Crime Junkie - UPDATE: Flathead County Doe

Episode Date: March 15, 2022

This is an update to the August 2020 episode "UNIDENTIFIED: Flathead County Doe." In the year and a half since the release of that episode, more people submitted their DNA to genealogical databases, and in February 2022 Flathead County Doe was identified as Steven Gooch. In the rest of this episode we also discuss the following headlines:-Remains found and suspected to be of missing Brandon Lawson.-A recent search for Susan Cox Powell and its findings. -A senseless and horrific murder leaves China Town grieving.-Las Vegas man arrested for holding his girlfriend captive and killing her 4-year-old son.-Missing child Paislee Shultiz found alive and kept under a staircase.-New details in the events prior to the disappearance of Kara Nichols are made public.-An Ontario Dr. is charged with the murder of a patient and suspected of more. -DNA technology helps identify a serial killer from Oregon.  Sign up for the 'Stay Alive' fan club level in the month of March to hear this whole episode and get a new episode like this every month. Along with an extra full episode, mini-episode and all our wide release episodes early and ad-free.You can see all the fan club content HERE and when you sign up for an annual membership you get ALL past episodes as well. Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/update-flathead-county-doe/

Hi, crime junkies, Ashley Flowers here. I wanted to bring you all a special update on a case that we covered that you guys actually might have had a hand in solving. Now, if you didn't know, every month in our fan club, Britt and I do a segment called Headlines, where we talk about some of the most talked about true crime topics,

all of the stuff that you guys are DMing us about, talking about in the Facebook discussion group, all of the cases that you wanna know our thoughts on, and we break them down for you. Now, we also do a full-length bonus episode in the fan club every month, a mini episode every month in the fan club, and I actually saw a comment the other day

from someone that's like, are these episodes like, as good as the regular ones, the same as the regular ones? And I never knew that you guys were wondering that. Yes, all of our episodes are just as long, just as interesting, but cases that you've never heard us tell.

Like this month in March, we covered the eyeball serial killer as our full-length episode. Anyway, all that to say there is so much content in the fan club, if you ever thought about checking it out, I'll actually put a link in the show notes so you can see all of the extra episodes

that are waiting there. But I wanna give you a piece of fan club content for free, because again, you guys might have had a hand in solving this case, and you deserve to hear the update. So here is a clip from the February 2022 Headlines episode. Enjoy. Okay, so I'm gonna start off today

with a few kind of like rapid fire updates for a few cases that we've already covered in like full or mini episodes. And the first one I wanna talk about is an update to a mini episode that we did back in August of 2020. And honestly, I had to double check that because I feel like we did this episode five minutes ago,

but it's the Flathead County Doe episode. And if you remember, the sheriff's office in Flathead County had actually reached out to us back in 2020 and asked us to do the episode. And so a year and a half later, we're excited to bring you an update. Now, if you haven't listened to the episode

for it's been a while, I am gonna start off with a little bit of a refresher just to catch everyone up to speed. But basically back in 2003, the remains of a man were discovered at the bottom of a cliff in Montana, along with a gun and other belongings like a shoe and a bottle of Aleve.

And if you remember, that Aleve bottle actually ended up being a really important piece in narrowing down how long the remains might have been there, because they found out that the style of the bottle was only produced between June of 1994 and January of 1997. Right, so it was like really specific.

Right, and then something similar actually happened with the shoe that they found. It had only been produced in 1995, which narrowed down their estimated time of death even more. Police were also hopeful that the gun and the remains would give them some clues as to who their victim was and what the cause of death was. But unfortunately, the gun ended up being a dead end.

And the only thing they learned from the remains were that they had been there for a few years and their victim was a white male between 21 and 36. Now, despite the sheriff's office best efforts, the case went cold. There were a few interesting developments over the years which we covered in our episode, but one of the biggest was back in 2018

when they turned to the DNA Doe Project to hopefully ID their John Doe through genetic genealogy. But frustratingly, according to a post on the DNA Doe Project's website, they were only able to get like really distant matches. Like we're talking fourth cousins here. Now, there were multiple family trees that their John Doe could have been a part of.

Like we, if you remember, had like specific names from like specific regions. I think it was like kind of in the Midwest, like Kentucky-ish area. And so the team was like going through the painstaking task of eliminating them one by one. And they just kind of hit like a dead end. Like this is as far as we can go

without more people submitting their DNA. So that's when in 2020, they reached out to us to do an episode and they asked us to basically encourage our listeners to submit DNA to try and get a closer match. And I was actually surprised at the turnout of that episode. Like we got a ton of DMs and emails that said, hey, I have this last name, I live in this area.

I'm gonna talk to my family and see if anyone's missing or I'm gonna submit my DNA. It turns out that, you know, whether it was our work or just the work of the public, it was all worth it. Because in January, 2022, they were able to finally track down a close match. In a press release from the Flathead County Sheriff's Office, law enforcement reached out to one of the relatives

who said that back in 1995, his 29-year-old son had gone missing. So law enforcement compared the DNA profile that they had from the remains to that of the missing man. And finally, after 19 years, Flathead County Doe was identified as Steven Gooch in February of this year. According to Steven's family,

around the time that they stopped hearing from him, he had been talking about possibly making his way from San Diego to Las Vegas. But after months of not hearing from him, they decided to file a missing persons report. And again, like it's not in Montana, so you can see how it didn't get connected. And somehow Steven made his way from San Diego to Montana.

And between 1995 and 1996, he died either on or near the cliff where his remains were found. And so I actually got an email from the deputy coroner in Flathead County back in early February when they announced that they had ID'd him. And I actually want to read part of that email to you because I think it's really cool.

The email says, quote, we have gotten quite a few calls from people who heard the podcast. A lot of them were instructed to upload their DNA in order to further the DNA research. Of course, we will never know for sure, but who knows? Maybe one of those people's DNA ultimately led or at least assisted in the father being tracked down.

The point is, I really appreciate you doing the story. End quote. I just got full body chills. I know. So listen, yeah, we don't know if it was one of our listeners whose DNA ultimately led to the identification. But the fact that the episode reached enough people

to possibly help make the ID like this happened, this is why we do this. I would say this is why we do call outs at the end of episodes. This is why. So freaking cool. This is why we reach out to you guys for like, hey, you could help be a part of this. And like you said, we may never ever know,

but the fact that it's a possibility is just so amazing. Yeah. Well, listen, even though Stephen has been identified, the sheriff's office is still dedicated to finding out what happened to him. According to King5.com, quote, the sheriff's office did not release any details

about the cause or manner of Gouge's death, end quote. And in an article from KPAX News, Flathead County Sheriff Brian Hinoe stated that he hopes the identification will bring closure to his loved ones and they won't stop searching until they have more answers. So this is the next part. If you think you have any information

relating to the investigation into Stephen Gouge's death, you can contact the Flathead County Sheriff's Office at 406-758-5600, or you can email tips at flathead.mt.gov. There are eight other stories we cover in this month's headline episode, including an update in the Susan Cox Powell case, the Brandon Lawson case,

and I'm sure you guys saw all over the headlines of a young little girl named Paisley, who was found underneath the stairs. Britt and I kind of dive into that. It's a little more complex than the headlines would have you believe. Anyway, if you want to hear that, sign up for the highest level this month

in our fan club, the month of March. You'll get that episode. You'll also get a full episode on the serial killer known as the eyeball killer, which is a wild case. You'll get a mini episode, and you get all of our wide episodes ad-free. And if you're hearing this later,

you can sign up for an annual membership and get every case we've ever done, the entire backlog of full episodes, mini episodes, headline episodes. There's a total of like 400 and some in the fan club. We're gonna link to that in the show notes. You can also find the sources for this specific episode on our blog post,

crimejunkiepodcast.com. Fill in your blanks and leave them. So, what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?