Crime Junkie - MISSING: Heather Teague

Episode Date: November 21, 2022

A young woman is abducted in the middle of the day, and despite seeming like an open and shut case, her family is still searching for answers almost 30 years later. If you have any information about Heather’s disappearance, you can contact the Kentucky State Police at [phone]. For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/.Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit: https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/heather-teague/

Hi Crime Junkies, I'm your host Ashley Flowers, and the story I have for you today is about a young woman who was abducted out in the open in the middle of the afternoon and never seen again. For decades, her case has frustrated law enforcement, the public, and her mother, who has never stopped fighting to get justice for her daughter. This is the story of Heather Teague. It's around 1 p.m. on Saturday, August 26, 1995, and a man named Tim Walt Hall is getting ready to eat lunch with his wife Karen.

They have a house right on the Ohio River in Newbrook, Indiana, and one of the things that he loves about living on this river is being able to look at all the wildlife. So as Karen is pulling out all the fixings to make hamburgers, he sits down at his telescope and looks across to Newbrook Beach on the Kentucky side of the river. He sees a group of people, like a little way down the beach, riding around on some three-wheelers, just kind of like goofing off and having fun. But when he shifts his gaze back the other way, something catches his eye. He notices a young woman away from the other group.

She's laying on her stomach, sunbathing, with the back of her bikini top undone. So this guy's just innocently bird-watching, clearly. Either way, what catches his eye isn't necessarily the woman, it's actually the man behind her. According to Tim, there is a shirtless man lurking in a wooded area behind the beach, and just as his mind processes what he's seeing, this dude makes a beeline for the woman. Tim watches as the man from the woods grabs her by the back of her hair and brandishes something that looks like a gun. The woman is clearly startled by this, and as she's literally being pulled up from her

lounge chair by her hair, she grabs her beach towel to cover herself. Once she's up, the man walks her back to the woods and they disappear. Tim is so startled by this that he just kind of sits there in shock as his mind tries to catch up with what he just saw, because no one expects to see something like that. But as his mind is playing catch-up, he jumps up to call Indiana State Police. Since the abduction technically happened on the Kentucky side of the river, ISP tells him to call Kentucky State Police instead, so he gets on the line with a KSP dispatcher and they ask him to describe the man that he saw.

According to an article from the Evansville Courier and Press, Tim says that the man that he saw was tall, maybe like 200 pounds, probably in his late 20s or 30s, and he had dark hair and a bushy beard, which honestly that could probably describe about half of the men in Kentucky if we're being honest. One of our writers who is from there, Megan, was like, cool, you just described everyone, I know. Anyway, KSP sends some officers out to the scene, but the area where the woman was abducted is actually pretty remote, so it takes them close to like 30 minutes to get to the beach.

And when they do, the officers call Tim back with a mobile phone so he can actually direct them to exactly where he saw everything happening. So literally from across the river, he's telling them where the lounge chair was, where the woman was sitting, and they actually find the top of her bathing suit. They proceed from where she was taken to the edge of the woods, where several steps away, they find swimsuit bottoms and a towel. Police identify the missing woman as 23-year-old Heather Teague, and they learn that she had actually been reported missing two weeks before this abduction.

It's not clear who reported her missing or what the whole story is there, but she actually ended up being found several days later and told people that she was just running around. So when police contact Heather's family, they learn from her mom, Sarah, that she had been kind of bouncing around from house to house and kept most of her things in her car. Sarah also says that Heather had recently gotten into drugs, which could have contributed to her absence before. But that instance of her being MIA had already been resolved before she was missing now for the second time, clearly under way more concerning circumstances.

And so her family is insisting that any issues she had with drugs didn't contribute to whatever is happening here. And her mom says that they also don't know anyone who fits the description of Heather's abductor. Over the next few days, the Kentucky State Police searched the beach and the surrounding area. They find Heather's car at the scene, but after a thorough search, there isn't anything there that could be of use to the investigation.

Police try interviewing people who lived in the area, they talk to beachgoers, they even stop cars with anyone inside who looks like their suspect, but they don't come up with anything substantial, which to me seems kind of impossible because in Tim's call to Kentucky State Police, he said that there was another group on the beach. In a later article from the Evansville Press by Dan Armstrong, he states that there were no more than 15 to 20 people on the beach and that Heather was located on the far, far end, so she was out of sight. And then police say that there was a total of like 500 to 600 people on the beach that

day, so to them, and again to me, it seems unlikely that nobody saw what happened except this guy in his telescope. And I don't know who's right here, I couldn't find any further clarification in my research about this discrepancy, but regardless of the exact number of people on the beach that day, no one comes forward with any information. On the third day of the official search, police bring in a team of search dogs to try and pick up Heather's scent, and the dogs do. They lead police to the woods, but eventually that trail goes cold, and this indicates to

police that the adductor likely forced Heather into a vehicle and then drove away. And it's also around this time that police finally get their first solid lead. This videographer comes forward and says that he had captured some footage of Heather as she was driving to the beach. I guess apparently like several local residents were having some trouble with people damaging like their nearby fields or whatever. Like this area, which is Henderson County, it's like pretty rural, and some crops had recently been destroyed by people trying to get to the beach.

So some of the farmers had hired this guy to film people driving past to see if they could catch the people responsible for destroying their fields. And it turns out that on the day of Heather's abduction, that videographer caught footage of her driving to the beach and then getting out of her vehicle. But what's even better than that is that a little while later, as he was getting ready to leave, he put his camera on his car's dashboard, but he didn't actually turn it off. And as he's driving away, the camera captured a Redford Bronco with a chrome luggage rack

driving towards the beach. This footage is super grainy, and you can't really make anything out about the driver, but something about this makes police want to question the owner of this vehicle. The problem is, they can't find the owner of the vehicle. Even after they publicize the details and make repeated pleas to the public for information, that driver never comes forward. Now, even though this seems like one of their best leads, that's kind of dying, police aren't totally at a loss.

Because four days after Heather's abduction, Kentucky State Police released not one, but two composite sketches drawn from two different witnesses. Because it turns out that there was a second witness who came forward two or three days after Heather's disappearance. According to an article by Lou Bublough for Evansville Courier & Press, a woman saw someone matching Heather's description in the passenger seat of a red chevette around 2.30 or 3 on the day that she was abducted. The witness says that the woman in the car was struggling with the man who was driving.

She clearly did not want to be in that car. And your question is my question, I'm not really sure why it took her a few days to come forward and there isn't a lot of information about this woman or her sighting in our source material. But when she does go to the police, they're able to put together a second sketch to release with the one from Tim. Now both of these are drawn from two different angles, one that is close up and more like head on, and one that is further away and at an angle.

The one that's close up depicts a man who, I don't know, I would guess he's in his thirties, he has short dark hair, this large round nose, and I mean again a big full beard. And the sketch that's drawn from farther away looks kind of similar, like the hair is a bit longer, the beard is a bit fuller, and the nose is kind of sharper too, and kind of similar. And for clarity, the police aren't saying if they think that these are like the same guy, they aren't even saying that they're connecting him to the driver of the red Bronco. So I mean these could very well be two different people that they're looking for, or maybe

three if the Bronco driver is someone else since no one really even got a good look at that guy. And really, again, though police aren't saying, I'm not sure they even know at this point. But it doesn't take long to start narrowing in because after releasing these images, this gets multiple tips about a man who could be their prime suspect. The police are told about a man who matches one of the sketches and, wouldn't you know it, drives a red Bronco. The guy's name is Marvin Ray Dill, and he only lives about twenty, twenty five minutes

away from Newburgh Beach. When they looked this guy up, they learned that he has been on law enforcement's radar several times over the last two years for some really bizarre behavior. Like two years earlier, Marvin had been arrested after he was repeatedly calling a woman asking to speak to her boyfriend, knowing that her boyfriend had died. According to an article in Evansville Courier & Press by Maureen Hayden and John Lucas, those repeated calls eventually turned obscene, and he was arrested and pled guilty to a phone harassment charge.

They also learned that he had been arrested earlier that same year in February in Evansville, Indiana for reportedly driving around and trying to solicit underage girls for sex. And when police arrested him, they found a small amount of marijuana, two loaded handguns, rubber gloves, duct tape, and rope in his vehicle. So pretty suspicious, right? Well with all this information, Kentucky State Police are like, well we need to talk to this guy, so they head to the trailer where he lives with his wife and son. But when they get there, Marvin isn't home.

But his wife Tracy confirms that yes, he drives a red Bronco with a chrome luggage rack. She also says that his physical description matches what was described by Tim, but notably, he keeps his hair shorter than what's depicted in both of the sketches. Now this is great for police, but they don't really need much more from her, so they thank her for the information and leave. Later on, that very day, they get another call, this time from a man named William Polk, who says that he's Tracy's attorney. William says that he's worried for Marvin's safety because according to Tracy, once he

got home and heard that the state troopers had been there, he got really angry and kicked Tracy out, stating that if the police came for him, he would kill himself. William also says that Marvin had taken his Bronco and hidden it in a wooded area behind his house. To knowing this, this is enough for police to get a search warrant, and a little after one in the morning on September 1, police arrive at his home. Since there is a threat of harm having to do with police, one of Marvin's friends actually goes inside to talk to him and see if he can get him to calm down, to come out

on his own, but shortly after the friend goes inside, police hear a single gunshot. That's when his friend comes running out of the trailer, saying that Marvin is dead. So it kind of seems like the case is closed, right? It feels almost like a confession of sorts to me. And why else would he take his own life after police come around asking about Heather? Well, it might not be that simple. The only other thing I could find is that he was facing gun charges from Evansville, from back when they pulled him over and found all that weird stuff in the car, including

guns. And I guess he had told both Tracy and his friend that he wasn't going to go back to jail. So he could have taken his own life, avoiding what he thought was going to happen in connection to that, but I couldn't find any information about those charges, like what happened, whether or not that he was actually going to serve any time for them. But either way, whether it's the gun charges, whether it's Heather, all of this is super suspicious and police think so too.

When they search the Dills residence and the surrounding area, they find the red Bronco hidden in the woods, and they decide to call in the FBI to handle its examination. They also bring in cadaver dogs to help aid in the search of Marvin's property because he and his wife's home sits on this massive spread, like 28 acres of land. But even after several days of searching, they don't find any trace of Heather. So police decide to expand their search to other areas where Marvin was known to go hunting. But even those all come up empty as well. So even though this seemed promising, even though you wanted to say case closed, without

actually finding Heather on his property, they're not ready to close all other investigative doors yet. According to another article by Lou Bubbala for Evansville Courier and Press, police say that they're still looking into other people, but they never publicly state who those other people are. And as all of this is going on, it's reported that Heather's mom, Sarah, gets help from two private investigators, one of whom claims to have psychic abilities. But she later denies hiring any additional help to find Heather, especially not someone

who claims to be psychic because she says she doesn't believe in that sort of thing. But PIs are not, whether she hired someone or not, she's not just going to sit by and wait for someone to find her daughter. So on September 7th, she actually organizes a search of the beach and woods where Heather was abducted herself. About 50 people show up to help, and even though the search isn't officially sanctioned by police, several officers offer their help to give searchers advice on what to do if they find something.

But at the end of the day, no one finds anything related to Heather. They all try searching again on September 17th, and Sarah asked local residents, especially those with large plots of land, to search their properties. But again, nothing is found. And with this being a super rural area, there are so many places where Heather could be that police just don't have access to because it's private property. Tristan Neeson reports for the Evansville Press that all police-led searches relating to Dill stop by September 21st.

Over a month passes without any solid leads, and it seems like the cases just hit a hard dead end. But it turns out that's actually the farthest thing from the truth. Because on October 27th, the public gets word that the police have another suspect in Heather's abduction. And there will be a grand jury held in November to investigate this suspect. This person is never named, but this is the first news that anyone, including Sarah, has gotten in a while.

But it seems like whoever broke this news must have gotten something incorrect because just a day later, the police state that there isn't another suspect. So they do confirm that they're convening a grand jury, but it will just be used as a fact-finding tool. But here's something that's interesting about this quote-unquote fact-finding tool. Marvin's wife Tracy is subpoenaed to testify. Again, even though it's been over a month since the Dill property was last searched, police still have questions for Tracy, especially when they find out that she was the one who

hid Marvin's Bronco in the woods. Her lawyer defends her actions by saying that she only moved it because Marvin told her to. But when this comes out, people start to look at her just a little more critically. And I kind of have a clarifying question that I think matters. When did she move the car? Because if she moved it before she knew Marvin was a suspect, that's totally different from if she moved it after she knew he was a suspect.

But I couldn't find anything about the timing. But actually, I'm not sure if anyone but Tracy really knows those kinds of details, because she ends up pleading the fifth and refuses to testify. And by November 7th, the grand jury adjourns, and there are no indictments issued. So it seems like there never was a second suspect, and the whole grand jury thing was really about Marvin, ultimately though I can't speak to their true intentions. We know that they said there wasn't a second suspect, at least, but here's what's wild. Less than a month later, another man is square in their crosshairs.

It's a guy named Glenn Rogers who is arrested in Kentucky after a car chase. Glenn is suspected in the murders of at least four other women in California, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida. And when police compare his mugshot to the composite sketch of their suspect, there are enough similarities to make the police want to question him, especially when he's confirmed to have been in Kentucky sometime before Heather's abduction. And even though police can't determine exactly where he was back in June, they do talk extensively with investigators working on the other cases.

However, after doing some more digging, they eventually end up ruling him out. But less than a month after that, there's another potential lead. The skeletal remains of a woman are found on December 2nd along a back road in Lawrence County, Illinois. The unidentified woman is about five feet tall with dark hair, and as soon as Sarah hears the she contacts KSP to find out if those remains could be Heather's. Now, this is promising and hopes are high, but by December 5th, the remains are identified as a missing woman from Indiana named Pam Fodrell.

Pam had been missing since August 18th of 1995 when she didn't return home from going to run some errands. At the time, police aren't able to identify a cause of death, but they do say that they're treating her case as a homicide. After Pam's remains are identified, several more months go by without any movement in Heather's case. Sarah has to spend the holidays without any answers, and she becomes increasingly more frustrated with the lack of leads.

And the more time passes, the more she's convinced that Tracy knows more than she's letting on. And so over the course of the next few months, she sends Tracy over 20 letters begging her for anything about what happened to Heather and where she could be. But according to more reporting by Tristan Neeson for the Evansville Press, after receiving these letters, Tracy takes them to the police and requests that harassment charges be filed against Sarah. Sarah ultimately does end up being charged and tried with harassment by communicating

for eight of those letters, but she's actually quitted. And if you thought that was going to stop her, it didn't. She continues searching for her daughter and her abductor every single day. Eventually, she starts to see this beach guy everywhere she looks, even in one of her exes, who she accuses of being the one who took Heather. And things spiral out of control so much that in April of 1996, she's arrested on charges of harassing communications, male theft, and forgery. She's later released on bond and I can't find any follow up for those charges.

But the stress of this really traumatic situation has just weighed on her so much that she is desperate for anything that could give her answers. And I get it. I do not know what I would do if something happened to Joe. I would send the letters. I would do more than send the letters and nothing would stop me and I don't care if people called me crazy. I don't care if I looked absolutely bananas.

Like, oh god, I just can't imagine. So even though Sarah is doing everything she can to find Heather and police say that they're doing all they can as well, without any real, solid, tangible leads, the investigation comes to a standstill. But finally, later that month, there is this huge piece of the puzzle that they've been waiting on that comes back. And that's the forensic test results from Marvin's Bronco. When those results come back in from the FBI, they learn that out of everything in the vehicle,

there were two spots of blood and a hair that the FBI wasn't able to identify. So police take blood samples from Sarah and Heather's father, Paul, to determine if either of the blood spots are from her. And I know we haven't heard anything about Heather's father like this entire time. Honestly, not sure why, what the deal was with him. There's just one article that I could find that mentions that Heather was actually living with her dad at the time she was missing, but that's literally the only mention of him.

So I can't say how involved he was in all of this in her life, in the search, whatever. But he does give his blood willingly. Unfortunately, though, a few months later, the blood test comes back and the blood found in the car is found to not be Heather's blood, but there is still the hair, right? Maybe because I actually couldn't find anything from law enforcement about whether or not they even tested it, which I would think they would, right? But the only information I could find about the hair comes from Sarah, because later on she claims that the FBI told her that it is Heather's hair, but the FBI never comments

on that. So I can't say one way or another, if it is, if it isn't, I mean, again, back then that wouldn't have been a DNA test. Like, at most, it's a comparison under a microscope for similarities. So maybe it's a bit of both. Maybe it's similar, but we can't say it's hers. And that might be why that this isn't enough to move the case forward. And Heather's case just goes cold.

KSP repeatedly insists that they're doing everything they can with the information they have. But to Sarah, every day that goes by without an answer is agonizing. She does her best to keep Heather in the news, and she calls KSP every single week to ask for updates. But after two years passed with no answers, she has had enough. She herself requests that a grand jury be convened, even though the police state that there aren't any new developments.

But despite that, she's granted that request. A grand jury is held on September 1st of 1998, but it adjourns shortly after without any new developments. But Sarah is convinced that there has to be someone out there other than the perpetrator who knows what happened. So the next year, she decides to organize something that I haven't really heard of. It's a reenactment of the abduction. Basically she's trying to see if she can spark anyone's memory.

According to articles by John Lucas for the Evansville Courier and Press, this reenactment includes Heather's car, a red and white Bronco, and people to play the roles of Heather and her abductor. And so on the day of this reenactment, Sarah stands on the Indiana side of the river and watches the whole thing play out through a telescope, just like Tim Walthall did. Everything goes off without a hitch, but even though it's successful in generating some renewed public interest, it doesn't actually bring in anything helpful, and the case stays cold.

Over the following years, both Sarah and the police do everything they can think of to keep Heather's case active. Sarah purchases billboards with the details of Heather's abduction on them, and every year on the anniversary of her disappearance, she hangs purple ribbons around town in memory of her daughter. The police even admit that they consulted a psychic in the last-ditch effort to try and find Heather, but eventually they confirm that they are at a standstill, at least until the right person comes along with the tip that they're looking for.

As the years continue to pass, Sarah's opinion on who took her daughter changes. She becomes less and less convinced that the man Tim saw on the beach that day was Marvin Dill, although since there aren't any other suspects, she can't be sure who else it could be. That is, until police get a tip about a suspected serial killer who lived in Kentucky at the time of Heather's abduction. In 2004, the Kentucky State Police are contacted by an investigator from Ohio named Scott Thomas, and he tells them that he's been investigating this truck driver named Chris Bellow since

2002, that's two years, because back in 1991, Christopher was a suspect in the murder of a woman named Catherine Fetzer in Medina, Ohio, but since investigators couldn't find her body, they couldn't actually charge him without some kind of confession. Detective Thomas said him and his colleague spent years working on Catherine's case until finally Chris did confess to her murder and he was arrested in 2003. Even though they hadn't found her body, that didn't stop Detective Thomas from trying to find her, and as he dug deeper and deeper into Chris's background, the more he became convinced that there could be even more victims.

When Chris was arrested and police were looking through his home, they found a missing persons flyer of a 16-year-old girl named Christina Porco who disappeared all the way back in 1986. She had had an argument with her parents and walked out of their home on Hilton Head Island in South Carolina and just seemed to disappear into thin air. At the time of her disappearance, there weren't any leads and her case quickly went cold, but when investigators find her flyer among Chris's belongings, they think that they could have stumbled upon their perpetrator.

So Detective Thomas is telling KSP that he was drawn to Heather's case because Chris was living in Henderson, Kentucky at the time of her disappearance, which is really close. And Heather also physically resembled the other two victims that they know of. All three women were short, they're between like five feet, five feet two, and they all had long dark hair. So it seems like this could be a pattern, I mean, none of them were ever found, and if he is a truck driver, he would have been able to travel long distances and hide the bodies relatively easily.

And according to an article by Shannon Sampson for 14 News, this guy even said to a friend that the best way to get rid of bodies is to either cover their grave in lime or to feed them to pigs. So he is just screaming suspicious to investigators. Detective Thomas said he even asked the FBI to put together a psychological profile of Chris, and he says that based on their findings, Chris has numerous traits that are common in serial killers, such as a history of pathological lying and an extremely manipulative personality. So hearing all of this, KSP is convinced, or at least convinced enough to look at Chris.

They don't ever publicize what they learned during that investigation. So I can't say whether or not they think he could be a probable suspect. But Tim Walt Hall, that birdwatcher, air quotes birdwatcher, is pretty outspoken with his opinion that Chris is not the person that he saw on the beach that day. In an article for 14 News by Shannon Sampson and Amber Griswold, he says quote, if I am wrong, then I'm sorry for it. But when you see something like I saw and it's instilled in your memory banks, then you don't forget it.

That is the individual, and there is certain things that I saw that lead me to believe it was the individual, Mr. Dill, end quote. But all of that is called into question when police ask him on three separate occasions to pick the man that he saw on the beach out of a photo lineup. And what's weird is that he actually picks Chris each time. But Marvin Dill authorities never say how many total lineups they did with him, especially back in 1995 when his memory was still fresh. Because remember, at this point, I mean, it's been nine years, but these most recent

identifications of Chris call into question his original one of Marvin Dill, especially with Sarah. I mean, she's already unconvinced that Marvin was the one who took Heather at this point. But I did come across an interesting fact. You see, Marvin and Chris actually did live close to each other at the time. So once investigators start like looking into Chris, a few members of the public start speculating that maybe, maybe they work together.

Like we know that Marvin drove a red Bronco, but maybe Chris was the one that Tim saw on the beach. But there isn't any like hard evidence of them knowing each other. So that rumor dies down pretty quickly. Now around this same time, authorities from other states start connecting Chris to other missing persons cases. The first is 18 year old Shailene Farrell, who left her house in Piqua, Ohio to run an errand back in 1994 and was never seen again.

Authorities later found her car in the parking lot of a local supermarket, but her body was never recovered. Next is a 28 year old woman from Evansville, Indiana named Andrea Hendricks Steinert. She disappeared from a gas station in 1997. But unlike the others, her body was actually found about 40 minutes away from where she disappeared in Francisco, Indiana, just two days after she was reported missing. And over the following months, more women emerged as potential victims. 17 year old Erika Lee Frazier vanished while driving home in Brooksville, Kentucky on October

21, 1997. Her car was found abandoned in a nearby hayfield the next day, but there were no signs of foul play. And later that same year, 23 year old Alaina Gwinner went missing after leaving a bowling alley in Fairfield, Ohio. Alaina's body was eventually found in the Ohio River, but her car was never located. That takes the potential victim count up to six, seven, if you count the one that he actually confessed to.

But frustratingly, police aren't able to definitively link him to any of these cases. And in Heather's case, specifically, police never name him as a suspect. And it is possible that they just haven't released information that they have. But after 2004, it seems like this Chris guy just falls completely off police's radar. And this is very frustrating to Sarah, because at that point in time, she really believes that Chris is more likely a suspect than Marvin. She feels like the Kentucky State Police had tunnel vision and were so convinced that Marvin Dill was the one that killed Heather from the beginning that since his death, they haven't

thoroughly explored any other suspects. So she starts making multiple open records requests for a variety of information, including the 911 call made by Tim. However, since this case is technically still open, KSP doesn't release anything. She keeps trying for years to get them to tell her anything. But the more she pushes, the more she feels like she's being ignored. In 2007, she gets a little glimmer of information when KSP releases the time that the 911 call is made, although they don't release the recording of the call itself.

I'm not sure what the purpose of this was. Like again, it didn't provide any helpful information to the investigation that would get the public to come forward. It certainly wasn't enough to stop Sarah because she continuously pushes to know more and more about what's being done to solve her daughter's case. And honestly, she has to. I don't blame her for continuing to fight for her daughter. I mean, we say it all the time.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease. So if she keeps pushing, it's more likely that investigators will spend more time on her daughter's case. According to an article by Lori Harrison for The Messenger, later in 2007, Sarah makes the difficult decision to have Heather legally declared dead. She does this hoping that it will make more information available to her. But she keeps hitting roadblock after roadblock. And even though it feels like the police aren't on her side, Heather's case does

attract the attention of several people who come to Kentucky to help move things along. The first comes in April of 2008. A retired detective named Gil Alba from New York City takes a weekend trip to Henderson to review Heather's case along with a cold case detective from Kentucky named Tom Loose. The two spend several days reviewing the information available to them. But unfortunately, it's unclear if they found anything. And then Gil returns to New York a few days later. After that year, a bloodhound search organization called Keeping Tracks contacts Sarah.

And they send a bloodhound and its handler to Henderson to search the beach and several roads in the area, including the road that leads to Marvin's property. Sarah even tries to get a warrant for his property, but his wife Tracy still lives there and she made it very clear over the years that she wants nothing to do with Sarah or the investigation. So the search warrant isn't granted. Which I don't know how I feel about this. And if you got nothing to hide, why don't you want to help?

On the other hand, I don't want people just digging through my property, especially if I had nothing to do with it and this lady was sending me harassing letters. I could go back and forth on both sides of this. I tend to end up on the frustrated mother's side who just wants answers. And again, if you have nothing to hide, what's the harm? But maybe there's a reason Tracy didn't want them on the property. Because even though the search warrant isn't granted, they are still able to search the roads around their land.

And what they find brings Sarah back to Marvin, making her think that he might really have been the one to kill her daughter. And Heather might even be somewhere on his property. According to another article by Laurie Harrison for the Messenger Enquirer, the bloodhound hits a total of 13 times on a road leading to the dill property. Now listen, dogs can do no wrong. I get it. But I was a little skeptical about this because keep in mind, when they're doing this, it's

been over 10 years since Heather's abduction and I had no idea if it was even possible for a search dog to get a hit after all that time. So I actually looked up how long a scent marker can stay around. And the problem is, I can't find a consistent answer. Some people say that a scent marker will dissipate after five days. Others say that a bloodhound specifically can pick up scents that have been there for years. So since the organization that contacted Sarah uses bloodhounds, it's possible that they could have picked something up.

But there definitely isn't like an agreed upon, like, verified timeframe for things like this. But something I was able to find is that the dog used in this search wasn't actually certified as a search dog. So even though it hit 13 times, the results wouldn't have been considered valid by any form of like law enforcement, which is probably why KSP literally does nothing with this information once they get it. But because of this, there is some renewed public interest.

And one positive that comes from that is that police finally allow Sarah to come in and listen to the 911 call from Tim. But neither she nor the police discuss the specifics of what is said on that call publicly. And I'm not sure what she was hoping to get from hearing the call. Like, I don't know if she was worried that Tim is lying or what. I mean, it could be that she was just trying to learn anything she can since it's been so long. And, you know, as her mom, she's like, I might hear the piece that no one else can

put together. But nothing seems to come from her hearing that call. Several more years pass without any updates to Heather's case, though the entire time Sarah continues to make open records request to keep Heather's case alive. In 2012, Heather is included in a deck of playing cards featuring unsolved cases in Kentucky. If you guys listen to my show, The Deck, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. And Sarah succeeds in getting a heavily redacted file from the FBI released under the Freedom

of Information Act. But even with these little victories, again, nothing new comes to light. In February of 2013, Sarah files a civil suit in federal court demanding answers from the Kentucky State Police and the Henderson Police Department. Savannah Oglesby reports for the messenger that she claims they committed, quote, acts of misconduct during the investigation back in 1995, and she calls into question the validity of a variety of information, including the initial 911 call. Additionally, she calls into question the sketch of the suspect, the DNA report from

the two spots of blood, the investigative report, autopsy report, and the FBI files obtained through the FOIA. She's particularly skeptical of the sketch of the suspect because she says that it looks just like Marvin Dill's driver's license photo. And I'm sure you're thinking like, okay, if it looks like him, wouldn't that like lend credibility to the theory that it was him on the beach? But what she's saying is that it looks so much like him, and in particular, exactly like the photo on his driver's license, like down to the shading.

So she is alleging that police tried to pin the abduction on Marvin from the beginning and they just made that sketch look like him on purpose. She also alleges that there are various conflicting reports that point to corruption and negligence. For example, in the FBI's report, it states that Heather was last seen on a boat ramp in Henderson, whereas in the Kentucky State Police's report, it states that she was last seen on the beach. Now, I'm not sure which FBI report she's referring to here, because in the redacted file that was released in 2012, I couldn't find any mention of a boat ramp, but it's

totally possible that she has seen something that isn't publicly available. Ultimately, a judge throws out the lawsuit, stating that it lacks merit, and the Kentucky State Police stressed that they are still actively investigating the case, going over old leads, and thoroughly analyzing every tip that comes in. Although after 17 years, the tips that are coming in are super few and far between. Like there's one that comes in in August of 2014, when police get a tip that Heather's body is located in an undisclosed rural area in Henderson. But when they do a search, like they find nothing.

Later that year, Sarah herself gets a tip that Heather's body was dumped in the Green River. And when I heard that, I was like, wait, Green River, like Washington Green River killer? But as much as I try to figure that out, my source material never specifies where this is. And it actually turns out there are multiple rivers named the Green River in the United States. And there's one in Kentucky that feeds into the Ohio River.

So again, not 100% sure which one it was. The Kentucky one seems much more likely. But regardless of where, Sarah took this tip and she contacts Team Water's Sonar Search and Recovery, which is this nonprofit group based in Illinois. I think a documentary reports for the messenger that the group does extensive sonar searches of the river. But after several hours of searching, again, no Heather, they come up with nothing. There are even other tips over the following years, police get that Heather is in a cistern

or a water basin, even an oil tank. And each time they search somewhere new, but each time again, nothing. And finally things start to quiet down and they stay quiet for a few years until 2016, and Sarah gets another opportunity to listen to the 911 call. And when she does, she is shocked to find that the one she listens to is different than the one she heard back in 2008. Now it's important to note she doesn't explain exactly how they're different, but she is convinced that there's something really wrong, something fishy with how the police

have handled the investigation and the evidence. So she works with Attorney Chip Adams to file an appeal to access the chain of custody documents regarding the 911 call from the day that Heather disappeared. They want to see who exactly had access to this call, especially back in 2008, because they suspect that one of the tapes could have been altered. It takes almost a year, but in November of 2017, a judge sides with Sarah on the appeal and orders that the Kentucky State Police release the chain of custody records and the 911 call. By this point, Sarah is stating publicly that she believes the call that she listened

to back in 2008 was a fake, and that the Kentucky State Police have gravely mishandled the investigation. But she still isn't saying what the differences were in the calls. And her attorney isn't saying anything about that either. Although the attorney does kind of walk back Sarah's statements about the 2008 call being fake in an article for The Messenger by Mike Alexi. He states that he thinks the simpler explanation could be that there are two recordings because Tim made two different calls. One to the Indiana State Police and one to Kentucky State Police.

Since we haven't heard both of them, I don't know what's going on. That does seem maybe likely, although he didn't really give a ton of information. Didn't ISP just transfer his call to Kentucky? But I can't think of a reason to fake a 911 call from a witness reporting a crime. I mean, again, if you're in Sarah's head and you think that the police are trying to pin this on Marvin, maybe, but I don't know, I truly do not know. Now it's around this time that Sarah also comes forward with some new and really interesting information that could point to a possible motive.

Like up until this point, that's been one of the problems. There hasn't been a motive. I think the assumption was that she was taken by a predator who likely had sexual motives, but without finding her body, no one has ever known for sure. But now Sarah says that she believes Heather was more heavily involved in drugs than anyone originally suspected. According to her, the FBI file states that Heather was supposed to have gone into a witness protection program because she got involved with a high-profile drug ring and was exposed

to people involved in drugs and illegal sex work. And this is an absolute bombshell, right? I'm not sure if Sarah knew about all of this from the beginning, because throughout this whole thing, she has never mentioned this before now, so I have no idea where it's coming from. And if you remember, from the very beginning of this episode, she originally said that she didn't think her daughter's drug use had anything to do with her disappearance. But also, she has had to become her own investigator, so it's possible that she's learned things

that the public just doesn't have access to or something that the FBI found in the files that she has. But even with this bombshell, law enforcement doesn't publicly confirm if what she is alleging is true. So we just kind of have to take her word for it, whether you want to take it with a grain of salt or not. And her struggle with KSP isn't over yet, because even after they were ordered to release the documents, they failed to do so within the time limit they were given.

So in 2018, Sarah files a motion to hold the Kentucky State Police in contempt of court, and she wins. So they finally hand over the documentation and the 911 calls, and they have to reimburse her for court costs, which ends up being around $23,000. So she has everything, and now it seems like we're finally going to know once and for all if those calls were altered or different in any way, right? Well, here's the thing. After those calls were released, I couldn't find anything from Sarah or her attorney regarding

their validity. But that was only four years ago. Maybe something is still ongoing. We know the law moves slow, maybe an analysis moves slow. I don't know. Though that's not to say that she hasn't still been fighting for justice for her daughter over the last few years, or that there hasn't been any movement. Just nothing related to the calls.

As recently as October of 2021, there were skeletal remains found in the northern part of Henderson County, but dental records ruled them out as being heathers. Those remains that were found were never identified, and I haven't been able to find much of anything about that investigation, so I'm not even sure if that case has been classified as a homicide. Almost 30 years have passed since Heather Teague's abduction, and her family still doesn't have answers. But the passage of time hasn't impacted Sarah's drive to find out what happened to her daughter.

No parent should have to experience the loss of a child, but Sarah will continue to fight for answers until justice is finally served. If you have any information about Heather's disappearance, you can contact the Kentucky State Police at 502-782-1800. You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram, at crimejunkiepodcast. Don't forget that you can listen to every episode ad-free and get bonus episodes in our fan club, which you can find on our website, and I will be back next week with a brand

new episode. Crimejunkie is an audio-chuck production. So, what do you think, Chuck? Did you approve?