October 23, 1987. Arlington, Texas. 43-year old Patsy Wright phones up her sister in the middle of the night to complain that she has become nauseous after taking some NyQuil, but collapses during the call and soon passes away. An autopsy eventually reveals that Patsy was poisoned after strychnine was put in her NyQuil. The investigation would uncover multiple suspects with a motive to murder Patsy, but no evidence to implicate anyone. Our first “Trail Went Cold” episode of 2017 analyzes a real-life whodunit which resembles an Agatha Christie murder mystery.

Additional Reading:

http://unsolved.com/archives/patsy-wright

http://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/1989/august/t-h-e-wax-museum-murder-mystery/

http://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/1990/february/the-name-is-dear-bill-dear/

The Trail Went Cold is produced and edited by Magill Foote.

All music is composed by Vince Nitro.

June 4, 1989. Spokane, Washington. 13-year old Russell Evans heads home after spending the evening with friends, but is soon found seriously injured in the middle of the road. Russell eventually succumbs to his injuries and the official ruling by police is that he was the victim of a random hit-and-run accident. However, the nature of Russell’s injuries and evidence from the scene do not support a hit-and-run scenario. Russell’s parents come to believe he was attacked and murdered by multiple individuals and that one of his friends is withholding the truth about what happened. “The Trail Went Cold” concludes 2016 with a very important minisode which was personally requested by one of the victim’s relatives.

Additional Reading:

http://unsolved.com/archives/russell-evans

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1996/mar/01/new-witnesses-come-forward-in-teens-death-parents/

The Idaho Spokesman-Review (April 20, 1990)

The Idaho Spokesman-Review (Feb. 27, 1996)

The Trail Went Cold is produced and edited by Magill Foote.

All music is composed by Vince Nitro.

Christmas Eve 1945. Fayetteville, West Virginia. George and Jenny Sodder are preparing to celebrate the holidays with nine of their children, but shortly after they go to bed, their home burns completely to the ground. When the smoke clears, five of the Sodder children – whose ages range from five to fourteen years old – are nowhere to be found and a search of the rubble fails to turn up any trace of their remains. Due to a number of suspicious events surrounding the fire, the Sodders begin to suspect their five missing children were the victims of a bizarre kidnapping. Did the Sodder children really die in the fire that night or did they somehow survive and remain hidden from their family for the rest of their lives? And if the children did perish in the fire, who was responsible for starting it? In this week’s special holiday-themed episode of “The Trail Went Cold”, we chronicle one of the most infamous Christmas mysteries of all time.

Additional Reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodder_children_disappearance

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-children-who-went-up-in-smoke-172429802/

http://charleyproject.org/case/jennie-irene-sodder

http://charleyproject.org/case/maurice-antonio-sodder

http://charleyproject.org/case/louis-erico-sodder

http://charleyproject.org/case/betty-dolly-sodder

http://charleyproject.org/case/martha-lee-sodder

The Trail Went Cold is produced and edited by Magill Foote.

All music is composed by Vince Nitro.

June 28, 1981. Tilden Township, Michigan. After a night of drinking at a local club, 48-year old Helen Dymond and her husband Roy get into an argument in the parking lot. Roy drives home without his wife and Helen decides to walk from the club to her son’s house in order to spend the night. However, Helen never arrives and vanishes without a trace. Unfortunately, potential resolution for this case would be hampered by a faulty police investigation, contradictory stories from eyewitnesses, and the spread of misinformation. Join us for this week’s minisode of “The Trail Went Cold” as we examine the perplexing disappearance of Helen Dymond.

Special thanks to Helen`s granddaughters, Holly Letson and April Lawer, whose Facebook page, “The Disappearance of Helen Dymond” is the source of most of the information you’ll hear on this podcast.

Additional Reading:

http://charleyproject.org/case/helen-leone-dymond

http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/cold-case-spotlight/granddaughters-missing-woman-helen-dymond-push-answers-decades-later-n609536

The Trail Went Cold is produced and edited by Magill Foote.

All music is composed by Vince Nitro.

February 19, 1982. Woonsocket, Rhode Island. 27-year old Susan Laferte and 22-year old Doreen Picard are both attacked in the basement of their apartment house by an assailant who bludgeons them with a pipe. Doreen is killed and Susan remains in a coma for a month, but when she wakes up, she has no memory of the attack. Ten years later, a suspect named Raymond “Beaver” Tempest is convicted of Doreen’s murder and sentenced to 85 years in prison. However, since the prosecution’s case was fraught with problems, Tempest’s conviction is vacated in 2015 and the state is currently deciding whether or not to retry him. Is Beaver Tempest innocent of this horrific crime, or did they have the right guy all along? In this week’s episode of “The Trail Went Cold”, we examine a very controversial case which has still not reached its final resolution.

Additional Reading:

https://unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Doreen_Picard

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/07/13/man-murder-conviction-vacated-after-years/fbbdnVyj0rVKmI1N0WLdUJ/story.html

https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20160714/ri-high-court-rules-beaver-tempest-is-entitled-to-new-murder-trial

https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1935215/state-v-tempest/

http://caught.net/2018/beaver1.htm

http://caught.net/pdf/tempestruling.pdf

https://web.archive.org/web/20141001230150/http://caught.net/cases/beaver1.htm

https://web.archive.org/web/20150208032655/http://caught.net/cases/beaver2.htm

The Trail Went Cold is produced and edited by Magill Foote.

All music is composed by Vince Nitro.

February 4, 1990. Orlando, Florida. 26-year old Deborah Poe shows up to work the graveyard shift at a Circle K convenience store. At around 4:00 AM, the store is discovered to be empty and Deborah is reported missing. Less than an hour beforehand, a customer had frequented the store, but for unknown reasons, an unidentified man was standing behind the counter and sold her some cigarettes. Did this mysterious man play a role in Deborah Poe’s unsolved disappearance or was someone else responsible? We attempt to answer this perplexing question in this week’s minisode of “The Trail Went Cold”.

Additional Reading:

https://unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Deborah_Poe

http://charleyproject.org/case/deborah-deann-poe

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1990-02-06/news/9002063308_1_poe-boyfriend-aunt

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2002-03-28/news/0203280229_1_grassy-field-human-remains-county-sheriff-detectives

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/breaking-news/os-deborah-poe-missing-anniversary-20150203-story.html

The Trail Went Cold is produced and edited by Magill Foote.

All music is composed by Vince Nitro.

November 12, 1976. Inverness, Scotland. 36-year old Renee MacRae and her 3-year old son Andrew leave on a weekend trip, supposedly to visit Renee’s sister. Later that night, their flaming vehicle is discovered at an isolated lay-by next to the A9, but Renee and Andrew have disappeared. In a shocking twist, it turns out that Renee was actually planning to visit Bill MacDowell, a man she’d secretly been having an affair with for years and who also happens to be Andrew’s biological father. While the evidence suggests Renee and Andrew were murdered, their bodies have never been found. Join me for this week’s episode of “The Trail Went Cold” as I examine one of the most famous unsolved mysteries in the history of Scotland.

Additional Reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renee_MacRae

http://www.scotsman.com/news/renee-macrae-are-police-nearing-the-truth-1-543570

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/659663/A9-roadworks-uncover-bodies-Renee-MacRaeson-forensic-expert

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-37936116

The Trail Went Cold is produced and edited by Magill Foote.

All music is composed by Vince Nitro.

May 1, 2008. Lawrenceville, Georgia. Millionaire real estate developer Hal Wenal returns home to discover that his 60-year old wife, Eva Kay Wenal, has been murdered. The only lead is an eyewitness sighting of a suspicious man in the neighbourhood around the time of Kay’s death. A newspaper soon receives an angry anonymous letter from someone who confesses to killing Kay because she wouldn’t leave her husband. When Hal passes away two years later, his family goes through his belongings and finds photographs of a man who bears a striking resemblance to the murder suspect. However, no one associated with the Wenals has any idea who this guy is. This week’s minisode of “The Trail Went Cold” explores the unsolved murder of Eva Kay Wenal, who may have unknowingly had her killer’s photo stashed away in her home.

If you think you recognize the man in this composite sketch or any of these photographs, please contact the Gwinnett County Police tip line at (770) 513-5480.

Additional Reading:

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/crime/2015/04/24/millionaire-model-murder-mystery/26298715/

http://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/archive/years-later-clues-emerge-questions-remain-in-slaying-of-millionaire/article_bf4b49b5-bbd1-5297-9351-2c79da0740aa.html

The Trail Went Cold is produced and edited by Magill Foote.

All music is composed by Vince Nitro.

June 18, 1977. Tucson, Arizona. After disappearing from his family for eleven days, the body of escrow company owner Charles “Chuck” Morgan is found outside his vehicle in the desert. He has been shot in the back of the head and is carrying a two-dollar bill which appears to have a coded message written on it. Even though Chuck had allegedly survived a kidnapping ordeal three months earlier and there are of lot suspicious things surrounding his death, the official police ruling is suicide. Thirteen years later, a Phoenix man named Doug Johnston is shot to death… but was his murder actually intended for a journalist investigating Chuck Morgan’s case? On this week’s episode of “The Trail Went Cold”, we examine two cases featured on “Unsolved Mysteries” which may be linked together by a frightening conspiracy.

Additional Reading:

http://unsolved.com/archives/chuck-morgan

http://tucson.com/news/local/crime/cold-case-strange-evidence-found-in-on-near-man-s/article_e84a1034-c078-5a43-81a1-e602f52eda02.html

https://www.cochise.az.gov/sites/default/files/treasurer/WillcoxMurder.pdf

http://unsolvedmysteries.wikia.com/wiki/Doug_Johnston

The Trail Went Cold is produced and edited by Magill Foote.

All music is composed by Vince Nitro.

February 14, 2000. Shelby, North Carolina. The parents of nine-year old Asha Degree wake up to discover that she has vanished from her bedroom. After she is reported missing, witnesses come forward to report having seen Asha walk down the highway earlier that morning. This seems to indicate that she voluntarily left her home in the middle of the night for unknown reasons. Eighteen months later, Asha’s book bag is found buried 26 miles away, but she is still nowhere to be found. In this week’s minisode of “The Trail Went Cold”, I examine one of the most baffling and unusual missing children’s cases of recent memory.

Please check out the Charley Project profile page for Asha Degree, which contains her vital statistics, age-progressed photographs, and contact info for the proper authorities should you happen to have any information: http://charleyproject.org/case/asha-jaquilla-degree

Additional Reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Asha_Degree

About Finding Shelby’s Sweetheart: Asha Jaquilla Degree

https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/local/new-clues-in-asha-degrees-disappearance/214961800

The Trail Went Cold is produced and edited by Magill Foote.

All music is composed by Vince Nitro.