IDENTIFIED: Midtown Jane Doe

In 2003, construction workers in Hell’s Kitchen, New York, discovered a concrete tomb hidden in the basement of a run-down building. Inside were the remains of a young woman, hogtied with pantyhose and electrical cords, this gruesome scene was more than shocking—it was deeply calculated. It took more than two decades for investigators to identify her as 16-year-old Patricia McGlone, who was last seen in 1969. But despite finally giving her a name, her killer remains at large. Now, police are asking for your help to find the person responsible and bring Patricia the justice she’s been denied for far too long.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ashley Flowers?

  When you're out in nature, you learn to trust your instincts. You pay attention to the trail, your surroundings, and you stay alert to protect yourself from harm. But what if the biggest threat isn't the environment at all? On Park Predators, host Delia Diambra explores true crime cases that happen in national parks and remote wildernesses, the places we usually think of as safe and peaceful. Each episode reveals what happened and how much more there is beneath the surface. Listen to Park Predators now, wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And the story I have for you today is about a gruesome discovery in a New York City basement, one that set off an investigation weaving together threads

• 0:43Ashley Flowers?

  that you would never expect to find in a single case. A shadowy suspect, a tangled family tree filled with deception, an iconic rock club, the September 11 attacks, mob shakedowns tied to a gangster who would later find fame on The Sopranos. Like you name it, it is in this case. And at the heart of it all is a teenage girl and the decades-long mission to restore her identity. But even though she finally has her name back, justice still remains out of reach, and police need your help to find out what really happened to her. This is the story of a woman who, for more than two decades, was known only as the Midtown Jane Doe.

• 1:55Ashley Flowers?

  It's Monday afternoon, February 10, 2003, and construction workers are clearing debris from a basement of a rundown five-story building on West 46th Street in Midtown Manhattan, a neighborhood known as Hell's Kitchen. Now, this place is in pretty bad shape. And the only reason the workers are even down there is because the restaurant next door arranged to rent part of the basement just for storage. So they're doing their thing when one of them notices something weird in the corner behind this old boiler. It's this big rectangular concrete slab, like six feet wide, five feet long, taller than your standard cinder block. And it looks just all kinds of wrong. Like, it definitely doesn't belong here. And in a place like New York,

• 2:40Ashley Flowers?

  where lifers have seen it all, that is saying something. So a worker takes a sledgehammer to this thing. And instead of the solid thud that you would expect to hear when you hit concrete, there is this echoing sound that tells them it's hollow inside. And with the blow, the cement starts breaking apart, until they see brown fabric poking through. And when they pull on it, a human skull starts popping out. Now, the worker notifies the NYPD and Detective Gerard Gardner, who just started his shift and is next up in rotation to catch a case, heads straight to the scene. Now, he knows right away that this is not going to be a routine investigation. New York City has more than its fair share of homicides, don't get me wrong.

• 3:26Ashley Flowers?

  But cases involving skeletal remains are rare here. So he calls in the city medical examiner's forensic anthropologist. And when they dig through that concrete to the dirt below, they find a skeleton, like curled up in the fetal position, all wrapped up in a rust-colored carpet. This was literally a concrete coffin. Mm-hmm, and more like a tomb. I mean, there is no bottom to it, per se. Like, whoever did this might have put the body down or maybe even dug into the floor a little bit. And then what they did was they poured cement right over the top, almost as if they were building some kind of foundation. Now, at first glance, investigators don't see any obvious signs of trauma on this skeleton. They have no doubt that this is a homicide.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, someone encased in concrete kind of speaks for itself.

• 4:13Ashley Flowers?

  Yes, but theoretically, I mean, they could have died from something nonviolent, like an overdose, and then whoever was there panicked and covered it up, whatever. But that's not even a consideration here because the victim was hogtied with pantyhose and an electrical cord, which is also wrapped around this person's neck. But even though they have a huge potential clue about the cause of death, like with these things, they've still got their work cut out for them. The concrete might have helped to preserve the skeleton, but what they're dealing with is just that: bones. There is no flesh, there is no muscle, nothing. And even the bones aren't in great shape. Like, the outer surface starts, like, peeling away on them, kind of like old paint chipping off of a wall. So an ID is gonna be difficult.

• 4:58Ashley Flowers?

  However, they do find some pretty promising clues. They discover that this person had long fingernails, and the victim is wearing a tan bra. There's also a glittery fabric with red and yellow sequin that they think might come from some kind of clothing, which all hints to them that this might be a female. Now, the anthropologists can also get a pretty good sense of this person's age. The victim's wisdom teeth haven't totally come in yet, which usually happens between, like, 17 years old and 25 years old. And their collarbone isn't fully fused, meaning that this person's bones were still growing when they died. And while they don't find a purse or ID, the victim is wearing two pieces of jewelry that could be huge for identification.

• 5:42Ashley Flowers?

  So there is a 1966 Bulleva watch on their wrist, and a yellow metal signet ring on their right pinky finger with the initials P.M. lowercase c.g. Now, everything gets hauled into the lab, and a couple of days later Detective Gardner gets an update on the findings that starts painting a clearer picture. They can now confirm that this definitely is a female victim, a young woman between 15 and 21 years old, somewhere between 410 and 54. She had a narrow face, petite build, and reddish-brown hair, some of which was still attached to the skull. According to America's Most Wanted, her pointy chin and the shape of her skull and

• 6:26Ashley Flowers?

  the eye sockets led them to believe that she was likely white. Now, looking at her pelvic bone, the anthropologist thinks it's unlikely that she ever had children, although they can't be sure. But it is her teeth that really tell an interesting story, because she had expensive dental work done on her back teeth, but her front teeth were starting to rot before she died.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  It makes me wonder if she left home or was somehow like taken from family or caretakers well before she died. Like, at some point, somebody cared enough to get her that expensive dental work, but then somewhere along the line, something changed.

• 7:01Ashley Flowers?

  Right. Now, investigators theorize that she might have been one of the kids who maybe ran away to New York City chasing big dreams or something. But whatever she was looking for, I mean, obviously, she found something very different. And that idea isn't totally out of left field. So the detective who's working the case now, Ryan Glass, he told our reporter Nina that this part of Hell's Kitchen specifically, like, including this very building, which is 301 West 46th Street, was known for drugs and sex work. It's right by the Port Authority Bus Terminal, which is often the first stop for young people coming into the city. But that also makes it a magnet for predators looking for vulnerable teens. Cops even nicknamed the area "The Minnesota Strip",

• 7:45Ashley Flowers?

  because so many of the girls being trafficked there were runaways from the Midwest. And the basement that she was buried in has its own interesting history. So it was home to a speakeasy in prohibition, then a rock club in the 60s.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Okay, but at least with this watch being from 66, we know that this body's at least from like the 60s.

• 8:07Ashley Flowers?

  Oh, yeah, it's definitely not like that old.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 8:10Ashley Flowers?

  But they can tell that she has been there for a while. So her skeleton is mostly intact, but some bones were missing, like smaller ones from her like hands, feet, stuff that could have maybe been carried off by rats. And speaking of rats, when lab techs processed the scene, they find this like whole little ecosystem that developed around her remains, maggot casings, rodent bones, a nest. And there were also animal and human hairs in the carpet that she was wrapped in. And then there's like this random collection of items that they find mixed in with everything. Pieces of Sears brand feed and weed bag, scraps of rat poison wrapper, like a plastic green toy soldier, some duct tape, and a dime from 1969.

• 8:53Ashley Flowers?

  The dime is so crusty and corroded that they can barely make out the date, but they do.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Was that all buried with her, or did it just like end up with her over time?

• 9:02Ashley Flowers?

  Right, so okay, that's hard to say. Some of it was definitely in the mix with her remains. Like the Sears bag and the toy soldier and that dime were actually in the rug with her, which makes me think that maybe they were just kind of lying on whatever carpet that like she was ended up being rolled up in. Or I mean, it's also possible that she had those things on her, like who knows? But the other stuff, like the rat poison wrapper, probably that stuff came like it was more in the concrete. I mean, it's really like kind of a show down there. But all of this stuff still helps create kind of a rudimentary timeline. Like those little green army men, they became huge in the 50s when everyone got freaked out about lead poisoning from the metal ones.

• 9:42Ashley Flowers?

  But then the dime tells us that she couldn't have been killed before 1969. Then the rat poison wrapper, that brand didn't even exist until the late 70s. So taking everything into consideration, they think she was killed sometime in the 70s, maybe the 80s, but they're leaning more toward the 80s, given the history of crime in that stretch of the city. Now, even after the medical examiner, whose name is actually Dr. Happy, even after Dr. Happy checks everything out, he can't find any injuries that definitively show how this person died. But given the electrical cord around her neck, Dr. Happy is thinking that it was probably strangulation.

• 10:25Ashley Flowers?

  And while they don't know for sure if she was sexually assaulted, nothing seems to point to that, actually. Her bra was still properly in place, not like pulled down or messed with. And they also find scraps of dark fabric near her hips and legs that might be from pants or shorts, along with some buttons. So right now, they have no name, no suspects, and no motive, and they're like two decades behind. All they can do for now is try to build a profile of what kind of person could have done this.

• 10:58Ashley Flowers?

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• 11:42Ashley Flowers?

  Visit sofi.com/crimejunkie to see how much you can save. That's sofi.com/crimejunkie and start making smarter money moves with SoFi. SoFi's student loans are originated by SoFi Bank, N.A., member FDIC. Additional terms and conditions apply. NMLS 696891.

• 12:01Ashley Flowers?

  Do me a favor, put all five fingers up. Now, put one down if you have workout saved on Instagram that you haven't gone back to. Put one down if you were gonna go to a workout class this week, but there's just none that the times worked out for. Put one down if you don't like working out at home because you don't know what to do and you need someone to push you. Put two fingers down if you want to stop this game. Babe, we are the same. I don't have a lot of time, and honestly, I'm not even someone who likes working out. But Ladder actually changed that. I literally had to waddle into the studio to record this because my butt is so sore. Ladder is quick. I'm not wasting time wandering around or doing reps of something that won't matter. I'm in, I'm out. I have a coach along the way who can help me make 30 minutes with weights feel better than two hours of whatever I was doing before.

• 12:45Ashley Flowers?

  And it's $1 a day, so if price was ever stopping you before, you're officially out of excuses. Remove the guesswork with Ladder and get a real coach in your ear telling you exactly what to do for every workout. No thinking, everything planned for you. If you have an iPhone, head to ladder.fit/crimejunkie and take a quick quiz to find your perfect Ladder plan. Use my link and get a free seven-day trial with no credit card and $10 off your first month if you join.

• 13:15Ashley Flowers?

  Police believe the killer had to be someone who knew that building inside and out, probably a regular in the neighborhood. They would have needed to know their way around concrete as well, and that particular basement. And there's actually a few ways to access this basement from inside the building, plus a steel trap door that opens to a neighborhood parking lot. But they don't think that this was just some random person who wandered in. I mean, think about how much time it would take to construct something like this tomb, as we're calling it. This is a place that her killer felt comfortable in.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Well, and it's not just about burying her, right? Like, unless this basement already had concrete stored in it, they'd have to haul that down there, making multiple trips in and out, like make the concrete.

• 14:00Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, Detective Glass estimates that they would have needed at least 50 bags of concrete to basically make this thing that she's encased in.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  And what was this building in the 80s?

• 14:10Ashley Flowers?

  So it's a little hard to tell at first, but it might have just been a regular basement back then. Like, TBD, we'll kind of get there. But this building in general, like investigators at the time quickly realized that it was never a kind of place where people would stay long. Like, by the time they're canvassing in 2003, the place is practically empty. There aren't any long-term residents. Even the superintendent is fairly new, and the first floor is just an adult video store, and some of the upper floors are completely blocked off. And they do end up finding one guy who worked in the area back in the 80s, but he can't tell them anything useful about the space. So with no witnesses to work with, Detective Gardner shifts focus to the physical evidence,

• 14:54Ashley Flowers?

  starting with that Boulevard watch. He's hoping that the serial number might lead them to whoever bought it. But according to New York Post reporter Al Guart, that is a total dead end. It turns out that Boulevard just randomly assigns serial numbers for insurance, like they don't actually track the purchases at all. So they move on to what they think is actually their best chance at identifying her, that ring. So Gardner teams up with the FBI and starts searching nationwide for missing persons with PMCG in their initials. Now, based on their timeline and what they know so far, they look for people born on or after 1958, and they get 11 names back.

• 15:35Ashley Flowers?

  But after comparing things like race and age and other characteristics, they have to eliminate every single one.

• 15:44Ashley Flowers?

  So next, they dig into arrest records, checking out every woman with those initials who's been charged with a crime across the country. And they're doing this thinking that maybe she could have been involved in sex work or maybe drugs. And if that's the case, maybe she had a run-in with law enforcement. So that search gives Gardner another 500 names to chase down. But still, even with those 500 names, he gets nothing.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  You know what doesn't make sense to me about the sex worker theory, though? Like, in so many cases we've covered where the victims were sex workers, the killers just dumped them somewhere, on the side of the road, in an alley ditch. They didn't even try to hide what they've done or what they did. And like, if they did do that, like, lisk, like, they did try to hide, the victims were, like, super, super hidden, close together, or at least buried outdoors. But this guy, he went to extreme lengths to try to make sure, like, she would never be found, not even by accident.

• 16:41Ashley Flowers?

  Right. Like, to your point, there are serial killers. Even that MO is a little off. But there actually was one of the first potential suspects, at least that we know of, that they look into was someone who targeted sex workers and someone who took elaborate steps to hide their bodies, or at least make sure that, like, these bodies couldn't be tracked back to him. Now, this guy is among New York's most notorious serial killers, Joel Rifkin. Rifkin terrorized women all over the city in Long Island from the late 80s into the early 90s. And the only reason he stopped was because he got caught driving with a missing license plate, of all things, like, that he could have gotten caught for. And when he did get caught, police found a decomposing body in his pickup. Now, he ended up confessing to killing 17 women,

• 17:26Ashley Flowers?

  though he was only ever convicted technically of nine murders. Now, what we know about him is he strangled his victims, all of whom were sex workers or women struggling with addiction, and he was super calculated about disposing of their bodies. And the thing about him is he used different methods each time, which made it really hard for investigators to connect these crimes. And get this, according to Biography.com, with his second victim, he actually put her dismembered head, arms, and legs into buckets and then filled those buckets with concrete and dumped them into the East River and a Brooklyn canal. Now, only catch is that Rifkin was known for leaving bodies outside,

• 18:10Ashley Flowers?

  in water, in woods, near highways. Sometimes he put them in oil drums, but as far as we know, he never stashed anyone away indoors. And I'm not exactly sure how or if they ruled him out back then. I know Detective Glass interviewed him years later, after he inherited the case. But in 2003, even though they're interested in him, they don't seem to really focus on him. Gardner tells Alguart that there's time. Rifkin isn't going anywhere, like he's serving over 200 years in prison.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, but anything could happen. Like, what if he dies? I guess, in my opinion, why wait?

• 18:46Ashley Flowers?

  Well, at the time, I think they were wanting to know more about their victim, who the press is calling Midtown Jane Doe. I think they want to figure that part out before going to him. And we've talked about this before, right? Like, you try and get, like, all your ducks in a row, so you know when someone's lying, you have all the facts. Like, they might get only one shot at those interviews, and without solid information about who she is, they would be at a huge disadvantage. I mean, truthfully, they still don't even know when she was killed. But according to America's Most Wanted, they do catch a break with that when they send crime scene soil samples to the lab. Mixed in with some dirt, they find a torn-up clothing label. And after techs, like, clean it up and look at it under a microscope, they can see seals showing that it was made

• 19:31Ashley Flowers?

  by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. So Detective Gardner reaches out to them, hoping that they can date this label. And when he gives them the numbers and the letters and all the things on the seal, they tell him that it could not have been made before December of 1987. So like, late 80s or even the early 90s. And that's making sense to investigators. I mean, at the time, like, 80s, 90s, New York was in the grip of a drug epidemic that was driving violence to levels that they'd never seen before. We're talking like 1,900-plus homicides a year.

• 20:06Ashley Flowers?

  Except, like it's feeling great. Except that timeline might not be accurate. It takes a while, but they eventually end up learning that the estimate was wrong. The clothing label, the dates that they were given were completely off. Manufacturing records show that it could have been made as early as the 60s. So we're back there.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  That adds almost, what, three more decades to the estimated timeframe of her death?

• 20:33Ashley Flowers?

  Yes, but for some reason, even though they're putting the label at the 60s, police still seem pretty set on the idea that this victim was killed in the 80s. I don't know why, but like that's their thinking at the time. So what they do is they have an artist create a reconstruction of her face using detailed measurements from her skull. They get her featured on America's Most Wanted, which is like prime back then. But no one recognizes her. Now they managed to determine that the human hairs in the carpet belong to a blonde male, probably a white guy, but they can't say who that guy is.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  Was there like a lot of hair?

• 21:11Ashley Flowers?

  Detective Glass described it as like a pinch, like about what you would clean out of a hairbrush. But they don't know, I mean, if it's the killers or if it was just like mixed up with everything else. Like it's not going to be like the nail in the coffin for someone, right? Like that's not going to be the clincher. So fast forward a little bit, over the years, the Emmys office checks Midtown Jane Doe against various missing people. And at least one possibility does gain some traction. In August 2011, a woman named Maureen is online when she comes across the sketch of Midtown Jane Doe. And as she later tells Long Island Press reporter Jacqueline Galucci, it stops her in her tracks because she thinks it looks just like her missing sister Judy O'Donnell,

• 21:55Ashley Flowers?

  who vanished in 1980 while pursuing her dreams of becoming an actress and a singer in New York City. And it's not just her looks that strike Maureen as similar. She knew that Judy had been living on the streets in Hell's Kitchen. She knew that she'd been arrested for sex work, which remember is the going theory about Midtown Jane Doe. Plus, they both had expensive dental work that just seemed to stop, like their lives took a sharp turn.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  But, but what about the ring? Judy O'Donnell doesn't match the initials.

• 22:26Ashley Flowers?

  Not hers, but those are Judy's grandmother's exact initials. And Maureen knows that Judy and their grandma were super close and like. There's nobody in her family that remembers a ring like that, but Maureen thinks that it would be like probable that Judy might have like found it somewhere and kept it to honor their grandmother. Like, who knows? So that October, a forensic specialist compare Judy's dental records to Jane Doe's. But they can't say if it's a match, one way or another. And after being encased in concrete for God knows how long by this point, her bones are so degraded that getting a viable DNA profile is like trying to get blood from a stone.

• 23:07Ashley Flowers?

  So all told, they submit 33 different samples for analysis. But it's not until 2015 that they're able to get any sort of profile from Midtown Jane Doe. And it's not until the following year that they can confirm that Jane Doe is not Judy O'Donnell.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  Which is shocking, a surprise and like disappointing, but at least they have DNA that they can work with now, right?

• 23:36Ashley Flowers?

  Yes, and they are even able to put it into CODIS. But the sample is so small that scientists can basically only use it for direct comparison. But either way, you're right, it's progress. And in 2017, there is this renewed push to finally figure out who she is once and for all, after a detective rediscovered the case while reviewing old unsolved files. And he decided it was time to take a closer look.

• 24:02Ashley Flowers?

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• 24:45Ashley Flowers?

  Visit sofi.com/crimejunkie to see how much you can save. That's sofi.com/crimejunkie and start making smarter money moves with SoFi. SoFi student loans are originated by SoFi Bank, N.A., member FDIC. Additional terms and conditions apply. NMLS 696891.

• 25:05Ashley Flowers?

  Do me a favor. Put all five fingers up. Now, put one down if you have workout saved on Instagram that you haven't gone back to. Put one down if you were gonna go to a workout class this week, but there's just none that the times worked out for. Put one down if you don't like working out at home because you don't know what to do and you need someone to push you. Put two fingers down if you want to stop this game. Babe, we are the same. I don't have a lot of time and honestly, I'm not even someone who likes working out. But Ladder actually changed that. I literally had to waddle into the studio to record this because my butt is so sore. Ladder is quick. I'm not wasting time wandering around or doing reps of something that won't matter. I'm in, I'm out. I have a coach along the way who can help me make 30 minutes with weights feel better than two hours of whatever I was doing before. And it's $1 a day.

• 25:50Ashley Flowers?

  So if price was ever stopping you before, you're officially out of excuses. Remove the guesswork with Ladder and get a real coach in your ear telling you exactly what to do for every workout. No thinking, everything planned for you. If you have an iPhone, head to ladder.fit/crimejunkie and take a quick quiz to find your perfect ladder plan. Use my link and get a free seven-day trial with no credit card and $10 off your first month if you join.

• 26:19Ashley Flowers?

  What they do now is they try to do isotope analysis, which basically looks at the chemical makeup of hair, teeth, bones, all of that to figure out where a person might have lived. And based on what they do, the results point pretty strongly to one region, the Midwest.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  The Minnesota Strip.

• 26:36Ashley Flowers?

  Yes, it's got a name for a reason, right? But the Midwest doesn't like narrow down, right? It's not specifically Minnesota.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  When they check missing persons reports, were they checking from the Midwest or just like New York and the surrounding area?

• 26:50Ashley Flowers?

  They were checking everywhere, all over across the country. So obviously, the isotope test didn't really move things along. So when Detective Glass is assigned the case in 2022, he comes with totally fresh eyes. No preconceived notions about who she was or where she's from or how she got there. And what do you know? It gives him a different take. His gut is telling him that Midtown Jane Doe wasn't a sex worker, and that he thinks she was killed way before 1980. And this theory might have just stayed a theory, but then something huge happens. A lab called Astrea Forensics, which specializes in analyzing low-quality samples,

• 27:35Ashley Flowers?

  they managed to get a genealogy-grade DNA profile from one of her foot bones. So the NYPD's new genealogist, this woman named Linda Doyle, she is brought on board. And when they upload the sample, they quickly get two crucial hits. They get a first cousin on her dad's side and a first cousin once removed on her mom's side.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  That kind of match right off the bat is...

• 28:00Ashley Flowers?

  Unheard of, almost.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, really rare.

• 28:02Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah. And thank God, though, right? Like, they are long overdue for a break. And this is a big one, because the paternal cousin's surname is McLean.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  Uh, the uppercase M, lowercase c, uppercase G from the ring.

• 28:17Ashley Flowers?

  Yep. So Linda starts doing what genealogists do best. She's like digging into public records, old newspapers, obituaries, court documents, anything she can dig up and get her hands on that might show her where these two branches of Jane Doe's family tree intersects. And after all of this research, Linda can only find one person who fits the bill: 16-year-old Patricia McLean. She wasn't born after 1958. She wasn't a sex worker, as far as we know. And she wasn't from the Midwest. She actually lived right there in Brooklyn until she disappeared. Except Patricia was never reported missing. And here's just a random twist.

• 29:01Ashley Flowers?

  So Patricia's paternal cousin, who died a couple of years before genealogy tracked the family down, he was actually a retired NYPD cop and had worked just one precinct away from where they found her body. Now, I doubt that they even knew each other. It doesn't seem like they were very... Like, the whole family was like a super close-knit family, but it was just... I thought it was so weird. I don't know. So while detectives have this tentative answer to the question that's haunted them for so long, they're now facing even bigger ones. Like, who was Patricia? What happened in her final days? And how does a teenage girl just vanish without anyone looking for her? So as Detective Glass and Linda dive into the investigation,

• 29:43Ashley Flowers?

  they begin to uncover a story that has been buried, literally, for decades. And to even try to understand it, we have to go back to the beginning. Patricia's dad, Bernard McGlon Sr., was a busy man, to say the least. By the time he hooked up with Patricia's mom, who was also named Patricia, but let's just call her Pat, he had already been married twice. He and his first wife had two sons before they split. Then he remarried to this woman named Helen. They had a son. But while he was still married to Helen, Bernard and Pat got married in Virginia. Now, he knocked about five years off his age on their application, saying that he was 45 when he was nearly 50.

• 30:26Ashley Flowers?

  And for some reason, Pat added a year, saying she was 21, but she was really only 20. Now Patricia is born on April 20th, 1953. So this is about 10 months after her parents' so-called wedding, if you can call it that since he's already married. And at the time, Bernard is still living with Helen, the other woman he's married to.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  Okay, so we've got one man, three wives, two of whom were at the same time, and at least four kids?

• 30:54Ashley Flowers?

  And a partridge in a pear tree. Like, you're gonna need a flowchart to keep everyone straight. Which is a great reminder for everyone listening to make sure you know that we have YouTube now. Like, this episode will be up in a couple of weeks if you want the visual crime junkie experience. But trust me, I'm giving you the simplified version. Though if you really want the messy details, there is a great article in Rolling Stone by the reporter Sarah Weinman that breaks all this down. But anyways, even though Bernard's two families live in the same Sunset Park neighborhood in Brooklyn, he somehow managed to keep his double life a secret for years.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  Was it a secret from both women?

• 31:32Ashley Flowers?

  Okay, so Nina interviewed Linda Doyle, and based on what we learned from her, along with Sarah Weinman's article, I'm pretty confident that Helen was completely in the dark. But with Pat, I'm not exactly sure. I mean, Bernard obviously wasn't, like, living with her and Patricia. So I assume that would have been a red flag. But he was a long-haul truck driver, so being gone for these long stretches, like... Wouldn't have been that weird either. But at any rate, in 1957, he apparently left Helen for Pat. Although when Helen died of breast cancer a few years later, her obituary still refers to her as Bernard's beloved wife. So like, make of that what you will. And then Bernard and Helen's son, Bernard Jr.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  Hold up, can we please like call them junior and senior from here on out?

• 32:16Ashley Flowers?

  Can you imagine like having a son and naming after you and the wife? Like, it's wild.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  And then having a wife whose daughter is named after her?

• 32:21Ashley Flowers?

  It's wild. So sure. Junior was in his teens when his mom died. So he moved in with his dad, Pat and Patricia. But if there was any stability in their home, it didn't last long. In 1963, when Patricia was 10, Senior died of a heart attack. Pat became Junior's legal guardian and he lived with her and Patricia for a while. But in a brief account that he wrote about his life titled Sad But True, he said that he was totally alone after his father died. Meanwhile, as Patricia bounced between public and Catholic schools, her attendance got more and more spotty. She had to repeat a grade. Detective Glass and Linda can't even locate a yearbook photo of her. Like, she's not in any of them.

• 33:04Ashley Flowers?

  But they did find little fragments of Patricia's life on other school records. And a really troubling picture starts to emerge. Like, at her first and only semester at a junior high she transferred to in late 1968, she only showed up for nine days of class. And obviously, her teachers were concerned. One of them noted that Patricia seemed well behaved, but she questioned how she ever was going to learn anything if she was never there. And Pat was also reportedly worried. And she told school officials that she just didn't know who her daughter was skipping school with. But I don't know how much attention she was really paying to Patricia. By then, she had started dating another married man, and I think he was living with them.

• 33:49Ashley Flowers?

  Now Patricia was totally closed off from her teachers, though she did mention being interested in something she calls "beauty culture", which I'm thinking is probably like cosmetology. But they didn't think that she seemed motivated to continue her education. But I don't know if motivation is the real issue here because, I mean, what really stands out to investigators are the last few memos in Patricia's student file, all dated 1969, including a report from March detailing a series of medical-related absences. And then, another from May 8th, when she dropped out of school for good. And officially, her final departure was a "medical discharge"?

• 34:31Ashley Flowers?

  But this isn't Linda's first "genealogy rodeo", and she knows exactly what that phrase was code for back then.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  Patricia was pregnant, wasn't she?

• 34:42Ashley Flowers?

  Bingo. And this was all happening during what was known as the baby scoop era after World War II, when more and more girls and women were facing unplanned pregnancies out of wedlock. Single motherhood carried a very heavy stigma, not to mention the financial burdens of raising a child alone. And that combination of judgment and desperation was the perfect storm for exploitation. Many expectant mothers were coerced or forced to give up their babies, and some doctors saw it as a business opportunity. For a fee, they would discreetly connect wealthy couples looking to adopt with vulnerable young women who felt like they had no other choice. So investigators think that the physician listed in Patricia's school records

• 35:27Ashley Flowers?

  might have been involved in one of these shady operations, in part because of a bizarre incident documented in a Daily News article. So, apparently, a gunman burst into this specific doctor's office on the Upper West Side one day at 9:00 PM, while the place was still buzzing with patients and staff, and he robbed a patient of like $500 cash.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  And night patients and cash is a major red flag.

• 35:56Ashley Flowers?

  It's definitely raising eyebrows for Linda. Now, word was that this doctor also performed abortions, which to me could explain the late hours and the cash. But Linda doubts that anyone in Patricia's Catholic community would have sent her to a doctor for something like that. So it's also possible that Patricia had no plans to give up the baby that she might have had for adoption because her school paperwork had another bombshell waiting for investigators. It turns out that Patricia got married a day before she dropped out of school on May 7, 1969, to a man named Donald Grant. I mean, did her mom have to sign off on that? Oh yeah, Pat gave permission.

• 36:40Ashley Flowers?

  In fact, she was their official witness at the ceremony. So where the is Donald Grant now? Exactly, and who the is he? Yeah. I mean, they assume that he might be the father of her baby, but investigators can't say for sure because they can't find a single person who actually knew Patricia. No friends, no neighbors, the few relatives that they're aware of have all passed away. So they don't have any details on how or when she met this Donald guy. All they can follow is this paper trail. So from the school records, they go and pull the marriage license, and it is basically just one giant red flag.

• 37:22Ashley Flowers?

  For starters, Donald was 32 when he exchanged vows with 16-year-old Patricia. So Pat was the witness at her daughter's wedding to this grown-ass man? Yes. Cool, cool, cool. But the age gap isn't even the biggest holy thing about this marriage license. Because guess what Donald put for his address? The building where Patricia was found. 301 West 46th Street. You got it. What's so extra interesting is that Donald's name is only listed at that address for one year in the 1969 city directory, and Patricia isn't officially linked to that building at all.

• 38:05Ashley Flowers?

  But it looks like their marriage license, like that's where it got mailed to. So investigators think that she probably lived there at some point. And all of this fits perfectly with the new timeline police are forming. They now believe that Patricia was killed during the summer of 1969.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  Hold up, I know the clothing label date was wrong, but what about that rat poison wrapper? Wasn't that from like the mid to late 70s?

• 38:31Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, it was later. Detective Glass has a theory. He thinks that the newer items like the wrapper, stuff like that, that probably got shuffled into the original burial site somehow, maybe during all the construction work that was going on. I mean, that makes way more sense than Patricia being alive like into the 70s or even the 80s. Especially when you look at all of the other evidence, like the dime and the watch and all of that found with her remains. So armed with their new estimated timeline, police decide to shift their focus to a place that they initially overlooked, a place called Steve Paul's The Scene. It was this like legendary rock club that operated in that buried basement from the mid to late 60s.

• 39:12Ashley Flowers?

  And when I say legendary, we're talking performances by Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Fleetwood Mac, like this was the hotspot. Even Andy Warhol hung out there. And the layout of this place was unusual. Like it was this massive maze of brick walled cellars and passageways. But like everything else in that building, the scene wasn't destined to last. By the late 60s, Brooklyn mobsters were demanding protection money from the owner. And get this, one of those mobsters was Tony Sorico, who is best known as Polly Walnuts from The Sopranos.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  Wait, are you saying the character Polly Walnuts was based on him? Or that the actor himself?

• 39:58Ashley Flowers?

  The.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  Actually used to be a mobster?

• 40:00Ashley Flowers?

  The actual guy used to be a mobster. But like, he's not a suspect. The cement Patricia was found in, like for a minute, it sparked all these mafia rumors over the years, but police don't think there's anything to that. Sorico is just like one of the many bizarre footnotes in this story. But before he became an actor, he was a legit criminal known for shaking down nightclub owners, including Steve Paul. But Steve didn't want to deal with all the drama, so he shut the club down in maybe July or August of 1969. So suddenly, you've got this empty basement, no crowds, no music, no staff, the perfect opportunity for someone to bury a body in concrete without anyone noticing. Someone like Donald.

• 40:43Ashley Flowers?

  And again, I ask, who is Donald? Well, all they know is that on the marriage license, he listed himself as a musician, which could mean anything from like selling out venues to like playing in a subway station for tips, like who knows? I mean, it's possible he even performed at the scene, right? But whatever the case may be, the fact that he never reported his wife Patricia missing, I think speaks volumes for investigators. They're convinced that Donald is the key to this whole mystery, just like you. But their luck has run out. Because as it would turn out, Donald Grant, or at least the Donald Grant that he claimed to be on the marriage license, doesn't exist.

• 41:27Ashley Flowers?

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• 42:11Ashley Flowers?

  Visit sofi.com/crimejunkie to see how much you can save. That's sofi.com/crimejunkie and start making smarter money moves with SoFi. SoFi's student loans are originated by SoFi Bank, N.A., member FDIC. Additional terms and conditions apply. NMLS 696891.

• 42:32Ashley Flowers?

  In their marriage license affidavit, Donald Grant said that he was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on February 27, 1937, to James Edward Grant and Carrie Elizabeth Johnson, who were also supposedly born in Pittsburgh. So with all those specific details, finding him should have been a breeze. There is no Donald Grant with that exact background, no family matching that description in Pittsburgh. The guy police are looking for is a ghost. The only official record they can find of this very specific Donald Grant is the marriage license itself. And the only detail they can even verify from that is his address on West 46th Street, which remember, he only showed up in one time in 1969.

• 43:15Ashley Flowers?

  And then poof, this guy vanished from the directory. And here's what's really interesting. According to Sarah Weinman's reporting, there was a Donald Grant who was born on February 28, 1937, but he died when he was a baby, not in Pittsburgh, but in nearby Ohio.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  So this dude basically stole a dead baby's identity?

• 43:37Ashley Flowers?

  That's what it looks like. Detective Glass is confident that stealing the identity or not, like Donald is an alias. But Linda figures there has to be some kind of kernel of truth buried in his affidavit. So she tries every possible combination, rearranging names and dates, searching every which way she can think of. But no matter how hard she shuffles the pieces around, there is nothing but dead ends.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  It's like Patricia never even had a shot. Like, no one protected her. She was surrounded by liars.

• 44:10Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, I mean, and honestly, you can add her half-brother Junior to the liar list because police learned that he went on to use aliases and he got caught up in identity theft and embezzlement. In his sad but true write-up, Junior blamed his crimes on his stepmom, Pat, and the married man that she dated after his dad died. Now, he didn't elaborate at all, except to say that they were both awful people, and those were the people raising Patricia, too, when you think about it. And I say all of that to say, it's Junior's fraud case that gives us the only documentation police can find that mentions Patricia's disappearance. So, the company that Junior stole from sent investigators to interview Pat in June of 1970.

• 44:53Ashley Flowers?

  And somehow, in the middle of answering questions about Junior, Patricia comes up, and Pat told them that Junior's sister was a quote-unquote addict who abandoned her 11-month-old baby. And according to Pat, Patricia just took off, moved away sometime in 1969, and no one has seen or heard from her since.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  Oh, wait, I think I'm confused about this timeline. How far along in her pregnancy was she when she dropped out of school?

• 45:20Ashley Flowers?

  Okay, so she married Donald on May 7th, and she drops out of school the next day, May 8th. So if you do the math, assuming what Pat said about the baby being 11 months old as of June 1970 was accurate, Patricia would have been about six or seven months pregnant when she dropped out. And she likely would have given birth around July or August of 1969, which is right when the scene closed. But beyond that, I don't know if Pat ever had seen the baby or knew where the baby was. I mean, this was literally just one random paragraph buried in a huge case file that had nothing to do with Patricia. I mean, she, again, isn't even mentioned by name, and Pat didn't even get Patricia's age right.

• 46:04Ashley Flowers?

  But I think the fact that Pat acknowledged that her daughter was gone makes something else investigators discover especially disturbing. You see, Patricia's father had left a small inheritance to her and Junior. Pat was in charge of managing the account until they hit, like, a certain age. And in May of 1971, this is almost two years after police believed that Patricia was killed, Pat petitioned the court to release $250 from her account. And she claimed that Patricia needed the money to buy, like, work clothes for a new job that she'd supposedly gotten. And we actually have a copy of the petition that she filed. And Britt, I'm gonna have you look at it, because I think there's something super interesting on it. Look at Patricia's so-called signature.

• 46:48Ashley Flowers?

  And then I've got Pat's signature there, too.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  Uh... They look pretty similar and you have Patricia's real signature, which looks nothing like Patricia's signature on

• 47:00Ashley Flowers?

  I know.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  this like request.

• 47:02Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, so the paperwork fills in some blanks, but only some. And that's the problem because police are running out of leads. Detective Glass tries reaching out to everyone he can think of, members of the Church of All Nations where Patricia and the alleged Donald supposedly got married. He tried her schools, even staff and regulars from the scene. But no one remembers Patricia and no one remembers Donald.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  Which isn't that surprising. I mean, what are police even asking these people about him? Do you happen to know some guy named Donald who we don't know anything about? Who might have been here around these times?

• 47:41Ashley Flowers?

  Whose name probably isn't even really Donald, by the way. Right, right. Like whether he's white or black or tall or short, what his real age is, like that is anyone's guess.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  It's like asking for a ghost.

• 47:51Ashley Flowers?

  Right, literally all Glass can do is ask people if they knew a guy who used that name around that time in that area. And every time he tries, the answer is always no. But at least Patricia is coming into focus a little bit more. After all the legwork, investigators are 99.5% sure that she is definitely their Midtown Jane Doe. But as Sarah Weinman points out, they can't just say like, oh, well, genetic genealogy says it's her, like call it a day to officially confirm it. They need mitochondrial DNA, like the kind that is passed down through the maternal line.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  But who do you compare it to if everyone is gone?

• 48:33Ashley Flowers?

  And literally everyone, I mean, on both sides. Pat, senior, junior, finding a sample is going to be tough. But Linda and Detective Glass go back to the beginning, back to someone who was on the early list of matches. The maternal first cousin once removed. So this is Pat's first cousin. And I'm going to call her Fiona. Now unfortunately Fiona died a few years ago. But here's where this story takes an incredible turn. Ironically, thanks to a tragic twist. Fiona's daughter worked at the World Trade Center and she was killed in 9/11. And like many families Fiona gave a DNA sample hoping to identify her daughter's remains among the rubble. Now that never happened, but Fiona's DNA stayed in the database.

• 49:18Ashley Flowers?

  So they finally have something to compare to Midtown Jane Doe. And when they test it, it is a match. So amid all the uncertainty, they finally know one thing for sure. This is Patricia McGlone. So here's where the case stands now. The blonde male hairs from the carpet haven't revealed anything yet, but more testing is underway. Meanwhile, the original building at 301 West 46th Street is long gone. It was demolished years ago to make way for a hotel and some apartments. And as for Donald Grant, whoever he is or was, he is the main suspect. Investigators are trying to figure out who he was and what happened to the baby that Patricia

• 50:03Ashley Flowers?

  supposedly had. Now they've already subpoenaed records from half a dozen of the largest adoption agencies and there's no sign of a child of hers ever being placed up for adoption.

• 50:12Speaker 01

  But it could have been one of those like under the table deals that you mentioned.

• 50:16Ashley Flowers?

  Totally. And every scenario is possible. Every scenario is on the table right now, but the lack of answers is frustrating. For all that they have learned about Patricia, there is still so much that they don't know. They still haven't been able to find even a photo of her. Junior didn't even acknowledge her existence in his sad but true write-up and it is like she just got totally erased from history. Her identification brings us closer to understanding what happened, but her murder is still unsolved. And investigators want to catch her killer, but they also want to know who she was. So they're looking for anyone who grew up near her childhood home. 375 52nd Street in Brooklyn. Or anyone who might have gone to school with her.

• 51:01Ashley Flowers?

  We've got a full list of the schools that she attended and when on our blog post. I'm going to put them in the show notes as well. Someone out there knew this girl, and she deserves to have her story told. So if you know anything about her, her family, this Donald Grant guy, or even this scene, anything at all, please contact Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS.

• 51:40Ashley Flowers?

  You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com.

• 51:45Speaker 01

  And you can follow us on Instagram, at @crimejunkiepodcast.

• 51:48Ashley Flowers?

  We're going to be back next week with a brand new episode, but stick around. We have some good things to tell you.

• 52:17Ashley Flowers?

  All right, Brett, end of the month. Share something good with us that came through the inbox?

• 52:22Speaker 01

  Always. So this is from Ally. It says, "Hi, Crime Junkie. I wanted to share that I recently gave a unique presentation at my office about the Crime Junkie life rules. I live in Denver, Colorado, and I work in government contracting for the US military. We host monthly safety meetings, but they are usually focused on workplace topics like PPE and job site safety. For this one, I shifted the focus to personal safety, using your rules as a foundation and incorporating Colorado-specific statistics on missing persons. I attached the presentation down below. I also highlighted the importance of the If I Go Missing File as a tool to help ensure critical information is accessible in case the worst happens.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  The session sparked meaningful conversations and reminded my coworkers about the importance of being aware, proactive, and prepared when it comes to safety." Thank you for the work you do to raise awareness and help keep us informed and vigilant. I love we're like a government training now. I know. She sent like copies of the presentation. Can we put the presentation online for people to see? We will definitely ask, but like it's pictures of us. It's pictures of the if I go missing folder. Oh, my God. It's a little bit of everything. And I thought this was so cool. It looks so official. I love that she was like, yeah, job site safety. Meh. Boring. I love it. Okay, well, we're gonna do our best so you guys can like see the presentation. Yeah, for sure. On the website.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  And make sure you send us your submission for the good and cheer us up a little bit.

• 53:58Ashley Flowers?

  Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

• 54:08Speaker 01

  Growing up in a small town, I know how deeply a crime can shake a local community. And I know that what makes the headlines is rarely the full story. That's what Kylie Lowe explores on her show Dark Down East. She digs into cases from Maine and New England using original reporting, archival records, and conversations with the people who knew them best. Each episode takes you inside the communities these stories shaped and the families who never stop searching for answers. Listen to Dark Down East wherever you get your podcasts.

• 54:36Speaker 02

  When the nights grow longer, the shadows start to stir. And that can only mean one thing. Full Body Chills is back. This season, step inside original tales where every doorway leads somewhere darker. Every stranger carries a secret and nothing is ever quite what it seems. Each story takes you somewhere new, but be careful. You never know what might follow you home. So gather around, listen close, and stream Full Body Chills wherever you get your podcasts.