Exit 10 - The Long Game - Part 2 - The Truth

Before diving into Part 2, be sure to listen to Part 1 of this conversation with this retired homicide detective Terry. In this episode, Terry picks up the story right where we left off, walking us through the strategy, patience, and persistence it took to build a murder case years in the making. Then came the moment every investigator waits for; Showing up unannounced to confront the man he'd been closing in on. 

What happened next is a reminder that homicide investigations aren't just about solving cases. They're about solving cases. They're about never giving up on the people whose stories deserve justice.

If you've ever wondered what happens after the headlines fade, this is a conversation you won't want to miss.

Check our website corridorofcrime.com for links to sponsors and sources for each episodes. We appreciate your support.

-Sarah Elle xo

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Surveillance team picked him up at his residence. They traveled about uh 45 minutes from his home to his work. Um, myself and my new partner, we drove up and we were uh at the high school waiting for him to arrive. He uh went in and started his uh normal routine at 8 o'clock in the morning, about 8.05. I walked up behind him at his uh in his little shop there at the high school campus and said, Hey Arnie, I'm I'm here to talk to you. And he turned around and saw me and he dropped what was in his hands. He was absolutely shocked.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Welcome, passengers. This is Corridor of Crimea. Before we begin, this is a second episode of a two-part series. If you haven't listened to part one yet, we recommend starting there for the full story and context behind this case. This episode contains discussions of domestic violence, homicide, and the discovery of human remains. Please listen with care.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

And he was shocked.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

I can imagine. And do you think that when you approached him, besides him being shocked, do you feel like in his life he thought that was all behind him?

SPEAKER_01 1:23

I think he didn't know what to think. It it it had been several years that he'd been living in Portland, and that just that distance between he and I, I wasn't in his business that much as I had been when he was living here. And so it may have gone a little bit further in the recesses of his mind. But every year his wife assured me that he um though these thoughts, bad thoughts come back into his mind from what I think had happened before, because he would have the problems sleeping, etc. And so that was the time framing that we were dealing with currently. So now when he sees me and he is shocked and stunned that I'm there, I tell him um something very specific. I said, Arnie, we're gonna put we're gonna resolve this today, and I have some new information to tell you. I said, I'd like for you to go with me. We've arranged and talk at the police department here, and um I'll explain everything to you there. He said, sure. And he was so shook up that the detective I was with, he called him Mike, and it wasn't Mike, obviously. He was so shook up, he knew who he was, but what he he couldn't keep, all he was focused on was one thing is what is gonna happen today, and what is the new stuff that they're gonna tell me. He didn't know if maybe we had found Dolores or that something else had come up. So he was stunned. So we take him, he's free to go, but so we're not I don't tell him about the warrant, I don't take him into custody, I just tell him that I'd like to talk with him further. We want to chat, and that's exactly what I said, and he said, That sounds good.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

We've done it 48 times, it's fine.

SPEAKER_01 3:17

So it's interesting though, he never went and told anybody that, hey, I'm not coming back. Because I I contacted him as work. He he he just walked out with us, we got in our police car and we drove to the uh local police uh station that we had arranged with ahead of time to use their interview room and record our statements and contacts, et cetera. And so we did, and we were accompanied there by the undercover team that had been tracking Arnie all along that morning, and he didn't even know it. And we went up into the elevator, went into the interview room. I I did advise him of his rights right away, um, as something I had done many times before, and he was cool with it, and we just sat down and we talked, and and basically I told him I that I knew as much as you could know about the case, and that we had done as much as humanly possible to either prove or disprove a lot of what he had already told us, and that we had gotten to a point now where we knew that uh Dolores was dead and that she was not coming back, and that he was responsible for her death, and that this was going to be his opportunity to set the record straight. And um, I basically said that there was family members, there was grandchildren who have gone without Christmas and birthdays and holidays and anniversaries, all along thinking that grandma had abandoned them and that they were gonna find out now that grandma hadn't abandoned them, uh, that she was incapable of making those arrangements.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

So was that the first time you actually said to him that he was responsible and you believed that he was responsible for it?

SPEAKER_01 5:02

I think this was the first I think you're exactly right, Sarah. I think before it's a good point that you make because I never really thought about it before, but I think in previous ones I always left that door open, like, well, maybe you're right. You know, maybe let's let's go see. And it was all oftentimes that was my intention because I didn't want to confront him and I didn't want him to close the door. Close the door.

unknown 5:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:28

Our game plan all along was for me to stay in contact with Arnie, to always keep that door open so that if something was to happen, that he always had uh access to me uh to to give me another story. Yeah. Or or take responsibility, whatever. So that's the way we progressed. He started out denying. And this was different because every time he denied, I would I would stop him. I'd say, Arnie, stop, put my hand up. I said, that's not true. And here's why I know that's not true. He would tell us that she had uh possibly gone away with a guy who uh owned a horse ranch in the Applegate, Oregon. I said, that is not true. I found that gentleman who is living in Oahu, Hawaii, and I said, he uh has been living there for four years. I sent a detective uh from uh Honolulu PD to that ranch and met with uh Bill, and he was just as shocked as we are to find that Dolores was not alive and well and living in uh a wonderful life. So I said, that is not true, Arnie. And he said, Well, I met that guy at the at the re uh hotel in town at that restaurant a week after she left. And sh I saw him, I saw the pickup truck, and I said, Stop. I said, Arnie, that is not true. I said, that gentleman's name is Robert. Robert was a close friend of yours and Dolores' that we found out that you met through your employment as a salesman with the fastener company. This gentleman was an older man, and when he contracted cancer and was told that he only had a few months left to live, it broke Dolores' heart. And you guys were actually his friends for the last few months of his life. And I said, How dare you call him or accuse him of leaving with your wife Dolores? And he said, Well, how do you know that's him? And I said, Because every time you described him and that truck that she left in, it was identical in every one of your descriptions. And I said, You described that to us in excess of 20 different times over 20 different occasions, and that never changed. So I said, We knew that you had a particular person and a particular vehicle in mind every time you were describing that to us, and that's that's how we found out.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

And so you were like the Aaron Brokovich in that in that scene where she has all the numbers memorized for everybody in the case because you've been working with the analyst and you're like, I know exactly how many times you described because yeah, you knew that case probably inside and out. Did his jaw draw?

SPEAKER_01 8:34

He would just stare at me. Like, how do you know that?

SPEAKER_00 8:39

Because I've been working on this only for a year and I'm ready to be done with it, and I'm ready to put you away.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

Yes. I I would use examples. Um I said, you you told me one time that you thought maybe she was interested in um hairdressing on board a cruise ship. I said, Do you know that we have like 36 cruise lines that in worldwide that would employ her at that time? And I said, Arnie, I contacted their human resources, their personnel departments, and every single one of those cruise companies. And I can tell you that she had never applied for a license. And without a license, you can't work on a cruise ship in a hair salon. And so it went like this, Sarah, for um uh probably the better part of three hours. I would take every single one of his statements and and go through them. And it got to the point where he said something like, Well, Terry, he says, Maybe I should maybe I should get an attorney. And I said, Arnie, that is entirely your choice to make. You have the right to do that, and if that's what you want to do, you certainly have the right to do that. And I just sit back in my chair. Never said another word. And he looks at me and he says, I'm sorry. He goes, Um, I do want to talk to you. He goes, I want to tell you what happened. And he basically tells me that she shot herself.

unknown 10:02

Oh, that's the new story.

SPEAKER_01 10:03

That's his new story. He said um she shot herself in the in her head with a rifle.

unknown 10:09

With a rifle?

SPEAKER_01 10:10

With a rifle.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

Before we get back to the episode, a quick word from one of my favorite partners. Today, all three of my kids are home and they're actually at the skate park together. I'll admit, I'm a little jealous. I'd much rather be on a board than sitting at my desk. But stories like this matter, and they deserve the time. Thankfully, when I do need a quick break, my whirly board is never far away. It's become my go-to for getting a little of that skateboarding vibe without leaving the house. Whether I'm taking a break from editing, clearing my head between interviews, or just trying to burn off some restless energy, it's a fun way to move and reset. If you've been thinking about trying one, check out the link in our show notes under sponsors and help support the podcast while you're at it. The corridor of trying to out here on the corridor, reliability isn't optional. It's everything. Whether you're commuting, hauling, or running a full fleet, CNC Tires Inc. keeps you moving with trusted brands like Michelin, including MRT retreading. From passenger vehicles to commercial fleets, they've built their reputation on safety, service, and keeping people on the road. They're serving Southern Oregon and Northern California. Because on the corridor, the wrong tire at the wrong time isn't just inconvenient. It matters. CNC Tires Inc., details and link in the show notes. This episode is also brought to you by Miss Congeniality LLC, home of handcrafted candles, room sprays, and other delightfully inappropriate home fragrance products. And don't forget about our monthly giveaway for your chance to win two crime-inspired room sprays and a 16-ounce candle. Simply like or share one of our posts or two, subscribe to Corridor of Crime, and comment with your username or handle so we can verify your entry. We'll announce one winner at the end of each month right here on the podcast and contact you directly. You can find Miss Congeniality LLC and all of our giveaway details through the links in today's show notes on our website. And the giveaway gifts are crime-inspired, of course.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

He said she was so upset that I told her I was gonna leave her. And so she uh shot herself in the head. So he said, it happened on our bed in the bedroom. So he said, I I took all of her clothes to um the dump. They were they were covered with blood spatter. I took the mattress to the dump, it was covered with blood spatter, the guns at my friend's house, and he says, uh I took and I wrapped her in a tarp and I buried her in the backyard, underneath a kennel. He um he had made friends, worked uh voluntarily with the local sheriff's department as a trainer, uh aggressor for canine dogs. And uh the deputies really liked him, and he was a he loved the dogs. The dog that he was working with subsequently got older and retired, and they the sheriff's department gave him the dog to keep. So he built a dog run in the backyard of his house, and um that was the disguise of the graveside he had oh my gosh. So he he told me that he buried her in the backyard of the garage of his yard. She had been there about a week or so. He said, the detective that uh came out and talked to me initially, he goes, I sensed that he didn't like women and was having um relationship problems with his own wife. So he said, I fed off of that. And he said, um, that that detective ended up telling me that you guys were gonna probe my backyard at one point during the investigation to see if we had any fresh grave sites. So he said, I dug her up in the backyard, and he said I um kept her in the tarp, put her in the back of my car, and then I drove her to a rural area about 45 minutes away, and I hid her in a forested area, and he said she's been there ever since. And I said, Well, Arn Arnie, if this assuming this is true, uh and and in my mind's eye, I was thinking, I don't want to upset him so that he invokes and I no longer have opportunity to talk to him because I want to find Dolores now. Uh we have to find her for the families. So I want to keep him cooperating. So I don't confront him about his new s newfangled story.

unknown 15:09

Of course.

SPEAKER_01 15:10

I'm gonna I'm gonna pretend to buy it and then hopefully he's gonna show me Yeah, exactly where the body is. So I said, assuming that she's um like you said, that she's deceased. I said, why would you just keep that from the family? Why would you let the the daughters and the grandchildren uh go through all this heartache and anguish uh when you could have just said that, well, grandma uh took her life or he said, Well I I didn't want them to be upset. I didn't want them to think less of grandma, so it would have been less his his rationale made no sense.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

Because they're thinking she abandoned them otherwise.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 15:56

Right.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

So we went ahead, he continued to talk in some detail, we were started getting to uh all the details of the um cleaning up the crime scene, et cetera. And so we knew now we had a crime scene in the bedroom. We knew we had some evidence that we we could recover, but our goal was to recover the decedent uh Dolores. He um promised me that he would lead he could lead me to the body. He says, I've been back once. He said, about a year or two after I buried her there, I went back on the anniversary to see if she was still there and to see if she had been discovered, and he said she was still there. So he said, I'm confident she's still there to this day. So um he said, I can't tell you how to get there, I'll try, but he said, I'll be happy to go with you. He goes, I want you to find the body. He goes, I want the family to have their um loved one back so that they can be, you know.

unknown 16:56

Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

Of course he does.

SPEAKER_01 16:58

Yeah. He's now such a kind person. So we put him in jail there that night. We explained to him, got a warrant for his arrest for murder. I told him that we would put him in jail in the northern part of the state that night. It was getting close to nighttime anyway. We had talked to him for probably the better part of six or seven hours at that point. Um, and I we would pick him up early that next morning. We had a four-hour drive back to where we lived, and that we would immediately start searching the area. So we tucked him away in the jail where he was secured for the night. We contact our uh staff uh here locally by phone, and we said uh that we need some forensic teams available, we need search teams available, we need maps of the Forest Service from the Forest Service of the general area, what we're going to. Um I said it's probably about a 15 or 20 mile radius uh uh that we're looking at. And uh we're gonna start our search first thing in the morning. We're gonna pick him up at six, four hours back to our home, and then start our search somewhere um early morning, mid to late morning. So that's what we did. We um picked him up the next morning. He we bought him breakfast. Uh he was in custody, uh traveled back um to our area, and we immediately pulled off at his direction and started searching some of the Forest Service Roads. Um uh probably an hour outside of town.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

Do you worry that they're gonna change their mind the next morning?

SPEAKER_01 18:35

Yeah, of course. Yeah. Um and that was that was why I didn't confront him. I I became um I believed every word he said. Um and I wanted him to bring us back here and try and find her. And so we searched all day long. We had search team searching all day long. We searched all that first day. We put him in jail that night. The interesting thing, we were up against some legal concerns because he that first day he had to be arraigned. You be when you in the in our state, we have to be arraigned or formally charged with a crime within um I think it's 24 hours, and so we we had to get him into the courts and he had to be charged uh formally. Um so we had arranged with the courts for a late as late as we could, it was eight o'clock at night. The judge agreed to hang on and wait for us. Uh we came in still having not found Dolores. He was arraigned. By that time, the some defense attorneys had gotten word what we were doing, and they were asking us to stop searching, uh, to cease our contact with Arnie, and and the whole time Arnie was saying, Hey, I know I have the right to remain silent, uh I know my rights, uh, but I I don't want any part of uh of you people right now. I want to work with Terry, I want to um continue the search for my wife, Dolores. So he convinced the judge. The judge tried to tell him, hey, you you don't have to do this. This is not maybe not in your best interest to do this, etc. And everybody was pretty hard to listen to. It was very hard to listen to. But Arnie he told me, says Terry, he says, Don't uh lit, I'm I'm with you, I want to find her. That is my intention. So he spends that night in jail. The next morning we pick him up, we go back to the forested area, start our search again. We spend the better part of 15 hours, 12 hours, still can't find her, still can't find the area. The meantime, we are coordinating our searches. We have teams assigned certain sectors on these maps, and when they finish the search, they're crossing these sectors off specific stuff. Arnie said you're gonna want to travel down a forest service road, or you're gonna want to go approximately a mile and a half. That road is gonna culminate in a like a cul-de-sac. It's gonna be a that road will end, and where it ends as an old-time overgrown logging site where you'll see a bunch of stacks of logs piled up. If you look underneath those logs near the uh roadway, you'll see a blue tarp down in amongst them, and that's the area you're looking for. So our teams were specifically looking for things. And when they couldn't find them, we cross crossed those areas off. So we had searched that first day, we searched that second day, we started searching the third day and gotten to the point where about four or five o'clock in the evening, we were finishing up all the areas that were left. To search and we still hadn't found her. One of the search teams came up to us and said, Hey, there was one road that we uh didn't get a chance to go fully uh to the end of it. Uh and he said, We're getting close to running out of daylight now. Um, so we can't finish it today, but that one section of road is all we have left, and we'll search it for you first thing in the morning. And he said, if we we don't find it, we don't find it, but that's the only thing left to search. So we're down to the very end, and we got him back to court. Um by that particular point in time, he had made the decision with the help. The defense attorneys and the defense investigators were speaking with him when he was in custody the whole time, and they had finally convinced him that he needed to stop. And so that it was kind of ironic because we were at the end of our rope as far as the search goes. He was at the end of his rope as far as uh dealing with his defense, and so the decision was made that this was we were not going to get him out anymore, that we were gonna go with what we had.

SPEAKER_00 23:08

And it was the end of January, so it was you didn't have much daylight.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

No. And so the next morning, I want to say it was like Thursday morning, because we were my my partner and I, we went to meet with Arnie again at the jail. We were gonna try and get him out of custody one more time. He's like, No, at that point. This was the point where he says, Sarah, he goes, uh tells he tells the correctional staff, he says, please tell Terry I I I'm not gonna I try. Exactly. I done my part, and um I I guess my memory isn't as good as it I thought it was, and I'm not gonna go with him anymore. While we were there, um we get a phone call from that search team that had gone back up on the mountainside that morning to run that last road out. And the call went something like, Hey Terry, we finished our search on that road and we found something that was kind of similar to what we're looking for. We found a log stack with three large uh logs that had were deteriorating over time, but and we found uh where a blue tarp had been pulled up through the a crevice in the logs and had been ripped and torn and shredded. Um we didn't see any remains, but we had this blue tarp. And so in my mind's eye, I thought we found it. So we get in the car and we start heading back up there, and we are on the way, we're organizing um forensic teams to help with the search. We're getting a crime lab up there, we're getting a forensic um our uh pathologist up there, uh some um anthropologists up there, and a security team that we can secure that crime scene off so that we can, if it takes us more than time to process it, we'll have be able to secure it. So we get up there and it's exactly like Arnie had explained the description and and it compared perfectly with what the detective was telling us on the phone. And so we ended up finding a gentleman locally who had a self-loading log truck because what we needed is some ability to lift these big massive logs and move them so that we could search underneath them. The first thing we did is we searched the log deck itself looking for evidence, and we didn't find anything. We started documenting everything with photographs, and then the a gentleman from down the road came up with his uh self-loading log truck and moved these logs for us and refused to charge us. Um he moved these logs off to a site that we'd already searched, so they were secure sitting over there. And then we started excavating where these log deck had rested. And um ultimately what we found it was a probably a two or three-day search. It was set up exactly like a science experiment with an anthropological recovery site, like you would see uh uh of the Egyptians. Yeah, it was crazy. And so we started excavating the floor of the forest down. Um we ended up going about three feet, I think, uh, and sifting and searching with um headlamps and it was it was crazy. But we ended up finding about 17 pieces of bone that were later identified as human skull. We found a single solitary tooth that had very detailed and expensive dental work on it. We found what turned out to be a wedding ring, um, silver band. And inside that band, it had a message and it had a serial number. We found um a forearm, two, uh I think that's called the radius and ulna bones and the forearm. We found some finger bones, and that was, I think, it. That's all we found. A clump of hair, a large clump of hair. And so ultimately what we discovered was that this tarp was fashioned exactly like Arnie said. It was in a rolled fashion, it was secured with duct tape, and the hair and stuff was caught up inside of it, but it had been shredded, and uh an scientist told us that was from an animal that had, you know, gotten to the remains and uh consumed a lot of the remains. It was predominantly a bear and a cougar, we were able to establish the 17 pieces of skull. I met with a forensic anthropologist up in uh uh the state of Washington, and uh amazing gentleman, and he and I spent the better part of two days with these pieces of skull, and I I assisted and he took modeling glue, and we took every one of these pieces of skull and glued it back together and formed almost a near perfect skull.

unknown 28:32

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 28:33

And what we discovered in that skull was a perfectly formed bullet hole. And the bullet hole was located predominantly in the left parietal, or I'm sorry, occipital bone, I think it is, which is at the back part of the head.

SPEAKER_00 28:52

So very, very, very unlikely.

SPEAKER_01 28:55

Yeah, that was the significance to the bullet hole, Sarah, was we were able to reconstruct um the shooting, and we were clearly able to establish that she couldn't have shot herself. We actually recovered the rifle from where he said Arnie said it was. It still had blood and tissue in it that was identified as Dolores's. We could tell that the bullet hole was made from outside in, so we could actually tell the directionality of the bullet hole. Um, we could tell from the forearm that the forearm was of her left forearm, and the anthropologist could measure the length of that forearm and be able to calculate her anatomical height. So Dolores was a very small woman in stature, short, I want to say like 5'3, 5'4, somewhere in there, and we could confirm that by the the size of her forearm. So we were clearly narrowing things down until we got to the tooth. We took that tooth idea up to a forensic odontologist at our state crime lab, a gentleman who I think was in his 70s at the time, who was an amazing guy. And I got to sit there and watch him go through. We had Dolores' dental work, her dental um um charts and x-rays from her dentist, and provided those to this odontologist, and he compared them to that single tooth, and without any doubt or question whatsoever, said that that was, for example, the number 23 tooth uh for Dolores Stralo. We it's crazy, huh?

SPEAKER_00 30:56

What is the stuff that I was asking the last time you were here about detective work? How different and and the intensity I feel like detective work was before.

SPEAKER_01 31:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:07

Yeah, you don't just take a little scraping of the DNA and ship it off. No, it's that's intense.

SPEAKER_01 31:13

Yeah. We we then took this ring, and the ring we could say was absolutely without question sold on a particular date at a particular time from a Fred Meyer jewelry store at a store in in the northern part of the state to our victim Dolores Trello. And there in fact was a little inscription in there that was only you know known by the family and just a couple of people that did correspond to Dolores. So we were able to provide the family with a great deal of their mom's remains, um, but not everything. But it made a lot uh difference when we were going to court.

SPEAKER_00 32:03

And so wow, that's another case from the state that is almost like well, the southern part of the state I should say, the first time right circumstantial that it really made an impact. And so here's a question during that time, because from start to finish when you started working with the district attorney until it went to trial, how long an estimated time?

SPEAKER_01 32:30

Probably two years.

SPEAKER_00 32:32

Okay, and so that's a lot of work. What was the feeling from the family?

SPEAKER_01 32:38

It was amazing.

SPEAKER_00 32:40

They weren't like, what are you doing? Oh no.

unknown 32:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 32:43

They were real supportive of us during that period of um just inactivity. We were following any and every lead. Yeah, we kept them involved the whole time. That's nice. And um, so they had tried to make make peace. They had gone and bought a headstone and and had it at a gravesite, and with the found date left open, there was nothing in there. So they were they were trying to do their best to move on, but they were struggling to do that. Um it's funny because we Mike in particular, the initial detective, we was in involved from start to finish in this whole process. He was the first detective that that believed them and believed their story and worked accordingly. He was kind of uh accepted into the the long family history. They had uh the family get-togethers every year, and Mike was always on that list of people invited. That's nice. Yeah, yeah. And so it was super nice to see Mike be able to be a part of things and get some resolve in this whole thing. We um we ultimately, the prosecutors, kind of a funny story. Both ladies that were on our prosecuting team were were so invested in this case that when we were looking for Dolores' remains, and when we they were kind of secretly hoping we wouldn't find them, because they were looking forward to actually prosecuting him and convicting him without a body because he thought he thought he was home free as long as Dolores was never found. So uh when we found the her remains, and as things progressed, of course they were so excited and things, but but they were just quietly disappointed because they wanted to have that to do that.

SPEAKER_00 34:39

Yeah, but that they took it on was pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_01 34:42

Oh, yeah. And and it was because of them that we were able to go through that whole process and indict him in the first place. They were steering the investigation. Hey, that we need more in this area, we need more in that area. Edward, the DOJ analyst, was absolutely just pivotable. He no, we couldn't have gone anywhere without him or made sense of this. Um it was just an incredible case. He was ultimately convicted. Um, it was a lengthy trial, it lasted for quite a while. There was some legal issues that came up, but those all were resolved, and that the judges found that we acted appropriately in every one of the instances. Uh his this admissibility of his statement was uh questioned, and and basically they said, hey, the the relationship that the detective had with Arnie over this prolonged period of time was so uh personal and intent, there was no way they were going to suppress the statement. Exactly. So he was ultimately convicted of the murder of his wife, Dolores. He was sentenced uh to life in prison. Um and it was uh they to they took a picture, it was I can't even explain it, but when the case was over, when the jury had rendered their verdict, the sentencing was announced. Arnie stood up and was being escorted out of the courtroom to um the corrections uh holding cells outside the courtroom. He was being taken into custody pursuant to the conviction. He stopped and told the uh the bailiffs to hold on for just a minute. He called me over there, he put his arm around me and gave me, shook my hand and said, Thanks. The news media took a picture of it. Uh it was on the front page of the news of the newspaper. Um I can't explain why why, but that was a spontaneous thing that he had done.

SPEAKER_00 36:36

Maybe that you just treated him respectfully or could be.

SPEAKER_01 36:40

Maybe he was just happy that it was finally over with.

unknown 36:43

That's fair too.

SPEAKER_01 36:44

You know, I I don't really know. He never explained. I never had a chance to ask him. I never had an opportunity to confront him when he told his story that she had killed herself. My plan was, well, once we get her remains, then I'll have an opportunity to go back and confront him to, but I was never able to do that uh because of the fact that he had an attorney and we still hadn't found her body. And so I I wasn't alone no longer able to go back and re-confront him and and try and actually get to the bottom of what happened and why. I we all suspect that that Dolores had confronted him just like she told her daughters, that uh things got heated and that he shot and killed her. Right. And that he went about hiding her body in a in a we we actually believe that happened. He told me um on the day we arrested him, he and we were going through his statement. He said um he said the day that you guys came out and was probing the backyard, he said I hadn't had the opportunity to dig her up at that point. So he said I was absolutely couldn't hardly breathe because I was thinking that any moment you guys are gonna find her. And then he said after we finished probing, he suspected we were gonna come in with um equipment and excavate his backyard, which we did. And by that time he had already had the opportunity to exhume her and move her. But those things he began to explain, and so uh it was interesting to find out how he was trying his best to stay one step ahead of us and conceal her uh and kept the case concealed all along.

SPEAKER_00 38:22

But so two questions um before we wrap this up. Did he was he allowed parole?

SPEAKER_01 38:30

Or was it no um I I checked on his disposition here probably a couple years ago was the last I've had the opportunity to do that. And he was moved to the state of Texas because at one point in uh while he was in custody, over uh the Oregon prisons were overcrowded, and um the prisons had room in Texas, so there was a swap. He ended up going and and serving out a lot of his time in Texas. I don't know if he's uh finished his sentence there or if he was brought back to finish it in Oregon in Oregon. I'm not sure. Um, but that was the last I heard. But he he was supposed to s serve life without okay.

SPEAKER_00 39:20

Um which was uh and uh what I said earlier to you, I'm gonna relive this conversation. I said that's shocking because Texas seems to convict a lot of people. And then what did you say?

SPEAKER_01 39:34

I I explained that Texas is fairly notorious uh for executing people on death row.

SPEAKER_00 39:39

Yeah, and then I said, Oh, that's a good point. So they may have had some extra space. Yeah. That's not funny, but it it is, and I said, Oh, yeah, that's that's a good point. So I don't know if they're still doing swapping. Do they still do that?

SPEAKER_01 39:54

I don't I haven't heard of any of that being done in quite some while that was probably back in the probably the late 90s is when I uh heard of that happening.

SPEAKER_00 40:05

Was it still privatized uh the prison system then?

SPEAKER_01 40:09

It not here in Oregon. I don't know. In Texas, they do have some private institutions and they have some private constru uh corrections people as well. And I don't know if that's still in play or not.

SPEAKER_00 40:21

Yeah, I don't either. Oh and okay, so my last question was is Mike still a detective?

SPEAKER_01 40:26

He's since retired. Okay. Um, but yeah, he he left investigations and went to the executive branch of the police department and oh kind of became supervisors and an executive uh in the police department. So but he he kept his hand in this case from start to finish. From the date of the um report, which was 1987, till the time of his arrest, it was seven years, uh till the time he was arrested. And then there was probably another two or three years during that we had trial and here locally and he was convicted.

SPEAKER_00 41:02

So gotcha. Well, that was a really good uh case story, and I appreciate it a lot. I appreciate that you come and tell the stories because they're good. Well really good, and these are things that I wouldn't know about, and uh it's nice to see and hear about how hard detectives work behind the scenes. It's easy to forget that.

SPEAKER_01 41:25

Builds on each and every case. I mean, we were fortunate to see the case developing in the northern part of the state of a prosecution involving nobody, and um it gave us some um direction to go, and we were successful at it. And there's been it's it probably happens more now than it used to, but it's still really one of those cases that are really difficult to because prosecutors they don't want to take that chance, that one and only opportunity to prosecute a bad guy and not succeed. So they oftentimes have a tendency to wait and wait and wait. And sometimes it gets to the point, Sarah, where you run the risk of witnesses um passing away, moving away, forgetting, not being as clear about their recollection and observations from back then. The longer it goes, the harder those cases are to prosecute, even when you find a body or remain. So this was I was so grateful that our there were so many things about this case that just made it um the the team that we were able to assemble, the people and the devotion that they all had, the prosecutors, both ladies were so uh valuable to this case prosecution. Mike, the patrolman who took it seriously and started collecting stuff when others didn't think that it was necessarily uh, you know, a viable case.

SPEAKER_00 42:51

And it weird often like what I'm noticing, I'm starting to notice it it takes either a detective or a team of detectives to really pay attention to other cases to really evolve their agency. I was just watching and I talked about one in Placer County recently, and that was what they had done to solve a case, and it's just really thinking outside the box like you had done watching the one in the northern part of the state, like, oh, okay, this is what they're doing, we should implement that. And I think that's impressive. I think that's really neat to talk about too. Like that's what it takes. It takes, you know, you're not following just what everybody's always done, it's evolving and learning to do something new, try something new.

SPEAKER_01 43:39

And truthfully, that's what I think is really valuable about what you're doing here with your podcast, because uh hopefully there's gonna be hundreds or maybe thousands of people that listen to this story, and they're they may be affected by like I was early on, with thinking like, hey, you know, I I know of someone who's missing that and the case facts are very similar, and it worked in this particular case. Maybe we should open it up and look again. Not not everybody can fit a pair of shoes, but they may fit more than one person. So you you can see what fits for your particular case, and and maybe it'll help, and maybe it uh it'll help somebody else, so you never know.

SPEAKER_00 44:21

Yeah, I appreciate your time so much, as always, and I really, really appreciate you being here. I just listening to your stories. I value it, and I value your time. So thank you.

SPEAKER_01 44:32

Thank you very much. Uh thank you.

SPEAKER_00 44:34

And that's where we'll leave things. A huge thank you to Detective Terry for pulling up a chair with us and sharing not only his experience, but also the perspective that comes from years of refusing to give up on the people behind the cases. We're grateful he spent his time with us, and we hope this won't be the last time you hear his voice here on the corridor of crime. Our door in our passenger seat is always open. If there's a case you think deserves another look, or a story that's been overlooked or forgotten, we'd love to hear from you. You can reach us through our website at corridorofcrime.com or find us on social media. Your suggestion could become a future exit. Until next time, thank you for riding along with us. Stay curious, take care of each other, and we'll see you at the next exit. 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.