It took a while to receive a copy of the police report, and when we first read it we had no reason to doubt any of it. But then, we started noticing things. Little errors. How some of the dates didn’t line up quite right, or some of the attached exhibits were missing. You heard from Chad in episode 4, the state trooper that was in charge of the investigation, and we asked if he wouldn’t mind reading over the report that he’d written, 45 years earlier.

We continue our shocking conversation with the retired officer who wrote the police report in 1975. We talk about ballistics, some missing or misplaced evidence and  about the role played by the governor's office. 

In the last episode we mentioned how we were going to be talking with two veteran police investigators who are familiar with this case. We will get to that next episode, instead we wanted to bring you something completely different.  

You’ll be listening to a very personal interview with Nicole, Angelo, and Peter Hauer’s niece, Meg.

This podcast is a work in progress, and we are hopeful the attention the podcast gets could lead to new information. That happened last week, and we’re going to be setting up a tip line, and sharing the new information and interviews with you in an episode very soon. 

This week we hear from Peter Hauer’s next door neighbor and his long time girlfriend.

The neighboring family that Peter Hauer was closest with, refuse to believe, even to this day, that Peter killed Walter Smith. The week the crime took place, Peter had been driving the grandmother every day to see her sick husband in the hospital

We heard that Peter went through the trouble of doing his laundry, and he’d made a bulk food purchase the week that Walter Smith was missing, friends and neighbors question why he would’ve bothered to do this if he was suicidal

Peter’s longtime girlfriend thinks he did, in fact, type the note

And we heard about what could possibly be a bullet hole in Peter Hauer’s skull

The mystery unfolds in The Witches, this week’s episode of Buried, Not Forgotten. Two police officers struggle to make sense of evidence, like an altar with candles in another cave and a misunderstood group called The Red Hood.

Episode 2 includes the cave search and rescue team that discovered Walter's remains, the questionable "Last Will" that was found with Pete's typewriter, and a nearby house that had been riddled with bullet holes.

So just to remind you, Peter Hauer moved to Pocahontas County, West Virginia in 1971. He bought a little farm for $4,500, and his place served as a kind of flophouse for his cave exploring friends, who were from all over the country. 

In Episode 1, we talked about how years later, sometime in 1974, someone started attacking Peter Hauer’s animals. This week, we will hear from witnesses to those attacks, and how the perpetrators were tracked in the aftermath. 

Open chapters, or skip to 7:30 to skip witnesses of livestock attacks.

People in the area are still talking about, and haunted by, this case today. It was hard to believe that no one had ever investigated the rumors in forty years. So after we first heard the story from neighbors, we wanted to know if the official report was different than the things we’d been hearing.

One question led to two more and after dozens of interviews, reviewing press coverage, Freedom of Information Act requests, and a trove of primary source documents, we knew there was something to this case.  

We want to share the story with you. So SUBSCRIBE to get each new episode, and visit the https://www.buriednotforgotten.com/ for case visuals or to ask a question. Stay tuned for a new episode every Wednesday. 

In next week’s episode of Buried, Not Forgotten, it gets a lot weirder as we discuss the role of witchcraft, animal abuse, cults, and problems Peter Hauer had been having with some neighbors.