Just The Tip-Sters: True Crime Podcast

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176. Looks Like A Spinoff Into Tragedy - The Senseless Murder Of Barbara Colby Feb 02, 2021

Show notes

This week’s sad and (like most unsolved cases) totally frustrating case was discovered when Producer Mark read a bio of Academy Award and Emmy-winning actress Cloris Leachman upon her recent passing. In the article, a fascinating side note about the show “Phyllis,” a spinoff of the “Mary Tyler Moore Show” (which starred Leachman as the title character) mentioned that the spinoff lasted only two seasons, and part of the reason it didn’t continue was because of the deaths of three of its cast members, one of which, Barbara Colby, was murdered after only three episodes of the show had been filmed. Naturally, this piqued Melissa’s interest – and so she delved into the case, and discovered that Colby and a fellow actor were not only gunned down for what appears to be no particular reason one July night in 1975 in Venice California – but that the case is still unsolved to this day. Colby – only three weeks past her 36th birthday at the time of her death – had already worked her way into a solid career in television with a reputation as a versatile and creative actor, gaining guest-starring roles in such series as “Columbo,” “The Odd Couple” and “Medical Center.” Colby’s big break came when she was cast as “Sherry,” a savvy “lady of the night” sharing a jail cell with the hilariously naïve Mary Richards in a now-classic episode of the “Mary Tyler Moore” show. Reaction was so positive that she was invited back the following season to reprise her role. Those performances resulted in Moore’s production company handing Colby the role of Julie, Phyllis’ boss on the “Phyllis” sitcom. But after only three episodes were in the can, Colby and her companion James Kiernan were walking to their car after teaching an acting class when they were suddenly approached by still-unidentified assailants who shot them both, fleeing the scene having stolen nothing and without any explanation of any kind. Colby was killed at the scene; Kiernan lived long enough to describe the incident to police, but died that same night. Listen in as Melissa describes the tragedy and some of the weird facts lurking in the background – and maybe, if you hear something that strikes a chord – you, dear Tip-Ster, can help solve this truly tragic and senseless crime. If you think you can, please contact the Los Angeles Police Department through Crime Stoppers USA at (800) 222-TIPS.

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175. Looks Like A Puzzle Waiting For Its Missing Piece - The Otha Young Jr. Mystery - With Special Guest Virginia Braden Jan 26, 2021

Show notes

On October 10 1996, a 65 year-old retired eyeglass maker named Otha Young, Jr., who had been admitted to a hospital in his hometown of Louisville Kentucky for a medical episode related to his Alzheimer’s - against the advice of the attending physicians and staff – checked himself out of the hospital, got in his car and headed north on Interstate 75. Along the way he was stopped by law enforcement and issued a traffic citation, and because he was driving without a license, the car was left on the side of the road and Young checked in to a Best Western hotel near the Northern Kentucky town of Florence later that day. And that was the last documented evidence of Otha Young’s existence. He disappeared without a trace. His car was found very quickly by his daughter the next day – where it had been abandoned in an emergency lane along the highway. But no Otha Young. And no evidence of any kind as to what happened to him – it didn’t take long for the case to go cold. Then eight years later, in November 2004, skeletal remains, clothing, a hotel key card and some other non-identifying personal items were found by city workers cleaning a storm drain about 30 feet from the highway. It took the better part of a year before some excellent police work determined that the remains belonged to Otha Young Jr. – and that he had been murdered. The case has been in active investigation mode ever since, with some fascinating clues emerging along the way – but it’s still more of a mystery than it is anywhere near close to solved. Enter Virginia Braden, a Kentucky-based private investigator who has taken an interest in several cold cases over the years and has made it her mission to bring some comfort to families and loved ones of missing persons and unsolved murder victims. Of all her cases, Braden has made the Otha Young Jr. murder investigation her greatest cause. And there are some fascinating facts that have emerged along the way – as she describes it, it’s like a jigsaw puzzle, and there are scattered pieces just waiting for their companion pieces to be found, to fill in and solve it. Join Melissa for her fascinating discussion with fascinating Virginia Braden – Melissa’s special guest this week – whose personal story is as compelling as any of the cases she follows. In addition to her work as a P.I., she is also the author of multiple books, including “Life is Hard…Here’s Some Help,” which Melissa discusses (and raves about) on this edition of the podcast. A detailed look into the Otha Young disappearance and murder – and a look into the work of a truly inspired and inspirational woman. If you have any information on the disappearance and/or murder of Otha Young Jr., call Detective Walt Cooley of the Florence Kentucky Police Dept. at (859) 647-5420. Virginia Braden’s website and blog are located at www.bradeninvestigations.com.

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174. Looks Like Murder Made For Hollywood - Mabel Monohan And Barbara Graham Jan 19, 2021

Show notes

This week Melissa jumps into the Tip-Ster Wayback machine and journeys to the rough-and tumble era of 1950s Los Angeles, where corruption ran rampant, the mob still held sway, mean jamokes with ill intent lurked in the shadows –and where Hollywood influenced everything from clothing to language to the very news being home-delivered every day. And right near the outset of that turbulent era – on March 9, 1953 – one of the decade’s most sensationalized murders took place on a quiet street in a tidy bungalow in suburban Burbank. There, in the shadow of the recently relocated Warner Bros and Walt Disney film studios, a former Vaudeville and Tent Show diva – 69 year-old widow Mabel Monohan – was brutally beaten and left for dead by a gang of five robbers who believed she was hiding a large stash of money in a safe, neither of which existed. Beaten and bloody, bound with a pillow case over her head, Mrs. Monohan died of her injuries – her body not found until two days after the botched robbery. After a couple of confessions (and after the burglars killed one of their own who squealed to the cops) – three of the five were eventually put to death in California’s gas chamber. Simple enough, right? Well no, not at all. That’s because one of the three capital murder defendants was a woman – a beautiful 29 year-old, thrice-married sex worker and heroin addict named Barbara Graham, who, with four male co-conspirators, plotted to steal $100,000 they believed Mrs. Monohan kept in a safe, as a favor to her gambler ex-son-in-law. So Graham and her four cohorts made a plan to invade the home, tie up Mrs. Monohan, crack the safe, take the money and run. It was Graham, posing as a young woman asking for help, who convinced Mrs. Monohan to open the door to the house. The plan – obviously – went awry very quickly. Mrs. Monohan was pistol-whipped and, when the would-be thieves fled after they realized no money was to be found, she was left on the floor, still bound, suffering from mortal wounds. By the time arrests were made, the local press had successfully turned the allegations against Barbara Graham into an international cause celebre, making the beautiful young woman’s story into a plea for leniency and an end to the death penalty. After Graham and the two other conspirators were executed, Hollywood picked up Graham’s story and turned it into a motion picture that won its star, Susan Hayward, an Oscar for Best Actress. Join Melissa as she covers the full gamut of this timeless case of murder, sex, sexism and the relevance of the death penalty – especially against women – and how those issues from 67 years ago haven’t really changed all that much.

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173. Looks Like Unreliable Statements - The Disappearance Of Erica Baker Jan 12, 2021

Show notes

Melissa opens Season 4 with a vexing case out of Soutwest Ohio – the town of Kettering, where on February 7, 1999, nine year-old Erica Baker took her aunt’s dog for a walk and never returned. The dog, with leash still attached, was found just an hour after Erica left the house. And this disappearance is not just frustrating and sad (as all cold or missing person cases are). It is also weird. Because even though someone was arrested and convicted of being involved in young Erica’s death, it really…wasn’t…solved. It seems that witness accounts indicated that Erica may have been struck by a van near the recreation center where the dog was found. A crack addict by the name of Christian John Gabriel who with two others had been fleeing in a van after stealing from the local Meijer store, eventually confessed that he may have hit a girl while driving the van and that he and his accomplices buried the body at a local state park. But then he changed the story – claiming one of the others – on Jan Marie Franks (now deceased) – was actually driving the van. Today he claims that all of his confessions were untrue and that he wasn’t involved at all in Erica’s disappearance. Police have spent innumerable hours and dollars looking for Erica’s remains based on Gabriel’s various confessions, but have never found anything. Eventually Gabriel and his cohorts were convicted of the Meijer robbery – and Gabriel was convicted in 2005 of gross abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence. Gabriel served six years in prison and has been free since 2011. And through all of this, no one has actually been convicted of killing Erica Baker – and neither she, her remains nor any sign of her whatsoever has emerged. If you know anything that may lead to the truth about what happened to her – or where her remains might be found, please call the Kettering Police Department at (937) 296-2555.

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172. SPECIAL: Smells Like An Incognito Interview Jan 05, 2021

Show notes

As a between-season special, we thought we’d pass along this delightful interview with Melissa from last week when she visited the YouTube Live channel for The Incognito Society and its host, Elizabeth. In the interview, Melissa shares a lot about herself, her podcast, the relationship between podcasts and law enforcement, as well as a number of cases, including the vexing Delphi Murders out of Indiana, where Elizabeth and her channel are based, and upon which The Incognito Society and its followers focus much of their time searching for clues. We want to thank Elizabeth for allowing us to share this interview with our Tip-Sters, and we invite all of you to take a look and a listen to The Incognito Society’s YouTube channel. Melissa will be back next week with the Season 4 premiere of “JTT.” Until then, we hope your new year is off to a great start! Remember, if you have a tip of any kind that can help solve a crime or any mystery whatsoever, you can call Melissa on the TIP-STER HOTLINE at (832) TIP-STER (832-847-7837) or send an email to jttipsters@gmail.com.

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171. Smells Like 18 Years Is Too Long To Wait - The Wideman Family Murders Dec 29, 2020

Show notes

Melissa wraps up Season 3 of the podcast with the tale of an horrific “family annihilator” mass murder from 2002 and the mysterious 18 year delay it took to bring a suspect to justice...mysterious because, right from the very beginning, all signs pointed – with big bright shiny, glowing arrows – to Jason Michael Walker, who was finally arrested on December 2, 2020 after nearly two decades following the murders in question. And those murders were as grotesque and incomprehensible as they come. On March 22, 2002, at approximately 3 a.m. local time, authorities were called to a burning house in the tiny town of Rebecca, Georgia. Inside the rubble of the decimated structure, firefighters discovered the bodies of the Wideman family - Tommy John Wideman, Tommy’s wife Deborah, the couple’s 20 year-old daughter Melissa – and the 8-1/2 month-old fetus Melissa had been carrying – which had been cut out of Melissa’s womb and placed by the family’s dead bodies. Tommy Joe, Deborah and Melissa were all determined to have been killed prior to the ignition of the fire. For the next 18 years the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), together with local authorities, worked to no avail to solve the grizzly multiple homicide. Then suddenly, in late 2020 a grand jury was convened to present evidence against Jason Walker, including recent eyewitness testimony from someone who saw someone fleeing from the burning house – and the fact that Walker, who had been known to date young Melissa Wideman, had been confirmed through DNA testing to be the father of the fetus found at the scene. The grand jury – at long last – handed down indictments on December 1, and Walker was arrested shortly thereafter. How does a case like this go so long without being solved? That is the troubling question asked by Melissa in this compelling episode. THANK YOU TIP-STERS for supporting Just The Tip-Sters! It’s amazing to realize we’ve now completed three full seasons – and we owe YOU everything! Melissa’s taking a brief one-week break between seasons – and the podcast will return on Tuesday January 12, 2021 with a brand new season of more fascinating cases, enlightening guests and YOUR TIPS (oh and of course more cowbell)! In the meantime, Happy New Year to one and all! Remember, if you have a tip of any kind that can help solve a crime or any mystery whatsoever, you can call Melissa on the TIP-STER HOTLINE at (832) TIP-STER (832-847-7837) or send an email to jttipsters@gmail.com

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170. Smells Like Flim Flam Namaste - Buddhafield And The Attraction Of Cults Dec 22, 2020

Show notes

On this special episode, Melissa explores the phenomenon of outlier religious or alternative followings – otherwise known as cults. At the center of this fascinating discussion, Melissa focuses on the still-operating community known as Buddhafield – currently situated in Hawaii. The cult is the subject of the 2016 documentary “Holy Hell,” which was made by former cult member Will Allen, with footage taken mostly from his years as the Buddahfield’s official documentarian. Started in the 1980s by an out-of-work actor named Jaime Gomez (who soon thereafter changed his name to “Michel, Andreas, The Teacher or Reyji”) as a sort of hybrid of Eastern and Western new age philosophies, Buddhafield attracted kindred souls in the often-vacuous and lonely landscape of West Hollywood. Gomez’ followers tended to be young and beautiful – encouraged to wear as little clothing as possible (the leader himself was known for years to wear nothing but a speedo) and to remain celibate. Which, it turns out, is a difficult thing to hold onto if you’re half-naked, young and beautiful and surrounded by nothing but other half-naked young and beautiful people. So ridiculous was the hypocrisy that cult members began to refer Buddhafield as “Bootiefield.” But there were darker aspects to life within the cult – as his cult grew, Gomez gradually began to consider himself God incarnate. His followers became servants – opening every door, carrying chairs on their backs so he could sit whenever he pleased. But even darker were the allegations from former members of emotional and sexual abuse by “The Teacher,” allegations which were consistently denied by Gomez and remaining cult members alike. In the meantime, the lighthearted, freewheeling spirit that had attracted so many to him began to drain from the cult leader as he became more of a shadow of a person and only a shell of a man. As she discusses the incredibly compelling history of Buddhafield, its move from California to Texas and then finally to Hawaii (where it still exists as a much smaller, but still devoted, cult), Melissa explores her own relationships with current and former members of alternative spiritual compulsions (i.e. cults) as well as age-old questions as to what attracts (almost always) educated, intelligent and creative people to the prison of cult life.

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169. Smells Like A Lifting Fog - The Cheryll Spegal Case With Special Guest Beth Rowland Dec 15, 2020

Show notes

On October 19, 1971, ten year-old Cheryll Spegall was last seen running to catch the bus to school near her home in Highland Heights, Kentucky. No one saw her after that. No one, that is, except her murderer. Whoever that person is (or was), he has never been caught. Not yet, that is. Cheryll’s lifeless body was found nearly two weeks later, buried under a pile of rocks in a remote area in neighboring Pendleton County, by a milk truck driver who just happened to pull over at that particular spot on the way to his last stop. While Cheryll’s family and friends have never stopped searching for Cheryll’s killer all these years later, it has really been over the past three years that the case has taken on a new life – a spark that has ignited a fire of interest by law enforcement as well as a wide range of people who never knew the young girl – many who weren’t even born yet when the murder occurred. The catalyst for this sudden and dramatic interest in a 49 year-old unsolved homicide? One person – namely, Melissa’s guest on this episode. Her name is Beth Rowland, one of the most dedicated and whip-smart amateur sleuths we’ve ever met. A music teacher by day, Beth’s interest was ignited years ago when, on a date with her then-boyfriend (now husband), she learned of a mysterious “man on the porch,” an older gentleman who liked to watch passersby from his front stoop that the locals all told themselves to stay away from because rumor had it that he had “killed a girl” back in ’71. Fast forward to three years ago, when at a family dinner, Beth’s curiosity about the case compelled her to ask her mother-in-law, who lived near the Spegal family home at the time, what she knew about it. The answers only increased Beth’s interest, and soon she started a blog, “Gone in the Fog,” which now has nearly fifty chapters, both in text and in audio, about her personal journey and her investigation into the murder – and how in the process she has compiled as much or more investigative data as the police themselves. Take a listen to Melissa’s fascinating hour-plus interview with Beth Rowland and prepare to want to get involved yourself! If you have any information about the disappearance and murder of Cheryll Spegal, please call the Kentucky State Police Post 6 at (859) 428-1212.

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168. Smells Like A Complicated Partnership - DNA, Science And Justice Dec 08, 2020

Show notes

Ever since the mid-1980s, when Sir Alec Jeffreys first developed “genetic fingerprinting” which soon came to be known of DNA profiling, forensic science has not only become more important in crime-solving than in the previous several hundred years combined, its potential for making it almost impossible to commit a crime in the first place seems to grow exponentially with each passing day. To be able to decode the secrets of DNA – which exists in the cells of virtually all living organisms and is for all practical purposes unique to each, and then break down that information into a practical form that can be used to definitively mark one individual over anyone else with certainties, the odds against which run into numbers that exceed the world population many times over, still seems like a miracle. Even more miraculous has been the latest extrapolation of DNA profiling, forensic genealogy, which can take even trace samples of human DNA and, utilizing DNA data from public websites (most notably GEDMatch) designed to link branches of family trees for ancestry research, to find previously unidentified perpetrators and victims of crimes. In this episode Melissa discusses the remarkable successes of forensic genealogy and struggles with the privacy issues companies like GEDMatch, Ancestry.com and 23andMe are facing – and the balance society is still trying to find between its desire to bring criminals to justice and simultaneously protect the rights of the individual.

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167. Smells Like A Hunting Trip Into Oblivion - The Ed Nichols Case With Special Guest Detective Coy Cox Dec 01, 2020

Show notes

Murderers are evil – and yes they’re evil because they take the lives of innocents – but also because of the lives and futures they affect for those left behind. Sometimes the murder itself is so disturbing or maddening that it’s easy to forget that the friends and colleagues – and particularly family – who are left to pick up the pieces of a murdered or disappeared loved on are often victimized themselves. Broken marriages, depression – even suicide – can all rear their heads in the residue of a killer’s actions. Especially when you don’t know where the victim is – and you can’t prove who it was who did the killing. But sometimes the loved ones of the victim overcome the temptation to give up and simply decide to find answers – whether they’re helped by the police or not. Such is the story of the three living sisters of one Edward (“Eddie”) Nichols of Gallatin County, Kentucky, who went hunting with a friend (or should we say “friend”?) on December 3, 1974 at a place called Shady Nook Bottoms in neighboring Boone County – and hasn’t been seen or heard from since. Since that time – for 46 years now – Eddie’s family has refused to give up the search to bring him home. And to their credit, the Boone County authorities, after initially dropping the ball, have not let go of the case either. On this episode, Melissa interviews returning guest Detective Coy Cox of the Boone County Sheriff’s Department, who currently leads the Nichols investigation, to go over the known facts of the case and to suss out some possible answers to this most perplexing disappearance – and the persistence of three loving sisters who won’t let their brother’s memory fade for even a moment.

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