Pod Insights Criminology Tina Marcotte and Tom Kueter About this episode In June 1994, two closely connected deaths occurred in Rapid City, South Dakota. The disappearance of Tina Marcotte and the mysterious death of Tom Kueter fueled decades of speculation before advances in DNA evidence finally led investigators to officially close the case. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the disappearance of Tina Marcotte and the death of Tom Kueter. Tina disappeared after getting a ride after work when she found one of her tires had been slashed. She told a friend it was someone she used to work with named Tom. Investigators are sure they know what happened in these cases but there are still some unanswered questions. You can help support the show through Patreon. We'd love to connect with listeners on social media. We are available on the following platforms: Facebook - Facebook Discussion group - Instagram - Threads - X Formerly Twitter - Blue Sky - Twitch - Tik Tok Criminology is an Emash Digital production hosted by Mike Ferguson and Mike Morford.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised.
0:37 Speaker 01 Hello everyone and welcome to episode 416 of the Criminology Podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson.
0:43 Speaker 02 And this is Mike Morford.
0:45 Speaker 01 Mr. Morford, how you doing this week?
0:47 Speaker 02 Doing pretty good. How you been?
0:48 Speaker 01 Great. You know, it's, uh, 4th of July week, weekend. This episode actually airs on the 4th. And, uh, you know, for those of us here in the States, I know we have a lot of listeners all around the world, but for those of us here in the United States, 4th of July is, is always a, a big deal. It's fun, barbecues, fireworks, all of that. This one's just a big one because it's 250 years.
1:21 Speaker 02 Yeah. Happy 250th to America. It's, it's pretty cool. And, you know, I'm right there with you. I love that holiday, hanging out, family, barbecue going, you know, just relaxing some, you know, a couple of cool suds here and there. You can't beat that kind of stuff. And, you know, I think it really breaks up the year because it happens to be right in the middle of the, of the year. So it's a nice time to take a break.
1:47 Speaker 01 Yeah, absolutely. And, uh, you and I are both old enough to have been born when, uh, 200 rolled around. So. Kind of shows our age.
2:00 Speaker 02 Yeah, you're, it's scary to think about. I remember when the bicentennial quarters came out and it was like, okay, this is pretty cool. And here we are all these years later. Goes by quick.
2:10 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, it absolutely does. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shout outs. We had new support from Aaron Bishop and the Someday Society. So great new support. We really appreciate it.
2:22 Speaker 02 Yeah, thank you so much. That really helps us out. And for anyone else that wants to help the show out, head over to patreon.com/criminology.
2:31 Speaker 01 All right, it's time to jump into this week's case, or should I say two cases? The disappearance of a woman named Tina Markot and the death of a man named Tom Keeter. Although what happened to them happened in separate incidents on different days. And early on, there was little doubt that their cases were connected and undeniably intertwined. Both cases happened within days of each other in the same city and the two victims knew each other. Well, just about everyone agrees that the cases are connected. Many disagree in exactly how they are or what exactly happened. These cases unfolded
3:13 Speaker 01 in Rapid City, South Dakota, a city of less than 80,000 people located in the Western Plains area of the state.
3:22 Speaker 02 Thirty year old Tina Markot was a mother of three young children, ages 13, 10, and eight. In 1994, she was living in Rapid City, South Dakota with her partner, Patrick Leeson and their children. Tina and Patrick had been together for at least 11 years. The couple both worked at the same company, Black Hills Molding. Tina was a lumber grader on the night shift at the wood processing plant. They worked opposite shifts with Patrick going to work during the day and Tina staying home with the kids. When Tina was working the night shift, Patrick was at home with the kids. They would both be there in the mornings. They were making a nice life for themselves and everything was normal. But that would all change in late June.
4:04 Speaker 01 On Friday, June 24th, 1994, at the end of her shift, at around 12:30 a.m., Tina made a startling discovery. When she got to her car, she immediately noticed that one of the tires was completely flat. The car obviously wouldn't make it even to the nearest gas station. She needed to get home, but it was so late. There was no way she was going to try to hitchhike. She called her best friend, Vicky Riddle, and explained the situation, hoping that Vicky would be able to pick her up from work, even though it was nearly 1:00 in the morning. Vicky didn't mind being woken up or going to help her, especially with how distressed Tina seemed to be about the situation.
4:47 Speaker 01 And she was about to get ready when Tina told her to hold on.
4:52 Speaker 02 Tina told Vicky that she had spotted someone's car pulling up outside. If it was one of her coworkers, maybe they would be able to help her instead. A few minutes passed and Vicky started to get nervous. She wondered to herself, what if something happened to Tina? It was late, she was alone and completely stranded, and she worried that perhaps some stranger had arrived out of nowhere. Finally, Tina came back on the line and told Vicky that she didn't actually need to worry about coming all the way out to her work. Tina told her friend that a man that she knew named Tom had shown up and offered her a ride home. Vicky was confused. She thought to herself, who the heck is Tom and what was he doing out there after midnight? Tina explained that the two had once worked together at the plant.
5:34 Speaker 02 So Vicky hung up, thinking Tina would be on her way home and that she would catch up with Tina later that day.
5:39 Speaker 01 So to me, this is already kind of starting out as a pretty strange situation. Now, Do people go out to their cars after work and find out that they have a flat tire? Or you know, their car won't start? Well, yeah, absolutely. That happens. You gotta call somebody, get some help. You know, this situation, I think, made worse by the fact that Tina's getting off so late. Right? It's 12:30, 1 o'clock in the morning. Little tougher to get help at that time of night. But it sounds to me like her friend Vicky was ready to help. Maybe ready to get into her car and come pick Tina up.
6:25 Speaker 01 But then you have this mysterious Tom guy. And to me, the situation sounds a little strange. Right? Tom's a guy who used to work there, doesn't work there anymore. What's he doing there? He's just riding around in the parking lot and happens to see Tina? I don't know. It seems strange to me.
6:47 Speaker 02 Well, Vicky seems like one of those ride or die friends that you can call at any time for any situation arising. You know, someone that will come out and help you this late at night, early in the morning, whatever you want to call it. And that's, it's good to have friends like that, that'll, that'll help you. And it sounds like she was ready to go and come out there. But this Tom guy shows up and I'm with you. It, it sounds very strange that he just happens to be there at this time when she needs help. So like Vicky, I, I was a little bit surprised by that.
7:22 Speaker 01 Hours later, Vicky called Tina on her landline at home to ask her more about this Tom character, but Tina wasn't there. Patrick told Vicky that Tina had never come home after her shift. Vicky told Patrick about the call from Tina, telling her about her flat tire and asking for a ride before telling her that a man named Tom, that she used to work with at the plant, was going to give her a ride. The only former coworker named Tom that Patrick could think of was Tom Kueter. The 29 year old was a forklifter. Driver at Forest Products Distributors, another wood processing plant and had once worked at Black Hills Molding.
8:04 Speaker 01 Vicky and Patrick called Tom to ask him about giving Tina a ride, but he denied that he was the Tom she had mentioned. He said he hadn't even been anywhere near Black Hills Molding that night. Tom either suggested or agreed to go to the Rapid City Police Station with Patrick. When he reported Tina missing, it was about 11 a.m. when they arrived.
8:29 Speaker 02 So I think this is an interesting situation that they called this guy Tom. He denies that he was the person that was there that gave Tina a ride. But he's willing to go to the police station. So you could maybe look at that as on one hand, he has nothing to do with it, wants to clear his name, wants to help if he can. But maybe on the other hand, you could say, well, is he going there because he wants to see what people know already, see what they're thinking? Is he there because he wants to maybe steer the narrative in some way?
9:05 Speaker 01 Or at the very least, allay suspicion, right? Because if you did have something to do with whatever happened to Tina and you say, okay, it's not me, but I'm not willing to help. I don't, I don't want to go to the police station. Well, that makes you look a little suspicious. So even if you did have something to do with it, maybe you have to go just to, you know, throw police off your trail. But you know, the, the one thing that does stand out is in the call between Vicky and Tina, Tina didn't say Tom's last name. She just said a guy named Tom, who she used to work with.
9:46 Speaker 01 It would have been much different if she had said a guy named Tom Kueter. Well, that kind of points to him or would point to him. But the fact that, you know, Patrick works there with Tina. You would think he would probably know most of the people who work there and Tom Kueter is the only one he can really think of.
10:13 Speaker 02 I think at the very least, it gives police some kind of starting point. Because unless Tina was telling her friend Vicky a fake name for some reason, it sounds like she knew him and she knew him as Tom. So whether or not this was the Tom that she had indeed worked with, or it was a different guy named Tom, you know, it seems like it was a good starting point, at least for police to have a name at least.
10:41 Speaker 01 Yeah. And that's important, right? We talk about a lot of cases where police have really nowhere to start. And those cases are very frustrating. You know, when you don't even have a road to start down, I mean, you're at a real disadvantage. At least they have that.
10:59 Speaker 02 Police headed out to the plant and quickly spotted Tina's car, a 1984 Dodge K series parked in the lot. When investigators looked closer to Tina's car, it was clear that her car trouble had been no accident. Her front left tire was flat because someone had slashed it with what appeared to have been a knife. There was one long and thin stab mark in the tire sidewall. This was very troubling to police. There are countless cases in which a perpetrator sabotages someone's car to keep them from leaving. And in many cases, they'll come along like a knight in shining armor to offer assistance. Police had to consider that this may have happened. And if it did, who might have done it? There was no doubt Tom was immediately the focus of
11:41 Speaker 02 police attention. So I get that this guy Tom is immediately of interest to police, but I just want to back up a second. I feel it's kind of weird that Patrick didn't raise more concern, or he himself drive out to look for Tina. Because, you know, if she's getting off late at night, driving at night, even if he's asleep, if he wakes up in the morning, she's not there, that would be troubling. At least if I was in his shoes, and I would have made calls, maybe got my car to drive to see if she had car trouble or something. So it kind of seems at least interesting to me that he didn't do that. And I think later on, we're
12:23 Speaker 02 going to talk about maybe a little bit of suspicion on him at some point.
12:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, I'm with you. You know, one thing that stands out to me in many cases is the pattern, right, that someone has, and we all have patterns or routines. And I'm sure they did as well, right? They worked at the same place, but they worked different shifts so that they could take care of the kids. You know, my assumption is that Tina probably got off around the same time every night, and she would probably get home around a certain time every night. Now, Patrick might have been asleep when she normally got home, but I'm with you.
13:09 Speaker 01 If I'm in that situation and I wake up in the morning and my wife is not there. Okay, the old panic meter is going to start up, and I'm gonna want to know what's going on. At least from the information we have so far, it almost makes it seem like the call from Vicky is what kind of kickstarted Patrick into being worried. And that seems a little strange. It wasn't just the police that began to suspect Tom Kueter. Looking back on it, Patrick felt that Tom's behavior was odd because he was just playing it too cool.
13:50 Speaker 01 Tom had a real reputation for having a bad temper and a short fuse. Patrick accused Tom of having an affair with Tina, and Tom didn't get angry. If he had nothing to hide when it came to Tina, Patrick thought he would have seemed a lot more upset, not just defensive, but actually mad, aggressive even, that he was being accused. Tom's lack of emotion was suspicious to investigators as well. They asked Tom to sit for an interview, and he seemed cooperative. He agreed to talk to detectives, but he didn't give them much. Tom stuck to his story. He hadn't been anywhere near Black Hills Molding the night that Tina disappeared.
14:33 Speaker 01 He had not offered nor given her a ride. He also claimed that he was sure he would be able to pass a lie detector test because he had nothing to hide.
14:44 Speaker 02 Tom walked detectives through his night. He said he played softball and would have plenty of witnesses who could verify that alibi. And that after the game, he drove a friend and fellow teammate home. That would have been late on Thursday night at around 11:00 PM. Tina's shift didn't end until about 90 minutes later at 12:30 on Friday morning, which would leave plenty of time. But Tom claimed he had run into car trouble on his way home from the friend's house that night. He claimed he was stuck for hours working on his car behind a grocery store. He claimed he didn't get home until around 3:30 in the morning. Tom even had an explanation for why his wife Nancy wouldn't be able to explain where he was during the time between the softball game and making it home at around 3:30 in the morning.
15:28 Speaker 02 He said he didn't call home to explain what was going on or warn Nancy that he would be late because he figured she and their two young children would already be asleep. He didn't want to wake them up and worry them.
15:40 Speaker 01 The issue with Tom's story was that there were no witnesses to confirm it. After he dropped off his friend, nobody could account for Tom or give him an alibi. Investigators weren't able to verify that Tom's car ever broke down. No one came forward to claim that they saw him behind the super duper grocery on East St. Patrick's Street. He claimed he was parked under a street light, so he would have been visible. More than one person who had been in the area during the timeframe in question were sure. They would have remembered seeing him in his car, a 1975 Pontiac Le Mans, if it had really been parked there.
16:22 Speaker 01 Okay, the, you know, this story just gets a little stranger. Now he's saying he has an alibi and he does, but only for a short period of time, right? He's playing softball. He drives a teammate home, but then there's about a four and a half hour period where he has no alibi. He's not with anyone. He claims his car broke down. He's working on it. That's very flimsy. I mean, it's not even flimsy. There's just nothing there. Four and a half hours unaccounted for where nobody can say, yes, I was with him. I saw him.
17:07 Speaker 01 There's none of that. Now I get that you don't want to call home at. One, two o'clock in the morning, you know, your wife's sleeping, you got two young children. I understand that part, but it seems a little convenient with, you know, how this story is shaping up.
17:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think because this was 1994, there weren't surveillance cameras all over the place to verify that he was there. You know, if this happened today, they could just go into any number of different places in that area and see if he was telling the truth. If his car was there and he was working on it, but because this was 1994, that wasn't a possibility. So nothing to really help him verify that story. Once Tom made it home, what he did next raised even more suspicion of him. Even though it was the middle of the night, he started a load of laundry. Of course, someone doing a load of laundry at three or four in the morning is going to raise some suspicions. But Tom had an explanation for this though, which was backed up by his wife, Nancy.
18:08 Speaker 02 According to both Tom and Nancy, this late night clothes washing wasn't unusual for Tom. He would often wash his clothes as soon as he got home. That night though, according to Tom, it wasn't just a baseball uniform or his daily clothes. He wanted to make sure the grime from working on his car for hours didn't stain. Two days after this first load of laundry, Tom washed his shoelaces and his shoes. Now, it's not unheard of for people to wash their shoes, but it's probably not very common. To police, it seemed like the late night clothes and shoe washing was an attempt to destroy evidence. But they didn't have enough evidence to arrest him and they let him go for the time being and continue to search for Tina. Now, I've owned a lot of pairs of shoes and I have never washed them once.
18:53 Speaker 02 It's either wear them till they're just worn out and too dirty and you chuck them and get a new pair, but I don't know. How about you?
19:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, we actually do wash shoes here in, in my household. But I don't do it at three or four in the morning. You know, now I get it. You know, his, even his wife is saying, well, it's not unusual for him to wash his clothes when he gets home. But I don't know, it just seems strange to me. And I think more so given everything else that we've talked about.
19:27 Speaker 02 Now you've got me reevaluating shoe washing.
19:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, no, it, it actually, uh, you know, can be a good thing, can prolong the life or at least the look of the shoes. Right. For a little bit. Now it does make a hell of a racket. I will say that when you.
19:42 Speaker 02 It seems like it might shrink them or something like that. That's why I never did it.
19:44 Speaker 01 You're not going to shrink shoes. Come on now. Now try it. Give it a shot. You might like it. But I will say this, you know, okay. Washing shoes, pretty normal for some people, not everyone. Again, though, at three or four in the morning, when you have a wife and, and children who are asleep. Like I said, it makes a heck of a racket. That seems strange. It really does.
20:14 Speaker 02 So, you know, he decides he come, he's going to come home after not wanting to wake them up at three thirty in the morning and do a load of clothes. Now maybe he doesn't wash his shoes that night. So maybe it's not as loud, but still putting clothes in and out of the washer, slamming the door. It cycles on, you know, you could still make some noise and wake up your family, which is what he said he didn't want to do, which, and it sort of clashes with that.
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21:26 Speaker 01 with your care team. So support is always in reach. Ready to reach your goals? Visit forhers.com/criminology to access personalized, affordable care for weight loss, hair, menopause, and more. Individual results may vary and stopping treatment may result in weight regain. Weight loss by Hers is not available in all 50 states. Wegovy is the registered trademark of Novo Nordisk AS. To get started and learn more, including important safety information, Wegovy clinical study information and restrictions, visit forhers.com. On Monday, three days after Tina disappeared, detectives spoke to Tom again.
22:06 Speaker 01 They visited him at work and asked him more questions, just like he did when Patrick asked him if he was having an affair with Tina. Tom denied it when detectives asked. According to Tom, they had only been coworkers at one point and there was nothing romantically going on between them. Before leaving, detectives informed him that they had found blood during a search of his car and that they were testing it against Tina's DNA at that very moment. This was 1994 and DNA was indeed being used more and more and becoming more commonplace. So even if police were bluffing, if Tom had really been responsible for Tina's disappearance,
22:50 Speaker 01 he may have been very nervous. Investigators were pretty sure that Tom had killed Tina, likely after she rejected some kind of sexual advance once she was in his car. But since she was still missing, they needed more proof, something that showed without a doubt that Tina had been harmed. But before investigators could really do anything, Tom Kueter was dead and his death on its own would prove to be mysterious.
23:20 Speaker 02 At 8:30 on Tuesday morning, the day after Tom was informed that blood had been found in his car. Two of his fellow coworkers at the lumberyard found Tom's body. He had been run over by the rear wheel of his own forklift, which crushed his skull. OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, investigated the workplace incident and found that the parking brake on Tom's forklift didn't work. Forest Products Distributors was also fined nearly $2,000 for various safety violations. However, the incident was not ruled an accident. Investigators didn't believe the forklift would have been going fast enough to accidentally run Tom over. There would have been nothing preventing him from getting out of the way based on the speed the forklift was traveling.
24:03 Speaker 02 The position he was in didn't seem like how he would have ended up if he had been hit by the forklift. It looked more like he had loaded up the forklift with more than one ton of lumber, hopped out of it at the top of an incline, deliberately laid down on the ground on its path, and just waited for it to run him over.
24:21 Speaker 01 So we got a pretty big twist here, right? Tom is dead and in a way more of that I don't think we have ever even come close to talking about on this podcast. We've talked about a lot of different ways of people dying, but being run over by a forklift and having your skull crushed is not one that we've ever delved into. And this whole idea that, you know, the parking brake doesn't work and the thought that he could have laid down and let it run over him. Man, what a terrible way to go.
25:05 Speaker 01 I, I have a hard time believing that someone could actually do that. Now, what I could believe, I think a little more easily, is that someone maybe could incapacitate a person and place them in the path of the forklift and then run them over with it. That to me is a little easier to believe than someone wanting to end their life and choosing to do it in that way. Or it being an accident as though he couldn't get out of the way of this forklift rolling backwards.
25:47 Speaker 02 It's a very strange way to go, and I'm sure this wasn't on the bingo cards for police. You know, they're looking at him as a suspect and all of a sudden he dies in a strange way. And strange deaths do happen. We do know that. I know. I remember there was an actor. I don't remember his name, but he had parked his vehicle in front of his house and he got out of it to go. I think, open his fence and the car jumped in the park and ran him over. So there are strange things like that that do happen, but this one here, it's different for sure.
26:21 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think you're talking about the, uh, the Russian born actor.
26:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's, that's him.
26:27 Speaker 01 Who played in the Star Trek movies. I remember that. It was a strange death, but I think it wasn't an accident. I don't know. To me, this just doesn't ring true. That it really could have happened that way. And it was said that Tom was very experienced and good at his job as a forklift driver. And had received very recent advanced training. He was pretty much the last person you would expect to die in this kind of workplace mishap. As he likely would have known how to properly handle and use the forklift safely. His death was officially ruled a suicide by the coroner.
27:09 Speaker 01 For many, this pointed to Tom's guilt over his role in Tina's disappearance. To them, it was clear that he couldn't face being caught and going to prison. He also had a life insurance policy that could provide for his family after he was gone. But the policy wouldn't pay out if his death was ruled a suicide. But to Tom's wife Nancy, it was clear to her that her husband hadn't taken his own life. Instead, she believed he could have been murdered. Or that it really was just a tragic accident. She appealed the judgment that his death was a suicide, so his life insurance policy would pay out.
27:51 Speaker 01 She also hired John Colback, a private investigator, and Rick Bodie, an attorney to look into the case. They apparently found nothing in the last few days of his life. That would have hinted at Tom's impending suicide.
28:07 Speaker 01 And I get it, right? They're looking into his life, but he was just told by police that blood was found in his car and they were testing it, you know, against Tina's DNA. So I think it's a little hard to say nothing in the last few days of his life because that obviously would have been at least something, not to say that that would have caused him to take his own life, but I mean, it's not nothing for sure.
28:39 Speaker 02 That's a very good point. And we've also seen that sometimes people take their lives with no hint of being depressed or that they might do that. So even if he had nothing to do with Tina's disappearance, it doesn't mean that he couldn't have taken his own life.
28:57 Speaker 01 No, but I go back to, you know, if you're going to make the decision to do that, how many people are going to lay in front of a forklift and allow it to crush their head? I, I just, I keep coming back to that as such a strange way. And I just don't know how you could stay still and have your body not react to getting out of the way. I mean, I, that it, it's kind of given me the, the chills even thinking about it.
29:31 Speaker 02 Nancy also claimed that Tom believed someone was trying to frame him for Tina's disappearance, which is part of why she believes her husband may have been murdered. To her, it was clear that Tina's killer was trying to frame her husband and now had likely killed him. It also turned out there was no shortage of people who had issues with or grudges against Tom. Police learned from interviews that Tom was disliked by pretty much everyone he worked with. One coworker even hated him so much that he had offered someone $500 to break Tom's legs. This same coworker was heard bragging about knocking him unconscious and tossing his body in front of the forklift. But investigators believe he was just boasting to try and impress people and seem tough. Authorities did look into the claim, of course, but didn't find it credible.
30:15 Speaker 01 And it's interesting to me, right? When people say there were no shortage of individuals who had issues or grudges against a person, it kind of tells you a lot about that person, right? They're confrontational, maybe they're an agitator, they get on people's nerves. But it does lean into, you know, maybe the theory that someone wanted to harm him. If there's that many people who dislike him and have serious grudges against him.
30:47 Speaker 02 And the fact that pretty much everyone at his job didn't like him, it's, it's pretty powerful. It tells you a lot about the person. Cause if it's, if it's one or two people, you could say, okay, you know, it's maybe they just have issues like, you know, that's common. People aren't always going to get along, but when everybody at your job doesn't like you, it's, you know, tells you a little bit about the person, probably.
31:10 Speaker 01 Well, and it also tells you about the situation, right? What's the common denominator? Who's the common denominator? Well, here I think it's Tom, right? It's not all the other people. When everybody dislikes one person, it's normally that one person. It would have been difficult though, for someone to kill Tom and then move his body into the path of his forklift. He was a pretty large guy, standing at six feet tall and weighing around 200 pounds. There was no evidence that anyone else had seen Tom when he was killed and there were no drag marks in the dirt. If Tom was murdered, someone had to basically, almost effortlessly carry him and drop him
31:54 Speaker 01 right in the perfect spot that would later fool the medical examiner and police. The lack of drag marks is another reason that authorities believe he laid down and waited to be run over and doubt that he was accidentally hit by the forklift. With Tom dead, investigators had no one to pressure, no one who could spill the details of what happened and where Tina might be. Tina's loved ones still had the slightest sliver of hope that someday she would walk right through the door like no time had passed. She would be able to explain everything and everything would be okay again. Sadly, that wouldn't happen.
32:36 Speaker 02 On October 11th, 1995, over a year after Tina disappeared, her remains were discovered by a worker at Forest Products Distributors, the place where Tom Kueter worked. The back area of their lumberyard had rarely been used for quite some time. On this day, a worker was clearing a pile of old scrap lumber from the area when they noticed a few pieces of wood fell from the load. As they were picking up the stray pieces to put back on the truck, they spotted human remains. Due to time and the elements, the remains were badly decomposed, but the clothing and general appearance were a match to Tina, and her family confirmed that the clothes and other personal belongings found nearby did belong to her. An official identification was made using Tina's dental records.
33:20 Speaker 02 Her cause of death was ultimately determined to be due to blunt force trauma to the head. She had been bludgeoned with something on the left side of her head. Investigators do not believe she was killed at the scene. They think she was attacked in an unknown location and then hidden in the lumberyard after her death.
33:37 Speaker 01 So I think this discovery morph doesn't look great for Tom, right? People already thought that he potentially had something to do with Tina's disappearance, and then her remains are discovered in the lumberyard of the place where he worked. Okay, either he placed them there, or somebody was trying to frame him, and so they placed Tina's body at the place where he worked.
34:12 Speaker 02 And if the latter's true, then that means that maybe Tom really could have been murdered by someone, and there is more to this story than meets the eye. But then again, go all the way back to the phone call where Tina said that Tom was there that used to work with her. That sort of, to me at least, seems to make it look more and more like Tom was involved.
34:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, I'm with you, but there's a, there's quite a few different mysteries here that are all, you know, surrounding these two cases. The fact that Tina's body remained undiscovered for 16 months seemed to indicate that whoever left her there was very familiar with the lumberyard and what went on there and that the location where her body was hidden might be a good spot to hide it. Whoever left her body there would have known that the specific area with the scrap wood was pretty much never touched. Leaving her in that wood pile may not have been their final plan. The killer could have just known that if they concealed her body there for a while, it would buy them some time.
35:20 Speaker 01 Once the initial flurry of her disappearance calmed down, they could later then move her body undetected.
35:26 Speaker 02 Now, I, one thing that is interesting, if someone was trying to, you know, frame Tom and make him look like the one that did this, it seems like they might make that body more easily found, so the finger would point to him that much quicker.
35:43 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. I also kind of think that, at least to me, it seems very strange if you're going to kill someone to then bury them at the place you work. I mean, obviously, the discovery of her body is going to lead right back to you. So that seems strange, but maybe it's that, you know, he knew no one was ever going to find it, nobody ever went out there. I don't know. I don't know. There's something, actually, there's a number of things in these cases that are just kind of throwing me off.
36:23 Speaker 02 Now, both Tina and Tom are dead and people were divided over what really happened and if Tom was responsible for Tina's murder. Most people felt that he was involved, but there were still some people who thought that Tom had been framed and later fell victim to the real killer. Assuming Tom did kill Tina, his plan was foiled almost immediately because they had no way to know that Tina would have been on the phone with her friend Vicki when he showed up, or that she would tell her exactly who was picking her up in the middle of the night. Without Tina naming Tom, there was nothing initially linking the two together, nothing that would have led investigators to his door. She would have simply vanished. Her car would have been found with a flat tire, and it would have been assumed that she took off on foot and met harm on the way home, or possibly that one of her coworkers
37:08 Speaker 02 at Black Hills Molding had been involved in her disappearance.
37:13 Speaker 01 If Tom was responsible for what happened to Tina, him being questioned just hours after she was killed, likely would have caused him to feel some panic and some immense pressure early on. If it wasn't for that, he would have had more time to figure out what to do, to distance himself from the crime, or to choose a better location to hide Tina's body. And going back to the claim by police that they had found blood in Tom's car, the blood investigators claimed they found and believed would prove to be Tina's, it's unclear whether it ever existed. Investigators are allowed to lie, to put pressure on suspects,
37:57 Speaker 01 and obviously Tom would have been feeling it after being questioned, but later articles note that authorities wouldn't confirm that blood was collected from his car. And Tom's wife Nancy apparently believed there was a red stain, but that it was from Kool-Aid that one of their kids had spilled. You know, and going back to my earlier statement, right, about, you know, why would somebody stash a body if, if it was Tom, right, who was responsible? Why would he stash it at the place that he worked? Well, if he's in a panic, because police are questioning him pretty early on, you know, this is a place
38:38 Speaker 01 that he knows, and maybe he does believe that, you know, this is a good temporary hiding spot until the pressure cools off, and then he can go back and, and move the body later on.
38:53 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's, there's so many things that could have happened, and a lot of it, you know, direct pressure from being questioned early on because...
39:04 Speaker 02 He probably didn't account for that. You know, he didn't have time to formulate a plan, maybe dispose of Tina's body. So, you know, I think it was a good thing that he was questioned early on in a break that, you know, Tina had the thought to tell her friend Vicki that it was Tom who used to work there that was, you know, picking her up. When Tina's body was found in October of 1995, there was still no direct physical evidence linking Tom to Tina's murder. We just talked about Tina mentioning to her friend Vicki that it was Tom that was picking her up. Tom used to work at the place where Tina worked and her body was found at his current
39:47 Speaker 02 job in an area he had access to. So, the circumstantial evidence was compelling, but there was no physical evidence tying him to the murder. Despite their suspicions that Tom Kueter had killed Tina, her case remained open for decades. Her death was ruled a homicide, but they still couldn't definitively prove that Tom was her killer. Even some of Tina's family members from New Hampshire, where she was originally from, weren't quite sure they felt that Tom was the only one involved in her murder. Her sister Kathy actually felt that Tom was killed because he witnessed Tina's murder or knew who killed her. By leaving the case open, it might one day allow police to solve or link someone else to the murder with physical evidence.
40:28 Speaker 01 While people were overwhelmingly suspicious of Tom, some people are actually suspicious of Tina's partner, Patrick, and think he might have known more about her murder than he let on. They point to his reluctance to immediately report her missing when she didn't come home after her shift. He also seemed pretty quick to accuse Tom of having an affair with her. Had he had suspicions that Tina was being unfaithful before she disappeared? Was their relationship? Less solid than it seemed from the outside was whatever they were going through enough for
41:07 Speaker 01 him to be so angry that he killed Tina. These were all questions that some people had about Patrick. And one of the main points people cited is evidence of Patrick's potential guilt is that he eventually moved out of Rapid City. But then other people pushed back on that saying that Patrick likely wanted a fresh start. He had lived and worked with Tina and was always around her. So maybe a change of scenery was something he needed. And more if I think, you know, a lot of people are, they're going to be suspicious of the current partner, right? That's, that's pretty
41:47 Speaker 01 normal. The, the one thing that I don't absolutely see is, you know, something that might point to his guilt is him moving out of the city. And I feel like, at least for me, if I was to have a loved one killed, it might be really tough to stay in that environment, to just be constantly reminded of that fact, day after day.
42:15 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's hard to, that's a hard situation to be in. You know, you're constantly seeing people that maybe she knew that family, friends, and places that you might have gone together and all of that could just be a big reminder of this terrible tragedy. And, you know, maybe it was just too much for him and he wanted to get out of that town. So it's hard to, hard to blame him if that's the case. Most people that discuss this case online agree with police suspicions that Tom was responsible for Tina's death. But some people think that there was more to it than her simply pushing back on his advances and him killing her over the rejection. They wonder if maybe they were actually having an affair and Tom wanted it to end, but Tina didn't.
43:01 Speaker 02 He had a wife and two young children. He couldn't risk having her cause any trouble for him by exposing the affair. And to be clear, this is all speculation. There's no evidence that the two had an affair. And in fact, Tom denied it multiple times. If they had, if they had that kind of relationship, there would have been no need for him to slash her tire. That's the kind of thing you do when you want to give someone no other choice but to end up in your vehicle. If you're having an affair, you likely do meet up in each other's cars a lot and don't need to be lured or tricked. And if you're Tina, you don't have to stab your tire and make up a story about it and how someone helped you. But Tina's tire was really completely flat and it had been done intentionally. It seems as if everything points away from an affair.
43:45 Speaker 01 And you know, more speculation is a big part of these types of cases. But I do want to kind of touch on some of this because I think it, to me, it does make quite a bit of sense. You know, if you're actually having an affair with someone, what would be the need to actually slash their tire? You don't need to try to trick them. I'm sure they would gladly meet you somewhere if you ask them to, if you're really having an affair. So all that part, the fact that her tire was actually slashed and it was completely flat,
44:26 Speaker 01 I agree, that does seem to point away from the affair angle.
44:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, a lot of times in cases like this, you start digging into people's lives and you find things that prove that there is an affair. You might find letters or witnesses, things of that nature that substantiated. But in this case, there was nothing that pointed to Tina and Tom having an affair.
44:54 Speaker 01 Yeah, and I do believe it would have come out. Right. I feel like they would have definitively been able to figure that out. So it really kind of seems as if this case is what it looks like to most people. That Tom killed Tina after she rejected his advances and that Tom realized early on that he was on the verge of being caught, being questioned so soon must have really shaken him. I think many people believe that Tom knew soon everyone would know the truth about him. So he did the last thing he could do to be a good family man, stage his suicide as an accident.
45:37 Speaker 01 But four years after Tom's death, the insurance company's ruling that his death was a suicide was overturned by a judge. Tom's wife Nancy ultimately did receive his life insurance payout. This change in judgment made it an even stronger argument for those who believe Tom's death was an accident or even a murder. And I said it earlier, Morph, but I'll reiterate it. I just find it very difficult to believe someone could end their life by allowing a forklift to run over their head. I'm struggling with that. Now, I'm not saying it's out of the realm of possibility. I just feel like it would be a very hard thing to do.
46:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, there's so many more methods that would not be as extreme or unusual. But you know, maybe just trying to look at it, if it is truly suicide, maybe he did this spur of the moment and you know, didn't have access to any other gun or something like that and decided to do it right then and there. So, you know, if looking at it from that perspective, you might be able to explain it away, but definitely not a typical way that someone would choose to end their life. After Tina and Tom were both dead, discussion of what happened to them and who was responsible continued. Their cases were even featured on an early episode of Unsolved Mysteries.
47:05 Speaker 02 In early 2016, more than two decades after Tina and Tom died, the case was officially and quietly closed. Investigators are now certain that Tom abducted and killed Tina. They feel that if he were still alive, they'd have enough to charge him with Tina's murder. According to Sherri, Tina's middle child, who was just 10 years old when she disappeared, Tina's DNA in the form of blood was found on one of Tom's shoes. It was just a tiny drop and had likely been run through the wash at least once, which is why it took so long to finally be able to test it. But it was a match to Tina's DNA. Finally, the rumors and theories about what had happened and who was responsible could be put to rest.
47:45 Speaker 01 Sadly, by the time her case was closed, many of Tina's loved ones were gone. Patrick Gleason, Tina's longtime partner, passed away due to a heart attack in 2015. Tina's father, Robert, passed away in 1999, and her mother, Joyce, passed away in 2012. None of them were alive to hear the news. Now, there's still some lingering questions in this case. How did Tom cross paths with Tina that night? Had he been planning this far in advance? Or was it a spur of the moment decision? After dropping off his friend, unfortunately, Tom Kueter took those answers to the grave with him.
48:28 Speaker 01 So we'll never know the full story of what happened. But Morphe, as we wrap this case up, it is still, for me, full of mystery. You know, there are questions unanswered. I get it, the police now believe that Tom killed Tina. They also believe that if he were alive, they'd had enough evidence to charge him. I think the, the blood on his shoes would be a central part of their case. But I go back to... You know, the reasons why was there an affair? Was there no affair? And did Tom maybe have some sort of obsession with Tina?
49:12 Speaker 01 Maybe from their time working together? Maybe he knew her schedule, knew when she would be getting off and, and decide to proposition her or, you know, whatever it was. Now, I understand that him being questioned very early on would have caused some panic. I'm still struggling with the forklift and how he died.
49:38 Speaker 02 Yeah, there's definitely some, some unanswered questions and some things that may be hard to accept. And it's a case where it's frustrating because even though you know the who, you don't know the why. And that's, you know, it's hard to, to not have full closure answers sometimes. And I just think how important it was that Tina's friend, Vicky answered the phone. And if she had not answered, if she just would have rolled over and said, who's calling me this late? I'm not answering it. Tina might not have had the opportunity to mention, you know, Tom that she used to work with.
50:19 Speaker 02 To me, that was the most important clue in this case. Now, eventually if her body was found at his work and down the line and somebody put together that he had once worked with her, maybe the police still would have eventually connected with him and looked at him as a suspect, but maybe not. So I think her answering that call and Tina relaying that information was the most important part that helped solve this case.
50:46 Speaker 01 The one thing I will say is that it is a fascinating one because of the twists and turns and, you know, the, the unknowns.
50:58 Speaker 01 You know, we know a lot, but there's still a lot we don't know. And that makes it very mysterious to me. But that's it for our episode on Tina Marcotte and Tom Kueter. As always, if you love the show, but haven't done so yet, go out, take a minute, give us a review, leave a rating. Also, keep telling your friends. Word of mouth about the podcast really goes a long way.
51:23 Speaker 02 If you want to find us on social media, we're on every major platform to search for Criminology Podcast on your favorites. And for news, information and old episodes, head over to criminologypodcast.com. If you want to join a discussion about the show and the cases we cover, head over to Facebook and search for Criminology Podcast Discussion and Fans.
51:42 Speaker 01 So that's it for another episode of Criminology. Again, we want to wish all of our listeners here in the States a happy 4th of July. And Morph and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode. So until then, for Mike.
51:59 Speaker 02 And Morph.
52:00 Speaker 01 We'll talk to you next week.
52:02 Speaker 02 Take care, everyone.
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