Going West: True Crime - Kassanndra Cantrell // 403

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

In August of 2020, a 33-year-old woman headed out for the day in Tacoma, Washington, but never returned home. An investigation quickly began in hopes of tracking her down, but instead, police uncovered unsettling surveillance footage showing a man clad in a black fedora hat and face coverings leaving her abandoned vehicle. With this man dubbed “The Hat Man”, her phone being found on the floor of the Puget Sound, and a devastating motive, investigators quickly zeroed in on her killer. This is the story of Kassanndra Cantrell.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on true crime fans? I'm your host T and I'm your host Daphne and you're listening to going west. Hello everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in today's case. The investigation on this case is so bad ass because they found some damning things and each development is just as shocking as the last. And there are some creepy photos associated with this case, but especially since this happened so recently,

our hearts really go out to Cassandra's family who were so close to her and who are still reeling from the shock of what happened in this story. Yeah, her mom and twin brother seem like such wonderful people and despite this being a recent case, we wouldn't have known about it if it weren't for Paxton who emailed this one a while back. So thank you so much Paxton. Yes, thank you Paxton. I think you recommended this in 2022. It took us a while, but like I said, I looked up this case and we looked at the photos associated and we just knew we had to dive deeper and I am so glad we did.

So thank you so much. All right, guys, this is episode four hundred and three of Going West. So let's get into it. Thanks for watching! In August of 2020, a 33-year-old woman headed out for the day in Tacoma, Washington, but never returned home. An investigation quickly began in hopes of tracking her down, but instead, police uncovered unsettling surveillance footage showing a man clad in a black fedora hat and face coverings leaving her abandoned vehicle. With this man dubbed the Hat Man, her phone being found on the floor of the Puget Sound, and a devastating motive, investigators quickly zeroed in on her killer.

This is the story of Cassandra Marie Cantrell was born on May 25, 1987 in a Ghana Heights Guam to Marie Smith and Jeff Cantrell, but she grew up in Tacoma, Washington alongside her twin brother Robert. Cassandra was always incredibly close with her family and enjoyed things like going to the movies with her mom or going to comedy clubs with her twin brother. But her biggest interests lied in Gothic stories, horror movies, books, Disney, Harry Potter, gaming, and so much more. Yeah, I mean, she seemed so awesome and there's a bunch of pictures of her wearing like horror movie t-shirts and stuff like that.

She was just really interested in stuff like that. Yeah, she seemed so great and like she had so many passions and was super creative. And as she got older, Cassandra continued to live with her mom and another major interest of hers was actually making videos of hauls for her YouTube. So she would find great deals while thrifting or like find cute gifts for her mom or a little outfits for her rescue Chihuahua. And she would show them to people on YouTube.

So it's obvious that Cassandra loved shopping, but not just for clothes, also like DVDs, Blu-rays, books, etc. And she had this big dream of opening up a shop of collectibles with her twin brother. Cassandra was unapologetically herself. She was curious, incredibly smart, and adventurous. She loved the theater and even acted on occasion in a local production of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. And it was at this theater

in the Proctor District of Tacoma, the historic theater called the Blue Mouse, which opened back in 1923, where she would on various Saturday nights in 2006, play the role of Janet in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. But she also knew Columbia's part. So sometimes she would do that, but she typically was Janet.

And she made some really good friends during this time and loved working with the costumes and just putting on a great show. When this case takes place years later in 2020, the COVID pandemic was obviously in full swing, and Cassandra was living with her mom Marie in the Parkland suburb of the large city of Tacoma, just 40 minutes outside of Seattle, also located along the Puget Sound. If anybody's ever been to Tacoma, it's like a mid-sized city, but it's absolutely gorgeous and it's right on the water.

Yeah, it's so pretty and actually the Puget Sound plays a small role in today's case. But yeah, so this is going on during COVID and most of her Facebook posts from that year are photos from the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. Just of different people walking the streets in their beautiful old clothes, wearing face masks because she was really into this era and just anything vintage. On Tuesday, August 25th, 2020, Cassandra said bye to her mom when Marie headed off to work. So that day, Cassandra had plans to go to a doctor's appointment and to go shopping, but she didn't show up to her appointment.

When her mom Marie got home from work that day and Cassandra wasn't home, she was immediately a little bit suspicious. It was clear to her that Cassandra had gotten ready to go somewhere that day, but when she learned that no one had seen her and she wasn't answering her phone, text, or calls, she got a really weird feeling, because she didn't know exactly what else her daughter had planned that day. But she waited it out, hoping that she was just with a friend. Because at the time of her disappearance, Cassandra was 33 years old. So although she did live with her mom, she was an adult, and her mom just hoped that

she was okay, and that she would contact her soon. Well, the next day, which was Wednesday, August 26th, Cassandra had a plan with her best friend Alexandra, but she didn't show up to that either. And this really confused and worried Alexandra, who didn't at this point know that Marie was also looking for Cassandra. So, Alexandra called and called Cassandra's cell phone, but got no response. Then the morning after this, so Thursday, August 27th, Cassandra's mom Marie finally had enough of waiting around, and contacted Alexandra to see if she knew where Cassandra was, but she didn't.

And when they exchanged their concerns, Marie knew that it was time to call the police, which she did that same day, after calling anybody that she could think of and not getting any answers. So even though Cassandra was an adult, it was great because the Pierce County Sheriff's Office got involved very quickly, and vowed to look across different surveillance videos in the city to see if they could find Cassandra's car, and thus, find her. Now it was their original hope and belief that she would be found alive and that there would be a reasonable explanation.

But they still looked. They started off by watching the video of Cassandra leaving her home, pulling out of the driveway and driving away in her white Mazda 3 sedan. While police scoured surveillance footage and looked for her car, her parents and friends organized search parties just hoping to find any clues as to where she could be. But the first clue came from police the day after she was reported missing, when they discovered her car abandoned on the side of a road against a sidewalk. Her car doors were unlocked and the keys were sitting inside the center console. So this was automatically a red flag. You know, they're wondering why is her car here and why are the keys in it and where is Cassandra?

Yeah, there would be obviously no reasonable explanation why she would leave her car keys in the center console. Exactly. And the area that her car was found was pretty interesting because this wasn't abandoned in some rural area or, you know, somewhere downtown where it was obvious that maybe she had left her car to go walk somewhere. Like it was left on a very public trafficked street on East 25th Street going into downtown Tacoma and it was surrounded by buildings,

parking lots, a storage facility, and a bunch of freeway underpasses. So again, it's not like she parked it and walked to lunch or a coffee shop. Like there's nothing in this exact area that she'd be going to. So this was a shock to her mom and her loved ones at why her car was there.

So this just added more fuel for police because now they're thinking that something could be really wrong here. So while they're trying to collect surveillance footage from this particular area so they can see if they can spot Cassandra, you know, actually exiting her vehicle, they tracked her phone and they learned that its last pinged location was at a place called Owen Beach at Point Defiance Park. It's at the tip of a peninsula against the Puget Sound alongside a zoo and aquarium and beautiful lush parks and a rose garden so you can get there really easily by car. It is in Tacoma. And if you want to see a Google Street view of the beach parking lot and the entrance,

you can see how populated this area is, go check out our socials. I mean, from this place, you can even rent kayaks and have picnics, so I imagine there were at least a decent collection of people there even during the weekday when this took place, because it was still summer. So divers from the Pierce County Metro dive team headed to Owen Beach, and they went searching in the waters looking for both Cassandra and her phone. But this is a really big job, because they have to search amongst the sound floor and the floors of the adjoining Salish Sea, and this is a huge area. I mean, again, it's the Puget Sound.

So the lead detective on the case, whose name is Franz Helmke, he had an idea that someone had simply tossed Cassandra's phone there, not that she necessarily willingly went there and something happened from that point, because her car was left on Tacoma Street about a 20 minute drive away, so it was like 8 miles or 13 kilometers from Owen Beach. So the divers first started by throwing rocks from the shores basically just to determine you know the distance that a small object could travel and they scanned that general area of the shoreline all the way down Owen Beach with divers lined up, swimming next to each other and scanning the rocks and corals below.

Really? Oh, sorry. I was just going to say this is like a really cool thing because they essentially like created a line, they fanned out, and then they created like an underwater dragnet of divers. Yeah, and also the fact that they had tossed a stone to kind of see if that would help and that they're thinking that anyway that out of this whole Park area because like I said, there's all this fun outdoor recreational stuff on this peninsula and Their first thought is let's check the water and a stone throw away. Yeah, it was just an absolutely

Incredible process here. So after nearly an hour of searching, miraculously, one of the divers noticed a reflection from the sun sparkling against something below. It was a phone screen. They had been told that Cassandra had a sparkly phone case on, so when they picked up the phone and turned it over, they knew instantly that it had to belong to Cassandra. With the discovery of her cell phone discarded in the water, detectives felt that something bad had most likely happened to Cassandra. Because in one hand, you take this as Cassandra possibly taking her own life, you know, leaving her car somewhere, getting rid of her phone, and then running away or taking her life,

but it just didn't seem like this was the case. The day she disappeared, Cassandra was doing really well. She was excited about things to come, and in fact, she was pregnant. Now, Cassandra wasn't in a relationship when she went missing, but she did date around on Tinder, and she had been doing so for a little while. You know, just trying to meet somebody and connect with them. Regarding who the father of the child was, it was originally unclear because she had apparently told her mom that it was somebody that she had met on the apps and someone who didn't actually live in the area.

So this person wasn't gonna be a part of the baby's life. And Marie didn't really pry here, especially since the news was so recent, with Cassandra just finding out a month earlier in July that she was pregnant. And the day after she went missing was supposed to be her very first ultrasound, and she was reportedly super excited about this. Here is a direct quote from her obituary about the situation. It says, quote, At the time of her death, she was preparing to get lost in motherhood. It suited her motherhood, and venturing into this new brave unknown.

For Cassie, every moment spent pregnant became the new best moment of her life. She took it like a bird to the sky and would have taught her children about all the important things. Her mom Marie and her best friend Alexandra also said that she was excited about this. Like she had even already made a baby registry on Amazon because she was having a lot of fun with all the planning involved with her pregnancy. And she had even started thinking of some baby name, so there was no reason to believe that she would just leave her life behind. But it was of the detective's great interest to figure out who the father of her child

was, and they confirmed this in two ways. From Cassandra's best friend Alexandra, and from Cassandra's doctor Both said that Cassandra explained to them that the father of her child was her ex Colin Patrick Dudley For whatever reason she had kept this from her mom Marie Even though Marie knew that she and Colin were still friends after their breakup all the way back in 2006 So 14 years before Cassandra went missing. Like they had dated when she was a teenager. Colin was four years older than Cassandra, but they had met back in the Rocky Horror days when Cassandra was on the cast because

so was Colin. Colin had sometimes played the role of the criminologist in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, but mostly he was the head of tech. And this is what someone who was allegedly a part of that period's Rocky Horror cast had to say about Cassandra and Colin. Quote, "...back in like 2005 to 2006, I was on the Rocky Horror Picture Show cast at the Blue Mouse where Cass played Janet and Colin was like a stage manager slash techie. I remember being closest with Cass, she helped me with some costume and makeup stuff too. Colin on the other hand was an absolute nightmare.

He hated me and never missed an opportunity for a passive-aggressive jab or hurtful comment. Cassandra and Colin dated for a few months while she was 18 or 19 and he was 22, but they broke things off a little while later and Colin then began dating another girl on the cast named Rebecca Fisher, who was the same woman that he was dating at the time that Cassandra disappeared. And by then, they lived together in a three-bed, two-bath, craftsman-style house on South K Street in a residential neighborhood of Tacoma, just a five-minute drive from where Cassandra's car was found.

So police headed to his house to question him at his door to see if he happened to know where she was, asking then-37-year-old Colin, who did fairly well for himself working as a chef, when he last saw Cassandra. And Colin was pretty taken aback by these comments, telling police that he hadn't seen Cassandra since they dated back in 2006. And when police explained that she was pregnant, apparently with his child, he said quote, no way, no, hell no. And there is a recording of that and we're gonna play it for you guys right now. to other people, talking to to Sandra's family and some other friends. They reported that she was about 10 weeks pregnant and what we've been hearing is that she's been telling people

that you are the father. No way. No. Hell no. So he kept this calm yet confused demeanor, explaining that he hadn't spoken to her in a very long time, and that they were not in each other's lives. But police weren't completely buying this story because of the fact that he was apparently the father of Cassandra's child. Like they just knew that there was more to this story. Even if he wasn't directly involved in her disappearance, it just felt like he was concealing something. So with the warrant that they had, they seized Colin's phone and headed on their way. But Cassandra's mom Marie said something different than what Colin had. That

Cassandra and Colin had rekindled a friendship back in 2014, so six years earlier, and that since he had a long-time girlfriend, things between them were just platonic, and that they would just get food together or sometimes watch movies together. But Cassandra's best friend Alexandra filled in the blanks here, by explaining that actually, things had become romantic between Colin and Cassandra, which is how he was the father of her child, obviously. Now, Alexandra even explained that Colin knew that he was the father, but didn't want much to do with the situation since he didn't want kids. But, allegedly, he was fine with the fact that she wanted to keep the baby and he didn't need to be involved.

And this was like a really big shock to Cassandra because as she told Alexandra She knew that he didn't want kids and he was also known to have anger issues So she was anxious telling him and was very surprised with how he took it in the moment when she told him Yeah, it seems strange to me that he's being really calm given the fact that A. he doesn't want kids and B. he has this long-term girlfriend. So you would imagine that he would not be okay with this situation. Which makes us very suspicious. So confirming this information that Colin was lying about the fact that he had not seen Cassandra in a long time were phone records from around the time that Cassandra went missing.

There was a number on her records that her mom Marie really didn't recognize, and there wasn't even a name associated with the number in her phone, but one that popped up time and time again over that year and beyond. But when police looked at this phone number, they confirmed immediately that it belonged to Colin Patrick Dudley. And that the most recent correspondence between him and Cassandra was on the morning that she went missing. I'm just gonna keep it real, I'm just gonna keep it real As police searched Collins' phone, they cross-referenced a ton of correspondence between Cassandra's records to confirm that they were very much in contact despite what Colin had told them. Now upon first glance of Colin's phone, police didn't see any connection between he and Cassandra. Her name was not in his phone, but her number was. It was just under a secret name, and that name was Velma.

And it looks most likely, according to investigators and her mom Marie, that he used the name Velma because she had gone as Velma from Scooby-Doo one year for Halloween. So for whatever reason, he used that as her contact name to conceal her identity from his girlfriend. So she didn't have his number saved at all, as far as anyone knows, since police couldn't get into her phone due to the water damage, but it wasn't showing up under a name on the

phone records. And he had hers under a false woman's name Which is strange too because how would he explain who Velma is if his girlfriend saw that like it's still a woman's name Yeah, I don't really understand the thought process here like it's it's still a woman She's still gonna be like who the fuck is Velma could have done Chris or something right? Yeah, so the last time This is really crazy the last time this is really crazy. The last time like Keith just hinted to before that commercial break that Colin and Cassandra spoke via text was on Tuesday, August 25th, 2020 at 849 AM with Cassandra saying quote, I'm a bit early, that okay? So clearly they had a plan to meet that morning and had since his final text to her was, quote,

yup, come on down. So obviously this means that Cassandra is at Collins house. Yup, but police needed a little bit more. You know, they didn't have a body, they didn't have a crime scene. They still didn't know what exactly had even happened to Cassandra. So a few days into the investigation,

officers noticed some very suspicious things on various surveillance cameras around Tacoma, picking up the same person's trail on the day Cassandra went missing. On the street that her car was left, there is a light rail that goes through the city, also known as the Tacoma Link or the T-Line, which travels across four miles of Tacoma, offering 12 stops for public transporters. And as you'll see if you check out the street view that we posted of where her car was found,

there is a light rail track that runs in the middle of that very street, with its closest stop being the Tacoma Dome Station, which is just a couple blocks away. Now most light rails have cameras and because of the kind of fisheye lens that they have, they show this wide range of view, even outside of the light rail itself. This would be a long shot because the light rails in Tacoma pass through each station approximately every 20 minutes and it goes all day all night. So the likelihood that one passed at the same time that Cassandra left her car, like I said, long shot. But get this, miraculously again,

a light rail passed just seconds after Cassandra's car parked at about 11.40 a.m. on August 25th, the day she went missing. Seen on the footage leaving her vehicle wasn't Cassandra. It was a man dressed in black, a black hat and t-shirt, walking away from Cassandra's car, while Cassandra herself is nowhere to be seen. Just like Daphne just said, the Tacoma Dome station is just a couple of blocks away, and there are cameras there too. Multiple of them. And they're in pretty high definition.

And because it was the late morning in the summer, the temperature was around 68 degrees, and it was very sunny. So you can see this person very clearly. And this footage is creepy. It really is. It caught our attention so much when we looked this case up originally,

because it's so eerie. Yeah, you guys should go look at this video footage and the pictures on our socials, because, I mean, the first time I saw it, I was like, that is the strangest looking, uh, suspicious character I think I've seen in a case. But basically, it's a slightly heavy set Caucasian man wearing black pants, a black t-shirt, blue latex gloves, a dark colored neck gaiter that's pulled all the way up to his eyes, I mean it sits right underneath of them, and then his black, flat brimmed fedora hat. And because of the shadow that the fedora is casting, you can't see this guy's eyes, which makes the images so off-putting.

It's broad daylight, and even during the pandemic, the gloves and neck gaiter and hat mixture is just covering too much. Yeah, like I can't imagine seeing this man in person, even in 2020, and not being creeped out. Like, he looks villainous. Yeah, like if you were walking down the street and you saw this guy, you'd be like,

I don't know if I'm gonna walk past that guy. Something is so off about it. Yeah, so this guy walks from Cassandra's car up a couple of blocks and then crosses the road to sit at the bench at the Tacoma Dome light rail station, where he sits and just seemingly ponders for about four minutes. He's holding this small to medium sized black plastic kind of like Shopping bag and instead of getting on the light rail

He just gets up at 1150 a.m. And continues walking up the block to the Tacoma Dome parking garage So it's really weird. He just he sits down He's just chilling there for like four minutes, and then he gets up and he walks off towards the parking garage. Yeah, it's almost like he's sitting there thinking. Yeah, yeah. So eventually he gets to the parking garage where he is very clearly seen entering a newer modeled gray Chevy Colorado truck, and then driving out of the parking garage with his Washington plates hitting the camera perfectly.

And who was this registered owner of this truck? Colin Patrick Dudley. So it is clear to investigators that this person in Colin's truck was the one to dispose of Cassandra's Mazda. But was it Colin in the video? Well, he has the exact same body type, and there was something that he was wearing that Cassandra's Mazda, but was it Colin in the video? Well, he has the exact same body type, and there was something that he was wearing that was incredibly telling to those who knew Colin, including Cassandra's best friend Alexandra. Alexandra explained that Colin always used to wear this same black hat this like flat brimmed fedora hat it was his

signature hat that he was obsessed with wearing for years and years so much so that he previously wanted people to refer to him as hat man or hat this guy is the biggest dork of all time I just think it's so I think hat man is creepy I mean a lot of us know who Hat Man is, the urban legend, but yeah, call me Hat. Like, just Hat. Just Hat. He's so funny to me.

He's such a dipshit. Well, someone else on the Rocky Horror cast explained that Colin blew up in anger a couple times at the cast because they didn't call him Hat Man, which is what he wanted to be called. Oh my God. And on this, Heath, you're going to like this, another cast member stated, quote,

I haven't talked with anyone from that crowd in ages, but I knew Colin back then. He was very proud of that hat. And he would tell people it was his grandfather's. Went by the guy with the hat for a long time. But apparently, sorry, this is the part you're gonna like, a lot of people called him Asshat behind his back because he wasn't super well liked.

Yes, Asshat Dudley. Yeah, that fits a lot better. So it's known that Colin wears this hat. That's his truck. That's his body type. This has to be Colin. Oh, it is Colin. But police needed more since they still didn't know where Cassandra was.

And considering his car was in the Tacoma Dome station parking garage, they're now wondering how it got there. Like at some point, he must have dropped his car off, gotten back to wherever Cassandra's car was, dropped her car nearby, and then returned to his own car. But where was Cassandra in all of this, and what had transpired in the couple hours between when her final text was sent and when her car was dumped?

With the latest developments on August 31st, 2020, six days after Cassandra was last seen, the FBI searched Collins' house and found some very suspicious things down in his basement. Now, remember, the last text that Collins sent Cassandra was, Come down here, insinuating that he was asking her to come into the basement, which is a place that he often hung out with friends, just watching movies or playing Dungeons and Dragons. Yeah, this was kind of like his area of the house. It wasn't a place where Rebecca hung out as much. Maybe she played Dungeons and Dragons with them and sometimes hung out there, but this was kind of like his space.

Yeah, it's where he kept his plethora of Mountain Dew, I'm sure. So Cassandra wasn't down there and there weren't any visual unsettling signs of disturbance or of a crime scene, but they were able to see some damning connecting evidence, including a box of blue latex gloves, heavy duty black trash bags, which we are going to discuss in a little bit and is also never a good sign, and the black pants seen on the surveillance videos, and that black hat, including other cleaning supplies and items, and also his Chevy truck. So they processed his basement and sprayed luminol, and multiple areas around the room showed possible signs of minor traces of blood, like the basement sink, on the floors, and on the walls.

And this was exceptionally disturbing since cadaver dogs had hinted to the basement being a place of interest for them. More specifically, this brown couch that was down there that was also missing a cushion. But Colin wasn't talking. He wasn't telling police what he did or didn't do, or where Cassandra was. So basically, they couldn't arrest him unless the samples that they had sent to the lab came back positive for blood, or they were able to make another connection. But the detectives knew in their heart of hearts that he was guilty of something. They just couldn't prove it yet.

And they actually were able to get his girlfriend Rebecca to come down to the station and talk to them. And she said that she didn't think that he would kill Cassandra or anyone else. So this must have been a huge shock to her because she didn't know what was going on. Like suddenly her house is being raided by the police and she doesn't understand why. But back to the investigation. So detectives decided to look further into the questions that I brought up a minute ago. You know, how Colin arrived to the Tacoma Dome station parking lot that morning, where Cassandra's car had been beforehand, et cetera.

And this is where their incredible investigative work continues to prevail, because using more surveillance cameras and internal data from his vehicle, they uncovered a lot. So like I said, the final texts between them were exchanged just before 9 a.m. on the morning of August 25th. But about three hours before that, Colin was

running some errands. At 6 30 a.m. Colin headed to his local Costco, which is just a five-minute drive from his house, And he puts some gas in his car at their station and then went into the Costco store to buy a bunch of supplies, including heavy duty 50 gallon trash bags, along with some other items. He left Costco just after 7 a.m., went home for a little while, and then just under an hour later, at 8.17am, Colin arrived at the Tacoma Dome station parking structure, remember, just about 5 minutes away, as well as Costco, and he leaves his car there.

The video shows that he took a bike out of the back of his truck and then biked home, which on average would have taken him about 20 minutes to do, putting him back of his truck and then biked home, which on average would have taken him about 20 minutes to do, putting him back at his house by 850, if not by 840. So he planned this whole thing. I mean, this is right before Cassandra's arrival and he's already dumping his car somewhere, meaning they had this plan to get together that morning, possibly to talk about the baby or her upcoming appointment that day, and knowing his movements just after this just a few hours later, it just everything is so intentional. Well, it seems that he got home by 840 or possibly 845 and that they had a 9am plan to meet that Tuesday, August 25th, because

again, Cassandra texted him at 849am saying, I'm a bit early, that okay? And then 15 seconds later, Colin replied, yep, come on down. And as police would uncover when they seized his phone, he had deleted both of those text messages. But there was both of those text messages. But there was still record of this exchange. So that doesn't look good if you're saying, yeah, I haven't talked to her in 14 years, and then when they take your phone,

you did talk to her just days earlier and you deleted it. Right, exactly. So nearly three hours go by when Cullen's phone just completely shuts off at about 1130 am. But Cassandra's phone stays on. In fact, her phone traveled to the very spot where her car was dropped off at about 1140 am, but of course, it did not stop there. After Colin dropped off her car, her phone continued to travel up the road while Colin picked up his car from the Tacoma Dome station parking garage and drove up to Owen

Beach where he threw her phone in the water, which happened at about 12.45 PM according to the final ping. So between about 9 AM and 11. and 1130 a.m., just two and a half hours, Collin and Cassandra, or at least Cassandra's body, remained in his basement. So investigators knew that at some point, Collin had to have dumped her body. They just needed to figure out where. Yeah, because they have all this information about what he did with her phone, they know where he put her car, they know his movements before and after directly, but when they searched the basement before they found all this out, she wasn't there.

So they're like, when did he dispose of her body and where did he put her? Well, this is where more investigative work comes into play. And since they had his truck in their possession, they wanted to see if they could use it to find out where he had traveled in those days, because again, it was a newer model, and with Colin leaving his phone off during crucial moments, it was their only hope at really finding Cassandra. Detective Helmke had the black box in Colin's truck removed, because it stores a bunch of GPS data in it. And they actually were able to see exactly where his truck had traveled that week, which changed the entirety of this investigation.

So everything else was connecting with the cameras and, you know, the Tacoma Dome and the beach, but what investigators uncovered from the black box was a location that hadn't come up in their investigation yet. The day after Cassandra is believed to have been killed, on Wednesday, August 26, 2020, at 6 a.m., Colin's truck arrives at a wooded area eight miles from his home. wooded area eight miles from his home. There is a large wooded area in University Place, Tacoma that sits next to Chambers Creek, which feeds into the nearby Puget Sound.

And in this large area, there's waterways, ravines, an agriculture center, numerous trailheads, et cetera. It's a nice rural area. And this is like a 20 minute drive from Collins House. And there is a spot where Collins' truck stopped. And at those coordinates, there's essentially this wooded cliffside. And when investigators reached it,

they looked down and amongst the newly fallen leaves and scattered trees, they spotted a large gray utility trash can 100 yards down the hill, leading to a ravine. And this stood out to them. So they descended the hill to look at it further, only to notice that it had ropes around it, had blood inside, and held a closed heavy-duty black trash bag.

Inside that trash bag, sadly, were the remains of 33-year-old Cassandra Cantrell. At this point, it was the end of September, almost exactly a month since she had disappeared. So with decomposition, the only way the detective was able to make an immediate identification was by seeing a tattoo of hers that he knew she had. And this tattoo said, quote, we don't stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing. So Detective Helmke had to deliver the news to her mom on the phone in that moment. After an autopsy was conducted, it was determined that Cassandra had died from fractures to her skull done by a blunt object, but she had also been stabbed. So this was a vicious attack.

But because he cleaned it so well and because they couldn't identify a murder weapon, and mostly because Colin was keeping quiet, detectives never uncovered exactly what happened to Cassandra. But they believe that she was killed during that two and a half hour window in the morning, right after arriving to Colin's home basement. And then her body was kept inside the basement for

the next day until he dumped her down the wooded cliff the following morning, about 20 hours later. By the time Cassandra's body was found, detectives were able to confirm that there were traces of blood found in his basement, but because of how little there was, police believed that he cleaned the basement multiple times. That same night, on September 22, 2020, Colin Patrick Dudley was arrested for the premeditated first degree murder of Cassandra Cantrell, quickly pleading not guilty in court. After his arrest, her mother Marie stated, quote, People say that when it gets to this

point you feel closure. I don't. Closure would have been her coming home. That's never going to happen. In the charging papers, prosecutors included this quote, quote, Colin had reportedly made a statement before when they, he and Cassandra, were dating, that if any girlfriend of his got pregnant and wouldn't get an abortion, he would sue to get full custody just to spite the mother for having the child.

That is an insane statement. That says a lot about his personality, honestly. Well, yeah, he's just this nerdy little weird guy who, uh, he wants everything his way. He's a spoiled, spoiled person and he doesn't want to have to share his life with a child. Yeah, I actually saw this comment online that was so fitting. Someone said, quote, Imagine wanting to be a murderer more than a father, because it's clear that he was extremely adamant about never having children. And because it unintentionally happened with Cassandra and she decided to embrace it, she

was killed. And this is a note that her doctor wrote in her file, quote, This pregnancy was not planned. Patient is feeling overwhelmed. Father of baby, supportive of pregnancy, but not planning to be involved with raising child. He and mom are on good terms. So he acted like he was fine with it, thought about it deeply, and then hatched this horrific plan to make it go away when it really just ended up making him go away. It is such a sinister thing the way that he stayed so calm with Cassandra and made her feel

like she, you know, even though he wasn't going to raise the kid, he was going to be supportive of her and then turned around, stabbed her in the back literally and killed her and it makes me wonder if He was planning this from the moment that she said it and he was acting calm So that this didn't raise any red flags so that she wouldn't go home and say mom or Alexandra or whoever He's really mad about this. You know, I don't know what to do I don't know what to do. I don't know, like it just makes you wonder if he...

I mean, I don't believe that he was ever fine with it. Yeah, I mean, he was definitely trying to cover his tracks the whole time by, you know, telling investigators, oh, I haven't seen her since 2006, by telling Cassandra, oh yeah, I'm totally fine with the pregnancy when I'm not, you know, like... It's like, did you think that investigators weren't gonna find out that you guys texted? That is such an easy thing to find out. I mean, he was completely caught. Yeah, absolutely. So, due to COVID delays, the trial wasn't set for until late 2022, but it never ended up happening.

Investigators had a great case against him, and her family was prepared to watch him go away for life with all the evidence that they had against him. But then, prosecutors decided to make a plea deal with Colin, who in 2022 was 40 years old. And they felt like they had to do this, because despite all the incredible things that investigators were able to uncover, there wasn't enough physical evidence or eyewitness reports to concretely feel like they could convince a jury to convict him. And they didn't want to risk any of that. So instead of potentially going away for life, Colin Dudley pleaded guilty, but didn't give any answers on November 14th, 2022, and he was sentenced to 26 years and 8 months. But he could get out as early as 2044 when he's the age of 62 years old, which is absolutely

insane to me. And her family was furious by this. And they weren't the only ones who didn't believe that this was right because Collins own friend wrote a letter to the judge titled quote a plea that Colin Dudley should get life in prison Yeah, this was sent to the judge four days before Colin's sentencing and we only have part of the letter sadly But what we do have says, quote, I know Colin. I was friends with him up until he was arrested for murder. He did it.

He told me he was going to do spring cleaning his exact words in the basement and to move their D and D stuff from the middle of the room to be put on a shelf against a wall. He also went into saying that Colin isn't an 18-year-old or a new adult, but that he has been an adult for years, suggesting that Colin very much knew right from wrong. He also wrote, quote, He should not be out at all. He won't learn from this. But still, four days later, Colin was sentenced to just 26 years and 8 months.

After Cassandra's murder, her brother made both of their dream come true by opening up a shop called Pacific Northwest Gaming and Collectibles, located in Lakewood just outside of Tacoma, where he sells video games, DVDs, toys, and so much more. So if you're into that and you're in the area, definitely check it out. And he started it in memory of his twin sister, Cassandra, and even has a large mural dedicated to her memory there. Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode.

Remember that we are going to post a map of this case and photos from this case as well on our socials. So you can go find those over on Instagram at going West podcast, or you can go check out our Facebook page. Yeah, I think the photos really help set the scene, the street views, the map that we put together and then just those photos of Colin, the super creepy ones of him dumping her car. It's just so unsettling. It's such a crazy part of this story. And although we are so glad that he is in prison, I mean, I just really feel for her family that he only got 26 years. And that they don't have real answers as to what exactly happened to her. I mean, luckily we do

have some sort of a motive, of course, and have a general idea, but this guy sucks. Yeah, I just can't believe that this piece of shit toad man is gonna be only... Toad man? Toad man, yeah, he's a toad man. Asshat. He's an asshat Dudley, and he's only gonna be in prison for 26 years. Like, in my lifetime, this guy could get out of prison. It just shows, again, like we talked about how he would have these outbursts because people didn't call him hat man.

Like it seems like this guy is just overall super weird and off. And a narcissist. I don't feel like him in his 60s will not be like that. He just seems like overall something is very off with him and I don't, I agree with his friend, I don't think he's gonna learn. So very scary stuff. But thank you guys so much for tuning in. Thank you so much again for Pat,

or to Paxton for recommending this case. This was such an interesting and devastating one to dive into. So yeah, we will have another new case for you on Friday. All right guys, so for everybody out there in the world, don't be a stranger. Thanks for watching!