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Buried in the Backyard S06E14 Episode 14 Engsub
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00:18There's large swaths of woods behind the truck stop.
00:26The body was out in the open. In the wild animals started to devour the body in various different
00:34ways. We had an unidentified victim. The body was decomposed. No one saw anything strange
00:46out there. We had no idea who the murderer was. This is the crossroads of Central Florida
00:54where everything comes together. That truck stop is a very busy place. Every minute that
01:01ticks by that you're not solving the case and your victim's still a Jane Doe, the murderer
01:05could be 2,000 miles away. We were able to recreate what our person would have looked
01:12like. That was tremendous because the true investigation to who did it starts when you
01:18know who the victim is. It's weird to think that someone that you
01:23were so close with at one point in your life, that they're just missing.
01:35I think he felt emboldened. I think that he thought he was smarter than us. Both phones
01:41were pinging on the same cell phone tower. He was murdered execution style. I don't care
01:48if I'm staying up for 100 hours at a time. I'm going to find out who did this.
02:16Wildwood, Florida is a main hub of railroad industry.
02:22It's a small town community. Stair Road 44 runs width of the state. And then you have
02:33the Florida Turnpike and I-75 all converge in the center of Wildwood. There's a lot of
02:48truck stops. It tends to be very transient. And there are a lot of homeless people. They create a lot
02:58of temporary camping locations.
03:04The truck stop behind the adult store. There's a path into the woods. It had been an extremely warm April.
03:18We'd had so much rain. It was wet and muddy.
03:27On April 22nd, 2013, we got a call that some kids were back there four-wheeling.
03:3915 yards off the little trail. There was a body covered by mud. And they called the police.
03:55The kids took us pretty deep back in the woods, about a half mile back off the main road, off
04:03of State Road 44.
04:06It's tight. And it's very, a lot of ruts, undulations, water, mud. The body was near a small patch of
04:16water. If there's water, there's gators. The body may be drugged there.
04:25I mean, you have no idea how that body got there.
04:32The person was wearing what appeared to be a pair of baggy jogging pants, a blouse, and some tennis shoes.
04:40There was no signs of any bags or belongings. And there was no wallet.
04:48At the scene, when we went through it, there was nothing identifiable other than clothing and the glasses.
04:58So we had nothing that said, this is who this person is. The body was not fully intact.
05:06There was a lot of bones scattered about the scene. And the skull was separated from the body.
05:18There was a clump of dark brown hair that was pretty long. And near that was a scrunchie that would
05:24normally be associated with putting out women's hair.
05:32There are alligators, coyotes, not to mention insects.
05:38Given what we saw, we believed some animal activity had taken place.
05:48The medical examiner's office responds and they bring out one of their own investigators.
05:53We were able to find the pieces of the skull and put them back together again.
06:00Actually, at the scene, you could see where there were three distinct bullet holes in the back of the victim's
06:07head.
06:12It was ruled a homicide.
06:15But we did not see any shell casings or a firearm.
06:21The body was transported to the medical examiner's office where an autopsy was conducted.
06:28The autopsy did confirm that the victim was a white female, 50 to 70 years of age, over 200 pounds.
06:38There was no teeth, no DNA, no way to identify the body.
06:43When they examined the body, inside one of the folds that was skinned, they were able to see the word
06:50Jane in a tattoo.
06:53The problem is, you don't know, is Jane a daughter's name? Is Jane the victim's name? We just didn't know.
07:00Without identifying who it is, we can't determine what she was doing, who she was hanging around, who had motive.
07:09The body was found at I-75 in the turnpike.
07:12This person could be from Connecticut and was driving through and had no intentions of being here and was killed.
07:18And the killer went off to Wyoming.
07:23At this phase of the investigation, given the evidence that we have on a scale from 1 to 10, 10
07:28being most difficult, this is a 9.999.
07:34This woman was brutally murdered, who killed her.
07:38And how did she end up there?
07:41Buried in the woods.
07:57For Chaarlette is not a huge town, but it's on the water.
08:04Life was very free there.
08:06It was like you were always on vacation.
08:12we were walking distance to where the water was
08:18when i was about 10 years old my family moved in our apartment
08:23as soon as we got there this lady ran downstairs and introduced herself it was jane weaver
08:31at first we were like who's this lady and why is she running downstairs but after we got to know
08:37jane we realized she was like that with everybody at the time she was married to butch they lived in
08:47the apartment above us there was a balcony sometimes we would sit there and she would hang out with us
08:54outside she had a happy life and she enjoyed every minute with her husband butch jane was very
09:06trusting and caring she was always eager to help everybody loved jane
09:22then one day butch had passed away
09:29jane took the death of butch really hard she wanted to make sure that she wasn't alone
09:37so she wanted to have more contact with everybody and she would call she texted
09:45it was really rough for her
09:47a few years after butch died
09:59jane was in contact with an old high school friend on facebook ralph penrod
10:07who i think had a crush on her when she was younger jane decided she was going to move to
10:14kentucky
10:14to be with ralph and jane felt like that was going to be a fresh start for her
10:21after jane moved she always kept in contact the same way that she had always kept in contact before
10:27she texted all the time she called all the time
10:35but as the days went on we hadn't heard from jane
10:41then on april 4th 2013 one of our mutual friends had called me she told me that she
10:47couldn't get in contact with jane
10:51we contacted ralph penrod and asked him if he knew where jane was
10:58ralph told us that there was a death in his family
11:02and he had left jane in kentucky to be with family and that he didn't know where she was
11:11he was really concerned that we couldn't get in contact with jane
11:14that was alarming there is no way that jane wasn't going to contact any of us
11:24april 4th 2013 was the last time anybody spoke to jane
11:29our mutual friend told me that jane had sent a text message saying that she arrived in florida
11:34but she wasn't coming down to port charlotte
11:39there was no punctuation jane had a distinctive way of text messaging
11:45she wrote like she spoke it wasn't written the way that jane wrote
11:51i knew that text message wasn't from jane that text message was from somebody else
11:57that's what i knew in my heart that something had happened jane was somewhere and she needed help
12:02we needed to find her
12:08running the man's name through databases we find out that he's a registered sex offender
12:14we got on a plane and flew to las vegas
12:16we now have a legitimate suspect in this homicide
12:35in this case we had an unidentified victim
12:40that was killed in wildwood here in florida shot three times and buried in the woods
12:54we were concentrating on trying to get the victim identified we had collected bugs at the scene
13:01and sent him off to a forensic entomologist who gave me basically a six day window
13:08in april 2013 as far as when the crime occurred there was no way to identify the body
13:16i had a blank skull and i needed a reconstruction
13:21our medical examiner's office granted permission for dr kimberly the forensic pathologist who does
13:28facial reconstructions to take custody of the body which was very critical because that was really
13:37the only means to get the victim identified i had pulled missing person reports from around the united
13:43states but there was about 2 000 missing persons matching the basic description of our unidentified victim
13:52the investigators began going business to business pulling video talking to people asking if they
13:58heard or saw anything strange within the time window because it was close to the interstate
14:04i felt that it was probably somebody not local now that committed the crime we know that she likely
14:11died in april 2013 we also went back through our firs which are field interview reports and we found
14:17records on different homeless people that had been in the area that law enforcement had come in contact
14:22with within the april time frame that we're talking about to potentially identify a suspect in this homicide
14:28we then come upon a name edward antus
14:35this particular person had a violent history and we learned he was in the woods at the time that this
14:41was with another female it was believes that that woman at the time was wearing the same clothing
14:47and in same physical description as our victim
14:52to us that was a hot lead had to be followed up immediately
14:56running the man's name through databases we find out that he is a registered sex offender
15:02and we searched trying to locate him at homeless camps
15:08but we couldn't find edward antus he had disappeared
15:15however that same day we did find that mr antus had a food stamp card and that card had been
15:22recently used in las vegas we thought he was running we got on a plane and flew to las vegas
15:32we now have something legitimate a potential suspect in this homicide we just got to go out there and find
15:41him
15:49based on the information we had we start going to some of these different locations where we
15:53believed that mr antus had been within las vegas metropolitan police department we were able to
16:00locate mr antus at a local bus stop we did interview edward antus extensively
16:09he did live in the woods the same woods where the victim was murdered
16:14he was with a woman in las vegas
16:19she hadn't been with him that long
16:21once we established antus had a violent history she wanted to go back home
16:29ultimately we learned that the woman that he was with was the same woman that had been in the woods
16:34with him in sumter county florida and so she was not our unidentified victim from the homicide
16:43mr antus was not a suspect anymore but we still have to get this victim identified and find a suspect
16:51to
16:51solve this case
16:58we're still waiting for the facial reconstruction
17:02and so we were doing everything we could to move the investigation forward
17:08we put out bolos be on the lookout for and we put out information and details to many agencies
17:15especially in florida like how our unidentified victim was killed near a truck stop area one of
17:21the theories was there might have been a truck driver involved just because of where their body was
17:26located and so every minute it takes by that you're not solving the case and your victim's still a
17:34jane doe the murderer could be 2 000 miles away
17:38i got a phone call from a north florida law enforcement agency they had a murder investigation
17:45a female left on the side of the road a semi truck driver was the suspect in the case
17:49my victim was killed near a truck stop area an area frequented by truckers so the question was is this
17:56person my killer
18:14we believe that the person suspected for the murder of our unidentified victim was a truck driver
18:22because my victim was killed near a truck stop
18:28i got a phone call from a north florida law enforcement agency
18:32they had a murder that they believed that a semi truck driver was involved
18:43i immediately drove to north florida met with the investigators and worked with them over the next
18:5024 hours or so hoping that maybe this was going to be a lead in my case
18:58we staked out a couple places waiting for the truck driver the person suspected who might be involved
19:05in this murder investigation to return so the other agency in north florida could serve their search
19:11warrant on them finally we found what we were looking for a semi truck driver i was present when that
19:20agency conducted a search warrant unfortunately there was absolutely no ties through cell phone records or
19:29anything found inside that vehicle back to my homicide
19:34and ultimately that truck driver was not our murderer
19:39it was deflating because we had to go back to square one back to the drawing board
19:53the last time jane weaver had been seen was on march 1st 2013 when she had driven from florida to
20:01kentucky
20:02to stay with her high school friend ralph henrod
20:08jane weaver's friends were especially concerned because on april 4th all communication
20:14from her had stopped and there was no trace of her no word from her
20:20myself and my friends spent countless hours on the phone checking hospitals looking for any car
20:27accidents that might have happened between kentucky and florida we tried to contact anybody
20:31in kentucky that knew where jane might have been there was no leaf left unturned
20:44it's weird to think that someone that you were so close with at one point in your life
20:52that they're just missing it felt unreal
21:05we tried to contact the police and let them know that we needed jane entered as a missing person
21:12and they wouldn't take us seriously because we were in florida i think that they thought that she was
21:21just an adult and she could do whatever she wanted to do a few months went by
21:27we kept in contact with greensburg police in kentucky and eventually we got them to enter jane as a missing
21:35person
21:44june the 10th i was assigned jane's missing persons case
21:49so we wanted to run jane through a national database to see if there have been reports that could help
21:55us
21:55locate this missing woman
22:01my initial thoughts was that jane and her friend ralph had maybe had a fallen out or something
22:07and that she had just went somewhere else investigators learned that jane had moved in with ralph in march
22:15possibly searching for a romantic relationship with him so we wanted to look at the house and see if
22:23there's any evidence that anything had happened there the house was vacant because ralph and left
22:29green county and moved to florida
22:34there wasn't any evidence that any foul play had happened so my belief at that time was that she had
22:41left greensburg kentucky
22:49looking for a missing person you want to talk to their friends their family who they live with
22:53we were able to find ralph and florida and talked with him on the phone were you living in greensburg
23:00at
23:00the time and uh when did jane come up to kentucky on the conversation with ralph he stated that he
23:10went to vanceburg for his mother's funeral which is up next to ohio and when he came back jane was
23:17gone
23:17that jane had left so you got home about the the end of march and she was gone yes jane
23:34tried to
23:34contact you any since march all right and i'll be looking into all that if i have any more questions
23:44i'll just give you a call we knew that his mother had died so that didn't really raise suspicions
23:53but in missing persons i don't necessarily have suspects but we continued to search for jane
24:09talking with her friends we learned that jane calls on a weekly basis
24:15so i found out that her phone number came back to metro pcs
24:22we contacted them we couldn't get a search warrant for her phone information because there wasn't any
24:28evidence that any foul play had happened to jane it's not illegal for a person not to call their friends
24:35we learned the phone was shut off may the 5th a month after her last text messages
24:43that is concerning but not completely alarming because maybe jane didn't pay the bill and then
24:50just got a different phone we learned that she was receiving a social security pension from her late
24:57husband and we tried to determine where jane's social security benefits were going i thought that
25:04if she went somewhere else she would have a forwarding address she did not so i did find that concerning
25:14one of jane's friends had told us about jane opening a bank account i was able to go to the
25:19bank and
25:19giving them a description of jane and the tellers were able to remember and say yes that woman was in
25:25here and we haven't seen her since then of course they couldn't give me her banking information without
25:32a warrant so we were not able to use that information that could help us locate her or find her
25:38a good job at work and i had another problem that she needed to do that in the past indian
25:41we've been trying to locate this missing woman for months during the summer there wasn't a whole
25:47lot of information that we were getting but i tried to do the job that i would want somebody to
25:52do for my family i never stopped looking for jane
26:05at this point in our homicide investigation we have a dead body in wildwood florida we have
26:11indicators that some violence has taken place but we didn't know who the victim was yet at
26:17that point the homicide investigation we knew we had a white female 50 to 70 years of age and any
26:23hot leaves that we had those had been exhausted the big break in the case came when we got the
26:31final rendition from dr. Kimberly dr. Kimberly does facial reconstructions she was able to utilize their
26:41tools to create 3d composites based on the skull her rendering was spot-on we now have a picture of
26:52who
26:52our victim is financial records can absolutely give you a blueprint for motive Jane was an easy target
27:03you had to figure out a way to take her money to get rid of Jane
27:25somebody's loved one died alone in the woods
27:32but now that we had a great composite that was part of investigative work we decided to go on a
27:38press
27:39junket where we talked about our victim what we knew and see if we can generate some leads
27:47so of course all the leads are coming in unfortunately as you deal with this for months the leads didn't
27:55turn out to be anything finally after six months we received a call
28:07in November 2013 I was at work and I had some downtime and I pulled up the doe network which
28:16is a website
28:16where I can find unidentified people I was scrolling through unidentified people in Kentucky and Florida
28:27I clicked on one of the numbers and I opened it up and it was gut-wrenching I knew as
28:38soon as I saw that
28:39picture that that was Jane it was one of the saddest moments of my life I didn't want to believe
28:48what I saw
28:52I went and called Sumter County and I told them that person was not unidentified she had a name and
29:00her
29:00name was Martha Jane Weber
29:17I talked to Jamie Gonzalez she'd sent me a picture it was like I was looking at a mirror image
29:26of the
29:27composite that dr. Kimberly had done her hair was up and you could see on her shoulder that Jane tattoo
29:36plain as day there is 100% no doubt that was my victim there are two investigations going on we
29:48have a
29:49homicide we didn't know who the person was Greensburg is investigating a missing persons report who they do
29:54know is missing it wasn't until we were able to get her identified call up there and that the two
30:00investigations are forced together I mean that was huge the true investigation to who did it starts
30:09when you know who the victim is once we talked to detective Norris and the positive identification was
30:17made and Jane has been found the missing persons case is closed but the homicide investigation in Florida
30:25has been ramped up detective Norris was able to procure search warrants access phone records social
30:36security monies bank records when we received the financial records what we found was that Jane was
30:49collecting pensions and she was living day to day just like every other regular American and she had
30:55this source of income that was sustaining her the pension fund check that Jane got from her late
31:02husband was actually a federal pension there had been multiple transactions where the funds had been
31:09diverted from one account to another to another after Jane's death her pension check was going in a bank
31:19account of Ralph Penrod for months I basically told detective Norris that after
31:31the death of her husband butch Jane moved to Greensburg Kentucky with Ralph Penrod
31:44while she was in Greensburg with this relationship I believe Ralph was using that relationship in order to
31:52get her to give him the finances and that's what she did in moving all these finances over to him
32:00and then suddenly she was gone at that time obviously Ralph Harold Penrod is suspect number one
32:28in November 2013 Kentucky State Police identified the missing woman Jane Weber as the murder victim in Florida
32:39as detectives dig deeper into Jane's financial records police realized that Ralph Penrod took advantage of Jane for her pension
32:48checks
32:49he's not just a friend he's the prime suspect
32:56the finances were crucially important because by investigating those financial records we were able to get the audio from the
33:03conversations from the banking institutions
33:05which led us to believe what their relationship was
33:11the day that Jane arrived in Kentucky she transferred her pension check direct deposit from her bank account to Ralph's
33:23account in Greensburg Kentucky
33:28you could actually hear Ralph in the background helping her with the account number
33:36I moved I don't live in Point Charlotte no one and I got a new bank
33:40did you direct deposit that what is the name of the bank that we're switching to
33:44what's the name of the bank hold on there he's gonna give him
33:48community trust bank everything's been taken care of going forward
33:52all right thank you very much now congrats
33:55however there was another recording
33:58Jane
33:59and she talks about how her roommate Ralph Penrod is taking her money
34:04is taking her money
34:07how may help you
34:08yeah this is more good weather
34:10I just found out my friend is using me so I want to change it back to the port bank
34:15a short time later there's a third recording Jane calls the pension and asks them to change the direct deposit
34:27back to Ralph Harold Penrod's account
34:40financial records can absolutely give you a blueprint for motive
34:44why did this person kill this person
34:49but it doesn't mean we were able to solve the crime
34:52or how did Jane Weaver end up in Wildwood Florida buried in the woods
35:03I was able to obtain Jane's phone records and I also got phone records for Ralph Harold Penrod
35:09Jane and Ralph's phone had traveled from Kentucky to Florida
35:17in April 2013 both phones were pinging on the same cell phone tower
35:22at State Road 44 and I-75 for a considerable amount of time
35:27the same location where the body was found
35:31and then Jane's phone went off and Ralph's phone traveled to Ralph's house into Varys Florida
35:42looking at the phone records knowing that Jane's phone went off
35:47there was no doubt in my mind that Jane had been murdered at that moment in time
35:57at this point I applied for an arrest warrant charging Ralph with murder
36:03of course Ralph didn't know that
36:08I talked to Ralph and asked him if he would agree to an interview with me and he said absolutely
36:16when you're interviewing people you hope that you're going to lock them into a story of lies or a house
36:21of cards
36:22that you could crumble down the road
36:25you know the Kentucky State Police I guess they've been looking into Jane being missing now for months and months
36:30and months
36:30they've talked to you on the phone
36:31yeah I was talking to some police man I don't
36:35sitting in that interview room I think that Ralph thought he was smarter than us
36:39he had been in contact with Trooper Dinkin
36:41I think he felt he had gotten away with it I mean I think he felt emboldened
36:45you said you never gave me any money right you guys didn't share share money
36:49no I no
36:51how'd she get money do you know
36:54yeah some I don't know
36:56okay
36:57of course I knew that Ralph was still receiving her pension fund check
37:06how did Jane's check ended up getting into your bank account
37:14I don't know
37:16you don't know
37:19he didn't really have an answer for that
37:21well that's what makes it really curious
37:23that's what makes it really strange
37:24that her check ends up in her check that she gets monthly
37:27ends up in your bank account
37:29and you're the sole account holder on it Ralph
37:30now I got a headache
37:32you got a headache?
37:34we're asking you how her check
37:37how Jane's monthly check gets deposited in her account
37:40at community trust bank
37:42well she asked me to
37:44and she took
37:46she owed me
37:4920 nines out
37:50I give her $29,000
37:52Jane?
37:52what would you $29,000 for?
37:54I told Ralph that that whole thing
37:56didn't make any sense
37:57and that where did he get the cash from
37:59to give Jane $29,000 in cash
38:03no I went to a home
38:04I mean
38:05damn I've been up here
38:08long enough
38:08my back hurt
38:09I told you
38:10what I knew then was
38:12Ralph's freedom
38:13was about to come to an end
38:15sir you want to stand up for me?
38:18you gonna turn around
38:19put your hands behind your back
38:20you have a warrant
38:21your arrest for murder?
38:22murder?
38:23for murder
38:23it's for the murder of
38:25Jane Weaver
38:27what you got there?
38:30I never been charged with murder before
38:32here
38:50in November of 2013 we were able to bring murder charges against Ralph Penrod for the murder of Jane Weaver
39:05after he had left Greensboro Kentucky we believe Ralph drove Jane back to Florida
39:11and when he pulled off the interstate behind the truck stop Ralph Penrod lured her to a location that was
39:19far enough back
39:28and then Jane was shot three times
39:34was brutally murdered and buried in the woods
39:40Ralph got his money
39:41Ralph got his money
39:42left her there
39:43and just continued living his life
39:52when you get to the trial the biggest challenge that the prosecution had to face is we didn't have any
39:57physical evidence
40:00and also you're talking about multiple jurisdictions and bringing them all together and making sure that the information got across
40:06to the jury
40:08the prosecution believed Ralph was a manipulator Jane was a vulnerable person
40:15an easy target to take advantage of
40:19he fostered that relationship in order to ultimately take her money sign over all our accounts
40:25and when he got to a point where he thought his footing was where it needed to be
40:31he had to figure out a way to get rid of Jane
40:36there was no DNA evidence
40:38there wasn't a smoking gun
40:39I didn't even have the gun
40:42when I had a lot of circumstantial evidence
40:46Ralph Penrod had suddenly acquired additional monies that were certainly upping his status
40:54we had evidence that Jane was moving all these finances over from her pension fund to him
41:01both their phones were still together when they got to the location in the center of Wildwood
41:06and then Jane's phone went off
41:10there would be no reason for them to pull into those woods other than to murder Jane
41:22Ralph's defense attorney did a good job in defending him
41:27but they didn't have anything significant evidentiary wise
41:35the jury found Ralph Harold Penrod Jane Weaver
41:42getting justice for the family and Jane Weaver
41:48it breaks my heart knowing that Jane trusted this man
41:55she didn't see the bad in anybody
41:59she loved people so much and she would do anything to help anybody
42:06I feel her in my heart
42:11it's the only place that she'll
42:14still feel alive is through the memories I have of her
42:20and those memories will be with me forever
42:24it's my best podcast
42:24I still feel like maybe I'll tell you aboutonde
42:24before yes
42:24yes
42:27for
42:37yes
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