The Evansdale Murders: A Conversation with the Documentarians Behind "Taken Together": Part Two

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[00:01:38] Content warning. These two episodes contain discussion of the murder of two girls. They also contain discussion about sexual crimes against children as well as drugs. On a summer's day in Evansdale, Iowa, two young cousins went out to spend time riding their bicycles. Eight-year-old Elizabeth Collins and 10-year-old Lyric Cook Morrissey vanished that day, on July 13, 2012. Despite an intensive search and the discovery of their bikes, they were not found until December 5, 2012.

[00:02:07] That is when hunters found their bodies in a remote spot in Bremer County. They were discovered 25 miles from where they were last spotted. Their case has remained unsolved to this day. As we discussed in our last episode, we recently got the opportunity to speak with the team behind a docuseries that covered this horrible crime. You can watch that series on Max. In this episode, we will finish our conversation with Dylan, Christian, and Ned, the documentarians.

[00:02:33] This is the second of two episodes in which we conclude this interview, but keep in mind we'll release both of them on the same day. 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. And this is The Evansdale Murders, a conversation with the documentarians behind Taken Together, part two.

[00:03:46] I guess, you know, the docuseries gets into a number of different sort of strands of this story and theories that have come up. And Dylan, you've parsed through so many of these. I want to save most of that for the docuseries. I really encourage our listeners to watch that and sort of get the full experience. But can you just give any sort of indicator or overview of some of the main theories that came up about this case over time that the docuseries covers?

[00:04:14] Yeah. So, you know, in the doc, we basically it's like the overarching story is, you know, the 10 years from when the girls were abducted to where we're at in 2022. And during that period, a number of different things happened. First being in May of 2013, Michael Plunder abducts two girls from Dayton, Iowa. One escapes Desi Hughes and he murders Kathleen Shepard.

[00:04:41] And it's, you know, relevant to the case because it's very similar with two girls being abducted at once. The next occurrences we have, you know, Jeffrey Altmeier was a person who was driving around Iowa enticing children to get into his car with $100 bills, which is absolutely terrifying to think about someone doing that. His job was to drive around Iowa to do sales of some sort. And here he is trying to entice children into his car with a $100 bill.

[00:05:11] And they found like when he got caught, they found drugs on him, Xanax, things like that. Then you have Teresa Girlman element, where a woman in Belle Plaine, Iowa, does a murder-suicide, but before with her son, Henry. But before she commits suicide, she talks to one of her, I think a counselor at Horizon is the name, I believe.

[00:05:39] It's been a minute, but saying that she has a written confession from the two people who killed Eric and Elizabeth. So that was another kind of crazy thing when it happened.

[00:05:53] And then you have Delphi, which is, you know, for me, like when I looked at, you know, looking at the case, like the number one thing that stood out to me when I was talking to investigators and I was reading through articles from the Courier, the Des Moines Register, or was just the rarity of double abductions. And how few there are and how much of a statistical anomaly they are. And to know that Iowa had three of them, right?

[00:06:20] Like you can't, we had reached out to try to get, you know, some more statistics from the FBI on just abductions, but they don't release those to the public. So you're basically going off of what police tell you how rare they are. Because you don't know their data set with how, how they determine what is a dual abduction and what is not, right? So that was the first thing that stuck out to me. It's like, here's this crime. It's insanely rare, a dual abduction of two children.

[00:06:49] There's only been like at the time 17 when I started the doc. And Iowa has a population of 3 million, but they have three to 17 double abductions. So they're overrepresented in statistically in dual abductions. And then, you know, two of those were Clunder who had done the Dayton dual abduction.

[00:07:14] And when you can't know everything, basically, you know, because it's just me, Ned and Christian kind of doing a documentary. For us, it's a labor of love. So it's like on weekends, or we would plan three or four days at a time to go shoot. We don't have a lot of resources. So there, we had to be clever in other ways. And so it was like diving into statistics that we could know, that we could find out.

[00:07:40] At one point, we actually drove down and talked to a woman named Catherine Brown, who was a co-author of what has been deemed as the Washington Report. But what it is, is it's a child abduction research study report that was done out of Washington State. And she wasn't included in the doc. But, you know, she just stressed, we just talked about dual abductions and their rarity. And just how insane they are that two kids are taken at the same time.

[00:08:09] Because if you're an abductor, you know, to take two at once is a much higher risk than just taking one. You know, your chances of something going wrong, of you getting caught, are much higher. So, you know, whoever did take two at once, they, I mean, you can think of it might be just a crime of opportunity. But, you know, you inherit so much more risk than you take two children at once.

[00:08:38] Because one, just like what happened in Dayton, you know, it's... And Clunder, he was in jail because he had abducted two kids from a daycare, like in the front lawn. He had stolen them. God knows what he did. And then he dumped them in a literal dumpster. And that's how he was caught. So he had already had a prior for this.

[00:09:06] And then he was sentenced 40 years and got out in 20 because of that prison program that he went through. And they deemed him fit to release, I guess, at that point. But yeah, he's done this twice with two girls. And I guess he did not... He knew he was going to get caught that second time when he made that mistake. Like, he did not want to go back into jail.

[00:09:35] And then he killed himself. And that was another tragedy in the sense that now you can't question him. And you can't get information out of him. And to try to see if he did the Evansdale case as well. Life moves fast. Sometimes you're minding your own business trying to do a podcast and battle misinformation and true crime. And the next thing you know, you got to sell some t-shirts. We all need an uncomplicated way to relax, recharge, or stay focused.

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[00:10:33] We have absolutely been relying on the Flow State gummies to write this book and record this podcast at the same time. Like when we sit down and get to work, we both make sure to have one. Right now, we are coming into the final stretch of some pretty important work. So it's been helpful to feel extra locked in and focused. Get started with their quick product finder quiz. They will send you personalized recommendations on what to try. Again, if you're 21 and older, head to VIAHemp.com and use the code MSHEET to receive 15% off.

[00:11:03] Free shipping on orders over $100. And if you're new to VIA, a free gift of your choice. That's V-I-I-A-H-E-M-P.com and use code MSHEET at checkout. After you purchase, they ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Enhance your every day with VIA. Yeah, yeah. Clunder, his MO, the escalation we saw from just the kidnapping, which is certainly horrific enough.

[00:11:32] But then killing one of his victims. And he really is of interest to me in particular, having watched your series. And one thing I was struck by was that law enforcement have, in the past at least, indicated that they ruled him out. Can you speak to that and, I guess, what your opinions are on that? Yeah, so when I started the doc, I started in 2015. What he did in Dayton was in 2013.

[00:12:01] But my first thing was like, I'm not here to make a doc that proves Michael Clunder did this. I started with the inverse. So it's like, if I'm going to look into Michael Clunder on my own, I'm going to try to do the opposite. I'm going to try to prove he didn't do it, right? And so, you know, after, you know, I don't get 100% participation when I reach out to someone. If I'm looking for information, it's like, hey, I'm a documentary filmmaker.

[00:12:25] Let me talk about the worst thing that's ever happened to you because you knew this guy, Michael Clunder, and the whole world collapsed around you. So I didn't get all the information that I would have hoped to, right, when investigating him. But the way I look at it is the cops don't start investigating or the investigators don't start looking into Michael Clunder until nine or 10 months after the Evansdale case, right? So right there, you're going to have a lot of data lost, right?

[00:12:54] Camera footage, you know, gas stations, they recycle, right? And it's just hard to, you know, it's like, it's hard to solve a crime when you start investigating immediately afterwards, right? It can be really hard. So if you're talking nine or 10 months out, you start looking into someone for a previous case. It can be tough to try to prove that.

[00:13:16] When Kent Smock had come out in 2014, a year later, after they had been investigating Clunder for a year, and when he had said that he wasn't the guy anymore, and that they used cell phone data and tests, and they believed he was at home or at work.

[00:13:37] Like, you know, to me, that just wasn't satisfying, never was, because it's not a definitive answer of, like, to, first off, cops never rule anyone out in a case. They just don't do it, right? So for them to come out and do it, to me, it's like, okay, what play are they making? You know, they're making some sort of gamble, roll of the dice to come out and say this. To me, it seemed like everyone had thought Clunder had done it.

[00:14:05] And then I had talked to DCI agent Mike Rekasi. It's in the film. But, you know, he alluded to this idea of, like, because everyone thought it was Clunder in the Evansdale case, the amount of tips went down dramatically. And, you know, investigations run on tips, right? The definition of a cold case is you have no more tips to go pursue. You have no leads to follow.

[00:14:32] So by reminding the public or telling the public, like, hey, Clunder didn't do this, you know, they're generating more tips in the case because they need more information to keep going. So, and like, it's tough, though. I mean, if you think about it, cell phone data, right? You know, it's what they said. They ran tests.

[00:14:56] So I just could never find, like, any definitive piece of information that put him at X and Y place and time, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would be really curious to see, you know, and is there a way to manipulate your cell phone so it looks like you're using it in one place when you're not? Or I leave it at home. Right. Right. Yeah.

[00:15:24] I think there's a huge difference between, oh, this guy was texting a bunch of people and FaceTiming somebody while at home versus their phone is just literally in their house. I was told the only definitive alibi a cop will take is if someone is in jail. That's like the only, like, then they know with 100% certainty that this person was at this place at this time as if they're in jail or they're in prison. Other than that, it's tough.

[00:15:53] You can have, people can vouch for you being in one place or another and they're lying. So jumping back to the Delphi angle, the sort of double abduction, double homicide of children. A few years ago, Kevin and I compiled a big non-scientific, non-mathematical list because we were in the same boat as you guys where it's like it's very hard to get this data and assess it. And how do you define an abduction?

[00:16:21] Like in Delphi, the girls were walked seemingly to a location nearby that's still in a legal sense an abduction. But it's not the same as necessarily transporting via a vehicle miles away. So it's just interesting.

[00:16:41] We found a lot of more than you would think in terms of double homicides of underage children, meaning 18 and under, in public places like parks and whatnot. But it's so all over the place because we were looking, you know, from the 1960s onwards and all different ages.

[00:17:02] And so it certainly seems like a rarity, but it's definitely not, I think, as unheard of as some people say because it does occasionally happen. But it definitely means that it's a more, it's an offender who's more okay with risk, as you mentioned. Where do you come off on the Delphi connection? Do you feel like there's something there? Do you kind of tend to say that it's a weird resemblance, but they probably looked into it pretty extensively?

[00:17:32] Yeah, I don't think they're connected. But because we talk about dual abduction so much in the film, to not include it seemed to be kind of like a misstep. At that time when we were filming that stuff, they still not made the arrest in the case. So it was just, you know, what was it? Like 400 miles from, what was it, Dayton? Or was it from Evansdale to Delphi? You know, that's just one day trip. Yep.

[00:17:57] So it was in the realm of possibility, and that was something that immediately they, when that Delphi case happened, they also, the similarities were so close, they also went down that same road of could this be connected? But now we know, well, in a way, we could say it's not, yeah. Yeah.

[00:18:26] Yeah, from what we've heard also, there's nothing connecting Richard Allen, the suspect in the Delphi case, to Evansdale or anything like that. So, but it certainly makes sense to look at it and scrutinize it. How many did you guys find, by the way, when you guys looked into it? Let me pull up, I have my little doc here, um, the double homicide. I mean, this isn't good data, because it's like all ages, all people.

[00:18:55] We ended up profiling six different cases. These were all in park settings. Two kids are out and about. I mean, I say park, but like kind of could be just rural trees. And boys and girls, that was the other thing. Mm-hmm. And they were homicides, uh, all of them homicides, not all of them necessarily abductions. In some situations, the kids were killed right where they were. You did strangers and not like a family member.

[00:19:24] Yeah, these were, now when I'm looking at all of these, so it was two kids killed by a gang in Texas, in Houston. This was a case out of California where, uh. I tried to find all of the other dual abductions. Like, it was, it was hard. I couldn't find them. It's really difficult because it's like, like, I wish the FBI would be a little more forthcoming with some of this. Because it would be, like, I think it would be helpful for the public to see and analyze.

[00:19:53] So I don't, I don't know why there's that reluctance. But, um, yeah. Yeah, in this case, a lot of these were just straight up homicides. I think a lot of these resembled Delphi more than Evansdale because in Delphi, they, they were walked a distance away. But they were still in the park and it was, you know, like, they didn't go that far. They didn't. And did they consider that, do they consider it an abduction in Delphi or? Yes. But yeah, we, we did, we profiled six. I think we found considerably more than that.

[00:20:23] But some of them were just straight up murders. I can send you a list that we have. Um. Do it. Yeah, no, just to, just to kind of compare you. I think I found seven because the, the data set's so particular. So it's got to be a stranger. It's got to be an abduction. Um, and I can only find like five or seven that actually fit the profile.

[00:20:47] And when I was talking with Dr. Catherine Brown, it's, you know, in some ways they'll, if you have survivors, you're right in your data set, does that count as a dual abduction? Right. And it just depends on, but as far as like what the cops say about dual abductions being 15, like they obviously had a data set that they'd use from Evansdale.

[00:21:14] That fit of, you know, a bunch of other cases or 14 other cases, rare cases. So it's just hard to know what that data set is. Yeah, absolutely. And it's so hard. And we, we literally just use newspaper.com where we went back and searched like double homicide, children, double murder, children, you know, like, and so it was by far not a scientific process whatsoever. And I'm sure there's a lot we missed. Can you speak to the drug angle in this case?

[00:21:43] This is something that's come up. I know a lot in online discussion with people speculating and I want to be sensitive because it involves the families of one of the victims. Um, and if you could just sort of speak to that and sort of how you covered, um, that aspect of it. Well, I mean, Misty and Dan were very open about it, you know, as you can, in the doc, you'll see, um, they had drug problems before the girls went missing.

[00:22:09] You know, I think a reasonable person can assume when something that tragic happens in your life, you're going to keep doing what you're doing to cope. Right. It did seem at the time when I was with the news and covering it that Dan and Misty weren't necessarily getting a fair shake. Right. Right. Because when you look at the elements of the crime, it seemed pretty sophisticated and smart to where the bikes were found.

[00:22:38] It's like in this little corridor of a bike trail where you can't see from highway 20. And at the time you couldn't see from across the lake, uh, in Evansdale. So it seemed pretty smart and, you know, you know, people who do meth, they do commit murders, but, you know, they tend not to get away. Right.

[00:23:01] But one of the things like Misty and Dan talked about is, you know, saying that something from their past could have come back and, and might've caused this. But based on what I know and all the people I talked to and over the years and the research, it just, it just did not seem likely seem very unlikely. And when you think about them, one being the victims of losing their child and their niece, then on top of it, everyone thinks you did it.

[00:23:30] Had to be a pretty, pretty hard ordeal for them. You know, it's very, the way the media focused on the parents who had the background and, and met and just, it's very easy to point the finger on that. Especially, you're like, oh, they must have something to do with it because of this, of this whole situation.

[00:23:51] But, you know, I feel like now in this world that we're in, because someone's a self-medicates or has any type of drug problem does not necessarily mean that they could be tied into anything else like this. A lot of people do self-medicate and especially, we don't know anything about their personal lives or what they go through. So to quickly, how, how the media and how the public really kind of turned on them, I thought was extremely unfair.

[00:24:20] That's the one thing I will comment on in regards to how that was laid out. As I do feel like there was some unfair treatment through the media because that, that background. And, and, you know, that, that same time, Dan, you know, was about to go to prison. And so all this was happening simultaneously. I mean, I, to be, to be going through what he was going through legally, plus what was happening.

[00:24:48] My hope is anything, you know, to not use that as, as a way to focus on someone for, you know, drugs should, does not necessarily mean that there are, it does not make someone a murderer, does not make someone have the ability to, to, to harm someone else. So that's all I really want to say about that. Because that was something throughout this process of watching that I thought was extremely unfair to them.

[00:25:19] Absolutely. And well said, Christian. I, being, taking meth, you know, dealing levels, you know, meth does not mean that someone is a drug kingpin that is going to attract the ire of, you know, a cartel or something. I mean, I think there's, people need to acknowledge that, like, that sort of thing is, there are different levels to it.

[00:25:40] And, you know, just like someone being a, you know, drinking too much in the 1920s doesn't make them Al Capone or at the level of attracting the ire of Al Capone. It's like, I think people sometimes just hear drugs and they just make all sorts of assumptions. Like this must've been revenge or, you know, it's like without knowing about the specifics of any of that, I think that seems. I had worked on an episode of intervention years ago and it's like the way they, they, they talked about it.

[00:26:08] It was like, it's like a, it's like someone who can't afford cope, but they can afford meth. You know, obviously we've seen what meth does longterm to somebody physically. I mean, Coke too, because it does the different things. Coke will drain your bank account. It's, it's definitely coming from a lower economic social class, not necessarily very rarely, you know, does it involve like this giant cartel.

[00:26:33] I mean, it's there, but it, you know, being a tweaker doesn't necessarily make you a potential murderer. I'll just say that. Absolutely. I wanted to sort of close out by asking you all where you think the case stands today and what do you think needs to happen for this to get closed and there to be answers for this family, for these two families? You know, it's obviously not a cold case, right?

[00:27:02] DCI is still investigating it. Um, and you know, to me, it sounds like they're just one piece away. You know, they're just one piece away. They, there's just one little piece they need to make the puzzle, you know, fit or like they, they could have an idea of who did this too.

[00:27:21] And it's, you know, in journalism or, you know, documentary film, like you, you're not held to the same standard as like a cop has to, you know, bring enough evidence to prosecute it beyond a reasonable doubt in a courtroom. Right. So they could know exactly who did this or have an idea and they just needed a piece of information that allows them to bring it to case forward.

[00:27:45] That's what I hope where the case is at the police or the DCI don't reveal to me, you know, we had very limited contact. Like I didn't talk with the DCI maybe twice during the whole filming of the doc. So my hope is that, you know, they're just right there. They just need one little more piece and then they can catch whoever did this.

[00:28:10] Yeah. And to go to what you said earlier, like they have to have proof beyond, you know, shadow of a doubt. So there is that air of like, they're just waiting for that person to make a mistake and they want to catch that little piece of evidence and then they can go forward.

[00:28:30] But it's, it definitely just seems like it's going to take a year, maybe more time for somebody to just change their mind and decide to, I can't live with this anymore. I'm going to say something, I'm going to do something.

[00:28:50] And from when we started, that was like always the idea was like, we, we want this to push this, even if it's just a little nudge forward and to hope that, like I was saying earlier, that piece of luck will just float into this case and give the investigators what they need to finish the puzzle. So, so to speak. Before, early on in this doc, before this doc, before we partnered with Jessica Sebastian and Maven Entertainment.

[00:29:21] I was just about to do that. I'm doing this. I'm rolling it in. You got to shout out the LA peeps. Yeah, I'm rolling it in. So before we partnered with Jessica Sebastian, Maven Entertainment and Donnie Iker, who was our, our showrunner, the project was called Turn Yourself In and it was called Turn Yourself In for a reason. And because with that's basically where at the time when we were putting this together, that's what the investigation needed is they needed a true confession.

[00:29:48] And even though there had been confessions over the years, I mean, there were, like I mentioned earlier, sociopaths who just wanted the attention, which I don't know why you would want the attention of kidnapping and murdering two children. But you will have those in this world.

[00:30:05] So, you know, we hope with the release of the show, getting it out there and we're getting, you know, it sparks that interest because the news media, I will say, every like five years, every 10 years, whatever, they do have an anniversary on the anniversary of the girls missing. There's always a news broadcast around the state. That's just around the state.

[00:30:29] The rest of the world now has this to basically remember this did happen and this has not been solved yet. So, you know, my hope is this does renew interest and this does hopefully lead to closing this case and finding out, you know, just so at the very least, the family can have closure, whatever that answer might be. And yeah, I wanted to... I do, I do. I have to shout out the LA peeps too.

[00:30:57] When we brought on Jessica Sebastian Day from Maven, you know, actually we got turned down from a lot of people because the case wasn't solved about doing a doc, right? Jessica Sebastian Day became a champion for the project and really beat the bushes to help get this made along with Ned and Christian and I. And then we got Donnie Eicher, who is a New York Times bestselling author, right? Did a book called Dead Mountain about the Dilatoff Pass. I don't know if you've heard about that case. It's a pretty famous case, right? Right.

[00:31:27] And, you know, I learned a lot from him. I learned a lot from Jessica. We all had like the same, we had syncopatico goals, same goals to make something with integrity. And, you know, hopefully that translated, right? And I got to shout out my buddy, Doug Banker. So you got the whole family now. Don't forget Paul and Thomas. They were the cinematographers that came in with Donnie.

[00:31:53] And they did a bunch of shooting and I assisted them during that second phase of shooting when we brought in the LA crew. They were fantastic as well. Yeah. I think, I commend you and your team, all of you and your team for doing such a great job with this. And I just, I hope it underscores to some of the big players that, you know, I understand sometimes there's a reluctance to make stuff around unsolved cases.

[00:32:18] But those are the things where there's a real public interest in doing something like this, raising awareness, sort of getting the public even more informed about a case. Because once it's solved, it's solved. But when it's unsolved, there's still work that can be done and pressure that can be put on people who might know something and may not be talking. So these kinds of projects are really important in my view and should be celebrated. And, you know, hopefully we can kind of push that.

[00:32:47] But yeah, great job. I wanted to open it back up to all of you just to conclude. Is there anything I didn't ask you about or anything that you wanted to say in closing? Just to, you know, always thank the people of Evansdale and the community for, you know, all the people who talked to us over the years and gave us information and trusted us to represent them accurately. Right.

[00:33:12] That's a big thing when you're doing a documentary, especially if you're doing true crime, is people are rightfully so worried that whatever they say is going to be misconstrued and they're going to be portrayed differently than who they are. And it's tough because, you know, when you make a doc, you're taking hundreds of hours of footage and your stuff into, you know, our film in total is two hours and 40 minutes. Right. So.

[00:33:39] We work very hard and very diligently to make sure everyone is portrayed as accurately as possible and everything's done with as much integrity as we can humanly muster, you know, throughout the whole process. And so when people do trust you with their story, right. It's very.

[00:34:01] It's very inspiring and it's also a responsibility to to then turn around and portray them in an accurate way because it's tough when you're cutting stuff down. You know, context can change just by taking out a single word in someone's sentence. And so. Devil's in the detail. So you got to really get in there and make sure that. You're giving the quote, the proper context that the person who said it was giving up, you know, when they said it.

[00:34:30] So and there's like this, there's this like I don't know if you've noticed this, but in the industry as a whole. You know, at least my approach, my philosophy when I'm filming is by someone sitting down and talking to me about, you know, in the Evansdale case, they're doing me a favor. Right. There is like this attitude in other parts of the industry where it's like, no, I'm doing you a favor by listening to your story. And I'm going to, you know.

[00:34:59] Put it out in the world and, you know, you're going to be seen in this film. So I'm doing you a favor. And I do the absolute opposite by them sitting down and trusting me to their story. Like I don't take that lightly. Yeah, it's just it's just an incredible honor that people would trust you with their story.

[00:35:17] And if anything, you know, the reason why I took part of the benefit to us that it took so long is I feel like, and again, I said that earlier, we walked the line with the families and our relationships with them. And but I feel like that line was walked so well that there was a lot of care.

[00:35:38] And then when we we partnered with Maven Entertainment and we got in Donnie and the whole crew that came out to work with us, that same care was handled and extended through them. You know, I'm I as someone who's worked in this industry for a very, very long time and I've worked with all sorts of creatives. The Midwest is often looked at with a microscope from the coasts and can sometimes be, you know, what Dylan said we didn't do, which is misconstrued.

[00:36:09] And I feel like in this way, this whole thing came together is like we, you know, very proudly did not do that. I mean, I'm very proud of what we accomplished. I mean, there were times that I had no idea if this was ever going to be done. I think all of us felt that. I mean, I remember being on those early calls when we were trying to sell it and we would get the no's, the rejections over and over again because we needed those resources to elevate the project.

[00:36:37] And just it felt like there was times that we're just like, I don't know. I don't know if this is going to ever see the light of day, but here we are. So, you know, I'm very proud of everything we accomplished with this. As you guys were finishing up there, one thing I was thinking about was that in the film, there's a letter that the family members had written to whoever it might have done it to be the hero and to do the right thing and turn yourself in and confess.

[00:37:07] You still have this opportunity, I guess. Because that's kind of what, if this reaches anybody's ears that knows this person or knows anything like this, it's just think about the fact that there is still this chance for you to make the right choice.

[00:37:27] And say you know something or if you did it or, you know, it's, there's still that invitation and open, opening here for you to do that. And I just hope, I know this is going to be a slow burn type of documentary.

[00:37:45] Like, I know it's got a lot of attention right now, but I think over the years, like, as more people see this and as it makes it more out into different people's lives and the facts and the family story. I just, I just, I'm hoping that it softens that whatever wall they've built up, that erodes that wall over the years and that it's probably, you know, time for somebody to say and do something.

[00:38:14] Absolutely. Well, thank you all for coming on the show. It was really wonderful to speak with all of you. I think this is an excellent documentary. Where can people watch it? Streaming on Max. So I want all our listeners to go stream it on Max right now, kind of get informed about this case and spread the word about it. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much to Dylan, Ned, and Christian for taking the time to speak with us and for the care they put into Taken Together.

[00:38:44] 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 dot com. If you have actionable information about an unsolved crime, please report it to the appropriate authorities. If you're interested in joining our Patreon, that's available at www.patreon dot com slash murdersheet.

[00:39:14] If you want to tip us a bit of money for records requests, you can do so at www.buymeacoffee dot com slash murdersheet. We very much appreciate any support. Special thanks to Kevin Tyler Greenlee, who composed the music for The Murder Sheet, and who you can find on the web at kevintg dot com.

[00:39:38] If you're looking to talk with other listeners about a case we've covered, you can join The Murder Sheet discussion group on Facebook. We mostly focus our time on research and reporting, so we're not on social media much. We do try to check our email account, but we ask for patience as we often receive a lot of messages. Thanks again for listening. So, Anya, before we let people go, I wanted to talk again about The Silver Linings Handbook.

[00:40:08] And more specifically, I want to talk about Jason Blair, because certainly there have been times when something happens and we don't know what to do. We're just out here rubbing two sticks together, and we need to turn to somebody for advice. I'm sure everybody's had that experience. We need to turn to somebody for advice. And one of the people we turn to most often is Jason Blair, and he's always been there for us. He's always willing to give you time. He's always willing to give you great advice.

[00:40:37] And so now what's wonderful is that everybody within this Sound of My Voice has access to his insights and his compassion and his advice, because you can find all of that on his podcast. Yeah, this podcast is a bit like being able to sort of sit down and sort of hear some interesting insights. I always feel inspired by it.

[00:40:58] He's had on some really incredible guests recently, and they've had just such heartbreaking, real conversations with people like Jim Schmidt, who his daughter Gabby Petito was murdered. Jim just came across just as such a real and empathetic and wonderful human being. He was even given one of Jason's friends kind of told him recently about some abuse she had suffered. Jim was giving advice. I mean, it was really incredible. I'm thinking of Kimberly Loring. Her sister went missing in Montana.

[00:41:28] It's another case involving a native woman. So raising awareness about that, talking to the woman who lost her father, who was a Los Angeles Police Department detective. He was murdered so he couldn't testify at a robbery trial. Just like awful stuff, but ultimately really focusing on the compassion and allowing people the space to tell their stories. I think Jason shines as an interviewer because he has that natural empathy and curiosity, too.

[00:41:54] Whenever I'm thinking of a question like, oh, I hope they get into this, he's asking it two seconds later. So it's a really enjoyable listening experience. And I feel like whenever we listen to it, you and I end up discussing some deep stuff like religion or what kind of positivity we want to share with the world. So I think if you're looking for that and you're looking to have those kind of thought-provoking conversations in your life, this is the show for you. 100%.

[00:42:19] So I would just say that if you're interested, subscribe to The Silver Linings Handbook wherever you listen to podcasts. Before we go, we just wanted to say another few words about Vaya. Yeah, this is really a wonderful product. I think it's really helped both of us get a lot better rest. Vaya is pretty much, I guess you'd say, the only lifestyle hemp brand out there. So what does that mean? It means that they're all about crafting different products to elicit different moods. Kevin and I really like their non-THC CBD products.

[00:42:48] Specifically, Zen really helps me fall asleep. Some Zen can really just kind of help me get more into that state where I can relax and fall asleep pretty easily. And they've been such a wonderful support to us. They're a longtime sponsor. We really love working with them, and they really make this show possible. I'm going to say this. You may not realize this, but when you support our sponsors, you're supporting us, and it kind of makes it possible for us to do the show. So if you or one of your loved ones is interested in trying some of this stuff, you're going to get a great deal.

[00:43:18] It's very high quality, high value. Anya, if I wanted to get this discount you speak of, what do I do? Okay, if you're 21 and older, head to Viahemp.com and use the code MSHEET to receive 15% off. And if you're new to Viah, get a free gift of your choice. That's V-I-I-A, hemp.com, and use code MSHEET at checkout. Spell the code. M-S-H-E-E-T. And after you purchase, they're going to ask you, hey, where did you hear about us?

[00:43:46] Say the murder sheet because then it lets them know that our ads are effective, and it really helps us out. And then we'll see you next time.