Jillian Dee "Jill" Cutshall was a young girl living in the Midwest. Born to Joyce and Roger Cutshall, her parents had since divorced and Joyce was granted full custody, though she worked out a custody-sharing agreement with Roger allowing Jill to spend time living with him. In the summer of 1987, Jill was staying with her father and stepmother at the McNeely Apartments in Norfolk NE. She was 9 years old. (images courtesy of the Charley Project) At 6 AM on the morning of August 13, Roger Cutshall and his wife left their home, leaving Jill by herself. According to the stepmother, Jill was awake and in her pajamas (with street clothes also laid out nearby) when they left. The stepmother also said that there was an "arrangement" for Jill to leave the apartment around 8 AM and walk to a babysitter's house around 4 blocks away; if the babysitter wasn't there to let her in, Jill would "let herself in" using a key in the mailbox. For whatever reason, Jill appears to have left much earlier than usual. Two witnesses saw a girl resembling her "walking down a Norfolk street" around 6:30 AM. Then at some point between 6:30 and 6:45 AM, a separate witness who passed by the babysitter's house saw a girl that looked like Jill sitting on the steps outside. This same witness passed by the house going the opposite direction about 5 minutes later and did not see the girl. If that girl indeed was Jill, it should of course be asked why Jill didn't go inside despite knowing how to let herself into the house. Sometime between 7:30 and 7:50 AM, the babysitter's boyfriend left the house and did not see Jill at any point. When Jill's stepmother clocked out at 3 PM, she went to the babysitter's house to pick up Jill, only to find that Jill had never made it. She and Roger both contacted several friends and relatives to see if any knew Jill's whereabouts; none did. Finally, they reported her missing to the Norfolk Police Department.[1] Numerous searches by multiple police agencies and private citizens were conducted, all coming up empty. Then on November 7, 1987, a hunter in the Wood Duck Recreation Area (in Stanton County NE, slightly southeast of Norfolk) stumbled onto clothes, shoes, and keys that were identified as belonging to Jill. The clothes were the same ones that Jill had laid out that morning and also matched what she was seen wearing in the "last firm sighting" of her, sitting on the babysitter's steps. Purportedly, no forensic clues ("fingerprints, semen, blood, hairs, or fibers") were found in an FBI inspection of this evidence, and a search of the wildlife preserve turned up nothing either, least of all Jill herself.[1][2] Norfolk police investigators turned their attention to tenants at the McNeely Apartments who might be suspects in the case. According to Joyce Cutshall, her daughter was afraid of staying in the apartment by herself because it was "seedy, noisy, filled with transients". That gives a bit of a hint as to who might have been in close proximity to Jill, and explains why she would have left so early that morning...though it doesn't explain why Roger saw it fit to leave his 9-year-old daughter in such a place by herself.[3] One of the suspects who made it to the top of the pile was Kermit Baumgartner, who resided at the McNeely Apartments during the same timeframe that Jill did. Baumgartner, who was days away from turning 61 at the time of Jill's disappearance, had served about a half-year sentence for 2nd degree sexual assault before being released on March 21, 1987. His name had come up in multiple tips to police and he had been interviewed several times without any real results. On March 24, 1988, Det. Steve Hecker interviewed Baumgartner for the fourth time, in a much more accusatory fashion than before. Nothing directly incriminating turned up in the interview, but Baumgartner promptly thereafter quit his job and moved out of his apartment, seemingly attempting to vanish from the police's radar. Trying to locate Baumgartner again, Hecker eventually managed to find his car at a new residence in Norfolk, where Baumgartner was hanging out on the porch with a woman and a man. Then, for some reason, despite his intention being to speak with Baumgartner, Hecker decided to call over the man with Baumgartner and treat him like a suspect. This man, David Phelps, allegedly responded by connecting himself to the Cutshall case unprompted, stating that he had lived in the McNeely Apartments and knew Jill's father and stepmother. Later investigation found they did know him "by a different name".[4][1] While Phelps was undoubtedly known to the Cutshalls who resided at McNeely, the exact nature of the connection is less clear. Phelps' clearest connection to McNeely was through Baumgartner, with whom he had been in a sexual and romantic relationship; it would therefore not be surprising for him to have spent a fair amount of time at the apartment complex. (Note that Phelps was just 23 years old at the time of Jill's disappearance, much younger than his partner.) If Hecker's various interviews of Phelps throughout April are to be believed, Phelps repeatedly evolved his story about his living situation, only claiming by the end of the month that he had ever resided at the McNeely Apartments (with individuals other than Baumgartner) during the time Jill disappeared. But him being known to the Cutshalls suggests that his initial claims to Hecker at their first meeting were the truest; indeed, the Lincoln Journal Star claimed in 1990 that he and Baumgartner were living together at the time Jill resided there and both "reportedly met Jill then". Phelps volunteered to Hecker in their first encounter that he had babysat Jill as well.[1][3] Before his April 29 interview in which he at least admitted to staying at the McNeely Apartments, Phelps had claimed to be living in a tent on the property of a Norfolk resident named Ray Schoen. Indeed, Phelps had supposedly moved onto the Schoen residence immediately before Jill's disappearance, on August 12. When Phelps was ultimately charged for kidnapping Jill, Schoen testified at the trial to provide him an alibi, as did Brian Pinkelman, a former sex partner of Phelps' who had allegedly been staying with him on the Schoen residence during this time. As the supposed alibi goes: Schoen met Phelps for the first time on August 12 and allowed him to sleep in his home that night; the two men were joined by Pinkelman for coffee the next morning (when Jill vanished) and then moved lawns for Schoen's lawn service business until noon; and Phelps and Pinkelman stayed together in a tent on Schoen's yard for 2 weeks after that. Pretty good alibi, but wholly reliant on the credibility of the two witnesses. Curiously, in the period immediately following Jill's disappearance, both Schoen and Pinkelman showed suicidal ideation: Schoen threatened it and Pinkelman wrote a suicide note.[1][5][6] Perhaps the most disturbing of Phelps' statements were his rather candid admissions of pedophilia in April 22 statements to Hecker. He spoke openly about his sexual preference for girls between the ages of 4 and 6, discounting the notion that he would have done anything to the 9-year-old Jill Cutshall because she was "too old" for him (🤮). And he related multiple sexual assaults that he committed on young girls, some that Phelps kept vague but some with enough specificity to perhaps identify the victims if investigators were willing to dig. Yet there is no indication that the Norfolk police investigated his offenses or even reported them to the law enforcement agencies where the assaults occurred. After speaking to Phelps throughout April 1988, Hecker was convinced that he had something to do with Jill's disappearance.[7] Proving it to the point of being able to arrest and charge Phelps, however, was another matter. In the fall of 1988, Joyce Cutshall was interviewed by a journalism student at a local college that happened to be Phelps' sister, who informed Joyce about how her brother was a suspect. Joyce gave the lead to private investigator Roy Stephens, who had been "on the case since the beginning" providing investigative services to her.[3][1] Roy Stephens was a curious figure, and it gets more interesting considering the obscure but important role he would play in the Franklin scandal only a couple years later. He worked for the Interstate Bureau of Investigation (IBI), a PI firm based in Omaha, but he had lied to get his PI license by omitting a 1976 burglary conviction from his application; this ultimately came out during Phelps' trial. When John DeCamp (a mightily suspicious figure in his own right) began representing Franklin victim Paul Bonacci, he hired Stephens "to check out Bonacci's story on [Johnny] Gosch and on other things". DeCamp's book calls Stephens a "former safecracker who went straight" but makes no mention of him lying about that history, and lauds him for helping to solve the Jill Cutshall case but omits all of the highly problematic things done by Stephens that I'm about to describe below. The hilarious cherry on top is that DeCamp cites an accolade given to Stephens by none other than Watergate burglar G. Gordon Liddy.[8] Stephens' involvement in the Johnny Gosch investigation undoubtedly turned up a lot of valuable information that helped bring his mother Noreen Gosch closer to the truth. But Stephens also seems to have initially been complicit in keeping Noreen in the dark about the investigation on behalf of her suspect then-husband Leonard John Gosch. Back in 1990, not long after Bonacci confessed involvement in Johnny's abduction, LJG came to visit him in the prison and kept in contact with Stephens as he looked into Bonacci's story. Noreen, however, didn't learn about Bonacci until multiple months into 1991. When she became aware of the full extent of what had been going on behind her back, she demanded an answer from Stephens, who became "sheepish" and "kept looking at John Sr. for an answer".[9] Noreen later discovered that LJG met several individuals from the Franklin investigation (such as John DeCamp and Judianne Densen-Gerber) with a woman by his side who pretended to be Noreen but was not her. When Noreen herself met these people for the first time, they made references to past meetings with "her" and LJG that she was not a part of, revealing her ex-husband's subterfuge. Ultimately, Noreen received a tip from an Omaha resident on who this impersonator was. It turned out to be another PI who had worked alongside Roy Stephens. Noreen included a photograph of this impersonator in her book, and my own investigation has identified the woman as Roy Stephens' partner at IBI: Diane Robinette.[10] It was Stephens' involvement in the Cutshall case while working for IBI that first helped him carve out a name for himself in the world of missing children investigations. Sometime around the summer of 1988, the Missing Youth Foundation formed in Omaha, with Joyce Cutshall becoming a director and spokeswoman.[11] By winter of that year, they had hired Stephens as a Foundation investigator "to aid families and law enforcement officials in missing-child cases", almost certainly a result of his prior involvement with a pivotal member of the Foundation.[12] Stephens soon became the public face of the Missing Youth Foundation, rising to executive director by no later than the early 90s and even being identified as the "founder" (unclear if that's sloppy/revisionist history or a sign that he was involved behind the scenes from the beginning) in a 1998 news article.[13] In October 1988, Stephens met with David Phelps for the first time. Phelps was reportedly very cagey on that occasion and denied even knowing Jill, contradicting his prior statements to law enforcement. Stephens met with Phelps again in December, this time for a recorded interview. On the audiotape, Phelps admitted his past sexual assaults of children, and mentioned his relationship with Kermit Baumgartner but denied knowing him at the time of Jill's disappearance.[1] And it is here, entering into the new year of 1989, where Stephens' tactics towards Phelps became extreme. On January 4, 1989, Stephens and his partner Diane Robinette drove up to Phelps in public, asked him to accompany them to help with something, and then took him to the Wood Duck wildlife preserve where Jill's clothing had been found. Upon their arrival, Stephens handed Phelps a shovel and directed him to use it to find Jill's buried body. Phelps denied any such knowledge, and they began walking around the preserve, with Stephens periodically yelling at Phelps to ask where Jill was. Stephens purportedly even made direct threats as they walked around, intimating that they would not leave without finding Jill and stating "I could kill you right here and nobody would ever find you". Finally, Stephens outright lost his temper. He grabbed a handgun that he had given to Robinette at the start of their walk, fired it into the air, and remarked "300 pound men don't like nature walks". Phelps then immediately began to supply information in line with what Stephens seems to have wanted, claiming that he "heard" Jill's body was buried in a particular area of the Wood Duck preserve. They drove to the area and Phelps dug for about 20 minutes without success before breaking down and telling Stephens he was ready to confess. He told a story, captured on audiotape, of how Baumgartner already had Jill captive in his vehicle and asked him (Phelps) to assist. They drove to Wood Duck, where Phelps held Jill down as Baumgartner molested her. Phelps claims that he got "aroused" but also nervous, so he left in Baumgartner's vehicle while Baumgartner stayed at the preserve with Jill.[1][14] Returning to Norfolk that afternoon, Stephens and Robinette brought Phelps to a motel to meet with representatives of KMTV in Omaha, who had come at Stephens' request that morning. On the way back, Phelps is said to have acted relieved to have finally told the story but scared of what Baumgartner might do to his wife and daughter; as a result of this, Phelps waited at the motel with Robinette and the KMTV personnel while Stephens moved Phelps' family to Phelps' half-sister's residence. Phelps then repeated the story he had told Stephens on a videotaped interview with the KMTV crew. The cameraman insisted that no threats were made to Phelps at any point, but it should be noted that Stephens and Robinette "also were in the room" throughout the entire interview. And Stephens had his gun on him at the time, which he claimed was only for "protection".[1][15] Stephens contacted Joyce Cutshall, who in turn contacted the Norfolk police. Police detectives Steve Hecker and Herb Angell arrived at the motel and picked up a consenting Phelps for questioning. Originally, Phelps told the same story he had told Stephens and KMTV, but then he recanted and claimed he fabricated the story under duress from Stephens. He requested an attorney, who arrived and met with Phelps, but somehow, questioning was then able to resume and Phelps once again made the same self-incriminating statements. Even Hecker seemed dubious enough to ask Phelps "what really happened", at which point Phelps adopted his earlier denial of involvement from his initial interviews with Hecker. Phelps began to talk about his memory issues surrounding August 13, and said he might have done something he couldn't remember, which was finally enough to make his attorney put a stop to the questioning.[1] It certainly does seem like Phelps was the victim of a coercive interrogation by PIs operating outside the restrictions of law enforcement procedure. Without a doubt, Stephens and Robinette were far from forthcoming about their interrogation of Phelps. It was noted by the appellate court that the pair "consciously omitted any reference to the gun in any of their reports to the Norfolk police". Stephens testified, as did Robinette, that he only fired his gun out of "frustration" over their fruitless search for Jill. Yet I (while tracking down the Noreen impersonator story) had a chance to speak with Robinette, who gave me a different account. She claimed that Stephens had only fired the gun because he had lagged behind her and Phelps and wanted to signal them to slow down. Not only does this contradict the motivation stated at trial, but it contradicts Robinette's testimony of how Phelps was in the lead with her and Stephens following behind, as well as her testimony about how Stephens took the gun from her just before firing it (which he obviously could not have done if he was lagging behind her).[1][16][14] When Stephens and Robinette weave such a contradictory web about their interrogation of Phelps, it becomes pretty clear that something shady happened, even if they won't admit it. Stephens' tactics were still not enough to push the case forward officially. In July 1989, the Norfolk Police Department reclassified the Jill Cutshall investigation as inactive, which outraged her mother Joyce.[17] Then in April 1990, a story came out indicating that the Norfolk police had seemingly failed to investigate a substantial and credible lead about Jill's abduction. Sherrie Taylor, the wife of former Osmond NE police chief Gailyn Taylor, recalled something strange that she and her husband witnessed on the night of August 13, 1987. They were living in Omaha at the time, and while driving near the downtown around 11:30 PM, they noticed a car with Madison County NE (of which Norfolk is the largest city) plates. A young girl was in the passenger seat — which Taylor thought was unusual that late at night — and a man in his late 20s who seemed to be unnerved by the Taylors' presence was the driver. The next day, news broke about Jill Cutshall's disappearance and Taylor recognized Jill as the girl she had seen the previous night. She reported the sighting to Norfolk police, who never followed up.[18] Sighting reliability is always a mixed bag, but the close correspondence in dates and the fact that the car was registered in Jill's home county of all places lends a fair bit of credence to this instance. Of course, if Jill was still alive by the night of her abduction and was transported as far away as Omaha, that points less towards a lone pedophile seeking a victim to later dispose of and more towards human trafficking. In the meantime, Joyce was hard at work trying to force the state to act against David Phelps. Starting in December 1989, she had been collecting signatures on a petition to impanel a grand jury. Her efforts succeeded, and in June 1990, Phelps was indicted for abduction with intent to commit sexual assault. Phelps had since moved to Iowa and was extradited back to Nebraska to face these charges.[3] Before the trial began, Phelps' defense lawyer David Domina asked the court for funds to check out numerous sightings of Jill Cutshall that had occurred elsewhere in the Midwest. He stated that the sightings were "apparently credible" and in a "chronologically and geographically significant cluster" around Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois. Domina harbored a strong suspicion that Jill might still be alive or at least had been alive and outside of Nebraska for some time after her abduction, either of which would undermine the lone predator narrative. In asking for the funds, Domina also attacked the prosecutor for "tardy disclosure" of police reports and indicated an intent to delay the trial which was initially set for December 1990. The judge granted half of the requested funds.[19][20] Phelps' trial began in March 1991. One of the most pivotal pieces of evidence introduced at trial was the KMTV interview of Phelps on January 4, 1989 after his "nature walk" with Roy Stephens. Domina unsurprisingly argued that the statement was a result of intimidation by Stephens and therefore illegitimate.[21] Jurors, however, would be struck by how Phelps seemed to accurately describe Jill's clothing down to her underwear, which was the "nail in the coffin" for him.[22] Whether he actually did, though, I'm less sure of. The description of her shirt was public knowledge since 1987 when it was first found at the Wood Duck wildlife preserve.[2] He claimed her underwear was white with "[l]ittle swirls and stuff on them", when it was indeed white but had "numerous clown face or ice cream cone designs"; it is not clear that his description matched anything other than the color (which could have been guessed). And he described her as wearing shorts when the clothing she had on was "jeans"; technically it could be jean shorts, but again, it is far from clear that his statement truly lines up.[1] The KMTV cameraman, Diane Robinette, and Roy Stephens all testified for the prosecution to back up the legitimacy of how Phelps' statement was obtained.[15][16][14] Unfortunately for Stephens, it also came out on cross examination that he had lied to the grand jury which indicted Phelps. Stephens testified under oath at the grand jury that he had informed police about his plan to bring Phelps to Wood Duck and interrogate him, but admitted this was untrue during the trial.[23] Of course, there is also the possibility that Stephens' initial story to the grand jury was the truth, and the police preferred not to be tied to an unhinged vigilante who had coerced a confession out of their suspect. Kermit Baumgartner, who had since moved to Lodi CA, testified for the defense. He confirmed having been in a relationship with Phelps, but denied any involvement in Jill's kidnapping.[5] While this testimony did serve to poke a hole in the version of events that Phelps related to Stephens and KMTV, many on the prosecution's side already thought that Phelps had acted alone. In that case, Baumgartner's inclusion in the story would have just been a way for Phelps to "confess" while shifting most of the blame. Det. Steve Hecker claimed to have been convinced that Phelps acted alone since December 1989, conveniently just as Joyce Cutshall began working to impanel a grand jury.[7] The prosecutor claimed to believe the same after Phelps was ultimately convicted.[24] But Joyce herself believed as late as 2012 that Baumgartner was involved too, even though he purportedly had an alibi.[25] And some of Baumgartner's testimony was questionable, such as his claim to not know Jill at all[24] even though he lived in the same apartment as her and "reportedly met Jill then" per the Lincoln Journal Star[3]. Domina then brought on the aforementioned Ray Schoen and Brian Pinkelman to testify as alibi witnesses for Phelps. How much good this testimony did for Phelps is unclear, as both witnesses exhibited fuzzy memories. Pinkelman actually, believe it or not, claimed to have been suffering memory loss issues due to being hit in the head with a frying pan.[5][6][1] While there is not much detail on this in news accounts, Domina also maintained his strategy of raising doubt as to whether Jill truly was abducted and disposed of by a lone predator in Nebraska. Jurors remembered hearing testimony from "people who claimed to have seen Jill alive and living in Iowa". Such evidence, however, was not enough to sway them from their belief in Phelps' guilt.[22] The trial came to an end and went to the jury on March 19. Prosecution closing arguments focused on Phelps' multiple inconsistent stories, while defense closing arguments focused on what they deemed a coercive interrogation by Roy Stephens.[26] Just a day later, the jury handed down a conviction.[24] Phelps appealed on two main points: the improperly-obtained confession and prejudicial evidence about his past child sex offenses being admitted. It should be noted that his appeal did not deny any of these offenses, but rather argued that they were too far in the past and involved "consenting children" (🤮). His appeal was rejected on October 16, 1992.[1] The news surrounding Jill's case wasn't over yet, though. A strange epilogue occurred a couple years later when none other than Roger Cutshall was arrested for child sexual assault. In June 1995, Jill's father was charged for "having sexual contact with a 14-year-old girl".[27] Roger pleaded guilty that October, facing a maximum potential sentence of 5 years. Madison County District Judge Richard Garden (who had also presided over Phelps' trial) gave him between 2 and 5 years with eligibility for parole after just 1 year.[28][29] Roger was paroled after just 22 months.[30] And that was that. David Phelps has remained in prison to this day. Multiple appeals of his since then have all failed: He tried to get court-ordered DNA testing on the evidence found at Wood Duck, but his request was denied all the way to the Nebraska Supreme Court.[31] In March 2012, the family of John Oldson, who was being charged in Valley County NE for the 1989 murder of Cathy Beard, received a diary with supposed exculpatory evidence. It detailed a ranch near Chambers NE where four women and girls had been imprisoned and raped by the diary author, her husband, and his brother. Aside from "Kathy", another victim named in the diary was "Jill Dee" (the first and middle names of Jill Cutshall), whom they had picked up from Fremont NE where she was walking without any clothes. Incidentally, one Cutshall case witness did see "a girl resembling Jill leave a Fremont hotel with an older man the day after her disappearance". The diary was labeled a hoax by authorities, who also claimed to have found nothing while searching the ranch in question; Oldson's defense lawyer, on the other hand, maintained it had too much accurate and obscure information about the women/girls. Phelps filed an appeal based on the diary, which was rejected by the state because he ran out of time to introduce new evidence in his case. Asked for comment, Phelps' trial lawyer David Domina did not believe the diary was genuine, but found the idea that Jill "was kidnapped and sold to an unpleasant life" to be plausible.[32][33] Starting in May 2014, Phelps began seeking post-conviction relief at the federal level. He introduced multiple pieces of evidence, including the aforementioned diary (the alleged author was identified as Jean Backus) and a supposed jailhouse confessor who "had bragged about the Cutshall abduction and how he had gotten away with it". All claims were rejected by the Senior US District Judge for the District of Nebraska, Richard G. Kopf.[34] Those who have studied the Franklin scandal might recognize Kopf as the former federal magistrate who stashed Larry King in a mental health facility just as Franklin was heating up, thus protecting him from media scrutiny and subpoenas during that time. All the while, Jill Cutshall has never been found, alive or dead. Given his extreme creepiness and contradictory stories, I have little doubt that Phelps was connected to Jill's abduction in some way. But I harbor serious doubts that he was the only person involved, and suspect that Roy Stephens came in to force a simple resolution that would prevent further examination. Some pertinent questions to ask: Why was Jill sitting on the babysitter's steps instead of letting herself in with the key, as she knew how to do? Had someone, with knowledge of her routine, misplaced the key in advance to leave her vulnerable out in the open? Did Jill's father, Roger Cutshall, have connections to the predators like Baumgartner and Phelps who lived at the McNeely Apartments? The Cutshalls did know Phelps and maybe Baumgartner as well, and Phelps might have even been allowed to babysit Jill at one point. And of course, Roger turned out to be a pedophile, making him fit right in with the sleazy McNeely crowd. If (per the above) there was any complicity among Jill's inner circle in arranging her abduction, I know who the first person I look at would be. To what extent was Kermit Baumgartner involved? Different pieces of evidence point towards and away from him. Nothing directly incriminating came up in his police interviews, but they did spook Baumgartner enough to quit his job and move out of his apartment. He seems to have been dishonest under oath by claiming he never knew Jill at all. On the other hand, it is rather convenient for Phelps to place most of the culpability on Baumgartner in his confession, especially when Baumgartner reportedly had an alibi. But Phelps also expressed seemingly-genuine fear for his and his family's safety from Baumgartner. The major age gap does raise questions about the power dynamic between the two. I find myself wondering if Baumgartner was some kind of behind-the-scenes orchestrator even if he wasn't directly involved. Why did Phelps' friends Ray Schoen and Brian Pinkelman both exhibit suicidal intentions shortly after Jill's disappearance? It sure seems like consciousness of guilt to me, and given how important they were to providing Phelps an alibi, I can't help but suspect they were involved in whatever unsavory activities he was. Schoen's alleged hospitality towards Phelps on August 12 certainly seems implausible if, as Schoen testified, they had only just met that day. How come no one tried to investigate any of the past child sexual assaults that Phelps freely admitted to? And come to think of it, why was Phelps so freely admitting them unless he had a reasonable amount of confidence that he would never be held responsible? Was Jill a victim of human trafficking? The sighting of her in Omaha on the night of her disappearance lends credence to her being trafficked; indeed, the fact that it was Omaha of all places suggests a possible Franklin scandal connection, which Roy Stephens would coincidentally be involved in investigating later. And those additional sightings of Jill throughout the Midwest once again point to an interstate pedophile network's involvement. Who did Roy Stephens really work for? Was he just a misguided and unprofessional investigator trying to solve a case? Or was he an even shadier figure, say a cover-up artist on behalf of a network like Franklin? His later actions on the Johnny Gosch case would seem to point to the latter, which could in turn (if the above point is true) explain his actions towards Phelps. I have heard from one source that Stephens was exactly this kind of fixer, and that he had a tendency to ruin every case he touched. More research needs to be done on him. Until they are resolved, Jill Cutshall and her family remain without justice. And through the Roy Stephens connection, this is a dark cloud hanging over the Johnny Gosch abduction as well. The weirdest thing I have discovered, which needs to be approached very delicately, is that Jill Cutshall might in fact be alive under a new identity. An individual looking into protected drug and prostitution activity in their Midwest city of residence ended up coming into contact with an adult woman in this network who looked uncannily like what Jill might look like as an adult. Past court records for this woman show that she suffered from schizophrenia and an attachment disorder. Looking into this individual, I found that not only she did indeed look oddly similar to Jill, but she goes by a variety of surnames and one of them is Cutshall. I am still deliberating where to go next with this information. List of sources: Nebraska Supreme Court, no. S-91-577: State v. Phelps, decision on appeal, 1992/10/16 Lincoln Star, "Hunter finds clothing worn by missing girl", 1987/11/09 Lincoln Journal Star, "Norfolk mother seeks justice in daughter's disappearance", 1990/08/19 (pages 1, 9) Norfolk Daily News, "No body, weapon or witnesses", 2012/08/14 Lincoln Journal Star, "Witness gives Phelps alibi", 1991/03/14 Des Moines Register, "Witness: Phelps mowed on day of kidnap", 1991/03/15 Omaha World-Herald, "Detective Says He Suspected Phelps Spotted in '88", 1991/03/21 John DeCamp, The Franklin Cover-Up, p.231 Noreen Gosch, Why Johnny Can't Come Home, p.128: "I called Roy Stephens to let him know that the TV coverage was everywhere concerning Bonacci. He decided to drive to Des Moines. When he arrived, I confronted him with the information I had just learned about Bonacci, John Gosch, and the visit to the prison. Roy acted very "sheepish" and kept looking at John Sr. for an answer. I knew there had been some type of collusion between them but neither one of them would talk about it." Noreen Gosch, Why Johnny Can't Come Home, p.85-89 Lincoln Journal Star, "Iowan dedicates song to plight of missing kids", 1988/07/14 Lincoln Journal Star, "Missing youth group hires investigator", 1988/12/23 Greenville News, "Most victimized kids know attackers", 1998/08/10 (pages 1b, 5b) Des Moines Register, "Witness: Phelps spoke about missing girl in interview", 1991/03/12 Omaha World-Herald, "Cameraman Tells Court Phelps Not Threatened", 1991/03/11 Lincoln Star, "Investigator fired gun in questioning Phelps", 1991/03/12 Lincoln Journal Star, "Mother still grieves for missing girl", 1989/08/13 (pages 1e, 5e) Lincoln Star, "Woman says she saw Jill Cutshall in Omaha", 1990/04/04 Sioux City Journal, "Lawyer wants funds to find Jill Cutshall", 1990/11/20 Beatrice Daily Sun, "Judge grants funds to search for Jill Cutshall", 1990/11/23 Des Moines Register, "Jurors to watch video of suspect admitting his role in kidnapping", 1991/03/06 Norfolk Daily News, "No doubts in jurors' minds", 2012/08/16 Des Moines Register, "Investigator testifies he lied to grand jury", 1991/03/13 Sioux City Journal, "Cutshall trial won't help find body", 1991/03/28 Norfolk Daily News, "Where’s Jill? After 25 years, question still unanswered", 2012/08/13 Omaha World-Herald, "Prosecutor Says Defendent Gave Four Stories in the Cutshall Case", 1991/03/19 Lincoln Journal Star, "Father of Norfolk girl who disappeared accused in sexual assault", 1995/06/18 Lincoln Journal Star, "Cutshall pleads guilty to sexual assault", 1995/10/07 Lincoln Journal Star, "Missing child's father sentenced", 1995/11/18 Sioux City Journal, "Cutshall's father paroled", 1997/09/19 Sioux City Journal, "DNA testing requested by kidnapper denied", 2007/02/03 Norfolk Daily News, "New information dismissed as hoax", 2012/08/15 Omaha World-Herald, "Despite mysterious diary, court refuses to revisit kidnapping conviction", 2013/06/14 United States District Court for the District of Nebraska, Phelps v. Frakes, memorandum and order, 2016/09/30

Those who've followed my work on serial killers probably know that I'm very interested in the hidden depths of the Ted Bundy case. An especially big focus of mine in that regard is the link to corruption in Grand Junction CO, through the city's then-police chief Ben Meyers. Meyers was Grand Junction's police chief throughout 1975, when the city was rocked by a startling number of murders. The victims were nearly all young women, almost all of whom had connections to the local drug scene and/or sexual involvement with local law enforcement. One of the victims, Linda Benson, had expressed knowledge of the "big shots" who controlled the local drug trade; a GJ police officer known for selling drugs at the local high school was purportedly witnessed at the crime scene. Another victim, Linda Miracle, had been recording sexual encounters with cops in her diary (which her cop boyfriend Truman Haley later destroyed and tossed in the river), was the victim of a strangulation attempt 9 weeks before her strangulation murder, and was planning to come forward alongside fellow victim Pat Botham with some unknown news of major import to the town. All of these murders with the specter of law enforcement corruption happened under the watch of Meyers, who was alleged to have secret bank accounts for the proceeds of drug trafficking and prostitution. In January 1976, Meyers was forced to resign after he was caught buying drinks for a 19-year-old girl at a bar and then threatening cops not to report him. He ended up taking a job as undersheriff of Pitkin County (home to Aspen CO), just in time to oversee the trial of Ted Bundy for the January 12, 1975 murder of Caryn Campbell. The sole witness identification of Bundy had been attained by DA's office investigator Mike Fisher, who back in 1974 ruled the Aspen death of Linda Benson's sister Judy Ketchum Lake to be from natural causes; the family believed that Judy, the wife of drug dealer Phil Lake, was murdered. Shockingly, in the pretrial hearing, the star witness identified not Bundy but Meyers, who was sitting in the courtroom. Bundy was rather conveniently able to escape not once but twice after that, so the trial in Colorado never completed, likely to the prosecution's (and Meyers') great relief. A good overview of the Meyers situation can be found on this website run by the sons of Ken Botham, who was convicted for murdering Linda Miracle and his wife Pat despite a solid alibi and having been the one who saved Linda during her first strangulation attempt: https://kenbotham.com/overview.htm Grand Junction area citizens were heard to say after Botham's arrest, "it sure had put a stop to the murders". It had not. On December 27, 1975, with Botham jailed, Debra Tomlinson was found dead in her bathtub, just blocks from the Benson home. She had been strangled and raped. All the dead women allegedly used drugs to varying degrees, with the exception of Mrs. Botham. The public would like to believe lawmen are on their side, but with a turnover rate far in excess of the state average, sexual involvement of nearly a dozen officers (that can be proven) with some of the victims, when the same officers being assigned to investigate their murders when they admittedly alter and destroy evidence, and when the police chief of that time, partied with the victims before their deaths, a feeling of uneasiness tends to develop. The police chief Ben Meyers was forced to resign shortly after the Tomlinson murder, and was allegedly extensively involved in drug traffic. Botham's investigators found numerous large deposits in account in two banks, but the D.A. objected to a court order for all Meyers bank records and Judge Ela denied it, saying it was irrelevant. Immediately, the chief resigned, clearing all accounts. This man took an undersherrif position in Aspen, Colorado, resigning after Ted Bundy escaped from the Aspen jail. During the Bundy trial, a witness identified Myers as the man she saw leaving the dead nurse's apartment at the time of her murder . . . the nurse Bundy was accused of killing and leaving frozen in the countryside. By the summer of last year, I'd been periodically looking into the Grand Junction situation and its connection to Bundy for a little over 2 years. My suspicion was that Bundy was part of a larger murderous group operating throughout the western United States, and ended up taking the fall for certain group actions that were not completely or sometimes not even at all his doing. This group would have been committing murder not just for sick thrills but also for specific contracted reasons, such as to cover for Grand Junction law enforcement's complicity in organized crime. There was a lot of tempting circumstantial support for this idea. Bundy's first attributed Colorado crime — the murder of Caryn Campbell — saw Grand Junction's top cop Meyers identified as a suspect, and Campbell herself was the sister of a cop in the drug trafficking hotbed of Fort Lauderdale FL. Another Colorado crime laid at Bundy's feet was one of the earliest Grand Junction murders: that of Denise Oliverson. Neither crime had much of any evidence linking Bundy other than his reported confessions on death row just before his execution. And in yet another oddity that is almost never reported on, Bundy was also seen by a witness at Linda Benson's apartment on the night of her murder. But this theory was high on tantalizing connections and low on definitive evidence establishing these links as meaningful. In hopes of finding more solid facts to work with, I sought out the Grand Junction police's report on Linda Benson's murder. Her case had been closed in 2010 following the conviction of serial rapist Jerry Nemnich, whose DNA was found at the crime scene. The DNA certainly proves that Nemnich had something to do with the murder, but law enforcement routinely assumes that these crimes are committed by only a single perpetrator and stops the search as soon as they catch one, even if evidence exists (as it does in Linda Benson's case) pointing to others. In any event, the GJPD's decision to close the case meant they were obligated to release the case file to the public, so I got a copy. Early on in the report (page 85), there was an interesting mention of a "John Antanopolis" who'd apparently been investigating the Linda Benson and Botham/Miracle murders: I tracked down this individual, John Antonopoulos, thinking they might be another researcher who I could share notes with. And after getting past the initial "how did you find me"-type awkwardness, it actually seemed to be even more promising than that, beyond my wildest dreams. He immediately outlined a series of allegations against none other than Ben Meyers, and was subsequently impressed at how I was on the same page, had been investigating this for a while, and took the initiative to track him down. JA presented himself as a citizen investigator who had been fighting to expose the Grand Junction situation for a long time, tape-recording the involved parties in preparation of a big expose. (For instance, he said he possessed a recorded conversation with law enforcement indicating that Bundy's death-row confessions to the Campbell and Oliverson murders didn't exist.) He claimed to have a mountain of evidence that would definitively prove Meyers was behind Caryn Campbell's murder, the 1975 Grand Junction murders, and Ted Bundy's two escapes from prison in Colorado. Best of all, JA acted impressed enough with my comprehension of the case that he believed I could be the writer who assembled his evidence into cohesive form and exposed it to the world. This was appealing without a doubt: having studied a case for years without much progress, and then being handed its resolution on a silver platter. I knew there was a reasonable chance this could be nothing but talk, and wasn't getting my hopes too far up until I saw the evidence for myself, but at the same time it felt promising. What were the odds that this other person had connected the relatively-obscure Bundy/Meyers dots in what appeared to be the exact same way I had? Over the fall and winter, I lost touch with JA due to a lot of personal things catching up with me at once. Luckily, by February of this year, I was finally in a position where I could reach out to him again. To my surprise, he wasn't even mad at the months-long gap: he was thrilled we reconnected and even talked of having obtained a few new pieces of evidence that were "icing" on the "cake" he planned to assemble. We talked again, this time more seriously, about collaborating on a book project in which he'd provide the material for me and I'd write it up. JA constantly regaled me with claims about how huge this story would be (and in fairness, if he was telling the truth about it, it certainly would be). This book would capture the public zeitgeist, it would be the starting point for numerous film adaptations, and I would not just be the subject of widespread acclaim but come away "a very wealthy man" making millions of dollars. It sounded very attractive, not really for the financial gain, but for getting to show the world for once that a "conspiracy theory" was undeniably the truth. (Along with being a well-funded and well-respected journalist whom witnesses in the other cases I investigate would finally agree to speak with...) During this hopeful period, there was a skeptical instinct in the back of my mind which I should have listened to a whole lot more. This entire thing sounded a little too good to be true, and when something feels that way, it usually is. If this story was as huge as JA claimed, and he'd been gathering the evidence for decades, how had he not found a single person before me to write it? Why was I, a young person just barely out of university with no writing credits to my name, JA's author of choice? With a mix of rationalism and naivete, I told myself that if this conspiracy was as deep as it appeared, there may have been any number of hidden forces at work to drive away past writers. Of course, if that was indeed the case, agreeing to work with JA would mean subjecting myself to those same machinations; but no use stressing over abstract dangers until they become real. And even if this was a delusion or a con or both, shouldn't I at least hear it out, for the possibility that this could be real or at least have a kernel of truth somewhere? Maybe I'd waste my time by going down this road, but if I didn't take this opportunity, I felt certain I would regret that forever. So I committed myself to the project, and to all the schmoozing that went along with it. JA always wanted to check in and talk, and not just about the project. He had a disorganized mind that jumped from topic to topic, often getting onto tangents about his personal life; and he could talk for literal hours without letting you get a word in and without realizing how long he'd been at it. Sometimes after I hung up and thought I was done for the day, he'd call me again to talk about some trivial event that just happened to him or some dumb shit he just saw on the news. I found myself dreading JA's calls because I knew I might be tied up for way longer than I wanted on some mind-numbingly boring tale from his life that I knew I hadn't signed up for. As annoying as it was, I told myself it was the game I had to play to stay in his good graces and get to the real story. He had plenty of other tics as well, which might not be too bad in small doses but of course become grating when you hear them day after day for hours on end. JA seemed very insecure, constantly wanting affirmation from me that I believed in what he was saying, was on board with the project, or was willing to do certain preparatory tasks he asked of me. My end of the conversation largely became a series of affirmations ("Yeah", "For sure", "Definitely"...), each of which he ate up like candy and told me how pleased he was in response. I received tons of effusive praise about myself whenever I made him feel good in that way, which was nice to hear the first few times but just got tiring, embarrassing, and insincere after a while. Beyond constantly needing my belief in him, he also tried to assure me again and again how much of a good person he was. JA even had weird truisms about that which he would often repeat, such as my personal favorite: "I love love and hate hate". I in turn found myself thinking that the people who have to say they are nice or honest all the time tend not to be. And how right I was, because another side of JA would come out when things didn't go his way. In fact, something as innocuous as me being in the bathroom and missing one of his calls by minutes could provoke anger on his part; if I wasn't at his immediate beck and call, he was offended right away. There was also his tendency to complain about every minor bad experience in his life: encounters with retail workers, hotel staff, restaurant workers, and so on. I also noticed that he would gratuitously bring up the race of those individuals with whom he had a problem, though only when they were non-white. Finding myself wondering why the only "love" he expressed was for his family, friends, and me while the "hate" seemed to be directed at just about everyone else in the world, I tried again to rationalize him as a stereotypical clueless Boomer (sorry to those of you of that generation who aren't anything like this!): insensitive and abrasive in today's world but not malicious. What mattered most to me was the case facts, not the personality of the individual gathering them. And no matter how problematic certain aspects of JA seemed, I figured he must be a good person if he dedicated himself to gathering these facts. In the middle of all this, I had gained enough of his trust for him to send me a draft manuscript written by one of his previous authors. I dove in, hoping to finally see some real evidence underlying JA's thesis about Bundy and Meyers...and came away decidedly mixed. There were some tantalizing aspects, to be sure. A fair amount of testimony from the star witness at Bundy's trial, which I'd never seen anywhere else, had been reproduced in the book. JA had some interesting taped conversations printed in the book, one with a former Grand Junction police officer and one with a former Mesa County sheriff's deputy. The GJPD officer expressed fear for his life if he came forward with what he knew about police corruption, indicated that Meyers as well as other cops were involved, and also told JA that Ted Bundy's cell bars had been cut (quite likely from the outside) and held in place with chewing gum: a part of Bundy's escape that was not in the official narrative. The MCSO deputy said that Meyers was "a damn good suspect" in the Grand Junction murders, and that "we've got to get to that son of a bitch somehow", suggesting that "a Vigilante Committee take him out in the middle of the desert and shoot" him; not how I like to hear cops talk, but revealing all the same. Unfortunately, that's about the only real evidence that was in the book at all. And those two law enforcement interviews, as fascinating as they were, didn't amount to anything more than suspicions; they certainly did not prove in any way that Meyers was a murderer. What annoyed me as I read the interviews was that JA would barely let his interviewees talk, preferring to interject his own theories of the case in a heavily leading fashion rather than just letting them relate what they knew. It became apparent to me that I, as the writer, would have to heavily chop up these interviews in order for the "hero" of my book not to come across as an assclown. Even that would be impossible to do for his interaction with Dr. Thomas Canfield, the coroner who initially found a time of death for the Botham/Miracle victims that Ken Botham's alibi exonerated him from, and then dutifully revised the time of death to negate that alibi. JA wanted to get proof that Canfield had changed the time of death at the behest of DA Terry Farina, which would be a crucial admission. The way he went about it, however, was shockingly coercive and leading, and still didn't get anything definitive: But it gets even better, because right after that, the manuscript goes on to say that JA didn't even record the conversation (making it doubly useless as evidence), and all subsequent recorded conversation he had with Dr. Canfield never brought up this issue again. JA bragged to me that he "turned into a monster" when interacting with the perps who he gathered evidence on, acting aggressively to break them down and make them admit things. What really appears to be the case is that when witnesses are confronted by a violent lunatic, they will try to end the conversation and say just about any noncommittal answer to get said lunatic away from them. Still, I tried to convince myself that perhaps this was just an unflattering view put together by an inept writer. The writing quality of the manuscript was pretty bad in general, so maybe this person didn't grasp the case very well and used only a fraction of the evidence JA actually had. I sure hoped he had more evidence than this, and he seemed pretty definitive about all his claims, so I stayed on for the time being. As late May approached, JA resolved to come over to where I lived to meet me so that we could get to work. He expected that we would be spending nearly all of our time together on this project, and was none too enthused to hear that I had a day job in my actual career path. I was willing to pursue the project in my free time after work and on weekends, but he wanted me to quit my job to work for him full time, something I was absolutely not willing to risk on a project that I still had no idea was going to work out. I received some manipulation and guilt from him, suggesting that I didn't care about him or the project and that he had options other than me, but in the end he stuck with me anyway. Due to delays on his end, we first met in person at the beginning of June. It was actually quite pleasant, and I felt much more positive than I had before, as if the awkwardness might be behind us and we were finally about to dive into the real work. JA was staying in a hotel nearby but said he was going to quickly find a space to rent, into which he would move and set up all of his documentation for me to begin writing from. This highly sensitive documentation, meanwhile, stayed in his open-top Jeep parked at a hotel in a city I would not exactly consider renowned for safety. Every day, JA seemed like he had a great rental opportunity (or several), and was about to close the deal, only for it to fall through. During our very first in-person meeting, I had suggested using Airbnb instead, but he was committed to finding rentals on his own by simply driving around and approaching individuals in person. It all seemed rather weird to me, but who was I to argue with a man more than 3x my age who presumably had a massive amount of life experience? Might as well let him do his thing, and enjoy whatever summer I could before I had to be fully committed to writing this book for him. It did, however, become a little excessive as the weeks wore on and he still hadn't found a place. Beyond that, he was somehow out of money and now was begging me to cover nights of his hotel stay. Early on in our conversations, he told me he had financial benefactors in Colorado, friends of his who believed in him and were lending money towards the completion of the book, the proceeds of which would pay it all back. In fact, to hear him tell it, he was hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to them. So perhaps I should have been more circumspect, but I wanted to keep up our relationship, and I had a good enough income and savings that I could spare it, so I did. And initially, I did get paid back reasonably quickly. By late June, JA still hadn't found a residence, and he had to go back to Colorado to take care of some unspecified business. He got a storage unit (which I paid for, of course) and we spent an afternoon moving all the briefcases of material out of his Jeep and into the unit. JA left for a while and there was a period during which we barely had any contact at all. Surprisingly, I felt more relieved than anything else. The whole thing got far less reasonable around July after his return. Suddenly, I was being begged not just for $100 or so to cover a hotel stay and food, but for loans of $1000 or more. This weirded me out even more, but I was willing to do so for a time as long as I wasn't putting myself in a dangerous spot financially. At this point I was very scrupulously tracking how much JA owed, and it was quickly piling up. The most annoying part, though, was how he kept asking me to get money for him in the middle of my workday. We had previously agreed that our time together was outside the time for my day job, but he repeatedly broke that; were it not for me working from home, I would definitely have been fired. In retrospect, I should have asked myself how he was burning through thousands of dollars so fast. By the middle of July, JA was pretty upset about how long we had gone without getting anything done. He accused me of not being there for him (bold to tell someone to whom you're thousands in debt); and laid on the manipulation thick yet again by saying how his friends in Colorado were questioning his decision to work with me but he was sticking up for me against all of them! It was, according to JA, my fault for not finding a place for him, something I had offered to help with from the start and was shot down in favor of his resolve to do it by himself. Finally he agreed to let me do it for him, and within about 5 minutes I found a great rental on Airbnb meeting every qualification that he wanted. Things began to calm down again after that. JA's material was moved out of the storage unit and into the rather expansive room that he was renting, and he began unpacking it. There were a few occasions where we met, and I spent several hours each day going through his documentation. What I had hoped to find was this earthshattering evidence which I had been promised for nearly a year. Aside from what was already in the book and a couple fascinating minor tidbits, I didn't find that. But I did find this: In which a previous author working for JA wrote JA's benefactors to tell them exactly the suspicion I had all along: that he had no proof substantiating any of his claims. Not to mention that most of his material was just from other legal battles he had been involved in which had absolutely nothing to do with the Bundy/Meyers situation, a depressing state of affairs that I was also beginning to suspect as I went through JA's files. I had to wade through piles and piles of extraneous bullshit just to get a few things relevant to the cases I actually cared about. At various points in our earlier conversations, JA often alleged that he'd been targeted by the legal system again and again for his work exposing the corruption in Grand Junction. It started to become quite apparent, however, that JA's primary concern was those other legal battles which affected him personally, and that gathering evidence on Bundy and Meyers was practically an afterthought by comparison. The real kicker came the next day. JA and I met, and then he began telling me a sob story about a relative of his. This relative, he assured me, was a good kid who tragically got mixed up with the Mexican cartels; at this point, the insensitive racial attitudes that JA expressed were graduating into full-blown racism, and he related some awful thoughts about "fucking Mexicans" (all of whom are apparently suspect to him) while telling this story. He revealed to me that the thousands of dollars I had been lending him was not going to the project at all but to this relative's legal defense. Then we went outside and he beat around the bush for nearly an hour before asking me to lend him $13,000 more. Mind you, I still had not been paid back any of the thousands he'd borrowed already. I very nearly ended things on the spot at that point, but I decided to stay the course if he agreed to a lesser amount which I could withstand and a signed agreement that he would pay back the debt. But it was pretty much the beginning of the end for us. I began paying more attention to things he said to me from that point on as well as reevaluating things he said in the past. And it became clear that I had, regrettably, been rolling my eyes at but otherwise shrugging aside some horrendous things: Propagating misogynistic purity double-standards: holding up his mother as a virtuous person because she "only had one penis inside her" (yes, he used those exact words) while bragging about he was able to pick up attractive women in public even in his 60s Relating to me how awful it is that women are no longer subservient housewives, but are instead being too assertive and trying to act like men Talking about how much he hates Muslims, and how he views every single one of them as a terrorist who wants to murder Christians like himself Making fun of the African culture of the family who rented out the Airbnb, expressing how their relatives back in Africa probably murder their own family members, and even disrespecting one of their traditions to their face at one point (he proudly related this to me) Denigrating the homeowner's wife as a fat and lazy gold digger; he once called her "bubble butt" while chuckling, evidently expecting me to be in on the "joke" Using the N-word, which he defined by saying "A n****r, that to me is like a sleazy piece of shit", but justifying it because he believes there can be "white n****rs" as well as "black n****rs". This was part of a larger conversation in which he defended two black men, Richard Deavens and Bobby Wilson, who he claimed were framed by the GJPD due to their race; he tried to talk them up by saying "they weren't n****rs". Ironically (or maybe not, as you'll see), Deavens, a former GJPD cop, might actually be the cop who was selling drugs at the high school and was present at the scene of Linda Benson's murder. Expressing his frustration with a bank whose staffers happened to be Asian-American women by calling it an "Asian bank", suggesting they have shady business practices in line with what goes on in China, and relating his desire to grab one of the women, throw her out onto the freeway, and watch a semi-truck run over her Because nothing says "I love love and hate hate" like sexism, racism, and homicidal ideation. As I reevaluated JA's statements, something else stood out to me too: how well-connected he and his family were. His father Sam Antonopoulos owned a couple hotels in Grand Junction, including the Athens Motel where Deavens and Wilson were arrested on drug charges. JA said that his parents would throw frequent parties that were well-attended by the pillars of the local establishment: cops, lawyers, judges, businessmen... One of his father's friends was Colorado congressman Wayne Aspinall, who was trying to get JA into either West Point or the Naval Academy at the behest of his (JA's) dad. That apparently never happened, and JA's youth was instead spent in some sort of party lifestyle; as an indicator of the circles he ran in, he told me that he once did cocaine with JFK Jr. in Aspen CO. Another thing JA claimed was that local authorities spread false rumors about his mother running prostitution out of the Athens Motel, but that seems incongruous with how well-regarded he claimed his family was by the authorities. On the other hand, it being true could perhaps be very congruous with how well-regarded his family was... JA once again left town at the beginning of this week to take care of things in Colorado. While he was away, I decided to sift through all of his material again, this time without anyone over my shoulder, just to do a thorough job and ensure I wasn't missing anything that would prove his allegations on the Bundy/Meyers situation. Despite JA's character, I thought maybe I could justify working with an awful person as long as it was for a good purpose overall. No such evidence came up, needless to say. One thing that did come up, however, was a rather creepy audio recording that JA had made of his conversation with Cmdr. Greg Assenmacher of the GJPD. The pivotal excerpt (@ 25:55): JA: I just wonder why my name is... You said you're gonna share paperwork where my name comes up as a suspect? I've never heard anything like that-- GA: No, no... John, if-- JA: No one's ever said anything like that to me. GA: Once you take a breath, and... The only thing I'm interested in talking to you about is -- it's kind of ironic -- the night Deborah Tomlinson is killed, that you out of the clear blue for not knowing her, not knowing her family, you call their address and house out in the Mack area-- JA: I didn't-- GA: --to inquire about-- JA: I didn't even know who I was calling. I looked up that name in the phone book-- GA: Well that's my interest. Why you took it upon yourself to open up the phone book, call the victim of a murder's parents, and break the news to them, and inquire about that when you say you don't even know she was and you don't know-- JA: Now would you let me answer that? GA: That's my interest. JA: Let me cure your interest, okay? At that time, right, that I made that call, I already knew, I was already on top of it, that bizarre things were happening, and women being murdered, right? Like the whole community. But, I had cops and government set up on my property [Deavens and Wilson], and those people that were set up believed Ben Meyers was murdering the women. And by the way, I have another sheriff of this county, veteran of 40 years, who says we ought to take Ben Meyers out in the desert and blow his brains out on tape. Now how's that? Who ran for Mesa County sheriff here, and is a 40-year veteran sheriff who was on the investigation task force team of Ben Meyers. GA: Who are you talking about? JA: I'm not gonna mention names. But believe me, I've got his-- GA: Was he employed there before Dick Williams or after? Or during Dick Williams'-- JA: By the way, Dick Williams at his house... You gotta believe me, I didn't record this, but his wife met me downtown. I want to tell you what Dick Williams said. Dick Williams said, John, he's a murderer, I hope you get his ass. And he had a heart attack and died two weeks later. I'm gonna tell you, Dick Williams was a good man. Sheriff Ray Reese [served 1959-72, just before Williams] was like my second father. He used to be with my father every day for 30 years; his daughter, her kids, her husband would come swim in our pools. This was a good town before Ben Meyers came. And by the way, I just want you to know, Ben Meyers isn't getting away with this. And by the way, I want to say one last thing to you. The sheriff that I told you about that I have taped is a very good man. He's been on the Mesa County sheriff's department for close to four decades. And he-- GA: Are you talking about [REDACTED]? JA: It doesn't matter who I'm talking about. But he-- GA: They don't have anybody that's been on there for 40 years. JA: Well, 30+ years. GA: Who? JA: Just somebody. And that somebody says that Ben Meyers was their #1 suspect in the Mesa County sheriff's department for the murders of multiple women in the city of Grand Junction but they just couldn't prove it. And he's talking about Ben Meyers, quote-unquote. That's the name in the conversation, that's the name in print. And that's the man. GA: Well, Nemnich did the Bensons. I don't know who did the Tomlinsons. Again, my conversation with you a few years ago had to do with you calling the Tomlinson family in the middle of the night inquiring about their daughter and informing them that she had been killed. Why did you-- JA: I didn't inform them. I asked them if they knew. GA: Well... JA: Had any idea, right? Because-- GA: What a good samaritan you are, then. I guess-- JA: I'm better than a good samaritan. You'll see what I mean. I'm not gonna get argumentative here with you, and I'm not gonna listen to anybody tell me I'm a suspect for a murder, because John Antonopoulos isn't a suspect in any goddamn murder. GA: No, I said I was curious why you called the Tomlinsons-- JA: And I answered your question. Because I'm already-- GA: That's just BS. JA: I'm already irate that two black men [Deavens and Wilson] were set up on my property and women are getting murdered in Junction. I became very involved. So did I just spend months of my time having dinner with, lending money to, finding a residence for, and spending hours in private with a murderer? That would of course be quite irresponsible to claim. But I can't really think of a legitimate reason for JA's call to the Tomlinson family on the night of Deborah's murder, which he fully admits to. This would have been before it even broke in the papers, so how did JA know that early, and why would he think he knew before her parents did? Tomlinson's alleged killer, Jimmie Dean Duncan, was identified by DNA in December of last year, and he is deceased as of 1987 so he will never stand trial; but as with the Benson murder, a DNA identification cannot categorically rule out the involvement of others. Unsurprisingly, I have no intention of meeting JA alone ever again, or even meeting him at all again except perhaps to collect on the debt. But if I do turn up missing or dead in the near future, I imagine that you all know where to begin looking.

This case has already been discussed on prior threads (particularly in the Hand of Death post), but I think there's enough information that it's worth having a dedicated thread. Described in these materials is a pedophile cult with white supremacist, neo-Nazi, and satanic undertones known as the White Eagle Underground, engaged (particularly near the Mexican border) in drug smuggling, child abuse, human trafficking, targeted murders, and domestic terror. It has many parallels to the Hand of Death, Adolfo Constanzo's cult, and the CIA-run fascist stay-behind networks involved in the Dutroux affair. An individual ("Choctaw Joe") was assisting the NYPD in their investigation of a domestic terror threat from white supremacists in the Houston area. This investigation developed intel on the so-called White Eagle Underground, and in the process of looking in that direction, they came across multiple abused children in the Houston area who had been victims of the cult. One was Nicholas Schultz and one was Lauren Roberts, both at the hands of their respective fathers Paul Schultz and Kenneth Edward Roberts. Sometime in mid-1997 during the course of this investigation, CJ was contacted by a woman "from an old, aristocratic family in Louisiana and on the Gulf Coast" (incidentally the same social scene where Nick Schultz's mother Belinda came from) offering information on who she believed was responsible for the death of JonBenet Ramsey. She implicated a "mafia hit man" going by the name "Paolo", which uncannily matched the description of Paul Schultz that had been developed earlier. This was in fact the first time a pedophile ring was mentioned in connection with JonBenet's murder, only months after she was killed and a couple years before Nancy Krebs came forward. This story was first told by Alex Constantine in a 2000 article: http://web.archive.org/web/20091218180007/http://www.newsmakingnews.com/archive4,24,4,29,00.htm#The%20JonBenet%20Ramsey%20Case:%20Emerging%20Child%20Sex-Ring%20Allegations,%20Political%20Connections%20and%20a%20Suspect Much later, a JonBenet Ramsey case researcher managed to contact Belinda Schultz, who supplied further background including how Colorado law enforcement were interested in Fleet White as a participant in this pedophile cult (https://archive.is/ro29J); that would be the same Fleet White whose family was accused by Nancy Krebs years later of the same thing. And last year I obtained the dossier that Alex Constantine had used as the basis for his article, which includes key background on this White Eagle Underground investigation. Now I just want to compile everything here, including documents from Paul Schultz's sexual abuse trial (he was thankfully convicted, but the investigation went no further than him) that I recently acquired. To start with, I wanted to lay out the full dossier: Police agency (NYPD?) interview of "Choctaw Joe" (p.2-6 of dossier) - https://imgur.com/a/wExwKeK Key details include: A description of how the JonBenet connection developed (which is what I discussed above) Paul Schultz had a homosexual lover named Tenorio Luga (fake name? I have yet to find anything on him) who worked for the Mexican Mafia and CIA as well as the ATF. Some unidentified ATF agent (likely Roland Ballesteros, who incidentally had earlier been involved in the disaster at Waco) disclosed that Luga was under investigation. Char Blasier, a PI who was the wife of O.J. Simpson defense attorney Robert Blasier, reported that shortly after JonBenet's murder, a man claiming to be a member of the Ramsey family (Patsy's father Don Paugh? John's voice would probably have been recognizable) contacted her saying "I want to talk to you about Paul" but hung up before she could answer. Blasier had also been told by a tabloid reporter on the Ramsey case that Boulder police chief Tom Koby, formerly the second-in-command on the Houston PD under chief Lee Brown (who himself oversaw a coverup of the Atlanta child murders during his time as Atlanta's public safety commissioner), was involved in child pornography while in Houston. I have heard from an additional source who validates this information about Koby. Another name to come up as one of Nick Schultz's likely abusers was that of Jerry J. Moore, an incredibly wealthy Texas real estate magnate. A reporter for the Globe tabloid who had done a story on the suspected connection of Psalm 118 to the authorship of the Ramsey case ransom note purportedly told CJ that his own investigation had turned up Moore's name. Affidavit to the Pearland Police Department summarizing Nick Schultz's disclosures (p.7-14 of dossier) - be warned, this is especially heartwrenching and graphic at times; there can be no doubt that Nick suffered awful abuse at the hands of his sick-excuse-for-a-father Paul Schultz and the many people in the cult whom Paul allowed to abuse his son in this way Key details include: Even well after getting free from the clutches of the cult, Nick still felt in danger from them, an indication of the threats and power that ritual abusers try to project onto their victims When legendary Houston music producer Huey Meaux appeared on TV after his arrest on child molestation charges, Nick recognized Meaux as one of his abusers Tenorio Luga was specifically named in Nick's disclosures. Luga was said to be dealing in a non-American currency (likely pesos in keeping with his reported Mexican Mafia ties) and to have owned a two-story house where primarily-Latino children were held captive. Nick was clearly being groomed for a leadership role in the cult based on his compatibility with their apparent neo-Nazi ideals: there was a ceremony with prayers in his honor, his father told him he was special due to fitting the Aryan ideal and being of German descent, and Paul also told him he would grow up to be the Antichrist One of the leading members in the cult was "First Star", who had "a widow's peak and evil eyebrows" (sounding very much like a familiar Lt. Col. in Army intelligence). Later, when Nick's mother happened to be watching a video to learn about cults, Michael Aquino's voice came on the TV and Nick immediately recognized it as the voice of "First Star". Something the cult would often do to their murder victims was to cut off their hands and save them for some reason (might this have some relationship with the Hand of Death cult name?) Certain targets of the cult appeared to be for organized crime-related reasons: Nick recalled his father and Tenorio going to Galveston TX (a major port city) where Tenorio shot at one of the ships, and also recalled the group murdering a police officer List of names given by the other WEU victim Lauren Roberts (p.15 of dossier) Key details include: Lauren also mentioned "Tenorio" and Jerry J. Moore (and her description of Moore is accurate), overlapping the information from Nick Schultz She specifically recalled the term "White Eagle Underground", which corroborates the suspected tie-in to the terror/cult network that CJ had been investigating A Dr. Bruce with an unknown last name had some connection. What's curious is that Arlis Perry's husband Dr. Bruce Perry was practicing in Houston at the time, specifically in the field of child trauma; he consulted on major cases like Waco (as, recall, did Roland Ballesteros, another individual in the WEU case), the OKC bombing, and Columbine. Cult Awareness Network summary of Nick Schultz's abuse (p.16-17 of dossier) Key details include: Nick was prostituted out by Paul Schultz to pedophiles at adult bookstores in Houston in exchange for cocaine and money Children were evidently being taken across the Mexican border into the US, held captive (at what sounds like the same house he described Tenorio as owning), and used in child pornography, human sacrifices, or sold to other pedophiles (quite reminiscent of the jobs Henry Lee Lucas described being given by the Hand of Death) One location in Dickinson TX where Nick described his abuse as occurring (the Dickinson Bayou, per the earlier affidavit about Nick's abuse) was a castle used for grand events including the annual Christmas party of the local police department In a description eerily reminiscent of Jeffrey Dahmer's activities, this group reportedly froze and later ate body parts of some of their murder victims The Houston PD, in investigating the Huey Meaux pedophile case, apparently substantiated Paul Schultz's connection to Meaux and multiple other Houston pedophiles "Choctaw Joe" reports on the WEU's background (p.18-23 of dossier) - https://imgur.com/a/FIGPbMM Key details include: Pam Lychner, an activist against child sexual abuse whose group Justice For All was pursuing the Paul Schultz case, died in the crash of TWA 800; it happens to be the case that TWA 800 was likely shot down by the Navy and passed off as an accident, though most such "conspiracy theories" still make it seem like an accident by the Navy instead of perhaps a targeted hit Paul Schultz ran (along with his wife Belinda) an air filtration business inherited from his father, which gave him and his wife access oil refineries all over the Gulf Coast. His mother purportedly told Belinda that Paul and his brother "Buddy" (in the air filtration industry also) were both involved in the mafia, and the Schultz family ties there may have been generational. The White Eagle Underground was led by a group known as the Star Chamber, consisting of military and intelligence officers (from the CIA, Army, and Air Force in particular) as well as foreign terrorists from places like Germany, Russia, and the Middle East Beyond its involvement in weapon, drug, and human trafficking (all likely under CIA auspices), the WEU was implicated in acts of domestic terror. They were stockpiling planes and helicopters, and planning assaults on government facilities and major population centers. They were also said to have chemical and biological weapons such as anthrax under their control, thanks to some of these foreign terrorists. (This might be starting to sound quite reminiscent of 9/11, or the Columbine shooters' plans to hijack a plane and crash it into NYC, or likely OKC bombing perp Andreas Strassmeir's plans to obtain a 747 for unspecified reasons...) The WEU has many bases of operation, including the Church of the White Eagle Lodge in Montgomery TX, the Cherokee Ranch in Sedalia CO where Tweet Kimball (former wife of high-level CIA officer Merritt Ruddock) owned a castle playing host to many prominent individuals, and the Brotherhood of the White Temple / Shamballa Ashrama also located in Sedalia. The OKC bombing is believed to be the work of the WEU Now I have finally received the court record from Paul Schultz's thankfully-denied appeal, which includes the full transcript of his original trial. I have to think of the best way to share the information, since I don't think it's fair to a sexual abuse victim like Nick to just post their abuser's entire trial on the Internet without curation. But there are some major parts of it worth sharing, which I will be posting. Note for when I cite the appellate record: the trial record is in contained within 7 documents, one called CR 1 and then RR 2 through RR 7 (presumably they mean Court Reporter and Reporter Record).