Crime Junkie - MURDERED: Erica Gene Shultz

Episode Date: March 7, 2022

From the moment her sister Erica’s phone went to voice mail, Emily Corbin knew something was wrong. But thanks to all those true crime shows – and countless episodes of Crime Junkie – she also knew exactly what she had to do to find her. Her tenacity not only led police to Erica, but helped solve her murder and two others -- and took the worst kind of serial predator off the streets.  Anyone with information that may be helpful to investigators regarding Harold David Haulman III and other possible victims should call the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI or submit a tip online at tips.fbi.gov  To access the Crime Junkie “If I Go Missing” form visit HERE.  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/murdered-erica-gene-shultz/

Hi, Crime Junkies, I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And the story I have for you today is one that first came to our attention in the spring of 2021 when we got an email from a listener named Emily that started like this. Hello, Ashley and Britt. My name is Emily, and until December 6th of 2020, I was a religious listener and Crime Junkie fan club member. I still love you both and your show.

I had to stop listening for a while because my 26-year-old autistic sister went missing and I became a full-time investigator working 18-plus-hour days trying to find her. I used a lot of my Crime Junkie knowledge. My sister's name is Erika Jean Schultz, and she was from Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. She went on to tell us the most incredible story of one sister fighting for justice for another. And she sent us another text message that said, quote, it's because of Crime Junkie that I had the knowledge and the courage to take the actions necessary, end quote, and I truly

believe it's because of the actions she took that a serial predator was taken off the streets. Emily asked us to tell her sister's story, and really it's her story too, because she thinks our platform could help get the word out and possibly help others find closure. So with the help of her sister Emily, here is the story of Erika Jean Schultz. At around noon on Saturday, December 5, 2020, Emily Corbin is working from home in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania when she hears a notification on her phone. It's a text from someone she knows named Donna, and she wants to know if Emily's sister, 26-year-old Erika Schultz, happened to be with her.

Donna has something she needs to drop off to Erika's apartment, but she hasn't been able to get a hold of Erika, and she isn't answering her phone. Emily says no, Erika isn't with her, but she says don't worry, I'll track her down and have her give you a call back. Emily punches in her sister's number, but Erika doesn't answer for her either, which isn't a super big deal. Emily knows that Erika loves her a good Saturday morning sleep in, so she's either at home in bed with the ringer off, or maybe she just got called in last minute to cover an extra

shift at work. And if that's the case, their mom probably drove her there, but Emily checks with their mom who says that she hasn't seen or heard from Erika yet that day either. Emily calls her own husband Cody and asks him to just swing by the Weiss Market where Erika works on his way home and see if she's there. But she's not. Cody goes from there to Erika's apartment, but she's not there either. So all four of them, Emily and her mom, Donna and Cody, start taking turns calling Erika's

lifestyle over and over all afternoon, Emily is racking her brain, trying to figure out where her sister could possibly be. She knows Erika's schedule pretty well, they talk every day, I mean, even several times a day. And there's not much that goes on in either of their lives without the other one knowing about it. So when was the last time that Emily spoke to or even saw her sister? Well she spoke to her the night before, Susan Schwartz reported for the press enterprise

that Emily Face timed with her sister around eight o'clock on Friday night, and at that point Erika had been home in her PJs working on a puzzle and getting ready for bed. There was nothing out of the ordinary about that conversation, like they chatted about the puzzle and Erika joked about how she and her cat Luna were working on it together. It wasn't a lengthy call by any means, just like a quick goodnight love you talk to in the morning kind of thing. Not hearing from her sister until noon, she can rush that off, but as the hours tick by, her worry is really starting to grow because Erika talks to her family all of the time

and by all of the time, I mean like it would not be out of character for her to call her mom and sister like 15 times in a day or more according to that press enterprise piece. Oh wow, so they're a pretty tight bunch. Really tight, but actually in Erika's case it's actually more than just like being close to family. You see Erika is autistic and while she is very independent in lots of ways, like she has a job, she has her own place, all of that, she still relies on her mom and sister for a lot of things, like she doesn't have a license, so usually one of them drives her

like to and from work for example. But again, Erika also has her own life, she has her own friends, she has her own interests and it is totally possible that Emily doesn't know every single thing that's going on every minute of her sister's life. But Emily thinks that if her sister had made any plans she didn't know about, there has to be a record of it somewhere. Like if Erika used Facebook or Instagram or something like that, Emily might be able to get into her accounts and find out who she was meeting and where.

And for some people, that might be more of a wouldn't it be nice if we had that kind of info kind of thing, but Emily Corbin is not some people, she is our people. She told our team quote, I have been a crime junkie for a long time and would constantly talk to Cody and Erika about the importance of passwords and having a go missing folder. End quote. I love this girl already, oh my goodness. I swear my crime junkie heart grew three sizes when I've read that, so yeah, Emily for sure doesn't know all of her sister's usernames and passwords, but she knows enough to give

her a leg up. Plus Erika had logged into Facebook a few times before on Emily's phone, which set up an auto fail. So Emily was able to access several of her sister's accounts right away, like that very afternoon. Unfortunately though, if Erika had made plans with someone, it wasn't through any of those channels. Okay, but it's still great to have those things like locked, loaded, ready to go, even

just so she can watch them for activity, or at least I mean that's what I'd be doing. And I mean, actually you haven't if I go missing folder, I haven't if I go missing folder. We have an if I go missing folder template on our website that all of our crime junkies can download. It's there. Use it. Yeah, we did that episode a long time ago, but for anyone who's new or didn't realize, there's literally something you can download on our website.

We have an if I go missing folder that has just tons of information and at the end of the day, right? Like Emily said, they didn't have everything, but she had enough to at least get started. Right. And like our folder, I feel like covers a lot, but there's still things that if you think they're important, put them in there. Yeah. And again, you hope you never have to use it.

You hope you are never in the position Emily is, but when you are, you don't want to be looking back, wishing you had made something by 4pm. Emily and her mom are concerned enough that they decide to head to Erica's apartment. Now she wasn't there earlier, but again, they're thinking like, okay, if she went somewhere with a friend, which they think she might have, maybe she's back now, maybe her phone died or something. But when they show up, they get no answer. So they use the key that each of them had to let themselves in.

And the moment they walk through the door, they know that something is wrong. The first thing that they noticed is that Luna's food and water dish are turned upside down and empty. It looked to them like Luna was trying to get what little bit of food was left inside the automatic dishes. Now Emily and her mom both know that if Erica was planning on being away, she would have made sure that there was plenty of food and water for Luna. And she would have told one or both of them about it so they could take care of Luna while

she was gone. And listen, if I'm ever gone and there were no plans made for Chuck, all the red flags, my husband murdered me, that's kind of how Emily is saying Erica feels about her cat. There's no way in the world she would just leave and leave her to fend for herself. And there's a reason for that. Again, it's not just that she's a beloved pet. She's actually an emotional support animal. And for Erica to even have Luna, Emily told us that she had to sign papers saying that

if something ever happened to her sister, she would take responsibility for the cat. So is there anything else in Erica's place that seems off as they keep looking? Yes. Her medications are actually left there next to the kitchen sink. She would always put out her daily medication each day so she didn't forget to take them. And Saturday's pills were sitting there untouched. But still, they're like, you know, things happen. People forget.

People get tied up. It doesn't necessarily mean anything. So they keep looking. They check the drawer where Erica kept her medications. Maybe she grabbed the next day's dose by accident. But the rest of the month of December was all there. This worries them a little bit more. And there's something else that they can't shake.

Erica's winter coat is lying on the couch. And this is December in Pennsylvania. People don't just venture outside for any length of time without a coat. Yeah, I was gonna say, I mean, I would maybe like run to my car real quick without a coat. But if I was gonna be gone for more than a couple of minutes, I'd want my coat with me for sure. Well, yeah. And again, remember, Erica doesn't have a license.

She doesn't have a car. She doesn't drive. But she did have this purple Columbia fleece that she would sometimes wear as a jacket on milder days, or if she was just gonna be outside, like you're saying, for like long enough to climb into someone else's car. But even that, they find hanging in the closet. Her overnight bag was in the closet too. And as far as they could tell, the only things missing were her purse and her cell phone

and Erica herself. So the next thing they do is look around for any clues as to where she may have gone or who she may have met, but they find nothing. So with an uneasy feeling, Emily and her mom decide that all they can really do is go home, keep trying Erica's phone and hope for the best. So they don't report her missing? No, not at this point. Emily told us that like so many others, she and her mom were under the impression that

they should wait 24 hours before filing a missing person's report. And so they decided to give it a day before involving police. And again, another crime-drinking rule here, that's not an actual rule anywhere. Now, that's not guaranteeing that when you go, police won't tell you that. It's not saying that they promise to take the report. There are agencies that still won't take it. There's no official rule that you have to wait if you ever find yourself in a situation like this.

But they thought that this was a rule. So they go home. And again, in the back of their minds, there's still this sliver of hope that this has all just been a series of unfortunate events. And Erica is just going to like show up. She's going to like explain everything away once she walks through the door. Now they know that she's scheduled to work at 5 p.m. on Sunday. So that's kind of like the marker they put in their mind.

Like if Erica doesn't show up at home by 4 to get ready, then we're going to call police. But neither of them realized just how long those 24 hours was going to be. And after trying all day Sunday to reach Erica by phone, by about 3.30, they just can't wait any longer. They grab their stuff and head back to Erica's apartment to wait for her there. The next 90 minutes feels like hours. They call the Weiss market to double check that Erica's on the schedule, and she is.

So Emily calls her husband Cody and asks him to go sit in the Weiss parking lot and just watch to see if maybe someone else drops Erica off for her shift. Emily told us she had a reason for asking Cody to stake out the parking lot, more than just to put eyes on her sister. She said, quote, I was thinking that maybe if she was with someone and they took her directly to work, I could get their description or license plate and check that person out. End quote. I don't blame her.

If someone had my sister off the grid for that long, I'd want to check them out too. Yeah, but Erica doesn't show solo or with anyone. She is officially a no call, no show. And that is absolutely 100% not like her. She wouldn't do that ever. So at about 10 after five, Emily calls 911 and officially reports her sister missing. She gives them all the details when they last saw her, how she isn't answering her phone, didn't show up to work, didn't take her medications or winter coat, didn't even

leave food for her cat. She tells them Erica is especially vulnerable because of her autism. According to Emily, even though Erica was 26, she had the mentality of someone closer to 15, which Emily says opened her up to being easily manipulated and she was very trusting. Now this part of the story is a little bit of a punch in the gut to me and kind of makes me think that even if Emily and her mom had gone to the police sooner, nothing would have happened because the officer tells Emily to just wait a little bit longer. And if Erica doesn't show up by 6.30, maybe call back then and then we'll start the paperwork.

Okay, what the heck is 90 more minutes going to do when they've already waited 24 hours? I mean, more than that early. Yeah, I don't know for sure. I keep coming back to this one thing that Emily told us, which I'm going to actually get you to read Brit. She says quote, we live in a small town and the police don't have a lot of experience with situations like this, especially when someone has an intellectual disability. They asked us if Erica could have met someone and moved away to start a new life or if she

just went away with friends for a couple of days and would return soon. They were all valid questions, but not for our situation. Erica didn't drive. She didn't miss her medications or work. She was living her best life and would never, ever leave us or her cat behind. End quote. Eventually police agreed to open a missing persons investigation. Emily and her mom are still at Erica's apartment at this point and so they check her laptop

for any passwords to social media or other sites, anything that might help them access her accounts. And then they take the laptop and an old cell phone of Erica's to give to the police. Emily and her mom get no sleep that night. And those she tries to work from home the next day, it's incredibly difficult. Her mind is going a million miles a minute. Thankfully, Emily told us she has an awesome boss who tells her, you know what, don't worry about work.

Just do what you need to do. And of course, Emily isn't an investigator. She doesn't actually know what to do. But she said she had listened to enough episodes of this show. She had watched enough Dateline in 2020 to know that the key to finding Erica is out there somewhere. And she's not just going to sit idly by and wait for police to find it. No one knows Erica better than she does, which means no one is better equipped to find her.

So she starts her own investigation. Emily grabs this pink glittering notebook out of the bottom of her desk drawer and opens it up to the first page. She writes the date on top Monday, December 7th, 2020, and she starts to write. She writes the exact time of her last conversation with Erica and everything she can remember about it. She writes about the text from Donna and when it came in. She writes down every single call she made to Erica's phone and what time she made

them. She writes about going to the apartment and what she saw, what was there and what was missing. She notes all of the people she or Cody or her mom called or text or spoke to, what they asked, what was said, in her gut, Emily knows that her sister didn't just leave on her own. She had to have gone with someone. She just doesn't know who, but she figures there has to be a way to find out.

And so that's when Emily switches into what I can only describe as like a full on crime junkie mode. She calls the building manager of her sister's apartment complex to see if they have any security cameras. They don't, so she calls the Napa Auto Parts store behind the building to see if they have any cameras, but they don't. She makes a missing persons poster and puts it up on Facebook asking for people to share it as far and wide as possible.

She calls Erica's therapist and asked her to report Erica missing to police and share with them any relevant notes or information from previous sessions. She calls the state social worker that Erica works with and asked her to do the same. On the advice of a friend, Emily reaches out to the area agency on aging and while her sister doesn't exactly fit the usual bill for their clientele, they do have experience tracking down missing persons. So they actually assign a caseworker who starts calling area hospitals and women shelters looking for Erica.

So are police doing anything at this point or is it just 100% Emily's investigation? Like I'm thinking about things that it would be hard for family members to do like get access to phone records or bank statements like that kind of thing. Well I'm not sure about police at this point, but actually Emily is able to log into Erica's bank account which lists the last transaction at a local restaurant on the evening of Thursday December 3rd. Now Cody happens to know the bartender at that restaurant so he reaches out to see if they can check on their security footage to see who was there to pick up the food.

Cause I think it was like a takeout order or something. The friend says that he's going to try and look to see who picked it up, but again it's not something he can do right that second so he'll have to get back to him. Now the phone records on the other hand are a little more complicated simply because Erica had switched providers just like a few weeks before and so there really wasn't much of a record to access yet. But Emily is able to check Erica's voicemail for messages by calling Erica's number and then entering the pin which she knew.

But the only messages are from herself, their mom, Cody, Donna and another friend of Erica's name Adam and all of the voicemails were them asking Erica to call them back because they were worried. Emily also logs into Erica's meet me and plenty of fish accounts because she's thinking that if Erica isn't with anyone they know maybe she met someone online. Erica hadn't been seeing anyone seriously and she hadn't mentioned anyone new lately either not for like several weeks. The last person Emily knew about was this guy Dave and she remembers talking about him

because Erica had said that he'd come to Bloomsburg and cooked her an Italian dinner and they watched a movie together and Emily was like oh that's you know super nice what did he make? And Erica had said English muffin pizza with sauce and cheese and Emily just like looked at her and said that's not an Italian dinner that is a crime and then they both like cracked up laughing about it. So did Erica tell her sister anything else about this guy or just about this English muffin pizza dinner like did she see him again after that?

Well let me just send you another few lines from Emily's notes that you can read. It says quote whenever Erica would talk about someone new I would talk to her like one of my friends and try to get as much information about them as possible. I would ask for their date of birth so I could see if they were astrologically compatible but really it was for me to look them up and see if they were ever arrested in Pennsylvania and I would do a Google deep dive on them. When I tried to get more information about Dave Erica was hesitant. She said he was older and he didn't want her to tell her family about him because

we wouldn't understand. I told her I have friends that are older and younger than me and gave her a few examples. She finally told me he was 46 and from Pine Grove end quote. Now according to a piece in the daily item by Frances Garcella she had met this Dave guy online through Meet Me but Emily went through every line of Erica's messaging history on the app and there was nothing recent from him or anyone else. And in and around all of that Emily is calling all of Erica's friends and co-workers, the media, a local PI, the district attorney's office, state police, local police, anyone

and everyone who might have even the slightest chance of knowing where Erica might be. Remember that's just what Emily did on Monday, that is one day. Yeah before she goes to bed that night Emily types out a long text to her sister telling her everything she did that day and she writes it purposefully in a way that if someone has Erica and if someone has her phone maybe they would see this and of course there is always the chance that Erica had run away. It's highly unlikely but not totally impossible so she adds a line saying that all she wants is to know that Erica is okay just in case.

The next day Emily wakes up, she opens her pink notebook and picks right back up where she left off the day before making phone calls, sending out missing persons posters, scouring Erica's online accounts and racking her brain for even the tiniest kernel of information that might help point her toward her sister. And she finally gets a little break when she learns the name of the person who picked up Erica's takeout the Thursday before, Ted. Does Emily know someone named Ted? Emily doesn't know him personally but she knows that Ted is a friend of Erica, someone

that she knew Erica trusted. According to Jill Whalen's reporting for Citizens Voice, the day before he dropped off the takeout which would have been Wednesday, December 2nd, Erica had asked Ted to put a GPS tracking app on her phone. Did she say why she wanted a tracking app? Well Ted says that Erica told him she was planning to meet up with a guy that she'd met online and she had seen him in person before too but only like one other time and apparently this guy was saying that he wanted her to pack up everything and like run away

with him but there was something about him that made Erica uneasy. For one, she told Ted that the guy was awful to her cat and Ted told her that you know if you feel uncomfortable you really should trust your gut and not meet up with this guy at all anymore. And Erica kind of just brushed it off like I'm just gonna see how it goes. Did Erica give Ted a name though? Like is he able to tell Emily who this guy was? Oh as soon as she hears about this, Emily knows exactly who Erica is talking about.

She was talking about meeting up with Dave and actually that whole mean to her cat thing, that's another thing Erica had brought up a few weeks back during that conversation that they had about Dave. Yeah I mean I would not be able to let that one slide, it is a major red flag. Oh for Emily too, she told her being mean to small animals is like serial killer 101 and that she didn't think she needed to be friends with this guy. And Erica told Emily that she didn't think she'd be seeing him again because of the way he was with Luna.

But she must have had a change of heart though clearly she still had enough reservations about this guy to request that tracking app and give Ted access to it. So anyways, when Ted heard that Erica was missing, he went into the app right away to see where Erica's phone last pinged. And according to Caroline Foreback's reporting for eyewitness news, when he pulls it up he's able to tell her that the last place Erica's phone pinged was just off the interstate, 40 minutes away in Milton. Okay, but do we know when?

Well Emily says that she doesn't know exactly when the last ping was, but she did say that Erica's phone was last active on December 4th. Now we know for sure Erica was home at 8 o'clock that night since that's when she and Emily were on FaceTime together, which means that it must have been sometime after that but before midnight. Okay, gotcha. So does Erica know anyone in Milton or have any specific reason to go there? Cause that Dave guy wasn't even from there was he?

Right, no he said that he was from Pine Grove, which is in a totally different direction. So Emily can't wrap her head around this at all. She doesn't know of any reason that her sister would be in Milton or even driving through. But whatever, at least it's something. Police send some officers out to Milton to search the area around where Erica's phone last ping. And while they do that, Emily calls all of the local hotels in the area to see if anyone with Erica's name or anyone matching her description had checked in.

She calls the hospitals too, asking the same thing, but she doesn't get anywhere with either. She even drives up there herself to look around and hang missing person flyers at local businesses and truck stops. By the end of the day, this is now day four since Emily last spoke to her sister. Her resolve to find Erica is stronger than ever. She's got a team of volunteers and she has this huge corkboard on the wall where they're tracking accounts and passwords, posting documents and marking all the hospitals they call in

every town where someone puts up flyers. Emily told us the next few days are kind of a blur for her in terms of what happened when. She coordinates a volunteer run search of the area around Erica's apartment building and the woods nearby. She goes with police to Erica's apartment to collect evidence. They print out phone statements from before Erica switched providers and they go line by line through all of the numbers, cross referencing with their own phones and trying

to identify every single person that her sister had talked to or texted. Deep in her gut, Emily says that she knew she was looking for Dave and she knew that if they could find Dave, they would find Erica. But without having access to her sister's most recent text messages, Emily feels like she's kind of at a standstill. And this is where police, with all of their access and resources, are able to step in and take over. According to Susan Schwartz's reporting for the Press Enterprise, Bloomsburg police

are able to get Erica's most recent phone records from Verizon. And wouldn't you know it? Those records show the very thing Emily knew would be out there somewhere. It turns out Erica received two text messages from the same number back to back at 8.43 PM on the night she disappeared. The first one said, surprise, and the second, knock knock. Erica responded to those texts, though I couldn't find anything in the source material about what she said and Emily doesn't know either.

We know they had a brief exchange, though, but after that her phone activity stopped completely. So, who does the number belong to? Well, that's not quite as easy to figure out as it might sound, because it turns out that the phone is a burner, but they are able to run some data on that phone. And what they find was truly chilling. Whoever had that phone was sending those text messages from inside Erica's apartment building.

They could tell the burner phone was with Erica, or at least Erica's phone, all the way from her place to Milton. At that point, Erica's phone is turned off, but the burner phone stays on in Milton for like 40 minutes, but then that goes dark too. Now, how police get from untraceable burner phone to a suspect is unclear to me from the source material for this case, but they do, and it turns out the person it belonged to is 42-year-old Harold David Holman, the third. Harold David as in Dave?

Yes, this is the guy Erica had met on the dating site who went by Dave, the one that gave pretty much everyone a bad vibe. Now, the timeline is a little fuzzy here for two reasons. First, this is now the police investigation, which we don't have as much insight to as Emily's investigation. And also, I think it just takes some time for police to track Harold down. Just because the phone he used is a burner? That's part of it, but the other part is he actually doesn't have a permanent address

at this point, and not only that, but he's also a truck driver, so he's all over the place all of the time anyway. But this is actually playing out the week before Christmas, and they do know where his parents live in Battle Creek, Michigan, so they figure there's at least a decent chance that he's visiting them for the holidays, so they head to Battle Creek. And that's exactly where police find him on December 23rd. When they reach him, it's not like he's arrested on a spot or anything. They just want to talk to him at this point, so they schedule a follow-up interview for

the next day. But before they leave, they stick a tracking device on his vehicle, just in case he decides to make a run for it. And that tracker comes in real handy the next day when, surprise, surprise, Harold doesn't show up for his interview. Instead, the GPS tracker tells them that Harold is on the move and heading back to Pennsylvania, all the way to Duncanon where his wife lives. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

This guy's got a wife? And a strange wife, but yeah, he does. Her name is Anne, and they've been separated since July of 2020, in part because he wouldn't stop seeing other women. Oh. But that is where police track him to, her house, where he arrives just after 10pm on Christmas Day. Though, they don't do anything or move in on him right away, and I'm not quite sure

if they wanted to watch him more or get their ducks in a row, but whatever their plan was, I promise you, this next part wasn't part of it. The next day, on December 26, an officer with the railway police just happens to find Harold walking along the train tracks near his wife's place in Duncanon. When the railway officer approaches him, though, Harold immediately pulls out a box cutter and starts slashing his arms, saying like, what's wrong with me, I need to die for my sins. The railway officer ends up calling an ambulance to take him to a hospital, and detectives

meet him there. Despite all those vaguely confession-y statements that he was making at the train tracks earlier, he actually refuses to talk to police at first, but they're persistent. They tell him that they know he was with Erica the night she went missing. They know he was the last person to speak with her before she vanished. And they also know that he is the only person who can give Erica's family the closure they need. Then, right from his hospital bed, Harold starts to talk.

He tells investigators that he drove to Erica's house that night, totally unplanned, and surprised her at her apartment. He says he asked her to come with him for a drive, and she agreed. One of Frances Scarcello's stories in a daily item mentions them talking and walking in the woods near Hobby Road, which is this long stretch of county road that's basically a mix of dense woods and farmland. Harold says that he attacked Erica while they were walking through the woods. He just pulled out a mallet and started to hit her with it.

Not just once, but like a dozen times. And then he says that he stabbed her at least that many times with a kitchen knife. Why? Police have the same question, and they ask him repeatedly why? But he doesn't really have a reason, he says he just did it. He says he left her body there, right where the attack happened, but took her phone, purse, both weapons, and drove back towards Bloomsburg and all the way to Milton, where he tossed them over the side of a bridge.

So Erica was never in Milton at all? Nope, that's just where he tossed her phone. Police bring Harold a map, and he shows them where they'll find Erica's body. And when a search team goes out the next morning to that location, that's exactly what they find just where Harold said it would be, with injuries that match the story he told them from the hospital bed. The same day they find Erica's body, they charge Harold Holman with her murder and begin what everyone hopes will be the final heartbreaking chapter of Erica's story.

But Harold's arrest is not, as it turns out, the ending to this story. Because after seeing the media coverage about Erica's murder and Harold's arrest, police get a call from a woman named Tasha Feaster, who tells them that the same guy they just arrested for Erica's murder had been dating her 25-year-old sister, Tiana Phillips, just before her disappearance in June of 2018. Tiana lived in Burwick, Pennsylvania at the time, which is like 20 minutes from Bloomsburg. She was a mom of a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old, and she had a long-term boyfriend named Scott, but her and Scott's relationship was pretty turbulent, always on and off.

And during the off-times, for like a year before she went missing, she'd been seeing a man that she'd met on an online dating app. She knew him as Dave, and Tasha did too, until she saw his face on the news and recognized Harold as the same guy. So how was he not connected to her case earlier if they dated for, what, like a year? Well, the police did question him. In fact, according to Susan Swartz's reporting for the press enterprise, when Tiana's cousin called to officially report her missing to police, she told them that Tiana had plans

with Dave that very night. Her cousin told them that Tiana and her boyfriend had gotten into a fight and that she'd called Dave to pick her up at a friend's place after, and then no one saw her after that. So the Burwick police at the time, like, called him, obviously, but apparently he told them that he didn't even make it to Burwick that night. He said that he'd been on his way to pick her up, but she called and said, like, oh, never mind. So then he just turned around and went home.

And I guess police must have just taken his word for it at the time, because as far as I can tell, the only person who was truly persistent in searching for Tiana in the two and a half years since she'd been missing was her sister, Tasha, who tells investigators that she had this gut feeling from the start that something horrible had happened to Tiana and that this Dave guy was somehow involved. She even called and texted many times, sometimes daily, to ask him about Tiana and where she was, but Dave always denied having anything to do with it. So this is like such a story of sisters, the true heroes, truly.

The more investigators now finally look into the detail of Tiana's case, the more similarities they see with Erica's. They went missing from towns within 20 minutes of each other. They have a similar look, and they both had disabilities that made them especially vulnerable. And most importantly, they both knew Harold Holman and had met him through a dating site. There's too much of a coincidence not to explore further. So police ask Harold about it, and he tells them that he had picked Tiana up, drove her to Hobby Road, and bludgeoned her with a hammer, and then cut her throat.

Again, they ask him why, and this time he says, because my wife asked me to. I'm sorry, what? Yeah, they ask Harold's estranged wife, Ann, about it, and she says that she knew Harold had been involved with Tiana. She says she found out about it because Tiana's boyfriend, Scott, had called her up and told her. So she had confronted Harold, who she says went pretty much bonkers and started talking about killing Tiana and her boyfriend, and tells police that she didn't think he was

serious about it, just that he was like angry in the face of getting caught. And she says that's what she thought, even as he apparently looked for locations online, that he could take them to kill them or dump their bodies, even as he told her that he was going to scout some of those locations in person, even as he drove off in her car on June 13, 2018. She didn't even believe him when he returned home the next day and told her he killed Tiana. She only started to believe him after he left for a few hours and came back with photos of what he said was Tiana's dead body.

But she didn't call the authorities at all? She didn't. Or did she call them a few months later when, according to Frances Scarcella's reporting in a daily item, he drove her to the stretch of woods along Hobby Road, got out of the vehicle, walked into the woods, and came back with what he said was Tiana's skull, her ribcage, and her clothes in a black garbage bag. She tells police that he drove for hours over toward the Ohio State Line and put that bag in a dumpster behind a movie theater.

And Anne tells them that she has something else, a letter he had given her that might be all police need to prove that he murdered Tiana. Here, Brett, I'm going to get you to read that letter, which was printed in Amanda Christman's piece for the standard speaker. Quote, To whom it may concern, on June 13, 2018, I drove to Burwick, PA, and picked up Tiana and Phillips and took her for a drive. We ended up somewhere in the woods east of Burwick, PA. After walking into the woods, I pulled a knife from my pocket and attacked her from behind,

cutting her throat. As she gasped for her last breath of air, I stabbed her repeatedly in the side of the neck, back, and arms. I then returned to the crime scene months later and retrieved any and all evidence and disposed of it in a dumpster, not sure exactly where. I, Harold David Holman III, committed this crime on my own and of my own free will, David Holman, end quote. Just when they're ready to close the book on this guy and get him for two murders,

Harold starts alluding to a third victim, a 21-year-old who went missing from Battle Creek, Michigan in June of 2005. Her name was Ashley Parlier, and like Erica and Tiana, she had disabilities that made her super trusting and therefore particularly vulnerable to predators like Harold. Ashley was pregnant at the time, or at least that's what her parents suspected. They confronted her about it because they wanted her to be getting regular medical care, which she hadn't been, and that led to an argument. According to Trace Christensen's reporting for the Battle Creek Inquirer, after the argument,

Ashley left to go for a walk, ostensibly to clear her head. She went for walks all the time, but this time she didn't come home that afternoon, or the next day, or the next, and no one ever heard from her again. Was Harold a person of interest in that investigation? His name didn't even come up in that investigation. Ashley's sister, Nicole Campan, says she didn't know Harold or even know of him, but they had some shared social circles apparently, and Ashley's parents had at least met the guy once.

Harold says that she was with them at a bowling alley in Battle Creek when they met the first time. So it's a little weird to me because it seems like it wouldn't have taken a ton of investigative prowess to at least have her parents mention him. But how Ashley and Harold's relationship played out from there, and how much her parents or friends knew about it isn't clear, but clearly it did progress, to the point that Harold says he thought he might be the person responsible for her pregnancy. If anything, at the time, Nicole felt like police focused mostly on her parents instead

of other suspects. They sadly both passed away in 2020 before any of the truth came to light. And it's not totally that police didn't follow other leads they did, it's just that there were very few leads to follow. Police would come in and police would look at them, but it was Ashley's sister Nicole who did a lot of the legwork, just like Emily, and she's the one who kept the case alive for all those years. According to a WBREPA homepage series called Tracking a Killer by journalist Caroline Forback,

Harold tells detectives that he knocked Ashley unconscious during an argument, then took her to a remote wooded area and bludgeoned her to death. He must have left her body in that location because he tells police that he went back there later and only found bones. He shows them on a map where both Ashley and Tiana's bodies had been and police in Burwick and in Battle Creek search extensively. At one point, they even bring Harold to Battle Creek to direct them where to search, but they aren't able to locate remains for either woman, but they don't actually need bodies

to charge Harold for murder, especially not with a confession. It takes time, but in May of 2021, authorities in Pennsylvania charge Harold with a second count of first-degree murder in connection with Tiana's disappearance and her presumed death, and in July of that year, he was charged for Ashley's murder too. So do we know for sure that there aren't more victims out there? We actually know for sure that there are other victims out there, at least one that police are aware of. A 21-year-old named Joseph Lawrence Whitehurst, who went by Jay, whose bludgeoned body was

found in the woods near the Ramstein Air Base in Germany back in June of 1999. Harold had been living there at the time, first with his parents, but then solo after they returned to the States. And he confessed to that murder too? Well, within a few days of finding Jay's body, German authorities had Harold in custody and he straight up confessed, even back then, to beating Jay to death with a stick after an argument. This according to reporting at the time by Kevin Daughtry, in European Stars and Stripes,

though police wouldn't share details about what they argued about or anything like that. So wait a second, he murdered someone in Germany in 1999, pled guilty, but then he's back in Michigan by, I mean, at least 2005 when Ashley went missing? Yep. Harold was only 20 years old at the time, which means that under German law, at least back then, he was considered a juvenile. Stars and Stripes picked up a story written by reporter Amanda Christman, which says that the court also found Harold had a quote, diminished mental state, end quote, specifically

a schizophrenia diagnosis. He ended up having the charge reduced to manslaughter and was sentenced to six years in a German reform school. But clearly he got out early because by 2002 he was back living in Battle Creek. So Erica, Tiana, Ashley and Jay are the victims we know about. There could be others that we don't. Also moved around a lot over the years, Pennsylvania, Michigan, California, Maryland, Illinois, and as far away as Europe.

Not only that, but we know he made a living as a professional truck driver, which could have put him just about anywhere. I would not be surprised to learn that there are other victims. This guy clearly has a type when it comes to his victims, which is hugely important information for police. And I wouldn't even be surprised if he confesses to other murders in the future, just so we can get his name back out there. Well, journalist Caroline Foreback actually sat down with Harold as part of that tracking

and killer series for eyewitness news. And during the interview, he mentioned that his wife had told police there could be as many as 10 victims, but he says that's not true. He says what police have now is everything. But you know, authorities aren't taking his word for it. First of all, because he has a track record for lying to them and to everyone else that he comes into contact with his wife, the women he met online and who knows who else. But more than that, he's a serial killer.

And by his own admission, he felt the urge to kill and acted on that urge. That is why he killed J. Whitehurst in Germany. That is why he killed Erika and Tiana too, and probably also Ashley. And there are huge chunks of time where we're supposed to believe that Harold was inactive. I mean, the biggest chunk being that 13 year gap between Ashley's murder in 2005 and Tiana's in 2018. I mean, his MO sounds really spur of the moment on the surface, but it's not. This guy was methodical.

He used online dating apps to prey on vulnerable young women. He initiated friendships and spent weeks or even months earning their trust. He did his best to ensure that his victims left no trace. And he went to great lengths not to leave a trail himself. He used disposable cell phones. He made sure his cell phones were powered off and then drove his victims to remote heavily wooded locations away from where they lived and where he lived. He used the same type of weapons to beat and then stab his victims.

And he disposed of those weapons after the fact. And he would go back weeks or months later, maybe even longer to the locations where the bodies were. And all the while, this dude is going about his life like none of it ever happened. During the interview I mentioned, Harold told Caroline for back quote, nothing. No drug can ever equate to that experience. There's nothing out there. Your mind is just, well, for me, it was just gone.

End quote. And I believe that this is the core of why Emily wanted her sister's story told. I said at the top, she said it's so that perhaps other people can find closure. If there are other victims out there who don't have answers, who might be connected to Harold, maybe hearing this story will set off some alarm bells or just bring up an old memory. In the fall of 2021, Harold Holman was sentenced to two life sentences for killing Erica and Tiana with no possibility of parole. Because he pled guilty, he avoided the death penalty.

At that time, he was awaiting to be extradited to Michigan, though I don't think that's happened as of this recording yet. The FBI had been working to develop a criminal profile that police could cross reference against open missing persons cases all across the U.S. And again, while no new victims have been identified yet, that doesn't mean there aren't any others out there. Because people like Harold don't just stop, they can't stop, they have to be stopped. By police, yes, they should be stopping them.

But we saw in these stories, it also took the persistence of people like Emily and Tasha and Nicole who did their own investigations, uncovered their own leads and identified their own suspects. I hope none of you listening to this episode will ever be in Emily's shoes or will ever need to know how to conduct your own investigation. But the truth is, every week, Emily was listening to Crime Junkie and she never thought she would need to know that either. But she paid attention and that paid off.

Again, that's why she wanted us to tell this story. I have said it a hundred times, these stories aren't just entertainment. Sometimes families need your help, but other times the people living these stories want you to learn something from their own tragedy so you can hopefully avoid your own. Or worst case scenario, you'll know what to do in the face of one. I truly believe if not for Emily, Harold Holman might still be out there prowling the internet for victims. If not for all of the sisters in these stories, we might never have seen justice for Erica,

Tiana or Ashley. Anyone with information that may be helpful to investigators, you can call the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI or submit a tip online at tips.fbi.gov. You guys don't forget to fill out your own If I Go Missing folder that can be found on our website crimejunkiepodcast.com under the Resources tab. You can also find all of the source material for this episode on our website as well. And fill out a folder for yourself and urge your family members to do the same and be sure to follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast.

We'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Crimejunkie is an audio chuck production. So, what do you think Chuck, do you approve?