A Strip Club Alibi, A Cold Shotgun, And Zero Patience For Rumors

Transcript

Welcome And Case Setup

SPEAKER_03 0:06

Here we go. All right, folks, we are back. Uh this is uh this is Mike Innis along with uh Lizette Goddard, and we together are Newsmakers Podcast, right? And and we have been talking now for about three weeks about a case that I knew nothing about four weeks ago. And that is the uh Joanne Bonches Bunches murder 1975. Unsolved. Unsolved. And this is this is a part that really bothers me, is just this young lady has been tragically murdered. Actually, I was looking at her date of birth. She was born six months before me. And so uh, you know, she easily could still be alive. And and here we are uh 50 years later, and we know no, well, we know more than we did then, but uh no, no, no one's ever been punished for anything. Today we have with us uh Catherine Kleinberg and Catherine, you are the author of, let me see, two books. It was really funny. Uh Better the Devil You Know, Better the Devil You Know Too, basically, right? Right. And uh so welcome to the show, Catherine.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Well, thanks for having us.

SPEAKER_03 1:14

So you were telling us along with Jerry Nutt. Jerry is a former uh lead detective, or lead deputy, I'm sorry. Yeah, lead deputy with the Martin County Sheriff's Department. Is that correct? When did you retire?

SPEAKER_02 1:24

Pardon?

SPEAKER_03 1:25

What year did you retire?

SPEAKER_02 1:27

1995.

SPEAKER_03 1:28

1995. Okay, so you've been gone for 30 years already.

SPEAKER_02 1:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:31

However, you were the lead detective on this case. Yeah. That's correct.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

And also became sheriff after that. Oh.

SPEAKER_03 1:40

I knew I recognized the name, Jerry, and I couldn't figure out why. Okay, all right. Well, Catherine.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

Thank you for your service, sir. We appreciate that. Yeah, we sure do.

SPEAKER_03 1:48

Catherine, you were telling me just a minute ago before we went on that uh in the original book, you had written Jerry came to one of your meet and greets, and uh he said everything you have in the book is wrong.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

Well, not everything. Everything. I I the name was right. I I did I I did my spiel uh about the book, and the first book was was uh written more to uh uncover a lot of the myths that had built up around Joanne's story. Right um, but then I uh introduced Jerry and he said, um, okay, but that's not how it happened.

SPEAKER_03 2:28

Oh, that's right. That's what you told me. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

And so I we went I sat down and we went back through what was different.

SPEAKER_03 2:35

And then you rewrote and you wrote book number two.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Yes.

Correcting The Record From Book One

SPEAKER_03 2:39

Okay, with all the new facts that now you have. Okay, so let's start with. We've heard two others, and irrelevant to this right now. I we I don't even want to try and pick them apart or anything else. All I want to know is based on what you know, Jerry, and Catherine, what you've uncovered, what do we know? What happened starting on October 1st? Wherever you guys want to tell us a story, I don't care.

SPEAKER_02 3:10

No, my my voice won't carry on. I've got a bacteria in my lungs.

SPEAKER_03 3:14

That's okay. We got you. I got you turned up.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

Well, Joanne went out with a bunch of her uh with a couple of her friends that night. Okay. And she went to Ormsley to the liquor store. Uh Sherburne. Uh I don't remember if it was a liquor store or the Legion.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

I think both.

SPEAKER_02 3:41

And then they came to Trimont to whatever the name of it was at that time. They drank all night long.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

And at that time, the Trimont Legion closed for supper. So our timeline, especially in the first book, started with they went out after work. And now we know every 15 minutes where they were. And they went first to the Sherburne liquor store, then to the Sherburne Legion, then they went to Trimont, then to Ormsby. And then back to back to Trimont, then to uh one of the girls' houses for supper, yeah, and then back to Trimont. So there were people coming and going.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

So then they finally were done about midnight, 1230. Is that our understanding, or has that changed from your from where you're at?

Reconstructing Joanne’s Night Out

SPEAKER_02 4:53

Yeah, they Joanne left uh the Trimont Legion or whatever it was at about 12:30, 1225, something like that. And that's the last anybody saw her.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

And this is one of the things that I had wrong because in the first book I said what every other newspaper report had put in was that she was going home because she had hair appointments.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

Okay. Okay, we've heard that.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 5:22

And that was she wasn't. Oh, she wasn't. She was going to Spirit Lake to a friend of hers that managed a bar down there. It was a striptoid. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 5:35

Uh it's called Gilly Hone. So what's that what's that based on then? You're the only one who's still uh told us that.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

It it's based on Melinda Honett's um reporting it to the police. Oh, I see.

SPEAKER_03 5:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

All right. So when when the police interviewed her, see Jerry has access to his original report.

SPEAKER_03 5:57

Yeah, so this was a first-person report that said no, no, she was going to Spirit Lake.

SPEAKER_00 6:02

And that's that's where our investigation is different. We have first person at 1975 accounts. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

So we don't have to rely on people's memories from So then how if she was going that far, and again, that's what we have been heard along the way in in, you know, then how did her car get gets found right outside of town?

SPEAKER_03 6:29

Um that that's I'd like to know. That's the mystery, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

So that's still the mystery. So we don't know that she ever made it to Estherville, whether she was planning to be.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

We know she didn't.

SPEAKER_02 6:40

No, she made it down there.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

No, Jerry took one for the team. He had to go to the to the strip club at that time and interview those girls. Right. So they found that she had not arrived. It was hard to do.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

I was going to say so so so, but she was not planning on going straight home because she had a hair appointment the next day.

SPEAKER_03 7:02

And she never arrived there. No. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 7:04

So these are what they they can sell until two o'clock in the morning down there.

SPEAKER_03 7:09

Okay. So so this is what we know as a fact.

SPEAKER_02 7:11

She had time to get from here to there and still have time for one or two drinks.

unknown 7:17

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 7:17

And that was something she commonly did with her her friends there. One of the things about Joanne is her she had several circles of friends, and they didn't cross over. And so at that time, again, through that lens of 1975, people in Trimont stuck together. People in Sherbourne stuck together. People in, you know, St. James didn't there wasn't a lot of crossover. Okay. With Joanne, she had circles of friends in each area and they didn't intersect. And so that has been something that that's Okay.

SPEAKER_03 8:01

So she was going to Spirit Lake to the strip club by herself to meet this different group of friends.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Right.

SPEAKER_03 8:08

Right? Right. Yes. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

And they were her oldest friends. Melinda Bonette was one of her friends from sixth grade.

The Planned Trip To Spirit Lake

SPEAKER_03 8:15

She didn't show up. No. She didn't show up. Okay. So let's go back then. So the last time we know where she was was Tribunt at 12 25, 12 30 a.m. on October 1st. Is that or or no that's October 2nd now, correct? All right. Okay. The next time we see her is October 3rd. Friday, correct? She's been afternoon. She's been killed now. Yeah. Yes. And okay, so one of my questions is has has been, maybe I'm jumping ahead, maybe not, but they keep talking about one says the shotgun blast came at an angle that the blood all came down her throat. The other one says there was no blood there, none whatsoever. Was there blood at the at the scene of the crime?

SPEAKER_02 9:04

Well, I don't know where the scene of the crime actually was. I know where her body was found. Okay, all right. Uh there wasn't enough blood there to say that it happened there. I see. Uh uh normally a 12-gauge shotgun that was shot at that close range would would have blown the top of her head right off. Oh, absolutely. And this didn't. It went in and circled around and scrambled her brains.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

And there's was no exit wound.

SPEAKER_01 9:40

So that's confirmed. There was definitely no exit wound.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

No exit wound, and the there was uh the star pattern on the side of her head.

SPEAKER_02 9:51

So that indicates she was hot at real close range. Oh, okay. Uh the there are a number of babies in the head yet. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

So one of the things that Catherine had said in the first book was this because this could be due to reloading of the shells.

SPEAKER_02 10:14

Is it could be reloading, uh bad reload, it could be uh just an old old shotgun like a lot of farmers used to have sitting by the by the back door for varmint. And uh just an old old shell.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

But for those that are thinking a police officer might have something to do with it, this would not be a police officer's mistake.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

So it wouldn't have been an intentional reload to try to hide the bullet. That that could be that was what I was gonna ask.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

It it could be that that it was done that way intentionally. Um but if somebody grabbed an old gun, it I know that there was at times um some suspicion posted on Jim Darmer, who was the Trimont chief of police. And I've interviewed him multiple times.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

And thank you for that.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

And and um he uh has been cleared and um has been very helpful in TriMont what was going on at that time. Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

You know, he was new, he'd only been on uh a lot of a lot of the answers were new.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

Yeah, and there are still people that will say, oh, I think it you know it's him, and and it's there comes a time when you have to say, no, it's not. We need to move on.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

Move on. Yep. So so again, with the intentionality of it, to to me, her missing for 36 hours, it just seems to me that it has to be an intentional situation. If her if she was not raped, was it accurate that her clothes were found clean next to her chief?

SPEAKER_00 12:10

Her clothes were not washed. Okay, let's put that there. She was wearing white, high-waisted bell bottom flare pants. Oh, cute. Exactly. She had an adorable outfit.

SPEAKER_03 12:24

75, yeah. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

But they had they were laying next to her. Okay, and the only other um uh injuries, Joanne had no defensive injuries, were some scraping to her knees. And we've heard that a couple times. Okay, if she'd been wearing those white pants, they would have been damaged, and they were not.

SPEAKER_03 12:54

Oh, they weren't. No.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

So her pants, she could not have been wearing those, and we know because of the the pathologist's report, that those wounds had healed for between 16 and 12 hours. Which puts her slapped egg in the middle of that 30-hour time thing.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

When she caught those bruises on her knees.

Forensics On The Shot And Wounds

SPEAKER_00 13:19

Well, that they're I would say more scrape, contusion type thing, so they're they would have bled and there was no blood on her pants.

SPEAKER_03 13:28

So how how do you explain then the reports we've heard before that um outside of her car on Highway 4, there were two drag marks from her feet. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:41

There were there were scrape scrape marks on on the on the top of her top of her feet, okay.

SPEAKER_03 13:47

And her shoes were there. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

The shoes are also mules or clogs. So they're not tied shoes. Oh, they're shoes that you kick off when you're driving. Oh, sure. Which is right.

SPEAKER_02 13:58

Something that I so when she was dragged, they just scraped. Oh, sure, that would make sense.

SPEAKER_01 14:06

So they were definitely so that's been a conflict. So they're definitely drag marks because there are scrapes on the top of her feet. Yeah. Okay, so we know that happened.

SPEAKER_00 14:15

Well the marks though are 14 inches long. Yeah, approximately. And made in a dusty area that is so what we're not talking about dragging a block down the road. Yeah, we're just talking about the crazy. We're talking about a very small area that was uh uh near her car. If her car was parked there in in order to to um you know distract delay, then those drag marks could have been put there the at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

Right. And I understood that. So so that was part of my question, you know, law and order, too many shows. Right. Um, but when you said that she had scrape marks on her feet, then that confirmed that yes, she was at least pulled at some point against her will.

SPEAKER_02 15:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:11

Okay. And again, we hadn't get really really gotten any confirmation of that. There we haven't seen any restraints, correct? Pardon? We haven't seen any any restraints. She didn't have any litter licorice. Nothing like so again, I still am so confused why she didn't. This is why motive six hours.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

This is why motive is the most important.

SPEAKER_03 15:34

So what was the motive then?

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Well, we know what it wasn't.

SPEAKER_03 15:38

Okay. They didn't start there.

SPEAKER_00 15:39

Her purse was in the car. It was a new car.

SPEAKER_03 15:44

So it wasn't robbery.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

She had expensive items in the car, right? Right. She was not sexually assaulted.

SPEAKER_03 15:51

Okay, so mark that off.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

Yep. And I know there are other ways to sexually assault people, but as Jerry attended her autopsy, they take measures, swabs, even at that time, of all areas. And there are other ways to look for content.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

She didn't have right.

SPEAKER_00 16:14

She was not didn't have that. Nothing under her fingernails, her fingernails weren't broken. Hyoid bone is intact, so she was not strangled. Okay. So she's not beat up. There is no passion in this death. I'm looking at it and it's it's about as cold as you can. In my opinion, this was to send a message. Who were they sending this message to?

SPEAKER_03 16:48

I don't know who.

SPEAKER_00 16:49

That's the that's the mystery.

SPEAKER_03 16:52

Well, let me ask you another question. What was the call cause of death, Jerry? Was it from the the shotgun blast? Okay, okay, so so it wasn't like she had been strangled earlier or suffocated. No. And then they just did that to cover things up.

SPEAKER_04 17:04

No.

Drag Marks, Shoes, And The Scene

SPEAKER_01 17:04

Okay, all right. So and she was not dead in uh for many, many hours prior. Did they feel like the the finding of her body about two or two noon, two on the Friday? What when did they feel like the gunshot had happened?

SPEAKER_02 17:21

That morning.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

So so hearing peep people saying that they heard a gunshot that morning, do you think that's that's verified?

SPEAKER_02 17:28

Or was that just a shot that was opening day of hunting?

SPEAKER_01 17:33

They're saying it's not because opening day was Saturday and open and this happened on Friday. Is that or but you know, we're all we're all country folks too. I mean, pulling out our gun is no.

SPEAKER_02 17:43

There are people out target shooting target shooting, okay.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

As you want to call it. Right. So was her body um well hit when they when they found her body in the ditch.

SPEAKER_02 17:56

Was it far removed from the road or was it been something like somebody could have it was oh I would say three foot from the edge of the road.

SPEAKER_03 18:05

Well, we have a report that a little boy on the bus had seen a body, no?

SPEAKER_00 18:11

No. And one of the things that I do when I'm going to verify is I go back on social media, I check and see if they said something earlier, and this um person said, Oh, you realize that was the same day our bus went by, we could have seen something if we looked out the window. So they didn't say that they saw something then. They said we could have. That's what they said then. If they're saying something different now, another thing I found is that some people will inject themselves into the important be part of the story. Right. And um so and that's part of those little bits. The the people that we've had uh just recently um that was homecoming week. It was also um uh people were harvesting, right? And we had people that have come forward and said, you know, I was 17 at the time and I was combining, and I was a mile, and I saw those headlights, and they were not there for five minutes, they were there for a long time.

SPEAKER_03 19:26

Which headlights are we talking about now?

SPEAKER_00 19:28

That when Joanne's car is parked on the road. Oh, Joanne's car, yeah, on the road. So they saw that as they're combining and going around. Okay. And of course, if you are the parent and your 17-year-old says, Oh, I think I might have seen something that has to do with this lady who's missing, and then you find out the next day she's murdered. Well, don't say anything. The murderer's out there. You're not gonna say, Oh, I think I know saw the car, you know. That's no, they would pr protect their children, but now So, Jerry, in your opinion, when was the car there?

SPEAKER_03 20:10

Because we've heard a couple of conflicting reports, haven't we, Liz? We've heard that the car was there around two in the morning. Then we heard maybe it didn't show up until seven in the morning.

Motive Ruled Out: Robbery And Assault

SPEAKER_02 20:18

No, it was there around two o'clock. Okay, so it was there consistently. We talked to a truck driver that it was on that road constantly. Was it running? No.

SPEAKER_03 20:31

No, it's turned on. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

So you're saying, Catherine, that the the headlights were on?

SPEAKER_00 20:35

There were two women that saw when the headlights were on and another car beside it. One woman's name was Lorraine Burris, and she was coming from Mankato.

SPEAKER_04 20:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:48

Um and what time was that? And that was between 2 and 2:30. And the other person is Joyce Ask, and she was coming back from working in the bar, and she knew Joanne's car.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

So she was at the TriMont liquor store and she was passing and going home to server?

SPEAKER_00 21:06

I I believe so. Because yeah, that's what and and um she saw her and and said, Oh, someone's helping Joanne already. I don't want to stop anyway, I want to go home. And but they both saw another car, another vehicle. They didn't remember, neither of them could remember, and they even hypnotized Lorraine Burris to see if she could if they could pull anything else out. Because one odd thing that she saw was that the other car was next to Joanne and their interior light was on, but then it came on brighter. It had a two-step brightness. And some police cars had that feature. So that was when the whole could it have been a police car came out.

SPEAKER_03 22:03

In my opinion, you would I always remember when I see a police car versus and I'm always going, what's my speed?

SPEAKER_00 22:09

Go out there. And and and police cars were different at that time too. They were big old but if if if you are out there at two o'clock in the morning and that area is flat wide open, if that car was sitting there with its headlights on and another car beside it, it would stand out for miles. There is very little shoulder.

SPEAKER_03 22:34

But I would probably unless it was an unmarked police car, I would definitely know that was a cop car. You know?

Headlights, Second Car, And Witnesses

SPEAKER_01 22:41

And that in my question too about all this, all this time, too, is you know, if this happened at 12 30 at night, just out of town, uh, the traffic from Tremont to Sherburn, even back in the day, was not that small. You're gonna see somebody pull up on you fairly quick. But at the same time, um, there's been a lot of conversation about what would cause Joanne to pull over. Was it flashing lights behind her? Was it flashing lights in front of her? Um, different cars back in the day were a little bit more unique as far as their headlights, and certain people would know whose car that was because how did they pick her out if she was driving to Sherbourne?

SPEAKER_03 23:17

And it could have been a friend of hers who who waved to her. Oh, yeah, you know, pull over for a minute. Right. Is there is there any validity to any of these thoughts, Jerry? Or is there any validity to any of these thoughts, or what's your thought? He's the guy who knows.

SPEAKER_01 23:33

Right, and we're still looking for motive.

SPEAKER_00 23:35

I mean we we knew it was there at two.

SPEAKER_02 23:38

Yeah, if if we if we if we had a a good motive, then then we'd it'd be easier to say what happened. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

So you're still not feeling there's uh that there's a motive because again, the b the car was, or excuse me, the body was dropped. Excuse me, Joanne, I'm sorry. Um her her body was left uh uh just a couple miles over from this same spot.

SPEAKER_02 24:02

About a mile and a quarter.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

And to me, that's also very confusing. Why would they be mo w what would be the purpose? How would they pre-plan this? It would have to be pre-planned.

SPEAKER_00 24:12

It's very significant. Okay. Because when we look at the search, the searches that were done, and because we have Jerry's Jerry's information, we know exactly from mile marker to mile marker where was searched at what time and when, from the time she was missing to the time her body was found. And we have maps, we've drawn all out, and then I have uh a layover that shows this was the ground search and what time it was done, and this is the area that was covered. Now they bring in the aerial search in the morning, and and they were doing uh uh this side of the of the road, and then they were going over to they did the east first and were doing the the west after lunch. Her body was brought back and dropped if you look at on the map with those search areas cross-referenced directly in the center of their search. Somebody wanted that search stopped and now right.

SPEAKER_03 25:23

And when was the search done? That that would have been on on the second? It would have started on Thursday, right?

SPEAKER_00 25:29

Right as soon as the car was found? As soon as that the afternoon that the car was found, going into that night, and then the next morning. But and they also closed off the road. Jerry was up in the airplane, and I think tell them about the the what you saw and what you didn't see up in the airplane.

SPEAKER_02 25:54

Saw a lot of cornfields.

SPEAKER_00 25:58

And and you were flying low.

SPEAKER_02 26:00

Yeah, we were we were flying real low. Uh the the pilot was trying to get me sick. It almost worked. But uh we were we were going north and south, and w we had a uh an old I call it a J three Piper Cub highway patrol plane. Yeah, uh Larry Steinberg was in in a helicopter going east and west. Okay. So we were actually crisscrossing for I uh I don't recall how many miles but it'd be in the area six miles north and south and two to three miles east and west. Well uh I I don't know how how far the helicopter went, but uh I would assume uh the same distance.

SPEAKER_00 27:07

And did you see any cars or any people?

SPEAKER_03 27:11

No.

SPEAKER_00 27:12

So not any unmarked cars.

Body Placement To Disrupt The Search

SPEAKER_03 27:16

So, Catherine, what you're saying is whoever did this wanted the the search to stop because they were afraid they might stumble upon where they had her, and so they brought her out. I'm gonna use the word dumped her because that's the only I can think of. It's I I don't mean it. I know. It I I really feel terrible about this. But they basically dumped the body there to make everything stop. Okay, you good you found her. You happy?

SPEAKER_00 27:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:40

This way all evidence would be would be terminated, right?

SPEAKER_00 27:44

Right. And I think that where they were keeping her body would is a clue. No, of course. Could have led to who did it. Who right.

SPEAKER_01 27:56

Well that makes sense. But we still we so we still don't know. We still we still really have no idea where she was held for three hours.

SPEAKER_00 28:03

And that's another thing that that we have been doing a lot of research on and have spent many hours um going through. And I have to give a huge shout out to Martin County Historical Society, Watmont County Historical Society, the Trimont Historical Society. They have helped so much with information about which houses were empty. We have pictures of the empty houses because reporters at that time did their due diligence and took pictures of them. There was a whole article that um one of our volunteers, Madonna, uh, found that said vacant houses 1974 and plotted them out on a map. So we have um, and there was one that mysteriously started on fire the week after Joanne's body was found.

SPEAKER_01 29:01

Right. We I mean we've we've heard about a lot about that, and and with with all the information about all the vacant houses, and as teenagers back in the day, we knew where all the vacant houses were too. And uh that still doesn't tell me how she was held for 36 hours without restraints, without a lot of bruising, you know, without drugs in her system. What's the yeah, what's well again, back to the motivation. You said that there was no passion involved with it. You know, we've heard set we've certain heard side stories that she was blackmailing somebody. This was about a relationship. Well, then you'd think there would be some passion involved in it. Right. So um uh the uh the the I blasted.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

I don't think that I personally don't think that anybody that was in the bar had anything to do with it. And uh I'll tell you why. Because she kept leaving the bar and going someplace else and And coming back as if she was looking for someone. If who she wanted to talk to was in the bar, she wouldn't have been go driving to Ormsby for 15 minutes to have one beer and then go back.

SPEAKER_01 30:12

So you think there was a relationship, or somebody had indicated that there was drugs? Uh chief, that was one of my questions after the last interview, because she it was it was indicated that that Joanne was involved with selling of drugs and tried to indicate it was hard drugs. And what what was going on back in was there heroin? Was there cocaine? I mean, or was there just a little bit of pot here and there? What was going on?

SPEAKER_02 30:40

Hallucin was a big thing in those days.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

LSD? Yeah. Huh. There we and marijuana. Right, right. But nobody's gonna kill somebody over a bag of wheels.

SPEAKER_02 30:52

That's about it. I mean, cocaine and heroin, and that that was something in the big city. We didn't have that out here.

SPEAKER_01 30:59

But LSD could have she I mean, that could have been an easy sit-down for for a few.

SPEAKER_02 31:04

It could have been. She didn't I mean she wasn't using it.

Aerial Search, Vacant Houses, And Leads

SPEAKER_01 31:08

That wasn't her okay.

SPEAKER_02 31:11

There was nothing in her autopsy showing she had any of that stuff in her.

SPEAKER_01 31:16

And nothing in her anything in her history saying that she was selling it.

SPEAKER_00 31:21

Between 1973 and 1975, there were three big drug busts that were from the state or federal level that left out the local police because there was an idea that the local police might have been covering up for people that were selling.

SPEAKER_01 31:45

And this was in Martin County?

SPEAKER_00 31:47

This was in Martin County. One arrest was 36 people, one was 24. They they took the airport hangar in in Fairmont, right? And they set the court there, and then they took someone from the sheriff's department and someone from the BCA, leaving the police out, and arrested these people and then brought them into the airport to be uh adjudicated. And this was LSD and so uh well that was it was uh different drugs. When you got 36 people, they were there were different drugs. A variety of things uh going on, and there were three of those between 73 and 75. But again, you have to look at it through the lens of 75. Things were different. You could go to Okeboji and get almost any drug, they had a lot more going on there. The Fairmont had three strip clubs at that time. There was a triple X in Milford. I mean, there it was a the community at that time in 1975, there was a huge vote in Martin County, and they for a year both sides petitioned what they called it the morality war. One part said, we don't want any of this in our town, and the other part said, This is our business, these are all adults, and nobody is getting hurt, and this is our our money. It won by less than one percent of the vote for for them to remove the the morality, the bookstores, and the and so that all happened at the same time that this is going on.

SPEAKER_01 33:44

And that's that's why we're hearing about so many different sexual assaults, so many different murders that were just it was okay, and then people just kind of rolled on to the next thing. I mean, is I mean, no disrespect, but is that kind of the way it was, Chief?

SPEAKER_00 34:00

And if you brought us if a sexual assault charge came to court, and I have several examples of that happening, even if you testified, even if there were witnesses, it was highly likely that that person would be found not guilty.

SPEAKER_01 34:21

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 34:22

And then what would you have gained?

SPEAKER_01 34:26

Right. What would you have gained?

Drugs, “Morality War,” And Local Context

SPEAKER_00 34:27

Nothing. So many women did not report. I can't count the number of women that have come to me and said I was sexually assaulted by this person. And and there were bad actors that took women to uh abandoned farm places. That was their MO and sexually assaulted them and and had multiple offenses that would have known Joanne and that that were active at that time. But we have to look at the facts. But the facts are she wasn't sexually assaulted. We should not be looking for uh a rapist. If they are, then it's the worst rapist in history because they couldn't get it done in 30 hours. I mean you can edit that bit out.

SPEAKER_03 35:26

All right. So with that lot, though, we're gonna pause it and uh we're gonna end this portion of the podcast and come right back. Okay. So, folks, if you're listening, you're saying to yourself, wait, what's going on here? Uh listen again, excuse me, to the next episode. And this is episode shoot, I think it's number 18. I think it's 19. Is it 19? Is it 19? Okay, the next one will be number 20. So we're gonna take a pause and uh we'll be right back.