153. Cold Cases Solved This Year

Cold cases can sit on shelves for years without answers, but this year we've seen some amazing advancements and cases that police thought would never get solved. I want to tell you about three of those today, and they all have twists that no one's all coming and they get twistier as they go so you're going to want to stick around. As always, welcome back to Heart Starts Pounding, I'm your host Kaelin Moore. Now this episode is coming out near Thanksgiving here in the States, and around that time of year I always think of things to be thankful for, and to me, the solving of cold cases, closure that gives families is something that I think we can all be very grateful for. Now this is going to be one of our last episodes before we start some more winter specific stories in December, think cozy mysteries, haunted castles, the kind of stuff you're going to want to curl up by a fire and drink hot chocolate, too. So you'll want to be here for our December programming, but for now, I want to start off our episode by telling you about an incredibly high profile true crime case that had a major major breakthrough this year, and was ultimately solved, the yogurt shop murders in Austin, Texas. It's when your heart starts pounding. Now a quick refresher on this case and the event that you're not familiar. 11.47 pm Friday night on December 6, 1991 in Austin, Texas, something was definitely not right at the strip mall off of Anderson Lane. The owner of a party supply store was working late that night when he heard popping noises coming from one of the nearby stores. He ran outside and he immediately saw dark smoke billowing from the next door for a new shop called I Can't Believe It's Yogurt. By the time you try to call 911, a group of firefighters were already approaching the scene. And once they got there, the firefighters tried to enter the building, but they found that the front door was locked. Now that was to be expected, the workers had probably locked the door when they decided to close up for the night. If anything, that was a good sign because maybe the shop was empty and no one had gotten hurt in this fire. Unfortunately, that was not the case. The firefighters forced their way into the shop and saw the layout of the store. There was a charred counter that was directly in front of the door, passed some tables. There were booths on the right and left side of the shop as well, covered and sit, and then passed the counter was the back of the store. And that is where the fire seemed to have started. Through all the debris and the back part of the shop, they could make out the shapes of three bodies of teen girls that had been badly charred by the fire. None of them were wearing clothes and they had been gagged and tied up. They looked as though they had at one point been stacked on top of each other, but had maybe fallen over at some point once the fire started raging. Now even further in the back of the shop, separate from the three girls was where they found the fourth and final body, also of a teen girl. She was not quite as badly burned as the others, but her body was still in gruesome shape. She seemed to have been shot twice through the face and head. And once the medical examiner had done the autopsies, it was confirmed that one of the girls was sexually assaulted. The medical examiner also swabbed the bodies for any DNA evidence, but never tested them for accelerant, so we don't know if something was poured on them to start the fire that night. The victims were eventually confirmed to be Eliza Thomas and Jennifer Herbison, who were both 17 and worked at the shop. Jennifer's sister, 15-year-old Sarah Herbison, and Sarah's friend, 13-year-old Amy Ayers. Now Sarah and Amy had been planning on having a sleep over that night at Sarah and Jennifer's house. They were just waiting that night for Jennifer to close up so she could drive them home. They were normal teen girls having a normal teen girl night, when tragedy struck. The Herbison parents would later recall how much both Jennifer and Sarah were both into sports. Jennifer excelled at track and Sarah absolutely dominated in basketball. The girls also loved animals and spent as much time around them as they could. Amy was a natural at horseback riding and she even had her own horse. Her mom described her as an old soul and her happiest when she was around animals. Sonora remembers her sister Eliza with an incredible amount of love as well. And so after this tragedy struck, the community very clearly was reeling over these deaths. Austin in 1991 was not the Austin that you think of today. It not even close. It was small. They didn't really have homicides like this. So police got to collecting clues to figure out who could have done it, but they were a little bit out of their element. And they really wanted to find out at this time if this had been done by someone within their own community. They confirmed that the weapons used in this attack used 22 caliber and 380 caliber bullets. Because of the extensive damage that was done by the fire and then the water that was used to put the fire out, collecting evidence was extremely difficult and they weren't really able to collect any fingerprints at the scene. But because the front door was locked, police were able to assume that the crime had taken place after the store had closed and the girls had locked up around 11 pm that night. And the attacker must have fled through the back of the store. Now based on the crime scene and witness statements that were collected from people who had been in the yogurt shop hours before it closed, the police put together an idea of what they thought had happened that night. So around 10 pm, one hour before closing, a few witnesses remembered seeing a man come in. They didn't see his face, they didn't really hear his voice as he spoke to the girls behind the counter. He didn't order anything, and instead he asked to use the bathroom. The girl said yes and he went in. He still hadn't come out by the time the customers who saw him left the store and they're not sure what happened. So one theory became that maybe this man could have snuck into the back without anyone seeing him. Maybe he jammed the rear door open, knowing that he was going to escape out the back later, and then he either then hit out in the bathroom until the store closed, or he came back later through the back door that he had previously propped open. But there were other witnesses who pointed out to other men who seemed suspicious in the store that night. One with a padded tan jacket, and another one that was thin and had light brown hair. But no one really got a good look at these guy's faces. Some customers reported seeing those two guys sitting in a booth near the counter of the yogurt shop, not long before the store closed. Around 10.45 pm that night, which was about five minutes before the girls would have started closing up. And the last witness to leave the shop at around 10.47 in that night, remembered seeing that the two men were still inside as they left. So these men in theory were the last people to see the girls alive. It wasn't a ton to go off of, but just a week after the murders took place, police had a suspect in custody. A 16 year old boy named Maurice Pierce was seen at North Cross Mall, kind of sauntering around with a loaded 22 caliber pistol, the same kind of gun that was used in the murders. And he had a kind of tucked in the waistband of his jeans and he had bullets in his pockets. Now the North Cross Mall was only two blocks from the yogurt shop. Amy and Sarah had actually walked over from the mall to meet Jennifer on the night of the murder. Maurice was immediately taken into police custody, and this set off a really horrible chain of events that would last decades and ultimately ruin lives. The police couldn't prove that Maurice's gun was the murder weapon. There actually wasn't any physical evidence that tied the 16 year old to the crime. But you have to remember, police were out of their element and they were really eager to make an arrest. And in order to do that, they would have to get a written confession to get the murder charges to stick. After hours of interrogation, without a lawyer, Maurice Pierce told the police that his friend, a 15 year old boy named Forest Wellburn, had borrowed his gun the night of the yogurt shop murders. He said that forest disappeared for a while and then later returned sweaty, smelling of hairspray, which the police thought was maybe the accelerant that was used to start the fire. And the day after this part of the interrogation happened, Maurice claimed that forest confessed to the killings. Detectives wired Maurice for a second conversation with his friend, Forest, but on tape, Forest just insisted that he was only joking. Again, there was no evidence that linked either of those boys to the crime. But a homicide detective pressed the boys relentlessly for confessions. When that ultimately failed, Maurice offered a separate lead, different from Forest. He said that there were two other boys, 17 year old Robert Springsteen and 15 year old Michael Scott that were involved in the killing. Police went and they interrogated those boys too, but again, they hit another wall because all four of these boys were denying any involvement in the crime. And with no physical evidence to tie any of them to it, they were all released and after that the case really went cold. But then, in 1998, so seven years later, this detective named Paul Johnson reopened the investigation. He wanted to revisit those original four suspects, so he brought Michael Scott in again. And after nearly 18 hours of questioning in 1999, Scott confessed that he, Springsteen, Pierce and Wellburn had gone to rob the shop that night and ended up killing the four girls. Then, after that happened, they set the whole place on fire. But he didn't mention anything about a sexual assault, which the police thought was a little strange. He said that he and Springsteen were the shooters, and after a little bit of coaxing and leading by the police, he admitted that Springsteen had sexually assaulted one of the victims. Neither Pierce nor Wellburn ever confessed to anything involving the crime though. And based solely on these statements, all four boys were charged with capital murder. Scott received life in prison. Springsteen was sentenced to death. And if you go back and listen to any of these interrogations, which I did while doing some of the research for this episode, you can really hear how flawed these interrogations were. The police keep asking leading questions. It's like they know that the boys have no idea what happened in this crime, so they keep asking them things like, well, did you sexually assault them? Well, then what did you do? Did you go over to one of them after that? And it's really the sexual assault element that they're leading them towards. One of the boys actually ended up asking for a lawyer during his interrogation, but he was ignored by the cops and ultimately never received one. And despite how chaotic the scene was at the time of the attack, none of the four boys left a shred of DNA, ballistics, or any physical evidence that they had ever been there. And now one of them was sentenced to die for this crime. Luckily, though, the convictions did collapse on appeal. The confessions were riddled with inconsistencies on top of the lack of physical evidence, and there really was just not enough to actually convict them. Over the next couple of decades, investigators chased more than 1200 suspects, and countless confessions that all proved to be false. The case remained unsolved until a dramatic break nearly 35 years after the girls were murdered. The big break in the case was set into motion by an act that was actually signed into law just three years ago in 2022. It was called the Homicide Victims Families Rights Act of 2021, and it was motivated by the yogurt shop murders specifically. The law was enacted to make sure that the latest technological advances were being used to help solve cold cases, and this set off a really lucky chain of events in this case. So in 1991, when the swabs were taken on the bodies for DNA, the forensic technology didn't really allow for DNA to be used to test against suspect's DNA, they just didn't have that technology yet. But in 2022, they did, and the police could pursue new leads in the case using this new type of DNA testing that was available to them. And that same year, a man named Dan Jackson became head of the Austin Police Department's Unsolved Homicide Unit, and he decided that he wanted to take another look into the case. This reopened it for a third time, and in June of this year, Dan Jackson pulled out two really crucial pieces of evidence for retesting. The first was the bullet casing from a 380 caliber gun. That bullet hadn't been tested through this one database called the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network in years. So Dan decided he was going to create a new profile for this bullet casing and run it through that system again, just to see if there were any matches and lo and behold, there were. He got a match. It seemed like the gun that was used in the yogurt shot murders had potentially been used in an unsolved murder in Kentucky. And that murder shared some really weird coincidences with the overshot murders, because in that unsolved murder, a woman was sexually assaulted and then fatally shot, just like one of the girls in the yogurt shot murders had been. And that really got Dan thinking, and it made him pretty optimistic. Were these done by the same guy, and if so, did that mean his DNA was now in a system somewhere? Well, DNA material was collected in 1991 at the yogurt shop from underneath Amy's fingernails. It had never been tested, because back then the technology just wasn't good enough, and they didn't have enough DNA to run more than one test on it. Or really to even upload it to Codis, or the combined DNA index system, which is a national database that lets crime labs share and compare DNA profiles. It uses technology to match DNA from crime scenes to other cases, or to known criminals, helping investigators connect violent crimes and find suspects. They only had, from this little sample of DNA, the suspect's Y chromosome DNA, but it was at least something that could potentially lead them to the right person at some point. So what Dan did was he sent the profile of the DNA that they had to individual police departments around the country, and he asked them to manually check it against profiles that they already had in their system. This was an incredibly tedious way to do this process, and I can only imagine that part of him was worried that other police departments simply wouldn't do this because of how tedious it was, but really this was the only chance he had. And then just like with the ballistics testing, he got a match from a police department in Greenville, South Carolina. The DNA tested matched DNA from the perpetrator of a sexual assault and murder that was committed in the area, and not only did the DNA match, but there was an eerily specific similarity between the two cases. The victims were tied up using their own clothing, which had happened in the Yorchop murders and also happened in that case. Now the crime that had shared DNA with the Yorchop murders had been unsolved for decades, but in 2018, thanks to a genealogist named C.C. Moore, the perpetrator had been named, and it was not anyone that police had on their radar. But just like that, 34 years later, the killer in the Yorchop murders was finally identified as a man named Robert Eugene Rashers. Now, Rashers had never been on any suspect list when it came to the Yorchop murders, and he was never approached by police at all in connection with the crime. His name, coming up as the perpetrator, was completely out of left field. Rashers was a serial killer, a mass murderer, and a rapist whose crimes spanned multiple states. Sadly, the Yorchop murders were not the only murders he committed in his pretty extensive career as a killer. The year before the Yorchop murders, he killed a 28-year-old woman named Jenny Zitricchi by strangling her with her pantyhose and her apartment. He also shot and killed a 38-year-old woman named Sherry Sherer and her 12-year-old daughter Megan and Missouri in 1998. Both of these victims had been tied up, and Megan had been sexually assaulted, which also matched what happened at the Yorchop. He killed women and children in Florida, South Carolina, Texas, Missouri, and Tennessee, making it incredibly difficult for police to catch him. But the craziest thing of all is his crimes remained unsolved until 2018, because that's when a genealogist named CC Moore was looking back through old cold cases and was able to name him as a suspect in three murders and several rapes that dated back to 1990. But at that point, unfortunately, Rashers was already dead. He had taken his own life in 1999 during a standoff with police. At the time, police were investigating him for a stolen vehicle, but when he saw them at his door, he proceeded to hold his wife, daughter, and two step daughters hostage and ultimately took his own life. And his crimes could have died with him, honestly. But CC Moore was able to have his body exhumed to collect DNA after she started making these connections almost 20 years later. She's basically the only reason that Rashers was in any system and connected to any crime, period. And ultimately, she's the reason he was able to be tied to the yogurt shop murders. But some people, despite this DNA match still have some questions, was Rashers alone when he committed this crime. Remember, there were two men that were seen in the shop when the last customer left. Was it Rashers and someone else potentially? Or were these two guys in the shop totally unrelated to the crime in general? Now, Rashers was known to work alone, so it is kind of unlikely that he had anyone with him in the yogurt shop. And at the end of the day, only his DNA was found at the scene. So we may never know exactly what happened that night, but there's at least a little bit of closure for families that I am sure they never thought they would see. I read that one of the girl's sisters actually said that she thought she was going to die not knowing who did this. So it is amazing that she was able to get this level of closure in her lifetime. And honestly, that's part of the reason that I wanted to do this episode now. Like I said, it's Thanksgiving here in the States. And I like to spend some time thinking of things to be thankful for during this season. And one of the things is the big leaps in technology made in the last few years that are helping families like this find closure. I mean, I maybe mentioned this before, but last year producer Matt and I lived in Austin. And we talked to people who remembered these girls who were friends with these girls and had gone to school with them. We even talked to people who were friends with the boys, the one that was sentenced to death for this crime. It was still this really open, gaping wound in the community. I would say. And I'm sure some of you can relate to that because I know some of you guys come from towns that also have these really visceral crimes that have remained unsolved for decades. So I can only hope that this at least brings a little bit of closure to the people of Austin and that we keep making these big leaps and technology that are closing cold cases around the country. I will say though, not every cold case is committed by a complete stranger. Sometimes all it takes to solve a cold case is a re-examination of the people closest to the victim because sometimes that's where you find the killer. March 2013 in Cleveland was colder than it had been in the past few years. A man walking along a frozen sidewalk had himself bundled up to protect against that cold. When something that was laying near the street caught his eye, he pulled his hood back to try to get a better look and that's when he threw his hand over his mouth to stifle a scream. When he was looking at was a body and from what he could tell, it looked like a woman and there was blood pulling all around her, leaking out of stab wounds that he could see. Police would quickly identify this woman as Aliza Sherman, a 53-year-old fertility nurse and mother. She had four children that she loved fiercely. Her daughter recalls how her mother was always an advocate for her to be strong and independent. She was admired in her community for her kindness and her generosity, which made her murder all the more puzzling to police. The attack that ended her life happened mid-day on March 24th, 2013 near the air of view plaza in downtown Cleveland. The murder was carried out in broad daylight and she was stabbed at least 10 times. The attack was brutal and it was very public, yet no one saw it happened, or at least no one came forward as a witness. Police figured that the attacker must have fled through a nearby alley, so they must have been able to stay out of view of all the people around. And no murder weapon was ever recovered near the crime scene, however, video footage that was taken from a nearby business shows someone wearing a heavy black coat running away from the scene. It was impossible to identify exactly who the person was, but it was believed that that was the attacker, though who exactly was it? Was this just a random stranger who had done this or did someone who knew Alisa target her intentionally? Well the police started going through Alisa's records and that's when they got their first bombshell clue. It turns out at the time of her death, she was in the middle of a very volatile divorce. Going back to 2000, the police had been called to the Sherman's house 22 times for reports of domestic disturbances. By 2013, Alisa and her husband had decided that they were going to separate, though that separation was not going well by any means. On March 24th, the day of her murder, Alisa was preparing for an upcoming court date. Alisa was actually on her way to her attorney's office when she was killed by this unknown attacker. And now oftentimes when a woman is murdered, the natural focus and the investigation is going to be on her husband or her partner. And there was a reason to think that Alisa's husband, Sanford Sherman, was involved. Now the couple, like I had mentioned, had a history of domestic disputes during their marriage that didn't stop once they decided they were going to get a divorce. And quickly after the police started looking into this, more started coming out that really did not look good for Sanford. Now after Alisa's death, the couple's daughter, Jennifer Sherman, filed a civil suit against her dad over how he had handled Alisa's estate. One of the claims that the daughter made was that Sanford had forged her mother's signature on a bunch of important documents, like a power of attorney that gave him access to withdraw funds from one of her accounts. And over the next six years, the account was completely drained by him. When Sanford was asked by Jennifer why her mother's signature looked so different on that document from every other document that she had signed, he said that some days Alisa's motor skills were affected negatively by dehydration and exhaustion. So yeah, according to Sanford, she was just dehydrated the day that she gave him access to her biggest bank account. And when police started digging into this even more, they found emails that Alisa had sent to her divorce lawyer, Gregory Moore, where she complained about not remembering signing those documents and feeling like she would have never knowingly signed away her accounts. During the civil trial that Jennifer brought, it was also revealed that Sanford had been engaged in an extra marital affair at the time. He was also revealed that Sanford one time entered a strip club under a fake identity. He was aggressively coming on to one of the dancers, and then he threatened to kill her and her father when she didn't reciprocate those advances. And on top of all of that, it also came to light that Sanford allegedly solicited advice from someone about the best way to commit a "perfect murder." And on January 12, 2012, which was a little over a year before her murder, Alisa had written to her divorce attorney saying, quote, "I am really afraid he's going to have me killed." So obviously, the police started circling Sanford. But even with all of the information they had, everything that had come out about him about the marriage and the divorce with Alisa, the investigation really stalled there. Those were never able to find any physical evidence present at the crime scene or on Alisa's body that could place Sanford at her murder. Sanford seemed also to get a lawyer immediately, and police never brought him in for formal questioning, though I really don't know why. Either they weren't pursuing this investigation all that seriously, or there was something about the crime that made them think that someone else had killed Alisa. Just an entire decade would pass without any information on this case. But then in 2021, Attorney General David Yost and his team at the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations, or BCI, got called in to help on this case. They had more bandwidth than the Cleveland Police had to take on difficult cold cases, and they also were there to kind of serve as fresh eyes on something that Cleveland authorities had already really raged through over the last eight years. The BCI also had better and more tools. They had a bigger lab to process evidence, and they had more time to be able to put together a meticulous minute-by-minute reconstruction of Alisa's day using digital evidence. And there was a lot of digital evidence for them to go through. To start, there were the texts where Alisa said she was meeting her divorce attorney at his office at 4.30pm on the day of her murder. The authorities realized that the last person she was set to see was Gregory Moore, her lawyer. So they started revisiting some more of the digital evidence surrounding him, and they found a few very strange inconsistencies. First, they noticed that the day of the murder, Gregory's phone was disconnected from his cellular network for around three hours, all around the time of the attack. The cell phone was still connected to data via hotspots, but not to cellular data. This meant the device wasn't pinging cell towers, which would create a map of the movements and location of the person using the device. The phone was then reconnected after the attack had taken place, and Gregory started to make phone calls, and he started sending text to Alisa asking where she was. And that all happened between 5.41pm and 6.43pm. And then a few days after that, Gregory got rid of that phone and got a new one entirely. They also noticed that Gregory's key card had been swiped at the entrance to his office that day at 3.51pm, but he never actually entered. And when police went to gather footage from the building's security camera that would have been taken before, during, and after the attack, they discovered something very clearly suspicious. 21 minutes missing from the security footage from the time when Alisa must have been attacked. Only 21 minutes of footage taken during a very crucial time frame had disappeared. Now, there was more missing evidence that they would eventually discover, like a voicemail that Alisa left for Gregory that day. The message had been deleted on March 25th, which was the day after her murder, without first giving it to law enforcement. But why would her divorce layer of all people involved in this case want Alisa dead? Well, the police found something in Gregory's records that might provide them with an answer. In July of 2012, three separate employees at the Old Kayahoga County Domestic Relations Court in Ohio received calls that a bomb was in the building and was going to go off at 11.30am. The courthouse was evacuated and the trials that were scheduled for that day were all postponed, and of course Panic ensued. Ultimately, it was discovered that there was no bomb in the courthouse and that the calls were coming from Gregory Moore, who had a case he allegedly did not feel prepared for going to trial that day. The point being, he had a track record of pulling elaborate stunts in order to push off trial dates for cases that he didn't think he was ready for. It's now believed that Gregg Marie intentionally lured Aliza to his office that day, knowing that he needed to come up with a way to stall her trial. When Aliza arrived at his office, she texted him that she was there, and then Gregory texted back that he would be down in just a moment, but he didn't arrive. So a few minutes later, Aliza texted him again, saying that it was cold out and she was just going to go wait in her car. And again, Gregory said he was just going to be down in a little bit. But investigators don't believe that he was ever inside of the building to begin with. And it's after those texts were exchanged that the attacker approached Aliza and began stopping her. Earlier this year, Moore was indicted on charges including aggravated murder, conspiracy, and two counts of kidnapping. However, it's still unknown if he had a co-conspirator. Was it really Gregory in the video running away from the scene or was someone else involved? Now there are people online who believe that the other man was Sanford, who helped maybe orchestrate the whole thing, though I haven't really found any evidence that that actually was the case. But while this is not officially solved just yet, no one has been officially charged with the murder of Aliza, an arrest has finally been made in this murder case and a trial has been set for early 2026. It was late morning on September 20, 2006, in Douglas, Georgia, when a 911 dispatcher answered a call. At first, they couldn't make out what the man on the other end of the line was saying because he was so hysterical. In between sobs, the man identified himself as John Warhol. His wife, he said, was dead. He had come back to the business that they ran together, this indoor sports park, to see that she had been shot in what must have been a robbery gone wrong. The police arrived at the scene, they found John crumbled on the ground next to the body of his wife Doris. And even before they had done an autopsy, it was clear to investigators that she had died by a gunshot wound to the head. Doris was only 39 at the time of her death. She had previously worked as a teacher and interior designer before deciding that she was going to give up her career for a little while and stay home to raise her and John's three children. Doris was active and she was a beloved member of both her church and local civic organizations. People described her as being gentle and artistic and endlessly devoted to her kids, which once again made this murder all the more senseless. And as I said earlier, the spouse of a murdered woman is usually who police look into first. So John had to sit with the police and take them through his movements for the day. It was 11.15am when he said he discovered his wife's body. And according to him, he had left to go to the hardware store at around 9.40 in the morning. He hadn't been at their business, which was closed at the time of the shooting when Doris must have been killed. And his alibi was quickly corroborated and he was ruled out of being involved. There was, however, one other person at the sports park that day who would have witnessed the crime or at least spend there when it happened. And that was Doris's 18-year-old nanny, Paola Yarberry. Paola was cleaning a different area of the indoor sports park when she heard a gun go off. But she explained to police that she didn't see who it was who had fired and she didn't witness them coming in or out of the business. Now the sports park that the couple ran was called Johns Sports Park. Any local kid could come spend the weekends or some days during summer vacation to go. Also, they had many golf and indoor areas for soccer and basketball. Security cameras covered almost every square inch of the park on the inside. However, there were a few spots that were not covered by cameras. And one of those blind spots was the office where Doris was killed, which meant the shooting wasn't captured on camera. And so, police started wondering if this really was a robbery gone wrong or did someone who was very familiar with the inside of this building intentionally target Doris. Police asked John who would have wanted Doris dead. Like, did she have any enemies? It was kind of hard to talk to John during this time though because he was so distraught and inconsolable over his wife's death. But he worked with them to make a list of any disgruntled employees that the business had. The police were wondering if there was someone who had been fired by the couple or maybe someone that had been banned from the park. And that ended up leading to the arrest of two men. These guys, Glidden Rodriguez, and Brandon Cage. Glidden had been an employee of John's Sports Park, but Cage hadn't been. There were reports that one of them had been banned from the park. So police figured that maybe they murdered Doris and retaliation. They were eventually arrested on charges of conspiracy to commit murder. However, prosecutors dropped their case. There just wasn't enough evidence to pin it on these two young guys. And after those charges were dropped, police were really back at square one in the investigation. They didn't know where to go next, but there was one witness they wanted to check back in with. In 2007, while she was eating lunch with her friends, police arrested Paula Yarbury, Doris' nanny who had been there when she was killed. They felt like she maybe knew more about the crime than she had let on. They also knew that she was an immigrant who the whorls were helping get a green card, and they were able to use her immigration status as kind of a bargaining chip against her. Basically they told her, "Tell us what you know or you're going to go back to Venezuela." But Paula insisted she didn't know anything. She called John for help, but he had already relocated himself and his children to Florida. He was just too sad to stay in the same neighborhood where his wife had been murdered. And so without any support, Paula was forced to leave the country. But also there really wasn't enough evidence that she had been involved in any way or that she knew something she wasn't telling the police. So after Paula left, the case just went cold. Over the years, there were some small movements in this cold case, but nothing revelatory. Eventually, John moved his kids to Costa Rica. In 2022, police searched a nearby pond for the murder weapon, but that search came up completely empty. There was no gun there. The business that John and Doris owned struggled for a while before it just shut down completely. There had been billboards put up around the community pleading for anyone with any information to come forward and help solve this case. But all of those billboards became faded by the sun over the following years, and eventually you couldn't even read the helpline number on them. The number of people who called in asking for updates on Doris' case dwindled, but one of Doris' sisters, Leanne Tuggle, refused to give up hope that she would get justice. She worked tirelessly on her sister's case over the following 20 years, even when the police seemed to stop. And it was Leanne who would inform police of a shocking development. Not a development in the case so much as a change within the world family. See, after John took the kids and relocated from Georgia to Florida, Leanne never heard from him again. No one endorses his family had, actually. And they were shocked to learn when he moved all of them to Costa Rica. Not necessarily because Costa Rica felt like a random place to move the family to. I mean, John had no ties to the country, he wasn't from there or anything. And it was strange because Leanne knew of someone else that was living in Costa Rica at the time. The family's nanny, Paola. Yeah, Leanne was able to update the police that she discovered John and Paola were lovers and he had moved the kids there to be with her. Now, John had moved to Costa Rica to be with Paola only two years after Doris' death, but it wouldn't be until years later that police knew about this, partly because of Leanne's discovery, but also partly because they got a call from Paola herself. And that brings us to this year, 2025, almost 20 years after the murder took place. Paola was ready to talk to the police. This was the same nanny who was only 18 years old when she worked for the Whirls back in 2006. So honestly, calling her and John Lovers doesn't even seem right in this situation. The story that Paola told police was that there was a lot of marital turmoil between John and Doris. She said their marriage wasn't really the happy image that they tried to project to those around them. John confided in Paola, who again, was a teenager at the time that he was scared he was going to lose the children if he divorced Doris. And that's when he told her that he was looking for someone who could do something that couldn't be undone. Something that would make his life much easier. It seems like Paola knew about this plan but hadn't really done much in way of orchestrating it. Because again, she was a teenager at the time. On May 20th of 2025, what would have been two days after Doris' 57th birthday, John was arrested and charged with her murder. His charges included malice murder, felony murder, aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit murder. Police were now convinced that it was John who at least orchestrated the murder of Doris, though he might not have been the one to actually carry it out. They basically allege that he hired someone to kill Doris. Yes, Paola had been there when the murder took place, she had heard the shot. But she was terrified for her own life at that point. She had now been involved in a man who was not afraid to take the life of a woman that he had no more use for, but she decided she was not going to say anything to the police. John was extra-dited from Costa Rica to Coffee County, Georgia after this arrest took place. On June 10, 2025, less than one month after the arrest, a grand jury indicted him. And two weeks later, John entered a "not guilty plea." This pained Doris' sister, Leanne, but she said, quote, "I'm not surprised that's the way he pled." Eventually, John's bond was denied because he was deemed a flight risk. Years of relocation, including one actual flight from the country, will do that to you. And now partly because of the case being picked up on social media and partly because the case was such a big deal in Coffee County where it was committed. His defense team is seeking a change in venue because they don't think he's going to get a fair trial there. At this time, his trial is still pending. Getting justice for a murdered family member or friend does not get rid of the pain or grief of such a devastating and violent loss. It's not going to get them back. That damage has already been done. But hopefully, there is some ounce of solace in knowing that the person who ripped them away from you has been named. That's technology and DNA forensics continue to develop. It means that more of these cold cases will be able to be solved, cases that have been sitting with zero developments for years and in some cases decades. One of these cases that I keep coming back to that I really hope I can put on the list of cold cases solved this year, next year in 2026, is that of Asha Degree. If you don't know the case of Asha Degree, we did a big deep dive on that case over on Clues, my other podcast, but it feels like we are so incredibly close to solving it. That was another one where there were no developments after this little girl vanished in the middle of the night for 20 years. And then all of a sudden, within the last four years, it seems like we've maybe found the people who are responsible. We just need the DNA evidence, any forensic evidence, but hers is one that I think about all the time. And that's why I wanted to do this episode, this Thanksgiving season, because a lot of what we cover here at Hercers Pounding is very dark. It's a little morbid, but there's a lot of good that can come from these kinds of episodes and by talking about these cases and just making people aware of stuff. So I am happy these cases were solved. I'm going to include if you want to join me over on Footnotes, which is our Hercers Pounding Aftershow that we do over on the Patreon at the High Council tier. I'm going to go through a couple of more things that were solved this year in 2025, just because of breaks and technology, sometimes it's a deathbed confession you never know. And I can't wait to see which cases end up on this list next year. But that is all I have for you today. You can join me here next week as we start diving into the dark history of holiday folklore. I'm going to get into all of the dark secrets behind the holiday traditions we love so much. So please join me then, I will see you there. And until next time, stay curious. Hercers Pounding is written and produced by me, Caleb Mort, Hercers Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown, our associate producer is Juno Hobbs, additional research and writing by Megan Gilbert. Sound design and mix by Pete Treesound. Special thanks to Travis Dunlop, Grayson Journey and the team at WME and Ben Jaffy. Have a heart pounding story or a case request, check out HercersertsPounding.com.