When we made the discovery about the Parson family, it made us question everything Nelson had told us so far. And again, lemon and Parson are pseudonyms because these guys have never publicly been named suspects by law enforcement. So to see if this was just some kind of huge mix up, we first reached out to a former employee of Nelson's who Emily had interviewed prior. She's actually the one who was assigned to be the liaison between Nelson and Kristen when their relationship deteriorated. Very familiar with the Hulse case. She was also someone who told us that buried bus property was Darryl Lemons. So we fired off a quick text just asking for clarity, and she texted back right away and was like, oh, I misspoke. Thats the Parsons. Ok. So I threw together a Parson family tree and realized that most of the four Parson boys were dead and none of them were all that old when they died of. From what I can tell, only one of them was still alive. Well call him Mike. The others, well call Jay, Jacob, and Daryl. Now, im not calling Daryl Parson the same name as Daryl Lemon just to confuse you.

Im doing it because they really have the same first name, which might be why Nelson and his staff have confused them for so long. I mean, its not really an excusable mistake in a homicide investigation, but I thought the context was important to add. Now, the brothers who had died were too old in their obit photos to see if they met the description of Darlene's killer. So we headed to the historical archive in Plymouth to dig through old yearbooks, and there were two brothers that stood out to us. Emily. That nose, even back then. This is episode 13, untangling misinformation. While Emily was trying to track down Nelson again to confront him about the discrepancy between the lemon and the Parson families, I went back through all our materials to see if any of the parson sons showed up in any reports, because so far, no one had brought them up to us. And isn't it amazing what a little context can provide? A couple of names on a prosecutor's whiteboard suddenly gave a whole new meaning to things that I had looked at a hundred times. Tips and reports from the very first days of the investigation that seemed to be investigative dead ends were now our best lead.

And so once again, we had to start back at the beginning. On August 18, the day Darlene's body was found, a local mail carrier called police and said the suspect might be Jay Parson of Kenilworth Road. She said about two weeks before Darlene's abduction, she saw a light colored car by the Hulse house. At the time, she didn't pay it much attention because she thought that they were probably just picking marijuana out of a field nearby. And for context about the marijuana crops, we did find old police reports where an ISP trooper with a plane had been doing flyovers and investigating a field right behind the Holst home. Now, the Holstes were in no way involved with this. Their house just happened to be close by. But apparently, the Parsons were thought to be involved in that grow patch. That same day, August 18, a different tipster called to say that the suspect's sketch in the newspaper looked like Mike Parson. That's all the tip says. Then the next day, August 19, another woman called police and said she also thought the suspect might be Jay Parson. The woman said she saw him, quote, drive by her house two weeks ago, driving a dark green over dark top, mid sized car.

She lives 20 b west of old 31 south side. Now, it's a little tough to translate these. Does she mean that she saw Jay driving a green car by her house or by Darlene's? Some of these handwritten tips and notes just leave a lot to be desired. Now, two days later, on August 21, police got a call at 02:00 a.m. about a person hiding in a cornfield at State Road 110 and Highway 31. An officer went out to check the area and didn't find anybody. Then 15 minutes later, police got another complaint, this time about a guy who ran off the edge of the road in the same area and, quote, unquote, hid in a culvert. So, this is written on a police follow up sheet. And here's what's confusing. At the top of the paper, someone wrote Daryl Parson, not to be confused again with Daryl Lemmitt. But then at the bottom of the sheet, the officer wrote that subject was located and arrested for 1056, end quote. In Indiana, 1056 means intoxicated person. The guy told arresting officers that he had just hitchhiked, and that was the end of the report. So our question was, is it Darryl Parson who is being arrested in the incident, or is it Darryl Parson who's the one calling in the incident?

Emily put in a records request for Darryl Parsons criminal history in Marshall county, and there was a public intoxication arrest on his record, but it was in 2008, not 1984. Darryl also had a domestic battery charge on his record, also from 2008. And it's Darryl, who was blonde with a long nose that fits the physical description for Darlene's killer. But what did police do with these tips? Well, it seems like they did look into them because on August 21, there's a follow up sheet with an alibi that got called in for Daryl Parson. Someone said that he couldn't have killed Darlene because he wasn't even in Argus. He was in Boone County, Indiana, that morning, filling out a job application at 09:00 a.m. and he was there for an hour. Now, it's worth noting that Jacob Parson is never mentioned in any of the reports that we have. But what about Mike and Jay? We couldnt find much else about Mike right off the bat, but Jay was interviewed by police, and Jay is really the one I find myself having the most questions about, mostly because of the stuff that weve learned and how it ties back to the FBIS profile.

He wouldve been 30 years old in 1984, and he lived in Argus all his life on the property with the buried bus, really close to Darlene. His obituary said that he graduated high school in 1974, though we couldn't find him pictured or even listed in the graduating class of that yearbook. We also couldn't find any records showing that he ever got married or had any kids. And he, too, has a long, flat nose, just less pronounced than his brother Daryl's. Oh, and get this, in a weird turn of events, looking into Jay Parson truly did bring us right back to the beginning, because I found out that he ran with Danny Bender. Remember him, the very first suspect in Darlene's case? And we know this because there are some old reports from a few of Danny's friends that mentioned Jay being with Danny, like, riding their bikes around town and partying together and stuff. The Marshall County Sheriff's Office gave Jay a polygraph exam on September 5, 1984, but it seemed more centered around Jay's friendship with Danny than Jay's possible involvement in the pretest. The subject gave the following information and admissions. The subject stated he knew why he was there reference he was there to help this department out in any way he could.

He advised that he knows Danny Bender, and because of him knowing Danny Bender, he feels that he may be able to help. The subject advised that he thought Danny Bender had streaks in his hair and was light complected. He advised that the last time he saw Danny Bender was on July 28, 1984, which would have been the subject's birthday. He advised that his brother had driven him over there and that his brother owns a purple Chevrolet. He advised that he had a couple of beers at Danny's house, and the other person was Jackie, who was Danny's girlfriend and her five kids. He advised that he was there for approximately one half hour. He advised that the day of the homicide, he was at home and that he has slept out in his car, which he keeps buried in the garden. He advised that he got up around 08:30 a.m. at which time his father told him that they were looking for three convicts that had gotten loose. He advised that he was home all day working in the garden and observed the helicopter that went over his house in the afternoon. The subject advised that he does not know the Hulse family before the homicide, and after seeing the woman's picture on tv, he remembers seeing her at the laundromat in Argus some time before the subject was given two tests.

His polygrams did not contain specific reactions to relevant questions, indicative no attempt at deception. Conclusion?

After careful analysis of this subject's polygrams.

It is the opinion of the examiner that he told substantially the truth during his examination. It seems like this was the end of investigators looking into Jay, which is weird, because I was left with a lot of questions. I mean, they didn't even have any follow up questions about him sleeping in a buried bus underground. Are you kidding me? The other thing that stood out is this whole thing about his dad waking him up and immediately mentioning something about three convicts on the loose. What is he talking about? We couldn't find anything about another manhunt going on that day in Argus. So maybe Jay's dad was conflating what he'd heard regarding Darlene's abduction. I mean, were there rumors going around that three men were involved? The other thing that doesn't make sense is Jay said he recognized Darlene's photo on tv because he had seen her at a laundromat in Argus. But Ron Holtz told police that they had a washer and dryer at home, and all of their laundry was done there. He was insistent. Darlene never went to the laundromat. There is no more mention of any of the Parson brothers or their family that we have been able to find yet.

So the question is, why is their whole family listed on that whiteboard? When Emily tried to track Nelson down again to see if he was confused or if he'd lied to us, this is what he texted her to quote, I'm sorry. I'm in something deep. I trust you have a sense of how many demands are put on my time. End quote. But the next day, when we followed up. Nelson agreed to meet Emily over his lunch hour at the Martin supermarket salad bar. The audio isn't great because the store is loud with people talking and top 40 radio. But when they sat down, Emily asked about the lemon Parson discrepancy, and Nelson just brushed it off as a simple mix up. Basically, no big deal. Okay, fine. Maybe he was confused only when talking to us. But again, why are the Parsons even relevant?

I cannot go into that. Oh, come on.

How did the apply?

There's a lot. A long line of detectives have all done that kind of work. I don't know if you know what my role is.

No, I do, but you're the only one I'm given access to for this. None of the detectives will talk to me.

I'm on their shit list for me.

I'll spare you from listening to all of that supermarket audio. But basically, Nelson admits our findings are correct, that Darryl Lemon was at the burgers that summer, and the Parson family are the ones who live near Darlene with the buried bus in their yard. He said the Parsons have only ever been considered persons of interest in Brandi Peltz's case, not Darlene's. Emily asked if the Parsons were still on police's radar for either case, and Nelson said no. So, I mean, I know what you're wondering. Why is their family tree on the conference room whiteboard at the prosecutor's office? Nelson said he wrote it up there a long time ago because he was getting confused. And that he also put the paper over the family tree because it's, quote unquote, nobody's business. And no one in his office has taken an interest in Brandi or Darlene's case. So it shouldn't just be on display every day for unrelated meetings. I also had Emily ask Nelson if they'd consider doing any genealogy testing regarding the Parson family for either case. And he said, quote, I suppose, if there was convincing evidence to move forward on that path.

End quote. But then I still wonder how the Parsons got up there. Were they considered for Brandi Peltz's case? And if so, why, when none of them seemed to have violent criminal records, save for Darryl's domestic violence charge? Maybe it was because they were being investigated for involvement with that Marijuana field. The weed patch was just north of the Hulse home, which was also in the direction of the Pelts house, but that seems like a stretch. Maybe a bunch of tips came in about them after Brandis murder. It's hard to say. We messaged Daryl's victim from his 2008 arrest on Facebook, but never heard back. And with most of the family deceased, it was a lot harder to find information about how they connected to the investigations. We even swung by their old homestead, where the bus is allegedly buried, but no one was home, and it was hard to tell if anyone still lived there. Emily pushed on Nelson and asked him to be a little more specific during that lunch break meetup. Basically, she wanted him to clarify all of this. And Nelson said, well, everyone always had their suspicions about Mike because he had some sort of mental illness.

Nelson didn't know if Mike Parson had been interviewed before or if he had the ability to be interviewed. He thought he was in assisted living today. And Nelson sort of acted like the idea of the Parsons came about in the Pelts case after law enforcement's other theories just fell apart. They had a suspect early on in that case, this guy from England who had spent some time in Argus. But then Nelson said by the time he returned overseas, it was too late to interview him.

I think I feel like there's more about the that you're not telling me.

I'm not telling you? Yeah, I'm telling you what it in my mind.

But why take the time to, like, write out their family tree on your whiteboard, but you're interested in or something?

After that, Nelson said, quote, I can't spend any time on it right now. I got too much shit going on. End quote. But then he made a mention that there was an effort made recently where a detective went to a relative's house to try and get more information about the Parsons involvement in basically just crime in the mid eighties around Argus. And he said that interaction didn't go well. They got yelled at, and the family they tried talking to wouldn't cooperate. But again I ask, what was the motivation behind that house call? In one breath, Nelson said, they aren't looking at them. It's been ages. They're just up there because there's nothing else. Then he's talking about detectives visiting living family members to get information on one or more of the brothers. When we tried to hone in on this, Nelson said, well, we just knew that they were around. So an investigator went, well, you know.

That Ken McCune's around. What's the difference? Help me.

Do this. Why the fuck you are doing that?

Well, no, just help me understand the difference.

Well, I'm trying to convince you that there is no logical plan here. We're trying to exist day to day.

Emily brought up Kenneth McCune junior, because if you remember at the time we spoke with him, Kenneth said investigators haven't questioned him about Darlene's case since he was arrested and sentenced back in like 87, 88. So you get that something's not adding up, right? Over the many, many months we've spent interviewing Nelson, there were no new efforts made by any law enforcement to go knocking on suspects doors to try and get DNA swabs or information. So to hear that someone went, quote unquote, recently to check in on a relative of the Parson family was surprising. Was it for pelts or was it for Hulse? Nelson wouldn't say. Nelson also said he cannot say one way or another if Brandi and Darlene's cases are connected. PI zip, who you heard from last episode, said he would be shocked if they aren't connected. But no one can say for sure. And I keep coming back to something else. Daryl, Lemon, the Parson family, Kenneth McCune, junior, all have one thing in common. They all stayed or lived near Darlene and where her body was found. And that seems to be the key to the Hulse investigation, at least for Nelson, which is also in line with what the FBI analysis said.

When Emily and Jake and I were in Marshall county visiting the crime scenes, Nelson texted Emily to ask what our reaction was to seeing the locations, referring to me and Jake. Emily responded that it was more rural than we had expected. And Nelson texted back, quote, and therefore, beyond coincidence, end quote. By now, I was kinda done trusting that guy. We decided to go back to the office and do a hard reset on everything he told us so far, and not just the stuff he had told us. We basically set out to double check everything, including things reported from decades before that have been the factual building blocks of the investigation, starting with Darlene's autopsy. I told you about the autopsy findings way back in episode three, and that her cause of death was listed as blunt trauma caused by the fireplace poker. But like everything else in this case, nothing is what it seems.

She died of strangulation. And then he kept squeezing.

A new cause of death, a new witness interviewed, and a whole new opinion about what happened to Darlene moments before her death. That's all next in episode 14, a massive revelation. You can listen to that right now. For almost four decades, no one questioned Darlene's cause of death. And honestly, at first, neither did we. We didn't set out to debunk the cause of death in Darlene's case. But when we went through the pathologist's 1984 findings, a few things just didn't make sense. It wasnt that we thought the report was wrong or that we knew more than a trained pathologist. In fact it was the opposite. Surely someone with more education than us just needs to explain a few things to me and Emily in laymans terms. But when we got the report translated from medical jargon to everyday speak, it proved that everything that stood out to us should have and it should have stood out to people for the last 38 years. But for some reason it didn't. And now we're about to tear apart the very foundation on which Darlene's case was built. So here goes nothing. This is episode 14, a massive revelation.

Darlene's official cause of death is listed as craniocerebral blunt trauma. Here's an actor reading word for word doctor Rick Hoover's conclusion.

It is my opinion that Darlene R.

Hols, a 28 year old white female, died as a result of blunt head injuries, causing extensive deep tears and bruising about the face and head. Diffuse hemorrhage was seen within the soft tissues of the scalp and hemorrhage was seen over the surface of the brain as well. Additionally, areas of blunt trauma were seen.

Involving the neck back in extremities.

Now, the conclusion was all fine and good, but it was some of his notes leading up to the conclusion that we didn't understand. Subsequent internal examination demonstrates diffuse scalp line hemorrhage but no evidence of skull fracture with diffuse mild subarachnoid hemorrhage seen over.

The right parietal cerebral cortex over an area measuring.

See what I mean about the medical jargon? But the part that we honed in on was at the beginning, but no evidence of skull fracture. For someone who died of blunt force trauma, we thought that was strange, but for all we knew, maybe this was common. The other thing that stood out in the report where Doctor Hoover listed off Darlene's injuries was a part that mentioned a, quote, focal fracture of hyoid bone. A quick Google search will tell you that a fractured hyoid bone is super rare and a life in true crime will tell you that it's most commonly caused by strangulation. But to be clear, there is nothing in Darlene's autopsy that mentions strangulation or asphyxiation. So were these inconsistencies just the result of real life clashing with the tropes that we see and read and hear in our true crime content? Or was there something there? We tried reaching Doctor Rick Hoover to ask. He still works as a pathologist in Indiana today, but I wasn't super hopeful about getting a sit down with him. He was actually someone that one of our other reporters, Delia D'Ambra, wanted to speak with a couple of years back about her investigation into the murder of the Peli family.

That was for counterclock season three, but he iced us out pretty hard back then, so I didn't see this going much different, and I wasn't wrong. We never heard back from him or his office in response to our request. So, with Doctor Hoover not returning our calls, we turned to another expert to walk us through the findings.

Doctor Gulsmak, police surgeon, Louisville Metro Police Department, medical director of the Training Institute on Strangulation Prevention. Consultant to local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies across the United States.

Doctor Smock also served as assistant medical examiner in Kentucky and worked as a medical advisor to the Louisville division of the FBI for years. He doesn't dispute that Darlene's killer hit her in the head and other parts of her body with the fireplace poker, but he thinks she survived.

That the subarachnoid hemorrhage may not get. But that's not what killed her.

What makes him so certain? That same little line that bothered us, but no evidence of skull fracture.

There was evidence of what's called subarachnoid hemorrhage, which is hemorrhage right on the surface of the brain. Subarachnoid hemorrhage does not kill you. It's evidence of an acceleration deceleration injury within the skull, but it's not enough to kill you. It may render you unconscious, but you do not die of subarachnoid hemorrhage.

So if the findings are telling him that Darlene did not die of blunt force trauma, then what did kill her?

She died of strangulation. And then he kept squeezing.

Doctor Smock reached this conclusion because he honed in on the broken hyoid, same as we did. But his expert eye also caught everything else around that.

The autopsy documented the presence of hemorrhage within the strap muscles of the neck. The strap muscles of the neck are the muscles that turn our head back and forth and up and down. So there is evidence of trauma to those muscles, which is absolute, consistent with strangulation.

Now, I want to note that it isn't unusual for medical experts to come to different conclusions. Even causes of death are subjective and totally dependent on the experience of the pathologist. Back then, Doctor Hoover labeled the neck injuries on the autopsy as postmortem. Doctor Smock said that he thinks the pressure on the neck started when Darlene was alive, but then continued after she died.

Doctor Hoover said there was no evidence of a hemorrhage associated with those fractures, which led him to believe that those fractures occurred post mortem. Meaning after her heart had stopped beating. So it's certainly possible that she was strangled to death. Then, after her heart stopped beating, either pressure was again applied or continually applied to her neck, resulting in the fracture of the hyoid bone, as well as the fracture of the laryngeal cartilage.

But what does Doctor Smock's new findings mean for Darlene and the investigation? Well, if he's right, it could potentially tell us a lot about the suspect, his behavior, his motive, and his rage. Based on the locations of Darlene's head wounds, Doctor Smock thinks that the man was hitting Darlene with the fire poker at the house as she was trying to escape.

The blows are coming from Darlene's right. Suspect's left. If he is facing her back and she is attempting to get away, and he's striking her head from behind. And there is some evidence that she did sustain multiple blows from a rounded, linear object to the back of her thighs. If she is attempting to run away, then it would be a strike with the right suspect's right hand.

We know from the blood in the house and the trail of blood to the car that some of the violence happened inside the home. But if doctor smock is right, then the question becomes, when did her killer strangle her? The suspect was still in the house when Marie and Melissa ran to their grandparents. And it was just a few minutes after that when police were called. And a few minutes after that when an officer arrived and the suspect and Darlene were already gone. So he didn't stay at the house long before deciding to take Darlene with him.

A human can be rendered unconscious from pressure. Just eleven pounds of pressure on either side of the neck in less than 10 seconds. And if that pressure is maintained, they will cease breathing somewhere between one and two and a half minutes.

So he might have had time to kill Darlene before even taking her out of the house. But if this man was willing to manually strangle her, why beat her first?

In this case, the suspect displayed some degree of anger toward the patient. The blows, multiple blows from an object. Plus, when you strangle someone, that is an intimate type of assault, because you were right in their face, literally squeezing the life out of somebody who was in front of you.

All of this could help inform the investigation and what we know or what we thought we knew about the man who killed Darlene. If police hadn't been working with the wrong motive and the wrong cause of death from the very beginning, it makes me wonder if Darlene's case could have been solved back in the eighties. I mean, I honestly wish we could have the FBI agent who did the behavioral analysis redo his report, knowing what we know now. Because there's more that doctor smock disagrees with Doctor Hoover on.

You have to assume till proven otherwise, that a sexual assault also occurred.

It seems like a sexual assault kit was done after Darlene's body was found because it's on an old evidence list and it's even mentioned in the autopsy report. But we haven't been able to find much context around it. Aside from a mention in that coroner's report about a quote unquote rape kit specimen being collected by Doctor Hoover and sent off with a state police technician by the name of Harmon, there are no results, no notes, nothing. We just know that at some point, authorities communicated to Darlene's family that she was not sexually assaulted. But there's a photo from her autopsy that perplexed us. It shows blood drops on the top of Darlene's underwear. But remember, she was found with her clothes on, which was one of the reasons authorities back then said that they didn't think she'd been sexually assaulted. Now, her skirt was covering this part of her underwear when her body was found. There's no explanation in doctor Hoover's report for the underwear bloodstain, so we wondered if there were more injuries to her lower body that weren't documented. But doctor Smock said that those blood spots aren't from injuries. He says they're transfer droplets, which means.

Blood has to be coming vertically down onto the underwear. She was in a skirt, based on the photographs from the scene. So if the skirt were actually over the underwear, then you would not expect to see any blood on the underwear. So looking at the photo from the autopsy indicates to me that clearly the skirt was up.

There are two likely scenarios where blood could have dropped down at that angle onto Darlene's underwear. The first is that it's Darlene's own blood that dropped there. Which for that to have happened, means that Darlene would have had to been in a seated position with her skirt off or pushed way up. And blood from a higher part on her body, likely her head dripped down at that angle. So when would Darlene have been in a seated position? Well, probably when she was put in the suspect's cardinal now, the second option is that its not Darlenes blood at all, and instead it could be a large sample of blood from our suspect. For a long time. If you made me bet id have said that it was the suspects blood, purely based on the fact that for so long, everyone believed that Darlene was pulled from the house unconscious or already dead. I'd always envisioned the man having to lay her across the backseat of his car to transport her from the house to Olive trail. But we recently found a witness statement that contradicted that idea. And when we tracked this witness down 38 years later, her testimony made us even more sure that police had it all wrong back in 1984.

This witness is a woman named Cindy Sellers. She first came forward not long after Darlene's abduction and told police that she had seen the killer in the green car with Darlene sitting up in the passenger seat. It doesn't seem like police ever gave her statement too much weight back then, but her account was pretty detailed and it hadn't changed in almost four decades. When we sat down with her, I.

Happened to look out the window and saw them there on the road, and it just. It was just. It was just a really freaky thing.

In 1984, Cindy was a 21 year old art student, and on August 17, she was with her parents and her brother driving from Culver to Rochester for some shopping. The family was driving east on State Road 110 near Argus with Cindy sitting in the back seat on the driver's side next to her sleeping brother. She said there was a black cadillac that was in front of them going slow, so her dad had to slow way down. And that's when she looked out her window and saw a 1970s, poorly painted, olive green, rusty car with two people in it, a man driving and a woman in the passenger seat. The description she gave of the man and the woman were a dead ringer for Darlene and the suspect. She said that the car was moving slowly on Olive trail, coming toward them on 110 as they passed by. Here's what an officer wrote in a report after interviewing Cindy back in 84. The passenger in the vehicle was female and slumped back in the seat with blood on her and a grayish looking skin. At this time, the driver placed something over the upper part of the body of the female, and the driver of the vehicle glared at the family.

Cindy said something about the people in the car seemed off, so when they passed by, Cindy turned around to get a better look at the woman.

She was trying to grab the steering wheel and he swatted her away, and she kind of crumpled into the door. And then that was the last of it. He turned around. I turned around to look because I wondered what was going on. And he had turned the car around to go back down the road they were on.

Now, we stopped her right there and had her re explain this over and over because this little detail was huge to us but not really included in the original report. What Cindy described is that after the suspect realized he'd been noticed, he did a U turn and went back north on Olive trailhead. And I hope I'm making this clear, because I think it is so important. If what Cindy saw was Darlene and her captor, that means that Darlene was still alive inside his car and that they were already on olive trail about to turn on to 110, like, away from the wooded area she was eventually found in. But then for some reason, he doubles back and does a U turn to go back onto olive Trail. Now, this is so important to me because authorities theorize, at least in recent years, that the suspect knew the area and knew exactly where he was going to take Darlene, meaning that he headed straight from her house right to that cutout in the woods where he dragged her through and left her. But now that doesn't make as much sense. Maybe he was out looking for any place to take Darlene, and then he realized that he'd been seen by witnesses.

So he turned around and just happened upon that opening in the fence. But really, if this is the moment where we reconsider everything, I'm not sure that's where Darlene even entered the woods. Recently, we came across a photo that we had never seen before of the fence that went along olive trail. The way the cutout has always been described. We imagined a hole in the bottom of the fence, like where it meets the ground so you could drag someone through it. But actually, the cutout is from the top of the fence halfway down, leaving a few feet of fence from the ground up. That would mean either Darlene was still alive and this man forced her to climb over the fence herself and walk into the woods, or he somehow lifted her body over the cutout. But that's, if you take everyone's word for it, that that is where they entered. But what if he didn't bring her in right there? Based on a statement from a hunter, it seems like there was an area where you could drive a car back onto the land. The hunter had told police during their canvassing efforts that he'd seen a green Nova back in those same woods just two days before Darlene's murder.

Now, nothing ever came of that lead, but maybe however that person got in the woods is how the suspect went in, which would have hidden his car as well in the critical hours that they were looking for for it right after Darlene was taken. Until the suspect is in custody, we may never know the answer to why he made the moves he did, which is why I think police need to hone in on the physical evidence left behind, like Darlene's underwear. Cindy said that the woman she saw in the car was sitting up in the front seat but sort of slumped back. So that's potentially when Darlene's head wounds could have dripped blood down onto the front of her underwear, but only if she wasn't wearing her skirt. Or again, her skirt was pulled all the way up, so the whole thing was around her waist. So if police haven't yet, they have to test her underwear and the sexual assault kit that they took back in 1984. The underwear is listed as evidence in this case, along with a number of other seemingly vital pieces of evidence, like fingernail clippings. While prosecutor Chipman does seem to understand the importance of new DNA testing, he doesn't seem to be in a hurry.

He also said that the items they have to test are limited.

I mean, the last several years, it was like, well, what else can we test? Can we test that again?

When we asked for specific examples of what's been tested in those results, Nelson seemed unsure. For example, he said that they've tested Darlene's fingernail clipping, but that it didnt result in anything. But when was that done? And using what method, he cant remember. And theres the phone cord and her other pieces of clothing and the carpet and the duct tape and the hairs that were found on her body and at the scene. I mean, Darlene fought for her life so hard that she broke a finger. So its hard to believe that Darlene didnt have some of this man under her fingernail. For clarity, we tried to interview the lab director at ISP to help us figure out what's been tested and when. But every single inquiry we made led back to gatekeeper Nilsen. Hey, Emily, it's Ron Galveston with the state police again.

After making a few phone calls and talking to a couple of different people, I'm going to refer you to the Marshall county prosecutor for an answer to your inquiry about materials being tested or items being tested, if any at all. So I understand he's the one kind of heading this collaboration between us and the sheriff's department up there on this investigation. So they said that the question should go through that through him. So I hope, I'm sorry to have to punt this elsewhere, but I hope, hope you get the answer you're looking for. Okay.

And good luck with the project.

Take care. Thank you. Bye bye.

No shade toward Captain Galaviz, by the way. He's the chief public information officer for ISP and only intercepted Emily's call that she made directly to the lab after getting turned down by the state police investigators who are technically assigned to Darlene's case. But we had already asked those questions to Nelson and he didn't know. So we figured going directly to the source would help. Were running around in circles.

I know that those people talking about ISP and cold case, you know, they're not thrilled that, you know, outsiders are prodding into this thing.

I'm not offended that the government officials in charge of Darlene's case see us as prodding outsiders, but I am frustrated that they don't seem to have done much with the information that weve gathered over the last year, especially when the message we keep getting from them is that the case was stalled for so long because they didnt have the resources to gather new information themselves. So we are left guessing or making assumptions about what was tested and what results came of it. Like with the sexual assault kit, we know a kit was performed on Darlene. It is noted in that coroner's report. But I dont know exactly what was collected because in 1984, sexual assault kits varied. Doctor Smock performed hundreds of them back in the eighties when he worked for the Kentucky me, and he told us that the training and experience of the individual pathologists came into play back then and affected how the kits were done. Basically, a simple one could be done where they looked for foreign hairs and trauma and took a blind swab, or a more sophisticated one could have been done where they would have come away with a more detailed look at potential trauma and a specific sample of semen if it was present.

Oh, and by the way, there was semen present. Yeah, that doesn't feel like an oh, by the way kind of statement in episode 14, does it? But that's exactly how we found out. There is nothing about semen being found in the old reports or even in the coroner or autopsy reports. But when we asked former investigator Yochalet and prosecutor Chipman if they knew how it had been determined that Darlene wasn't sexually assaulted, they revealed this pretty casually.

I think they did a, well, I.

Know they did a rape kit per.

Se and it was sent off to the lab, but that was nothing that. Well, there was semen, but they figured it was Ron's. Yeah, because they thought.

Did they do tests to determine it was Ron's?

I don't know. Are you screaming yet? Emily and I were past the screaming phase and to the speechless phase. So clearly we don't have everything. Or maybe there is some stuff that only lives in the original investigators brains, which is a terrifying thought because how much has been lost as people associated with this case have retired or died? So they tell us. We know there is semen, but it's Ron's. We just don't know exactly how that was decided or by whom. Nelson and Yokolet said something about Ron telling them that they had sex, like, a day before or a couple days before. Again, something we can't find documented anywhere. In 1984, they could have done an acid phosphate test and determined the blood type of the person that the semen belonged to. And we have no idea if that was done or if they just went off of Ron's statement about having sex. And since Hoover said that there was no sexual assault, they thought that the semen was irrelevant. I don't know, but it seems like something you'd want to be sure of. Right. The technology is available today to get a DNA profile from the semen sample, as long as they preserved the seminal fluid on a glass slide after the sexual assault kit was done.

It's a lot of ifs, but let's say they don't still have the semen. We're pretty sure ISP still has her underwear, which doctor Smock said could also lead to answers through the blood or potential seminal fluid, or both.

If the state police or the prosecutor's office had asked me to consult on this case. I think the most important evidence at this point is submitting whatever evidence we have. The sexual assault kit, the underwear for DNA testing. That's where I think the answer to who the murderer is lies.

Another interesting observation doctor Smock pointed out was in a photo of Darlene's wrists. He asked us if investigators had ever said if Darlene had been bound, which they haven't. We know her killer had duct tape because there were pieces of tape found at the house, but she wasn't found with any duct tape on her. But doctor Smock pointed out that the skin on her wrist is lighter, as if she had been bound there with tape. If that's true, the suspect likely ripped off the tape before leaving the woods, and that tape would have been loaded with DNA. If it had ever been found. Even if it was found today, there could still be traces of Darlene or her killer on it. After Emily left doctor Smock's, she called prosecutor chipman. Not only did we want to share doctor Smock's findings, but we also wanted to ask if Darlene's underwear had ever been tested. She tried calling, texting. No answer. But that's okay for us. It was even more important to tell Darlene's daughters what we had just heard. We kept them in the loop during our reporting and shared every bit of new information that we found along the way.

And while this news about strangulation and a possible sexual assault was a lot to take in and it made them rethink everything they'd been told for 38 years about their mom's death, it wasn't exactly a shock, especially not to Marie.

I believe she was raped. No one can tell me otherwise. I don't care if they say they were semen or not found. I just feel like it was sexually motivated because it's never made sense. Any other reason? Like, Melissa and I were talking about it. Like, when Melissa came out, he had her on the ground. You know, he was on his knees in a position to do something, and so, you know, he never took anything. And for years, we've been told, oh, she was not raped. I'm like, you don't know. You messed everything up. And so I just feel like it was sexually motivated. It makes so much more sense to me. It makes the pieces fit better, and I want to know what made them originally say that she was not raped. Like, I definitively like work. How did they miss the strangulation is what I want to know.

I'd like to know the same thing. But I don't get too caught up in what should have been. Investigators and pathologists are human. They work with what they have and what they know. And in a small town like Argus, resources are limited. And I don't hold investigators now responsible for how the investigation was handled back then. Here is what I do. Hold them responsible for doing everything humanly possible to solve the case today and doing it soon so someone can be held accountable. So what are you waiting for?

I'm not waiting for. I'm waiting for my people. I gotta do. I got work to cut out. I mean, I got work to do. Maybe you're too early.

It's been almost 40 years.

We are running out of time. And every day, Emily and I are still uncovering new information. So what are the next steps for investigators. And where do Emily and I go from here? All of that is in our final episode. Episode 15 next in the investigation. You can listen to that right now. As of last summer, authorities have Ron Holz's DNA swab. They agreed to do a direct comparison test against the partial male profile found on Darlene's blouse, not because Ron is a suspect, but because he's her husband. If that DNA belongs to Ron, then it actually means the profile is kind of useless. Maybe it was from their hug goodbye that morning when he went to work. In which case, it means that we need to start testing other items while we still can to get a suspect sample. And that sample might be right there in the slides from her autopsy. If they still have them. If they did a comparison between Ron Schwab and the semen, they could figure out pretty quickly if it did, in fact belong to Ron. But we asked prosecutor Chipman if that has been done yet, and he said no.

It was the first of many nos that we'd hear. This is episode 15, next in the investigation. We also asked Chipman if there were any immediate plans to get a swab from Kenneth McCune Junior. And he said he still needed to write an affidavit to get a court order to do so. So what are you waiting for?

I'm not waiting for. I'm waiting for my people. I gotta do. I got work to cut out. I mean, I got work to do. Maybe you're too early.

It's been almost 40 years.

I feel like you could put that clip on repeat. And it was every conversation we had with Nelson when Emily met with him in August. The plan was to get some comparison testing done in October. Then the goal is by thanksgiving, then by the end of the year for sure. We havent gotten any updates since then. When we push, Nelson gives us the same story hes always given Kristen. Theyre busy. New cases come in every day, no doubt. I dont think hes bluffing, but I also dont think thats an excuse.

What keeps you motivated in wanting to solve this case?

Justice. That's the romantic way of saying it. But it's also, there's ego. You know, I want to win, but I want to, you know, I want that family to have some kind of closure. I never liked that term or that concept. Don't even understand what it means.

Justice, ego and closure for the family. If his ego wants a win, it seems like a softball. We're at the point where the only thing that's left to do is test the freaking evidence. It's the only thing I personally can't do. Nelson's lack of urgency around this has been driving us bonkers for the last year. And please keep in mind the frustration that we've felt is just a fraction of what Darlene's family has lived with for nearly four decades. If I put myself in their shoes and we're talking to the state police, what I want to say is I get that new crimes are popping up every day. But, like, if we've got something so viable and we've been waiting 38 years, like, when do we get to cut to the front of the line? And I understand the frustration.

I understand, right.

And I'm not saying there's like an easy fix or something. It's, it's disheartening. Nelson said he's never thought about it that way, about Darlene's case getting to cut the line because she and her family have already waited so long. I mean, it seems like the most natural conclusion to me, which is why I think bringing in fresh perspectives can be good sometimes. So what now? The to do list for authorities is short and simple. Number one, compare the unknown sample to Ron. If it ends up being his DNA, go back to the underwear, to the sexual assault kit, other pieces of evidence, and do more retesting to get a new sample. Number two, if its not Ron or once another sample is obtained, start going down the list and testing it against people known in the investigation, both then and now. Now for me and Emily, our to do list is a little less straightforward. I mean, really, our to do list comes to a grinding halt. The second comparison testing is done and Darlene's killer is identified. But until then, we want to keep looking at all the things that still don't make sense, and we want to keep pulling at little threads that unravel into something bigger.

And there are all of these little threads, some that lead nowhere, some that might mean nothing. But we don't know unless we pick and pull them apart. Here's an example. Back around the holidays, as Emily and I were in the thick of writing this series, we kept going back through old reports to fact check and also to make sure that we hadn't missed anything. And almost every time we did, we came up with another person worth investigating. Like, do you remember the Argus appliance guy, Lee? I told you about him back in episode six. Ron Holz said that he was going to do a house call on the day that Darlene was abducted. Ron told police in one of his original interviews that Lee was supposed to stop by that morning to check out a faulty refrigerator light.

We called him, and he was supposed to come down shortly then and fix it. As it turned out, he was on.

His way at 930 that morning, drove by the road, and said, well, I.

Promised I'd call first.

So he kept driving and went into Rochester. Police didn't pose any follow up questions about this, but I have a few. First, we know Darlene was about to head out the door that morning with all three girls for Kristen's doctor appointment, which was at 10:00 in Plymouth. So she wasn't even planning on being home at 930 that morning to meet a fridge repairman. So was it an unplanned, spontaneous house call? I mean, you have a man who says that he's gonna stop by the Hulse house on the day and the exact time a murder is going down, and you don't interview him? We asked Sergeant Yochulet about this, and he said that he remembered this lead about Lee Chisholm, but he doesn't remember anything coming from it. I gather that Lee was older and didn't quite fit the physical description of the suspect, so it was discounted quickly. But after doing a little digging ourselves, we found out that Lee has a son who was within the suspect's age range, who is a convicted sex offender. Sergeant Yokolet didn't remember anything about the son, and the son didn't return our calls, so it's hard to say if he even worked for his dad back in the mid eighties or would have known about the Holst's refrigerator problems.

But again, this is another question worth getting answers to in this case. Another name that sometimes gets tossed around in Darlene's case is Ray Oviat, a former Baptist pastor from Argus who was arrested for child molestation in 1986. That would have been two years after Darlene's murder. He was head of the First Baptist church in Argus in the eighties, which is one of the churches that the holsters attended for a bit while they were kind of church hopping. Now, there's a rumor around Argus that because Darlene played piano for the church, that she was there during a weekday and maybe walked in on the pastor molesting a young boy, and that her murder was a silencing tactic. But according to Darlene's family, Darlene did not play piano at First Baptist and wouldn't have ever had a reason to go there for anything besides Sunday service. And by the time Darlene died, the Holstes were attending a completely different church, Liberty Baptist. We've already talked about why, but nothing about Darlene's case says it was a hit job, and her family feels like the pastor theory is just a baseless rumor. But do you want to hear about the little thread that really keeps me up at night?

There's another man that police questioned briefly back in 1984 because of something an officer found in the horse's yard after the murder. It was this torn piece of a prescription paper with the name Robert Ewing on it. Now, that alone is not all that suspicious until you look at the date. There is something scribbled out, and written in its place. Is August 17, 1984, the day Darlene was abducted. According to old reports, Robert told police that he didn't know the holstes, but he thought that maybe he had been at their house for a yard sale a few weeks prior. We asked Darlene's family, but they don't remember there ever being any yard sales at their house. I even had Emily check old newspaper ads for yard sales at the Hulse home from that summer, and there weren't. We even had Darlene's daughters ask their dad, Ron. Nobody remembers hosting yard sales there. Now, Sergeant Yocolette told us that he remembers this lead, and he remembers following up on it because he said there was a valid reason for that paper to be there. He just doesn't remember what it was. Nelson suggested that maybe the piece of paper flew over into the holst's yard from the nearby landfill, which we found.

So weird. Why even suggest a thing unless it had any merit? I mean, there is a landfill about a half a mile south of where the Holstes lived, so his suggestion wasn't totally random. But it's not like trash from there is constantly blowing into people's yards, and that logic doesn't even make sense. Again, it was dated 817. Then you're saying it made it to the landfill on 817 and then blew into Darlene's yard that same day? I don't think so. Old reports are vague. They don't say exactly where or what day the paper was found. Though the way that the reports are written makes us think that this piece of paper was found pretty soon after Darlene's body was found. Like when police were all over the property looking for evidence. It seems like police just took Robert's word for it, because in the report, the officer wrote that there was no need to follow up. We tried to reach Robert Ewing, but we got a family member instead who said that Robert wasn't in good enough health to speak with us. We're also actively trying to track down this guy, or pretty much a kid at the time, who was in the woods hunting the day Darlene's body was found.

He claimed to be just 20ft from where the body was discovered, but said that he never saw anything. It's particularly interesting to me because there were reports from other hulse women, Ron's mom and sister, about someone who was lurking around their properties and peeping into the window months or even years before Darlene's death. And the officer who interviewed this young man mentioned that there were rumors that he was that peeping Tom, which he denied. I'd still love to talk to him. And then there are all these other rapes and murders at the time. First and foremost, I think the Brandi Peltz case needs a second look specifically in comparison to Darlene's case. For years, marshall county authorities have discounted a connection between Brandi and Darlene's case because of the different causes of death. But now we have an expert saying that Darlene was likely sexually assaulted and strangled, just like Brandi, two years later and just less than 2 miles up the road. The big difference between the cases was the fact that Darlene was taken from her home and brandi was placed in the bathtub and her killer lit a fire inside the house.

But even those details make the hulse daughters wonder about a connection.

You can't tell me all those are not related. Right there. But why did he set that house on fire? Well, think about it, though. He's trying to cover it up. He's like, okay, I jacked up moms. Like, I took her somewhere and they found her body. How am I gonna get rid of this one? I mean, honestly, what would you do? What would get rid of all the evidence? You would set something on fire. I mean, also seeing us coming out of the bathtub, that spark his imagination of, oh, bathtub. I don't know. I know that sounds weird, but he's. He's reviewing everything in his head and he's like, yeah, water.

Brandi's not the only case I'm interested in giving a closer look. There was a string of rapes across northern Indiana at the time that I find particularly interesting. And a weird tip I've never been able to shake suggests that Darlene's case could be connected to the murders of other Indiana housewives in the surrounding years. Is there a season two of Darlene's case up our sleeve? I don't know. Honestly, I hope not. Because that would mean the authorities did the testing and we don't have to keep digging. It means Marie, Melissa and Kristen finally have the answers after all of these years. And you know what? Answers is all they want. Not justice or vengeance, just answers.

It's the why. What did you think you were gonna accomplish? But now that we know more about it, I feel like that answers some of the why. But, like, why her? Why that time of day? I self. Selfishly, I want to be like, you saw us. You saw us what? You knew what you were taking away from three young girls. You saw us all. You saw her crawling around. You saw her, you chased. Like, what? How did you think it was gonna turn out?

If you get the chance to, you know, ask this person any questions or anything you'd wanna say to him, what.

Did you hope to accomplish? And please tell me that you took her life and she was not aware of it, that she didn't suffer. Do you ever think about it? Did you follow any of us? I've had that question asked to me a lot. Like, when people find out, they're like, is that why you moved? And I was like, it's actually not why we moved. Even though it seems that way. There's a lot of questions. Did you follow her? Did you stalk her? When did you see her? How did you get over that and then live a normal life? What did you do after you dumped her? What was your day like? What did you do the following weeks?

Where'd you go?

I'm not about all about him getting punished, but just the fact that we could go on and never, never know anything. Just. I don't know. I mean, once upon a time, I would have been a lot harsher. But now I just want closure. I just want. I feel like time is running out for my dad. He told me yesterday, we were in the kitchen and I was asking him all those questions. He's like, I just. Oh, Kristen. I've just. I've just resorted and told myself that this is never going to get solved. We'll never know.

The Hulse family deserves those answers, and they do deserve justice. Something that has been so remarkable about working on this project has been seeing that despite the awful tragedy that happened to their family, they all have so much happiness and love in their lives. I mean, in half the audio from our interviews with them, you can hear it. Babies cooing, kids interrupting to ask their moms for snacks, and teenagers running through the house. The first time I heard it, the audio producer in me was like, crap. We can't use any of this. But then I listened close. I listened as a mom.

You hungry, baby? Yeah. Okay. Get you some food. She eats french fries at the fork. What kind of crazy is she?

Love and laughter fill their houses. And it's comforting knowing that whoever did this to Darlene couldn't take that away from her family. And I hope Darlene can hear all of it. Darlene will always be their mom. She's not the body in the woods or the homicide victim. She is the woman who made all of their own bedding and clothes and lived frugally. To make sure she could send all three of them to college, she would.

Try and make a meal, like a dollar a meal. You know, that's what she wants to be. Cause she was trying to save for our college. Even when I was little, that was something that she was already saying, you know, we're gonna save for your college. You've got, you girls are going to college.

When the girls were little, Darlene would have do these audio diaries with them, and she would ask them questions and help them practice pronouncing words.

It's now March 29, 1980. Marie is three and a half. Melissa is 27 months old. They're taking their bath. Now. We're going to be talking. Okay, Marie, say your abcs.

Of.

Q.

R S T M B, A B, C, D, E F, G H, I J K, l, O P, Q r s. She did these to document what her kids sounded like at different ages, not knowing that they would grow up to cherish the recordings to remember her voice.

Today is December 17, 1980. Marie is four years old, and Melissa will be three on December 29 in a couple of weeks. And here's what they sound like at this age. Marie, what would you like for Christmas this year?

Tinkerbell.

Tinkerbell? What? What's that? What kind of tinker bell lipstick? What do you want, Melissa? Candy Cane. Candy canes. Did you see Santa mask?

Yeah, we did.

What did you say?

You said you want something to be. Yeah, I want something.

You were a good girl or bad girl?

Good girl.

You thought you were a good girl. What did you say, Melissa?

Oh.

Did you like Santa? Yeah, you did? How come you went through that?

Cause I don't want to.

Oh, well, maybe next time, huh?

Darlene was also the kind of mom who would just joke around with her kids. She was silly, and she wasn't afraid to go outside and play with them.

She had on a playboy bunny shirt. Do you remember that? You probably don't remember that. Vaguely remember the stupid shirt. Yeah. She. We were like, you can't run. We can't run as fast as we can. And it's the stretch of ride between our house and our grandparents. And she's like, I can, too. I remember her running and me thinking, you don't have the right brae.

Darlene also made everything. Homemade. Curtains, comforters, clothes. And she made her daughters and other family members dolls that they can't bear to display in their homes because they're so creepy but that they can't get rid of because they represent how much their mom loved them.

I literally have them in my attic, and I try not to look at them. I have one in my closet. I think it's one that she was making for one of my cousins.

Darlene Hulse spent one day of her life as a victim, but she had 28 years of being a friend and a sister and a daughter, a wife, and a wonderful mom. She was a talented piano player, an intelligent natural leader who graduated the top of her classes, and she was a woman who loved her kids so much that she spent her last living moment fighting like hell to protect her daughters.

What else can we talk about? Want to talk about Teddy Bear? Who's Teddy Bear? Teddy bear's my puppy. What color is he?

What?

What's he do? All four people. Mommy said, pick up your twin. And cheese a good mommy. I'll see you later.

I love you.

This might be the end of our series for now, but Darlene's story is far from over. We will keep investigating her murder, and we aren't done demanding action from investigators to solve it. And this is where you come in. We need each and every one of you to support Darlene's family by signing a petition to have her evidence tested and comparisons done in a timely manner. We have a link for that petition directly in the show notes, and you can also find the link on darlenehulse.com. i also think there are some of you out there who can help us dig even deeper. If the following people are listening, please reach out to us by emailing thedecaudiochuck.com dot. Officer Fish, you were the first on the scene that day, and we have questions that the photos that we've been given just can't answer. We would love to talk to you. I want to talk to that young man who was hunting in the woods that day her body was found. Robert Ewing. I think you could quickly clear up the confusion we have about your prescription and how it got into the yard. If there's anyone who worked with Ron Hulse at young door in Plymouth who remembers the day darling was abducted, you might have valuable information.

I'd also like to talk to the holsters dog breeder. Their dog, Ling was with you at the time of Darlene's attack, and we wonder if her killer knew that the dog wouldn't be home. So we're trying to find out who would have known their dog was with you. If there's anyone familiar with the people that we've discussed in detail, knowing more about their whereabouts and demeanors around the time of Darlene's murder could be critical information. We're also trying to get in touch with a former 911 dispatcher from Fulton County, Indiana, named Stephanie Miller. You took a call regarding Darlene's abduction in 1984 that we think could be important to her case, so we need to talk to you. We'd also be interested in talking to the people in the car that passed by six year old Melissa on August 17, 1984, near the intersection of US 31 and 20 B Road in Argus, Indiana. It would have been around 930 that morning. Theres also the people in the black town car that were driving slow near Interstate 110 and Olive trail on August 17 between 930 and ten. You likely saw the suspect vehicle along with Cindy Sellers.

And wed love to see what you remember and wed still love to talk to Doctor Rick Hoover. If nothing else, its time to re examine your 1984 findings regarding Darlene Hulses autopsy, and we need to know if the slides from her sexual assault kit were preserved and can still be tested. And to the Indiana State Police, please expedite testing of blood and potential semen on Darlene's underwear. And finally, if anyone listening has any information about the August 17, 1984 murder of Darlene Hulse in Argus, Indiana, even if I didn't mention you above, please reach out again. You can email us@thedeckaudiochuck.com that email is also in the show notes. And please do not forget to sign the petition. With your help, justice for Darlene could be right around the corner. It's been seven months since we released the final episode of Darlene Hulse's season, but if you thought that meant we were done, you thought wrong. In the next three episodes, I'm going to tell you everything that's happened since our series was released, from the response to the podcast from officials on the case to one of many tips we received that led us to a completely new person of interest and more information about a previous one.

I'm Ashley Flowers and this is the DEC investigates. This is episode 16, government discretion. Any working relationship we had with Marshall county prosecutor Nelson Chipman ended when the podcast was released. He no longer takes our calls, and the last time Emily texted him, passing on a tip, he told her to send the information we have to the lead investigator, ISP detective Sergeant Don Curl. Nelson also turned down Emily's request to meet with him one last time, and he's also refusing to meet with Darlene's family. On April 10, her daughters wrote him a letter requesting a sit down. Here's Darlene's oldest daughter, Marie, reading that letter.

Dear Nelson Chipman, this letter should come as no surprise to you. Our family has repeatedly reached out to you for updates and questions about our mother's case. In the past seven years, we have begged for answers, pleaded that the case be brought up to, quote, contemporary status with DNA testing. Your gatekeeping of this case has only resulted in more anguish for our family and anger with your continual excuses. We deserve to be treated with respect. No more patronizing answers of number one, we don't have the funds. Our response, we've offered to pay privately, and the DOJ offered to test with the grant. Number two, I am extremely busy. We have a large caseload. Your mom's case isn't the only one we have to work on. Number three, look, I have a picture of your mom on my desk. Our response, this literally means nothing without action. Number four, promising to write the affidavit for testing McCune's DNA by October 2022, which came and went. Then you promised again after a November sit down to have it written by December 31, 2022. Once again, we heard nothing from you. Number five, when asked, wouldn't it be easy for you to take half a day and drive to McKune to get his swab?

You said, oh, yeah, it would be nothing. I think everybody's fearful about what the ramifications of that would be. Isn't that the point? The ramifications would equal answers to us. Number six, when asked, what keeps you motivated? And I quote, uh, well, that's the romantic way of saying it. But also there's ego. Number seven, you admitted, quote, cause I'm an amateur at this, basically, you know, investigative end of it, usually. I think we talked about that. You know, my role, the prosecutor's role here is a case that's already been solved. So my question to you is, why do you have the case then? This entire list of excuses and runaround over the years is downright negligent. We don't want any more empty promises from you. Enough is enough. We will not stop our push for answers. We are asking for a sit down meeting involving us and our spouses. No reporters or recordings will be done. If you refuse or do not respond, we will move forward with our efforts. Our next contact will be to the Indiana district attorney, Todd Ricketa via our attorney general.

Ten days later, Nelson responded, here is a voice actor reading his response to the halse family.

I sincerely apologize for the state to which our relationship has evolved. I attribute this to many factors, not the least of which are my own infirmities and feeble efforts to honor my career long commitment to make government as transparent as legally and ethically possible. In this case, I underestimated how the pecuniary interest of the podcasters, commingled with their drive to entertain and create a saleable virtual package, could so readily be used to distort good faith efforts to solve this case and instead create a perverse picture of callous indifference and incompetence. Consequently, and quite obviously, I chose a while ago to cease cooperating with the podcasters. Recently, though, a local television station contacted me to give my side to the podcasters claim of a failure to retrieve biological material from the evidence and test it with the most advanced methodologies of DNA analysis available. As this, too, was based on a false premise, I chose to not participate in that coverage as well. I did, however, present the enclosed statement. This is the official position of this office as it relates to this case. I will eagerly amend the statement to include any significant updates as they occurred.

Until then, I regrettably conclude that a face to face meeting would be counterproductive. Therefore, I must respectfully decline your request to meet. I wish you well. Most sincerely, E. Nelson Chipman Junior now.

The statement prosecutor Chipman is referring to was in response to a local station, WNDU, who picked up Darlene's story after the podcast launch.

Now, we did reach out to the.

Marshall county prosecutor's office to talk about this case and where it is today.

Last we heard, in 2019, the game.

Plan was to start over with fresh eyes and even test new pieces of evidence. While prosecutor Nelson Chipman declined an interview, he did release a statement saying, in part, the exhibits have undergone extensive study by consecutive administrations of detectives, crime scene analysts, psychologists, cold case investigators and prosecutors. I'm going to have an actor read the statement Nelson provided WNDU TV on April 17, and I'll unpack it as we go.

The events that resulted in the home invasion and senseless murder of Darlene Holz occurred south of Argus, Indiana, on August 17, 1984, 38 years and eight months ago. The physical evidence acquired throughout the investigation of this horrific, needless tragedy continues to remain in secure custody of the Indiana State Police, with the exception of items under examination. As custodians, the ISP must document and ensure an intact chain of custody. For more than 38 years, for each of the over four dozen items held under lock and key, the exhibits have undergone extensive study by consecutive administrations of detectives, crime scene analysts, psychologists, cold case investigators, and prosecutors. I am the fourth sequential prosecutor to exercise jurisdiction over this case. Although forensic DNA processes did not exist until the latter 1980s, several years after the murder, each successive generation of investigators have scoured the investigative reports and examined the evidence, utilizing the then most advanced, scientifically acceptable methods of deoxyribonucleic acid collection and analysis available at that time.

Here's what we know. According to old case reports, testing was done in 1984 and 1989, but only with fingerprint and basic blood detection tests. Now, despite Nelson originally telling us that nothing was found, records indicate that a partial fingerprint was found on the phone receiver at the Hulse home. Decades later, again, according to old evidence lists and letters in the case file, the lab suggested follow up touch DNA testing on that evidence, which, as far as we know, was never done. And I say that because we straight up asked Nelson if he had anyone doing that or preparing to do that, and he said, quote, um, nothing sticks in my mind.

Those painstakingly detailed processes continue to this day, but with even more advanced scientific methods that continue to evolve. Any suggestion to the contrary, as the podcasters are apt to do, is false.

We also know, because Nelson told us, that the semen found in Darlene was never tested, nor was her bloody underwear.

In my limited interactions with Miss Muir, and even less so with Miss Flowers, it became quite evident the podcasters neither concerned themselves nor are burdened with proof beyond a reasonable doubt, derived from evidence legally acquired within the bounds of the law, admissible in accordance with the formal rules of evidence, and all the while observing the dictates of professional ethics, tested in court by rigorous cross examination, determined admissible at trial by jury and subject to confirmation on appeal, is the most reliable method to obtain the truth and secure justice.

We absolutely want things to be admissible in court, but all you need to obtain comparison swabs is probable cause, of which I believe there is plenty for at least three suspects in this case. And to be honest, I think a court would agree. But Nelson told us he didn't have the time to write a probable cause affidavit for Kenneth McCuun junior S swab. And when we asked if they had tested Ron Holz's swab against the partial profile, yet Nelson implied money was the holdup.

Through the years, ISP command has assigned to this case some of the most experienced and dedicated detectives and crime scene investigators in northern Indiana. Several have since retired. But those of us that remain continue to be confident. We are on the verge of a breakthrough. We will continue our best efforts to secure justice for Darlene, her children, her widower, her family, and our community. It has been far too long. Nelson Chipman Marshall county prosecutor listen, I.

Think ISP is dedicated and good at their jobs, and no one is questioning the investigators. We are questioning Nelson because when we've asked about specific evidence being tested and plans to move the case forward, he said he didn't know if the fingerprint or bloody underwear or semen or hairs or duct tape had been tested. He also told us last fall, quote, I'm trying to convince you there is no logical plan here, end quote. We tried numerous times to let nelson correct the record. We don't go into these interviews expecting him to have everything memorized. But when we come away feeling like he doesn't even know the case, and then we see him putting out a statement like that, we gotta question things. Marie, melissa, and kristen did make a ydehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe plea to the indiana attorney general in spring of this year, and they got a heartbreaking response. Someone in the Ag's office said that they couldn't help and encouraged the family to take their grievances to the state disciplinary commission, which investigates lawyer misconduct. But the thing is, the ag could help if he wanted to. And that's not just me spouting off. We talked to experts in law and legal ethics who said.

So, unfortunately, the likely reason of why the Indiana Ag refuses to step in is. You guessed it, Nelson.

The prosecutors are supposed to do the best they can to serve the public, which includes taking the victim's interests into account.

That's lawyer and Fordham University School of Law professor Bruce Green. He heads up the university's center for Law and Ethics. He served as a federal prosecutor in the eighties and has been a professor at Fordham for 35 years. He said prosecutors in the US have a ton of discretion, so they can basically decide how they spend their time. And unless they show undisputable gross negligence, basically no one is going to do anything about it.

I do think it's probably unusual anywhere for the state prosecutor to forcibly take a case away from a prosecutor.

Professor Green said it would be much more likely for the AG to take over the case or assist in the case if Nelson would ask for help, which often happens when a small prosecutor's office doesn't have enough resources. But we know that Nelson doesn't want the AG's office involved because when the Hulse family made such requests, Nelson got defensive and even asked Marie to explain her reasoning for basically trying to go over his head.

Is there some reason why you wouldn't enlist investigators to assist you in investigating a murder case when you have possible avenues that haven't been explored? It's hard to see why you would do that unless you could investigate yourself. And it sounds like in this case, nothing's happening. The prosecutor is not investigating and the police are hamstrung. If they can solve a murder, they want to do it.

Professor Green told us that prosecutors are administers of justice and they are supposed to do what's in the interest of the public. So in this case, Nelson is supposed to do whatever is in the best interest of the people of Indiana. Professor Green said that if there is viable evidence and suspects who are still alive today, which there are, then there shouldn't be anything holding back the Marshall county prosecutor's office, or ISP, from investigating further and doing more DNA testing.

The job of a prosecutor and of law enforcement is to investigate cases and to bring the cases when you have somebody who you can prove as guilty. And while there's a lot of discretion, prosecutors and police treat murder cases pretty seriously. And so if you have the possibility of bringing a case against someone who's still alive, who committed a murder, even if a long time ago, there's a reason why the statute of limitations hasn't run, it's because the legislature recognizes this is a really, really serious crime, and they want to allow for the possibility of prosecuting it even many years later.

So the question is really, like, how do they get this case solved if the person calling the shots isn't, you know, giving any marching orders?

Well, that's the problem. You know, it would be interesting to know, you know, why the prosecutor isn't investigating if there's investigative measures that could be taken that might be fruitful.

I agree. It would be interesting to know why Nelson isn't doing anything. And by the way, if you're wondering, there's not exactly a legal requirement for a prosecutor to be nice to a murdered victim's family. But there is a victim rights law in Indiana which says that victims must be treated with respect. But like all the nuances in state statutes, respect is open to interpretation. And I believe the Hulse family has experienced a level of disrespect that no loved one of a victim should ever have to deal with. And based off all the emails you sent, I'd say you guys agree. In those messages, some of you were simply compelled to write in just to make sure your love and support was heard and felt. Bye us and more importantly, Darlene's daughters. Some of you had ideas on how to propel Darlene's case forward, but then some of you had tips for us, and many of those tips were legit investigative leads. Most recently, back in August, 1 of you forwarded us a reply that you got from Nelson that actually gives me a little hope. I'm just going to read you the entire so someone named Elizabeth wrote, to whom it may concern, I stand with Darlene Hulse's family and their fight to bring her murderer to justice.

Marshall county should be embarrassed and ashamed of the failed investigation. The world is learning about Darlene's murder on a global span and the lack of integrity of Marshall county. And here is Nelson's response.

I am sorry you jumped to that conclusion based on the podcaster's rendition. For almost 40 years, dozens of investigators and four different elected prosecutors have given their best to test, retest, and analyze with the then most current techniques, the evidence accumulated. We are currently in a round of expensive, cutting edge technology attempting to find the one bit of DNA that can solve the case. I am proud of the efforts law enforcement has exerted to solve this case over last four decades. You don't know anything about those efforts. Your hateful comments will not dissuade us from the goal, but your shallow analysis based on an entertainment hit piece certainly don't help bring the murderer to justice. Sincerely, Nelson Chipman so, according to this.

Most recent statement by Nelson, they are currently in a round of DNA testing. So it makes me wonder if recent strides have actually been made in the right direction. Because, you see, around the same time, Emily actually got a text from a source saying that they had also heard new DNA testing was being attempted. So it seems to be working. Keep the pressure on. As of this recording, more than 141,000 of you have signed the whole family's petition demanding answers just for 2023 context. That's double the size of the average Taylor Swift era's tour stop. So keep signing, keep sharing Darlene's story, and keep sending us your tips. Because your tips are what led us to explore someone completely new over the last seven months. Hello, I'm reaching out about information I.

Have about the Darlene Holz case.

I'm trying to keep calm typing this because I feel this could potentially lead to the killer, and I really mean it.

Please bear with me while I explain.

I wasn't sure if this is small town rumor mill or if it's truly the killer's confession. What I was told is that a man in town confessed to killing Darlene while falling down drunk at a bar one night. That's next on episode 17, a secret confession. You can listen to that right now. Just a quick note. All emails referenced in this episode have been altered slightly to maintain anonymity and for clarity. As a general rule, small towns don't usually keep big secrets for very long. Arcus, Indiana, though, might be the exception. This is episode 17, a secret confession. During our year long reporting on Darlene's case, we spent our fair share of time in Marshall county. We ate at local restaurants, stayed at local hotels, chatted up locals in small, smoke filled bars, and even had hushed conversations with local people in libraries, coffee shops, and on street corners. We thought wed heard it all, but on March 13, 2023, four days after we dropped the deck investigate series, we got a tip via email from someone with a story that wed never heard before. For reasons you'll soon come to understand, our tipster wanted to remain anonymous.

But here's what I can share. I know for certain the people involved in the information wouldn't want to be spoken to or included in any investigation. I also wouldn't wish to be identified or spoken to by police or anything like that. I'm not looking for enemies or trouble.

Of any kind, and I just don't.

Want to be involved in any of.

This on the record.

It's why I've held on to his name, but I was hesitant to do anything with it. Now that you're acquainted with how Marshall county law enforcement operates, I hope you understand they weren't going to do anything with the information anyway, but for Darlene and her kids, if you think it will help, I can provide the name of someone who got drunk some years back and confess to one of my friends that he's the one who killed Darlene. Over the next few weeks, we built a rapport with that tipster to get the man's name, who reported, reportedly confessed to Darlene's murder. And then we received another email, also from someone who wants to remain anonymous. Hello. I'm reaching out about information I have.

About the Darlene Hulse case.

I'm trying to keep calm typing this.

Because I feel this could potentially lead.

To the killer, and I really mean it. Please bear with me while I explain. I am from Indiana, and almost one year ago, this person mentioned to me day that one of his friends was at a bar, and there was a gentleman sitting near him that started talking to him.

It sounds like this man definitely had.

A couple drinks in him, but after a couple conversations, he told this person that he murdered darling Holz.

I don't have the exact details of.

How this conversation went, but this person knows of the man that told his friend this.

The man's name is Jason, and he.

Is from Argus, Indiana. If you start digging, I believe you will find even more crazy connections based on the land and areas where he would have farmed and where he lives. If we start digging now, were these separate tips talking about the same bar confession, or were there two confessions at two different times? Honestly, I still dont know the answer to that. But I do know that these two separate people named the exact same man. Problem was, our tipsters seem to have each heard it like third hand. We needed to get to the source. So after promising anonymity, one of our sources put us in contact with somebody next in the chain, someone who heard it secondhand. They weren't the direct witness to the confession, but they were one of the people the witness told about the confession right after it happened. Our source didn't have that person's contact information anymore, just a name, which, unfortunately for us, was a super common one. So it took quite a bit of sleuthing. But we love sleuthing, and we're good at it. So we ended up calling this person, and gotta be honest, we're, like, half expecting them to be like, wow, that's wild, but I have no idea what you're talking about.

Please just leave me alone. And we were half right. They did want us to leave them alone, but not because they didn't know what we were talking about, rather because it was clear they were scared for their life, which is why I won't be using their name. They didn't, quote, want to say for sure that I heard something like that. End quote. This person admitted that they used to frequent the bars in Marshall county and that they would run into this man in question, but they stopped short of admitting that they heard the guy confess to anything. Instead, they said they aren't inclined to believe anything someone says at a bar, especially if the person was drunk. But before rushing off the phone, they said that they hope we crack the case. Thanks. We were hoping that they would at least tell us when and where this alleged confession happened, but no luck. Our thread was effectively cut, but that doesnt mean we were out of options. We started researching the man who allegedly confessed. Maybe wed look into him a little and it wouldnt make any sense. Sense. And we could walk away and focus on other things.

But then again, maybe there was something here. Cause what we found was pretty interesting. This man, I'm gonna call him Jason, but that's not his real name. He's from Argus and would have been in his twenties in the mid 1980s. He's six foot two, slim billed, and blonde. So check, check, check. The next thing we did is we did what wed done with every other person whod come on our radar. In our initial investigation, we found some photos of Jason from the eighties and asked Marie and Melissa to look at them. We actually got so many emails from you guys asking if Darlene's daughters recognized any of the persons of interest weve explored, and theres no easy answer because, I mean, there have been features of all of these persons of interest that have made their eyes go wide, and they were almost clinical in the way that they dissected them. This part, yes, this part, I don't know. But they've never been able to say, yeah, that's the guy. So this time around, we got some old mug shots and yearbook photos of Jason. Even found some old family photos and sent them off.

But something different happened this time. Melissa started physically shaking when she first saw Jason's photo, and Marie was overcome with emotion. So who is this guy? We got his criminal history through a records request and printed it out. And it's extensive. Just his rap sheet in Marshall county alone is several inches thick. It includes stalking, intimidation, harassment, disorderly conduct protection order violations, trespassing, even a death threat. So then we went back to Darlene's case file to search for his name, because according to doctor Robert Keppel, who became infamous as a detective from his investigations into Ted Bundy, in 95% of cold cases, the real perpetrator will be named in the case file in the first 30 days of the investigation. So I shouldn't have been completely shocked when we found his name, but I still was. What was there, though, and why is a bit of a mystery in and of itself. Now, full disclosure, there is nothing indicating when these documents were requested, received, or made by investigators, meaning I don't know when they made it into the case file, so I don't know in what order they even came. I can only guess, but my best guess would be that the piece of plain paper with some handwritten notes on it came first.

At the top of the paper, there is someone's name with an address. And then, quote was a TK driver for young door, 1984. End quote. I'm guessing TK driver in this instance means truck driver. So this person that is named not Jason, by the way, this person was a truck driver for the company Ron Hulse worked for. Now, under that, someone wrote Jason's full name, an Argus address, his date of birth, Social Security number, a Plymouth address, and then next to it, it says, quote, TK driver on contract, potentially implying that Jason was working as a contract truck driver for young doar. Under Jason's name. It also listed another address and listed the name of his employer along with, quote, old PK. Now, I've gone back and forth on what old PK could mean. I even took to the crime junkie Instagram stories a few months ago to crowdsource what you guys thought it meant. And the consensus, which is just all of us guessing, is that PK could mean pickup truck. So maybe they were noting that that's what he drove at the time. I mean, they were really interested in vehicles because they were constantly looking for that old rusty green car that the girls saw.

But according to this, maybe he might have driven a pickup truck. Was he a contractor for Young Doer, though? It's very possible. Aside from this cryptic handwritten note, we also found a single page from Chase Leasing Corporation. It's a mileage and odometer log with Jason's name on it. And through talking with the Hulse family, we found out that Chase Leasing company was the same company young door worked with to find contract employees. Anyway, if Jason was working as a truck driver on contract for young door in 1984, that would mean he likely knew or knew of Ron Hulse. Now, whether or not Jason was a contract driver for young door is TBD, but we were able to find out what company he was employed kind of on a regular basis during this time. And we found out he was working a trucking and delivery job in 1984, delivering bathroom appliances for a big bathroom manufacturing company that was based out of Plymouth. And that kind of made us wonder something else. According to property records, Ron built his family home on 20 B Road in 1979 and 1980. We wondered if his bathroom finishings came from that same company.

So we had Kristen call her dad Ron to ask if he could remember where he bought the tub and shower, and sure enough, it was from the same manufacturing company. Now, this is all tenuous at best. So where was Jason at 09:30 a.m. on August 17, 1984, when a man was forcibly taking Darlene from her home? Well, according to the next thing we found his name on, he was somewhere between Indiana and New York. Super helpful, I know, but bear with me here while I explain. The report I'm looking at is just a few pages long. It's not a police report or an interview or anything like that. It's Jason's work logs from August 16 to August 19 of 1984. We don't know why it's in the case file or when it was requested or if anything was done with it, but one could assume it's here because police went searching for his alibi. The logs are on a printed template, and handwritten in the lines are the days and hours Jason presumably worked that week. The company he worked for, which I'm not naming on purpose, was a big bathtub manufacturer in Plymouth back in those days.

It's actually still around today, but it was bought by a bigger corporation years ago as a delivery driver for them in 1984. Jason was expected to keep track of his own hours and mark his logs accordingly when he was on the road, which included when he was actually driving, when he stopped asleep, etcetera. So, according to Jason's self reported logs, he left Plymouth on August 16 and headed toward Riverhead, New York, for a delivery. The mileage he entered would have had him stopping overnight, probably somewhere in Ohio each way, which clearly puts him out of town on August 17. Jason's own note says he arrived back in Plymouth at 03:30 a.m. on August 18 and was off the next two days until starting a new route on August 19. And that's when the notes cut off. His name appears again on another document floating among the 3500 other pages about Darlene's case. And this single page report is also related to his work. It's an injury report dated five days after Darlene's murder on August 22, 1984. That's when Jason reported some injuries to his employer. And what's typed into line six, nature and location of injury.

Illness is, quote, strained muscles and minor bruises to ribs. According to the documentation, he said he got them two days prior at 08:00 a.m. on August 20, while, quote, unloading double tier of fiberglass tub shower units at jobsite. There is a place to list the names of those who witnessed the injury, but it just says employees at the job site receiving the load of tubs, which is vague. But in all fairness, I don't expect that he would know their names. For all we know, it was this injury that made police suspicious of Jason, because pretty much everyone agrees that Darlene's killer didn't leave unscathed and she fought back. But it seems he has an explanation for that. So far, everything we have, it kinda all adds up. Makes sense, right? Even though the trail of how we got from a to b to c isn't there. You can reasonably fill in the pieces, but this next one is a complete mystery to me. The next page after that injury report is a calendar for the month of August, 1984. It looks like any old wall calendar that you might have seen or had yourself back in the eighties.

It's branded with the NFL and Pepsi logos in the top right hand corner, and there are a couple random NFL trivia facts sprinkled on random dates. There is nothing handwritten on the calendar except for three little xs right next to the date. One on August 17, one on August 20, and one on the 22nd. So that's the day Darlene was murdered, the day Jason claimed to have been injured, and the day he reported the injury to his employer. Whose calendar was this? Where did it come from? God, do I wish I knew. I mean, there's a world where a detective was maybe suspicious of the injury and marked the relevant days related to, like, the injury itself and Darlene's case. But if so, why? I mean, all that stuff is written on paper already. And if it wasn't, you could way more easily just, like, handwrite a note and throw it in the file. So why put x's on your calendar? Take it off the wall, which it was on the wall, by the way, because you can see the nail or pinhole at the bottom of the August page like it'd been flipped. So why take the calendar off your wall, flip it back to August, mark the date, then photocopy it.

It would all make a little more sense if this were a calendar somehow related to Jason. And it'd be awfully strange if he marked the day Darlene was murdered, the day he says he was injured on the job, and then the day he reported it. If police stopped investigating Jason after looking at his work logs, I could see why. He clearly says he was out of town on the day Darlene was killed. But I can't help but wonder what they did in 1984 to confirm those handwritten logs. I mean, Jason was trucking by himself. We know that because there's a line on his work logs where you could list a co driver, and that's blank. Now here's where things get interesting. There is one other report port attached to his work logs where it looks like they tried to confirm his locations by looking at his self reported mileage. The handwriting on it gets really faded, especially as you go towards the bottom. And at first we thought it's maybe too faded to even read. But I had Emily print it out so we could take a closer look. And what we found was pretty unbelievable.

I laid Jason's driving logs next to the faded mileage and leasing sheet. The chase corporation lease sheet is what I assume Jason kept because he was leasing his truck. So that mileage and odometer log would get turned into chase leasing corporation, and then his daily driving logs would get turned into his supervisor at the manufacturing company. All that to say, I don't know that he ever expected anyone to be comparing the two. So we started crunching the numbers to see if the hours and miles that he was reporting on his daily logs matched the odometer readings on his leasing sheet. By the time we were done, I was fully convinced that Jason cooked his books because things just weren't adding up. But I wasn't so convinced that it could be a smoking gun or anything. I mean, it was more like maybe his math was wrong here or maybe he took longer route here. Like I couldn't. It just felt wrong. So I pulled in audio truck Coo Bob, who is much better with numbers than me or Emily. He actually took the reports to his office, started punching everything into Google sheets, columns for states, dates, the odometer reports.

Plus listed time that he was off duty, sleeping, driving, everything. And he even got a map to fact check all the miles. Bob Cross referenced all of it, and what he found was that none of it matched up. But he noticed something even more damning. Jason's leasing log is a whole state and a whole day behind his daily driver logs, which just doesn't make sense. Like it looks as if Jason just delayed everything by 24 hours to put himself a across the country on August 17, when in reality he could have absolutely been back in Plymouth on August 17, 1984. Listen, I understand lying on the daily driver logs because truckers back then will be the first to admit that they didn't stick to the eight or eleven hour max driving capacity that they were supposed to abide by to stay in compliance. Because I mean, honestly, if you're 2 hours from home, are you going to keep driving or are you going to stop for the night? You're gonna keep driving and just say that you stopped for the night, but what's the incentive to lie on the leasing sheet? I can't think of one.

Also, the odometer on his truck would have shown the real miles, so it was a big risk to lie. So basically, Jason could have easily gotten away with fudging his logs, and he could have been back in Marshall county by August 17. So this is something that, like, at first glance, it seems like a strong alibi, but if you really study it, it's shaky at best. And I won't lie to you guys. I honestly was kind of half hoping that all of this would confirm Jason's alibi, and we could call the alleged bar confession Argus folklore, but knowing this, we had to keep digging. There were a few names of Jason's old employers written on the work logs in a case file, like the owner of the manufacturing company and his manager from back then, but we found out they're both deceased, so we tried to call around to people associated with some of the names and the reports from back then. We even tried getting in touch with the admin staff at the company to see if they could give us Jason's employment history, but that didn't lead anywhere because, like I said, the company was bought out years ago, and it's a massive corporation now.

So we were kind of left with so many questions that we needed answered and no one to answer them except Jason himself. At the tone, please record your message. When you finished recording, you may hang up or press one for more options.

I'm a reporter covering the unsolved homicide of Darlene Holz in Argus, Indiana. I have some questions for you and wanted to see if you'd be willing to be interviewed. You can call or text me back at this number.

It's pretty standard that we don't get calls back. I mean, Kenneth McCune junior or John Paul Clark never called us back. We only got to them by showing up at their door. But in Jason's case, we'd been advised not to. The other people that we tracked down didn't have the extensive violent history that Jason does. I didn't want to put anyone on our team in that kind of risk, especially when there were still other people we could talk with, like people who've been known to personally associate with Jason. Someone from Jason's circle back then told us that he did, in fact, have a rusty, old green car, but they weren't sure the make or the model. And they didn't have any photos of it. In fact, when we started asking more details about it, they realized that, you know, after the summer of 1984, they stopped seeing Jason drive that car. We had also been given a guy's name that Jason might have lived with in the eighties, but he didn't text or call us back either. We fired off more Facebook DM's, to no avail. We called local bars where the alleged confession likely went down.

Nothing. And just when we thought we'd hit a wall, we got an email from someone surprising. I agreed not to share this person's name or how they're associated with Jason, but let's just say it is someone who knows him quite well.

The one thing that really is eerie to me is hearing that he said something in a bar one night about it being him. I've never known to lay claim on someone else's account. He's been very adamant and braggadocious. I don't know what other words to use about his fighting and his beating people up and his ability to threaten people when they leave him alone. I mean, he's had countless restraining orders put on him and all kinds of stuff, and you've probably seen his criminal history.

Hearing this made sense because everyone we got in touch with during our reporting who knew Jason back in the day is still scared of this guy, and they were too afraid to talk. And I don't blame them. It's not like Jason's criminal history can be chalked up to being young and stupid. This guy was charged in a bar fight as recently as 2016, and our source shared that Jason wasn't exactly known to respect women.

As long as I've known, he's viewed women as possessions and for pleasure purposes mainly.

That prompted us to look up some marriage records, and sure enough, Jason had been married, but he'd gotten divorced just before Darlene's murder. This felt relevant because of the FBI profile that was done for Darlene's case. If you remember, it said, quote, the brutality of the crime scene reflects anger resulting from short or long term stressors in the offender's life experience experiences. Our research and experiences reflect that these participating stressors can be the result of conflict with a significant female in the offender's life, end quote. Something else the FBI analysis pointed out was, quote, he would probably have followed the progress of the investigation through the media and by overhearing others in the community. However, the offender would not be likely to engage in conversation about the crime.

Do you remember, like, ever mentioning Darlene or this murder zero times.

Our source was also able to fill in the blanks for us on some of Jason's whereabouts from back in the eighties. He had three addresses back then, which we confirm through court records, two of which were in Plymouth and another in Argus. The one in Argus was less than 6 miles from where Darlene lived, but the address listed on his work injury report, which would have been from August of 1984, was one of the Plymouth addresses at that time. He would have been recently divorced, and according to locals we talked to, he was living with either a friend or a girlfriend at the time. After we've been chasing down leads and endlessly trying to bang down the doors for the powers that be, this call gave us renewed hope. Honestly, I was surprised our source was even willing to talk to us, considering I'm mostly used to people being defensive when you try and talk about someone they know being a person of interest in a murder. But this person said, thinking about Darlene's family is what compelled them to reach out to us.

If this is true, he needs to serve time for it, and that family needs justice, and they need to know why. They need to be told the truth.

Once and for all. So in the spirit of justice, we figured, but why not pass along everything weve learned about Jason and let the guys with badges take it from here? We send everything we learned to prosecutor Chipman and former detective Dave Yochulet. Back in April, Nelson sent a two word response, and to our surprise, it wasnt fuck you. It was thank you. We gave Nelson a month to see if he would do anything with the info, but we heard nothing. I mean, crickets. So in May, Emily emailed Isp Sergeant dawn.

Hi, Sergeant Curl. I'm not sure if you remember, but last summer I reached out trying to get an interview with you about the 1984 unsolved murder of Darlene Holz. Over the course of a year, I ended up doing several interviews with prosecutor Chipman. The information I'm about to give you, I've also sent to him and retired Marshall County Detective David Yochalet, but I haven't heard anything from them. And since this is an investigative matter and you're the investigator assigned to the case, I want you to be aware. I think at the very least, it warrants direct comparison of DNA testing to the partial profile ISP secured from Darlene's blouse with help from the Cold Case foundation. Since our series about Darlene's murder, the deck investigates dropped. We've gotten hundreds of emails from people with wide ranging information. But the tips I want to urgently bring your attention to are a few emails we got from locals who say Jason has confessed once or twice to various people to killing Darlene Hulse. Since learning about this, we've shown Darlene's older two daughters who are eyewitnesses to the murder. Jason's photos from back then and their reactions were notable, both emotionally and physically, which is evidence in and of itself.

Jason has an extensive criminal record, so the state of Indiana might already have his DNA, but the partial profile extracted from Darlene's blouse isn't enough to put in CODIS, I'm sure you know, but solving this will take direct comparison testing. In FYI, Jason also has an active warrant for his arrest out of Marshall county. But I hear he's living in Indiana. I know it will take more than a rumored confession to prove this case, so I tracked down the witness who heard Jason's alleged confession. Would you or anyone at ISP be up for a meeting? Again, we just want to get these leads in the right hands and see this case get solved.

Sergeant Kurl responded three days later saying, quote, please provide the names and contact information for the individuals you have interviewed related to this information, end quote. Emily responded saying, it'd be a lot easier to relay the information in person. But Sergeant Curl's response was, email is fine. So, rejected again. But it was the first time that Sergeant Curl had ever responded to any of our emails. Honestly, I'll take that as a small win. A month later, we know that Sergeant Curl did call our anonymous Jason source because that person said Sergeant Curl asked him some questions about Jason and his whereabouts these days. Our source said he also asked Sergeant Curl about what he plans to test DNA wise. But he left the conversation feeling like Sergeant Curl wasn't super interested in DNA. He was more interested in the alleged confession and getting witnessed witnesses to talk about it, which I can appreciate. Even with DNA, if anything's gonna go to trial, you need a good investigation to back it up. So I appreciate that he's doing the legwork. I'm not sure what's happened since then. We reached out to Sergeant Kurl again in July when Emily was back in Indiana, asking him to meet with us.

We even said he could bring a public information officer with him, but this time, we didn't get a response. We had to know if Jason was worth pursuing further. So we actually met with private investigator Patrick Zerpoli again. Remember him from episode twelve? We all had a mutual event in Utah last spring, so Emily and I met up with Zip one morning to chat about Darlene's case and Jason. From a behavioral standpoint, which is zip's specialty, we told him everything we knew. The alleged bar confession or confessions, the criminal history, his work logs deep in Darlene's case file. And the thing that really stuck out to him was the emotional response Marie and Melissa had just to seeing his photo.

Well, that speaks volumes. And I've said that to Don Kerl when I talked to him years ago, that you have eyewitnesses to this whole thing. You have someone who physically saw him even though she was eight years old, they physically saw him. If you get that reaction from them, it's gotta be a guy. This guy fits you and me. And you'll see people. They'll never go back up. You know, for him, he just doesn't need to go to that level anymore. But the level of violence that he has, the level of crimes that he commits even afterwards, fit that level. So there was no intention going to Darlene's house that day to kill her. The intention was to rape her, and it just went sideways.

Zip thinks whoever went to Darlene's house that morning likely knew Ron wouldn't be home. So either he'd been watching their, or it's someone who had a way of knowing his schedule.

So you know him from work or you know him from somewhere, but you know the husband's not home. She's by herself and have absolutely zero care over those three kids. You're gonna do what you want to do. I don't give a shit about anybody else. That's his attitude, but that's also his future crime attitude also. I'm gonna do what I want to do.

Zip also wasn't surprised. We mostly struck out trying to get interviews with Jason or others who knew him, someone like this.

I think that's why you have witnesses who'll come forward, but they're not gonna say that. They don't want to be the guy to point the finger and say, that's him.

There was an important distinction I wanted to make clear about Jason's alleged bar confession, to see what zip thought. From everything that they heard, he wasn't. When he, like, is drunk and confessing, it's not like a threatening, I did this, I'm gonna do this. It's always, like, super sad, because, again, it wasn't planned.

Like, he didn't go in there saying, I'm gonna kill this lady. It was just that it went too far. And I think that's when it comes out. And a lot of times too. You know, it doesn't mean anything until you tell somebody, and that makes it real. And I think that's why sometimes when he's that intoxicated, it comes out.

I just keep thinking, why would this person who reportedly heard this confession, just make it up? They aren't friends with Jason or even the same age or have beef or anything. From what we've heard, they weren't even there together, just acquaintances in the same small town. When one of them whispered something heinous that the other has never been able to shake off, and we're told, even though it's third hand, that it rattled this person so much, he ran home that night and immediately told his roommate what Jason said at the bar. So it seems like if it all was true, there's no reason to lie about this. But good investigations have to consider every lead. And while we waited to see if Jason would come around to talking to us or if the investigators would make any big moves, we had more tips to weed through and more people we needed to track down, which meant one more trip back to Argus to revisit a new brother in a family that we've already told you about. You ever seen the movie the shining? Yeah. Yeah, that kinda yeah.

Is he violent?

Well, he's different. That's next on episode 18, our lingering obsession. You can listen to that right now. There's one person who's been a recurring theme in our inboxes since the release of this series. He's the person of interest we actually know the least about. A modern day ghost. No social media presence, no phone number, no criminal record, no spouse or kids. And he's the only parson brother still alive today. This is episode 18, our lingering obsession. I first told you guys about the Parson brothers back in episodes twelve and 13 when I had my whiteboard revelation, and we realized that Nilsen had been confusing the lemon and the Parson families during our conversations with him. Once we unpacked all of that and made a family tree, we realized that there were at least four parson brothers who would have been young men in their late teens or early twenties back when Darlene was murdered. Three of those brothers showed up in the case file in the first few days after Darlene's abduction. They were subjects of tips from the public, mostly people claiming the police sketch looked like then. Also, it's clear the locals knew about the infamous buried bus at the Parson property, which is very close to the Hulse house.

It seems like the boys had a reputation for running around that area, and maybe one or two of them were rumored to have been associated with the marijuana patch right behind the Hulse house. So it's not surprising that they popped into people's minds. But it was the youngest brother, the one we refer to as Mike Parson, who was almost impossible to research. We aren't using his real name here because he has no known criminal record. Nelson told us Mike was always sort of on police's radar, but he didn't know if he'd ever been interviewed or even had the ability to be interviewed because of his mental state.

I mean, the only one that would have been.

Would have been.

Is that driven by a prejudice? One of the stories is that an officer knocked on the door and came to the door with an aluminum foil hat to ward off the raids.

That's what inspired so many of you to reach out to us, and it was your emails that made us revisit Mike as a person of interest. If Mike had a mental disability, is there a chance that he was nonverbal? That was the question you guys kept asking us. The girls described the sounds the man who attacked Darlene was making as, like, grunts and growls, and it could be possible that these sounds could come from someone who is nonverbal, which also could explain why he was never interviewed. But my mind didn't immediately jump to that conclusion. I mean, there are lots of different ways to interpret what Nelson meant by Mike's inability to be interviewed, but it was an interesting thought. We knew we needed more information about Mike, but that started proving very hard to get. We filed records, requests for any inkling of a criminal history, and came up empty, aside from some speeding tickets and reckless driving charges. Now, the one thing that did tell us was that he was able to drive, at least at one point, but he wasn't arrested for those incidents, so there weren't even any mug shots for us to see if he matched the suspect description.

The only photo we've been able to find of him was from the 8th grade when he was enrolled in Argus schools, which proved to not be super helpful. But then our luck turned around a little when we received a very helpful email back in March from a relative of Mike Parson. Finally, now we agree not to identify them, but we did confirm that they're a family member. They actually grew up going to the Parson house, and they confirmed something that we had heard. The second to youngest brother of the Parsons had actually died in an accidental electrocution on the property. And this family member said that Mike and another brother, the one that we called J. Parson in episode 13. The two of them had witnessed it. I'm gonna have a voice actor read some of the quotes from our interview with the Parson relative, but names have been changed to pseudonyms. I think maybe Mike would have done it. He fits more of the profile. He fits more of someone who would do something like that. One of our relatives had said that one time Mike had been gone for a few days. He was off in the woods living like a dog, and that he would growl and bark and stuff like an animal, and they would dig holes in the backyard and bury things, which you talked about in the podcast.

And another relative at one point was able to sneak back there with some other cousins, and they went in the tunnels, and they found a straightjacket and some other weird stuff, and then they got scared and ran out. Mike had a trailer of his own that he accidentally burnt down. He accidentally burnt down his mom's house, and they had to build her a new one. Unfortunately, our source didn't have any idea when that fire was. I would love to know if it was after 1984. He also had cardboard people that he would cut out and sit inside his trailer and talk to. And there's another thing. One of wives went to their house. She always went to their house all the time. But at one point, Mike pinned her in a back room to rape her, and Jay came in and pulled him off of her. She's pretty tough. So when I heard this story, I was like, whoa. All of this was a lot to take in. I mean, a straight jacket in the underground tunnel and cardboard people. But after so many years and the way stories tend to grow over time, those could be conflated.

I mean, you could say the same for the growling and barking, but what about his alleged disability? Our source didn't remember Mike being nonverbal. I don't remember him being different at all when we were young, but we were told that Jay gave him drugs and that it messed up his brain. And when he came back from the institute, that's when he would was different. If you remember, Mike seemed to have been ruled out by police in the early days of the Hulse investigation because he was a patient at a mental health facility called the Bowen center. According to an old police report, three days after Darlene was murdered, Marshall County Deputy Rex Gilliland went to the Bowen center in Warsaw, Indiana, and confirmed Mike's alibi. The report states that on the morning of the murder, Mike Washington, quote, at the Bowen center on Friday from 09:00 a.m. till 02:00 a.m. per, Karen Rosegarten, an employee. At 01:00, his father arrived, and they had dinner from one till two, end quote. The report is signed by Rex and dated. Now, it seems Rex is still alive today, so we reached out to him to see if he could remember any other details or to see if he spoke to Mike or his father directly, but we couldn't get a hold of him.

I also really want to ask Rex if there is a typo in this report, because it says that Mike was there from 09:00 a.m. till 02:00 a.m. and I wonder if maybe he meant 02:00 p.m. because it seems more likely that he ate a meal with his dad from one to 02:00 p.m. not one to 02:00 a.m. and if that's true, where was Mike before 09:00 a.m. and after 02:00 p.m. on August 17? And how precise were those times? Did employees see Mike there, or could he come and go pretty loosely as he pleased? Emily stopped by the Bowen center over the summer because it's still open today and has a few locations in northern Indiana. And someone at the front desk was like, yeah, I have no idea what our sign in policies were in the eighties, and they basically gave us a number of a public relations rep who never called us back. But the Mike Parson intel didn't stop there. In the spring, we got another message from a local who said, quote, he would ride his moped by our house and wait at the end of our driveway for my sister to get off the bus.

He would never say anything to us but just stare at us. He was a very strange young man. I believe he lived alone with his mother. He actually broke into our home while we were at church one Sunday and stole a beer and one of my mother's undergarments. I always thought he was somehow involved, and maybe that's just because I was terrified of him. End quote. After that, we received a message from someone else who said that they actually saw Mike the day before Darlene's murder. According to our source, Mike was seen sitting in a hand painted green car at the Argus Parkin shop on August 16, 1984. And right after they saw Mike sitting in the parking lot, they went into the store and saw Darlene Hulse. They said Darlene was buying something inside the store the very moment that Mike was in the parking lot. And apparently Mike and Darlene were parked right next to each other. This person was spooked enough back then that they reported this to then detective Dave Yochalet after they had heard what had happened to Darlene. But Dave told her that she must be mistaken. Mistaken because Mike had been at the Bowen center.

We knew that we needed to do some on the ground reporting to sort all this out and to try and confirm some things for ourselves. So the first stop in a small town when looking for information, usually the local watering hole. There's a bar in Argus called the Bears Den. It's one of those midwestern dives where patrons still smoke cigarettes inside with a jukebox playing Tom petty on repeat. The first time Emily and I went there last year, we made the mistake of showing up after dinner when the regulars were already pretty sauced. When we asked some locals about Darlene's case, instead of concrete information or even local rumors, we ended up just hearing ghost stories, like literal ghost stories. But when Emily went back in July, she decided to try again. And this time, she entered the Smokey bar in the middle of the day to try and get some more information on Mike Parson.

Do you know either of these people or if they come around here, which one? He's the youngest.

Yeah, he's woo.

Way out there.

The bartender had worked there for decades and said that she thought Mike Parson lived underground in tunnels out on his mom's property, where the buried bus is. I swear, every single time we went back to Marshall county and brought up Darlene's case, someone mentioned the buried bus at the Parson property. We also heard from people that there were other buried cars and even underground tunnels on the property that the brothers had dug years ago. The bartender said she thought Mike still lived there with his mom. Then a man sitting at the bar overheard Emily and the bartender and joined the conversation. When Emily asked if he knew Mike Parson, he said, quote, I'm his best friend, actually.

Oh, really?

He's got a lot of problems, man.

Is he okay?

He's alive.

Do you have his number?

You can go out to his mother's house, because I think he's already been questioned about that before. So there was only one thing left to do. Go to the infamous buried bus property and try and interview Mike Parson ourselves.

Hey, let's see if anyone's home.

It was a short drive from the bears den to the Parson house, and when Emily pulled up, she noticed that there were two cars there last year. When she went, the property looked as if no one lived there. But this time, there were cats all over the lawn as well. It was Mike's mom who answered the door. Hi there.

Are you.

Hi, my name's Emily and I'm a journalist. Yeah, I ran into in town. He told me to tell you hello. Oh, but friends with, I think could be. He told me that might be here. Does he live with you?

Yeah.

Is he available?

She gets a pretty cun.

Okay.

And I don't know how to react. Sure. I call him. He probably wouldn't even come out.

Now, you'll notice we removed all names mentioned in this conversation to protect identity. But Mike's mom went on to say that her son hasn't left her home for two years. She eventually came out of her house and took a seat on her front porch and chatted a little further. She seemed genuinely curious about why we wanted to talk with Mike.

We're looking into the Darlene Holt's case, and name had come up, and I.

What case?

Darlene Holt. Do you remember her? She was. It's an unsolved murder from 1984 roll.

It's nothing had something to do with that.

I'm not sure saying that, but we. His. His name came up a couple times and we just. We wanted to give him an opportunity to talk if he wanted to.

But like I said, probably wouldn't even come out of high education.

We asked Mike's mom if she could remember anyone coming around to ask Mike anything about Darlene's case back in the eighties. She shook her head no.

But then seems to me like at that time, my son was still alive. And they brought that up and they both went in and took lie detector jets.

Oh, really?

Yeah, they volunteered for that. The names we cut were her two sons that we've been calling Jay and Mike. In the old case reports, we've only seen a polygraph for Jay Parson. Nothing. Mike. So then we asked if she recalled her sons ever saying anything about their police interviews or even Darlene. And the only thing she remembered came from her older son, Jay.

I think I remember there was two.

Murders at that time, and it was a little girl.

He says, my God. Mom says, that's bad enough.

They accused me of the first one.

But to kill a child, something.

Remember why they accused him of it?

No, I don't.

No, I don't.

I don't remember. I know it was unthinkable to me at the time that they thought he.

Could have done something. Mike's mom kept bringing up her other son, Jay. It seems like, from her perspective, that's who, at least in her household, police focused on. We asked her if Mike has ever mentioned Darlene's case to her, and she said no. She also couldn't recall if police searched their property back then. In fact, she thought they lived at a different house in 1984. But all the records we've been able to locate indicate otherwise. Before leaving, Emily left her business card and said that if Mike felt like talking, he should call us.

He never leaves this place. Schizophrenia, I guess, is caused by childhood trauma. He seen his brother, his ten year old brother, electrocuted. He said that's what causes schizophrenia.

I'm sorry. And there's days when he has his.

Good days and other days when he's talking to his voices.

Mike's mom said his condition has worsened over the years. Back when he was a teenager, he drove and had his own car and didn't outwardly show many signs of the mental disorder he now struggled with as an adult. There were just a few thin walls separating Emily from Mike and the answers that he might have held. But this is as far as we would press. When mental illness is a part of the equation, there's an ethical line we don't want to cross. Yeah, we gotta be dogged when searching for the truth behind what happened to Darlene. But we also don't want to go around causing more harm than is absolutely necessary. Did we want to talk to Mike? Yeah, of course. Do I want to go back there with an excavator and search their backyard for a fireplace poker or a green car? Would love to. And maybe one day, if he's having one of his better days, Mike will give us a call. But until then, I can only go off of what we have. So I went back to the FBI profile. The special agent summarized that the offender went there to sexually assault Darlingenhe Darlene, even bringing duct tape with him to help secure her.

He also notes that because the man didn't bring a weapon with him, he likely thought he'd be able to get control over her pretty quickly. But because of the way Darlene defended herself, he reacted impulsively and violently by grabbing the closest weapon, the fireplace poker. The analysis says that when Marie and Melissa ran from the house, the offender was in a frenzied state and decided to remove Darlene from her house to take her somewhere to continue the sexual assault. It also states that the manner in which the victim was, quote, brutally assaulted, dragged, and her body disposed of indicates the possibility of the use of drugs or alcohol by the offender prior to the attack, end quote. We know Mike and his brothers lived nearby and that one of them had an old green cardinal. We also know that there have been allegations of sexually deviant behavior with Mike. In addition to that, we know that he and his brother Jay were experimenting with drugs back then. The FBI analysis said that the man was probably in his low twenties to 30 years old. Mike would have been 19 when Darlene's attack happened, and we still don't know what he looked like in 1984.

But 19 isn't far off from low twenties, though it's worth mentioning that he is the youngest person of interest that we personally looked into so far. The special agents report also says that the killer would not have more than a high school education and would not have done well in school. From yearbook pictures alone, which are by no means the end all, be all for records, it seems like Mike may have quit school in 1980, 1979, and never graduated. We also haven't been able to find out if he's ever held any type of a job. But here's the part of the FBI report that really sticks out with me as it relates to Mike. We would expect him to be living alone or with a significant family member, such as a domineering mother, older sister, or grandmother upon whom he is somewhat dependent. He would be described by others as a loner and likely does not have a close circle of friends. End quote. Of course, this analysis was done decades ago, back when authorities thought Darlene died of blunt force trauma to the head. But as you all know, we are now exploring the differing opinion by doctor Bill Smock that Darlene could have been strangled, which might change that assessment.

And speaking of Darlene's cause of death, as of now, it is still technically listed as blunt force trauma, but because it's still an unsolved murder in Marshall county, we reached out to the elected coroner there, John Groelik, to see what he thought of the new opinion around her cause of death. And our conversation with him got him thinking about the case again and looking at the old crime scene photos for the first time in a very long time.

Poor lady went through hell trying to survive.

We asked him what he thought about the lack of a skull fracture, which is what got us asking questions related to her cause of death in the first place. And he actually said something related to Darlene's attacker that we hadn't considered before.

Well, the first thing I would think about with the amount of injury to the head, you would almost wonder if that person was either a smaller person or not very strong or not very old to do that much damage to the tissue and not cause a skull fracture, that kind of makes me wonder. That's curious. Makes me curious. Just a few years ago, we had a young lady that was attacked by a person high on meth. And he attacked her with a machete, and he hit her in the head a few times. And there were obvious skull fractures. So I realized that the fireplace device is not sharp, but it's pretty rigid metal. And you would think that if somebody took a full swing that you would very possibly have skull fractures. So I kind of wonder if that person either was a young person or a small person that didn't have a lot of strength. But then you'd have to wonder, how did they get the body removed out into a vehicle and then discarded out into a wooded area?

I suppose adrenaline could account for more strength after the initial attack. But in the chaos of a violent crime, I guess there could be other plausible reasons that her skull didn't fracture. Coroner Groelik admitted that both Doctor Rick Hoover, who did the autopsy in 1984, and Doctor Bill Smock, who we interviewed in episode 14, are both more qualified to make such determinations. But during our conversation with Coroner Groelik, out of the blue, he brought up none other than Mike Parson.

The kid lived underground. Everybody said he was crazy. I tried to serve them once. I worked part time for the sheriff's department, and I think I tried to serve him papers once. And there were two of us because they knew he was a little psycho, and he come out of the door charging at us. So we just got back in the car and left.

Do you remember what you were serving him for?

No, I had no idea.

Coroner Groelik couldn't remember when that was either. But it was a long time ago when he worked part time as a reserve deputy for the sheriff's office. It's also interesting that if they were there to serve him court papers, that they never returned to finish the job. They just, what, left and never went back? I mean, what were they serving him for? I have so many more questions about this. I mean, we even put in a records request for any such filings at the Marshall county sheriff's office, and it came back empty like nothing. But there's something else I want to touch on that, he said. I think it's important to note that everyone we talked to about Mike Parson described him in that same way. Crazy. And I can't help but wonder if the rumors and negative talk around his mental health have driven people to view him in a sinister light, when in reality, he could just be a man who has been struggling his whole life. Before we ended our interview with Coroner Groelik, we asked about Darlene's underwear, because, if nothing else, we wanted to make sure the coroner was aware of the unexplainable transfer of blood droplets.

They really don't look like drops that came from her head if she was in an upright position.

And there's no notes in the coroner's report about, you know, trying to make sense of this blood. Because if you look at the colored photo from the scene, her underwear isn't exposed.

Right.

Does the police, state police still have her underwear?

What a great question. We certainly hope so. It was on an evidence list. But without confirmation from state police or Nelson or lab techs, which we have not been able to get, there is no way for us to know for sure how it was preserved or stored, or if they even still have it.

A trained evidence technician, I think, could probably saturate that blood and collect some with some sterile saline and a swab and identify a DNA from that.

That DNA could be Darlene's, but it could also be the killer's DNA just sitting in evidence storage for 39 years. Same goes for the semen. Coroner Groelik thought it would be unlikely for the semen found during an autopsy to have been Ron's, unless the two were intimate, like right before he left for work that morning. And according to Ron's recollection, they had been together the night before. But for some reason, everyone assumed the semen was his. Though if you remember, Nelson couldn't remember why that assumption was made.

I think they did. Well, I know they did a rape kit, per se, and it was sent off to the lab, but there was nothing that ever. Well, there was semen, but they figured it was. Yeah, because they don't.

Did they do tests to determine it was Ron's?

I don't know.

Coroner Groelik said he would need to have a conversation with both Doctor Hoover and doctor Smock before making his own determination on Darlene's cause of death. But he said if he ends up being convinced that she did die by strangulation, he would amend the cause of death in her file and on her death certificate. Some people might wonder why that even matters. And here's why I think it's important. As Nelson told us more than once.

I've told everyone that my intent is in mid to early 2024, to either be running for a different post or.

Retiring those are two very different things.

Yes.

I'll be 70 years old at that time.

It's very likely that Nelson won't be the last person to touch Darlene's case. Investigators and prosecutors will come along someday who might be willing to try and solve it. And when they do, it's paramount that they have the most accurate information possible. I mean, what if there's a confession someday? But the cause of death doesn't line up with what's on paper? Would it get thrown out, ignored? I know it's a lot of what ifs, but I just want everyone to be dealing in facts, no matter what those facts are. Sometimes when I'm just sitting and spiraling down and down the endless rabbit holes, I think of Marie, Melissa, and Kristen. It's almost impossible to imagine these children witnessing their mom being attacked by a stranger in their own house at any age. But especially at the. The vulnerable ages, they were. Someone stripped them of their sense of safety and of any future memories with the woman who loved them the most. And in broad daylight, he drove off, getting away with a heinous crime, leaving those little girls to grow up without their mom, the woman who they would always remember as the person who spent her last waking moments fighting to protect them.

And here we are, 39 years later, and the tables have turned. Marie, Melissa, and Kristen are the ones fighting now on behalf of their mom. And the wild part, the thing I think about the most is that they aren't even vengeful. In fact, when we filled them in on what we learned after visiting the parson house about the childhood electrocution tragedy, about Mike's condition, now their response was, that's so sad. And what a horrible life. Over the past 15 months, I have been in constant awe of them. Anytime we update them on certain things about specific persons of interest, they were the ones showing empathy for these men, one of which is very likely to be the person who killed their mother.

If this person is still alive, if they would just. They could even reach out to one of us and just tell us, and I would be happy with that. I just think. I just want to know. Like, it's really not about punishment. I wouldn't want to want to. There's no punishment that would be sufficient. No, no, I'll let God handle that. I just. I just need pleasure, that's all.

As of this recording, no one from Marshall county or the Indiana State police will meet with us or give us an update. Nelson still won't meet with Darlene's daughters, so they aren't being given any updates either. Local media has tried to press, but they just get blanket statements that don't answer any real questions, but rather just blame silly journalists for getting people all worked up.

So if this doesn't work, what do we do after that?

That's a good question. What do you do when your mother's been murdered, taken in front of your eyes 39 years ago and the only person in charge of the case won't talk to you? Years ago, when I first started talking to Kristen and got a grasp of everything they were up against, I told Emily that their frustration must feel similar to screaming underwater, because no matter how hard you scream, no one's really ever gonna hear you. And I have a deeper understanding of that feeling now, at least to some extent. I know we caused some waves in Marshall county this series, but all I can hope for now is that somebody in a position of power decides to do the right thing and find the truth for Darlene and her family. And I also hope that all of you will start screaming with us. If this were your mother, your sister, your daughter, you would scream. So scream. Not hateful or menacing, but just be her heard. You can still sign the petition in Darlene's case, you can share this series. You can even send emails to those in positions of power asking for updates and letting them know that everyone's watching.

Because even though this series might be over, I'll be keeping one eye on Marshall county until there are answers. The Deck Investigates is an audio Chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com. so what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve.

Of.