MURDERED: Joyce LePage Part 1

In the summer of 1971, 21-year-old Joyce LePage disappears after a skydiving lesson followed by a beer with friends. In the beginning, the only clue is a piece of missing carpet that was cut out from a vacant dorm on the campus of Washington State University where Joyce had been secretly squatting. Her belongings, her car and her body would all be found in different places, and they all point to different suspects.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp is one of the world's leading online therapy services. Now, insurance options may be available nationwide with average copays of just $23 per session for eligible members. But cost isn't the only thing holding people back. Most of us weren't taught stress management. Therapy gives you tools to keep stress from building. BetterHelp works with more than 125 health plans, making it easy to get started with low-cost sessions. Don't have eligible insurance? Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/crimejunkie. Cost and coverage may vary. Discount cannot be combined with insurance.

• 0:33Speaker 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 Diambra 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.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  Let's face it, if student loans are slowing down your financial goals, it might be time for a smarter strategy. That's where today's sponsor, SoFi, comes in. SoFi is helping you tackle student debt by refinancing your loans with flexible monthly payments that fit your budget. We're talking about the potential to lower your interest rate, reduce your monthly payment, or even pay off your loan sooner, depending on the term you choose. You can also consolidate your student loans into one simple monthly payment, so you could save more each month and work towards achieving your long-term financial ambitions. SoFi offers competitive, fixed and variable rates and no origination fees, prepayment fees, or late fees required. It takes just two minutes to check your rate with SoFi, and they have already helped over 500,000 members refinance more than $50 billion in student loans.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  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.

• 2:10Speaker 01

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

• 2:12Speaker 00

  And I'm Brett.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  And the story I have for you today starts almost 55 years ago. But don't call this a cold case, because things, even all these years later, are heating back up. Everything centers around one July night on the campus of Washington State University. A coed and a big swath of carpet go missing from a residence hall no one was supposed to be in. Where her car ended up, where her keys were found, and where her body was left are all clues that point at different people. There have been many theories about what happened to Joyce Lepage over the years,

• 2:54Speaker 01

  but only six viable ones seem to remain. And maybe our sleuths out there can help us see what is missing as we try to figure out who killed Joyce Lepage.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  I'm about to take you back to a time that we, and a lot of our audience, have only ever witnessed in the movies, the early 1970s. Now, what you might know about the time was that President Nixon has just declared the war on drugs, some of the Pentagon Papers are being released, and many Americans are taking to the streets to protest the Vietnam War. For some, these issues were part of the everyday fabric of July 1971. And for others, they probably felt a whole world away. Take, for instance, Joyce Lepage, a 21-year-old farmer's daughter in eastern Washington whose focus that summer was on young love, meditating, skydiving, and school.

• 4:23Speaker 00

  I'm sorry, Ashley, what are we gonna take our own advice and like, stay out of Washington for once?

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Listen, every time we cover a case there, it leads to another one, which is actually how we found Joyce's story. So, back to the summer in 1971. Joyce is subleasing a room in an off-campus apartment while taking summer courses in chemistry and German at WSU in Pullman, which is on the eastern side of the state. Now, I've always said college roommates are a coin toss. I found both of mine on Craigslist. It's a story for another day, but you're either gonna like, be absolute best friends, or you'll want nothing to do with one another. There's not a whole lot in between. I actually had both. And for Joyce and her roommate Bruce Beerbaum, they fall into that second category, at least as far as Joyce is concerned.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  She finds Bruce kind of annoying, so much so that she had actually been avoiding sleeping at her own place. In a letter scrawled in her messy handwriting, Joyce explained to a friend where she had been crashing instead. So I'm gonna have a voice actor read a portion of the letter.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  Stevens Hall is being worked on this summer, so I have taken over the building. I play their piano, watch TV, sleep, shower, even bathe in there. It's my private hideaway for the rest of the summer.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  It wasn't a secret among Joyce's friends that she was spending time at Stevens Hall, but concerns had been expressed about her getting caught. So she writes in that same letter that she was taking precautions.

• 5:55Speaker 02

  I even used their hidden parking place that the police can't see from the road. Yesterday morning, a workman stumbled upon me accidentally. I had spent the night in the head residence room. He thought I was the head resident, I guess, because he asked me if I knew where the storm windows were, then apologized and left.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  This letter isn't dated, so we aren't sure when that worker stumbled upon Joyce's hiding place. But it's not like she got kicked out. The arrangement seemed to be working for her. And on weekends when she could, she would try to go back home to visit her family a few hours away in Pasco, Washington. In fact, in another letter written by Joyce in the case file and dated July 20, she wrote to her family telling them that she would be home that upcoming weekend for a doctor's appointment and to attend the Water Follies, which was this like, annual boat race that the town put on.

• 6:51Speaker 00

  Love it.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  But before she hit the road, she had skydiving lessons to attend.

• 6:56Speaker 00

  Would you mention skydiving before? And I was like, what?

• 6:58Speaker 01

  I am telling you, Joyce was one in a million. She was into writing, meditation, she played piano, loved getting her hands dirty, like helping on the family farm. And before skydiving, she took up flying, like she got her pilot's license at 18 years old. So she is no novice when it comes to aviation. And she was actually taking these lessons alongside her friend, this guy named Hal Wood. So, fast forward to Thursday, July 22. This is just two days after she sent her parents that letter. This is when Joyce and Hal had a lesson planned. So Hal and his then-girlfriend Patty hop on their motorcycle. They ride over to Joyce's apartment.

• 7:38Speaker 00

  Wait, her actual apartment or the dorm she was like hiding out in?

• 7:42Speaker 01

  They meet her at the apartment. It's just a few blocks away from campus. And she's there, and everything is good. They all pile into Joyce's car, drive about four miles to the Pullman Moscow Regional Airport for the lesson. After, the three friends go to Spruce Tavern in Moscow. They share a pitcher of beer before heading back. So it's about 10:00 PM when they pull up to her apartment complex. And they say goodbye to Joyce in like, the front yard area of her place. And that is where she is still standing when they take off on their bike. And this would become the last confirmed sighting of Joyce Lepage alive and well. We really don't know anything else about the rest of her Thursday night after 10:00 PM.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  But this is what we know about the next day, Friday, July 23. At 8:22 AM, campus police get a call from a custodian who is doing rounds at Stevens Hall where Joyce had been crashing. And the janitor says that there is this big piece of green carpet in the lobby that has been cut out from the floor. And we're not just talking like, a little piece. This is like, a five-by-five-foot swath. And the contractors had no reason to remove it. Plus, if they did, they probably would've used like, precision cutting tools. This looks like somebody took a pair of scissors and just like, went to town.

• 9:00Speaker 00

  Hat at it, yeah.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  So they're calling to report this basically as a burglary. Now, nothing else besides the carpet is missing, but they do find things that don't seem like they belong there. This woven basket-type purse containing a headscarf, a German 350 textbook, and several cards and letters from someone named David Arthur to another person named Joyce Lepage. And there's even an unmailed letter from Joyce back to David. Now, David Arthur is Joyce's boyfriend, who at the time is back home in South Africa for the summer. Obviously, he didn't take their carpet. But they figure this Joyce might know something, since clearly her purse is there in the building.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  So police locate Joyce's address. They head to her apartment to question her about the missing carpet, but Joyce isn't there. In fact, she ends up being MIA to every scheduled thing she had that day. A German class that was scheduled from 10:30 to 11:30, another skydiving lesson with Hal at 4:30, and she supposedly had been entertaining the idea of going to a dance in Oaksdale, Washington with this guy named Mike Finch. Mike was a friend of Joyce's that she had kind of like, she dated on and off at some point. He's a teacher. He was like, literally chaperoning like, a high school dance and had invited Joyce as his date. But Joyce was a no-show to all of it. Her professor said she didn't come to class. Hal says she didn't show up for the lesson. Mike says he waited and waited, thought Joyce just blew him off for the dance.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Come Saturday, Joyce also didn't show up to her childhood home as planned. She missed the boat race and her eye doctor appointment. Of course, her family had no idea of all the things she had already missed back at school. So they just tried calling her, thinking maybe that her plans had changed. But there was no answer. And Joyce was one that didn't really talk on the phone a lot to her family, or really to anyone very often. I mean, combing through her letters, it seems like mail was her main form of communication. So her family decided to kind of just wait a beat. See if she showed up, see if she would call with an explanation for her absence. But she didn't. And after a few more days, her parents try calling her apartment again.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  And this time, they at least get a hold of her roommate, Bruce. But he said, like, they're basically ships passing in the night. They don't really see much of each other at all.

• 11:22Speaker 00

  Which makes sense if she's been like dodging him.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, and he says that he hasn't seen Joyce since the weekend before. And he doesn't know where she is. Now, when Monday, August 2nd, comes, and there is still no word from Joyce, her dad Walter calls campus police bright and early to report his daughter missing. And first stop police make is again to Joyce's apartment. But no one is home. Her light green 1966 Dodge Coronet that her dad told them she had isn't there either. Which at first might seem like a good sign. But by 1:15 that very afternoon, after checking the local hospital, after checking student health center, and checking their own arrest records without success,

• 12:06Speaker 01

  they locate Joyce's car parked at 1704 Opal Street, right outside a fraternity house about seven-ish blocks from her apartment. People they talked to at the frat house say that the car has been out there for like a week. There was even like a parking ticket on the windshield dated July 29th. So it's for sure been there at least four days, but likely more, like people are saying. But even though people have seen the car a lot, they haven't seen anyone around it. Now, the car is locked up, and peering through the windows, officers only see some books and papers, a wallet, some women's shoes, nothing that screams foul play or anything. But they do at least still have some analysts with the Washington State Crime Lab

• 12:51Speaker 01

  come and process Joyce's car right there on Opal Street. But the report says that they don't find anything.

• 12:59Speaker 00

  Not even fingerprints?

• 13:00Speaker 01

  So this, that's the thing. So reports don't get that specific. They just say that nothing of significance was found. But Whitman County Sheriff Brett Myers, who oversees the case today, he says he doesn't think they dusted for fingerprints.

• 13:14Speaker 00

  Okay, then why have it processed at all if you're not gonna do that?

• 13:17Speaker 01

  What, what does processing mean?

• 13:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, like what are you looking for if not at least fingerprints?

• 13:22Speaker 01

  I don't know. I assume they're like looking for blood or like in her trunk. They're like looking for obvious signs that something bad happened. But like, I'm with you. To me, this would be a huge miss. Because the car just ends up getting returned to Joyce's family. And it's probably because investigators don't know what they have on their hands yet. I mean, this is weird for sure. They've got a coed who hasn't been seen for almost two weeks, who lives on Oak Street, but whose car is parked on Opal Street, but whose stuff is found inside Stevens Hall, where a carpet went missing around the time that Joyce was last seen. But no one can say what it means.

• 14:01Speaker 00

  I mean, a crime junkie could tell you some ideas.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  And listen, it's not like they're totally writing her off. I mean, they launch an investigation and they interview pretty much everyone. Joyce's friends, her professors, roommates, boyfriends. And I think part of what confuses them or the situation is that they get some one-off sightings of her maybe being seen after 10:00 PM on Thursday. So it's like, you know, this isn't normal, but is it sinister? Well, the more time that passes without any word from Joyce, and without any real confirmed sightings of her, the more they begin to believe that something bad happened to Joyce at the hands of someone else. But what?

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Well, it took nine full months before everyone got the answer that they were dreading. On April 16th, 1972, a teenage boy and his mom showed up at a police station in Colfax, Washington, with some bones in tow. They said that they'd been out in Waiwai Canyon looking for gemstones when they found what they think are human remains. And it is unbelievable that these were ever even found. I mean, to recover the rest, Whitman County deputies have to tie a rope to the bumper of a patrol car and like rappel down a steep cliff to get to the location where the rest of the bones are.

• 15:24Speaker 00

  Okay, how were the boy and his mom even down there if the spot was so hard to get to?

• 15:29Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't know if they both were. So reports say that the teenager was the one who actually found the remains. His mom was like a higher up. So I assume this kid is just like young and nimble and like climbed down easily.

• 15:39Speaker 00

  And mom is like on the edge being like, I'm watching.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 15:43Speaker 00

  But like, that's how they got down there. How did this body, how did these remains get down there though? Or someone get them down there?

• 15:50Speaker 01

  I wondered the same thing. And we asked Sheriff Myers. He actually volunteered to like go out there with his drone and shoot some photos and video for us that kind of like give you a feel for the area. And if you take a look, you'll see there's this like canyon road. And they're thinking that maybe someone drove up there and then like pushed her down the canyon to where she landed. And I actually do, like along with this drone footage, I have some of the original scene photos that the sheriff gave us as well. And I know it's like kind of hard to like know what you're looking at because they're in black and white. They're like filmed, they're pretty close up. But like they're in the brush.

• 16:26Speaker 00

  Oh, is that, is that the carpet?

• 16:28Speaker 01

  That's the carpet. Yeah, when they get down there, deputies do find a partial, mostly skeletal body wrapped in a green carpet. Now Joyce isn't completely intact anymore. Like the bundle of carpet that she's in is found about three feet above a seasonal creek. So between that and animal activity, I'm sure. Like some of her remains were found more scattered.

• 16:51Speaker 00

  And how far away is this from Pullman and WSU?

• 16:54Speaker 01

  Close enough that, I mean, they know about Joyce LePage. Because while this is a very rural area, it's only like 25 minutes southwest of campus. So people in these parts are well aware that a student has been missing for the better part of a year at this point. Now, they have to enlist the help of the FBI, and it takes some time. But it's eventually confirmed through dental records that that was Joyce. What's left of her remains can't tell them how she died definitively. But their best guess at the time was that she was stabbed because there were markings on some of her bones that like looked like they could be knife punctures. But interestingly, if she was stabbed,

• 17:38Speaker 01

  it wasn't while she was laying on that carpet. Because apparently, there's no blood on it. Her remains were also wrapped in some blankets, including a military US Army Medical Corps blanket. And none of that has blood on it either. Now, there's a pair of women's floral underwear that they found too, either like wrapped up in it or like somewhere nearby. And the underwear had been like sliced on either side. And the only other item of evidence that they find is this fishing wire, like twine, that was like wrapped around the pelvis. Now, this obviously is not the outcome that the LePage family was hoping for. But in a way, it is a relief.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  We interviewed Joyce's brother, Bruce LePage, for this episode. Totally different than her roommate Bruce, this is her brother. And he told us by that time, I mean, this is like nine months out, like they had accepted the fact that Joyce was likely gone. And her remains being found did allow them to have a funeral and to grieve and to celebrate who she was. This daughter, sister, friend. She was a hardworking farm girl with a freaking pilot's license, who likes skydiving and listening to her favorite Steppenwolf record. And who, by the way, contained multitudes because she was also studying English Lit and attending summer school to be able to graduate faster. Her brother told us that if Joyce had lived, she would have had a full life.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  He guessed as a teacher, or maybe a journalist, or a pilot even, and probably a mom. Because just two days before she vanished, Joyce wrote a letter to her parents talking about a friend's baby, who had just turned six months old. And in it, she mused that maybe someday she'd have a baby of her own. Like, who knows, she said, the world felt like her oyster. But someone took all of that away from her, from her family, from everyone who loved her. And to this day, they've gotten away with it. But not for a lack of trying on the part of investigators. Because Joyce's case file is robust. I mean, I could spend hours walking you through every step they took,

• 19:50Speaker 01

  every person they looked at, every lead that they ran down. Lots of it went nowhere. But after 55 years, there are several theories that still carry a lot of weight. And I think that says something. So I want to walk you through the different scenarios and the six different suspects whose names have endured decades.

• 20:18Speaker 00

  College is a lot like Halloween. You can become whatever you want to be. The difference? A costume lasts one night, but a college degree lasts a whole lifetime. Try on something new with Southern New Hampshire University. They've got over 200 online degree programs for all kinds of career goals: business, healthcare, technology, you name it. Plus, with no scheduled class times or live lectures to attend, you don't have to quit your day job to work toward your dream career. And get this: SNHU has some of the lowest online tuition rates in the US, which means you can still be that house that gives out full-size candy bars. So instead of pretending to have your dream job, why not earn a degree that helps you get there for real? Start your free application today at SNHU.edu/crimejunkie. That's SNHU.edu/crimejunkie.

• 21:06Speaker 00

  With the leaves turning and the air getting crisper, cold and flu season is right around the corner. Staying ahead of the inevitable sniffles and being prepared shouldn't mean overpaying for prescriptions. That's where GoodRx comes in. GoodRx makes it easy to take control of your health and your budget with savings on preventative cold and flu medications and your everyday prescriptions. It's free and super easy to use. You just search for your medication on their website or app, compare prices, and bring the free coupon to show your pharmacist. You can save at over 70,000 local pharmacies nationwide, like Walgreens and CVS, or get prescriptions delivered right to your front door. Remember, GoodRx is not insurance, but it works whether you have insurance or not, and it could even beat your insurance copay price. I recently switched medications, and the first thing I did when I got my prescription was head straight to GoodRx to see how much I could save.

• 21:51Speaker 00

  And as usual, it was easy and really made a difference. Save time and money on your prescriptions this season. Check out GoodRx at GoodRx.com/crimejunkie. That's GoodRx.com/crimejunkie.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  Before I jump into the six theories that have lasted through all these years, let me get something out of the way, because if I don't bring it up, I know the Crime Junkies are gonna come for me. The boyfriend. So Joyce's boyfriend, David Arthur, was for sure in South Africa when she was murdered. No funny business. He isn't even on the table here, and he didn't hire someone or want to take her out. Like, from Joyce's letters, it seemed like she was pretty smitten with David. And actually, some people even say that they were low-key engaged to be married. So he had zero means, motive, opportunity. But there was someone in Joyce's recent dating history who had for sure two of the three of those: Mike Finch.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  And he's the teacher guy who invited her to chaperone the dance with him that Friday night. He was supposed to see her the very night that she was likely killed. So obviously, that's a guy you gotta look at.

• 23:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:07Speaker 01

  But on top of that, police had gotten a tip that said that Mike had a habit of hanging around outside Joyce's chemistry lab and disrupting class so often that the teacher was about to ban him from coming back.

• 23:19Speaker 00

  Also, he's like a grown man with a career. Like, what's he doing, hanging around?

• 23:25Speaker 01

  Well, he's kind of a grown man. So he had done a stint in the Army, and he had just graduated WSU the year before. So he's not way older than Joyce or anything. He's 27.

• 23:37Speaker 00

  Kind of a full-grown man.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Still, you know, she's in her 20s too. Anyways, police interview Mike, who tells them that he's known Joyce for two years. They had gone out about 10 times, he says, in the year or two before. So he knows her pretty well. And he says that it wasn't just the dance that they were supposed to go to together. They were gonna spend the whole weekend together. So he says that he last saw Joyce on Thursday, July 22. He was on campus for some reason, and he asked Joyce to chaperone this dance with him and then go to the Waterfollies thing together in Pasco. But Joyce didn't outright say yes. She said, "How about you call me tomorrow? We can talk about the plans." But he says he called the next day, between 6:30 and 7:00, right?

• 24:23Speaker 01

  Like, it's the 70s. You know, you have to schedule when to call somebody. That's when she would be home from her skydiving lesson. But he couldn't get a hold of her. And he makes a point that he called her from a friend's place in Spokane, except she didn't answer. So he called her again and again, but all three times, he never got in touch with her. And he tells police that he went to the dance on Saturday as planned, chaperoned, thought maybe she would show up at some point, so he waited, but Joyce never showed up. So he sucked it up and went along with weekend plans without her, which was to go to the Waterfollies and then go to Bellingham, Washington for an ag teachers' conference, where he said he remained for almost the whole next week.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  But I don't know about this. Like, can I be honest for a second?

• 25:12Speaker 00

  Always.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  So in early iterations of putting this story together, the Mike Finch section of this was actually pretty short. It was like, he called her, he went to the Waterfollies, drove to his conference. And spoiler: even though he wouldn't take a polygraph in the 1970s, he did take one in 2013, and he passed, so police don't really consider him a suspect anymore. But I am a details gal.

• 25:34Speaker 00

  I mean, always go a layer deeper.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  I don't know if you know this about me. And not everywhere in my life, for sure, but for case details, like...

• 25:41Speaker 00

  1,000%.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  I don't care what the final line in the report says. I want to dissect everything. And I cannot make this man's timeline make sense. Now, people before me kind of chalked it up to the fact that Mike was a drinker, and I'll get more into that in a minute. And they're also like, well, you know, he didn't have a calendar in front of him. Sometimes it's a little unclear exactly when he left for Pasco. Like, was it Friday? Was it Saturday? Even the dance? Like, sometimes in the reports, the dance reads like it's Friday. Most of the time, when Mike's being explicit, he says the dance is Saturday. And determining what is sus and what is typos in old reports is hard, because there's literally one part where it says that he left for Pasco Saturday morning at 10:00 PM.

• 26:27Speaker 00

  Iconically not in the morning.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Which cannot be correct. And on top of that, I think everyone is like, oh, you know, whatever. Like, everything we're talking about is Friday, Saturday. Like, Joyce was killed on Thursday.

• 26:36Speaker 00

  Right, so like, these days don't even matter.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  But I think it could matter a whole [bleep] lot, because here's what I've pieced together: Mike's story changes, and there's a lot of weird details in between. His first statement was given to police on August 3, 1971. This is the day after Joyce is reported missing. And the report states that in a phone call with police, Mike says that he visited Joyce on campus on July 22 and invited Joyce to the dance. They made arrangements for him to call her at her apartment the next evening to make solid plans. But the loose plan, he says, was for them to attend the dance and then drive to the Tri-Cities for the boat races. But Mike says that when he called Joyce

• 27:23Speaker 01

  on the evening of the 23rd, she didn't answer. He then waited around until 10:00 PM, and she didn't show. So he says he went to the boat races solo. And then, from there, he drove to Bellingham, Washington, where he attended a vocational agricultural teachers' convention. When police interviewed Hal and Patty, they're the ones who saw Joyce Thursday night, they said that she was planning to go to the dance on Friday. When they interviewed Joyce's roommate, Bruce, he too knew about the dance, which he said Joyce was planning to go to on Friday. These are all people who are being interviewed like the day after she's reported missing.

• 28:06Speaker 00

  And Joyce is the one telling them all this? Is she just mixed up?

• 28:09Speaker 01

  But why is Mike then saying that too in his first interview? And someone from the school ends up telling police that dances are always on Saturday, never Friday. So the mix-up seems even more strange to me. So then, fast forward to after Joyce's remains are found, but before she's been officially identified. They do a more formal interview with Mike Finch. And his story is a little different and has a lot more details. And pay close attention to the details. So he makes it sound a little more like he just happened to run into Joyce that Thursday morning. And he told her he's going to the Waterfollies, and he asked her if she wanted to go down,

• 28:54Speaker 01

  because, you know, "I'm already going." She says yes. They make plans for him to call the next day to verify. He does. "From Spokane, Washington," he clarifies. This is the first time this comes up. He says he calls from his buddy's place there. She didn't answer. He tries her a few times. "From Spokane," he wants to make sure. He mentioned that.

• 29:13Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 29:13Speaker 01

  And then he drives back to his place in Oaksdale. And they go back and forth to verify dates a little bit. And they get back to the 23rd, when he called Joyce between 6:30 and 7:00 PM.

• 29:25Speaker 00

  From Spokane, I'm sure, right? Okay, we get it.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  Then, on Saturday, he says he didn't leave for Pasco to go to the Waterfollies until really late, like 12:30 at night. I mean, technically, Sunday. But before he drove there, he just stopped by Pullman to drive by Joyce's apartment.

• 29:45Speaker 00

  What? He...

• 29:48Speaker 01

  Listen...

• 29:48Speaker 00

  Okay, why?

• 29:49Speaker 01

  Listen, it's not totally out of the way, but you don't drive through Pullman to get to Pasco. That's for sure. He said he just passed, saw that all the lights were off. It looked like no one was home, so he didn't stop.

• 30:02Speaker 00

  I mean, or everyone was asleep. It's midnight.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  Well, he's asked if her car was there when he drove by, and he's like, "Oh, I can't really remember. Like, I wasn't paying attention." Anyways, he says, from there, he left. He went to Pasco. And they do press him on something else that doesn't make sense. They say, "Okay, so she's gonna ride with you to the Waterfollies, and then you were gonna go to that teachers' conference in Bellingham." Because that is still part of his story here. And he's like, "Yep." So they say, "Well, then how was Joyce gonna get back to Pullman for classes on Monday?"

• 30:38Speaker 00

  If you were her ride, yeah.

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, and he's like, "Oh, like, you know, get back? I guess I would drive her back to Pullman, and then I would drive to Bellingham." And the timing and the geography of this makes zero sense to me, because if you're looking at a map, you have Pullman all the way on the right, on the eastern part of the state. Pasco is two hours southwest, and Bellingham is even...

• 30:59Speaker 00

  It's like way up northwest, right?

• 31:00Speaker 01

  Way up northwest. Yeah, it's like another five hours. So it makes sense to go from Pasco and the Waterfollies right to Bellingham. It makes no sense, however, to drive back to Pullman and then to Bellingham. Now, we do lots of things for love, but this wasn't his girlfriend.

• 31:19Speaker 00

  I mean, maybe all the more reason, though, because it feels like he's very into her.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  Like, I think there had to have been something there, right? But like, the thing is, he is saying to them that they're just friends. Like, yeah, they'd gone out a few times before, but they both decided it was mutual. They were just friends. But like, Mike... Come on. Come on. Like, why else are you asking her to be your date to like spend the weekend together?

• 31:46Speaker 00

  And hang around all of her classes all the time when you no longer go to school there?

• 31:50Speaker 01

  He, well, he did. I think he was like taking a summer class at one point. So like, he had a reason to be on campus, but

• 31:56Speaker 00

  But like

• 31:56Speaker 01

  he denied the accusation about disrupting her chemistry class, but he did admit to hanging around campus on occasion. For people in Joyce's life who knew Mike Finch, opinions are mixed. Some say that he's a big teddy bear. Others say he is crass when he drinks, which he does a lot.

• 32:16Speaker 00

  And both can be true.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  I think both probably were true. Joyce's friend Jan, who had also dated Mike, by the way, is quoted in the case files, saying, "The more you knew Mike Finch, the less you liked him."

• 32:30Speaker 00

  That's ominous.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  But there's no elaboration. She just said that when Mike was drunk, he was very foul-mouthed beyond belief. Now, police also interviewed the principal at Oakdale High, where Finch was an agriculture teacher. Lost art, by the way. And the principal says that Finch does a good job at school, but he said it's no secret that he is a heavy drinker.

• 32:53Speaker 00

  And if your boss knows you have a problem, then sir, you might have a problem.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  But he says the only time he's seen him have a violent temper was when he was sober.

• 33:02Speaker 00

  Which, okay, but that's not helping the situation at all.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  But again, no elaboration where I wish there was one. Know what else there is no mention of? Whether or not his alibis check out. And I should be clear, like, he doesn't have an alibi for Thursday, like, the real night in question. Because Friday morning is when the carpet goes missing.

• 33:27Speaker 00

  Right.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  She's found in the carpet, so presumably she's already dead by Friday. For the life of him, he cannot remember what he was doing that night.

• 33:39Speaker 00

  But he definitely knows the time he called her from Spokane, when he left for Pasco, where he stopped for gas. He knows all this stuff about the following two days, but that particular night, nothing.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  Now, they did verify with that friend in Spokane that Mike was there Friday night and that he thinks Mike tried calling a girl. But the guy says that Mike had no special feelings for Joyce. They also tried to talk to someone at the school to verify that Mike had chaperoned the dance.

• 34:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  They confirmed there was a dance on Saturday. But the person they're talking to doesn't know if they kept records on who was chaperoning. Because again, they're not like really looking into this until like a year out after her body's been found. The guy says basically he's gonna have to check and get back to detectives, but there's no follow-up in the file.

• 34:26Speaker 00

  Okay, was he at the Waterfollies? Did he go to the conference? Like, there's other things.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  There's only, there's mentions of police like saying they want to find out about these, like a few years down the line, but I don't see in the case file where they ever got any answers. I do see where they looked up his criminal history, though. They found that he did have public intoxication and resisting arrest charges from five years before. And interestingly, a few weeks after Joyce vanished, Mike got into a rollover accident while driving and he like totaled his car. Now, back in the day, police asked Mike to take a polygraph in Joyce's case. He initially agreed, but instead he got an attorney and then declined further participation, which only makes him more suspicious to some investigators.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  Other things make them suspicious of him, too. Like, remember the military blanket that Joyce was wrapped in? Mike was in the army. This makes some investigators keep their sights on him as the primary suspect for years, though they never seem to be able to pin anything on him. Now, there is a moment, though, when they wonder if they've got it all wrong. And that's in 1977, after a certain Pacific Northwest serial killer is arrested and begins confessing to murders of college coeds.

• 35:49Speaker 00

  Enter one Theodore Bundy.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  His name is in Joyce's case file as a person of interest, but not until after his arrest. So he was first arrested in 1975, and then in 1977, a tip made its way to police that said Bundy had supposedly stayed on WSU's campus the weekend that Joyce was killed. But there was no way to prove that six years later. Also, people kept saying that there was like VW bugs around campus, which like some say lent credence to this theory.

• 36:21Speaker 00

  Right, because Ted Bundy drove a VW bug, but so did everyone in 1971.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  Literally including Mike Finch.

• 36:27Speaker 00

  Oh. Okay, but isn't Joyce's case a little early for Ted Bundy, though?

• 36:32Speaker 01

  Uh, maybe. So Bundy's first confirmed killing was in 1974, but authorities have speculated that he may have started murdering people like in the 60s. So that leaves the door open. And because we're talking about a victim who was like his profile type in the Pacific Northwest, which was like a hunting ground for him, his name, I think, will always come up until they can rule him in or out. But if you believe the word of a serial killer, it should be out. Because before Bundy was electrocuted in 1989, he was asked about Joyce's murder, and he denied any involvement. It's still totally possible that he was involved.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  But of the few theories that have survived, I think it's the least probable, and Sheriff Myers agrees with that. Bundy would have had to have just been like randomly passing through campus late at night on July 22, 1971.

• 37:31Speaker 00

  Right, like, it's much more likely it was someone that Joyce knew.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Or someone who for sure knew where she was going to be. So maybe for that reason, Mike Finch stayed on police's radar for a very long time. They would try to revisit him, but he pretty much stopped cooperating once he got that lawyer. But just in 2013, they finally broke through. Mike agreed to be re-interviewed, and that time is when he took a polygraph. And his memory then, as he is interviewed, is a little bit different. So by 2013, he's saying Joyce asked him if he was gonna go to Pasco for the boat races. And when he said yes, she asked if she could hitch a ride with him.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  He told her, "That's fine, as long as she could find her own ride back," because he had to go to that ag teachers' conference the next day. This time, he doesn't mention calling her on Friday, but he does say that Saturday he drove to pick her up. She wasn't home, so he drove to the airport to see if she was still at her skydiving lesson.

• 38:36Speaker 00

  Wait, what time is this?

• 38:38Speaker 01

  In this version, it's earlier. He says that when she wasn't there, he drove back to his place in Oakdale because he figured it was too early to go to Pasco. Remember, before, he said that he drove by her place, then went like straight there, like really late at night. So he says he drives back to his place, he waits around, has a couple of beers outside his house with a local farmer friend, and then he left. And he says he didn't know he was a prime suspect all these years. And all that time might have warped his memories, as time tends to do. But he still says he had nothing to do with her disappearance or murder, and he finally agrees to take the polygraph, and he passes.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  Mike Finch died in 2024, and investigators today more or less consider him cleared. They can't connect him to anything from the scene, and they can't put him with Joyce or around Stevens Hall on Thursday, July 22, 1971. So maybe it would be better to look at someone we know for a fact was near Stevens Hall that night. A man who police had on their radar when Joyce was still just a missing person.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  I don't know if this is just a Midwest thing or a me thing, but I get a rush of excitement when I score an incredible bargain. And I am one of those people who feel compelled to tell anyone about it when given the chance. So like, I'm the person who immediately responds to a compliment, like, "Thanks, I got it on sale," or "Thanks, got it on Whatnot." And if you haven't tried Whatnot, then you're missing out on some great deals to brag about. Whatnot is the number one live shopping app in the US, where shopping happens in real time with real people, real conversations, and incredible deals. You almost never pay full price. You can shop name brands across makeup, perfume, clothes, handbags, jewelry, and more. When I say more, there is literally everything. I have gotten lost in the estate sale side of the app.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  You can find so many treasures without even leaving your couch. Download Whatnot today and get $20 off your first purchase. Search Whatnot, W-H-A-T-N-O-T, in the App Store. Sign up and start finding the best deals on the products you love with $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply.

• 40:58Speaker 00

  Most people focus purely on where their money is today, but Acorns is the financial wellness app that cares about where that money is going tomorrow. Acorns offers a smart, effortless way to grow your money. I love that it's an all-in-one platform for investing, saving, and goal-setting. No extra finance apps needed. With the Acorns potential screen, seeing your financial future is clear and motivating. Sign up now and join over 14 million people already investing with Acorns. New customers get a $20 bonus investment just for signing up. It takes about two minutes and could be the quickest $20 you'll ever earn. Head to acorns.com/crimejunkie, that's A-C-O-R-N-S.com/crimejunkie, to claim your $20 bonus today. Acorns.com/crimejunkie. Limited time offer, terms and conditions apply. See acorns.com/terms for details.

• 41:43Speaker 00

  Paid, non-client endorsement. Compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns. Tier two compensation provided. Potential subject to various factors, such as customers' accounts, age, and investment settings. Does not include Acorns fees. Results do not predict or represent the performance of any Acorns portfolio. Investment results will vary. Investing involves risk. Acorns Advisors LLC, an SEC-registered investment advisor. View important disclosures at acorns.com/crimejunkie.

• 42:10Speaker 00

  This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. There are plenty of reasons we put off getting support, and for a lot of people, cost is one of them. With BetterHelp, insurance options may now be available nationwide, with an average copay for eligible members of just $23 per session. And while we're reconsidering old assumptions, maybe there are a few others worth questioning, too. Think about the pressure to be ambitious but never intimidating. The demand to be available for everyone while still carving out personal time? Perhaps the belief is that a career should be perfectly defined by now, or that being a reliable partner or friend means being reachable 24/7. Extending grace to oneself is just as important as showing compassion to others. If you've been waiting to start therapy, BetterHelp works with more than 125 health plan networks, and eligible members have an average copay of just $23 per session with insurance.

• 42:54Speaker 00

  Don't have insurance or don't live in the United States? You can still get 10% off your first month. Visit betterhelp.com/crimejunkie to explore your payment options. That's better H-E-L-P.com/crimejunkie.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  The first indication that anything was amiss on campus wasn't the report that Joyce was missing. It was that report that they'd gotten of the missing carpet in Stevens Hall. And while Joyce was an early suspect in the carpet theft because her belongings were found in the building, there was one other suspect. A contract worker named Robert Lauren Johnson, who was laying tile that summer in what was then Arts Hall, which is a building just like 100, maybe 200 yards from Stevens Hall. And it turns out, he was working late the night of July 22nd and actually ended up working until like 2:30 a.m. and just stayed the night there.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  Now, he became a suspect in the carpet theft because an off-campus police officer saw his car parked outside Stevens Hall in the middle of the night. And the theory for Robert, in terms of Joyce's disappearance, is that maybe after Joyce said goodbye to Hal and Patty, she snuck to Stevens Hall like she'd been doing on previous nights. We know from Joyce's own letters that a worker had stumbled upon her poaching the head residence's bed. Who was that worker? Was it Robert? Was it someone who maybe told Robert about it? Someone knew that she was there, more than just the one incident she wrote about in that letter, because police ended up hearing a rumor that had been going around that

• 44:38Speaker 01

  one of the men working in Arts Hall, where Robert was laying tile, had reportedly been messing around with a girl from Stevens Hall that summer.

• 44:47Speaker 00

  And Joyce is literally the only one staying in Stevens Hall.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Exactly. But they were never able to determine where this rumor originated or who it was about. I mean, yes, presumably Joyce, but who was the man? When police interviewed Robert, he said he had nothing to do with Joyce's disappearance. He did admit that he was working in the dorms that week, mostly by himself. And the only people he saw was a security guard around 8:00 p.m. the night before. And then, the night of the 22nd, he saw a few contractor buddies who came by from another job after midnight and brought him a burger. He says, "They left at like 1:00 a.m. He kept working until like 2:00 or 2:30." And because he was anxious to get the job done, he just like slept on the floor and then continued working a few hours later when he woke up.

• 45:35Speaker 00

  Worried because a chunk of your night was spent doing something else? Or...

• 45:40Speaker 01

  Well, Robert, who by the way, was married with kids, took and passed a polygraph in the early days of the investigation. So that was pretty much that. There weren't really any red flags in his background for them to like keep pursuing him for any reason. And then he ended up dying just a few years later.

• 45:59Speaker 00

  Okay, if he wasn't involved and he's up like all night working...

• 46:04Speaker 01

  Well, most of the night.

• 46:05Speaker 00

  Most of the night working, wouldn't he have heard like screaming or something if Joyce had been attacked like 100 yards away?

• 46:12Speaker 01

  If there was screaming, maybe. I mean, Robert talked about hearing a party or like something that night. So it seems like sound traveled there. And Sheriff Myers told us that you can like hear parties happening from across town, especially in the summer. But I mean, we don't know what happened. Maybe Joyce didn't have a chance to scream.

• 46:30Speaker 00

  Okay, but she had to have been attacked in Stevens Hall, right? Like she's wrapped in the missing carpet when she's found.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  I mean, to me, it seems like the most likely scenario because I really don't know why else you would go there and take the carpet if you're not already there.

• 46:42Speaker 00

  I mean, might help to hide and transport the body?

• 46:46Speaker 01

  Sure, but like, I don't think you kill her somewhere else, then go to this hall, cut out a square carpet, like there's no other way?

• 46:52Speaker 00

  And like go to this hall where she was like, kind of secretly known to have been staying, like that she was associated with. And it was taken from the front lobby of the building, right?

• 47:02Speaker 01

  Um, it was taken from, they called it the lounge, like this hangout area of the building. There's actually this hand-drawn diagram of the room in the case file. It doesn't give like precise details, but our producer licensed some old photos from WSU of the interior. And one of them shows the room with a piano in it. And like, we know from her letters, like she would go, she would play piano. So like, I don't know, like it just seems like something happened in that room where she was known to hang out. And this room is like a decent size, and it is kind of at the front entrance on the main floor. But listen, we know Joyce got in and out of the building through a window in the head residence room where she was sleeping.

• 47:44Speaker 00

  Okay, but like, we know she's staying there, she has a way in and out, kind of. How would Robert have gotten into Stevens Hall?

• 47:52Speaker 01

  I mean, like, I don't know if he had a key or anything, but like, he could have gotten in the same way she did. Like she's sneaking in through a window. Anyone could have snuck in the same way she's getting in. Or she could have let someone in. But there are a couple of things that make sense for a suspect like Robert. Someone who maybe had opportunity, but not like a deep motive or history with the victim. So like, hear me out. So the place is what would tie him to Joyce.

• 48:19Speaker 00

  Right.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  Right? Like, he can't untangle himself from the dorms. People know he was there.

• 48:23Speaker 00

  He was working.

• 48:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, he had scheduled work to get done. So he would have to remove Joyce from the place. Her body can't be found there. Her car cannot be found there. You need people looking elsewhere for her. But maybe you don't know her enough to know that she told a lot of people about staying there. Like, you don't know her enough to know that her books and letters are still there in the building.

• 48:45Speaker 00

  Well, and I kind of forgot about her car being moved.

• 48:47Speaker 01

  Well, technically, we don't know that it was moved, but if we believe that she went to Stevens Hall herself and then she was killed in Stevens Hall, then yeah, how did her car get outside that frat house?

• 48:59Speaker 00

  And what was the parking situation like back then? Like, was that just a good spot so she didn't like draw attention to the fact that she was squatting there, like...

• 49:07Speaker 01

  No, no. So if you like, picture a triangle, her car is like at the top, her apartment is like the bottom left, and Stevens Hall is bottom right. So it's not like you drive past it or it's like on your route driving there. So to me, that like, that doesn't make sense for like a place to park.

• 49:23Speaker 00

  For her to like store it there.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  Even if she's trying to get people not to see her, just like, I don't know, it doesn't make sense. But since there are no mention of processing fingerprints when they found the car, we don't know if someone else drove it there. But there actually is the option that she did. I mean, she could have, because her car location is actually what leads us to the next theory, the meditation group. Because even though Joyce didn't know anyone at the frat house, she did know a group of people just a couple houses away, actually. And she was planning on moving into that house right before she died.

• 50:02Speaker 01

  And the people in that house, one of them at least, has a dark secret that Joyce recently learned about, and she had shared it in a letter to a friend. "I discovered that [BLEEP] one stayed at a mental institution for trying to strangle people." That is next week in part two of Joyce LePage's story. You can listen to that right now if you are part of the Crime Junkie fan club. Just go to crimejunkie.com to join.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  Otherwise, we will see you next week. You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkie.com.

• 50:56Speaker 00

  And you can follow us on Instagram, @crimejunkiepodcast.

• 50:59Speaker 01

  We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production. I think Chuck would approve.

• 51:47Speaker 03

  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.