0:00

The following podcast contains dramatizations

0:02

of actual events. Certain situations,

0:04

dialogue, names, and locations may

0:06

have been changed. Some scenes

0:08

are graphic in nature. Listener

0:10

discretion is advised. Up

0:18

next, even police have to

0:20

admit this killer has left nothing

0:22

to chance. He is methodical

0:24

and playing head games with law enforcement.

0:27

And he's determined that his victim

0:29

never be identified. It brought

0:32

tears to my eyes to see that

0:34

someone had been so

0:36

tortured. A photo

0:38

was released and soon the general public is

0:40

on the case. So we ended

0:42

up on Web Sloots, a place where a

0:45

lot of armchair detectives, a lot of internet

0:47

sleuths, a lot of true crime enthusiasts go.

0:49

They were able to identify her. So

0:52

now we know who this body belongs

0:54

to. It was just a

0:56

shot in the dark and it

0:58

worked out. On

1:04

April 4th,

1:07

1998, a couple driving in

1:10

rural South Central Utah made

1:12

a discovery that would consume

1:28

local law enforcement for more than

1:30

two decades. It was a

1:32

spring day where husband and

1:34

wife are driving along. They

1:37

observe something off the side of

1:39

the highway. It looked

1:41

suspicious to them. So they stopped to

1:44

see what it was. And

1:47

that's when they located the body. The

1:49

female victim was wrapped in plastic, tied

1:52

with rope and duct tape, rolled up

1:54

in a child's play mat and stuffed

1:56

into a sleeping bag. The

1:59

cause of death. was a single execution-style

2:01

gunshot to the head. The

2:04

victim was wearing only a bra

2:06

and panties and had no identification.

2:09

The killer had made sure even

2:11

estimating a time of death would

2:13

be impossible. This body had

2:15

been in a deep freeze prior

2:17

to it being found. And

2:20

in April, the temperatures would have been 60, 70

2:22

degrees. In her

2:24

state, being in a completely horizontal, flat,

2:27

laid out position was apparently after death

2:29

was placed in a freezer where

2:32

the body could be frozen. It

2:34

was clear that whoever killed this woman

2:37

wanted to make it as hard as

2:39

possible to make an identification. Law

2:41

enforcement struggled to identify the woman

2:44

because her fingertips had been cut

2:46

off. Someone,

2:48

I don't know if they had a rough blade

2:50

or whatever, but it was horrible. All

2:53

of this post-mortem activity, the

2:56

wrapping of the body, the removal of

2:58

the fingertips, would have taken a lot

3:00

of time, a lot of privacy,

3:03

and a lot of planning. Whoever did

3:05

this, I'd say they pretty

3:07

much knew what they were doing. They did not

3:09

want to leave any trees of this heart. And

3:14

they made sure. It was very well thought

3:16

out plan methodical, the way that

3:18

this was done. I would argue it

3:20

wasn't a first time that they had

3:23

done something like this. It wasn't done

3:25

in a hurry. The

3:28

victim was about five feet tall, dark-haired,

3:31

had brown eyes, appeared to be

3:33

around 40 years old, and

3:36

could possibly be of Hispanic or

3:38

Native American descent. And that's all

3:40

investigators had to tell them who

3:42

she was. So they

3:44

turned to material found with her body. As

3:48

far as evidence, the duct tape

3:50

on her face was good evidence to use

3:52

to try and find out who

3:55

the perpetrator was or who the suspect

3:57

was. Anything that was touching

3:59

her body. was good evidence. A

4:02

sketch of the victim's face was released to

4:04

the media, but no

4:06

solid leads emerged. The

4:08

National Crime Information Center and

4:11

FBI database also yielded nothing.

4:14

The duct tape wrapping the body was

4:16

tested, but no prints or

4:18

DNA were found. The

4:20

perpetrator in this case had taken some

4:23

great care and precautions in

4:26

hiding his identity. At

4:28

this point, the victim had no name, but

4:31

she acquired one during the course of

4:33

the investigation. This

4:35

Jane Doe, since she was found

4:38

near Maiden Water Spring, she

4:40

eventually became known as the Maiden

4:42

Water Victim. As

4:46

the weeks, months, and ultimately years

4:49

wore on, investigators worried

4:51

that would be the only name they'd

4:53

ever have for this victim. They

4:56

exhausted the leads, it dead ends,

4:59

and there really became nothing more to follow up on. This

5:14

show is supported by BetterHelp Online Therapy.

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6:16

Hopeful that forensic technology would catch

6:18

up to their case, all

6:20

the evidence from the made-in-water murder was

6:22

put in storage. In

6:26

2008, 10 years after the body was found, the materials

6:30

used to wrap the body, the

6:33

duct tape, the sleeping bag, the rope,

6:36

and the play mat were tested

6:38

for DNA. They went

6:40

through the evidence. They were looking

6:42

for touch DNA that

6:44

would indicate a suspect and

6:47

through that effort they were unsuccessful in

6:50

obtaining anything other than

6:52

the victims own DNA. But

6:55

the rope, or more accurately, the

6:57

knots in the rope, resulted in

6:59

the first solid lead. This

7:02

led to 42 year old

7:05

Scott Kimball serving life in

7:07

a Colorado prison for killing four people

7:10

and he was suspected in a number of other

7:12

murders. One of the

7:14

reasons law enforcement believed

7:17

Scott Kimball to be a person

7:19

of interest was because he had

7:21

tied up other victims in the

7:23

same manner. The

7:25

knots in both cases were unusually

7:27

elaborate and to the untrained eye

7:30

looked identical. The ropes from

7:32

his victim were collected

7:34

from the law enforcement in Colorado and

7:37

we took our ropes and our knots from

7:39

our made-in-water victim here in Utah and

7:42

we then referred to a knot expert

7:45

that the FBI had used to analyze

7:47

and compare the knots. This

7:49

expert concluded that the knots from

7:51

Scott Kimball's case and

7:53

the knots used to bind the

7:56

made-in-water victim while not perfectly identical

7:58

could very possibly been tied by the

8:01

same person. And

8:03

there were other reasons Scott Kimball could

8:05

be the man detectives were looking for.

8:07

At the time

8:10

in 1998 Scott Kimball worked for

8:14

a some type of a meat company and

8:17

he would deliver frozen beef

8:20

in a refrigerated truck and

8:22

he would deliver frozen beef in

8:25

Colorado and Utah some of just

8:27

the surrounding states. Kimball

8:29

clearly has a means to freeze

8:31

his victim. There was already

8:34

a workup through FBI on Scott

8:36

Kimball at that time. They'd done

8:38

a timeline, they'd

8:40

done association charts and stuff

8:42

like that kind of like the analytical stuff that

8:44

needs to be done as the case goes on.

8:48

Some of Kimball's victims were shot

8:50

execution style with a small caliber

8:52

weapon and were

8:54

dumped next to rural roadways after being

8:56

wrapped in rugs and tarps. One

9:00

suspected victim had both hands

9:02

severed after death. There

9:05

was another female he admitted to killing

9:07

that the body was apparently left

9:10

and dumped and dismembered in

9:12

Eastern Utah. So in 2017 we

9:15

got to a point where we determined

9:18

that we should just go and interview him in person

9:20

to see what he said. But

9:22

if investigators thought Kimball might be willing

9:25

to talk, they were sadly mistaken. He

9:28

knocked down the idea that the knots

9:30

tied him to the maiden water murder.

9:33

I'm not an expert, but we have an expert

9:35

looking at these. He's using the completeness analysis on

9:37

them. To see if they're the same knot, the

9:39

same person tied those same knots. In

9:42

everything I learned, I learned from being on

9:44

a Boy Scout

9:46

troop, that's

9:49

what I was doing. Things

9:51

that you use in ranching. Those

9:53

are basic They're

10:00

not unique to an

10:03

industry, you know. Investigators

10:05

reminded him that DNA technology

10:08

was getting more sophisticated by

10:10

the day. Kimball

10:12

was unfaced. Just

10:15

be honest. If you had any physical evidence

10:17

on any crime, you would arrest me. If

10:19

you had fingerprints, if you had

10:21

DNA, if you had a witness, if

10:23

you had any of those things, you would arrest me.

10:25

But you can't have those because I wasn't there. Well,

10:27

there's still things we are waiting on. You're just wasting

10:29

your time. You really are. You should be looking at

10:32

other suspects. Can I hold any cold cases that

10:34

you can solve? Investigators had

10:36

to concede. Scott Kimball was their

10:38

one and only suspect, and they

10:40

had no evidence that tied him,

10:42

or anyone else, for that matter,

10:45

to their victim, who still had

10:47

not been identified. The case kind

10:49

of went cold because

10:51

we weren't really getting a lot of

10:53

information from anybody. So it went cold.

11:07

In 2018, detectives

11:09

on the maiden water case, despairing

11:12

that without an identification for their

11:14

victim, her case would never be

11:16

solved, made an unusual decision.

11:19

We had a photograph of our victim where

11:22

she was deceased. It was

11:24

her face only. It was not

11:26

graphic or gory. And we

11:28

felt like it was something that we could potentially release

11:31

to the public. We felt like we've

11:33

exhausted every other possible lead, and we had to

11:35

do this. These days, local

11:37

news takes on a whole new meaning.

11:40

A local story can go global, or

11:43

at least national, in no time. And

11:46

the undeniable popularity of true

11:48

crime means there are

11:51

scores of people whose hobby is

11:53

researching real-life cases. Mandy

11:55

Hart is one of them. I

11:57

found myself on a website called WebSloots.

12:00

And then I fell into a

12:03

rabbit hole of investigation,

12:05

if you will. WebS Mandy

12:28

did a deep dive on this

12:30

case, collated all the information she could find, and logged onto

12:42

an organization called NamUs, which

12:45

was also used by investigators in

12:48

Utah working the Matonwater case. The

12:51

case was put into the

12:53

national missing and unidentified site,

12:55

NamUs. I work

12:57

with that site all the time because

12:59

it's a national database and

13:02

it's for the public and it's for

13:04

law enforcement. It's a great tool. I

13:07

found eight to ten matches and

13:09

I just started going through each missing person case

13:11

one at a time. And

13:14

I had a photo of

13:16

her deceased, which

13:18

is very rare to actually have. Mandy

13:21

checked the face of the Matonwater victim

13:23

against photos of women who had gone

13:25

missing. I could rule them out based

13:27

on the photo. I had her photo up

13:29

on half of my screen and I went through and kind

13:32

of said, no, no, no. By

13:35

photo, really. Until I came to

13:37

maybe the fifth or sixth one. And

13:39

the fifth or sixth one was the

13:42

missing person profile for Lena Reyes-Geddes. And

13:45

there was a good photo of her face.

13:48

And immediately I stopped

13:52

and kind of looked back and forth and

13:55

said, okay, I want to look and I'll read more about this one. Reyes

14:00

Geddes went missing after leaving her

14:02

Youngstown, Ohio home in 1998. In

14:07

what could be more than a coincidence, the

14:10

maiden water victim was found in Utah

14:12

twelve days after Lena

14:14

disappeared. I went

14:16

looking at her ethnicity. It

14:19

was a match, her height. It was a match,

14:21

her weight. It was a match. And

14:24

I'm kind of like, okay, the

14:26

location was the only thing that was not a match. But

14:29

the breakthrough came from something smaller than a

14:31

peat. The physical description

14:33

of the maiden water victim, the

14:36

one Utah detectives had uploaded to

14:38

NamUs, indicated she had a small

14:40

mole on the top of her right ear. And

14:44

so did Lena Reyes Geddes. And

14:47

that was the time that I literally,

14:50

my blood just went

14:52

cold. All the hair on the

14:54

back of my neck stood up. And immediately I

14:56

was like 100% new

14:58

that these two people that I was looking out were

15:00

the same person.

15:13

True crime hobbyist Mandy Hart had

15:15

a long shot hunt she'd identified

15:18

a murder victim from a 20-year-old

15:20

cold case out of Youngstown, Ohio.

15:23

Like, how do you even describe like how I

15:25

knew what I knew? You know, without sounding like

15:28

a total weirdo. To her

15:30

surprise, she found a very receptive

15:32

audience in a Youngstown detective. Detective

15:35

Sweeney in Ohio, he said 98, 99% sure that it

15:37

was her. And

15:39

they needed science to prove it. Looking

15:42

at the pictures, I could see

15:44

the mole in the ear. And

15:47

when I saw that, I thought, wow, we

15:49

do have a match here. But

15:52

we need to confirm it with DNA. DNA

16:00

from family members to confirm her

16:02

identity. Lena was really essentially the

16:04

shining star of her family. She

16:06

was a ballet dancer, she had

16:08

a university degree, she was successful,

16:10

she was smart. Two years

16:13

before she went missing, Lena married

16:15

Edward Gettys, a successful

16:17

Ohio businessman. This

16:19

was his third marriage. Edward

16:22

Gettys had his own business

16:24

within the city of Youngstown

16:27

and it was a commercial soap

16:30

chemical business. There

16:32

was a huge age difference

16:34

between the two. Detectives

16:38

now got some shocking news. Edward

16:40

Gettys took his own life in 2001,

16:43

but he had been

16:45

questioned back in 1998, shortly after

16:48

Lena disappeared. Edward

16:50

said Lena was visiting family in

16:52

Mexico and never returned. He

16:55

vividly recalled the day she left. She

16:58

would come out of the shower and she

17:00

would have the towel wrapped around her thing. She

17:02

would put on a pair of underpants and bra.

17:04

Okay, and then she would

17:06

start working over their hair. I

17:09

can tell you what underpants and bra

17:11

she had on. They

17:15

were white cotton and

17:19

the reason I remembered it

17:21

was my favorite pants and

17:23

bra. It

17:25

was white cotton with pictures of apples

17:28

and maybe bananas on it. This

17:32

matched undergarments from the crime scene.

17:35

According to Edward, there were no problems in the

17:37

marriage. I didn't come into the

17:39

airport. We kissed. I was out on the car. We

17:42

kissed. I can't pick

17:44

up stuff from it. They went into the car. That's

17:47

the last time I saw them. Lena's

17:51

family said she'd never made it to Mexico

17:53

and ominously, Edward never reported

17:56

her missing. To me, that's suspicious.

17:58

You'd think that there would be some... or

18:00

some idea that

18:02

maybe my wife is missing, that I need to

18:05

call someone. Lena said something to

18:07

a close friend in an English

18:09

language class shortly before she went

18:11

missing. That further raised the

18:13

specter of Edward as her killer. Lena

18:16

said that if something happened to her,

18:19

she passed a note to her

18:21

friend so she would

18:23

be able to contact Lena's family

18:25

members. Edward was abusive. He

18:27

was controlling. I believe Lena wanted

18:29

to leave him. She was afraid of

18:31

him and wanted to be away from him. And

18:34

I believe that he didn't want

18:36

that to happen. He did not want

18:38

Lena to leave him. And I

18:41

believe that that is the motive. He

18:43

appeared to be the only person with a motive. But

18:46

even after all this time, it

18:49

seemed there was no way to tie him

18:51

to Lena's murder. We've tested evidence two and

18:53

three times with no

18:55

success. Lena was ever

18:58

found other than Lena's. But

19:00

now analysts turned back to the rope

19:02

used to bind Lena. Whoever

19:05

tied her up and put her in

19:07

that position had to have

19:09

handled that rope and made those knots. So

19:12

we knew we wanted to focus on

19:14

those knotted areas and that rope. What

19:18

made the rope so important as evidence was

19:21

a new forensic tool called MVAC.

19:24

With MVAC, it was now

19:26

possible to lift DNA from all sorts

19:28

of materials that were previously

19:31

out of bounds, including something

19:33

rough and porous like rope.

19:37

How the MVAC works is really

19:39

fairly simple. Let's look at

19:41

the MVAC like a mini carpet cleaner.

19:44

It sprays a very clean sterile

19:46

solution on the item of evidence.

19:49

It gets that solution into the tiny

19:51

nooks and crannies, the weave of something, and

19:55

then you suck it up, the vacuum sucks it up, and

19:58

it deposits it into a... small sterile

20:00

bottles. And in that solution

20:03

would be the skin cells

20:05

that were deposited hopefully by

20:07

the perpetrator. A

20:09

male DNA profile was lifted from

20:11

the rope and when tested against

20:14

DNA from known relatives of Edward

20:16

Gettys, the two decade plus

20:18

mystery of who killed the maiden

20:20

water victim was finally solved. Ultimately

20:24

even in death Edward

20:26

Gettys couldn't hide. Technology

20:28

thwarted all of his attempts to

20:30

conceal his role in his wife's

20:32

murder. Edward Gettys

20:34

was the killer. It turned out that Edward

20:36

Gettys was the one who left the DNA

20:39

on those knots, on those ropes.

20:42

He is the one that handled them,

20:44

that tied it, that cinched it. It

20:46

was him. No

20:49

one is sure exactly what happened

20:51

when Edward killed Lena. What's

20:54

not in dispute is that

20:56

he went to unusual lengths to

20:58

keep her and himself from being

21:00

identified. But he

21:02

made two key mistakes. He

21:04

never knew that when he handled the

21:07

ropes he left his DNA behind. And

21:10

in a fitting irony, when

21:12

he froze Lena's body in an attempt

21:14

to conceal her time of death, all

21:18

decomposition stopped, which

21:20

meant her face was perfectly preserved

21:22

when she was later photographed by

21:24

police. And that

21:26

photo finally led to her

21:28

identification and gave her

21:31

family some measure of justice despite

21:33

the passage of more than 20 years.

21:37

I do honestly believe I was I

21:39

was drawn into this case. Divine

21:42

intervention. I don't know why this isn't

21:45

something that I had done before or that I

21:47

really have done since. I'm just

21:49

thankful that I was a part of it.

21:52

It wasn't just forensic science that was

21:54

crucial to it. It was everybody working

21:56

together. It was like putting a

21:59

puzzle together. and everybody added a

22:01

piece in this puzzle and helped bring

22:03

the whole picture and make it clear.

22:05

And we all helped each other and

22:07

when we had that DNA, that

22:10

was it. The puzzle was solved. The

22:30

16 month old was left alone for more than a week in

22:32

a pen filled with her own waste. Now

22:59

it is the mother who will

23:02

remain confined after receiving a

23:04

life sentence. The judge noted that

23:06

despite the long punishment, the

23:08

woman would still receive better treatment in

23:11

jail than she showed her own daughter in

23:13

her short life. I'm your host

23:15

Anna Garcia. Listen and subscribe to True

23:17

Crime Daily, the podcast, wherever you

23:19

get your podcasts.