SPEAKER_00 0:00

In Tragedy, a true crime podcast, we discuss missing persons cases, violent crime, and other sensitive topics that may be difficult for some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. Our show is a place where every story matters and every voice deserves to be heard. To support this podcast, you can subscribe at www.tragedy a true crime podcast.com for early access to new episodes. And join our Facebook community, Tragedy a True Crime Podcast, for updates, discussions, and ways to support the families we feature. Welcome to Tragedy, a true crime podcast. I'm Elisa.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

And I'm Michael.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

And today we're doing something a little different for our listeners.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Yeah, we've we've got a lot of updates for a number of cases that we've been working on. And, you know, there's FOIA requests, there's information we've gotten through various sources, and there's a lot of things that go on behind the scenes that I don't think are necessarily obvious to our listeners that we wanted to share some of the work that we do as part of the investigations and continuing to try to pull more information into the public so we can keep these cases at the forefront and also have new areas to explore.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

It's really interesting that you mentioned FOIA because that's going to be part of our discussion today. And we're just going to start off with what um started this whole show for us, and that is the unsolved homicide of Jody Kilgore.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

All right, let's get going.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

So we have three main updates that we want to discuss as far as behind the scenes for Jody. And really the number one primary thing primary thing is the FOIA. So after several months of reaching out to the Waucala County Sheriff's Office and asking under the Freedom of Information Act, we were provided with a 75-ish page document in response to our request.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Yeah, I think we probably should let people know how many times was this requested? How many FOIAs did you file?

SPEAKER_00 2:18

I would say formally, I think I've requested a FOIA maybe three or four times, but then we've also had follow-up emails asking where we are on that. Um, and of course, our listeners who come all the way from episode one and forward know that for a while we were getting no response at all. Um and so this is encouraging. Um, it did take some persistence, uh, but we do have some things that we did get in the open records request that we would like to share with you.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

All right.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

So I mentioned that we received a 76-page document in response to this request, which is great. However, 85 and maybe a little bit more percent of the document is redacted, which means it is completely blacked out. Um again, we know this is an open and active investigation, and we trust that the things that are redacted could uh jeopardize the investigation. Um, but there are some things in here that we think are useful and we do want to share with you.

SPEAKER_01 3:24

One thing I think we should point out is you know, a big portion of the redacted area is um interviews. So we don't have a record of who was interviewed, we certainly don't have a record of what was said. While we do know that's a very important part of the investigation, we also understand why it wasn't included in our folio.

SPEAKER_00 3:41

Yeah, so let's just start from the top. And this one really, really stood out for me. Um, the way that this document works is um the person the victim is named, of course, we know that's Jody Kilgore. And just right under that, there is the charge. And that piece is not redacted. So the charge that it looks like the sheriff's office um is hoping that they can move forward with is homicide, which we know, obviously, that we know that Jody was killed. And it is described as a willful kill, felony, murder premeditated. So that really, that premeditated word really jumped out to me. Now, we've talked a lot about um different theories and things that may have happened, but premeditated obviously means planned.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

Yeah, even when we spoke to Julie, I mean, one of the kind of prevailing theories when speaking with her, and based on the the scenario that was painted, we really always believe that this was an argument that got out of hand. And so when we start seeing the word premeditated, now there's no rules saying that that didn't change over time and we're just not aware of it, or it's part of the redacted area. But it's interesting that the premeditated was in there as an initial part of the investigation.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

Yes. And I just want to clarify that this does not mean charges have been filed. This just seems to be that this is what they are working towards because what happens, what this document looks like the rest of the way are um called evidence articles and they are exhibits. Um, they're kind of out of order numerically, which means maybe some just were completely pulled out. Again, totally fine. But the highest number I can find is like 70. So from what I can understand, it seems like the process is collecting all the evidence, putting it in this document, and then uh linking it to a charge. Um, like I mentioned, like 85% of these things are redacted. But um, what I can tell you I see are um lots of interviews. Every single name is redacted. It will say interview with, and it's blacked out. Um, those kinds of things are not there. Recorded interview, blacked out. We can't tell any names at all.

SPEAKER_01 5:53

Is there any indication of who's conducting the interview?

SPEAKER_00 5:56

No. Um, it just says article code, um, total value, the description. There doesn't seem to be any names as far as who conducted the interviews. Um, I can say that m some place it will say interview, and other places it will say audio, video, tape, or disk.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Well, the good news we know they're recordings. Of course, we just don't have access to those, but it gives us something to start working toward.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

Yes, for sure. Um, some other things that I see when I kind of scroll down here are things like um digital images. So there are lots of pictures, right? Digital, we don't see the pictures again, but it'll say digital images of the scene, um, photos of certain things. Something that really stood out to me as far as digital images is um there's something that says digital images of weapon, parentheses, handle removed.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

And this kind of makes me think of when we were able to watch what we refer to as the town hall, and law enforcement was discussing certain things that they had sent to FDLE for identification of any biological substances that were on there. And we've talked quite frequently about what we think um did go to FDLE um because it wasn't necessarily named in the town hall, but this FOIA, at least to us, makes it pretty clear that I mean it says weapon. So we know that that has gone up there.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

Just trying to see if other kind of uh there's well before we move on, is there an indication of the weapon? Like what do they you know, is can we see in the FOIA what they sent FDLE or at least what they identify as the murder weapon?

SPEAKER_00 7:45

It looks like there's two different knives discussed in this in the FOIA. One is described described as a fixed blade with a sheath. Also, there's an indication here that it is taken apart where the handle was separated from the blade itself.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

Yeah, I would imagine they probably did that for maybe possibly blood evidence.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Possibly. Um, and the other one is described as a black folding knife. And then later on, um, after all of these, we'll call them evidence line items, the supplemental reports happen. There are several supplemental reports, um, 35 pages of supplemental reports, but only the first one is available to us. Everything else is redacted. However, the knife is discussed um in this first supplemental report, and it is referred to as a quote, duct D-U-C-T, end quote, knife, and that it was lying next to Jody's right shoulder and it was soaked in blood. So that those are the places where we see a description of knives at the scene.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

Interesting enough. Um when you said it's a knife and sheath and then the duct knife, to me it seems strange that the sheath would have been there as well.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

You have to sort of try to put your mind into sort of what may have been happening at that point. Now, I am not someone who carries a knife with me, but I would think that a sheath is attached to somebody's belt, right? It holds a knife. Um, but it seems like the sheath was actually at was collected as a piece of evidence.

SPEAKER_01 9:20

Aaron Powell Okay. Thanks for that clarity.

unknown 9:23

All right.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

So that's what we have from a from a perspective of weapons or knives or however you want to describe it. Was there any other evidence um collected that we could kind of extract from this FOIA?

SPEAKER_00 9:33

Yeah, there are a couple of things that really stood out to me um that are named as pulled from trash at 922. Now, uh to speaking of behind the scenes, we've done a lot of work to try to figure out what is 922. I mean, the most obvious is that it might be the beginning of an address or it's part of someone's phone number, or we but we spend a lot of time trying to figure out what this 922 is. And the reason we did that is because there are two things that were taken from the trash at 922. One is a comb, and the other is a sock. So to us, in our, you know, rudimentary understanding of how investigations go, I mean, we're I feel like we're trying to do some sort of DNA match. Like I'm really familiar with the Golden State Killer and Michelle McNamara's book. And I don't really care what people say, she's the one who solved this case. It's her work and that book that led law enforcement in that direction. And they did eventually determine that he was a strong suspect, and they went to his trash and they pulled things from his trash and they used familial DNA, and that's how they identified the Golden State killer. And so this seems pretty obvious to me. When we're taking a sock and a comb from trash at whatever 922 is, and we have a premeditated murder charge of trying to make some sort of connection on the part of um law enforcement's efforts. And then there's one more piece of physical evidence called it says trash pull at, but it's redacted. Could be 922. I don't know why 922 would not be redacted in a couple of places and then is redacted somewhere else. But this is discussed as miscellaneous papers. And that's all. So fingerprints, maybe?

SPEAKER_01 11:33

Or just content. I mean, you know, it's it's it's miscellaneous papers. We don't know what they pulled. It could have it could have been McDonald's trash for all we know.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

Yeah, that that's a good, that's that's a great could be. Also, we've got uh photo lineups. That's I think very interesting. Um it says witness redacted and photo lineups. Now we all know what photo lineups are are designed to do. So I I feel like there seems to be a pretty clear indication that the Walcala County Sheriff's Office may know who this is and they're trying to substantiate it through um DNA, pulling socks and combs, doing photo lineups and interviews and things like that.

SPEAKER_01 12:20

Well, the part that stuck out to me is regarding that, even though again, most of that is redacted. The fact is they have a witness or they see they seem to. And so we've kind of gone through the approach so far that there weren't any witnesses, and that's one of the things that made this investigated so challenging. I mean, we have the one person who, the neighbor who supposedly heard the scream, and that's really how we established some of our timeline on when things would have, you know, would have at least begun or happened. But if they had a witness that was looking at a photo lineup, someone saw something.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

Mm-hmm. Yeah, excellent point. They also pulled someone's criminal history, redacted, I don't know who it is. And then the last thing that just really stood out to me is this video surveillance from Dollar General Leon County. Okay, well, again, my little amateur sleuth hat came on, and I found a Dollar General that is in Leon County, right up the main road from where the homicide happened. So, you know, what why are we gathering video surveillance? Who might have been there? Um, that they're trying to either substantiate that they were there, or maybe somebody said they weren't, and they're saying, trying to prove that they were not there. But I thought that was very, very interesting. And I feel pretty confident which Dollar General they were pulling that from. Lastly, we have lots of things that we're taking from dogs. Dog hair. Seems to be two dogs, a black hair, a black-haired dog, um a Pomeranian dog. We're taking lots of pieces of evidence or hair from dogs. And we do know that um Jody did have a couple of dogs.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

Yeah, and one thing to make note on this is obviously there must have been some type of hairs found at the crime scene, and they're trying to rule out Jody's dogs, or maybe even just see if there's any other connection to dogs maybe in the neighborhood. Um, I think we can make that assumption, even though there's nothing in the FOIA itself that indicates where those crime scene samples come from. Now, let's circle back to the supplemental report that you mentioned earlier. Is there anything else notable in that report we should talk about?

SPEAKER_00 14:33

Yes, I found some things that were really interesting in here. And again, this is the first responding officer's report. Um, and what he discussed is coming up on the scene and observing a very visible and distraught male subject standing over Jody. And we all know who that is. We all know who made the 911 call. So he's coming up on Toby, um, who made the 911 call uh at 1021. Um also the duct knife is discussed in there, which we had previously just um talked about. What I think is interesting here, or one of the things I think is interesting, is that there's a mention of a wallet. So it says approximately two feet from the victim's right side was his wallet, which appeared to have been gone through. There was blood splatter on the wallet and several of its contents. So I find this sort of something that we might want to talk about a little bit because robbery has been a theory here that perhaps someone was just coming up to commit a robbery that went bad. And so now we see this wallet and it says, which appeared to have been gone through. There was, you know, money was still there, it had blood on it, the wallet was there, nobody took the wallet.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

What's interesting though, you said blood splatter. Um, and that usually is an indicator of something that was open during a during an act, not something that got soaked as a as a result of just being at the scene.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Yeah, that's possible. It does say blood splatter on the wallet and several of its contents, but we didn't see wallet in the evidence logs. So that was weird. That is weird to me. Um it also says that Toby, who made the 911 call when he came up on the scene, he initially thought that Jody had had a heart attack. He was laying on the ground, and that that was his initial thought until he got closer and then immediately uh made the 911 call. We also talk about the backpack here in the supplemental report. And we've talked about the Jody's work bag, right? And that it was, we have heard that it was inside the house, um, behind the locked door. Um, and that piece is confirmed that it wasn't there. It says it should be noted there was no backpack around the body of the victim. So that piece that we had heard that it was in the house or not on Jody, or he didn't take it out with him, that's been confirmed because unless someone took it.

unknown 16:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

I guess that's plausible too. They did take digital images, turn those in, um, and then FDLE took the scene over relatively quickly. Um, and then Captain Meek arrived and the crime scene was turned over to him. So that is all we have in the pages and pages of supplemental reports is that first responding officer's report.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

Yeah, this is actually more information than we expected, but it was certainly disappointing to see. I mean, what I've described this FOIA as is we have multiple sheets that basically might as well be black construction paper because every single letter on the page is redacted.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

Yeah. Um, let's also just talk really briefly about the the medical report. So those of us uh are listeners who listen to Julia's episode, we talked a lot about the medical report and how nice it would be to have that, particularly for Julia and being able to create uh a victim profile. Um and we've been working on that behind the scenes. Um, we've been in close contact with one of the detectives at the Wokala County Sheriff's Office. And we were told at one point, quote, it shouldn't be a problem, but let me check with the state's attorney. And that sort of went on for a couple of months. Um, then unfortunately, based on what we heard just this week, the state's attorney's office denied the release of that medical report. So what seemed really promising uh initially turned out to not be. And so we do not have that medical report, which we kind of thought we were gonna get. And finally, we would like to share the efforts that we have been undertaking to get more coverage on Jody's story. And there are two ways that we have been working on that. And one is working in collaboration with the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. They have something called Fresh Take Florida. And this is a group of investigative journalists that work out of UF, and we were uh connected to them through one of our local, one of your Waucola local newspapers. And we spoke with B from Fresh Take Florida. She also spoke with a member of Jody's family. And she, the way this works is then she writes up an investigative uh journal article that then is available nationwide. And she said she would let us know if any of the um national news sources or any local states picked up her article. So that's really exciting. And then finally, we were able to speak with Frank Gibson, and he has a YouTube channel called I'll be Frank, and that was just maybe last week or a couple of weeks ago, and we discussed Jody's case, and he's actually in the UK. So we've got national and worldwide coverage, and you can find that discussion with Frank on our Facebook page.

SPEAKER_01 19:47

All right, so let's move on to Ian Rogers.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

Yes, there is a big, big piece of information that we are happy to share in regard to Ian.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Yeah, if anyone's been paying attention at all on the Ian Rogers case, um, the truck has been found. And after, you know, over a year, we finally find the truck. Now, this is both good and bad from from this at least from our perspective. I'm so happy we have found the truck. At this point, we have not found Ian. There's at least there's been no indication we found Ian. Now, let's talk about the bad. The bad is that it's disappointing. Maybe I shouldn't say bad, but I should say disappointing, that the truck is found in close proximity of the original foam ping. So in my opinion, this is exactly well, I'll just say it this way. I question how good the investigation was around that foam ping and how, you know, there's a there's a clear indication that there was a complete lack of any legitimate searching. I mean, I know that we had Britain out there, but I'm talking about law enforcement. And I think it's a little bit embarrassing that the truck was found, from what we understand, in pretty reasonable proximity. I mean, whenever we know about the ping, we've talked about it on two different episodes in this podcast. We've talked about tram road and old plank road. And if anyone's been following the latest news articles about the truck, where was the truck found? Tram and Old Planck Road.

SPEAKER_00 21:13

Yeah. Quote, way down off tram road. So, yes, if you just take a look at tram and old plank on any Google map and you could look at the the GPS point of the ping, the truck is likely literally right across Old Planck Road.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

Yeah, I'm gonna be really interested to see how law enforcement um, you know, tells the story and you know why it's taken over a year. I think they I think they need to give Teresa that answer.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Yeah, and what we do know is that the Ian's truck was found in Leon County. Uh, and we do know that the truck has been processed. Obviously, we're hoping that there's lots of information um in that truck that leads to some sort of outcome for Teresa and the rest of Ian's close friends and family members. And we Do know that the truck is way deep in the mud and going to be difficult to pull out from what we've understood.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

Right. Now, there was also, um, kind of from a timeline perspective, a very close proximity before we found the truck of a body that was discovered at Woodlake. So at this point, there's no indication that there's any relationship between these two things. So we're not trying to insinuate one. However, one of the things that I always like to think about, and we've learned this when we talked to Julia over on the consult, is there there are no coincidences typically in investigators. So I'm very curious to see what the outcome of that is. There's been there's been no report on the identity of that body. I'm desperately hoping it's not Ian. You know, I at this point I don't I I don't think a lot of people think Ian is alive. I think that that, you know, that theory or that hope, I should put call it a hope, is probably gone. But, you know, I also, you know, I still hold out hope that there's some other explanation on now that we have his truck and we don't have him. I'm hoping it's not him, but at this point we don't know.

SPEAKER_00 23:05

Yeah, and you mentioned proximity, and from what we believe to be about the proximity of where the truck was found and where the body was located, looks to be about 45 minutes. So they're not super close to each other in different counties. And the only thing that we have seen made public about the body that was found is that it was, quote, aged. Uh, and potentially even it could not be determined visually whether it is a male or a female. So that was a couple of weeks ago, and we know that those remains have been sent again up to FDLE to determine, see if they can figure out who that body is.

unknown 23:43

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Okay, to move forward, um, we we talked about a lot of the things that you were doing behind the scenes on the Jody Kilgore case. Let's talk now about what you were doing behind the scenes for Ian Rogers.

SPEAKER_00 23:54

Yeah, so our listeners will remember that there's there's a lot of time um during Ian's day, the day that he went missing, that is just he's unaccounted for. And one of those blocks of time is the truck spot picture, which is roughly around 1230, that we believe he was driving the truck near Tom Brown Park, and then that cell phone peeing that we were just talking about, which is roughly around 3.15. Um, and we also are aware that there was about an eight-minute time period where the truck was seen, the truck spot picture that we have, and then the truck was gone for eight minutes, and then it came back in the view. We don't have that precise picture. This is what has been um relayed to us. And we even know the direction according to what was told to the person that gave us this information. The truck was going on Appalachi Parkway and was about eight minutes, and it was going um east. And so I just grabbed a Google map and I tried to figure out like what is around there that would take about eight minutes to get to on a typical Monday afternoon traffic day. And there is a Dollar General and a convenience store that are right on Appalachian Parkway east of uh Tom Brown Park. So I am working on getting incident reports for both of those locations. I started with Tallahassee Police Department and I requested a FOIA on incident reports, police activity, service calls, arrest reports related to those two locations from January 19th to the present. That request was forwarded to Leon County Sheriffs because that just under Tallahassee PD jurisdiction, this belongs, this particular, these addresses belong to Leon County Sheriff. So I you went to their website and I used their form and I heard nothing and I heard nothing and I heard nothing. So I finally just called last week and I found out that they don't use the um that email anymore. Apologies. I sent an email because that's what it said to do. Well, that's not what they do anymore. Now there's a form that you have to fill out. And she helped me figure out how to click through all of that. So working very hard to figure out what potentially happens at those locations, much like you did when you were talking about Tom Brown Park. And we're always looking to get more coverage of these stories. You know, we started in Walcala County and we're just getting bigger and bigger. And so, particular to Ian, we were a guest on a Missing Persons podcast. And you can find it by going to abjectentertainment.com. And there are several podcasts at this website. But if you click down to Missing Persons, we were able to go on that show and get some more coverage for Ian. Uh, also, we talked earlier about I'll be Frank and the UK, and he had actually spoken with Teresa. So you can learn more about Ian's case when you're checking out Jody's case on the YouTube channel, I'll be frank. And then just recently, within the last couple of days, people.com covered Ian's story. So we're getting national coverage for both Ian and Jody and also worldwide coverage. And let's talk a little bit about what we have been doing with Michael John Olson's case as well. We've been doing a lot of behind the scenes there. Really, really good news there is that Michael's nieces have been in close communication with the lead detective down in West Palm Beach, Detective Senior. And in early November, they sent a batch of information and included us on that email. And that information was included several new documents that the family found in a box, particularly related to a traffic ticket that Michael received a couple of days before he went missing. They were also asking about confirming the status of Clear Lake, whether it had been cleared or not. And Detective Senior said that she was going to go ahead and reach out to whichever city. I remember part of the city owns that. So they needed to connect with them to make sure that Clear Lake had been cleared. We also sent along in that batch of information what we learned from Jack Fox, that we linked the entire podcast.

SPEAKER_01 28:02

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 28:02

On that. And also from Jenny, we received a massive amount of information regarding a civil case about something that we had talked about before with someone close to this case who had an incident later on, several years later. And we talked about there was a wrestling match at a golf course, and there was a civil case that happened, and we got massive amounts of documents about that civil case, and we sent that on to Detective Senior as well.

SPEAKER_01 28:32

Oh, wait a second. Wrestling match at a golf course. What do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_00 28:35

Yeah. So if our listeners will recall that we spent some time talking about the person who was last to see Michael John Olson, and that several years after Michael disappeared, that person who was last se seen with him was involved in what was referred to as a wrestling match at a golf course in w in which someone was injured pretty badly. And so we received a batch of documents regarding the civil case related to that incident that golf match.

SPEAKER_01 29:01

So this wasn't a sanctioned event. This was an argument that got out of control.

SPEAKER_00 29:05

Correct. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 29:06

As you keep using the word wrestling match, and that's probably not the right term to use.

SPEAKER_00 29:09

Yes. And the reason I do that is because that's how it is referred in the articles that there was a wrestling match that went wrong. But you're right, there was a physical altercation that happened at a golf course. So you can see that the family wants to make sure that the lead detective has all the information that she can get about um everything related to this case, particularly around the last person to see Michael John Olson, which is why we've sent all of this information. And they seem to be having a really good communication back and forth. So we're hoping something comes of that in terms of even a search warrant has been discussed in those email threads. So we'll see where that leads. There's a lot happening there. Uh also in keeping contact with the family, I referenced a traffic ticket. Now we know that when we were um originally discussing Michael's case, that he received what we believe to be a speeding ticket um in was it Fort Lauderdale?

SPEAKER_01 30:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:10

I feel like that's right. And that there was maybe um another person with him in the car. And so when his nieces were going through um one of the boxes, that um, you know, you guys will recall that his family did a really good job of documenting, keeping things related to their own investigation around the case, and that they found some correspondence from the Fort Lauderdale PD around that ticket. And basically it was saying, like, you haven't paid the fine, we're revoking your license. And of course, they don't know that he is missing. But in those documents, I found the actual original citation, traffic citation number. And so behind the scenes, I was working with Fort Lauderdale police to see if I could even get that ticket. Like, because we had unheard that it was a speeding ticket, but the documents that um his nieces have say something else, that it was not a speeding ticket, it was something else. And so I want to get clarity on that. Unfortunately, I just keep hearing that because it was so long ago, there are no electronic records. In fact, they're less than helpful. I was asking someone over the phone, is there anything I can do? Can I reach out here? And she just said, yeah, we don't keep anything before whatever the date is. I can't remember exactly what it is. So that may be a dead end. Um, but uh, you know, because there are some, there's some confusion that we can tell as to what that traffic ticket was issued for. And it was literally two days before he went missing. We feel like it would be important to get some clarity.

SPEAKER_01 31:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 31:38

And then also in the box, um, they found a cassette tape.

SPEAKER_01 31:44

Yes. Um, they sent us the cassette tape to kind of start analyzing and look at. And first of all, I could tell, you know, just looking at the manufacturer, the cassette tape, is that this thing was produced at least 50 years ago. And so that's a it's it's a really old type of cassette, even though it is a standard cassette tape. Um, you can tell too by again the manufacturer how long the tape was capable of you know maintaining recording and things like that. So um now the audio on the tape was incredibly degraded, and so I you could tell even looking at the tape itself that a lot of the the sheen that you would normally see on a tape was was all gone. And so I kind of expected um to be some serious problems with the tape, and of course there was. Now that didn't stop us from trying to pull and extract everything that we could, and so far I'm still going through some of that, but I'm pretty convinced that there's nothing um noteworthy to the case on the tape itself. One side is a very short recording where it seems like there's a small child that's recording themselves maybe reading something, and the other side is you hear a child's voice for just a few seconds, and then it goes into almost like they're watching a game show or watching cartoons in the background. So I would say from a case value perspective, probably not very high, but from a, you know, from a family value perspective, maybe incredibly high. So what I'm still doing now is going through the digital conversion of this, and I'm gonna try to clean it up as much as possible. But if this is Michael John Olson, this is a this is a tape, if if it is in fact him, because that was the name that was on the tape. If it's in fact him, this was not when he was in his 20s. Um, this is when he was probably six to ten years old, maybe.

SPEAKER_00 33:23

Yes, and so this is important because not only was it found in this box of things related to Michael, but also it had his name on it. And we are just really thankful to the family for um trusting us and mailing that tape to us. And thank you, Michael, for getting some really cool technology and working on trying to clean that up. And, you know, we are gonna send it back to the family. And, you know, the girls, his nieces were really excited because if it does happen to be him, um, they indicated to me they they've never heard his voice. And so I think it would be really nice if they, you know, they will be able to tell if it's if it's him reading. And that would just be a real gift, I think.

SPEAKER_01 34:01

I agree. Okay, as our final kind of update for today, we're gonna kind of give you the behind the scenes and update for the Jonathan Haigons case.

SPEAKER_00 34:10

Yeah. So again, you're going to hear me talk about lots of emails and things I'm trying to do to figure out bits and pieces related to certain cases. And so in Jonathan's case, when we talked to Joel, he indicated that there was a snack shack and that it is his memory that Jonathan walks into this snack shack. Um and so I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out what this snack shack is. And of course, this is 1968. So first I had to learn even how to reach out to these places. So I discovered that um historical associations and local museums are where to go. So I reached out to Beaches Museum, the Jacksonville Public Library, and the City Clerk. And what I'm trying to do is find out what is the name of the snack shack, where was it, maybe even some pictures. I also found they keep talking about the car ramp to the beach. Now I didn't grow up in a beach community, so I found a picture. So now I know what this looks like, this car ramp to the beach. And so when I'm reaching out to these places, um, what is happening is really kind of cool. They're super awesome, by the way. These people who work at the museums and the libraries are super responsive. And I think they kind of like this research part of their job. I've been getting scans of the first thing I got were um yearbooks, high school yearbooks. Um back then and even into the 80s, you would see advertisements, local advertisements in yearbooks. And that's how they kind of supported the funding that was needed for um the yearbook development and distribution. And I've been getting all kinds of scans from like 1967, 1968, 1969 of high school yearbooks in the Jacksonville Beach area. And I'm scanning and I'm looking, they're like little business cards that are scanned in. And I know the approximate um street address and no snack bars, no concession bars. Um, I'm seeing some restaurants and they're sending me newspaper clippings. Um, the city clerk, not as helpful. They're basically saying there's nothing electronic before 1980. But the museums in the public libraries, and we're still in communication with them as I'm getting more precise and understanding. Um, but at this point, I have not been able to find the name of what would look like a concession or a snack bar in any of these scans that I'm receiving.

unknown 36:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:39

And one theory that I have regarding that is if you go back to the our last episode, we we hear the we hear the statement that Susan made that we shared, is I want to always I just want to remind people, she was 15 and everyone else was neither not born yet or notably younger. And she is not just describing a snack shack. She is describing a bar. And so one of the things that we're gonna start doing is kind of looking at that angle, because you know, there's a lot of theories behind, oh, you know, nothing was really tracked, there's a lot of not a lot of paperwork, it's too long ago, that's why we can't find the name of the snack shack or location. Um, I want to take a different approach, and I'm like, maybe there was no snack shack, and that's why no one's finding it. And so we're gonna start looking at what bars in the area and locations and various land deeds, things like that, to see if we can't find the exact bar. And, you know, we've already applied for the FOIA for a lot of this information. And one of the things we're hoping to cross-reference is Susan indicates in her statement that you know there was an interview that went on and there was a number of things that were done related to that bar. And so it's gonna be a good indication of whether we've been looking, or anyone, including us, been looking the right direction when we start thinking about Snack Shack versus the bar.

SPEAKER_00 37:51

Yes. Thank you for bringing up the FOIA. I would like to say that the Jacksonville Beach Police Department has been extremely responsive. Um, within two days of me submitting the FOIA request, I got an email back from the records department in which they indicated that they needed to check with the lead detective and that they would get back to me. And then to my surprise, less than three or four days later, my phone rang and it was the lead detective, Detective Warren, um, on Jonathan's case from the Jacksonville Beach Police Department. And she let me know that she had approved the records department to release the FOIA to us. Um, this is a much different experience than than we have had with several of our other sheriff's offices. And so this is why this is really surprising to me. And so I immediately got back on the phone with the records department and um they said yes, absolutely. They did, they did request a fee, um, which is fine. So I um went ahead and sent that fee over. And now we don't know how much will be redacted because I did ask how long it would be, and she said they didn't take some time to see if it needed to be redacted. But um, you know, this is within two weeks of me even making the request. And I've spoken to the records department three times and the lead detective, and we should be getting the FOIA information relatively soon and can clear up precisely what you're discussing. And one of the things, things that we hope that you have noticed as we've done this update are the number of collaborations that we are building with external partners. I will just say for myself that I had no idea that this journey would take us to developing partnerships with um local newspapers, dive organizations, museums, libraries, and um other podcasters as well. And so if you've listened to our episodes on Jonathan, Scent Evidence Canine is one of those organizations, and they've been really supportive to Jonathan's family. We've heard them talk about him several times. And they recently reached the 1000 Find Milestone. This is a nationwide organization that's obviously using canines to track and find missing people. Something we found really interesting about this organization are what they call scent preservation kits. It's kind of made me think about, you know, when my daughter was in elementary school and they used to fingerprint kids and then they'd give you the fingerprint thing in case they went missing or something horrible happened. This is like the amped up like 21st century version of that. And it's called a scent preservation kit. And you can order that through scentevidence canine.com. And it's really designed to protect and prepare those you love and care for in the event that they go missing. So it's really cool technology.

SPEAKER_01 40:40

All right. So to wrap up today's episode, um, let's kind of cover, you know, some of the things that are coming.

SPEAKER_00 40:46

Yes. And of course, we always like to continue to build our community. And we have a new missing persons case that was actually referred to us um by Ian's mom. And she has come in contact with a mom in nearby Liberty County, Florida. And her name is Michelle. And Michelle's son, Cody, his name is Cody Haney. He went missing on June 21st, 2024. And we've already spoken with Michelle, and she's put us in contact with some people close to Cody, so that will be the story that we're telling next. All right, you've been listening to Tragedy, a true crime podcast. Our purpose is to honor victims by sharing their stories through the voices of friends, family, and those whose lives were forever changed. If today's episode resonated with you, we encourage you to subscribe, leave a review, and share the podcast so these important stories continue to be heard. Together, we can preserve their memories and ensure their voices are never forgotten. If you have ideas for cases we should cover or questions about what you heard, you can connect with us through our Facebook group, Tragedy a True Crime Podcast, on X at Tragedy Podcast, by email at TragedyAt True Crime Podcast at gmail.com, or by visiting our website www.tragedy a true crime podcast.com. Thank you for listening, and we hope you'll join us next time.