Crime Junkie - MISSING: Margaret Ellen Fox

Episode Date: May 25, 2020

In 2017 the FBI released a chilling recorded phone call that may be the only clue as to what happened to Margaret Ellen Fox back in 1974.  For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/missing-margaret-ellen-fox/ 

Hi, crime junkies. I'm Ashley Flowers, and I'm actually solo today. If you listened all the way to the end of last week's episode, you'll know that Britt and I planned to take this week off for Memorial Day. But I also know you guys need a fix, so I wanted to tell you a little mini story that I just came across to get you by until we're back next week. This is a story I had never heard of before until one of our listeners sent it to me. In the second I heard the chilling recorded phone call that was recently released in this still unsolved case, I knew I had to share it with you guys because one of you out there just might hold the key information to a question that's baffled the FBI for over 45 years.

It happened to Margaret Ellen Fox. In June of 1974, Margaret Fox had just graduated the eighth grade. Being the independent girl she was, the Philadelphia Daily reported that she had big plans that summer to start working so that she could make her own money. You know how we all were when we got our first jobs, just wanting that little taste of financial freedom, the first small steps to adulthood. But being just 14, Margaret didn't have a lot of specific labor skills specifically, but her and her younger cousin Lynn came up with an idea. They would place an ad in their local Burlington, New Jersey newspaper offering in-home babysitting services. They listed

both their phone numbers and not long after publishing the ad, Lynn got a call from a man named John Marshall. He was looking to hire a babysitter for his five-year-old son at their home in Mount Holly. Mount Holly, New Jersey is about seven-ish miles from Burlington, New Jersey. According to Marissa Payne, who wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Lynn's parents weren't okay with her taking a job in a different town. She was younger after all. She'd have to take the bus there, and they just weren't comfortable with it. But Lynn knew that this was a too-good-to-be-true kind of gig. The guy was offering $40 a week for just four hours a day, and he said they had a swimming pool that they could use, and

he'd even cover their bus fare to get there and back. She didn't want this opportunity to go by, so she passed along his information to Margaret, who was thrilled at the opportunity. Margaret made contact with Mr. Marshall on June 19th, and he asked her if she could start in two days on the 21st. He gave her specific instructions about what bus to take and where to meet him and his wife so they could take her to their home. Now, Margaret's parents were okay with the arrangement, so everything seemed great. But the next day, June 20th, Mr. Marshall called again. This time, he even speaks with Margaret's dad. He tells him that his mother-in-law had just died, so there would be no need to have a babysitter come

to their home the next day. Now, Margaret was bummed at this loss of a new job before she even got the chance to start it, but she was relieved when the man called back on the 21st, offering a second chance for work, starting Monday, June 24th. So on the morning of June 24th, Margaret set off for her first day on the job. She packed a swimsuit and carried her glasses with her, and her 11-year-old brother, Joe, walked her to the bus stop to see her off. Now, Margaret's parents asked her to call when she arrived, just so they knew she made it okay. But 9 o'clock came and went, 9.30, 10. Her parents began to worry, but they tried to ease their own minds, thinking, you know, maybe she just forgot. Maybe she

got there, you got a five-year-old kid, like she just jumped right into it. But their worry only grew as the day slipped on. Margaret was supposed to be home by 2.30, and when that time came and went without any word from her, her mom was in a full panic. According to the Courier Post, back in 74, the first thing she did was call the number Margaret had left behind in case of emergencies. At about 3.30, a woman picks up on the other end of the phone, and when Mrs. Fox asked to speak with Margaret, the woman says there's no one here by that name. Now, there isn't any more information about this call, and I don't know how long it went on. I have to assume it kind of ended abruptly because Mrs. Fox keeps trying to

call back. It rings and it rings, and this time, someone else answers the phone. And the person who answers is totally different and tells Mrs. Fox, you know you're calling a pay phone outside of an AMP, right? No, she had no idea that she was calling a pay phone. And that's when she gets sick to her stomach, because now Margaret had been gone all day, and the only way she had to reach her daughter was a fake number. Mrs. Fox then starts looking up any and all people with the last name Marshall in the phone book, and she just starts calling all of them. I mean, this has to be a mix up, maybe a transposed number or something. Nothing bad could have happened. Now, at home, they found a note

that Margaret had left with more detail about the travel arrangements for the job. John Marshall said that either he or his wife would pick Margaret up from the bus stop to take her to their home. And he told her to look for a red or maybe even orange-ish Volkswagen at High and Mill Streets, which is where the bus would have dropped her off. So while Margaret is making call after call, her husband drives the 15 minutes to Mount Holly with a friend, and they start to look for any sign of his daughter. But neither parent have any luck, so that evening they call in police to help. By the time police arrive, even they know that this is all wrong. There was almost no talk of Margaret being a runaway. Instead,

just after midnight on what's now the 25th, her missing person file was officially opened and police start to investigate, starting with her bus ride. They found out that multiple people had seen her on the bus, and she got off at the exact spot that she was instructed to, right at High and Mill. Now, there were a couple of sightings of Margaret talking to someone, a man, but nothing that ever panned out. And any attempt to glean information from the phone number John Marshall gave was a lost cause, too, because police found out exactly what the family did, that in fact, it was a pay phone outside of the AMP in Mount Holly. But police found something interesting. The assistant manager at the store, can you

guess what his name was? The assistant manager's name was John, or sometimes Jack Marshall. Now armchair detectives all over the world are screaming right now because this seems like way more than just a coincidence. But police quickly ruled him out. Though I don't love the reason why. So Lieutenant Ben English, like the guy who's kind of in charge early on, spoke to Ron Avery for an interview in the Courier Post, and he told Ron, oh, I'm totally friends with John Marshall. And he says, quote, I've known him for 25 years. He's the father of five grown children. And I'm sure he's not involved. End quote. And you guys, my research notes just have a bunch of expletives because what? I mean, that is

not how you rule someone out just because a cop is friends with him. Now to be fair, Margaret's sister-in-law, who is obviously much older than her, also said that she knew him too and never thought that he was involved. But I pray someone in the last 45 years did more than just say, hey, I know this guy, he's cool. And it was reported by Lisa Ryan that the assistant manager was given a polygraph and passed and he had an alibi. He was actually working at the time. But I don't know how to weigh all of this information without the details who verified the alibi, who gave him the poly? Was it his friends? But here's the thing, I don't necessarily think he was the person that did it. But I do think he

could be the key to solving this disappearance because what are the odds that some random person picks a pay phone in the parking lot of a place where the manager is a guy with the same name that our perp is using as a fake name? I mean, it seems too farfetched to be a coincidence. I think whoever made that call knew John, maybe as a friend, maybe they were a regular of the store, they knew to use his name, they knew the store, and they knew the area. Now by day three, the media gets wind of the case and strange reports start coming in. Parents calling police and telling them that their young daughters too had been contacted about fake babysitting jobs. Though in every other case, the girls weren't

allowed to go meet up with the stranger, so they had no idea what kind of terrible fate they had escaped until after Margaret had gone missing. This made police even more sure that they weren't dealing with some kind of accident or impulse abduction. This was well planned and Margaret was targeted. If there was anyone who questioned this conclusion, their mind was changed when four days after she went missing, a phone call came into the Fox home from the supposed abductor asking for ransom money. I'll play you a short clip of this call that was released by the FBI in 2017. $10,000 might be a lot of bread, but your daughter's life is a butter topic. If that

didn't give you full body chills, you might be broken. I was shook by that call the first time that I heard it. I mean, I literally had to play it multiple times because my mind couldn't even like wrap around it. So I'm going to play it for you one more time again. $10,000 might be a lot of bread, but your daughter's life is a butter topic. So in that call, the caller says $10,000 might be a lot of bread, but your daughter's life is the buttered topping. And then that's Margaret's mom you hear on the other end asking who the caller is. Now how much more of this call got recorded? I don't actually know. This is all the FBI would ever give. And initially they didn't even release the audio of this.

Prior to 2017, all they did was told the newspapers what the man says. I mean, it was such odd phrasing. I think that maybe they were hoping someone would recognize just the words themselves. What I find interesting is like the fact that the specific phrasing was about, you know, food that you'd find at a supermarket, like where John Marshall worked, where the payphone was, it never gets brought up. Maybe it's just me, maybe I'm spiraling, but I think it's a little bit bizarre. It is very unique phrasing. So they don't release the audio, they just release what was said, but they decide to release it in 2017 on the 45th anniversary of her disappearance. And to me, that's a little astounding because, my God, why not

release this sooner? If there was nothing for 45 years, why not see if someone can recognize this guy's voice? The Philadelphia Inquirer posed the same question to authorities and they were told, quote, release of the call was not previously possible because the audio had not been clear. The FBI spent years working with developing technology to enhance the tape for digital release, end quote, which I kind of get, but not fully. I mean, they had the tape in the 70s. Could they not have played it on the news? I understand you have to change it for digital release, but why not when it first happened? I know we've come a long way in forensic testing, but I feel like we've had a pretty good audio equipment for some years now. And I mean, to be

totally completely fair, I know zero about the condition of this tape back in 74 or 2017 or anytime in between. So I can't pass judgment. I just wish people in the area could have heard this voice sooner before the speaker could potentially be long gone and when people's memories were still very fresh. But it's worth noting that this call came in just one day after the press first started reporting about Margaret's case. So it's also possible that this call was just a terrible hoax and the letter that followed it could have been too. In a Philadelphia inquirer story written by Jan Heffler, it says that the day after the call came in, a note arrived at the family's home and it actually gave instructions about exactly how to prepare and package the money

and it even made mention of a specific blouse and glasses that Margaret had been wearing, though it's possible that those details were already released to the public, which is why a lot of people wonder if this is the hoax because why wait four days? If this truly was a ransom, you know, information comes out to the public on day three and then all of a sudden there's this call on day four, this letter on day five. It seems like somebody who was trying to take advantage of the family. Now, even though her parents withdrew the money and were ready to go meet the demands, another note ended up arriving saying that they quote goofed and the deal was off. And that was the last time they heard from the caller or the note writer. The FBI was able to

pull fingerprints from the note back in the day. But when they tried to search in their local databases, nothing matched, which meant either this guy had no criminal history or he wasn't local like we thought. I would assume that in the year since they've compared the fingerprints to national databases, but that is strictly an assumption and not something I was able to confirm. So in August of the same year, without any leads as to where Margaret might be, the FBI released a sketch of a man that they wanted to talk to in relation to the crime and it was published in the Burlington Times. He was white between 35 and 40, about 510, 200 to 230 pounds. And notably the article said that he had very blue eyes like piercing blue eyes. He also had light blonde or reddish hair

and very noticeably white teeth. And just like the description of the car given to Margaret to look out for, they thought that he probably drove a like reddish orange Volkswagen back in 74. This lead seemed promising, but persons of interest would come and be cleared and go. And police and the FBI got no closer to finding Margaret. There were twinges of hope as the years passed. In 76, the Courier Post reported on a 53-year-old man who confessed to her killing, but it was ultimately found that he was just lying. Then in 77, Central New Jersey Home News reported on a 31-year-old man named John Houseman who actually was arrested for the murder of a 15-year-old girl named Patty. And in an eerie similarity to Margaret's case, John actually

lured Patty to his home by responding to her ad for a babysitting gig and making a fake offer for work. Now, the fact that his first name was John, I found to be extra interesting, but ultimately police even ruled that he wasn't connected to Margaret's case. Jan Heffler reported that in 79, police even looked closely at a sex offender who lived very close to where Margaret was dropped off by the bus. And he even drove like the same kind of car that they were looking for. And I don't know how exactly they got to him if they were just looking up all of the sex offenders in the area or all of the people with that kind of car, which I know they did. But either way, this guy ends up being ruled out as well because he had an alibi as a ham radio

operator, which apparently they keep like very detailed logbooks of who they communicate with and when, which police were able to verify. But I always have to wonder, I mean, if they're verifying this alibi four years later, can you really be 100% sure if he says I talked to, you know, person with XYZ handle and they go to XYZ person, you know, it was four years ago, maybe they have a logbook that matches up, maybe not. To me, it's a little bit of a question mark, but they knew something that I don't and ruled this guy out. The next little bit of hope came in 88, when about an hour or so away from where Margaret lived with her family, a young woman's remains were found in a shallow grave covered by two tires. It seems that by the time they made the possible connection to

Margaret in 92, her dental records had been lost. So according to Asbury Park Press, it was 10 years before they were able to do a comparison with this Jane Doe and Margaret through DNA, only to realize that they weren't a match. Now that Jane Doe is still a Jane Doe and Margaret was still missing around the time this testing was done in 1998. In the 10 years between finding those remains and getting conclusive testing done, there was also a single piece of jaw bone found in a yard in Mount Holly. And this was in 1990, but no other remains were found. And the bananas part about this is, I couldn't find any follow up articles about this jaw bone. So I have no idea where the jaw bone is, if anything came of it. And if it was ever found to belong to anyone,

I mean, this is just another huge question mark in this case. And that's really all we have. Even all these years later are just question marks. The FBI says they have a long memory and they will never give up on this case. Most people believe Margaret is deceased. And if she is, her killer needs to be caught. But also, what if she's not? What if somehow, some way she's still alive? Keep your eyes open. Talk to the people in your family who would have been alive when Margaret went missing in 74. Show them her picture, play them the audio recording from the ransom call. Because decades later, the FBI's only hope at closing this case is you, that one person who knows something, even if you don't know, you know it. Anyone with information about Margaret's whereabouts is

asked to call the FBI Newark Field Office at 973-792-300. Or you can call the Burlington City Police Department at 609-386-0262, extension 211. Thanks so much for listening to this little mini episode. We will be back next week with our regularly scheduled programming to see pictures and all source material for this episode. You can find that all on our website crimejunkiepodcast.com and make sure to follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast. Crimejunkie is an audio chuck production, so what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?