Crime Junkie - MURDERED: Amy Weidner

Episode Date: February 5, 2018

A teenage mother stays home from school one day with her daughter because she isn't feeling well. Just a few hours after her family leaves the house she is brutally attacked. Surely it had to be someone she knew. Did they know she would be home that day? It is a case that goes cold for nearly two decades before someone unexpected comes in and cracks the case wide open. 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/murdered-amy-weidner/    

Welcome back junkies, I knew you couldn't stay away. Listen, this week, Britt and I have a special favor to ask you. We want to keep this podcast totally free. We don't want to ask you for money. In fact, we want to give you free stuff, but in exchange, we need you to help us out. If you have an Apple account, please go on to Apple Podcasts and leave us a five-star rating and a written review. Here is the catch, though.

When you leave your written review, sign it with your Twitter username. Once a week, Britt and I will pick our absolute favorite review, contact you on Twitter, and send you some free crime-junkie swag. You can't buy it, you've got to earn it. It's totally free and takes less than two minutes, so please help us out so we can keep this show going for you. I think I know you well enough now to know that not even my podcast is enough to give you your fix, so Britt and I wanted to recommend to you a true crime podcast that we love called

True Crime Storytime. It's a lot like our show where they stick mostly to the facts, not a ton of back-and-forth banter, pretty clean, and Britt, you love the show because you hear stories that you've never even heard before, right? So this show is based in Australia, and it's by two wonderful, delightful hosts. They have the most adorable accents, and they profile mostly Australian crimes, which I personally don't know a ton about. Yeah, it's great for us to hear some stuff that we don't know about since we're crime

junkies, we are well-versed in all the American crimes, but they're giving us some new stories. So we're going to play you a quick clip so you know what to expect from True Crime Storytime. Alright junkies, that was a lot of talking, so I'm just going to jump right into our episode, and this week we're talking about a case that took place in my backyard of Indianapolis in 1989. It's the story of a young girl named Amy Weidner, who lived on the south side of Indianapolis with her mother, her older brother JP, and her two younger sisters Tanya and Cassie. Her mother was divorced, so she was raising four kids on her own, working full-time, and

she was doing the best she could. She thought she was keeping a close eye on her kids, and she didn't think she had anything to worry about. They were all really great kids, and especially Amy, she was super studious, very involved in school, she was always on the honor roll, but when Amy was 13, going on 14, she came to her mother in tears one day, and just said, Mom, please don't hate me. And her mom's like, Amy, I could never hate you. What is going on?

And Amy revealed to her that she was actually five and a half months pregnant. Yes, at age 13, again, this is the second time you've heard a story like this, and everyone's kind of shocked that she could hide it for that long, but when they were that young, you really, I feel like a lot of girls hold it all in their stomach, and she said Amy just started wearing a lot of baggy clothes. It literally never even crossed her mind, and when she asked her who the dad was, it turns out the dad was a guy named Tony Abercrombie, who was 17 years old, and it was actually one of JP, her older brother's best friends.

And her mom said that she felt totally betrayed because she had this kid over all the time, he was like family, and she had no idea that any of this was going on behind her back. And in October of 1987, Amy gives birth to her daughter Emily, and you want to talk about a superhero? Do you want to guess how many days of school this girl missed after she gave birth? An obscenely low amount. Six days of school. So a week, a week and a day.

A week and a day. I need more time, like if I come back from a trip from Vegas, like I need more time to recover, this girl pushed a human out of her body and just like went back to school. That's incredible. Go Amy. Yeah. Yeah. And she was super, she was super studious, like I said before, and she was really dedicated

to keeping up her studies. Before she gave birth, she was going into school early all the time to make sure she wasn't going to miss anything before when she was out. And afterwards, she obviously went right back to school. She didn't want to miss anything. And her mom said, you know what, Tony is obviously a really bad influence. I don't want him to have any part of your life. He's not going to be friends with JP anymore.

He's not going to be around this baby and you're not going to have anything to do with him. I don't know if that caused a fight. I don't know what Amy's feelings were or if she realizes how much this changed her life, but Tony stayed away and he really didn't have a relationship with his daughter. Amy's family really comes together and supports her. So her mom and her three siblings help raise Emily for her. She still has a really good social life.

She's still doing well in school. Her mom would babysit. She would take the baby to a sitter while she would go to school. And her life is going actually so well. Like she doesn't go off the rails at all. She's handling it all in stride, but Amy's story ends on November 13th, 1989. At this point, she's 16 years old and her daughter, Emily, is now two. And that morning that she wakes up, she isn't feeling super good.

And so she tells her mom that she actually wants to stay home from school. And her mom offers to take Emily to the babysitter, but Amy says, you know what, like I'm going to be home. I'm not feeling that bad. I just have a really sore throat, so I can watch her just leave her here with me. Around 9.30, her mom calls to check on Amy, but there's no answer. She keeps trying a couple of more times. And when Amy still isn't picking up the phone, she calls her neighbor and asks her to go

knock on the door. So her neighbor walks next door, gives it a knock, and she waits. But no one comes to the door and she doesn't hear a thing from inside. So she goes back and calls Amy's mom. And at this point, Amy's mom is super worried. And so she goes home immediately to check on her. And when she walks in the house and she's looking for her, she looks through the whole bottom half of the house.

She looks in the kitchen, she looks in the living room, and she finally wakes, makes her way up to Amy's bedroom. And when she opens the door, she finds Amy laying on her bed in blood. And there's blood on the walls. It's a total violent scene. She's been raped, she's been beaten, and then she was strangled. And her mom said it was just a total, just like shock to her system. And she said no parent should ever have to find their child in that kind of condition.

They should never have to walk in and find somebody like that. I don't think anyone should ever have to walk into any room and find anyone like that. No. And so she then goes and obviously looks for Emily to make sure Emily's okay. And she finds her. Oh my God. She's totally fine, but I remember she's two, so she can like kind of put together sentences and she calls her mom Mamie instead of Amy.

And what she pieces together is Emily keeps saying she was trying to lift Mamie up. She was trying to wake Mamie up. So obviously she was there when her mother was dead. She was trying to wake her up. And then she keeps telling her grandma that Mamie was mean, meaning that she was fighting back with whoever was attacking her, which is just yelling and all this stuff, which is just horrifying to think about a little two year old having to watch their mother be brutally attacked like that.

But she was only two years old, so she couldn't give any information on who it was or what that person looked like. I mean, she really just had this thing happen to her that she didn't know how to express as a child. These are called to the scene and they begin to process it. And what they take with them is they take her bedding because there's semen found on her bedding. They take some clothes.

There are some hairs that don't match Amy that they collect. And then they actually cut out a portion of the plaster wall that has this bloody palm print on it. And they take that with them as something to compare as they start doing their investigation and finding suspects. In two days of her murder, she has a funeral and detectives find it super important to go to this funeral because what they really believe is that someone who would have done this would have been someone that knew her because the only thing that was taken from

the home was this stereo system. So they believe that whoever would have murdered her for this had to have known it was there. It's not like they ransacked the house and we're looking for everything. And they likely would have thought that no one was in the home. They probably knew the family's schedule and assumed that if they went early in the morning, right after everyone left for school and for work, that the house would be empty. Well, and isn't it like a thing too that killers will go to their victims' funerals and stuff like that?

Or is that just a TV show? No, totally. They often go to funerals or they'll be part of the search parties. So they say a lot of times that a person, whether they were in the victim's life before or not, they want to insert themselves within an investigation to be close to the family, to see the reactions of people and more or less to kind of see this chaos that they've created. So they go to this funeral.

They actually get copies of the registry of people who attended the guest book. And the first person they look at in this case is the brother. And that's not too weird because you always look at the closest relatives when a murder like this happens, but they compare the brother's handprint to the handprint found on the wall. They compare his hair samples to the hair found and none of it matches. And later on, her brother, when he's doing an interview about this on 48 hours, is super torn up because you have to remember he's 17, 18 years old at the time. And what they're basically accusing him of is sexually assaulting his sister.

But they didn't... In front of his niece. In front of his niece, but they didn't have DNA at the time to exclude him from that. So there's kind of just this thing that's been looming over him and obviously people know that he's being brought in and questioned, but they really push heavily on him. When he doesn't match anything, they think, well, maybe it's one of his friends. But the second person they go to is Tony Abercrombie, which you remember is Emily's dad and the guy who got Amy pregnant when she was only 13.

And so Tony Abercrombie, I can't be the only person who just imagines an Abercrombie and Fitch model. Right? But he is the farthest thing from an Abercrombie and Fitch model. I can't find the picture that they showed on 48 hours, but this guy is like backwards Indiana. It's like 1989 and they show this picture of him. He's got these little shorts on and he's this long, lanky guy with a mullet and a trucker

hat and I promise you, not an Abercrombie and Fitch model. Oh my gosh. Well, good to know. Yeah. Thank you for the visual. Anytime. Anytime. They compare him to the handprint and the hair as well, but there's absolutely no match

and he has a really solid alibi, so they kind of move on from him. As they're talking to people in Amy's life, a couple of people point a finger at a boy named Troy Jackson. He was a young man who lived actually in the house behind him, so he was familiar with the family. He would have known about this stereo that they think was the reason for this break-in in the first place and he would have known the family's schedule and expected no one to be home at the time.

Now, remember, it's 1989. They can't compare his DNA and just rule him out, so they bring him in just a couple of days after the murder and they actually take pictures of him all over. They take pictures of his hands, they take pictures of his arms, they take pictures of his neck, and all of this to see if there's any kind of defensive wounds on him. Because remember, Mamie was fighting back, Mamie was being mean. She absolutely had defensive wounds and whoever attacked her would have had some kind of scratches on them.

But he's got nothing on him. They even take his hair samples, which don't match any hairs found at the scene, and they compare his palm print, which didn't match the palm print on the wall. But he still seems to be a really good suspect, so they give him a polygraph test. And this is another crime-junkie rule to live by. I don't care who you are, I don't care what the situation is, never, ever take a polygraph test. Ever.

No. It's the worst idea. Yeah, I've never seen anything good come of it, so they're not admissible in court. You can't prove anything with them, and they call them a lie detector test, but they're not detecting lies. They're just reading your heartbeat, they're reading how much you sweat, I sweat like a faucet, I'm sweating right now. So I'm a super anxious person, so I would just automatically fail a test.

Yeah, 100%. So they're super inaccurate, and whether you pass or you fail, or it's inconclusive, it's never a good look. Yeah, I mean, it doesn't, again, it doesn't actually prove things, if police think you really did it, and you pass, they'll think you just passed, again, because it's not a lie detector test, they rule it out. I feel like it's really only used to make people look suspicious. So don't do it, I don't care who's you know that's gone missing, and especially if someone

you know has gone missing or been murdered, like all the more reason for you to be all worked up and not do well on this test. That's a little bit of a high pressure situation. Right. However, this is the exception to the rule, it actually works out in his favor, and he passes the polygraph test and kind of moves off of their radar. But at this point, they totally run out of leads, and people stop talking and there's no new information coming in.

And this is why stuff like crime stoppers is so important. When you have cold cases like this, that were done so long ago where there is no evidence or the evidence is just too old, a lot of times the only way to progress a case is with tips of people calling in, people maybe who have remembered something or their allegiances have changed, and they call in and actually can, they can actually push a case forward. So as a reminder of all the good stuff crime stoppers does, we're going to take a minute to tell you a little more about them. So do you know what the difference between sending a tip to crime stoppers versus the

police is? I don't know. I guess who has the better reward? The difference between submitting a tip to a police officer and submitting a tip to crime stoppers is anonymity. If you want to have a police officer follow up with you, which a lot of people do, it's important that you go to the detective directly. If you go through crime stoppers, their number one goal is keeping the tipster anonymous.

They have no idea who is calling in, whether it's by phone, by website tip, or through their app P3. Their goal is to keep the tipster anonymous so they won't be following up with you and the detective won't be following up with you. They will just get leads to go on. Sometimes tipster anonymity is super important when a tipster is in fear for their life or they are afraid to testify, so crime stoppers plays a central role in that. If you have any more questions about how crime stoppers works, feel free to contact your

local crime stoppers, and if you want more information on crime stoppers of central Indiana, go to Crimetips.org. So from 1989 until 2002, nothing happens in the case. In 2002, at this point, Amy's file is totally cold and it is in a pile with 800 other cold cases in Indianapolis. That is 800-800. That is so many cold cases. Yeah.

And if you guys know anything about cold case teams, it's not usually a high priority for departments. I mean, especially if they're small departments, all their resources are going to all of the murders that are happening right now. So a lot of the times cold case units are maybe one or two guys, if that. But it is our dream volunteer position, so... To be a cold case detective? Yeah.

Wouldn't you just love to sit in a room and open up all those files? Yeah, that's the dream. And find something? I would do it for free, again, dream volunteer position. They should totally have volunteer detective. Again, that's what I was trying to do when I started volunteering for crime stoppers. It's not a thing, but it should be. So anyways, I'll do it.

So while it's sitting in this pile of 800 cases, it gets brought to the top because one day this call comes in and it's this totally weird dude who goes on and on about how he had this dream about a murder. And he's not even from the area, but he saw this girl and he starts explaining details of the crime and he thinks he knows who did it. And police have no idea what he's talking about. So they start digging through their cold cases and they actually find one that matches the description he's talking about and it's Amy's case.

But what they realize is this guy's probably a nut job because everything he's talking about is just stuff that could have been found in all of the old news articles done on her murder. But even though this guy's a nut job, him calling was totally a good thing because it brought this case to the top and drew detective's attention. And it got a little bit of attention in 2002 when this detective on the cold team worked on it and he took it as far as he could, but he really didn't find any breakthroughs. He had to keep moving on and going to the next case.

Now, in 2011 is when it breaks again because one of the local Indianapolis papers does an article on the case which spurs the family and Amy's friends to create a remembering Amy Facebook page. Detectives are still keeping an eye on this case, so when this Facebook page pops up, they actually go on and there's some stuff being said that they take some interest in and they want to print out some pages to add to Amy's file. But Facebook, it's 2011 and you got to remember these guys are cold case detectives. So most of the stuff they're dealing with is like 90s or before.

They have no idea how Facebook works. So just so happens, lucky for them, the cold case guys are sitting right next to another sergeant named Bill Carter. And Bill is not a detective. He's not in homicide. He is actually a nuisance abatement officer. And what that means is he spends a lot of time just doing like quality of life stuff. He monitors like underage drinking.

He keeps track of liquor laws. He does a lot of monitoring on Facebook to see if there are parties going on where he would find underage drinking and make sure things don't get out of control. He also does a ton of stuff with dog fighting, which like, oh, well, hero, I know, I know the prophets, the prophets. So he's really familiar with Facebook. And these detectives ask him if he could print off a couple of pages for them for this cold case.

Well, he kind of gets to the bug in him. He starts looking through this Facebook page and that prompts him to go look at her file. And then he eventually even talks to the family just to kind of let them know, like, hey, we know this Facebook page is up and operating. He gets to know them a little bit. And he knows what the cold case detectives stack is like, you know, I mean, again, they remember they have 800 cases. So he kind of takes Amy's case on as a pet project.

And 100% in his free time, he starts looking into it, re-interviewing people, and he starts entering her information into a database. So this is kind of a fun fact, which seems kind of obvious, but I never thought about. A lot of these cold cases are all on paper. Computers weren't even a thing, much less the internet or databases. And Detective Carter or Sergeant Carter actually would put all of this stuff into a database. So that way, when he was interviewing people, if a name popped up, he could just enter that name into the database and see if any in any of the files or interviews that name had popped

up before. Instead of what they would have to do previously is just look through every single piece of paper over and over and over again. And all these 800 cases, it takes someone manually to go in and actually put these in every single time. Oh my gosh. Again, I would volunteer to do that. I know.

That sounds incredible. I know. I've like put some feelers out to the IMPD to be like, if you ever need someone to enter, just random facts in a computer, like just let me at the murder files. But you know, no one is taking me up on my call yet. So he enters all this into a database, and that database not only is it good for interviewing, but I have to imagine, I don't know this for a fact, but if they don't even have that information in a database that they can look at, I have to think that it's not in a database

that anyone else can look at. So if a Jane Doe were found in another state or if there was a murder that was similar to something that happened a long time ago, I have to wonder if the only way for people to connect that would be to start calling or making connections because there's no way to just like Google it if it's not already in NamUs, you know what I mean? Yeah. It seems like there would be absolutely no way to cross reference it against anything else.

Right. So Bill's putting all this information in. He's re-interviewing a lot of people, and he re-interviews one of the former neighbors of the Wideners, and they say, you know who you should talk to. There's this kid named Rodney Dank, and he might know something because he was an old neighbor and he was really good friends with JP. Bill looks into this guy. He's a divorced dad, one son currently living at home with his mom, and Bill decides, you

know what? I'm going to drop by this guy's house. I'm going to see if he can point me in anyone's direction, see what this guy's story is. Well, Dank wasn't home, so Bill leaves his card and says, hey, when your son gets home, have him give me a call. I'd love to set up a time to meet. Rodney gets this message, and he actually calls Sergeant Carter right back, and they set up a time to meet, but when Sergeant Carter goes to meet him, he's totally MIA.

So immediately this sets up some red flags, and Bill Carter runs his name. It comes up that in 91, he was charged with battery, and in 97, he was charged with larceny. So we know this guy isn't a perfect angel. He's robbed something. He's beat someone. Both these things happen in Amy's case. So they take Prince from his prior arrest and compare them to the palm print. And you want to guess what happens?

Does it match? It's a total match. And here's where I have a question again, because I didn't realize that Prince weren't auto-compared to things, to like cold cases. So I don't know if the Prince and Amy's case weren't uploaded, or if like the type of arrest he had. Maybe he never got convicted, and so then they didn't compare his prints. They didn't have like a reasonable right to do that.

But it took him, tracking him down, and seeing that he actually might be a suspect to compare them. But when he compared them, they were a total match. So they find out that he rented a car, and they use the GPS to track him to a friend's house. And when he comes out of the house, like totally not suspicious at all, he just yells, I didn't do it! And then slits his wrist with a knife.

Oh, real innocent. Now he's not dead. He's like a total idiot, obviously. So they bring him into the hospital and interview him there. And the family is totally shocked. This kid was a really good friend to JP, Amy's brother. They saw him all the time. They were friends with him.

They saw him after Amy died. Like they grew up with this kid. He was obviously at the funeral, and again in the documentary there's like this creepy footage where he's actually like signed the guest book. So just like police thought, her killer was there. They just didn't know it was him. And they got final confirmation when his DNA matched the semen from the blanket in sheets. And when they're interviewing him in the hospital, he said that basically it was just

a robbery gun terribly wrong. He had no idea she was going to be there. He just wanted to take the stereo, and when he was taking it, she actually came around the corner and he just freaked out and hit her over the head and then raped her. And this is the stuff that I can't understand because I get a robbery gun wrong. I can understand you freaking out and hurting her. I can even like understand logically where you would like, well, I've got to murder her because she knows who I am, whatever, like as a psychopath, you're crazy.

But I don't understand how something that's supposed to be stealing a stereo turns into rape. Yeah, that seems like an escalation. And I mean, forgive me if I'm judging this guy, but also stealing your buddy's stereo also seems a little bit short sighted. Yeah. I mean, like you're totally like maybe he was going to pawn it. You can't just have that stereo in your house.

Like obviously they're going to know it's gone. But yeah, it's a huge escalation to be like, oh, shit, I knocked her out. Might as well rape her while I'm here. Yeah. Because I can see like rape for the sake of rape. Like you're going after something, but again, to be like an afterthought is just so weird to me. It happens all the time.

This is not actually unusual, but it's something that I can never wrap my head around. As he's telling the police his story, his story actually changes a couple of times. And one time he actually says that someone else had helped him and kind of kept an eye out and that they were watching the house. Then one time they helped him steal it. Family and police are still not even 100% convinced to this day that he acted alone, but he just kept saying he's confused and he doesn't remember. And because no one else came forward and they didn't have any other semen or palm prints,

they've never been able to convict anyone. And it's likely if there was someone else that they were just a lookout and they stayed outside of the house, but we never know. We probably won't know unless someone from Indianapolis hears this and wants to call Crime Stappers, 317-262-TIPS. But he says he doesn't remember ever seeing the baby or hearing the baby. And thank God. Like I don't know where she was in the house, but I can't imagine what he would have done

if he saw her. I don't know if he was high while this happened. But it's just a total miracle that she stayed out of the way. Kind of a weird side note about Rodney Denk is he killed Amy at age 18. That son that I was talking about Rodney that he had. So at age 16, almost 17, his son actually killed his mother by beating her with a baseball bat. So at almost the same age.

Whoa. Yeah, they both committed like a brutal murder. And it's just, again, super strange, like this kind of come back to that, is it genetic? Is it nature? Is it nurture? But his son went to prison and Rodney, as far as we know, never killed anyone ever again. So it's kind of shocking that he would murder this girl that he knew just over a stereo. But as of 2015, her family actually still lives in the house.

That it all happened. My mom said, you know, like I would have loved to move and not been here with the memories, but I was a single mom of four kids. I couldn't afford to just up and move. So Amy's room now is used for her grandkids and they did this beautiful ceremony where they shared memories of Amy and they honored Sergeant Carter. And there's this cutest video where they hold a press conference and Sergeant Carter is talking about being able to bring justice to the family and arresting Rodney Denk.

And he's like all teary-eyed and crying like while he's talking about this. And he is my absolute favorite. I think some of the best investigations come from those who are outside and not at all because the people who are inside do a bad job. I think there's so much pressure on them and there's a lot of politics involved. And you get so close to something for so long and you have 800 cases that you're worried about, you know what I mean? But sometimes it takes someone from the outside who's really just a fresh set of eyes.

Right. And who's doing it because just out of the goodness of his heart, his job is not on the line here. He has nothing that helps him with this. He just has a desire to help this family and help this girl. And he did. And now Bill Carter is my hero. Yeah, definitely.

On top of that, he also saved profits. Yeah. And now he saves profits. So, you know, I've just got, it's fine, I love him. Thank you guys for listening to another episode of Crime Junkie. Please don't forget to go on and give us a rating and a written review. We'd love to send you some Crime Junkies swag. You can also follow us on Twitter at CrimeJunkiePod and on Instagram at CrimeJunkiePodcast.

And don't forget to go to our website CrimeJunkiePodcast.com to sign up for our newsletter. Our first official newsletter went out at the end of January. It's got a bunch of great stuff like crimes we're following, books we love, podcasts we love, things we're into, and all the stuff that goes on behind the mic that you don't get to hear about on these episodes. So sign up for that to get an extra fix, and until then, we'll see you next week. Crime Junkie is written and hosted by me. All of our sound production and editing comes from Britt Praywat, and all of our music, including

our theme, comes from Justin Daniel. Crime Junkie is an audio chuck production. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?