Wndyri Plus subscribers can listen to Morbid early and ad-free. Join WNDYRI Plus in the WNDYRI app or on Apple podcasts. You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast. I'm Dan Tabersky. In 2011, something strange began to happen at a high school in upstate New York. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast. What's the answer? And what do you do if they tell you it's all in your head? Hysterical. A new podcast from WNDYRI and Pineapple Street studios. Binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Hey, weirdos. I'm Ash.

And I'm Elaina.

And this is Morbid. This is Morbid. I hate carbonated water. Were you making fun of me?

No, unintentionally.

Were you making fun of me? I wasn't. I just took a sip of this water that I just found in the fridge, which was really bold of me.

It was really old of me.

No, bold. I thought it was an old of me. Old people just find... I mean, old people do just be finding things in the fridge.

So fair enough. That's very ancient of me.

Very bold of me to just grab this water. It is old as well, but it's water. But anyway, it's gross. I don't like it. And I don't know why. No, I do know why. It's the carbonation. It's definitely just that. If you drink... Does water go bad? No. No. Okay. So if you drink carbonated water, I don't trust you.

Mikey's dying.

You drink sparkling water. That's different. That is sparkling water.

No, no, no.

It's sparkling carbonated water. Yeah, different. Sparkling, carbonated. You just drink sparkling. They're all the same. This is way more... This is way more...

Do you guys hear her? Then the water. Then the water.

Would you like a sip? It's horrible. I'm sorry. I need to add my mic in. I need the people to hear me.

I need to defend myself.

Not only did she call me old last week on the rewatcher. I didn't call you old.

Now she has to malign me.

I didn't call you old. I asked if you had ever taken a Scantron test.

There's a difference. She essentially I said, were you around when cars were invented?

You know what's actually crazy is you still haven't answered the question of, were you around during Scantron tests? Of course. They've been around since the '70s. I didn't know that. I thought they were new. Because one, no, genuinely, one day we were taking regular tests, like circle A, B, C or D, just on the paper. And then all of a sudden in high school, they were like, We have to conserve paper. So we got this smaller paper for you, and we're going to give you a test and this paper. Do not circle the answers on the big packet. Only put them on the Scantron. So I said, Oh, these must be new. And that's sparkling water and Scantrons.

Well, I can tell you a thing about I'll tell you about being old.

What's up?

I could tell you a thing or two.

I'll tell you about being old.

We were at Storyland recently. I was with my family. I certainly wasn't.

But the things you do when When you get kids. I know. That's how the kids put it. That's how they put it.

But we were there and there's this ride. It's like this little... It's like in a fire. It's got fire trucks outside of it.

It's like in a fire.

It feels like it's in a fire, to be quite honest. It's in the middle of town. Would I rather be in a fire? Maybe. But I really don't like theme parks. So unhinged. That was a joke, everybody. But- Look it up. These fire trucks are like the old-timey fire trucks outside of ride. One of my girls was like, Oh, what are these? And I was like, Oh, this is what fire trucks used to look like. And she goes, Mama, is this what fire trucks looked like when you were little? Was that the littlest? And I said, Baby. Oh, no. These are from 1910. Wait, now I need to look up what they looked like. No, it wasn't even my littlest. That's the rub.

Middle or oldest?

Oldest. Wow.

I would put that on middle-est or littlest.

Middle-est or littlest. Yeah. Asked me, like old timey firetrucks.

Damn. Hold on. I'm looking up a picture.

Like the ones you see in parades. Oh, fuck. Yeah. Like the ones you see in parades. She said, Mama, did they look like this in the '80s?

Yeah.

Did they look like this when you were little? I was like, No. They sure did. I was like, no. They just looked like regular fire trucks when I was little. I'm not that old.

Well, what's fucking crazy is our kids are like, wow, you were born in the 1900s.

Yeah.

I don't have kids, but my kids will say that someday, too. I'm like, Our kids are like... All our kids are saying that. People are like, Ash, you don't have them. Well, speaking of...

Can't really segue that.

No, it's not segue.

I tried. And that's why we drink, say it A sagoo? It's not sagoo-able.

It's not sagoo-able. I have a more recent case. It's not old.

It's not old.

There you go. It is from the 1900s, so sorry.

So I guess it is a little old.

It's a little bit old. It's older than me. From the '90s, right? Yeah, it's the '90s. It's older than me a little bit. But it's a cold case, and it's a very interesting case. I don't... Oh, no. Actually, I'm sorry, I don't have your username, but the reason I found this is because I saw somebody on comments be like, Oh, you should cover this.

Oh, hey. Hey, somebody who said that. I'm covering this. Thank you for saying that.

Thank you for saying that. I should have written your name down, but I am who I am.

I don't know your username, but you rule. You know who you are.

Exactly. Yeah. It's It's just me. It's how I roll. It's just me. But as you could tell from the title, we're going to be talking about the disappearance of the Springfield 3. It is a very chilling, haunting case. Yeah.

I only know the gist of this case, and it's always fascinated me.

Yeah, it is. I had heard the name before, but I didn't know any details whatsoever, and it's just creepy. Yeah. So let's get into it. On the afternoon of Saturday... What?

I said, Let's do it. Sorry. What? I said it as you began. I was like, Uh-oh. In my head, I was like, Oh, no. You're talking while she's talking. And she's going to say, What?

On the afternoon of Saturday, June 6, 1992, friends and relatives of Kickaboo High School's graduating senior class gathered at, I think it's the Hammond's Student Center for the graduation ceremony. So everybody was getting together, graduating.

Yeah, the Vitamin C song was playing, even though it hadn't happened yet.

Is that the like, As we As we grow old. As we go on.

No, as we grow old. I think it's as we go on.

We remember. That reminds me of the end of Laguna Beach.

Yes.

What? But that hadn't happened yet.

No.

Anyway, among the graduates were 19-year-old Susie Streeter and her best friend, 18-year-old Stacey McAl. When the ceremony wrapped up later that afternoon, they made a quick stop at home to change into some more casual clothes. And then, you remember, you headed out to go to all the senior parties, the graduating parties. All the grand parties. Yeah. Why didn't I remember what that was called? The senior parties, the graduating parties.

The senior parties.

So for Susie and Stacy, the first stop that night was at the home of their friend and fellow graduate, Janel Kirby. She lived in battlefield, Missouri, just outside of Springfield, so it was like a little bit further away, but not crazy. Earlier that day, they all made plans to meet up at Janel Kirby's house that night, and then they were going to walk to a party that was being held at the home of another student nearby. So they were really just going to be making their that night, going to a couple of different parties. And then the plan was to drive to Branson and get a hotel room. They were going to meet some more friends, hang out, and then the next morning, they were all going to be going to a water park together. However, just a few hours into the evening, Janel Kirby called her mom to say that they actually changed their minds. And instead of getting a hotel room, they were going to go to a few more parties and leave for Branson in the morning instead. Okay. So after a little while, all three girls moved from the party in battlefield to another their grad party back in Springfield.

Around 2:00 in the morning, after bouncing around between all the parties, the three girls ended back up at Janel Kirby's house. So they were going to be staying at Janel's for the night, but when they got there, they realized that her house was full of relatives who had come into town for their graduation. Susie and Stacey didn't want to impose on their friend's family. It would have been really tight quarters anyway. They decided to go to Susie's house. Susie had just gotten a king-size waterbed delivered as a graduation gift from her mom, and she was really, really excited to show her friend.

Dude, waterbeds? Were the shit. Holy shit.

I will never forget yours as long as I live.

Yes. And everyone's parents had waterbeds. I remember all my friends' parents had those wily waterbeds that felt like you were in the middle of the ocean.

Remember, you could hear it, like you would flop onto your bed. Oh, yeah.

It literally was like, Why?

It was crazy.

Why did we all think this was great?

And remember when yours started leaking?

It was gonezo. It's bad news bears when it starts leaking. That's when you got to get out of. You got to get out of dodge at that point.

Yeah, it's like Kristen Cavalari in Laguna Beach. Your waterbed is gonezo.

It's Dunzo. Dunzo. It's Dunzo. Dunzo.

But yeah, How freaking cool is that that her mom got her a water, a king-sized water bed for graduation. That's the best. So Susie was like, I got to show this to Stacy. So honestly, this works out. So a little after 2:00 AM, Janel Kirby waved goodbye to her friends as they pulled out of the driveway. And unfortunately, Definitely that would be the last time she would see Stacy or Susie again. So let's talk a little bit about both girls. Susie Streeter was born in March of 1973. She was a pretty typical teenager with a somewhat atypical history. She was raised by a single mother who was working with a limited income. The family had actually moved to Springfield from Seattle in 1980. And not long after, Susie's mother, Sheryl, ended up marrying her stepfather, Dawn Levet. Their relationship lasted nine years, but they ended up getting divorced in 1989. And according to friends, Susie, quote, seldom talked about her father or her stepfather, who had left town after the couple divorced and hadn't been heard from since.

Oh. Yeah. Interesting.

Sounds like a poopoo head.

Yeah.

While her relationship with her stepfather doesn't really appear to have had any big influence on her life, her relationship with her mother was always strong. And Sheryl, her mom, was a constant source of support for Susie. At the time of their disappearance, Janel Kirby's mother, Kathy, told reporters Susie's very protective of her mother and vice versa. So they really looked out for each other. I love that. Despite the support she had at home, Susie did struggle pretty often at school. She had a learning disorder that made her feel like she was something of an outsider, and she also felt like she didn't really have a lot of friends.

Oh, I know.

Which all of these women, the two girls and the mom, are gorgeous. So the fact that she felt like an outsider, I'm like, no, you're smart and great and beautiful. But family friend Janet Olivera said she was a very sensitive girl. She felt like she wasn't part of the in-crow. But what she did lack in quantity of friends was definitely made up for in quality, particularly her best friend, Stacy McCall.

Which I think is more important. I think so, too.

I think you realize that the older you get. You do.

Yeah. That's the thing. It's the you do realize that probably a little too late in life most of the time. Yeah. But it is. It's the quality.

You I don't need a bunch. No.

You need a handful.

If you have- Pick and choose. Isn't that like an old saying? If you can count your friends on one hand, you're lucky? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we're fucking lucky. You guys are so lucky. We have two friends in this room right now. Hell, yeah. Thank you for being a friend. Yeah. Anyway.

I don't know what's up. Anyway, it's a Golden Girls theme song.

It's the carbonated sparkling water. It is.

The old carbonated sparkling water.

Exactly. But Like Susie Streeter, Stacy was a quintessential 1980s American teenager. She was obsessed with fashion. She loved tanning. She loved music. Metallica was her favorite, along with Garth Brooks.

I just went to the Metallica concert.

I thought that was a good way to slip that in.

Yeah, it was awesome.

And she was described by many people as bubbly and outgoing. Although they were a year apart in age, Susie's learning disability had put her in the same grade as Stacy, and they became fast friends at actually a young age. They met like It seems like in grade school. Yeah. Throughout elementary school, Stacy, Susie, and Janel, the one that they were hanging out with earlier, they were inseparable, and they spent almost every afternoon and every evening together. But when Stacy was 11 years old, her family moved out of state for a few years, and when they returned, they had drifted apart a little bit. Actually, they had only recently reconnected and become close again in the months before graduation. Oh. During her senior year, Susie was actually living with her older brother Bart. About halfway through the school year, though, they got into a heated argument. A few months before graduation, she ended up moving back in with her mother, Sheryl. I couldn't find a lot about- It's probably hard to. Anyway, she moved back in with Sheryl. Sheryl Lovett was really happy to have Susie move back into the house. They had always been super close, like I said, really protective of each other.

In the few years since she had gotten the divorce, Sheryl had rented out a room to single tenants in the house to subsidize her income because she was a hair stylist, but she wanted to bring in some more income. Yeah. She was never really lonely because there was always somebody living at the house. But those relationships obviously were nothing compared to the one that she had with her daughter. Yeah, of course. They really didn't have a lot, but Sheryl worked really, really hard for everything they did have. She was also always happy to spend a little extra money on her daughter. Like the king-size water bed she bought her.

Yeah.

Other than her daughter, Sheryl had a few close friends. But after her divorce in 1989, she didn't date. She really didn't socialize Instead, she was focusing on some home renovations around that time. She had been slowly completing them around the house in her free time. Friend Janet Olivera said, She didn't know how to fix half the stuff, but she taught herself.

Damn. Isn't that cool? What a badass. Yeah. Handy woman.

Literally. That night, after having dinner with Susie, Sheryl cleaned up the dishes from dinner. And having the house to herself, she decided to finish hanging some wallpaper and varnishing a chair.

Damn.

Which if you've ever had to fucking hang wallpaper- Oh, I was just going to say.

That is no easy feat. That alone, like...

To varnish. What is varnishing again?

But to varnish a chair, it's like to put that transparent top coat on, like varnish it makes it like that shiny.

So to do that on top of wallpaper? Yeah. Badaspi. Badaspi. Badaspi. Good for her. Yeah. So she was working on that that night. A little after 11:00 PM, she called a friend, and they talked about the projects that she was finishing, and then presumably she went to bed. The next morning, Susie Me and Stacy, like I said, made plans with Janel and several other friends to go to that water park over in Branson, and they were all going to meet at Janel's house in the morning. But when morning came, Susie and Stacy just didn't show up. Janel said, I started getting worried because Stacy, she's so responsible, and so is Susie. So a few hours later, when they still hadn't heard from their friends, Janel and her boyfriend, Mike Hensen, decided to go to Sheryl Streeter's house to make sure everything was okay. The first thing that Janel noticed when they arrived at the house was that the glass globe on the porch light had been shattered, and there was glass scattered across the front porch. The bulb itself, it was intact, but the globe around it was completely broken. Yeah, that's creepy.

Super creepy. Especially because the bulb was intact.

Yeah. I really wonder if it was unscrewed a little bit, though. Like in the Strangers. Yeah.

Like if they smashed the globe to get to the thing.

Yeah, that's all I could think of. Or I don't know if it was just smashed in some struggle. But anyway, Janel remembered that, quote unquote, as a favor to Susie's mom, her boyfriend, Mike, grabbed a broom and swept up the glass and dumped it in the garbage. You would not think anything of that.

No.

In hindsight, investigators believe that the broken glass could have been, could have contained some important clue. But at the time, Mike was just concerned that somebody might cut their foot or get cut somehow. So he threw it away. But unfortunately, he potentially did throw away valuable evidence.

Without having any idea.

Literally completely unknowing. This show is sponsored by Better Help. I feel like kids are always learning and growing, obviously. But as adults, We sometimes lose that curiosity. What's something you want to learn? Gardening a new language, maybe how to finally beat your best friend in bowling? I recently took up learning how to do sourdough. Therapy can help you reconnect with your sense of wonder because your back to school era can come at any age. I feel like I'm experiencing my back to school era right now learning this sourdough process. It's pretty crazy. And I feel like therapy taught me that I wanted to dive deeper into some of my interests that I've been holding on to for a while. And I feel like you could learn that in therapy, too. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give better help a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. And all you have to do is fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist. Switch therapist anytime for no additional charge. No big deal. Rediscover your curiosity with Betterhelp. Visit betterhelp. Com/morbid today to get 10% off your first month.

That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P. Com/morbid. Listening on Audible helps your imagination soar. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, expert advice, any genre you love. You can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, new ways of thinking. Find the genres you love and discover new ones along the way. Explore bestsellers, new releases, plus thousands of included audiobooks and originals that members can listen to all they want with more added all the time. Audible makes it easy to be inspired and entertained as part of your daily routine without needing to set aside extra time. There's more to imagine when you listen. I have been listening to The Spell Shop. It is a title written by Sara Beth Durst, and it's narrated by Kaitlyn Davies, who just has the most beautiful voice. I feel like I'm transported into a different world when I'm listening. I love this title, and I think you would, too. Also, as an Audible member, you can choose one title a month to keep from the entire catalog blog, including the latest best sellers and new releases. New members can try Audible free for 30 days. Visit audible. Com/morbid or text morbid to 500, 500.

That's audible. Com/morbid or text morbid to 500, 500 to try Audible free for 30 days. Audible. Com/morbid. As far as Janel could tell, everybody's cars were still parked in the driveway. When she peered into the living room window, everything looked normal. But she was like, What's going on? They're supposed to meet me. Did they oversleep? She tried the front door and she found it unlocked. She cracked the front door. When she did, Susie's dog, Cinnamon, started barking and appeared to be in a pretty agitated state, only calming down when Janel opened the front door further and he recognized Janel. He knew who she was, so he calmed down. Janel said she started to yell to them, calling out to see if anybody was in the house, but the house was completely still completely quiet. She got no response.

That's chilling.

Yeah. So to Janel, who had been in the house countless times, nothing seemed out of the ordinary other than the fact that they didn't seem to be home. But there were a couple of things that did catch her attention. Susie's bedding had been pulled back like somebody had slept in the bed. All the purses of all three women were piled on the steps leading to Susie's room. And Susie and Sheryl's open cigarette packets were on the counter. The two were said to be pretty heavy smokers, and they didn't go anywhere without their packs of cigarettes.

So this was already like...

So that was weird, definitely. Yeah. So as they were walking out, the phone rang, the home phone. That was when people had the...

The landline.

The landline, if you will. And Janel ran to answer it, hoping that it might be her friends. But the voice on the other end of the line was a man, or at least a male. And Janel would later describe the collar as sounding like a teenager. The collar immediately launched into just a barrage of offensive comments and sexual innuendos. What the So she hung up and they left the house.

That series of events is so creepy.

It's so creepy. And they found out later that Sheryl and Susie had been getting calls like that. Really? Yeah. Like, just yucky prank calls is what they thought they were. And still, nobody's really sure if it connects to the case or if it was just a separate gross thing happening.

Coincidence.

So finding nothing super alarming at the house, obviously, it's alarming that they're not but it doesn't look like there's a sign of struggle beyond the glass. Janel and Mike decided to stop by their friend Shane's house, hoping that the girls maybe got confused about the plan where they were supposed to meet and were there. But when they got there, Shane said he hadn't seen them, he hadn't heard from them, nothing. They were frustrated and ended up going back to the street or house and found it exactly as they left. So they set out to look for the girls around the neighborhood, thinking maybe they walked somewhere to get lunch, something like that. At the time, remember, these are 18-year-old kids who just graduated high school. It didn't occur to Janel or Mike that something could be super, super wrong here.

No, because especially at that point, you're not... You think you're invincible and all your friends are, too. Exactly. Nothing bad can happen.

And it's just like, Oh, like something weird must be going on. Yeah, it's just not home. But we'll figure it out. Yeah. So around that time, Janel was walking through Sheryl Streeter's empty house. Stacey's mother, Janice McCall, was getting irritated that she had not heard from her daughter since the previous night. She called to say there had been a change of plans and she would be staying at Janel's house because at that point, they were still going to be staying there. Okay. Janice called the Kirby house and asked to speak to her daughter, assuming that the girls maybe just got a late start. Yeah. But Janel's sister explained that Stacey and Susie hadn't actually stayed there the night before because the house was so crowded. And as far as she knew, they had actually gone back to Susie's house. Janice is frustrated because she's like, Okay, Stacy didn't call me and tell me this. Yeah, I'd be frustrated. I'm trying to track her down. So she called Susie's house and left a message on the answering machine instructing her daughter to call her back as soon as she got the message. A few hours passed, and Janice McCall was finally able to get a hold of Janel Kirby, who told her that they had gone by the house and they couldn't find Stacy or Susie, or for that matter, Cheryl, anywhere.

So Janice placed several more calls to the street or house, just leaving increasingly frantic messages like, Why are you calling me back? Where are you? You need to call me. I can't imagine. You need to call me. A short time later, she got a call from the mother of one of Stacy's other friends, informing her that the girls' cars and purses were actually still at the street or house. So now convinced that her daughter was just being irresponsible and maybe she slept in. Just blowing her off. Yeah, exactly. Blowing her off. She called her other daughter, and together they grabbed the spare car key and drove over to the house. The plan was for Stacy's sister to drive Stacy's car home, and Janice would grab her purse, effectively leaving her daughter just confused and stranded. Janice said, I was going to let her look for her car and clothes. I thought, That serves you right. You didn't let me know anything, and I won't let you know.

It was the '90s.

Exactly. She might have been angry with her daughter on the way there when she left for the street or house. But by the time she reached the house, that anger turned back to worry. Oh, I'm sure. In the several hours that had passed since Janel had first checked on her friends, the Streeter house had filled up by this point with concerned friends and families all looking for signs of Susie, Stacy, or Cheryl. As Janice went through the house, the same signs that seemed odd to Janel were now concerning. She was like, what the fuck?

Because now it's turning into more time has passed by. Other people are worried. Yeah.

And not only had they left their cars and their purses behind, but Stacy also left behind some of her clothing that she'd been wearing the night before and her migraine medication, which she always had with her.

Honey, you're not going anywhere without that. I thought of you. If you have migraines, I have extend her migraine with me literally 24/7.

It was still in her purse. Yeah. That's not good. Janice was like, there's no way she would have gone somewhere without that. And there's no way they would have gone somewhere without their purses. Susie and Sheryl wouldn't have gone without their cigarettes. There's all these different signs now. Too much. So Janice hit play on the answering machine and waded through her own messages that she'd left before she, quote, heard a man's voice who was saying very unpleasant things. So this person, who I'm assuming it was the same person that Janel had picked up the phone for. This person called back and left a message.

I'm sorry. I think there's something there.

I think there could be. Something weird there. Despite the obvious red flags, nobody's minds had turned to outright panic yet. When one woman suggested that they make a pot of coffee to keep everybody going, Janice thought, I don't want to do that. What's Sheryl going to say when we're sitting in her kitchen drinking her coffee. I don't blame her. Never thinking that Sheryl might not be coming back. So after calling all of her daughter's friends that she could think of, Janice finally called her husband, stew, and she said, There's something not right. Something is really wrong. And stew agreed and suggested it was time to call the police and report the three women missing. Janice still couldn't accept at that point that something bad was happening or might have happened to her daughter, so she didn't want to call 911. She felt like it was unnecessary. She later said, I was still waiting for them to come in.

Well, it's hard when you realize you have to call 911 in a situation. It's scary. Yeah, it's very scary. And you're always worried about overreacting, even though, like we say it all the time, overreacting, underreacting. But it's easier said than done. Totally. It really is. Every time I've ever had to call 911, it's been a very scary experience.

You have an internal battle with yourself.

You're like, Am I supposed to be doing this?

Because it's meant for emergencies. You don't want to waste somebody's time.

No. And resources. In a situation like this where you're battling back and forth of like, Is this really fucked up or is this not? Am I just going to call and say, I don't know where they are, and then they're going to come back from a day at the beach and we're going to be Sorry.

Okay. Our bad. You also don't want to admit to yourself that it's an emergency. No, definitely not. Instead of calling 911, she called the police Department's main line, and she asked the dispatcher to send an officer out to the house as soon as they could. A few minutes later, luckily, they responded pretty Exactly. Springfield police officer, Rick Booko, pulled into the already crowded driveway at Sheryl Streeter's house because now everybody's there. Everybody's there. A three-year veteran of the police force, Rick Booko wasn't too alarmed when the call came in about the missing women. But despite the lack of evidence, when investigators did arrive at the house, they just felt like something was different. Something was off. Interesting. Yeah.

Well, there's so many people in there, like tramping all over the place.

That's the thing. If it was a crime scene, who really knows? There's no evidence now. It's been trampled all over.

It's like the Sean Mene Ramsey. Yes. Kind of scene where everybody just walking around.

Exactly. So Bookout noticed that Susie and Stacy's cars were in the driveway, and Cheryl's car was also there. It was in the garage, just like Janice McAul had said. As he walked through the house, he noticed all the other oddities that had been delayed to the dispatcher. Jewelry by the bathroom sink, the unmade bed that looked like it had been slept in, and so on. Springfield Police Captain Tony Glenn said, The only thing unusual about this house was that three women were missing from it. You had this feeling as you looked around that something was missing, that something had to be missing, but there wasn't. Just them. So tons of valuable still around the house. Like, jewelry and that thing. Cars, purses, I'm assuming, wallets in the purses.

Just people missing.

Just people missing. It was like they up and vanished.

And it's like people that would have taken some of these things with them.

Exactly. So Book Out got started by talking to Janice and Steumacal, who explained... Or Mikal, excuse me, who explained that their daughter had gone out with friends the night before to celebrate graduation and hadn't come back the next morning when they were all supposed to leave for the water park. So he got that story, and then he walked around the house with Janice at his side this time. So the scene seemed to be telling a story of a household that had started the routine of getting ready for bed but was interrupted at some point. Jewelry and makeup were removed. There was literally like dirty makeup wipes at the scene. Clothes were changed. Tv was turned on. And this is so fucking creepy. Because it was the '90s and whatever they were watching had played through by the time everybody started arriving at the house. It was on that snow. Do you remember how when your movie was over, it would go to the blue screen and then the snow?

Yeah.

Yeah. Something about that. I was like, I hope you guys muted it. It was just like they had just vanished, like I said. But most concerning, like we said, was that they had all left their purses containing essential items like identification, medication, all that stuff behind. And they hadn't just been left on a chair or somewhere that you might throw your purse. They were stacked, like piled together on the stairs leading to Susie's bedroom. Yeah, that's weird. Yeah, it seems weird to me, too, right? Yeah. And Stacy's overnight bag was on the stairs, too. Officer Bookout casually suggested that, what did they suggest in the '90s? They probably were just gone having fun.

Oh, yeah. Don't worry about it.

They just forgot to call and forgot their purses. Yeah, of course, forgot everything. But Janice pointed to her daughter's clothes that were piled up by the bed, and she said, If she is, she's in her underwear. Like, literally looked at the cop and was like, Yeah, no.

Yeah, do you think my daughter's out there in her skivvies? I don't think so. No.

So by the time When Bookout had finished his walkthrough of the house, other officers arrived, and he started bringing them up to speed on what he knew. It was clearly a missing person's case, but despite the lack of evidence or the presence of anything suspicious, they couldn't shake the feeling that these women hadn't gone missing voluntarily.

Yeah, there's something off here.

And this suspicion was unintentionally conveyed to the families when Bookout asked Janice McCall whether they could get dental records for her daughter or not.

Oh.

She said, I thought if they want dental records, they want to identify my They thought my daughter could be dead. Oh, that's awful. I can't imagine.

What an awful feeling. No.

Finally, after they'd cleared the house of friends and families, Bookout locked the doors and the windows and stuck a note on the door asking that somebody call the police Department when they return to confirm their safety, which is just so chilling.

Yeah, I was going to say something about that.

Just walking out. It's just quiet in that house. Leaving a note. And just leaving a note, like, call us when you're back safe. But they never came Despite their suspicions and their instincts, even the police didn't want to admit that something terrible could have happened in that house.

Because it's bizarre. It's a bizarre scene. It is.

So the next day, news about the disappearance hit the local papers and the alarm over the three missing women began to spread. A friend and former classmate, Adina Rathruaf, I hope I'm saying that right, told a reporter, I'm scared to death about what's going on. The longer they're gone, the more negative comes out. I'm scared someone broke in and got them. I just hope to God, nobody hurts them. Oh, jeez. Yeah. Those who knew Sheryl were equally concerned by her sudden disappearance. Joe Tate, who owned the salon where she worked, told the press, I've already talked to two or three detectives today. I've told them this is not like her. Sheryl is definitely not the type of person that would just leave. She would contact someone, something is wrong.

That's the thing. It's like, these aren't people that are known to do this stuff that they're like, oh, well, let's all wait around a little bit because sometimes they do this. Sometimes they disappear and we don't hear from them for a few days. Then they come back.

No. These people were like creatures of habit. They weren't going to just run off. And it didn't make sense. Why would Stacy, the friend, run away with Susie and Susie's mom? That doesn't make a lot of sense.

Honestly, that's the part that really gets me is that there's somebody not part of the family here. Right. Yeah. Exactly. But was in the house and maybe was just in the house at the wrong time.

Exactly. Which is also so sad to think about when you think about the fact that they weren't even supposed to stay at Susie's that night. Yeah. But then also you're like, Would something have still happened to Sheryl? Yeah.

It could have been a very different story.

Yeah. While Friends and Family of the Missing Women formed their own informal search parties, the local police started to go over what they had learned about the case already, hoping that Somebody knew something that might help. Captain Tony Glenn said, While we haven't had any real breaks in the case that would lead us to have knowledge of their current location, we're actively pursuing and talking to individuals who were in contact with them Saturday night. But after three days passed and there was still no sign of these missing women, the FBI was called in to join the 30-member team of investigators now working the case. Damn. Yeah, it was... Shit was getting real. Yeah. By then, it seemed very much possible that all these women had been kidnapped. But even that didn't make a lot of sense because even if the individual was armed, it would still be pretty difficult for one person to kidnap three adult women without leaving any evidence of a break-in or any struggle at the scene.

Yeah.

Like, yes and no, I guess. Yeah. I said that, and then the more I was thinking about it, they were all petite women.

Yeah. It's like you brandish a couple of weapons.

Even just, even just, you'll be surprised.

You know? Like, it would scare anybody.

I said that and then I was like, well, maybe not. I don't know. Yeah. It is hard to believe that nothing would have been knocked over. You know what I mean?

And the leaving Like the purses on the stairs and like a line? When did that happen? If it's one person trying to corral three adult women, he's not going to have time to do that. No. You know? Like, it's strange things.

Yeah. It's just weird.

Why was that thing broken?

Yeah. Why was the globe around the porch light broken?

Did you mean to this person, if this was somebody, did they mean to break the light, too? But they just smashed the globe and thought they broke the light. Maybe. Maybe just loosened it.

Or, and this is like such a dark thought. It's awful. But I was thinking, was somebody carried out kicking? Oh, maybe. Maybe they had a hand over their mouth so nobody heard them screaming. Were they kicking or thrashing? Yeah, maybe. But then you would think that maybe there would be blood.

Somebody would hear something or blood?

Yeah. I don't know. This case is like, it gets your brain going.

It really does.

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But maybe it was unless it's a stranger.

Which it could be. Yeah. But I think at that, I don't know why they weren't thinking of that at the time, but it doesn't sound like they were.

Yeah, I think that was genuinely something that was not first thought on everyone's mind for a long time. Yeah.

Yeah, it's weird. But when it came to suspects, investigators had difficulty putting together a list of any real substance. There was Susie's ex-boyfriend 17-year-old Mike Kovacs, who she had a somewhat troubled and occasionally violent relationship with a couple of years earlier. Kovacs said, Sure, we hit each other before, back when we were first going out, when I was just 15.

I was like, Fuck.

That sounds pretty volatile.

At 15, you were hitting your girlfriend? Jesus. What?

But he said he had been on good terms with both girls since that relationship ended, and he did have an alibi for the night that they went missing. And at the time of their disappearance, neither girl was dating anybody seriously, nor did anyone believe Susie's fiercely protective mother would have let anyone in the house after the girls had got home that night. Janet Oliveira said, If Susie got a phone call after 10:00 at night, Cheryl didn't even allow her to answer it. So I know she would never let her answer the door after 10:00, especially at 2:00 AM. Yeah. Eventually, investigators started administering polygraph tests to the men in Susie, Stacy, and Cheryl's lives, hoping that maybe one of them might produce a lead. Bart Streeter, Susie's brother and Cheryl's son, said, I was upset with it, mainly because it's my mother and my sister, and I love them more than anything in the world. While he might have been upset, he did give into a polygraph examination because he was willing to do whatever it took to get his family and Stacy back.

Yeah, he just said that, I love them more than anything in this world. Of course, I'm going to do that.

He's like, It's pretty shitty, but sure. He said, I think what the police are trying to do is right. I've spent as much time as I can at the department. The emotional thing is incredible. In the end, he passed his polygraph exam, and so did the other young men that investigators tested, leaving them no closer to finding these three women. Wow. After a week, investigators had made zero progress on the case, and the families of the missing women had started to accept that somebody might have taken their loved ones, and most likely had. Friends and family had spread out across the city to distribute more than 20,000 missing persons flyers. Damn. Which are still around in the area today, which is, again, like I said, chilling, haunting. Yeah, truly. It gives you goosebumps. And while friends and family were doing that, Janice and the Steumacall had started going around to all the local hospitals, showing pictures of their daughter to anyone who would listen. Sergeant Mark Webb said, In the beginning, I had every hope that we would solve this in a few days, that we'd find them, know what happened. I thought we'd get to the bottom of it.

But the problem was that investigators had virtually nothing to work with. The crime scene at Sheryl Streeter's house, assuming, like I said, it even was a crime scene, showed no signs of a struggle or break-in. Nothing was missing or out of place, and nothing had been left behind to indicate who took these women or where they could have gone. There was that broken glass discovered outside, but like I said, that had been thrown away. So evidence was also thrown away with it. And the same was true of that obscene message that was left on the answering machine. Back at that time, it was standard for answering machines to automatically delete messages after 24 hours. And that's exactly what happened with that one. It was just gone. And at that point in time, there was no way to get it back.

Yeah, it was just gone.

Now you just tap your fucking iPhone to delete it messages. Exactly. It wasn't like that. So investigators turned to the media for help with segments about Susie, Stacy, and Sheryl appearing on America's Most Wanted in 48 Hours, but none produced any viable leads.

Oh, man.

Finally, in mid-June, Springfield police got a tip about a potential suspect, and for the first time, they had a lead to chase. According to a collar on the tip line, on June fifth and sixth, a local woman saw an unfamiliar man lingering around Sheryl Streeter's house. Captain Glenn told reporters this individual was totally out of place in the area. He was a transient type with no apparent reason for being there. It's something we feel is significant. That's creepy. I know it is creepy. So investigators released a composite drawing of the suspect, which depicted a middle-aged, bearded man, average height and weight, with dark shoulder-length hair and a, freckled, tan complexion. I feel like it's very hard to picture this man.

Yeah, I'm trying to picture this man, and I'm struggling. Same.

Well, the so-called transient man quickly shot to the top of a suspect list that still included Bart Streeter and Mark Kovacs, but hope of finding that individual soon fated because he wasn't seen in the area again. And realistically, who knows if he ever existed in the first place. As theories of the transient abductor started to dry up, detectives shifted their focus to Sheryl Streeter, hoping something or someone in her background might provide a lead. Deputy Chief Worsham told a reporter, as the case ended its third week, I think it's an abduction, and I think the answer lies somewhere in Sheryl Levet's background. Sometimes she's referred to, just so nobody's confused. Sometimes she's referred to as Sheryl Streeter, and then other times Sheryl Levet because she had been divorced from Dawn Levet.

So people called her by different last names.

It seems like both. But since they were divorced, I most often refer to her as a Sheryl Streeter. But anyway, he added, We have no information, and I want to emphasize that I don't want the relatives and friends of Sheryl Levet to feel like we think she's the cause of this or a bad person. But she may be a focus of the investigation, and somebody in her background may have some reason to do something like this.

Whoa.

Which is scary. Yeah. Sheryl had been married twice, first to Bart and Susie's father, Brent, and then to Dawn Levet, like I said. Both relationships had ended in divorce, and as far as anybody knew, she actually had no contact with either man since their relationships had ended, hadn't seen from or heard from either since. According to Bart Streeter, Sheryl's second husband, Dawn Levet, had left her in 1989, and literally no one even knew where he went. Damn. Which is so creepy. Like, what the fuck? Bart said, He pretty much left my mom in debt and took off.

Nice guy.

Yeah. So Sheryl hired a lawyer in 1990 because it seems like he left her in some debt. He had a failed business. But unfortunately, he was never found and nothing came of it. Otherwise, Sheryl was said to live a relatively quiet and private life. Her friend Janet Olivera said, she was about as close to Mother Teresa as you could get. Wow. Whoever did this had to be somebody who did not know her. No one had any vendetta against her. Damn. Which is even fucking scary. It is. Like somebody just that you have no idea who they are. Some stranger. Walks in your house in the middle of the night, and abducts you and your child and friend. Yeah. So after struggling to find leads in the case, the detectives caught another break on June 24th, when a waitress at George's Steakhouse, which was one of Sheryl's favorite restaurants, reported to investigators that she had seen the three missing women in the early morning hours of June seventh. According to the waitress, Sheryl, Susie, and Stacy came into the diner sometime between 1:00 and 3:00 AM. And she recalled Susie was extremely gitty or maybe even drunk, and that Sheryl was trying to quiet her down.

Around that time of night, George's Steakhouse was known to be pretty typically busy with a bar crowd. But the woman recognized Levet and Streeter because they were regular customers, though they hadn't been to the restaurant in a couple of months. One detective told reporters she seems like a credible witness, but other detectives and investigators were less convinced because a convenience store clerk in Springfield had also reported to the police that Susie and Stacy came into his store that a little before 2:15 AM, and he said they seemed like they were in a hurry. But if that was true, it wouldn't have been possible for the server to have seen them at the diner because that would have put them in two places at the same time. The report from the server conflicted with the previously established timeline that put their disappearance somewhere between 2:30 and 07:00 AM. So regardless of the conflicting reports, the possibility of a new sighting did reinvigorate the case, and the reward fund that had been established established days earlier jumped from $3,000 to $40,000.

Whoa, that's a leap.

An anonymous donor made a very large contribution, I guess. So now we're three weeks deep. The detectives have made almost no progress on the case, and at this point everyone was starting to get desperate. The supposed sighting reported by the woman at the steakhouse pretty much went nowhere. And billboards and flyers yielded thousands of tips from the public, but they did little to move the investigation forward.

That's so frustrating. Is.

With options dwindling, the family started turning to a local psychic, referred to in the press simply as Ruth. According to Ruth, the disappearance was a, quote, unquote, revenge abduction that she referred to as, quote, Sheryl's problem, possibly involvement in or knowledge of a legal activity. Yeah. In her visions of the scene, Ruth described, quote, two men in a brown or beige van. One man is medium tall, has dark hair and a short ponytail, and stows his sunglasses horizontally into his shirt. The women were, quote, Abducted at gunpoint with a small black revolver at 3:40 AM, and the transient reportedly seen in the neighborhood is not involved in the abduction. So that's all quotes.

Wow.

Janice McCall had received hundreds of calls and letters from psychics all around the country offering her tips, and each one was passed on to the police. But apparently, Ruth's tips seem to resonate with her more than the others did. Janice said, I wish one could say, I see her now and she's all right. That's what I look for. So they give me hope.

Oh, that's so sad.

And the rest of the McCall family agreed that Ruth actually did seem to have more insight than the others, and they were, stunned by her accuracy in describing their own private lives.

That's interesting. It is interesting. You know how I feel usually about psychic centering these things?

Yeah, because it can be iffy.

But it's a hard one because you want family members to have hope. And when it seems like These people actually are the real deal because I've seen certain things where it's like, they know so much and they end up helping the investigation.

People have solved cases before.

So you hope it's one of those? You do. Because you just don't want them giving people hope.

And false hope at that.

Just for it to be ripped out from under them. Exactly. We've seen that a lot.

Yeah, which is really shitty. That's just the human species being the human species. Truly.

People just people.

People going to people. But regardless of how accurate she was about their family's private lives, it It could be said that much of what Ruth told Janice McCall had actually already been reported on the papers. I mean, again, she did know things about their personal lives that they were pretty amazed by. Okay. But the details regarding the crime had been reported on. Like her seeing a light-colored van, neighbors had already reported that. The other information she had was given to investigators who followed all of the leads but eventually reported that, quote, none has proven helpful.

Damn. Yeah.

So after three weeks now no progress, public demand for action had grown exponentially and was generally targeted at the Chief of Police, Terry Knowles. This was not the first time that he had come under attack by the press and the public at that point for perceived failures, because one year earlier, investigators failed to solve a brutal rape case, and more recently, the murder of an elderly woman had gone unsolved. Oh, shit. So they're over their heads. They're in over their heads. Yeah. Jinks. In response, he took a defense of position claiming lack of evidence and a potentially tainted crime scene were responsible for the slow progress, which- I mean, yeah.

Very fair.

Tons of people trips through there.

That's very tainted.

He said, We would have looked at the glass on the front porch. That could have told us some things. He also pointed to the large number of people who had gathered in Sheryl's house and handled personal items like the purses as additional issues in the case. He said, Whether it's a real hindrance or not, it doesn't matter. We're stuck with going in there after the fact. And yes, it sets you back.

Because you also think about the fact that he's saying, if we had been able to look at that broken glass, it could have told us something. It's like, What really could it have told you?

I feel the same way. The glass, specifically, it's mentioned. And of course, you have to mention it. It's a thing that happens. Of course. But it's in every outlet that reports on this is like, and who knows if valuable evidence was thrown away. There was nothing else at the scene, so I don't know.

The fact that that globe smashed, the light was smashed. That's weird. For sure. Mention that that's important. Totally. That could point to some foul play here, something crazy going on for sure. And it's spooky no matter what. I just don't know how much it would... The actual shards of glass we're going to tell you.

I completely agree.

Because it's like, I mean, if somebody punched the glass with a gloved hand or something, it's not going to tell you. If they hit it with something, it's not a shard of glass.

No. What is it going to tell you? And I don't know if they're making a big deal of it because he swept up the glass and who knows, maybe there was a footprinter in the dirt or something like that. But maybe put it that way instead of like, he threw away the glass and there was valuable evidence in there, possibly.

That broken glass could have told us something. It's like, what, though? Yeah. Can you tell me that?

Even at that point, I don't even know if they could have tested the blood. It was like 92.

Yeah, and he didn't see any blood. Yeah, exactly.

Anyway, years later, several investigators would actually speak out in the press, blaming the lack of progress on Knowles himself, claiming that he micromanaged the detectives and constantly interfered with how they were performing their jobs.

Well, that's not a good way to be.

No. Some even claimed that he ruled out suspects. Others on the team strongly believed had a motive to abduct the women. Oh, It. Green County prosecutor Darryl Moore told a reporter, This was clearly the most micromanaged case I've ever seen. Season detectives were not allowed to use their expertise and judgment in this investigation. Oh, that's bad. He said, This is the only case where that happened, and I understand that.

Yeah, that's not good.

Yeah. Knowles himself rejected the idea that his hands-on approach negatively affected the case and claimed he hadn't heard any criticism on his performance back when it was happening. More recently, he said, I don't recall that being an issue back then. What anyone wants to say 10 years later, I can't control that. It's certainly disappointing, and it's frustrating at the time to be doing everything you possibly can.

Yeah.

I think I see both sides here.

I was going to say you can see both sides for sure, and I understand the the want to micromanage.

But- Honestly.

But you got to, sometimes you just got to let people do their jobs.

I think a lot of times people who micromanage don't necessarily realize that they're micromanaging until it's brought to their attention. It's true. And then I'm sure it's a little bit of a point of embarrassment. For sure. Then you get defensive.

Yeah, I was going to say you get defensive. Yeah.

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Use code Morbid for 15% off your first purchase at lumideodorant. Com. That's Morbid at lumedeodorant. Com. But whether it was micromanagement or just a lack of evidence and leads or both, I think it was honestly an amalgamation of everything. After a month, investigators found themselves at a complete dead end with the investigation, and it was starting to look like this case might go unsolved. To make matters worse, in the time that had passed since Sheryl, Susie, and Stacey disappeared, several other cases had gone underinvestigated or just uninvestigated due to a significant number of departmental resources being directed toward this missing person's case.

Oh, no.

According to Detective Truly Applegate, which truly Truly Applegate. It literally had to be a detective.

Yeah, Truly Applegate. Like, come on.

Truly Applegate forever. They said, Officers are not doing what we're normally able to do because of the attention paid to the Streeter-McCaul case. There are simply too many felonies to follow and not enough officers to work them.

Well, shit. That's a problem, my friends.

We said earlier, I think they were very much in over the heads. I mean, they called the FBI in, but...

I know. At least they did that.

I think the lack of evidence the fact that the crime scene, if it was or wasn't, it was completely contaminated. It was. There was nothing they could have done. Yeah. In response, the Springfield police regrettably announced that they would be scaling back the number of investigators working on the disappearance so that they could free up some detectives to work on other crimes. Although most of the community was understanding, it was hard not to see the shift in priorities as a sign that the case had begun to stall and was definitely in danger of getting cold.

Oh, as soon as you When you see that thing happen, like when you see that they're shifting away from it, it's natural from on the outside, especially, to be like, Are they giving up on this? Or are they showing it? It's like the air.

It's watching the air go out of a blue.

Exactly.

By the onset of fall, the investigation had pretty much come to a virtual standstill. And though very much still being said an active case, many of the resources and hours dedicated to it had been redirected to more urgent matters. In mid-September, Bart Streeter actually quit his job and left Springfield for good. He wasn't able to live in the city because it had so many awful memories.

Oh, I don't believe him.

Janice McCall expressed similar frustration. She said, I'd hate to think of doing this another hundred days. But that is exactly what happened. And then some and then some.

I can't imagine.

As the days turned to months, detectives continued to follow leads from the public, including searching a farm in a neighboring county where some evidence was collected, but nothing that moved the case in any direction. Then, in late 1995, detectives revisited one of their earlier suspects, Robert Craig Cox, who had been arrested in Texas after robbing a tanning salon and holding a 12-year-old girl at gunpoint. Oh, fuck you, Robert. Oh, just you, mother. Are you Are you kidding me? On a list of suspects assembled by law enforcement, there was literally no better suspect than Robert Cox.

Oh, shit.

Remember, the list of suspects is a little shaky.

It's not great. Yeah.

He's a good one. On New Year's weekend, 1979, 19-year-old Sharon Zellers disappeared after finishing her shift at Walt Disney World in Florida. Oh, goodness. A few days later, her car was discovered abandoned in a nearby Orange Grove. The next day, investigators found her body in a nearby sewage station. At the same time, an ambulance was called to a motel adjacent to the sewage station for Robert Cox, who was on vacation in Orlando with his parents. Part of his tongue had been bitten off and needed to be surgically repaired, and he refused to say how it happened.

What the fuck?

Part of his tongue had been bitten off and needed to be surgically repaired, and he wouldn't tell anyone why.

Okay.

Yup.

Yeah, that's probably fine.

Totally. Many years later, in 1986, Cox was arrested pleaded guilty to kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon.

Oh, you don't say.

In an unrelated matter in California, when he abducted a young woman and put a knife to her throat.

I'm sorry. Are we seeing a pattern?

We sure are, because that same year, he also attempted to abduct a female soldier who he was serving alongside in the army. Jesus. He wanted to take her to a remote location, but she ended up escaping. So it was while he was serving his sentence on the abduction in California that authorities in Orlando found evidence that connected him to the Zeller's murder in Orlando. In 1988, he was returned to Florida to stand trial where he was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to death.

Whoa.

The conviction was appealed to the State Supreme Court of Florida. Why? The justices found that there was insufficient evidence to justify his conviction, which was ultimately reversed by the court, and Cox returned to California to serve out the rest of his sentence on the earlier charge. Holy shit. So he was cleared of the first-degree murder, but he still had to serve time for, you know, abducting a young woman. Yeah. In 1992, he was paroled and left California to live with his parents, where you might ask. Springfield. Springfield. A few weeks after Sheryl, Stacy, and Susie went missing, Sharon Zeller's brother, Steve, read about the case in the paper and actually called investigators in Springfield to tell them about Cox's criminal history. Oh, shit. The Zeller's family had been keeping tabs on him since his release. Good for them. And as soon as they the details of the case, they immediately felt he could be a suspect. Guys, listen to them. Steve Zeller said they didn't even know he was serving parole there. Jesus. But they appreciated the tip and started looking into Cox as a possible suspect. After they got that tip, they interviewed him, who claimed that at the time of the abduction, he had been at home with his girlfriend.

And later that morning, the two of them went to church together.

I literally don't believe you.

You shouldn't. Yeah. With other leads and suspects to chase down, detectives confirmed his alibi with his mother and his girlfriend.

Oh, with his mom and girlfriend? Yeah. That should do it. The two closest people. Very reliable. Yeah.

And they moved on to other priorities. I'm also like this dangerous guy. Yeah.

You're like, Oh, you probably were at church. Yeah.

And also his girlfriend, she's probably not scared of him. No. Cool, cool, cool. Totally. So they moved on to other priorities. However, his alibi notwithstanding, Robert Cox had always been the best suspect on the list and easily the most likely person to have committed the abduction. Sergeant Dave Smith a reporter in 1996, the year of my birth. We didn't dig deep enough. We didn't feel we needed to dig deeper.

Do you regret that?

Those feelings changed later when Cox was convicted of an armed robbery in Texas and sentenced to life in prison. Jesus. In the year since the abduction, several key members of the investigation team had been replaced by new detectives, and they hoped now that he had nothing to lose, Robert Cox might be willing to share whatever information he had on the Springfield III abduction. On January 1996, two Springfield detectives went to Texas and spent three hours interviewing Cox in prison. But according to Captain Darryl Crick, Cox, had nothing earth-shattering to say about the case. But investigators in Springfield still were not ready to cross him off their suspect list. A Texas law enforcement official said he knows they don't have anything new on him, and he's remorseful for some acts he's committed in the past, so there was still a chance that he might divulge some information. Now, despite being remorseful about his past of heinous crimes, he seemed to delight in the attention from these Missouri detectives.

Yeah, so I don't think he's very remorseful.

No, I don't think so either. He maintained that he had nothing to do with the missing women in Springfield yet, told police enough for them to think he knew something, but not enough to incriminate himself. Guys. Yeah. For instance, in one of the many interviews they conducted with him, he told detectives that the three women were dead and were, buried near Springfield. But when they asked follow-up questions, he just smiled and refused to say anything else.

Oh, come on. He's either fucking with you completely or he's your guy. So there's- There's nothing in between.

There's literally no in between there. It's one of those two things. Their suspicions of his involvement grew considerably when, while giving testimony before a grand jury, his former girlfriend admitted that she had lied to the police when she gave him his alibi for the morning of June 7, 1992.

I'm sorry, Then what was he doing?

Nobody knows.

If somebody had to lie for him for that alibi, ding, ding, ding.

To me, that's like, boom. Oh, 100 %. Investigators continue to remain interested in him as a suspect, and they checked the places he was known to have worked at the time. But without any solid evidence against him, they couldn't move forward in any official capacity or even name him publicly at the time. The families of the victims, on the other hand, were pretty well convinced that Cox was responsible for the disappearance of their loved ones. Sheryl Levet's father, Jim Williams, was certain that Cox was responsible for his daughter's disappearance, but he died in 1997, having never seen the case solved.

Oh, that always kills me.

Cliff Williams, Sheryl's uncle, said, He told me, I'm sure that's the guy. I just don't know if they'll be able to prove it. How sad is that?

That breaks my heart.

For his part, Robert Cox has always maintained his innocence, at least publicly. In 1996, he wrote a letter to the Springfield newsletter insisting he had nothing to do with the case and claimed that he, too, was a victim of the story. Shut up. You're not a victim in any capacity. He wrote, I told them that I wanted closure, too. I'm tired of the harassment I've received because of my association to this case. Even in his letter, he couldn't help but toy with the investigators, though. He added, Then I told Sergeant Ralph, if I could tell him where the bodies were, then he could come after me with an indictment and seek the death penalty. He went on to tell a reporter he could tell the press where the bodies were located, but the journalist would give him up to the police and he'd get the death penalty, so he wasn't willing to. So he's like, I know where they're buried, and I could tell you, but I'm not going to because I don't want to get the death penalty.

But I'm such a victim of this. I'm such a victim. And I'm sick of everybody harassing me. Yeah.

Shut up. And that's the thing that does lead me to believe that he absolutely is the strongest suspect because I'm not so sure that his Florida case there should have been overturned.

I'm not so sure And he was able to win that because he was trying to avoid the death penalty.

So he's afraid of dying. Of course.

Which. There you go.

That's what I think. Now, interviews and informal communication between Robert Cox, investigators in Springfield, and journalists continued through the rest of the 1990s, but nothing concrete ever came out of their correspondence.

Come on, everybody.

He just wouldn't give them anything. In 2002, detectives in Springfield reached out to him again in a letter requesting an interview, but he denied.

So shitty. This is It's so frustrating because I'm like, I... Come on.

It gives you a strong feeling. I don't want to say he 100% did it because there's definitely not enough evidence to be 100%, but he's a strong suspect. But you want to talk to him more. But he's a strong suspect. And I'm like, If you know where the bodies are, just say. Yeah, just say it. There's no evidence tying you to them. Exactly. Other than the fact that you know where they're buried.

But you could just be like, I don't know. No, I knew that.

I just heard.

I just knew.

I mean, don't make anything up.

But come on.

You're not going to get the death penalty for saying where the bodies are.

And you know that someone can crack him. Absolutely. There's some investigator out there. There's some interrogator out there that could do it. It's like- This is a guy from the '90s. You can crack him.

Exactly. And it's like you say, a cold case is never cold. It's never cold. Don't leave it. I really want this case to crack open. Oh, me too. I want it so bad. So over the years, the Springfield police have gotten still, they still get countless tips from the public about the disappearance of the Springfield Three, as they're known. But no trace of any of the three women has ever been found, and no one has come forward with new information about the case. That's been helpful. Many family members of the missing women remain in belief that Robert Cox had something to do with their disappearance.

Interesting.

Cheryl's sister, Deborah, said 2022. He doesn't deny it. It's just question mark after question mark.

That's infuriating.

Yeah, I would lose my mind. Cox, meanwhile, has been quiet on the subject of the Springfield III and continues to serve his sentence in a Texas prison. While the The case may have gone cold decades ago, their city has not forgotten about Sheryl, Susie, or Stacey. Like I said earlier, many of those original missing flyers can still be seen in restaurants and storefronts all around Springfield, and others have been replaced with newer versions that show aged versions of the women. Wow. Yeah. And nearly every year, a large group gets together and holds a visual to raise awareness and keep the women in their collective memories.

Good for them.

Now, like we said, as of today, the case has been labeled a cold case by the Springfield Police Department. But the reward for information leading to an arrest and prosecution of the person responsible has risen now to $42,000. Anyone with information about the disoherence is encouraged to contact the Springfield Police at 417-864-1810, or place an anonymous call to Crime Stoppers at 417-869-8477. And tips and information can also So be submitted online at p3tips. Com. And that's capital P, the number 3tips. Com.

Wow.

But I just really want this case to be solved because you think of their family and their friends just sitting around wondering what the fuck happened. Where did they go? And they don't have anywhere to go to visit them.

They have no closure on anything. All they have is their own imagination to come up with what could have happened here. Which is way worse. I'm sorry, These these women didn't disappear on their own. No. Something happened here. No.

There's no way. There's no way.

And I just want somebody to talk to Robert Cox again.

They need to send a spicy detective in there.

That's exactly what they need to do.

I'm not saying for him to elicit a confession out of anything wrong, but just send somebody in there that is intimidating.

You nailed it when you said, send a spicy detective.

A spicy detective.

A spicy detective who plays by the goddamn rules, but he skirts that line and is good at it. That's what you need.

Or send good cop, bad cop, that shit. Send somebody in there that makes him think, Yeah, keep talking, man. I'm your homie. I'm your friend.

Exactly. You got to get some good copy. Play the game. You need to get some mind hunter style teams in there. Yes. You got to get some attention forward in there.

Yeah.

You just got to.

Because realistically, this case is a little over 30 years old. It can be solved. It can. It can be solved.

We've seen shit solved way older than that.

The fucking Somerton Man was identifying A couple of years ago.

Yeah, come on. The boy in the box was identified.

The lady in the dunes.

The lady in the dunes. It can happen. It can happen.

I just want these families and these friends of these victims, these are three separate people who all had people that loved them. You just want them to have some closure.

You really do. And you feel like it's there. It's somewhere.

It's somewhere.

Oh, it makes you so mad.

Maybe even as frustrating as it is, maybe even a deathbed confession. And just say where the bodies are. So they can have somewhere to go visit their family. Yeah, exactly. But yes, that is the case of the Springfield 3. If anybody listening knows anything, saw anything.

They're still taking tips.

They're still taking tips. You know who to call, you know where to submit them. And in the meantime, we hope you keep listening.

And we hope you Keep it weird.

But not so weird that you drink carbonated sparkling water because it is old and disgusting.

And you will be old and disgusting if you do it.

That's how I feel.

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