Pod Insights Park Predators The Confession About this episode When a hiker emerges from the Appalachian Trail in Tennessee claiming he murdered a woman with a hatchet, it seems unfathomable… But when investigators discover the brutal truth, they realize they’re dealing with a dangerous man who has a disturbing past in multiple U. S. states.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra. And the case I'm going to tell you about today is a particularly difficult one. I feel like I can say that about nearly every episode on this show, because it's true. Each case I cover in depth has its own unique trauma and loss narrative that's important to process through. But I don't know why, for whatever reason, this specific episode just really got to me. It happened 50 years ago on the Appalachian Trail, which is a trail I have covered now multiple times on this podcast. And I think that's because the AT itself, though beautiful and for many people a cathartic experience, is just unfortunately a place that's been home to incidents of violent crime across several decades.
0:43 Speaker 00 I could give you more interesting facts about it as an outdoor destination, but I won't. Because I really think it's important that we dive headfirst into the story of this victim. And the human predator who committed a truly unspeakable crime against her. The story of Janice Balza is one you may be familiar with. But in this episode, I hope to bring a little bit more of who she was to the forefront. Because I think that all too often, her memory has been overshadowed by some of the more shocking aspects of her notorious murder. This is Park Predators.
1:59 Speaker 00 Just after a daybreak, on Saturday, April 26, 1975, a man cutting timber near Dennis Cove, Tennessee, stopped what he was doing when he saw a bearded man in his early 50s approach him. The guy who'd seemingly emerged from the forest out of nowhere looked grisly and a bit worse for wear. The stranger told the woodcutter that he'd killed someone in the woods a few days earlier. But I guess instead of being overly concerned by this man's confession, the timber cutter just directed him toward the house of a woman who lived nearby named Ethel Childress. I know, I wish I had more context about this timber cutter's decision-making process, or could at least try to understand his rationale behind sending someone who claimed
2:43 Speaker 00 to be a killer to a woman's house alone. But I don't, so I kind of have to leave it at that. Anyway, what I can tell you is that the man from the woods with the bizarre tale ended up making it to Ethel's house. Once he was inside, Ethel fixed him some coffee and quietly listened as he relayed his story of having murdered a young woman a few days earlier on the Appalachian Trail. Around 12:30 PM, Ethel let the man use her phone, and he called the Carter County Sheriff's Department to report himself. A captain from that agency, along with two deputies, immediately responded to Ethel's house and took the man into custody. After speaking with him some more, they learned he was 51-year-old Paul Bigley, a transplant
3:27 Speaker 00 from Tucson, Arizona. Paul told authorities that on Monday, April 21st, he'd killed a young woman at a shelter on the AT somewhere on Iron Mountain. Then, he'd hidden her body in some brush. This confession was bold, to say the least, and at first, the captain and deputies from Carter County weren't really sure if Paul was serious. Joe Ledford reported for the Johnson City Press that right after investigators took Paul to the Sheriff's Department for further questioning, an assistant district attorney general for the county named David Crockett came to speak with him as well. And at the start of the interrogation, even David wasn't quite sure if Paul was being truthful. Initially, the prosecutor said he just thought Paul was a worn-out hiker who was looking
4:10 Speaker 00 for a warm place to stay, like the county jail. So David suspected that Paul had likely made up the wild story about murdering someone so that he could be guaranteed shelter. But as more and more time went by and David continued to question Paul, he started to believe the 51-year-old story. Turns out, David had actually bumped into Paul several days earlier in a totally random coincidence. And like, the more he stared at Paul's face, the more he began to realize where he knew him from. According to Joe Ledford's piece I mentioned a second ago, when Paul first exited the Appalachian Trail shortly after allegedly committing the crime, he'd hiked into the town of Hampton, Tennessee.
4:52 Speaker 00 And the first person he had a friendly conversation with about his travels was David Crockett, who I guess was just like on the sidewalk or something, or in the same place as Paul was. I know, talk about a small world.
5:06 Speaker 00 Anyway, on the afternoon of the 26th, so a few hours after Paul came forward, the Sheriff's Department, Forest Service, and Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency sent out personnel to the area where he claimed he'd left his victim. And sure enough, around 4:45 PM, not long after everyone arrived, searchers discovered the body of a young woman who'd been brutally attacked in the head with a hatchet. One source says she was near the base of a big oak tree, about 50 to 100 yards away from a designated shelter on the AT known as Van de Venter Shelter. However, I should mention that a few other articles reported she was several hundred yards from the actual trail. Coverage by the Elizabethan Star states that she was clothed in jeans and a shirt
5:50 Speaker 00 and had been partially covered with leaves. Meanwhile, still in police custody and standing near the scene was Paul, who, based on an image I found of him in a local newspaper, appeared distressed. Near the victim, authorities found a hatchet with what appeared to be traces of blood on it. And not too far away from that, investigators found several pieces of hiking gear tucked into cracks and crevices of a large rock. The gear was assumed to belong to the young woman, and Paul actually later confessed to burning some of her traveler checks and taking some of her best hiking gear. And to help give you a little bit of context about where exactly Van de Venter Shelter is, it's about 8 and 1/2 hours east of Johnson City, Tennessee, if you're walking.
6:36 Speaker 00 It's definitely in the woods, but not super far from civilization. It's about three to four miles away from the community of Winter, Tennessee, if I'm pronouncing that right. The shelter itself is built to fit six people inside and is free to stay in overnight. Some of the source material I found reported that it's located on Iron Mountain. But honestly, when you look at the location on Google Maps, Iron Mountain's peak is about 30 miles or so south of the shelter, closer to the Tennessee-North Carolina border. But I think colloquially, locals and newspapers back in 1975 at least just referred to this general geographic location as Iron Mountain. Anyway, because investigators already had their prime suspect in custody,
7:20 Speaker 00 they sort of had to work the crime in reverse. Starting with gathering as much information as they could from Paul, and equally as important, identifying the victim.
7:35 Speaker 01 You know that thing where you're scrolling the internet and suddenly you're three hours deep into a celebrity lawsuit?
7:40 Speaker 00 Where you hear a courtroom term and think, wait, what does that actually mean?
7:44 Speaker 01 I'm Eliza Orlands, career public defender.
7:46 Speaker 00 And I'm Taya Johnson, law professor and legal analyst.
7:49 Speaker 01 And on our brand new podcast, Criminally Online, we break down the law behind the stories you can't stop talking about.
7:56 Speaker 00 No legal degree required, just curiosity. Find Criminally Online wherever you get your podcasts.
8:10 Speaker 00 According to coverage in the Elizabethan Star, investigators found a form of identification on the young woman's body and tentatively identified her as 22-year-old Janice K. Balza, who lived in Madison, Wisconsin, but was originally from Green Bay. The same evening she was discovered, the Carter County Rescue Squad removed her body from the crime scene and sent her off for an autopsy. The Kingsport Times News reported that some of her family members were expected to arrive in Tennessee the following night to officially confirm her ID. Additional coverage by the Johnson City Press stated that it was actually her brother-in-law who verified her identity. And I have to imagine that was a terrible responsibility because by that point, Janice was believed to have been dead for several days.
8:56 Speaker 00 Preliminary findings revealed she'd suffered numerous blows to her head from what's described as a small hatchet. Out of respect for Janice and her family, I'm not going to go into any more detail than that.
9:09 Speaker 00 As investigators learned more about her, though, they discovered she'd graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Nursing School in January 1975. Coverage by the Johnson City Press explains that after earning her degree, she decided to take a year off to travel and volunteer with an organization called Vista, Volunteers in Service to America, which is described as a program similar to the Peace Corps, but with many or all of its operations taking place within the US. After spending a year doing that work, she wanted to return to school and pursue a master's degree. During her gap year, she'd set her sights on achieving her lifelong dream of hiking the full length of the Appalachian Trail, starting at the southern end in Clayton, Georgia, and working her way north to Maine.
9:55 Speaker 00 At the beginning of her trip, one of her nursing school classmates had joined her, but at some point, that friend ended up needing to bail, which left Janice to carry on by herself for a little while, until she came across a familiar face. Jo Ledford reported for the Johnson City Press that in March, Janice bumped into a girl she knew from Wisconsin. And this friend was hiking with her boyfriend. So for a few days, the trio traveled together. But then, that girl who knew Janice fell and broke her arm, forcing her and her boyfriend to stop hiking the trail. And an interesting detail I read in this part of the research was that Janice didn't just leave this couple to fend for themselves. Because she had experience in nursing, she was able to set the girl's broken arm and even made sure to wait with the couple until further help arrived.
10:40 Speaker 00 So I think that says a lot about the kind of person Janice was and how seriously she took caring for other people's well-being. After parting ways with her friends, Janice continued hiking alone. Records indicate that toward the end of March, she stayed at a motel and resort near the trail, and by mid-April had made it through a few small towns in Tennessee and North Carolina, where she'd cashed a $20 traveler's check at a local convenience store and bought groceries. The weekend of April 19th and 20th was when it's believed she arrived at Van de Venter's shelter. Conversely, a few months before this, in mid-November 1974, Paul Bigley had started hiking the AT from New Hampshire.
11:22 Speaker 00 But bouts of frigid weather had forced him off the trail a few times. Along the way, he'd worked a low-wage job at a rescue mission in Roanoke, Virginia, and cut trees for a guy in Damascus, Virginia. Often, he would spend days at a time living in shelters on the trail trying to keep warm. On April 10th, about 10 days before the murder, which was also Paul's 51st birthday, he stayed at a shelter in Abington Gap, which was just outside of Damascus. While there, he'd crossed paths with several people who were part of the same church group, and spoke with two guys who were headed in the opposite direction as him. By Saturday, April 19th, despite terrible weather conditions and lots of rain making
12:02 Speaker 00 the AT difficult to track, he'd managed to make it about 33 miles south to Van de Venter's shelter before Janice arrived. Interestingly, he'd bunked up in the shelter with another hiker from Georgia, who, the next morning, ended up not staying another night and decided to battle the bad weather and hike north to Damascus, leaving Paul behind. Now, that hiker from Georgia is probably the luckiest person in the world from making that decision to leave the shelter sooner rather than later, because it's unlikely they could have known Paul was about to commit an extremely violent murder against the next hiker who came across his path.
12:42 Speaker 00 When Paul confessed to authorities about murdering Janice, he claimed that he was concerned he may do something like it again. He also revealed a lot more information about his past that I think is critical to understanding exactly the type of person he was, which by the way, was vastly different from Janice. He said that at the time of the murder, he'd been on probation for an aggravated assault he'd been convicted for in Tucson. That offense involved a former partner of his, who I'll refer to as Vi. The couple had apparently only dated for like four months when suddenly one evening after walking her home from a party, Paul abruptly attacked Vi. Reporting by Joe Ledford stated that investigators who responded to that crime
13:27 Speaker 00 discovered Vi bloodied and beaten, and there was a path of blood leading back to where she'd been attacked at her home. According to reports, the weapon that was used to beat her was the rubber roller to a wringer washer. Which, if you're like me and initially had no clue what that was, just pop a quick search into Google. It's basically a solid roll of rubber that's about a foot long, so essentially a blunt object, or a club. According to news coverage about Vi's assault, she survived and Paul was of course investigator's prime suspect. When authorities caught up to him, he claimed he had no memory of the incident. His story was that he'd remembered going out with Vi, but then everything after that was seemingly blank.
14:12 Speaker 00 He said he'd woken up somewhere on Mount Lemon in Arizona, which is a little more than 40 miles northeast of Tucson, and was missing his car keys. His initial thought was that someone had mugged him and taken him up to the rural location. So according to him, he hitchhiked to a nearby town and called Vi right away. But the person who answered the phone wasn't Vi. It was Vi's daughter. And Paul immediately got an earful about the assault.
14:39 Speaker 00 Not long after that, Tucson authorities arrested him for the crime and booked him in jail. About a month later, he bonded out but repeatedly violated the terms of his release. At one point while awaiting trial, a psychiatrist evaluated him using sodium amitol, aka "truth serum." But during that evaluation, Paul maintained that he had nothing to do with what happened to Vi. He claimed that a crime like what she'd endured was unthinkable, and he would never attack a woman in such a vicious way. While awaiting whatever further court proceedings were going to happen in that case, Paul skipped town and ended up in Nevada and California, where he eventually got married for the fifth time in his life.
15:21 Speaker 00 While living with his new wife in California, Paul co-managed an apartment house with her, using an alias, which was, wait for it, "the name of his new bride's dead husband." Eventually, that ruse fell apart, though, because Arizona investigators working the aggravated assault case that he was still technically a fugitive for wanted their pound of flesh from him. So by 1972, he'd been apprehended and extradited to Tucson, where he eventually pleaded guilty to attacking Vi. But, and this was a detail that was absolutely mind-boggling to me, he was only sentenced to five years probation. Not prison, not even house arrest, probation.
16:05 Speaker 00 Multiple news reports back in 1975 stated that he'd formerly been a "mental patient" in Arizona. But an article by the Green Bay Press Gazette stated that even though he'd regularly received psychiatric help and counseling while on probation, he was never actually admitted as a patient at a mental health facility. In November 1974, while on probation, he was allowed to leave Arizona for six months to visit some of his family members in New Jersey and Florida. He took his new wife with him, and the couple traveled as far north as Vermont before apparently getting into a physical and verbal altercation, which resulted in them parting ways. It wasn't long after that Paul decided to hike the AT by himself, which eventually put
16:50 Speaker 00 him on a path that intersected with Janice.
16:54 Speaker 00 According to an in-depth article by Joe Ledford in the Johnson City Press, Paul had grown up in New Jersey during the Great Depression. During his early elementary school years, someone reportedly pushed him down a flight of stairs, which required doctors to surgically insert a metal plate into his head. Also, at a young age, his father had passed away, which left his mother to raise him and his four siblings on her own. Paul and his mom's relationship, though, was reportedly pretty volatile, with her at one point throwing a butcher knife at his eye. In his early teens, he struck out on his own and bounced from place to place just trying to get by. He was very much described as a loner. As a young man, he'd picked up the trade of trimming trees, but eventually enlisted
17:38 Speaker 00 in the Army Air Corps. During World War II, he flew airplanes that delivered supplies to countries like China, India, and Burma. After his time in the military ended, he returned to the US but continued living a bit of a nomadic lifestyle. He lived in several different states, and according to Joe Ledford's article, got married at least four different times before finally meeting his fifth wife, who I already mentioned. He had at least eight kids between his ex-wives, but the source material doesn't go into detail about what, if any, relationship he had with them. The only thing I could find was that he got in trouble with New Jersey authorities for not paying child support, an offense he was later arrested for and sentenced to three years at a work farm.
18:22 Speaker 00 During his life, he'd traveled alone for several years, often hiking for months at a time in Arizona's Superstition Mountains. Joe Ledford reported that Paul had always wanted to hike the AT, which, to me, makes total sense why, when things went south for him with his fifth wife towards the end of 1974, he decided to finally embark on that endeavor.
18:45 Speaker 00 But to jump back to Janice for a little bit. On April 29th, more than a week after her murder, her parents Hazel and Gordon, along with her sister Pat, laid her to rest in Wisconsin. She was buried in a Catholic cemetery in Green Bay. One article I read stated that she may have been engaged at the time of her death because investigators who'd responded to the crime scene found letters hidden along the trail near where she was found that were addressed to her from her fiance. But I could only find like one mention of this detail. So I'm not sure if it's true or what, but if that was the case, it just makes the fracture effect her murder had on her loved ones that much more heartbreaking. Because Paul had confessed to killing her,
19:30 Speaker 00 investigators charged him with first degree murder. At his arraignment, which took place in Tennessee on the same day as Janice's funeral, a judge denied him bond and he was sent to the Carter County Jail to await trial. In early May, about a week after his arrest, a preliminary hearing was held and Paul entered a plea of not guilty. But a judge determined enough probable cause had been established to move the case forward to a grand jury. A Tennessee Wildlife Resource Officer and the Carter County Sheriff's Captain who'd escorted Paul to the crime scene testified in court that Paul never provided a reason for why he killed Janice. The officers explained how they'd initially been hesitant to believe his bizarre story when he first came forward.
20:15 Speaker 00 But then their tune changed. The sheriff's captain who testified said, "It was the first time in my four years as an officer that anybody had walked out of the clear blue and said they had killed somebody." End quote. While Paul's case wound its way through court, the prosecutor had him undergo a psychiatric evaluation at Central State Psychiatric Hospital in Nashville. This testing came after personnel at the Watauga Area Mental Health Center produced a report that stated Paul was, quote, unquote, "incompetent to stand trial." Instead of being housed in jail during his psychiatric evaluation, he was kept in custody in a clinical environment for several months.
20:57 Speaker 00 In early October, the Carter County Attorney General's Office issued a report that concluded he was mentally fit to proceed to trial. So he was transported back to jail and the trial was scheduled for mid-February 1976. But things would end up going in a bit of a different direction.
21:16 Speaker 01 You know that thing where you're scrolling the internet and suddenly you're three hours deep into a celebrity lawsuit?
21:27 Speaker 00 Where you hear a courtroom term and think, wait, what does that actually mean?
21:30 Speaker 01 I'm Eliza Orlands, career public defender.
21:33 Speaker 00 And I'm Taya Johnson, law professor and legal analyst.
21:36 Speaker 01 And on our brand-new podcast, Criminally Online, we break down the law behind the stories you can't stop talking about.
21:42 Speaker 00 No legal degree required, just curiosity. Find Criminally Online wherever you get your podcasts.
21:57 Speaker 00 On February 18, 1976, the day his trial was set to begin, Paul decided to take a plea bargain and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison, which he was required to serve in Tennessee. I don't know the details of his plea deal, or like, what led the prosecution to agree to second-degree murder versus first-degree and forego a trial. But I have to assume it had something to do with the fact that Paul had voluntarily come forward, confessed, and then led investigators to Janice's body and the murder weapon. But get this: Remember his fifth wife? That woman who he'd reportedly parted ways with after a fight in Vermont?
22:40 Speaker 00 Turns out, that woman ended up reconciling with Paul while his murder case was going through court. She'd moved to Johnson City, Tennessee, and everything, just to be there for him. Ten months into his prison sentence, Paul did an interview with reporter Joe Ledford and said he didn't want to spend two decades, so basically the rest of his life, behind bars. He alleged that he'd had opportunities to escape and likely would one day, but chose not to do something like that yet because he didn't want authorities to blame his wife.
23:13 Speaker 00 Something that's interesting to me, though, and also a little frustrating, is that at no point throughout this whole case did Paul explain why he killed Janice. In fact, he claimed that he had no recollection of the murder whatsoever. I know, sounds familiar, right? Kind of like how he claimed to have no recollection of the aggravated assault he committed against Vi in Tucson. His official statement to Joe Ledford about Janice was that he could remember details from shortly before her murder and shortly afterwards, like dragging her body off the trail into the woods and ditching and stealing some of her stuff. But he claimed he couldn't remember committing the actual killing. However, Kay Wilkins reported for the Johnson City Press
23:58 Speaker 00 that Assistant District Attorney General David Crockett said Paul had been able to recall some details throughout his conversations with authorities. David stated that the suspect remembered waking up on the morning of the crime, chopping firewood, building a fire, and watching Janice get out of her sleeping bag and sit in front of the fire to warm herself. David also said Paul had described walking up behind her and hitting her over the head with the hatchet. But according to Joe Ledford's interview with the killer in prison, Paul said he'd suffered throughout his life from blackouts, which he claimed caused him to lose track of time. These episodes had worried him, but he didn't seek help for them or reveal to anyone that they were even happening.
24:41 Speaker 00 He claimed that he simply didn't know why he did what he did to Janice. A direct quote of Paul's that Joe Ledford included in a long article he wrote for the Johnson City Press was, "It's a mystery to me, the why and what. Not that she is dead, but why and what caused the reason for the killing. If I lived through the 20 years, I'll still have to live with it. You can't get it off your mind. If I knew, it would make it a lot easier." He later continued, "The last thing I can honestly tell you is she was trying to keep warm on a chair by the fire. She was drinking cocoa. We were talking about finding a shoemaker because her shoe was coming apart. I was on the other side of the fire, sitting on my haunches and poking at the fire.
25:26 Speaker 00 The next thing I can remember is standing over her with the hatchet, and it was done." End quote. Paul claimed that after the slaying, he'd wandered into the woods and then woken up in Dennis Cove, Tennessee, several miles away from Van de Venter Shelter. And it was only at that point he realized what had happened. According to him, that's when he decided to come clean. The way he phrased it was, "Figured I better get my ass off the street before someone else got hurt." End quote.
25:59 Speaker 00 In his interview with the Johnson City Press, Paul described Janice as a congenial person who wasn't a threat to him. During their interactions, they'd gotten along, and each of them had a shared knowledge of Buddhism and overall found conversing with one another easy. Paul claimed that Janice had talked to him about her friend breaking her arm earlier in her trip. And on the morning of the murder, he'd volunteered to fill up her canteen at the same time he filled up his. Now, because Janice isn't around anymore to provide what she thought about Paul, his behaviors, or essentially verify anything he claimed, I think it's totally appropriate to wonder if perhaps his motive for the crime was sexual in nature. Meaning, his claims about them getting along all hunky-dory
26:43 Speaker 00 could just be BS. But according to what he told reporter Joe Ledford, sex wasn't something he was interested in. The Green Bay Press Gazette reported something similar when their coverage attributed a statement to Assistant District Attorney General David Crockett, who said that Paul denied sexually assaulting Janice. In Paul's own words, he claimed, well, I'll just use this direct quote from him because it's a little hard to understand, and I think that's kind of the point. He said, "It takes a hell of a lot of woman to get me interested in sex. I'm not over-sexed. In fact, my sex is below par, so there was nothing like that." End quote. So yeah, I don't even really know what that's supposed to mean.
27:27 Speaker 00 And unfortunately, no one was ever able to get clarity from Paul because he died not long after going to prison. According to reporting by the Johnson City Press, in November 1976, so less than a year after beginning his 20-year sentence, Paul suffered from a broken blood vessel in his brain, which killed him. He was buried at the Veterans Administration Cemetery in Nashville. To this day, the US Department of Veterans Affairs still has a profile for him online on the National Cemetery Administration's website, which to me feels a bit cringe and maybe should be reevaluated, you know, since he's a hatchet murderer and all.
28:08 Speaker 00 Now, I've brought up Johnson City Press reporter Joe Ledford's writing quite a bit in this episode, and that's because he was one of those journalists who really owned this story back in the day. In 1978, about three years after Janice's murder, he penned a piece that discussed how violent crimes seemed to be increasing along parts of the Appalachian Trail in Tennessee. For example, he cited how in the years since Janice's murder, a pair of women had been menaced and threatened at gunpoint by two guys if they didn't have sex with them. And a group of juvenile young women from North Carolina had been attacked and sexually assaulted by several men along the trail in Carter County. Ledford's article brings up a lot of points I feel I've reiterated 100 times in this
28:50 Speaker 00 show, which is, just because the AT is a perfect place to go off the grid and detach from society a little bit, that doesn't mean you should let your guard down. There are seriously nefarious characters hiking it for exactly those same reasons. The story of Janice Balls's life and tragic death is a reminder of how true that reality is. A lot may have changed in the 50 years since her murder, but I think the Appalachian Trail has a unique way of slowing down time and sort of creating this almost alternate reality. I think we all have to remember that we never really know the person sleeping next to us in a shelter, and we certainly don't know what they're capable of.
29:39 Speaker 00 Park Predators is an AudioChuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, @parkpredators. So what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?
30:04 Speaker 02 One day last year, detectives knocked on the door of a multimillion-dollar mansion in Los Angeles County. Inside, they found a strange scene. A dining area converted into classrooms with children and toddlers seated at rows of desks. The couple that lived there had 21 kids.
30:24 Speaker 03 It's a house that looks like a castle, but it's under investigation for being a possible factory, a baby factory.
30:32 Speaker 02 Where had these children come from? Almost all of them were born through surrogates. But those surrogates had been deceived.
30:40 Speaker 04 Me and my coworker, we named her the surrogate pimp.
30:42 Speaker 00 That's the one time that we called the cops because she was screaming. And then he pulled out a gun.
30:47 Speaker 05 I started crying. I was like, what the heck did I just get myself into?
30:52 Speaker 02 I'm Ava Kaufman. The Journey is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In the Dark feed, wherever you get your podcasts.
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