The I-65 Killer

Part Two: The Bearded Man

Unbeknownst to investigators at the time, the 1989 murders of 24-year-old Peggy Gill and 34-year-old Jeanne Gilbert were just the tip of the iceberg when it came to this unknown offender. A rash of other crimes throughout the area - ranging as far south as Kentucky and as far north as Minnesota - would later be linked to the same individual…

Listen to "The I-65 Killer (Part Two: The Bearded Man)" on Spreaker.

Lois "Evelyn" Wright was a 41-year-old that had been married to her husband, Daniel, for over half of her life. The two lived in Rockford, Illinois, where Evelyn worked overnights at the Colonial Inn Best Western, located less than two miles away from Interstate 90.

Daniel dropped off Evelyn at for work on the evening of Saturday, December 17th, 1988, and all seemed well at the Colonial Inn throughout the night. The following morning (Dec. 18th), Evelyn's husband woke up at around 6:00 AM, expecting a call from Evelyn. She normally called him in the morning to let him know that all was well, and since they only had one vehicle at the time, they would make plans for him to pick her up. However, on this morning, Evelyn had missed her expected call time, and as minutes began to pass, Daniel's worry continued to grow.

At around 6:15, Daniel decided to call Evelyn at work. Thankfully, she answered; telling him that she had simply gotten busy with work, but would be ready to leave at 8:00 AM. So the two said their goodbyes, hung up, and Daniel prepared to pick up his wife from work in a little over an hour.

Police would later speculate that within the 60 minutes - somewhere between 6:15 and 7:15, with the exact time undetermined - Evelyn was shot and killed at the front desk of the Rockford Colonial Inn. Using a .44-caliber handgun, an assailant had entered the hotel and shot Evelyn once in the chest, leaving her body on the ground as they began to rob the hotel (the exact amount of the take was never publicly disclosed, but it wasn't believed to be much).

Evelyn's body was discovered by a guest attempting to check out approximately one hour later, at around 7:15 AM. They initially believed that the clerk had suffered a heart attack, unaware that a .44-caliber round had entered the right side of her chest and killed her almost instantly. By the time paramedics arrived, Evelyn was already cold to the touch, and had been deceased for approximately one hour.

The paramedics were still at the scene when Evelyn's husband, Daniel, arrived to pick her up. He never got to give his wife a proper goodbye, and her case would quickly go cold; with police having no available leads or information, other than the .44-caliber round that had been fired into Evelyn's body.

Fast forward to just under two weeks later.

James Matthew Walton was a 34-year-old that worked the overnight shift at the Envoy Inn, in Florence, Kentucky; just off of Interstates 71 & 75, which run concurrently through this area south of Cincinnati. On the morning of December 31st, 1988, James was wrapping up an overnight shift, and probably had his mind on the pending new year holiday. Guests at the Envoy Inn were beginning to stir that morning, but shortly before 6:30 AM, James was shot multiple times by a similar .44 handgun. He was believed to have fought back against his attacker, but would be shot several times in his chest, stomach, and back, and left to bleed out in the hotel parking lot (having been lured outside for some unknown reason).

Some of the guests had heard a confrontation in the lobby preceding the gunshots (which they believed were holiday fireworks). At least one witness would describe seeing a man in the lobby just minutes before the shooting took place: a man estimated to be 30 - 40 years old, who stood at an above average height (6'1") with a heavy build, who was described as a "Grizzly Adams type" with reddish-brown/graying hair that reached the collar of his plaid shirt, and a scraggly beard of similar coloring. A sketch would later be released to the press of this man, which pretty much matches what you're already thinking of in your mind's eye.

Police throughout the region would quickly link together these two cases, due to the bullet fragments left behind at the separate crime scenes, which revealed that they had been fired by a virtually identical .44-caliber handgun. It was also determined that the M.O. had been nearly identical in both crimes (with robbery believed to be the main motive), and the physical location of both attacks seemed eerily similar: hotels located just off of midwestern highways, which were separated by a mere 400 miles.

It would quickly become established that one man had committed both of these crimes, which predated Indiana's Days Inn Murders by mere months. It was likely that the perpetrator of these crimes was no stranger to violence, and would like strike again moving forward.

Police have never officially linked these two deaths - Evelyn Wright and James Walton - to any other known spree. But the description of the attacker, the type of crimes committed, and the proximity to the Days Inn Murders, makes it hard to believe that a similar attacker was committing the same type of crime in the same area at the same time. This has led to a lot of speculation in the years since, and has given birth to a Midwestern urban legend, inspired by a serial killer that somehow managed to slip under the radar.

This is part two of the I-65 Killer.

On March 3rd, 1989, police agencies throughout Indiana were called out to various crime scenes.

In Merrillville, local police responded to calls from guests attempting to check out of the Days Inn. They would eventually discover the body of 24-year-old Mary Margaret Gill ("Peggy") in a vacant wing of the hotel, and an autopsy would reveal that - in addition to being raped prior to her death - Peggy had been shot twice in the back of the head with a .22-caliber firearm.

Meanwhile, as police in Merrillville figured out the specifics of Peggy's death, investigators about an hour south circled around a similar crime. In that case, 34-year-old Jeanne Gilbert had gone missing from her own Days Inn hotel, where she - just like Peggy - had been the lone overnight staffer. Police would eventually learn that Jeanne had been abducted, at around the same time that her body was discovered approximately twenty miles away. Like Peggy, her body showed signs of a sexual assault, and she had also been shot multiple times with a .22-caliber handgun. Forensic tests would later establish that this firearm had undoubtedly been the same weapon used in both murders.

Right away, the similarities between these two cases seemed obvious to everyone involved. Two overnight desks clerks - both women - had been sexually assaulted and robbed while working at a Days Inn hotel in the state of Indiana. Both had been shot and killed by a .22. Both had been sexually assaulted. And in both cases, robbery seemed to have played a predominant motive, with the killer stealing a grand total of $426 from both locations.

These cases were so insanely similar that some of the details would be misreported in their immediate aftermath. News outlets struggled to differentiate between the cases, due to the eerie similarity between them. There was also some additional confusion due to the time zone discrepancies, as the region where Jeanne Gilbert's body was discovered was using Eastern Time, adding an hour to a lot of her news reports.

It became clear to everyone involved that local authorities were not fit to handle a case of this breadth. Not for lack of trying, of course, but because there was simply too much here for a small-town police agency to handle. So the Indiana State Police stepped in to assume control of the investigation for the foreseeable future, as detectives pored over the details and attempted to find a clue pointing to the killer's identity.

A task force was assembled by the Indiana State Police, which oversaw the investigation, but worked closely with the police agencies that had jurisdiction over the separate crime scenes (which were located more than 50 miles apart). It quickly became apparent to investigators that a single individual had been behind both crimes: the sexual assaults and murders of Peggy Gill and Jeanne Gilbert. Whoever had been behind this crime had targeted Peggy first, and then drove about an hour south, before abducting and then killing Jeanne. This would become confirmed in the years to come, as DNA testing become more and more readily available; proving that a single offender had sexually assaulted both women just before their deaths.

Evidence left behind at the crime scene would point to a spree killer, who - in a single night - had raped, robbed, and murdered 2 women more than 50 miles away. He had clearly been headed southbound down Interstate 65, which connected the two locations together (Merrillville and Remington, Indiana).

As I already touched on, both victims had been killed with a .22-caliber firearm, and forensic testing would later reveal that the bullet fragments left in and around their bodies had undoubtedly come from the same weapon.

Investigators would probe dozens of persons-of-interest and potential suspects, including several of the travelers that had been in or around either of the Days Inn locations at the time of the murders; many of whom were only in-town for that evening, and were likely eager to continue traveling as soon as possible. This included many of the last known hotel guests that had interacted with the victims, or had been near the crime scenes when the assaults took place.

One of the individuals that police seemed to express a particular interest in was the Hyles-Anderson college student that had arrived at the Merrillville Days Inn at around 2:00 AM, which is when police believe the robbery, sexual assault, and murder of Peggy Gill had taken place. This young man told police that he had not seen anyone in or around the lobby when he was there, and he had left shortly afterwards to find another hotel. Police became interested in this 18-year-old when he returned to the hotel the following day, and began giving statements to police of his own accord. This struck some investigators as odd, and was made even more odd when they discovered that no other hotels or motels in the area recalled him having rented a room. Nonetheless, there was no evidence pointing to the young man having committed either of the crimes, so interest in him quickly waned.

Another person that police wanted to chat with was the guest that Jeanne Gilbert had called at around 4:30 AM for a courtesy wake-up call. If you recall, Jasper County Sheriff Steven Reames made a rather pointed comment about this individual's recollection (which I pointed out in the last episode), but - likewise - there was nothing about this person's story that stood out as suspicious.

These two individuals would later be cleared of involvement, but their statements provided a rough timeline for investigators to work with: they believed that the attack in Merrillville had taken place between 1:30 and 2:00 AM, while the attack an hour south, in Remington, had likely started some time between 4:30 and 5:00.

In the wake of these savage crimes, two separate psychological profiles would be made; with one coming from a Monticello police officer, using a new computer algorithm that he personally designed, and the other coming from a Chicago homicide detective that had a long history of working on serial offender cases.

While these two profiles varied on specificities, both agreed that the killer was a white male that likely lived far enough from both crime scenes for him to feel comfortable getting away with it. He was likely close in age to the two victims (who were 24 and 34 years old, respectively) and likely had some kind of prior criminal history... although, in regards to prior crimes, the profiles differed. One profile speculated that the killer had been previously arrested for weapons violations and armed robbery, the other believed that he was a sexual predator.

When the FBI got involved months later, they disagreed with both profiles, openly theorizing that the killer was likely an impulsive individual that had few run-ins with the law (if any). They believed that:

"... he had little police contact since adulthood, outside of a horrible driving record."

As you can imagine, these dissenting voices were not altogether helpful, painting a rather vague and unfinished portrait of a scumbag that had been motivated by either robbery or sexual assault to commit murder. A detective would later recall about the task force's opinion on the matter, by stating that they believed this individual's primary motivation was:

"Robbery first. That was the consensus. This guy wants fast cash."

In that scenario, the sexual assaults and murders of the two women - Peggy Gill and Jeanne Gilbert - was likely inspired by the killer's impulsive decision-making, which indicated that these crimes were not planned out in advance. They were spur-of-the-moment decisions, in an effort for this guy to get some money quickly. To some, this indicated drug use, which couldn't be ruled out.

Police began to theorize that the killer was someone who traveled around a lot, driving throughout the region on a constant basis. At least, enough to get a working knowledge of the area, including local roads and highways, as well as local hotels and motels. Maybe he was a trucker, a delivery driver, or a traveling salesman of some kind. Some investigators believed that the killer might have been a former employee of the Days Inn hotel chain, since he had targeted two of their establishments in a single night; others felt that this was just a coincidence, perhaps a comfortability that the killer felt with the Days Inn name itself (perhaps he frequented their hotels during his travels).

While investigators began to throw these questions around in an effort to identify the killer, their primary concern was that this wasn't an isolated incident. You see, since both crimes had occurred within a few hours of each other, it pointed to this being a spree killer: an individual that commits two or more murders within a short period of time, with no cooling off period. Perhaps this was a one-off event that wasn't indicative of any longer string of attacks. If so, something had likely happened that had caused this individual to lash out. Some investigators worried that this was just the beginning of a longer campaign of terror. This individual seemed to have become truly unhinged in the commission of these crimes, and it pointed to someone that wasn't going to slow down anytime soon. One detective would recall years later, in 2015:

"... one thing I think we all agreed on, was this guy was on a rampage. He was just going to rape and kill women as he moved across the country or until he was apprehended. When he went silent, our thought switched to that maybe this was a one and done. Something set this guy off and he went nuts."

If that was the case - that this was a one-off event - what could have possibly set this individual off enough for him to commit these two heinous crimes in a span of just a few hours? And then there was an even more pressing concern: could it happen again?

On January 1st, 1990, a 21-year-old woman showed up to work at the Days Inn in Columbus, Indiana: about 140 miles south of Remington, where the second Days Inn assault had taken place roughly 10 months prior. This was a moderately-sized city in south-central Indiana, and the two murders from months prior weren't even on this young woman's mind as she began her shift that evening.

This 21-year-old night auditor was working alone that evening, as she had done many nights prior. For the first several hours, things unfolded pretty routinely and quietly, but the uneventful nature of her shift would come to a sudden halt in the early morning hours of January 2nd.

At around 5:00 AM, a man entered the lobby of the Columbus Days Inn, wearing simple blue jeans and a plaid shirt. He was later described by the young woman as a "stereotypical looking blue-collar trucker," who stood about six feet tall, appeared to be in his late 30's or early 40's, and had medium-length brown and gray hair, which was mostly covered up in a dark stocking cap. What hair wasn't hidden appeared to be unwashed, all greasy and matted. This man also had a long, full beard, which was brown and gray, with long whiskers.

Most peculiarly, though, this individual had striking green eyes, which were described as being so bright that they were almost yellow. His right eye, in particular, seemed to be lazy, and did not focus straight ahead.

When this man entered the lobby, he began a friendly interaction with the front desk clerk. He was even somewhat charming, engaging young woman working behind the desk in pleasant conversation for a minute. He asked her for change for a cigarette machine, and then asked if there were any good restaurants nearby. She directed him to a few places that might be open, and he then disappeared out the front doors.

The man would return about 15 to 20 minutes later, carrying a foam cup... which, the night auditor would soon learn, was full of hot coffee. After entering the lobby, the man approached the front desk and threw the hot liquid into her face, incapacitating her almost instantly. With the young woman struggling to regain her senses, the older man seemed to jump behind the counter and began to rob not only the Days Inn, but the woman herself. In addition to seizing the money from the cash drawer, this individual demanded the money from this young woman's purse, as well as the three rings that she was wearing.

Instead of flashing a gun, this offender would reveal that he was armed with a knife, and would use the threat of it to keep the young woman subdued. After shoving the stolen cash into his pockets, this man then directed the young woman towards a back area of the hotel, near a stairwell, where he subjected her to a sexual assault.

After several minutes - which dragged on for what felt like hours - this man then directed the young woman towards a side door, ordering:

"Get the fuck outside now."

The young woman did as she was told, and was then told:

"Don't turn around and keep walking."

This young woman expected to be killed, but continued to follow the orders given to her. She just kept walking: first, through a shallow, frozen stream that ran beside the hotel; and then up a small hill, towards a residential area. The entire time, she expected the man to shoot or stab her, believing that he was still behind her, following closely, but that never happened.

Eventually, this young woman made it to a trailer home, where a woman inside let her in. She was then able to call the police, and at 5:55 AM, her 911 call was received by the Columbus Police Department, who began to respond to this incident.

Columbus P.D. investigated this crime, and seemed to approach it as a standalone incident. At least, that's the feeling I get from the details of their investigation, which have remained closely guarded in the years since (include the name of the 21-year-old survivor, whose identity has been withheld).

The day after this crime was reported - on January 3rd, 1990 - police would release a composite sketch taken from the surviving victims report.

[Side note: this is the image that was the cover of last week's episode, the black-and-white sketch that is rather light on detail.]

It is believed that this was done without any consideration to the ISP's task force investigating similar hotel assaults, and that is why some believe that this case wasn't linked to that spree until many months later.

Despite this crime bearing many of the similarities to the Days Inn Murders from the year prior, this case wouldn't be linked (at least, not publicly) until the following year, 1991. That was when the task force seemed to take more of an interest in this sexual assault & robbery from Columbus, dispatching forensic artist Kenneth O'Deen to meet with the survivor. Together, they would create an updated sketch of the culprit, which would be released on the 2nd anniversary of the Days Inn Murders in March of 1991.

This image is believed to be the most accurate portrayal of the individual that the surviving victim encountered on the morning of January 2nd, 1990 (and is the cover image of the episode you're listening to now). Investigators would later confirm through DNA testing that this was the same individual that had murdered Peggy Gill and Jeanne Gilbert ten months prior, having left behind evidence at all three crime scenes.

Throughout 1989 and 1990, investigators in Indiana attempted to track down the individual that they were calling the "Days Inn Killer": the unknown individual that had sexually assaulted and murdered two Days Inn employees on the same date, Peggy Gill and Jeanne Gilbert. Now, with the addition of a third crime - a sexual assault that had been committed ten months later in Columbus, Indiana - it seemed like their investigation was beginning to broaden.

It would continue to do so well into 1991, when a case that was strikingly similar happened again in Indiana. However, unlike the other cases I've discussed at-length so far, this one remains more of an enigma, and has not been officially tied to the investigation, making it a huge question mark in and of itself.

In September of 1991, Vicki Harshman was a 36-year-old going through a divorce, who had just recently suffered the loss of her oldest daughter (who had died in a car crash). To make matters even more complicated, she discovered that she was pregnant for the fourth time, after separating from her husband.

Despite living in Jamestown, Indiana, Vicki worked approximately twenty miles away, at the Holiday Inn Holidome in Lebanon, located just off of Interstate 65. There, on September 19th, 1991, Vicki showed up to work an overnight shift, monitoring the front desk and helping guests with whatever issues arose that evening.

For at least the first few hours, things seemed to be fine. A police officer, who checked in on the area's 24-hour establishments every night, drove through the parking lot at around 2:30 and waved at Vicki from his squad car. She waved back. Just fifteen or so minutes later, a newspaper delivery man dropped off the day's papers. It was around 2:45, and he would later recall seeing Vicki talking to two men at the front desk, but their conversation appeared to be routine and/or amicable. Roughly one hour would pass before anyone picked up on something out of the ordinary at the Lebanon Holiday Inn.

At 3:39 AM, a 911 call was received by the Lebanon Police Department. A truck driver that had attempted to get a head start on the day and check out early had discovered a trail of blood leading from the lobby into a nearby hallway. This prompted his urgent call to 911, fearing that something violent had happened. Just minutes later, Officer Brent Wheat arrived at the location. Years later, in 2013, he would recall that:

"Blood was everywhere. All over three rooms. The front desk. Hallway and utility room, like she had tried hard to escape her attacker."

The body of Vicki Harshman was found at the scene, and investigators would quickly discover that she had been beaten severely with a golf putter taken from the Holidome's mini-golf course; which had been broken in the commission of the crime, and was left lying beside her body. After beating her with the golf club, the killer had then taken out a pair of scissors from Vicki's purse, and then used them to stab her several times. The bloody scissors had been left lying on top of her body.

Police would also learn that a robbery had taken place, with audits showing that anywhere between $100 and $200 was missing from the Holiday Inn's cash drawer. In addition, the contents of Vicki's purse had been upended, and several of her items were lost. This included her billfold, her car keys, and her identification cards, which would never be found (despite her vehicle still sitting in the hotel parking lot).

Investigators would not rule out sexual assault as a motive, but would not state whether or not a rape or sexual assault had actually taken place.

Vicki's estranged husband was almost immediately cleared by police as a suspect, having been living out-of-state when the murders occurred. Additionally, it was believed that Vicki and he were still on good terms, and their divorce had been preceded by a simple falling out.

While this crime seem to bear some similarities to the assaults of the region's hotel staff over the prior couple of years, police would soon learn that Vicki had been receiving threatening phone calls in the weeks before her death. These phone calls had come not from a man, but from a woman, who was theorized to have been a romantic or personal rival of Vicki's, who - for some reason - might have wanted to do her harm. This led police to speculate that the crime was personal in nature, and was more likely to have been a crime of passion as opposed to a robbery-gone-wrong.

Nonetheless, Vicki's case would quickly go cold, and would eventually end up coming across the desks of the investigators monitoring the Days Inn Murders. Because this crime seemed so different from the murders of Peggy Gill and Jeanne Gilbert, they were unsure if it was part of the same spree. After all, there was no sexual assault, no gunshots, no abduction... the only similarity seemed to be the target and location. However, the murder of Vicki Harshman remains unsolved to this day, and has never been officially linked to the I-65 crimes, despite some believing that it might be.

Despite the best effort of investigators with the Indiana State Police and other various agencies, the cases I've covered throughout this series would collectively go cold. The stories - those of Vicki Heath, murdered at a Super 8 motel in 1987; of Peggy Gill and Jeanne Gilbert, murdered in Days Inn hotels fifty miles apart in March of 1989; and the unnamed 21-year-old night auditor of the Columbus Days Inn, who was sexually assaulted in January of 1991 - would remain unsolved over a period of years.

Police and the media speculated publicly that a couple of known offenders might have committed the crimes; Joseph Franco was one of the names bandied about in 1992, after he was arrested for abducting, sexually assaulting, and then carving "I 65" into the chest of a female victim before setting her free. Despite facing charges in that case, he was eventually cleared of the Days Inn murders through DNA testing... as were the other named suspects.

It wasn't until 2009 that the stories really began to receive media attention again. And it was the following year - more than two decades after the crime spree came to an end - that a major break in the case finally came.

In April of 2010, a DNA hit in CODIS would confirm that Vicki Heath - the 1st victim from Elizabethtown, Kentucky, whose story you heard in the introduction of the last episode - was a victim of the same killer that had taken the lives of Peggy Gill and Jeanne Gilbert. This revealed that this unknown killer had struck two years before police originally believed.

This revelation also confirmed what investigators had long feared: that this likely wasn't a spree killer, whose crimes were confined to a set period of time. They now had crimes spanning over a roughly four-year period, which pointed to a serial offender that had somehow avoided being identified.

Three years later - in 2013 - another match would be made in the CODIS system. This time, though, it came from out of state... out of the area entirely, in fact. This time, a match was made to a 1991 rape and assault from Rochester, Minnesota, in which the victim had survived the ordeal after being stabbed and sodomized by her attacker. Police at the time had originally linked the crime to an unrelated crime spree, but later labeled it as a one-off after DNA results came back as inconclusive.

Police had not released the details of this crime to the press, and it wasn't until 2013 that police were able to link this sexual assault in Minnesota to the same offender, which seems almost hard-to-believe years later. You see, in the Rochester case, the surviving victim had described an almost-identical culprit at the onset of the investigation: a bearded man of average height, with graying brown hair, who had bright green eyes. She even described the offender's lazy right eye in detail that is painstakingly obvious in retrospect.

This, I believe, is not a sign of police ineptitude, but rather a sign of how far law enforcement's investigative abilities have progressed over the past few decades. With the advent of the internet, crimes like this - separated by hundreds, or even thousands of miles - can be linked together through various factors (such as DNA testing).

This outlier of a case extended the range and time-frame of the offender's crime spree, taking it up to Minnesota state, and pushing back the timeline of the last known assault to 1991. This has led to the widespread belief that this killer had many more victims, many of whom were likely not yet linked through DNA, or had gone unreported in the press (as was the case with the Rochester assault).

Some of the cases that I've detailed in this episode - namely, the two cases at the beginning, the murders of Lois "Evelyn" Wright and James Watthew Walton from December of 1988, as well as the September 1991 murder of Vicki Harshman - have only ever been loosely attached to this crime spree. That's because they fit within the same time range of the other attacks, and seem to have shared motivational similarities; if not forensic similarities, in some part.

Of these three cases, the two that are most likely to be related to the I-65 Killer's spree are the shooting deaths of Evelyn Wright and James Walton, whose stories I detailed in the introduction of this episode. Their deaths happened just days apart, in December of 1988, predating the Days Inn Murders by mere months. These crimes also happened along the same interstate corridor, stretching from Indiana to Kentucky, where they were killed by a bearded man wielding a .44 handgun.

While the caliber of the weapon differed from the other three known murders, it is possible that this was a conscious decision. Vicki Heath was murdered the year prior to these two murders, back in 1987, and had been shot with a .38-caliber firearm. The Days Inn Murders happened in 1990, and those two victims had been shot with a .22. This pointed to a killer that had a firearm collection of some kind, or was no stranger to trading in firearms. It's possible that he got rid of his weapons after using them in a crime, and did so after his known murders.

In addition, while these two cases - the shooting deaths of Evelyn Wright and James Walton - were linked together through ballistics testing, the description of a suspicious man seen lurking around in the lobby just moments before Walton's murder seems to directly match the description given to the I-65 Killer. If you recall, a witness had described this man as a "Grizzly Adams'' type; a bearded man who stood at an above average height, had a stocky build and graying brown hair, wore plaid clothing, and came across as a trucker. This matches the description of the I-65 Killer almost precisely, give or take one lazy eye - which may or may not have been spotted by the witness's brief interaction with him.

In the I-65 crimes, the survivors had gotten a better look at their attacker, and it was possible that the details of his eyes had eluded this one male witness from 1988. It's also possible that, this being a male witness, certain details had simply eluded him (as I know they would me).

The Vicki Harshman case, on the other hand, is a lot more loose of a connection. The only real connection to the I-65 murders is the location (Lebanon, Indiana, which is right along I-65) and the time period of the crime (September of 1991, when we know this individual was still active). But other than this being an apparent robbery at a hotel, there are very few other similarities, and police have always described Vicki's murder as a crime-of-passion; or, at the very least, a crime of opportunity for someone with an ax to grind against Vicki. However, it's still-unsolved nature leaves a lot up to the imagination, and it remains possible - however slightly - that the same offender committed that crime. After all, it has been publicly theorized by investigators that this same individual, who committed at least three murders and a handful of sexual assaults, might have been responsible for many more crimes that they have yet to identify in the years since.

The I-65 Killer, as he has come to be known as, has managed to live a life free from consequence for the better part of 35 years.

This individual would enter hotel and motel lobbies under the guise of a weary traveler; a trucker, perhaps, who was looking for a place to stay, or recommendations for a place to grab a bite to eat. Once he was close to the clerks in the lobby, he would strike; subduing them at gunpoint or knifepoint, or through violent assaults (which, in at least one case, included throwing hot coffee into a woman's face). He would then begin robbing the hotels and victims, before subjecting them to a brutal sexual assault in an isolated spot nearby.

In several of these cases, he would kill the women in other areas, such as a vacant hallway or outside, near the dumpsters. He would then make his getaway, along with whatever loot he managed to obtain from the establishment's cash drawers (or from the victims themselves). It remains unknown today what this individual's true motivation was, whether it was robbery or sexual assault, but it is believed that murder was just a means to an end... a way for him to silence his victims, and escape all culpability for his vile actions.

DNA may hold the answers to this decades-long mystery, with genetic genealogy providing interesting avenues for law enforcement. as made evident with the identification and apprehension of numerous offenders over the past few years, including names that listeners of this show may be familiar with. This includes the Golden State Killer, Joseph James Deangelo, and the Daytona Beach Killer, Robert Tyrone Hayes, who are both awaiting trial today.

Since this unknown offender's DNA has been kept on-file, this provides an interesting avenue for investigators to explore in the immediate future, in the hopes of perhaps finding justice for the remaining loved ones of his numerous victims and survivors. Until such a time, the stories of Vicki Heath, Peggy Gill, and Jeanne Gilbert - as well as Evelyn Wright, James Walton, Vicki Harshman, and the other victims potentially impacted by this offender - will remain unresolved.

UPDATE

Episode Information

Research by Damion Moore (American Crime Journal)

Hosting, production, and additional research/writing by Micheal Whelan

Published on on February 2nd, 2020

Producers: Maggyjames, Ben Krokum, Roberta Janson, Quil Carter, Peggy Belarde, Laura Hannan, Katherine Vatalaro, Damion Moore, Astrid Kneier, Amy Hampton, Emily McMehen, Scott Meesey, Steven Wilson, Scott Patzold, Marie Vanglund, Lori Rodriguez, Jessica Yount, Aimee McGregor, Danny Williams, Sue Kirk, Sara Moscaritolo, Thomas Ahearn, Victoria Reid, Marion Welsh, Seth Morgan, Alyssa Lawton, Kelly Jo Hapgood, Patrick Ari Ekeheien Laakso, Sydney Scotton, Meadow Landry, and Rebecca Miller