Babes in the Wood Murders /// Chapter 1

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1:26Crime garage, wherever you are, whatever you are doing, thanks for listening. I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man with a suggestion. If you burn your clothes, you might be alright. Here is the captain. I am the decider, not the sugester. It's good to be seen and good to see you. Thanks for listening. Thanks for telling my friend. This week we are very excited to be featuring King Julius by the bright and brilliant brewers at Treehouse Brewing Company. King Julius is an American double IPA. Brewed to be an exceptionally flavorful juicy and hop saturated beer while never tiring the palate. Its vivid citrus aroma gives way to flavors of orange cream sickle, mango smoothie and tropical fruit. This one is a must try but pour it in a glass or you won't get it.

2:27Garage Grade 4 and 3 quarter bottle caps out of 5. And let's give some thanks and praise to some good garage friends who straight up get it. Here is the shout out to Claire Matthias and Wales UK and last but certainly not least we have a double-fisted cheers to Dale and Beth from West Harrison, Indiana. Everyone we just mentioned went to TrueCrimGurage.com and contributed to this week's beer fund for the beer run and for that we thank you. Hey and speak of King Julius shout out to Julius Pepperwood from Chicago. B.W. Double are you in beer run for everything true crime check out truecrime garage.com. If you're not listening to off the record what are you doing with your life. Get it together people get it together you can check out off the record on patreon or apple podcast subscription and curl that's enough of the B is nass. Alright everybody gather around grandma chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime.

3:43This story begins not with murder but with a haunting. On Monday April 25th 1977 the De Bo family had reached the end of what they believed they could endure. Mrs. Ande Bo and her husband Roger De Bo and their children left their Brighton Council House behind and moved into another council property on Ashhurst Road. They did not leave because of ordinary dissatisfaction with the house. They left because they believed the home was haunted by an evil presence. The presence they said did not appear as a figure but when it wished it made itself known through a choking sulfur like smell. It tormented their children and their baby. It was a smell so overpowering and unsettling that Ande Bo believed it had a supernatural source.

4:52The move to Ashhurst Road became for Anne an attempt to reclaim peace. After the family left the old house they said they had no further trouble from the specter yet Anne was not fully reassured. Speaking to the August newspaper she said I am sure it will come back in some sort of way. For Anne leaving the house was not a casual decision. It brought disruption practical complications and money worries. The family would have to decide whether the children should remain at their current school or transfer elsewhere. There would be debt. There would be adjustment. But Anne made it clear that the move was worth it and it was necessary. Quote it is worth it for peace of mind she said. It is even worth getting into debt to move. At the time the story was strange and eerie. It was the sort of local newspaper tale people might remember because of its oddness.

6:01A family abandoning a home because of an unseen sulfurous presence. Ande Bo became known as the Haunted Wife and later in darker and more sensational language as the Ghost Wife. But the thing that would bring Ande Bo's name back into the newspapers in 1978 was not a ghost. It was murder. This is the Babes in the Wood Murders. Chapter 1, The Darkening of Brighton. By the autumn of 1978 Brighton and the wider Sussex area were already gripped by fear.

7:06Reports in the press asked how many potential sex attackers might be prowling the streets of Sussex during the long dark nights of that coming winter. Violence against women, sexual assaults, attacks after dark had become an urgent public concern. Parks, sea fronts, roads, phone booths, and footpaths had become dangerous. The fear was not abstract. This fear was tied to names, places, dates and crimes, real life events filled with violence. One name stood at the center of that fear, Margaret Frame. But before Margaret's case Sussex had already seen a disturbing pattern of attacks. In September of 1978, roughly one month before Margaret Frame was killed, a teenage German op-air was brutally raped on a pitch and putt course and rodine Brighton after an evening out with friends.

8:07Within weeks of that attack, a 21-year-old woman was taken to the hospital after fighting off a would-be rapist on the sea front. Detectives were also dealing with a large number of indecent assaults, many involving young girls late at night. The concerns stretched beyond Brighton. In London, 122 girls were raped in the first six months of 1978. In Sussex, there had been 22 rapes in 1977. By the final week of October 1978, the pattern across seemed relentless. And Crawley, police were hunting a man who had left the 22-year-old woman semi-conscious on a building site after sexually assaulting her and attacking her viciously and violently. An Eastborne, a 20-year-old woman had been sexually attacked only yards from her home by a man who then ran off with her handbag. In Worthing, police were investigating two indecent assaults reported during the last several days of August 1978.

9:12One involved a six-year-old girl attacked while playing in Ham Road. The other involved a married woman walking along often Avenue, in Little Hampton. Police were still searching for a man who had raped a 19-year-old factory worker as she walked home alone. They were also hunting a gang of four youths, who had sexually assaulted a girl at knife point on a train between Hove and Shoreham. In Burgess Hill, a teenage girl walking her pet dog was thrown to the ground and assaulted by a man who pounced on her. In Brighton, the pattern continued, a man threatened a 16-year-old boy with a knife in Wild Park and forced him to commit a sex act. The Criminal Investigation Department in Sussex made clear that many sex crimes in the county remained unsolved. Detectives stressed that public help could be vital. People were urged to report anyone acting strangely because even small pieces of information might allow police to act quickly.

10:13The message was simple. If something suspicious was seen, people should contact the local police station immediately or dial 999. Early information police said was vital in every one of these cases. Obviously, there's a lot going on in this area at this time, an uptick and violent crime and uptick in crimes that are sexually motivated and women who are being assaulted on their way home or late at night or in the streets. There was also a public discussion about whether some attacks might be copycat crimes. Because this was so front and center in the news, there were many people talking about trying to get to the root of the problem. What is the root of the problem in this area at this time? A specialist, Dr. Whitehead, who is a member of the editorial board of the British Journal of Sexual Medicine, was interviewed and I'll give a short snippet of that interview.

11:13He had said there were often cases in which one man committed a crime and others then went out and copied him. He said that possibility created serious difficulties for police because investigators could not immediately know whether they were dealing with one offender, responsible for multiple attacks, or several different people imitating one another. Dr. Whitehead also addressed the motivation of certain attackers. He added that some offenders use sexual violence not for gratification but as punishment, driven by a desire to hurt and damage women that outruns the sex drive itself. He distinguished those offenders from killers who derive sexual pleasure directly from hurting women. Those he said were the people who waited in the dark to attack women. One of the problems here too is because of the time of year, the darkness that falls on the city happens relatively quickly. Yes, and that was everyone's concern and what the papers were pointing out here at the time was like look at all this violence in these sex attacks that are going on, the sexual assaults that are happening in this area and oh, by the way, it's autumn now.

12:27And we're going into winter and the nights are going to get longer, they're going to get darker. And they were concerned that this uptick, this trending crime would just continue to grow and grow and grow under the cover of darkness. So not only was there a real threat that they were actively experiencing, the concern was now so great that they were completely overwhelmed by the possibility that this threat could be growing and growing and there could be more danger that could be more violence, there could be more assaults and more murder. Again, back to the folks in the communities trying to get to the root of the problem, there was also some kind of public debate about pornography and it's possible connection to sex crimes. There was a worthy group believed that there was a clear link between pornography and sex crimes. This is from Dr. Sangster, chairman of the Worthing Community Standards Association, who cited dreadful cases such as the Cambridge rapist and the Moors murders as examples that in his view showed a connection between pornography and sex crimes.

13:44Now in this atmosphere of let's say alarm, right there are we have parks and lonely routes after dark that became symbols of danger for these communities and one park in particular would soon become infamous. Margaret Anne Frame was a Brighton woman in her mid 30s, a wife and a mother. Margaret lived with her husband Peter Frame and Saunders Hill, Col Dean. Peter was 45 years old and worked as a coach operator. He ran downland coaches and had previously worked as a taxi driver in Brighton. Together they were raising their eight year old son Andrew. Margaret worked part time as a cleaner at former comprehensive school also referred to in some reports as former high school. Her job had been something she took on because according to Peter, she had grown bored of staying indoors all day. She was once a stay at home mom.

14:47Now their young son is in school full time. It sounds like they may not have needed the money, but she wanted a reason to get out of the house. Yeah, give yourself some purpose and it's fun to be back in the workforce. You know, you have people that you can interact with in a place that you can show up to a couple times a week and people you can talk to and you get out and you get to know some people. Well, I'm glad that you said that because I recently just got you a job at the local McDonald's. There you go. I keep getting text from Amazon that there are jobs available. She was also known as a woman who would vanish voluntarily. Sorry. She was also not known as a woman who would vanish voluntarily. Peter described his wife as stable and dependable. She was healthy and strong. She did not suffer from any depression. Those are his words. She was not the type he insisted again and again to simply walk away from her life. Now we are using these words and we are citing Peter's words because unfortunately this young woman would go missing.

15:50Her colleagues described Margaret as quiet, slim, pleasant and devoted to her family. In fact, one of the cleaning staff members remembered quote she was a really nice person, very quiet, very slim and not very talkative when she did talk. It was about her little boy Andrew and about her dog Bruce Bruce the family dog would become another small part of this heartbreaking story Margaret and Bruce were very fond of one another and she had often taken him for walks in the park. Now remember we said one of these parks in particular that's in this area of growing concern is going to become infamous. And that is Stammer Park on Thursday October 12, 1978 Margaret frame finished her work at former comprehensive school and began making her way home. So she had a regular route and instead of sticking entirely entirely to the main roads, Margaret often took a shortcut through the Southwest corner of Stammer Park in Brighton.

16:59So this is a large parkland area near former Lowe's road and Coldine Lane. This is when I say large parkland. This is a very large parkland. And I think for those who have not been there, I myself have not, but I think you'll learn and get to understand how just how large this place is as we go through this true crime story. So this shortcut captain save time it cut across the corner between Lowe's road and Coldine Lane eventually leading her toward Saunders Hill where she lived. Her friends and the fellow cleaning staff had warned her about taking this shortcut. They told her, look you want to stick to the main roads. They told her not to go through the park after dark. They said it was creepy. Stammer Park had a reputation and those who knew Margaret were uneasy about her walking through the park alone. Peter frame her husband later acknowledged that unease friends he had said told him Margaret walked straight through the center of the park to get home.

18:12This seems odd to me captain because based off of how the park is situated, it makes sense that she would cut from the school and avoid the roads for a portion of it. And basically she's just cutting the corner. She's really instead of walking down to the corner and making a right and continuing on her way. She's just going straight through the park and then connecting to that same road that she would end up on anyway if she took that route. But according to her friends and people she worked with, maybe she's just saying this so they will zip their lips when they keep warning her about walking through the park. But she is saying at least according to them that she walks straight through the park. So when I look at this on a map and review everything to me, it doesn't seem like she's saving much time if she's going straight through the open portion of this park. It ultimately just seems like a different route. Now I do know you were saying earlier sometimes we look at these cases and look at details of these cases through our own lens and try to relate it to things in our life and our own personalities.

19:19But I do know with me if I have the ability to do so, if I'm not in a hurry, I am the type that will regularly take the long way home or the scenic route just because I find it to be more enjoyable. I don't mind if it adds three to six minutes to my travel time. If I get a kick and some enjoyment out of the travel. Yes, it's also a way to decompress from your day at work. Leave, leave the troubles of work at the door. So friends said to her husband that Margaret had told them that she walks straight through the center of the park to get home. He goes on and he says, quote, he's talking about the park. He says it does have a bad reputation. There have been incidents there. Still warnings unheeded here. Margaret took the shortcut on October 12, 1978. Margaret left work and waived goodbye to friends. There appeared to be nothing wrong.

20:21She was last seen by a friend at about 6.45 pm at the entrance to stamina park, walking in the direction of her home. Now at the time that she disappeared, Margaret was described as five feet two inches tall with shoulder length brown hair. She was wearing a brown suede jacket, a brown skirt, and a light blue blouse. She never made it home. She's also described as being very slim. And we see that all the time in these cases. As these individuals, there's maybe not planning to the degree of stocking individual every time and knowing all their movements. But there's this degree of planning. They have to calculate if depending on what their motivation is, if I'm trying to commit a sexual assault is there. Am I going to cover up that sexual assault with murder? And if I'm going to murder somebody, how am I going to dispose of the body? Am I just going to leave the body where the attack happened?

21:24Or am I going to have to move that individual? I think there's all these DVS calculations going on in these killer's heads. Oh, absolutely. And some of them don't have to be super algebra, right? It's. Yeah. I can't imagine that there are, look, there are dumb criminals out there. But I can't imagine that there are too many guys out there looking for a woman to attack, looking for someone that they think might overpower them. Right. Right. We talk about the three desire, the three abilities for a victim for a prowler all the time, desirability, availability, availability and vulnerability. Vulnerability is probably the most important aspect of those abilities that the attacker is looking for. The attacker isn't lying and waiting, hoping to spot a woman that's built like AJ Hawk. Right. No, they're looking for a petite woman that they could easily overpower and do so with the quickness without without being injured themselves without raising the alarm without her being able to scream and yell and

22:34put up a fight or flee. Now, let's go to just a short time later. So this is after Peter frame says this is sometime after 7 p.m. on October 12, 1978. He says he's expecting his wife to be walking through the door. Now, he did say when she did not arrive, he did begin to worry, but it was still pretty early in the night. And then as time was dragging on, he says at first, I tried to think of ordinary explanations for her to be late, perhaps she stopped somewhere, perhaps she had gone to see someone, perhaps there was some simple reason for her delay. So a lot of these communities have corner stores or they have smaller grocery stores. So it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility that she left work and I got stopped by this corner store to pick up some milk or whatever on the way home. So being a little bit late, no big deal. But as that time is ticking, your level of worry becomes a lot more.

23:41And that's exactly right by 9 p.m. Peter was seriously concerned. He called friends to ask whether Margaret had stopped off to talk with them. No one he calls had seen her. So he decides, hey, I'm going to go out and look for her myself. He doesn't find her when he gets back, he calls the police. He says that night, he could not sleep. On Friday, October 13th, 1978, while Margaret had been missing for less than 24 hours, Peter spoke openly about his fear and desperation. He said, quote, I am not a religious man. But last night I prayed for the safe return of my missing wife. I couldn't sleep. I just kept thinking of her, seeing her face and asking for her to be sent safely back to us. He said he sat by the phone, smoking, chain smoking, he actually said drinking tea and coffee all night and hoping for some good news.

24:42He said he could not think straight. He was confused. He kept imagining that Margaret would come through the door or that someone would call to say she was safe. But no call came. I want to hire private investigator some folks in the best. ABC Tuesdays TV's hottest PI is back. Are you sure you're ready to take on a serial killer? It's like a dozen more likely explanations other than serial killer. All right, maybe not it does. In Florida, crime has no offseason. I just heard you were shot at today with a rocket launcher. Well missed RJ Decker Tuesday's 10 night central on ABC next day on Hulu. It's time to get the most out of your money with shine. Time offers the most rewarding fee-free banking all with no overdraft fees, no monthly fees, and no minimum balance fees.

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30:53You should be calling friends and family as many people as you can say hey can I need help I need people to help now I don't want to wait for tomorrow I don't want to wait for next week to start looking for her let's look for her now and and so then you can have people staying at the home just in case you returns or she calls. And then you can have other individuals calling police departments or the hospital because hey she's walking home maybe she didn't walk through the park maybe she walked down the street maybe she got hit by a car maybe she got mug maybe something happened and then I'm sending people out to look I don't know if chain smoking by the phone is the most productive way of trying to solve this situation and I'm not trying to bash and I'm just. But this forward I see what you're saying and you're absolutely right but I would say do like Peter frame did I mean he he says I I started calling friends and people along her route to see if anybody had seen her I mean you said call people he called people he goes out and looks for her himself he calls the police that night no no no I'm sure

32:04that's great for police and I would continue this search right I'm sure but he I'm sure police and hey go home to your little boy to your son stay at home in case she returns home she doesn't know that she's missing you know if she comes home call us so we can quit looking for her go home and see if the phone rings if somebody else calls so I I get what you're saying and I you know it would be difficult I don't think the man wanted to sit by the phone clearly he didn't go to bed that night and police would launch a major search for Margaret after she failed to return home but we've seen how these things go right they're out looking for her that night to what degree difficult to say but we know that a major search for her is going to start first thing in the morning and that search is centered around stammer park the lonely stretch of woodland she would most likely have cried

33:04out and she would have crossed on her way back to coldine a police spokesman said officers were very worried because they had examined the situation and they after talking to some folks said there appeared to be no reason for Margaret to disappear voluntarily now they continued to search for her they're looking through the park and at some point they reach a stage where there's just no trace of her Peter says she got this family dog he says Bruce and Margaret were very close she used to walk she would walk Bruce in that park so he kept telling police let me and the dog go out there and help you let me and the dog go out there to the park and look for it sounds like they push back on this idea they wanted to search the park for this young wife and mother but he said as soon as the police told him that they had found nothing he was out in the park with the dog looking for his wife hoping that maybe the dog would be able to naturally track her knows her sent maybe can follow something and he said the other part of this to

34:15like it's it's really difficult for us to wrap our heads around the idea of what somebody in Peter's situation could be experiencing because he had said the other painful part of this is walking that fine line of shielding your son Andrew from exactly what's going on to also telling him what's going on because he's eight if if mom turns up tomorrow where the next day and everything's fine then he's unnecessarily put the kid through a lot of hell but he also said you know this is my son and I'm not going to hide from him what's going on but so he did say he he had told plenty of folks he said I simply told him that his mother is currently lost but because of the boys young age he said he gets that she's lost but he doesn't understand how serious the situation is

35:19right so this search would grow larger around 20 police officers three tracker dogs and two mounted officers comb the park as we said Peter joined the search with Bruce at his side eventually hoping that the dog might pick up Margaret sent but stammer park is vast and unfortunately during the search the conditions were poor dense fog hampered the search by dusk on Friday October 13th 1978 the fog had become had come down so heavily that the operation was called off the search was called off now this was be late that Friday night well after dark but police did make an announcement when they announced that they were calling off the search they said that the search of stammer park would not be would not continue until other leads had been checked and they said that they you know look we have little to go on but we are going to check other leads first now let's examine this part of their investigation a little bit because the location if she were intercepted on her way home which that's certainly a possibility here then you go well why the heck aren't you looking and looking and looking and looking in the park

36:38they are exhausting resources time money people power all on the idea that she might be in the park but with the idea that we search the park with 20 officers three tracker dogs and two mounted officers and found no trace of the woman so what they're simply saying in not so many words is we need to examine this woman's life we need to question her family and friends which we're already in the process of doing but we need to make sure that there's no reason that a she wouldn't have left on her own or be that somebody else is responsible and for her being missing and it has nothing to do with the park at all well this is also a time when you if you don't want to be a father or mother you could literally move blocks away and just never come home and possibly never have anybody know exactly where you move to and I think the other thing that's working against law enforcement here is the lack of technology like I said you'd have these it's a short commute from her work to her house

37:49or relatively short and so if you had these cameras at other places of business or ring doorbell cameras or whatever we'd at least be able to track some of her movements Peter told the news that look I'm just praying for a miracle now he said and so he sends the sun Andrew to spend the weekend with his grandparents so he could focus on helping the search and helping the police the hope that Margaret might be found alive did not last her body was eventually discovered in a stamina park in a shallow grave more than a quarter of a mile from the place where her blood stain clothes were found partly buried the details were grim so police found Margaret's torn and blood stain clothing buried near the edge of a field this is described as being only inches from a barbed wire fence so they discover the clothing being buried in the park first and now they yeah now they're like we're probably going to find her

39:01what only makes sense is that we're going to find her somewhere in this big park area here now this is if you I'm looking at a map of how this park was situated in 1978 again I've never been there so I can't speak to a great degree of certainty that it looks the same today but it looks similar to me like if you get the aerial view of of central park now I don't know if this is as big as I'm going to be a little bit more big is central park but it's certainly a very big park and what I mean by that though captains is it appears to be fairly open in the middle and then heavily surrounded by woods on the perimeter and those the wooded areas the woodland will creep in at pieces and parts of the the park there so yeah most of the time these parks are protected so maybe certain aspects of the park whether they add a cafe or they

40:01add a playground area of those things might change but the actual area that the park occupies normally stays the same when they find the clothing buried I mean come on this is this is sort of next level stuff we've talked about finding a lot of things buried over the years but to be in the area of where they think she might have been walking trying to make it home and then to find the clothing around there this is of course extremely bad news but it's also a breadcrumb for your breadcrumb trail and they're going to follow their noses here officers said that beyond where they found the clothing buried they for my understanding like they could see what what inspired them to take a closer look was one of the officers thought that they had saw like a piece of a jacket maybe a sleeve sticking out of the ground and so they go over they dig it up find the clothing and then they continue up the steep hill and officers said that they came to kind of a gateway like a natural gateway looking area that led onto a track through bushes and trees and so they they're going through this and a few yards along that track

41:29there was an opening on the right hand side there police said that they discovered what they refer to as a crude mound and as they got closer to this crude mound they could see flesh part of Margaret's shoulder was visible beneath the earth and branches so somebody had buried her shallow grave covered this little mound with branches who we know what items of hers were found and what items of hers might have been taken and did this perpetrator leave anything behind yeah those are great questions so we don't think that the killer left anything behind taken is a question mark but we have items that are going to be missing okay so Marga is found naked and blood stained and the report is that she was dumbed up and she was there is that she was dumped face down in a shallow grave reports state that she had been stabbed in the back and they don't release this early on but eventually they will tell us that her throat had been cut and that she was sexually she had been sexually assaulted beyond that

42:45and the other day there was a lot of damage have some holdback information I believe here although they're not outwardly saying that they're simply saying at the time we're working to determine the precise facts so remember the sexual assault in the throat cut was not something that was reported right away however this stab to the back in the blood stains on her body were they said that one powerful thrust from a thick bladed knife had gone through the back of her heavy sway jacket penetrated her ribcage and cut into her heart police believe the blow had been delivered with a considerable with considerable force and that Margaret would have died very quickly after being stabbed later reports added that her throat had been cut the case soon became known as a quote shortcut to murder a grim phrase bill around the shortcut route Margaret had taken through the park and we both agree that they might not have a might not have been a shortcut at all police retraced her final walk they timed the route from where she was working that former comprehensive school through the park toward her home again her exact route is not known really to anyone but they're attempting they're using logic and saying look this is the route if I'm trying to save some time or if I'm just out enjoying nature

44:10this is the general route that I might take regardless of how you try to sort this out they come up with I think some pretty good conclusions here they said that the fatal portion of the journey may have lasted only nine minutes so they say nine minutes was all it took for an ordinary walk home to become the last walk of Margaret frames life detectives tried to reconstruct Margaret's last movements as precisely as they could the known route began at former comprehensive school where she had worked as a cleaner she left and headed toward her home on Saunders Hill coldine to get there we know that she would have had to cross the railroad tracks on foot walking toward lows road and then taking the shortcut through stammer park rather than continuing to the call corner of lows road and coldine lane by cutting through the park Margaret was shaving off a corner of her journey she would only been in the park for a brief part of the walk that is likely how police arrived at the estimate that her final journey through the danger zone took only about nine minutes police said she walked through the center of the park police believe she may have been attacked near the corner end of the park close to where lows road and coldine lane

45:34when examining this and their words and comparing it with the map we have to keep in mind that it is possible that she saw someone became frightened and tried to run if so her killer caught up to her now absolutely on on the map that they released to the public they identify with it with a simple arrow of where they think the location of the road where they think the location of the attack took place. Okay, we got to be very clear. This is different. The attack took place in one portion of the park, not terribly far away. We're talking probably about two football fields, American, sorry. The buried clothes are found. And then another two football fields away in a different direction is approximately where her body was found. So there must have been some physical evidence here, Captain, such as blood or additional

46:38signs of a struggle for police to believe that they had identified the likely attack location. Because of her clothing found in one place in her body and another, the exact sequence of events remained difficult for detectives to determine. I'm the dumbest boy in school. Tell me what the motivation here is for who? The attacker? She was raped. Right. But they're saying that the whole event took place and they think under nine minutes. No, no, no, no. From where she left work on foot to the location where they believe she was attacked took place in nine minutes. Now, fortunately, based off of the injury, they do state that they believe she died very quickly, almost instantly. So that is one fortunate part of this in a whole series of unfortunate events. To be clear here, whatever this guy or the attackers or whoever is responsible, what they're

47:44doing, all of their actions and their attempts to conceal the crime, this takes a lot of time. Somebody spent a lot of and we're going to get into this. In fact, let's get into it right now. So with as far as her exact route, I wanted to make sure we mentioned that the location of where she was attacked may not have been part of her route. I think there's a chance based off of where they say the signs of the struggle took place. I think there's a likelihood that maybe something tipped her off. She spotted somebody, somebody frightened her or she saw somebody coming after her. And she's a woman in her 30. She took off running, I believe. And I think that the attack actually happened occurred off of her route that she might have already been in the process of trying to flee and try to get away from someone. Right.

48:44You're saying what they believe is, you know, once she stabbed that she died pretty quickly. So there could have been some physical confrontation at some point. And maybe she gets away or again, she just spots a creepo and decides, okay, I don't feel safe in all those voices of people saying you shouldn't go through the park. And then this chase ensued. And do you have any thoughts on are we dealing with one pervert or two perverts? How many perverts are here in the park? So there's, we have a lot of complicating factors at our crime scene. One, it's outdoor, so it's more complicated naturally. And we also have a sprawling crime scene, right? We have a location where police say we think the attack happened here. I don't think they're just willy-nilly saying that. I think there's some evidence that they found at that spot. And I did read one report that they had found like a tuft of hair or some hair that would

49:50have been, it's the way it's described. It seems similar to me of that of Margaret's. So maybe the attacker grabbed her by the hair. She's trying to flee and a big batch of hairs kind of ripped out and left there. Hair can blow around pretty easily. It's outside. But, but again, the sprawling nature of this crime scene, you have a spot. A location in the park where police say we think the attack happened here. The clothing is buried in another location. The body is buried in another location. So let's go through this. This is the part of the story that I think matters most or that I think that investigators probably honed in on the most because what we can say with certainty is we can state the uncertainty, right? These were open and based off of our view of the crime scene, anyone that walks away and thinks that they know exactly how this went down, I think they would be, I wouldn't

50:52say wrong, but I think I think it's a bit of a fool's errand. We have the sequence of events is going to be difficult to determine. Now, what we do know is this, the killer had gone to whether it be one or two people. I tend to lean toward it being one here. Obviously, things would be easier if you had two, but the killer had gone to a significant effort to conceal this crime. Remember, Margaret's clothing was mostly buried. Her body was dragged or carried a considerable distance and placed in a shallow grave and then covered with earth and branches. That effort would have been difficult. Now, there are factors here that are going to make that effort even more difficult. It's nighttime. The terrain as described by investigators included a steep climb and moving a body through the park would have required time and physical exertion.

51:52Well, that's why I wonder if, do we have investigators, anybody leaning in towards the idea that it's possibly multiple attackers? My other big question mark here is, this is a large area. Yes, it's nighttime, but eyewitnesses, there has to be other people in this park. So police are going to do a good deal of canvassing on this, especially when it goes from a missing person to a murder investigation. They're going to come up with some things that they want to further investigate and eventually share those things with the public. And then to your point there, Captain, it seems to me like they were keeping it open, the idea opened that it may have been more than one perpetrator. But when you do examine, because they never outwardly say we're looking for one person, they never outwardly say that they're looking for two. So I would guess they're leaving that idea, leaving the door cracked a little bit, leaving

52:54it open. But when one of the investigators who spent the most time on this case, really looking at his words, he seems to be implying that it was one person, because he keeps saying, I keep trying to think about why the killer did this. I keep trying to think getting to the mind of the guy. I keep trying to, you know, so when you base it off of his words, the guy who knew the most about this case, he seems to be working on the idea that it was just one person. So let's go through this timeline here. And I do owe you a list of items that we're missing. And I promise that we will get to that. So let's go through this timeline here just so we don't lose the listeners because we've gone, we've moved quickly through events. Well, we probably are lost. Well, these events took place over the course of a little less than two weeks. So we moved quickly through this. So just so we're clear here on Thursday, October 12th, on the 12th, this is when she's

53:56walking home and Margaret goes missing. The husband Peter calls police late that night on Friday, the 13th police searched the park all day long and well into the night late at night. The police call off the search. They keep returning to the park, even though out. Remember they said to the public, well, the park search will continue once we've had a chance to run down some other leads and talk to some other people, but we don't have much to go on. I think they wanted to work both at the same time. And if you have the manpower and the ability to do so, that's exactly what you're going to do. So they may have wanted to do that a little, you know, maybe quietly. I think the cops were very smart on how they handled some of this. Now on October 22nd, unfortunately, that is when the clothing was first found buried and then later that day, the body burial location is discovered.

54:57So you have 10 days between her going missing, husband and son at home worried and they'd be able to get the car. Peter frame doesn't get notified until 9 30 PM on October 22nd that all we found your wife buried in the park. Yeah. Now police, as said, repeatedly returned to the park, trying to build an accurate timeline and sequence sequence of events. They believe the attack itself happened quickly, but the concealment afterward suggested calculation and determination. One police comment at the one police comment at the scene captured the atmosphere of the park after dark. This officer said, quote, this place must be eerie at nighttime. It is not the sort of place where women should walk on a company. Well, maybe I'm just the guy that failed lunch, but the husband did it.

56:00Where the cops looking into the husband's alibi and timeline. Oh, absolutely. And so after Margaret's murder, after it became aware, known that she was murdered and not just missing, Peter frame did not hide from the police. He did not hide from the press. You know, we told we said he was involved in the searches for his wife. Right. According to all reports, he cooperated with investigators. He answered their questions and gave lengthy interviews to the number one media at the time, which was newspapers. And he said, look, I understand as Margaret's husband suspicion is naturally going to fall on me. His exact words were this captain. He says, quote, I know I am top murder suspect, but I didn't kill my wife. Quote, naturally, I am the number one suspect, but I know I didn't do it. Peter said he had known nothing about Margaret's death until 9.30 p.m. on the 22nd when

57:00police, I think I said earlier that they called him. Police came to his door and told him that they had found his wife buried in the park. Now what he means by I knew nothing about her death. I think what he is not saying here is that he was still holding out hope at that time that she would be found alive. That's difficult after 9, 10 days. Yeah, but see, I actually like this. If I'm an investigator, I like what he's saying because the people that act surprised that the cops would look into them or law enforcement would look into them. I go, how much space do you have in your skull because your brain doesn't seem too large? Yeah, and a big part of this too is he seems like a very logical dude, but he also seems like having a hard time accepting. I don't know if accepting is the right word. I think that it's, I think he kind of says like there was a lot of things that were occupying

58:06his mind during this time that the loss of her, the forever loss of her had not hit. So he's concerned number one about finding her this whole time. He's concerned number two about his son. He runs, he owns his own business runs his business and he said he wasn't able to do that during that time. So he did say he said, look, since the announcement of her murder that the phone, his phone had not stopped ringing, he said he was receiving about 30 calls a day offering help and sympathy. He says quote one thing this proves is I have more friends than I ever deserved. He also told the newspaper, he said, look, the hardest thing is I've not gotten to the part of figuring out losing my wife yet. He goes right now, the hardest thing has been to tell my son Andrew.

59:06Yeah. And he said, he said, look, he goes, I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to handle it. He said, I simply said to the boy, your mom is dead. And he said, Andrew screamed and cried. And he said, despite the horror of what happened, Peter said he didn't feel any anger toward the killer. He said he felt pity, actually. But he did also warn that people needed to know that there was a maniac, a maniac out there. And we get this whole idea of not being angered by this or anger towards the killer. And it would be such a tough thing to wrap your head around. And as we get older and we lose people in our lives, I think we've all felt that. When somebody passes away where you can grieve, but you can also grieve for somebody else that was closer or maybe had a more direct relationship with that person.

1:00:09And so, kind of imagine what he's going through and the idea of his son is now going to be, and everybody said, you know, she's a great mom and should, and to be a stay at home mom and the closeness with that. And then just going back to work and man, it's a lot of stuff to wrap your head around. Yeah. I can't speak for him. I think it's the passage of time a little bit here, maybe, that, you know, look, you hold out hope. But you don't have to be the host of a true crime podcast. This guy does not appear, you can go by his words. He doesn't appear to be an idiot. And you don't have to be the host of a true crime show to buy day four of a, of your missing wife going, you know, the real possibility here, whether you say it out loud or not. Yeah. And then at some point, we've heard this with everyone. I want to be clear, we've heard this with everyone. I don't know that we've ever encountered a story where we've not heard this.

1:01:12And I mean this, not by day two or day three or week one or week two or a month one or month two. I mean, on a long enough timeline, what's the thing we always seem to read and hear from the family members, especially the one that loved the individual the most is I've kind of come to the idea that my missing loved one is probably dead and never coming home. But I need to know what happened. I need to know if they are alive. Knowing for them to be dead and knowing what happened is better to not know at all. And maybe he had come to reconcile that during the course of her being missing. And then look, don't hear what I'm not saying, but maybe some level of certainty offered some, you know, he was seeking answers. Wasn't the answer he was hoping for, but he got some answers. Some poor people never ever get answers.

1:02:14Yeah, we hear often there's not going to be closure. There's not going to be me getting over this, but because those are certain things that you can't control. But if you can get those answers that can at least help move on in the process. Yeah. Peter had said that friends and relatives had suggested to him that he should probably seek some medical help because he wasn't sleeping. He wasn't really eating. He was, while he might be putting on a good show and trying to look strong for his son and trying to remain calm when talking with detectives and the newspapers, I bet you behind closed doors, it's a much different story. He did say, look, I've not sought any medical help or attention yet for what's going on. But when it, when it does become too much, I will go to the doctor. He also openly said, I'm struggling to keep my business running at all.

1:03:15I'm left trying to piece together this mess, this strain. I'm trying to sort out what's left of my life, of my family life. The business is something that's just going to have to sit and wait. He did say, look, I've not had the time. I've not had the time to properly think about this tragedy. He did start to cry when he was talking to the newspaper when he spoke about Margaret directly. One of the things he said was she was a devout mom. He said, look, we were basically happy. Yeah, we had our ups and downs. But he also said that night when they knocked on my door at 9.30 pm and told me that my wife was dead, he said, I went with them to the police station at that time on that Sunday night. And I was questioned until 5 am on Monday and he said, quote, I know I didn't do it. He said, I know the police had to interview me in the efforts to find out who did.

1:04:30So much more to get to in this true crime story. Join us back here in the garage until then. Be good, be kind. And don't let it. Football season is here and the fantasy footballers are back to help you dominate your league. In this season, we're bringing you five episodes every week. That's more starts, more sits, more waiver, wire wins and more trades from draft day all the way to your fantasy championship.

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