Pod Insights True Crime All The Time Pearl Bruns About this episode On August 11th, 1991, Pearl Bruns disappeared after an intense argument with her husband, who did not report her missing for several days.
Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss Pearl Bruns. From the beginning, Bill Bruns was the prime suspect, but it took over a year to find enough evidence for an arrest.
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Transcript 0:05 Speaker 00 Hello everyone and welcome to episode 483 of the True Crime All the Time Podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson and with me as always is my partner in true crime, Mike Gibson. Gibby, how are you?
0:14 Speaker 01 Changing my name.
0:16 Speaker 00 To what?
0:17 Speaker 01 I will let you know, I think I'm gonna be.
0:19 Speaker 00 Turd Ferguson?
0:23 Speaker 00 Did you ever see that skit with Burt Reynolds?
0:25 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's good.
0:26 Speaker 00 It cracks me up. I mean, first of all, because that's my last name.
0:28 Speaker 01 Yeah.
0:29 Speaker 00 That, I don't know why that just cracked. Any of those skits where Will Ferrell is playing Alex Trebek?
0:37 Speaker 01 Yeah.
0:37 Speaker 00 Those Jeopardy ones, they always crack.
0:39 Speaker 01 It is. That was good stuff. I was just gonna go be the podcaster formerly known as Gibby.
0:44 Speaker 00 Okay.
0:45 Speaker 01 You know, kinda like a spin off of Prince.
0:47 Speaker 00 Yeah, maybe go with the symbol or?
0:49 Speaker 01 Yeah. Yeah, I was gonna do the, you know, fancy little, you know, symbol.
0:54 Speaker 00 Well, whenever you come up with it, we'll put it on your nameplate.
0:56 Speaker 01 Until then, I'll remain Gibby though.
0:58 Speaker 00 Okay. All right. You ready to get into this episode of True Crime All the Time?
1:01 Speaker 01 I am.
1:02 Speaker 00 We're talking about Pearl Bruns. On August 11th, 1991, Pearl Bruns disappeared after an intense argument with her husband, who did not report her missing for several days. And that's always kind of a sticky situation.
1:19 Speaker 01 It's not good.
1:20 Speaker 00 No, it doesn't make you look good, right? And from the beginning, rightfully so, her husband was considered by police as the prime suspect.
1:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:31 Speaker 00 But it, it took some time, right, to figure out who actually murdered her. Pearl Ann Drown was born on December 14th, 1943, in Bidford, Maine. She grew up in Sacco and moved often as an adult. You ever been to Maine?
1:47 Speaker 01 I have not been to Maine.
1:50 Speaker 00 I'm not either. I have wanted to plan a trip up through the Northeast.
1:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:55 Speaker 00 For a long time, but we just haven't done it.
1:58 Speaker 01 Whether when the leaves are changing colors.
2:00 Speaker 00 I don't care about no leaves. I want to get a lobster roll, some clam chowder, you know, just try it.
2:05 Speaker 01 Okay.
2:06 Speaker 00 I'm more about the food, you know, man.
2:08 Speaker 01 All right. Well, you should plan that trip one of these days.
2:10 Speaker 00 Yeah, we will.
2:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:11 Speaker 00 Pearl had three adult children, two daughters and a son from her previous marriages. In 1986, she married Bill Bruns and moved to South Portland, Maine. According to the Journal Tribune, it was Pearl's sixth marriage and Bill's fourth.
2:28 Speaker 01 Wow. I mean, that's a lot of marriages.
2:32 Speaker 00 I mean, that's two people who were looking for love multiple times.
2:37 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:38 Speaker 00 And obviously, you know, the situations that they were in didn't work out for one reason or another.
2:45 Speaker 01 I mean, that's.
2:46 Speaker 00 But they didn't give up. You'd have to say that.
2:48 Speaker 01 Six time. My aunt, my one aunt was married five times. And I was like, how do you do that? How do you do that?
2:55 Speaker 00 Well, you just stand up in front of a preacher or you go down to the clerk. Oh, you mean like, how do you do it emotionally?
3:03 Speaker 01 Yes. That's just a, I don't know. It seems like a lot.
3:07 Speaker 00 Yeah, I tell my wife all the time. Well, first of all, I tell her, my next wife's not going to treat me like that.
3:12 Speaker 01 Yeah.
3:14 Speaker 00 That doesn't go over well.
3:15 Speaker 01 You say my next wife won't be like my current wife.
3:18 Speaker 00 But no, I've told her, I don't think I would get married again.
3:21 Speaker 01 Yeah.
3:21 Speaker 00 I really don't. I love being married, but, and that could change. You know, if you met someone and if, you know, God forbid, something happened to my wife.
3:34 Speaker 01 I'm glad you went that direction. Cause I was like, wait a minute, where's he going with this?
3:37 Speaker 00 No, I just, I love being married, but I don't know if I would do it again. I really don't.
3:44 Speaker 01 Cause nobody can ever compare to your wife is what you're trying to say.
3:48 Speaker 00 Yeah, let's go that route.
3:49 Speaker 01 Yeah.
3:50 Speaker 00 Cause she'll, yeah, she'll hear me editing this.
3:53 Speaker 01 Right.
3:54 Speaker 00 So Bill owned Belko Trucking, which transported fish products.
4:01 Speaker 01 Okay. Well, they are in Maine.
4:03 Speaker 00 Yeah, they're in Maine. Might be a little smelly.
4:07 Speaker 00 The two met at their local VFW where Pearl enjoyed spending her free time. At first they seemed happy and said they were lucky in love. Now, did they say that with all their previous marriages as well? Probably.
4:22 Speaker 01 I'm assuming there's a good odds that they said at least one or two of those marriages.
4:28 Speaker 00 Yeah. I mean, you know, I've said it before, nobody goes into a marriage thinking, oh, no, this ain't gonna work. Cause why would you get married?
4:36 Speaker 01 That's true.
4:37 Speaker 00 Everybody's happy. And then there's a honeymoon period. Sometimes that lasts for a very long time. Sometimes it doesn't, you know, if you're a celebrity, it could be like 70 days. That's all those celebrity marriages last sometimes.
4:52 Speaker 01 Potentially, maybe it only lasts one night as a true honeymoon night. That's it. You know, it's over.
4:57 Speaker 00 Especially if you don't know each other's names and you met in Vegas or something like that. For many years, Pearl worked as a certified nurse's assistant and activities director at the Elms Residence Home. Most recently, before her disappearance, she worked as a fish packer at Stinson Seafood in South Portland.
5:17 Speaker 01 All right. Well, someone's got to pack that fish.
5:19 Speaker 00 I mean, I get it, right? You just said they're in Maine.
5:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
5:24 Speaker 00 Is there a lot of jobs that kind of revolve around the fishing industry? Maybe.
5:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
5:30 Speaker 00 Maybe a lot of people make their livelihood in that way. But, you know, I talked about this honeymoon period. I don't think it was all that long that their marriage started to deteriorate. According to Pearl's friend, Deanna Sur, they were constantly fighting. Pearl started drinking more and became depressed. She also told Deanna, per the Southern Maine Community College Beacon, there's one thing I want you to know. If anything should ever happen to me, tell them Bill did it.
6:05 Speaker 01 It's always alarming.
6:06 Speaker 00 It is, and it's not the first case that we have talked about this. Where someone has said, hey, if anything ever happens to me, my wife, my husband, my significant other most likely did it.
6:22 Speaker 01 Yeah.
6:23 Speaker 00 And my thought is always the same. If you think that way, what are you still doing in this relationship?
6:30 Speaker 01 And it's not like she's been in this relationship for a long time already.
6:33 Speaker 00 Yeah, again, I don't know how long they were actually married before it started to go downhill. But there were no stranger, either one of them, to getting divorced. So.
6:47 Speaker 00 I mean, if you seriously thought your partner was potentially going to hurt or kill you, that seems like a pretty good reason to get out of a relationship.
6:58 Speaker 01 Yeah, I'd say go ahead and exit now instead of waiting until that moment comes around.
7:03 Speaker 00 Pearl's daughter Elaine was aware that the couple fought often. When he was angry, Bill would sometimes throw things or he would rip the, the phone out of the wall. But as far as she knew, it didn't go beyond that. And so I'm taking that to mean as far as Pearl's daughter knew, it never got physical.
7:27 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:27 Speaker 00 Right? He got upset. He threw tantrums. He threw things around the house, but she never saw him strike her or be physical with her. But as we've said, right? If you're not living there day in and day out, and sometimes even if you are, do you know everything that happens behind closed doors?
7:52 Speaker 01 And but who would want to live in that environment though?
7:55 Speaker 00 Oh, throwing things, ripping phones out of the wall.
7:58 Speaker 01 You know, I mean, come on, you know, how old are you? You gotta rip the phone out of the wall because you're upset because somebody called or I called somebody or what? You know, ripping the phone out of the wall.
8:08 Speaker 00 Yeah, I'm assuming that happens a lot less these days. Maybe they just take your, your phone and stomp on it, your cell phone. Cause a lot of people are getting rid of their landlines. We haven't had a landline here in many, many years.
8:23 Speaker 01 Same here. I haven't had a landline since I can't even tell you the last time I had a landline.
8:27 Speaker 00 Family friend Judy Dickinson spoke to Pearl in June 1991. She recalled to the Bedford Journal Tribune, she wasn't happy. She told me that she had been drinking a lot. When I asked her why, she said she didn't know. I said, a lot of times it's because people are unhappy. And she said, how'd you get so smart?
8:48 Speaker 00 You know, maybe tongue in cheek, but also maybe she is saying it without saying it. You're hitting the nail on the head, right? I'm not happy. That's why I'm drinking. Dickinson said Pearl didn't talk much about Bill and had expressed interest in improving her life. And I'm taking that to mean life without Bill would be an improvement.
9:11 Speaker 01 Yeah. I mean, it sounds like Bill, life with Bill is dragging her down, right?
9:17 Speaker 00 I think that's what she was trying to relay to, you know, other people.
9:22 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:22 Speaker 00 On August 11th, 1991, Bill and Pearl got into a heated argument about money. Bill claimed that he grabbed his keys and left the house for a couple of hours. When he returned, Pearl was gone. He went to bed, assuming Pearl was at the VFW or perhaps somewhere else in town. And so let's break down that scenario, right? People get into arguments, right? Couples get into arguments. It happens.
9:50 Speaker 01 It does.
9:51 Speaker 00 Now, this one was about money, which is probably one of the main things that most couples fight about.
9:58 Speaker 01 I would say it's gotta be, if not the number one thing, then it's gotta be right on the heels of the number one thing.
10:03 Speaker 00 And I would think for you, as cheap as you are, it probably is number one.
10:07 Speaker 01 I argue with myself every day. Mike, what are you doing?
10:11 Speaker 00 Don't buy, don't buy that dollar cup of coffee at McDonald's. You can't, we cannot afford that.
10:17 Speaker 01 You can get it cheaper. You know you can. Look around, drive around a little bit longer.
10:20 Speaker 00 But then you have this, this scenario, right? Where one person leaves the house. In this case, Bill, after the argument, he comes home and Pearl's not there. Okay. What does he think? Well, she left too.
10:35 Speaker 01 Yeah.
10:35 Speaker 00 She went, I went to go cool off. She left to go cool off. She's probably at the VFW, if not somewhere else in town.
10:43 Speaker 01 Sure.
10:44 Speaker 00 So maybe because of that, Pearl wasn't reported missing until August 13th. But even then, she wasn't reported by Bill. She was reported by her daughter Elaine. And Bill hadn't even said anything to Elaine.
11:00 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:01 Speaker 00 It was really just Elaine kind of. Knowing in her heart that something was wrong.
11:07 Speaker 01 I mean, I get it. If you have a spout with your wife and you know, you come home, she's not home, but you're thinking, well, she's just down to the VFW, probably drinking. She'll get home eventually. I'm going to go ahead and go to bed. Um, but when you wake up and she's not there, normally that's your, should be like, uh, hey, I need to figure out what happened to her.
11:27 Speaker 00 Well, and, and especially if more than one day goes by.
11:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:31 Speaker 00 Because that would be out of character for most people. And it was for Pearl as well. She had a pretty steady routine.
11:39 Speaker 01 Right, right.
11:39 Speaker 00 She liked to get her daily coffee. She liked to get her lottery ticket from the local Quick Mart. And she liked to drink at the VFW. So I think she was a regular there. She also talked to her daughter Elaine several times a day, but Elaine hadn't heard from her.
11:56 Speaker 01 And to me, that these are all red flags.
11:59 Speaker 00 Yeah. And both unsolved and TCAT cases, we talk a lot about people's patterns, right? When they go missing. I think patterns really matter a lot. Because let's face it, most of us are, you know, creatures of habit. We like our routines.
12:19 Speaker 01 We are.
12:19 Speaker 00 Yeah. I do the same thing every day. I get up, I have to make my coffee, start to drink my coffee before I do anything else.
12:26 Speaker 01 Yeah.
12:28 Speaker 00 I don't want to take on any tasks. I don't want to talk to anybody on the phone.
12:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, that, that is a hundred percent true.
12:35 Speaker 00 Yeah. Even when we go to like Crime Con and stuff, I need to get my coffee.
12:40 Speaker 01 You, you need to be left alone.
12:42 Speaker 00 Cause I, I'm not fun. I'm not a good, nice person to be around until I get a little bit of pick me up, a little caffeine.
12:49 Speaker 01 Yeah. And then, uh, you know, at that point you're just, you know, all type of fun to be around.
12:54 Speaker 00 Oh, even then I'm just so, so.
12:57 Speaker 01 Yeah.
12:58 Speaker 00 Elaine noticed something unusual. When she went to the house to check on her mom, she told the Journal Tribune, my mom used to buy a newspaper every morning. This was Tuesday and the last paper in the house was from Sunday.
13:12 Speaker 01 Well, okay, that's a tell, tell, tell, tell, tall, tell, tell, tell. That's a TT sign.
13:18 Speaker 00 Yeah, we, we all know what you mean. So, you know, Elaine called the police and Detective Linda Barker came to the house to talk to her. Detective Barker walked through the house and found all of Pearl's belongings, including her beloved Cadillac, still there. And again, something that always crops up in these cases, people seemingly leave, right? Or we would say disappear, but you don't know at that point, what makes it seem more likely than not that they just didn't willingly leave is that they leave a bunch of stuff behind that most people would take.
13:55 Speaker 01 Yeah.
13:56 Speaker 00 If they were just going to up and leave.
13:58 Speaker 01 Just doesn't make any sense.
14:00 Speaker 00 No, no, I see, I can see a woman wanting to just get away from her husband.
14:06 Speaker 01 Yeah.
14:07 Speaker 00 But you don't call your daughter? My wife and her mom talk at least once a day, if not multiple times a day.
14:13 Speaker 01 Well, like you said, that's, that's what they did multiple times throughout the day, they would have conversations to go from that down to zero.
14:21 Speaker 00 Yeah.
14:22 Speaker 01 That's.
14:22 Speaker 00 And you're gonna leave and not take your car, your, this Cadillac that
14:26 Speaker 01 Right.
14:26 Speaker 00 she loved, I guess.
14:27 Speaker 01 Wasn't like it was a Ford Fiesta.
14:29 Speaker 00 No, things just, you know, they just don't make sense.
14:32 Speaker 01 Right.
14:32 Speaker 00 Right? And when things don't make sense in a case, there's usually a reason why.
14:36 Speaker 01 Sure.
14:37 Speaker 00 And detectives are, you know, they're not dumb. They, they can see all of that stuff as well. On the bedroom floor was a partially packed suitcase, which had a light amount of blood spatter on it. There was also light blood spatter on the bureau and sink. So, okay, what do we make of that? Sounds like maybe Pearl was in the process of packing
15:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
15:05 Speaker 00 to leave, something happened because we got blood spatter.
15:10 Speaker 01 What does that mean? Right? We don't know what.
15:13 Speaker 00 That somebody was bloody.
15:14 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we just don't know.
15:17 Speaker 00 Or had a wound.
15:18 Speaker 01 To the extent.
15:18 Speaker 00 Yeah, we don't know what, what the extent was. Detective Barker asked Elaine if there were any other places. They hadn't looked. Elaine took her outside to the entrance to the cellar and Barker saw what appeared to be blood stains on the stairs leading down. I mean, I, I'm thinking, if you're this detective, you're, you're starting to get really worried.
15:40 Speaker 01 Yeah. I think all your spidey senses are going off.
15:43 Speaker 00 You say sensies? Cause I have a sensi, I think it's plugged into this wall right here.
15:49 Speaker 01 It puts out a spicy scent.
15:53 Speaker 00 Cincy. You crack me up, man. But you know, I'm just thinking, I'm not a detective, but if I was, okay, I got some blood spatter here in the house. Now I'm seeing it leading down to the cellar. I'm starting to think to myself, I might find something not so good.
16:13 Speaker 01 Exactly.
16:14 Speaker 00 If I go down into this cellar.
16:16 Speaker 01 Like we're on the trail of something.
16:18 Speaker 00 Yeah. And it was said that it was roughly around a 500 square foot cellar.
16:24 Speaker 01 Okay.
16:24 Speaker 00 And when she got down there, the detective, she found a cement floor and an opening that led to a dirt crawl space. Some of the soil looked like it had been disturbed. She called for backup to bring shovels.
16:40 Speaker 01 We're gonna do some digging.
16:41 Speaker 00 Yeah. First of all, there's a, there's a few things I don't like. I'm not big on cellars.
16:48 Speaker 01 Yeah.
16:48 Speaker 00 I'm not big on crawl spaces.
16:50 Speaker 01 Most people aren't.
16:52 Speaker 00 Mainly because of John Wayne Gacy. He messed up crawl spaces for everybody.
16:56 Speaker 01 He ruined it.
16:57 Speaker 00 But, um, you know, I, I, again, I don't know what this exactly looked like, but I'm picturing like scary movie type stuff here.
17:07 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:07 Speaker 00 Like this is not, you're not walking down into someone's finished basement, right?
17:12 Speaker 01 Right.
17:12 Speaker 00 You're walking into a, a cellar. When you say cellar, it, it kind of denotes a certain atmosphere.
17:20 Speaker 01 I'm picturing spider webs and.
17:23 Speaker 00 What's with you and spiders today? Spider, Spidey Cincy? We got, we got all kinds of stuff. So detectives got down there and they dug up the crawl space, but they didn't find anything. The South Portland police chief declined at the time to call in homicide investigators from the state police and declared Pearl a missing person. And it was the following day after all this happened, that Bill finally reported his wife missing.
17:52 Speaker 01 Okay. Seems like a.
17:55 Speaker 01 Little bit late.
17:56 Speaker 00 It does. But I also want to go back and I'm like, okay, so the police chief doesn't want to call in homicide investigator.
18:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
18:05 Speaker 00 Why? Maybe it was the, the amount of blood spatter. They just didn't think it was significant enough to kind of lean homicide. Again, I, I don't know. But it doesn't seem good. Is it possible somebody cuts themselves? Yeah, absolutely. But most people don't just leave it there. Or, you know, you're dripping on a suitcase into the bathroom and then down by the, in the cellar. Okay, that, again, it's not all adding up to me.
18:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, but for whatever reason, right? The police chiefs just didn't feel it was warranted enough to make that call.
18:45 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, there wasn't really much explanation as to why. Now, Bill explained that he waited because Pearl would sometimes leave home for two to four days at a time to stay with a relative. But she always came back. And he did admit that they had an argument before she went missing.
19:04 Speaker 01 Okay, I mean, if that's the case, I get it. You know, if it's something that happened frequently. Um, kind of surprised though that he wouldn't have said something to her daughter.
19:16 Speaker 00 Yeah.
19:17 Speaker 01 Hey, we got in one of those fights again. Your mom probably went to old Aunt Betsy's for a couple of days and, you know, hopefully she'll be back soon.
19:27 Speaker 00 Yeah, I, I think he has to explain, right? Why he didn't report his wife missing until a number of days later. That's going to be a question that detectives are, are going to ask him. Bill remained the primary suspect for Detective Linda Barker, but her superiors thought that Pearl ran off with an ex-husband. And she did have five of them.
19:53 Speaker 01 Well, that's.
19:54 Speaker 00 So I don't know which one they, they thought it was.
19:56 Speaker 01 Yeah.
19:57 Speaker 00 Now, they did think it was concerning that Pearl didn't tell her children.
20:03 Speaker 00 That she was leaving and we touched on that, especially Elaine, because I mean, a lot of the reporting did center around Elaine and their relationship, but she had other children as well. And it was said she was in regular contact with all of them and she enjoyed spending time with them. So it wasn't like, you know, they were estranged.
20:22 Speaker 01 Right.
20:22 Speaker 00 Because that would be a different situation.
20:24 Speaker 01 Yeah, of course. Yeah. I mean, if she didn't typically talk to, you know, Elaine or any of her kids for periods of time.
20:32 Speaker 00 Yeah.
20:33 Speaker 01 Then that would make sense, but that's not the case here.
20:35 Speaker 00 Right. So it seems even that much more strange, right? That she's not contacted any of them. Even if she was going to do this thing where, as her husband said, go to a relative for a few days and stay, maybe decompress after the argument and come back.
20:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
20:54 Speaker 00 You would still think she would talk to one or if not all of her children and just say, hey, wanted to let you know, I'm at Aunt Betsy's.
21:03 Speaker 01 Right.
21:04 Speaker 00 I got my Spidey senses and I'm good to go. But that lack of communication to me just really jumps out.
21:13 Speaker 01 Yeah.
21:13 Speaker 00 You know, in some of these cases. Over the next few weeks, Detective Barker pursued every avenue, but there wasn't a whole lot to be done. She eventually told Elaine that her hands were tied. Elaine could tell that Barker was frustrated with how the investigation was progressing. You know, it's something we don't talk about a lot, but I think it would be very frustrating to be a detective because we know they don't solve every case.
21:44 Speaker 01 No.
21:44 Speaker 00 So there's ones that drag on and they're not solved. I mean, I would imagine there's a great deal of frustration there.
21:53 Speaker 01 I wonder if they, you know, have like yearly reviews and they have like, you know, baseball players have batting averages.
22:00 Speaker 00 They have, I'm sure they have clearance rates and things like that.
22:03 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah. I wonder how.
22:04 Speaker 00 I don't know if, if their raises and things are affected by that. Probably.
22:10 Speaker 01 Yeah. Would be, seem like a little bit unfair though, too, right? I mean, you can only, unless you're not a really good detective.
22:17 Speaker 00 Yeah. I mean, if it was 10% and everybody else's was 80.
22:22 Speaker 01 Yeah.
22:23 Speaker 00 Then yeah, we're gonna have to let you go.
22:24 Speaker 01 Yeah.
22:25 Speaker 00 I mean, you're.
22:25 Speaker 01 You're not.
22:26 Speaker 00 All you're doing is sitting around eating doughnuts. You're not clearing any cases. But I, I do understand what you're saying. It's not like some jobs or a lot of jobs where you can get the job done.
22:40 Speaker 01 Right.
22:41 Speaker 00 There, there are some cases that just can't be solved.
22:44 Speaker 01 As we know, because we do many of them.
22:46 Speaker 00 Yeah.
22:48 Speaker 00 Detective Patrick Lehan also believed that Bill was a suspect. Lieutenant Detective Michael Harriman agreed that Bill was matter of fact when answering questions. When the detectives expressed their worry that things had gotten out of hand and something happened to Pearl. Bill maintained that he would not hurt his wife. Okay, what's he gonna say? Right? I always kind of look at that. Means he gonna say, I'm the kind of guy who, if it went too far, I'd probably hurt her.
23:21 Speaker 01 Yeah. It's not ever gonna happen.
23:23 Speaker 00 Guy, yeah, people aren't gonna say that. Detective Lehan noted that Bill said, I would never hurt my Pearly. I loved her so much. And that's when he began to question his use of, you know, past tense.
23:39 Speaker 01 It's a little strange to say.
23:41 Speaker 00 It is, and I think some people trip themselves up with that.
23:45 Speaker 01 Right.
23:46 Speaker 00 Right? Present tense, past tense. We don't know at this point what has happened to Pearl. Bill says he doesn't know. He didn't hurt her. So why in the world is he using the word loved?
23:59 Speaker 01 Right.
24:00 Speaker 00 And not love? It could be a real, as you would say, tall tale, telltale, whatever sign. TT.
24:10 Speaker 01 TT. It's a TT sign.
24:12 Speaker 00 It's a TT sign. On August 28th, 1991, Elaine called WMTW 8, Channel 8. She spoke to reporter Christine Young and shared more information about the case, such as the blood on the suitcase and cellar stairs. Young called an Assistant Attorney General. She recalled that when she told him the situation, he uttered a profanity.
24:37 Speaker 01 Oh.
24:37 Speaker 00 And very quickly, the state police got involved in the investigation.
24:42 Speaker 01 Okay.
24:43 Speaker 00 So for me, this kind of goes back to, what was the police chief saying, eh, we don't need homicide investigators to get involved. Now we have the Assistant Attorney General kind of hearing about this and saying, what is going on? We need like, somebody to look into this because I think he's viewing it kind of how we were, which is, you've got blood spatter in different areas and down in the cellar. To me, at the very least, it warrants kind of a homicide type investigation.
25:23 Speaker 01 Sure. And so use those state resources and it's, you know, look at that.
25:27 Speaker 00 Yeah. On September 28th, 1991, a hiker in the White Mountains near Carroll, New Hampshire, found Pearl's purse. This is about 200 miles from her home.
25:40 Speaker 01 It's a healthy hike.
25:41 Speaker 00 Yeah. I mean, it's not, you know, close, really at all. Inside the purse was her driver's license, her pocketbook with cash inside, several loose diamonds, and more blood spatter.
25:55 Speaker 01 I mean, who carries loose diamonds anymore?
25:58 Speaker 00 Uh, maybe somebody trying to get away from a very, very bad relationship.
26:02 Speaker 01 That's true. They're, you know, exchangeable for a good amount of money.
26:06 Speaker 00 Yeah. I'll take your word for that.
26:09 Speaker 01 Been a while, but yeah.
26:10 Speaker 00 I've never fenced loose diamonds.
26:16 Speaker 00 As you have.
26:17 Speaker 01 Not as easy as you think it is.
26:18 Speaker 00 No, I'm sure it's not.
26:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
26:20 Speaker 00 Investigators noted that the area where Pearl's purse was found was close to Bill's trucking route, which to them kind of raised two possibilities.
26:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
26:30 Speaker 00 Bill left the purse there as a red herring, or he dumped both the purse and Pearl's body in the woods.
26:38 Speaker 01 You know, and I'm just thinking, you know, well, why would she have these diamonds? Or why would if, why would, if it was him, why would he place those diamonds there? But I'm thinking, what if she was planning to leave? He came home, did what he did, and she already had those loose diamonds on her as a form of, as you mentioned, as currency to use at a later time.
27:02 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, the suitcase kind of made me think, well, maybe she was packing up.
27:08 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:09 Speaker 00 But the suitcase is still there, right? She didn't take it. There's blood spatter on it. She didn't take her Cadillac, so it doesn't really seem as though she left on her own.
27:21 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:22 Speaker 00 But it could be that she was in the process. And maybe somebody, possibly even Bill.
27:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:30 Speaker 00 Saw it, came home, whatever, and got upset. On November 21st, 1991, state and local police set up a command post at Pearl and Bill's residence. A search dog was brought into the cellar and alerted to the scent of human decomposition. Police dug again, but again, they didn't find anything.
27:52 Speaker 01 So bizarre.
27:54 Speaker 00 It is, especially now, because at first we had the disturbed soil in the crawl space.
28:01 Speaker 01 Yeah.
28:01 Speaker 00 And I think a lot of people would look at that and say, okay, why is there, why is the soil disturbed other than somebody's been digging and putting something down there? And now you have the dog hitting, but they're still not finding anything.
28:17 Speaker 01 But, but. No, sorry. I was thinking, you know, they went and looked prior to this. Maybe that was enough. Concern for the person, you know, him, if he did have her in that crawl space to remove her.
28:33 Speaker 00 Yeah. And that's, that's exactly what investigators started to believe, right? That perhaps Bill had hidden her body in the cellar initially, but then decided to move it. Detectives brought Bill in for questioning, but he maintained his story that Pearl was gone when he arrived home and he never noticed any blood in the house. And I think, yeah, I mean, you got to weigh that, right? On the, the plausibility meter, did he not go into that room? Did he not go into that bathroom? Because most people are gonna see that.
29:09 Speaker 01 Sure they are.
29:11 Speaker 00 According to an affidavit on the November search, Detective Lehan told Bill that he thought he killed his wife. Detective Leanne wrote, while I said this to him, he was nodding his head in the affirmative. And then I asked him, am I wrong? And he replied, I just don't know. Which is to me, one of the strangest replies to that question that someone could ever have.
29:37 Speaker 01 It really is.
29:37 Speaker 00 First, now I get it. Some people just nod their head when other people are talking.
29:41 Speaker 01 Yeah.
29:42 Speaker 00 Even if it's like something that they're not agreeing to, it's just maybe a habit.
29:46 Speaker 01 Like acknowledging what you're saying.
29:48 Speaker 00 Yes.
29:48 Speaker 01 Yeah.
29:49 Speaker 00 But when, you know, if, if you're a detective, right? And you bring me in, you're questioning me.
29:56 Speaker 01 Right.
29:56 Speaker 00 And you say, I think you killed your wife. Am I right? And I, what do I say? No, hell no, you're not right. I did, I didn't do anything to my wife. I would never hurt my wife. What I wouldn't say is, you know, I don't know.
30:11 Speaker 01 Don't, yeah, that doesn't make any sense to say that.
30:14 Speaker 00 I mean, you're not, I don't expect people to admit to it. Cause most people don't. But this, I don't know type of answer is like, how could you not know? You either killed your wife, did something to your wife, or you didn't.
30:28 Speaker 01 Like saying no contest in front of the judge, right? Do you plead innocent, guilty, no contest? You, you figure it out. What do you think?
30:37 Speaker 00 No, doesn't no contest mean you're guilty?
30:40 Speaker 01 Well, I guess.
30:43 Speaker 00 I mean, I don't know. I'm not the master of spidey senses, but
30:49 Speaker 00 apparently you are. I'm pretty sure when you played no contest, that means you're guilty. You're not contesting it.
30:54 Speaker 01 I go neutral. I'm neutral, Judge. Neutral. I don't know. You figure it out.
31:00 Speaker 00 You are a true crime podcaster, right?
31:02 Speaker 01 I am.
31:03 Speaker 00 I'm just checking.
31:03 Speaker 01 Formerly known as Gibby.
31:07 Speaker 00 But I mean, I don't think there's any doubt, right? That Bill is suspect number one.
31:14 Speaker 01 Oh, absolutely.
31:15 Speaker 00 And first of all, how could he not be? He is the husband. So even if they wouldn't call him a suspect, he's going to be the first person looked at. They're going to have to vet him and either rule him in or out.
31:31 Speaker 00 Pretty hard to rule him out based on all the things we know so far.
31:35 Speaker 01 No, I don't think you're checking that box off yet.
31:38 Speaker 00 When you answer, I don't know. You're not, you're not ruling yourself out. Despite all of this, on November 25th, the main Department of Public Safety spokesman Stephen McCloslin said, "State police were not treating the case as a homicide." This kind of blows me away.
31:58 Speaker 01 Yeah.
31:59 Speaker 00 I get it. They might not have at that moment, right? The type of evidence where they could conclusively say, "This is in fact a homicide," but it just seems to me that why wouldn't you treat it as such, given what we know?
32:16 Speaker 01 Right.
32:17 Speaker 00 And, and, and do the investigation the way you would in a homicide case? If it turns out not to be a homicide, no harm, no foul, right?
32:26 Speaker 01 True.
32:27 Speaker 00 And I think the other way around, there, you can cause irreparable harm.
32:33 Speaker 01 If we've seen that.
32:34 Speaker 00 In cases.
32:35 Speaker 01 Yeah.
32:35 Speaker 00 You don't treat it as a homicide. You treat it more as an accident or the person just up and left. Later on, years down the road, it turns out it was a homicide, but you have less to work with because you didn't do all the the things you would have normally.
32:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, yep. You got, I don't want to say they got at that point, they're lazy on it, but it kind of feels like that, right? Why wouldn't you want to do all your due diligence?
33:00 Speaker 00 Yeah, I just think it's strange to me to say, no, we don't want, you know, homicide investigators or, you know, now they're saying even the state police, we're just, at this point, we're not treating it as a homicide.
33:17 Speaker 00 Also, on the 25th, New Hampshire State Troopers brought a search dog to the hiking trail where Pearl's purse was found, but discovered nothing. And it was kind of a long time between the purse being found and them making the decision to bring the dog out.
33:35 Speaker 01 Yeah.
33:36 Speaker 00 They, uh, they were questioned about it, but they declined to say why they waited so long to search this area.
33:43 Speaker 01 Yeah, sometimes I, I think if you wait too long, it just doesn't do any good.
33:47 Speaker 00 Well, let's go back to your theory. Uh, is it possible that she was in the cellar, but later moved? Is it possible that if her killer knew that they found the purse, that person thought, oh, oh, they're close to where I buried the body.
34:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
34:06 Speaker 00 Go, they go out and get the body and bury it somewhere else. Possible.
34:10 Speaker 01 Very possible.
34:12 Speaker 00 A few days later, Pearl's daughter Elaine Woodward spoke to the Journal Tribune, expressing her belief that police mishandled the investigation, causing delays that may have prevented the case from being solved early on. Elaine couldn't understand why the police didn't share her belief that Pearl was dead, saying, I felt like the police were brushing me off when I knew so many things were wrong.
34:36 Speaker 01 I mean, I feel like she's getting frustrated.
34:39 Speaker 00 Well, and let's face it, in a lot of the cases that we do, family, they're often frustrated with the police.
34:48 Speaker 01 Right.
34:49 Speaker 00 Number one, because maybe they're not getting as many updates as they think they should be getting. They don't know everything the police is doing, but they don't think they're doing enough, right? That's pretty common, I think, on the part of family members. But in this one, I can kind of see where the frustration comes from.
35:09 Speaker 01 Yeah.
35:09 Speaker 00 It's not like it comes out of thin air. You know, the signs to me are pointing to at least it being more likely than not that there's some sort of foul play involved here. So when you're not treating it that way, yeah, I think people are gonna, the family's gonna be frustrated.
35:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
35:29 Speaker 00 Elaine claimed that Police Chief Robert Schwartz told her, the mere fact someone is missing does not mean that there is any foul play. And that's an absolutely true statement. The problem I have with that statement is it's not just the mere fact that she's missing. Add in she didn't take her car. Why is her purse found in the woods? Why, why is the blood spatter found? You know, it's, you have to take it all into consideration.
36:00 Speaker 01 Add it all up and see what you have.
36:02 Speaker 00 Yeah, so I think that statement is, while true, it's misleading in this, this, um, the case.
36:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
36:12 Speaker 00 With the circumstances we've talked about. Elaine also noted that an investigating officer, quote, "Told me point blank" that with a trail of blood like that, without a pool of blood or a body at the end of the trail, the blood means absolutely nothing. And I have a problem with that as well.
36:32 Speaker 01 Yep.
36:32 Speaker 00 Does it mean that she was hurt or killed? No, not necessarily. Like I said, she could have maybe cut herself.
36:41 Speaker 01 Could have.
36:42 Speaker 00 Walked around, maybe even gone down in the cellar. Maybe she didn't know that she'd cut herself and was dripping blood. But to say that it means absolutely nothing in conjunction with somebody disappearing, their purse being found, I think that's a little off base as well.
37:01 Speaker 01 I mean, I've cut myself pretty good shaving, you know?
37:04 Speaker 00 Blood for a little bit, you know, and can't get it to stop.
37:08 Speaker 01 So face, manscape.
37:11 Speaker 00 I was gonna say, and that's not even to mention like shaving your face.
37:17 Speaker 00 On December 30th, 1991, police publicly acknowledged that Pearl may have been murdered. So it did really take them a little bit.
37:26 Speaker 01 It did.
37:27 Speaker 00 Right to at least acknowledge the fact that she may have been murdered. Detectives returned to the house with a search warrant and they spent eight hours looking for evidence. Investigators sprayed luminol throughout the house, which revealed a trail of blood.
37:43 Speaker 01 I'm sure it did.
37:44 Speaker 00 So, but you know, it all goes back to kind of this point of why not treat this as a homicide investigation from the very beginning, because then you're probably doing the luminol test.
37:57 Speaker 01 Yeah.
37:58 Speaker 00 Very early on.
37:59 Speaker 01 And you'd be much further along in this case.
38:02 Speaker 00 Absolutely. Inside the cellar was an imprint of blood that was approximately the same length of Pearl's body, indicating that at some point it was resting there, possibly while someone was digging. So they questioned Bill again that night. He was informed that blood was found throughout the house, but again, he said he didn't recall seeing any blood. And now it's not just a few droplets or some spatter.
38:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
38:33 Speaker 00 This is a trail of blood. So you either didn't go anywhere near where this trail was, or you're just oblivious or you're lying.
38:43 Speaker 01 Or you're lying.
38:44 Speaker 00 There's really only about three different scenarios in play here. He maintained that on August 11th, he left to get dinner and Pearl didn't want to go. He went to Dunkin' Donuts and then came home. Pearl wasn't there when he returned. He insisted he didn't know what happened to her. Now. I love Dunkin' Donuts as much as the next person, but I don't normally eat dinner at Dunkin'. They have like dinner?
39:14 Speaker 01 I, I think donuts.
39:16 Speaker 00 I mean, I know they make a bunch of different specialty drinks, cause that's what my kids are always going there for, specialty coffee drinks. Obviously they have donuts.
39:26 Speaker 01 I think they might have like, maybe some Danish for sandwiches or something like that.
39:32 Speaker 00 I would think if they have sandwiches, it's probably breakfast sandwiches.
39:36 Speaker 01 I think so too.
39:37 Speaker 00 It just doesn't seem like a dinner spot, but hey, maybe, you know, he wanted donuts for dinner. More power to him.
39:43 Speaker 01 I always went to Dunkin' to get those little donut holes. That's what I went there for. That's it.
39:49 Speaker 00 You're a, a donut hole guy?
39:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
39:52 Speaker 00 More of a Krispy Kreme.
39:53 Speaker 01 Are you?
39:54 Speaker 00 If I can get them.
39:55 Speaker 01 Yeah.
39:55 Speaker 00 With the light on, I mean, nothing better.
39:58 Speaker 01 I like the ones that you can just, you know, pick up that bowl and just pop it in your mouth and go, good.
40:02 Speaker 00 You know, you're heading down a really.
40:04 Speaker 01 I was worried there. I think everybody knows.
40:06 Speaker 00 I'm gonna leave it alone.
40:07 Speaker 01 I, I like the, uh, chocolate glazed donut too.
40:12 Speaker 00 That's where you lost me. Now you and my wife, two peas in a pod. I'm a glazed, I don't like chocolate as much as most people do.
40:21 Speaker 01 I mean, I like the glaze, but I really love the.
40:22 Speaker 00 Like even chocolate cake, it's not my favorite. I would rather have like a vanilla or.
40:27 Speaker 01 Yeah. About pie, you a pie guy?
40:30 Speaker 00 I do like pie.
40:31 Speaker 01 Yeah.
40:32 Speaker 00 Not chocolate pie.
40:38 Speaker 00 But so that, I mean, that struck me as strange, but I mean, if you're gonna lie about something, that seems like a strange thing to lie about.
40:44 Speaker 01 It sure does.
40:45 Speaker 00 You, you could have picked something different. Maybe he just wanted donuts for dinner. I don't know. Despite the luminol evidence, prosecutors still felt they needed to find Pearl's body to support a murder charge. In January, 1992, police searched the area across I-95 from the Brunns household with a specially trained dog. But nothing came of this search. On September 11th, 1992, 13 months after Pearl went missing, police searched the house again, focusing on the cellar. And why wouldn't you, right Gibbs?
41:19 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, I think that makes good sense.
41:22 Speaker 00 That something happened in that cellar.
41:24 Speaker 01 Yeah.
41:24 Speaker 00 I don't know exactly what it was.
41:26 Speaker 01 I mean, it's a reoccurring place to visit.
41:29 Speaker 00 Well, I, I thought about that when there was blood spatter.
41:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
41:32 Speaker 00 Now we find out that there was blood, the length of her body, as though she had been resting there at some point, most likely while someone was digging a hole to put her into.
41:44 Speaker 01 Yeah, and the dog hit there too, right?
41:46 Speaker 00 Yeah.
41:47 Speaker 01 So.
41:48 Speaker 00 And the dog hit there. But this time investigators brought in a geophysicist who used ground penetrating radar and they detected an anomaly in the crawl space. And you know, that ground penetrating radar is used quite a bit. This technology though fascinates.
42:07 Speaker 01 Sure is.
42:08 Speaker 00 I mean, technology in general, but especially as it relates to the, uh, the world of true crime.
42:14 Speaker 01 Yeah.
42:14 Speaker 00 And cases, obviously you've got the DNA and, and that type of forensic stuff. But you also have things like, you know, ground penetrating radar, just to be able to see, and, and they use it for stuff other than true crime, but to be able to see what's under there without first jackhammering or digging it up.
42:35 Speaker 01 Yeah. So you're not destroying the whole area. You're like, okay, let's do this and see if we can find a void that makes sense for us to do.
42:42 Speaker 00 Yeah. Cause how many cases have we done where a wife has gone missing and it turns out that the husband poured a patio.
42:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
42:50 Speaker 00 Right after that.
42:52 Speaker 01 Conveniently.
42:53 Speaker 00 But, you know, can you just go and dig people's patios up if you're not sure? No, but could you run a machine over it and maybe tell if there's something under there?
43:02 Speaker 01 Yeah.
43:03 Speaker 00 Possibly.
43:05 Speaker 01 Saves, saves the county or city some money.
43:09 Speaker 00 From having to replace it.
43:10 Speaker 01 Replace it if he didn't need to tear it up.
43:12 Speaker 00 Yeah. Police only had to dig up a couple of shovelfuls of dirt before they hit something. It was a head wrapped in a garbage bag. The body was wrapped in bags and buried under just about a foot of soil. The victim was immediately identified as Pearl Bruns, based on her shoes and monogrammed watch.
43:36 Speaker 01 It makes you wonder how they missed it.
43:38 Speaker 00 Exactly. It's almost shocking.
43:41 Speaker 01 Yeah.
43:41 Speaker 00 Right? They, they were down there multiple times. You mentioned it, right? The dog hit down there. They searched the crawl space, but they couldn't find her and she's only under about a foot of dirt.
43:56 Speaker 01 Unless he, she was moved, brought back.
44:00 Speaker 00 Yeah, I get that. It's possible.
44:02 Speaker 01 Yeah.
44:03 Speaker 00 Bill was arrested in his kitchen while he was eating spaghetti. He insisted that he be allowed to finish his meal.
44:11 Speaker 01 Yeah. Let me finish my spaghetti, then I'll get to you guys. Okay?
44:15 Speaker 00 But they ignored his demands.
44:18 Speaker 01 I'm sure they did. They probably, no, you're, you're going to go with us right now.
44:21 Speaker 00 Put that damn meatball down and put your hands behind your back. Many people questioned why it, it took investigators so long, right? To find Pearl. If she had been in the cellar the whole time, kind of the question that we were just talking about. The Journal Tribune reported that the cellar was as wide as the house. But the crawl space was only about three feet high. And that's right crawl spaces are usually cramped.
44:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
44:51 Speaker 00 Why they call them crawl.
44:52 Speaker 01 Yeah. You're normally on your hands and knees if you're in them.
44:53 Speaker 00 That's why I don't like them.
44:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
44:55 Speaker 00 I'm getting under there. Could be all kinds of animals and raccoon skunk.
45:01 Speaker 00 I'm not messing with no raccoon.
45:02 Speaker 01 Spiders.
45:03 Speaker 00 Spidey sense or sensey.
45:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
45:07 Speaker 00 That's going to go down in history because.
45:11 Speaker 01 I'm sure you won't, uh, let me forget it.
45:13 Speaker 00 No, and other people won't either. According to State Police Sergeant Michael Harriman, it would have been impossible to dig up the whole cellar by hand. And they were faced with removing the house from the foundation and excavating, or just isolating a particular area and digging. So I, I think maybe that helps kind of say, or make it a little more reasonable as to why police didn't find her body beforehand, right?
45:45 Speaker 01 Right.
45:46 Speaker 00 This crawl space, although not very tall, it's as wide as, as the house.
45:52 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's a pretty good area to cover.
45:53 Speaker 00 So there's quite a bit of dirt there and they probably did do some digging. But never found her the first few times or whatever.
46:05 Speaker 00 But you can see why people will question it. I get that. At Bill's arraignment, it was announced that Pearl had been struck in the head three times by a fist, causing her to bleed to death. Specifically, she died from blood loss from fractures to the nose and left side of the face.
46:23 Speaker 01 Pretty powerful punch.
46:26 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean vicious, right? Most of the time, we're talking about blunt force trauma, but from some type of object. This is blunt force trauma solely from this man's hand.
46:39 Speaker 01 Yeah.
46:40 Speaker 00 And he killed her.
46:41 Speaker 01 Pretty powerful hit.
46:43 Speaker 00 Sounds like it. She suffered a fracture of the left orbitable bone. Orbitable? Orbital bone.
46:51 Speaker 01 Going to correct you, but I didn't want to do it in front of everybody.
46:54 Speaker 00 Well, you can. Makes it seem like you didn't catch it when you don't. It was said if treated, this injury would probably not have been fatal. Prosecutors believe that the argument between Pearl and Bill got physical. She was likely knocked unconscious when he hit her and left to left her to bleed to death. Medical records also showed that Pearl had been recently diagnosed with terminal cancer. And she actually had less than six months to live.
47:22 Speaker 01 Really?
47:23 Speaker 00 Police Chief Robert Schwartz defended the investigation and said his department, quote, "did everything possible." However, two state police investigators said the first observations of blood stains at the home could have intensified suspicions earlier in the case. And I, I don't know how someone couldn't agree with that. You've got blood stains. Maybe we should treat this as a homicide investigation.
47:52 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's kind of burnt you this whole episode.
47:54 Speaker 00 It has. It has because we've seen it so often. Why not err on that side? Because for me, there's really no downside other than more work. But if you go the other way, there, there are ramifications.
48:09 Speaker 01 Yeah.
48:09 Speaker 00 Negative ramifications. Schwartz noted that a detective was
48:14 Speaker 00 Signed to the case full time before state police took over in the late fall. And the blood found in the home was a couple of blood drippings. That's all. So you've got two sides to the story.
48:26 Speaker 01 Sure.
48:27 Speaker 00 He added, there was not copious amounts of blood that anyone would suspect was any more than cutting your finger or a bloody nose. It wasn't a puddle of blood, but there was a puddle of blood.
48:40 Speaker 01 Well, yeah.
48:41 Speaker 00 There are a trail of blood. They just couldn't see it, right? If they had gone just a step further and done the luminol earlier.
48:49 Speaker 01 Then they could have put that picture together.
48:50 Speaker 00 Yeah.
48:51 Speaker 01 Yep.
48:51 Speaker 00 So I get both sides of it, but I'm, I'm sticking with my assertion that that, that they could have erred on the side of foul play. Something wasn't right there. State Police Sergeant Michael Herrmann said he didn't want to discredit the local police. But when assessing the initial handling of the case, he said, certainly blood found at the scene should raise suspicion. A determination of where the blood came from is important. It's a judgment call on the part of the police department. And I get that. I think what he's saying is they just made the wrong judgment call. Chief Schwartz maintained there was no reason to suspect foul play in the beginning.
49:35 Speaker 00 He said, if you look at this logically, you've got a woman who was divorced a few times. A woman with alcohol problems. She's left before. She has another daughter in Florida. Who's to say she wasn't just leaving him? They had money problems.
49:52 Speaker 01 I mean, it's possible.
49:53 Speaker 00 It's possible. There's also some victim blaming there though, too, right? He's trying to, to cover his ass, but at the same time, kind of blaming the victim, right? She's been married a bunch of times. She's got problems with alcohol.
50:07 Speaker 01 Yeah.
50:08 Speaker 00 Okay. Does that mean that you shouldn't have done a little bit more investigating? I don't think so.
50:14 Speaker 01 Same because she's a divorcee and. A five time divorcee and an alcoholic that we really shouldn't put the effort behind it?
50:22 Speaker 00 Yeah. Making the assumption that somebody ran away. I, I think that's, that's part of the problem. On April 4th, 1994, Bill Bruns agreed to plead guilty to manslaughter because a jury would have convicted of the same charge, according to his lawyer. Before trial, prosecutors acknowledged much of the evidence was circumstantial, but it all pointed to Bill. And I get the circumstantial evidence part, but you know, when the person, the victim is found in your crawl space.
50:55 Speaker 01 Yeah.
50:56 Speaker 00 In bags. That's a lot of circumstantial evidence.
51:00 Speaker 01 That's pretty strong evidence.
51:01 Speaker 00 Yeah, it's gonna, it's gonna sway the jury, I think, pretty heavily.
51:06 Speaker 01 I think so.
51:06 Speaker 00 On September 30th, 1994, Bill was sentenced to 15 years in prison. The Journal Tribune reported that the events surrounding Pearl's death remained a mystery. The judge also noted that Bill had not chosen to reveal the circumstances behind Pearl's death. The defense read a statement on Bill's behalf, expressing his regret. He wrote, "I never intended for any of this to happen. I loved Pearl and I miss her very much." And that could be true, right? This could have been a crime of passion or a heat of the moment thing.
51:43 Speaker 01 Could have been.
51:44 Speaker 00 That got out of control, but he still did kill her.
51:48 Speaker 01 Yeah.
51:48 Speaker 00 And by the sounds of it, if treated, she would have lived. So there's that factor as well. He just didn't get her help.
51:59 Speaker 01 Cause he didn't care.
52:01 Speaker 00 I don't know what the answer is, because he hasn't said. Bill was 63 at the time of sentencing. Taking into account two years he had already served and time for good behavior, Bill was likely to be released by the time he turned 71. But couldn't really find too much out about Bill.
52:22 Speaker 01 Kind of a man of mystery?
52:23 Speaker 00 Yeah. I mean, that was what 30 years ago? So obviously Bill's not alive probably at this point.
52:32 Speaker 01 Pretty and pretty, pretty doubtful.
52:34 Speaker 00 He would be, you know, 90 some years old. He could be alive.
52:39 Speaker 01 Could be. Most likely not.
52:42 Speaker 00 But 15 years in prison, I get it. It was manslaughter. And it could very well have been, as we wrap this one up, that he didn't mean to kill her, but he did kill her. And, you know, his actions killed her. So.
53:00 Speaker 01 Exactly.
53:00 Speaker 00 You got, you gotta live with that. And you gotta pay the price for that.
53:03 Speaker 01 You do need to pay the price.
53:06 Speaker 00 But that's for another episode of True Crime All The Time.
53:09 Speaker 01 Okay.
53:10 Speaker 00 Got anything you want to say?
53:11 Speaker 01 No, that we just. Love you guys.
53:13 Speaker 00 Yep, we love you as always. And we'll come back at you next week with a brand new episode.
53:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
53:21 Speaker 00 So until then, for Mike.
53:22 Speaker 01 And Gibby.
53:23 Speaker 00 Stay safe and keep your own time ticking.
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