The Trail Went Cold

December 20, 1984. Greeley, Colorado. After singing in a choir at a Christmas performance, 12-year old Jonelle Matthews is dropped off at her family’s house by a friend. When Jonelle’s father returns home later that evening, he is horrified to discover that Jonelle is missing and the evidence suggests she was abducted by an intruder. In spite of an extensive search, Jonelle is never found and investigators fail to uncover any potential suspects in her disappearance. Our newest minisode of “The Trail Went Cold” examines a baffling missing children’s case, as well as its possible connection to an unidentified Jane Doe who was killed in Huntington Beach, California in 1990.
Click here to see Jonelle Matthews’ profile page at the Charley Project, and here to see the profile page for the Huntington Beach Jane Doe at the Doe Network.
http://blogs.denverpost.com/coldcases/2012/11/02/greeley-kidnapped-vanished-declared-dead/5758/
http://www.greeleytribune.com/news/local/three-decades-after-she-disappeared-from-her-greeley-home-memories-of-jonelle-matthews-remain/
The Trail Went Cold is produced and edited by Magill Foote.
All music is composed by Vince Nitro.

June 2, 2007. San Francisco, California. Hugues de la Plaza, a 36-year old sound engineer with dual French and American citizenship, returns to his apartment after spending the evening at a club. When morning hits, Hugues is found stabbed to death. Since a security camera shows no one else heading in the direction of Hugues’ apartment that night, police explore the possibility that Hugues committed suicide and his death is classified as “undetermined”. However, Hugues’ family discover disturbing discrepancies which point to murder, so they are forced to bring in the National Police from France to seek justice for his death. In this week’s episode of “The Trail Went Cold”, we examine a very controversial case which prompted an international police force to take over an American investigation.
Additional Reading:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/48-hours-mystery-a-case-for-murder/
http://archives.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/no-exit-san-francisco-police-have-ensured-that-hugues-de-la-plaza-will-dwell-eternally-in-bureaucratic-limbo/Content?oid=2826340
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Homicide-or-suicide-Man-s-death-a-mystery-3219748.php
http://hoodline.com/2013/06/in-pursuit-of-justice-the-story-of-hugues-de-la-plaza
The Trail Went Cold is produced and edited by Magill Foote.
All music is composed by Vince Nitro.

February 12, 2009. Washington, D.C.. 47-year old Pamela Butler phones her mother to say that she is planning to take her out on Valentine’s Day. Pam never shows up and after not hearing from her for several days, her family checks her house and discovers that she has vanished without explanation. Curiously, even though her home was covered with surveillance cameras, none of the footage shows Pam leaving during the time period she went missing, but her boyfriend can be seen entering and exiting the house on multiple occasions. In spite of this, there is no evidence of foul play or any trace of Pamela Butler. This week’s minisode of “The Trail Went Cold” chronicles a bizarre mystery about a woman who somehow managed to disappear from a locked home which had 24-hour surveillance.
Additional Reading:
http://charleyproject.org/case/pamela-j-butler
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/24/AR2009112404264.html
https://crimewatchdaily.com/2016/04/15/cold-case-d-c-government-computer-specialist-still-missing/
Be sure to take part in our Facebook poll to help decide which case we will cover on our one-year anniversary show!
The Trail Went Cold is produced and edited by Magill Foote.
All music is composed by Vince Nitro.

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.