MURDERED: Dorothy “Toby” Tate

The murder of 41-year-old Toby Tate is a case that no one thought would ever be resolved – one that spent decades collecting dust in a file box at the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office. Until two detectives decided to take another look… and all of a sudden, after 40 years, the hazy picture of a fatal 1983 burglary gone wrong started to come into focus, and preserved DNA evidence revealed a twist that no one saw coming.

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  If you know me, you know I love stories that make me go, "Wait, what?" The kind that stop you in your tracks and send you straight down a rabbit hole. And my friend Delia DiAmbrera tells stories just like that on Park Predators. Every Tuesday, Delia investigates true crime cases that unfold in the world's most beautiful places. From national parks to hiking trails, she reveals the shocking crimes, mysterious disappearances, and unsettling encounters hidden beneath the postcard-perfect scenery. If you're ready to discover what's beyond the trailhead, listen to Park Predators wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:33Ashley Flowers?

  Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.

• 0:36Speaker 00

  And I'm Brett.

• 0:37Ashley Flowers?

  And today, I'm going to tell you about a case that nobody thought would ever be resolved. One that spent decades collecting dust in a file box at the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Office, with nobody even assigned to it at all, until two detectives decided to take another look. And all of a sudden, after 40 years, the hazy picture of a fatal 1983 burglary gone wrong started to come into focus. And preserved DNA evidence revealed a twist that no one saw coming. This is the story of Dorothy Toby Tate.

• 1:46Ashley Flowers?

  Let me take you back to November 15, 1983, just before 11:00 a.m., when sheriff's deputies are dispatched to the scene of what seems like a car accident on a dirt road just off Highway 1 by the beach. There, they find a 1980 Chevy camper van like halfway off the road. Its passenger-side fender is damaged, the hood is slightly bent, and both front passenger windows are shattered. Though it's unclear what caused the damage, because there is nothing else around. It doesn't look like the wreckage from a fatal crash by any means, more of like a low-speed collision. But someone was clearly injured. There is blood spatter by the driver's seat

• 2:30Ashley Flowers?

  and blood running down the inside of the driver's door. Strangely, though, both the driver and passenger seats are empty. And that's when deputies notice something is seeping out from the closed sliding door of the van and like pooling in the dirt. And when a deputy slides open the van's rear door, he finds the source. It is coming from the woman who must have been in the driver's seat, because she is laying on the floor of the cargo area, clearly dead from a wound to her head, which is where all that blood was coming from. But there is no way she got that wound from this minor crash. It is a single gunshot wound below the woman's left ear

• 3:13Ashley Flowers?

  from a 45-caliber pistol that killed her. Now, there's also a dog in the van with this woman, alive and unharmed. And then there is another dog wandering around outside. And judging by the two leashes still draped around this woman's neck, those were likely her babies. Now, how everything fits together isn't totally clear yet, like when the crash happened or how she got from the front seat to the back. But one thing is clear. There may have been a vehicle collision, but this death was not the result of an accident. This was murder. And judging from the trail of blood droplets leading away from the van, somebody walked away from this incident alive.

• 3:58Ashley Flowers?

  But who that was and what role they might have played in this, only time would tell. For now, they felt pretty confident that their victim was Toby Tate. She didn't have a wallet or an ID in the van, but luggage in the back that had a name on the tags, along with an address in Texas, led them to Toby's family. So that's how investigators began to fill in some of the blanks. They learned that 41-year-old Toby was the oldest of three girls. And according to her sister Priscilla, she was a freespian. She had spent her adulthood traveling around the country in her van, which she named Esmeralda. And I love a woman who has like led multiple lives, not in like a devious double life kind of way,

• 4:42Ashley Flowers?

  but like the kind of person who takes chances, who's tried things and like reinvented themselves in hopes of finding something or finding themselves.

• 4:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:50Ashley Flowers?

  So Toby traveled all over with Esmeralda. I mean, she picked up gigs as a nanny, a bartender, a photographer, even a dog breeder at one point. And all along the way, she would gather friends. In fact, just as an aside, Priscilla told us that after Toby died, their dad was just downright shocked at the number of letters that started coming in from people mourning Toby from all over the country. Now, in the years before her murder, Toby worked on an indigenous reserve in British Columbia, restoring a church. And then she moved back home with her family in Dallas, where she designed gardens. But she had just bought her own house in Colorado, where she planned to grow her cleaning business.

• 5:30Speaker 00

  Okay, but Colorado, what was she doing out in California then?

• 5:33Ashley Flowers?

  She was being an amazing niece, because Priscilla told us that Toby had driven up to the Bay Area because one of her twin aunts had passed away and the other one had never spent a birthday alone before. So Toby's plan was to like take her van, take her two dogs out there to like be with her aunt. And then, from there, she was gonna travel down to LA to visit a friend, like kind of camping along the way. Now detectives are able to confirm that Toby had made it to her aunt's house. She was actually there the morning before she was found. This would have been November 14, 1983. And then she did, from there, her and her dogs took off for LA. But from the location of the crime scene, it seems like she only made it about halfway. A receipt on Toby's dashboard

• 6:17Ashley Flowers?

  showed that she had checked into a campground by the beach on the same afternoon that she had left her aunts. It's San Simeon State Park, which is about 10 miles from the crime scene. Now detectives checked this out to see if anyone there had seen her with people or noticed like somebody paying attention to her. Nobody had. But that might have been because, as detectives learn from a ranger, Toby had done a self-registration, which is what you do when there is nobody on duty. You basically fill out a receipt, attach your money to it, and then like drop it in this little lockbox.

• 6:50Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 6:50Ashley Flowers?

  Strangely, though, when the ranger looks into this, he finds two receipts for that same campsite. He finds Toby's, and then he finds another person's. Except, this second person didn't fill out their receipt properly. Like, they wrote down their name, but under license plate, they just put Arizona, like no number. And of course, investigators are wondering if maybe this is where Toby encountered somebody. But it's also possible that this double registration was just a total fluke, because it's not like she was attacked there at the campsite, right? Now, they determine that she died sometime in the evening hours of the 14th. And it happened right where she was found, at the beach.

• 7:33Speaker 00

  Not the campsite. So how do they know that exactly?

• 7:37Ashley Flowers?

  Because all of the evidence that paints a picture for them. Starting with what they find from Priscilla. So she says that she talked to her sister on the phone the night before her murder. And Toby said that her dogs had never been to the Pacific Ocean. So she was gonna head south to LA, and she wanted to take them for a run on the beach. Now Toby was fully clothed when she was found, even had her shoes on and socks on. But the coroner found sand between her toes. So that, the call with Priscilla and the location of her van, just steps away from the beach, kind of bring things into focus. So investigators think that Toby left her campsite that evening, safe and sound, went to the beach with her dogs to run.

• 8:20Ashley Flowers?

  And then, when she got back to her van, she was ambushed. But they think that it all started about 20 yards up from where the van ultimately landed, because up that way is where they found a bullet casing. So they think that Toby started up her van, as evidenced by them finding keys in the ignition and it being in the on position. But just as she began to move, whoever ambushed her was like still standing outside of her van and shot her through the driver's side window, which they can tell from the shattered glass. They can tell that from the bullet trajectory and the blood patterns. And given the location of the gunshot wound, she would have died instantly. But the thinking is that the van continued rolling after Toby had been shot.

• 9:05Ashley Flowers?

  So it wasn't until her van hit something that it knocked her foot off the gas and then like rolled to a stop. And investigators believe that something was likely the suspect's vehicle. Probably one of the only other vehicles out there at the time of her murder.

• 9:20Speaker 00

  And I mean, it obviously wasn't like a random person's car, or they probably would have reported it.

• 9:25Ashley Flowers?

  Precisely. Now, because she died instantly, they know that she couldn't have crawled into the back of the van on her own.

• 9:33Speaker 00

  Meaning the suspect moved her there then?

• 9:36Ashley Flowers?

  Correct. It seems like the suspect gets into the van and drags her out of the driver's seat into where she would ultimately be found in the back. And they dropped something while doing this. A cigarette is found next to Toby's body in the back, and she wasn't a smoker. So they think that it probably fell out of the suspect's pocket like while they were moving her.

• 9:58Speaker 00

  Okay, but what I can't figure out is like, why stick around to move her and risk getting caught? Like, that's gonna take more time.

• 10:05Ashley Flowers?

  So the detectives that we talked to theorize that like this whole ambush was just some kind of robbery scheme. There's no sign of sexual assault, but valuable items were missing from Toby's van, like her wallet and this camera that her family said that she had with her. So the theory that police went with at the time was that the suspect probably wanted to buy some time to get what they came for and then like get out of Dodge. And they're thinking that like a body slumped over in the driver's seat is-

• 10:30Speaker 00

  People are gonna notice that.

• 10:31Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, that's gonna draw a lot more unwanted attention as opposed to just like a van that maybe looks like it got into an accident.

• 10:36Speaker 00

  If there's no one there, maybe it's abandoned, no one's there, you don't think about it.

• 10:39Ashley Flowers?

  Yes, so that's what they went with. But as I was like in this, I don't know why, I kind of wondered if maybe they had to move her? Like, in my mind, I don't know, to grab a wallet and a camera, that's quick. Like, you do it and you clear out of there, who cares if somebody sees? But what if her van, right, we're saying it hit their vehicle? Like, what if it kind of like locked into it? Like, is it possible that they needed to get her out of the driver's seat so that they could move it to dislodge their car without causing more damage? And like, we asked about this, and the detective said that, sure, that's possible, but that's not the theory that early investigators ever ran with. Either way, the damage caused by the collision was their potential saving grace.

• 11:23Ashley Flowers?

  Because even though investigators don't really know anything about their suspect, what they can put out is information about their suspect's vehicle. The California Highway Patrol has this accident investigation team that can basically analyze everything about a crash. Paint transfers, tire tracks, types of damage, and then predict what kind of vehicle like was involved. And here's what they get. I'm actually just gonna have you read it.

• 11:46Speaker 00

  Okay. "Suspect vehicle: unknown make, half or three-quarter ton pickup with a bed height of 42 inches to 43 inches. Color gray or silver gray with damage to the driver's side rear corner of bed and bumper. Vehicle has a wheelbase of 129 inches and the bed is rectangular. It may have a camper shell on bed."

• 12:09Ashley Flowers?

  So-

• 12:09Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 12:10Ashley Flowers?

  Crime Stoppers puts this description out and offers a cash reward for information while investigators check with any local body shops in the area to see if any truck matching that description has come in for repair. And they also scour the local pawn shops looking for Toby's camera.

• 12:25Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 12:26Ashley Flowers?

  They come up with nothing on either front.

• 12:29Speaker 00

  Okay, but you're saying they're looking like locally. Highway 1 basically runs up and down the entire state of California, right?

• 12:36Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah.

• 12:37Speaker 00

  So this guy doesn't have to be or stay local.

• 12:40Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, and if he's not, that's just gonna make this case all the more difficult to solve with the resources that they had in 1983. Because there is no nationwide print databases. Forget DNA databases, they can't even-

• 12:53Speaker 00

  DNA doesn't, yeah.

• 12:54Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, like they can't make DNA profiles yet.

• 12:55Speaker 00

  I mean, did they get any physical evidence from the scene? I mean, it sounds like there was that cigarette, but anything else?

• 12:59Ashley Flowers?

  So yeah, they found that cigarette, they collected it, but that wasn't a used one. So I don't even know how hopeful anyone was about that. What they were more keyed in on was a Coke can that they found near the scene. They were able to pull some latent fingerprints off of that. And after not finding any suspect prints in her van, this really was their best shot at IDing somebody. Though, it's only good if they have somebody to compare these prints to.

• 13:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, tell me if I'm missing something, but it might not be connected at all, right? Like, this is at like a beach location.

• 13:31Ashley Flowers?

  I asked, but according to detectives, the can was close enough to the van to be considered within the crime scene. But I mean, like-

• 13:38Speaker 00

  But it could have been there before.

• 13:39Ashley Flowers?

  There is nothing saying definitively that it was left there by Toby's killer. So I think they would probably have a hard time ruling people out just based on the Coke can. But if there is somebody that you can rule in, right, like, and-

• 13:53Speaker 00

  If you have someone that you're already looking at and you're like-

• 13:55Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah.

• 13:55Speaker 00

  And they happen to match the Coke can.

• 13:56Ashley Flowers?

  That'd be another story.

• 13:57Speaker 00

  Right.

• 13:58Ashley Flowers?

  That would place them there in the same spot where Toby was murdered. And depending on what else led them, right, like you're saying, like, again, it could give them something.

• 14:06Speaker 00

  Right, like, did they have a gray truck that was in the shop or pawn camera?

• 14:10Ashley Flowers?

  Exactly. And actually, for almost two years, they have very few people to compare these prints to. I mean, we're grasping at straws here. But then, one day in November of 1985, like, out of the blue, investigators get a call from the Bakersfield Police Department in California, which is like two and a half hours east of San Luis Obispo. Turns out, they had been contacted by a local pawn shop because somebody had just brought in Toby's camera.

• 14:45Speaker 00

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• 15:48Ashley Flowers?

  Back in 1983, Toby's camera had been entered into the automated stolen property system. So when somebody tried to pawn it two years later, the serial number immediately flagged as a stolen item. So that's how the pawn shop knew to call authorities, and then the sheriff's office sprang into action. The man who pawned the camera was named Michael Lee Queen. But of course, nothing is that easy.

• 16:13Speaker 00

  Right.

• 16:14Ashley Flowers?

  Once investigators track him down, he tells them that he got the camera from somebody else.

• 16:18Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 16:19Ashley Flowers?

  So they track that person down too. What do you know, he also got the camera from somebody else. And this is the camera that has lived a thousand lives, because investigators ended up tracking these camera handoffs down for like about a year through like four more people, all the way back to a gas station owner in Bakersfield. And he tells investigators that he bought the camera from two men who walked into his gas station one day and offered him the camera for a hundred bucks, which he decided to buy for his son's birthday. Neither man identified themselves, and there was no record of the transaction.

• 16:53Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 16:54Ashley Flowers?

  Now, the guy did his best to describe these two guys. Like, I know they tried making composite sketches, but I don't know how good they were or how much faith investigators had in them, because as far as I can tell, those were never released to the public.

• 17:07Speaker 00

  I mean, is there a chance they think he was lying?

• 17:09Ashley Flowers?

  I don't get that impression at all. And according to detectives, like, nobody in this whole camera line matched the prints from the scene. Like, they tested everybody. So I think, I don't, I don't know why they didn't pass out the photo, but like-

• 17:20Speaker 00

  Like, everything in everybody's story was lining up.

• 17:23Ashley Flowers?

  And they're, they're pretty sure that everyone they talked to was not Toby's killer. And at this point, detectives told us that the case was about as cold as a cold case could get. It got put on a shelf, and that's where it stayed for decades. There was nobody even assigned to it. All the while, Toby's family was struggling to make sense of how and why their lives were suddenly upended. I mean, the grief was like an infection that continued to just like rip through their family long after November of 1983. Two months after Toby's murder, her dad died of a heart attack, which Priscilla says she knows was because of a broken heart, because her heart was broken too.

• 18:05Ashley Flowers?

  And she told us that Toby was the only person in the world who really accepted her for who she was. And in the wake of her death, Priscilla stopped believing in God, she stopped going to church, she stopped singing. Toby's younger sister Judy struggled with alcohol use, though that didn't stop her from calling the sheriff's department every year for updates that didn't come. And Judy's daughter Elisa, who was seven when her Aunt Toby died, she grew up with her own struggles. And in 1996, she ended up taking her own life. Eight months after that, Judy passed away too from a tragic accident where she fell down the stairs on Toby's birthday of all days.

• 18:45Ashley Flowers?

  So, Priscilla, the only Tate sister left, took on the responsibility of calling the sheriff's office every year. And while she said that they couldn't have been more kind, she didn't get much more than Judy did. And she sort of just resigned herself to thinking that like crimes like these are never solved. Like, it's just never gonna go anywhere. Still though, she never stopped calling. And in hindsight, those calls might have done more to move this case forward than anything else. Because, fast forward to 2018. Priscilla thinks to call the sheriff's office after the Golden State Killer is arrested

• 19:28Ashley Flowers?

  to ask if he could have been the one to kill Toby.

• 19:33Speaker 00

  Same year, same time.

• 19:35Ashley Flowers?

  Yes, but his MO was totally different. Like, he never attacked anyone in their car. At least, not that we know of. So they're pretty quick to tell her they don't think he's their guy for this. But Priscilla is in the right headspace because there was evidence collected and preserved, in Toby's case, that could eventually be used to solve it, the way that the Golden State Killer was, right? Like, it was just gonna take the right detective to come along and do it. Enter Detective Clint Cole. Now, he's not new. He has been with the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Office since 1990. He actually just resigned this year.

• 20:16Ashley Flowers?

  But in 2017, he became the first investigator assigned to the agency's newly created position of cold case unsolved homicide detective. And that's why, about two years after Priscilla called, asking about the Golden State Killer, she gets this out of the blue call. And on the other end is this man who says, "Hi, I'm Detective Cole, and I'm gonna solve your sister's murder."

• 20:41Speaker 00

  I've said it before, I'll say it again. I love this guy.

• 20:44Ashley Flowers?

  Yes, this is not the first time that we have talked about Detective Cole. And that's because this man is out here solving cold cases right and left.

• 20:53Speaker 00

  I mean, yeah, he's the one who helped solve the Kristen Smart's case.

• 20:55Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, and he was San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Office first and only cold case detective, like I said. So as you can imagine, when he comes in, he does have dozens of cases on his docket. That's why he didn't get started on Toby's until 2019. But this man has a process. Before he ever makes that call to Priscilla, he has to get his ducks in a row, right? He digitizes the files, cataloging testable evidence. And while the detectives back in the day honed in on that Coke can, to Cole, the blood droplets leading away from Toby's van are what really seemed promising. The droplets suggest active bleeding.

• 21:37Ashley Flowers?

  We know that Toby never left the inside of her van, so that means somehow...

• 21:41Speaker 00

  The blood belongs to the killer.

• 21:42Ashley Flowers?

  Probably, like, he probably cut himself... Not granted, like, could her blood somehow have been on something? Maybe, but they don't, they don't think that that's the most likely scenario. And sure enough, when he sends that sample that, thank God, they still had preserved, that he sends it off to be tested, what they get back is an unknown male DNA profile that doesn't match anyone in the CODIS database.

• 22:07Speaker 00

  So definitely not the Golden State Killer, cuz he's there.

• 22:10Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, he's in the system by that point. Now, because this is California, their laws allow you to search CODIS for familial links too. Like, does the killer have a brother or an uncle in prison? So this even, like, widens, like, their search pool, but even that comes up empty too. So the next step is genealogy. Detective Cole gets a profile created to start looking for potential relatives in genetic databases. And then, he has to hit pause. Because that is right when the Kristen Smart case starts breaking. And per sheriff's orders, he basically has to drop everything else to get that across the finish line, which obviously, he did.

• 22:54Ashley Flowers?

  So Toby's case gets kind of punted to others, who can at least, like, pitch in part of their time to help keep things moving. It's not like it totally stops. And they get C.C. Moore at Parabon Nano Labs involved. And as she works out the family tree, she passes off leads to Cole's partner, Detective Jeff Robichotti. And, of course, it was not easy. It never is, right? They find the suspect's father.

• 23:20Speaker 00

  Great.

• 23:21Ashley Flowers?

  But this guy has no record of having sons.

• 23:23Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 23:24Ashley Flowers?

  So then, they have to map out mom's family tree. And that's when they realize that their suspect was raised by a different man and probably never knew his biological father. And anyways, I am zipping through a lot of work that took months to complete, but in the end, they do get a name. The DNA belongs to Stephen Hardy. And that name is nowhere in the files. So Detective Robichotti's next step is to find out everything he can about this guy. But everything he learns just ends up confusing him more. Now, by this point, Stephen Hardy is deceased, so it's not like Robichotti can just go talk to him.

• 24:08Ashley Flowers?

  But nothing he is seeing is making him think that this guy is really their suspect. Like, Hardy was a Vietnam War vet who grew up in Ventura, California. He lived a fairly low-key life. He separated from his wife after the war, but they continued to see each other. He was a chain smoker, struggled with drinking, but importantly, had no felony convictions ever. Now, he had, like, a record in California for some DUIs and other minor alcohol-related charges, but nothing involving, like, violence that Robichotti could find.

• 24:40Speaker 00

  Okay, but isn't that kind of always the story now with a lot of IGT matches? I mean, the Golden State Killer kind of wrote the playbook, like, unassuming, normal life.

• 24:49Ashley Flowers?

  But at the time, Robichotti is like, he had never had a case of his like this before. Like, this was a first, and he just did not know what to think.

• 24:58Speaker 00

  Well, and I, I mean, I brought up Golden State Killer, but he also had murdered more than a dozen people over the decade. This would just kind of be a one-off murder.

• 25:07Ashley Flowers?

  Right, and it's not like Hardy's DNA pings on any other cases in CODIS, right? Plus, there was a real issue. Robichotti could never put Hardy in San Luis Obispo. Honestly, he said if he didn't have this guy's DNA saying he was there, he likely would have looked the other way when it came to this guy. There were only two things that stood out that made them really believe that the blood evidence wasn't some kind of fluke. One is that 30-something-year-old Hardy, who has a girlfriend and a steady job, suddenly did seem to have become transient after Toby's murder.

• 25:47Speaker 00

  Almost like something set him off down a different path.

• 25:49Ashley Flowers?

  Mm-hmm. Two, the family member that connected him, like, through genealogy, was Hardy's sister. And when they talked to her, she told them that around the time that the murder happened, her brother had this pronounced limp. And when she asked him about it, he said that he was out on Route 1, trying to help a woman whose car was on the side of the road, when this oncoming car ran over his foot. And Robichotti thought, like, that's a really weird story to tell. Eerily similar to kind of Toby's whole situation.

• 26:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I mean, like, don't people say the best lies have, like, a grain of truth to them?

• 26:29Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, and like, plus, like, Detective Cole's, in his eyes, he said, like, if a car hits you on the side of the highway, like, you're gonna have a bit more damage than just, like, a little bit of a limp.

• 26:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, a limp is almost like a car actually, like, slow-rolled over your foot. I don't know, going at a super-low speed in a parking lot, right?

• 26:47Ashley Flowers?

  So Robichotti can't put his finger on it. But even still, even with these two weird things, something just isn't sitting right. So he decides to double-confirm by going back to the evidence, to the one thing that they have been using to rule people in or out since 1983.

• 27:05Speaker 00

  The prints on that Coke can.

• 27:06Ashley Flowers?

  Right. So he taps a woman named Shelby Liddell, this forensic specialist with the sheriff's office, who we're told is something of a wizard when it comes to fingerprint analysis. Robichotti basically says to her, like, "Hey, we have a suspect. Can you run the prints from the scene against him to confirm?" Typically, what that would mean is that Shelby would get the exemplar prints from the suspect and the latent prints from the soda can, and look at them side by side. That is not what Shelby does. And the reason why is important. She doesn't want confirmation bias to get anywhere near her work, especially if she has to defend it in court. So rather than do this, like, one-to-one comparison, before ever pulling the exemplar prints,

• 27:52Ashley Flowers?

  she decides to just run the latent prints through the FBI's print system again herself. Like, start from scratch. And actually, before I get into this, like, quick crash course on this, like, on how it works, cuz I don't think we've ever, like, gone over it. And I actually, I know we haven't, because I didn't truly know myself until our reporter Nicole, like, sat down in the lab with Shelby and got a masterclass. So the basic process is, like, you run a latent print through the system, and it returns a list of possible matches with a score. Not just, like, this is it.

• 28:22Speaker 00

  But like, 100% is the best, and then, like, 75% is pretty good, at 25% is, like, TBD.

• 28:27Ashley Flowers?

  So then it's up to the lab tech to, like, go in and independently verify everything. So this is what Shelby does with the Coke can prints. But when she gets the list back, the scores aren't even super great. So she starts going through the matches one by one, ruling them out, ruling them out. And when she gets to number four, she is like, "Okay, bingo. This is a make. I've got a match here." So that's when she goes and she looks at the name, and it is not the suspect name that detectives gave her. So just to double-check, she tries the whole process again with another print that was lifted from, like, a different finger from the Coke can. Runs through the list, finds a match, looks at the name, same guy, not their suspect.

• 29:11Ashley Flowers?

  And Shelby literally has, like, a second person double-check her work, just to make sure. But they reach the same conclusion. The prints do not match Stephen Hardy. They match a man in the fingerprint system named Charlie Sneed. And this dude is from Texas. Like, at least with Stephen Hardy, he was in the same state, right? So it's even hard to be like, "Why is his print at the scene?" So once again, detectives Robichotti and Cole don't know what to make of this. But they know that none of the science is wrong. It has been checked over and over again at this point. They're missing a piece of the puzzle.

• 29:51Speaker 00

  But we said at the top, like, the Coke can might not be connected.

• 29:56Ashley Flowers?

  Yes, and maybe you could write it off that easily. Except, when they look into Charlie Sneed, he is exactly the type of person who would commit a crime like this.

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• 31:17Ashley Flowers?

  Charlie Sneed is from New Braunfels, Texas with a violent history. I'm talking a destroyed car, being reckless with guns, and literally holding someone hostage. So let's start in June of 83. This is just five months before Toby's murder. Sneed was in the process of divorcing his wife, and he had decided to go over to her best friend Deborah's house to pay her a visit because, for some reason, he blamed her for the divorce. Now, Sneed didn't want to talk to her. He went over in the middle of the night with a high-powered rifle to shoot up her car while in the driveway.

• 31:51Speaker 00

  What?

• 31:52Ashley Flowers?

  So aggressively, by the way, that Deborah thinks he was trying to blow up her car. She obviously woke up, and when she looked out her window, she saw Charlie in the street putting the rifle back behind the backseat of his pickup truck before just, like, driving off.

• 32:06Speaker 00

  A silver, or silver-gray, or gray pickup truck?

• 32:09Ashley Flowers?

  It doesn't say in this report, but there is another report that brings up this truck. So, three months after that incident, in September of 83, this is now just two months before Toby's murder, Charlie Sneed went out to a random area in, like, the middle of nowhere, Texas, highly intoxicated, and just starts shooting off his rifle at nothing. Unbeknownst to him, on the bluff directly above him, were two New Braunfels police officers on break. So they go down and arrest him for reckless discharge of a firearm.

• 32:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:46Ashley Flowers?

  Their report makes note of his 1983 beige Chevy pickup truck.

• 32:53Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 32:54Ashley Flowers?

  Not gray or silver.

• 32:55Speaker 00

  What kind of vehicle did Hardy have?

• 32:58Ashley Flowers?

  So this is the thing. We don't know what Stephen Hardy drove, but not for a lack of trying.

• 33:03Speaker 00

  I believe you. Okay, so were these two working together?

• 33:09Ashley Flowers?

  Maybe, but, like, the detectives still don't have anything that connects Hardy and Sneed.

• 33:16Speaker 00

  Like, they might be, but we have no idea why or how they would be.

• 33:17Ashley Flowers?

  They're not from the same place, they're not related, so that's what Robachati goes in search of. Like, what is the connection here?

• 33:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:26Ashley Flowers?

  So what he does is, he tracks down one of the officers who arrested Sneed back in 83. Now, he's retired by that point, but Robachati is looking for anything. Like, point me in the right direction, even. Well, immediate jackpot. This officer remembers Charlie Sneed all right, knew him really well, actually, because the two had gone to school together. So now comes the important question. Had he heard of Stephen Hardy? And right away, the officer's like, yup, he was here for about a month or two, and he and Sneed used to run together. Robachati ends up confirming that when he finds a criminal record for Hardy out of Texas. He was arrested for a bad check in February of 1984, and this would be after Toby's murder

• 34:11Ashley Flowers?

  now. Now, Robachati's also able to find a number of stolen vehicle reports filed by Hardy to San Antonio Police Department. And this is where he went down a rabbit hole, trying to connect Hardy to a silver truck with the right damage, but he never could. Still, in all the digging, there is clearly enough connecting these two men around the time of the murder. And there's physical evidence that suggests both of them were at this scene, that they were likely working together to rob Toby, and then one of them pulled the trigger before they both fled the scene. This is the theory that detectives Cole and Robachati present to the ADA, along with

• 34:56Ashley Flowers?

  all of their supporting evidence. And on January 7th, 2026, 42 years after Toby's murder, the DA writes back saying that there is sufficient probable cause to support a prosecution of the suspects if they were still alive, because Sneed is also deceased by this point.

• 35:16Speaker 00

  So we'll never know who pulled the trigger.

• 35:19Ashley Flowers?

  No, the murder weapon has never been found, but given Sneed's history, both detectives believe that he was the shooter. Interestingly, though, when Hardy was arrested in 1984, they fingerprinted him, and on the fingerprint card, they mentioned that he had a scar on his lower-left index finger, which, when you think back to, like, the crime scene, what he's connected to...

• 35:46Speaker 00

  Which he could have gotten, then, during the shooting.

• 35:50Ashley Flowers?

  It's possible. Like, the detectives suspect that he cut himself on one of the broken van windows.

• 35:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:57Ashley Flowers?

  But the truth is, we have no way of knowing where that scar came from. We don't even know, like, what he was bleeding from, and we know he left his blood there, but we don't know why or how.

• 36:07Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:08Ashley Flowers?

  And really, it doesn't matter. I mean, not legally speaking, anyway, because in California, there is a felony murder rule. Now, that's recently become, like, a bit more complicated, but before 2019, the rule meant that if a group of people commit a crime, and then someone dies during that crime...

• 36:25Speaker 00

  Everyone gets charged with murder, or could be.

• 36:27Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, even if you had no role in the actual killing itself, even if you didn't intend for anyone to die. Now, as far as we know, Hardy didn't commit any more violent crimes after this, but Sneed kept up the same violent antics. So after Toby's murder, he went back to Texas, still going after his ex's best friend Deborah.

• 36:48Speaker 00

  Still because of the divorce?

• 36:49Ashley Flowers?

  Actually, so according to the offense report, this time he was after Deborah because he wanted her to drop the charges that she filed when he shot up her car years earlier.

• 36:59Speaker 00

  Because of the divorce, right.

• 37:00Ashley Flowers?

  Same line, yeah. And this time, he switched up his strategy, though, so instead of going straight at Deborah, he went after her ex-husband, taking him hostage outside of a bar.

• 37:10Speaker 00

  What?

• 37:11Ashley Flowers?

  Pointing a gun to his head and forcing him to drive them both to Deborah's house. When they got there, though, this guy fought Sneed off and then called police after Sneed ran away, or so he thought, because when officers respond to Deborah's house, they find that Sneed actually didn't go very far. He was hiding in Deborah's closet.

• 37:28Speaker 00

  Oh, my god.

• 37:29Ashley Flowers?

  So he spent 20 years in prison for that.

• 37:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:33Ashley Flowers?

  Got out in 2009, but then died in 2014. So, like I said, any answers that he might have had about what happened, or who played what role, gone with him. Regardless, the solve got announced publicly on January 20th, 2026, and Priscilla flew to San Luis Obispo to attend the press conference. It was actually her first time ever being in the county, and until that moment, she told detectives she had this, like, very dark, evil picture of this area in her mind. But when Detective Robachati takes her out to the scene of the crime and to the campground, Priscilla said that it actually, kind of unexpectedly, brought her a lot of peace, like,

• 38:15Ashley Flowers?

  just knowing that the beautiful California coastline was the last thing her sister saw. She told us it was finally, like, putting a period at the end of a sentence. But there is a bit of a question mark that I want to leave people with, something that has been bothering Detective Robachati. Remember how crime scene investigators determined that Toby was dragged from the driver's seat where she was shot, like, to the back of the van, right? Well, there was male-touch DNA present on her clothing that was consistent with that. According to Robachati, it's degraded to the point where you can only compare one to one. But they did a comparison with Hardy and with Sneed.

• 38:59Speaker 00

  Ashley, no.

• 39:00Ashley Flowers?

  The DNA doesn't match either of them, or any known persons of interest detectives have thought to compare it to thus far. So there are a few options here. That DNA could belong to one of the old investigators at the scene, or medical examiners, like, someone present at the autopsy. I mean, Shelby has certainly seen that before, especially in some of these older cases. But unfortunately, according to Detective Cole, everyone who was present at the autopsy is dead, so they can't go get their DNA.

• 39:31Speaker 00

  Right, so it could be that, or we might have a third suspect who could be able to tell us exactly what happened.

• 39:39Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah. So this is kind of where I think our crime junkies come in. If anyone out there listening by any chance knows something about the 1983 homicide of Dorothy Toby Tate on Highway 1 in San Luis Obispo, or if you knew Charlie Sneed, or Stephen Hardy, or anyone that they used to hang out with in Texas or California, please come forward. You can reach the San Luis Obispo Sheriff's Office Detectives Division at 805-781-4500. Or if you'd rather stay anonymous, you can call the San Luis Obispo County Crime Stoppers

• 40:18Ashley Flowers?

  at 805-549-7867. Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production. I think Chuck would approve.

• 40:30Speaker 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.