Exit 8 - Twelve Years In Plain Sight

Listen to ML Browning share a story about a case that began in 1996. When fifteen-year-old Kaelin Glazier disappeared from the small town of Ruch, in Southern Oregon. Her family spent twelve long years, wondering what happened to her. When her remains were finally discovered, they were found shockingly close to the home of the boy she was last seen with. 

This is the story of a young girl, a failed search, and a case that would ultimately change how missing and runaway youth cases were handled. 

Find all sources on our website at corridorofcrime.com

-Sarah Elle

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome, passengers. This is Sarah L, along with ML Browning. Two lifelong friends who didn't just stay friends. We stayed curious. This is Corridor of Crime, and we're taking you with us. Every episode is an exit, and every exit is a story. So buckle up. And please remember to always check your blind spots.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Today's episode is brought to you by CNC Tires Inc. in Central Point, Oregon, serving Southern Oregon and Northern California since 2002. Moving with fleets, passengers, and providing alignments, brakes, and custom wheels. Because getting stranded on the side of the road should only happen in our stories. Welcome, passengers. I'm Emil Browning.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

And I'm Sarah L. And this is Corridor of Crime. Before we begin, this episode discusses violence against a minor and additional adult topics. Please take care while listening.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Today I'm taking you back to 1996 in Southern Oregon to tell you the story about a disappearance of Kaylin Rose Glazier. Kaylin Glazier was born May 1st, 1981 in Ashland, Oregon. She was the daughter of Kimberly Cruz and Paul Howeisen and the stepdaughter of Robert Glazer. Robert and Kimberly didn't start dating until Kimberly was already pregnant with Kaylin. Robert stayed in their lives until he and Kimberly separated when Kaelin was two years old. Just to clarify, Kimberly Cruz now goes by the name Kimberly Cruz Waller following her marriage to Shannon Waller, which was after Kaylin's disappearance. Although their specifics regarding timing are somewhat nuanced in reporting at the time. Kaelin was the oldest of six siblings. She was close with her paternal grandparents, and Kaelin was their only grandchild. On occasion, she spent long periods of time staying with them. However, Kaylin primarily grew up in Roosh, Oregon.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

Roosh is a beautiful area in southern Oregon. It is located 12 miles outside of Medford and is filled with small organic farms, wooded areas, and winding roads. It also has Applegate Lake close by that has vast hiking trails and fishing spots. Just on the other side of Applegate Lake is the Siskiy Mountains in California. So Roosh is located on the very southern part of Oregon via the back roads. It is a quiet, isolated area that is deeply connected to nature. There are old homesteads, wineries, and people who value privacy and country living. There are also a lot of cannabis farms. Roosh had a significant number of marijuana grows even before cannabis became legal in Oregon.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

At the time of her disappearance on November 6, 1996, Kaylin was a 15-year-old girl who was a sophomore in high school. She attended South Medford High School, which was where the Roosh kids generally attended. Kaitlin was social, artistic, and sources say strong-willed. She loved Jesus, writing, listening to music, and spending time with friends. Investigators indicated that she had become friends with another social circle in the Applegate Valley area. This was near her home, but these were kids outside of her school and church circle of friends. This was something that her mother was not comfortable with, although there isn't a lot of information around why. But KOBI coverage in February of 2012 quoted Kimberly confirming this, as well as a mother-daughter power struggle. Which sounds very normal, but this group of friends is where Kaelin became associated with 16-year-old William Simmons, who was known as Billy to his friends and family. Billy was a classmate of Kaylin's boyfriend, Clifford Rouland. The weather in Rouche on November 6, 1996 started out cold and drizzly. It was about 28 degrees in the morning, and by afternoon it was hovering around 68. This was normal weather for this time of year. The day began like any other. Kaylin attended classes at school, interacted with her friends, and did not appear to be distressed or worried in any way. There had been no mention of doing anything out of the ordinary, according to Friends. Kaelin's plan for the evening was to meet up with her friends from the Applegate area after school. After hanging out, she had plans to attend a church service with them later, where her mom planned to pick her up in the lobby following the service. Sauna Speck from the Medford Mail Tribune wrote for the Ben Bulletin on February 20th, 2012, about this case. On the day Kaylin disappeared and she did not arrive at either the church service or at home later that night, both her friends, Jennifer Gonzales and Rachel Hunt, as well as her mother, Kimberly Cruz, knew that something was wrong immediately. Her mother called the Jackson County Sheriff's Office to report her missing right away. Kaylin and her two friends, Jennifer and Rachel, were very close. Both of her friends were at the church service that night and instantly knew when Kaelin did not arrive that something was wrong. Initially, investigators thought this was a runaway case because of who she had recently been hanging out with. However, her friends and family strongly disagreed with this and knew that something more was seriously wrong. Billy Simmons originally reported that Kaylin left his home on Johnson Road and planned on walking to the church down the Highway 238. Billy's home was less than a half a mile away. It would have been a very short walk down his dirt road, crossing Highway 238, into a grocery store parking lot. There was a shortcut from the bottom of the store's parking lot directly to the church. He seemingly implied that something could have happened to her on her walk. I took a road trip for this story to see where this happened. Johnson Road is a very narrow dirt road off the highway. It is the definition of a single-lane dirt road. It is very remote with trees and bushes along the side. A few of the houses can't be seen clearly because of the overgrowth. We have a map of the walking distance in the show notes if you're interested. Early on, Kaelin's friends suspected that Billy had something to do with their friends going missing. Just like Kaylin's mother, they also never had a good feeling about him. In the same KOBI coverage, Jennifer and Rachel expressed a creepy feeling around him, expressed that they did not consider him a real friend and preferred it when he was not around. Unfortunately, in 1996, the sheriff's office did not have a process in place for teens who went missing. No standard protocol anyway. This is why she was originally treated as a runaway. This wasn't just a local attitude, this was a national problem. What had been established early on was that Kaylin went to the trailer of Billy Simmons on Johnson Road, which was owned by his grandparents to hang out and watch a movie. His parents lived in the main house while Billy resided in the trailer outside. It was later discovered that Kaelin had plans to meet her boyfriend Clifford at Billy's trailer, who did not end up showing up.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

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SPEAKER_01 8:50

One theory that the investigators considered at first was that in small communities, teenagers often hitchhiked or accepted rides from acquaintances. This was considered as something that she could have done if someone she knew passed by her. Apparently, this wasn't considered all that unusual, even in 1996. Early on, the largest obstacle was the loss of time during the critical hours. Those first hours and days are crucial in a missing person's case. Caitlin was not treated as anything other than a runaway for 21 days. That's 21 days before investigators thought it could be considered a possible abduction or murder, 21 days of lost time investigating her disappearance, 21 days of not collecting any evidence, 21 days of not questioning Billy about the last day he spent with Kaelin. Despite pleas from friends and families, it was not until after this delay that the case was escalated to the detective's major assault and death investigation unit, which was when FBI agent Shauna Carroll became involved. The unit is made up of the Jackson County Sheriff's Office, Medford Police Department, Oregon State Police, and the Jackson County District Attorney's Office, which led to Billy being questioned multiple times. Early on, investigators also questioned Robert Glacier, Kalen's father figure, until the age of two. They found him camping in Northern California. Robert told investigators that he had only seen Kaelin one time after he and Kimberly separated. It was by a chance meeting when Kaelin was 12 or 13 in Ashland, Oregon. Otherwise, Robert had not seen Kalen in years. Investigators determined that there was no reason to believe he was involved, so he was quickly eliminated as a suspect. Investigators always believed Billy Simmons to be the person of interest, but there was nothing to solidify his involvement, so that is where he stayed, quietly. A person they were sure was involved, but no evidence to prove it. This case became stagnant for a very long time. Even though multiple people were interviewed, nothing came from these interviews, leaving this case at a dead end. Twenty-one days proved to be too many days.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

Kaylin's friends and family continued pushing and organizing search parties. Her missing person flyers were handed out all over the Rogue Valley, which covers much of the region in southern Oregon. Her missing poster contained her name, the date she went missing, the location she went missing from, and her description, which was five foot six inches, 110 pounds, blonde hair, blue eyes, as well as what she'd been wearing. It also noted the small scar on her chin.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

It took 12 years for the case to move. Because of this, I'm gonna take a little side road to talk about how Kain's case affected the Sheriff's Office and what steps were taken to make sure issues in this case didn't happen again. Kaelin helped make changes for the local law enforcement agencies, essentially making her a hero to future missing children's cases. During the years the case stood still, the Sheriff's Office made an effort to create change. There had to be a better way to investigate missing children from day one with no delays. It was understood that the first three hours a child goes missing is whether or not a good outcome would be likely. When Kaelin first went missing, her friends Jennifer and Rachel told multiple people that she would never run away. However, both said that they were ignored. Even at one point, they were pulled from class and pressured to tell the police where the friends ran away to. The Sheriff's Department was forced to reckon with their negligence. But this was also a sign of the time for missing children's protocol in 1996. These changes were made both locally and nationally between 2003 and 2012. According to the Ben Bulletin article, major changes came to the Jackson County Sheriff's Office when the new sheriff, Mike Winters, took office in 2003. Throughout the years following Kalen's disappearance, there were several missing and murdered children both locally and across the U.S., and the issue gained major traction for changes everywhere. Sheriff Winters attended a seminar at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Virginia in 2003. When he returned, each detective was given a new model policy to follow. Sheriff Winters made the commitment that, going forward, the protocol for missing children would change immediately. The policy was called the End of Exploitation of Children Today Act of 2003. It is a 47-page national document. The primary goal of this act is to prevent child abuse, abduction, and exploitation while providing law enforcement with stronger authority to investigate and prosecute crimes against children. Moving forward with these new policies, every missing person was to be treated as such until something proves otherwise. This includes children and adults. It is important that there is a rush in investigation from the start, although for Kaelin's case, these changes came too late. Maybe in some ways the changes that came from her case is part of her legacy. So let's get back to the main road and what happens next in her case. In 1999, roughly three years after Kaylin vanished, investigators with the Jackson County Sheriff's Office publicly named Billy Simmons as a person of interest in the case. Despite growing suspicion, authorities did not have sufficient evidence to support an arrest at that time. After Kaylin had been missing for 12 long years on April 8, 2008, her remains were found by a man working on the Johnson Road property where Billy had lived. The man was mowing in three-foot-tall grass when he discovered them. They were wrapped in vegetation and had to be removed by hand. Near the remains was a tennis shoe, part of a bra, jewelry believed to belong to Kaelin, and her skull had been wrapped in eight feet of duct tape. They were on top of the ground, not even buried.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

DNA was sent off to the Portland, Oregon lab for testing. Forensic pathologists identified the remains as kaelens. They could not, however, determine the exact cause of death, but could determine that it was a homicide.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

As published in the Eastern Oregonian in April 2008, Kimberly Cruz Waller said, It is not a happy occasion when you learn your daughter was killed, but it is a relief to not have to keep searching for the truth. I am grieving and relieved at the same time. Her family had organized many search efforts over the years. Kimberly left a picture and flowers where her daughter's remains were discovered. She also added, I'm thankful it was a beautiful spot. It made me feel better to know she was there all this time. During the 12 years, Billy did not stay out of trouble. From the time Kaelin disappeared, some of the larger charges he faced was fraudulent use of a credit card, identity theft, delivery of a Schedule II controlled substance, and delivery and possession of methamphetamine. He was convicted and ended up on parole for possession of meth. The Colombian newspaper reported on April 9, 2010, that Simmons was arrested on April 7, 2010 in Grants Pass, Oregon, on his parole violation for his previous drug charge. The indictment for the murder of Kalen was added the following morning on April 8, 2010. This meant it was another two years after Kalen's remains were found that authorities were able to officially charge William Billy Simmons with her murder. After a few delays, the jury's selection for the trial for Billy began January 31, 2012, almost two years after his arrest. Since there were no eyewitnesses to the murder, this made the trial difficult. Investigators had no murder weapon, no jailhouse informant testimony, no incriminating jail phone calls, and no definitive explanation of exactly how Kalen died. As a result, the prosecution's case relied heavily on circumstantial evidence and witness testimony. Although the department had no standard protocol in place for missing children, I give credit to the investigators for how they handled those mistakes. The Sheriff's Office, state police, and other local agencies did not attempt to hide or minimize their errors. Instead, they were transparent about what occurred, acknowledged their mistakes, and use them as learning opportunities. While this transparency does not change the outcome of Kaelin's case or offer peace to her family, it demonstrates a commitment to accountability. The trial lasted 10 days. The jury had to decide if Simmons was guilty of murder one, which carries life without parole or life, or the lesser charge of manslaughter one, which carries a minimum of 10 years. After deliberating, the jury came back with a 10-2 in favor of guilty verdict on the Lesser Manslaughter 1 charge. William Billy Simmons was sentenced to 10 years in prison. However, based on a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court ruling of non-unanimous verdicts, his conviction was vacated and he only ended up serving roughly eight years in prison. Kalen's friends and family waited many years, not only for her to be found, but also for the person responsible for her death to be held accountable. An eight-year sentence seems relatively light considering the profound loss suffered by those who loved her. While the legal system reached its conclusion, I can't imagine how difficult the entire process must have been for her family and friends, who endured years of uncertainty, grief, and waiting for answers. Ultimately, Kaelin's story is not only about a crime and an investigation, it's about a young woman whose future was taken from her and a family who spent years seeking answers and justice. I want to leave you with this thought. Time has a way of changing the landscape, but for the families and friends left behind by tragedy, the story never truly ends. The years may pass, but the loss remains. For those who love Kaelin, there will always be a space in their hearts reserved for the girl who never came home.

SPEAKER_00 20:05

Thanks so much for listening. All of our sources are in the show notes. Please find a full list and our affiliate links at Corridorofcrime.com. We'd love for you to follow us on social media at Corridor of Crime on the platform of your choice. We'd appreciate it if you'd consider liking, rating, and subscribing to allow us to keep putting content out. Corridor of Crime is hosted and produced by Sarah L and ML Browning. Executive produced by Sarah L. And music is composed by Matthew Langdon Music. We will see you at the next exit. Until then, don't forget to buckle up and remember to always check your blind spots.