Dive into the chilling mysteries of Rocky Mountain Cold Cases, where we unravel some of the most perplexing, unsolved murders that send shivers down your spine. In this episode, we venture into the haunting shadows of a healthcare facility, exploring cold case murders that have baffled investigators for years.
Join us as we dissect the intricate details of these cases, where the victims, elderly residents at the facility, met a tragic end. We get into the hows and whys of their untimely demise and brace ourselves for the unnerving reality of the lack of suspects or updates in solving these compelling mysteries.
But it's not all darkness; we bring you fascinating fun facts with a surprising twist to keep you on the edge. From the allure of Cheetos to the intrigue of Pringles, we'll sprinkle some light-hearted moments into the suspense.
True crime enthusiasts murder mystery lovers, this one's for you. Tune in for a gripping exploration into the heart of Rocky Mountain Cold Cases, where every detail is a clue, and every episode is a step closer to unraveling the truth.
https://imgur.com/a/ScHjG3M
Dive into the chilling mysteries of Rocky Mountain Cold Cases, where we unravel some of the most perplexing, unsolved murders that send shivers down your spine. In this episode, we venture into the haunting shadows of a healthcare facility, exploring cold case murders that have baffled investigators for years.
Join us as we dissect the intricate details of these cases, where the victims, elderly residents at the facility, met a tragic end. We get into the hows and whys of their untimely demise and brace ourselves for the unnerving reality of the lack of suspects or updates in solving these compelling mysteries.
But it's not all darkness; we bring you fascinating fun facts with a surprising twist to keep you on the edge. From the allure of Cheetos to the intrigue of Pringles, we'll sprinkle some light-hearted moments into the suspense.
True crime enthusiasts murder mystery lovers, this one's for you. Tune in for a gripping exploration into the heart of Rocky Mountain Cold Cases, where every detail is a clue, and every episode is a step closer to unraveling the truth.
https://imgur.com/a/ScHjG3M
Hey. This is Rocky Mountain cold cases. I'm Rachel, and that's Adam.
I'm Adam. And that's Rachel. So today our fun facts are about Cheetos.
Cheetos? Yes. I like Cheetos. I didn't say anything bad.
I'm, like, into Cheetos right now. I really don't love the flaming hot Cheetos. No, I actually hate those ones.
They are too flamin'hot. I think they cause stomach ulcers. Maybe if you eat the whole bag and it's sitting well, that's what I want to deal with.
The regular kind. Yeah. Not with the flaming.
The flaming ones are way too hot for me. I can't do it. That was weird.
Whatever show you were watching, and the lady grabbed avocados and the flaming hot Cheetos. Yeah. And then she, like.
She squills lime on it, too, and then just literally ate it like cereal. It was very weird. She said it was delicious.
I don't know. I've never seen before. Wow.
So anyways, you know who the mascot is, right, for Cheetos? The Cheeto guy. What's his name? His name is Chester Cheetah. Oh, Chester Cheeto.
Chester Cheetah. Cheeto. I don't think Cheeto is part of his name.
It could be. According to this website, it's not. Well, apparently, in the way back times, he was not the mascot.
Oh, really? Yeah. There was a mouse. Because, you know, mice like Cheese, so there was a mouse.
It doesn't tell me the name of the mouse, though. Maybe it didn't have a name. I like to think it did.
Anyways, he was, like, in the 1970s, and the mouse would run around with Cheetos. Yeah. But eventually they changed it to Chester Cheetah to be cool with the times.
But speaking of flaming hot Cheetos, do you know who invented them? Because it was not technically Cheetos. No, I don't know. But it was also kind of technically Cheeto.
Okay, so it was actually a janitor that invented them. He started putting chili powder on his own bag of Cheetos and then pitched the idea to the CEO. He is now, according to this website, an executive vice president at PepsiCo in North America.
So making way too hot Cheetos really panned out for that. Yeah. Yeah.
Put your phone down and listen to my Cheeto facts. I did. You're just now on TikTok now.
Gross. Anyway, and then my last fact about them, that they have, like, a thing about them that makes them kind of addicting. According to this website.
It says, an Oxford study. The brain associates the crunching sound with freshness. So you might be convinced that what you're eating is more appetizing than it really is.
They do have an excellent crunch. The crunchy ones, not so much the puffs, but the Cheetos. Yeah.
They can crunch even if they're still. They can still crunch even if they're stale. I don't let the bag get stale.
Why would I do that? I don't either, but I think they will crunch, or. Yeah, probably. Who has time for that, though? No one.
They're going to eat them already? Yeah. I would eat the whole bag in one go if I knew it wouldn't make me sick. I mean, they're okay.
I don't love them enough to eat the whole bag. I don't know. I like them quite a bit.
They're up there with barbecue chips. Yeah. You know what I don't understand? Well, there's a lot of people that like the talkies.
Oh, those are too hot. Too hot? Too hot. They're too, like, vinegary, I think.
I can't do the heat. They like, overseasoned a chip. Well, some people like overseasoned chips.
Clearly those talkies are selling like crickray. That's true. They do.
All right, well, you ready for my case? Yeah. Take a guess at what state we're in. Colorado.
Negative. Because Colorado is so hard to find cases on. I can't remember this time.
I don't know. I pull so many cases and end up being like, that's not enough information. Yeah.
It's like this person disappeared, and that's what we know now. This one's in Montana. Okay, Montana.
We are in Montana. All right, well, okay, the case was in Montana. Yeah.
We are not, but the case. So at Riverside Healthcare center in Missoula, Montana, Bertha Scott was found on May 2, 1990, in the early morning hours in her bed during a routine bed check. Bertha was found deceased from natural causes.
She was 86 years old. Okay, so this is an older lady. This is an older lady.
Keep Bertha in mind. Okay. She died May 2, 1990.
1990, at the same health center. On July 1 of 1990, employees called police to report Nancy Lagerquist, a resident of the center, missing. At 04:41 a.m.
Police arrived and began looking for Nancy. At 06:30 a.m.. A boat manned by the fire department found Nancy's body on the edge of a river near the care center.
She was 88 years old. Okay, wait, pause. Wait.
What? So how many days we've gone by between the two of these things? Well, the first one died in May 2, the second 1 July 1. So, like, two months. Okay.
It was clear at the scene that Nancy had been murdered. Her autopsy revealed that she died between 03:30 a.m. And 04:30 a.m.,
from, quote, blunt trauma to the chest and abdomen, most likely during a sexual assault, unquote. I'm not swearing, but I want to. I mean, everyone else is anyway, so.
Yeah, there was a few reports that did say exactly how she died. It was pretty graphic, and so I chose not to share it. They shared how she died? Pretty much, yeah, it was a lot.
Really? Yeah. So just know she's 86 years old, 88, 80. So just know.
Blunt trauma to the chest and abdomen, most likely during a sexual assault. Just like. Oh, my gosh.
So, Nancy, certain people I want to do bad things to. Oh, yeah. Nancy could actually no longer walk.
And police believe she was carried out of her. The. Nancy couldn't walk.
Nancy couldn't walk. There's no way she could get to the Ding river. No.
So I put that in there to show that Nancy wasn't just old and senile and wandered out of the building. She could not walk. Her walker was not.
Her wheelchair was not at the river. Somebody physically took her out of her river. This one's pissing me off.
Oh, my gosh. So the care facility that they were in did have some light security, and they did have alarms on the doors, like the main doors, so none of the door alarms went off. And so police thought her murderer took her from the building through a window in her room because the window was open and the screen was cut.
So he literally sneaked in her room, carried her out down to the river edge and murdered her. What the sicko. In early reports from the Missoulian police did not believe the murderer was someone who was in the building previously, such as an employee.
Later reporting would include a care center employee in the list of suspects, but by August, he was no longer considered a suspect. Now, when I was, this was one of the ones where one of the older cases where I was able to find the actual news clippings. So there's actually not a lot of information on this case.
So everything I got was from a website that had all the original news clippings, and none of them said why they ruled people in or out. So you can think all you want about those reasons. None of them gave me a reason why they ruled him out.
Yeah. So I don't know why this employee was a suspect, and I don't know why. He was eventually ruled out.
Interesting. Yeah. Police did not find anything they thought could be a murder weapon at the scene where Nancy died.
Because of how she died, there should have been a weapon. So whoever did this took it with them. But she was by a river then.
They didn't search a river. It didn't say. I'm assuming they did because they were looking for another item of hers that they never found.
So I'm assuming they searched a little bit there. Do I dare ask what the other item was? It was actually her adult diaper. Oh, yeah.
It's a trophy. I don't think so. Okay.
All right. Well, they did take her bedsheets to analyze for evidence. None of the newspaper clippings said if anything came from those bedsheets, it was never mentioned again.
They took it. That's all I know. I don't like this one.
It was colder research in that I was able to find the original articles because sometimes that's really hard to find. But it was also frustrating because it's like, why is there no updates? Like, this is not being updated. Well, so there's some the, I guess.
Did, did Nancy have family or kids? I didn't include it in here, but it does mention it in the articles. Nancy actually did not. She lived away from her siblings and she never married, so she never had any kids.
So I think if I remember right, ultimately it was just friends who ended up identifying her and claiming her. And Nancy actually didn't even want a funeral. So they just did like, a cremation.
She did a really low key thing. Wow. Do you think it was like someone that knew all that? No.
And because of Bertha. Did you forget about Bertha already? Bertha died May 2. Yeah.
Told you. Don't forget about her. And you did? Well, I mean, K, so in a July 27, 1990 Missoulian article, police left to LA to interview a man named James Bailey.
Again, I don't know why, but by August 4 of 1990, after it was three or four interviews, they had finally ruled him out as a suspect. I don't know why. Again.
Okay. A man was seen by an employee at the care center the night Nancy died. He was described as white in his thirty S or forty S and weighed between 182 hundred pounds.
He had light brown hair that was down to his collar as well as had a mustache and brown glasses. As far as I could tell in the articles, they never found this person. Do they not have a record of who he was? No.
He was just wandering around outside of the building. Yeah. He didn't go in and sign in.
Okay. But they didn't have anyone that had ever gone in and signed in before that looked like this. Because I'm just, like, thinking, like, how do you even know? Or maybe it didn't say.
I don't know. What's crazy is I found this case through a Reddit thread. Really? Yeah.
Googling didn't pull this up. Reddit did, though. Wow.
People in the Internets and webs. Find out who. Find out more.
Really? There was not really any updates on this. I was surprised there were not any updates, but okay, this is enough to piss you off. Are there old people? They've done nice things.
Maybe like, made somebody cookies. Come on. And then this is how they go out.
It'sickening. Hey, let's journey back to Bertha. Okay.
In August of 1990, take away Bertha is such, like an old fashioned name anyway. Yeah, she was 86 in 1990. She is old fashioned anyways.
So in August of 1990, her body was exhumed. Do you know what that means? No, I do not know what exhumed means. Exhumed means they dig your body up.
They ungrave you. I guess that makes sense. I could have put a guess to it, but I just figured I'd let you.
No. So they dig her up. Her body at the time of her death was noted to have some discoloration around her neck.
Police were exhuming her to conduct a full autopsy. And according to a Mazulian article, a window was noted to be a jar in a physical therapy room at the center the night Bertha died. So again, our person might be creeping in through windows because they don't have alarms on them.
While the article didn't explicitly say why they were looking into Bertha's case and what her cause of death was, it was implied that it was because of what was going on in Nancy's case. Thank you so much for being here, for being a listener and allowing us to take up a little portion of your day to share some of these true crime and cold case histories with you. It takes a lot of work to put in and find these cold cases.
If you guys have liked this episode and some of the others that we've done that are like, please, please subscribe if you have not already, as well as we would surely appreciate it if you gave us a rating on Apple Podcasts. Without further ado, let's get back to the episode. Thank you guys so much.
So basically, police were talking to employees and they were like, hey, was there been anything else weird. Or any other weird deaths. And somebody was like, well, when Bertha died, she did have a little discoloration around her neck, and then there was that window open.
So then they were like, well, let's look into Bertha. And it's a good thing they. There was.
If this was sexually, like, a sexual kind of crime, right? Is there not, like, some DNA left over? Hold tight, my friend. Okay. All right.
So Bertha's autopsy would reveal that she was actually murdered. So originally they thought it was natural causes because she did have health conditions, like heart issues and stuff. She even had, like, dementia as well.
So she was, in fact, murdered, and she was actually strangled, and she had been raped. So police were able to get a semen sample from her autopsy. Now, keep in mind, Bertha has been dead for, like, three or four months now.
Yeah. In the ground. You're not collecting samples from her body that have been decomposing for three or four months.
Yeah. I don't envy that job. Unfortunately, this was in the 90s, when we're not awesome at DNA.
So in April of 1991, police were informed that the DNA did not match any samples and that the DNA sample they did get from Bertha was not the best sample, essentially, because using DNA in this matter was still pretty new. They couldn't really pull apart which part of the sample was from Bertha and which part was from her rapist. Wow.
2023. I'm like, wow, we just did go over a new year. But anyway, can they pull that DNA now? This is why I was frustrated that there's no updates.
My brain says if they still have that sample properly stored, they should be able to test it again with new technology. Yeah, there are no updates saying they're retesting anything. Okay.
People that are listening call those people. I think that with the way technology has changed, I think there's a good chance they could get a better profile from it. I don't know if they could get a complete profile, though, because like I said, it had been marinating in a decomposing body for three months.
Yeah, well, I mean, anyone can make a podcast like we have now, and it's like there's so much different technology out that the DNA stuff is getting better and better and better and better. I don't know. Just do your freaking jobs.
I know it's hard, but in, there's a lot of cases and there's a lot of things, and DNA testing is expensive. Hers took, like, seven months to get back just to say, we can get anything now. It probably should only take, like, a couple weeks.
No, they're backDated, backLogged. Really? There's so much Going on. There's like, oh, my gosh, ADam, you should go on a journey on rape kits.
It takes years sometimes for a rape kit to be. Are you serious? Yeah, you should go on a journey. MaYbE that Just becomes An episode.
Yeah. Okay. So back to BErtha.
So they eventually sent the DNA to a different place Just to see if they could pull apart the different types of DNA. They were finally able to get Bertha's DNA pattern. However, they couldn't produce a second DNA pattern, so they were able to pull up Bertha's and identify Bertha.
But the other Rest of it, there's. Don't. This Is a Jumble.
I Don't. So. Gotcha.
AcCording to the articles, though, police do believe both cases are, in fact, related. Yeah, the guy Got away with it Once. He thought I could get away with it again, and he Did.
Yes, but possibly. What do you mean possibly? Possibly. WEll, I didn't catch him.
This is a cold case. It is very cold. So I got away with it the second Time.
WEll, assuming it's the same person in 1990. So it's funny, because when I was reading the comments on that Reddit thread that found this case, people were very much so on the side of this is two different people. Really? The majority of the comments.
Yeah, because they were saying that the murders are too different to be the same person with the same ML. Like, it escalated too quickly. So you went from raping and strangling a woman's inner room to literally pulling a lady out of her room down to river and brutally murdering her.
So it was almost like one of them was like, well, how do we know Bertha didn't die from another patient and then Nancy was from some straight up mean, okay, but here, think of it like, well, I get where people are thinking that, but I also think like, oh, if you didn't get caught the first time, you're going to try and do it again. And, hey, these people, like, oh, they just Wrote it off as a murder. But probably he broke.
Yeah, obviously he. The Restiemen. Yeah.
Anyway, broke in, cut a screen, and so obviously was like, well, let's make it look like she escaped. And so then I'm really, what do you think of this again? That's just what I'm good at. But pulls her out of the room because it's like, well, yeah, if this makes it look like she escapes, because then it's not me that cut the thing.
And then if she's dead by the river. Maybe they just assume that she, I don't know, fell or whatever. Well, and then there was some comments that were like, how do we know these are the first victims? What if these are the last victims? So how many other had just been straight up sexually assaulted and not murdered? Yeah, I think it is more likely it's somebody who works at the facility who did something, because that would be way easier as opposed to a random stranger just like, sneaking in, you know what I mean? Yeah, no, and I kind of agree with that too, because it's like, in a sense, like, yeah, maybe that person wasn't on shift, but they knew which room it was and knew how to get out all those things.
The newest article that I was able to find. Well, I make it sound like I scoured the Internet. I did scour the Internet, but everything is from literally one website.
The show notes are one website instead of usually five to seven that I have. Anyways, this one was a 2002 article, and that's, like, the newest one, but. So the article from the Mazulian states that in 1991.
So the year after Nancy and Bertha were dead, some residents had said they had seen an unknown man walking the halls at night over several weeks. Unfortunately, because conditions such as dementia and Alzheimer's were common with those in the care facility, no one really thought much of the claims because it's not unusual for people with dementia to hallucinate a little bit. Yeah, but I don't believe this claim, personally, even though it was, like, in a news article, it doesn't make sense to me because in the other articles, the employees were really shaken up with the murder.
And then to find out that Bertha was murdered were they were shaken up and they were doing more bed checks and everything. And to have that next year, patients going, someone's in the hallways at night and they're going, sure, whatever. I just don't believe that.
I think with those two murders, they would have been much more stringent and called police and doing more checks and things. So I just don't believe it. I think some of that can be like, I'm afraid of seeing something, so I think I'm seeing something, or I thought I heard, okay, it's a mouse, Grandma.
It's a mouse. In the hallway, you're hearing them in the walls or whatever. Yeah.
I mean, not saying it's mice, but anyway, yeah, it's like just the subtle sound or light movement or whatever in the hallway, they're like, oh, there's a guy out. And like, even if these claims that the patients were seeing something. I just don't believe that nobody believed them, that nobody took extra action in some way.
I don't know. To me, it was a really weird thing because I was like, if that had happened before Nancy died, I think. Sure.
But because they were shaken up, two people had been murdered in their building. I was like, there's no way that they just ignored that and wrote that up to dementia. Yeah, that's basically the case.
A lot of the searching took me to this other podcast. It's a three part series. Their episodes are, like, 20 minutes longish.
I started to listen to one, but then we had stuff going on, and I never got back to it just to see if they had any other information, because, like I said, I was having a hard time finding anything other than those original news articles. Their podcast is called Montana Murder Mysteries, and the episode is called Rest Home Rapes and Homicides, which is a pretty bomb title. Rest home rapes and homicides.
Yeah. Wow. So, I mean, give that a listen.
I don't know if I want to say bomb title. It's pretty captivating. That's what I mean, it's captivating.
It's like, what now? Yeah, it's very creative on their part, but at the same time, you're like, it's cringey that that was ever one. This one pissed me off. Yeah.
I really was disappointed in not finding more information, especially because Nancy didn't really have any family, and a lot of her friends, I'm sure, are gone now. But Bertha did have family, and so they would be continuing for that fight. Oh, I just remembered.
It was really weird. Bertha's family and some of Nancy's friends and I think some of her family, like her siblings, ended up suing the care center. Really? I couldn't find anything that said what ended up panning out, like, what won or whatever.
But I thought it was a little bit of a bogus lawsuit, only because all the articles that referenced it said that they were suing because the care facility should have known that the women would have been potential victims of murder. And I was like, who thinks that way? You put your grandma or your own mom into a care facility, and your thought is you all are ready in case someone breaks in to try to murder them, right. Or rape them because someone's planning on.
I mean, I guess there's some sicko out there that was planning on raping an ad, but nobody thinks that when they put their loved one in a care center. I mean, we live really close to two of them. And I would never think there's a wild murderer running around killing them.
That would never, ever cross my mind. You're right. No, I was like, that's your basis for a lawsuit? That they should have known that was a possibility.
What? Yeah. I don't know. I get it.
They're angry, but my goodness, also, I'm not sure. I don't know. Again, it's just some sicko because I don't know how one guy gets off on an 88 year old.
Just, like, murdering in general. Yeah, I don't know. So that is the case of Nancy, 20 years older now or dead.
Well, but they carried Nancy out. I don't know anything about Nancy's physique. But you're still carrying a whole person out of a window.
Yeah. You got to be kind of young to do that. So that person is probably still alive, assuming some type of accident didn't happen.
Or cancer. Yeah. I mean, they've probably been, like mid twenty s to do that.
I would say twenty s to thirty s. Yeah. But I don't know.
No, that one makes me want to do bad things. No, because then we'll have to do a whole different type of podcast with you in to actually. Anyway, I'm not the only one that's thinking.
Anyway, so this is the episode. This is it. Sweet.
So, yeah, if you like this so far, please give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend or someone that you know would be totally interested in hearing cold case murder mystery. Oh, remember the episode we talked about Pringles and how they're not really chips and they have, like, crisps on the side? Yeah.
Somebody pulled one of those knockoff lace ones and sent a picture. It does say Chris. Yeah.
Okay. That's funny. Anyways, yeah, we'll have all the little links or whatever in the show notes.
The one link. The one link. But anyway.
And send any of your case ideas to Rockymancald cases@gmail.com. Yes. Anything else that I'm missing, send me some fun facts ideas.
Oh, yeah. Fun facts. And Cheetos.
And Cheetos. And that's all I've got. All I've got.
Sweet. Thanks for listening. Thanks for being here.
We'll catch you on the next one. Bye.