What we lose in the Shadows (A father and daughter True Crime Podcast)
What we lose in the Shadows (A father and daughter True Crime Podcast)
The Debbie Makel Case: A 50-year tragedy
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In this episode we explore the heartbreaking case of 8-year-old Debra 'Debbie' Makel, who disappeared on October 5, 1973, in Rices Landing, PA. After a normal day at school, Debbie vanished shortly after getting off the school bus, leaving her family and community in shock. Despite an extensive search, her body was discovered two days later, revealing a tragic crime scene that deeply affected the small town. Despite numerous leads and tips, the case went cold. With advancements in DNA technology, there is hope that new evidence could finally bring justice for Debbie. Join us as we delve into the ongoing quest for truth and the lasting impact of this tragedy."
The Unsolved Murder of Debbie Makel | by Jenn Baxter | Medium
https://observer-reporter.com/news/localnews/greene-county-cold-case-closer-to-solving/article
Contact us at: whatweloseintheshadows@gmail.com
Background music by Michael Shuller Music
Good morning and welcome to what we Lose in the Shadows a father-daughter true crime podcast. My name is Jamison Keys.
Speaker 2I'm Caroline. How you doing, caroline? Good, how are you? Very well, I'm loving fall.
Speaker 1How are you? Very well. I'm loving fall.
Speaker 2You love fall.
Speaker 1I'm loving fall.
Speaker 2I feel like it's already too cold, but I wanted to ask if you heard about the bears the fake bears that were going through people's cars. It's an insurance fraud thing that's been happening in this one area of the United States.
Speaker 1So I'm assuming they're not actual bears, they're bear costumes People dressing up in bear costumes. Wait, wait a minute. That's absurd. So people were dressing up in bear costumes and breaking into cars.
Speaker 2Burgling their own cars.
Speaker 1Burgling their own cars.
Speaker 2burgling their own cars for insurance money and then with video evidence and they'd be like look, it's a bear.
Speaker 1I'm sure it moved like a bear.
Speaker 2Exactly. So they started like investigating. It happened like four or five times Right and they were like it's all the same area, Like, and so they went in and the police found the bear suit.
Speaker 1It's the lighter side of true crime, oh my God, they didn't get rid of the bear suit. Huh? No, because it was an ongoing prank.
Speaker 2Yes, not a prank Fraud, fraud. Scheme Ponzi scheme.
Speaker 1Oh my God, Not a Ponzi scheme. Yeah, yogi, bear scheme.
Speaker 2There you go. So silly Trigger warnings today are child abduction, sexual assault of a minor and murder.
Speaker 1Caroline, today we're going to be diving into a case that shook the small town of Rice's Landing, Pennsylvania, to its very core. It's a story of an eight-year-old girl whose life was tragically cut short and whose killer remains unknown to this day, 50 years later.
Speaker 2Oh, that's horrible.
Speaker 1So I grew up in a little town called Waynesburg in Pennsylvania, which is 12 miles from Rice's Landing where the murder took place. I was about 10 years old or 11 years old at the time and you know, just to set the scene, there was really no violent crime in that little area in Pennsylvania. You know, people left their doors open, they left their cars unlocked.
Speaker 2So the case so crazy to think about.
Speaker 1It was like living in Mayberry. You probably don't know what Mayberry is I don't.
Speaker 1It was an Andy Griffith show. It took place in Mayberry. It was this idyllic place that no bad things happened, the sheriff didn't carry a gun, that sort of thing, so, and it was a show on in the fifties and sixties, but it was. It was kind of like living that the case really freaked out. My mother I remember clearly, because my mom and her sisters had come up on a Saturday there. My uncle and my dad were going fishing and the the three sisters were hanging out and I just noticed weird things that day. They were really watching me closely, right.
Speaker 2I bet.
Speaker 1Yeah, because they were aware of it. I had no idea what was going on, and anytime I was looking at the television I was like like I said, nine or 10 or 11, something like that. And you know, they were just really. They were like stay where I can see you, and I'm like that. And that was really rare because I was, you know, lived in this little kind of an area that there was a big field and there was some you know gardens and things there and and they just kind of let me roam around. But they were really really close and watched me very closely that day.
Speaker 2Just that day, or like a little bit after too.
Speaker 1Well, my grandma was always, my mom was always really kind of watching out for me. For example, in this little town of 5,000 people, right, um, we lived in like these little row houses, right, and I was going up to a friend's house and she would make me go through the backyards not on the main thoroughfare, not the main sidewalk because she was like, uh, I don't want anyone to like, snatch you off the sidewalk, true, true, but I was allowed to go through the backyard. So really an odd, an odd thing, but it was really a big story at that point in time. And I just recently found out that one of my friends, michelle, was a friend of this little girl's, oh, and they took dance class together from a dance school in Waynesburg. And they took dance class together from a dance school in Waynesburg.
Speaker 2And they'd arrange play dates and things like that. That's crazy.
Speaker 1That's so sad, it's tragic, it truly is, and especially since it's still an ongoing case, and so on.
Speaker 2It must be traumatic for your friend to grow up in the shadow of that.
Speaker 1Well, right, because she would have been the same age as this little girl, about eight years old or nine years old, wow. So yeah, she had no idea. She couldn't probably grasp what was actually happening.
Speaker 2I don't know. Kids are smarter than we give them credit for.
Speaker 1True, absolutely, but this is the story of the disappearance and murder of Debbie Macle. It was a crisp autumn afternoon, october 5th, which was a Friday in 1973, when eight-year-old Debbie Mekle boarded her school bus in the small town of Rice's Landing. It was just a typical day for a third grader. She was headed home on the Friday from Dry Tavern Elementary School, and Debbie's two older brothers, dwayne and David, decided to walk home from school that day instead of take the bus. They were selling magazine subscriptions which I remember doing when I was that age as a school fundraiser and they were going to walk the two miles from the school to home. They thought it was a good opportunity to knock on doors and maybe sell some subscriptions.
Speaker 1At that time, rice's Landing was a really quiet rural place. Fewer than 500 people lived there, and Debbie's parents, dwayne and Charlotte, had moved to the area a few years earlier, thinking it would be a perfect place to raise their three children. Both of them worked full time Dwayne as a high school teacher and Charlotte she worked at a local factory as a seamstress. So the kids were used to coming home to an empty house. Charlotte normally arrived at about 445 just in time to start dinner. When Debbie's brothers got home that afternoon they found her coat in the kitchen and her school books and her keys laying on the table, but there's no sign of Debbie herself. The boys assumed that she had gone outside to play with friends, and you know something like that that she did quite often after school. However, when Charlotte returned home later that evening the house was still empty and as it got closer to dinner time, you know she started preparing dinner and so on. And you know Duane and David came back and they said there was no sign of Debbie. You know they told Charlotte that Debbie had been home before them at the time that they arrived. Now Charlotte was worried and when her husband Dwayne came home they began calling around and checking with neighbors and friends to see if anyone had seen their daughter, but no one had.
Speaker 1The last confirmed sighting of Debbie was when she got off the bus at 345. Now she lived on the end of a dead end street. You know there's just a few houses on this little lane and so you know, like when I grew up, like my mother would call around to the neighbors have you seen Jim? Where's he at? Well, I saw him up there. He's playing across the street. So it was that kind of a, you know, real close, tight-knit community. The parents figured that maybe, you know, debbie just wandered off while she was playing or maybe she'd gotten hurt, you know, as she was a very active kid, you know a very sweet kid apparently, and she loved climbing trees, so they decided to drive through the neighborhoods calling her name, hoping to hear her voice. But there was no thing, or there was no one, no answer, no sign of her.
Speaker 1As the sun set and the hours passed and panic set in, by the time it was dark and the Macles knew something was terribly wrong. They called the police and reported Debbie as missing. Wow, the small town of Rice's Landing quickly rallied together and law enforcement and volunteers began searching immediately for Debbie. An announcement was made at the Jefferson Morgan High School football game, not far away, about a missing child and the stands emptied as people rushed. Wow, yeah, but yeah. So the stands emptied and the people rushed there to try to search for this little girl. And they did. They paired up in teams with flashlights and they scanned every corner, every alley, everywhere. But as hours passed and the search continued into the night, no sign that Debbie was found.
Speaker 2That's horrible.
Speaker 1By Saturday morning the search had expanded. Investigators interviewed neighbors who confirmed that they had seen Debbie walking toward the house after getting off the bus. One witness described seeing her wearing a green dress and carrying a little pink purse. Another neighbor even reported that she had seen Debbie entering the house.
Speaker 2Wow.
Speaker 1But after that there was no sign of her leaving the house again. But after that there was no sign of her leaving the house again. Investigators believe whatever had happened to Debbie must have occurred outside, because inside the house there was no signs of a struggle. Everything appeared completely normal. It seemed that she had entered the house like any other day, but then she had just disappeared.
Speaker 2And so maybe she'd like left to go play with friends or to go find someone to play with. Maybe, or was coaxed out?
Speaker 1That's a great question. There's something later I think that might be of interest then. Okay, but Saturday afternoon hundreds of volunteers come through the woods surrounding the Maykel home because they said it was like on a little dead end street but it was surrounded by woods. The woods around her house were thick and dense and it made the search difficult, but despite their best efforts they turned up nothing.
Speaker 2Wow.
Speaker 1The search continued until dark, but no leads came in, and early Sunday morning two of Debbie's cousins who had joined the search made the heartbreaking discovery Just 200 yards from her house, near an old distillery, they found her body. That's horrible.
Speaker 2It was hidden beneath some shrubbery and some branches and leaves and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1Did they miss it when they were walking or was it placed later? See, that's a great question, that's a really important question.
Speaker 2Did someone say they searched that area before?
Speaker 1So a lot of people said that they had been right near that area.
Speaker 2I think it would be be, was it it wasn't snowing at that point, probably in october it was october, so there was no snow. At that point it was leaves had fallen but so I feel like most likely they would have seen her because they're looking exactly for her, you know right, but you know it was close to the house.
Speaker 1There were some groups that said there's something wrong. I know we were standing right here exactly, yeah, so there's some.
Speaker 1There's some conjecture as in terms of was the body killed somewhere else, someplace there later? So, but the coroner, uh, who worked on the case at the time, said that that's not what happened. It looked like she was strangled and killed right on that spot. Interesting so, but but, like you said, different people said I know I was right here and I know that body wasn't there, but did they or are they just, you know, remembering things incorrectly?
Speaker 2well that, but yeah, also the memory of witnesses, eyewitness, testimony, um even like our own memories can be so faulty.
Speaker 1Well, it's so faulty and so historically off so often that you know police actually kind of take it with a grain of salt, don't give it enough credence, perhaps sometimes because they're like people don't in an instant remember things the way that they necessarily think they did.
Speaker 2Right, and that's why they look for more than one Exactly.
Unsolved Small Town Murder Case
Speaker 1More than one to corroborate that, yeah, exactly. As I said, she had been sexually assaulted. She had been strangled with a piece of twine. Now that's interesting so it wasn't a rope, you know, it wasn't a belt. The twine was actually still there and still around like that, like that thin metal twine is like a string, like a heavy-duty string.
Speaker 1Okay, now the interesting part is, twine is also what you use to wrap around bales of hay, and there would have been plenty of farms and plenty of places around there that would have had twine. So had it been a rope, that would have been much more unusual, but a piece of twine was a fairly common thing to find. You know, in that area of Pennsylvania Her larynx had been broken. Oh my gosh, which tells you? You know, which tells you it was someone with a fair amount of strength, mm-hmm, you know it wasn't like a child. You know a child would. But also the sexual assault piece.
Speaker 1That's true too, yeah.
Speaker 2And depending on Well, I mean I guess because she was a minor they could have ruled sexual assault simply because of any like trauma to that area. But I know sometimes they are hesitant to say that people who are adults are sexually assaulted unless there's like semen present. So I guess we don't know exactly what happened there. But if there was more than just like trauma to the area, if there was actual like DNA left behind, that would, you know, obviously be someone a little older at least, like what?
Speaker 215 right, normally yeah, 14, 15 is when but so then, also, on top of that, the you know the force it would take to break that portion of her neck right most likely someone older, although it could be a teenager it could be a teenager.
Speaker 1Yeah, we just don't know. Debbie's parents, of course, were devastated.
Speaker 1Uh, they'd always thought that rice's landing was a safe quiet place you know, before the tragedy, the big, her biggest fear, uh, was that one of her kids would be hit by a car. And I mentioned that before we were talking. Right, your mom, that my mom was always just so terrified of cars. That's so sad, um, you know especially. But but in a small town, you know something like that it just didn't seem possible. It didn't seem like that was you know something that you know could happen.
Speaker 2And you hear about that often, right? Like you hear, in these cases, people say like it never happens in this area, but it happens everywhere and that's the sad part and why, like you know, it's important to be like vigilant with your children, with other people's children even. You know what I mean. Like just watch out for the kids and for women in general, actually, for sure, like I think it's important that, like women and men and everyone watch out for, you know, people who can be in vulnerable positions, especially children, though Especially children.
Speaker 1At Debbie's funeral, hundreds of people gathered to mourn, but among those mourners there were dozens of undercover police officers hoping to spot the killer. They believed that the person responsible for Debbie's murder could be someone local, probably, and maybe the killer would even show up at the funeral home.
Speaker 2It's common, yeah, to place themselves near the scene of the crime or in the investigation.
Speaker 1So they had police officers and people from the Pennsylvania State Police that were in, dressed up among the audience right, looking for anything weird or you know something that was out of place, but they didn't find it. In the months that followed, the investigators worked tirelessly to find answers. They interviewed anyone who had been close to Debbie, ran polygraph tests and followed every lead that they could find, but despite their best efforts, they were unable to identify any suspects. There were no signs of a struggle in the Maykel home and no one saw anything suspicious like any weird cars or any weird people walking around In a small town. They noticed stuff like that, right, yeah. So as time went on, the case grew colder. Wow, weird cars or any weird people walking around in a small town.
Speaker 1They noticed stuff like that, right yeah so as time went on, the crate, the case grew colder. Wow and uh. In 20 2003, law enforcement reported that they were reopening the case. New forensic technology allowed investigators to extract dna uh from the evidence that had been collected years earlier.
Speaker 2Okay, so that was probably semen.
Speaker 1Yes, I'm assuming that they didn't specify that in the source material.
Speaker 2But that lends itself to someone being older.
Speaker 1Because of the sexual assault and that sort of thing, right.
Speaker 2Honestly, yeah, simply because of leaving DNA, Because otherwise I don't know what DNA they would be testing leaving DNA, because otherwise I don't know what DNA they would be testing.
Speaker 1Well, I mean so. So the hard, the hard DNA is obviously, you know, semen and blood and things like that.
Speaker 2But if it wasn't mentioned, like a lot of blood that you know, a small amount of blood would be tough to test now.
Speaker 1Well, and given the, given the way that she was, that she was killed, I mean, it didn't seem like there would be blood necessarily.
Speaker 2Unless yeah.
Speaker 1Unless a seem like there would be blood, necessarily unless, yeah, the, let's say, bludgeoned or something like that, well, unless the predator was scratched or something. Right, right, right, they created a dna profile of the killer and submitted it to the national databases, but once again no matches.
Speaker 2Oh wow, so her. So someone could potentially match that, like what we were talking about earlier in 2013, so 10 years later.
Speaker 1So the thing it occurred in, you know, in 73, in 73, 2003, they reopened the case and they started looking at forensics. You know they extracted dna because dna was beginning to be you know something that police officers were using.
Speaker 22013 and they were like like suspicious of it at first.
Speaker 1right, very yeah, they're like well, this is voodoo, you know, right, but of course, it's the biggest thing ever to happen in criminal investigation, right? So 10 years later, in 2013, detectives took another look at the case and they tested the DNA from any of the men who were considered people of interest at that point, but they were all cleared, all of them, all of them. So, sadly, even with new efforts, no breakthroughs have been made. So some of the questions I have right. One of the things that I found out in some supplemental documents was that the basement door was left open, like I said, in this period of time, not all that unusual People did it all the time. They left their doors.
Speaker 2Do you mean a basement door out like that leads outside? Yes, oh okay, like a cellar.
Speaker 1Like a cellar. Okay, right, so the back part was open. Now one of the grandfathers one of Debbie's grandfathers said that he had dropped off some plums earlier that day, so he may have left it open. Okay, because I guess the plums were in the basement. You want to keep it somewhere cold, you know.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1So, but he may have left it open. I'm wondering now. If you look at the pictures, the house is situated on this dead, dead end road. The basement faced the woods.
Speaker 2Where she was found.
Speaker 1Where she was found 200 yards after that. Now people say they didn't see her leave again. My thought is someone came in through that basement door.
Speaker 2I could see that.
Speaker 1And was waiting for her. Yeah, took her out that basement door and down through the field and into the woods there where that distillery was, and that's where she was found.
Speaker 2Wow.
Speaker 1So that could be the reason that she was never found. But jewelry was and that's where she was found. Wow, so that could be the reason that she was never found. But here's the thing it has to be, or I think it has to be someone that knew them, because there was. Normally her two brothers almost always rode the bus home with her at the same time because they went to the same school. Now they would have been there, which would have been, you know, complicated for someone to try to subdue three children. Yeah, so could it have been someone that knew?
Speaker 2But were they like planning on not going home with her, like this was a set plan or this was like a moment that they just made that decision?
Speaker 1So they got permission from their parents and the parents told the teachers that they would be walking home that day, because teachers you know, teachers do great things right. Yeah, and they're super vigilant especially, you know, in primary school. Yeah, they're super vigilant in terms of watching kids.
Speaker 2Especially now.
Speaker 1Well, especially now, but even back then. So you had to have permission If you were going to ride the bus. You're not going to ride the bus if you're going to walk home. You had to have permission to do that. You had to tell your the teachers that that was okay. So the boys knew that they were going to be walking home. They had the magazine subscriptions with them.
Speaker 1so there's that yeah, that's suspicious for sure right, and I'm assuming that they checked all the backgrounds of the neighbors you know, looking for domestic violence or in any kind of a odd you know situation? No, things weren't reported very much back then looking for domestic violence or you know any kind of an odd you know situation?
Speaker 2Things weren't reported very much back then, though. Yeah, like domestic violence, abuse, sexual abuse.
Speaker 1Even like some sort of like a, you know, pedophile.
Speaker 2Yep, there was no national registry. I mean that, but it wasn't reported very often. And just to give like context, 1973 is when women were allowed to own bank accounts, so women survivors were not given very much.
Speaker 1Credibility.
Speaker 2They weren't giving very much credibility, Right? So this is like a different time period, you know, and like gosh, especially in a small town where, like the police know everyone, you know it's like oh, like, yeah, he had that one incident, but like it could never be him, you know, it's just like there were a lot of excuses made for community members. You said 500 people 500 people.
Speaker 1Yeah, like everyone knows everyone, oh for sure. So they probably even move into a community and just completely reinvent yourself and say your name was whatever and now you're, you know.
Speaker 1John Smith and you move in there, you live there for a couple of years and you kind of just embed with these people. But in the meantime, in the midst of all these folks, you have someone that's you know has nefarious intent and that sort of thing. Because it was easier to do that, easier to disappear, easier to reincorporate yourself as something else at that period of time, because of the lack of connected databases and things like that, right, right.
Speaker 1So another question why, if there's still DNA, didn't they contact, you know, a genetic genealogist? If that material's still there, if there's still enough of it, why haven't they done that in this case?
Speaker 2Well, I think that's still super new, right? They're not doing it for all cases yet, right? I know, but it's been 50 years, I know, but that's probably another reason, unfortunately, that they're like. Let's look at these other cases.
Speaker 2But I think that's a great idea right and that would be like because, if you think about it, it's like there are 500 people in this small town, right, could it have been a random, you know person just coming through town and, like you know, a sad coincidence. Yeah, it could have, but have, but like I feel like most likely probably not. It was probably someone who knew her because, um, they say that most acts of violence against, um, women and children are from people that they know. It's like a high percentage, 80 something percent.
Speaker 1Yeah. So here's why I think that isn't true, which that it was some random person. Do you think that it was not? I think it was not Because, like I said, they noticed when this little girl got off the bus and they watched her into the house. Right, there's still a large number of women that were home.
Speaker 2Stayed home with the kids.
Speaker 1Stayed home mothers at that point in time. So that was actually that was a great system. Because I mean, for that was actually that was a great system, because I mean For some, for some, I mean they were vigilant, they watched things, yeah, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2Yeah, which is crazy that no one saw this.
Speaker 1But that's why I think it wasn't some random person, because they said they didn't see any cars. They were unusual, okay, and like a weird car coming through that little neighborhood with maybe five or six houses on it. They, with maybe five or six houses on it, they're gonna notice a car, especially a dead end, because you're gonna have to turn around and go back another way. So that person would have to have known the layout of this neighborhood, known how to get to this house without being seen, because they saw the little girl but they didn't see some other strange guy walking down the street. No, I don't think so.
Speaker 2Yeah, it was probably that's so crazy.
Speaker 1And if they, I mean, how did they know to go in the back basement door and wait for this little girl without knowing that the mother or the father or any of the other kids, were also assuming that they did that we're. I'm assuming they did that yeah, but there's no evidence the contrary.
Speaker 2One way or the other, right so like she could have, and I don't know if you know if she typically like went outside to play, yeah, so like she could have like gone outside in the backyard and played, right, and then someone you know saw her and and it was a crime of opportunity, Right, you know, I can almost see it playing out of my head, you know, like someone who's like a community member that no one would think of. You know what I mean. But that's why this, like this specific testing that you were talking about, say, the name again, I forgot.
Speaker 1It's actually called forensic genetic genealogy.
Speaker 2So that's why the forensic genetic genealogy would be like a good starting point for this case again. Because, if they do have enough of the sample of DNA from the perpetrator. But I mean, I think that you know there was only 500 people in that town, and so how many of them were women?
Speaker 1You know what I mean.
Speaker 2Yeah, exactly. So it's like that's not a lot to go like, so now it's down to 250.
Speaker 1Yep Right, yep right and and probably take half of that children, right, so probably half of those. So now we're talking 150, 100, 150 people if they are from that area, if they are from that town. Now, hell, I'm about to do it.
Speaker 2Yeah, no, kidding like oh my gosh, this is crazy.
Speaker 1So. So think about that, okay. And then the fact that they had to have thought about this. If there's still genetic material left and the last time it looks like it was looked for is 2013 if it's still there, if it can still be extracted, why not do that? Is it a matter of cost? I know it's dreadfully expensive. Oh, is it? Uh, it's. It's an expensive test, and so on, and but I'll tell you what if there is still genetic material, we'll keep you up to date on this, because if there is, I'm going to start a GoFundMe page. Yeah, you should. That's a great idea, and I mean, if there's still a chance of catching them. This is how they caught the Golden State Killer.
Speaker 2Yes, I know yeah.
Speaker 1This is how they caught you. Remember the lady that was bowling with her husband and went home and they murdered her? She was murdered in her kitchen. We did a story about that.
Speaker 2Did we talk about this? We did, yeah, I forgot about that one.
Speaker 1They found that one out by genetic genealogy as well. So a lot of big cases are being solved.
Speaker 2The Golden State was crazy.
Speaker 1And that was 30 or 40 years later too.
Speaker 2Yeah, he almost died with that secret. He almost later too. Yeah, he almost died with that secret. He almost died.
Speaker 1He was like 70 when they caught him my. So even if that's the case, because it's 50 years and some of those folks were 50, then they're dead.
Speaker 2I mean, but the closure, and you know, and to know, and to know, and the closure for the family closure for you know your friend michelle closure for the community at large and, if they are alive, and if the mother and father are still alive and the brothers right they deserve and that little girl. You need to be nicer to yourself. It's okay to get upset about this. It's very upsetting.
Speaker 1That little girl deserves it.
Speaker 2She definitely deserves it. And oh, and this is, you know, not only does it impact like we've talked about this before but not only does it impact, you know, the family, the community, but it impacts generations after and like, when we talk about like generational trauma, like you know people who grew up with this little girl then saw their friend get murdered, you know in the safety of their home, like, think about how those stories like got passed on and those like you know anxieties and you know paranoias got passed on to their kids and how they raised their kids. So it's like it's a big deal when, like, a member of a community is like is murdered, you know, or like, or assaulted or what have you Like, when, when something like traumatic happens, like that impacts so many more people than we think.
Speaker 1Yeah, I'd be interested about the. I'd be very interested about the DNA. I'd be interested to see if there are any people that moved out of town directly after that.
Speaker 2Probably not. Honestly, they probably.
Speaker 1well, the other thing is uh, cause I don't remember any other cases like that happening in that area and things like that. This don't like people that are are do things like this. They don't just do it once.
Speaker 2No, not typically.
Speaker 1Yeah. So I'm, I'm, I'm really curious, I'm, I'm, I'm really dug in on this case. I'm really invested emotionally, obviously yeah, no, that's I.
Speaker 2I think that's super interesting, that, um, that they haven't, and I think one reason that maybe they haven't is because it is like a newer technology and newer technology.
Speaker 2And again like, like we talked about with the dna, like people were hesitant about it at first, sure, and in this small police department in like rural America, typically people are less open minded about like new ideas and like changing the ways that they do their jobs Right, and so I mean I get it. You know it's it's tough to like make changes, but, like with this, like they may not be willing to try it just yet, they may be like waiting, holding off, seeing if this is actually like a science that they can trust before they test their cases on it. On top of the money thing, but I think, like giving them a call maybe, or and doing the GoFundMe, I think that's a great idea.
Speaker 1And I feel stupid thinking that you know that they haven't done that idea. I and I feel stupid thinking that you know that they haven't done that. Like it seems like, oh well, obviously they've done that. But what if people for years have thought, well, obviously would have done that, but they never checked to make sure?
Speaker 2Yeah, no, absolutely, that's so true, like the the bystander effect kind of, even though, like I guess this is a little different, but but still like the same same. Like you know, principles apply with like assuming that people do things when it would be helpful to like get a reminder sometimes you know Absolutely. No, I think you should definitely look into that, and then we can update the listeners later.
Speaker 1For sure. So Debbie Minkle was eight years old. She was a bright, energetic child who loved school and loved life and had a future of great promise. But that future was stolen from her, and the person that is responsible for her death needs to be caught.
Speaker 2Absolutely.
Speaker 1Today, the case remains unsolved and though investigators continue to hold hope that one day Simon will come forward with a bit of key information or truth, hope that one day Simon will come forward with a bit of key information or truth. If you have any information about Debbie's murder, please contact the Pennsylvania State Police at 724-627-6151.
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Speaker 1And remember. All of the source material will be available in the show notes.
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Speaker 1Or if you just want to give us some feedback.
Speaker 2Okay, join us in the shadows next Tuesday. Bye.
