Murder at the Bike Shop | Ep. 2 – Kalamazoo Cycle

Do you want to know what it's like to hang out with MS-13 Nelsalvador? How the Russian mafia fought battles all over Brooklyn in the 1990s? What about that time I got lost in the Burmese jungle hunt in the world's biggest meth lab? I'm Sean Williams. And I'm Danny Gold. And we're the hosts of the Underworld podcast. We're journalists that have traveled all over, reporting on dangerous people and places. And every week we'll be bringing you a new story about organized crime from all over the world. Available wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome home, Scott. Virginia. Hey. Virginia Marie. Virginia, who is this? Paula D'Ares, she is. When Scott Baldwin was released from prison in October of 2025, we were there to pick him up. We got him inside the home where he would live with his wife and their dog, Petunia, and helped him get into his recliner so he could rest. While Petunia tried her best to convince Scott that she was a lap dog. From all of those, she is. All right. You can't wait that day, right there. I'd been hoping to update Scott on some of what we found in his case. The day before his release, Jacinda and I had been in Kalamazoo, and we were excited to tell him about some of what we found there. But he was so tired. It wasn't the time for it. Well, I won't bore you with the details, but we got the good day yesterday. And that's clearly. That's good stuff. I want to tell it. Even though Scott was home now, his case was not over. There was still work to be done. He still wanted to be exonerated. You know, he's not being released as an innocent person. His release didn't even have anything to do with it in a sense. It had to do with the judge looking at a person who's clearly dying and saying, you know what? I think it's okay for him to go home and die with his family. That's Olivia Vigiletti. She is Scott's attorney with Michigan Innocence Clinic. After we'd started working on Scott's case for proof, Michigan Innocence had taken on Scott as a client. Olivia had been there too and picked Scott up from prison. And after we'd gone him inside his new home and he'd fallen asleep on the recliner, we'd all gone outside to talk where we wouldn't disturb him. I'll say even other releases I've been to where the person is very, very sick. Has still been quite joyous. But I think here what we saw is a deep realization that Scott can do very little for himself right now. This is a particularly difficult case to grapple with. He didn't get to walk out of prison. He had to be pushed out of prison. And so when people imagine that moment of stepping out of those doors, I'm sure none of this is what he imagined. What Scott had imagined for 25 years was being legally exonerated and walking out an innocent man. Instead, we spent most of the day of his release trying to figure out how to get him enrolled in hospice care. So many things went wrong for Scott. Of course, his life was taken from him. Of course, this shouldn't have happened when we were working on the recentancy case. I put together a memo of, you know, why I believe in Scott's innocence. And what I said to the judge was that I don't think I have time to verify and prepare a post-conviction motion around these claims because in Michigan, you have to be alive to litigate that motion. So even if I got it filed tomorrow, I don't think it's very likely that Scott would be here to see the result. Standing there in Scott's yard, we all knew now that there was no hope of Scott living long enough to be exonerated. Scott knew that too. So where did that leave the fight to prove his innocence? We had sort of a frank conversation right after the recentencing where I asked him, "Okay, you're coming home now. So what would you like me to do? Would you like to kind of just set this down? Would you like me to step back? Would you like me to keep fighting the case, fighting for your innocence?" And he was like, "As long as you're willing, please continue to try to find evidence of my innocence." You're still willing? Yes, absolutely. We were still willing to. To investigate Scott's case, we needed to go back to the beginning, back to 1988, and back to Kalamazoo's cycle. The bike shop where Earl O'Burn was murdered. We needed to find out everything we could about the crime that Scott Baldwin was convicted of committing. I'm Susan Simpson. And I'm just Cindy Davis. I'm an attorney and investigator. And I'm a true crime TV producer. And this is Proof Season 3, Murder at the Bike Shop. Proof is a Red Marble Media production and association with Glassbox Media. New episodes are released on Mondays. And on Thursdays, you can catch our sidebar episodes where we talk about the case, talk to guests, and tell you more about what's going on behind the scenes. This is Episode 2, Kalamazoo's cycle. On the morning of June 3, 1988, 83-year-old Earl O'Burn was found beaten to death inside his bike shop. The presumed motive was robbery. The case went unsolved for 12 years. Then in 2000, the Kalamazoo cold case team reopened the investigation. They concluded that the killer was a 31-year-old father of four named Scott Baldwin. As a young teenager, Scott had worked at the bike shop. It was a part-time job he'd had just for a few months. But the cold case team believed that five years later, when he was 19, Scott had gone back to rob the shop in the middle of the night. And in the process, he had killed Earl O'Burn out of fear that Earl had recognized him. So, this was a robbery. Scott went there to rob Earl O'Burn. How do you think Scott got into the bike shop? I don't know. I doubt that it was very well secured. That's cold case detective Rich Madison. He was one of the lead investigators on the case. He told us he was certain that Scott had killed Earl O'Burn. So somehow or another, Scott must have managed to get inside the shop that night. But there was no sign of any break-in. The only way to get in is for Earl to open the door. There's no break-in. So how it's got him gotten in. I just say anybody get in. You remember Karen Raymond, the manager that was like, "Yes, yes." Yeah, she had worked for him for years and years and years. You opened the door and somebody came in and robbed him. That's what I was told. Someone came in and robbed him. That's Karen Raymond. She worked at the bike shop and she was also pretty much the closest thing to family that Earl O'Burn had. But it never made sense to me. Like I couldn't picture it as a story because it just didn't make sense. When we spoke to Karen, she told us that even all these years later, she doesn't quite understand how the man convicted of Earl's murder could have done it. And I wasn't much help in the cold case because. Did they tell you that? Well, no. No. He was very nice. But my beliefs were different than maybe what the facts were showing. He thought Earl had opened the door. I don't think I've lived at the time. I don't think I've lived at now. My beliefs were there was only certain people that Earl would work with and trust. So Scott Baldwin, would Earl have opened the door for him? No. Like is there anything that Scott could have done to convince him to open the door? No. Earl had the people that he trusted and it wouldn't have been somebody that worked there a short time. So there's a lot of things that just don't make sense, right? That's kind of why we're looking at the case. When we spoke to Karen at the end of a 10-day investigative trip to Kalamazoo, a trip on which as you've probably noticed, I lost my voice and could barely speak above a whisper. Yeah, not ideal, but that's how it goes sometimes. Karen told us that she'd begun working at the bike shop in 1982 when she was 16 years old. So the first time you walked into the shop, you're in high school. What do you think about what you see there? That was a little nervous. I mean, the bike shop was unique. So I've never seen anything like it. A lot of high school kids come and go at this place. How did you end up sticking around? I think I started to care about them. You know, I developed a relationship. I just cared about them. They were good, good men. What was your job at the bike shop? If you had to have a title later on, I would say I managed it, but I had power of attorney for Earl, so I was more of a caretaker maybe. Johnny O'Burn was born in 1899. His little brother, Earl, was born in 1905. Their family lived just east of downtown Kalamazoo and a little white house by the river. Earl and Johnny opened up the bike shop sometime in the 1920s after their father died. The shop itself was a big brick warehouse attached to the back of the house they lived in. Their brother died in 1905. would continue to live and work there for the next 60 plus years. Neither brother ever married or moved away from the house/bike shop they'd grown up in. They were each other's best friend and the world was a shop. And you don't really have a sense of why they never left. I think just the way they're family and the way they were brought up, they never wanted to leave. And I think it just morphed into his business. Did they have any friends that you remember now? I thought they were employees like I thought they were the shop. Not so much friends in the word terminology of friendship. Early in Johnny didn't have any family and they didn't really have any friends. But they did have a lot of employees. We spoke to many of them and they told us what working at the bike shop had been like. He was known for giving kids their first jobs because he would hire a 14 to 16-year-old to do things around there and whatnot. So many people had the same story as me like that was their first job. Or they would work there for a few weeks. Very few of us actually stuck it out for any length of time. They kind of took me under the wing. But I mean that was a good worker. It's a good worker. It's a good worker. It's a great. Okay. Earl, that's all some time. One of the former Teenage and Police we spoke to was Rick, who started working at the bike shop in the early 80s. He told us how both Earl and Johnny had always worn the exact same outfit, green overalls and a cap. I showed him a photo we'd come across of Johnny and Earl sitting side by side in the bike shop. It was the first time he'd seen them in decades. All right, here's one photo. Oh my God. Is that bring back memories? I didn't have any of the interiors in my life. There's that green hat. And might even have been the same hat. Holy. Holy. Johnny. Johnny's huge. And Earl's mean as fucking look. Oh my God. You know, Earl, Earl is a take what? He even the penny pensioner. He was just, yeah. Earl was funny, but Johnny, he was a good guy. Some employees said Earl could be difficult to work with. But Karen Raymond told us that in her years at the bike shop, she'd grown quite fond of him. Earl, he was like a grandpa to me. More so than Johnny. I liked Johnny a lot, you know, but I had a relationship with Earl. I did see a quote in one of the columns who gives that articles, calling him a flirt. Yep. He loved his ladies. I knew how to turn the charm on. Karen showed us another photo she had, one just of Earl sitting by himself in the cluttered bike shop. And in this photo, there's a big smile on his face. Like I said, I look back sometimes at that and think. He was like a grandfather to me though. You hear everybody saying he was a crumbudge in and out, but you know, you look at that picture. That's, that's my Earl right there. That's my Earl. After three years of working at the bike shop, when she was only 19 years old, Earl gave Karen Raymond power of attorney and effectively made her manager of the store. Even though there were other employees at the bike shop who'd been there longer, and who had more experience than her. Yeah, I, there was a lot of bitterness on that end of me being power of attorney. Earl favored me. And I think that upset some people that had been there while I can ask who. James was one for sure. Wilma. Wilma and James had started working at the bike shop when they were 14 years old, back in 1950 and 1960, respectively. Karen recognizes why the old timers at the bike shop might not have appreciated her being promoted above them. But Earl and Johnny had needed someone to help care for them, and she'd stepped up for the role. There might have been some thought that I was in it for the money. And I certainly wasn't. In the summer of 1985, Johnny Oburn developed pneumonia. He was taken to the hospital. It was Karen who drove Earl there to see his brother. That's what I drove Earl to the hospital and was at Little Red 2-seater. And nobody thought I should because he was very clean. But driving in a car, everything amazed him. When's the last time you think Earl left the property? That was it. That was the only time I've ever seen Earl lead. So he never left. Not to go to the bank, not to. No, not to go groceries, not to do anything. And he was a fixture right there. When you walked down the alley a little bit, but not even that really. That trip to the hospital was the last time Earl ever left the bike shop. And it was the last time his brother Johnny ever left to. It broke his heart when Johnny died. They were together always. And once his brother passed away, he kind of got worse, you know, because they were inseparable. They've been in that house their whole life. That's Lori Scott, another bike shop employee. She told us what the bike shop had been like back in 1988 when she worked there. No one uses the word "horter" in the files. I don't think "horter" was used back in the 80s, but. He was definitely a hoarder where he lived inside the bike shop. It was a lot of trash. The crime scene photos of the bike shop are almost overwhelming. It's a struggle to visually process what you're seeing amidst all the clutter. Fold to the brim, fold to the ceiling in some places. Chaos. There's not a lot of organization there. Piles of stuff, fricking to the ceiling almost. Employees kept the bike shop portion of the building functional more or less. It was packed, but you can move around. Inside the attached house where Earl lived, things were different. Every room was packed to the gills, and Earl's bedroom may have been the worst of all. There's no bed, no furniture, just piles of paper, several feet deep, covering every inch of floor space. It looks from the pictures we have. Looks like he's laying on a stack of newspapers. That's what you think, but that's like that was his bed. Much of what Earl had collected and stored and towering piles throughout the bike shop would be regarded by others as trash. And yet, Laurie told us, the bike shop had frequently been targeted by thieves. Did Earl seem like he had money? He had some stocks, but he would never know it. But to be rich rich, no. He wasn't a rich rich person. From what I understand from James, they were always trying to break in though. Oh really? Yeah. It was in a real hot neighborhood around there, and they were always trying to break in at night. There was even a time in 1984 when someone had succeeded and gotten into the bike shop. On time, Earl got beat up by a kid that he fired, and that's why he was real. Laurie, he was just terrified from that. The attack by the former employee happened four years before Earl of Bern was killed. The teenager had gotten into the bike shop and snuck up on Earl, beating him in the head with a pool queue. Earl had needed 27 stitches to close the wounds. Afterwards, Earl had installed an alarm system and reinforced all the windows with security bars to make sure that no one else ever got in. But why would anyone be trying to rob the bike shop in the first place? When we'd start talking to Scott Baldwin about his case, this was something we hadn't understood. Because I always had to say, why would someone want to rob a bike shop? Because there was rumours to be millions of dollars in their head. Like most people in Kalamazoo, Scott had heard rumors about Earl and Johnny hiding cash inside the bike shop. Scott told us he didn't think those rumors were actually true though. Everybody speculated that there was millions of dollars hidden in the bike shop. But I think it's a work that's new better. There was at least some truth to those rumors though, Karen told us. I saw him come out with money. So he did just keep cash somewhere in there. But when I talked to him about it, because that's a dangerous thing, he said it was all gone. Well, other two are not. The rumors existed. That's dangerous by itself. It is. Yeah. Due to the history of breaking attempts, every evening when the last employee left for the day, Earl would go through a care 14 to ensure that the shop had been securely locked up. Was Earl security conscious? Extremely. I mean, when I would get ready to leave, he would walk me to the entry door, and shine his little flashlight out, and look, and look, and look, and look, doll around, then he'd unlock the door, and he'd let me out, and he would shine the flashlight as a walkway all the way to my car. And would you then wait for him to shut the door? "You'd lock me out." There were seven locks in total. Or old would lock all of them. Three dead bolts in the shop entrance, and three more dead bolts in the door leading to the attached house where Earl slept at night. Plus on the front door, there was a steel sliding bar that he would shove into place, making it so the shop could not be completely unlocked from the outside. Only someone inside could remove that bar. It should have been enough to keep anyone out, but somehow it wasn't. On the night, Earl of Bern was killed, someone managed to get in. On the morning of June 3, 1988, employees James Long and Lori Scott arrived at the bike shop together and got ready to open for the day. It was just before 9am when they went inside. All three dead bolts were locked on the front door, just like normal. The bar was already moved, which it usually is. Earl would get up early and he'd move that bar so we could get in. James unlocked the door, but it was kind of weird. It said, "Something was telling me to look down. I looked down and I could see blood spots." I said to James, "Look at this." He turned around and said, "Oh, Earl probably cut himself or something." We walked in a little bit farther and a bunch of bicycles had been knocked down. James said, "Oh, I wonder if somebody tried to break in. I'm going to go check." I went in to check on Earl and there was a hole in his door and I looked in there and I could see blood on the sink. I unlocked it, I went around, excuse me, it's not really easy to say. I went around to his bedroom and I could see his feet sticking out. His arm was up in the air, kind of like he was in rig and mortise type thing. I didn't touch him. I just ran out, screamed, "J for James," and called 911. The place were there pretty much immediately and that's when they made us go out. I called Karen because Karen was basically his caretaker. She showed up probably within a half an hour. He told me I had to get there right away, so that's what I did. Did they tell you what happened to him? Then he opened the door and somebody came in and robbed him. When you got to the shop, what did you see? People standing around outside. Yeah, it's dark inside. The dog got off. Yeah, it's okay. We can, yeah. They were outside and there was a little, I don't know, I want to see negativity. Anyway, the police immediately started talking to me and I saw him coming out. Nobody knew what to do. Did you see blood at the scene? Oh yeah. All the walkway, the desk area right into the green room and right into his, all the windows bedroom. There wasn't much blood up front by the entrance, but as you walked deeper into the store, the trails of blood became heavier and heavier until they turned into pools of blood. Did you ever hear out like where the fight seems to have happened? Well, from a week ago, it was kind of by the bathroom because we saw some, there was some blood there and stuff. There were signs of some kind of struggle in the bike shop's main store room, but the fatal attack on Earl O'Burn had taken place in a dead end hallway leading to the employee bathroom. There Earl had fallen to the floor and someone had struck him in the head repeatedly. From the bathroom hallway, the blood trail continued back to the main sales room where some bikes that had been overturned were laying in the aisle. Earl's ball capped on the floor underneath them. It must have fallen off at some point during the struggle. From there, the trail continued into the attached house. Earl had made his way to a storage room and then through the cluttered kitchen and into the room that served as the bike shop's office. Earl must have sat down at the desk there and tried to stop the bleeding. The trail I just showed you, there was paper towel where he was mopping his head and mopping his head. Bloody paper towels are stacked on the desk in front of where he must have sat for a time. Eventually though, Earl made his way to the room where he slept. He had climbed onto the stack of newspapers, gone to sleep, and never woke up again. That's where he was laying when I walked in. That's when I kind of went a little farther in Shazza. He was laying on his back, his mouth opened, and his arm was up in the air. The murder investigation was assigned to Detective Robert Jenkins of the Kalamazoo Department Public Safety. One of the first things Detective Jenkins did after he arrived at the scene was to have Karen Raymond do a walkthrough of the bike shop and see if anything was out of place. Here's what he wrote in his report. Mrs. Raymond checked the immediate office area and advised me that she thought the following items were missing from the top of the desk. Two cup of lip-dened suit boxes that had coins in them. Also a black money pouch and another money pouch with the name Safari written on it, tan and green in color. We are assuming at this time that these items are missing. However, due to the business practices of Mr. O'Burn, it would not be surprising if these items turned up in the future. The bank bags and coin boxes had been stolen. This gave investigators a motive for the crime. A robbery gone wrong. You know, there was no evidence that somebody broke in. That's the only thing too. We saw him figure out how they got in the building. He opened the door for someone. He would have had to because he put that bar across the every night. A bar that came across the door so he couldn't come in. It was like a security door. So he had to open that door for somebody. Why he would have let them in unless he knew them? Is there anyone he would have opened the door for? That was another question we had. Did somebody come there that he knew that he opened the door for? And he would have had to know when I'm open that door. He wouldn't just open it for a stranger. Lori thought the only way someone could have gone inside the bike shop was if Earl had let them in. The caron told us she had another theory. In my mind, I always thought they must have hid inside. At closing. So they were there until I put on the left. And honestly, you could have so easily. You know, you feel a little guilty because did we look close enough? Did we look at everything? Someone had gotten into the bike shop and assaulted Earl in a cramped hallway. Earl had tried to fight back. There were extensive defense type injuries to both hands. He also had three broken ribs on his right side. That wasn't what had killed him though. Here's what the medical examiner wrote in Zotopsy report. It is our belief that death is due to blunt force injury to the head with the mechanics of death being largely loss of blood from the multiple-scale placerations. The blunt force was applied with insufficient force to inflict great injury. Because it was commonly believed that this man kept large amounts of money in his store and/or residence. We suggest that he was essentially tortured in an attempt to learn the places in which such money may have been hidden. The part there about Earl O'Burn essentially being tortured to death, I want to note that this was the medical examiner's speculation. There's no explicit evidence showing that's what happened. It's just another possible theory. The method does emphasize that Earl's wounds don't seem to have been inflicted by someone who started off trying to kill him. In fact, the wounds were not immediately fatal. When the killer left the bike shop, Earl had still been alive. The story told at Scott Baldwin's trial in 2001 was that Earl must have waited for Scott to leave and then made its way to the storefront. There, Earl had locked the three dead bolts but did not slide the steel bar into place and then returned to his residence where he locked himself inside with three more dead bolts. Then he laid down on the piles and newspapers and died in a sleep. That's why when employees Lori Scott and James Long arrived for work the next morning, all the dead bolts have been locked up again. That's another thing we can't understand is how was he able to lock that door if he was so incapacitated? You know that, I mean you get hit eight times in that head, that's going to cause some problems. They said that he probably wasn't in his right mind. Like some things would be automatic, almost a muscle memory. Like he would just do because he's done him so long. But when he automatically locked the sliding arm too, I would have thought. But my question was why did he call 911? He went right by a phone to go to his bedroom. After the assault, Earl Aburn had at least two chances to call for help. The bloody paper towel roll found on his desk had been laying right on top of a working phone and blood stains on his bed of newspapers show that at some point he'd been right next to a second phone that he'd kept there. Earl hadn't called anyone though. That's something that Karen has always wondered about. The answer I got was that there's some things when you're hitting the head like that so many times he didn't think to call. He might not have known how badly he was injured. There were some strange details about the crime scene with the bike shop. But later on, after I'd begun looking into the other cases covered by the cold case team, I was struck by how similar the bike shop murder was to another cold case. One that happened 12 years later in August of 2000. Mariners sensory poldermen were in their 90s and lived out in a rural section of Kalamazoo County. Their bodies were found in the basement of their farmhouse. Along with the body of their 63-year-old daughter, would stop by that day to drop off groceries for them. Both cases involved elderly people beaten to death inside their own homes, with no sign of a break in and all doors carefully locked up after the crime was committed. These cases are so intertwined by facts by people, by misconduct. They are factually similar. So it was so much so that one of my students in the Baldwin case said, "If you're doing DNA testing in the poldermen murders, you better compare the the open DNA." That's Olivia Vigiletti again. Scott Baldwin's attorney with the Michigan Innocence Clinic. Olivia is also the attorney for Joe Lewis. He was one of the five people convicted of killing the poldermens. We sat down to talk to Olivia about both cases and all of the strange overlaps between them. After Scott had mentioned the poldermen case to us, we'd gotten interested in learning more about it. What do you know about the poldermen case? Joe Williams was one of the guys who was convicted of it, brought his transcripts out and showed everybody. Joe Williams and Scott Baldwin met in prison. They'd run into each other by chance and figured out that both of them were from Kalamazoo and that they'd both been convicted by the Kalamazoo cold case team. In many ways, the bike shop case and the poldermen murders were very similar crimes. According to the Kalamazoo cold case team, both had been burglary attempts that had gone wrong. The difference though, like, the poldermens is so out in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, like that's a weird place to like, I was surprised when I first saw photos of the outside of the house. I was expecting something way more lavish, like a big farmhouse, like a big, no. This person has deep farm money farmhouse, but it was a modest home. You don't drive by that house and think, oh, those people know, got some money. No. Neither the bike shop nor the poldermens farmhouse had the appearance of wealth, but they had something else in common. Everyone always said they had millions of dollars hidden in that bike shop, like the neighbors that that about the poldermens. The poldermens, like Erlo Bern, were rumored to have kept cash inside their house. In the bike shop case, the cold case team thought it was Scott Baldwin who had gotten inside to try and steal the hidden money. In the poldermen case, the cold case team had convicted five people and all. Joe Williams, two other men, and 19 year old woman, and a 17 year old girl, who were all accused of committing the crime together. Though in both cases, it wasn't clear how the killers had gotten inside. There's no sign of forced entry, but they went to this house and they decided to rob them with their bare hands. If this is just a robbery, why do you go in unarmed and use items from their own house? In the bike shop case, the officer who examined the crime scene had concluded that Erlo Bern was beaten to death with a bicycle tire rim that was found in the hallway where they saw it occurred. Bloody fingerprints were found on the tire rim, but never identified. And in the poldermen case, investigators concluded that an ice-spud and a baseball bat taken from the poldermen's garage had been used to kill the victims. And near the ice-spud, two pieces of a torn latex glove were found, and both pieces had DNA from the same unknown male who was never identified. That's another similarity between these two cases. Physical evidence was found at both crime scenes. DNA, fingerprints, shoe prints, but none of that was ever linked to any of the people who were ultimately convicted. Not to Scott Baldwin and not to any of the five convicted in the poldermen case. To this day, no one knows who that DNA or those fingerprints belong to. And here's something that almost all the cold cases have in common. With one exception, the cold case team never used physical evidence to solve cases. Instead, mostly they used confessions. Either confessions made by the defendant's selves while being interrogated, or through witnesses who testified that they'd once heard the defendant confess. Either to themselves or someone else. The cold case team was very effective at closing out cases this way. We know that this cold case team is famous for solving the unsolvable murders, and we have to ask ourselves, well, are they just better at solving murder, or are they more committed to getting the conviction than they are to accuracy? And I think more and more as more cases come out of Kalamazoo, we're seeing that perhaps it was the latter. We were curious about a lot of those cases, but because of what Scott had told us, we now knew the poldermen case was one we needed to learn more about as well. I think he'd appreciate that it happened to him, might at least benefit someone else. Yeah, he told me that. He told me that. We only talked a few times because I came in so close to the end. He said, I know this is bigger than me. At both the poldermen's farmhouse and at the bike shop, the doors have been carefully locked up again after the crimes were committed. In the bike shop case, the cold case team ultimately concluded that Earl Obern himself had locked all the doors. After the killer had left, but before he'd succumbed to his injuries. But what if it hadn't been Earl who locked up? Could the killer have done it on their way out? If so, then it had to be someone with their own set of keys because Earl's keys were found inside with him. Do you know what employees had keys to the building? Well, myself for one, caring, James, there was three of us that had keys at the time. There were three employees that had keys to all six of the dead bolts that were found locked. Lori Scott, Karen Raymond and James Long. I mean, I would think we would all have been suspects. And I guess, I'm being recorded. You know, I should have been as well. I had keys. I think we all had to get fingerprinted and everything because we had the keys. Oh really? Yeah. And lie detector test. Yeah. What was that experience like? That fun. No, it was all right. I mean, we all passed. The three employees with keys were all questioned and polygraphed. All three passed. No deception indicated. They were cleared of any suspicion. Which did not leave detectives much to go on, until an eyewitness came forward. I heard about it the next day and that's when I called the city and said, hey, you know, I saw the owner last night on my way home. I mean, it kind of seems like you saw him at Pro's Killed. Unfortunately, I think so. In 1988, Officer Harold West was a patrol officer in Kalamazoo Township. On the night, Erlo Burn was killed, Officer West had driven past the bike shop at about 12.45 a.m. on his way home from work. I've done my shift. I'm off. All I'm thinking about is going home and having a beer. And I happened to pull up to the stop sign across from where the shop was. And the thing that struck me as odd is that it was night. And, you know, the lights were on and he standing in the doorway. Erlo Burn was standing in the open doorway of the bike shop. His arms crossed over his chest, a ball cap on his head. And Erlo wasn't alone. A second man was there too. He was walking away from the building. And Erlo was watching him. A male walking as if he was walking around the building. I could tell that he was a white male. I could tell that he was blind here. I just happened to see it. There was nothing going on for me to really pay close attention. Obviously, you did remember it. Like, it caught your eye for some reason. Because it was late. That's kind of late for a bicycle shop. Did he seem distressed to you or nothing was going on if there was an argument or something of that nature, I would have paid better attention. Officer West only got a brief look at the man that was with Erlo Burn outside of the bike shop that night. White man, blonde hair, average build. Not too young, not too old. Maybe in his 20s. He was wearing a brown jacket. one that West described as a bushcoat, and he had on white or light colored pants. - I could see the silhouette and because of how high the pants were, I could tell that his pants were tucked into his boots. - There was a car there too. It was pulled up in the alley next to the bike shop entrance. It was lightish in color, tan or beige or cream, and West thought it had four square headlights. There was no one in the car that West could see, but the driver's side door was open. It says if the blonde man had pulled up to the entrance, hopped out the car and left the keys in the ignition while he walked north, away from both the car and from where Earl O'Burn stood in the doorway. - Like why is the guy walking back behind the shop? - Well, he was walking north in front of the building. - But to what? There's nothing there. - No. - Real road track. - That's it. - No. - I've run it through my mind a couple of times. Was that the killer that I saw? - If it was the killer though, that Earl didn't know it, 'cause he could have just shut the door and locked it. - Correct. I didn't get the sense that anything was going on. You know, again, as a police officer, you look for those things where there's some kind of conflict. - By chance, Officer West was not the only person who saw Earl O'Burn that night. Do you know the name Tom Coyne? - Not right off hand. - Are you aware of his statements in this case? - No, I have not read any of the statements. I haven't read any of the reports involving this other than my own. - There was a second witness who driven by the bike shop late that night. At around 12.45 AM, the witness said, the same time that Officer West thought he driven by. This witness didn't see the blonde man, but he did see Earl O'Burn. - Like you, we were just driving home and he saw Earl gone outside and was looking north upwards as if he was trying to see the man that you saw. So you weren't the only one to see him out there that night. - Yeah, I think it would have caught people's attention because it was so late at night. - Yeah. - But it definitely confirms what you saw. - Yeah. - That's too bad. - So here's a report that was written by a police officer who happened to be driving past the shop that night. - Oh yeah, I remember there was somebody that. - We showed care in the reports from Officer Harold West and the other witness who'd seen Earl outside the shop that night. She'd heard about the reports, but had never seen the exact details before. - That's how they knew the timeframe because I think he said the door was open, didn't he? - Yep. Is that surprise you? - Yeah. - So it's two witnesses both called in and said they saw Earl out of the shop at 12.45 that night. One saw the blonde man walking north towards the tracks and the tan car with the square headlights. - But both saw Earl. - Both saw Earl out of the shop, yeah. - You sure not off? - Yeah. - Seeing the eyewitness report of someone with Earl on the night he was killed, had been a lot for Karen to take in. Because whoever it was never came forward to acknowledge being there. And Scott Baldwin did not match the description of the man Officer West saw who had blonde hair and a cream or tan colored car. - One thing that's left us is that Scott Baldwin has like jet black hair. - Oh. - Which? - Contradicts what I saw. - Yeah. And the car he was driving was a forest green rag top, cheap, or cheap wrangler. - A jeep, or I would have, that was not a jeep that I saw. No, that was not a jeep. I'm a jeep guy. - So who was the blonde man? And why had Earl O'Burn open the door for him? Many of the bike shop employees we talked to told us that they had the same questions. Did you ever wonder like question if they got the right person to ever cross your mind? - Yeah. - I do because it was so weird that 13 years later this just comes up. Yeah, we always wondered. I had never known him to open that door for anybody, you know, unless he knew who they were. (soft music) - I've all the bike shop employees. It was Karen Raymond who was most familiar with Earl O'Burn and his habits. (soft music) - Okay, we're recording again. Is there any reason someone would be there late at night? Let Earl would go outside of me? - Absolutely not. He didn't have friends, he didn't have acquaintances. He didn't have anybody outside the business. Earl didn't go outside just to go outside for a walk or to check on things. He was very untrusting. I always wondered, of course, and I had my suspicions like everybody else. It just didn't make sense. - Detective Harold West's sighting of Earl O'Burn and the blonde man was the first and last big break in the case that the original investigators got. That's not to say they didn't have any leads though. They had a lot of leads, maybe too many. In part because of a local businessman named Jim Gilmore. He started running ads in the Kalamazoo Gazette, offering a substantial reward for information in the case. - I was gonna ask the reward that Gilmore put up. But why did he do that? - I think as a community service, Jim was a big part of the community and he realized that Earl was a big part of the community too. In a way, it's kind of an attack on Kalamazoo, an attackless fixture who's been there forever. - Initially, the reward was $15,000. But as the months ticked by without the case being solved, the reward grew until it reached a total of $75,000. That's over $200,000 in today's money. That got people's attention. Kalamazoo's anonymous crime tip line, called Silent Observer, received well over a hundred calls from people who had information they thought might be important. Or information that they hoped might be important and could earn them the $75,000. One of those tips was called in on June 23rd, 1989. So an entire year after Earl's murder. The caller claimed to know who had committed the murder at the bike shop. The tip sheet read, "Scott Baldwin admitted to murdering Elburn that night. "Caller was given this info by a female. "She said he came home covered in blood." - The female in question was Scott Baldwin's girlfriend, Stacey, or rather his ex-girlfriend. Stacey and Scott had broken up by that time. So back in 1989, the police took Stacey in for questioning. So they take me and they grill me. I mean, they hooked me up to what a detective does. And so you take the polygraph, they don't seem interested. - No. - And nothing. - You don't hear anything else about it? - Nothing. They were basically like you can go now. I mean, it was all very rude. I didn't understand why they weren't taking me serious. They thought I was in for it at a money, I guess. - Stacey didn't hear anything more about the case after that. Not until November of 2000, when the cold case team reopened the investigation. - It was like 12 years later. I never walk in and during my mom's like, this detective from Canada is who you just called. So I'm gonna talk about Scott Baldwin and like, okay. All right, wow, are you serious? You gonna listen to me now? Okay, let's do this. - Next week on Proof. - So I told her I said, "Save us the time and money. If this is not true, tell me now." She goes, "No, it's 100% true." - And I remember I had looked at the scene, there was spots that they were on his boots. I mean, I'm talking about splatters. That this is so big and big, I'm like gonna vomit. - Her calling the police saying, "Scott was just driving down the road with me." "Infested, he did this murder. "Wait a minute, it's impossible." (gentle music) - You've been listening to Proof, a podcast by Red Mar Will Media, in association with Glassbox Media. We'll be back next Monday with episode three. Send us your questions and comments at [email protected]. We'll respond during our bonus episodes, Proof Sidebar on Thursdays. Kevin Fitzpatrick is our executive producer. Our theme music is by Ramero Marquez. Audio production for this episode is by Michael Yulotowski, Michael Alfono, and Hesu's Urbias. Our social media manager is Leanne Cook. And thank you to our sponsors who make this podcast possible. Follow us everywhere with the handle at ProofCrimPod and on our website ProofCrimPod.com. pod.com. And lastly, a no-tor listeners. If you have any information related to this case or any of the cases we've covered, we'd love to speak to you. No matter how small of a detail it may seem. It just might be more important than you realize. You can reach us by email or leave us a voicemail at 347-985-0794. That's all for this week. Thanks so much for listening. [BLANK_AUDIO]