Crime Junkie - MURDERED: Reyna Marroquin // Michelle Schroader

Episode Date: June 17, 2019

This week we have two stories of women who were murdered and laid to rest, Reyna and Michelle. It would take decades before Reyna would be able to rest in peace and Michelle and her family are still waiting for their day. 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-reyna-marroquin-michelle-schroader/    

Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers, and it's one more week with just me. But don't worry, if you've been missing Britt, she's going to be back in a big way next week. So just stay tuned. But until then, I actually have two stories for you today. Two women who were murdered, two women who were laid to rest, but one who, even after death, is being tormented by the man who went to trial for her murder. Our first story is set in New York State, 1999. There's a man who recently sold his house, and he has to go clear it out. I mean, I've moved a couple of times, and you know how there's things that build up, and you start to sort through all of your own stuff, and then you're reminded of all the

weird things that were there before you even moved in, things you didn't bother moving. But in this man's case, it was something he couldn't move when he moved in. Now, when he moved into the house, under the crawl space of his home, where he had moved nine years before, there was a large metal drum, like very large. He had tried to move it when he first got in the house, but it was so large and so heavy, 345 pounds we later learned, so he couldn't do it on his own. Life quickly got in the way, so he just let it sit, remaining under him and his family as they went about their lives year after year. But after he sold the house and the new tenant found it, they insisted it be removed before they took possession of the home. So the seller calls up his realtor buddy to help him get

it removed. It's definitely a job for two, and they try and get it taken away with the trash, but the trash guys are like, oh heck no, we have no idea what's in there, it could be toxic, like you got to get someone to check this out first. But apparently these guys were like toxic, schmoxic, let's see what we can find. So they find screwdrivers and start to pry open the lid little by little, it starts giving away until it opens, revealing another corroded barrel, which only heightens the mystery for these guys. So they go into the second barrel and slowly start trying to pry off that top, but this time when the lid opens, they are assaulted with an incredibly foul odor, and when they get their bearings, they notice this green goo, and submerged in the goo

is what looks like a human hand and a shoe. They call police who in turn call the medical examiner, nothing is removed there at the house in hopes of preserving as much evidence as possible. Back at the lab, a fully intact body is removed from the metal barrel, and when the goo and the body fluids have been removed and drained away, they realize that the encapsulation has mummified the remains, like how long had this person sat under that house. If they are to believe the last owner, we know at least nine years, and they do believe him, because what they're able to tell is that this is a white or Hispanic woman ages 20 to 30, she's short, maybe like five feet tops, and her clothing and her purse are indicative of an era decades ago, perhaps even as early as the

60s. Although they can't get fingerprints and identify her right away because of her condition, they are able to glean some clues from her body, she had very unique dental work, gold on her front teeth, and her cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head. Now they also learn that she wasn't totally alone in that barrel, she was actually nine months pregnant at the time she was put in there, and her unborn son died with her. So police are a little bit stumped, how are they going to solve a decades old case when they couldn't even identify their victim? Well, you got to work with what you got, and they had a barrel. Now they also had a purse that was in the barrel, a purse with an address book in it that might hold the keys to answers. Now you might

think that this address book would be totally unusable, it's been sitting in decomp and what we're calling goo for literally years, I mean I can't imagine that it's legible, and you'd be right it's totally useless if you're just going to look at it, but that doesn't mean we can't fix it. They have experts for this stuff for a reason, they turn over the book to a forensic document examiner who's going to put the book into this drying cabinet and then try this crazy light spectrum machine to read it. But that takes time, and nobody's got time to just sit around and wait and let a case solve itself, so the police go back to the barrel. It has some markings on it showing at least at one time that it had been shipped to a company called Melrose Plastics.

Now maybe this didn't matter, I could easily see barrels changing hands or getting sent to junk, I don't know, but police did think it mattered after they looked at the history of the house that the barrel was found in, and exactly who had owned that house before. One prior homeowner stuck out to police, a man named Harold Elkins. The same Harold Elkins, who back in the 1960s was part owner of, you guessed it, Melrose Plastics. Now this seems like a great lead, but if I've learned anything from my detective friends, it is this, you cannot go in hot. You have to get as much information as you can before you ever want to even think about going confronting a suspect. You need to know what the evidence tells you, what the witnesses tell you, what's

happening at the time, otherwise how do you expect to catch them in a lie? So about this time that we learn about the barrel, we go back to our forensic document examiner. The pages are dried, and she uses what she calls a VSC 2000 machine, which is a video spectral comparator. And the way it works is it uses different kind of light waves that the human eye can't detect to make writing impressions visible. And like science manuals, it is so cool. So using this machine, they find a piece of paper in the book and handwritten in it is a line that says, Residencia Nombre. Now this is a resident alien number. They know now that they need to go talk to immigration. And when they give immigration, the number that they found, they finally get a name for their victim. Her name

is Reina Marokin. They learned that Reina immigrated here from El Salvador back in 1966. She started working as a nanny, but eventually got work in a plastics factory. Of course, it was Melrose Plastics. Now along with her ID number, they also found another scratch of paper with a handwritten message that seems really telling. It said, Don't be mad, I told the truth. Like what truth? Police felt like they were getting close, but they didn't have all the pieces. But there was one more thing in that address book, something that might lead them to the pieces. It was the name of a woman named Kathy in her address book. Now Reina didn't have a lot of friends in the U.S., but she did have one and Kathy was her best friend. But finding Kathy would take a little

bit of work. Now they are sandwiched in between a time when the information is like super relevant and maybe you just go knock on this person's door or call their number and they're sandwiched between another time where you can just look somebody up on Google. But they're in this weird space in the 90s where the address and phone number they had for Kathy is 30 years old and not relevant, but they also can't just go look her up on Facebook. So they have to do some real legwork, but they put the work in and they find Kathy. And what she tells them is very interesting. When police show up at Kathy's door, she was shocked. Yes, she'd known Reina. She even knew something bad had happened to her and she tried to alert authorities back in 1969, but no one would

pay attention to her. She said that her and Reina have been friends for most of the time she lived in New York. And at the time they met, Reina was living in a home for immigrant women. But sometime around November of 1968, she was going to be moving because Reina had a boyfriend. She was actually pregnant with his child and he was going to put her up in an apartment somewhere in New Jersey. Now remember Kathy was her best friend. They knew everything about each other. So she was one of the few people at the time who knew that Reina's boyfriend was also her boss, a boss that was already married with three kids. One night in 1969, this was a Friday, Kathy gets a call from Reina and Reina is frantic. She's done something and maybe she

shouldn't. It's something she wishes she could take back and now she's afraid. Like what, what did you do? Kathy keeps asking her and she says, I called his wife. I called her and I told her I'm pregnant with his baby and now he says he's going to kill me. I'm sure Kathy tried to calm her down. Like I would try and calm down Britt if she ever called me frantic. Everything is going to be okay. We can figure this out. I'm going to come over. I'll come over tomorrow and we can decide what to do. Kathy did go to her place the next day, but everything was not okay. She found the door open, warm food still on the stove as if Reina had just been there and disappeared into thin air. Kathy went to the police right away and tried to tell them that something was wrong, that Reina's

boyfriend had threatened her. You have to find her. She begged, but the police had no time. They said, sorry, there's not much we can do. There's really no sign of foul play. And to me, this is a little crazy. Like maybe there's no sign physically of a struggle, but there are signs pointing to the fact that something is wrong. I don't know what the culture of the New York police or even the New Jersey police in general, but if I were to make assumptions based on the country as a whole back then, I would have to assume that her status as an immigrant played into their own willingness to even look at her case. Because if they would have even scratched the surface gone to talk to the boyfriend, they would have found Reina and her unborn child in his home.

So in 1999, Kathy tells investigators this whole story and they finally understand what her note meant. She didn't want him to be mad that she told the truth to his wife about her pregnancy. But he was mad. The police were now almost ready to confront him, but they wanted to talk to one more person. They wanted to talk to Howard's business partner who resided in Florida, which is convenient since that's where Howard was now anyways, and he'd be their next stop. His business partner was a man named Mel. Now he's about 80 at this time and is super cooperative with police. They show him a picture of the barrel and he says, yep, I know that barrel, we got them all the time at the plant. So then they ask, well, any idea how a young pregnant girl might have

ended up in one of those barrels? And he had an idea. All right, he confirms the stuff police had heard from Kathy. He said we used to use young migrant workers in the plant. And I know at some point Howard got tangled up with one of the women. He said she was very beautiful, but he didn't remember her name and never really asked about her when she stopped showing up. Didn't even think much of it at the time. This confirms it for investigators. Now they are ready to talk to the man himself. Howard and his wife, Ruth had moved to Boca Raton, Florida by the time police came knocking at their gated community. They eased into questioning at first. You know, did you know about this barrel under your house? Oh my gosh, of course not. We didn't even know

the house like had barrels like that. That's crazy. We know that's a lie. Did you know this woman? And he said, no, not at all. I had nothing to do with her. Also a lie. Did you ever date any of your coworkers? And Harold kind of tells a half truth here. He said, I did have an affair once, but I can't even remember her name. Lie. Did the woman you dated ever get pregnant? No, no, absolutely not. Howard says another lie. So police say, you know, there's a super easy way to clear all this up. Let's take a blood sample for DNA comparison to her unborn child. And Howard tightens up the mood changes in the room. And he denies the request. That's okay. They say we will just come back with some paperwork

tomorrow and that'll be a warrant and we will have to take it. So that's what they do. The next day, the police are hard at work getting everything in order with their warrant when they get a call from the New York state police. They say, tell me Howard Elkins is in your custody right now. And they say, no, we're just getting the warrant ready. Like he wouldn't be with us. Why? He's missing. Apparently his wife had filed a missing persons report the day after the police had talked with him. He wasn't gone long, but it was super unusual for him to be away from her for any amount of time without her knowing where he was. By the time the New York cops arrived back to the scene, Howard Elkins had been found by his son in the backseat of a neighbor's SUV with a self-inflicted

gunshot wound to his head. That was as much of a confession as anyone needed, but they still did the DNA test anyway. And it confirmed that Howard Elkins was the father of Reina's unborn baby. Now he's not around to answer questions about why or how he did what he did, but the story police piece together goes something like this. Reina did tell his wife Ruth. He was furious and made good on his promise to kill her. So he showed up at her house in New Jersey on that Friday night and lured her out of the house, whether by force or good nature. And they believe then that he took her to the plant and killed her there. They think he originally was planning to weigh down the barrel and put it on his boat and dump her somewhere in the ocean where she would never

have been discovered. Like we would not even be talking about her today, but the barrel was too heavy. So he just buried it, his little secret under his home where his family lived. Now here is the piece that's still a mystery to me. In one report of this case, it was said that she was pregnant again. In a couple of news reports, there's an account of someone who fits Reina's description bringing in a toddler to the factory. And workers had joked that the father was Howard. So I have to wonder, was there another child? Was she the caregiver for that kid at the time of her murder? And if so, what happened to that child? Could they still be alive today? And if they are, do they even know the fate of their birth mother? Reina's remains were transported back to El Salvador

to be near her family. Her mother had always worried about her daughter ever since she abruptly stopped writing to them in 1969. And for years, her mother had dreams of her daughter in a barrel, but never knew what to make of them until she was contacted by police so many years later. Reina's 95-year-old mother died just one month after bringing Reina home, and she was buried with her daughter, both of them together, finding peace in knowing that Reina was back where she belonged and back with the ones who loved her even in death. But for the victim in our next story, that's not the case. Even after death, she could not rest in peace. Her daughter believes that the person who tormented her mother in life has found a way to continue to torment her even in death.

Crime junkies, this second story should hit extra close to home for all of us, because it came from one of our listeners, someone in our little crime junkie family. A few months ago, I was contacted by a girl named Kara, and she asked that I share her mother's story, a tragic story of murder and loss, because she wants her mother's story to serve as a cautionary tale for others in similar situations. She wants something meaningful to come out of such a senseless act. And you guys, I can't thank Kara enough. I spent hours reading reports and watching trial tapes, but she put more work into this case than even I did. I get a lot of requests to cover cases, but Kara was the first person to come to me with all of the research in hand,

so when she asked me to help her tell her mother's story, I knew we needed to. So this is Michelle Schroeder's story. In February 1998, Michelle was a 27-year-old mother with two little kids, Kara, age eight, and Kyle, age three. Michelle had divorced from her husband and the father for two kids sometime before, and he was actually awarded custody of the children. You see, Michelle had hit a rough patch in life. She started running with the wrong people, began drinking a little more, dabbled in drugs. She wasn't in a place to have her kids full-time, but she still saw them regularly. She had them every other weekend and Kara knew, even as a young child, her mother loved her. Whatever was going on, whatever happened or what happened,

her mother cared about her. On the evening of February 27, 1998, Michelle was supposed to have her kids that night, but schedules got jumbled the way they tend to do when you're juggling growing kids with little lives of their own. Kara had gotten invited to a friend's sleepover birthday party that she really, really wanted to go to, so of course her mom wasn't going to keep her back. So new plan. Kyle would stay with his dad on Friday night, Kara would go to the sleepover, and in the morning, Michelle would pick up Kyle and then swing by and grab Kara, and they would spend the rest of the weekend together, playing games and having pizza. Michelle even relayed this plan to Kara over the phone on Friday night. You have fun at the party. I'll see you tomorrow.

I love you. The next day, Kara patiently waited for her mom to come pick her up, but she never showed. Instead, Kara was surprised to see her aunt, and it was this aunt who had to be the one to tell her why her mom wasn't there and why she wouldn't be coming. She had been murdered. Kara has had 20 years to replay that night over and over, feeling I'm sure every emotion. But in the end, she says she thinks it was a blessing that her and her brother weren't there that night, because if they were, she's not sure she'd be here to tell the story today. And here is what she, and we, know about her mom's last night. Knowing that she wouldn't have her kids that night, Michelle decided to go out with her best friend, Lori. Lori had a small group of

friends that were hanging around town, mostly at a local bar. They drank a little, they drove around, nothing really out of the ordinary or memorable. At some point in the night, Michelle's ex Charles met up with them just briefly, maybe like 10 minutes or so. He brought Michelle some cigarettes or something. Now, I need to talk briefly about Michelle's ex or maybe not ex. They were very on and off all the time, probably off at that moment, but they were very hot and cold and they had a very volatile relationship. And I'm not exaggerating. On September 4th of 1997, this is about two years before, one of their fights got so bad that Michelle had to file a restraining order. And here's exactly what the restraining order reads. Quote, he had threatened me by telling

me he was going to kill me. He was calling me names. He was out of his mind. I don't want him around me or around my house. He is a threat to me. End quote. Now, this wasn't the first time they had blowout fights before. And this wouldn't be the last all out brawls where people overheard Charles threatening to shoot Michelle or blow her head off times where people witness Charles chasing her grabbing her by her hair and dragging her off. Just three months before the murder, someone said they saw Charles kick Michelle in the head. The restraining order was an important step for Michelle, but she couldn't stay away. Charles would cross the lines of that order many times and Michelle would too. The national domestic violence statistics show us it takes

on average seven times of trying to walk away before someone can leave their abuser for good. I don't know how many times Michelle tried to break it off, but we do know that she filed a report on September 4th and we know another police report was made on New Year's Eve showing that Charles violated that order. Police were called to Michelle's trailer and they'd been there before. They were familiar with both Michelle and Charles. When they arrived, Michelle came running out and she was agitated. And as she comes running out, someone had taken off through the back door. Now police tried to chase this man down, but as they're looking for him, all of a sudden they hear noises back inside the trailer. And

it sounded like the place was coming apart. This man was back inside. When they came back in, there was blood all over Michelle. She was bleeding from her face. Her nose was completely smashed and she had been severely bitten on her shoulder. Her attacker was able to ride off on a four-wheeler, but police knew her attacker. It was Charles Allen and they knew where to find him. When police wrote up the report of the incident, this is what it said. Quote, committed fourth degree assault by intentionally hitting and biting Michelle Schroeder, causing physical injury. Victim's nose was broken and her eye was badly bruised. She had a large bite mark on her arm. End quote. After Charles Allen beat up Michelle

again and violated their restraining order again, he didn't spend the next couple of months in jail. If he would have, I might be telling a different story now. But he was out, free, able to bring cigarettes to Michelle on February 27th. So Lori says Charles came and went that night. No big scene. Things were fine. Michelle and Lori, their friend Tom, continued to drive around till around midnight when Michelle says that she's ready to go home. And so that's where they head. Now this time, Michelle isn't talking about her trailer. Her trailer didn't have heat. So it was a cold February night. Both Lori and Michelle were actually staying at one of their friend's house. So around midnight, Lori and Tom drop off Michelle

at their friend's house. Lori actually goes inside with Michelle to use the bathroom and start a fire for Michelle, but she's still planning on going back out. When Lori leaves, she sees Michelle letting the dog back into the house. She didn't say anything to her, didn't think to because it all seemed so normal. She had no idea that when she came back just a few hours later that the house she left would be a gruesome crime scene. Lori and Tom drove up to the house a few hours later around 2.50 in the morning. The porch light was off and Lori made her way to the front door, which was open. She looked inside the screen and was immediately terrified. No, this wasn't real. Her friend's face was gone.

Lori says she has no memory of backing up, of getting off the porch or even walking to the car. She just remembers being in the car and asking Tom, what should she do? Should she go inside? She was too scared to go inside. Did she call police? Now Tom, who had been behind Lori, didn't see what she saw. So he couldn't really understand why she was freaking out so much. And he's just like, I don't know. What do you want to do? So Lori tells him, we need to go call 911. They don't have cell phones, so they drive to a local Taco Bell in town and they make the 911 call from there. Now I'd love to be able to play the 911 call for you, but the original tape was lost and all we have are the recordings from the videos taken in court.

So it's super, super hard to hear. But the essence of it is basically Lori tells the operator that she went back and saw her friend and she says her head was crushed. She gives them Michelle's name, tells them where they can find the house, and the dispatcher asks her if she can go back and meet the officers. But Lori says she's too scared. So she waits at the Taco Bell for an officer to come pick her up and drive her back to the scene. Now when they get back, there's something interesting. Now I'm not 100% sure what it means. Lori says when they drive up, now the porch light is on. No one makes a big deal of this, but Michelle's daughter, Kara, has always wondered, did that mean that her mom's killer could have still been in the house when Lori came up the

first time? We don't have the answer to that, but it's something that will always linger in Kara's mind. When detectives finally get to the scene and take inventory of what's there, it's overwhelming. The crime scene spread over three separate rooms. Michelle had been running from her attacker. Skin and hair and bones were found in three different rooms, the bathroom, the dining room, and finally the living room where Lori said she saw Michelle's lifeless body. And when Lori said to the 911 operator that her face was gone or that had been crushed, what she didn't know was that Michelle had been shot with a shotgun multiple places, but the final blow was to her face just to the left of her mouth, and that was the shot that

killed her. When investigators look for physical evidence, they don't have a ton. There seemed to be no forced entry, but that's not too surprising since Lori said Michelle probably would have kept the door unlocked to let her come home later. But there was something interesting. The phone line seemed to have been ripped from the wall, and most telling in Michelle's hand was a handful of hair. Now while police are trying to catalog everything at the scene, things are happening in parallel. Lori and Tom are taken to the police station and both their hands are tested for gunshot residue, which both come back negative. Lori tells police her story of finding Michelle, leaving out the fact that earlier in the night they were looking for

drugs, but who would want to tell police that? Additionally, while this is going on, police are learning about Michelle's tumultuous relationship with Charles, and so the detectives send someone to the house that he's staying at around 5.30 in the morning, basically just to keep an eye on him while they work the scene. See if he does anything fishy, make sure he just stays in one place so we can talk to him when we're ready. Now police are watching him, but they aren't ready to go in with a warrant until 9 o'clock in the morning, and from the time they're watching till they go in at 9, he was inside. When police walk in, they describe Charles as being on the couch, rocking back and forth, just saying, oh no. When police approach him, he just

says, I didn't do it. He didn't try to run or fight back, but he refused to talk to police when they took him into custody. The house he was staying in is treated like another crime scene. They search high and low, looking for any sign that he could have been around Michelle when she was murdered, and here's what they find. They find two shotguns, even though it's illegal for him to have these weapons because of the court orders against him at the time, and remember it was a shotgun used to kill Michelle. They find shotgun shells in a trash can outside the garage. They find a couple of specks of blood, one on his white tennis shoe that had no laces, one on his sweatshirt, and one on his bedding. Finally, they did another GSR gunshot residue test on Charles,

and multiple swabs taken from his left palm, left back, right palm all came back with significant amounts of antimony and barium and lead showing positive results. He handled a gun recently. Now, this seems like an open and shut case. A woman was murdered with a shotgun. The man who has consistently had police reports filed for beating the living crap out of her has the same kind of gun in his house, with shells in his trash can and blood on his stuff, and witnesses who allegedly heard this man threatening to blow her head off, which is exactly what happened to her. It didn't take long for police to build a case against Charles Allen, but everything I listed above mostly was circumstantial. Some of the shells in the garbage seem to match the scene,

but it's not 100% exact science, and the problem was they didn't have the gun. Even though he had two shotguns in his house, the one that was used to kill Michelle wasn't found, but police thought they knew why. He had actually bought a brand new weapon from a man just two days before the murder, and this man testified at trial that he did sell it to Charles Allen. So this was another shotgun that they were never able to locate, but they can prove he bought it. But again, all circumstantial. So okay, let's look at the blood and take for instance the blood on the shoe. It was just a small speck on a white shoe. The speck was too small an amount to test in the 90s, so they couldn't say for sure if it was even Michelle's. The defense pointed out that there

were no shoe laces, and they say like, who would even wear shoes without laces in such a cold February day? But the prosecution when they got up was like, we're looking at the same thing. That's not our question. We're seeing this and saying the reason there are no shoe laces is because the laces are the only part of the shoe he couldn't clean blood off of. He probably got rid of those just like he would have gotten rid of the gun if he did. So their argument, at least for me, the prosecution's argument seems legitimate, but again, circumstantial because you do not have those laces. You do not have the gun. So the defense keeps attacking the prosecution's circumstantial evidence, and this time they go after the speck of blood on the sweatshirt, which again was too small to test.

So they say, listen, you got to just completely throw that out. But the prosecution thought they had something solid. They did have the spot of blood on Charles' bedding, and that spot was big enough to be testable. And when they tested it, it was Michelle's blood. Now the defense says they have an excuse for this too. They say, well, I mean, that's not surprising. They dated on and off. Maybe she had a nosebleed before. You can't tell when the blood got there. This is totally explainable. And at one point in the trial, the defense attorney says something that made my skin crawl. He said, you know, nosebleed aside or whatever. He said, listen, take for example, there might be blood in Michelle's own trailer, but clearly that has nothing to do with this crime,

because no crime took part in that trailer. So he continues, if blood were to be found in that trailer, we have to assume it's from previous times where Charles beat up Michelle. So they were proposing that the jury view all of the evidence this way. He's basically saying that we should assume that blood could be all over Charles and his stuff and where he stays, because he beat on her so frequently that we should expect to see her blood everywhere by now, and that shouldn't be taken into consideration when weighing whether or not he was responsible for killing her. Are you fired up like me because there's more? The defense also said, well, yeah, they fought all the time. And to clarify here, which of course the defense did not, we're not

talking about like screaming matches or arguments, we're talking about police reports of Michelle getting her nose broken bleeding profusely. He says, yeah, they fought all the time, but they always got back together and things were fine. That is not fine. A victim might go back to an abuser, but that does not make the abusers actions normal, or fine, or even mean that they won't escalate. Now this isn't the only thing I have problems with that the defense did. During the trial, when it was time for Lori to tell her story about finding her friend, the defense counsel goes on and on about Lori's use of drugs. He goes into extensive detail about how she does drugs. Do you snort it? Do you inject it? How do you inject it? Well,

you show us how you inject it. Now let's talk about Michelle. How did she do drugs? This did not have any relevance to the case or whether or not Charles was innocent or guilty. The defense attorney wanted the jury to have a distaste for Lori and Michelle. He was trying to attack the character of the victim to try to make her seem unsympathetic, and he was trying to make them think Lori was untrustworthy because he had something up his sleeve. The defense had a story from Michelle's own brother who said that Lori told him she was there when Michelle died and that she watched someone else kill her. But that someone wasn't Charles. Now this seems like a bombshell. But Michelle's brother wasn't stable. Michelle's sister testified as much in court,

and when I talked to Kara, Michelle's daughter in present day, she said this, quote, he suffers from various mental illnesses, including a mild mental delay. He has had to have legal guardian most of his adult life. My mother and Carl's sister Pam tried to have him declared incompetent to stand trial in the months prior, but it didn't work out. Going on my experience with Carl, he found a situation in which he felt important and made up information to remain in the spotlight. The last time I heard from Carl, he was homeless in Memphis, Tennessee. And I mean, this explanation seems logical enough. How many cases have we crime junkies heard about where people insert themselves into the investigation or make up false stories completely? And that is

sometimes compounded if a person is mentally ill. However, the defense used the story from Carl to point to one other piece of information in this case that can't be explained away as easily. That clump of hair in Michelle's hand, it came back inconclusive to matching Charles. Now they didn't do a full DNA profile testing from what I understand because of the limitations in the 90s, just like a visual comparison. So I don't think this is the definitive proof we would necessarily have in present day if this testing was done. But it was enough of a question mark for the jury. Combined with Carl's story and the way the defense bashed Laurie and Michelle's character, it didn't matter to them that Charles had abused Michelle countless times before. It didn't matter

that there were hearsay witnesses who heard Charles threaten to kill Michelle in the exact way that she died. It didn't matter that they found her blood on his bedding. The jury found Charles Allen not guilty. And I want to make a quick note in here. Testing on the hair has never been done with new technology. If we want to theorize about other people, you of course are free to do so. But Kara has asked that if you speculate and theorize, please keep her father out of any theories. He had his son that night. He's been cleared. He had an alibi. He fought for and won custody of both kids, which is super rare. And she says he's a loving and gentle man who's been a good father. And other than exchanging the kids on weekends, he had no interaction with

Michelle and no motive to harm her. So I asked Kara what her theory of that night is. She said she's had 20 years to think about every possible theory. And she keeps coming back to that phone cord that was ripped out of the wall. Now police always theorize that the killer did it so that whoever was inside couldn't call 911. But Charles Prince weren't found on it. Kara wonders if someone, maybe Charles, was trying to call her mother that night. And her mother wouldn't take a call. And her mother was the one to rip it out. So whoever was trying her could not reach her. And that would have been just the kind of thing to set someone off, especially if they had a history of abuse. It's been over 20 years. No one has ever been held responsible for the murder of Kara's mom,

but the injustices don't stop there. Charles was found innocent of Michelle's murder in court, but he was guilty of abusing her, as seen in police report after police report. The courts issued a restraining order for him to stay away from Michelle. But apparently, those restraining orders only last in life, and they don't follow you to your grave. Because when Charles Allen eventually died of cancer, he bought the two cemetery plots next to Michelle, one for his grandson who died as a newborn, and one for him so that he could lie next to the woman he abused for an eternity. Now, every time Kara wants to go visit her mother, she also is forced to visit and be reminded of the man who caused her mother so much pain. Kara has started a GoFundMe that we've contributed to,

to help her move her mother so she may finally rest in peace. And Kara's family can finally go visit and remember their mom for who she was outside of Charles Allen. If you want to donate to help her, there will be a link on this episode's blog post. You just have to go to crimejunkiepodcast.com and then click the episodes link. But I want you to know that Kara didn't share the story for the money. She didn't even ask me to put the GoFundMe up there. She wanted other people to hear her mom's story, to better understand the cycle of abuse. The more we talk about it, the more we can recognize the signs and get out and help people get out before it's too late. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, right now nearly 20 people

per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States. And this doesn't just apply to women. It's one in four women, but also one in nine men experience severe abuse. On a typical day, there are more than 20,000 phone calls placed to the domestic violence hotlines. The presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation increases the rise of homicide by 500%, as seen in Michelle's case. Abusers will not change. No matter how good the good is or what promises they make, they will not change. If you or someone you love is in a domestic violence situation, and please remember it doesn't always start with violence. It can be slow and methodical and manipulative verbal abuse, but it will escalate. So if you or someone you love

is in any kind of domestic violence situation, please reach out for assistance. You can visit ncadv.org slash resources. We'll also have this on our website, but they have a wonderful list of resources for help in any specific situation. We can't afford to lose another friend or another mother like Michelle. Thanks so much for tuning in to another episode. Again, if you want information on those resources for domestic violence victims, that's going to be posted on our website. If you want to contribute to Kara's GoFundMe, it will be a limited time, but as of right now, the week of June 17th, 2019, the link is live, and you can help her move her mother away from her abuser. We will be back

next week with a brand new episode, and I do mean we. We have Brit coming back. And if you ever want to follow us on social, don't forget our handles are at CrimeJunkiePodcast on Instagram and at CrimeJunkiePod on Twitter. I'll see you guys next week. CrimeJunkie is an audio chuck production. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?