Murder With My Husband - 217. How Old Junk Solved Two Murders - Jane Antunez and Patricia Dwyer

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

In this instance, Payton and Garrett delve into two cold murder cases that reignite when unexpected evidence surfaces. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murderwithmyhusband/ Discount Codes: https://mailchi.mp/c6f48670aeac/oh-no-media-discount-codes Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@murderwithmyhusband Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/murder-with-my-husband/id1508098400 Listen on spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6GaodpBsSpBuUMhmEXhjK2 Case Sources: The San Luis Obispo (san LOO-is oh-biss-POH) Tribune - https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/crime/article229427849.html  https://www.newspapers.com/image/716851462/?match=1&terms=%22arthur%20rudy%20martinez%22  https://www.newspapers.com/image/716850418/?terms=%22arthur%20rudy%20martinez%22  https://www.newspapers.com/image/716850510/?terms=%22arthur%20rudy%20martinez%22  https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/crime/article229688874.html  https://www.newspapers.com/image/808125021/?match=1&terms=%22Jane%20Antunez%22  The County of San Luis Obispo - https://www.slocounty.ca.gov/Departments/Sheriff-Coroner/e-Newsletter-Articles/Suspect-Identified-in-41-year-old-Homicide-Cold-Ca.aspx  KCBX FM Radio - https://www.kcbx.org/crime/2019-04-17/dna-evidence-spots-suspect-in-1970s-san-luis-obispo-county-murder-cases KSBY 6 - https://www.ksby.com/news/2019/04/17/san-luis-obispo-county-sheriffs-office-identifies-suspect-in-40-year-old-murders ABC 30 Action News - https://abc30.com/arthur-rudy-martinez-jane-morton-antunez-patricia-dwyer-fresno/5258271/ Daily Mail - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6947475/DNA-inmates-razor-helps-solve-cold-case-murders-two-women.html  Atascadero Historical Society - https://www.atascaderohistoricalsociety.org/history.php  KREM 2 - https://www.krem.com/article/news/crime/murder-of-2-california-women-in-1970s-linked-to-dead-spokane-inmate/293-1d8e10e9-4a53-4309-81b7-b588594edd17 Ventura County Star - https://www.newspapers.com/image/847720815/?match=1&terms=%22arthur%20rudy%20martinez%22  The Los Angeles Times - https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-california-cold-case-murders-inmate-20190418-story.html Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to an Ono Media Podcast. Hey everybody, welcome back to our podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Peyton Morland. And I'm Garrett Morland. And he's the husband. I'm the husband. I feel like I look so dark today.

Must have a good tan going on. Maybe your light got moved or something. Might have. Oh, we don't have many announcements this week. Kind of the same old. Patreon. Chug and plug. I mean plug and chug.

Patreon, Apple subscriptions. If you want ad free content, bonus episodes, kind of all that stuff. Um, thanks everyone for listening. Thanks for supporting us. We really appreciate it. We're so glad that we can be here each week and little by little my lisp will get better. You know, something we kind of just skipped over

these last couple of weeks is that we, I think, hit our anniversary for the podcast. We did four years. Four years, you guys. Four years around, I think it was April. Four years, it's pretty crazy. It's gone by so fast, but actually, no, it hasn't really gone by slow at all crazy. It's gone by so fast, but actually no, it hasn't really gone by slow at all.

It's just gone by so fast. I know that I was just about to say, I don't feel like it's been slow. I feel like this has just zoomed. Four years is crazy. It is pretty crazy. We're four years into it. Wait, four or three?

Four. No, it's four. Oh my gosh. It was April, 2020. four. Oh my gosh. It was April, 2020. Yeah. Oh my gosh. That's crazy. And now here we are.

This is our full-time gig. Yeah. We wouldn't be here without you guys, so. So, yeah, thanks for the support. We really appreciate it. All right, you got your 10 seconds for this week? I do have my 10 seconds. Scary, you're never prepared.

We are in the middle. I will post some pictures on my personal social media of turning our, what is funny? Post some pictures on my personal social media. Just trying to plug myself, man. No, but- My personal page. We are turning our garage into a gym. I'm really excited about it.

I'll post some pictures. Basically we painted everything black. We put some wood cladding everywhere. We're finishing the floor next. And then I will order the equipment, put everything in. I'm pretty excited. Peyton was a little hesitant at first. After seeing it, she's actually pretty excited now too.

She thinks it looks good. And now here's the hope in that I start using it. And I'm working out. Because if not, it's going to look pretty. And be a waste of money. But I'm committing to it. I am. Yeah, I'm committing to it.

I'm going to do this. I'm going to work out Monday through Friday. Take off Saturday, Sunday. That's what I got going on, so I hope everyone holds me to it. If I'm not working out every day, you can roast me, you can make fun of me. I got to, I gotta commit to this,

but that's my 10 seconds. I'm pretty excited again, and we'll post some pictures on Murder With My Husband and my personal page. You know how some people buy a new workout set to motivate them to work out? You just renovate an entire garage to motivate you I'm I'm ready to go. I need a home gym. I need a home garage gym. That's crazy In fact, there is actually a whole community dedicated to home gym garages Really? Yes. There's this guy on YouTube who I've been watching. I think it's Home Gym Garages or Garage Home Gyms.

I don't, I'm getting all the words mixed up. On YouTube, amazing. He does reviews of all the equipment, spaces, just everything A through Z. So if you're curious, you can go look him up. And he also has a Facebook page and there's all like, literally there's a huge community of people. It's like their thing.

So I'm pretty excited. YouTube has a corner for everything. I know. That's what's so great about YouTube. There is a niche for everything. All right. Our sources for this episode are the San Luis Obispo Tribune, the County of San Luis Obispo, KCBX FM Radio, KSBY 6, ABC 30 Action News Daily Mail, KREM 2, Ventura County Star, and the Los Angeles Times.

I'm gonna guess that this case is in California. Yup. So this episode includes discussions of sexual assault and murder, so please listen with care. Now, okay, we all own junk. Even if you think of yourself as really tidy or as the sort of person who doesn't buy much at all, random clutter like always has a way of building up.

That jar of mayonnaise in the fridge that's almost but not quite empty, those coupons you set aside but never used, which are now expired, that old pair of pants that doesn't fit anymore but you're holding onto them just in case you can squeeze back in one day. We're all holding on to old useless stuff that we don't really need. And that's good because today's case was solved in part because of an old razor that logically should have gone into the trash.

Instead though, through a stroke of luck, the owner held onto it and helped close a decades-old murder mystery. But before we get into that, we need to backtrack a few years. We're going to 1977. A crime was committed in a California community called Atascadero. This was a small but rapidly growing town in the fairly rural stretch between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Now it wouldn't be officially incorporated for a few more years but Atascadero would rock it to become the

biggest city in its county before too long. So picture an area that is exploding in population in 1977 with lots of new people moving in every single day. And at this point, it's not exactly crime-ridden, but it's also not unheard of for a murder to happen either. In fact, between 1968 and 1978, the police investigated 65 murders in Atascadero. So that averages out to about one every two months. But law enforcement had an excellent record when it came to closing murder cases here. In those same 10 years, only five homicides went unsolved.

Now Atascadero at this point was home to a 30 year old woman named Jane Morton Atunes. She was a recently divorced mother whose 13-year-old daughter had moved out of state with Jane's ex-husband. So she's by herself. So as for Jane herself, she decides to settle in with her own parents and just get to work on starting her life over once her daughter and husband move away and they're divorced. So she gets a new boyfriend and she manages to land a good job at a welfare office.

She worked there until she had to quit to take care of a sick family member. And from what I can tell, Jane seemed like a responsible, thoughtful person. She wasn't the sort to just leave one day without word to anyone Which was part of why it was so strange when one day November 17th 1977 she drove off to meet a friend and then never came back home This I mean it sounded like this case is gonna be solved at the end of this so we'll get to that Mean it sounded like this case is gonna be solved at the end of this so we'll get to that but this does surprise me because there is so many cases where this happens and people just They're gone. They just disappear and

That does really intrigue me. Like what happened? Where where are they what happened? So? Okay, speaking of our anniversary of our podcast. Okay. Four years ago, I would have looked at you and said, it's crazy. Like, how can people just up and vanish? Like, how do people just disappear and no one understands what happened?

And why is it so weird and strange and mysterious? And are there aliens? Like, what's going on? Four years after doing this podcast, I can confidently say to you that I feel like- There's a reason for everything? I feel like there are people who are struggling mentally and have psychotic episodes,

and that actually might be to explain for why people kind of randomly up and disappear. As I've learned a little bit more, and I think society as a whole has learned a little bit more about mental health, you know, someone disappearing and going off the radar during a psychotic episode is actually not that rare. And I think sometimes when people are in that state of mind, they then get themselves into situations that they wouldn't normally, or they just disappear or whatever it may be. Four years ago, I would have been like,

this is so confusing. And now I think it's less confusing than it used to be. More understandable. Yeah. So again, this is highly out of character for her though. And I'm not saying this is what happened in this situation, but it's enough to make her brother, Dave Morton, extremely nervous for his sister. I'm not sure if he thought to reach out to Jane's friend that she was going to see that day, the one she'd driven

off to visit. But if he did, that conversation almost certainly made him even more worried. Jane had never even made it to that friend's house. It was like she'd disappeared somewhere from leaving to go see the friend and driving to see the friend. So by the next morning, when he still hadn't heard from her, Dave hit the road to see if he could track Jane down for himself. And he drove all over the area, recreating the route that ran between Jane's home and her friend's place.

If Peyton ever disappears, I hope that every single murder with my husband listener will be out on the streets looking for her. I do too. That's all. So eventually he turned onto a small rural gravel road and that's where he spotted her 1972 Datsun parked on the side of the street. So her brother has officially found her car. It was only about a mile away from her house, so she hadn't really gotten far at all that day.

When Dan had looked into his sister's car, he found that she was still in the car. She was not alive. His own sister was dead in her own car in the back seat. She was tied up and her throat had been slit. There was also evidence that she had been sexually assaulted before being killed. No one should ever have to find anybody like that,

but finding a loved one or a family member is heartbreaking. And I think just so confusing to be like, how did this happen on the way to a friend's house? So clearly Jane had been murdered and the police show up and they don't have any clear theories about who might've killed her. However, whoever did it had somehow gotten her to stop

so he could get at her inside the car. Some eyewitnesses suggested she may have picked up a hitchhiker during the trip to her friend's house. Remember, this is the 70s. It's hard to say what this hitchhiker looked like beyond the fact that he was a man. And it was also hard to even verify this testimony. It's possible those eyewitnesses saw another woman who resembled Jane who drove a similar car picking up a hitchhiker. After all, Jane's friends all said that she was a very careful driver that

she probably wouldn't ever pick up a stranger. Whether or not the hitchhiker story was true, the detectives didn't have much to work with in terms of identifying the killer. Like say it is a hitchhiker. Okay. Where does that get you? They have no tie to her. They were able to collect some DNA evidence from the scene, including semen that they found inside Jane's body. But genetic testing technology in 1977 is very limited. There was no way to identify who it came from.

Yet, so as amazing and smart as they were, they stored the samples in hopes that one day it might be useful. That will never not be amazing to me. So just two months later, on January 11th, 1978, the police got called to investigate another homicide in the same town. This was in the home of 28 year old Patricia Dwyer.

Patricia was single, so she didn't have a boyfriend or a husband to serve as an obvious suspect in her murder. She was also a bit old fashioned when it came to new technology. She didn't own a television. She didn't have a laundry machine. She had to go over to her sister's house every time she wanted to wash her clothes.

But that was about the only way that Patricia was old fashioned. She believed very strongly in being independent. She worked at a good job in the medical field. She took her niece to get her ears pierced even after Patricia's sister, Denise's mother, was like, absolutely not. And Patricia was very outgoing. She loved to meet new people. She used to brag that she had no problem finding dates even though Patricia didn't see herself as conventionally attractive. So the day

before her murder, Patricia had called a friend to chat on the phone. And during the phone call, Patricia talked about her plans for that day. She said she was gonna go buy groceries, then get a head start on her spring cleaning. She said that friend should come over the next day for a visit. And the friend was like, yes, okay, I'll be over tomorrow.

Now, when the friend came over the next day, she found Patricia's front door unlocked, so she lets herself in. And that's when she stumbles on to Patricia dead in a pool of blood in her own living room. She had been stabbed to death with a knife that the murderer had taken from Patricia's own kitchen. And she had also been sexually assaulted.

And just like with Jane, when the police arrived, the investigators gathered samples of the attacker's semen. So police are like, okay, they don't necessarily make the connection yet. They decide to talk to Patricia's friends and family to ask if they knew of anyone that might want to hurt her. And nobody could name any possible suspects. But everyone did find it strange that the murderer had killed Patricia in her own home. All of her friends and family are like, she would never let someone in if she didn't know him personally. She just wasn't that trusting. Plus, Patricia had a big husky dog named Unit, who was very protective of her. It was a unit.

So if some stranger had come into her home, and especially if that stranger had hurt Patricia, unit would have jumped in to defend her. But when the police took a close look at unit, he wasn't injured and there were no signs that he had been in any kind of fight. He was covered in blood, but all of it was Patricia's, which is actually devastating

because we know probably why he was covered in his owner's blood. From what the police could tell, he'd spent the past day desperately trying to wake her up, lying next to her. That's heartbreaking, man. Still, since he wasn't hurt

and since there was no sign of forced entry, it seemed like maybe the killer was someone who knew Patricia, possibly a secret boyfriend who she hadn't told her friends and family about. That said, it seemed that a lot of people knew that Patricia kept a spare key hidden under her welcome mat. So it wouldn't have been that difficult for an attacker to find the key and let themselves in, but unfortunately almost anyone could have done this. The existence of the key under the mat didn't bring the police any closer to identifying the suspect. So just like

in Jane's case, police had to keep digging for answers. Now on the surface, Patricia's murder did seem pretty different from Jane's. Jane was found in her car. Patricia was found in her home. Jane's throat was slit. Patricia was stabbed. The killer had used different weapons. There wasn't much to link the two crime scenes, but they did have some eerie similarities. They were in the same area, of course. Both women had been sexually assaulted and both of them had been tied up with their arms behind their backs. So even though their bindings were made of different materials, the police still thought there were too many similarities for the murders to be unrelated.

So they look at both and they're like, what are the chances these two women so close together are both attacked with a knife and tied with their hands behind their backs? So the next step for detectives was to try to find more commonalities that connected Patricia and Jane. So in an interview with a local paper, one sheriff said that the two of them had quote,

many of the same personality traits, but he didn't elaborate on what those traits were or whether they might've been what attracted their killer to them. I do know they ran in the same social circles and did have some friends in common. They also both liked to visit the same local bar, one called the Tally Ho Tavern. Patricia even

worked with one of Jane's brothers at her job. So again, definitely could have crossed paths at some point. Definitely some things in common. So from the sound of it, Jane and Patricia didn't actually know one another, but they were only about one degree separated from one another. Who knows? Maybe the killer also liked to go to the Tally Ho Tavern and picked each of them as targets while he was there. Or maybe he had some connection to their larger social circle. The problem was, there were a lot of options and a lot of theories, but not much in terms

of hard evidence. The police looked at recent parolees, maybe see if anyone in the area had committed similar crimes in the past. The fact was there were some people who seemed suspicious but you can arrest someone just because they committed a crime in the past and now there's an open investigation. And the detectives couldn't find any hard evidence implicating any of those parolees. Now at one point in late January of 1978, they spent more than 30 hours questioning a hospital employee who knew both Jane and Patricia.

And I don't mean they questioned him for a few hours, took a break and then went back into the interrogation room. No, they were in there for 30 consecutive hours asking questions. Is that legal? Yes. The only breaks the man got was when he had to use the bathroom.

I'm surprised. I guess it's legal because at any point he could have said, hey, I'm leaving. Or I wanna go home, yeah. I wanna go home. Cause he wasn't being detained. Right. Apparently during this 30 hour session,

he failed a lie detector test, which didn't make him look good. It sounds like the man was getting desperate because at one point he volunteered to take sodium pentothal or as it's more commonly known, the truth serum. He said he was going to prove that he was telling the truth and he didn't know anything about the murders. I don't know if the police actually took him up on this offer, but I do know somewhere along the way, the man did say something that had to be pretty convincing. It was actually enough to get his name crossed off the suspect list. And once the police ruled him out, they didn't have much else to push the

investigation forward. So by December of 1978, which is about 11 months after Patricia's murder and 13 months after June's, the police issued a general call for tips. They asked the wider public if anyone knew anything. Now plenty of concerned citizens called in. The murders were big enough news that people wanted to help however they could, but none of the tips led anywhere. The man who owned the Tally Ho Tavern was especially invested in seeing these cases solved. After all, both Patricia and Jane had been customers of his, So he put up $200 of his own money for a reward for any tips that led to an arrest.

He knew that wasn't a very big payout, but it was what he could afford. And when nobody shared any information or claimed the cash, the bar owner put out a jug in the Tally Ho. He invited his customers to chip in and help increase the fund. And within a few days, he'd actually raised $1,700 as a reward. That's good.

I wonder what would happen if, because I bet you it's happened before. So I'm sure one of our listeners can tell us if they just put out, if someone put out, hey, I'll give you a $50,000 reward and they never pay it. Yeah. Like there's no contract. So technically. Yeah, I wonder. I wonder if that has happened.

Oh, sure. Yeah, I'd be surprised. So- Wouldn't be surprised. Upping the rewards still wasn't enough to get any useful information out of anyone. Various other individuals and groups added another $1,500, meaning a tipster could now potentially collect over $3,000 if they helped the police crack the case,

but those tips still never materialized and by November 18th 1978 the police were openly telling the press that they were just Stuck the evidence they had just wasn't enough to move forward and there weren't any new clues coming in All they could do was comb back through what they already had and hope that there was something that they'd missed during their last look over. And since there wasn't anything new standing out, their investigation stalled and the case was going to go cold for 39 years. Holy crap. Okay. Until I'm guessing some sort of DNA comes up. But these victims, they were never forgotten. In 2017, cold case detectives revisited the murders

of Jane and Patricia. And they weren't just poking at random to see if they could learn anything new. They came in with a plan. I mentioned before that police collected DNA evidence from the scenes of the crimes way back in 1977 and 1978. At the time, there weren't many tests that detectives could run on it,

but DNA technology had become a lot more robust in the four decades since then. And on top of that, the state of California had passed a new law in 2009. It said that if anyone was arrested for a felony, the police would automatically collect a DNA sample from them. OK. Kind of crazy.

It took till 2009 to decide to start doing that. I know it's 15 years ago, but that's a long time. That seems like it should have been done, I guess, because beforehand, they couldn't use DNA to do a bunch of stuff. So they were like, why would we do that? They took fingerprints. Yeah, do a bunch of stuff. So they were like, why would we do that? They took fingerprints. Yeah, that's true.

Okay. So this meant that by 2017, detectives all through the state had a massive database with 2 million people in it. And Jane and Patricia's County had just given the sheriff's department more funding specifically for cold case investigations. And this is the sad reality of cold cases. Unless someone's willing to pay forward

or someone is gonna get funding, some division is gonna get funding, cold cases are going to sit there with DNA that needs to be tested. Forever. But there's not enough money to test them, which is why it's great that there are organizations out there that are helping fund rape kits and the backlog, all these things.

So with all of these resources, the police compared the genetic material from the cold murders to the samples they had on file. And they found a partial match. It wasn't an exact hit, but it was close enough for the investigators to figure the person who came up in the system was related to the killer. So basically, the murderer had a relative who'd committed an unrelated felony and now his DNA was coming up as a similar match. So the police start digging into that person's family tree and trying to see if anyone fit the killer's profile. They found a relative who lived in the Atascadero area at the time of the murders. And interestingly, this was a man who'd already come up on their radar previously years ago,

which always happens. Was it the guy they interrogated for 30 hours? We'll get there. Oh my gosh. So I mentioned before that the police looked at people who'd been paroled after committing super similar crimes. And there was one man who looked like a very likely suspect. The police at the time just didn't have any concrete evidence

to link him to the murders. Not until now, when they have a DNA match. His name was Arthur Rudy Martinez. Now Arthur had a long history of violent crime, even before he was linked to Jane and Patricia's murders. It all began way back in 1976, when Arthur was just 18 years old. In June of that year,

he broke into a store in Fresno, California. Now, originally, he just wanted to rob it, and he assumed the store was empty and free of witnesses. He was shocked to find a 48-year-old woman still in the store. So Arthur panicked, tied the woman up, binding her arms behind her back. And once the woman was tied up and couldn't fight him off, Arthur decided, okay, I know I came here to rob, but now that she's tied up, I'm just going to sexually assault this woman.

Okay. After he was finished with the attack, Arthur shot the woman in the head. Jeez, which is unlike any of the other killings though, because they were all, oh, stabbed basically. Well, thanks to some kind of miracle, this bullet grazes the top of the woman's skull. So she survives. Not that Arthur stuck around to see if she was okay. He literally shot her in the left.

He drove up the road to a cafe and then ordered a cup of coffee. He was still in the parking lot, sipping his drink when the police showed up, because eyewitnesses saw him go and the police show up and arrest him. And once Arthur was in custody, the investigators were actually able to link him

to a bunch of other violent crimes. According to reporting with the Tribune, Arthur had also shot a 16-year-old girl and a 26-year-old woman in previous robberies gone wrong. All of his victims so far had lived. But this was a long list of charges, especially for a culprit who was only 18 years old. I'm sure we're gonna get to it,

the charges that he was caught with. So Arthur very easily could have spent the rest of his life behind bars. I mean, he's attempted to kill three people at this point, but as you know, attempted murder. Which, something I'll never understand, but yes. So the police worked out a plea bargain with him where he was only charged with rape, assault with a deadly weapon and assault with the intent to murder.

So just cause he has bad aim, he's not going to go to prison forever. They didn't nail him for all of the various robberies and in exchange for his guilty plea, Arthur managed to only spend about 10 years in prison before getting out on parole. Guess when his release was? 1977. What a surprise. So once he's free he moves to Atascadero and there he gets a job as a welder, but it didn't take long for him to start getting into trouble again. Arthur lived there for only six months before Jane's body was found at the side of the road. Patricia then was murdered two months later. Now, as near as the police could tell, Arthur didn't actually know either woman before the murders. Now

that they'd identified him with his DNA, the detectives even showed his picture to Jane and Patricia's relatives. They asked, hey, have any of you guys seen this guy before? And everyone was like, no, we have no idea who that was. The best guess the police could make was that the two murders were just crimes of opportunity. Arthur must've seen Jane driving down the road, maybe pretended to hitchhike, just to have a chance to hurt her.

It's still unclear why Jane pulled over for him since she didn't usually pick up strangers. That's the one question I had. I just just had a curiosity. She's a nice person. Yeah. Similarly, it's hard to say what made him decide to break into Patricia's house and kill her that day. Even assuming that he found her key under the doormat, it's unclear why he even thought to look there in the first place or why he chose her home to break into.

And the police still didn't understand why Patricia's dog had failed to protect her. So there were a lot of unknowns and questions about the murders themselves. The police assumed that Arthur had killed the two women to avoid a repeat of his last conviction. That time his victim lived and was able to call 911 and could have testified against him in court

if he hadn't taken a plea deal. So this time around, he made sure both victims were dead. With no one to talk to the cops, he was able to stay a free man after those crimes. And after Patricia's murder in 1978, Arthur decides to skip town. He moved to Spokane, Washington, where he continued attacking women.

So it wasn't interrogated then? It wasn't the same guy that was interrogated? No. I just wanted to keep you on your toes. Keep me on my toes. Got it. So the good news is as near as we can tell he didn't murder anyone while living in Spokane. Oh good for him.

What a solid guy man. Obviously he's not a good guy either. In November of 1978, 11 months after Patricia's murder, Arthur was convicted of numerous rapes and robberies and sentenced to life in prison. So 11 months after he kills Patricia, he gets sentenced to life in prison for more rapes and robberies. Which it goes back to our point earlier of because it was attempted murder. Right. He didn't go to jail for life. So now he gets out and kills two more people. It's this could have been and even caught for this. This could have been stopped. Right, but he only ends up serving 16 years

of his life in prison sentence. And I haven't been able to find much information about how exactly he pulled it off, but in 1994, Arthur escaped prison. Holy crap, who is this guy? So it's not like he got out on parole, he escaped. And once he was free again, he began using a fake name. He settled down in the Fresno area, which was about a two hour drive away from

Atascadero. He stayed there for 20 years, basically just keeping his head down and staying out of trouble. The police never figured out who he really was or ever recaptured him. That is not until he turned himself in willingly, finally in 2014. What? No fricking way.

Literally, until that day, Arthur was never in any serious danger of being caught again. He could have spent the rest of his life a free man. What, did he have a change of heart? I hate even like saying that because of how many people he's hurt, but. Okay, we'll get this. It's not because he's all of a sudden a good man.

So he's like, okay, I'll probably spend the rest of my life in prison if I go back because I escaped, right? Except he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. And obviously he's on the run and using an alias. So he's not affording any good health coverage. So his cancer is not being treated well. He got the idea that if he was back in prison again, the state would pay for his medications and his other treatment.

If he goes to prison, of course they're going to have to pay. So basically if someone who has killed multiple people has cancer in prison, they help him with the cancer treatment? I don't think they help them. But they give him treatment? They do get treatment. Ooh, someone, I'm curious about this. If anyone knows more information, let us know.

But that's kind of interesting. There's a reason I don't know. And it's because he gets this idea. He's like, yeah, I'm gonna turn myself in so I can get treated for my cancer. And he's like, I'll go serve the rest of my life behind bars, but at least I'll get treatment. He said, and even if they don't treat me,

like even if they don't give him, you know, what he needs, they'll probably give him painkillers. He's like, at least they'll give me painkillers and other stuff to deal with this. Didn't work out that way. Arthur went to prison and then died two months later on June 18th, 2014. Oh, wow. Okay.

So his 65th birthday would have been just one week later if he'd made it. So by the time investigators identified Arthur as the suspect in Jane and Patricia's murders, it was too late to question him. Figure out why, how, how did any of this even happen? Karma is a you know what. And I'll note, it's not very clear to me

why his relatives DNA came up as a partial match, but not his because obviously he was in the system. And I'll note, it's not very clear to me why his relatives' DNA came up as a partial match, but not his because obviously he was in the system. And I'll note, it's not very clear to me why his relatives' DNA came up as a partial match and not his. I'm wondering if he just died too quickly for them to officially log him in the system, or they might've skipped collecting a sample because his wasn't a new conviction. Either way, the detectives believed that Arthur was the real killer. They just couldn't prove it and they didn't want to close the case without something more definitive. Basically they needed to compare Arthur's actual DNA and the material from the crime scenes to see if it's a perfect match. He doesn't have any on file and even though it had been

three years since he died they figure that maybe someone might have owned something of his still that they could test. So officials reached out to his girlfriend who'd lived with Arthur in the Fresno area before he had turned himself back into prison. And the police ask, hey, do you have anything? Anything of his? We know he died three years ago, but anything?

And it turned out even after all this time, she had some of Arthur's old grooming tools in her bathroom cabinet, and this included his razor. Now I know it's wild to think that anyone would still hold onto a crusty old used razor for years, but that's kind of human nature. Like I said, we all let clutter pile up. It's possible that Arthur's girlfriend

had completely forgotten that it was in there until police came knocking. Either way, they pulled usable material from the razor and tested it against the semen samples from the crime scenes, and it's an exact match. I mean, statistically, it was basically impossible for the DNA to have come up anyone else. And even better, not long after the police get the genetic match, the cold case detectives tracked down a witness from Jane's murder I think this was the one of the people who testified that Jane had picked up a hitchhiker Either way the police show this witness a picture of Arthur and they say hey does this maybe resemble the hitchhiker that you saw and Not only did the witness recognize him. She's like, oh no, that is the exact man that she picked up her testimony

And the DNA results proved that Arthur Martinez was the murderer. So on April 17th, 2019, the local sheriff's department announced that finally after 41 years, Jane and Patricia's killer had been identified and this case was closed. The officials also said they were encouraged by their success and they were hoping to use this same technology to solve other cold cases. I mentioned before that at the time that Jane and Patricia were killed there were also those five unsolved murders in the area. By 2019 there were 41 unsolved cases. But the sheriffs were confident that they'd be able to start

closing the books on those murders too. It's wild to think that this case sat cold for 41 years and that the key that broke it open basically was an old razor. But the truth is, when it comes to criminal investigations, you never know what details will be important and which ones won't. And it can be almost impossible to predict which hard evidence will end up being the smoking gun. It's like the old saying goes, one person's junk is another person's treasure and in this case one woman's trash represented something else to two other murder victims and their families and that was justice and that is the case of Jane and Patricia. It's crazy that there's so many cold cases like that that are still out there today where somebody was innocently killed like them,

which is horrible and still waiting to be solved. At random. And you know what? If that was, if that- Crazy. If that murder happened today, most likely the DNA wouldn't have been left behind at the scene and then where do you go from there? True.

The only reason this was solved was basically because we didn't know that DNA could be tested. I guess that's not true though because if they're sexually assaulted like that, the DNA is going to be always left at the same. Well I will say sometimes they are smarter now. True, yes. And they protect. Yep. I get that.

Alright you guys, so that is our episode for this week and we will see you next time with another one. I love it. I hate, you guys. So that is our episode for this week and we will see you next time with another one. I love it. I hate it. Goodbye. Yeah. Yeah.