Episode 1: A Single Shoe

[00:00:00] Who Killed Beth-Ellen, Episode 1?

[00:00:10] The lights have added me to help you.

[00:00:13] Yes sir, hey my name is Matt Duff, I'm a private investigator and I'm working on an old case

[00:00:18] from Raleigh, North Carolina. A vehicle was found outside of L'Oreal Pontiac. Did you use

[00:00:24] the work for that car lot? I did.

[00:00:29] The summer of 1994, the week before school started back, there was a car lot. It was right off

[00:00:38] Capitol Boulevard on the service road. Well when the guys were pulling into work that day

[00:00:43] they saw a car out front of the gate. The radio was on, the driver's door was open

[00:00:50] and there was a shoe in the floorboard. It was a lady's platform sandal.

[00:00:57] I don't know if I was the first one to see the car that morning because I usually went

[00:01:07] up and had to get up the top two buildings and then I had to use car manager.

[00:01:12] Unfortunately, it was Steve Matthews and he's passed away trying to think that anybody

[00:01:17] might have been working there at the time. The other two that were there early, they've all passed

[00:01:22] they passed away too.

[00:01:24] This is the oldest unsolved murder in Raleigh, North Carolina.

[00:01:31] And four days later this was in the Raleigh newspaper.

[00:01:37] The parents of a missing 17 year old girl say they hope she is just off on a rebellious

[00:01:42] teenage adventure but admit they fear the worst is time passes.

[00:01:48] Beth Ellen Benson is a lifelong student of modern dance and a former beauty queen whose car was

[00:01:53] discovered abandoned. Parked sideways in the driveway of the Capitol Boulevard used car

[00:01:58] lot on Tuesday. That's what really worries her parents. The car, a white 1990 Mazda 626

[00:02:08] was a prized gift from them that she had had for only a few months. Her mother Penny

[00:02:12] Benson said by telephone on Friday,

[00:02:14] We're scared to death.

[00:02:17] We feel like the longer it takes, the less chance we have of getting her home.

[00:02:23] The teenager attends Southern Wayne High School in Goldsboro where she will be a senior next year.

[00:02:29] Goldsboro is a rural town, a little over an hour south of Raleigh.

[00:02:34] She was crowned queen of the Wayne County Agricultural Fair last year.

[00:02:39] Following conflicts with her parents, the girl wanted to be on her own for a while during the summer

[00:02:44] so she moved to Raleigh the week of July 4th her mother said.

[00:02:49] She and a girlfriend planned to move into a West Raleigh apartment with two young men they had met

[00:02:54] but the other girl backed out Mrs. Benson said.

[00:02:58] Beth Ellen had taken dance lessons since she was two years old.

[00:03:02] Her whole life was dancing.

[00:03:05] She won national and state competitions and had attended professional sessions in New York with Gregory Hines.

[00:03:10] It was her dream to move to New York to become a professional dancer.

[00:03:14] She danced every afternoon into the late evening on weekends.

[00:03:19] Mrs. Benson said several months ago, her parents gave her the Mazda.

[00:03:23] The only thing that makes us this parent think of Val Play is that she left her car.

[00:03:30] She loved that car. It was her pride and joy.

[00:03:34] Mrs. Benson said their daughter told them she was working at a Windixi grocery store.

[00:03:39] I really, really don't know where she is.

[00:03:43] She's very naive and trusting. If she's not safe now, she's scared of death.

[00:03:49] If she is where she wants to be, I'm hoping she's happy.

[00:03:55] What was the family like when they get the call that police had found her car and she was missing?

[00:04:02] Well.

[00:04:03] Beth Ellen's aunt Pansy, her mom's sister.

[00:04:06] I left work and then went straight there and I was going to stay until they found her.

[00:04:12] You know, when Panty told me that she had been abducted or something that she's missing.

[00:04:18] My immediate response was she probably ran off to New York.

[00:04:29] Like, it just was to me so matter of fact, like she's fine.

[00:04:35] She would do these little run-off things.

[00:04:42] Like I was almost wanted to be, I wanted to be one of the people that thought maybe she had, you know,

[00:04:46] going off to New York as crazy as it sounds.

[00:04:50] Thinking that a 17-year-old could actually get to New York.

[00:04:56] But if anybody could have, I think she would have been the one.

[00:05:00] And so I wanted to believe that, you know, honestly because I didn't want to believe anything else.

[00:05:06] And why do you say that if anybody could have made it, there would have been her to New York?

[00:05:12] Because she had wanted it for so long which, you know, looked before her actually moving out and I wasn't

[00:05:18] about, you know, that.

[00:05:20] But I mean, she was, she was old, you know, pretty bold to have moved out and moved, you know,

[00:05:28] to Raleigh and doing the things that she was doing and looked at that's why I say anybody could have.

[00:05:33] I mean, she probably could have and would have.

[00:05:37] She just wanted it that much.

[00:05:39] I would have never thought of doing anything like that and say it was just, it was very bold to me like,

[00:05:47] I don't want.

[00:05:48] She's not afraid to do whatever she wants and get what she wants.

[00:05:57] Yeah, I was in my college dorm room by myself and I turned on the news and I saw her car and I knew something was wrong.

[00:06:05] This is Erica.

[00:06:13] Because she had my mom's shoes on and I saw this shoe in the, in the news because my mom gave her these

[00:06:21] platforms shoes that she couldn't drive with. They were so high, they were from the 70s, they were so old.

[00:06:27] So she would take one off the drive with and that's what I saw in the video and I'm like, I knew something was wrong.

[00:06:39] In the early 90s this building had no exhaust fans whatsoever.

[00:06:44] So in the early 90s I put these two exhaust fans here to pull air through because they would get hotter and you know what, and they're in the summer.

[00:06:53] So seven days after Beth Ellen's car was found this guy Craig Wade, he was the manager of a distribution warehouse at the time.

[00:07:02] I'm out here with Craig Wade outside his building.

[00:07:06] All of this was just a little hill where you see all that dirt was trees, pine trees

[00:07:13] and whatever.

[00:07:15] He was pointing to a plot of land in between his building and the warehouse next door.

[00:07:20] There's about a 30 foot wide plot of land that runs in between the buildings all the way behind the warehouses to a big marshy field.

[00:07:28] There's a drainage ditch that runs between the two buildings down to that field and you got about 10 feet of flat land outside of each building with about a 10 foot ditch that dips down in the middle.

[00:07:41] Today the land is clear just dirt but back then it was thick with trees.

[00:07:47] How we first discovered or realized something was amiss, we knew about the little girl missing, young lady missing.

[00:07:55] And these fans were pulling in air, aroma, come out the front and I just walked over here on this little embankment.

[00:08:06] And as I came out here, I mean it was very clear.

[00:08:10] I mean she was laying I think face down but she was covered with a piece of cardboard and all I saw were the two legs sticking out.

[00:08:23] So I went in and called the police and they came out and did their thing.

[00:08:27] They had a whole crew out here on top of my building, on top of that building looking for weapons and whatever.

[00:08:33] So from the roadway though, you want to walk on back here.

[00:08:37] It had to come from the road.

[00:08:39] She had to somebody pull in at this parking lot and pull it there.

[00:08:42] That parking lot right there?

[00:08:43] Yeah that's my opinion.

[00:08:47] The parking lot of the warehouse next door which at the time was some kind of furniture distribution center.

[00:08:55] It was cheap furniture.

[00:08:56] You have two or three guys working over there but I never knew their name or anything.

[00:09:02] I'm surprised that no one working there would have seen very couple days.

[00:09:07] You would think.

[00:09:11] Now the cardboard that she was covered with, would that have been cardboard from where?

[00:09:16] Probably from this business here from furniture, boxed furniture but again I don't know that.

[00:09:25] There was no logo or anything.

[00:09:26] I didn't stay around long enough to look at it.

[00:09:28] With the size of that cardboard, it was pretty good size.

[00:09:32] But it was something they were using that size cardboard.

[00:09:36] I would think so.

[00:09:38] But if you put money on it you would say that the cardboard would have come from there.

[00:09:43] I'm there.

[00:09:44] Yeah.

[00:09:45] They didn't bring it with them.

[00:09:46] From the look of the news clips, I'd say maybe a six foot by four foot piece of cardboard.

[00:09:51] Right because it was too large for a car.

[00:09:54] And there was no other cardboard around.

[00:09:57] That was the type of thing where cardboard would be laying around and outside the...

[00:10:01] Possibly.

[00:10:02] There was a dumpster or two over here.

[00:10:05] Where were the dumpsters?

[00:10:06] Right.

[00:10:07] Where you see that stack of whatever it is there, that's where the dumpsters were.

[00:10:12] Oh okay.

[00:10:13] So yeah, that would make a lot of sense.

[00:10:16] The dumpster would have been in the corner of the parking lot closest to the wooded area.

[00:10:20] The corner that was facing Craig Wade's building.

[00:10:23] You walked straight back about 50 feet from where the dumpster would have been.

[00:10:27] And a few feet towards the ditch, that's where Beth Ellen's body would have been.

[00:10:32] This is always stuck with him.

[00:10:34] This used to be a troubled area.

[00:10:37] Oh really?

[00:10:38] Yeah, oh godly.

[00:10:39] We had break in after breaking here.

[00:10:41] But they would take anything that was not nailed down.

[00:10:45] We had a lot of...

[00:10:46] Up here in this area, you had a lot of homeless people.

[00:10:50] Pointing across the street to another wooded area.

[00:10:53] Yeah, this looked like it could still be a city area now.

[00:10:57] But back then, it's right off Capitol Boulevard, but just turned down a couple streets.

[00:11:02] And it's kind of a secluded road of warehouses and woods.

[00:11:06] And then it curves around and spits you back onto Atlantic, another major street.

[00:11:11] They thought that she would have been murdered right here.

[00:11:14] So far I've gotten limited information from the police

[00:11:17] because I've been told that this is still an open investigation.

[00:11:20] But one thing I was told by a detective

[00:11:23] was that they did believe she was killed in this wooded area, where her body was found.

[00:11:28] The detective didn't go into details.

[00:11:30] But I figured because apparently there was no blood found in her around Beth Ellen's vehicle.

[00:11:35] And no blood was found in these parking lots.

[00:11:38] No drag marks in the dirt, that kind of thing.

[00:11:41] They thought that she would have been murdered right here.

[00:11:45] What do you think?

[00:11:47] Possibly I don't know.

[00:11:49] She was taken from her car and brought here where she was...

[00:11:54] I wouldn't be a bit surprised if I hadn't thought about it before, probably.

[00:11:58] But she may have been murdered here.

[00:12:02] Because the car was up there and she was here.

[00:12:07] If somebody had to have another car to bring her down here...

[00:12:11] I'm guessing that, now that's just strictly...

[00:12:14] Well yeah, knowing the area is there any way from where her car was

[00:12:19] that she would have ran to this location?

[00:12:26] I don't think so.

[00:12:28] When you come on back this way, you'll see what I'm talking about.

[00:12:32] This was always a constant problem because there's a drainage pipe

[00:12:38] goes under where that telephone pole is.

[00:12:42] That supposedly fed the water over the Crappery Creek.

[00:12:46] It constantly stopped up so this was almost a lake most of the time but not the day we found it.

[00:12:54] Aside from the water drainage issue,

[00:12:56] although this location was only about a half mile away,

[00:12:59] it takes about five different turns on five different little streets to get back here.

[00:13:04] Being chased on foot here seems unlikely.

[00:13:08] She would have had to have been snatched out of her vehicle,

[00:13:11] leaving the door open, radio playing, her shoe on the floorboard...

[00:13:17] and then driven down here.

[00:13:20] Yeah, this kind of thing couldn't happen today with all the security cameras and all.

[00:13:25] It doesn't look like there's too many security cameras out here.

[00:13:28] When we were here, they were never any security cameras.

[00:13:32] They probably have some over there.

[00:13:38] We walked through the mud to the other side of the ditch

[00:13:42] to the old furniture warehouse side.

[00:13:46] What you see here was just a field of weeds and scrubbugs.

[00:13:56] Now we're in the other parking lot.

[00:13:59] And then the dumpsters would have been about right here.

[00:14:02] Right where you walking there?

[00:14:06] Right here, actually. They stood out.

[00:14:12] Somebody knew it area. I've always thought that.

[00:14:15] I mean they weren't...

[00:14:17] they didn't know so arbitrarily right back here.

[00:14:22] Somebody knew the area.

[00:14:25] Especially coming back here at night, it was dark.

[00:14:29] And so yeah, your thought was that they would have taken the cardboard from here,

[00:14:36] probably drugged the cardboard 40-50 feet.

[00:14:40] Yeah. And they had to... in my opinion had to pull up in this parking lot.

[00:14:46] This parking lot, they wouldn't allowed them to take her body and lay it over there.

[00:14:53] She was... came out of a car here.

[00:14:56] That's it. You know everything I know now.

[00:15:02] I was there the day that they finally just had it.

[00:15:07] Bill said he wasn't getting the information.

[00:15:10] They didn't know anything. And so Bill and Bruhman...

[00:15:14] Bethellan's dad and brother said they were going to the police station.

[00:15:18] And they were going to demand some answers.

[00:15:21] And Penny was laying down, and we've gotten her to go to sleep.

[00:15:26] Again, Penny was Bethellan's mom. This is Aunt Panty.

[00:15:30] And phone rang, and it was the news of an observer, Rolly Pagra.

[00:15:35] They weren't sitting in the center. I said, well I'm sorry she's not available.

[00:15:39] Can I help you? And he said, yes we're just wondering how she feels now that they've discovered her daughter's body.

[00:15:47] And I just hung up the phone. I thought how cruel.

[00:15:53] And she just had to get the bill and Bill wasn't there. Bill had left her to go find out something on his own.

[00:16:01] And so she was there with just us and she was all the pieces.

[00:16:05] And she said, I've got it tell Bill. I've got to tell Bill. He's going there and he's not going to know it.

[00:16:11] And he was thinking the whole way home, him and Bruhman, we've got to go in and tell Mama.

[00:16:16] We've got to tell Mama. And so they just kind of met on the porch.

[00:16:21] And each one knew what they were thinking when they saw each other.

[00:16:30] I didn't know exactly where I was whenever I found out that they had found her body.

[00:16:35] It was our first day of high school, 12th grade.

[00:16:38] And I look and there is like a group of my friends.

[00:16:41] And you know, and of course being allowed to be in Asia. I'm like hey what's going on?

[00:16:46] And then I'm like looking at everybody and I'm like no really what is going on.

[00:17:01] I walked into my dorm room and I turned on the TV. And as it came on, I also hit the answering machine.

[00:17:08] And the answer machine was my mom's voice saying, Karen called me. It's about the cell in.

[00:17:15] And then the new story was that they had found her.

[00:17:22] I just never, I really don't think I had ever let my mind go to the idea that that was going to be the outcome.

[00:17:33] Like I just watched her so many times through this thing where she kind of ran away and came back

[00:17:40] and I just didn't ever think that was going to be the outcome.

[00:17:50] At 18 years old, to process that she was gone and to process that someone had done this to her

[00:17:59] that I wasn't ever going to talk to her again. And it was just so big and so sudden.

[00:18:08] And I think I didn't know how to process it.

[00:18:14] This is Beth Ellen's cousin Shannon.

[00:18:17] And I just, I don't see how anybody could do this to her.

[00:18:23] You know, I mean it makes more sense if they did it and they didn't know her.

[00:18:28] Because to know her you couldn't do that. Especially not in that way.

[00:18:38] Beth Ellen was stabbed to death, back there in that wooded area, between the two warehouses.

[00:18:45] Initially the newspapers reported it as multiple stab wounds.

[00:18:51] Years later it was made public that Beth Ellen was stabbed, quote, in excess of 15 times.

[00:18:58] Bill Vincent, Beth Ellen's dad told me the number he remembers the police telling him was 28.

[00:19:07] His daughter was stabbed 28 times and then covered with that piece of cardboard from the dumpster.

[00:19:22] There was a girl that I met, actually I met her at Beth Ellen's grave site, which was really weird.

[00:19:29] It was a few months after she passed and she was at the gravesite by herself.

[00:19:33] And I said gosh you know do I walk up with this girl there or not? When it's walking up there we sat there for two hours talking.

[00:19:40] She told me how she met Beth Ellen in high school.

[00:19:43] Karen was the friend by the grave.

[00:19:46] I met Beth Ellen my senior year of high school. She was a year younger than me and my last semester of my senior year we were together in a marine biology class.

[00:19:59] Everybody knew Beth Ellen, you couldn't help but know Beth Ellen who Beth Ellen was but that's where I really got to know her.

[00:20:08] Why could you not help but know?

[00:20:11] She was just this energy field.

[00:20:16] She was so talented I mean everybody knew her from some way whether it was that she had been clean of the fair or just you knew that she was this amazing dancer that had won all of these dance competitions.

[00:20:32] She really was just this amazing free spirit and by that year, by her junior year she dressed really differently than everybody else was just so exactly who she was.

[00:20:51] You know she knew who she was, she knew who she wanted to be and there was just this freeness about her that she had.

[00:21:01] I think most of us coming from a small conservative rural community were afraid we were afraid to be our authentic self and she wasn't.

[00:21:15] But how was her style different?

[00:21:18] She was wearing things like a long floral 90s dress with tube socks and combat boots or you know a t-shirt no bra which drove the haunt her seat and cut off jeans shorts and tube socks and combat boots.

[00:21:40] She owned it like no one else in the school could have worn that but she could and she just pulled it off.

[00:21:47] She was just this force really different.

[00:21:51] But if you wasn't your typical beauty queen, you know the high school beauty queen that wasn't her.

[00:21:58] Well no.

[00:22:02] This is Duranda.

[00:22:32] She had a dream of dancing professionally, going to New York and there was no doubt.

[00:22:39] Not only in my mind but in everybody else's mind that she could have totally made it as a professional dancer.

[00:22:47] You know I believe at a young age that her mom saw that in her and so I believe her parents did all that they could to help her chase hard after that dream.

[00:23:05] Was she really like the best in the class?

[00:23:08] I'd say so yes.

[00:23:12] You know a lot of girls have dreams of being a dancer on Broadway but you thought that it was certainly a possibility for her.

[00:23:19] It wasn't just a dream.

[00:23:21] Yeah no, no, no, no. It was certainly a possibility with her.

[00:23:25] She could have 100% made it professionally as a dancer.

[00:23:29] Not only in New York but probably anywhere in the world that she would have chosen to go.

[00:23:37] She was different and she felt like she was different and she was afraid people wouldn't like her because she was different.

[00:23:43] And like different things than what the norm which I think she kind of embraced that a little bit later in life.

[00:23:49] Kind of embraced life and you know to be a little different.

[00:23:53] It was the ground and everything I think she was kind of one of the first to kind of be grunge.

[00:23:58] I guess you would call it in high school.

[00:24:01] She was just fun. But the sun to be around we spent almost most weekends there out going with her on dance three ups and watching her dance and watching her competitions,

[00:24:11] pageant, all kinds of things.

[00:24:13] Heather.

[00:24:15] We were best friends from fourth grade-ish, on up to until fifth grade when we actually had a core accident.

[00:24:24] So it was Easter Sunday and she had got a new CD from the Easter really.

[00:24:29] And she called and wanted to come over and wanted me to hear that CD that she came over on her convertible, performance thing.

[00:24:35] And I didn't have a CD player anything in my house at that time because they were new.

[00:24:41] And so we hopped in the car, take off to listen to that CD and headed to Manol of you know just to hang out or whatever.

[00:24:51] And we didn't get not even two miles down the road and we were looking for a CD or cigarette lighter.

[00:24:59] I'm not sure what we were looking for.

[00:25:01] And she took her eyes off the road and smurved off the road ever correct to them.

[00:25:07] We had a truth.

[00:25:08] We pretty much hit it going 50, 50 miles an hour and pretty much straight on it was a little more on my side than hers which is how she, you know,

[00:25:16] didn't she just got little bruised up and all that but I remember them packing me up because I was airlifted to do.

[00:25:25] And I remember them packing me up and it hurt really bad.

[00:25:27] I don't remember anything else until I woke up a couple weeks later and I see what were the injuries you?

[00:25:34] I crushed, my right ankle was crushed, my left ankle was broken, my left femur was broken, my right arm was broken.

[00:25:44] I had a crushed vertebrae in my back.

[00:25:46] I had to wear like a back brace for nine months afterwards and both of my jaw bones and my nose were broken, lost my tooth.

[00:25:54] And sometime when I was in ICU one of my lungs collapsed.

[00:26:00] And what do you remember about the tourist conversation between you and Bethel and Athol?

[00:26:05] When she came and visited me at the hospital a couple times and I know one time she came and where I wasn't able to get up they had to sit on it.

[00:26:15] I don't know if you've ever heard of a tilt table and they like strappy onto it and stand you up and that hurt really, really bad.

[00:26:22] And her mama and her were coming in when they had me on that and I was crying.

[00:26:27] So for her, she's hurt me crying and hurting.

[00:26:32] I mean we just able to get this awkward conversation after that because like they should feel bad that she was driving anybody would.

[00:26:41] And then the next year when we started school we didn't have any classes together and so we didn't really see each other except in passing.

[00:26:48] So we just kind of lost touch.

[00:26:51] Some people have thought that after that wreck or I guess maybe that Rick in package or like she'd always been a little different but it seemed like even more so after that.

[00:27:12] I think we all at some point go through a rebellious phase and I think it was just maybe a time in her life where she was trying to figure out maybe what she really wanted and not say much what her mom wanted.

[00:27:25] Her mom was pretty controlling about her dancing and her school and her pagents and I think that's why Bethel and Reveal because she was just so controlled her whole life.

[00:27:37] Like her mom was kind of like one of the parents mom.

[00:27:40] Yes, a pagent mom.

[00:27:43] Yes, very much so if I asked Beth on a similar night well she's got to go to dance class or she's got to go to ballet or tap.

[00:27:51] She's always doing something with that and her mom wouldn't let her have much of the social life outside of that with her friends because she kept her into that stuff all the time and it kind of war on Bethel and over time.

[00:28:05] So your knowledge there wasn't like other family drama going on it was basically just that Bethel and felt like her mom was just overwhelming her with the dance and the pagents and all that kind of stuff.

[00:28:20] Exactly.

[00:28:22] And a lot of the times that Bethel and would run away that semester on the weekends she would run away from home and it was usually around something like her mom had entered her in another pagent.

[00:28:35] And Bethel and didn't want to do it anymore. She just felt like that just wasn't really who she was anymore.

[00:28:45] She definitely loved the dancing part she didn't feel like she was a beauty queen you know to do those kinds of things anymore.

[00:28:54] She really enjoyed being able to cut her hair off and you know diet a different color and and just kind of be herself instead of having to look like a girl that they thought should be miss other name.

[00:29:10] So when she would leave on the weekends where would she go just one of her many crowns or usually she would just end up at a friend's house.

[00:29:19] And I think she would even call her dad and like let her dad know like hey I'm over it and kill me.

[00:29:25] And I'm fine you know just it was more of a it was a safe rebellion.

[00:29:33] She would usually come see me at the restaurant I worked at it was like a 50 style diner kind of restaurant and she would come on a Sunday after all of that had happened to be like

[00:29:47] I have to go home I'm out of gas and I'm out of money. I'm going to have to go home and so I would feed her French fries and stuff until

[00:29:57] she was ready to go home you know we would talk it through because I'll be like we you have to get a school tomorrow anyway so you're going to have to go home and she would say I know I know and you could

[00:30:11] Beth Ellen always want to kind of get out of school for always want to get out of the small town or this is Erica.

[00:30:18] That started very young age she and I both collected things like we were old school people we would collect Maryland and Rose she wanted that lifestyle she wanted to be famous you want to all of that.

[00:30:31] She was ready to go like as soon as possible she wanted that life and I'm that's why she was doing what she was doing so she could go to New York because I want to say they went that year before when she met Gregory Heinz and she saw Broadway

[00:30:46] and all this these things that she could be doing and she was just ready to go she can wait.

[00:30:53] So that summer a month or two before the murder the timelines are fuzzy Beth Ellen and a friend tried to take a Greyhound bus

[00:31:03] to run off to New York this is Beth Ellen's friends dad she going to pack my little camera. They all packed up

[00:31:11] and I got wind that they were at the bus station but I pulled in my strings with the goals were pleased to buy them

[00:31:18] and they said they could not stop Beth Ellen from getting on that bus because it was stopped my job because of Kelly's age.

[00:31:25] Kelly was only 15 at the time and Beth Ellen was 17.

[00:31:29] I said well you do what you want but I'm on the way there and if you don't capture Beth Ellen I won't get her.

[00:31:36] I said let me go and I got no business leaving her and Beth Ellen got a mom of dad.

[00:31:40] They diverted me to the police department so they didn't want no sin and they got the girls.

[00:31:46] Beth Ellen surrendered and went on to the police department with her.

[00:31:49] Her daddy ended up taking her back home.

[00:31:52] But Beth Ellen didn't want to be back home and her parents couldn't legally keep her there.

[00:31:57] 16 year olds can live on their own if they want in North Carolina where she wanted to be was New York and the stepping stone was...

[00:32:05] Did you know that she had moved to Raleigh?

[00:32:08] Well...

[00:32:10] Beth Ellen's aunt Pansy.

[00:32:12] She kept that kind of a secret because they kept thinking it's not going to last.

[00:32:16] She's going to come home because Beth Ellen got mad at them because they would not let her go to Lala Palozo.

[00:32:24] And evidently it's a big rock thing like woodstock or something and they refused to let her go

[00:32:31] and she got mad and she left.

[00:32:36] And that's when she went to New Guinea with a bunch of people in Raleigh.

[00:32:46] They were just hoping that she would come home and I kept reassuring her.

[00:32:50] She will.

[00:32:51] I said, Penny she's going to get there and realize what she's giving up and she'll be back.

[00:32:58] And Penny said, I don't know.

[00:33:00] She said she was so mad at me when she left.

[00:33:03] She said the last thing that she said to me was I hate you and walked out the door.

[00:33:12] And tell you something that it just did in my heart since it happened.

[00:33:22] When I called Nancy, it was like three or five.

[00:33:25] We talked all night long.

[00:33:27] That's just the way we were.

[00:33:30] She didn't sleep.

[00:33:31] I didn't sleep.

[00:33:32] So after Beth Ellen had died, Penny kept telling me she just wished she'd do that.

[00:33:39] Beth Ellen wasn't heaven and Beth Ellen had forgiven her because the last thing she remembered her saying was

[00:33:46] I hate you when she walked out the door.

[00:33:49] And so one night Beth Penny called me and she said, Pancée.

[00:33:53] She said everything's okay.

[00:33:55] She said, Beth Ellen isn't heaven and she said, and she isn't mad at me anymore.

[00:34:02] And I said, well how did you know that?

[00:34:05] And she said that she was going through some cards and stuff that she had in a box.

[00:34:12] And she found a piece of construction paper.

[00:34:16] Now when they did Beth Ellen's tombstone, I don't know if you've seen it at the cemetery.

[00:34:22] It's a black tombstone and it's got actual pictures of her dancing shoes on the back.

[00:34:30] It's her dancing and background is Broadway.

[00:34:33] Her goal was to dance on Broadway.

[00:34:36] Anyway, her tombstone is black.

[00:34:39] I had to tell you that to get to this.

[00:34:42] Penny told me that night that she would go through some cards and look at some stuff.

[00:34:47] And she found this piece of construction paper that she said, I've never seen before.

[00:34:51] And I don't know why it was in my card box.

[00:34:55] But she said she opened it up.

[00:34:58] And in little kid's handwriting it said, Mommy, I love you.

[00:35:07] And on the other side was a hill.

[00:35:11] A little drawn hill and it had three crosses on it.

[00:35:17] And at the bottom of the hill was a black tombstone.

[00:35:24] That was Penny's dancer.

[00:35:26] She was with God.

[00:35:29] And she loved her.

[00:35:31] But Penny got released from that.

[00:35:35] She got piece of wine.

[00:35:38] This is Pansy's daughter and Bethel and cousin Shannon.

[00:35:42] You don't always think about it, you know?

[00:35:45] But when you do, it's like...

[00:35:50] It's raw and we just get upset.

[00:35:55] Of course I want it to be solved.

[00:35:58] I want justice for her.

[00:36:00] I want closure for the family.

[00:36:02] I want the killer to have to pay.

[00:36:07] And to have to know that Bethel had enough people caring for her and caring about her

[00:36:13] that we didn't stop fighting and hoping.

[00:36:16] Her friend Heather from the wreck.

[00:36:19] I just don't understand how it can be.

[00:36:22] How they just have not solved it in 29 years.

[00:36:27] I mean, I'm kind of a fan of true crime.

[00:36:30] And so you know, I watch all the IDs and you see these people that have...

[00:36:34] You know, went missing or whatever in like I think 70.

[00:36:38] And they're solving their murders and I just don't understand how it can be solved in this...

[00:36:44] It can't be solved somewhere or another.

[00:36:50] Then it very small part.

[00:36:53] And then her mom and dad got closure before she passed away.

[00:36:57] Penny died in 2017, 23 years after Bethel and Smarter.

[00:37:04] She didn't deserve it.

[00:37:06] She didn't deserve to go out like that.

[00:37:10] And for nobody, the knows what happened to her.

[00:37:14] And for nobody to have no justice to be failed

[00:37:20] for her failing and her failing.

[00:37:23] And I still understand how anybody can do that.

[00:37:26] So you have 17 year old

[00:37:29] and keep quiet for 29 years,

[00:37:34] and nobody knows anything.

[00:37:38] And I just don't understand how more hasn't came out.

[00:37:43] People aren't hurting saying or thought of anything.

[00:37:47] You have to deal with somebody. Somebody has to know.

[00:37:52] There has to be someone.

[00:37:56] Back to Bethel and his cousin Shannon.

[00:37:59] You know, I was so glad that my uncle Bill decided to talk to you

[00:38:05] because he didn't want to. He didn't want to bring it up again.

[00:38:10] Nobody does.

[00:38:13] We know but we have to do this for her.

[00:38:18] She deserves it.

[00:38:22] That's the last thing we can ever do for her.

[00:38:29] My name is Matt Duff.

[00:38:31] I'm a private investigator

[00:38:33] and I'm going to be working on this case until it's solved.

[00:38:38] My last podcast investigation,

[00:38:41] I was able to uncover enough new information

[00:38:44] that resulted in a stay of execution for a man on death row in Texas.

[00:38:49] I worked on that case for over four years.

[00:38:53] So I can generate enough new information

[00:38:56] to change the course of a case

[00:38:59] and I'll work on it for as long as it takes.

[00:39:03] Now the plan for this podcast is to release a new episode every month

[00:39:08] which gives me time for production and investigation.

[00:39:13] I'll be using this podcast as an investigative tool,

[00:39:17] a way to get Bethel's name back out there

[00:39:20] and heat this case back up.

[00:39:25] With the goal of having this case solved this year,

[00:39:29] 30 years is long enough.

[00:39:32] As more and more people start talking about Bethel and again,

[00:39:36] new information will surface.

[00:39:38] It always does.

[00:39:40] There are people out there with information,

[00:39:43] information for whatever reason they've been holding on to for 30 years.

[00:39:49] And some people may have information

[00:39:52] but they don't even know it yet.

[00:39:54] As this podcast continues to unfold

[00:39:57] and you can see more of the full picture,

[00:40:00] people will come to realize they do have a significant piece to this puzzle.

[00:40:07] And there's a lot more to the story.

[00:40:11] It's all a blur for me, it was an awful time.

[00:40:15] Well then I started questioning why was she in Raleigh then?

[00:40:19] Like you know who was she there with and why didn't I call her?

[00:40:23] That bugged me for so long

[00:40:26] and when I went to her parent's house,

[00:40:30] after the funeral I'm thinking or before the funeral,

[00:40:34] I can't remember.

[00:40:35] They told me that she was staying with a boyfriend

[00:40:39] and that she was in an escort service and I'm like what?

[00:40:43] If you have information about this case or no someone who might,

[00:40:59] call 1-866-TIPS-4-BE

[00:41:04] That's 866-847-742-3

[00:41:10] or email us at who killed Beth Ellen at gmail.com

[00:41:17] If you're in North Carolina and want to help, please email us.

[00:41:22] For more information on the case and to see pictures

[00:41:25] check out our website at Beth EllenPodcast.com

[00:41:30] and follow us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

[00:41:34] 2024, the year of closure for a family and justice for Beth Ellen.

[00:41:41] Thank you for listening and stay tuned.