Pod Insights Criminology Joanne Chambers About this episode In 1993, a stalker began to target 41-year-old Joanne Chambers, a first-grade teacher in Coolbaugh Township, Pennsylvania. The stalking escalated over time and the threats became more violent. All signs pointed to another teacher who worked at the same school. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the stalking of Joanne Chambers. This case has been referred to by some as the strangest stalking case ever. The police zeroed in on another female teacher at the school named Paula Nawrocki. But the details that emerge are so bizarre that they are difficult to believe. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production
Transcript 0:01 Speaker 00 Hi, I'm James Wallner, host of the podcast Dakota Spotlight. In 1999, a young man with a bright future was tragically murdered at his workplace in Bismarck, North Dakota. In Homicide at House of Bottles, a new six-part series, I take you behind the scenes of the investigation with exclusive interviews, original archival audio, and a deep dive into this peculiar crime. Listen to Dakota Spotlight in our newest season anywhere you get your podcasts or at dakotaspotlight.com.
0:29 Speaker 01 Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised.
1:07 Speaker 00 Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 342 of the Criminology Podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson.
1:13 Speaker 02 And this is Mike Morford.
1:15 Speaker 00 Mr. Mike Morford, how you doing, bud?
1:17 Speaker 02 I'm doing great. How you doing?
1:19 Speaker 00 Pretty good. You know, we're still trying to bury ourselves or unbury ourselves out of some snow here, and the temperatures are pretty cold, but other than that, it's not too bad.
1:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's can't complain here. It's chilly, but it's not anything like up there. So I'm gonna not gonna rub it in that I've been with what you're dealing with.
1:39 Speaker 00 Yeah, the one thing I will say is with the holidays over, I got, you know, about three weeks with both of my girls being home, and it's been pretty lonely this week. Everybody, you know, went back to college. My wife went back to work and and I'm missing them big time.
2:00 Speaker 02 It's funny how that works. Sometimes you need some time where you can get work done. And when it's just you, you're like, okay, I'm gonna knock some of this stuff out. But then all of a sudden you realize, hey, it's, it's quiet. It's lonely here with nobody else.
2:12 Speaker 00 Yeah, I just got the two dogs to keep me company, but. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shout outs. We had Caroline B., Karen Smith, and Lorna Jean Charles jump out at our highest level. So we really appreciate that support.
2:28 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's some great new support. Thank you so much. For anyone else that would like to help the show, you can go to patreon.com/criminology.
2:36 Speaker 00 So, speaking of the holidays being over, we're into a new year. It's hard to believe, Morf, that we're just eight months away from CrimeCon 25.
2:44 Speaker 02 Yeah, CrimeCon 2025 is happening September 5th or 7th. It's at the Gaylord Rockies Resort and Convention Center in Aurora, Colorado. It's your best chance to meet up with your favorite people from the world of true crime.
2:58 Speaker 00 And as always, we'll be there on Podcast Row, and we'd love to see you. And if you're going, why not save some money? If you go to crimecon.com to book, use our promo code CRIMINOLOGY at checkout to save 10% on your standard badges. All right, now that we have all of that out of the way, it's time to jump into this week's case, and we have a bizarre one this week. This case has been referred to by some as the strangest stalking case ever. It's hard to believe that what was revealed to have happened here in this case is actually true. We're talking about the stalking of Joanne Chambers.
3:36 Speaker 02 In 1993, a stalker began to target Joanne Chambers. At the time, the 41-year-old was a first-grade teacher at the Cool Ball Learning Center in Cool Ball Township, Pennsylvania. She had been there since 1989. She and her husband, who owned his own painting company, lived in Cool Ball Township with their 10-year-old son. This was a small town. Actually, it's officially a municipality, and back then had a population of less than 7,000 people. Today, that community located 60 miles north of Allentown is home to about 20,000 people.
4:11 Speaker 00 It sounds a little bit more of like the place that I grew up in. You know, I refer to it as a town, but back then, it was actually called a village. That's how small it was. It's much bigger today, but you know, those kind of small towns that we often talk about in some of our episodes. Are quite endearing to a lot of the people that live there. You know, it's a, it's a different way of life when you pretty much know everybody in the town.
4:43 Speaker 02 And I think something like this case that we're going to talk about, as bizarre as it was, I think was that much more shocking for the small community as opposed to it happening in a large city. You know, we've got tens of thousands of people. It might not have been as noticed, but here it definitely was noticed.
5:05 Speaker 00 Well, I think any type of crime is magnified in a smaller community. Cause like I said, you know, everybody knows everyone. People don't expect that type of stuff to happen in a much bigger city. You expect things like that. You don't know everybody. You're more leery of people than you are in this type of situation. Joanne had a real passion for teaching. She liked to make the information she shared fun for the children to take in. And her specialty was helping the kids learn how to read. She also liked to decorate her classroom so that the environment was more stimulating for her students.
5:48 Speaker 00 The plain beige columns in the room became colorful palm trees with some tape and some construction paper. Joanne wanted each of the children she taught to feel supported and important. According to Red Book Magazine, at the end of every class, she would announce, you are wonderful and beautiful. You make my heart happy. Joanne's students and the parents she interacted with all adored her, which made it surprising. When Thomas Kapatsky, the principal of the Cool Ball Learning Center, began to receive negative letters about Joanne beginning in July of 1993.
6:28 Speaker 02 Some of the letters were mild and petty with complaints about Joanne's wardrobe. She would often wear jeans to work instead of skirt or dresses, which the author noted with disapproval. Another letter made fun of her efforts to set up a water fight between staff members at the school, complaining that her time would have been better spent applying for the assistant principal position. Soon the letters would escalate in negativity and the subject matter would get darker involving sexual content and threats of violence. It definitely seemed like whoever was writing the letters was someone who worked at the Cool Ball Learning Center. After all, how many people who didn't work there would know about the staff water fight? And what Joanne wore to work every day?
7:11 Speaker 00 And I think I've said it before more, but my wife is a teacher. She teaches elementary school, young kids. And you know, some of what we were talking about as far as Joanne kind of really hit me because my wife does the same stuff. I can't tell you how many times we've gone to, you know, the hobby store or what, you know, some type of store to buy construction paper and things just to liven up the classroom. A lot of people don't realize how much money teachers spend on their own just to make their classrooms better for their kids.
7:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's good to hear when teachers go the extra mile and it's not just a job to them. They look at it as an experience for the children, something that they'll always remember. And they put their best foot forward to make it memorable for them.
8:04 Speaker 00 But I think what really jumps out at you here is, so we're saying all of these great and wonderful things about Joanne. It seemed like, you know, she was a good teacher and then all of a sudden these complaint letters start coming in about her. And, you know, they, like you said, they were pretty petty. The water fight, she wore jeans. Okay. But that has to hit you kind of hard when you think, hey, I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm doing a good job. Who has a problem with me?
8:40 Speaker 02 Yeah. And the letters weren't really accusing of her any wrongdoing, doing anything bad or reporting her. They were just more of a, they seemed, as you mentioned, petty just to make fun of her or paint her in a negative light.
8:55 Speaker 00 So these letters were pretty easy to ignore at first because it was brushed off as just a coworker who didn't like Joanne and they would eventually get over it or confront her to her face. They seemed harmless at first with messages like, seems to me she's bored and perhaps she needs a challenge or a little discipline. Joanne in an episode of forensic files said, I just wanted to know who it was. And I thought it was a thing that you could, you know, sit down with that person and talk it out, fix it. It didn't take long for the letters to become much more personal and much more dangerous. The letter showed up at both
9:36 Speaker 00 Joanne's home, at work, and even in the mailboxes of other teachers at the school. The tone moved from simply disapproving of Joanne to wanting to destroy her. The writer threatened, I can get you in one try. The one will ever prove it. I'm smarter than all of you. You stupid bitch. So we just got done talking more of about how, you know, these letters seemed pretty petty. Okay. Who is this? It's annoying. But now they have jumped and escalated to a whole new level.
10:15 Speaker 02 And if you're receiving these letters, now you have to start wondering, is there somebody after me? Is this person dangerous? Should I take them seriously? So that had to be, you know, extremely nerve wracking. In one letter, Joanne was accused of bringing marijuana to work and basically very casually showing it off to the employees who were in the faculty room at the time. The letter was anonymous, but this was a very serious allegation at a school and in the early 90s marijuana use was still very stigmatized and seen as a heavier drug than it is today. In March of 1994, another letter instructed the reader to check Joanne's desk in her classroom where Jack Daniels could be found. When Joanne checked in her desk drawer,
10:59 Speaker 02 there was a bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey. The writer wasn't just accusing Joanne of bringing marijuana to work. They actually managed to apparently plant evidence that would strongly suggest that she was drinking on the job around children.
11:13 Speaker 00 Another letter was really over the top. Someone had taken a photo of a nude woman and put Joanne's head on the body and photocopied it multiple times. The photo of Joanne was cut out of a photo that had been stolen from her desk. Around the same time that the Jack Daniels appeared. Not only was this sent to the principal and to parents of the children who attended the school, a copy was taped to the door of a local store. At one point, when Joanne sat down at her desk and then tried to adjust her dress, she realized that her hand was covered in feces. Someone had smeared it all over her chair and the underside of her desk.
11:56 Speaker 00 The writer not only humiliated Joanne in the letters, they soon physically harmed her. One day, as Joanne went to get into her car, her finger was sliced open by a razor blade that had been taped in a hidden spot inside her door handle. The cut was bad. It required eight stitches. According to forensicfilesnow.com, just over a week later, Joanne received a letter that read, "You're sliced."
12:25 Speaker 02 I think at this point, this letter writer has crossed a line. You know, it went from harassing letters to now they're coming on school property, getting into the classroom, leaving alcohol. If they can do that, if they can put razor blades under Joanne's car door handle, now they've proven to be dangerous. And with kids in the mix in a school, this had to be very concerning for the school staff.
12:57 Speaker 00 Well, and for Joanne as well. You know, the one thing that kind of crossed my mind was, you know, it's one thing to know that someone has a problem with you. Let's say you're feuding with someone, but you know who it is. It's another thing completely. When someone has a problem with you and they're, they're doing things to you and you have no idea who it is. I think that would be very, very scary.
13:23 Speaker 02 By this point, Joanne was living in fear. The letters had gotten darker and darker, and now Joanne had been harmed. Joanne told forensic files, "I said goodbye to my husband like I wanted him to remember me saying goodbye." She braced herself, wondering what each day would bring, saying, "I lived every day thinking that it was truly possible that it could be my last." The writer kept very busy. Letters were sent to parents claiming that Joanne was a lesbian, which was less accepted in the early 90s, or that she had AIDS, which was far less treatable and much more stigmatized at the time than it is today. Some of the letters also falsely informed the parents that their child had been molested by Joanne,
14:05 Speaker 02 and claimed that school administrators were aware but could not prove it. It was clear from the subject matter in the letters that the writer wanted to ruin Joanne.
14:14 Speaker 00 By the summer of 1994, officials at the Cool Ball Learning Center were ready to get to the bottom of things. The letters had gone way past the point of being a harmless joke or prank. A surveillance camera was placed inside of Joanne's classroom, capturing footage of her desk in case the writer tried to take or leave anything else. It was at this same time that the anonymous person stepped up violent threats against Joanne. A pink box was left in front of the school. Inside, there was a Barbie doll that had been styled to look like Joanne. The doll was wearing a blue dress that resembled one of Joanne's,
14:56 Speaker 00 and its long hair had been chopped short in a similar style to Joanne's haircut. There was a razor blade stuck in the doll's throat, which was covered in red paint. A death threat accompanied the doll.
15:09 Speaker 02 By the fall of 1994, the letters with Joanne's face pasted onto a new body, read, "It's not over. You die." One of the letters informed Joanne that they, whoever they were, had multiple chances to poison her coffee and taunted her with the idea that it may have already happened. One letter read, "I had four chances to drug your coffee this week. Or did I drug your coffee, bitch? You make me sick." Looking back at the video from the surveillance camera, multiple staff members had been inside Joanne's room while she wasn't there, but only one of them had grabbed her coffee cup off of her desk and walked out of frame.
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17:19 Speaker 00 Her method of teaching was a lot more old school than Joanne's, and she was much more strict with her students. According to the Allentown Morning Call, Paula Nawrocki had a record as clean as a new chalkboard. Maybe she wasn't the most fun or joyful teacher, but she was effective and known to be good at her job, and she had worked for the school district for two decades with no issues.
17:44 Speaker 02 Other teachers at the school became suspicious of Paula Nawrocki because one of the letters mentioned a specific nickname for Superintendent David Crowser. It referenced Colonel Klink, the character from the TV show Hogan's Heroes. In the show, Klink ran the POW camp that the show centered around, and while he always thought he was tough and smart, the show's heroes always outsmarted and duped him. Chester Holmes, who taught 6th grade at the time, told the Morning Call that Paula Nawrocki once said that Superintendent Crowser's nickname is Colonel Klink. More than one teacher also remembered that Paula found the water fight Joanne had talked about upsetting. It wasn't so much a friendly battle as it was an ambush style prank on the administration.
18:29 Speaker 02 She didn't approve of it.
18:30 Speaker 00 So I can see why people would start to be suspicious of Paula. It is obvious more of that the two Paula and Joanne had very different styles of teaching. Paula was a little more old school, strict, stern. We all had those kind of teachers growing up. And then Joanne was a little more progressive, maybe new school. We, most of us probably had one of those teachers as well. Then you have Paula being seen grabbing Joanne's coffee cup. And this reference to Colonel Clink, pretty easy to see why people would think it possibly
19:12 Speaker 00 could be Paula making these threats, writing these letters, doing these awful things.
19:18 Speaker 02 And we talked about how this was a small community. So it was very likely that word about these letters was spreading. And as soon as there was a name to go with it as a possible suspect, you can imagine what the people were saying behind the scenes, talking about Paula and bringing her name up in relation to these letters.
19:40 Speaker 00 The local authorities set Joanne up with a hidden recording device, often called a wire, and asked her to talk to Paula about the harassment, hoping to catch her off guard and get her to incriminate herself. In Paula's conversations with Joanne, she didn't say anything that made her seem guilty. She only expressed her sympathy for Joanne due to the situation and how inspiring her strength was. In one recording, Paula said to Joanne, "We're all amazed, Joanne, that you can be surviving through the whole thing. I can't imagine how this person can do what they're doing."
20:18 Speaker 02 When Paula learned that she was a suspect, she volunteered to take a lie detector test, thinking that it would prove her innocence. In her mind, she had nothing to hide, so taking a polygraph exam couldn't do any harm. She knew she didn't do it, and was sure that none of the other teachers there could be responsible for their harassment. She told forensic files, "I was positive that it wasn't anybody in the building. There was just no reason for any of them to attack Joanne like this." Paula was upset by the entire situation, and all the suspicion and rumors. And when she found out that she herself was the main suspect, she was shocked.
20:54 Speaker 00 And we've talked a lot about how Joanne must have been feeling, scared, "Who's doing this to me?" But now you have to kind of look at Paula. You know, if all your fellow teachers, if other people in the community, if the authorities start to believe that you're the one doing this, and like you said, more of people are probably talking about it, what does that do to Paula? How is she feeling?
21:21 Speaker 02 It's gotta be a terrible feeling if you know you're not the one doing something you're accused of, but everybody else is starting to point the finger at you. You gotta feel like the walls are closing in on you.
21:32 Speaker 00 An attorney probably would have told Paula that it's never a good idea to take a polygraph when you're upset, which if Paula was really falsely being accused, she would rightfully be. The test can't tell if your heart rate and respiration changes because the idea of being blamed for something like this makes you sick, or if it's because you're nervous that they will know you're lying about being innocent. All it can tell you is that you failed. And this is all that Paula learned after taking her test, that she failed it. Paula told forensic files of the test failure, "It was very upsetting. I couldn't believe that it was making things worse instead of better."
22:16 Speaker 02 But police weren't just interested in polygraphing Paula. They asked Joanne to take a lie detector test to make sure her story checked out, and she passed. All the other teachers who were asked to take polygraph exams, just to rule them out, also passed theirs with no issues. Paula cooperated with the investigation, trying to clear her name. She agreed to let investigators search her home without needing a warrant to do so. They took her typewriter to compare the letters to documents it produced. It was determined that the letters had not been prepared on her typewriter. Joanne was still sure it was Paula, despite authorities not being able to find the typewriter in Paula's home that actually made the letters. When a car ran Joanne off the road on Interstate 380, Joanne made direct eye contact with the driver.
23:01 Speaker 02 According to Joanne, it was Paula Narakie. Joanne told forensic files, "She was looking right at me. I will never forget that look."
23:10 Speaker 00 After the Interstate 380 incident, finally, authorities felt they had enough evidence to act. In January 1995, 42-year-old Paula Narakie was arrested and charged with 100 total counts of harassment, stalking, simple and aggravated assault, making terroristic threats, and recklessly endangering life. Despite her clean record, the community quickly turned on Paula. Paula's husband Leonard told forensic files, "Basically, we were isolated people. It was just Paula, Leonard, and their son," against the judgment of the world. Leonard also said, "We felt like there wasn't a friend in the world.
23:52 Speaker 00 When she tried to return to work, other teachers would ignore Paula and refused to socialize with her during their lunch period. Even school administrators gave her the cold shoulder when she attended a school basketball game." According to Leonard, "They just seemed to scatter."
24:08 Speaker 02 It wasn't just Paula's coworkers who wanted to get away from her. Parents of one student requested a class change for their children. They didn't trust Paula to teach anymore. Unable to do her job without causing trouble. She was eventually suspended. At first, the suspension was with pay. But eventually, she was fully suspended without pay. Articles at the time were treating Paula as if she had already been convicted. Paula told the Morning Call, every time you guys sit down to write an article, up at the top of your paper, you ought to write the statement in capital letters, innocent until proven guilty, and go from there. Keep your perspective straight. Paula's husband would later say, my first thought was, my God,
24:52 Speaker 02 how did the newspapers find out about this already? I mean, it was like less than 24 hours after she had been arrested.
24:59 Speaker 00 The Norrockies didn't realize just how much attention the case would receive in the news. It stretched way beyond their small community. After her preliminary hearing in February 1995, they were hounded by the media. On their way back to the car, it started as they exited the district attorney's office. Leonard told the Morning Call, as soon as I go to open the door, there's a camera right there. I would have parked closer to the building. Paula said that people were interested in it was something that was unbelievable. The Norrockies had to change their phone number due to repeated hang up calls and inquiries from nosy reporters
25:40 Speaker 00 searching for the scoop, including representatives from Jerry Springer and the Montel Williams Show.
25:47 Speaker 02 So here we have this small town mystery, and it grows sort of out of control from outside the community to now you've got Jerry Springer and Montel Williams Show reps calling you to try and line up an appearance. So that just gives a sense of how, how much life this took on.
26:08 Speaker 00 Well, and I can't help but think of it from Paula and her family's perspective. You know, if, as she said, she didn't have anything to do with this, their life was completely turned upside down. They went from You know, living a normal, I don't want to call it boring, but everyday, you know, life, going to work, eating dinner, to now being hounded by reporters, being accused of, of doing something pretty nasty. It had to have been a really rough time in their lives.
26:47 Speaker 02 There had been no more letters or any issues with Joanne since Paula was arrested. This pretty much solidified the idea that Paula was the culprit in most people's minds. But why would a respected, professional and well-liked teacher suddenly turn into such a monster of a coworker after so many years with a clean record, a perfect behavior? The only motive anyone could think of was that Paula was just jealous of Joanne for some reason. Joanne was newer in the district and quickly became extremely popular with staff and students alike. Joanne was just more fun and less stuffy, while Paula was described as someone who rarely, if ever, strayed from traditional teaching methods and followed rules verbatim. Joanne believed in a classroom without desks and had an unconventional
27:32 Speaker 02 approach to teaching.
27:34 Speaker 00 Maybe Paula was resentful of Joanne. She had such a different teaching style. Paula could have felt her methods had no place in their school, or she could have even felt angry that she couldn't find it in herself to be the carefree, fun and unconventional teacher. These were the theories some people had, but Paula never expressed any of this herself. She was completely blindsided by the accusation that she was stalking Joanne. And before any of this happened, she thought they had a friendly relationship. Despite having only circumstantial evidence and a very weak motive, the case against Paula
28:15 Speaker 00 went to trial. Paula told the morning call, "Someday, I'll be able to gloat. When everyone finds out, it's not me."
28:24 Speaker 02 Paula, who made just $55,000 each year as a teacher, spent $7,000 to get evidence against her tested for DNA. She also paid for a defense team and a private investigator. Her character and reputation were at stake here, and in her mind, no expense was too great. The envelopes with the threatening letters had minuscule amounts of DNA on the flap, where they were sealed, as well as on the back of the stamps where someone had licked them. To get enough of a sample for comparison, the DNA was amplified using the PCR process. There was no match to Paula or Leonard Nawrocki. This revelation was not enough to convince prosecutors to drop the charges against Paula, though. Luckily for her, the defense team
29:09 Speaker 02 she hired was able to dig up some interesting information about Joanne's past that would help her.
29:15 Speaker 00 The Carbondale Police Department disclosed that Joanne Chambers was known for reporting various crimes. She had called about things like burglaries or fires multiple times in the past few years. Paula's private investigator Jim Anderson told forensic files, "They said every crime that she's been a victim of has had some weirdness attached to it." Paula's attorney Phil Lauer told The Morning Call, "Miss Chambers on 15 or 16 occasions has claimed to be a victim." Former coworkers of Joanne's from the Lackawanna Trail School District felt that these allegations were all too familiar. Nearly a decade earlier, when she worked with them, and long before
30:00 Speaker 00 meeting Paula Nawrocki, she claimed that another teacher had threatened to burn her house down. Perhaps most damning, coworkers there remembered specifically that she had claimed someone smeared feces on her chair. And my thought more of is this had to be a pretty big revelation. Now, what does it mean? That still has to be determined. But when someone says that you've claimed to be a victim on 15 or 16 different occasions, that's a pretty high number. And then you have these teachers saying that Joanne had made similar claims.
30:44 Speaker 00 In the past, and specifically the one about claiming someone smeared feces on her chair. I mean, that is so very similar and odd.
30:58 Speaker 02 Yeah, you have to wonder, what are the odds that years later in a separate school district that someone would do that exact same thing? So I think this probably opens some people's eyes to the fact that, hey, maybe there's more to this story than it seemed like. Maybe Paula is innocent. News that Joanne had claimed to have experienced such strikingly similar harassment at her old school district was eye opening. When speaking to the Morning Call, Joanne's former coworker, Jane Pardue, said of Joanne, "She carried tales that weren't true to the superintendent, and she tried to get us in trouble." Another former coworker from the Lackawanna Trial District, teacher Lois Renda, recalls that
31:42 Speaker 02 Joanne told wildly different stories about a time that she had claimed to have broken her leg. Both versions of the story include the injury being caused by jumping out of a window, but in one version, she was forced to jump out of the window due to a fire at Marywood College. And in another version, she claimed that she had been studying to become a nun and was eventually forced to jump as she was escaping other nuns who wanted to force her to stay at their convent. The details supplied from Joanne's old coworkers were alarming, and if true, cast doubt on Joanne's claims about what she was experiencing at her new school district.
32:20 Speaker 00 In an attempt to find a match to the DNA on the envelopes and stamps, which didn't match Paula or her husband, private investigator Jim Anderson rummaged through Joanne's trashcan after she placed it on the curb on collection day. He collected a straw, used tissues, and a Q-tip with earwax on it. The DNA samples taken from items pulled from Joanne's trash matched the DNA on the envelopes that contained the threatening letters. Jim wasted no time getting That DNA connection put into evidence. Joanne had an explanation for the presence of her DNA where there should have been DNA from her stalker.
33:03 Speaker 00 Once, when she had been allowed to look over the evidence, the stamps fell off. She simply licked the stamps to reattach them. That's all. That doesn't really explain how her DNA was on the flaps where you licked the glue to seal the envelopes, though. She would also claim that she used a glue stick to reattach the stamp since it's actually pretty impossible to reattach a stamp by licking it. However, analysis of the stamps showed only the original adhesive. There was no glue stick residue present. There was a very slim chance that a third party had licked the stamps.
33:43 Speaker 00 The odds that the DNA was someone other than Joanne was one in 14,925. In a small town in the Poconos, that's enough to say. It was definitive, but it's a lot smaller of a number than we hear in many cases today. You know, a lot of times nowadays more if we're talking about one in 32 trillion or something like that, that's just how far DNA is advanced.
34:14 Speaker 02 Yeah, but even at this smaller number, it's, it's literally twice the size of this, the residents of this community. So it's still a pretty big number for, for this scenario.
34:25 Speaker 00 But in spite of that, the trial continued.
34:29 Speaker 02 The jury was initially on Joanne's side. One of the jurors told forensic files, I felt so bad for this woman, this poor thing to have had to go through all these terrible things. But once the defense presented their case, things weren't in Joanne's favor. Paula told the Morning Call, the evidence against Joanne, I couldn't believe that I was sitting there hearing what I was hearing. After two hours of deliberation, the jury overturned a verdict of not guilty. They did not believe it was Paul who had threatened Joanne. As they exited the courtroom, some of the jurors actually hugged Paula and gave her words of encouragement. Our hurts are with you, one juror told her. Some of the jurors felt that investigators had botched the investigation from the start.
35:12 Speaker 02 Juror Harry Astana told the Pocono Record, obviously she paid a very, very high price.
35:19 Speaker 00 And there's no doubt that Paula paid an extremely high price. Now, she was vindicated in some respects. And the reason I say that is because as we've heard many times more, you know, once you're accused of something and especially once you're charged and you know, tried for something, a lot of times that's all that people remember. They, they may not even know that you were acquitted. And so, you know, does that stigma completely go away? Yeah, to people who really know her, but all around town, maybe not.
36:03 Speaker 00 And then the other thing is, you know, the financial price that she paid. And I think about this a lot. You know, people can be charged fairly easily and taken to trial fairly easily. And yeah, it's great if you beat the charge, if you're acquitted, but you're not getting your money back for, you know, paying for your defense and, and all of that. So even though you're acquitted, it takes a terrible toll on someone to have to go through this.
36:37 Speaker 02 Yeah, Paula paid the price financially. She paid with her reputation could never be the same. And then you probably still have that group of people who despite the not guilty verdict, probably whisper behind the scenes, oh, I think she really did it though. So you, you probably have some of that going on. So it seems unlikely her, her name, her reputation would ever be back to what it was before all this happened.
37:04 Speaker 00 So Paula had been found not guilty, but this wasn't the end of her troubles. Despite being found not guilty in a court of law, she still had her employer to deal with. In 1997, she was the subject of an investigation by the Pocono Mountain School Board due to supposed immorality, accusing her of school code violations. According to the morning call, there were months of school board hearings that were peppered with audience cheers for Paula Nauraki and jeers for Joanne Chambers. Finally, Paula cleared her name and was allowed to return to work.
37:43 Speaker 02 Paula filed a lawsuit against Joanne, the Cool Ball Learning Center, and the Cool Ball Township Police Department, asking for $9 million in damages. Joanne settled, agreeing to pay $25,000. She claimed to want to move on with her life and she didn't want to pay for the defense team it would take to fight the lawsuit. This is something that Paula could certainly understand, having been forced to pay $100,000 for her criminal defense team, a private investigator, and the DNA testing. If she hadn't fought, she would have faced five years in prison, not just a hit to her bank account. The school also agreed to settle, owing Paula $600,000.
38:24 Speaker 02 First, they suspended her when she was ultimately the victim, and they failed to end their investigation into her when it was decided in court that she was not guilty. The evidence in that courtroom, the DNA, and the prior claims of threats should have been enough to investigate Joanne for immorality and school code violations, let alone enough to bring the investigation into Paula to a halt.
38:48 Speaker 00 At the time of these lawsuits, both of the women, Paula and Joanne, still worked for the same school district. Paula was a third-grade teacher at Pocono Mountain Elementary Center, and Joanne was a reading specialist at Pocono Mountain Intermediate South. Joanne still being employed by the district made their missteps glaringly obvious. Despite it being quite clear that Joanne was responsible for these actions, which included sending what was considered pornographic material to parents who had children in the district, they didn't place her on leave, they didn't suspend her pay, she faced no disciplinary boards. So what were they punishing Paula for?
39:33 Speaker 00 Really, if the true perpetrator had zero consequences?
39:37 Speaker 02 Police Chief Anthony Flugel refused to settle with Paula and took the issue to trial. He told forensic files, "I thought from the beginning I was just doing my job." Flugel's attorney, Hugh J. Hutchinson, blamed the Monroe County District Attorney's Office. While the police may have arrested Paula, they couldn't undo anything once the DNA didn't match her. It was the responsibility of the District Attorney's Office to stop prosecuting someone who didn't look guilty anymore, but they didn't. They pushed forward with the prosecution. The jury ultimately agreed. Chief Flugel, the only defendant to go to trial, was the only one who didn't have to pay damages.
40:18 Speaker 00 And I understand that line of thinking, right? The police put together evidence, they present it to the district attorney. It's the district attorney's office who decides whether or not to move forward with the charges. And this idea that they kept on, even after this DNA information came to light, you know, to me, things like that are pretty alarming.
40:45 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's their responsibility, once something comes to light, to, to stop and say, this, this no longer looks like a winnable case, because now we have evidence that sort of goes against the person that we think did this. So I think if anything, the DA's office maybe should have been on this list of people that Paula should have sued.
41:11 Speaker 00 Yeah, I don't know if they had immunity. Sometimes, you know, some of these groups have immunity from being sued, you know, in, in certain instances. But, you know, just speaking of like, the DA's in general, my thought has always been that, you know, the, the goal, the quest is for the truth. But in so many of these cases, it seems as though some DA offices, it's all about the win, not about the truth. And, and I think that comes up in a lot of cases, especially some of the older cases. Both Paula and Joanne agreed to appear on Dateline and Forensic Files, back when it
41:56 Speaker 00 was called Medical Detectives. Paula told The Morning Call, "I still was hoping for the blazing gun that would just straighten the world out." Explaining why she agreed to relive everything and tell her story publicly, her ordeal changed how she consumed media. Paula said, "No matter if it sounds like they have a rock solid case or whatever..." I believe it when the verdict is in. Neither of the women moved away. After this whole situation was resolved, they continued to live in the same county and work for the same school district, but they were never in the same building again.
42:35 Speaker 02 This is a case that started out with Joanne being the victim, but eventually shifted to where Paula was the true victim. She was suspended without pay, children were pulled from her classroom, and she was eventually forced to transfer to another school. It's not really clear whether Joanne set out to frame Paula specifically, or if she accidentally became a convenient patsy. The letters were written from the perspective of an insider at the school. One of the first things that made people suspect Paula was that letter mentioning the nickname for Superintendent David Crowser. Was this intentionally meant to implicate Paula? Was she the only one who ever said that? So the writer knew it would point right to her? Or was this meant to be one more thing that would strongly hint that the writer was someone
43:20 Speaker 02 in the school, and it was other employees who attributed the nickname to Paula?
43:24 Speaker 00 If it wasn't Joanne's original plan to blame Paula, she seemed set on framing another teacher when she began sending the letters about being poisoned. When Paula grabbed Joanne's coffee mug from her desk, she maintains it wasn't to poison her, it was only because Joanne had asked her to grab it. The surveillance footage also shows Joanne and Paula talking to each other in the classroom, walking out together, and then it shows Paula come back in for the mug. Looking at the timestamps on the video footage, she went back for the mug less than a minute after they both left the classroom.
44:04 Speaker 00 From the second Paula had that cup in her hand, she became a red herring of a suspect, and it undoubtedly changed her life.
44:13 Speaker 02 Joanne retired in June 2015. She managed to obtain National Board Certification, so the case didn't appear to harm her career prospects. However, her retirement was supposed to be temporary, but it ended up permanent when the Hazelton Area School Board decided not to hire her as they had planned. She would have been a specialist, teaching Wilson Language Training to students in the Hazelton Area School District. One concerned parent, who didn't know Joanne's backstory, told the Moore and Consul, "We just Googled her name, and all this came up." Upon being presented with this information, Hazelton Area School Board Director, Jared O'Donnell, considered it a grave concern. This incident caused
44:58 Speaker 02 another director, Robbie Wallace, to request the position of HR Director be reinstated. The position had been cut to save money, but allowed all this very relevant background information to slip through the cracks in the hiring process.
45:13 Speaker 00 And sometimes I think you get in trouble more, you know, when you try to save a little bit of money. And I get it, you know, schools are like anything else. There's only so much money to go around. But how important is it to do all the necessary background checks on a teacher? And to me, it's even more important than it would be in the private sector. These are the, the people who are going to be spending time with young children, shaping young children's minds. You definitely want the background check on teachers to be
45:54 Speaker 00 as complete as possible. And it doesn't surprise me one bit that once all this information came out about Joanne, the school district said, you know what, I think we'll hire somebody else.
46:10 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think that there's any budget cutting, or trying to trim a few dollars off someplace within a school district. I think most parents would be in favor of it not being, when it comes to the person that's going to background check who's in the classroom with your kids. You know, obviously, that's very important, and they want the person there being safe and qualified, and, and someone they can trust their kids with.
46:39 Speaker 00 On November 1st, 2024, Joanne Chambers passed away at the age of 76. Her husband Mark passed away 13 months before she did. Leonard Naraki passed away in May of the same year at the age of 73. At the time of concluding our research for this episode, there's no published obituary for Paula and nothing to indicate that she's not still alive. You have to wonder if she still lives in that small community. And if she does, did she ever run into Joanne at a store or restaurant there over the years? If so, how awkward must that have been?
47:23 Speaker 00 And we said that the, you know, the town grew over time, but you know, still, how many restaurants are there? How many stores are there? There's a pretty good chance that you're going to run into somebody, you know, over a number of years. Do you have words? Do you just glare at that person and walk on? Or do you just ignore that person completely? I mean, let's face it more. If Joanne was the one who kind of set this whole thing up, which it appears that that's the way this thing went down. She really altered Paula's life.
48:04 Speaker 00 You could understand how Paula would hold a great deal of animosity towards her.
48:10 Speaker 02 Yeah, unless she was the kind of person that's very easy forgiving. I could understand how she would harbor a grudge, you know, for years after what she went through.
48:24 Speaker 00 And going back to this DNA evidence, it kind of shows that it was Joanne sending these letters, but she denied that, I think, up until the day she died. But assuming that the DNA is correct, then really the big question in this case is, Why would Joanne have done all of this? We may never truly know that answer. I mean, I think you can kind of work through some theories. You know, there are some people who are, I'll say addicted, for the lack of a better term, to attention.
49:03 Speaker 00 You know, could all of this have come from kind of wanting attention, wanting to be the center of attention, wanting people to feel bad for you, wanting that sympathy from other people? We've seen things happen for similar reasons before.
49:23 Speaker 02 What's frightening is there was that record of Joanne having similar incidents from her old school district before she ever met Paula, yet somehow she was allowed to go on teaching and find herself in a new environment, having a run-in with a new teacher, Paula. And maybe what happened at the previous school district wasn't criminal, but had the people hiring Joanne at the new district known what the old coworkers there had to say, they might not have ever hired her.
49:59 Speaker 00 They might not have. They might have, because again, it wasn't criminal. You know, one of the things that I want to talk about as it relates to the investigation into, you know, what was going on at the time, Paula being arrested, Paula being charged, I didn't see it anywhere in the research. But you wonder why the police didn't go talk to some of Joanne's former teachers, some of the people who she taught with in the past. I think if they had done that, some of this would have come to light and it would have been known about much earlier on in the investigation.
50:44 Speaker 02 Yeah, what's frightening most of all to me is that if Joanne Did all this, the way that DNA seems to show that she did. Either you're, you're talking about having alcohol in schools, pornographic material sent to parents. The fact that she never was held accountable, suspended, was allowed to keep teaching after all of this. After it seems that she was the one who likely did all this. That boggles my mind that they would allow someone like that to be teaching kids and in the school because in my, in my mind, maybe she's not stable. Maybe she has some underlying mental illness and
51:26 Speaker 02 should have been properly, you know, suspended and vetted out to see if she was safe to continue teaching kids.
51:34 Speaker 00 But I think you said the word seems. It seems like she did this. It wasn't proven like, let's say in a court of law. Right. She wasn't convicted of anything. It does kind of all point to her. But would that be enough for the school board to act? And, and I guess that's just the question I'm asking. They might have thought after they had already been sued by Paula, that they didn't have enough to stand on. But you're right. As a parent, that would be concerning that this person who's thought to have done all of this.
52:17 Speaker 00 I mean, let's go back smeared feces on her own chair. The Jack Daniels, the pornographic pictures. That's not someone, if Joanne did that, it's not someone you want teaching your children.
52:33 Speaker 02 Yeah. Imagine in the fall, you get that, that little sheet that tells you what classrooms and teachers, your, your kids are going to have. And you see Joanne's name on the list. How do you, how does that make you feel? And are you comfortable with that?
52:49 Speaker 00 But again, you know, I go back to the fact that she was never convicted of anything. I think most people believe that based on the DNA evidence, she was doing this. She did this. And again, for what reasons? Probably will never know, but no doubt it's such a strange story, a strange case. But that's it for our episode on Joanne Chambers. If you love the show, but haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, leave us a five star rating, leave a review. Also, keep telling your friends. Word of mouth about the podcast really helps us out.
53:32 Speaker 02 If you want to find us on social media, we're on X with the handle at CriminologyPod. You can also find us on Facebook by going to Facebook.com/criminologypodcast. And you can join our Facebook discussion group, Criminology Podcast Discussion and Fans.
53:48 Speaker 00 So that's it for another episode of Criminology, but Morph and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode. So until then, for Mike.
53:58 Speaker 02 And Morph.
53:59 Speaker 00 We'll talk to you next week.
54:01 Speaker 02 Take care, everyone.
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