Jest Out of Jurisdiction
Law Enforcement / First Responder stories and experiences with a focus on comedic blunders, events, and the lighter side of stressful jobs. Stories are firsthand accounts told by the hosts Flash and T-Dot with accompanying guest interviews.
Jest Out of Jurisdiction
Blue Lights and Broken Hearts: The Myra Stalbosky Case
What begins as a routine missing person report reveals itself as one of Kentucky's most heinous crimes when Detective Sonny Boggs takes on the case of 18-year-old Myra Stalbosky, a newly graduated police officer whose promising career was tragically cut short in April 1995.
Blue lights from the dead of the night, lying on a run of dim street light, laughing through the written reports. Truth stranger than the wildest courts. Tales from the force gone astray, caught up in the games they play. High speed chases gone awry. Serious turns into pie in the sky, just out of jurisdiction, left during the conviction All right guys, we're back with another episode.
Speaker 2:We've had a little bit of time in between the last one. We've had some scheduling conflicts. I've got a new job so I've been running through that training and all that, and Travis is jet setting around the world and doing his thing. But we're back. We've got an awesome guest for you tonight. A little bit of a different episode, a little more serious on this side of things.
Speaker 3:It's not all going to be serious no, no, it's not the whole thing We've got some fun stuff.
Speaker 2:It's not all going to be serious, no, no, it's not the whole thing. We got some fun stuff.
Speaker 3:That's the intro we got. Yeah, we are going to switch gears a little bit, because this week is a very special week for law enforcement Absolutely, with it being the National Police Memorial Week and they're honoring officers, fallen officers all over the united states, and I think I read where kennedy put this together way, but you know, like in 62 or something like that, and it was uh, so it's been ongoing. They got the memorial in dc. It's um, it's someplace that all three of us haven't went to, that they're sitting sitting here tonight and we need to go Having friends that are on that wall.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, we need to go see that. But yeah, we've got other big news. Now, too, we are officially a sponsored podcast now. This will be the first sponsored episode that we have out. Ascend Wellness has decided to throw their hat in the ring and sponsor us, and they deal with mental health support and trauma, trauma counseling and things like that, and we'll we'll tell you a little bit more about that after after this episode concludes, we'll we'll have a little ad for for them. But without further ado, we have an honored guest here with us, sonny Boggs. Sonny, you started out. You've been policing for a long, long time, right? A very long time.
Speaker 4:My policing career actually started back in the 80s. I started out as well let's go with my first responder stuff when I was but a young kid. My role models on TV it wasn't sports figures or music stars or anything, it was. I don't know if you guys ever remember the television show Emergency. Yeah, Okay, yeah, Gage and DeSoto.
Speaker 2:That's where it was at for me, absolutely.
Speaker 4:And I grew up here in a local community down in East Bernstadt, Kentucky, and at a young age of about 16 years old I was able to join the East Bernstadt Fire Department.
Speaker 3:Oh, my gosh. Was it always right there on the corner of 490 and 25?
Speaker 4:It was, but we had a substation across the tracks right there too, okay, but it was mostly right there there. Uh, at the yeah, it used to be an old shell station that was there, that's all right.
Speaker 2:It happens that's all right for the first several episodes we had. I had an alarm go off at the same time don't bother us.
Speaker 3:So I grew up on on school street. So, yeah, I was telling you about that. So I was a You're familiar with Twin Branch. No, yeah, okay.
Speaker 4:Right, there is kind of where I grew up and you know, since I got of the age to where I could join the fire department, the volunteer fire department, that was just the thing for me. I mean, I knew that public service was what I wanted to do at a very young age. And you guys probably don't even remember bob hurley, the old fire chief of the east bernstead fire department yeah, uh, he took me on.
Speaker 4:I was like 16, maybe 17, and my brother he was two years younger he still took him on at age 15, wow. So that that's where it got started. And you know, we went through all the training and all that good stuff and then I was like, well, I want to do a little bit more, I want, I want to be in, I want to. So that's where it got started. And you know, we went through all the training and all that good stuff and then I was like, well, I want to do a little bit more, I want to be a paramedic. Well, there was no paramedics in Kentucky back at that time. The only paramedics in Kentucky was two, maybe three places, either Louisville, jefferson County or Louisville and Fayette County. There was none in this area. So I went to EMT school and got to meet another role model after that, bill Smith. Oh, Bill.
Speaker 4:Bill and Janet. Bill and Janet Smith, as a young man, gave me chances I surely didn't deserve. They gave me a job at the ambulance service and I worked for them for a period of time. I was also on the Laurel County Rescue Squad here. This was back in the early 80s.
Speaker 3:Bill was a fire chief. No, I'm sorry, he was a police chief back that time too right, yeah, he was In the earlier 80s.
Speaker 4:He was.
Speaker 3:And I don't know how long he did, but they had the ambulance service. I remember stories they talked about the funeral homes used to run in, you know, running EMS calls. Back in the day that was the transporting and then Bill came in and kind of got that centralized with the EMS.
Speaker 4:Yeah, he's done a. Him and his family have done a heck of a job in the Es thing here for our county, uh, but that was you know a long time, you know a long time ago, and uh, he's done a good job with. I drove like la2, la3, la1 was there, I know you remember these. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I, uh, I, we was around during that time and and I come up with a lot of people that you, you guys, know, yeah, uh, that were just awesome people and, if you don't mind me mentioning, oh yeah billy madden.
Speaker 3:You know the mad dog. We're gonna have him.
Speaker 4:He says he's coming I call him mad pup yeah, uh, mad pup, uh, you know uh, billy, uh, billy osborne. I don't know if y'all know billy. I don't know. I worked with billy and and and and jimmy jimmy johnny phelps can't forget about them and their mom. You know their mom worked there at the ambulance service.
Speaker 4:She was you know that's what we called her. We called her mom. She's just just an awesome lady. And and, uh, that's kind of where I got my start in law enforcement, and and and and and I later or not law enforcement, I'm sorry and for as a first responder, and the one event I think that inspired me to want to. I'm also a military veteran and the event that inspired me to want to be a part of the military is that Bill Smith has a son. His name is Tim Smith and I was working for the ambulance service when Tim Smith came off active duty and walked up the driveway when he first got home and I remember the response that Bill and Janet gave him I was like that's it, I think I might want to do the military.
Speaker 4:I didn't know what I wanted to do. I don't even know what Tim did, but I seen how proud his parents was of him for his military service. I was like that's it, I want to do. I don't even know what tim did, but I seen how proud his parents was of him for his military service. I was like that's it, yeah, I want to do that. And uh, I walked into a recruiter's office. Uh, on north, main north is it north south main street, where there used to be an old hotel there and there's a recruiter's office and I walked in I said I think I'd, uh, I'd like to join the army. They said, well, okay, says uh, sit down and take a test.
Speaker 2:You're the easiest person, yeah I said we didn't even have to lie to you I think I want to join the army.
Speaker 4:They said, well, you're going to have to take a test and I had to show my id and all that stuff and back during that time there was no computer test, it was all fill in the bubble with the pencil and this and that and I filled, filled it in. They looked at it and they said, well, looks like you qualify for MP. I said what's that mean? And they said, well, that's military police. I said you mean like a police officer? They said yeah, but only you do it for the military. I said well, okay, sign me up.
Speaker 4:Yeah, there we go, I'm in and then I was off and that's how my career got started. Uh, I went to uh fort mcclellan, alabama, for basic and ait and got sent to uh fort devins, massachusetts, and I was up there for uh four years uh active duty, uh garrison mp, and I know I was I was a road MP. I was responding to calls for police service on a military base.
Speaker 3:It's amazing how many calls for domestics. It's just like working right out here there is no difference there's not a lot of difference.
Speaker 4:You just operate under uniform code of military justice and things like that. I had a good time. I knew that ASVAB told me you know this is where you belong, you know, and you know I kind of enjoyed myself. You know I'd never been to Massachusetts. I don't know if you all ever been to Massachusetts. I've been to.
Speaker 3:Boston Okay.
Speaker 4:What have those people, what have we ever done to those people? You drive through Boston and everybody's got the metal fingers stuck up at you. And as a young man I got to try to say what is wrong with these people.
Speaker 3:But saying that the people I've met from there because my father-in-law lives in Florida and all these Boston people come around some of the nicest people that would but driving wise.
Speaker 2:Oh, and they're well, they don't like it they don't like anybody.
Speaker 3:They're worse than new york.
Speaker 4:You don't drive that car very well yeah anyway, I stationed up there and, uh, uh, you know, early on I knew I was one of these, uh, policemen, or if you uh that didn't just want to go take a report and throw it in a box and walk away, right, I just wasn't that guy, right, if somebody took some cookies out of the cookie jar, I want to know who took them, why they took them, where they went. Know, early on that kind of stuck out with me. I was given a job as an investigator, a criminal investigator for them, back in the 80s and that's back when the Cold War was still on. Awol still meant something, oh yeah, and Deserter still went to jail. Awol still meant something and deserters still went to jail. So I and four other guys no, five other guys covered the whole six state New England area and we served warrants on fugitives, awols and deserters. We would pick them up, we would bring them back and we would transport them to wherever they was wanted from.
Speaker 3:Wow, that would be because I remember, sadly, we would pick them up, we would bring them back and we would transport them to wherever they was wanted from. Wow, because that would be. Because I remember, sadly, in peace, and these guys coming to find somebody at our church when I was growing up. The guy that I was joining for ended up going AWOL, I'm like. And then they get knocks on the door and I was like, oh my gosh, what did this guy do?
Speaker 1:But they're knocks on the door and I was like, oh my gosh, what did this guy do?
Speaker 3:But they're serious now.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, it's like a felony. I don't know what they do with it now.
Speaker 4:You know I don't know what they're doing, but back then you know they were serious. We'd get warrants once a week from Fort Bend, harrison, indiana, and you know the warrants in our area. We'd set up and go try to pick these guys up and they were in Lincoln. They were in not Lincoln Fair but they were in NCIC and some of these guys had been in NCIC for a long time. I've picked up Vietnam vet deserters back in the 80s.
Speaker 1:So they was in there forever, but, yeah, it was a good time.
Speaker 4:I got out, enjoyed the military done that out, come home and I my mom lived over on hampton road, I don't know, you know.
Speaker 4:Okay, uh, and I come home and I said, well, I got a good job. She said, well, how about a state job? I said I'll try it. So, uh, I take off and I go to frankfurt and I walk in and start taking some state tests. I see a posting for a a police officer job. I said, well, let's try that kentucky state university are y'all familiar with kentucky? And start taking some state tests. I see a posting for a police officer job. I said, well, let's try that Kentucky State University. Are you all familiar with Kentucky?
Speaker 3:State In Frankfurt right.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I walked in there and filled out a paper application, had my military discharge paper my DDT-14, and showed them where I was a military policeman, and the chief sitting there at the time. He says you know, do you got a record? I said no. I said I ain't got no records. I said you can read some. He says looks like you've been an MP. I said yeah.
Speaker 4:He says well, I'll tell you what. I'm going to run your criminal history here. If you don't have records, I think I'm going to hire you. I said well, want to hire you. I said well, just like that. I said that's all there is to you. See, yeah, that's all there is to it. So those processes are not that short anymore. Yeah, yeah, which is which is fine, yeah, yeah. But they hired me. And uh, right there on the spot, and he says get in that closet. Right there, the chief just said get in that closet, pick you up some uniforms that'll fit you and get you some leather gear. Basket weave leather gear, model 1038 wheel gun yeah, and he said I need you to work tomorrow night. I said wait a minute. I said I ain't been to the police academy here. He said you been an MP, haven't you? I said yes, sir. He says well, that'll do till I get you to the academy. He said no, I need you here to work tomorrow night oh man, so it started like that yes straight to the wall.
Speaker 2:I was like what have I got myself into?
Speaker 3:so you had you moved back to the to London. I was in London at the time. I got that job there. Do you go to all of a sudden? You go up there for a estate, maybe working at the transportation.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and then I'm hired by Kentucky State University Police. So did you move up? I did.
Speaker 3:I did. That's a big transition.
Speaker 4:I'll tell you. I moved up there. I didn't have nothing. I had a couch and a TV with a box that had come on and some. I didn't have nothing and I had to rent an apartment from Kentucky State University. So the money that I made at Kentucky State University at 1989 when I got hired there, was like four dollars and thirty cents an hour. True, so it would take my entire paycheck that I made from the university to pay rent. To pay rent and in order to have groceries and eat, you know I would. I would, on my nights off, I would work at a five-star market down there on US 60 next to make money.
Speaker 3:That's crazy. It was, it was. It was crazy. We talked about that we didn't get into this for the money. But that does. No, but it helps it helps, it does. It's a little better now.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it does, but you know, I didn't know nothing else. I didn't have a formal education, I had my DD-214, and I was young and I had a lot of desire to learn and do this. And they took a chance and hired me and they sent me to DOCJT in Richmond. Back then, docjt was 10 weeks long. I don't know, was it 24 weeks now? What class number do you remember? Do you remember 110? Maybe 110.
Speaker 3:Wow, what was yours 324.
Speaker 2:Mine was 482.
Speaker 4:Okay, I can't be wrong, but I think it was like 110 or something. And I got through there and as soon as I got hired, as soon as I got through there, I was like you know, I don't want to work for Kentucky State University. It was just not a place I wanted to work and the first place that popped up was LaGrange Police Department.
Speaker 3:What a beautiful city. Probably the like, with that railroad running right downtown.
Speaker 3:I got a buddy that works, that, retired from the, he might have worked for the county police. They got a county police up there still, I think, and then, and then they had, um, the city police and then the sheriff's office, of course. But lagrange, there's a great little restaurant that said, I mean we were sitting outside like track side track, yeah, we're sitting there like, and they had they were on dinners, drive-ins and dives for some kind of derby pie or something. I mean they were famous for that. We were sitting out there.
Speaker 3:It was February but I wanted to sit out there close to the train. I mean, dylan, you could reach out and touch. It felt like the trains would come by and they they come by like two miles an hour because it can't go really slow. They were right, I mean, for for 30 minutes we couldn't talk because that thing would just move out, yeah, and we were like maybe we should have ate inside, but it was what a cool atmosphere I don't know if there's I don't know if there's another city around that has like that where they come right.
Speaker 3:I mean, it is Main Street and the railroad are together. It's incredible.
Speaker 2:There's so many places in Kentucky. I've lived here my entire life and I've not went to them and I'm like, why, why?
Speaker 3:have I not? Yeah, lagrange, there's a lot of places I've got to check out.
Speaker 2:It's on the bucket list, so it's a nice it's a really I looked at LaGrange I.
Speaker 3:It's a nice, it's a really. I looked at LaGrange I think it's like most of the people that work, the big executives and things that work in Louisville, like Anthem they usually live over in that county, right, Well see you know I live in.
Speaker 4:currently I live in Woodford County, kentucky. Woodford County is very much like Oldham County, the county that LaGrange is in, and you know usually the highest income per household, lowest unemployment rate and it goes back and forth month to month between them and maybe I don't know shelby county and that's because, they're bedroom communities to the largest metropolitan areas in the state yeah, yeah then oldham county.
Speaker 3:I mean the only thing about other than that would be that would be awkward. There would be the state. Pen is right, in Oldham County. It was a grange, but that's kind of pretty far out of the city limits. I think what a beautiful. I mean it's got a little museum with the trains and the courthouse.
Speaker 3:When I was up there last year, two years ago, they were remodeling the courthouse that's sitting. I was up there last year, two years ago. They were remodeling the courthouse that's sitting. Right there is off on its own, yeah, and just a beautiful downtown setting. So that's, that was your next place.
Speaker 4:It was, it was my next place and I went from making like maybe four dollars and forty cents an hour at kentucky state university to nine dollars and eleven cents an hour. That's a big pay jump and A big pay jump. I thought that I had hit the big time.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 4:My every two-week paycheck I'll never forget it is $526.05. That's because the city paid for our insurance. Oh yeah, and that was just—.
Speaker 2:That's a huge benefit it was.
Speaker 4:It was a very big thing. We were treated well. It was a good place to work and, quite frankly, I'm sorry that I ever left there. It was a good place, but I worked there up until about 1998. Then I left there and then I went to the not Louisville Metro. It wasn't Louisville Metro until 2003. Right, so I went to the Louisville Division of Police, because Louisville and Jefferson County, you know they had two different.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the Sheriff's Office.
Speaker 4:Oh, two different. Yeah, the sheriff's office oh no, they had a county?
Speaker 3:did they have a?
Speaker 4:county police.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they had county police and then louisville division and I worked for look, I went on down to louisville, so you worked downtown, so it was like a city police and a county police, yeah, and then they had a sheriff's office and then you got a bunch of smaller agencies
Speaker 4:like jerry's in town st matthews uh, indian hills, uh sh. There's a bunch of different smaller agencies yeah. Yeah, yeah. I know about Shively, but anyway I stayed there. I was also in the Kentucky Army National Guard. I was in the 223rd Military Police Unit out of Louisville and while I was working for the Louisville Police Department, louisville Division of Police, I got sent to Iraq and I spent about a year deployed to Iraq.
Speaker 3:Well, that was, what year? Was that 90? Oh, I left.
Speaker 4:I went to Iraq and I left here in December of 2002.
Speaker 3:Oh, so you went to Kuwait, so you'd been in the.
Speaker 4:Guard for a little while. Yeah, I'd been in the Guard for a little while and I went to Kuwait initially, and then we were there when the war first started 03. And 03 was on the border. When they said go, we went. We weren't the first one to go, we was an MP unit, we weren't a heavy fighting unit, we were handling enemy prisoners of war and we seen very little. I seen a lot more stuff, as policemen, yeah, but you go and thank you for that.
Speaker 3:That's the hardest, they said the tip of the spear, but you're just kind of back here on the hosel.
Speaker 4:I seen a lot of things, but I didn't see those infantry units and stuff. It's a different thing, that's cool though. But I came back and I thought it was time for me to get out of the police work. This had been very hard on my family for me being gone.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I get it I went through a difficult time and I came home and I decided, well, you know what? And uh guys, I can't. I can't go on without mentioning my wife. I have the most wonderful wife in the world. You know. If it hadn't been for her, I don't know what I've done. I, I mean that came back. It's kind of rough and but we got through it and I said well, you know, I'm not gonna be a place for policeman anymore, I'm going to do a business. Let's do some business here. I said I just don't think I want it. So I did that for a few years. First of all, I figured out number one I'm not a businessman. I'm not a businessman.
Speaker 4:In my heart lives a police officer or a cop. And my wife she says to me, she says honey wife. She says to me, she says honey. She says you're not happy doing what we're doing. She says you need to go back and do police work.
Speaker 4:I said I don't want to go do police work again. She says, well, I have some friends that work for this federal law enforcement agency here in central kentucky that I believe would be glad to have you. I said, well, let me take a look at it. And I took a look at it and they said we'd love to have you, and they hired me. Currently I work for a federal law enforcement agency in central Kentucky that I'm not allowed to say who it is because I don't want to get in trouble, but it's probably the best, probably the best job I've ever had. I work with a lot of good, honorable, decent men and women. One of those is my oldest son, who's a police officer for us, and I can't say who the agency is, but I'm a detective sergeant currently and I still conduct criminal investigations.
Speaker 3:So you get to go around different areas.
Speaker 4:I go to different areas throughout central Kentucky, eastern and southeastern Kentucky, depending on what the needs of our agency is. I conduct criminal investigations and they get presented in respective state courts in whatever county it happens to be in. Or the eastern district court, us district court for the eastern that's cool. Respective state courts in whatever counties that's being.
Speaker 3:Or the Eastern District Court, yes, yes, district court for this school, yeah so just think so we'll change off of that, just in case me and him give it away.
Speaker 4:But you, you found your niche, kind of invested investigations, and like I said earlier, I figured out I was that guy that couldn't just throw that take a report on a burglary or something like that.
Speaker 4:No, ever work in peace and figure out the puzzle, and yeah I wanted to know who took the cookies out of the cookie jar, why did they take them and where did they go? Yeah, right, you know, I don't know what gave me that drive, but but I had that and that started early on in my career, back in the 80s that's some let's.
Speaker 3:I know there's some funny stuff. I'm sure that along the way you've seen and done and you can, we can go into that anytime. But I really want to transition back into lagrange. Yeah, um, how were you do you when you was up there at this time?
Speaker 4:Well, I started there. I think it was 1991.
Speaker 3:Ninety-one.
Speaker 4:And I'd been 27.
Speaker 3:27. That's when I started. I started in at 26 when I came back from deployment myself. But I went to Belgium, the real war zone. I was in Belgium, oh yeah, fight ourselves After 9-11. We went right. I mean, we were gone. We were like here it is, we're getting those phone calls. You remember in the guard they were like said some kind of code word over the phone. You're like oh my gosh, I don't even know what's going on here?
Speaker 3:Rutabaga, yeah something. Santa Claus has landed on the plane. You're like what? I remember a trooper buddy of mine called me and he was like, did you get that message? I was like, yeah, but I thought it was a prank call. I don't know what's going on here. That was that. But this was in between. This was in 2001, 2002. So Iraq hadn't kicked off and they were really still doing a lot of special forces stuff in Afghanistan at the time. So we went actually to guard the Supreme Allied Commanders of Europe, his air base, and to give the MPs a break, but not for the war and not for Afghanistan. But it was still Kosovo and Serbia. All this stuff was still going on. But they were gearing up for this fight, you know, for war on on terrorism, but they were trying to get everybody transitioned.
Speaker 3:But our so we wasn't even part of that. We was part of the this ongoing conflict and and you know it's been going on since bill clinton stuff. So we were like okay, so but it was uh, it was pretty pretty cool and kind of seen the transition from the national guard to what it, you know, became, because we're going over there with old a, a, one m16, just I mean like holy moly, yes, and I I mean I hadn't seen. You know, you saw all that transition and the gear that they said like hey, if we're going to use the guard, we need to utilize and get them the best training, the best equipment, and it was pretty it. So I got to be involved in that. But, um, but that was my time. When I got out I went to the police department so I was done with military and I then went in that route. So that's how that journey went. So I was about the same age. Yeah, you've been policing a little longer. I guess how long did you stay at k state before you went to?
Speaker 4:about.
Speaker 3:Well, just a cat, almost two years yeah, so we were about the same age, you know in that. So and and dealing as well. So so you go up to lagrange and were you in? How long had you done like patrol?
Speaker 4:I was a patrol officer there to start out with. I was one of those eager beavers. I was ready to come to work. It was time to go to work. I was ready to get on the radio and call 10-8. It's time to catch the bad guy. That's what. I was supposed to do.
Speaker 4:I was a DUI I know nobody likes this word. I was a DUI hunter, any other criminal wrongdoer. I was there. That's what I was for and I went and did my job and I worked on nights for a long time and then I finally went to days. We had nine officers and I was one of nine and a lot of times I'd be on shift by myself and if I needed backup or whatever, you had KSP post five there. Sometimes they were around, sometimes they weren't. They didn't even have a trooper that was assigned to that County. There where I worked, they were all. They worked in northern counties because we had the Oldham County police there. Then sometimes, you know, I'd get back up from them. Sometimes you just had to be smart instead of tough, you know, because you can't win in every situation.
Speaker 2:No, and I learned that early on you know, put yourself in an advantage somehow. Yeah, yeah, whether it be knowledge or or, you know exactly.
Speaker 4:You can't be, you can't be the tough guy all the time. You gotta wait for backup. You gotta, you know, figure something out. But uh, I worked there as as a patrol officer up until well 1995. I was still working there in 1995. Okay, but I got a story to tell and I think it's important to tell this story. We're right here at the end of the Police Officers Memorial Week in 2025, and this story that I'm about to tell is a it's kind of the granddaddy of them all of my whole career as far as a criminal investigation, and it started on the morning of April, the 27th 1995.
Speaker 4:I went to work, I was working on day shift and I went in to leave this officer and I don't care to mention his name, my good friend today, jerry Colston. I said hey, jerry, what did we have last night? He said, well, we had two things that happened. We had an armed robbery that occurred at the BP, but we also had an individual that showed up here last night in the middle of the night and he's reporting that his daughter, uh, his daughter, is missing. I was busy, I took a missing person's report from him, but I have not been able to follow up on that. So that's the two things that happened.
Speaker 4:So I picked up on this missing persons case and he told me that the complainant on this was at the Waffle House there in LaGrange, Kentucky. So as soon as I cleared I went up there and I located this individual and his name was Stabowski. The father's name is Michael Stabowski and he reported to me that his daughter had departed from their home in Peebles, ohio and she had left on April 28, 1995, when I went up to follow up on this investigation. And he says that his daughter had left the previous day, she had left from their home in Ohio and she was traveling. She brought her brother to work, dropped him off in northern Kentucky at his place of employment, then she left from there and then she was going to Eddyville Kentucky to pick up her brother's girlfriend who lived there brother's girlfriend who lived there and that she drove as far south as somewhere south of Louisville on I-65 when he received a phone call from her telling him that she had experienced some mechanical problems with her vehicle and that she didn't believe that she was going to be able to make it to Eddyville Kentucky and that she was turned around, uh, to come back home because he could, she couldn't make it.
Speaker 4:So she turns around there on i-65, comes back north, gets on 265 going around the gene snyder back towards i-71 to where she traveled back to ohio. And when she gets on i-71 going northbound, uh, there's a rest area there. Uh, and she starts having trouble with her truck again. Uh, it's a her truck and and the truck is an old blue 1978 ford f-250 I guess they would call them uh and skinny tires, you know. But she was having trouble with it and she pulled into that rest area.
Speaker 4:Uh, she made a another phone call to her father from that rest area because there wasn't just portable cell phones back at that time. So she made a phone call from a pay station or a pay phone to her father in Ohio and says hey, dad, I've made it to this rest area and I'm on I-71, and my truck's messed up again. But this truck driver is trying to help me fix it. And he said okay, you know, I'm gonna try to get off the interstate somewhere and I'll call you. So she gets off the phone. He doesn't hear from her again for quite a while. Then she leaves the rest area, she drives to exit 22 on i-71, which is the lagrange exit off i-71. Um, she gets off the interstate, she pulls uh up onto a parking lot of a there's. I don't think there's any super americas anymore, but I think it's any.
Speaker 3:Super Americas anymore.
Speaker 4:I think Speedway or something bought them all out she pulled up on the parking lot of this Super America and this trucker followed her in there. You could see her truck that she was driving, pull on and you see a big truck pull up after she had pulled. Pull on and you see a a big truck pull up after she had pulled on and then you see the the big truck depart and she's nowhere to be found after that. And how I learned that they had pulled on to that parking lot. There is that when mr Stavosky arrived there on the late night hours of April the 27th, you know that's where his daughter's truck was at, so we was assuming that she may have called from there.
Speaker 4:But the third and final phone call, through investigation we discovered was made from Pendleton, was Pendleton S, kentucky, exit 28. There was a Davis Brothers 76 truck stop there. Her last phone call lasted, and I'll never forget it it lasted for 14.7 seconds and she allegedly says to her father Dad, I'll be at exit 22 in LaGrange, hence why he comes to LaGrange, kentucky, to look for his daughter and that would be the last time he talked to his daughter so let's see here where is i-71 starts in louisville, right and kind of goes all the way it does, goes all the way up into like uh east kent, ohio yeah, it goes away, and then so you.
Speaker 3:So you're not too far from the Gene Snyder up there in Odom County.
Speaker 4:No, I'm about. We're about 18 miles from the Gene Snyder right there in LaGrange.
Speaker 3:Okay and she's heading back. So it kind of referenced Cincinnati, so she'd be kind of traveling from Louisville heading towards Cincinnati in that way. So how far up was the town where they lived at in Ohio?
Speaker 4:Because that's a long way. Isn't that out in western Kentucky? It is western Kentucky. So the town that they lived in was right across the river from Maysville, kentucky. Yeah, is where the family was from. Okay, wow. So I sat down with Mr Stolboski. He relays all this information to me and I'll tell you about the phone records and stuff in a minute. Yeah, but he relays this information to me and you know, you've got somebody missing. You know, young girl, she's 18 years old, she's not even turned 19 yet. Somebody missed. You know young girl, she's 18 years old, just made him. She's not even turned 19 yet, not 18 years old, really. And it seems like that there's something wrong here, because this is way out of norm for the family.
Speaker 4:That way out of norm for that family. I said this deserves some attention. And I, who took the cookies out of the cookie jar, had no boys. I had to know yeah, right, you know, I was. I was that guy, so I started working this thing. So after I met with him there at the waffle house, uh, we went across the street over to the super america and I went in and I looked back during that time. You know this black and white vhs video, oh yeah. So I looked at this video tape and I could see this large tractor trailer. I could see her truck come on there. I could see this large tractor trailer come on there, but I don't see where it went. And then it comes out and it leaves. I couldn't tell really what color it was, though it was light colored and had some writing on the door and it was pulling what I described back at the time a heavy-duty, bulk type chemical trailer. And I was like, well, you know, obviously, you know she left here. Something went wrong and she's gone right with this truck driver whom she's met at this rest area. So I called my boss and I said boss, I said we got a problem with this and I said I think that we need to put out some put out a press release on this. So he called her public information officer, who came up there and called a bunch of news media who was responding there to that parking lot to do a news release about this girl missing.
Speaker 4:So, as I was telling you on the day previous, on April 27th, I know both the big truck and Ms Doboski was traveling north on I-71. And so I know both of them. Their destination was somewhere north of there and I was, uh, standing in the parking lot of that super america and, uh, are you familiar with the term jake break, compression break? Yeah, I heard a compression break on the truck and I turned around and I looked at the southbound lanes of I-71. And I looked directly at a truck that looked exactly like the one that I had just seen on the video.
Speaker 4:Wow, you talked about divine intervention right there. There is no other way to describe it. So I said, you know, I paused briefly, I, I paused briefly like, ah, this is shot in the dark, but I'm gonna take it. Jump on the radio. I call a county policeman and I said, hey, this truck is coming us. Where are you? He said I'm sitting at the. He said I'm sitting at the 17 on the southbound side. I said when this truck comes through, I said, pull him over, I'd like to talk to him. And he found him, pulled him over and I left from the Super America. I had the victim's father and her brother with me.
Speaker 3:Complicates some stuff. Yes, it does.
Speaker 4:And my police cruiser. It was during this time, when we departed the scene to go talk to this truck driver, that the father told me that his daughter, whom I was trying to find, was a young female police officer I think it was with Russellville Ohio Police Department, and that she had just graduated from the Brown County Ohio Police Academy. Furthermore, he told me that he was a chief of police.
Speaker 4:Hmm, I learned that after I seen this truck and was on the way to the yeah, I couldn't leave these people who were upset there in it parking lot so I took them with me. I went down there I said sit still, so I get out and they have this. I'm not going to say the suspects name because he doesn't deserve to have his name said. Absolutely okay, yeah, exactly okay. So I get out in the suspect stand at the back of the truck with the other officer, I walk up to him and identify myself. I said look. I said you know you're not under arrest, man, we're doing a missing person investigation here and we're trying to locate somebody that may have been in a truck or been seen around the truck like the one you were driving. I said do you mind to talk to me? He says no, sir, I'll talk to you. I said what is your? I got his license. I seen what his name was. I said do you mind if I call you by your first name? He said no, go ahead. I said well, my first name's Sonny. I said well, just talk here for a minute. I said listen, I did. You happen to be through this area yesterday? He said well, um, I'm not sure. Uh, I don't remember, I don't know. Hmm, odd, yeah, odd.
Speaker 4:I said I said, well, mr such and such. I said, uh, you're driving this commercial vehicle. I know that you have a. You run a logbook. Oh, yeah, I got a logbook, but I lie and I cheat on it all the time. And I was like, oh, the spidey senses just kicked in and I really need to know about that cookie jar. I want to know, I want to know more. So I said, man, I appreciate you cooperating with us and everything. I said, uh, I said did you, did you happen to stop at the rest area on the northbound side as you came through Gerstee, if you came through here, he finally admitted to me that he came through there. He said, yeah, I did. I said did you encounter a young lady while he was over there? And instead of saying yeah, I did, I looked back on it. The manner with which he responded to me meant a lot, but I didn't know what it meant at the time.
Speaker 4:He says dad, which was his father, was trucking in concert with him in another truck and tire changer did like, okay, well, what, what happened? He says, well, she was having trouble with her truck and they knew that I had in his way, but I had mechanic experience and they asked me to look at her truck. I said can you describe this girl for me? Yeah, I said can you describe the truck? Yeah, he described the truck just like it, like I described earlier. I said, uh, what was wrong with it? I said you looked her truck right. He said, yeah, I said what was wrong with her truck? Says, uh, I think she had a thermostat in it that was sticking. And he said I was able to peck on the thermostat to get it to open up. And uh, then it was okay and she took off and I followed her up to exit 22 where I got off the interstate with her and I pulled up behind her there on the parking lot and says she told me that she had never ridden in a big truck before and asked me to take her for a ride.
Speaker 4:I said, really. I said did you take her for a ride? I said really. I said did you take her for a ride? He said yeah, I did. He said where'd you take her to? He said I pulled out of the Super America Instead of turning left to get back on I-71, I turned right and I just went up the hill to the Walmart and I turned in the parking lot and she got out of, took off walking toward the parking lot and never, uh, and that's the last time I seen her, so I don't know where she went.
Speaker 4:No, okay, well, I appreciate your time and everything I said. I said, sir, I said let me ask you one more question. I said would you have any objection to me looking inside your truck? Just just to say that you know, I know that she's not in there. Oh, no, I said. Well, let me ask you another question. I said would you agree to a consent of a search of your truck? He says absolutely. So I get out the good old consent to search forms, go into great detail, explain to him like we're supposed to do, and he signs a consent to search form.
Speaker 4:So I just walk up to the side of the truck and I climb up on the side of the truck and I look in it and one thing that I noticed is that there were numerous strands of blonde, long blonde hair that had matter attached to one end of them, which would lead me to believe that there was something that went wrong in that truck, some kind of struggle, some kind of struggle that would have caused that hair to be removed by force because it had some matter attached to one end and another end didn't. So again, you know, it really caused me a lot of concern. I was like, well, I'm scared, what have I got into here? I'm young and I'm inexperienced and you know, listen, I can catch the heck out of a DUI and I'll make the heck out of a domestic call and other crimes in progress or whatever. But this may be something different. I might need some help here.
Speaker 4:So I go back to the back of the truck and I start talking to this suspect. I said look. I said again, thank you for your cooperation. We appreciate your time. I I said if you had a daughter you'd probably understand you'd want somebody to find her and all that stuff just getting trying to get along with him. I said I want to do a detailed search of your truck, but I don't think it's safe that we do it here on the side of the interstate. I said if my agency will agree to pay for having your truck towed off the interstate to have it towed, would you do that?
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah yeah, I'll do it, I said. Furthermore, I said I'm probably going to want to talk to you somewhere off the interstate too. Will you agree to go with us somewhere so I can talk to you? Yeah, yeah, I will. So back during this time period there were cell phones and I was one of them super cool cops that had a phone around in his car. So you got the victim's father sitting in the front. I forgot about them sitting there. You got the victim's father sitting in the front seat of my car, you got the victim's brother sitting in the back seat and I'm having to come up here and get on my cell phone and call my boss.
Speaker 3:And you know, the longer your interaction with this guy, you know that dad's back there Because- he's probably putting two and two together.
Speaker 4:He is. He's putting two and two together. So you know he's getting a little bit like he is and he's upset and his brother's upset and I'm having to talk about this stuff in front of him because I don't want him to get out of the vehicle, is upset and I'm having to talk about this stuff in front of him because I don't want him to get out of the vehicle and I had to call somebody that's seen there to pick those two up to get them away yeah uh.
Speaker 4:So, and I did so, this the suspect agreed to uh go back to the pd with me and or with, with with us. And we went back and I'll tell you something I you know I wasn't the best interviewer and I wasn't the best interviewer and I wasn't the the fastest cat in the barn back then when it comes to sitting down, interviewing somebody and getting information. You know, I don't know what tool I need, but I know where a tool is that and I can get it. And his name is is bill bosmer and he's an old detective, uh that worked for, uh, oldham county pd and they, they sent him out to help me and took him in and we interviewed him and certain part of his interview I started questioning him.
Speaker 4:You know I'm this militaristic guy. You know, duh duh, duh, duh duh. I wanna know this, this, this, this, this. That wasn't the right way for me to go about it. Bosmer kept hitting me on the leg, slow down, slow down, slow down, and he gets mad. The suspect does, he takes his fist and he slams it against the table and he says gee, did it, gee, did it. You think I did it. I did not do it. I don't know who did it.
Speaker 3:At that time you accused him of anything.
Speaker 4:The only thing we had was a missing person. The only thing we had was a missing person.
Speaker 2:He's admitted guilt.
Speaker 4:In the world that I live in now we call that an admission. Yeah, it's not a confession, but it's an admission. You're making a you know uh, subliminal admission to me, that about information I don't know right. So, uh, we got him. Got him said. I was like look man, I'm not trying to make you mad or upset you. I said, please understand, we're just trying to do our job, cool him out. I said listen.
Speaker 4:I said would you mind consent, you know, to a male sexual assault evidence kit being collected on you? Absolutely, I'll be glad to do it. I want to help you boys. I want to go join the us marshals, come back down here and see you. I said, well, such and such I I won't say his name on here I said, uh, that's good. I said, well, we'll, we'll take and get that done, I said. I said I'm gonna tell you. I got your truck secured and an officer is sitting on it right now waiting for us to go search it and let's go up here and get this sexual assault kit out of the way. First. We took him to the hospital there in lagrange. They collected all this evidence that we need. The truck was secured at an impound lot with a commercial tow truck and we had a police officer sitting on it. So me, detective Bosmer and I. He reminds me of I don't know if you guys ever watch Hill Street Blues. He reminds me of Sipowitz.
Speaker 3:Okay, we say it. He reminds me of Seppowitz. Okay, we say it every time.
Speaker 4:He reminds me of Seppowitz. So we go to where the truck is secured. We take the suspect with us because we don't have a search warrant. We've got a consent to search. We know that if he decides to withdraw consent to search any time that we have to stop that search. We have know that if he decides to withdraw consent to search any time that we have to stop that search. Okay, so we have to set him there while we're doing this search, along with another police officer just there watching him. He didn't stop the search, he let us do our thing.
Speaker 4:So as we started the search on this vehicle, we photographed everything. First we climbed into it, photographed the hair and everything else, and then we looked in the back and one thing and a sleeper compartment. The truck, I'll never forget it's a 1989 International and when you look between two seats in the back there's a sleeper compartment and it had a mattress back there. The first thing that we noted is that there was no linen pillows or anything like that thing that we noted is that there was no linen pillows or anything like that, and it appeared as though the mattress that was the side of the mattress was up, was dirty, used and it looked like it may have been laying on the other side for a long time. I was like, well, you know, that's odd, you know.
Speaker 4:And when, uh, we wanted to look at the other side of the mattress, we lifted it up. We heard a noise on the platform like you drop a ring or something like that, and we looked down on the platform where this mattress was laying and as we picked it up, an earring was stuck in this mattress and it fell and hit the platform the mattress was laying on. We didn't know what it meant, but we collected it. But when we collected it and we examined it, there at the scene, it was a gold post angel earring and the post had been bent, which would lead me to believe that something happened because it had been removed before us.
Speaker 4:We collected that and then when we flipped the mattress up, the other side of the mattress that was laying down on the platform had two big, large splotches of what I believe was blood. So we collected that leaf. Was was blood. So we we collected that.
Speaker 4:Uh, during that search there that night, we also collected some other items that would later out to be later turn out to be very important. We collected a, a, a wire, a wiring kit, tools, uh and stuff such uh like that you'd use to cut wires and stuff. And we collected pieces of wires, uh, yellow wire with like blue connectors. We didn't know what they meant, we didn't know if they'd been used to do whatever, but we collected them and once we got done with the search here, we found that stuff got down. You know, I didn't have nothing to charge him with. I had a whole lot of uneasy feeling and suspicion, but it takes probable cause to charge somebody with a crime and I uneasy feeling and suspicion, but it takes probable cause to charge somebody the crime. And I didn't feel that we had it, neither did the other detective there that was helping me, and uh, we had, we had suspicion we had a lot of suspicion, yeah, but you know I can't, uh, I can't hold him no longer.
Speaker 4:I mean, I need probable cause charge if I want to, and I didn't, so we had to let him go. So this was on Friday evening, april the 28th, so we didn't know what this earring meant. So by this time the family of the victim the grandmother, the mother, the brother, younger brothers.
Speaker 4:They had all converged on LaGrange, Kentucky, and they were there at a hotel. So we took this earring back and we spoke to the family there and we showed in this earring. They said have you? Do you know if Myra her name was Myra? Do you know if Myra has a pair?
Speaker 4:of earrings like it so the grandmother looks at it and you know she kind of tears up a little bit and she says that looks like a set, one of a set of earrings that I bought for her, uh, during christmas, the previous christmas, which would have been christmas in 1994 wow, just a couple months back yeah, just a few months back and I said, okay, well, I appreciate that.
Speaker 4:I thought we're going to continue this thing and I got you know all the information I needed for phone records. And I found out I was able to get way scale records Because there was a way scale north of the 28 where I know where the last phone call came from. That would have shown when that he went across that way scale and I'd be able to identify witnesses and so on and so forth and I'd have a timeline Timeline on this is going to be important and I was able to identify witnesses and so on and so forth and I'd have a timeline Timeline on.
Speaker 4:This is going to be important Right, and I was able to identify witnesses later. That was important in this case. But anyway, we go on and I knew the route that he was trucking. He was trucking, he was working for a company in West Tennessee and he was trucking from a company in Paris, kentucky, and he was driving to east canton, ohio. He was dry hauling dry, uh, bulk clay and he was doing that two or three times a week running back and forth on that route.
Speaker 4:So my boss says you know. He says, hey, this might have been a case that crossed state state lines. We may need to call in some other assistance. I said, said well, you know you're the boss. And he said, well, I think we need to call the FBI. I said, okay, so we made a call to the FBI on Saturday morning early. We got in touch with them and you know there's a lot of you know your Bob Band thing about the FBI. I said I'm going to tell you something. Those guys sent an army to us on Saturday morning. They was there and they was ready to be the police and they were completely and fully involved and did a good job helping me with this. So I got the weigh scale records. I know what time her last phone call was made. I know what time he crosses the weigh scale.
Speaker 4:So the FBI says, hey, I think that we need to do an air-to-ground search with a helicopter along the route that he trucked up to that truck stop. So we called the Jefferson County Police and they sent a helicopter and we couldn't get up that next day until about 11 o'clock because of bad weather, it's foggy or whatever. But we, we, we got up. They got the helicopter up and I was, uh, I was on the ground and my cruiser, you know, and, and with me was an FBI agent, ed Evans awesome dude, he was with me and the helicopter took off from LaGrange. There it was traveling north on I-71. Yeah, north on I-71. We got up to the 28, where the Davis Brothers 76 truck stop was at. They searched around the area several times, looked in there, couldn't find nothing. Then we proceeded to go on north toward the weigh station and as we got on the interstate, going north at the 28, as we traveled north, I could see in the distance that there was a bunch of buzzards.
Speaker 4:And I was like I didn't think I was like. Well, a lot of deer, tons of deer there in that area. So it's not uncommon. But as we travel north on I-71, searching slowly along the interstate, my boss and my chief was in the helicopter at the time with Jefferson County pilot, and he radios me and tells me he says hey, go ahead and shut down the the slow lane of i-71.
Speaker 4:We got a crime scene hmm, so from the helicopter they were able to, they was able to see the remains, an unknown of who it would be or whatever, but they could. They could. They could see the remains of somebody at about the 29 and a half mile marker on the northbound side of i-71 and it was laying over a guardrail, over an embankment. Where you couldn't see it from the road is a steep embankment and I don't know if this is the proper word not perpendicular with where the truck would have, would you know, would have stopped to eject her if he did. And we also noted as we approached the scene, where that body was located on the interstate, in the slow lane of the interstate there were double tractor-trailer skid marks like a tractor-trailer would have come to a stop and where it had come to a stop and in parts where it come to a stop, it would have been sitting out in the travel portion of the, the slow lane of i-71. That would be important later.
Speaker 4:But as we drove up there, evans and I had Evans and I got out of the cruiser and we walked up and looked over the bank and yell, we could see. And I got out of the cruiser and we walked up and looked over the bank and yelled we could see somebody you know, the remains of somebody laying over the bank. Couldn't tell who it was or what it was, but as we looked there at her, we looked down the ground and we seen a yellow piece of wire with a light blue in color attachment on one end, and the other end had been freshly tied so he used his tie that he's bounder with no, no, no, no, no, but it did tie him to that vehicle, though, then yeah, because that here's what you all do.
Speaker 4:Here's why that piece of evidence would be so important later on in our case, because that piece of evidence right there connects the truck yeah to him to the scene where the body was found yeah, whether he used it or not.
Speaker 2:That gives you more than just suspicion, because y'all take it out so in evidence.
Speaker 4:So this was probably 25 or 35 feet down the embankment where she was laying. So I walked down to the, to the remains, to check for vital signs just to see what was. And there was no vital signs. But in her right ear was an earring that looked just like the one that I had recovered from her truck two days previously. And the left ear there was no earring.
Speaker 4:Oh, so this was a huge media circus, if you will. A huge media circus, if you will. And there was a Wave 3 television reporter that was following us down the interstate and we had stopped her back away from the scene and I'll never forget her name. I walk back and I'll say her name is Kelly Burkeen, and I walk back up off the embankment. We had, we had, we had the world coming. You know we got this crime scene.
Speaker 4:So I went back, I said I said miss burkeen, I said we have a crime scene here. I said I'm asking you not to report. Give me, give me 30 to 45 minutes before you report on this, please. And I explained to her. I said we have a family that's watching this stuff on TV right now as we're doing this search, and this family does not need to know that we have a crime scene until somebody's able to talk to them. And she agreed. She agreed and she didn't report. So, consulting with the FBI, ksp was coming. Her body was found in Henry County, kentucky, henry County. Coroner was coming. The FBI says hey, we'll call our evidence response unit, we'll do your scene for you. Thank God, because you know we didn't have the resources to do that scene. Ksp probably would have. But the FBI says we're, we're in it for a penny, we're in it for a pound, we're here with you and, and I'll tell you those, those guys are awesome.
Speaker 3:That's awesome. They got access to stuff.
Speaker 4:That's absolutely, absolutely. And they come in there and process your scene. But, um, I've done a lot of tough things in my career. I've delivered a lot of death notifications and so on and so forth. I've seen people killed in front of me, I've seen a lot of bad things, but I knew that I could not let this family learn of this on the news. So after the scene was secured and we had people there working the scene, I jumped on, run north for a piece and turned around and headed back to LaGrange. It's a hundred-mile iron fast lug drive. I was heading back. These people need to know this 100 mile iron fast, like a drive. You know, I was heading back these people. These people need to know.
Speaker 4:And I'm not this most religious person, you know. I just I have a strong Christian belief. But I said a prayer that day and I prayed for the words that would lessen the blow of the message that I was about to receive, that I was about to deliver to these people. And I got back to this hotel it's called the Luxbury Hotel and back during that time you actually had rooms there that had door keys. So, my composer, I was a cool common clerk. When I walked in, they were all in the lobby, the whole family was, and they wanted to know what was going on. I said give me just a second. So I walked to the clerk there at the hotel. I said could you please give me a key for a room that's downstairs? And they did and said mr and miss stolboski, could you come back here with me? I need to talk to you in private. And and the look, it's just the look of dread on their face. The, the, the, the color fell out of them and I went back and unlocked this door and I walked in first and mr and miss stolboski followed me and his hotel room's got two beds and the cop that I am, I had to set, was where my back was, not to the door, and I put them on the other one, on the other bed, and I reached across and I took Ms Stolboski's hand and I said I have some, some news to deliver. That's, that's not easy. I said we've discovered the remains of what I believe to be is your daughter. Complete meltdown, just a complete. I was like God I am, I don't know what to do here.
Speaker 4:So we got clergy coming. We never had a pastor, know a pastor or anything. But we did with the Oldham County Police and they finally sent someone there. They want to know where we found her. I told them where we found her. They said what, what, what, and I told them that she, you know she was deceased and I believe it was her, clothes matched. She matched, matched. I said I believe it's her. I said, but they wanted to go to the scene. I said I can't do it. They said please take us to. I said no, we cannot do that. I mean it would compromise the integrity of the evidence and you know that just just something for a defense attorney to poke holes in. And they said how did she die?
Speaker 4:I said I believe that she was a victim of a homicide and furthermore, I believe that the individual that I had on the road two days ago was the guy that's responsible for your daughter's homicide. That's what I think. We got the clergy there, we got some other officers there, some other people there. I'm able to leave. I'm talking to my boss.
Speaker 4:We got to go to the Commonwealth Attorney's office. We got drafted up. I first got to convince the Commonwealth Attorney that we need an arrest warrant. So I, along with an agent with the FBI, and I call him Sepulvitz Bill Bosmer. With the FBI, and I call him Sipowitz Bill Bosmer. We go and meet with the Commonwealth's attorney there in Oldham County and in the greatest amount of details I can, I explained to them the reason why that I think that the individual whom I had stopped a couple days ago on the side of the road was responsible for the death of this, this young female. They agreed with me and we we wrote, they wrote an arrest warrant and it's back during time there you know we had arrest warrants.
Speaker 4:Go don't know if y'all went to judge's house yeah so we had to go to a district court judge's house there late that evening and get that warrant signed. So back up a little bit. I've got the warrant signed. But before getting that signed the fbi had tracked my suspect down again after I had released him and they wanted to re-interview him and had him in their office in paducah, kentucky, re-interviewing him. At the time we found the body.
Speaker 4:Wow so um were they just want more information or they just they, they wanted from they, you know following anything that's following anything that you may, maybe some unanswered questions that we didn't get. You know, I didn't have all the answers, uh, but they would. They had him there, they was interviewing him and we got in touch with that agent and we said, hey, I think his name. Lou.
Speaker 4:Zader was his name. Please don't let this guy go stand by. We found the remains of the victim and we got an arrest warrant coming your way. So we got the arrest warrant signed and, yes, we had fax machines back then too. So we was able to get the fax machine, or the warrant, fax to the McCracken County Jail in Paducah. That's a pretty long drive. It is, it is.
Speaker 4:We got faxed down there and they locked him up and that was on April, the 30th of 1995. Gosh, and so we had to go down and pick him up, bring him back the next day. I was dead, I was just spent tired. You ever be so tired working that you're angry and you snap at people? That's where I was at and that's outside my character. And my boss said hey, sonny, you're too tired, you need to slow down and take a nap for a minute, do something. But anyway, we got up early the next morning, we drove to Paducah, kentucky, we brought him back, we put him in the Oldham County Jail and they set his bond at $500,000 and we had all this mountain of evidence.
Speaker 4:Well, let me back up to the Commonwealth Attorney's Office. So after we got this arrest warrant you know KSP the post commander, come out there. There was a I think there was a lieutenant from KSP and I was scared. I was in over my head I mean, you know there was and I was like well, you know, okay, my involvement is about to end, I'll just be a witness and my boss, state police post commander and the FBI went in and had a meeting behind closed doors outside me. I was out in the waiting room lobby and I was hoping they was deciding who was going to take this case and run with it. Fifteen minutes later they come out and they said come in, you're taking lead on this.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:I've been there. Inside myself, I said no, but I'm still that guy that I described earlier on.
Speaker 3:You've got to figure it.
Speaker 4:I want to know who took those cookies from the cookie jar. You've got to see it to the end now, baby. You've got to see it to the end. And we had all this evidence from know from every KSP 41s sick of seeing KSP. I wrote so many of them, you know well. We had evidence going to KSP lab. We had evidence going to labs in Washington DC.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, you had to maintain strict chains of custody on this evidence. It was a very stressful time for me. Ksp assigned a detective to help me. He helped me some. We did searches in Calloway County, kentucky, and found evidence that was important to this case. So I'm getting ahead of myself. That was important in this case, so I'm getting ahead of myself. Later that night, on April 28, 1995, I had to take the family to the state medical examiner's office on Barrett Avenue in Louisville to make a positive identification on this body. So you know, everybody watches TV. Well, the ME takes somebody in, they pull out a slide and pull. That's not the way it works this body. So you know, everybody watches TV. Well, they imagine. Well, the, the. The me take somebody in, they pull out a slide, pull. That's not the way it works. You know, they put them in a room. There's glass window curtain, they put the. You know, bring the remains in another complete, just down there, just the.
Speaker 2:They're just a horrible meltdown um, I can't imagine what a horrible thing to see, I mean, you know, I'll y'all have daughters, I do okay.
Speaker 4:So I don't have no daughters I got. I got all roughneck boys, but I do got two granddaughters now and I can tell you something by having those two granddaughters, those little girls, there's something special about fathers and their daughters. Oh my gosh, I know. Okay, there's something real special there and that was tough for both of them. And you know, this family was a salt of the earth family. The father was a retired Air Force veteran.
Speaker 4:I later found out, you know, when he come out of the Air Force he become this chief of police and his daughter wanted to follow her daddy's. Oh my gosh. And this has happened. And this family, you know they was like. You know we want to see justice done and the weight of the world was on my shoulder. This is not about poor, poor, pitiful me. I'm just saying I had a lot on me because I was so terrified that I was going to do something wrong that was going to mess this up.
Speaker 4:And that's one important thing I learned about being a policeman back during this time is that there is nothing more important, no important, more important attribute that a police officer can have than to be resourceful. Your man, be resourceful, slow down, take a look, ask questions, get help, because there ain't no one policeman out here that knows everything. No, they don't exist. No and uh. But I muddled through this thing. The evidence, uh, first of all the case was going to be he's this capital case, because you had, uh had, rape and murder. We couldn't prove a kidnapping, but we could prove the rape, we could prove the murder, uh, so it went on my this back during time when dna evidence was just getting started. So we sent the ksp was doing our dna stuff back during that time. The dna was taking for six, eight months to get it back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we had two sets of dna. We had the dna from the mattress and then during the post-mortem exam um.
Speaker 3:Did they do a rape kit?
Speaker 4:for an exam. They do a rape kit. Well, yeah, we did lots of blood. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So lick fluid found inside of her matched his DNA and there was, there was evidence of, there was substantial evidence that she had been raped and that evidence matched him. The blood in the mattress matched her. The earring that we found in sleeper we sent it off, along with the one from her ear, to the FBI lab, quantico, virginia. They handled that. Their their metallurgist give us an opinion that it was a very high and strong probability that this was a matched pair of earrings. But the most important piece of evidence in my mind, like I talked about earlier, was the wire to see. That wire to seen connects that wire to the truck, to the girl, to him. So I sent those tools off to the FBI lab, that wire to the FBI lab. They said not only do you have the wire that this piece of wire was cut from on the ground there next to the body, but you also got the tools that was used to cut it.
Speaker 3:Because they could use. You know, I guess it puts out a, a specific cut in that stuff. Yes, yeah, tool marks.
Speaker 4:Yeah, tool marks and they said we can. We can definitively opine that this, this tool that you seized two days before that you guys found her body and this wire on the side of the road, was the tools that was used to cut this wire that was found on the side of the road. Plus, we got the piece of wire from the truck that this other piece of the scene was cut from. Yeah, so sometimes, guys, luck or divine intervention as you call it.
Speaker 3:I just how.
Speaker 2:What was the turnaround from the time that she was reported to the time of actually having him in custody?
Speaker 4:Okay, april, the 27th timeline, April 27th 1995. We took a report. Our agency took a report on missing person from him that night.
Speaker 3:So that's about the only part of the case that you didn't do Was take the missing person Was take the missing person. Yeah, wow, so, which you probably adopted. I mean it's probably just part of the yeah, the case was handled.
Speaker 4:Because I followed, took it and ran with it. So on the morning of April 28th I come to work it's on a Friday I pick up this missing person report and I start following up on it. April 28th, early in the afternoon I find the truck we're had to turn him loose. April 28th we searched the truck and found the evidence in the truck. April 29th I got the weigh scale records and the phone records. I don't know how I got the phone. How did you get that so fast? I don't know. I can't explain it. I know that his phone carrier was AT&T and I remember I called AT&T Corporate Security. It was somewhere in New Jersey and I explained to them what we were doing and who we are. They say can you get us a subpoena? And I was. I had a good relationship with the county attorney's office there and they got me a subpoena. I got the subpoena fax to them and they sent me back the records with real.
Speaker 4:That's awesome yeah, that's and in in conjunction with that I was able on late friday night, april the 28th, I was able to get the uh the way skill records from uh department transportation in frankford. Now, this would be important too, because on those way skill records those trucks are tracked by uh kyu number number and I know what his KYU number was. By looking at that I was able to identify individuals who may have been witnesses to him sitting there on the side of the road through finding who belonged to his KYU numbers. And I tracked down several individuals and interviewed them in very close proximity to the time this happened. These were all separate interviews, away from everybody. I think I did three interviews and all three of the interviews that I did on these truck drivers that were from various places in the United States all talked about one thing that the back of that truck was sitting in the travel portion of the slow lane of I-71 on the northbound side, which matched with the physical evidence at the scene of the skid marks that was up there on the scene. So I got three independent witnesses describing that. You know, got the KYU stuff. We just had a mountain of evidence.
Speaker 4:So uh, working overtime, give them up, got to do a pc hearing. You know, charge some other crime, we got 10 days of custody, 20 days throughout a custody. Do a probable cause hearing. Probable cause hearing come up. Uh, I, along with the FBI, gave testimony in this probable cause hearing. The judge ruled that. You know we had a problem probable call sent over to a grand jury. I present because the body was found in Henry County, kentucky, and I believe that she was probably killed in Henry County. I presented a case to a Henry County grand jury and they returned indictment against him. Initially he was represented by public offenders but once his family got word of all this they raised money. The suspect's family raised money and hired probably the most prolific criminal defense team that they could hire that was from central Kentucky to represent him on this and I knew who they were. I dealt with them in other things and they was kind of like the who's who of criminal defense.
Speaker 4:And I was like, well, there we go, this is just getting ready to get worse. They wore me out in court. They wore me out Suppression hearing after suppression hearing. There was all kinds of hearings about this DNA, which was relatively new in Kentucky at the time, and they wanted to go through and I couldn't talk about it. I don't know nothing about DNA, I just know what DNA and we had all these experts that was coming in from the FBI and KSP. It wore us out in court for a long time.
Speaker 3:Did so? What year did it take, like a year to go to trial? Two years, two years because of all the suppression.
Speaker 4:Yeah, all suppression and we had to get all of our evidence back. Did the parents?
Speaker 3:did the family come to every hearing Every?
Speaker 4:last hearing, they never missed one the mother, the father the brother the grandparents everyone.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't have either.
Speaker 4:And I can't say enough good things about this is just a family that just they've done it right. They've got an excellent family and this horrible tragedy has has occurred and this little girl's trying to follow her daddy's footsteps to be a sick person.
Speaker 3:Uh yeah, just crossed paths or just to just uh are you familiar?
Speaker 4:I'm sure that you guys are. You're my god. You're a retired chief of police. You're going to be familiar with this VICAP. So when I submitted the VICAP on this case, got a call from behavioral sciences oh yeah tell us about your guy.
Speaker 4:I said, okay, well, he's this old and so on and so forth, and this is how this happened, and so on and so forth. Can you tell us the route that he's been trucking? I said, well, I have a good idea where he's been trucking for the last couple of years and I told them the route that he was trucking and they had a number of open cases that were very similar to ours.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4:But the victims in these other cases that they had, they were in such a state of decomposition and all these girls in these other cases and I know you guys got truck stops here, it's here for me A lot of lizard Truck stop prostitutes Nobody would report immediately. They were really interested and wanted to talk to him back. I said well, you know he's represented by council and I I would, I would bet the farm that they'll never let you talk to him yeah, but you could try, and they did and they said, no, you're not talking to him.
Speaker 4:Uh, so those cases were never made. But post-mortem uh autopsy revealed that Ms Stoboski died. As you know, manner of death was homicide. Cause death complete disarticulation, c2, c3, broken neck. But it also you know that she had been raped, but in addition, there too she had several impact sites on her head that we couldn't figure out what it was. Now, this is gonna call it miss it. I'm cough, you know we make mistakes. So we searched that truck on April the 28th. We noticed in that truck that there was a blue in color I call it, you know real police flashlight, like we used to carry once more time like a can of lye.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, yeah in that truck.
Speaker 2:We didn't seize, it didn't know what it meant, didn't look like.
Speaker 4:We examined it, carry once upon a time Like a K-11. Yeah, yeah, yeah, in that truck. We didn't seize it, didn't know what it meant, didn't look like it. We examined it, looked at it. Didn't see anything on it that would. We just didn't take it.
Speaker 4:But when we started doing his background, we went and talked to one of his girlfriends down in West Tennessee where he was from and she says you know, when he came home that night, well, when he came home that night he was acting very, very weird after you guys had released him and he had this flashlight that he carried with him everywhere. And he goes out into the shop and he cuts this flashlight up and he takes and throws it in his pond out here. So we had to do a search warrant for this farm down in Callaway County, kentucky, wow, and we was able to recover pieces of that cut-up flashlight. Ah, and the state medical examiner at the time. I know you're going to know her, I believe you will. I think her dad is an attorney here in London. Handy, yeah, tracy, tracy, yeah yeah.
Speaker 4:Tracy's the one that done the post-mortem and she looked at this flashlight and she says I will testify that this is what caused the impact sites on her head. Huh, but wow, case went to trial. I was in the hot seat. They set me on fire and wouldn't stand it After everything they could. You know that's what they do. They're getting paid. Yeah, they have to. That's their job. That's their job. That's what they do. They're getting paid, yeah they have to.
Speaker 3:That's their job. That's their job and nothing personal. I don't take it personally. You get irritated at defense, but that is their job, it is their job. And then once you figure that young cops have a harder time than veterans, do they do?
Speaker 4:It was hard for me to put it in that perspective back then because I just didn't have the experience that I have now. They wrecked me over the coals. So we got to about the eighth day of trial Gosh, that's long, and her attorneys. It was being tried as a capital case. Have you all ever tried a capital case? No, I've never. When you do a jury selection, it's called individual boarder. You take and they interview each potential juror individually, wow. And so we finally see the jury. We had a good jury out of Henry County, kentucky, and in a layman's term, I'll describe it as an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth kind of jury, this defense team that was representing them.
Speaker 4:If I was in trouble and needed help today, I would go to them. They're just good. They read the writing on the wall. They knew that they had a jury that was going to do their job. Yeah, and the mountain of evidence that we had was just overwhelming. Eighth day of trial they walked in. They said we're pleading guilty. Take the death penalty.
Speaker 4:The Commonwealth attorney says we ain't got nothing on the tape. He said you don't understand. You can't stop us from pleading guilty to what he's charged with in the middle of this trial. They pled guilty in the middle of the trial, dismissed the jury pool because they would be recommended in a sentence. Yeah, and he wrote a statement admitting to the offense and the judge gave him 25 years to life. Well, that's the 25 years to life back at the time of the smash he did in Kentucky without the death penalty for his eligible and he went to prison.
Speaker 4:So about six years ago I get a call hey, this case is coming up for parole. Can you give? Would you give testimony on it? I said absolutely so. I called the family whom I have a decent, good relationship with. They're good people. I said do you guys want to give testimony on this? They said we just don't have the stamina to go relive this again. Would mind doing it? I said absolutely so.
Speaker 4:I, along with the Commonwealth attorney for that judicial district that handled this case in North Kentucky, appeared before the parole board.
Speaker 4:I give about an hour and a half worth of testimony about how this case impacted that family, you know, and everything and everybody involved. The Commonwealth's attorney told what she knew about the case but she didn't she was involved in because two Commonwealth's attorneys that were involved in it were either retired one of them was deceased and but but she says you know what? This is the worst case that we've had in our judicial district, that that I am aware of, and the commonwealth attorney previous to me asked me to go and and talk about this. She brought the whole case file, pictures to everything. So at uh, the conclusion of the hearing, they they could have given him parole. They could have deferred him for five years to be considered for parole again in five years. They could have deferred him for ten years or they could have given him the remainder of his life in prison. And that's what they did. They gave him the remainder of his life in prison.
Speaker 3:So no more hearings Done.
Speaker 4:He's locked away for the rest of his life. We'll never see, unless something changes, of course, we know how things go, so you know. You spoke a minute ago about how this has the touch or smell or feel of a divine intervention. Yeah, so you see, certain parts it's been tough for me to talk about. Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Okay, rightfully so.
Speaker 4:So after I left the parole hearing that day, do y'all know much about Frankfurt?
Speaker 3:Just you know down toward the state buildings.
Speaker 4:Yeah, Public justice cabinets. They got an office down on high homes and me row street somewhere in that area. So I leave there and I'm heading back to my office out in Lexington and and I'm going up the hill up to us 60 toward the other state place Academy is yeah and as I'm going up this hill on us 60 it's four lane.
Speaker 4:you got turn lane the middle. I'm sitting in a turn lane right adjacent to Arby's it's, there was a truck exactly like I don't know the truck she was driving. Oh, exactly like the truck that she was driving on the day that she was killed. Wow, and it was like, for the love of God, what has just happened here?
Speaker 2:I felt like somebody was saying we heard you Kind of a tip of the hat thank you thank you, old blue Ford 78 F250, same kind of tires, white wheels sitting there.
Speaker 4:You can't explain it. I was like, oh my god.
Speaker 2:I don't believe in coincidences.
Speaker 3:I can't for the life of me. A simple Jake Brake sound and you turn your head. I mean trucks go by on I-71. Thousands, thousands and probably thousands an hour.
Speaker 2:And for that one jake break to get your attention.
Speaker 4:To get my attention to look at that truck.
Speaker 3:And then for you to just say, you know, because there's a lot of trucks that look a lot alike, there are lot of trucks that look a lot like that. There are um for you to actually go after that one or call ahead and say, hey, this one looks, you know, looking at a black and white um video of of a truck and not I'm sure you couldn't see plates, okay only thing I've seen dot numbers.
Speaker 4:There's a light colored truck. It was pulling the type of trailer that I had seen on the day pre and he went up and completed his route.
Speaker 3:come back through investigation I learned that he was light colored truck that was pulling the top of the trailer that I had seen on the day previous, had he went up and completed his route and come back.
Speaker 4:Through investigation I learned that he was trucking to East Canton, ohio, where he dumped his load and he was turning around and going back to Paris, tennessee.
Speaker 3:Okay, so, whether he did or not, well, he did. He went up there and dumped his load and came back.
Speaker 4:We had FBI in East Canton, ohio searching for evidence. Up there.
Speaker 3:Come back because we had FBI in East Canton Ohio searching for evidence up there.
Speaker 4:It was spread out all over. I've told you the Reader's.
Speaker 3:Digest first the best I can. Lots of involved around.
Speaker 4:If I have a message to tell to any of your young listeners that are police officers out there, do your job. Yeah, don't take that report and throw it in the box. Some family, somebody, somewhere is depend upon you.
Speaker 3:It's so, so easy just to knock out that little report. I gotta go turn it in my wife's waiting on my girlfriend's way.
Speaker 4:Hey, wait a minute, there's a family here looking to you to help them you're the police.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a selfless job and you have to be committed. You have to, and I know we've fought through fatigue, we've had a lot of stuff and there's that easy. You can press that easy button.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and I you know a lot of people may not agree with me that it's inside the profession, but I feel like your faith is very important inside this type of profession. To get you through things to help you. I mean divine intervention on helping you solve something.
Speaker 3:Because I think that case goes cold.
Speaker 4:If you missed that truck at that point in time that could have went cold. Through a lot of investigation we may have been able to identify the truck, but crucial pieces of physical evidence Would have been gone. Would have been gone and it would have been it may not have led to a conviction, there would have been tons and tons and tons.
Speaker 3:You would have had a lot of circumstantial evidence, you may not be able to get air support.
Speaker 4:A lot of things.
Speaker 3:You may not have been able to get an FBI to get involved at that point you could have. There's a lot of things, and I'm not saying it could. I mean you know the Lord works in all kinds of mysterious ways, so it could have been.
Speaker 2:And I would say that there was a lot of prayers for mommy and daddy. I would say that there was a lot of prayers for Mommy and Daddy. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Oh, there's no doubt.
Speaker 4:But I've seen that stuff too in our it's just you know, there's a greater power than us.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah.
Speaker 4:That's, you know, for the good and the bad. I believe throughout my life and my career, that God has put me where he wanted me or needed me to be.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 4:Not for the good, not always for the good, but sometimes I need to be checked.
Speaker 2:And I fully believe that you'll be in the right place at the right time, or the wrong place at the right time if you're listening. You're right or the wrong place at the right time. If you're listening, You're right.
Speaker 3:There is something you said you was talking about. There's people, there's parents, there's people that are counting on you, there's victims that are you know, and it goes to every little thing, not just the sympathy and the empathy of human Like. I don't know how many we talked about.
Speaker 2:How many wrecks have we worked parking lot wrecks, the fender benders and it's mundane, but this is the worst day that they've ever had. It's a Monday for you, but it's the worst day that they've ever had it's the worst day they've ever had.
Speaker 4:And they look at you, you know, and I just I don't want to be the guy that throws that ball down and walks away, says somebody else will do it no it's me, I'm gonna do it. You know that's what I'm getting paid to do, and it's the right thing so let's talk about the family a little bit.
Speaker 3:What? What is her full? What was?
Speaker 4:her. Her full name is myra dinette m-y-r-a dinette d-a-n-e-t-t-e stalbos-A-N-E-T-T-E Stalbosky, s-t-a-l-b-o-s-k-y.
Speaker 3:You'll never forget that.
Speaker 2:And you said that she's. Where did they memorialize her name at?
Speaker 4:In 1995 of the pastor over the state FOP Lodge, david Burke. They memorialized her name on the police officer's memorial in Frankfurt, kentucky.
Speaker 3:That's awesome, because she was an Ohio officer.
Speaker 4:Ohio officer.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and she's been remembered in Kentucky, In Kentucky. That is awesome, so I want to make sure we always remember her and that family, what they went through. Absolutely. That's what this podcast is about today.
Speaker 4:That's exactly what this is about, and I spoke with the family last night and they said if, by telling this story, that you educate the public about things like this that happen, the public about things like this that happened, give them a higher and greater awareness, and it saves one person in the whole world, since you've done something good, they said by all means, please go tell the story, her story's worth, always worth mentioning.
Speaker 3:Her name should never be forgotten, I agree. And that family, and I agree, and that family, and I will pray for their family from now on, because I have a daughter, I can imagine I can't imagine. There's an officer that was lost, that I never knew about until you told this story of her, because my first thought was 1995.
Speaker 4:She must have just graduated high school, um she just graduated and then got a place, place straight into the brown county ohio police academy and just graduated so she was how old then? 19, 18, 19 18 years old, hadn't turned 19 yet that was.
Speaker 3:She is exactly my age I was. I was, uh. I was graduating high school that year. I was a hold back, not for sports, though, but uh, so her and I are the same age. She would be 49 years old I'll be 49 next month and so we were about the same age, so we're and I think, I think, I think her birthday.
Speaker 4:If I remember correctly, her birthday was in July.
Speaker 3:So mine's in June, so I was a month older and we'll never know what she could have done, but we know that we can tell her story for the family to remember her and who she is and who she was to them, and that's what's important. Yes, the story is incredible. The police work is incredible.
Speaker 4:I want to say that I'm not smarter than the average bear. I'm not the best police officer in the whole world. Average bear, I'm not the best police officer in the whole world, and sometimes I won't call it luck, but divine intervention plays a thing. I'm not some super sleuth, you know I'm not.
Speaker 2:But you were willing to put out the effort.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely, and that's your effort and your desire is different than, uh like, I always felt like my specialty is more in the um with you know I did sro work and I'm still doing it and I've done it for years. I did a little administration. I enjoyed that. You know leadership side of it too. But we all have our specialties that we really key in it on and dylan I mean you, you hunted dope and and those things for years and did some detective work and things like that and supervision and we. But the cool thing is now I think if we can learn other things is teamwork makes the dream Absolutely and collaborating.
Speaker 4:This was not my show. This was not, and I want to give credit to every one of those agencies and those people who spent hours helping me along the way. I would have been in trouble. Those FBIs, those guys helped me a lot. I would have been in trouble. Those FBIs, those guys helped me a lot. The detective assigned from KSP to help me my God, for the love of everything, Bill Bosmer. He was just a godsend to me because he's like slow down, Tiger, Settle it down here, let's slow down.
Speaker 2:Let's walk down. This profession gets competitive. Yeah, but it's awesome to hear a story of how everybody came together to the common good and the common goal. Yes, to get what they want.
Speaker 4:Well, I had the torch. I had a lot of people help me hold that torch and move forward. It wasn't a one-man show, guys. It was not.
Speaker 3:It was not that it never is, unless you're the one you know somewhere in alaska remote. Yeah, yeah that you have to do it all, but, um, it takes a lot, and people supporting the police and and deputies is so important, important, and the relationships that police build in their community is so important too. So I think, uh, without without citizens in in the in the town to support and give that back as well, to for you to go and ask officers or you to go and ask truck drivers along the way it is, it's not just you got to build that, relationships with people. I I agree.
Speaker 4:And this is the least important fact out of this whole thing. So after this case happened, he went to jail my boss there and the city council. He's like we've never had a detective before, we're going to have one now. So they called the city council meeting and appointed me. It wasn't a promotion, because I didn't get no more money, which I'm not complaining, I was the first detective that we'd ever had Good, that's awesome.
Speaker 3:Well, I think this story needed to be told. I'm sure it's remembered more up in northern Kentucky, up in Ohio for them, and up towards LaGrange, louisville and things like that, but I've never heard it until there's plenty of information out there on the internet.
Speaker 4:On it too. If you guys decide looking up and don't know if y'all have, y'all have court in it oh yeah yeah, it's a. It's a Henry County case, a 1995 case, it's there. Okay, interesting.
Speaker 2:If you want to check into it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, there's pictures and videos and stuff of the memorial event at the FOP Peace House, waller Memorial there in Frankfurt.
Speaker 3:Well, that's awesome, that is awesome. Today it's somber, it hurts. It kind of gut punches you and I don't think it's hard to we can't transition to something crazy, but it's hard to, it's hard to even.
Speaker 2:You know we weren't there, but it's hard to listen to those yeah, this one stories like that, especially having when I read when you sent me that to read.
Speaker 3:I at first I glanced and thought wait a second, you know how cops are. When I went back and I read that your email to me three times the case report, I guess, is what you're saying. It was just an overview and I couldn't. I was like, oh my gosh. I was like read this. Talking to my counselor I was working with, he said where did this happen? Is this some kind of? I said no, this was, you know, a couple hours away from us. I never heard of it, you know, and just things like that. So we'll always remember her and we'll keep that family in our thoughts, because it's been 30 years ago, right, like a month ago or a couple weeks ago.
Speaker 4:Yeah, 30 years ago I was deep in the middle of this case. That's amazing.
Speaker 2:I want to thank you guys for having me on here. Yeah, thank you for coming.
Speaker 4:London, kentucky, is my hometown. I love this place and if it wasn't for my grandbabies, when I retire finally next year, I would come home, but I'm not leaving.
Speaker 2:No, I don't blame you, I don't blame you.
Speaker 4:I don't blame you.
Speaker 3:London is come visit us.
Speaker 4:I have three brothers that live here.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:The rest of my family is gone but I've got three brothers. Two brothers lives here in this county, one lives in whitley okay, so you get to come down a lot I'll spend. Hey, I love to come down here and spend the time with my. I spend time with my brother, you know, spend all day with him let's, let's do this again. We will yes, and and be alive.
Speaker 3:I know you got more and then I know you got a lot of connections, so let's, let's do that side of it too. We'll uh, there's people that have there's officers, there's ems, there's fire that you know, that have stories, and it needs to be told for the next generation and plus, just for them to kind of relive that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's good. This is the. I mean, this is a good form of therapy really.
Speaker 4:I mean to get it out guys, I'm gonna tell you, uh, this had had an impact upon you. Know god, this is not about me, but it was impactful on me. It was a very eye-opening high, high stress, you know, yeah, high stress situation, and it was absolutely you know well, don't break you, we'll make you stronger.
Speaker 3:I've been in those. You were talking about that notification. You know I've done a couple that still sent me into some therapy yeah, that was where I kept going to is in a family room telling somebody that you know their son's dead and I'm. That was a hard place to be and I still just hearing you talk about that triggers some of that emotion on that grief and that pain and that stress that they were under and I was under.
Speaker 2:I remember throwing up in the front yard and I had to give that notice twice we carry so much responsibility, so much on our shoulders because, like we said, you know you're that family's counting on you to have all the answers, to be there, to be the counselor to be able to guide them through this difficult process, when there's no one really to guide you through that process after, after it's all done, you know the case is closed and it's. You know they've got closure and then you're walking out. You know which is I mean and we talk about mental health a lot on here and getting you know, I was lucky, and still am lucky, to have, you know, a wife. That is a good support system for me. I can talk to her about anything and she just listens.
Speaker 3:She doesn't sign that you mentioned that Mine has been a support for me for my whole career.
Speaker 2:And faith, that's what I said. I mean your faith is a must in this profession, in my opinion.
Speaker 3:I couldn't imagine doing this job without a strong faith in Jesus. Yeah, we all fall short, we all have our ebbs and flows in our walk, but he definitely sends his guardian angels over us too and his watchful hand on us.
Speaker 4:I think he knows who we are?
Speaker 2:Yeah, he knows us, he knows who we are Absolutely, absolutely, and that transitions us into our sponsor. I mean, I'm proud for us to have this type of sponsor because you did what was that, emdr?
Speaker 3:I did EMDR. Emdr, which is the IBE movement. They probably have that at a place that you may have worked or you know that you go to and it helps.
Speaker 2:it helped me tremendously and um but uh, our sponsor, like I said earlier, is it's ascend wellness and they they specialize in trauma therapy and things like that, um, for those of you who don't know, ascend wellness. It's a family-owned mental health practice in London, kentucky, which is where we're all from. I mean, I think everybody's pretty much aware of that. They can't tell the bag what.
Speaker 2:They've got over 65 years of combined experience. They specialize in trauma-focused care, offering EMDR therapy for first responders and other impacted by traumatic events. When Logan died, I mean there was a lot of us. I never got to go. I wish I would have. You still need to go, I still need to go at some point in time and will but their services also include individual marriage and family counseling.
Speaker 2:No police officer would ever need to go through marriage counseling or anything like that MAT, substance abuse counseling, parenting classes, supervised visitations and medication management, all delivered in a supportive, client-centered environment.
Speaker 3:Thank you all for sponsoring us. I'm definitely going to take you up on the EMDR again. I thought I'm going to be honest. I thought it was voodoo at first.
Speaker 2:And it sounds like it Because you hold two paddles and vibrate.
Speaker 3:I don't know if you've ever been through so. It's desensitizing from the traumatic. It doesn't mean I forget, because, like you said, you just talked about being there and that triggered some things in, but it puts you in rim, basically, and then you're able to go through that with the counseling, to where it desensitizes that traumatic event, doesn't mean you forget it, but it helps you overcome some of the trauma the emotional response to it rather than so.
Speaker 3:I'm a believer and I was like what, but it really impacted me a lot, so thank you guys for supporting us and we encourage you.
Speaker 2:I mean don't be ashamed of it. There's nothing to be ashamed about needing to go talk to somebody and if you aren't willing to go talk to somebody about some kind of traumatic event that you've went through, then talk to a loved one, a wife, a brother.
Speaker 3:Reach out to us.
Speaker 2:Call us.
Speaker 3:We'll tell you to call him. We're not trained but if you needed somebody to talk, to listen. We've all been through some things in our life and we don't know it all, but we know people that can help, but sometimes just getting it off your chest that's what's so important about this podcast, I think, is like minded people getting back together and telling stories. It's therapy for us to do this.
Speaker 2:So again, thank you all. Yep and Sonny, thank you for coming on. Absolutely Thank you, guys for having me.
Speaker 4:It's been a pleasure it has been and I feel, by telling this story to you guys, I feel a closeness I didn't have before with you guys. Thank you for listening to me.
Speaker 3:Thank you for being here, appreciate it.
Speaker 2:All right, guys, hope you enjoyed this episode, a little more somber than what we're used to, but it's a great story. It needs to be out there. Don't let these people be forgotten. Don't let the ones that we've lost be forgotten. Don't be afraid to say their names, and until next time we'll see you.