Episode 5: The Stepfamily

[00:00:01] It sounds like everything's pointing towards me now. Yeah, you're looking forward to this. Who Killed Beth-Ellen, Episode 5 There were newspaper articles when everything happened back in August of 94. Then there were flurry of articles covering the anonymous letter in May of 95. The following month, more comprehensive articles were published.

[00:01:07] Some of the details in these articles we've yet to cover in the podcast. It was 2.30 am in the middle of a summer night when Beth-Ellen Vinson finished drawing on her eyeliner, took a long look in the mirror, and told her boyfriend not to worry.

[00:01:24] With an easy smile, she tossed back her brown hair, smoothed her skin-tight mini dress, and walked out the door. Beth-Ellen, 17, was headed for another escort service date, dancing for a stranger in a motel

[00:01:38] room. She was murdered before the sun came up. Friends and family have learned a lot about Beth-Ellen's final night last August, where she was going, who she was seeing, and how she ended up. They know she took risks, but they thought she was safe.

[00:01:58] They have a letter she wrote saying she was scared about her future, and a letter from someone else that claims her death involved a conspiracy and cover-up. What they don't have 10 months after the murder is her killer.

[00:02:15] Portia Merritt said Ricky told her that late on the night she disappeared, Beth-Ellen took a call and agreed to see a client at 2am. Ricky said he was concerned because of the late hour. He became more concerned, said Mrs. Merritt,

[00:02:30] when Beth-Ellen failed to return within 90 minutes, the usual length of time. So 90 minutes after Beth-Ellen would have left Ricky's apartment, would have been around 4am. And you'll remember from Jerry Faulk last episode. And then all of them wound up going to sleep around the same time, around 4am.

[00:02:54] Which makes you wonder if Ricky was really concerned. Why did he go to bed? Why didn't he drive to the innkeeper at 4am to go looking for his girlfriend? Making sure she was okay. Driving out in the early morning hours was apparently pretty common place to these

[00:03:20] guys. Brian and Walt just got back from Walmart at 3am. At that time in the morning, it would have only taken a little more than 10 minutes to get over to the innkeeper. Upcoming in this article, Ricky is quoted as saying,

[00:03:36] I think we were pretty serious. I was, he said. Well, if it were my pretty serious girlfriend, or I feel like most guys pretty serious girlfriend, I wouldn't be able to sleep. And if I'm not sleeping, I'm driving to the innkeeper.

[00:03:56] It's not like Beth-Ellen was hanging out at a girlfriend's house and could have fallen asleep on the couch. She was out on an escort call, something that would have already been eating at me, if I were her pretty serious boyfriend. But instead, the story is...

[00:04:18] And then all of them wound up going to sleep around the same time around 4am. I want to say it was around 7.30 that Ricky wakes up and starts calling around trying to

[00:04:29] figure out where she's at. And then he leaves at some point and starts driving around looking for Beth-Ellen. Ricky told his sister he went to look for Beth-Ellen and found her car, and police who had been called to the car lot.

[00:04:43] Now this is one of the more curious parts of the case. Beth-Ellen's family and most friends have always been suspicious of this. If Ricky didn't have anything to do with Beth-Ellen's murder, he wouldn't have known where her car was.

[00:04:56] He wouldn't have known it was parked in front of that used car lot. So how did he happen to just show up there? Well, this is how it was reported in the paper. Ricky was driving around on Capitol Boulevard because that was near the motel

[00:05:10] where Beth-Ellen was meeting the client, said Mrs. Merritt. The officer that was on scene at Beth-Ellen's car is named Masonic Stokes, quite a name. I was interested in any other details that Stokes could remember, Ricky's demeanor, that kind of thing.

[00:05:26] But after 30 years he couldn't remember much about the incident. However, John Lynch, one of the original lead detectives on the case, can add more insight. Yeah, I would say everybody was suspicious about it because it was an unusual situation.

[00:05:40] Geographically it was far away from where he lived, where his home range was. His story, which seemed plausible at the time and still does to a certain extent, is that he wakes up, decides he's going to go look for her because she has to come home,

[00:05:56] so he's going to go to the hotel. My recollection is he makes the same kind of error getting off on Capitol Boulevard that she made and he actually passes the car and he looks over and either,

[00:06:09] I don't think he recognizes it so much as her car, but he says that looks like her car. But he's still going up to the endkeeper to check on that. He goes to the endkeeper, the car is not there, then he realizes where the other car was.

[00:06:21] He goes back down to the car. Everybody thought that was suspicious that he showed up at the car. This is where it gets a little confusing because apparently he drove past what he thought

[00:06:32] might have been her car, but continued to go to the endkeeper to look for her car and then goes back to where he thought he might have seen her car. It was documented in the newspapers this way.

[00:06:43] A few miles from the motel, he recognized the peace symbol decal on her car, saw the police and thought there had been an accident. So here's where it's important to understand this location on the roadway. Soon we'll be posting a video which will illustrate the routes of travel.

[00:07:00] Coming from the NC State Department, if you take Interstate 440, you'd hop on 440 East, which circles around the north end of Raleigh. You'd be on the Interstate for about eight miles before coming to the exit for Capitol Boulevard where the endkeeper was.

[00:07:17] To go to the endkeeper, you'd go north on Capitol. Beth Ellen's vehicle was located heading south and that car lot was about the first place to pull over after taking that southbound exit. And Ricky's story was, he accidentally took that southbound exit trying to get to the endkeeper

[00:07:37] and noticed what could have been Beth Ellen's car. Everybody thought it was suspicious that he reached in the car. Everybody was very concerned that he reached in the car and turned off the stereo. And that was considered suspicious. It really was.

[00:07:53] But that in and of itself, you know, I mean, what does that really tell you? You know, you got to figure out what that means. You know. Now tell me more about him reaching in the car and how that all happened and what the officer did.

[00:08:08] Well, you see from the perspective of major crimes, when we get into a scene, the first thing we want to do is preserve the evidence. So we don't want people touching things. We don't want people going places. We don't want anybody manipulating anything.

[00:08:21] But Officer Soaks, he's just there on an abandoned vehicle call. So he's looking at it from the perspective of it's just an abandoned vehicle. You know, I got to get this vehicle out of here at some point.

[00:08:31] What's the deal with it makes a few phone calls and figures out, hey, the girl is missing that was in his car. And then lo and behold, her boyfriend shows up. So for Stokes, he's getting bombarded by a series of facts

[00:08:43] that are outside of the norm of what he considers the call to be. You know, initially back in 1994, did I have a hard time with Stokes letting the boyfriend get that close to the car? Of course I did. I did. I had a hard time with that.

[00:08:57] But you know, from his perspective, he was just out on an abandoned vehicle. And the boyfriend shows up and then this thing starts cascading into a much more serious or potentially serious situation. As detectives and bloodhounds arrived, Heath told police about Beth Ellen's

[00:09:17] escort date that night and how his roommates had returned soon after she left. They all stayed up for about another hour before going to bed. When he awoke, he called the escort service repeatedly but couldn't get an answer.

[00:09:38] Now do you remember anything from Stokes report about Ricky's demeanor or, you know, anything that he picked up on or any kind of notes just about Ricky showing up? No, no, there wasn't anything that I recall that was extremely significant.

[00:09:55] Yeah, so if Ricky had come up there or if Stokes did get some impression like, hey, you know, this guy seems to shovel. This guy seems, you know, there was something off about that guy. This guy who's telling me this story about his girlfriend missing.

[00:10:13] If it had been that type of encounter, you feel like, you know, that kind of information would have obviously been relayed to you guys. Right, right. Because every police officer conducts, you know, probably a couple hundred interviews every day. They talk to people about traffic tickets.

[00:10:29] They talk to people about minor infractions. They talk to people about gathering information about what happened when they reported crime. So they're constantly interviewing people, whether the person realizes they're being interviewed or not. The officer is gathering information and they're coming to conclusions.

[00:10:43] And so my recollection is that other than him turning off the stereo, which was suspicious, there wasn't anything else. And yeah, trying to think about it from the other side, if Ricky had something to do with the murder, even thinking about it that way,

[00:11:03] it's peculiar for him to have driven up to the scene to pull up right beside an officer. If you did have something to do with it, that would be putting yourself in a very precarious position right off the bat. If you're looking at it from that direction,

[00:11:19] would you figure a reason why he would have stopped to talk to an officer? You know, he wants to know, he wants to see what they know. Did they already find the body? Are they over here at the car because they found the body first?

[00:11:35] You know, he could figure out any number of scenarios that he's would be playing in his head to figure out, you know, hey, you know, I'm gonna, I'm so smart that I'm gonna do this and I'm going to see what they tell me. Yeah, that's obviously a possibility.

[00:11:52] I don't think that's what happened, but I mean, that's certainly a possibility. Again, it's all speculation. Nobody knows, only he knows and Beth Ellen knows right now what actually happened, but you can play what if for a considerable period of time just on that

[00:12:10] and people that want to think that Ricky did it are going to find the fact that he found the vehicle extremely suspicious and other people that aren't so inclined might say, huh, okay, so he's out there looking for the girl, you know, and he stumbles upon the car.

[00:12:25] He's trying to help. I mean, there's just so many different ways it can be interpreted. Back to the newspaper article from 95 and another crucial detail in the case. When Beth Ellen's body was found, her rings had been removed and her purse was missing, said Mrs. Merritt.

[00:12:46] Four rings, a silver spoon ring, a yellow gold mother's ring, with two amethyst stones on the outside and a garnet stone in the center, a silver mood ring, and another amethyst ring with yellow gold. The purse was very unique, cloth material, burnt orange and brown in color

[00:13:08] and the figure of a cowboy woven into the material. You can see pictures of these items on our social media and web. The rings, the car keys, the purse, those are still missing. And so maybe somebody, maybe somebody saw those rings in someone's belongings.

[00:13:27] Maybe somebody came across that purse, a set of unusual car keys with a New York City skyline, or they found some rings, you know, in their uncle's possessions after he passed, or they remember seeing this cowboy purse in the back of their dad's car or something.

[00:13:45] And there never really was an explanation to what that thing was there for, but that's important information because those items, they may no longer exist. They may have been disposed of. They may be trophies. They may be something that somebody is hung onto.

[00:14:00] And they may be sitting in somebody's basement right now or they may be somewhere that someone has seen them. They may be somewhere that someone has seen them and they recollect those items. And those items are right there on the VyCAP alert.

[00:14:14] We had recreations made of those items, all except the purse. And those things can be, they could be crucial to solving this case. And I don't think I was ever aware of the New York skyline part of the key chain.

[00:14:32] I don't think I've ever seen anything about the keys. Really? Well, the problem is that at various times in the investigation, we attempted to keep certain information completely confidential. Because that would be the way that we would be able to turn around

[00:14:51] and know that somebody had some involvement. I think we were pretty serious. I was, he said. She was one of the nicest people I ever met. She didn't care who you were or what you looked like. She could like you and I love that about her.

[00:15:17] She never told him about the rape or said that she wanted to get out. Looking back, he doesn't see anything he could have done to change her. I never really liked that, not at all. But I wasn't going to tell her not to do it, he said.

[00:15:31] I know a lot of people don't think I made the right decision, but I wasn't going to be a parental figure. I wasn't going to be her dad. She came to Raleigh to get away from that.

[00:15:42] She wanted to be on her own and I thought that's what she deserved. Investigators also have spent a lot of time grilling Heath. Police have searched Heath's car several times and interrogated him relentlessly, more than 15 hours in an interview room in those first two days.

[00:16:01] It was hell, he said. I pretty much just lost it. Investigators have continued to question him during the past 10 months, along with Beth Allen's friends and others, even as recently as this month. They said they still do not have a good suspect in the case.

[00:16:17] Heath's sister said he hasn't been the same since the murder. When they found her, Rick slept on the couch with Beth Allen's t-shirt draped across him. He couldn't talk. He was devastated. Portia Merritt said from her Mount Olive home. He walked around with that t-shirt for weeks.

[00:16:37] The man Beth Allen was supposed to have met said she never showed up. Mrs. Merritt said she was told both the man and a second girl hired from the service that night, passed lie detector tests, showing they were not involved in the girl's disappearance.

[00:16:54] At the time, it said Mrs. Merritt, police focused their attention on Ricky Heath, who had formed a relationship with Beth Allen. Mrs. Merritt said her brother failed the first lie detector test, but passed others. She said she believes her brother is innocent.

[00:17:15] Interestingly, a lot of that narrative came from Ricky and his older sister Portia Merritt. If they had interviewed Portia's then husband and Kelly's dad, David, the narrative would have been quite different. It sounds like everything's pointing towards me now. You're looking forward to this.

[00:17:37] Yeah, I mean, I think the only way that this thing is going to be solved because apparently there is a lack of physical evidence, it's just going to be putting some pieces of this puzzle together that for whatever reason, the cops haven't put together before.

[00:17:54] That's why I just want to see what everybody knows and kind of start there. But I was there and I saw some stuff no one else saw. Go ahead. However you want to, you got to ask questions and I'll answer them. I guess.

[00:18:11] Well, let's start with when you first met Portia. What year were that? Have been do you remember? No, I don't. You remember right here you got married? No, it was probably the same year I got divorced. Miranda was I was 19. Miranda was born. Miranda is Kelly's older sister.

[00:18:37] Her mama and I were married 19 years and then we got a divorce and now Miranda introduced me to Portia. This is Miranda. I dated Ricky in high school. I think it was our junior year. Like we went to a military ball together.

[00:18:52] I mean, you know, we just hung out. We dated just a little bit. And then I when I graduated, I went into the army at 18. And then I was only in a year and I got out and Ricky and I had kept in touch while I was gone.

[00:19:07] You know, it was time I was going to need a job when I got back and you know, all this kind of stuff. And he said, well, my sister, she needs help the actual weekend that you get home. Hang a wallpaper. She had a beach job to do.

[00:19:19] So I went with her that weekend and worked and came back. And when she dropped me off at the house, that's when she met my dad. And pretty much from that day forward, they were together. Miranda introduced me to Portia the same year.

[00:19:36] I was I was still living in the house that we owned. And I was at Portia's house that night eating a hamburger steak gravy and squash and other things. And that's that's what did it for me.

[00:19:50] So Portia and I, we stayed married for probably seven or eight years. And I divorced her because she tried to commit suicide plus. And I was about all I could stand. And I said, I'm not going to wake up and I have to do something like this.

[00:20:08] So that's what we split up for. Nobody quite knows the exact dates, but seems like David and Portia were married shortly before the murder in late 93 or early 94. And then were divorced around 99 or 2000. When you married Portia, I guess we bought a house together on 311 West James

[00:20:30] Street in Mount Olive, North Carolina. My middle daughter Kelly lived with me and Miranda had her own bedroom with her living boyfriend Michael. I forgot my phone's name, but anyway, and Portia had a daughter. There was three bedrooms upstairs. Her name was Kara.

[00:20:47] And then Portia had the two brothers, Rick and Dang, what's the other boys name? Go ahead and tell them. Brian. Brian. Yep. Now there was another third player in all of this. Another young man that was going to state with them.

[00:21:04] I called him 88 miles an hour because he looked like Doc. He wore glasses and had a bushy head of hair. David thought Walt looked like Doc Brown and back to the future. You probably know who that third guy is. They all stayed in the apartment on state.

[00:21:19] And I've been to their little apartment off campus there and set a carpet that had beer teams. So they were doing the college scene, but they were smart. They were not dumbasses. So Beth Allen was Kelly's best bud at the time.

[00:21:36] Next thing I know, Beth Ellen's having explosions at her house and can't deal with her mom. Next thing I know, Beth Ellen to run away from somewhere went to stay in Rawlings with them boys. The college guys all three of them.

[00:21:53] And then battle started then that Beth Ellen was just hanging out not really working and partying with them. And the guy wanted her to pay her way, her share. This is the best I can tell you, Matt. Somehow she got hooked up and she got into escort service.

[00:22:14] And Rich couldn't stand that shit. Rich and they were boyfriend and girlfriend. Now how do you know that Rich couldn't stand it? Okay, that particular night Rich reached out to his sister and she had got a call. Beth Ellen had got a call. This is what I remember.

[00:22:38] I can't tell you no times or dates. Rich couldn't stand her dating going out and meeting guys. And this particular night was late night. I was told by my porcins not Rich that the customer requested a black and a white girl.

[00:22:58] Okay, so Beth Ellen's hurrying up to get Rich and she made the mistake of this is what Porsche told me. Asking Rich how this looked. She had her little under things on and showing teeth and then sort of like and he couldn't stand it. So she went out.

[00:23:18] The black girl made it. Beth Ellen did. Somehow Beth Ellen was deterred off the side of the road pulled over in a little car lock and she went missing. Well here comes the strangest part.

[00:23:48] When Rich was notified or supposedly, I want there that she was missing, he comes to our house. And without asking me, he's staying there. And he would put a little blanket over his shoulders and that's dumb as hell. Like he did something. He was severely traumatized.

[00:24:11] Well couldn't you have been traumatized because he just found out that his girlfriend was murdered? Well first of all, Matt, she got missing. Instead of going to try to find her and lend a hand and do this and do that. He's trying to get away. He left Rawling.

[00:24:33] He left Rawling. Don't stay in my house. What? We ran. Do you remember how long he would have stayed at your house? A week? I don't. Too long. You wanted him out of there. Well, I didn't like the way it smelled the salt there.

[00:24:58] But that boy acted dumb as hell when all that was happening. Now what do you mean by dumb as hell? He just claimed up. He acted like if he thought about it, he'd go crazy to breathe the word about it.

[00:25:13] He'd be in trouble and he was trying his best just to be quiet and see if he could get away with it. Porsche caught me trying to squeeze on him a little bit. She jumped in my shit and told me leave him alone. Just leave him alone.

[00:25:33] And now she's never talked to me like that before. And right then I knew she knew something. She got pissed that I was trying to find out something. You know, stuff like where were you? What? But I could never get nothing out of him. He showed no emotion.

[00:25:52] He showed no crying. I can't believe someone did this to her. All that kind of stuff he would expect to see. He showed none of that. None of that. So he never, he never cried. Not like you would think. Not like you would think.

[00:26:11] I told you it was strange and I was totally leaving alone. So I didn't, I kept telling her when's he leaving? So and when Porsche, when you were trying to squeeze Rick, Porsche kind of tried to shut you down. That's correct. Oh yeah.

[00:26:30] And Porsche had never taken that tone with you before. Never. So if Rick did it, is there any doubt in your mind that Porsche would have known he did it? I think eventually he could tell. I think she died. I think she died knowing.

[00:26:48] Porsche died in 2014 at the age of 49. And you didn't notice anything different about her behavior after the fact like, you know, she had a secret that she couldn't tell anybody. Like, you know, she was being elusive or drinking more or not. Work. That happened. That's exactly what happened.

[00:27:18] Her work flowed away. She quit working and she started drinking. That's how she died. She drank herself to death. They found her in the motel room. I've done already divorced her and she tried to quit commit suicide twice.

[00:27:32] And you won't put all that together and say that's why? I can't tell you that but something happened to her because she was on top of her game. So she was successful with work but then after the murder. Little by little, she fell off the earth.

[00:27:48] Why do you think that Rick came to your house? He needed a place to get away from Rawling. He couldn't go to his mom and dad's. Why? Because it was horrible. He couldn't breathe if he went there committed crime. But he could come to Porsche's, his sisters.

[00:28:09] And he knew I'd go out with my daughters who were all teenagers. Good looking girls. And he was comfortable around my house. If you were going to run somebody in my house, it would be a perfect place to go. Chill out. That's why he did that.

[00:28:25] Was Porsche's demeanor with you just different after that? Yeah, I couldn't say nothing about it. I couldn't mention or breathe nothing about the incident or she would tell me to leave it alone. We're not even talking about it.

[00:28:39] But interestingly, Porsche and Ricky did talk about it to the newspaper. Craig Jarvis was a writer with a Raleigh News and Observer for about 25 years and the writer of the article read earlier. This is Craig Jarvis.

[00:28:54] One thing that struck me all along is that potential murder suspects don't sit down with reporters. At least that's my experience. White collar criminals tend to think they can talk it away out of things. But murder suspects, not so much.

[00:29:14] So that made me a little hesitant to buy in the story that it was definitely the boyfriend because it would be very unusual. Then would he lie about it in front of his sister or maybe he would? I don't know.

[00:29:30] That's just, maybe that's just what he would do. But it seemed there was a point where it seemed like everyone was pointing fingers at the boyfriend. And I was kind of going the other way thinking, well, maybe he didn't do it.

[00:29:41] There was a lot we didn't know then. You'd think there'd be useful DNA, other evidence. But still, Ricky and his sister made a compelling case. They described him as being distraught for days or weeks after her body was found.

[00:29:57] That was kind of my perspective on the whole thing. They just didn't. It was unusual. And when something's unusual, it's worth looking into. How many times would you say that you spent a little bit of time with Rick prior to the murder?

[00:30:17] I mean, are we talking five times, 10 times, 20 times? 25 times. We used to go eat at the parents. Their childhood life was horrible. Their dad, terrible. He would beat them boys. He'd make them do weird things.

[00:30:35] Of course, it was made to undress on the back porch every day before she'd come in from playing. So he'd wash her down with a hose. Weird stuff. This man was strange, their daddy. So they had a real rough upbringing.

[00:30:50] And then kids went through such hell as kids. They had a bond that they would protect each other. So I knew Rick and Rick always acted a little different to me. Brian was okay. He was cool.

[00:31:04] Well, did you ever know Rick or any of those buddies or forces to have a knife? No. Nope. That's gonna be a party. Celebrate the delicious E.M. all the time with Volt. Use your home delivery and make sure you order 24% discount on your order.

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[00:31:39] I asked Kelly, David's daughter and Beth Allen's best friend, the same thing. Just keep a knife on them. A lot of people have sometimes carry knives. Yeah, I know. I know they want those kind of boys. So they weren't country boys? Or how would you... That, no.

[00:31:55] I never just say like... I mean, I can go back and say I've seen Ricky snap one time that I'll never forget. What happened then? He had come over to the house with Kira. That was Portia's daughter.

[00:32:19] And she was younger and we had this little dog and his name was Rudy or whatever, but he was very protective over me. And like Kira had done something that kind of came close to me and the dog kind of like

[00:32:39] and the dog kind of like snipped at her and he grabbed that dog up and was like shaking him like crazy. And I had a sit and I said, Lee, because my parents went home. My dad wasn't there.

[00:32:53] He was at work and I just cannot wait to tell my dad. I was like, he was shaking that dog like a maniac. I know it's kind of good, but like it devastated me. Another friend told me about this same incident. She was there that afternoon.

[00:33:13] And like Kelly, even after 30 years, it still stood out in her mind too. Yeah, what did the dog do though? He just like kind of snipped at Kira because she was coming. She was like coming really close to me for something.

[00:33:31] I don't know if she was just like coming to lean on me or what it was. She wasn't like doing anything bad, but the dog, I think was sitting in my lap and he just like snipped at her and it scared her.

[00:33:42] And so he picked up the dog and was just like shaking him like crazy. And I just was like screaming like bloody murder, like you gotta leave, you gotta leave. Yeah, it is, I can say weird, like strange.

[00:34:00] I mean that's not the only time I've seen a mic like that, but still like stuff like that sticks out in my mind. I was in the dog kind of growls or scents that you, you don't pick up their dog and like, I like a crazy man.

[00:34:12] How big was the dog? He was a medium sized dog. He was mixed of a terrier and lots of stuff. Huh. Did you ever see Portia or Ryan snap like that? Back to Kelly's older sister Miranda. Well, let's go back to Bate and Ricky in high school.

[00:34:36] How long do you figure you dated them for? Oh, I don't know. It was on and off. I mean it wasn't like a serious thing. And so how was that relationship?

[00:34:47] It was fine. I mean, I don't, I know it like if you talk to my dad, he's gonna say, you know, he thinks Ricky is fishy and you know what I mean? Like he has something to do with it. I personally, I have never thought that. Okay.

[00:35:02] But I mean, I mean, you never know about people. You have no idea about people. In my opinion, I don't think that he had, I just don't think he had it in him to do something like that. But that's just my opinion.

[00:35:20] Yeah. Well, and do you think that just because you never saw any kind of above? Exactly. Exactly. I mean, I've told him, I was like, daddy, you know, I went out with Ricky. I knew him. We were friends and I just don't think he could have done that.

[00:35:34] And he's like, but Miranda, that's not how I see it. I see that night went horribly wrong and Rick told her not to go. She went anyway and he got so furious about it.

[00:35:45] He went after him and one thing led to another and he lost his damn mind. And you can say, well, accidentally killed her. I don't think he went and potentially killed her, but it ended up happening.

[00:36:00] Ain't nobody going to fall out of the sky, pull up in that traffic light. Hey, girl, pull over and not even robber. You hear me? That's the only thing that made any sense back then and still does to me.

[00:36:14] That's why I ain't found no, no, no person who did it. That's why this crime has not been solved. The guy got away with. And I was just like in such an aisle that like she really was missing.

[00:36:33] Like in my heart, in my mind, I really thought she had just taken off and gone to New York. And I never would have thought he would have done anything to hurt her. But as an adult now, I don't feel that way.

[00:36:51] I mean, I just feel like he maybe did it unless it was a complete stranger. But like what a bizarre situation, you know? I don't see her pulling over for any stranger. She's a very strong, real smart girl.

[00:37:08] I just don't like what I think her window was down. I don't see her doing any of that, like you talked to some random person. Ain't no reason for that girl to pull off the side of the room.

[00:37:23] I didn't find out for a long time, but that she was stabbed several times. No, you keep stabbing somebody like that over and over. You're mad. You're pissed. You're because I don't know if you've ever done that,

[00:37:36] but you can go outside right now, take your parking on that and start stabbing the ground. Hard with a lot of energy. You'll get tired. You know, it's not an easy task. And especially if someone's trying to get away and you got to hold them back.

[00:37:51] You think about it, man. It takes a lot of energy to do that. And you got to get the pull it off. You got to be super pissed off. See like back then I was defending them because you never thought this would happen.

[00:38:03] You never thought it would be somebody you know. I didn't know like all the details. And so like now knowing all that stuff, I do feel like he had something to do with it. Her body was a good way from the car. Then when I got all that,

[00:38:29] I just knew Rick tracked her down and had it out with her and chased her. And I felt like he stabbed her down. That's what I feel like the whole time. And I think the brother Brian knows and I think Doc knows.

[00:38:52] There wasn't no squeezing the brother Brian about killing on his brother. Brothers just don't do that. But Doc's the guy that you could squeeze and get a confession about knowing something because he's not related. There's no blood there.

[00:39:10] And he knows. He knows whether Rick did that or not. John Lynch, one of the main original detectives has come to his own theory on the case, which we'll go into detail on in an upcoming episode. And he came to the conclusion that Ricky didn't do it.

[00:39:33] Is that fair to say? For me that's fair to say. You can't you know I don't want you to blanketly say that for every single person. But I came to my own conclusions based on the evidence and it was not immediate. It certainly was not immediate.

[00:39:45] It was not quick. It wasn't even within the first you know probably week or so. But as time goes on and the things that that usually will click into place or the things that you will usually find when you don't find them,

[00:40:00] you have to come to the conclusion that there's some other reason why you didn't find them. Is Ricky such a master criminal that he's able to pull this off and have the time span of you know the very relatively short time span to do it?

[00:40:15] And then pretend the next morning that he's actually out searching for the victim. Do murderers search for victims? It happens all the time. It happens all the time. Pedophiles will do it. Kidnappers will do it. All kinds of people do it. It's not an uncommon thing to do.

[00:40:31] But in this situation, it just doesn't seem to line up in my opinion. And what are some of those factors that led you to that conclusion? You can't get past his alibi. If you believe his alibi, and once you know what the blood evidence tells you

[00:40:47] of the secondary crime scene, you're talking about a very narrow window. Once the timeline is established with the cab records, the phone calls, and all of these data points that you've gathered, and you can put them down on paper and you can figure out exactly,

[00:41:01] okay here's this happened, this happened, this happened. How much time did this guy actually have to do this? And even at the outside, you know, giving the roommates a little wiggle room as to the exact times that they might have come home,

[00:41:14] you're talking about a maximum amount of time of 45 minutes and a minimum time of 30. Just not enough time to do what had to be done in my opinion. And just walk me through your thought process of what would have had to have been done in that 30 to 45 minutes.

[00:41:39] In that timeframe, we know she left the apartment sometime after that phone call at 2 27, saying that she's en route. We assume that she's leaving pretty close to immediately after that, okay? So let's say we give her five minutes to put her stuff together,

[00:41:57] grab her keys and walk out the door. So now we're at about 35 minutes after two. Does she leave and he's down in the parking lot trying to get her not to leave? We don't know. But let's assume that she does leave on her own by herself

[00:42:16] and that he jumps in a car and immediately starts to follow her. Then he has to follow her along a significant portion of the route. And at some point in time, he has to get her to stop her vehicle.

[00:42:37] So how that happens flashing lights, pulling beside her, begging whatever. You know, there's no cell phone you're going to call somebody and say, hey, let's pull over. Let's talk for a minute. You know, that didn't happen because this is 1994.

[00:42:52] So then let's assume that she does if she does pull over for her boyfriend. Then they have to have an interaction at the car. And when they have an interaction at the car, it has to turn violent. And she has to be extracted from the vehicle.

[00:43:07] And the reason we're saying extracted from the vehicle is because you've got one shoe in the vehicle, the other shoe is on her. So she didn't voluntarily just get out of the car on her own because she would have been terribly off balance.

[00:43:18] And you know, it just doesn't make any sense. So she's extracted from the vehicle and then she has to get into another vehicle. She has to get in that vehicle. They have to drive six, 10 to a mile away. They have to drive down the road.

[00:43:31] They have to make a right hand turn. They have to make a left hand turn and then follow the road around to the right. Then they're pulling into a parking lot for the nationwide mattress warehouse. Then at that point, something happens where she comes out of the vehicle.

[00:43:47] Then she goes to the side of the building and approximately 29 feet after she passes the edge of that building is where the blood starts. And there's a lot of blood and it's a lot of fight and it takes a while.

[00:44:09] The victim bleeds for a while on the ground in one spot. And then the victim bleeds on the ground for a while in another spot. And then the victim is ultimately taken and placed in the ditch and covered with a piece of cardboard.

[00:44:34] And the suspect at this point is going to be completely covered in blood, probably exhausted. You're talking about driving time between every close apartment and a cab at Boulevard. So you're talking about somewhere in a 10 to 15 minute range, you know?

[00:44:54] And then you got to talk about the pull over time. You know, how long did it take for that negotiation to happen? And then you got to talk about the time where the two people are actually talking face to face. How long did that happen?

[00:45:09] So when you start thinking about all of those things, you eat 30 minutes up very, very quickly. And you're probably closer to 15, probably less than 15 minutes for everything to have happened at the crime scene.

[00:45:22] And for the person then to get themselves back in their car, collect themselves after what they've done. And drive back to their place, which was another drive time to get back to the place. And then be there in time for the roommates to walk in.

[00:45:36] Any appearance that nothing happened. And based on the blood evidence and everything else, in my opinion, there's no way he could have done that. And not have transferred, brought the transfer evidence to his residence. And that transfer evidence was not at his residence.

[00:45:55] There was no sign of any kind of blood. There was no bloody clothing. I mean, you can come up with a lot of reasons why there wouldn't be maybe. You can think that he might have cleaned it up before 7.30 a.m. or something like that.

[00:46:07] Yeah, that's all possible. But then you've got the roommates. Roommates walk in about three o'clock. He's sitting there. When you start looking at it and you actually start thinking about what actually happened at the crime scene. And you think about all the sequences of events.

[00:46:24] You either have to not believe the roommates or you have to say, you really have enough time to do everything that had to be done. But you already know there's a lot more to the story. Earlier this month I got this text from Beth Ellen's friend Karen.

[00:46:46] So after each episode I get messages from different people from high school. Just got this one. I'm working on trying to get the sister to encourage the friend to talk to you even anonymously. I'll let you know if they can get her to agree. This was the message.

[00:47:03] My sister had a friend. She doesn't want to say who that knew those guys. She said that one night while they were all hanging out, Walt and Brian admitted that Ricky asked them to lie about his alibi.

[00:47:20] And that when they got back from Walmart, he wasn't at the apartment. We've got less than two months before we hit the 30 year mark of no justice for Beth Ellen. Let's work together and not let it get to 30 years. More and more people are coming forward with information.

[00:47:55] If you have information or know someone who might, now is time. Now is the time to come forward. Call 1-866-TIPS-4BE. That's 866-847-7423. Or email us at whokilledbethellen at gmail.com.

[00:48:20] Pictures of Beth Ellen's rings and the cowboy purse are posted on our website and social media. There's no picture available of the New York City skyline key chain. But if you have any information on any of these items, you know what to do.

[00:48:33] Next episode you'll hear more on John Lynch's theory of the case and his plea to the public. If someone has some evidence on the board friends, they definitely need to call. They definitely need to share that. If somebody has evidence about somebody else, definitely they need to call.

[00:48:48] They need to share that. If they had somebody back in 1994 that for all of a sudden, you know, just decided, you know, they're here today and then all of a sudden they're gone. They've left town. They just for no inexplicable reason, they just decided to leave town.

[00:49:02] Suddenly in the middle of August in 1994, that would be something of interest. We're running down any lead on any suspect. 2024. The year of closure for our family. And justice for Beth Ellen. Thank you for listening and stay tuned.