Going West: True Crime - Tanya Kach // 396

Episode Date: April 10, 2024

In the small town of McKeesport, Pennsylvania, a 14-year-old girl went missing after leaving home. In a case where it seemed no attention was paid and no real investigation took place, an unbelievable story unfolded in front of everyone’s eyes years later of what really happened to her. With the discovery of a predatory security guard, another missing girl in the area, and a grocery store confession, the truth prevailed. This is the shocking story of Tanya Kach. 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. I truly cannot believe that this case that we have for you today wasn't in our email recommendations because the entire time I researched it, I was consistently beyond baffled at the details. Like even though it's such a mind-bendingly unbelievable story, I feel like it's not very widely discussed at all. But wow, what an intense journey. Absolutely. I mean, it just gets crazier and crazier as it goes on. And this episode, I will say,

is a little bit unlike most of the episodes that we do on Going West, as you guys will see, but wow, it is bonkers. It really is. I don't know how many of you guys watch that show Cruel Summer that came out in 2021. Season one reminds both Heath and I so much of today's case and to me it seems like there is no way that it wasn't inspired by this case but the writer claims that that was an original idea so I don't know if you've seen it you'll definitely see the similarities but either way buckle Either way, buckle up. All right, guys, this is episode 396 of Going West, so let's get into it. ["Going West"] In the small town of McKeesport, Pennsylvania, a 14-year-old girl went missing during winter after leaving home.

In a case where it seemed no attention was paid and no real investigation took place, an unbelievable story unfolded in front of everyone's eyes when years later, they found out what really happened to her. With the discovery of a predatory security guard, two other missing girls from the same school and a grocery store confession, the truth finally prevailed. of Tanya Cash. Tanya Cash was born on October 14, 1981 in Pennsylvania as the only child of Sherry and Jerry Cash. She grew up in Monongahela, also known as Mons City, which is a very small city that at the time had a population of just around 5,000 people. But this is where Tanya spent her childhood, so when her parents told her at the age of

13 that they were moving, she was devastated. Now they weren't going very far just about 15 miles or 24 kilometers north to the town of McKeesport which has a larger population of around 25,000 people at that time but McKeesport is a suburb of the city of Pittsburgh so it's very close to the action in downtown while remaining a little bit tucked away but according to what we read online it's not the safest or the nicest town per se with niche.com giving it a C plus rating for schools and a D rating for crime and safety. I'm just telling you guys that because that's where today's story takes place.

So just to give you a better idea of the type of town that it is. But anyway, the reason for this move is because Tonya's parents had recently gotten divorced, which was very hard on Tonya. So her father Jerry got engaged to a new woman and they were moving into her house in McKeesport. Things were already tough for Tonya though because she described her mother as abusive and violent, so they did not have a good relationship, and she didn't have a good one with her dad either, or her to-be stepmother. And to kind of explain this a little bit better,

she describes her dad as being very cold with her in general, and when he started dating this new woman, Joanne, and they moved towns, Tanya says that Joanne left her out of a lot of family activities and just made her feel like a black sheep because Joanne did have a child of her own and it kind of felt like She didn't really want Tanya a part of that bigger picture. So Tanya was not happy at home now in the fall of

1995 almost 14 year old Tanya was beginning eighth grade at Cornell Middle School in 14 year old Tanya was beginning eighth grade at Cornell Middle School in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. So a whole new school and it was pretty much bad from the start because Tanya explained that she was bullied. But everything changed just a few weeks into the school year when she met a 37 year old man named Thomas Hoes who worked as a security guard at this school. Now, Thomas didn't have a great reputation at school. A lot of the young female students had claimed that he was weird and rude and touch women in ways that he shouldn't. And this is what Tanya was told before meeting him.

And to give you a visual, if you can't check out the photos on our socials at this moment, Tanya was a very young, blonde teenage girl. And Thomas was this guy in his late 30s with black dyed hair, tan skin, a thick dark mustache and a pretty average build. I don't know if you guys have seen the show Big Mouth, the Nick Kroll show Big Mouth, but this guy looks exact, Thomas Hose looks exactly like Coach Steve in my opinion. Okay, I can kind of see what you mean. Hold on, I'm pulling up a picture of Coach Steve. I've not seen the show.

Just extremely Italian, big old thick mustache, just, yeah, you know what I mean. I kind of see what you mean there, yeah. The same kind of vibe. So that's what you can picture if you've seen Big Mouth. So according to Tanya, it was towards the end of the school day when Tom came up to her for the very first time, originally making her believe that she was in trouble, but they had a kind of pleasant encounter,

like he made a joke about her hall pass that made her laugh, and she left the conversation feeling like he was kind of a nice guy. So whenever they saw each other after this, they chatted and Tom got to know Tanya better and better about her likes, her dislikes, her home life, et cetera. And especially considering she didn't have a good relationship with her dad,

you know, here's this older guy who listens to her and seems to care. So obviously she felt safe with him, which made this little crush develop. As they spoke more and more, they both looked forward to their encounters and Tanya started to write him these quasi love letters. But unlike what you would hope out of Thomas

in this situation, he encouraged the letters. Like he was giddy about them and wanted her to keep sending them. Yeah, obviously, cause this guy's a creep. He's a pedophile and a piece of shit. Absolutely. I mean, obviously, from our adult minds, we all know this is very wrong.

This is a 14-year-old girl. This guy is 25 years her senior. He's a grown-ass man. And he is absolutely grooming her. He is making her, a child, feel safe with him, an adult, and so that he can, as we're very much gonna get into, manipulate her later. And of course, Tanya doesn't understand what's happening.

She's just a kid. She's just happy that someone is being kind to her and making her feel seen and wanted, because clearly she didn't feel like that from her family and she didn't feel like that from her peers. But, you know, interestingly enough, people at school started to kind of notice that this relationship was forming between the two of them.

And not just the students, but the teachers and the faculty would witness them constantly walking and talking together. But all that was done was a faculty member telling Tonya to stop hanging around Mr. Hoes so much. And nothing was done to Tom Hoes. Like, he wasn't disciplined for walking around with her during class, or lighting her cigarettes, which he bought for her, by the way, and full view of faculty and school cameras. I mean, just absolutely nothing was done here.

And things only got worse. A few months into their meeting in the beginning of 1996, Tanya and Tom started meeting under a staircase in the school's gym where they kissed for the very first time, and would continue to do so for weeks to come. With Tanya's home life continuing to be a bad environment, Tanya started running away from home, originally heading to her grandmother's house every single time, but whenever that would happen, she would just be returned to her dad's house in McKeesport.

So one day in the end of January of 1996, on Super Bowl Sunday, Tanya ran away somewhere different. Tom's house. Now by this time Tom had turned 38 and by the way he was still living with his parents in their two-bedroom house where he also lived with his son Justin, obviously from a previous and brief marriage, who was just around two years younger than Tanya was. So since this house is a large part of the story, I kind of want to describe it to you guys so you can get a better picture. So it's a two-bedroom, one and a half bathroom house that totals

972 square feet. And by the way, this is according to Zillow. As Tanya described it, quote, the inside of the house was not what I had expected. I thought that it would be warm and cozy. Instead, it was outdated and uninviting. The telephone was rotary. Bedsheets covered the furniture." And regarding Tom's bedroom that she stayed in during these 10 days, Tanya wrote, quote, "...it was a wood-paneled space about the size of three prison cells. As we entered the only door into the room, there was a full-sized bed pressed against the opposite end between the narrow windows.

On the right side of the bed, a box sat under the window between the bed and the dresser on the far right wall. The box was there to hold my meager belongings, and the dresser contained Justin's things. Justin slept on the floor in a body-sized space next to what became my side of the bed. So in this room slept a 38 year old man, this 14 year old girl that he is grooming, and his 12 year old son all together. So Tanya stayed at his house for 10 days in that bedroom so that Tom's parents wouldn't know she was inside. She was instructed to keep the door locked and since she couldn't leave the

second floor of the house to go the bathroom, Tom provided her with a bucket to use. Now, I know this seems like this is awful because it absolutely was, but at home, you know, Tanya isn't getting any love or attention from her father or her stepmom. And also her stepmom, and also her stepmom Joanne had removed the door for her bedroom. So she just absolutely hated being at home.

And even though the conditions at Tom's house were awful, when he was there, she feels this sense of love and care. And even though she's locked in the room during this period, she's thinking, at least I have privacy, right? So this trick of his is absolutely working. But Tanya was not at his house this entire time because during this 10-day period she did stay at one of Tom's female friends houses during the day and they would just kind of hang out together. And this woman whose name is Judy, we're going to talk about Judy a few times today, encouraged Tanya to just go back

to her mom and that what she was doing, you know, running away and staying with Tom, wasn't a good idea. But Tanya knew that she couldn't do that because of the relationship that she had with her mom and how her mom was towards her and there wasn't any other family that she could stay with. I mean there was a period of time when she ran away that she went to her mom's sister and her uncle, so her mom's sister's husband at the time, tried to rape her. And basically when she went back to her dad and told her that this had happened he didn't believe her. So after this 10-day period when she did finally go

back home, she just knew that she had to leave again. The situation was not okay. So on February 10th, 1996, 14-year-old Tanya left home for the last time. Now Tanya's disappearance wasn't handled well from the start. Upon her disappearance, this was the third time Tanya was reported missing because she had run away a few times before and two of the times her father had reported her missing to police. So you can imagine how police felt with this third report. The final report came in four days after Tanya went missing on February 14th, 1996. Now the reason her dad waited four days after Tanya went missing on February 14th, 1996.

Now the reason her dad waited four days is because he apparently believed that you had to wait a certain period of time to report somebody missing, which is true in some cases, but not for minors. And secondly, Tanya had usually returned after just a couple of days when she had run away in the past. Obviously the most recent time before this that she got missing, she was gone for 10 days, so he probably had that in the back of his mind. But either way, it doesn't seem like there was a ton of care here. So the officer assigned to Tanya's case,

Michael Elias, did not announce to Tanya's school that she was missing, nor did he interview any of her peers or the students at Cornell Middle School, just some of the parents, even though parents later stated that they don't remember being interviewed at all. Of course, the parents of Cornell students didn't know anything, but multiple students were aware of what was going on between Tanya and Tom Hoes, as did faculty. But he didn't interview Tom Hoes, as did faculty. But he didn't interview the staff either, nor did he interview Thomas Hoes himself. So after Tanya went missing, her grandmother provided the police with her diary, which

included both Tom's name and information regarding his actions towards her, as well as information about Tom's friend Judy, who Tanya briefly stayed with, but Officer Elias didn't look into any of it. Strangely, both Joanne and Tanya's grandmother know that the diary included the name Tom in it, but suspiciously found it to be missing pages when it was returned years later from the FBI. But that same year that Tanya went missing, towards the end of 1996, a tip came into police that Tanya was being held at Tom Hoes' house.

When Michael Elias briefly spoke with Tom about this, he apparently acted like he had no idea why he was speaking with him, and the conversation went absolutely nowhere. Tom was not properly questioned here. Now eventually, after a couple of years when Tanya's case went cold, there was renewed interest into her disappearance when another detective took over the case. So after reviewing her diary, this officer, Gene Riazzi, actually questioned Tom Hoes, but nothing came of this either, and Riazzi didn't issue a warrant for Tom's phone records, nor the home that he lived in with his parents. So after this, police started thinking that she wasn't abducted, she wasn't

being held somewhere, but that she had run away. After Tanya was added to the National Database for Missing and Exploited Children, someone in West Fort Worth, Texas reportedly saw a girl named Tanya working at a grocery store there that looked just like missing Tanya Cash. So the McKeesport Police called for someone in Lincoln Borough, Texas to go and check it out, but confirmed that this was not Tanya. They continued to follow up on other leads across the country of reports of Tanya

being spotted alive, but sadly they were never her. It's interesting because usually in cases that we cover, especially when it regards a missing child, the town gets together, the police are leaving no stone unturned, the family is out there doing whatever they can, but none of that happened in Tanya's case. Yeah, she was absolutely let down by everybody in her life. Yeah, because people didn't really know who she was. She was new to town. So those who did notice her absence thought that she had moved away or transferred schools.

And her parents weren't known to be out there scouring the streets for her, so they eventually succumbed to the belief that she had run away for good. And in fact, four years later at the passage of Tanya's 18th birthday, police interviewed her dad again to see if Tanya had made contact. And her dad apparently said that she hadn't and that he was hoping to remove her from the missing persons list so he quote, would not have to worry about her anymore. Yeah, that really shows signs of a loving and caring father. Yeah, not at all. But get this, so another student from Cornell School's Anna Marie Callahan was found dead six days after she disappeared on October 15th, 1995

on the banks of the Monongahela River in town. So this was the day after Tanya Cash turned 14 and right around the time that Tom had begun to form a relationship with her. Now Anna also went to Cornell like I said. She wasn't in middle school She was in the high school and she was a couple years older She was 16 years old her death was quickly ruled as a homicide as she was found with an electrical extension cord wrapped around her neck and

Her hands were still bound with duct tape and eerily in her tied hands Someone had placed flowers and eerily in her tied hands, someone had placed flowers. So, was it possible that Tonya had met the same fate as her peer? Like, was there a killer targeting girls at Cornell? Well, two and a half years after Tonya disappeared, another young girl was found dead in the area. This time, a 14-year-old girl named Kimberly Crimm, also a Cornell student.

Her case was never classified as a homicide, though many people believe she was murdered, because her body was found on an overgrown hillside in Versailles Cemetery in McKeesport just days after her disappearance, and she was already in an advanced state of decomposition so they could not determine cause of death. Nor, like I said, manner, but there is a ton of speculation. Because it just seemed too strange that there were three disappearances, two of which were found dead, in less than three years and all of them went to the same school, were around the same age, and had similar appearances.

Yet time passed and no connection was made and then Tanya's case went really cold. No body was found, scarce reports came in about sightings of her, and no one was looking back at the original clues of her disappearance that clearly pointed to the involvement of one predatory man. Until one day in March of 2006, exactly 10 years after Tonya went missing, when a convenience store and deli owner uncovered something that would bring complete closure and understanding regarding what happened to Tanya Cash. On March 21st, 2006, a 24-year year old woman approached the owner of a deli and convenience store and confessed something shocking to him. Right there in JJ's Deli Mart in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, this woman who had previously

claimed her name was Nikki Diane Allen said that her real name was Tanya Nicole Cash, and that she had been held hostage for 10 years by a man named Thomas Hoes. For 10 years, she had been stuck in the upstairs bedroom of his home, sexually assaulted, mentally tortured, and threatened for ten whole years. Now, since that is a lot to process here, let's go back to the very beginning, so that we can explain what on earth happened and how she got to the point of being in public alone

and able to even tell someone and get help. On Saturday, February 10th, 1996, 14-year-old Tanya woke up earlier than usual for a weekend, packed a small bag, and headed out of the house, prepared to stay at 38-year-old Tom Hose's house for a while. This is a man, as we've explained, who spent months grooming her and convincing her to escape her abusive home life and stay at his home that he shared with his 12 year old son and his parents

Now while this was kept a secret from his parents his son Justin was aware of Tanya's Captivity and that woman Judy we mentioned earlier was also aware of their relationship and would sometimes let Tanya and Tom sleep at her house according let Tanya and Tom sleep at her house, according to Tanya. Now Judy even helped alter Tanya's appearance by dying her hair twice at the request of Tom. So during the first few weeks of Tanya being missing, she's staying at Tom's house, they keep going to Judy's house, and she's kind of finding a friend in, who is obviously much older than she is. And Judy knows about what's going on between 14-year-old Tanya and her 38-year-old friend Tom. So she's also, you know, by acquaintance, a groomer and a pedo. Yeah, exactly. She is complicit in this.

But what happened was, after a few weeks, it was about a month after Tanya went missing Judy was contacted by CYS or child and youth services and they asked if she knew where Tanya was So when she was having this conversation with them and essentially being interviewed Judy mentioned Tom hoes by name But you know didn't give up and say yeah, I know where she is. She's been at my house I helped her dye her hair and disguise herself, you know So she's not telling the full story, but she after this just kind of said I don't want any part of this and she's washing her hands of it Yeah, because she knows that you know she could go down for all of this as well

Which we are gonna get into later. But yeah, I mean, she's basically just trying to act dumb and say, well, I don't know anything about it. And then, you know, telling Tom like, hey, I don't want to be involved in this. Yeah. And but she's not helping. She's just, like I said, washing her hands. And I will say as well, though, about a year and a half later, she did call Tom and ask if Tanya was still with him.

And Tom told her that Tanya was long gone and he didn't know where she was. So it just seemed like Tom wasn't trusting anybody but his son with this information after this encounter with CYS. But that is not true that after a year and a half, he didn't know where Tanya was because let's get into it So after leaving Judy's house over the next four years until Tanya turned 18

She hardly left Tom Hose's bedroom When he was at work and his son was at school Tanya would just lay around in the bedroom and read magazines and books Still going to the bathroom in three designated colored buckets. When Tom fed her, it would always be something simple like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, or a banana and soda, causing her to lose 30 pounds over her first few months there. One to two times a week, Tom would wait for his parents to fall asleep before quietly and quickly leading

her into the bathroom to take a shower. Now at first, young Tanya felt like these were, you know, just things that she had to do to make the relationship work and to get away from her family. But quickly, Tanya realized that this situation was a living nightmare. Tom began to threaten her on a daily basis, telling her that if she ever attempted to leave the house that he would kill her and he drilled this into her head constantly When she contracted lice from his son at the end of her first year there Tanya said that Tom explained that he was considering killing her and getting rid of her body along a nearby river Throughout Tanya's time there Tom hoes even brought up the other two deaths, Anna Marie

Callahan and Kimberly Crimm. Now, a lot of the information for today's case came from the book that Tonya Cash wrote and released in 2011 called Memoir of a Milk Carton Kid, and I want to read a page from it regarding these two other deaths because Tanya puts it best. She wrote, quote, At first, I learned of Kimberly Crimm's murder from Justin, who came home one day to report it. Chills shot through me. Kimberly Crimm was the younger sister of Monica Crimm, my first friend at Cornell,

the girl who later yanked the necklace that Tom Hose had given me off my neck. Now Monica's sister was dead, how could that be? When Tom Hoes was informed that Crim had been found dead, he did not seem surprised and said quote, you knew that was coming. This struck me as an unusually strange and cold reaction to learning about anyone's death. Tom Hoes hated Kimberly Crim because of all of her problems at Cornell and because of my troublesome interactions with her sister. One evening after he had

been drinking, Tom Hose even described to me the configuration of Crimm's dead body as it was discovered in the cemetery. These details were especially disturbing because no details had been reported at the time. He claimed that Crim's lifeless body was found propped up on a hillside amidst overgrown grass and shrubbery. He further claimed that Crim was slouched over her knees, which were bent inward and up against her chest. He went on to describe Crim's panties being drawn down to her ankles.

According to official reports, the manner and time of Crim's death were undetermined because her body was so badly decomposed when she was discovered by authorities. So this just feels wildly suspicious and it's hard for me to believe that Tom isn't involved in either of these cases. Like, to come home and say what he said, to act how he did, and have, like, happen to have all these details when they haven't been released. Yeah.

And also, why are you telling her them anyway? Something is so wrong with this. Very scary, and I feel like he's telling her because it's almost like a threat, but not a direct threat, you know what I mean? Oh, yeah, like, this is what... I mean. It's not like he said I did this but it's almost like he's hinting at that He's saying this could happen to you exactly especially because at by that time he was very much constantly like you said Heath threatening Tanya's life and

Regarding this Tanya also wrote this in her book, quote, After my rescue, while Tom Hose was in jail awaiting his trial, a jailhouse snitch claimed that Tom Hose confessed to the murder of Kimberly Crimm. Detectives sat down with me to ask me about this. I could not recall any time when Tom Hose came home as if he had killed someone, such as with blood on his clothes. He could have showered and cleaned up without me knowing, however, because of my imprisonment in the bedroom.

Many speculate that Kimberly Crimm was killed by Hoes because she knew he was keeping me in his bedroom. No one had ever been charged with Kimberly's murder. And I guess what I have to say about this is that if Tom is able to hide Tanya for 10 years, what else can he hide? Right? But it's impossible for us to say if police have questioned him or really looked into this, or if they've done any DNA testing in either victim's case to see if Tom's DNA, you know DNA would match any found at the scene. So it's just another way that Tom is potentially slipping through the cracks of the law.

But let's get back to Tanya's first four years in captivity. So regarding health and dental care, Tanya didn't get any of it. Her health was overall terrible, suffering from toothaches, lost fillings, chest pain, psoriasis because she never saw a doctor or dentist for 10 years and was not properly cared for by any means. Whenever Tom would come home with the flu, a cold, pink eye, you name it, Tanya would get infected and wasn't given any ounce of proper care or medicine. She tried to leave once during that first year just once because she very quickly learned what would happen if she did try.

Because basically her 15th birthday passed and Thanksgiving approached and she realized how much she wanted to get back to her normal life. She didn't want to feel sick and trapped anymore. Like her abusive home life at this point, she decided was better than what she was going through. But still, Tom threatened to kill her and she says this time was one of the worst for the threats because of how angry he was that she was determined to leave.

During the summer months, Tanya reported that the heat was unbearable in that bedroom, yet she wasn't allowed to leave. Eventually, she found some sort of solace in Tom's son Justin, because even though he was keeping the secret of her captivity, they eventually kind of became friends and would hang out together, you know, like playing video games or watching TV in their shared bedroom. But it was such a fragile relationship because Tanya would sometimes tell Justin that his father Tom threatened to kill her, and Justin would just stay silent.

Over time, it seems kind of like Justin began to morph into the type of person his father was, because Tom seemed to always encourage vile behaviors behaviors like degrading women and being violent. When Justin was questioned after Tanya was found, he explained that it was better that Tanya lived with the Hose family than her own, based on what Tanya said about her home life. But it kinda seems like Justin was just brainwashed by his dad. A hundred percent. Yeah. So over the years, Tom continued to brainwash Tanya into believing that if she tried to leave he would kill her Or he would kill himself because he just couldn't live without her Then he would love bomber and try to convince her that he took care of her and loved her

He would also tell her that her parents didn't care that she was missing and that they had moved on her that her parents didn't care that she was missing and that they had moved on. One year after she disappeared, her mom got married, and Tom actually showed her the newspaper clipping and told her that her mom had moved on and didn't care about her anymore. So she absolutely developed Stockholm Syndrome in this confusing mind game that was Tom's world. And then there was the sexual assaults as well, sometimes up to four times a day. And it was Tom's choice every time, always forcing himself onto her and making her keep a log book about every single

encounter, telling her that he wanted to be able to brag to his friends at the end of the year and show them how many times he had sex. I fucking hate this guy. This guy is so horribly evil. And when police eventually did search his home later after Tanya was rescued, they found 31 books of these logs of these sexual encounters. Absolutely disgusting.

So when Tanya turned 18, a lot changed for her her So Tom started to become a little bit more lax like for four years She had been wearing hand like men's hand-me-downs, you know clothes of Tom's and Justin's But then after her 18th birthday Tom actually let Tanya venture out into the world by herself While his parents were away for the weekend venture out into the world by herself while his parents were away for the weekend. Because he kind of figured he could trust her and that she had been gone for such formative years that, you know, nobody would be able to recognize her. She was now a woman. Yeah, exactly. So he gave her $12 and helped her discreetly escape through the back door so the neighbors wouldn't see her because via the back door

there was a like an abandoned lot behind the house and there was this alleyway so she could get out without being seen. Because the house that this all took place in is in such close quarters with other houses. I mean, it is astonishing to see what the street looks like. When I was researching this and I looked at a picture, I said, what out loud? looks like. When I was researching this and I looked at a picture, I said, what? Out loud. Because basically the houses are so narrow and they're kind of sardined in there and almost none of the houses on the street have a side yard or

a front yard. So they're really close together. Yeah, I mean you can kind of picture this. They're in a suburban area. This is not rural by any means. I mean, you can kind of picture this there in a suburban area. This is not rural by any means. I mean, this is, you know, this is like Pittsburgh. So it's basically in the city. Yeah. So we'll, we'll put a picture so you guys can see it's an, obviously it's not, it's shocking, but it's not like she was screaming or they were shuttling her in and out of the house, but it is just so weird to look at the house and the street and say, Oh my God, somebody was kept in there for 10 years. How is that possible?

So for the first time in four years, Tanya was able to go shopping. Now, obviously, this is a very confusing trip for her. She hasn't left the house in four whole years. So when she eventually got back to Tom's house, she says that she kind of felt a sense of relief. In a way, despite all the abuse and the confinement, this was all she knew for a long time was that bedroom.

And that just plays into the Stockholm syndrome of it all, especially because it wasn't until six months later that Tom let her leave again, but this time giving her $120 to go shopping for clothes again. Shortly after this, Tom began to let her leave the bedroom after his parents went to sleep just so she could go sit on the back porch and get some fresh air, which is crazy that this meant so much to her because even going outside became so foreign.

Yeah, the small things, the small victories that she got meant everything to her at this point. Absolutely. And so she's, you know, able to sometimes go outside and get some fresh air, but the next time she left the house was within just a couple weeks of her second outing, and this was for Justin's 17th birthday. So she asked Tom if she could go to the end of the street to JJ's Deli Mart a couple weeks of her second outing and this was for Justin's 17th birthday.

So she asked Tom if she could go to the end of the street to JJ's Deli Mart to get something for Justin and she ended up getting him a bunch of junk food. And this was an exciting trip for her. She was starting to feel better about leaving the house. But still, she was instilled with fear and uncertainty of telling anybody she encountered that she needed help and that she had been held hostage. So she didn't, she didn't know how, she didn't know what was going to happen. And then after this trip, Tanya was allowed to leave the house two to three times a year, and it was always to the

grocery store. She enjoyed going to JJ's Deli Mart and seeing the friendly face of its outgoing and kind owner, Joe Sparico, who as we know, played a very pivotal role in Tanya's rescue. In late 2004, after Tanya turned 22 years old, she wanted more and more to get out. But still, she was brainwashed by Tom. So she would try to convince him of ways that she could live more normally without him getting in trouble. And she would ask him, you know, is there any kind of way? Could you get advice from somebody where you don't have to go to prison and, you know, we can both kind of be free. So he would lie about meeting with lawyers about their situation to gain advice. Like he's telling her, oh yeah, I met up with a lawyer and I told him

about our situation and he doesn't think it's a good idea if I let you go. Yeah. But that obviously, you know, never happened. Yeah. But every conversation ended in Tanya remaining in prison by Tom. You know, even though they were having these talks, because by this time it's been eight years. But just after turning 22, 47 year old Tom asked Tanya to marry him and she accepted. Shortly after this, things grew worse again with Tom being increasingly cruel and cold and Tanya's

daytime privacy changing with Justin's work schedule. Because again, Tom, Justin, and Tanya, still the whole time, shared one small bedroom. Even though at this time, Justin is 20 years old, Tanya is 22, it's absolutely crazy to think about. And I know at this time Justin's schedule had changed, so he was working night shifts,

which meant he was sleeping during the day. And that means Tanya is stuck in a room during the day while Justin is just trying to sleep. Like that is what she was dealing with on top of the continued abuse from Tom. And throughout that whole time, Tanya had nothing but buckets as her bathroom that Tom emptied for her, which she grew increasingly resentful of even though he was the one instilling

this. So in 2005, Tonya and Tom came up with the idea to give Tonya an alias, Nikki Diane Allen. With this alias and with Tanya being 22 and nearing 23, they devised a plan to introduce Tanya as Tom's new girlfriend Nikki who was coming to live with them. And thus, after living in their house for 9 years, Tanya finally met Bud and Eleanor Hoes for the first time. Yeah, I mean up until that point she had only known these two human beings by their voices. She had never met them, she had never seen them, she just knows that Tom's parents live in that house as well. And she's just upstairs the entire time.

So after meeting them she she went back upstairs, and Tanya put it this way, quote, in her book, quote, "'Still, after nine years of a stilted existence "'in that room, psychologically tortured "'and sexually degraded, I was hardly free "'in any traditional sense of the word.'" After this, Tanya could leave the house more often and would go shopping with Tom's mom, things like that.

And that summer of 2005, Tanya got her first job, part-time, at a thrift store nearby. Now of course, since she was using a fake name and didn't have or know her social security number, this wasn't a job job but more of just helping out here and there. And by going out more and more, making more acquaintances, Tanya fully began to realize that her relationship with Tom and what had happened to her for all those years was not normal and it was not okay. And that she may actually be able to get herself some help.

And we have to think about it this way too. By the time that she is, you know, 22, 23 years old, and she is just finally starting to leave the house more occasionally, she still in a lot of ways has the mind of a 14 year old because she didn't get continued education or exposure or social experiences. Yeah, I mean, like the only real kind of education

she was getting was from the books that she was reading and you know, what kind of books does Tom Hoes have in his house? You know what I mean? Well, actually, it's funny you say that. A lot of the books she read were Goosebumps books because that's what's in the house for this young boy, right, Justin?

Yeah, makes sense. But now she's out there in the world and meeting people and understanding other people's experiences. And one thing she said in her book was that, you know, these people she's meeting, she's seeing other people's relationships and saying, wait, mine's not like that. Mine is horrible. Yeah, because she has no other relationship to compare at that point. Right. All she knows is her relationship with Tom, and he's an abusive prick.

And the relationship that her dad had with her mom, which was also abusive and volatile. Right. So Tanya started to get excited thinking about the type of future that she could have without Tom in it. And the plague of fear was slowly starting to dissipate. Now not completely, because the idea of leaving or telling anybody was still terrifying. But now, as of 2005, Tanya began to have hope. Now crazy enough, one day near Christmas of 2005, just three months before Tanya braved telling Joe about her true identity, she was in JJ's

deli when she noticed a man staring at her. Now she soon recognized that this man was Michael Elias, the McKeesport officer who was originally assigned to her disappearance. Now she knew who he was because they had previous encounters when she had run away from home before and here he was, in this convenience mart with her, almost ten years later staring at her. Unreal. Seriously. I mean, she almost exposed her identity to him in that moment, hoping that he could be

the one to help her, but before she could, he just dashed out of the store. By that point, Tanya had confided some brief details to Joe, the owner that she had befriended over the last couple of years, and she had told him about her constant abusive relationship troubles in so many words, and Joe always encouraged her to leave, unaware of the real situation. So, she started going in there on a daily basis, just kind of loitering because Joe was, you know, this positive presence in her life, and she could really talk to him.

But one day, in March of 2006, Joe had had enough of watching her come in and complain about her life, and he wanted better for her. So, he approached her, and Tanya started to cry. Joe even told Tanya, a then 24 year old woman who he only knew as Nikki, that she made him think of his own daughter and he wanted right for her and he felt for her. So finally Tanya said to him quote, my real name is Tanya Nicole Cash. But he didn't understand what

she meant and that's when Tanya explained the entire situation to him and he listened to everything. Of course, he was a bit skeptical. I mean, it is a truly unbelievable story here. But after she explained everything, he told her that she needed to go back to the house and act normal, but that he was going to call the police and have them come to the house. When she got back to the house, all of them were there, Tom, Justin, Bud, and Eleanor. So as you can imagine, unsure of what was about to happen, Tonya was beyond anxious. Now while in the living room, within 30 minutes or so of leaving JJ's deli, Tonya sat and watched as a McKeesport police officer walked up to their front door.

And when they did, she ran over to open it. The officer immediately asked if she was Tanya Nicole Cash and where Tom Hoes was. And with that, officers swarmed the house as Tom acted as though he had no idea why they were there. However, he was arrested for Tanya's abduction. Now obviously, his parents were beyond shocked by this news because apparently they had no idea, which I really wonder about because obviously, even though I know that she was super careful, uh,

Tanya was super careful because Tom would have never allowed her to make herself known in any kind of way. But it's just so hard to imagine that even in the times when she had to hide in the closet. So if they came in the room, they didn't see her, that 10 whole years went by or at least nine whole years went by When she was there secretly and they didn't know Yeah, I mean I want to believe in my heart that they didn't know but I don't know It's hard to it's possible that they did well Tanya said that Tom one once told her that his parents were terrified of him.

So I want to get into that a little bit. Let's actually talk about Tom a little bit here. So Thomas Hoes was born and raised right there in McKeesport, Pennsylvania on November 11th, 1957. And actually he spent his entire life living in that very same house that he brought Tanya to. Now as we said, he worked as a security guard, but little did anybody know when he applied for this job. He had lied on his resume about graduating from high school, which was a requirement. So Tom got the job anyway, and it later surfaced that the security company he was employed

with also hadn't checked up on his references and they didn't perform a drug test. So they just let him slide into this job, which is a job that he certainly should not have been allowed to do, especially now knowing what a predator he was. In her book, Tanya wrote, quote, As I realized from the beginning, Tom Hose controlled his mother more than anyone. That is how he managed to go virtually all his life without a job before he began working for St. Moritz Security Company. Once he moved back with his parents after his failed marriage, his family just could not support him and Justin on their fixed income. support him and Justin on their fixed income. The year after Tom's arrest in 2007, Tom Hose pleaded guilty to three counts of involuntary deviant sexual intercourse, aggravated indecent assault, statutory sexual assault, interfering

with the custody of a child, corruption of a minor, and child endangerment. And because he pleaded guilty and took a plea deal, Tom was only sentenced to 15 years in prison. Which is why in 2022 at the age of 64, Tom was released and is now simply registered as a sex offender and continuing to live his life. This, this portion of this story absolutely pisses me off. How can he do this to somebody for that many years? For an entire decade? To a child? And only get 15 years in prison just based on a plea deal?

It makes me sad too thinking about how I know maybe even somebody listening to this right now would think that just because she wasn't chained up or actually locked away, you know, that it doesn't, it means that he shouldn't face consequences for it because the manipulation and the psychological torture that was involved in this, to me, is equivalent to being chained.

Like she genuinely didn chained like she genuinely didn't feel like she could leave she was just a child yeah I mean he was telling her that he was gonna kill her so exactly and it also brings us back to those two young girls who were murdered in the same town and when we talk about the fact that Tom's name is attached to both cases because a lot of people do speculate it makes you wonder if this guy did anything else that should also warrant him being behind bars for way longer than 15 years you know? Yeah I mean I agree I think he should definitely be looked at

at least for those other two cases. Yes well on his you know 15 year prison sentence and then his release in 2022, Tanya stated quote, This nasty, horrible human monster of a person is getting out. After what he has done, I am scared that he might do it again. And for those wondering, Judy Sokol also faced criminal charges, since she did help change Tanya's appearance and knew about their relationship. She pleaded guilty to charges of statutory sexual assault, involuntary deviant sexual intercourse, and decent assault and corruption of a minor. And for these charges, we know that they were at least partially related to her allowing Tanya and Tom to have sex in her house around the time that she went missing in

1996 Although it was incredibly hard for Tanya to settle back into life after what she endured Writing her book really helped free her from her experience One of the hardest things that came from it though was when her father Jerry and his wife Joanne sued Tanya for what she wrote in her book about them, insinuating that her awful childhood made her easy prey for somebody like Tom. Tanya told Channel 4 Action News, quote, if my father would have paid attention and been a father to me, this never would have happened to me. Here's a statement from her father's attorney,

quote, the Cassias believe the evidence will show that they have been defamed and directly harmed by untrue statements made in the book and seek to be vindicated through this legal action. I think after all Tanya went through, knowing that they sued her, I think that says a whole lot about them. It really does. I mean, can we all agree that these people were just not great parents, at least not to Tanya? Yeah, well, luckily in April of 2007,

the motion was dismissed and Tanya became estranged from her father once again. But then on a positive note for the first time in this story, Tanya fell in love with a man named Carl and in 2018 got married and gained two children from his previous marriage, and now she is a grandmother. Before her marriage to Carl, Carl had learned about a prom that was being held

for people who either never got to go or had a bad experience. So he was determined to take Tanya, and he did, and they had a great time. So it seems like she is truly with a loving and caring man for the very first time. Thank you so much, everybody, for listening to this episode of Going West. Yeah, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode of Going West. Yeah, thank you guys so much for checking out this episode. What a wild story.

And I know, like I said in the beginning, this is not like the typical type of case that we would cover on Going West. But for the first time, we wanted to give you guys kind of like a happy ending story. Yeah. I think Tanya finally got after so many years of torture and abuse. I'm just so happy that she's free and she is loving life. Absolutely and that's the thing about this case too is I mean this is still very much true crime in so many ways across this entire story. So I after I

found it last week I just like couldn't get it out of my head and I knew we had to cover it so just what a wild ride. And please, if you guys want to read more about this, her book is so good. Again, it's called memoir of a milk carton kid. And of course, by Tanya Cash, it's a pretty quick read. It's like 260 some odd pages or so. And it goes through the entire story for life before, during and after. And it is such a wild ride.

So thank you guys so much for listening to this one and we'll see you again on Friday. All right guys, so for everybody out there in the world, don't be a stranger. I'm just a little bit of a wimp. Great news! Whole Foods Market is now available on Instacart. New Instacart users get free delivery on your first three orders, which you can now use at Whole Foods Market. Fresh organic ingredients to cook healthy dinners at home, free delivery on your first three orders, which you can now use at Whole Foods Market. Fresh, organic ingredients to cook healthy dinners at home.

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