Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings, and Mysteries - Cold Cases That Were Solved This Year

Episode Date: December 12, 2024

When a case goes cold, it's easy to lose hope that it will ever be sold. But sometimes a leap in technology, or even a deathbed confession, can help families get the closure they've been looking for. Subscribe on Patreon for bonus content and to become a member of our Rogue Detecting Society. Patrons have access to bonus content as well as other perks. And members of our High Council on Patreon have access to our after-show called Footnotes, where I share my case file with our producer, Matt. Apple subscriptions are now live! Get access to bonus episodes and more when you subscribe on Apple Podcasts. Follow on Tik Tok and Instagram for a daily dose of horror. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On May 30th, 1974, a phone in a police precinct in the small town of Leydard, Connecticut rings off the hook. An officer answers and asks who's calling, but the voice on the other end won't give a name. Instead, they say that they have some information that the police might find interesting. They said that in the backyard of an A-frame house on Shueville Road, they'd find two bodies. The officer perks up and starts asking more questions.

Whose bodies are they and who put them there? But the caller isn't willing to give them that information. Instead, they tell the officers that the murders happened four years prior, and then the line goes dead. So a few officers decide to go check out the scene. Occasionally, they'd get prank phone calls from local teens about tips, so they were skeptical, but they wanted to go look just in case.

The A-frame in question was down a two-lane road with thick woods on either side and houses peppered in between. And as the officers pulled up, it appeared as if no one had lived there in quite some time. No cars were in the driveway, no lights were on in the house, the grass was overgrown and the house had signs of wear from the elements. It gave the officers a bad feeling. They started walking around the property, seeing if there was any sign of the bodies,

when they came upon a big overgrown garden in the backyard. Thick weeds and brush tangled into each other, but one officer could see through the mess that there was dirt underneath that had been dug out and then filled in again. The area was about the size of a body. Beneath that disturbed dirt were two badly decomposed bodies. Upon initial investigation, it was determined that one was male and one was female. But who were they? And how did they get there? This is Heart Starts Pounding. I'm your host, Kayla Moore, and today we're talking about cold cases that were finally solved this year. Just a reminder, we upload episodes for the Darkly Curious each week on Wednesday evenings at 7pm Pacific.

That's 10pm if you're listening in Salem, Massachusetts. And you can listen wherever you get your podcasts, including the Odyssey app. If you noticed the logo change on the show cover, you are truly an eagle-eyed member of the Rogue Detecting Society, but I am super excited to join their network alongside some of my favorite shows, like Search Engine, You Must Remember This, and of course, my good friends Tank and Investigator Slater at Psychopedia.

We have some fun things planned for the next year, so stay tuned. But for now, let's go back to the bodies that were found in the garden in Connecticut. Because when the police uncovered them, they had no idea the 50-year-long goose chase they were about to embark on. This episode is brought to you by Quince. I love gift giving. I love finding something special for the people I love, something that they'll actually use and enjoy. And this year I'm excited to gift some of my loved ones quince.

And also I'm not just saying that, I saw my mom a few weekends ago and she stole my quince black beanie and told me that that's what she wanted for Christmas. But I get it, quince has luxury basics at affordable prices. They're known for their Mongolian cashmere sweaters, which start at just $50. And Quince also isn't just clothing. You can find 14 karat gold jewelry and Italian leather handbags. Quince items are priced at 50 to 80% less than similar brands. And they're able to do that because they partner directly with Top Factories, which cuts out the middleman and passes the savings directly to you. And they're able to do that because they partner directly with top factories, which cuts out the middleman and passes the savings directly to you. And they're definitely on the nice list because they only partner with factories that use

safe, ethical, and responsible manufacturing practices. Love that. Gift luxury this holiday season without the luxury price tag. Go to quince.com slash HSP for 365 day returns and free shipping on your order. That's q u i n c e dot com slash hsp to get free shipping and 365 day returns quince.com slash hsp. This episode is sponsored by liquid ivy. We're in the midst of the holiday marathon as I like to call it, traveling every few weeks to get to family. It's nearly impossible during this time to remember to drink water, but Liquid IV is here to help you. With convenient packets

of their hydration multiplier or sugar-free hydration multiplier, you get eight vitamins and nutrients, three times the electrolytes of the leading sports drink, and no artificial sweeteners. I love liquid IV. I almost never drink enough water and unfortunately when I don't drink enough water I suffer some nasty consequences like headaches. So I love that liquid IV gives me the boost I need to stay hydrated. One stick and 16 ounces of water hydrates better than water alone.

Find all your favorite hydration multiplier flavors on their website from acai berry and lemon lime to piña colada. Stay hydrated through the holidays with Liquid IV. Get 20% off your first order of Liquid IV when you go to liquidiv.com and use code HSP at checkout. That's 20% off your first order when you shop better hydration today using promo code HSP at liquidiv.com.

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. I love vegging out at Christmas time. Leo and I text every day about how we're just gonna sleep and watch the Harry Potter movies during the few days that we get to be together over the holidays. And that's all I want to do. If you like the comfort of the holidays, therapy can be a great way to bring yourself some comfort that never goes away, even when the season changes. I've personally benefited from therapy in my adult life. I'm the type of person that

struggles to relax. My brain is in near constant spiral, I would say. It's not fun, it's not helpful, but therapy has given me some coping mechanisms to help turn my brain off so I can actually enjoy my life. And because I've benefited from therapy, it's important to me that convenient and affordable therapy is available to everyone. If you are thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist

and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. Find comfort this December with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash stay curious today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp.com slash stay curious. After the bodies in the garden were exhumed, they were sent to a medical examiner who was able to at least determine the cause of death. It appeared that the male had died from a gunshot wound to the head. Another bullet was found near his body and one was lodged in his stomach. The woman had suffered the

same fate as the man. A shot to the head and one to the stomach. Her remains though were so decomposed there wasn't much else the medical examiner could learn about her, other than she was white, probably between 18 and 30, and about 5 foot 2. No hair color, no eye color, nothing that would help identify her. So the police had to look at what was left at the scene in hopes that there would be some clues there. She was wearing a tan sweater and a brown tweed skirt.

She also had some jewelry on her, like a school ring with the letters JHSN engraved on it and the initials ILN. However, the ring had the year 1917 engraved on the inside, so it was likely a family heirloom. They also though found some documents at the scene that identified the couple as Dirk Stahl and Lorraine Stahl. So next the police wanted to confirm these identities so they could notify Next of Kin. When they searched the name Lorraine Stahl,

they did get a hit, but it wasn't the one that they were looking for. Instead, they found a living woman named Lorraine Stahl who had previously moved out of the neighborhood that the bodies were found at. When the police got to her, she said she believed the young woman was actually using her identity. And that's when the police got a call. The medical examiner was able to get an x-ray of the man's teeth, which matched the records of someone who was in a Wisconsin Correctional Institute in 1965. A man named

Gustavus Lee Carmichael. Not Dirk Stahl like the documents found nearby his body suggested. So he too must have been using a fake identity. Gustavus Lee Carmichael was a notorious bank robber who had been in and out of prison for a lot of his short adult life. In 1970, he was just 25 years old. A spree of bank robberies he committed in 1968 after he had been released from prison had netted him around a million dollars. And when he was arrested for that, he was actually able to escape out of the car that was bringing him to the courthouse

by overpowering the marshal who was driving him and handcuffing him to a tree. So Gustavus had this long criminal record and it was easy for police to learn a lot about him. But what about the woman who was found next to him? What did her dental records show, the police wondered. Well, her dental records didn't match anything. Was she an accomplice or was she just at the wrong place

at the wrong time? Regardless, there was a family somewhere out there that was wondering what had happened to their daughter, their sister, their friend. And the people who had done this to her were still out there. So the cops got back to work. They started going through other people who had lived in the neighborhood because if this woman had stolen one of their identities, maybe someone else had some information. That's when they came across a man, Richard DeFratis, who used to live in the A-Frame house. Richard

was currently in prison for a robbery, but his similar history to Gustavus's made the police think that maybe the two knew each other. So they paid him a visit in prison, not really expecting much, let alone a confession, but that's what they got. Maybe it was because he wanted a reduced sentence or something, but DeFratis told police that he and another man killed Gustavus and his girlfriend, but that they didn't know her real name. Apparently, the story went, Gustavus had just pulled off a heist of $60,000 cash from a

bank in New Jersey. And less than a week later, Gustavus and the woman, believed to be his girlfriend, packed up their things and arrived at the front door of a married couple named Richard and Joanne Emerson. On December 28th, 1970, Richard Emerson agreed to help Gustavus and his girlfriend assume the fake identities of Dirk and Lorraine Stahl. He even offered the couple a place to stay for a few nights while they arranged

a new apartment to move into. But Gustavus wasn't aware that Emerson wasn't entirely trustworthy. In fact, the surname Emerson was actually a partial alias for the 31-year-old's defratus, who lived with Joanne Rainello, his common-law wife. He had recently managed a successful, if not slightly less impressive, robbery himself, ripping off $30,000 from a financial institution in Newport, Rhode Island. So Gustavus trusted him. He was like one of his own. The night that they met, DeFratis introduced Gustavus to his business partner, Donald Brandt.

Their business was pulling off historic heists without getting caught, and that evening's work included splitting up the $30,000 from DeFratis' Rhode Island hall. DeFratis and Brandt also had a third partner named James Gardner. The group had promised to use the arsenal of weapons that they possessed between them to protect each other from whatever consequences might come from their crimes or anything that threatened to take their money away. And unfortunately, Gustavus's girlfriend

started getting nervous. Maybe it was the fact that they were now living with criminals, ones that owned a lot of guns, but it seemed like she was starting to have second thoughts about living a life on the run. And one night, she turned to her new friend, her only friend in the world, Richard DeFratis' girlfriend, Joanne,

to express her concerns. But Joanne was not really a friend to the woman, and she took the gossip back to her boyfriend, who immediately raised this concern to his partner, Brant. Brant understood the woman's uncertainty meant that their freedom was at stake. What if this girl snitched on them or took their cash and ran? DeFratis and Brandt were both wanted by the law, DeFratis for armed robbery and Brandt for suspicion of a double murder. And the career criminals felt that they were left with no choice

but to silence the girl if they wanted to stay out of jail. They agreed to kill her to stop her from talking to police, which meant, in their minds at least, they would have to kill Gustavus too. It was New Year's Eve, 1970, when De Fretis drew Gustavus Carmichael to the backyard of his home under a false pretense. He figured he would deal with Gustavus while Donald Brandt would shoot the woman in cold blood.

Within moments, both of the fake stalls were dead, but they still needed to make them disappear. Defredus and Brandt called their third partner, James Gardner, as well as DefFratis' girlfriend Joanne to come over to the house. They were going to need their associates to take care of this one last problem. Around four years and eight months later, the police arrested Richard DeFratis and Donald Brandt for the double homicide of Gustavus Carmichael and this unknown woman. But though Gustavus's case was finally closed,

investigators were still no closer to finding the identity of the woman who died as Lorraine Stahl, this poor woman who was trying to get away from the situation. Police traced every possession they could associate with Lorraine, including her phone records,

which pointed to connections in Tennessee, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. And when police tested the clothes that were found on her, they were still left empty handed. They also spoke to locals in the area who had seen the unknown woman around, but no one knew who she really was.

Enough of them, though, remembered seeing her, so the police were able to draw a composite sketch of the woman. And I've seen this sketch. It's of a young woman with light hair and a shaggy cut with bangs. She has large almond eyes. People knew her face so well, but no one knew her. This mysterious passer-through with a fake name. The image was circulated around, but nothing ever came of it.

And the case, unfortunately, went cold. Luckily, though, police did know who the murderers were, and they were both sentenced for the murders of Gustavus and the unknown woman. But for now, she would remain unknown, buried in an unmarked grave with no one to bring her flowers. And this would have stayed cold forever if a chief medical examiner named Michelle Clark hadn't taken an interest in the unfinished business 35 years later.

In July of 2011, Michelle added the unknown woman's case data and dental records to the National Missing Persons Database, which had been created in 2008. The mystery woman now had a new temporary identity, number UP-8909. And a year after that, what DNA they had from the unknown woman was uploaded to the FBI's combined DNA index system, also known as CODIS. Despite the huge opportunity

that these mass databases provided Clark's investigation, neither pulled any hits to match the evidence. Lorraine's case was proving to be a very difficult one, so difficult that actually the technology needed to solve this case wouldn't be available for several more years. That is, until 2022, when a specialty facility called OTHRM reached out and said that they now possessed that technology. Though OTHRM is a private DNA testing company, it works exclusively with law enforcement.

The Texas-based labs had recently announced their collaboration with the Connecticut office of the medical examiner to leverage advanced DNA testing technology to solve human remains cases that have long remained unsolved. Lorraine Stahl's unresolved mystery was the perfect fit for their work

since Othram's forensics team can take a piece of evidence as small as a bone fragment and create a full genetic profile through forensic investigative genetic genealogy testing, also known as FIG. Established in 2020, the unprecedented method of DNA genome sequencing is different from previous testing because it identifies up to 1 million sites on a genome. Existing DNA testing methods could only identify up to 21. And because of this new, extensive sequencing, relatives as distant as fourth or fifth cousins can be retrieved from a pool of 2 million people. The pool is made up of civilians who voluntarily gave DNA submissions to the GED match and family tree databases.

From there, law enforcement transforms a fig profile into an identified missing person by building out a family tree from their DNA matches. And this technology first gained attention when it tracked down the culprit of a much more famous unsolvable case. It helped find the identity of the Golden State Killer. And this year, through this fig technology, an elderly woman in Kentucky got a knock on her door.

It was police officers from Connecticut who traveled to her to tell her that they knew what happened to her sister, who disappeared all of those years ago. Her sister, Linda Sue Childers, the unknown woman found next to Gustavus. The police had used this genealogical testing to build out a family tree based on the profile of DNA they had of the unknown woman.

And that led them straight to her sister's door. The woman at the door couldn't believe what she was hearing. To have closure over her sister's fate, but also to know where she was resting 54 years after she disappeared was a miracle. But she told the officers there was someone else who really needed to hear this message. She put the police in touch with another woman who was around 60 years old. It was Linda's daughter, who for her entire life

up until this point, had never known what happened to her mother. Linda Sue Childers was 24 years old when she died. She was born on September 4th, 1946 in Louisville, Kentucky. Her family lost touch with her when she moved east in the 70s. Though not a lot has been shared about what kind of woman Linda was in her life, it was confirmed the tip about Childer's murder came from Richard DeFratis' former girlfriend,

Joanne. Joanne was friendly enough with Linda Sue to briefly act as a shoulder to lean on before she ultimately became complicit in Childers and Carmichael's deaths. She must have deep down cared for the innocent woman though, to some degree, when she turned in her former boyfriend out of guilt four years later. Without Joanne's tip, Linda Sue's life may have remained something more troubling than a mystery. Her memory would have been lost entirely. But because someone chose to come forward, Joanne, and someone else chose to not stop fighting, Michelle, the medical examiner, two women in Kentucky were able to find a little bit of peace at the end of their lives.

a little bit of peace at the end of their lives. I love that! A redwood forest would be cool. I'm in! Ha, ski slopes! Let's do it! Um, can a girl go shopping? Yeah, baby! Wait! Did we just invent California? Discover why California is the ultimate playground at visitcalifornia.com Get ready for the movie event of the year with Disney's Mufasa the Lion King. It's time I tell you a story.

A story? About Mufasa and the prince who It's time I tell you a story. A story? About Mufasa and the prince who would come to be known as Scar. So glad I brought some crickets. Bring your whole family. Come on, Mufasa, let's get in some trouble. On December 20th, a kingdom of adventure awaits. We can do this.

We're busy, let's hustle. Disney's Mufasa the Lion King in theaters and IMAX December 20th. The holidays are here. Ready to spread some sparkle? This season, give the gift that says, I love you, from People's Jewelers. They have styles to make your loved ones shine, from timeless diamonds and gemstones to stunning gold.

It's the perfect way to show just how much they mean to you. Shop now at People's and find that special piece today. Let's celebrate love, friendship, and all the joy this holiday brings. Live for love with Peoples Jewelers. Though some crimes take decades to solve, it's not always emerging technology that helps with the breakthrough.

Sometimes when someone is at the end of their life, they re-examine everything they've ever done. They think about the things they regret and all of the secrets that they've kept. And sometimes that can lead to a confession, as is the case with our next story. lead to a confession, as is the case with our next story. In August, 2000, a 41 year old woman named Susan Gail Carter and her 10 year old daughter, Alex Carter, vanished into thin air. Susan had been involved in a rather intense custody battle with her ex-husband, Rick Lafferty.

During one of the custody hearings actually, she turned to Rick and shouted that he would never see his daughter again. I don't know if Susan knew how true her words actually were, because not long after that, she stopped returning Rick's calls, and then the calls of her family members. And soon, no one knew where she and her daughter had gone.

When that happened, everyone who knew Susan had their theories. Some people really saw her as a vengeful ex-wife who ran off with a new husband and brought her daughter along. But they also knew that if that was the case, they probably would have heard from her at some point. And as the days passed by, no word came from the two. So by November, people started getting a really bad feeling. Like something horrible might have happened. Like maybe Susan was serious

about Rick never seeing Alex again. Eventually, a felony arrest warrant for kidnapping was issued for Susan. The FBI missing persons poster described Alex as a 10 year old, blue eyed, blonde, white female with a scar over her eyebrow. Susan was listed as five, six white, blonde with green eyes, and though the FBI warned she may have changed her appearance or been using her maiden name will. Alex's grandmother said she believed Alex was afraid of Susan. The Lafferties really wanted her home where they knew she was safe. But unfortunately, because Alex was presumed to be with her mother, the police did not take the case very seriously. They figured she was safe. But doing their due diligence, editors note it was not due

diligence, it was the bare minimum, they still spoke to a few witnesses including Susan's landlord Larry Webb. Larry owned a red brick home that Susan was renting part of for her and Alex, But Larry said that he had no idea what happened to the two. One day they were there and the next they were gone. Rick Lafferty, Alex's dad, was starting to get furious. He felt like the police weren't taking this seriously enough and that the case was going cold.

He just wanted his 10-year-old daughter back. Why was it so hard for the police to understand that he just wanted to know she was safe? So over the years, he kept pushing. All of the Lafferty family kept pushing, even when there was no movement. For 21 years, they bombarded the police department with phone calls and emails until finally the FBI caught wind of the story. In December of 2021, Special Agent Jennifer King was assigned to the case, and she was absolutely the right person for this.

She had cut her teeth in the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force and was known for her unwillingness to quit. And she was determined to find Susan and Alex. Even if she couldn't find them alive, she wanted to find them and give the Lafferties some closure. She was partnered with special agent Mike Nordwall, who promised Alex's family and the community that even though it's been 21 years, this case is not sitting on a shelf. The FBI started by offering a $10,000 reward for anyone

willing to come forward about what happened during the summer of 2000. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children created age-progressed portraits of Susan and Alex Carter to help the public imagine what the women would look like at now 62 and 31 years old. And finally, two years after all of this attention was being paid to the case, they got their first real movement. On August 29th, 2023, the FBI, US Marshals, and state police pulled up to the same red brick house that police had visited just after the disappearances.

It was the home that Susan and Alex had rented. They hoped that now, 23 years after the disappearance, there would still maybe be something inside of that house that would give them a clue. They walked in the front door to see Larry Webb, now an elderly man, bedridden and under the full-time care of a nurse. The officers were informed that his mind was deteriorating, but they asked him once again, "'Do you know what happened to Susan and Alex Carter?'

And Larry got a dreamy look on his face and stared past the officers. He said, "'I've looked for them over the years. I even went to Cleveland and I looked for them and I don't know. I just don't know. I loved her with all my heart and I loved that little girl too. Slowly the officers made their way to the section of the house. Alex and Susan had lived in the reason that they decided to start here

was they now believed after pouring through case files that this was the last place they were seen alive. They made their way into Alex's room and even after 23 years, much of it was the same. The furniture had been switched out, but nothing about the home had really been updated since that time. So they got to work searching every square inch of the room

for anything, a strand of hair, even a small fingerprint. One officer was tracing the bottom of one of the walls on his hands and knees when he started screaming for the other officers to come over. See, there, lodged in the wall, surrounded by faded wallpaper, was one single bullet. Police got to work excavating that part of the wall where the bullet was found, and it was discovered that inside of the wall was dried blood. Whoever this bullet had struck preserved a small piece of their identity with it. The bullet and the blood was immediately sent to a lab for testing,

and more of the wall was excavated. It was also reported that a tile from the basement was collected by officials. Following the raid, Larry Webb was questioned about the Carter's disappearances by the police and the media, but he had trouble remembering the details, and his accounts of what happened were muddled.

Webb claimed that he would have been the last person to hurt Alex Carter and that he loved that little girl. But then he revealed something that sent shockwaves through the community. He said, quote, I think I was married to her mother. I think I was married to her mother. Could this be true? The Laverdys did assume that Susan ran off with a new husband, but Larry was still in the house and now blood was found in little Alex's room. What could a 10 year old girl have done that would have made someone so angry he

would have taken her life. While the police started building a case against him, Larry reminded them that he had previously cooperated in the past. He said that in 2000 he was the one to report his concerns about his quote, wife's disappearance. He even took a polygraph test in 2000 to prove his innocence. And when Susan and her daughter didn't turn up, Larry said that's when he went to Cleveland to try and find them. But Webb's recollections seemed so opposite to the way the evidence was leaning.

Was it actually possible Susan Carter had pulled off the greatest disappearing act of all time and left her lover to pick up the pieces all these years later. Police were hesitant to take any of this at face value though because of Larry's dementia. When Larry was asked exactly when he saw Susan and Alex for the last time, he told reporters he didn't know anymore because of his disease. Though it might have seemed like the perfect excuse. His caretaker could attest that Webb had been sick for some time now, but that caretaker, who also knew the Carters from 20 years ago, wanted to find out what happened to them just as much as anyone else.

She didn't know it yet, but they wouldn't have to wait much longer for the FBI to come back with an answer. The DNA evidence confirmed that the blood on the bullet was Alex's. Larry Webb was indicted by a special grand jury for the first degree murder of Alex Carter on October 24th, 2023. The prosecuting attorney promised the Lafferties that he was going to put Larry away for good for what he did to Susan and Alex. But there were a few problems with this.

Only Alex's blood was found on the bullet, which means there was no physical evidence the prosecution could use to prove that Larry had killed Susan, and also, no body, no crime. There was a chance that someone shot at Alex and Susan fled with the girl, and now they were living somewhere under different identities, and when questioned, Webb refused to admit any guilt.

Even as his mind was getting worse, he maintained he had nothing to do with it and that he and Susan were in love. There was also the issue of putting someone with dementia on trial. I actually talked about this in my episode on the Runerwald secluded family, but someone can be deemed not fit to stand trial,

and Larry's condition was making it impossible to question him on the stand. So Larry sat in prison as the courts decided what they were going to do, but the chance of justice being fully served in this case seemed increasingly unlikely, that is until the first week of April this year. Larry Lay curled up in his prison hospital bed when he asked if the nurse could bring an

investigator to his bedside. With the strength he had in his fragile state, he finally admitted to killing Susan and Alex Carter. Back in 2000, Webb had a romantic relationship with Susan Carter, but it was rocky, or so he said. On August 8th of that year, Larry and Susan started arguing about money. Larry said he discovered a chunk of his stash missing and he confronted Susan about it. The conversation quickly became explosive and Larry insisted the single mother had betrayed him. In a moment of rage, Larry Webb shot Susan Carter point-blank, killing her instantly. As soon as the moment had passed, he said he knew he

ruined his life by taking hers. He had done the unthinkable, and with his back against the wall, he made an even more heinous decision, to get rid of the only witness. That's why he shot Alex Carter in her bedroom that day, where police had found the bullet his crime had left behind. While he dug the plots in his backyard for Alex and Susan's graves, Larry left their bodies in the basement to decompose without dignity.

Larry Webb said he cried himself to sleep that night without thinking about all the tears he'd caused people who loved Alex and Susan to cry for the next 20 years. As quickly as that moment of deep clarity washed over Larry as he sat in his hospital bed, it was gone. His eyes glossed back over and he had trouble remembering where in his backyard the bodies were buried. So police had to bring in these huge excavators to his property to search essentially inch by inch until they found the bodies.

Weeks into the search, on April 19th, Webb was transferred to hospice care at the Mount Olive Correctional Complex. The window of accessing Webb's memories to put this case to rest was shrinking rapidly. Investigators had even tried bringing Larry back to his home to show them the graves in person, but he was of little help because his state of mind was so clouded. And then, less than two weeks after his formal arrest, Larry Webb suffered a fatal medical event on April 22nd, 2024.

He was pronounced dead at Montgomery Hospital around 1030 a.m., taking whatever memory he had of where Alex and Susan were with him. But just the next day, after weeks of searching, canine search and rescue services of Virginia found something. Dogs had alerted their handlers to the scent of human remains just hours after Larry Webb had died. Rick Lafferty had mixed emotions at the long-awaited discovery. He was just happy he could bring his baby home after losing hope so many times. He was given the green beaded hairpin that Alex wore in her hair

the day she was killed. It's now the only physical memory Lafferty has of his 10-year-old girl and it's decorated with tiny butterfly clips. When it came out, what Larry Webb did, police still had to dig a little deeper to verify any of his story and it's still kind of unclear what parts of the story were fabricated or just muddled in his dementia ridden mind. It's unclear if he really did have a relationship with Susan or if he hardly knew the two borders in his house. Was Susan stealing money or had she rejected his advances?

Those details may never be known, but the most important things now are known. What happened to Susan and Alex, who did it and where their bodies were? These stories are sad, but in a way, they give me hope that even decades after a case has gone cold, it can catch a second wind if someone decides to look back into it. And as technology gets better every year, we'll see more and more of these kinds of cases being solved. And let me tell you, Heart Starts Pounding will be here to tell you about them.

Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by me, Kayla Moore. Heart Starts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Additional research and writing by Marissa Dow. Sound design and mix by Peachtree Sound. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jernigan, the team at WME and Ben Jaffe. Have a heart pounding story or a case request?

Check out HeartStarsPounding.com. Until next time, stay curious.