The Cheat Sheet: The Missing and the Media

[00:00:00] Content Warning, this episode contains discussion of murder and violence as well as domestic abuse. So today on The Murder Sheet we're going to be covering a couple of different cases, none of which we've covered on the show before. So Kevin, you are going in completely unawares.

[00:00:21] Yes, I was actually editing a couple of episodes while you were preparing this. So I don't even know what you have prepared for it. Get ready for me talking a lot and Kevin saying nothing. No, I'm just kidding. Typical episode. I'm going to make you talk.

[00:00:37] Yeah, we're going to be talking about several missing persons cases that listeners requested that we cover. All of them are relatively recent. Two of them very recent. One of them within the past few years and they all occurred in the Midwest.

[00:00:54] And on the other side of the country, we're actually covering a Nevada case that another listener requested. And that is about the murder of Las Vegas review journalist Jeff German. So we're going to be covering a range of cases and hopefully you all find this interesting.

[00:01:11] Thanks so much for listening. My name is Anya Kane. I'm a journalist. And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney. And this is the murder sheet. We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews and deep dives into murder cases. We're the murder sheet.

[00:01:28] And this is the cheat sheet, the missing and the media. So where do we begin? We're going to start off with our most recent missing persons case. This is the case of Jared McCulloch. So he is a 33 year old man.

[00:02:30] He's five foot nine hundred and seventy five pounds. He's white with blonde hair and blue eyes just to give you a sense of what he looks like.

[00:02:37] And in terms of what he was last seen wearing, light blue shirt, car heart jacket that's brown and blue jeans, possibly sketches, possibly boots. So Jared was apparently driving up from Louisiana to Illinois in order to visit his son.

[00:02:59] That's what's been posted on social media by people close to him, giving sort of an explanation for what happened here. And if you want to follow along with more information on this case, you know, you can go like the finding Jared McCulloch page.

[00:03:15] That's where they're posting updates on November 6 2023. So very recently his car was found abandoned in Knox County, Indiana on the banks of the Wabash River.

[00:03:31] As I'm looking into notes, is it correct that he had dogs inside his truck and the dogs were found inside the truck at the time? Yes. And that is correct. And people who know him say he would have never left his dogs.

[00:03:45] So dogs were in the car with him and, you know, going on this visit to see his son apparently. And then he's gone. The car is still there. The dogs are still there.

[00:03:57] And one of the things that I saw posted, there's been a couple of them flyers put out there. There's been this Facebook page. And again, this is along this major river in Indiana. So it's very concerning, obviously, that this man is missing under these circumstances. Now, I don't...

[00:04:22] We're not the kind of show where we're going to do the whole, oh, is it foul play or accident? It's when a missing person, when a missing person situation happens like this, it's obvious to me that something bad has happened. And this man needs to be found.

[00:04:39] That's all there is to say in these early days, you know? And that's why we're publicizing this.

[00:04:46] That's why we're putting it out there because if you're in that area, if you're in that part of Indiana, which is right near Illinois actually, then this is something to be looking out for.

[00:04:59] This is the case to be following, looking for updates on and spreading the word on. You have a timeline here in the notes. Do you want to quickly go through that? Yes. And to give credit, this post came originally from the Finding Jared McCulloch Facebook page.

[00:05:17] So information had gone out there and this post was essentially correcting some of it and giving a more detailed breakdown of where he had been in the hours prior to his disappearance.

[00:05:30] So November 5th at 1.30 a.m., McCulloch goes to a Hux gas station in Salem and he talks to the clerk there. Seems fine. He is apparently in some sort of communication with his ex and indicates that he has lost.

[00:05:50] At the next place he's apparently cited is at the Phillips 66 station in Centralia, Illinois. He's again fine. No one else seems to be in the truck other than his dogs. 8.30 a.m., he's in Carme, Illinois at the Hux gas station. He appears on video and seems fine.

[00:06:14] Again, it's him, the dogs. His phone last pings off of a tower in St. Francisville and that's the he gets a call from his ex partner. And that's it. The call last six minutes. That's like 11.08 a.m.

[00:06:39] That same day, hours later at 6.30 p.m., his truck battery dies. His relatives are notified by an app that it's dead and his truck is later found as I mentioned on the banks of the Wabash River right near the river.

[00:07:01] To be very clear, both dogs are in the truck and both of the doors on the driver's side were open. Also the gas is all spent because the indications are it has been left running. So what happened to Jared? What is going on?

[00:07:24] We don't know as we said. We're just trying to get the word out there, put out this information. Hopefully if you live in the area, if you know people in the area, you can get people talking.

[00:07:34] You know, be reaching out to local media. All of that and our hearts go out to his family because I mean just what an agonizing situation. Not knowing what's happened. Thank you to the listeners suggested that we cover this also.

[00:07:50] This man was going to visit his son and so his son not only doesn't get to see his father, but asked to wonder where his father is and what happened to him. So hopefully this is a family that could get some answers very soon.

[00:08:04] Absolutely. Moving on to another missing person's case out of the Midwest. This one occurred actually in October. So this involves the case of Namrud Wigata Tessema. I apologize if I pronounced any of his names incorrectly. To give you a description of him, this man is 46 years old.

[00:08:28] He is African American. He has a white beard sort of graying hair, 150 pounds, five foot 10. He was last spotted in Mercer, Wisconsin. And the date of that last sighting was October 22nd of this past year. And it was near the Maple Grove Mobile Home Park.

[00:08:48] He left behind his car. He left behind his items, his various personal items according to Namus. And a site called the Wisconsin Missing Persons Advocacy Inc. had further posts on him. Indicated that he was recently became very interested in Native American culture

[00:09:08] and was going on a bit of a spiritual journey. He's not familiar with this area of Wisconsin is what they're saying. So he came from Rochester, New York. He's going on this journey. He's not been seen. He's apparently a very sweet person, just a beloved person.

[00:09:24] But he is missing. And the lead agency according to Namus appears to be the Iron County Sheriff's Office in Wisconsin. So they're looking for him. Obviously very concerning when somebody just disappears. He was apparently normally in contact with his family.

[00:09:42] So the fact that he falls out of contact again, we're not saying, oh, this is foul play or it's an accident. We're just saying that when something like this happens, it's very concerning either way. And it should be treated with all seriousness until you figure out what happened.

[00:09:57] What is the next case? The last case we're going to talk about comes out of Michigan. This has gotten a bit more attention than the other two. So sometime between April 24th and April 25th in 2021, a 52 year old woman named Dee Warner.

[00:10:15] She's, you know, she's a business woman. She runs her own trucking firm out of her backyard barn. Like she's, you know, she's doing stuff. She goes missing from her home. And her family immediately is concerned. They are looking at her husband, Dale Warner.

[00:10:35] He is a man who they knew may have been perpetrating domestic abuse against her. So obviously when you have a situation like that and somebody goes missing, that's going to be incredibly concerning that things escalated to the point where someone was murdered.

[00:10:55] Well, there's been movement in that case. On November 21st, 2023, Dale Warner was arrested and Dee's family told the local four station that, you know, they suspected this was a domestic abuse case. So what's happened since?

[00:11:12] Well, the suspect has been slept with a $20 million bond that was then low to $15 million. But, you know, frankly, I don't really know what knocking off $5 million does there. And he's been charged with tampering with evidence and with murder. Her body is still not been found.

[00:11:31] So there is unfortunately still that open ended question for her family. And of course, her husband is innocent until proven guilty or until, you know, he makes a plea deal or whatever. So I there's there's open ended questions here.

[00:11:47] But this is a case where you do have a missing person's case that did turn out to be what police believe is a homicide and there is movement now. So hopefully that gives hope to other families that are dealing with a similar situation.

[00:12:00] In that case, initially the county sheriff, the Lanawi County Sheriff's Office was on it, but they also brought in the FBI they brought in the Michigan State Police. So it's been a joint effort as far as various law enforcement agencies go.

[00:12:15] I want to go over just places you can contact if you have any information about any of those cases we mentioned. So for Jared McCulloch, the contact is the Knox County Sheriff's Office and you can reach them at 812-882-7660.

[00:12:33] For Teseema's case, please reach out to the Iron County Sheriff's Office in Wisconsin. And their number is 715-561-3800. And for D Warner, if you have information on that case, you want to reach the MSP Michigan State Police Monroe Post at 734-242-350.

[00:13:03] So now we're going to go into a case that I think you and I have both been interested in for a while now. And a listener recently asked us to talk about it in a cheat sheet episode.

[00:13:17] And I wanted to take this opportunity to because frankly, it's an incredibly disturbing case. Any sort of murder is going to be a disturbing situation.

[00:13:26] But this one frankly hits home because the victim was a journalist and the motive as it's been presented and stated at this point seems to be that his work, his reporting work, his investigative journalism gave the alleged perpetrator the motive to kill him, which is scary.

[00:13:50] But those things unfortunately do have a history of happening at least occasionally. Before we talk about this case, why don't we talk briefly about an older case where something like this happened and that was the case of Don Bulls?

[00:14:10] Yeah, one can't fill in our listeners on the background of that case. It's an interesting story what happened to Don Bulls. He ultimately died because of a car bomb. It gets in his car, starts it and a bomb goes off and it kills him.

[00:14:30] He was working on stories about land fraud and a bunch of other similar crimes that were basically upsetting some people with some powerful interests.

[00:14:43] And one thing I found ultimately inspirational about this horrible story is that it sparked a real sense of unity among different investigative reporters all over the country.

[00:15:00] And a group of about 40 investigative reporters ended up going to Arizona when this tragic explosion happened and furthering the investigative work Don Bulls was doing and completing his stories. And they did a book about it called The Arizona Project.

[00:15:22] That is inspiring that they got together to dig into that because yeah, it's such a horrible, horrible tragedy. And I don't feel like anyone was really ever fully held accountable for what happened to Bulls, which really makes me so angry.

[00:15:43] I know that there were some convictions around it, but I believe the man who was ultimately proven to be the guy who set the bomb that killed them ended up going into witness protection or something. So, something very unsatisfying about that.

[00:16:02] Yeah, and also the Arizona Project with all these reporters working together. Some newspapers didn't run their coverage.

[00:16:13] It said that the coverage, you know, according to the editor who ran the Arizona Project, I'm quoting him here, that the findings of the project show that the state of Arizona is facing a massive problem in organizing. I mean it's cron and the story, name names.

[00:16:35] And sometimes editors and such and publishers can be reluctant to pursue those things as vigorously.

[00:16:44] Well, I mean, I have always said this, but that's why I think that there's such an important role played by both local, regional, and national journalism because local journalism you're on the ground and getting the details and getting things out there.

[00:16:59] I think there can also be instances where, you know, if somebody's a massive donor to your advertising, you know, like and, and, and, and fills the bottom line for a newspaper, maybe you look the other way or maybe your editor kills a story because it's unflattering

[00:17:13] to an advertiser. That's where people like the investigative journalists who came in or the national press can step in and say, well, we don't care about that. And we're going to say it anyway. So yeah, just something to think about in terms of media

[00:17:27] environment. Yeah, that story always horrified me. The other one that comes to mind that I always think about is Chauncey Bailing. He was a reporter who was murdered in 2007 in California in Oakland. He was the editor-in-chief actually of the Oakland

[00:17:46] Post there. And he was digging into the finances of a company called Your Black Muslim Bakery, which was a chain of bakeries that existed in California at the time. And they were about to file for bankruptcy. But there's also a very large amount of criminal

[00:18:08] activity centered around that company. And he was digging into it and he was shot to death outside of like a McDonald's or something. And in order to kill that story, which it effectively did, it was never published. But ultimately people were convicted in that case.

[00:18:28] And I think the first instance of something like this I heard about, and this goes back to when I was a kid way, way long ago. And this is a less inspirational story. This is the story of...

[00:18:45] Oh, I know what you're going to say. Also, yeah, Bulls and Baylor in a totally different league than the guy you're about to bring up. Who am I about to talk about?

[00:18:52] You're about to bring up that Chicago guy who turned out... Well, I don't want to spoil it. Chicago Tribune reporter Jake Lingle. He's shot in the back of the head as he's going through a station, Randolph Street Station. And initially people think he's a hero and he's

[00:19:10] been cut down because he was exposing criminal activities. It turned out he himself was heavily involved in criminal activities and that his murder had nothing to do with his reporting and more to do about the criminal side of his life. Oops. Yeah, that's not so inspirational.

[00:19:29] And this happened a long time ago. This happened when I was a little boy back in 1930. You were a little boy? Not quite that old. You were like one of those little newspaper boys selling news copy on the side of the street. Just had a birthday,

[00:19:43] so I'm feeling a bit old, but I'm not quite that old. But why don't you tell us about... Yeah, well, I just... Okay, before we go into the German case, I do want to say that

[00:19:55] it's very, very rare in the United States for investigative journalists to be killed for working on a story. We just cited a couple of examples, but this is a very rare outcome. And I think sometimes based on our conversations with listeners, they'll express

[00:20:12] concern over things. And it's like that just really doesn't frequently happen. It's very scary and upsetting when it does and you want to dig into it. I'm not downplaying. These are obviously all horrible incidents. I'm just more of saying that if you watch movies, you think

[00:20:27] that it happens... You probably would be forgiven for thinking it happens a lot more often than it does. Generally, people don't do this for the same reason you don't kill a detective

[00:20:37] digging into you because then all the other detectives are going to swarm you and put you away. That's what happened in Arizona. Don Bulls is murdered, a bunch of other reporters come in.

[00:20:47] And these are kicking over every rock in Arizona and it makes things very uncomfortable for some people. So you generally don't... You generally only see this when people are being just, frankly, stupid because they think they can get away with it.

[00:21:03] So let's talk about Jeff Gurman. He was an incredible investigative reporter, just very much digging into all kinds of stories including the Las Vegas mass shooting that occurred there, looking into organized crime and previously worked at the Las Vegas Sun

[00:21:30] but then became a member of the staff of the Las Vegas Review Journal. And just working for years and on September 3, 2022, he was stabbed to death outside his home in Summerlin. He was 69 years old at the time. And because he had worked on so many different

[00:21:52] stories that it required investigative journalism and in touch upon issues like crime, I think at the time people may have been wondering what was this in relation to essentially? Is this a random homicide or was it targeted because of one of his stories? Well, several days later, police

[00:22:13] arrest a man named Robert Tellis. And this was a former Clark County Public Administrator and Gurman had indeed investigated him. He looked into him because Tellis was having an inappropriate relationship with a staffer and created a really hostile and

[00:22:32] bad work environment in his office. And as a result, in part, potentially because of Gurman's digging into this situation, he lost his bid for reelection in the Democratic primary. So he

[00:22:47] didn't even make it out of the primary at that point. So he's arrested and police say this is sort of the stack of evidence against him. He is spotted on video approaching Gurman's house.

[00:23:04] Video is plural. They find clothing in his house that matches what the suspect was wearing and also his DNA is underneath Gurman's fingernails. So there was an altercation and he got DNA under his fingernails. So that's pretty bad for Tellis. That's not good.

[00:23:28] Of course, he's pled not guilty and is representing himself. Can we talk about that? Why on earth would anyone represent himself in a murder trial? Because you're arrogant or mentally unbalanced. It's an awful idea. You're a lawyer. Would you

[00:23:51] represent yourself? Do it on the cheap? No, it's like, it's even like, you know, if you're going to like go out and buy a house, you get a real estate agent because real estate agents do that every day. They can look at things coldly and dispassionately

[00:24:08] and help you analyze contracts and figure out, oh, there's a problem here or there's a problem there. You wouldn't do that on your own. You'd look at an expert. And the same thing with a criminal

[00:24:19] defense thing. This is your life on the line. You want to have the best possible help you can. And that's usually from outside experts. The stakes are so high. It's not like,

[00:24:32] oh, I'm going to for dinner tonight. I'm going to bake bread from a recipe I've never used before. So that's an experiment which will probably go badly. But if it does,

[00:24:43] we can just go out to the store and buy a loaf of bread. But if you experiment and say, oh, I can defend myself in court on a murder charge and it goes badly, you're incarcerated perhaps for the rest of your life.

[00:24:55] Well, Kevin, this guy was an attorney who did practice civil law. So, you know, I'm sure he knows what he's doing. Yeah, it's wild to me. And in fairness, he's apparently, according to the Associated Press, he's got a little lawyer friend now,

[00:25:13] Gary Motifari who's going to help him over the phone with constitutional issues. Although he will not be with him in court or making any arguments before the court. He's just there to be his little helper, I guess. So it sounds like a totally foolproof system for him.

[00:25:31] And obviously the world of civil law is very different from the world of criminal law. It's like if I sprain my ankle, I'm not going to go see a neurologist. No, exactly. It is like doctors because doctors specialize for the most part. And maybe a doctor,

[00:25:54] if you're like, if you faint on a plane, maybe a doctor can come over and no matter what kind of doctor they are, they can kind of help you or like see, you know, are your pupils doing anything

[00:26:02] weird? But they're not going to like operate on you when you get in. And that to have a lawyer be putting himself in this situation is pretty surprising because one would think that a lawyer

[00:26:16] would be the first person to say, oh wait, anytime people do this, it's a stupid idea. So maybe I shouldn't even if you were a criminal defense attorney who does this day

[00:26:28] and day out, that doesn't mean you have the ability to look totally and dispassionately at your own case and figure out what's best to do. I could imagine criminal defense attorneys can think about, oh,

[00:26:43] I'm really good. I'm really persuasive when I talk. So I know they say most people shouldn't get on the stand, but I should do it because I'm so persuasive. It just seems you need

[00:26:53] someone else there. Yeah, you wouldn't do surgery on yourself. No. Because that's just a mess or you wouldn't do surgery on your wife. You know, if you're emotionally compromised in the situation, you have to take yourself out of that situation and rely on someone else's help and

[00:27:12] you'd be better off if you can't afford a private counsel than better off working with a public defender to figure out what you need to do. I feel like in true crime, public defenders often

[00:27:24] get a bad rap or people say, oh, they're not good. There's a lot of really good public defenders out there, first of all. A lot of great public defenders. A lot of amazing public defenders.

[00:27:34] And second of all, I understand when people are talking about structural issues that they face, like having too high a case load, those are problems. I'm not dismissing those. I'm just saying that, you know, I think that that would be way better for anybody in this situation

[00:27:53] than doing what he's doing. He has made comments to the press, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal, you know, they reported on February 9th, 2023 that he's meeting with all these media outlets, except for them, of course, and saying that, you know, he's been framed somebody,

[00:28:13] he doesn't know who, but he thinks he does. Planted clothing at his house. So I guess they also planted his DNA under the victim's fingernails. It's just been a, it's a very thorough frame job.

[00:28:27] So I think that if you are doing this by yourself and that's the best you can come up with, you would be better off just getting some help. And not in the form of some guy

[00:28:40] talking about the Constitution over the prison pay phone with you. I'm talking about like actual representation. Here's one interesting journalistic legal conundrum, Kevin, that I think you will find intriguing. So as part of their investigation, the Las Vegas police and the police investigating

[00:29:04] this in the prosecutor's office wanted to dig into German's confidential files, notes, unpublished works. And the Las Vegas Review Journal blocked them. They said no, because that could compromise sources and were protected by the journalist's shield law. So what do you think of a conundrum

[00:29:27] like that where you have possible evidence that police and the prosecutor want? But conceivably, if they see some things, then that might not be so good for the Review Journal sources. Yeah, reporters, to a reporter, a source, especially a confidential source is extremely

[00:29:53] important. And that is something they take very seriously, including protecting that. And so the idea that someone's sources could be spoiled or exposed in that way is very troubling. And who knows, maybe at some point this reporter was working

[00:30:17] on stories where he could have talked to someone in law enforcement or something off the record or prosecutors off the record. And that could have been exposed in that way, or he could have other sources who he talked to off the record and they would get exposed.

[00:30:34] And they might have to deal with some repercussions in their private or professional lives. And obviously, the newspaper appropriately takes seriously their obligation to protect that. That was completely right on their part. I understand that that might seem baffling to

[00:30:56] people who might be like, well, don't you want to solve the murder? But ultimately, the Review Journal's reputation and name and ability to conduct journalism and effective journalism relies upon them keeping sources confidential and safe. And so if that doesn't

[00:31:14] happen, then it's not that they don't want their colleagues' murder to be solved, but it's that also speaking as a journalist, I'm sure most of us would just... I mean, it would be

[00:31:30] so bad to have your sources exposed in that way. And it's just counter to what you stand for. What's happened is there's been a compromise. The judge in this case, according to Las Vegas

[00:31:44] Review Journal, has put together a team and the two members of that duo are Peggy Lean, who used to be a US magistrate judge, and David Roger, who used to be the district attorney of

[00:31:58] Clark County. And they are going to confidentially sort through all these materials and I believe select what is relevant and remove what is not. So law enforcement and the prosecutor's office won't be able to see anything. They will see everything, but they are instructed to discard

[00:32:23] what is not relevant to this specific case. What do you think about that approach? That sounds like a reasonable balancing of interests. Because you're quarantining... I mean, I would still hate to have anyone go through anything of mine.

[00:32:37] So it still makes me a little bit uncomfortable, but I can understand it because they can basically say, oh, this has nothing to do with it. This has nothing to do with it. These notes do have

[00:32:46] something to do with it. We'll use those. So make some sense. Do you have any closing thoughts on investigative journalism and how this senseless murder just affects the media climate in the United States, but also what happens when something like this happens to somebody who's

[00:33:12] just trying to bring truth to a situation? No one deserves to be killed for any reason, but certainly no one deserves to be killed for doing their job. Yes, especially a job as important as investigative journalism. And the evidence against this

[00:33:30] tele's person seems pretty bad. That's a pretty strong case if you have, again, DNA underneath somebody's fingernails and they have a reason to want to kill you. That's not good. And

[00:33:44] complaining about some frame job to every other media outlet in town just says good luck with that one. But I think this, I think there's also, I mean, I'll be curious though because he is an attorney, so

[00:34:02] what kind of tricks he's going to pull out of his sleeve in terms of illegal, the legal proceedings will be interesting to see even though obviously he's a civil attorney and that's not, this isn't his wheelhouse to put it nicely.

[00:34:18] Yeah, it disturbs me because this man was serving his community and by looking into things that affected his community and he lost his life for it. And hopefully there can be accountability in that situation. Thanks for listening. We really appreciate it.

[00:34:37] You guys all mean a lot to us. Thanks so much for listening to the murder sheet. If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover, please email us at murdersheet at gmail.com. If you have actionable information about an unsolved crime,

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