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In June's Journey, you have the chance to solve a captivating murder mystery and reveal deep-seated family secrets. Use your keen eye and detective skills to guide June Parker through this thrilling hidden object mystery game. June's Journey is a mobile game that follows June Parker, a New York socialite living in London. Play as June Parker and investigate beautifully detailed scenes of the 1920s

while uncovering the mystery of her sister's murder. There are twists, turns, and catchy tunes, all leading you deeper into the thrilling storyline. This is your chance to test your detective skills. And if you play well enough, you could make it to the detective club. There, you'll chat with other players and compete with or against them. June needs your help, but watch out.

You never know which character might be a villain. Shocking family secrets will be revealed, but will you crack this case? Find out as you escape this world and dive into June's world of mystery, murder, and romance. Can you crack the case? Download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android.

Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. That's June's Journey. Download the game for free on iOS and Android.

I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime. And I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them. Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes. And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.

Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens. Some are solved and some are cold, very cold. This is Buried Bones. ♪♪

Hey, Paul. Hey, Kate. How's it going? It's going really well. Now, there's something I've got to ask you about. Uh-oh. It's your aquarium. My aquarium? The sound that comes out of your aquarium, which I hear can cause sound issues sometimes. So, I'm curious about what is up with your aquarium. I've never known someone with a saltwater aquarium. Yeah, you know, technically, it's still a very young aquarium. It's about eight months old. So, saltwater aquariums

are not like goldfish tanks. This is truly sort of replicating the ocean inside a window box, and it has a whole life support system. So that is really what is the issue when it comes to

the sound is there's pumps going, there's supportive equipment that make noises. And when I record, since it's in the space that we do the podcast from out here in my man cave, I have to literally shut down the life support to this aquarium in order to try to get my room as quiet as possible so the people who are listening aren't hearing the rumblings and the gurglings and everything else that's going on.

Is that risking the lives of your aquatic animals, though? But we have to shut down the whole system? It is, in a way. Now, I will tell you, we recorded two episodes the other day, and that's the longest that I had shut my tank down. Oh, no. And we...

When I looked, I don't know if you remember, but in between recordings, I was like, hey, I got to go check on my fish. And I have a flashlight because I, you know, basically I'm sitting here in the dark right now. So I take the flashlight and two of my fish were laying on the sand bottom. And I was just like, oh, no, that fast? You know, that was my, uh-oh. And it was, I have a royal grama, which is a beautiful purple and yellow fish that

And then I had just put in a relatively young six-line wrasse. And both were literally just laying on the bottom of the sand, which is what you typically see when fish die. Oh, no. So I was really concerned. And then I... You seaside it. Well, then I flipped on my lights to the tank. And they both just got up off the sand and started swimming away. Oh.

And I was like, okay, they were fooling me. You and I talk a lot about reducing anxiety since that's what your book was about, was the amount of anxiety that you've gotten in life. And so we've worked you towards the cava, right? Drinking the cava. And that's very calming and nothing wrong with bourbon, but just, you know, working on some other things. So I assume that the Saltwater Aquarium is one of the ways that you try to reduce anxiety. I need like three of those. So maybe you can send me one.

I need a lot of saltwater animals to reduce my anxiety. It's not a cheap hobby, but yes, I will sit there and just watch my tank. I've even sat in front of it, sipping bourbon, watching my tank. I love these creatures. They all have their own little personalities. Oh.

The way they interact with each other, the engineering some of these animals do. Like your coral reefs, right? Don't you have coral? I have a few pieces of coral, but the tank's not quite ready to really put a lot of coral in there. But I have creatures, both fish and this invertebrate, this pistol shrimp, that build structures. They will take shells and build homes. And it's amazing. That's awesome. Yeah. And now...

The one thing that I cannot control about noise out of this tank is the pistol shrimp. Can you imagine why it's called a pistol shrimp? Does it... What does it sound like? It has a super large claw that it can close so fast, it causes the water to cavitate and it creates this loud crack. It's a defense mechanism. It can literally stun other fish or invertebrates with this claw. And every now and then, you'll hear this loud pop.

And it's just because it's feeling threatened and I can't control it. So listeners may hear a pop from here. You know, this pistol shrimp's trying to just get by during its day. That's good to know. Well, and everybody should be able to get by during their day. So I'm going to forgive the pistol shrimp for interrupting us.

So this has been a fantastic episode of Fish Talk with Paul Holes. There we go. This is our spinoff podcast, right? Love it. It's going to be a hit. Going to be a hit. But let's get serious because I have a really interesting case that still confounds me today. It's a little bit of a whodunit, but it's also how do they figure out who this person is? So let's go ahead and jump in and let's set the scene.

So this is Fresno, California. We have a lot of California stories just for right now. I love this area. And it's really where I concentrated a lot of research on American Sherlock, which is why I gravitate towards California. And you gravitated, obviously, towards California, too. So this is Fresno. Do you know anything about Fresno? I have been down to Fresno. I've driven through it. It's about

The middle of California, if you're driving from north to south, it's in the middle of Central Valley. Central Valley, California, a huge farming area in terms of its production of fruits and nuts. It leads the world, I believe, in terms of how much produce it is able to produce. But also, Central Valley, California is so blasted hot today.

in the summertime. Where I lived in California was technically sort of Central Valley, this town called Vacaville. And it was routinely getting to 110 to 115 in the summertime. And I was just like, nope, I'm not subjecting myself to that anymore. And that was one of the factors in moving out of California. Wow. Yeah, that sounds Texas hot. It's...

We are hot, hot, hot here. And it's a humid hot. People make fun of us for that all the time. It's humid. Humid hot is the worst. But this is a family that we're centered on, the Stammers. And they are upper middle class, if we're going to frame how this family is. The father, Walter Stammer, is a corporate attorney. And he's got four children, three daughters, one son, two very young children, and then a 14-year-old girl, and then a girl a couple of years younger,

living a nice life in Fresno, tree-lined street, long driveway, really safe area. And this family that seems to be very loving and supportive. And he sporadically travels, kind of goes back and forth. He has to hop on the train. This is November of 1935. And he hops on the train to go see clients. And they're such a tight-knit family that often they'll just drive with him to the train station. It's 15 or 20 minutes away and they'll drop him off and come back.

So that is what happens on this particular night. So in November of 1935, it's foggy, it's dark, late at night, and the two little kids are sleeping. So there is a six-year-old little girl and a two-year-old boy who are sleeping upstairs, and then 14-year-old Mary Louise Stammer, who is the center of the story. So she's 14. She's very studious. She's a sophomore in the local high school. She wants to be a lawyer like her dad. Right.

And she likes to read a lot. So she is in their music room, so wealthy enough to have a music room. She plays instruments and she's sitting in her dad's chair and she's reading through a trial transcript, which at 14 is kind of amazing. She's reading all of this legalese and really taking it in.

So, smart young woman. This is, I'm going to tell you right now, our victim. No known enemies. So, 14-year-old girl, seemingly not at high-risk lifestyle. This is someone who is going to die shortly. This would be a surprising victim to have, I'm assuming.

Yeah, depending on the circumstances. Yeah. So Walter and Dorothy Stammer decide that they are going to go to the train station with their youngest daughter under Mary Louise. So there's Dorothy Stammer, the younger daughter, and they want to go with Walter Stammer because he is this attorney and he's going onto a train to go see a client. So this is kind of a last minute thing.

So the three of them leave, leaving Mary Louise Stammer alone, the 14-year-old, for the first time ever. She had never been alone in the house before at night. She's in charge of her younger sister and her younger brother, who are six and two. They're asleep upstairs. Her mother says, lock

the door behind us, which they never did. I grew up in the 80s and 90s in a farmhouse, and we never locked the doors, ever, ever, ever. So the mom was concerned enough for Mary Louise that she wanted to make sure that she locked the door. Do you know what time...

the parents are leaving the house that evening? It is dark enough. It is six o'clock, seven o'clock. So it's dark and like I said, foggy, so limited visibility. And this was a last minute thing. So the younger daughter decides to go leaving Mary Louise at home and the parents leave, they get into the car.

So Mary Louise is sitting in her dad's chair. She's reading through one of his trial transcripts, just sort of flipping through it. Who knows how much she understood, but she was a very smart young lady. And there is somebody watching. We don't know who this person is. He is watching the car leave, and he sneaks up to the window, and after they pull away, he waits.

And Mr. Stammer forgot something. So he comes back in the car. They hop out. He grabs something from his briefcase and goes back and gets back in. So the man stands and waits. He's hiding. Then he sneaks up when he feels like they are gone. He sneaks up to the window and he pulls out a gun. So he crouches and he watches the girl for about five minutes, the 14-year-old.

And this is the third time that he's done this. Three nights. Okay, so he's been there. He's watching this 14-year-old girl. Right. And now the house is vacated of adults, and she is alone with two younger siblings upstairs. Yep. So he's watching long enough, right, to know what the routine is, and he's looking for an opportunity. Is that right? Yes, and he may not have expected an opportunity this night because you said this was the last second planned opportunity.

trip by the parents. So now he's presented with an opportunity. And this is where the offenders have to determine whether or not they're going to seize that opportunity. And it's risky because the parents have already come back once. They left for a few minutes. He forgot something. They came back.

So, already, what I'm hoping you're going to do is start building a little profile in your head of this person because he becomes more interesting, the things that he thinks about doing. Okay. So, he has been watching her. This is the third time we've talked about that.

And he's crouching by the window and he pulls out a gun. And we do a lot of research for this show. And there are a lot of different resources that we pull from. And I found contradictory data about the gun that he used. He definitely used a gun. I hear it being called a .22 rifle. I also hear it called a .22 pistol. So what should we do? Because I can't say for certain what kind of gun this is.

Well, the common descriptor is .22 caliber. And both pistol and rifle designate, well, one's a handgun, one is something that is designed to be shot from the shoulder and typically will have a longer body to it and or longer barrel.

But I think not knowing the particulars, we might just be better off calling it a .22 caliber gun. Okay. So we'll say that. So he takes this .22 caliber gun and he points at her head. And he is not far from her at all. He's kind of behind her, probably five to ten feet. And he points it through the window, which is closed, and he fires it. And he hits her at the base of her brain. Oh, so he's standing outside and shoots her. Yep, through the window. Window breaks.

And it hits her one shot, the autopsy said, right at the base of the brain. And doctors were pretty confident that this would have killed her immediately. Oh, I'm surprised a little bit about this .22 penetrating through the window and then still being on target to strike the victim. These windows back in the day, probably single-pane windows versus the double-pane windows, fairly thin glass windows.

10 feet away, still having enough energy to actually penetrate into the skull. Quite frankly, with that information, and this is more educated speculation, that would cause me to start thinking he had more of a rifle. Generally, rifles will have greater accuracy across greater distances and more power behind the bullet. But can't say that for sure. But okay, so she struck, you said, in the back of the head? Yeah, hitting her in the head at the base of her brain is what the coroner said.

Oh, wow. And they assumed killing her instantly. She slumped over just like that. Yeah. And most certainly, that is entirely possible, even with a small 22. It's funny because people, when they envision somebody being shot, the general person is relying on what they see on TV or in the movies. Now, oftentimes, when somebody gets shot on TV and in movies, they drop instantly.

Well, in real life, that typically is not what happens unless something very vital, such as part of the brain that is involved in locomotion and consciousness or part of your spinal cord. When these structures are hit, then yes, you lose locomotion, but it doesn't mean that you die instantly. You still can survive. And I've even had cases where somebody is shot

in the head, shot in the brain, and they survive. They're still able to move after being shot. And it really comes down to, well, what is hit? What part of the brain is hit? And I like to use when I talk to like citizens academies and I start talking about this issue is if you've taken any like high school or college psychology courses, you've probably been introduced to Phineas Gage.

The railroad worker who had a iron rod from an explosion go up underneath his chin, out the top of his head. He remained conscious. The doctor was able to put a finger in the entry wound and a finger in the exit wound and touch his fingers inside this guy's head. Ugh.

And it was like it didn't hit those vital structures that either would have killed him or caused him to lose consciousness or motor function. Right. And so this is where in assessing a crime scene, I have to assess the possibility that the victim has potentially committed

maintained consciousness and or motor function after being shot. And in this case, so the shooter is saying that Mary Louise just immediately slumped. That's what he said. But we'll find out in a little bit that this is not the most trustworthy person. Obviously, when he gives us some more details about what happened...

So he has shot her, and this is what he says he did, which I know you're not totally on board with organized versus disorganized in that category. Okay. We'll talk about that in a little bit. Like the person who plants meticulously, this seems like somebody who didn't know what he was doing and then definitely knew what he was doing at the same time. Yeah.

He says that he held his hand over the breech of the gun to catch the shell. Is the breech the little hole thing? I'm sorry for being ignorant about guns, but is that the thing that you put the cartridges in? Is that what a breech is? Well, what this is telling me is that whether this is a pistol or a rifle, that it's a semi-automatic gun or a bolt-action type gun.

If it's a semi-auto, the gun utilizes the recoil of the round in order to push a slide back, extract and eject the empty cartridge case, and then re-chamber another round. You can also have a bolt action where you...

manually eject that cartridge case and catch it. So he is policing his brass in a way. Typically, you're not catching it as you're doing it. I'm thinking it's bolt action. He must have manually done it and grabbed this empty cartridge case versus a semi-auto, which would immediately be ejecting the cartridge case out. I think there'd be no way that he'd be able to fire at Mary Louise, kill her, and he'd catch the cartridge case

at the same time of committing that homicide. But it's telling me that he's concerned about that cartridge case as possibly being evidence. Yeah. And just to summarize, we have someone who has been to this house and stalked the people in this house three times. He waited for an opportunity. He knows how to use a gun. He seems to know how it operates. And he is starting to show some knowledge of

of forensics. So he takes this cartridge and he bites it. Okay. Which doesn't sound great for your teeth, but he's obviously doing it because he must know enough about ballistics to know that something on that cartridge could be traced back to him. Do you think that's the case? I mean...

I couldn't imagine putting an expended cartridge case in my mouth and starting to chew on it. You know, even though this is not a real hard metal, you know, it's still metal. He's having to apply a lot of force with his jaws in order to change the shape of this cartridge case. Now, it does seem like he is trying to obliterate the marks that this gun would have left on the cartridge case that could have been used to tie that evidence

back to the gun that he possesses. I believe that is what his intent would be. However, it's possible that those marks under a microscope that came from the firearm would survive this chewing process. Really? Yes. So occasionally out, let's say a shooting on a street, we will have empty cartridge cases laying on the street and then a car runs over it or somebody steps on it. Oh, yeah. Firearms examiners are able to tell the difference from,

Marks left from the road and the tires being crushed that way versus the extractor, ejector, firing pin marks that are left by a gun. Same thing with teeth. Teeth don't leave the same types of marks that the firearm is going to leave. So this cartridge case is still valuable evidence that can be used to tie that cartridge case back to the weapon if it was recovered. Okay.

So he might be wrong, but he's showing some level of intelligence, right? Yes. So he goes, he knows that the front door is locked because he's seen Mary Louise open and close the door for her mom, lock it. He goes through the back. He probably wouldn't have gone through the front door anyway. He goes through the back. He knows she's in the music room dying or has already died.

He smashes the back door window in. So they have the kind of door that's got the windows in it, kind of an ornate door. He smashes it and then gets this. He pulls out all of the shards in that window and throws them into the bushes next to the door. Why would he do that? Well, he's removing these shards first because he's planning on reaching through that window in order to unlock the door. And so he's removing the shards.

Now, do we know if he has gloves on? He did not have gloves on, which seems like an odd admission to me. Well, but this gives me some insight in terms of what his plans were that night. He may be realizing that in order to reach in with those shards in place, he's risking being cut. And we see this all the time today with burglars. They get cut and

They're bleeding at these burglary scenes. They're leaving their DNA. And agencies that have the resources to pursue burglaries with DNA testing, which some agencies will, those guys get caught. Wow. So he's not thinking DNA back in 1935, but he's thinking, I don't want to get cut. I don't want to get hurt. But now I'm leaving fingerprints behind on these shards as I pull them out. And so that's why he's hiding them. Yep. But he's savvy enough...

to chew on a cartridge case to try to prevent it from being identified. If he was planning that night on going into the house, he most certainly is probably aware of the fingerprint discipline and that those fingerprints could be used to identify him. So how come he isn't wearing gloves? Right. This tells me that, again, this was an opportunistic

that he was not expecting. He may have just been planning on being there for another night of observation. You know, I suspect that this is probably a peeping Tom scenario where he is sexually aroused by watching this 14-year-old girl inside. And then all of a sudden, 14-year-old girl is essentially alone.

And he sees, oh, I can actually reach out and touch my fantasy now. But he has a gun. Would a peeping Tom usually bring a gun? I mean, I don't know. Maybe this is escalating past peeping Tom by night three. Oh, these types of offenders, they're going to be armed, some of them, for just their own protection.

Wow, okay. So they can be very dangerous if confronted. So just because he has a gun doesn't indicate he's planning on committing a homicide that night. If he's confronted, he wants to be able to protect himself and get away. Mm-hmm.

So he walks in and he finds her in the music room, which just seems insane to me. He knows these two little kids are upstairs asleep. He knows the parents could come back whenever, or the mom and the sister could come back. So he walks in, he picks her up. Now, just as a disclosure before we get into this,

this was not a sexual assault. It was going to be a sexual assault, but something happened. So I just want to explain that to listeners straight away. I am bothered by hearing sexual assault stories. I thought this was an important story to tell, but I just want to say this is not what happens.

Okay. That was his intention, though. He picks her up, and he takes her to the nearby bedroom. Blood is spilling all along the way, and he's stepping in this blood. So there are bloody footprints. The kids are still asleep. He lays her down. He starts to undress her on the ground. And then something occurs to him because he doesn't seem 100% experienced at getting this far.

Doesn't seem like it. He is worried about the gun. Where the hell did I put that gun? What did I do with the gun? So he leaves her. He does not assault her. She is either dying or already gone at that point. He goes to the back door and he starts looking in the bushes where those shards are for the gun. Where did I put that gun? Because that gun might be able to be traced back to me. Experience the glamour and danger of the roaring 20s from the palm of your hand in

In June's Journey, you have the chance to solve a captivating murder mystery and reveal deep-seated family secrets. Use your keen eye and detective skills to guide June Parker through this thrilling hidden object mystery game. June's Journey is a mobile game that follows June Parker, a New York socialite living in London. Play as June Parker and investigate beautifully detailed scenes of the 1920s

while uncovering the mystery of her sister's murder. There are twists, turns, and catchy tunes, all leading you deeper into the thrilling storyline. This is your chance to test your detective skills. And if you play well enough, you could make it to the detective club.

There, you'll chat with other players and compete with or against them. June needs your help, but watch out. You never know which character might be a villain. Shocking family secrets will be revealed, but will you crack this case? Find out as you escape this world and dive into June's world of mystery, murder, and romance. Can you crack the case? Download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android.

Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. That's June's Journey. Download the game for free on iOS and Android.

Someone comes home. It's the mom. And she's trying to open the door. Mary Louise has locked the door. She's banging on the door. Where's Mary Louise? Where are you? What's going on? What's going on? And he hides. The mom goes through the back. She looks at the blood that's in the music room. She goes to the bedroom where Mary Louise is. She obviously is screaming and crying. And then she hears a door unlock and someone running. And he goes out the front door and no one sees him.

He disappears. But they've got evidence. There's blood in places. He's got handprints. They have these huge columns in their front porch. He's got a bloody handprint on the front porch. So this did not go the way that he was expecting it to go. No, in fact, this is showing the lack of planning. Mm-hmm.

And it's also showing an offender, just like a normal person about to do something that is nervous. It causes nervousness, it causes anxiety. Well, these offenders experience that type of emotion too. They're excited about this is going to be a sexually motivated crime. They're excited about what they're about to experience.

But also, they're nervous about this, especially earlier in their careers. And this really shows that when things go sideways, certain people do not respond well. And that works to law enforcement's advantage because this is now they're leaving evidence in that panicked state.

And this is part of when I was working the Golden State Killer case when it was unsolved. And I'm assessing that offender and how when things would go sideways or he had to resort to plan B or plan C, how methodical he remained.

how in charge he remained, how he still prevented leaving evidence. This told me he's a cool cat. He's a cool customer. He's intelligent. He's sophisticated. And things don't rile him up. Whereas this offender, simply thinking, uh-oh, where's my gun? And then mom comes home. He's just

He doesn't know what to do. And she doesn't spot him. It's just an open door where it was once locked and handprints. And of course, she calls the police. And Mary Louise is dead. And they call the father back. And it's chaos within the family for quite a while. And the police in Fresno are alarmed. Wealthy family, daughter of a prominent lawyer, safe neighborhood. Of course, you know, a young white woman, high school student who was well-liked. This situation

sets off so many alarm bells in the town, and it's just a panic because it seems... A phrase that you read a lot in the 1800s and the 1900s is sex craze killer, the lust killer, all different names for rapist. And I haven't read the term rapist in a very long time. They would say molested, but they determined that she had not been sexually assaulted because his own panic prevented that from happening.

So they go and look for the forensic evidence they have, which is the chewed up cartridge. They find the gun. They have fingerprints, as you said, on the glass shards. They have the bloody shoe prints, bloody fingerprints. All of this stuff is pretty good evidence. Particularly, they think the glass shards are good evidence because I've said this before with fingerprinting, it totally depends on the sample that you're receiving. If you've got a smeared fingerprint,

You're not going to be able to see the swirls and everything else very well. This seemed like a pretty clean fingerprint on one of the glass shards. Yeah, well, that also is a misperception about fingerprints is that as soon as you touch a surface, you're leaving your fingerprints behind that are good enough to be able to be identified back to you. The reality is, is most of the time when you're grabbing objects, especially during the commission of a crime,

you're not leaving prints in a static state. There are a lot of smears. There's a lot of fragments that fingerprint examiners are dealing with. It's actually the unusual print that is that nice, beautiful print looking like somebody just put their thumb down like when they are being printed by DMV. So to get a print like that,

That is huge. I've had that happen in my career in some cases. And it's just like, this is a goldmine. You're confident it came from the offender and it's easily identifiable versus most of the prints that I've collected in the course of my processing. They're smears and they're fragments. It's really tough to work with those.

And many of those are inconclusive, and you can't hang a case on one fingerprint. Besides the fact that he could have said, oh, yeah, I came to the door one time, and I knocked on the door. I was lost. That would have put some reasonable doubt, I would think, in there. But who knows? They decided that they were going to canvas all of Fresno. I thought this was really impressive. They had hundreds of volunteers who did what they called a fingerprint drive. Oh.

Where they had every boy and man fingerprinted. 3,000 boys and men fingerprinted for this case. Can you even imagine? Would they do something like that? They wouldn't do that today, right? No, in fact, I don't think you could. This is akin to the mass screenings that are done over in Britain, going back to the Cullen Pitchfork case, where now in a small town, they're basically drawing DNA samples from every person

eligible male within a certain geographic area. That doesn't pass the civil rights test over here in the United States. You can voluntarily ask.

But you cannot compel all these men and boys to give their prints. And quite frankly, law enforcement today just doesn't have the resources to do that. You rely now on the databases, the FBI's database, the state databases, and the ability to do searches within those fingerprint databases.

Well, I'll tell you what's interesting is the fingerprint drive turns up some really good results we'll talk about in a minute. But they start profiling, which profiling in the 1930s was very rudimentary. So they start profiling who this person is, and the local police say, this is a kid. This is definitely a kid who knew Mary Louise Stammer or maybe her sister. This is inexperienced. This is poorly planned. This is someone who...

who one of the two young girls in this family must have said, oh, one of us is going out tonight. We're going to go to the train station to go take the dad. And this young boy saw it as an opportunity. And here's what tells you about the times the most. The police did not believe that an older man would be enough of a degenerate

to try to sexually assault a 14-year-old. So that tells you a lot about society, at least in Fresno, California in the 1930s. They just didn't think a grown man would have been capable of doing this. You know, you have your chronologic age, but you do have criminals that at different stages in their life, you know, somebody may start earlier and then somebody may start much later in their life in terms of when they commit crimes

let's say a Peeping Tom style crime. So the chronological age is sometimes tough to assess. There's, well, what about the psychological age of the person? Is there other mental aspects to the person that could potentially have manifest themselves at an older age?

So it's really tough to say, well, it's got to be a kid. This is where one of the things that I would be and have been wondering about was the age of the offender. You said that he was identified and it was like, well, how old is he? That would tell me a lot in terms of where he was potentially at in the evolution of his crimes as it relates to sexually motivated crimes.

Well, this case is really interesting because as you learn more and more about the offender, you'll see how a lot of this stuff makes sense. They, of course, found out very quickly that this was a spur-of-the-moment trip to the train station. The dad didn't even know he was going. So there was no, now they said, oh, okay, this is not some 14-year-old kid who was obsessed. He was not a sex fiend obsessed with Mary Louise. This is now the work of an older person who is attempting at least

to be organized. So here's the thing that happens. Fresno in 1935 was a fairly safe place, except there had been a recent series of break-ins, so burglaries, right? Including at the Stammer house, twice. Walter Stammer chased off somebody. He couldn't identify, somebody dressed in black who had tried to break into a house. And listen to this, whoever did that to Walter's house, to the victim's house,

had cut the telephone lines on the last one. Oh, okay. And again, 1935. That's interesting. This is like a half century before, and maybe not quite a half century before, you know, 9-1-1. So the cutting the phone lines was to prevent victims inside the house from being able to call the operator in order to get help to respond. Okay.

This is somebody who is thinking a bit in terms of self-preservation, whether it is the intent that I'm going to go hands-on with these victims or in case I am seen and I have to make an escape, I want to delay the first responders from getting to the location so I have enough time to be able to get as far away from the scene as possible.

Yep, it's smart. And we hear that in horror movies all the time where the lines have been cut. And I had not read of a case actually of that happening. And I think it's hard to believe that this is not connected. And we'll find out a little bit more about that in a minute. So let's talk about 1935 forensics, Doberman Pinschers. I had never heard of Dobermans being used to track the scent, but they used Dobermans in Fresno. First of all, is that...

of thing, really. Do dogs really do a good job? Have they ever broken a case before? Well, dogs are a tool. Dogs are amazing animals when it comes to being able to smell. And they do have success in terms of tracking. But again, they're a tool. I've seen dogs track and evidence is found along the path that they've tracked.

Dogs will track to where an offender is hiding. That happens frequently, and it's typically in cases that never make the newspaper. So the canine handlers out there can tell stories after stories of that scenario. But I've also seen dogs miss, you know, whether it be scent dogs or decomp dogs, they miss. And it's part of that human-animal interaction.

Is it the animal missing or is it the handler who's not interpreting the animal's behavior as to is there an alert going on? Yeah. Or is the dog sent? If it's a scent dog, has the dog keyed in on the right scent? You know, if you have an item that maybe multiple people have handled. Yeah. So this is something where they're a tool. But yes, they can be valuable. They also can have your false leads.

This brings up a good point that I make a lot, which is that there are lots of forensic tools that you could use, dogs and fingerprinting. But the problem is, is when there's just one of those tools used to convict someone, and it's something that is on shaky ground forensically that could be considered junk science. And I'm not saying fingerprint,

or dogs or any of that stuff as junk science. I'm saying that the problem we have is when we have investigators who aren't able to gather, for one reason or another, more evidence than evidence connected to something that could be argued in a Dahlbert hearing where you're protesting the admission of some evidence. So I think that's why I really appreciate this story because in 1935, the Fresno police worked really hard to gather things on this case. When it comes to trial and making a case,

You know, of course, in this day and age where we have DNA, DNA does not stand alone. There should be other circumstantial evidence and other aspects of the case that is built up and presented in front of the jury. There are times where DNA is, that is the big... Smoking gun. The smoking gun. Thank you.

But typically, the prosecutors, the people's representatives, are going to try to build a case. And this is relying on the original investigators at the investigating agency. And then the DA's office typically has investigators that will go out

And try to show, okay, this is the totality of the facts that we believe show that this person is responsible for committing this crime. And whether you have a fingerprint, like it sounds like we have in this case, you still need other aspects to present to be confident that you have the right person. Now, he's left a fingerprint in the victim's blood, I believe you said. That's pretty damning evidence.

It wouldn't necessarily stand alone, but he has a lot of explaining to do. It's more than just, well, I was at the house before. He was out the house after Mary Louise started bleeding. So they continue to gather all of this evidence. They go on the idea that maybe he was cut by those shards because he spent a lot of time picking the shards out of the glass door windows.

They look at all the drugstores. Did anybody buy bandages recently? They go to the hospitals. Did anybody come in injured? They did bullet trajectory using string to try to figure out how tall this guy was. Turned out to be average height, which is useless. I mean, essentially, they're shaking down every person in Fresno at this point. Well, to

To use the string, here you have Mary Louise who's been shot in the back of the head. Her position has been changed by the offender. She's been moved to a different point in the house. So you've lost that data point in terms of the trajectory. And then now you have a window, which is likely a single pane window. From my perspective, there's no utility in trying to string that trajectory. You don't have enough information. You can just basically say that

That the muzzle of the firearm was at this height at the time the shot was fired and was at this distance. Maybe if they have shoe impressions or they have firearms discharged on the window in order to say, yep, at this distance from the window when the bullet passed through. And then we know that Mary Louise was sitting in that chair, but you don't have any true objective evidence to be able to say, I've got a valid trajectory.

I'd basically be at that scene going, yep, offender was standing outside the window and shot in there. And I can guess it was along this trajectory, but I would not be making any measurements to that fact nor testifying to anything related to that trajectory. Well, and it ended up not being helpful, whatever information from that string. What was helpful was the pressure from this fingerprint drive that they held.

So there were men and boys who came out voluntarily. I said 3,000. There were people who did not volunteer. And they, of course, immediately became suspects. They narrowed it down to 13 men who said, no, I'm not doing this for one reason or the other. So they compelled them to give their thumbprints, but they missed somebody. And this is what cracked the case. They got a tip, an anonymous tip, which is so often something that we hear of that is the turning point in a case.

that said, you need to look at this ex-convict. So now we're on an ex-convict, and his name is Elton Stone, and you need to take a look at him, and it turns out that he was a neighbor of Mary Louise Stammer and the Stammer family. Oh, okay. They have his fingerprint old school because he went to prison. He was at Folsom, and...

He had a fingerprint on the good old school index cards that they always took. And of course, it matches. And that's not the interesting part of this. So this is an ex-convict who's 30 years old. So now we're going to go back to your thinking about this profile. An ex-convict.

30 years old, in and out of prison, primarily for robbery. Not in prison for sex assaults or murder, violent crime, lots of robbery, lots of grand theft auto from the time he was probably 20. Okay, and I just want to make sure that when you say robbery, that we are talking the legal definition of robbery, which is taking a possession by force or fear from a person. Yep.

Okay, because a lot of people will misuse the term robbery. With burglary, yeah. So he is somebody who has a history of being willing to confront somebody and take some possession of value away from them.

This is a serious offender. When somebody's willing to take that step, this person has a dangerous aspect to them. So now I'm starting to think about, okay, what was the intent with this repeated surveillance of Mary Louise? He lives in the neighborhood. Going back to the famous quote out of Silence of the Lambs, you covet what you see. Mm-hmm.

So here's a 31-year-old man who's seeing this 14-year-old girl in his neighborhood. Everything about this tends to suggest that he's watching Mary Louise. Who knows what his ultimate goal was, but he may just be a peeper. And then all of a sudden, that opportunity presented itself where he realized, oh, I can actually go physical with her. What is really interesting is

is he shoots and kills her before he even makes the attempt to go physical with her. Is he lacking confidence to be able to get into this house and get her subdued without alerting neighbors, without alerting the other two children inside the house? He must have plenty of confidence in the use of a gun in order to shoot through a window

at this 14-year-old girl and then still break into the house and spend some time with Mary Louise until he goes, well, where's my gun? And then mom comes home and things go sideways on him.

So he resorts to what he's comfortable with, and that's the gun. And that tells me he's probably very familiar with firearms, probably used firearms during the commission of his robberies in order to intimidate his victims. So he's somebody that that is his weapon of choice. And he didn't shy away from picking Mary Louise up after she's bleeding from that mortal head wound. And there would be a lot of blood. Yeah.

And he goes and undresses her in a room. He was planning on still following through with the sexual assault with a, in essence, a dead girl. I find Elton Stone to be confusing because this is what happens next. Here we go.

Here we go. He says, okay, you're right. I did it. I shot her, but I wasn't ever going to sexually assault her. He said, I have a grudge against Walter Stammer and the whole family. And if Walter Stammer and his wife had been home, I would have killed them. I would have killed everybody in the family. I wasn't focused on Mary Louise. And he was adamant about that.

So the police go to Walter Stammer and said, what did you do to this guy? He said, I've never met this guy in my life. So of course the police say, okay, you're full of it, Elton Stone. So why is he deflecting in that way? I wonder in the 30s, is it as bad a thing now to,

be in prison as someone who raped and killed a child. I wonder if that's what the motivation was for him to just put out this nonsensical story. This is the typical excuse that is given by somebody who's admitting to the crime, but then they're trying to minimize certain aspects because whether it be their own internal morality conflict or

or because of fear of having that type of stigma associated with them. Being an offender that is sexually assaulting young girls, young boys, you are a target, of course, today.

Imagine, and you would know better than I, in 1935, with kind of the morality of the culture at that point, the stigma is huge in the general population about somebody who's willing to sexually assault a 14-year-old girl.

I bet that general population culture is also concentrated within the prison system. And so he's now realizing when he makes this statement, he goes, okay, I know I'm going to get convicted on this, but I need to minimize what's going to happen to me once I'm sentenced and put in prison. And that's my guess. This whole thing about I had a grudge against the father and I was going to kill everybody in the house and I wasn't going to sexually assault Mary Louise, that's just...

In a way, he's minimizing the morality of sexually assaulting the 14-year-old girl. The fact is he picked her up, put into her a different room, and took her clothes off. It's a sexually motivated crime. And I don't think this is the first time he's done it. No. And the police don't either. So they start questioning him because there are two unsolved cases.

on either side of his prison term, in addition to Mary Louise Stammer. Okay, so Elton Stone went to prison in 1931 for grand theft auto and robbery, two separate things. But before that, there was a woman who was sexually assaulted very violently in her home. She wasn't killed, but she was sexually assaulted.

And phone lines cut beforehand. Same thing that happened at Walter Stammer's house the one time when he was clearly practicing. And this was an unsolved case. He couldn't be identified. This was in Mary Louise Stammer's neighborhood, which at one point,

was his neighborhood. So this is right before he went into prison. Okay. So he has prior familiarity with this neighborhood. He has familiarity with the dynamics of trying to commit this type of crime. Mm-hmm.

Do we know what he was cut on in that first case? Was it by chance a broken window shard as he was reaching in to unlock a door? You know, I don't know. Let's take that as maybe that's the case. He breaks in a window and he gets cut.

Now, with Mary Louise, he takes the time, realizing he's leaving fingerprints that could identify him, but he still takes the time to remove the shards out of the window pane itself. This is how offenders learn. This is a minor MO adjustment in order to prevent something the offender thought was negative in the past.

MO changes from case to case as offenders learn, as well as as offenders have to adopt to the dynamics of the crime they're committing. Because sometimes victims do things that they're not expecting or mom comes home, then they weren't expecting that, right? So this is what complicates trying to link cases together.

When you don't have fingerprints or DNA, the identifying evidence to link cases, now you start looking at MO and behavioral aspects, and MO does change. And sometimes, well, is this a different person or is it the same person? And they've had to adapt based on prior experience or the dynamics of the current case. So now we're about to talk...

about really adapting. So he goes to prison. He gets out. This young woman is attacked in 1931. He goes to prison for something else because that's an unsolved case. He comes out in 1934. So Mary Louise Stammer was murdered in 1935. Before that, there's a woman who worked for an inn and she was sexually assaulted and bludgeoned to death. But...

The killer made a mistake. He left her alive for too long. And when the police arrived, she was still alive. They asked her who did this. And she said, stone. And they said, which stone? Because I guess there were multiple stones.

She said Clayton Stone. And Clayton Stone was her neighbor, 14-year-old neighbor. They cleared him. And this went cold because they said she doesn't know what she's talking about. She knew Elton Stone. He had come to the inn. So they said trauma. Of course, she was being bludgeoned to death. She just misspoke. She was trying to say Elton Stone. But because she said the wrong first name, he got away. Then a year later, he kills Mary Louise Stammer. Okay.

Assuming the original investigations into these cases are solid and Elton Stone is responsible for all three of those. Of course, now you have he's a serial predator. He's willing to commit a broad variety of crimes. So there's a level of criminality to him.

But this adaptation, the 1934 case, the woman was bludgeoned, yet she lived for a period of time. Yep. Long enough to ID him almost. Yeah. So now I'm starting to question his intent to go into Mary Louise and he has the pistol. He's now bringing a firearm. Is it because by bludgeoning somebody, but they live long enough?

But does he know at this point that's really going to be a big factor? He may not even know that she made any statements implicating him in the 1934 case. So I would want to know that to see if he's bringing a pistol for the fact that he'll be more confident that he'd be able to kill Mary Louise after he leaves. So there's that. Or is he normally armed with a pistol because of his just general criminality?

maybe he's going to run across somebody later that night after he peeped on Mary Louise and is going to get a wallet, you know, and he's going to use the .22 gun. We don't know if it's a pistol or rifle, but the .22 gun. If he is aware that that prior victim in 1934 lived after a bludgeoning, I can see where now, okay, I need to use a gun the next time. Yep. And then he's bringing a gun to Mary Louise's house. Did he intend to go in that night or did he just happen to be prepared to?

and the parents left, and now he seizes that opportunity. So this is interesting. You know, from my perspective, I would want to kind of drill down on the details of what was known when and exactly what the original investigators knew in order to really study the evolution of this offender. But it does look like you have somebody who is a serial predator and

And he's also been in prison. And prison is the great learning institution for felons. So he's talking to people and now he's more well-versed and maybe a broader area of criminality when he comes out. So fascinating offender from my perspective from 1935.

Well, I'll tell you, Folsom State Prison at that time period was known for the repeat offender route. So that was the thing is most of the guys there had been there two or three times. So this was somebody, you're right, who could have been easily educated. That case from 1934 I looked into and it was very widely reported. Unless he wasn't intentionally looking, he would have known. It was very unusual, especially because she was accusing her 14-year-old neighbor. And Fresno was not a huge place. And

And he would have known, and I think that he took a gun because he didn't want to make that mistake again because he was almost caught. He knew this woman. He had been seen with her. He knew her. And I bet in 1934, and correct me if I'm wrong, they probably didn't have the protections of juvenile identity. So I'm sure the 14-year-old boy with the last name Stone, his name was in the newspaper. So if Elton Stone is saying, oh, jeez, they got it half right.

that's a little bit of an oh shit moment for him. Yeah, big oh shit moment. And I think that he solved it by using a gun the next time. And as you said, he's a robber and he's familiar with guns. So the police in Fresno start pressing on him and they say, we know you killed Mary Louise Stammer. We know it was an attempted sexual assault. We think you were also responsible for these other two cases. And he said, maybe, maybe.

Maybe not. I don't know. I'll give you a few details. Now, here's what's screwed up about this guy. I mean, beyond everything that he did. Elton Stone gives them some details about the other two cases, and this is how we know that he knew about the second case. He had just enough information of what was in the newspapers. He wasn't giving them anything else.

But what was interesting about Elton was he wasn't asking for anything. He was just having fun with the police. There's a little bit of where now he's able to express a level of control, power and control over his accusers because he knows the facts and he knows they want to know the facts. That's what these offenders do. They'll tease it out, but not divulge everything. And that can be very frustrating. You know you're on the right path,

And this guy's willing to talk. I mean, it's like a Ted Bundy. Yeah. He's willing to give out some details, but he's not telling everything. No. And so he is ultimately convicted, and he is sentenced to the death penalty to the gallows in 1936.

And his quote at the end I thought was very telling. Before he died, he said, hanging is okay. It will clear up my debt. Interesting quote. Yeah. His debt to who? His debt to the devil? Right.

Not that he had a conscience, but I think that there are times when people sort of reflect back and think, maybe I did make some mistakes. I don't know if that's the case, but it so minimizes the profound effect that Mary Louise's death had on her

family and on that community. This was a woman who had so much promise, 14, wanted to be an attorney, never been in trouble, just, you know, someone who had nothing but a bright future ahead of her. And to take that away. Yeah. These types of crimes in many ways are the ultimate selfish act that somebody does. They will take somebody else's life for their own personal gratification. Yeah.

And in essence, that is what Elton Stone did. And it's just terribly sad to think about the future that Mary Louise would have had. Many of these cases have seen this type of outcome over and over again. And that's just part of the tragedy of somebody just trying to fulfill a fantasy and they steal somebody else's life.

Well, thank you for your insight on this case. I've been reading about it for years. It's been haunting me for quite a while. And now I need to buy myself a saltwater aquarium and I think decompress a little bit. This was a hard case and I appreciate everything that you contributed to. You always surprise me, Paul, with your insight. Well, you're such a good storyteller. You got me hanging on the edge going, okay, what's coming next?

The twists and turns are great. Good. It's a tragic case, but it also is an important case for us to kind of sort through and digest and learn from. Well, go say hi to your fish for me and I will see you next time. All right. Sounds good.

This has been an Exactly Right production. For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com slash buriedbones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Amorosi. Research by Maren McClashen and Kate Winkler-Dawson. Our mixing engineer is Ryo Baum. Our theme song is by Tom Breifogle. Our art

work is by Vanessa Lilac. Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer. You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at Buried Bones Pod. Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded Age Story of Murder and the Race to Decode the Criminal Mind, is available for pre-order now. And Paul's best-selling memoir, Unmasked, My Life Solving America's Cold Cases, is also available now.