Pod Insights Criminology Tricia Lynn Reitler About this episode In 1993, 19-year-old college freshman Tricia Lynn Reitler, an Indiana Wesleyan University freshman, vanished while walking back to her dorm after a quick trip to a supermarket. More than three decades later, investigators believe they know who was responsible, but Tricia's body has never been found, and no one has been charged in her case. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the disappearance of Tricia Lynn Reitler. The case eventually became linked to suspected serial killer Larry DeWayne Hall, who repeatedly confessed to and then recanted involvement in numerous murders. Authorities found disturbing notes, maps, and items connected to several missing women, including Tricia. 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 413 of the Criminology Podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson.
0:43 Speaker 02 And this is Mike Morford.
0:44 Speaker 01 Mr. Morford, how you doing this week, buddy?
0:46 Speaker 02 I'm doing pretty good. How you doing?
0:48 Speaker 01 I'm doing great, just busy, right? Getting ready for Crime Con. We're taping a bunch ahead of time and because I got the wedding that's backed up right after Crime Con, so a lot, lot going on.
1:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, my schedule's a little hectic too. Kids are out of school tomorrow and you know, I'm running around a little bit. So yeah, it definitely is a shock to the system.
1:10 Speaker 01 Yeah, it always is the summer because you know, my wife's a teacher. Now my daughter is a teacher, so they're both off starting this week and it's kind of a shock to the system for me just because I'm used to being by myself during the day. And then when they're here, it's harder to get stuff done because you know, you want to hang out with them, they're home and all of that, but I still gotta work.
1:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, well, I'm sure they enjoy their downtime though, so I don't think you're gonna take that away from them.
1:39 Speaker 01 Oh, no, no, this is my daughter's first year of teaching, so her first summer paid and she is so excited, dude, to not go to work and get paid. She just keeps talking about it.
1:52 Speaker 02 Well, sign me up for that, mate. Is it too late for me to become a teacher?
1:55 Speaker 01 I think, no, I don't think it's ever too late. I don't know, you make a great one though. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shout outs. We had new support from Alicia Conia, so great new support. We really appreciate it.
2:08 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's awesome, Alicia. Thank you so much and thank you to everyone else that helps support the show. And if you're interested in getting started to help us, head over to patreon.com/criminology.
2:18 Speaker 01 All right, buddy. It's time to jump into this week's case. And we have an older, but really interesting one. It's so interesting that it partially inspired a 2022 TV mini series on Apple called Blackbird. We're diving into the investigation into the disappearance and presumed murder of 19 year old Trisha Lynn Reitler. This is a frustrating case because police think they know what happened to her and who's responsible, but they've never been able to bring home her body, leaving her family with no peace for over three decades.
2:54 Speaker 02 Trisha Lynn Reitler was born in 1974 to parents Donna and Gary Reitler. She had three younger siblings. The family lived in Olmsted Township, Ohio. After graduating high school, Trisha attended Indiana Wesleyan University in nearby Marion, Indiana, where she majored in psychology. The last time Trisha was seen alive around 8:00 PM on March 29, 1993, she had walked from her dorm room to a Marsh supermarket not far from campus. It was a busy week for students. Trisha, a freshman, was working on her term paper at the time. It seemed like she just needed a quick break or maybe some sugar to help fuel her studying. So she thought she would pop up to the store for a minute. She asked her roommate to go
3:37 Speaker 02 to the store with her, but she didn't feel like it. So she stayed in their room. Trisha bought some root beer and a magazine and then headed home to her dorm. But as far as anyone could tell, she never made it back to Bowman Hall. We know it was supposed to be a quick trip because she didn't take anything with her, just the money she needed for her purchase, which in 1993 wasn't much. She didn't even take her purse with her. Trisha had simply vanished.
4:01 Speaker 01 Around midnight, Trisha's parents received a call. It was the police in Marion hoping Trisha was with them. Her roommate had quickly reported that Trisha never made it back from the store. Her parents were immediately worried because they hadn't heard from her. And as soon as it was clear that Trisha hadn't gone home, for some reason, everyone knew the worst must have happened. Days after Trisha was last seen or heard from, there was a chilling discovery. Women's clothing had been found at a park along the same route she had been walking. The clothes, a T-shirt, a pair of jeans and a pair of shoes were covered in blood. Trisha's university meal card was in the pocket of the jeans.
4:44 Speaker 01 This isn't what anyone wanted to find, but at the very least, it was a clue. Investigators believe Trisha was abducted on her way home from Marsh supermarket. And the discovery of her bloody clothing in the immediate area indicated that she had been harmed very soon after leaving. A bag with her soda, magazine, and a receipt from Marsh was found near the bloody clothing. Police were in a race against time because from the looks of things, if she was alive, she might not have much time. And more if I, you know, to be honest with you, this is sending some chills down my spine.
5:23 Speaker 01 Anytime we talk about girls at college, women at college, because you know, I have two girls, one just finished up college, one is still in college. So, you know, these hit me very close to home. They are so scary.
5:42 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think anyone with daughters, when they hear about something like this, it definitely puts them on guard and makes them think of terrible things that can happen. And from the looks of it, police knew something seriously was wrong here. It wasn't one of these cases where, well, maybe she just ran off or she's out hanging with somebody. There was clear evidence that she was in trouble. Investigators thought that whatever happened to Trisha must have happened fast. She was pretty athletic and in good shape and was training to join the track team. She ran several times a day if the weather was nice enough. The half mile from campus to the store would have been nothing for her. It seems unlikely she would have accepted a ride from a stranger with such a short distance to cover.
6:26 Speaker 02 Police learned that there were several witnesses in the area that may have seen something and could help the investigation, but frustratingly, they've never come forward. It was reported that multiple people were playing basketball at the center school playground. Tricia would have walked right next to the playground as it was between her dorm and the supermarket. And the field where her clothes were found was right next to that playground. Even with all those people around, no one seemed to have seen or heard anything. Did this mean that there was nothing to see or hear? Or were they too focused on their game to notice that anything was happening to Tricia? Police asked people that may have seen anything to come forward and employed public pleas for information, posters and news segments, but no one did. And Tricia's case cooled off pretty quickly.
7:11 Speaker 01 Authorities investigated a potential link between Tricia's disappearance and the 1987 disappearance of Wendy Felton. 16-year-old Wendy disappeared from her home in Marion, Indiana. She had been left home alone early in the morning on June 5th, 1987, while her older sister drove their parents to the airport. By the time her sister returned, Wendy and a suitcase full of clothing were missing. However, all of Wendy's personal belongings had been left behind. According to her family, she was looking forward to getting her driver's license the next week and had no known reason to leave. A man named Donald Grineer was looked at as a suspect in both cases
7:56 Speaker 01 after he was arrested in 1999 on charges of abduction and child molestation. He kidnapped a young girl and held her for three days. She escaped. Grineer denied any involvement in either case. His home was searched, but no evidence was found linking him to either disappearance. Another man, Tony Circe, was looked into simply due to his criminal history. Circe was checked into the hospital for a hernia the night Tricia disappeared and apparently failed two different polygraph examinations that asked him questions about her. Like Grineer, he maintained his innocence and could not be linked to either case.
8:38 Speaker 02 It seems like police were jumping into action, looking at possible suspects. They weren't, didn't seem like strong suspects, but they were at least looking. So I think that speaks to the urgency of their investigation.
8:52 Speaker 01 Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by the word strong. No, they're not strong in the aspect of the, you know, there are ties, direct ties. But obviously, you know, especially the first guy, Donald Grenier, he was not a good guy. Right? Arrested for abduction and child molestation. The other guy seriously had a criminal history. We just don't know the full background of it.
9:19 Speaker 02 As interested as police were in these guys, one suspect was very high up on the police radar. And that's because he confessed to Trisha's murder multiple times, though he later recanted the confessions. And none of the information he gave panned out. Investigators believe this may have been because he was toying with them, not because he didn't know anything. He actually confessed to many different murders, but interestingly, not Wendy Felton's. This man's name is Larry DeWayne Hall. Hall was living at his parents' home in Wabash, Indiana, about a half hour from the university campus at the time of Trisha's disappearance. Hall was known to be shy, and the fact that his twin brother was smarter, funnier, and more attractive didn't help him come out of his shell.
10:01 Speaker 02 He probably had a hard time relating to other children as the son of a gravedigger who often helped his father at work. The shyness would have just made him more creepy to some. As a teen, Hall got into trouble here and there for crimes like theft and arson. After high school, he found work as a janitor. He ended up traveling the country after getting heavily into the Civil War and Revolutionary War, going in person to multiple historic reenactment sites nationwide. Photos of him from that era show a facial hairstyle reminiscent of the style worn by men during the Civil War.
10:33 Speaker 01 But as we're about to get into, this Hall guy turned out to be more than just a creepy or weird guy. On September 20th, 1993, six months after Trisha went missing, 15-year-old Jessica Roach disappeared from Georgetown, Illinois. After a six-week search, her body was found in a cornfield 20 miles away in Perrysville, just over the Indiana border. Sadly, a combine, a large piece of harvesting equipment, had run over her body and may have destroyed potential evidence. In addition, To severely damaging her body. At first, it seemed as if Jessica's case, like the case of Trisha
11:15 Speaker 01 Reitler, was going to go cold. There was just no evidence or leads, but people in the area continued to be on edge suspicious. So when children reported anyone suspicious, it was taken very seriously. In May of 1994, a van was seen following two teenage girls. The van drove off, but days later, it happened again to another group of teen girls who reported a heavyset bearded man was trying to coax them into his van. One of the girls remembered the same man and told police he had followed her on three other occasions. In July, he followed
11:54 Speaker 01 another two teenage girls. Finally, in October, he followed yet another two young girls. This time, they wrote down the man's license plate number and gave it to police. That led investigators right to Larry Hall in Wabash, Indiana. Larry DeWayne Hall was arrested in late October of 1994 for stalking these girls and trying to get them into his van. So another scary situation here in Morph, right? We have the quintessential true crime vehicle, a van. I don't know if it was windowless, but maybe, right? My girls, still to this day, with them both being in their twenties,
12:38 Speaker 01 are scared to death of windowless vans. And maybe rightfully so. Now, most of them are used for work or whatever it is, but it's kind of like the true crime trope, right? The guy in the windowless van. And here with Larry DeWayne Hall, I mean, we're seeing exactly that. It's a very scary situation. He is just driving around following girls.
13:10 Speaker 01 Trying to coax them into their van. This is the definition of like the boogeyman.
13:17 Speaker 02 And I don't think he'd be able to explain this off as, you know, he's just asking for directions or something along those lines because he did this several times. And thankfully they got his license plate on that last incident. But this makes me think of maybe those girls were safer because they were traveling in pairs and not alone. I wonder if they were alone, if he would have tried something forcefully and maybe one of those girls might have disappeared.
13:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's a good point, right? We've always heard that, you know, there's safety in numbers and I think there is something to that. You and I talk a lot about prenters looking for who they believe are the most vulnerable victims. And normally you would think that is someone alone, not multiple people or a group of people. But I do want to go back and talk about, you know, this Larry DeWayne Hall growing up, people saying he was creepy, weird.
14:22 Speaker 01 You know, having a dad who's a gravedigger and having to help out with the grave digging, that is not going to help when people already think that stuff about you.
14:33 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's a pretty creepy resume to have if you're creeping around in a van and then you have the gravedigger background, that's probably going to scare a lot of people. Police thought that Hall was quite likely responsible for the abduction and murder of Jessica Roach and questioned him about her case. And he pretty quickly admitted that he murdered her. In November, 1994, Hall was arrested for Jessica's murder. Hall confessed to abducting her, tying her up, sexually assaulting her and strangling her with a belt for leaving her body in the cornfield. But the next day, he recanted that confession. He did this with multiple cases. He tried to claim that the confessions he gave them were just details from dreams that he had.
15:16 Speaker 02 It was during one of these discussions that Hall gave information to detectives about Trisha Reitler. Hall directed investigators to an area of Grant County, Indiana, along the Mrs. Newell Reservoir that he claimed to have buried Tricia's body, but they were unable to find anything.
15:32 Speaker 01 So police were clearly frustrated with Hall. They knew that he had lured, or at least tried to lure teenage girls into his van. And now he had confessed to at least one murder, but retracted it, saying it was just a dream. When police searched his van, though, they found the stuff of nightmares. They found suspicious items like ether, a hacksaw, rope, duct tape, masks, detailed maps of wooded areas that had been marked by hand, and newspaper clippings about both Trisha's and Jessica's cases, along with pornographic photos of women that Hall or someone had drawn on,
16:15 Speaker 01 adding belts around the women's necks and blood coming out of their mouths. To investigators, this proved to them that they had the right guy. There was also evidence in the van directly linking Hall to Trisha and to other missing or murdered women. Investigators found stationery from Indiana Wesleyan University with Trisha's name on it. And I think if you're police more, if you're just salivating at this point, right? You've got the guy, but you have to put it all together. I mean, there's a lot here that is making this guy look guilty. I mean, the stuff they found in his van, it's like a Dexter kit.
16:58 Speaker 01 I mean, that is like a prototypical stalker, abductor kit. It's scary stuff.
17:07 Speaker 02 Yeah, we talked about how scary those kind of vans were, but this stuff inside the van, as we just mentioned, is nightmare fuel. That's pretty clearly shows a person that's up to no good and they've got all the tools they need to do something really bad.
17:23 Speaker 01 And the one thing that jumped out at me was the newspaper clipping specifically about Trisha and Jessica. I mean, I understand maybe a person having an interest in keeping up with a true crime case or something like that. But these specific newspaper clippings along with everything else they found in the van, I mean, how could police not think that they've got the guy?
17:53 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think in a lot of cases, sometimes police are guilty of going down rabbit holes or getting locked in on one person prematurely. But here, who can blame them after finding this treasure trove of frightening stuff?
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19:39 Speaker 02 In Hall's Belongs, investigators found a pack of birth control pills with the name Reyna Ryson on it. 16-year-old Reyna Ryson was last seen on March 26, 1993, in La Port, Indiana. Her car was found the next evening, parked on a rural road with the hood up and keys in the ignition. Reyna's purse was still inside the car. The car started up just fine, indicating that the scene had been staged to make it look like she had car trouble and maybe walked off. Her body was found in a pond one month later, fully clothed with no signs of sexual assault. She had been strangled. Reyna's brother-in-law, Ray McCarty, who had gotten her pregnant when she was just 12 years old and forced her to have an abortion and threatened her to keep quiet about it, was initially the
20:23 Speaker 02 main suspect. He was released from jail on child molestation charges just three months before Reyna's disappearance. Prosecutors dropped the charges, feeling there wasn't enough evidence to charge him with her murder, and he was released from jail.
20:37 Speaker 01 So, Moore, if there's no shortage of really bad guys, right, that we're talking about in this episode, you got this Ray McCarty guy impregnating Reyna when she's only 12 years old. And then he's released on charges just three months before she disappeared. So, I mean, I think if you're investigators, you gotta be looking at him, right, very seriously. But then when they find the pills with Reyna's name on them in Hall's items, that would make it pretty tough, I would think, to build a case against Ray McCarty.
21:18 Speaker 02 Yeah, this Ray guy seems like a real scumbag. And knowing what he did and knowing that he got out very shortly before she was killed, I could see why police might be interested in him. But then to find pills with her name on them, and this guy Larry Stuff, you know, which way do you go? Which road do you go down? And one thing I didn't hear about, but maybe it's something that should be considered, I wonder if there's any possibility if police looked into the, a chance that these two knew each other. Maybe they somehow worked in cahoots, but I hadn't seen anything about that.
21:54 Speaker 01 But apparently, police were unclear whether this was a real prescription label or something Hall could have made himself. And we talked about the, the article clippings, right, that were found in his vehicle about Tricia's case. So we know that he liked to follow the news. In 2015, 22 years after Reyna's murder, her ex-boyfriend Jason Tibbs was charged with her murder. He was convicted and sentenced to serve 40 years in prison. Tibbs maintains his innocence. There are many who believe her brother-in-law Ray McCarty really did kill her. Most of the evidence against Tibbs was the testimony
22:36 Speaker 01 of a co-defendant who got immunity for cooperating. Reyna disappeared just three days before Tricia Reitler. They were last seen just two hours from each other. It certainly seems possible for one person to be responsible for both murders, especially if something went wrong. And he felt frustrated after killing Reyna instead of feeling satisfied, or whatever killers feel when it's time to cool off for a while. The whole birth control pill angle seemed to link Larry DeWayne Hall to Reyna, but there was nothing solved.
23:12 Speaker 02 So a lot of times in these cases, we talk about there's nothing evidence wise that points to any one person. But here in this case, in Reyna's case, you've got her pills, possibly that are in Larry DeWayne Hall's possession. And then you also have this perv brother-in-law who's already molested her and gotten her pregnant that just got out of jail. He seems like he could have a motive. So if you're the police, what do you do here?
23:45 Speaker 01 Well, but then they end up charging and convicting her ex-boyfriend, who to this day claims he didn't do it. And again, we don't know everything about, you know, the evidence and the trial. But when you hear that the bulk of the testimony kind of centers around one co-defendant who got immunity, those cases are a little bit scary. Let's be honest, because we have seen in the past, people wrongfully convicted on that type of evidence or that type of testimony.
24:25 Speaker 02 And I think there's still one important question that needs to be answered. If those birth control pills were really Reinas, what's Larry DeWayne Hall doing with them? How do you get them? Just eight days after Tricia Lynn Reitler was killed, two students at Wesleyan were walking home from the store after dark. They were feeling safe because they were with each other and weren't alone. That's when a man in a van began to follow them. They immediately ran to campus security and told them about being followed. A security officer found the van and pulled it over. Larry Hall was driving, but claimed he was looking for a friend's house and gave an address. The security officer let him go on his way, but reported the incident to the police, who informed him that the address the man gave didn't exist.
25:10 Speaker 02 The license plate was registered to Hall. Maybe for him, there was no cooling off period.
25:16 Speaker 01 Hall's van also contained a document or a note with the name Naomi Kidder on it. Naomi Kidder disappeared on June 29th, 1982, after leaving the Travel Lodge Hotel in Rawlins, Wyoming, to hitchhike to Buffalo, Wyoming, where her parents were watching her one-year-old daughter. Naomi's body was found on September 10th in a shallow grave in Natrona County, Wyoming. A piece of barbed wire had been made into a ligature and was still around her neck. She was a Jane Doe until 1993. Naomi's daughter, Bobby Winkler, made it sound as if her name was in Hall's handwritten notes, which did have dates on them.
26:01 Speaker 01 She believes this could be a legitimate leak because the note predates the media coverage of her mother's case. And we're going to get into these notes a bit later. If Hall had murdered Naomi Kidder, he would have been about 20 years old when he did so. Police confirmed Hall was a person of interest in Naomi's case, and they have never been able to rule him out.
26:25 Speaker 02 Hall appeared to have scoped out several different areas looking for victims. He took detailed notes during the process, which were found when authorities searched his van and home. According to CNN, some of these notes read as follows. Seen joggers and bikers, many alone. Checked colleges, parks, seen some prospects. There were also notes that were like instructions to himself, like buy two more plastic tarps. Cover all floor and sides of van and no body contact. Buy condoms, buy two more leather belts, find one now. One week after Trisha vanished, Hall apparently wrote, cut out stained carpet. Vacuumed van thoroughly. Buy new hacksaw blades, clean all tools.
27:09 Speaker 02 It's ominous what he wrote, but not damning.
27:12 Speaker 01 Well, I think ominous is maybe an understatement. I get it. You can't take this on its own and convict somebody, right? Solely based on it. But there's no doubt it's scary as all get out. I mean, who in the world writes stuff like this down unless they are a serial predator? I mean, what other reason would you have? I mean, that stuff is so specific.
27:43 Speaker 02 Yeah, one thing I am wondering at this point, how does Hall keep having things connected to these different victims? If he's not involved, you know, how does he have things with names on them or prescriptions? Things like that that are tied to missing or murdered women. It just, it's not looking good for him.
28:02 Speaker 01 No, I, there's no doubt, right? That there is so much smoke here that I think he's catching on fire. And this kind of note taking is something that we've recently seen a serial killer do. You know, when you look at Rex Schurman, the Long Island serial killer, on his computer, investigators found a planning document with notes on hunting for victims, preparing their bodies for disposal, cleaning the home and getting rid of evidence. Even typed destroy computer files, which made the files discovery pretty ironic. The document had one purpose, which was to help Hurman get away with the perfect murder.
28:48 Speaker 01 Hall's notes were very similar, while handwritten and not quite as obvious with its intentions. And it's interesting, right, to talk about Hurman. Gibby and I on true crime all the time are in the middle of like a four parter on Hurman. And, you know, a lot of people are fascinated with him. I think in large part because the Lisk case was such a like a big time unsolved case for so many years. And then for them to figure out who did it. And now he's recently confessed. I mean, it's just one of those cases that people are drawn to.
29:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's interesting that some of these predators too, have these well thought out documents, plans, things they want to accomplish, things they don't want to make mistakes with. And they're cataloging all this stuff and being very organized. But then you have the predators that are like the oddest tools or Henry Lee Lucas is just randomly roaming and, you know, attacking victims they come across with no rhyme or reason. So it's, it's interesting to see the dichotomy of these two different kinds of people.
30:01 Speaker 01 It is, but it's also interesting to have, you know, someone who's so meticulous in writing everything down. Or in Rex's case, right, he had a computer document. But then to let that be found by authorities, right? That's, it's going to be a pretty damning piece of evidence. When you write every little thing down in such minute detail.
30:29 Speaker 02 Tricia Reitler and Jessica Roach are not the only people Larry Hall outright admitted the murdering. He wrote a list or underlined names on a list given to him. It's not exactly clear which, and investigators believe he was indicating his involvement in each case. The list is quite long. And again, he later changed his mind and claimed that he was innocent in each and every case. One of the names on Hall's list was Lori Jean Depes, a 20 year old woman who disappeared from Minasha, Wisconsin in 1992. Lori's disappearance was very quick, like Tricia's.
31:03 Speaker 01 At around 10:00 PM on August 19th, 1992, Lori Jean made the drive from the Fox River Mall in Grand Chute, Wisconsin, to her boyfriend's apartment in Manassas. Her boyfriend, his sister, and one of her friends had been waiting for her to arrive. And sometime between 10:15 and 10:30, they heard the sound of her Volkswagen pulling into the parking lot, but she never walked into the unit. They went to go see what was taking her so long, but she wasn't out there. Her purse and her overnight bag for spending the night at her boyfriend's were both inside the locked car. A styrofoam cup of soda had been left on the hood of the car with no evidence of a
31:45 Speaker 01 struggle and nothing overheard by the people waiting for her nearby. Authorities initially believed that Lori willingly got into the car of someone she knew and trusted, and that something happened to her after that.
32:00 Speaker 02 There are certain elements of Lori's disappearance that are reminiscent of the disappearance of Denise Diane Flum, years earlier. Hall also indicated that he could have been involved with her disappearance. On March 28th, 1986, 17-year-old Denise Flum had a dilemma. She realized she had forgotten her purse at a party she went to the night before, but she didn't want to go back to get it alone. Everyone she asked, including her friends and her sister, were too busy to go with her, so she did end up going by herself. Denise never made it home, though her purse did. About an hour after she left, someone stopped by to drop it off for her. It seems that Denise never made it to the property where the party had been held. The person living there claimed Denise didn't come by.
32:44 Speaker 02 The next day, her car, a 1981 Buick Regal, was found parked down a gravel road in Glenwood, Indiana, about three miles from where the party had been held. The car was locked. There were no signs of a struggle in or near the car. Because of this, her disappearance was initially written off as her being a runaway. Unfortunately, fingerprints collected from the inside of the car were taken into evidence, but later misplaced without ever being tested.
33:10 Speaker 01 Denise's family was never convinced that she ran away and believed that her disappearance had something to do with the party. Her mom Judy told WTHR.com that Denise seemed to be apprehensive about going by herself, but she was not a person who was normally afraid to go places. So we've puzzled over that all these years. In July of 2020, Denise's ex-boyfriend Sean McClung confessed to her murder in an attempt to receive immunity in two unrelated cases. McClung was dying at the time of this confession and would only live two more months. During this time, he refused to help investigators locate Denise's
33:53 Speaker 01 body. So he didn't receive immunity in those other cases just five days before he died. He admitted he had no idea what happened to Denise and had lied to try to spend his final days outside of jail. Judy Flum believes she knows the identity of her daughter's killer, and it's not Larry Hall. There is a man still living in the area who was on investigators radar before Larry Hall made his so-called confessional list. But this man was never interrogated and has not been publicly named. There are rumors that he told multiple people in town that he killed Denise, though he was never charged. More
34:34 Speaker 01 if I don't know if we've ever talked about a case or a series of cases where so many people confessed to murders, some of which were proven to be false. I mean, this is a very kind of specific situation, right? Where McClung is dying. He knows he's dying, and he just wants a chance to spend some days before he dies outside of jail. So he confesses to a murder that he didn't commit.
35:07 Speaker 01 Or he says he didn't commit later on.
35:09 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's, you know, I can maybe on one hand see why he did that because he's so desperate for for any kind of freedom making it. But at the same time, that's very terrible to do to a victim's family that thinks maybe they're finally getting some answers, some justice, and then you're pulling the rug out from under their feet.
35:29 Speaker 01 But I do want to talk about authorities, you know, classifying Denise as a runaway. I thought that was very strange. You know, if you if you're going to run away, why would you drive your car and park it down a gravel road three miles away from where this party that you went to had been held? You're going to lock the car and then just disappear? That just doesn't seem to make sense to me.
35:58 Speaker 02 Yeah, if you wanted to get to another area or start a new life or go visit somebody, you think the car would be an easier way to get you where you want to go and not abandoning it.
36:07 Speaker 01 Well, maybe if it was abandoned at a train station or, you know, at the airport. Okay. Does that make a little more sense that maybe somebody ran off to start a new life? Yeah, possibly. But just down a gravel road in the middle of nowhere? That just doesn't make any sense.
36:27 Speaker 02 Another possible victim Larry Hall is connected to is named Paulette Webster. Hall didn't directly confess to the murder of Paulette, but he heavily hinted at his involvement. According to the Charlie Project, he wrote, "If I did it, I would have put her in a river or in a field." Paulette was 19 years old when she vanished from Chester, Illinois. She was walking home from her friend's house at around 11:00 PM on September 2, 1988. She never made it home where all of her belongings, including her purse and driver's license, as well as her beloved cat, dog, and pet burrow were waiting.
37:01 Speaker 01 Hall wasn't shy about connecting himself to crimes as at one point he confessed to picking up and killing a hitchhiker. Based on his description, investigators believe this was Georgia Ann Shree. The 37-year-old was last seen alive at an Indianapolis truck stop on Thursday, July 25, 1991. Her body was found 11 days later in a ditch on the side of an on-ramp, heading westbound on Interstate 74. Hall also admitted to abducting and killing Ulealia Miley Chavez in 1986, though he recanted that confession to. A sample of his DNA was
37:44 Speaker 01 taken for comparison to a sample relevant to the case, but it was inconclusive.
37:51 Speaker 01 And we have to talk about the "if I did it." I mean, that just made me think of OJ a little bit. It's always strange when people say, "If I did it, I would have done it this way, or maybe I did it this way." Why would you even talk that way if you didn't have anything to do with it?
38:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, that has always been a head scratcher to me. Now, I know some killers sort of like taunting the police and they get a little bit of a thrill out of sharing information, but not too much to where, you know, they are held accountable to it. But I also know there's people that for whatever reason make false confessions too, just for the attention. And, you know, you have to sort of sort out maybe when someone's trying to get attention or when they actually have some real information that's relevant. Investigators compiled their own list of cases that they tried to rule Hall out of being involved in. One case that Hall does seem likely suspect in is the murder of Jennifer Lee Schmidt. The 19-year-old
38:57 Speaker 02 was a freshman at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. She was last seen on August 6, 1985, after leaving her off-campus apartment to head to a professor's office. She was declared legally dead in 1993, but her body has never been found. We know from Hall's notes that he liked to hang around different campuses, and from the girls who reported him to security, we know he liked to follow young women in his van.
39:22 Speaker 01 In most of the cases we've discussed so far, where a body was found, the cause of death was strangulation. But there were also multiple stabbing deaths that happened in an area not far from where Hall may have been around the same time, mostly for the Civil War reenactments he traveled to attend. For example, 18-year-old Holly Ann Anderson was killed in January of 1992. Her body was found just three miles from the cornfield, where Jessica Roach would later be found. The location certainly makes you wonder if one person is responsible, but Jessica was strangled, Holly was stabbed, so there is
40:04 Speaker 01 some doubt. In nearly all of the cases where Hall can be confirmed as the most likely suspect, the victim was strangled, not stabbed. If he had more than one MO, there could be many more cases out there, and the blood found on Trisha's clothing could indicate that she was stabbed. Despite the differences in the causes of death in some cases, there is reason to think Hall could be responsible. In May of 1994, a young woman was rollerblading in the general area where Jessica Roach and Holly Ann Anderson were found, when a man in a van started driving past multiple times, watching her. The license plate she remembered
40:49 Speaker 01 would turn out to be registered to Hall, putting him in this area at least twice.
40:55 Speaker 02 The authorities are not the only ones with their suspicions that Hall murdered many others besides Trisha Reitler and Jessica Roach. His twin brother, Gary, believes that Larry killed 20-year-old Michelle Dewey. On July 1, 1991, Michelle was laying out in her backyard, lapping up the sunshine, while her one-year-old son, Will, splashed around in a kiddie pool. Hours later, a babysitter arrived and found Will inside alone. Looking for Michelle, the babysitter found a terrible scene in the back bedroom. Michelle was dead. She had been strangled. According to Gary Hall, his brother Larry confessed that he was In the Irvington area of Indianapolis on July 1st, 1991, looking at a vehicle,
41:37 Speaker 02 a blue Dodge van to potentially purchase. Larry Hall also told his brother that he drove past Michelle while she was outside, a true crime of opportunity. His brother told WTHR.com that Larry only had time to ambush and strangle Michelle before her son got upset and started crying, which he said freaked him out and caused him to flee. But he did take one of her records as a souvenir on the way out. Gary said, I believe Larry killed Michelle. And he added, I believe he killed a lot of young women, I'm sorry to say.
42:10 Speaker 01 Larry DeWayne Hall was tried and convicted and sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for the abduction of Jessica Roach, specifically kidnapping her for the purposes of sexual gratification and for crossing state lines with her during the abduction. He has still not been charged for her actual murder. Investigators suspect he could have been involved in up to 40, maybe even 50 murders, though he was never charged in any other case. They believe he may have been active, committing murders from 1981 until his arrest in November of 1994.
42:49 Speaker 01 However, according to his brother Gary, he confessed that his first killing was in 1979. Hall described picking up and killing a hitchhiker that year and burying her body along the Mississinewa River. If Larry DeWayne Hall was committing murders all that time, he could be a true monster. Fayette County Police Department Detective Joey Loughlin told WTHR.com, if Hall did everything that he's been accused of, he's one of the most prolific serial killers in the Midwest, if not the most. And there's no doubt to me that, you know, Larry DeWayne Hall was a very bad individual.
43:33 Speaker 01 I mean, there's just no, no doubt in my mind. The question is. Not to me, whether this guy murdered, because I believe he did, it's how many people did he murder? I feel like for probably the better part of 15 years or this guy was driving around, scouting victims. I mean, we have no idea how many people, how many, you know, young girls this guy could have killed.
44:05 Speaker 02 Yeah. And in a lot of these cases, we've talked about girls that were stalked or that he tried to get into their, into his van, came forward, but there might be other cases where the, the person didn't report it. They didn't want to get involved, the police for whatever reason, and didn't report it. So, you know, he may have done this all over, going to these civil war reenactments. He could have countless victims.
44:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, the, the traveling serial killer, that's a scary thought. Because we've talked about, you know, him being connected to all these cases that are kind of in a similar area. But if he's traveling the country, going to these different civil war, American Revolution type reenactments, he could have many more victims that the authorities just never would connect him to.
45:00 Speaker 02 Yeah, we know that he was a planner and organized and tried to take steps to cover his track. So he may have been able to get away with a lot of different stuff. As frightening as it may be to think of all the victims Larry DeWayne Hall may have had, there are many people that don't believe Hall could be responsible for most, if not all of these crimes we've talked about. He's been noted to have a very low IQ and to abduct someone with no witnesses, leave no forensic evidence that can tie you to the crime and dispose of a body where no one can find it, does seem to take some intelligence that a lot of people doubt Hall had. Indiana State Police Lieutenant Al Williamson told ABC 57 News, Larry Hall liked to take credit for something he didn't do.
45:45 Speaker 02 He liked to be famous for homicides, for murders. I don't know why he did. It was just something he wanted to do. So did Hall kill all of the girls we've talked about? Some of them? It's hard to say. Physical evidence doesn't seem to have linked him directly. Hall definitely seems to be the most likely suspect in Tricia Lynn Reitler's disappearance and presumed murder. But Marion Police Deputy Chief Stephen Dorsey told Fox 59 News, Investigators just don't have any evidence that puts Larry Hall into the mix of Trisha being missing.
46:15 Speaker 01 Investigators tried very hard to figure out which version of Hall's stories were true, but it just never happened. A fellow inmate, Jimmy Keane, was even recruited as an informant to try to get information from Hall just to provide closure to the families. Not even necessarily to be able to take the cases to trial. His main objective was to get Hall to tell him exactly where he buried Trisha Reitler and anyone else he killed. Keane, having served less than one year of a 10-year sentence on drug charges and unable to be with his sick father, jumped at the opportunity. And Keane was doing a good job at the task. He did earn Hall's trust.
47:00 Speaker 01 Eventually, Keane saw Hall with a map that had a bunch of different areas circled as well as some carved wooden falcons, which according to Newsweek, Hall told him were to watch over the dead. Asking more about the map and the dead, Keane got Hall to admit to abducting Trisha Reitler. But he claimed that he blacked out. And when he came to, Trisha was already nude and dead next to him. There was no real accountability or detail in the confession. It was enough for Keane, though.
47:33 Speaker 02 For whatever reason, instead of waiting for the operation to be officially over, Keen decided to tell Hall exactly what he thought of him, and none of it was good. The sudden shift in Keen's tone tipped Hall off to his real reason for being there and talking to him. By the time investigators went to find the maps and falcons that Keen described to them, Hall had gotten rid of them. We'll never know if there was anything at each of the points he marked, or if it was just more dreams that he had. Despite failing to secure a specific borough location in any of the cases, investigators held up their end of the bargain. Keen was given credit for time served and released. The conviction was dropped from his record.
48:12 Speaker 01 And I'll be honest with you, that was a little shocking to me that they held up their end of the bargain because I get it, this guy did some of the work, but then he essentially blew the whole operation.
48:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, and I think he was possibly overcome with his anger and frustration at having to talk to this monster that he probably just couldn't hold back any longer and sort of exposed himself to why he was really there. But I watched that series Blackbird on Apple that we mentioned at the beginning, and it sort of delves into this arrangement that they had and explores that. It was really interesting to see what they wanted to accomplish and how it fell short.
48:57 Speaker 01 Yeah, I haven't seen it, but I've heard a lot of good things about it, so now I'm definitely going to have to go back and watch it. In 1996, the year after his conviction, Larry DeWayne Hall appealed. According to Newsweek, in his appeal, he stated that he had a personality disorder that makes him susceptible to suggestion and pathologically eager to plead, which caused him to confess to a crime that he didn't really commit. That appeal was denied. Larry DeWayne Hall is currently serving his life sentence in the medium security Butner 2 Building at the Federal Correctional Institute in North Carolina.
49:37 Speaker 02 After all this time, Tricia Lynn Reitler's family may never get the answers to all of their questions. The one thing her mother, Donna, still hopes for is that someone will find Trisha's remains so that she can be buried where her headstone is. She told Newsweek, she just wishes there was someplace to bring flowers for her. Right now, they do have a burial plot with a beautiful headstone, and there's a memorial for her on the Indiana Wesleyan campus with a plaque and a bench. But when her family and friends visit, they know she's not really there. It's just not the same for them. If you have any information about Trisha's disappearance, you can contact Grant County Crime Stoppers by calling 765-662-8477.
50:19 Speaker 01 So Morpheus, we wrap this one up. I mean, you've got this guy Larry DeWayne Hall. And to me, he's kind of a mystery, an enigma. There are real questions about whether this guy is a very prolific serial killer, or whether he's a guy who likes to confess to crimes, for whatever reason. And not just crimes, but murders. The one thing that has stuck with me the whole time we were doing this episode, were the things found in Larry's van, and how
51:00 Speaker 01 much stalking we know he did. You talk about news clippings about people who were murdered. I mean, to me, there's just too much smoke there for this guy not to be a serial killer. I get it. They may not have the evidence to have been able to charge him with, you know, murders. But man, if he's not a murderer, I would be shocked.
51:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, there's just so many little things that seem to connect him to several of these cases. Belongings of some of the victims, you know, their names, interest in them that, you know, clearly he had. But it seems like there's just a real lack of physical evidence, you know, with all these cases, you know, there's not really any DNA or anything like that to tie him to these. And this was, most of these crimes were committed back in the 80s or early 90s before. People knew about DNA and how it linked to crimes. So although he was careful and tried to maybe get away with things and not leave evidence, he wouldn't know about DNA, most likely.
52:13 Speaker 02 So the fact that in all these cases, there's nothing really tying him on that front. It's kind of got to be frustrating for investigators.
52:21 Speaker 01 But here's the issue I have, right? People say, well, he couldn't have pulled this off because he had such a low IQ. And I just don't believe that. We have seen killers who definitely had low IQs get away with crimes for a very long period of time. I think it's possible. And, you know, could he have known about DNA? I don't know. I mean, they started using it for convictions, what? In the eighties, 86 ish timeframe. By the nineties, could he have known about it? Yeah, probably, maybe. I don't know.
53:00 Speaker 02 Yeah, either way, it's just frustrating that there's things that seem to link him to these cases, but just nothing there to physically tie him and convict him for it.
53:11 Speaker 01 If I had to put money on it, one way or the other, my bet would be that this guy is a somewhat prolific serial killer. That's what I truly believe. Now, how he, you know, didn't leave evidence or, you know, I don't know.
53:28 Speaker 02 Yeah, I'm right there with you. I think there's other victims that he has for sure that just haven't been connected yet, and hopefully one day they will be.
53:36 Speaker 01 But that's it for our episode on Tricia Lynn Reitler. As always, if you love the show but haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, leave us a review or rating. Also, keep telling your friends. Word of mouth really helps us out.
53:50 Speaker 02 If you want to find us on social media, we're on every major platform. Just search for Criminology Podcast on your favorites. And for news, old episodes and more, check out our website, criminologypodcast.com. And if you want to join a discussion group about the cases we talk about, head over to Facebook and search for Criminology Podcast Discussion and Fans.
54:10 Speaker 01 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 for Mike
54:19 Speaker 02 And Morph.
54:19 Speaker 01 We'll talk to you next week.
54:21 Speaker 02 Take care, everyone.
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