Just The Tip-sters

Sometimes it’s so crystal clear that a crime was committed, who did the crime, why the crime was committed and where to go find the bad guy – it’ll drive you nuts.  And that is pretty much the story of the disappearance of 23 year-old Austin “Jay” Smith exactly 28 years ago on March 23, 1993. when he left his home in the suburbs of Southern California's San Gabriel Valley and never returned.  It’s enough to make a sane person go mad.  Dig it:  We know Jay went to an appointment that evening, meeting a former employer who was renting audio-video equipment at a local high school – despite the fact that said former employer was furious with Jay for reporting him to the school for pocketing rental money for himself.  We know that when he didn’t return at the expected time, Jay’s girlfriend drove to the auditorium where she saw Jay’s truck and the former employer’s camper parked, and that when she banged on the auditorium door, the disheveled former employer opened briefly, only to slam the door in the girlfriend’

This week we focus on a murder from December 1993 that occurred literally less than a five-minute drive from the Homestead Studios – although long before Melissa and Producer Mark moved there.  The victim was a beautiful and accomplished 29 year-old martial arts instructor and black belt named Veronica Estrada, who left the studio where she was an instructor and, having had an argument with her boyfriend, decided to walk home instead of having him pick her up.  The next morning, after no one had heard from Veronica, the owner of the studio, Ken Lewis, and another instructor at the studio named Stuart Milburn, began walking the street that Veronica would have traveled, and eventually, Lewis spotted the young woman’s body off the side of the road and had Milburn run to a business across the street to call police.  Both Lewis and the police suspected strange things about Stuart Milburn from the very beginning – but wait – we’ll let  the man who was there tell you the story himself – because Ken Lewis is Melissa’

This week Melissa’s special guest is the engaging (and really nice guy) Detective Matt Wharton from the Sweetwater County Wyoming Sheriff’s Office.  It’s definitely Big Country in Wyoming, and Sweetwater County is big indeed – the 8th largest county by land in the United States – with miles and miles of rugged beauty – and winters that are not advisable to take on alone unless you know what you’re doing and know your bearings.  And even then, you can get lost…which is exactly what appears to have happened to 74 year-old Terry Meador one cold day in October 2018, when he went looking for a place to hunt but never returned.  His pickup truck, abandoned and stuck in a rut, was found on an access road several days after his disappearance.  But as of today, no one knows what actually happened to Terry Meador, or where he (or his remains) might be found.  Melissa and Detective Wharton cover all the bases in this detailed interview, including a couple of side-tracks that may or may not mean anything at all…but migh

Hey Tip-Sters!  Surprise!!!  We have a special between-regular-episodes MURDERTIZER (an appetizer of murder)!  Last week Melissa appeared as a guest on a terrific podcast – the Don’t Assume Podcast hosted by Dave Kimball – a truly interesting and interesting guy who hosts people from all over the country from a wide array of professions and backgrounds and challenges his listeners to not assume they know what they think they know about those backgrounds and professions.  Naturally, who better for Dave to discuss true crime podcasts with than our own Melissa?  Enjoy this wonderful chat where you’ll have a chance to hear Melissa as the interviewee rather than the interviewer – and learn a few things you may not know about her!  Thanks to Dave Kimball – we highly recommend you check out the Don’t Assume Podcast for yourself!

This week’s episode involves a twisted web of convictions (perhaps wrongful), acquittals (also possibly wrongful), the murder of a young woman and the disappearance and probable murder of a second young woman – all wrapped around two potentially really bad guys and one no-doubt-about-it nasty scumbag.  The story unfolds in tony Putnam County, an affluent New York City suburb north of Manhattan in southern upstate New York, where in October 1994 12 year-old Josette Wright disappeared.  Just over 13 months later, Josette’s remains were discovered.  Two young men – Anthony DiPippo and Andrew Krivak – were charged and, in 1997, convicted of Josette’s murder – in separate trials.  DiPippo has always maintained his innocence. Krivak confessed.  Seems simple.  Except…well, a couple of things.  It turns out that Krivak has claimed, almost from the moment he accepted his sentence, that his confession was coerced, and there’s evidence to indicate the investigator who questioned Krivak used tactics that may have led to

On the night before Valentine’s Day 2000 (which, like this year, was also part of a three-day Presidents Day weekend), a beautiful 9 year-old girl named Asha Degree and her ten year-old brother O’Bryant went to bed in their Shelby North Carolina home.  Sometime around 2:30 am, O’Bryant heard his sister go to the bathroom and return to bed – but when he was awakened in the morning by his frantic mother, he found out what the rest of the nation was about to learn – young Asha had disappeared.  And what made the whole thing baffling is that every indication was that Asha had left of her own free will.  There were no signs of a break-in nor anything else that would indicate anyone took her from the home.  Her backpack and some clothes were missing, indicating she had planned to leave.  Even more baffling was the fact that it was heavily raining the night/early morning when Asha disappeared.  A witness claimed to have seen her walking in the downpour, but when offered a ride she ran into nearby woods.  Would a nin

Sometimes when researching a case, Melissa discovers threads that lead her in multiple directions.  Every once in a while one of those threads leads to a clue in the case she’s investigating.  But other times, they lead to cases clearly unrelated – but eerily similar – to the matter at hand.  This week’s episode brings together two such cases.  The cold case Melissa started researching involves the mysterious – actually downright strange – 2007 death of 78 year-old Louise Paciarello, a retired nurse’s aide who was a beloved neighbor and friend in her Yonkers, New York building and surrounding neighborhood.  Tiny, frail and lovely, Louise by all accounts had no enemies.  Yet for some time before her apartment was set fire by someone who had first strangled her, she had told friends some very troubling – and weird – stories.  She showed several friends a note, written on a napkin, from someone who wrote they’d been in the apartment while she slept – and even though she wouldn’t say who the note was from, expre

One day in March 1980, a member of the U.S. Army (her rank still not clear) named Tamara Tigard, who was living (or was she stationed?) in Las Vegas, went for a walk.  And then vanished.  One month later, 1,200 miles away near the small town of Jones, Oklahoma – on Tamara’s 21st birthday, as it happens – the unclothed body of a young woman was found in a shallow grave on the banks of the North Canadian River.  The body had been covered with “wet” lime, which, intentionally or not, had acted to preserve the body to a remarkable degree.  Even so, authorities could not identify the body – and no reported missing persons reports matched the dead woman’s description, so “The Lime Lady,” as she came to be known, was buried in an unmarked grave there in Central Oklahoma, leaving law enforcement with a mystery that would last for the next four decades.  Almost exactly four decades, as it turns out.  Because in 2020, through the unending determination of the Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Office, in particular Captain Bob

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 televi

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,

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 o

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

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-S

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

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 thi

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,

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) de

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 neigh

This Thanksgiving week Melissa updates a couple of unsolved missing person cases – one we’ve not yet covered but which has been covered extensively and one we’ve covered extensively and almost no one else has…and as with all unsolved cases, it’s a mixed bag.  The first update has to do with the 2015 disappearance of Crystal Rogers, the then 35 year-old mother of five from Bardstown Kentucky who went missing during the Independence Day holiday.  The last person to see Crystal was her live-in boyfriend, Brooks Houck, who claims that Crystal was playing video games on her phone when he went to bed on the evening of July 2, 2015, only to find Crystal and her car gone the next morning.  Two days later, Crystal’s Chevrolet was found with a flat tire, abandoned off the side of the Bluegrass Parkway – its keys in the ignition and her purse and phone left behind.  The case has been analyzed in detail by several podcasts, most notably the serial Bardstown.  In this episode of JUST THE TIP-STERS, Melissa updates the Rog

You wanna hear a really creepy ghost story?  Well…actually…a really creepy satanic possession story…or something? Try this on for size: Guy gets really good at his job.  So good that he’s given a cameo doing his job in one of the biggest horror movies of the century.  A movie whose set became legendary for weird accidents, injuries, fires – even deaths! – during its making…and a few years later, same guy gets arrested for knocking his gay hook-up over the head with a frying pan and then stabbing him to death…and to top it off, same guy seems to be pretty much the person who killed at least six other unidentified men, dismembering them, then packing them into garbage bags that get thrown into the Hudson River. Not very believable.  Except that it’s a true story. It’s the story of Paul Bateson, the alcoholic radiological technologist whose delicate, caring manner in performing the cerebral angiography procedure on children at New York University Medical Center caught the eye of film director William Friedkin,