Show full transcript 0:25 the postcard perfect scenery. 0:27 If you're ready to discover what's beyond the trailhead, 0:29 and listen to Park Predators wherever you get your podcasts. 0:33 Hi, Grime Junkies, I'm your host Ashley Flowers. 0:36 And I'm Britt. 0:36 And today, I'm gonna tell you about a case 0:38 that nobody thought would ever be resolved. 0:41 One that spent decades collecting dust in a file box 0:44 at the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Office 0:46 with nobody even assigned to it at all 0:49 until two detectives decided to take another look. 0:53 And all of a sudden, after 40 years, 0:56 years, the hazy picture of a fatal 1983 burglary gone wrong started to come into focus and 1:04 preserved DNA evidence revealed a twist that no one saw coming. 1:10 This is the story of Dorothy Toby Tate. 1:46 Let me take you back to November 15, 1983, just before 11 a.m., when sheriff's deputies 1:53 are dispatched to the scene of what seems like a car accident on a dirt road just 1:57 off Highway 1 by the beach. There, they find a 1980 Chevy campervan, like halfway off the road. 2:05 Its passenger side fender is damaged, the hood is slightly bent, and both front passenger windows 2:12 are shattered. Though it's unclear what caused the damage because there is nothing else around. 2:19 It doesn't look like the wreckage from a fatal crash by any means, more of like a low-speed 2:23 speed collision. But someone was clearly injured. There is blood spatter by the driver's seat 2:30 and blood running down the inside of the driver's door. Strangely, though, both the driver and 2:36 passenger seats are empty. And that's when deputies notice something is seeping out 2:42 from the closed sliding door of the van and like pooling in the dirt. And when a deputy 2:48 body slides open, the van's rear door, he finds the source. 2:52 It is coming from the woman who must have been in the driver's seat, because she is 2:57 laying on the floor of the cargo area, clearly dead from a wound to her head, which is where 3:02 all that blood was coming from. 3:04 But there is no way she got that wound from this minor crash. 3:09 It is a single gunshot wound below the woman's left ear, from a .45 caliber pistol that 3:16 killed her. 3:16 Now, there's also a dog in the van with this woman, alive and unharmed, and then there 3:22 is another dog wandering around outside. 3:25 And judging by the two leashes still draped around this woman's neck, those were likely 3:30 her babies. 3:31 Now how everything fits together isn't totally clear yet, like when the crash happened 3:37 or how she got from the front seat to the back. 3:40 But one thing is clear, there may have been a vehicle collision, but this death 3:45 was not the result of an accident, this was murder. 3:49 And judging from the trail of blood droplets 3:52 leading away from the van, 3:54 somebody walked away from this incident alive. 3:58 But who that was 3:59 and what role they might have played in this, 4:02 only time would tell. 4:04 For now, they felt pretty confident 4:06 that their victim was Toby Tate. 4:09 She didn't have a wallet or an ID in the van, 4:12 but luggage in the back that had a name on the tags 4:14 along with an address in Texas led them to Toby's family. 4:19 So that's how investigators began 4:21 to fill in some of the blanks. 4:23 They learned that 41-year-old Toby 4:24 was the oldest of three girls, 4:26 and according to her sister Priscilla, 4:29 she was a free spirit. 4:30 She had spent her adulthood traveling 4:32 around the country in her van, 4:34 which she named Esmeralda. 4:36 And I love a woman who has led multiple lives, 4:40 not in a devious double-life kind of way, 4:42 but the kind of person who takes chances, 4:44 who's tried things and like reinvented themselves in hopes of finding something or finding themselves. 4:50 So Toby traveled all over with Esmeralda. I mean, she picked up gigs as a nanny, a bartender, 4:56 a photographer, even a dog breeder at one point. And all along the way she would gather friends. 5:02 In fact, just as an aside, Priscilla told us that after Toby died, their dad was just 5:07 downright shocked at the number of letters that started coming in from people mourning Toby 5:11 from all over the country. 5:14 Now, in the years before her murder, 5:16 Toby worked on an indigenous reserve 5:18 in British Columbia, restoring a church, 5:21 and then she moved back home with her family in Dallas, 5:23 where she designed gardens. 5:25 But she had just bought her own house in Colorado, 5:27 where she planned to grow her cleaning business. 5:30 Okay, but Colorado, what was she doing 5:32 out in California then? 5:33 She was being an amazing niece because Priscilla told us 5:36 that Toby had driven up to the Bay Area 5:38 because one of her twin aunts had passed away 5:41 and the other one had never spent a birthday alone before. 5:45 So Toby's plan was to like take her van, 5:47 take her two dogs out there to like be with her aunt. 5:49 And then from there, she was gonna travel down to LA 5:52 to visit a friend, like kind of camping along the way. 5:56 Now detectives are able to confirm 5:58 that Toby had made it to her aunt's house. 6:00 She was actually there the morning before she was found. 6:02 This would have been November 14th, 1983. 6:05 And then she did from there, 6:07 her and her dogs took off for LA. 6:09 But from the location of the crime scene, 6:12 it seems like she only made it about halfway. 6:15 A receipt on Toby's dashboard showed 6:17 that she had checked into a campground by the beach 6:19 on the same afternoon that she had left her aunts. 6:23 It's Sam Simeon State Park, 6:25 which is about 10 miles from the crime scene. 6:28 Now, detectives checked this out to see 6:30 if anyone there had seen her with people 6:33 or noticed like somebody paying attention to her. 6:35 Nobody had. 6:36 But that might have been because, as detectives learn from a ranger, 6:42 Toby had done a self-registration, which is what you do when there is nobody on duty. 6:46 You basically fill out a receipt, attach your money to it, 6:48 and then like drop it in this little lockbox. 6:50 Strangely though, when the ranger looks into this, 6:53 he finds two receipts for that same campsite. 6:57 He finds Toby's, and then he finds another person's. 7:01 Except this second person didn't fill out their receipt properly. 7:06 Like, they wrote down their name, but under license plate, they just put Arizona, like 7:10 no number. 7:12 And of course, investigators are wondering if maybe this is where Toby encountered somebody. 7:17 But it's also possible that this double registration was just a total fluke, because it's not like 7:22 she was attacked there at the campsite, right? 7:24 Now, they determined that she died sometime in the evening hours of the 14th. 7:30 And it happened right where she was found at the beach. 7:33 Not the campsite. 7:35 So how do they know that exactly? 7:37 Because all of the evidence that paints a picture for them. 7:40 Starting with what they find from Priscilla. 7:42 So she says that she talked to her sister on the phone 7:44 the night before her murder. 7:46 And Tobi said that her dogs had never been to the Pacific Ocean. 7:50 So she was going to head south to LA 7:52 and she wanted to take them for a run on the beach. 7:55 Now Tobi was fully clothed when she was found. 7:58 Even had her shoes on and socks on. 8:01 But the coroner found sand between her toes. 8:04 So that, the call with Priscilla and the location of her van just steps away from the beach and kind of bring things into focus. 8:12 So investigators think that Toby left her campsite that evening, safe and sound, went to the beach with her dogs to run, 8:19 and then when she got back to her van, she was ambushed. 8:23 But they think that it all started about 20 yards up from where the van ultimately landed because up that way is where they found a bullet casing. 8:32 So, they think that Toby started up her van, as evidenced by them finding keys in the ignition 8:39 and it being in the on position. 8:41 But just as she began to move, whoever ambushed her was still standing outside of her van 8:46 and shot her through the driver's side window, which they can tell from the shattered glass. 8:51 They can tell that from the bullet trajectory and the blood patterns. 8:54 Given the location of the gunshot wound, she would have died instantly. 8:58 But the thinking is that the van continued rolling after Toby had been shot, so it wasn't 9:05 until her van hit something that it knocked her foot off the gas and then like rolled to 9:11 a stop. 9:12 And investigators believe that something was likely the suspect's vehicle, probably 9:17 one of the only other vehicles out there at the time of her murder. 9:25 Precisely. 9:25 Now, because she died instantly, they know that she couldn't have crawled into the back 9:32 of the van on her own. 9:33 Meaning the suspect moved her there then. 9:36 Correct. 9:37 It seems like the suspect gets into the van and drags her out of the driver's seat into 9:41 where she would ultimately be found in the back. 9:44 And they dropped something while doing this. 9:48 A cigarette is found next to Toby's body in the back, and she wasn't a smoker, 9:53 So they think that it probably fell out of the suspects pocket like while they were moving her 9:58 Okay, but what I can't figure out is like why stick around to move her and risk getting caught like that's gonna take more time 10:04 So the detectives that we talked to theorize that like this whole ambush was just some kind of robbery scheme 10:10 There's no sign of sexual assault 10:12 But valuable items were missing from Toby's van like her wallet and this camera that her family said that she had with her 10:18 So, the theory that police went with at the time was that the suspect probably wanted to buy some time to get what they came for 10:25 and then like get out of dodge and they're thinking that like a body slumped over in the driver's seat is 10:30 People are gonna notice that 10:31 Yeah, that's gonna draw a lot more unwanted attention as opposed to just like a van that maybe looks like it got into an accident 10:36 There's no one there, maybe it's abandoned, no one's there, you don't think about it 10:39 Yes, so that's what they went with but as I was like in this, I don't know why, I kind of wondered 10:44 If maybe they had to move her like in my mind, I don't know to grab a wallet and a camera 10:50 That's quick like you do it and you clear out of there. Who cares if somebody sees 10:55 But what if her van? 10:58 Right, we're saying it hit their vehicle like what if it kind of like locked into it? 11:02 Like is it possible that they needed to get her out of the driver's seat so that they could 11:05 Move it to dislodge their car without causing more damage 11:09 And like we asked about this and the detective said that sure that's possible 11:13 but that's not the theory that early investigators ever ran with. 11:17 Either way, the damage caused by the collision was their potential saving grace 11:23 because even though investigators don't really know anything about their suspect, 11:27 what they can put out is information about their suspect's vehicle. 11:31 The California Highway Patrol has this accident investigation team 11:35 that can basically analyze everything about a crash, paint transfers, tire tracks, types of 11:40 damage, and then predict what kind of vehicle was involved. And here's what they get. I'm actually 11:45 just going to have you read it. Okay. Suspect vehicle, unknown make, half or three-quarter 11:51 ton pickup with a bed height of 42 inches to 43 inches, color gray or silver gray with 11:57 damage to the driver's side rear corner of bed and bumper. Vehicle has a wheel base 12:02 of 129 inches and the bed is rectangular. It may have a camper shell on bed. 12:09 So, crime stoppers puts this description out and offers a cash reward for information while 12:14 investigators check with any local body shops in the area to see if any truck matching that 12:19 description has come in for repair. And they also scour the local pawn shops looking for Toby's 12:25 camera. They come up with nothing on either front. Okay, but you're saying they're looking 12:31 like locally. Highway one basically runs up and down the entire state of California, right? 12:36 Yeah. So this guy doesn't have to be or stay local. 12:40 Yeah. And if he's not, that's just going to make this case all the more difficult to solve 12:44 with the resources that they had in 1983. Because there is no nationwide print databases, 12:51 forget DNA databases, they can't... Yeah, like they can't make DNA profiles yet. 12:56 I mean, did they get any physical evidence from the scene? I mean, 12:58 it sounds like there was that cigarette, but anything else? 12:59 So yeah, they found that cigarette, they collected it, but that wasn't a used one. 13:04 So I don't even know how hopeful anyone was about that. 13:07 What they were more keyed in on was a coat can that they found near the scene. 13:11 They were able to pull some latent fingerprints off of that. 13:14 And after not finding any suspect prints in her van, 13:17 this really was their best shot at IDing somebody. 13:21 Though it's only good if they have somebody to compare these prints to. 13:25 Yeah, tell me if I'm missing something, but it might not be connected at all. 13:29 right like like a beach location I asked but according to detectives the can was 13:34 close enough to the van to be considered within the crime scene but I mean like 13:38 but it could have been there before there is nothing saying definitively that 13:42 it was left there by Toby's killer so I think they would probably have a hard 13:46 time ruling people out just based on the coke can but if there is somebody 13:50 that you can rule in right like and if you have someone that you're already 13:54 looking at and you're like yeah and they happen to match the coke that 13:57 another story. That would place them there in the same spot where Toby was murdered. 14:02 And depending on what else led them, right, like you're saying, like, again, it could give them 14:05 something. Right. Like, did they have a great truck that was in the shop or on the camera? 14:10 Exactly. And actually, for almost two years, they have very few people to compare these 14:16 prints to. I mean, we're grasping at straws here. But then one day in November of 1985, 14:22 like out of the blue, investigators get a call 14:25 from the Bakersfield Police Department in California, 14:28 which is like two and a half hours east of San Luis Obispo. 14:31 Turns out they had been contacted by a local pawn shop 14:35 because somebody had just brought in Toby's camera. 14:45 One of the simplest, most powerful ways to build wealth 14:48 is something most people overlook, 14:49 actually earning interest on your savings. 14:51 But here's the problem. 14:52 Most banks pay you next to nothing, 14:54 a fraction of a percent. 14:56 Your money just sits there doing nothing for you. 14:58 That's where SoFi comes in, the everything app for smarter money. 15:01 With SoFi checking and savings, you can track your spending and save toward your goals. 15:05 And with eligible direct deposit, you can actually earn eight times the national average savings rate. 15:09 Terms apply. 15:10 You'll even get paid up to two days early with direct deposit. 15:13 And you can access additional FDIC insurance up to $3 million on your deposits through a network of participating banks. 15:19 And right now, you can also earn up to $400 cash bonus when you open a SoFi checking and savings account 15:24 and set up eligible direct deposit of at least a thousand dollars, terms apply. 15:28 Plus, you can manage your finances all from one app. 15:30 Whatever your needs are, SoFi is there to help you get smart with your money. 15:33 Open your SoFi Checking and Savings account today. 15:36 Head to sofi.com slash CJ Bank to get started. 15:39 SoFi Checking and Savings is offered through SoFi Bank and a member FDIC. 15:44 Hi, crime junkies, Britt here. 15:46 I know too many of you guys, I might just be a voice in your headphones 15:49 or a face that lives inside your screens. 15:52 But believe it or not, 15:53 But when this episode ends, I continue to exist. 15:57 I know. 15:58 Wait, what? 15:59 And while I'm doing that whole existing thing, I am so much more than just your favorite 16:04 podcast's co-host. 16:06 I invest time in my family, friends, work, interests. 16:10 I love to crochet and cook. 16:13 I listen to music and podcasts. 16:15 I like to travel. 16:16 All things humans like to do. 16:19 And YouTube has found its place in pretty much all of it. 16:22 And that's why I'm so excited to share with you how YouTube Premium has taken my daily 16:27 life and made it absolutely seamless. 16:30 YouTube Premium's ad-free experience means I don't have to pause my latest crochet project 16:35 while I wait for ads to roll or scramble to wash the sticky mess off my hands mid sourdough 16:40 loaf to hit skip. 16:41 And I love that I can indulge in all the niche interests living rent-free in my head 16:46 and dive down deep rabbit holes like Applejack's role in my little pony friendship as 16:52 magic or watch hours long video essays learning everything about anything completely uninterrupted. 16:59 Anyone else? Just me? Okay. And that convenience doesn't stop when I'm on the road. One of the 17:06 most important steps on my travel prep checklist is downloading YouTube videos and shorts to 17:10 keep my kids, my husband and myself busy on long flights and road trips. And when I'm 17:15 traveling alone, I can load my phone up with episodes from some of my favorite shows 17:19 like Vibe Check and Good Hang with Amy Poehler. 17:22 So I don't have to worry about what I'm going to listen to 17:24 while I'm running to catch my next flight. 17:26 And as if the endless video content wasn't enough, 17:28 with YouTube Premium, I can stream all the music I want on the YouTube Music app, 17:33 ad-free. 17:34 And with mixes and playlists tailored especially to my tastes, 17:37 I never fall into a music rut. 17:39 So yeah, turns out I have a whole life outside of Crime Genki. 17:44 Whatever I'm into and wherever I am, 17:46 YouTube Premium is right there with me. 17:48 Stream Crime Junkie and the rest of your favorite creators without limits on YouTube Premium. 18:05 Back in 1983, Toby's camera had been entered into the automated stolen property system. 18:12 So when somebody tried to pawn it, two years later, 18:15 the serial number immediately flagged as a stolen item. 18:18 So that's how the pawn shop knew to call authorities, 18:21 and then the sheriff's office sprang into action. 18:24 The man who pawned the camera was named Michael Lee Queen. 18:28 But of course, nothing is that easy. 18:32 Once investigators track him down, he tells them that he got the camera from somebody 18:35 else. 18:36 So they track that person down to, what do you know, he also got the camera from somebody 18:41 else and this is the camera that has lived a thousand lives because investigators ended 18:45 up tracking these camera handoffs down for like about a year through like four more 18:51 people all the way back to a gas station owner in Bakersfield. 18:55 And he tells investigators that he bought the camera from two men who walked into his gas station one day and offered him the camera for a hundred bucks, which he decided to buy for his son's birthday. 19:07 Neither man identified themselves, and there was no record of the transaction. 19:11 Of course. 19:11 Now the guy did his best to describe these two guys, like I know they tried making composite sketches, but I don't know how good they were or how much faith investigators had in them, because as far as I can tell, those were never released to the public. 19:24 I mean, is there a chance they think he was lying? 19:27 I don't get that impression at all. 19:28 And according to detectives, like, nobody in this whole camera 19:31 line matched the prints from the scene. 19:33 Like, they tested everybody. 19:35 So I think— I don't know why they didn't pass out the photo, 19:37 but, like— 19:38 Like, everything in everybody's story was lining up. 19:40 And they're pretty sure that everyone they talked to 19:42 was not Toby's killer. 19:44 And at this point, detectives told us that 19:46 the case was about as cold as a cold case could get. 19:51 It got put on a shelf, 19:53 and that's where it stayed for decades. 19:56 There was nobody even assigned to it. 19:59 All the while, Toby's family was struggling to make sense 20:02 of how and why their lives were suddenly upended. 20:05 I mean, the grief was like an infection 20:08 that continued to just like rip through their family 20:11 long after November of 1983. 20:14 Two months after Toby's murder, 20:16 her dad died of a heart attack, 20:17 which Priscilla says she knows 20:19 was because of a broken heart 20:20 because her heart was broken too. 20:23 And she told us that Toby was the only person in the world 20:25 who really accepted her for who she was. 20:28 And in the wake of her death, Priscilla stopped believing 20:30 in God, she stopped going to church, she stopped singing. 20:34 Toby's younger sister Judy struggled with alcohol use. 20:37 Though that didn't stop her from calling 20:40 the Sheriff's Department every year 20:42 for updates that didn't come. 20:44 And Judy's daughter, Elisa, 20:46 who was seven when her aunt Toby died, 20:48 she grew up with her own struggles. 20:49 In 1996, she ended up taking her own life. 20:53 Eight months after that, Judy passed away too from a tragic accident where she fell down 20:58 the stairs on Toby's birthday of all days. 21:02 So Priscilla, the only Tate sister left, took on the responsibility of calling the Sheriff's 21:09 Office every year. 21:11 And while she said that they couldn't have been more kind, she didn't get much more 21:15 than Judy did. 21:16 And she sort of just resigned herself to thinking that like, crimes like these are never solved. 21:22 Like it's just never going to go anywhere. 21:25 Still though, she never stopped calling. 21:29 And in hindsight, those calls might have done more to move this case forward than anything 21:35 else. 21:36 Because fast forward to 2018, Priscilla thinks to call the sheriff's office after 21:43 the Golden State Killer is arrested to ask if he could have been the one to kill Tobi. 21:53 But his MO was totally different. He never attacked anyone in their car. 22:00 So, they're pretty quick to tell her they don't think he's their guy for this. But Priscilla 22:06 is in the right head space because there was evidence 22:11 collected and preserved in Toby's case 22:14 that could eventually be used to solve it 22:17 the way that the Golden State Killer was, right? 22:19 Like it was just gonna take the right detective 22:22 to come along and do it. 22:24 Enter Detective Clint Cole. 22:27 Now he's not new, he has been 22:28 with the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Office 22:30 since 1990, he actually just resigned this year. 22:34 But in 2017, he became the first investigator assigned to the agency's newly created position of cold case unsolved homicide detective. 22:43 And that's why, about two years after Priscilla called asking about the Golden State Killer, she gets this out of the blue call. 22:52 And on the other end is this man who says, hi, I'm Detective Cole, and I'm going to solve your sister's murder. 22:59 I've said it before, I'll say it again. 23:00 and I love this guy. 23:02 Yes, this is not the first time 23:03 that we have talked about Detective Cole. 23:06 And that's because this man is out here 23:08 solving cold cases right and left. 23:10 I mean, yeah, he's the one who helped 23:11 solve the Kristen Smarts case. 23:13 Yeah, and he was San Luis Obispo kind of sheriff's office, 23:16 first and only cold case detective, like I said. 23:18 So as you can imagine, when he comes in, 23:22 he does have dozens of cases on his docket. 23:25 That's why he didn't get started on Tobi's until 2019. 23:28 But this man has a process. 23:31 Before he ever makes that call to Priscilla, he has to get his ducks in a row, right? 23:36 He digitizes the files, cataloging testable evidence. 23:39 And while the detectives back in the day honed in on that coke can, to coal the blood droplets 23:46 leading away from Toby's van are what really seem promising. 23:51 The droplets suggest active bleeding. 23:54 We know that Toby never left the inside of her van. 23:57 So that means somehow the killer probably like he probably cut himself not granted like could her 24:04 Blood somehow have been on something maybe but they don't they don't think that that's the most likely scenario and sure enough 24:10 When he sends that sample that thank God they still had preserved that he sends it off to be tested 24:16 What they get back is an unknown male DNA profile that doesn't match anyone in the CODIS database 24:23 So definitely not the Golden State killer because he's already there. Yeah, he's in the system by that point now because 24:31 This is California their laws allow you to search coders for familial links, too 24:37 Like does the killer have a brother or an uncle in prison? 24:40 So this even like widens like their search pool, but even that comes up empty, too 24:46 so the next step is 24:49 genealogy 24:49 Detective Cole gets a profile created to start looking for potential relatives in genetic databases, 24:56 and then he has to hit pause. 25:00 Because that is right when the Kristen's smart case starts breaking, 25:04 and per Sheriff's orders, he basically has to drop everything else to get that across the finish line, 25:10 which obviously he did. 25:12 So Toby's case gets kind of punted to others who can at least pitch in part of their time to help keep things moving. 25:18 It's not like it totally stops. 25:20 And they get CC Moore at Paribon Nanolabs involved. 25:24 And as she works out the family tree, 25:26 she passes off leads to Cole's partner, 25:29 Detective Jeff Roboshotti. 25:31 And of course, it was not easy, never is, right? 25:35 They find the suspect's father. 25:38 Great, but- 25:39 But this guy has no record of having sons. 25:40 Of course. 25:41 So then they have to map out mom's family tree. 25:44 And that's when they realize that their suspect 25:46 was raised by a different man 25:48 and probably never knew his biological father. 25:51 And anyways, I am zipping through a lot of work 25:55 that took months to complete, 25:57 but in the end, they do get a name. 26:00 The DNA belongs to Stephen Hardy. 26:04 And that name is nowhere in the files. 26:09 So Detective Robochotti's next step 26:11 is to find out everything he can about this guy. 26:14 But everything he learns just ends up confusing him more. 26:20 Now, by this point, Stephen Hardy is deceased. 26:22 So it's not like Robeshottie can just go talk to him, but nothing he is seeing is making 26:27 him think that this guy is really their suspect. 26:30 Like Hardy was a Vietnam war vet who grew up in Ventura, California. 26:34 He lived a fairly low key life. 26:37 He separated from his wife after the war, but they continued to see each other. 26:41 He was a chain smoker, struggled with drinking, 26:44 but importantly, had no felony convictions ever. 26:49 Now he had like a record in California for some DUIs 26:52 and other minor alcohol related charges, 26:54 but nothing involving violence that Roboshadi could find. 26:58 Okay, but isn't that kind of always the story now 27:00 with a lot of IGG matches? 27:01 I mean, the Golden State Killer 27:03 kind of wrote the playbook, 27:04 like unassuming, normal life. 27:07 But at the time, Roboshadi is like, 27:08 He had never had a case of his like this before like this was a first 27:13 And he just did not know what to think well 27:16 And I mean I brought up Golden State Killer 27:17 But he also had murdered more than a dozen people over the decade 27:21 This would just kind of be a one-off right murder right and it's not like Hardy's DNA pings on any other cases in 27:28 Kodis right plus there was a real issue 27:32 Roba shoddy could never put Hardy in San Luis Obispo 27:36 Honestly, he said if he didn't have this guy's DNA saying he was there, he likely would have 27:43 looked the other way when it came to this guy. 27:46 There were only two things that stood out that made them really believe that the blood 27:51 evidence wasn't some kind of fluke. 27:53 One is that 30-something-year-old Hardy, who has a girlfriend and a steady job, suddenly 28:00 did seem to have become transient after Toby's murder. 28:04 almost like something set him off down a different path. 28:07 Mm-hmm. 28:08 Two, the family member that connected him 28:11 like through genealogy was Hardy's sister. 28:14 And when they talked to her, 28:15 she told them that around the time 28:18 that the murder happened, 28:19 her brother had this pronounced limp. 28:22 And when she asked him about it, 28:24 he said that he was out on Route 1 28:26 trying to help a woman whose car 28:28 was on the side of the road 28:30 when this oncoming car ran over his foot. 28:34 And RoboShotty thought, like, that's a really weird story to tell, eerily similar to kind 28:41 of Toby's whole situation. 28:42 Yeah, I mean, don't people say the best lies have like a grain of truth to them? 28:47 Yeah, and like plus, like Detective Cole's in his eyes, he said, like, if a car hits 28:50 you on the side of the highway, like, you're gonna have a bit more damage than just like 28:54 a little bit of a limp. 28:55 Yeah, like a limp is almost like a car actually like slow rolled over your foot. 29:00 I don't know going at a super low speed in a parking lot, right? 29:05 So Role Bouchotti can't put his finger on it, but even still, even with these two 29:09 weird things, something just isn't sitting right. So he decides to double 29:15 confirm by going back to the evidence, to the one thing that they have been 29:20 using to rule people in or out since 1983. The prints on that coke can. 29:24 Right. So he taps a woman named Shelby Liddell, this forensic specialist 29:29 with the sheriff's office who we're told is something of a wizard when it comes to fingerprint 29:33 analysis. Roboshotti basically says to her like, hey, we have a suspect. Can you run the prince 29:39 from the scene against him to confirm? Typically what that would mean is that Shelby would get the 29:44 exemplar prince from the suspect and the latent prince from the soda can and look at them side 29:50 by side. That is not what Shelby does. And the reason why is important. She doesn't want 29:57 confirmation bias to get anywhere near her work, 30:00 especially if she has to defend it in court. 30:03 So rather than do this like one-to-one comparison, 30:06 before ever pulling the exemplar prints, 30:09 she decides to just run the latent prints 30:11 through the FBI's print system, again herself, 30:15 like start from scratch. 30:17 And actually, before I get into this, 30:19 like quick crash course on this, 30:20 like on how it works, 30:21 because I don't think we've ever like gone over it. 30:23 And I actually, I know we haven't 30:25 because I didn't truly know myself 30:26 until our reporter Nicole like sat down in the lab with Shelby and got a master class. 30:31 So the basic process is like you run a latent print through the system 30:34 and it returns a list of possible matches with a score. 30:38 Not just like this is it. 30:39 But like 100% is the best and then like 75% is pretty good, 25% is like TBD. 30:45 So then it's up to the lab tech to like go in and independently verify everything. 30:49 So this is what Shelby does with the co-cam prints. 30:52 But when she gets the list back, the scores aren't even super great. 30:56 So she starts going through the matches one by one, 30:59 ruling them out, ruling them out. 31:01 And when she gets to number four, she is like, 31:03 okay, bingo, this is a make. 31:06 I've got a match here. 31:07 So that's when she goes and she looks at the name 31:10 and it is not the suspect name that detectives gave her. 31:15 So just to double check, 31:17 she tries the whole process again with another print 31:19 that was lifted from like a different finger from the coke can. 31:22 Runs through the list, finds a match, looks at the name. 31:24 same guy, not their suspect. 31:28 And Shelby literally has like a second person 31:31 double check her work just to make sure, 31:33 but they reach the same conclusion. 31:36 The Prince do not match Stephen Hardy. 31:40 They match a man in the fingerprint system 31:42 named Charlie Snead, 31:45 and this dude is from Texas. 31:48 Like at least with Stephen Hardy, 31:50 he was in the same state, right? 31:52 So it's even harder to be like, why is his print at the scene? 31:56 So once again, Detectives Roboshotti and Cole don't know what to make of this, 32:00 but they know that none of the science is wrong. 32:03 It has been checked over and over again at this point. 32:07 They're missing a piece of the puzzle. 32:09 But we said at the top, like the Coke can might not be connected. 32:13 Yes, and maybe you could write it off that easily, 32:17 except when they look into Charlie Snead, he is exactly the type of person who would commit a crime like this. 32:32 I used to think cameras were enough, but they just record. 32:36 Simply Safe is different. They understand that break-ins aren't just about the house, it's about the people you care about inside. 32:42 Having a security system has always been a top priority for me, but knowing Simply Safe isn't just going to sound an alarm, 32:47 they're actually designed to be proactive about keeping us safe, 32:50 has made me trust them with my home and family for years now. 32:53 While other security systems react once a break-in has begun, 32:56 SimplySafe is built to keep threats away from your door in the first place. 33:00 Their AI-powered cameras alert live agents who intervene in under 30 seconds 33:04 and speak through the camera. 33:06 They stop an intruder in their tracks and call for urgent 911 dispatch when it's needed most. 33:10 Join the more than 6 million people who entrust SimplySafe with their home security. 33:14 Right now, save 60% off with professional monitoring when you visit simplysafe.com 33:21 And when you order, be sure to write in Crime Junkie in the checkout survey. 33:25 It lets them know we sent you and it really helps support the show. 33:28 Simply safe, ahead of crime in real time. 33:36 Charlie Snead is from New Brunfels, Texas with a violent history. 33:40 I'm talking a destroyed car being reckless with guns and literally holding someone hostage. 33:46 So let's start in June of 83. 33:48 This is just five months before Toby's murder. 33:51 her. 33:51 Snead was in the process of divorcing his wife and he had decided to go over to her 33:55 best friend Debra's house to pay her a visit because for some reason, he blamed her for 34:01 the divorce. 34:02 Now, Snead didn't want to talk to her. 34:04 He went over in the middle of the night with a high-powered rifle to shoot up her car 34:09 while in the driveway. 34:10 What? 34:11 So aggressively, by the way, that Debra thinks he was trying to blow up her car. 34:15 She obviously woke up and when she looked out her window she saw Charlie in the street 34:20 putting the rifle back behind the back seat of his pickup truck before just like driving off. 34:24 Silver or silver gray or gray pickup truck? 34:28 It doesn't say in this report, but there is another report that brings up this truck. 34:33 So three months after that incident in September of 83, this is now just two months before 34:39 Toby's murder, Charlie Snead went out to a random area in like the middle of nowhere, 34:45 Texas highly intoxicated and just starts shooting off his rifle at nothing. Unbeknownst to him, 34:53 on the bluff directly above him, were two New Braunfels police officers on break. So they go 35:00 down and arrest him for a reckless discharge of a firearm. Their report makes note of his 35:07 1983 beige Chevy pickup truck, and not gray or silver. 35:14 What kind of vehicle did Hardy have? 35:16 So this is the thing, we don't know what Stephen Hardy drove, but not for a lack of trying. 35:22 I believe you. 35:24 Okay, so were these two working together? 35:28 Maybe, but the detectives still don't have anything that connects Harvey and Steve. 35:33 They might be, but we have no idea why or how they would be. 35:36 They're not from the same place. 35:38 They're not related. 35:39 So that's what Roboshadi goes in search of. 35:41 Like what is the connection here? 35:44 So what he does is he tracks down one of the officers 35:46 who arrested Snead back in 83. 35:49 Now he's retired by that point, 35:51 but Roboshadi is looking for anything. 35:53 Like point me in the right direction even. 35:56 Well, immediate jackpot. 35:58 This officer remembers Charlie Snead all right, 36:01 knew him really well actually 36:02 because the two had gone to school together. 36:05 So now comes the important question, had he heard of Stephen Hardy? 36:10 And right away, the officer's like, yup, he was here for about a month or two, and 36:14 he and Snead used to run together. 36:17 Robeshottie ends up confirming that when he finds a criminal record for Hardy out 36:21 of Texas, he was arrested for a bad check in February of 1984, and this would be after 36:29 Toby's murder now. 36:30 Now, Robeshottie's also able to find a number of stolen vehicle reports filed 36:34 killed by Hardy to San Antonio Police Department. 36:38 And this is where he went down a rabbit hole, trying to connect Hardy to a silver truck 36:44 with the right damage, but he never could. 36:47 Still, in all the digging, there is clearly enough connecting these two men around the 36:53 time of the murder. 36:55 And there's physical evidence that suggests both of them were at this scene, that 37:00 They were likely working together to rob Toby 37:03 and then one of them pulled the trigger 37:06 before they both fled the scene. 37:08 This is the theory that detectives Cole and Robeshottie 37:12 present to the ADA, 37:13 along with all of their supporting evidence. 37:17 And on January 7th, 2026, 42 years after Toby's murder, 37:22 the DA writes back saying that there is 37:24 sufficient probable cause to support a prosecution 37:27 of the suspects if they were still alive, 37:31 because Snead is also deceased by this point. 37:34 So we'll never know who pulled the trigger. 37:38 No, the murder weapon has never been found, 37:41 but given Snead's history, 37:43 both detectives believe that he was the shooter. 37:47 Interestingly though, 37:49 when Hardy was arrested in 1984, 37:52 they fingerprinted him and on the fingerprint card, 37:56 They mentioned that he had a scar on his lower left index finger. 38:02 Which, when you think back to, like, the crime scene, what he's connected to.
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