Welcome to the "I Can't Sleep Podcast with Benjamin Boster." If you're tired of sleepless nights, you'll love the "I Can't Sleep Podcast." I help quiet your mind by reading random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice. The "Jepisode" provides enough interesting content to hold your attention and then your mind lets you drift off. Find it wherever you get your podcast. That's "I Can't Sleep with Benjamin Boster." In beloved family patriarch Gary Ferris went missing, his family looked everywhere on their property until they came across something horrifying. The blame game in this family went round and round. This is Bloodesticker, the Ferris Wheel. I would don't see how anyone can look at this story and think they were happy. Follow and listen to Bloodesticker, the Ferris Wheel on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcast. Scott Baldwin had known since 2022 that we were interested in his case, that we wanted to see if maybe we could cover it on this podcast. His attorneys weren't comfortable with the idea, which is understandable, working with media as a huge risk for any defendant. The actor keep hearing the calls from the best here in some reason and in any time I mention that he helped work to look at things that he could really upset for care and for an off. So for years, I remained in touch with Scott, hearing updates about his case and his cancer. We never got a chance to see the files for ourselves, but I wondered a lot about the man Scott said had been seen with Earl O'Burn shortly before he was killed. And again, 100% of this is in police reports. It's all verifiable. It's not just me saying it. The script and that was for 13 years, it was a white male with blonde hair, light colored clothes, light colored vehicle with rectangle headlights. Who was the blonde man? Why hadn't he been identified? Then last year, Scott found out his diagnosis was terminal. And around the same time, the lead attorney on his case unexpectedly left the group that was representing him. That's when Scott told me, "Fuck it, I can't wait anymore. Go ahead and investigate my case. Do whatever you can." That's why it's all changed. I just send out anything I've just sent an FLA whatever she can from whoever can get it for herself and come then do it. So we got started. We moved as fast as we could to get the case files and transcripts and could finally see them for ourselves. There was a lot in those files, of course, about Alan Nutter, who has been pursued as an alternate suspect for over two decades now. And we could see why. There was a lot of potential evidence against him. But the files also made it clear to us that there were other people in this case who should have been investigated. Not long after we got started, I got a text from Susan. "They're someone else who should have been a suspect, right?" Double question mark. I called her back right away. Who are you talking about, I asked? "They should have been looking at James Long, right, the employee?" Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking. James Long had worked for Earl O'Burn for 28 years off and on. He's the employee who testified at Scott's trial that Earl had a habit of walking around outside at night. James Long had been 14 years old when Earl first hired him in 1960, and he was still working there in 1988. He should have been a suspect in this case. He should have been investigated. But he wasn't, not really. He did take a polygraph along with several other employees. He passed it and was cleared. That was the end of that. There's a good reason, though, that detective should have given James Long a closer look. This is a report from Sharon Waley, the polygrapher, and it's the only record of Earl's own keys. There were drops of blood in the floor, which looked like the old guy went to the door to lock it. But there was no blood on his key ring and his hands were covered in cake with blood. She's talking about the blood up from by the door, but she's saying there is no blood on his key ring, which means they found his keys. And it means there's no way he locked the door, right? Someone who had keys locked the door. Earl had still been alive after the attack, but he was actively bleeding to death. His hands were coated in blood. Anything he handled would have had blood on it. But according to this report, there was no blood on his keys. That would mean Earl hadn't handled his keys that night. That would mean Earl hadn't locked the doors. But since Earl's keys were still there in the shop, that would mean no one else had used them to lock up the shop either. And that would likely mean only someone else with their own set of keys could have committed this murder, since they were able to lock up after themselves when they left. Yeah, that detail that they found the keys is so important. There's a reference to finding trace blood on the locks themselves, but that could have transferred from the killer. We have no crime scene photos of the keys. But if this report is accurate, if Earl's keys were really still there, which in this case is admittedly a big if, it would mean only three people could have committed the murder. And that's the three employees who had their own keys and could have locked up after Earl was assaulted. His employees were James Long, Lori Scott, and Karen Raymond. We had good reason to think neither Lori nor Karen had committed this crime, because officer Harold West, who during by the bike shop on the night Earl O'Burn was killed, had seen a blonde man outside the shop with Earl next to the tan car with four square headlights that was still running. Later, we spoke to officer West for ourselves, and found out he had the same suspicion about this blonde man that we did. Maybe the guy you saw wasn't the killer, but who is he? And why is he not come forward? If you. What? That's. What? When I can't get over. Like, if it wasn't the killer, why didn't he say, "Oh, I saw Earl that night and he was fine when I left." And I agree with you. Well, I didn't come forward if he wasn't the killer. When we saw the case files for ourselves, we wondered, could the blonde man have been James Long? Was he there that night? Because if he was, then he absolutely should have been a suspect in this murder, right? We didn't want to get too far ahead of ourselves, though. We knew almost nothing about James Long. Do you have any idea what he looks like? No. And do we have any idea what kind of car he was driving? Not a clue. For all we knew, James Long was five foot two with black hair and drove a blue minivan. Which would mean he was absolutely not the man Officer Wes saw, either. That would explain why no one had considered him to be a suspect before. But it would be good to at least make sure. As Susan and I prepared for our first investigative trip to Kalamazoo, one thing we hoped was that we could find someone who could answer a question for us. What did James Long look like? I'm Susan Simpson. And I'm just in the 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 7 in Cold Blood. Alright, back in Kalamazoo. That's not working on Titus's case. Titus is out. Um, but it's sort of an offshoot. Well, not sort of it. This is an offshoot. It's so weird driving around because it brings back all these memories when we were here before. Yeah, who is our first door knock today? Back during COVID, we had spent months in Kalamazoo working on Jeff's case. It gave us a real sense of deja vu to be back there talking to witnesses again. At the end of our first day, we called Kevin to update him on our progress. What's going on? Well, as typical our day one was mostly a bust. I don't really get's true. We thought that. We were worried about that at first. We actually had a pretty successful start, I thought. Well, that's on you.
as you guys are consistent, we should be fine as soon as I'm free. We didn't record any interviews that first day, but one of the witnesses we'd found had given us some useful info. We'd spoken to him for a while about the bike shop and some of the other cold cases that we'd started looking at. Yeah, he knows a lot of people connect it. And basically after we talked to him, he called us back about 20 minutes later and said, "Are you girls armed?" 'Cause if you're not, you shouldn't be doing this. But if you're armed-- That's your arm, go for it. (laughs) Wow. Hey, the witness told us, "I just wanted to say, be careful doing whatever it is you're doing out there." Because these people you're talking about, some of them are harmless. But some of them are very, very dangerous too. And some crazy shit could pop off. Yeah, and I mean his advice, we took to heart, 'cause basically what he was trying to tell us is like, you might be investigating this one murder, but the people you're talking to are involved in other multiple murders. Right. And they're not gonna necessarily believe or trust that you don't care about the other murders. Which is fair, fair enough for them. We told Kevin that we'd also arrange to interview two key witnesses in the case. Like who are these people? So Renee Padula was the girlfriend of Alan Nutter, who's the long-time, altering suspect of the case. Right. And then was allegedly part of the myth of this case is that she was with Nutter on the night of the murders and she drove the getaway car essentially. The second interview we'd scheduled was with Karen Raymond, the manager of the bike shop. We'd only spoken to her briefly on the phone, but she told us a few things that had already caught our attention. Basically what she said is, there is no way Earl opened the door for that kid, meaning Scott. Well, she also made comments about how James Long, there's more of the story there, but then cut herself off. Yeah, she said, "I don't want to get ahead of myself. I'm gonna look through boxes and pull pictures for you guys." But she gave us a description of him, skinny, blonde hair. Yeah. - Okay. - Yeah. - Which is what we've been wanting to know. Yeah, that's what we've wondered. - James was blonde. Like you could see from a distance, he blonde. - So James was blonde, like the-- - Blonde. - He was blonde all the entire time. Like no fake, no, he was blonde. - That's Karen from when we met up with her in person. And yes, she told us, James Long had indeed been very blonde. We asked her what he'd been like as a coworker. I got along with him fine. I mean, I did. I think there were some bad feelings on his part of how much Earl depended on me. He was a little bit of a loner. He'd go to the bar, he was a drinker. I was quite a drinker. I did remember his friend coming once in a while. - The friend Karen is talking about here is actually James Long's boyfriend, James Connell. Did you know he was gay? - Yes. Although he didn't talk about it, or somebody might have told me, I don't know. - This is something Karen had mentioned in one of her early police reports. It read, reporting officer asked Karen whom Earl O'Burn didn't get along with. She advises that he was often upset with employee James Long. She advises that when James Long's boyfriend came over, this would upset Earl. - You think Earl had a problem with-- - Earl would have had a problem with James being gay. - Oh, for sure. I mean, that's not something that he would have accepted. - Karen said she didn't have any problems with James as a coworker, though she suspected he might not have felt the same way about her, especially after Earl chose her to essentially be the manager of the bike shop. - I think towards, and I think James was very-- - Jealous maybe is a word or-- - Pitter? - Yeah, about me. - James Long was bitter because the reports talk about it. Then surprised you to hear that. - No. - Back in 1988, James Long had been open with investigators about his disdain for Karen Raymond. She is why he'd immediately quit his job after Earl was killed, he said. James never ever returns to the shop again. And they asked him about that. And he says, "cause I knew Karen'd be in charge, "so I wasn't ever gonna go back." - Yeah, I mean, kind of surprises me a little bit. How I knew he was a little upset and jealous. I knew there were some bad feelings there, but I didn't really think he hated me. - Karen had never known what exactly James had told the police about Earl and the bike shop. But after seeing your reports of his statements, Karen now had the same question we did. - What can a car did James have? - That's what we'd like to know. (gentle music) - On that trip to Kalamazoo, we also spoke to another bike shop employee, Laurie Scott. Right away, she told us there was a lot about this case that had never made sense to her. - I was told that night, then after the police officer came out, Karen drove by there and saw him outside. For him to be outside, that was very unusual. For him to go out of that building. That's what we couldn't understand either. Why was he outside? - 'Cause he didn't go outside. - Is there anyone he would have opened the door for? - One thing I could think of being a blonde man, maybe he did call James at night, and James came to check the building or something. - Laurie started telling us about the day she'd found Earl's body. On her way to work that morning, she stopped at a nearby gas station and ran into James' lung. - And I got there and I started to go in. I thought, no, I want to get something to drink. And here, you know, there's a gas station right across the street. If I walked across the street to get something to drink, and James and I walked over back over together. James had unlocked the three locks to let them into the bike shop. But as they walked in, Laurie immediately noticed something was wrong. - It's just weird because I saw the blood and it was like, what? And then James is just like, oh, we probably just got him, so. - Laurie ran to Earl's bedroom to make sure he was okay and found him there, dead. - His arm was like up in the air, kind of like he was in the rig or mortise type thing. And he wasn't moving. Yeah. - So his arm was actually sticking up in the air. - Yeah. - Kind of. - So you knew. - Yeah. I just screamed and I said, James, I think he's dead. - What was James' reaction to when you came out? - He didn't really say anything. He didn't, he didn't act surprised. I mean, I was a wreck. He didn't act surprised. So I'm not accusing anybody. I'm just saying he did not act surprised. That's to that to you back then, like you noticed that he wasn't not. - Yeah, he didn't really say much. - Did you ever wonder if James long could have done this? - Honestly, yes. My dad just, just my own thoughts. Then he was, like I say, he really had no reaction that day. He was just, nothing. - We asked Laurie if she knew what kind of car James would have driven back in 1988. - I couldn't tell you. - He didn't have a car starting to roll the bus and stuff or his partner would drop him off. - Laurie didn't think James himself had a car, but she did think his partner, James Connell, sometimes dropped him off at work. So he had a car of some sort, but she didn't remember what kind. Laurie doesn't think she ever told police explicitly that she thought James long could have done it. She had no evidence he had. Just a bad gut feeling about how he'd acted that morning. But yes, privately, she'd always wondered if James long had killed Erlo Bern. - I wonder why they never looked into it. - Yeah. Well, thank you so much for talking to us. - Oh, I appreciate it. I appreciate somebody still looking into this. - When we met with Karen Raymond, we told her about our conversation with Laurie, her former coworker. When we talked to Laurie, she said, she always thought it could have been James that did this. I guess I would place my name in that hat as well. Laurie had said that she'd kept her thoughts about James to herself back then, but Karen said she had spoken up. She had told investigators that she thought James long should be a suspect. Did you ever tell Madison that I think James should be a suspect or could be a suspect? - I told the police officers in the beginning. - In the beginning? - Yeah. - 13 years later, you don't think you told them or? - Well, I think I would assume that my thoughts were in the original police report. - You're not. - That I thought,
that maybe James was a suspect. That's not recorded anywhere. You saw the whole report that they had for me back then. If Earl really had opened the shop door that night, Karen said, they didn't meant that one of his most trusted employees had to have been there. My personal feelings are the only people that he would have opened the door for, would have been the three of us. I mean, even if he did have bad feelings with James, and even if he didn't approve of James all the time, he still trusted James. I mean, James was 25 years in work form. Yeah. Karen told us that if James Long had shown up at the bike shop in the middle of the night, he would have known how to get Earl to come out. Because Earl's bedroom and the attached house had been against one of the exterior walls, not far from the alley entrance to the bike shop. You could have pounded on the house. I don't know if anybody would know this bedroom was right there, but James did. I think would Earl have gotten up and opened the door for him? He probably would have come out and looked saw James and opened the door. He just had to be surprised it wasn't investigated further because if there was a blonde man outside, and he was outside, but that blonde man, there's no other blonde man I know of that Earl was close to other than James. We obviously needed to speak to James Long, but no one we spoke to had heard from him since the late 1980s. He left Kalamazoo not long after the murder. James had left by then. He went somewhere. I don't remember where. In hindsight, I realize now that it was around the time of this trip to Kalamazoo that Scott's health took a turn for the worse. He began to decline that he'd never recover from. But at the time, I hadn't understood that's what was happening, in part because Scott kept up a brave face and tried to maintain his normal routine for as long as possible. Are they going to move you to a medical unit? I'm in general population. They want to move me to a medical unit. And I'm being very stubborn and refused. OK. I said, keep your arm up. Let me be with my dog. I have a partner next to me. I'm in a unit that has quality walls. So there's a little four foot point wall that my partner can look over and go, how you doing? America, you can see me sleep better. See if I'm just cute getting what's going on. And you can go get the officer if needed. But my partner keeps dying out. I'm he's a good guy. When we're out walking the dog, I hold the leash and he's pushing me in the wheelchair on the cement. And we walk the dog. Come back in. From our earliest conversations with Scott, he had told us about Alan Nutter. His attorneys and private investigators had never spoken to Nutter directly. He was hoping that we finally would. Alan Nutter, it feels like in every case, there's always someone we're looking for. We knew Alan Nutter was somewhere in Kalamazoo. And after realizing Nutter's connection to the house where the bloody wrench was found, and knowing that he'd never been questioned about it, it was more important than ever to find him. He'd served some time in prison for a bank robbery, but he was out now and back in town. A lot of people we talked to had seen him around. He was in a wheelchair, we were told, and usually outpan handling at a gas station on the north end of town. So we just went to the speedway, bought a coffee, and burned myself on it promptly. Let's be completely honest. We bought coffee, a double pack of slim gyms. I can't get a kid cast. We needed to resupply anyway. So we talked to the people working at the gas station. They told us that the man in the wheelchair did come around here or used to. I showed him a photo, looked at it, and was him. But they hadn't seen him recently. So Alan Nutter has been hanging around here. This would be the start of a recurring pattern. We'd find out someone had seen Alan Nutter somewhere, but by the time we got there, he was always gone. Hi, excuse me, sir. I'm looking for Alan Nutter. Do you happen to know where he is? Hey, we're on the street. Oh, really? Do you know where he might like, where he's been hanging out lately? I'm going downtown. He was downtown now. OK, thank you. So we have been looking for Alan Nutter, driving all over Kalamazoo, asking every person, every unhoused individual in a wheelchair, if they're Alan Nutter. It feels like we're always a step behind him. Always a step behind him. We have multiple people helping us try to track him down. Even though Nutter remained elusive, we were able to find someone who known him back in 1988. [MUSIC PLAYING] How'd you meet him? At a bar. What did he look like back then? He was tall. Then he had blind hair, like a yellow blind. Blinds weren't my type, actually. That's Renee. She was Alan Nutter's girlfriend, sort of. How long did you all date for? We didn't really date. We kind of hooked up, and then we started hanging out until he went to jail, and I was pregnant. And I didn't have nothing to do with him after that. Let's just say I've evolved. I'm not as naive as I used to be. Renee and Alan Nutter had a brief relationship back in 1988. And as a result, she spent the past four decades periodically being questioned by people who are certain she knew something important about a murder at a bike shop. They always came in a thing to make me very defensive, the way they came at me every time. Like, I was hiding something, and it's like, look at my face. I'm not hiding. They were convinced you were hiding something. I've seen the files. Like, they are dead convinced that you were giving him an alibi, that you were covering for him. I wouldn't do that. I might do that for my children. I'm not saying. But I would not do that for him. When they asked me, I told them he robbed John Deere. You did. I was like, oh my god. I didn't want to get in trouble. He went at night to a shop that sold John Deere equipment. And I was in the car. And he said he'd be right back. And then when he came back, he had a bunch of stuff. Weedwackers and stuff was like, I was like, what the hell? What are you doing? Who wants to buy a weedwacker? His friends were not rich. They're not the kind of people that say, yeah, take one of those. I mean, I'm just saying that was stupid. Did you see how he got into the shop? No. No. I was in the car sitting in the car. And it was your car? I had a little ocean blue escort at the time. Silent observer tips claimed Alan Nutter had been seen in a tan car that matched the one seen at the bike shop. If so, then he hadn't been in Renee's little blue car. Renee has always admitted she was with Alan Nutter when he robbed the John Deere store. And that means she really was hanging around with Alan Nutter around the time when the bike shot murdered. So the robbery of John Deere, it's either the night of May 31st or the night of June 1st. When was the murder? The night of June 2nd going into the morning of the 3rd. The John Deere store was also on East Michigan Avenue. The same road that the bike shop was on. So two break ins at two different shops on the same road, just a night or two apart. And Alan Nutter definitely did one of them. But Renee still doesn't think he did the other. I just-- the timeline in my head, I was with him. And I just didn't think he did it. In other ways, I would have said something. I can't see him doing that. I just can't see him being that violent. Back in 2010, when Renee spoke to detectives from Kalamazoo, she told them another reason she was convinced he couldn't have done the bike shot murder. Who's that? Mark. OK. And I'm not saying you have to be smart to do the other thing, but to get away with it, as long as-- if he did it. If Alan Nutter had done this, Renee believed he'd have been caught a long time ago. Back in 1988, Alan Nutter had initially claimed to be at a motel out of town on the night of the murder. But motel record showed he was actually there the following week. Then Renee told police Alan was actually with her when the murder occurred. But one of the sign-lubs server tips had claimed that this was a lie. That Alan Nutter had asked her to lie for him. Subject states that Alan Nutter has asked several people, including his girlfriend, Renee, for an alibi. To protect him? No. No. That man was a human. That was beaten to death. There's no way I would protect. No. They end up going to you. And you give a statement. Renee was contacted. It was noted that she was the girlfriend of Alan Nutter.
Renee stated she had been with him every night and day for the past two to three weeks. She advised me that she thinks the night the sentence that she and Alan spent the evening at the Cole's residence on Jackson Street. "Oh yeah, the Cole's." "Dayward night, good people." A few years later, Manny Cole was murdered on the other side of East Michigan Avenue from the bike shop. And as we mentioned last episode, it seems like it was this murder that Alan Nutter had once told his daughter Brooke a little bit about. Renee told us she's not exactly sure when the murder at the bike shop occurred. But she thinks either the night had happened, or maybe the night after, that she'd been with Alan Nutter at a party at Manny Cole's house. "That happened. I remember being at that party. Maybe he could have left." "What if he stepped out of the. That's what I'm saying." So, their statements made that Ronnie Cole told people that the night of the murder, the bike shop, Alan Nutter came to his house with blood on him. "I wasn't with him then. I don't. Yeah, I don't know." In June of 1988, Renee was with Alan Nutter a lot. But Nutter had plenty of other girlfriends he was hanging around with too. "Well, there was a redhead. There's Trudy. Oh, she was married. And there was a girl in Menden." Alan Nutter having several girlfriends is significant. Because the reason Renee got caught up in the bike shop case in the first place, is that back in 1988, a bunch of silent observer tips were called in about how Alan Nutter's girlfriend had either been his getaway driver or do something about the crime. Several of the tips talk about Alan's girlfriend. So suddenly you become the girlfriend that all the stories are about. I am wondering if there was another girlfriend the stories were actually about. "Well, the key to this, the main character besides Alan would have been Trudy." Most of Alan's other girlfriends were just side pieces Renee said. And then there was Trudy. The married woman he was having an affair with. Renee had spoken to her once. She called her when she found out Alan was seeing her too. "Because I was upset when I found out about her. And she told me that he always goes back to her. There was that body and clad connection there. But also he told me about what he did with the Metro bus. What's that? He pulled the knife at the Metro driver to get a ride. And I think it was Trudy." In February 1988, Alan Nutter had in fact hijacked a driver at knife point. Because he'd been desperate to get across town to see his girlfriend Trudy. She lived not far from the bike shop. At the house where after she moved out, her landlord would later find an antique pipe wrench covered with blood and what looked like human hair. When we told Renee about the bloody rent shed Trudy's house, she had a question for us. "I wonder where Trudy drove." "Oh Chevy celebrity." "What color was it?" "Maybe that was the car they were referring to." It was a tan car with four square headlights. Same as the car Officer Wes saw outside of the bike shop. "I just seem to not have very good luck with men." "No you don't." "It's okay. The older you get the less important they are." Alan was a bad person as far as being a liar and a thief, but I don't think you could have done it. We were hoping that Renee might nowhere to find Alan Nutter, but she told us she hadn't seen him in years. "Give us a call if you see him." "Now I'm going to be looking at everybody in a wheelchair." As the days went on, we heard from a lot of people who said they had seen Alan Nutter though. He was on this road yesterday, someone would tell us, and all would go to look for him. Kevin and I are once again driving around looking for Alan Nutter. "I don't remember the last time I've looked for anyone. This hard maybe not since I was a kid looking for Santa Claus." When we made our first trip to Kalamazoo for logistical reasons, I'd had to bring along my then five-month-old baby. Which meant in the evenings, I was stuck at the hotel with her. I couldn't join Jacinda and Kevin as they searched the streets of Kalamazoo for Alan Nutter. "Hey, is your name Alan?" "No man. All right, thanks." Somehow they never seemed to find him. They swore they were looking really hard. But after hearing the recorded audio from their search attempts, well, it makes more sense now while we never did find him on that trip. Looking for Alan Nutter again. This is the seventh day in a row, I think. "Well, it seems like it's about time he turned up then." I think Susan would be mad if he just went to the Main Street pub and told her we were looking for Alan. I might never know. "We're leaving no stone unturned. He could be in there, you don't know." "Two hours. Where are you guys?" "He's still waiting to see if he comes down." We had much better luck finding many other witnesses who testified at Scotts Trial, including Virginia Bice, the waitress who Scot had floored it with, and had given a song he burned into a CD that she'd later given to detectives. "I remember, Mike. Almost killed you. What even looked like that this happened so many years ago." "He seemed harmless." You've heard in previous episodes what Virginia told us about Scott Baldwin. But when we met with her, she also told us about someone else she knows. Someone else with a connection to the Kalamazoo cold case team. "Ritchie Roy." He knows when I'm getting mad at him. "Boy, I usually just call him Rich. If he pissed me off, I'll say Richard Roy, you knock it off." Virginia's brother is Richard Vindavill, cold case team informant and triple homicide suspect. "When did you first hear that your brother was a suspect in that murder?" "When he got arrested for the burglary." Which that was his actual arrest. In April of 2002, Richard Vindavill was arrested for breaking into a garage and stealing a purse. Shortly after that, he became the lead suspect in the polterman case. A triple homicide, where an elderly couple and their daughter were murdered in a civilian township. "What did you think about that?" "I'm like, no way." "Because he could never hurt an elderly person." "I never thought of him as a murderer then." "Now?" "Then?" "No." "But then again, if I sit back and look at it, is much into drugs as he was in? Could it be possible?" "Yeah." "My brother's a little scary. I will. " "He's scary." Vindavill was somehow eliminated as a suspect in the polterman case. Instead, five other people got charged with that crime. So they eventually convicted his girlfriend, cousin, and these three guys. But it does seem strange that that group would have done something together without Richard Vindavill being part of it. At the time of the polterman murders, Richard Vindavill was 38 years old. His girlfriend, Brandy Miller, was just 19. It had found out just one week before that she was pregnant with Vindavill's child. Vindavill's cousin, Angela McConnell, who was also charged, was only 17. The other three defendants were Brandy's brother, Andrew Miller, his roommate, Joe Williams, and their friend Ben Platt. One thing I did find out was that five dumbass kids could do a crime like that without leaving any evidence behind. "No, Angela. " "Yes, I don't think she did it." "You don't think Angela?" "She was so young. She was just a baby still." I mean, she couldn't live with it. She didn't want to live the rest of her life in prison. That's why I guess that's why she hung herself. Angela McConnell died in 2023. She'd been represented by the Michigan innocence clinic at the time of her death. They never found any DNA though, for many of them. That's not what Mallory said, but he said they had all kinds of evidence. Oh, they got nothing. No DNA, no fingerprints. Mallory is Captain James Mallory of the Kalamazoo City Police, one of the investigators on this case. Virginia remembered him telling her once that they had lots of physical evidence on the five defendants. But they didn't. DNA, fingerprints, and boot prints had all been found at the scene, but were never linked to those charged in the case. The only evidence
against the five defendants came in the form of confessions. The five of them had been interrogated or questioned by police well over a hundred times combined. Eventually four of the five confessed to police that they'd been inside the Polterman House when the murders occurred. Three of them quickly recanted. They had made it all up, they said. The fourth defendant who confessed, Brandy Miller, initially told people that she'd lied to the police as well. So when offered a plea deal that would let her go home one day if she agreed to testify against the others, she accepted. The case against the other four was largely based on her story. No physical evidence. If five kids like that broke into a house, I'd knew. I mean, and got away with it that cleanly, but in that time of day, and I didn't even know it was at a time of day. What day like? And they sold flowers out in their front yard. They did. You tell me how many people stopped for the flowers and didn't see something. That's what I've wondered too. There had been sightings of strange vehicles and strange people, acting around the Polterman House during the time period when the murders happened. But no one saw any of the five defendants or any of the vehicles that allegedly parked in the Polterman's driveway while committing the crime. So yes, four of the five Polterman defendants did confess, but a confession should never be the end of an investigation. Not without something that proves the confession is actually true. So what were the reasons then that the confessions and the Polterman case should be believed? That was something we needed to find out. We also want to find out what exactly Richard Vendevil's role in all of this had been. And then something strange happened here. From what we can tell, Vendevil started off as an informant for cold case team detective Mike Warkama. He provided information he claimed to possess a bale who had committed several of the Kalamazoo cold cases. But then he became the lead suspect in the Polterman triple homicide. Detective Mike Warkama was determined to charge him with the crime. There's an excerpt from Warkama talking to one of the Polterman defendants. This case is going to be charged really quickly. And we're not going to get Richie, never at opportunity to get out prison. That's our ultimate goal. Because Richie's not going to play. Richie's going to fight right to the end, which is expected. Because it'll be pleased, he's going to die in prison, he knows that. And he knows that's absolutely not by fighting. The case was quickly charged, but not against Vendevil. The cold case team changed their mind about him. They concluded he was innocent. They believed instead that the five defendants who were ultimately charged had conspired together to frame Vendevil for the murders. So Richard Vendevil was cleared as a suspect and became a cooperating witness instead. He did end up giving a statement against the others after he's given immunity. Did he snitch on Brandy? Because I just don't see that happen. I mean, yeah, he gave me a statement like, he gave several statements and all of this. That surprises me because he was still somehow in contact with Brandy. Richard Vendevil was never charged with the Polterman murders, but he did serve time for stealing a purse. I mean, he has done some stuff in his life, obviously. That he has. That he isn't saying that he got 20 to 40 years for stealing a purse out of the garage. That's very bitter. He's very bitter. And last I knew he was after work, I'm most dirty. That's all I kept saying. In April 2002, Vendevil got caught stealing a purse out of someone's garage. He was charged with breaking and entering and received a lengthy prison sentence. He served 20 years before his release in 2022. Fallen prison Vendevil met Jeff Titus, the man who was convicted, then exonerated, of the murder of the two deer hunters in Fulton. Vendevil found out Titus was represented by the Michigan Innocence Clinic, and he began writing letters to his attorneys. Jeff Titus is innocent, Vendevil told them, and there's more to the story than you know. Here's Kevin reading a portion from those letters. In April 2002, I found myself in the same situation that Mr. Titus was in, and only by my dumb luck that I gained the upper hand to save myself three life sentences for a crime that I did not commit. In 2006, I caught detective Mike Worcimer, planting/tampering with evidence to frame me for a cold case homicide. In 2007, his supervisors also found this evidence that showed Worcimer had planted/tampered with evidence. His supervisors approached me and committed some misconduct to keep me from coming forward and to keep this information from coming out. What Vendevil is claiming in that letter is important. If Mike Worcimer was really caught planting/tampering with evidence and it was somehow covered up, it could mean there's something much bigger going on here. Now, that's a big if. Vendevil's claims could just as easily be the ramblings of a bitter convict with a grudge against the police that caught him. Vendevil has been making these claims for years and almost no one has ever taken him seriously. Virginia did, though. Her brother knows something important, she told us. "There's a lot of stuff going past people and somebody's making that happen and I want to know who's behind it." It's Vendevil and some of his letters that I've seen before, basically says just that. He's like, "Pay attention, look what's going on behind the scenes." Vendevil's talk of a grand conspiracy had caught my attention. After all, who doesn't love a good conspiracy theory? But up until that point, I'd been less interested in Vendevil's conspiracies and more interested in understanding the mystery of how he'd gone from cold case informant to triple homicide suspect and back to informant once again. Because the Kalamazoo cold case team had apparently been all but certain that Richard Vendevil killed the Polterman family. But within a couple weeks, if not days, they had changed their minds entirely for reasons that never seemed to have been explained. It was bizarre how had that happened. Vendevil could tell us. And maybe he could tell us about some of the other cold cases he claimed to know about too. Where do you think we could find him? Rich? I don't know. She's got his number. That's the same number. Give me a call. Tell him who you are. Do you think he's dangerous if we were to roll up on him? No, you wouldn't hurt you. He thinks he's got the truth and he wants people to know it. Okay. Virginia gave us the contact info she had for her brother, but the number she gave us had all been disconnected. We weren't sure where to look next. But while Alan Kalamazoo, we took Kevin to the house where the Poltermans were murdered. So we could start to get an idea for himself. Why Susan and I were so bothered by this case. I'm recording. Okay, so you guys are taking me to the famous Poltermans. From the looks of it, the Poltermans house is the last place you'd expect to crime like that to happen. A tiny two bedroom house set on 80 acres of quiet farmland. And the Poltermans themselves were the last people you might expect this kind of crime to happen to. Dutch immigrants in their 90s, they were described in the case file as "very frugal people." We would have chosen this house and those people to target for a crime like this. The house feels so stuck in time. It still feels like we're half a miracle, almost like the Truman Capote like in cold blood house or something. Yeah, it hasn't changed. If we knock the door, I think they'll let us end the look at it. Guessing they're immortal. I'm guessing you ever bought the house. At some point somebody probably looked around for the money. They might have found something. Right. After the murders, the Poltermans next door neighbors told police about rumors they'd heard about the couple keeping cash in their basement. Turns out those rumors were true. While searching the house, police found thousands of dollars in cash hidden about the house. From the pictures we saw earlier today, though, it doesn't look like the money was actually hid in really great places. Like it was under a cushion. Well, they had the fake floor in one place. So that one was pretty good. They had a fake floor and there's money in it. So we don't know that anyone found any money. There are a few boxes that are put out that could have been boxes that held money hidden in the rafters. So potentially yes. You say put out. You mean like out on the floor. Yeah. I think there was a metal box in one of the bedrooms, but I couldn't see it in the photos today. But it sounded like a cash box kind of. Crime scene photos show a house that had not been ransacked. There was a considerable amount of blood everywhere, but upstairs at least the only signs of a struggle without the wires for the kitchen faux.
and have been yanked out of the wall. Some items in a back bedroom had been knocked off a desk. And the bath mats in a bathroom hallway had been bunched up and pulled out of place, as if something large and heavy had been druged through there. But everything else seemed to still be in place. Both the kitchen chairs were tucked into the tiny kitchen table. Cabinet doors were all shut. If someone had opened the kitchen drawers, they would have found Mr. Polterman's wallet and piles of loose dollar bills, likely collected from the Polterman's roadside flower stand. There was even a drawer full of watches and jewelry. But the drawers hadn't been touched. Oh, so there was also a sliced open milk jug found in the basement. After seeing it, it looks very much to me like someone tried to defend themselves with a milk jug. And it was sliced like someone had a knife was going at Anna. And slices the milk jug open, suddenly she's defenseless. You see milk jug, I don't know which-- Like a gallon of milk. Anna is Anna Lewis, the Polterman's 63-year-old daughter. Although the Poltermans in their 90s were still able to live independently, they had some mobility issues. And Mrs. Polterman was mostly deaf. So their daughter, Anna Lewis, often stopped by to help them out. On the day of the murders, she had gone shopping at Myers and then stopped by her parents' house to drop off some groceries. The state's theory is that the Poltermans were in the process of being killed or whatever. And their daughter comes and kind of accidentally comes into this happening. She becomes a victim because she's unlucky. Yeah, but when you look at the photos, there are two bags of groceries sitting on the table. And in the sink is Chuck roast. And it's sitting in the sink. Someone had either put it in there to fall for dinner that night or it was leaking. So maybe she brought it in. But if she sees all this blood and everything, she takes the time to throw this in the sink, that would make sense. Exactly. Around 6 p.m., Anna's husband and son drove past the Poltermans' house on their way to their weekly bowling league. They saw Anna's van parked out front and figured she was there visiting her parents. So they decided to stop in to say hi. But everything at the house was eerily quiet. The blinds had been drawn. All the lights turned off. The doors locked. The only thing out of place was the kitchen window, which had been swung open. Concerned, they'd forced open the garage door to get inside. And the first thing they noticed is all the blood in the garage. And they freak out and call 911. We just saw the photos for the first time. And it's so clear that anyone walking that garage knows immediately something really scary has happened. The blood in the garage all belonged to Mr. Polterman. It appeared as if the attack had begun right there. His hat, which he always wore when outdoors, had been set or dropped on the trunk of his car. And one of his slippers lay just outside the garage entrance. The other slipper would later be found inside the house in a blood-soaked bedroom. Why does he go outside the house? So Anna has groceries. Maybe mom takes the potatoes downstairs. And does someone pull in the driveway? And he goes out to say hi. And that's where the confrontation does he go out to? It kind of seems like that, right? When Anna's son and husband finally made it into the house, they found the bodies of Anna Lewis and Mr. and Mrs. Polterman in the basement. They'd all been bludgeoned and had their throats hacked open. Anna Lewis had been stabbed twice in the chest. Blood was pulling everywhere. It was a horrific triple homicide in broad daylight on a quiet country road. Someone did not rummage-- if it was a total burglary, you'd think someone would have open drawers, rummage drown for money. The original detectives hired a forensic psychologist person who said they thought the attacker would-- I thought the attacker was one. A family, because it was so personal. Family, a friend. What? And then they dispatched with that theory. Oh, yeah. The theory that the cold case team settled on was that the five defendants had all committed this murder together. Though there was no physical evidence, really, that more than one person had done the crime. A single unknown male's DNA was found, as was a single set of unknown fingerprints. And a single set of boot prints was found throughout the property. Tracked through the dirt floor of the pole barn outside, and tracked through the blood inside in the bedroom and basement. The crime lab concluded that the prints came from a caterpillar brand work boot, size 10 1/2. And then there's the weird stuff on the steps to the basement. There's exactly one set of footprints. If the cold case team is right, then five people were in the Polterman's house that day. Five people were in that blood-soaked basement. And three of those five had gathered around the victims and beat them to death with a tire iron and a baseball bat, while the blood pulled all around them. And yet only one of the five, whichever one it was, that must have been wearing those size 10 1/2 caterpillar brand boots, ever stepped in blood, or left prints in the dirt. Somehow, the other four avoided leaving any physical trace that they'd ever been there. If it wasn't for their confessions, there'd be no reason to think that more than one person had done the crime at all. This is another thing, too, that the Polterman case has in common with Scott Baldwin's case. At the bike shop, there were footprints that were never identified, found in the dirt, beside and behind the bike shop, in the same place and direction that Officer West had seen the blonde man walking. Those unknown prints were, coincidentally, also a size 10 1/2. And definitely not Scott Baldwin's. He wore a size 13. At the end of this trip to Kalamazoo, it seemed like the list of people we wanted to speak to was only growing longer, not shorter. James Long, Richard Vendaville, Alan Nutter, we need to define all of them. As our trip came to a close, Jacinda and Kevin made one last attempt to find Alan Nutter. This attempt failed, too, though, for a good reason. OK. Kevin and I went to do one last drive by looking for Alan Nutter. And we got distracted because we got a call from someone. We got a call from Richard Vendaville. We never found him in person, but we did get a message to him and he called us back. Richard Vendaville had not wanted to meet with us. And he wasn't sure if he wanted to talk to us just yet. Either. But he did confirm, yes, he knew Detective Workamah. Their first meeting had been in 1988. He wouldn't go into detail, but he made the comment. My story got to do with a lot of terrible shit, a lot of bad lawyers, a lot of bad cops, a lot of bad prosecutors. Call me again the next time you're in town. Vendaville told us. We would be back, and we'd call again. But first, we needed to make another trip to Alabama to see Stacey, Scott's ex-girlfriend once again. And to see James Long, who, by chance, had moved to Alabama too, not far from Stacey. With any luck, we'd be able to speak to both of them. Next time, on proof. They just came and gave me a check. And so we pulled us together and thought you could use it. And I was like, OK. Workamah starts talking to Vendaville and gets info. Not cold cases. Do you think he was giving good info? Where's this from? What's going to go? Just curiosity or what? Vendaville seems to have been involved in several of the cold cases giving info, and I don't trust the info he was giving. Now me either. You've been listening to Proof, a podcast by Red Marble Media, in association with Glassbox Media. We'll be back next week with episode eight. Send us your questions and comments at Proof
[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 Yulatski, Michael Alfonno, and Jesus Orbias. 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 Proof CrimePod, and on our website, ProofCrimPod.com. That's all for this week. Thanks so much for listening.
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