Welcome back to Missing. I am Tim here today with Lance. Lance, how are you today? I'm doing fantastic today. I'm very excited to present this story, which is incredibly tragic, but it has all of those elements that I think we really dig our teeth into and we know our listeners really like to unpack. And we couldn't have done it without the work of Kathleen Studer, the great Kathleen Studer. She really put together a great document here. And at the end, she has some of her own questions. So that will tell you just how much of an in-depth analysis and detailed story this is. It's historical.
It's tragic. It has all the ear markings for a classic conversation on this podcast. Tim, but before we do all that, like I need the classic mood that you're in. How are you? Not one of my better ones. Doing good. Thank you very much for asking. Yes, very excited to go over the case of Evelyn Grace Hartley. And she was 15 years old when she went missing on the evening of October 24th, 1953 from La Crosse, Wisconsin.
She is white, 5'7", 126 pounds, brown hair, blue eyes, and she was wearing a size 34-36 white broadcloth ship-and-shore blouse with pearl buttons, size 16 red denim, white stag jeans, and a side zipper and cuffs rolled up above the ankle and white bobby socks with no shoes. And her nickname is Evie. And Lance, yes, you mentioned Kathleen included some of her own thoughts at the end of this research. And I love it because we can kind of include her in our final thoughts segment, which we can get to at the end of the episode where we kind of share our opinion on what we believe happened. And just the other evening on June 11th, we hosted a private investigations for the missing fundraiser on our missing YouTube channel. And it was a resounding success, Tim. We raised at this point a couple thousand dollars, which is fantastic for that organization. And we had at any given time.
Over 100 people joining in on YouTube. So a big thank you to everybody who joined in. We hope to do more of those fundraisers. We also hope to do more of those virtual live shows as well because it's really amazing to get that audience engagement and try to keep up with all of the dialogue that's going on in the chat feature. That was a bit of a challenge, but we love seeing it. We love seeing that while we're having a conversation, there's an adjacent conversation happening in the chat. And just building that community is really cool to see. So thank you to everyone who showed up and who donated. We really appreciate you all. And, you know, dare I say we love you all from the bottom of our hearts. And we are making our triumphant return to CrimeCon this year, everybody. And if you are on the fence...
on whether or not you should be purchasing your passes to CrimeCon. This might put you over the fence. You get 10% off if you use our code CRAWLSPACE. That's one word, CRAWLSPACE. 10% off the standard pass, and that is CrimeCon in Denver, Colorado, the Mile High City, Tim. September 5th to the 7th. We will see you there. Very good. Okay. Please follow us on social media at MissingCSM. We're going to break quick right here, and we'll be right back to discuss the mysterious disappearance of Evelyn Grace Hartley.
Evelyn Grace Hartley was the third child born to Dr. Richard and Ethel Hartley, and the first girl. Her oldest brother, Richard, contracted polio and died in 1946 while he was in the Navy, stationed at Bainbridge, Maryland. A second son named Thomas was seven years older than Evelyn, and a little sister Carolyn came along when Evelyn was nine years old, so the family's filling out here. And Evelyn's parents met in Nebraska. Dr. Hartley received his PhD in zoology from Iowa, and the couple then relocated to Texas, where Evelyn was born, and Dr. Hartley taught at Lamar College.
And in 1950, they moved their family to La Crosse, Wisconsin, where Dr. Hartley was a professor of biology at La Crosse State College. And the Hartley family loved the outdoors, and they did a lot of camping, a lot of hiking, a lot of biking. They were also a very musical family, which I thought was really cool. Evelyn and Tom both played the piano. And in the fall of 1953, Evelyn was a junior at Central High School, where she participated in many of the school activities. She was described as a quiet, responsible, very smart, and genuine girl.
I thought that was interesting that we got the word genuine there. 15 years old. I'm trying to think of people I knew when I was 15 and how many of them I would consider now to be like genuine people. So I think that's really cool that somewhere along the line she was described as genuine. And she did have a silly playful side too and most likely displayed that as a member of the high school thespian group for girls called the Maskers. And we got a picture of that. It's very cool. Thank you for including that, Kathleen. And she's listed in the annual as being vice president of the group that first semester. Right. And that picture is from 1954.
the Central High School annual, and she is in the back row, second from the right. And this picture is a bunch of young women smiling. And I don't see anyone really not smiling. Well, maybe one here. There's a couple, yeah, who aren't showing teeth at least. Yeah, yeah, but they just look like a very happy group of people. Yeah.
So now a little bit about La Crosse. La Crosse is a city on the western Wisconsin border with Minnesota. And the border between the two states in that area is defined by the Mississippi River. And it's considered a college town with three colleges and universities established there at the turn of the 20th century. And the population of the time of the 1950 census was 47,500 people. And Tim, are you aware of the population today? No, please inform me. As of 2023, so just recently, the census had the population at 51,327.
Okay, so it didn't grow much. Didn't grow much, right? 70 years or so. 70 plus years, yeah. Which I found really, really curious. So we move to the night of Saturday, October 24th, 1953. This was the homecoming football game for the La Crosse State College. And as you can imagine, Tim, in a town like this, in this area of this country, it was a big deal. They were facing the rivals River Falls State College. Perfect night for a game. The temperature was falling from a high of 56. The air was calm. Just partly cloudy. No chance of rain. And they had a kickoff scheduled for 7.30 p.m. And many of the La Crosse residents planned to attend the game.
which included Dr. Hartley's fellow professor at La Crosse, Viggo Rasmussen, and his family. And the Rasmutens had two daughters, seven-and-a-half-year-old Rosalyn and 20-month-old Janice. They had recently moved into their house at 2415 Horschler Drive, and it was a brand-new neighborhood of one-story Rambler-style houses, many of which were still in the process of being built on that October night. And the sod had just recently been installed, and from photos, it didn't appear that there were any trees or landscaping yet.
I didn't know what a Rambler-style house was until I read this, and it's really a common-style house, a one-story house that's more long than it is vertical. It's one-story and very popular back then, going into production in the 40s and 50s. So if you're not sure what it is, you've definitely seen it. It's a very simple style. It's like a ranch. Yeah, like a very small, simple-style, ranch-style, one-story home. And so the Rasmussen's normal babysitter decided at the very last minute that she wanted to go support the lacrosse football team. So the Rasmussen's made arrangements for Evelyn to watch over Janice while the couple and daughter Rosalyn went to the game.
And Mr. Rasmussen picked up Evelyn from her house at 6.30 p.m., and the Hartleys lived only about a mile from the Rasmussens, so that's a very short drive, and the Rasmussens left for the game at about 6.45 p.m. And very specific instructions were given to Evelyn to put Janice down at 7.15 p.m., but not to cover her until she fell asleep. And that's pretty common for young children. It is pretty common, and that's what I thought when I first read this, but as we're going to get into the details of the crime that obviously has been committed here, this is an important detail.
But she puts the child to bed at 7.15, very specific time. Maybe she was a minute either way there, but don't cover her until she falls asleep. So it gives a window of time or a sense of a timeline here. Evelyn did have prior experience with babysitting, and it was normal for her to call and check in periodically with her parents while she was working. But by 8.30 p.m., she had not checked in yet, and Dr. Hartley became concerned. He calls over to the Rasmussen residence and does not receive an answer.
So then he drove over to the house, and he found all the doors locked. He saw the lights on and heard a radio on, but no one answered the door. He walked around the house, looking into windows, not finding any open except one basement window. And he noted that the screen for the window was removed and was sitting next to the window against the house. So I guess taken out and put outside.
And this window was very small and was in a well just below ground level. And it's a casement window that from the basement hinged open upward into the basement. So Dr. Hartley decided to enter the house through that basement window. And he found that a small wooden stepladder was located directly below the window. And it was an unfinished basement with a concrete floor and concrete blocks making up the walls. And at the bottom of the stairs in the basement, he found one of Evelyn's shoes. This must have been awful for her father. I mean, he's already had...
This moment where she's not checking in and no one's answering the phone at the house. All the doors are locked. There's this basement window open. Now he's entering someone else's home through the basement, an unfinished basement. Clearly there's a ladder there that is allowing access. And now he finds his daughter's shoe at the bottom of the stairs. The other shoe was located in the living room along with Evelyn's glasses. And now he starts to find signs of a struggle. Her textbooks are scattered and there's blood smears on the carpet. So this is an awful situation for the father. I can't even imagine.
what's going through his mind. Yeah, I'm sure panic set in very quickly. And Janice was located in her room, sound asleep, but uncovered. As we mentioned that, that clue of Evelyn not covering her until after Janice was asleep is important here because now we can realize that Evelyn was apparently abducted before Janice fell asleep. Exactly. And that phone call.
from Dr. Hartley happened sometime after 8.30, because it was 8.30 when he realized and became concerned that she hadn't checked in yet. So it was around 8.30 that he made that call. So Evelyn puts Janice to bed. She doesn't fall asleep, so she hasn't covered her yet. It was in that time period, that 7.15, 7.20, 8 o'clock. Like, we have a time period where all of this happened. And so after that, Dr. Hartley ran to a neighbor's house and called for police. And police did send all available officers from two shifts to start the search, the first arriving just after 9 p.m. So not a lot of time has gone by. He was concerned at 8.30. Then he makes his way over there. He gets through the basement, goes...
Upstairs, finds all this stuff, calls the police, and they're there just after nine. So this is just a matter of a half hour. So it's very, very, very early on. They interviewed Evelyn's father and started searching the neighborhood pretty much immediately. And pry marks were found on three of the Rasmutens' windows. Shoe marks were found in the dirt of the basement window well with matching dirt prints inside the house. So that's interesting. And as Evelyn's shoe was found at the bottom of the basement stairs, it is believed she was taken out of the house through the basement window.
And District Attorney Phil Arneson arrived at the house, and as he and Dr. Hartley were walking around the outside of the house, they located an 18-inch round bloodstain about 10 feet from the basement window. So pry marks were found on three of the Rasmussen's windows. So somebody, after Evelyn put Janice to bed, tried to pry their way into the home. That's the thinking here. Or maybe they tried to do it while she was putting Evelyn to bed. Maybe they tried to do it much earlier so that they could be in place to abduct whoever was in the home. And keep in mind that Evelyn wasn't the original babysitter.
for this. She was a fill-in. So I don't know if that means that the other babysitter was targeted, but somebody knew that a young woman, a 15-year-old, was going to be in this home alone and vulnerable. Well, that's a good point about the other babysitter. I hadn't considered that. I do hope the police looked into that babysitter and whether or not he or she could have been targeted. Right, right. The primarchs do suggest that this wasn't like an inside job, right? This was somebody who didn't have a key they were trying to get in. The investigation did continue overnight, but first light would show...
a larger trail of blood. They found more blood smeared on the garage of another house about 100 feet northeast of the Rasmussen house. That blood smear was about four feet off the ground and alongside almost all of the whole length of the wall. That is really interesting. That is really interesting. I mean, is that somebody holding somebody over their shoulder who's bleeding?
And why are they running this injured person along the wall? Why aren't they just making sure they're staying away from the wall? Are they dragging? I don't know. It's very strange that Evelyn would be abducted from a home down the stairs and out of the basement window and then walked over 100 feet. Very strange scene to even picture. Taking her out the front door would cause less of a scene. Yeah, potentially. If you were to try to make it look like it wasn't an abduction, walking someone out the front door is normal.
managing to get somebody out of the basement window that isn't really designed for a human being to go through is... Like an alarm. Yeah, it's very bizarre. Yeah. And floodhounds were brought in twice, but they lost this in about two blocks from the Rasmussen home on Cooley Drive. And it is believed that whomever took Evelyn had their car waiting here to escape. Again, very strange, right? Why is that two blocks away? Right. And we do have a little further down an overhead sketch of the neighborhood. If they just had the car waiting outside of the Rasmussen home, it goes right to the street. They go from the front door directly to the street. The path that they took takes them behind another home.
The car's on the corner in front of another home. Like, there's at least three other homes here that could have seen this happening. So the person had probably known that no one was home in this neighborhood. Most people were at the game, were at the homecoming game. So they really didn't feel concerned to be seen. Yeah, and as the research notes earlier, there really aren't many trees in that area. Yeah, it was being developed. Yeah, so there's just not a lot of places to hide. Right. But again, it doesn't answer the question, why didn't they just take her out the front door if they thought that no one was in the neighborhood? Like, now they're overthinking it, even though they don't have to.
I don't know. This is very strange, and it's very unnerving. And so Sunday Daylight also brought hundreds of curious La Crosse citizens to the Rasmussen neighborhood, where they trampled the area of the crime scene. And police finally roped off a two-block area, but it's not known if any evidence was lost before the scene was secured. And as you can imagine, 1953 was a very different world in many ways, especially in criminal investigations. They only knew how to type blood back then, so DNA was clearly not in play. Surveillance cameras weren't prevalent. I don't need to say this, but cell phones didn't exist.
Many families didn't even own televisions at this point, and the news of Evelyn's kidnapping came primarily by newspaper, by radio, and by word of mouth. And police interviewed neighbors and discovered that one neighbor heard screams at around 7.15 p.m. that night, but he thought it was just kids playing outside. And another neighbor noticed a light-colored car circling the neighborhood at around 8 p.m. That's notable. Yes. Keep in mind, 8 p.m., 7.15, the child goes to bed, not covered yet. 8.30, that's when Dr. Hartley is concerned and he makes his way over, and he's there probably at like 8.35 or 8.40. So, yes, very notable there.
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Now, on Monday afternoon, another neighbor told police that he had nearly collided with a green 1941 or 1942 Buick that had a male driver with another male and a woman slumped over in the back seat. Now, I don't know if we're saying that this is Evelyn or another woman trying to hide her identity as they pass through. But he also said it looked like the two men he'd seen walking holding up a woman between them near the house that police later located the blood smears on. So interesting. So the same eyewitness saw this trio twice. That sounds pretty credible to me. Yeah, it really does. Saw them twice and not just like, oh, they were walking and chatting and sort of nonchalant activity. They were holding a woman up.
And it was located close to where the blood smears had been located. And he believes he saw them around 7.15. So that could be pretty much immediately after Evelyn puts Janice to bed. He assumed they were a group that had gotten an early start by celebrating the homecoming game. So he had thought, oh, this is some people who might have been drinking too much and...
This poor woman needed a hand to make it back home. And in the weeks after Evelyn disappeared, police and volunteers like the Boy Scouts searched everywhere in La Crosse and the surrounding areas. The Civil Air Patrol and other pilots put in over 35 hours searching from the skies that first weekend. And the La Crosse Sheriff's river patrol boats, as well as private vessels, searched the Mississippi River. That couldn't have been an easy task. Right. I don't know how the river runs through that area, but that's a pretty major river. And back then, I know they probably didn't have the amount of, you know, power needed.
like these private vessels or the river patrol boats. I mean, they probably were strong. They could get through the river, but to like search that, it seems like a very tall task. And a reward fund was established around that time, but still nothing was found. This takes us to the Thursday after the abduction.
where a plan was hatched to examine local vehicles. I thought this was really cool. I thought this was a really cool idea. Gas station attendants, while filling vehicles up with gas, would ask the vehicle owners to allow them to search the vehicle. Anything suspicious was reported to police, as well as any vehicle owner who refused to allow a search. Cars that had been cleared actually got a sticker that said, my car is okay. And those cars without stickers would be pulled over by officers to check for any signs of Evelyn. I just thought that was so cool that gas station attendants were working with law enforcement like this and agreeable to ask people, hey, do you mind if I search your car because of that missing 15-year-old?
Yeah, I think that's very cool, too. And Kathleen included a photograph from the La Crosse Tribune where two police officers are placing a sticker on the back of a car, and they look kind of proud of that. Well, I'm also a little proud of that. It's a nice community-based thing to do. And so on October 28th, underwear and a bra, the size and type that Evelyn wore, were found near an underpass of Highway 14 to the south of La Crosse. And tests of blood on the undergarments would show that it was the same type as Evelyn's, which is type A. And the undergarments were a common brand, so there was no real way to know for sure if they belonged to Evelyn. And it's not known if Evelyn was an A positive or A negative, but A positive is the second most common blood type after O positive, with just over a third of the population having A positive blood. And then on October 31st...
A pair of tennis shoes was found not far from the undergarments on that highway, Highway 14. The shoes were a Goodrich brand shoe style hood mogul size 11. The same pattern on the soles as the prints found at the Brasmussen home. I looked at the shoes. Very common shoe. Kind of looks like a converse. Kind of looks like what you'd expect a high school basketball player to wear during a game. Right. Blood was also found on the shoes. And just as a quick reminder, these...
were not Evelyn's shoes. Those were found in the house. So very mysterious here. And in February of 1954, the state crime lab confirmed the shoes were the very same that left the dirt print in the Rasmussen home. This is getting better and better as far as the investigation. I was reading this. I was getting excited because you can almost see them putting everything together, including this. Markings on the shoe were determined to be from wearing them while riding a Whizzer motorbike. And I looked that up. A Whizzer motorbike looks like a souped-up bicycle. Looks like a mini motorcycle. It's a motorized bicycle.
And I don't know what those markings on the shoe were, but I'm so impressed that they've done all this. They've confirmed that the shoes were the same that left the dirt print in the Rasmussen home, and there were markings on them that were determined to be from wearing them while riding this Whizzer bike. So they've narrowed down a lot here. Whoever was wearing these shoes, they were in the Rasmussen home. Who has a Whizzer bike? They've really done a lot of great work here.
Absolutely. And trying to take that ball over the goal line, police searched all stores that sold that shoe in a size 11 anywhere in the Midwest to try to identify the owner. They also tried to locate and identify everyone that had a whizzer. But unfortunately, no meaningful leads developed from these clues. And next to be found was a blood-stained blue denim jacket found not far from the shoes. And police tried again to identify the owner as there had been some specific alteration made to the jacket. But they hit a dead end there as well. So frustrating. So they're desperate to generate a lead from both the shoes and the jacket. In order to do this...
Police put up an exhibition tour. Stores in the area put them on display. This is another really cool moment. Stores in the area put their shoes and the jacket on display to see if anyone could identify them and their owner. This is, they're sourcing the public. They're asking for the public for help. This is amateur sleuthing. They want this to happen. And it was estimated that over 10,000 people viewed the clothing items. Unfortunately, again, no new leads came from this. But hey, can't fault them for trying. Yeah, no, I think that's a great way to sort of crowdsource the investigation and get the public's help if they can. I mean, that's the word I was looking for. A lot of times they can help, yeah.
And because of Evelyn's disappearance, a new position was created by La Crosse County. And the person hired for that job, a county crime investigator, to turn in the next step in the dragnet for Evelyn's abductor would be to polygraph every male teacher and student at her high school and at the La Crosse State College. It's phenomenal. Way to go. Casting a wide net. I mean, I like the idea. Yep. Create a new position and say, you are now in charge of this. Take the ball and run. Like, we have to get some answers here. And among the people polygraphed, Dr. Hartley was also given one. He passed it. 300 polygraphs were completed before the school district put a stop to them.
All persons given a polygraph were cleared. At least 300. And as time went by, police received many tips of Evelyn's sightings as well as false confessions. The Hartleys received two phone calls, each stating that for $500 they could provide information about Evelyn. That kind of scam rings true even today. Families of missing people will get calls because of flyers out there with phone numbers. Sometimes those family numbers are on that flyer and they get extortion attempts, essentially. Yeah. We're going to have a lot, everybody, in our final thoughts for this.
So stay tuned for that. But that'll be part of it. Yeah, you're right. I mean, once people start seeing the possibility to benefit off of something like this, they'll take that opportunity if they're that type of person. Also, some gossip went around that Evelyn ran away with a boy, which I guess that's going to happen. But when you read the details of the bloodstains and the forced entry and everything, that's definitely not the case. Even going back to like she wasn't even supposed to be in that home. It was supposed to be another babysitter. Nothing concrete ever materialized. News media blamed the police's investigation and La Crosse residents were in fear that the perpetrator was actually still in the area waiting to take another young girl. And that's a legitimate concern. But at this point, you can feel it slipping away.
You can feel that the leads aren't coming in anymore and too much time has passed. And then in 1957, Edward Theodore Gein was arrested in Plainfield, Wisconsin, after the disappearance of a local hardware store owner. And the arrest led to the search of his property and the discovery of many human body parts to include that hardware store owner. And Gein was using human skin to fashion everyday objects and was the inspiration for Norman Bates from the Alfred Hitchcock thriller Psycho, the Buffalo Bill character in the Oscar-winning Silence of the Lambs, and also Leatherface from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. So quite a character is being considered for having abducted Evelyn. I guess when you have a character like Gein in the conversation in that area in that time period, you have to consider that this would be a possibility. But Plainview is just over 100 miles northeast of La Crosse, and it was rumored that Gein had relatives in La Crosse and that he was visiting those relatives the night that Evelyn vanished. But no trace of Evelyn was found on his property, and he denied any involvement in her disappearance. He even passed two polygraph tests regarding her case. And again, that was a rumor that Gein had relatives in La Crosse and he was visiting.
that area, that town, the night that Evelyn disappeared. So Evelyn went missing just two months before Gein's first confirmed murder of tavern owner Mary Hogan. And Hogan went missing from the town of Bancroft, just about eight miles from where Gein lived in Plainfield. And Gein's only other confirmed victim was Plainfield hardware store owner Bernice Worden, who went missing from her store in 1957 and whose body was confirmed to have been found at Gein's property. So still, it's quite a distance for Gein to have traveled to abduct Evelyn.
if he is guilty here, seems unlikely to me, seeing that his only confirmed victims were really very close to where he resided, unless it can be confirmed that he really had relatives that he was visiting that day. I don't know how that hasn't been confirmed in these 70-some-odd years since that happened. So I'm guessing that that's not true, that he was ever in La Crosse that evening. Yeah, and there'll be more on that. I got some, well, just one thought on Gein in the final thoughts for this episode. But Tim, remember when we mentioned the population of La Crosse today?
Sure. At 51,000, and it really didn't change that much since the abduction of Evelyn back in 1953. And I'm wondering if it was because La Crosse was forever changed by what happened on that night, October 24th, 1953. After that happened, people started locking their doors, and they actually didn't let their daughters babysit, which is totally understandable. The Rasmussen sold their new house as soon as they were able to because they just couldn't bear living there. Yeah, that's understandable too.
And they put bars on the windows of their new home, and Dr. Hartley retired and moved his family to Portland, Oregon in 1970. And tips have come in over the years, but the mystery of what happened to Evelyn Hartley remains unsolved. And if anyone has any information about Evelyn's disappearance, you're instructed to contact the La Crosse Police Department at 608-785-5962. In 2002, Ryan Wedding was an Olympic snowboarder at the top of his game. Ryan's style is really gunning and gold. And in less than a minute, it slipped away. But he continued to chase the high. Ryan James Wedding. He controls one of the most violent drug trafficking organizations in this world. I'm Michelle Shepard, and from CBC Podcasts and the Toronto Star, The Most Wanted Olympian. The Most Wanted Olympian. Available now on Spotify.
Okay, we're back here for final thoughts, Lance, after the discussion about Evelyn Hartley's disappearance and the investigation and search afterwards. What a tragic case. Extremely mysterious. Kind of annoying to me that Ed Gein was considered as having abducted Evelyn. Again, if we don't have confirmation that he was actually in town that night, I don't think we should be relying on sort of the convenience that pointing at him kind of poses, right? There were actual...
suspects, an eyewitness, saw two men with a woman that could have very well been Evelyn. And that seems like such a good lead. And Lance, the clothes found, the shoes, bringing those to different stores and things like that. I can't believe this wasn't solved. I know. It felt like they were so close. It felt like they were so close. And maybe if they had today's technology or even like 20 years ahead of this period, that technology, something would have happened. You know, if there was just a better communication, more people having television sets to learn about this, you know, people understanding don't show up at the crime scene and or potential crime scene. I mean, come on, it's a crime scene. She wasn't, she didn't disappear. She was abducted. You know, just having that knowledge, like putting it out there as soon as possible. But as far as like.
abductions and disappearances go and law enforcement's reaction. Like, this is one of the top ones that we've talked about. They tried as hard as they could, I feel. They enlisted the help of the public. They enlisted the help of gas station attendants. And you're right. To include Ed Gein into this conversation is like, what? Why are we talking about Ed Gein? And folks may have heard a recent episode of Crawl Space where we had a gentleman on named Mike Gatto. His father, Joseph, was murdered. And that was the reverse. And there was this great quote that the police said to Mike,
when they were concocting their theory. And their theory, honestly, is kind of ridiculous. It's based on a lot of coincidences and it has to be like perfectly timed out for this to work. Anyway, they said to Mike, why would we be chasing a unicorn when we have a horse right here? And their horse was that theory, this individual that they wanted it to be. And they put all of the pieces in place for it to be this individual. Here, it's the reverse. Why in the world are we introducing a unicorn into this when the horse is right here and the horse is actually real? Like, you have the witness saying that he saw two people with a woman. They were carrying, they were holding this woman up right around the bloodstains.
I mean, the Gein thing is compelling, but also very compelling is the kind of... reality of what happened i mean what what in the world like so many questions yeah i can't make sense of this um but you know if you want to just go through the the steps that the abductors took or abductor or abductors um because it sounds like they entered from the basement window after potentially trying to pry through an upstairs window um you had a good point about the screen why would the screen or how would the screen be outside the house if they went in that way because you would maybe kick it in or or just kind of push it in and i think that's a good point but So that does add some question in my head as to if the abductors went in through a door, maybe knocked and Evelyn opened, or if they did go in through the basement. But either way, it does seem like the abductor or abductors took Evelyn out through that window because the step ladder was at the bottom of that window, which, by the way, reminds me of JonBenet Ramsey's case a little bit.
Yeah, instantly, you know, kind of harkens that idea. So she's taken out through that tiny window. I mean, what kind of condition must she have been to be able to have been kind of pushed through that? I'm guessing there was some head injury that occurred in the living room where there was some blood found. I'm guessing she was whacked on the head and was barely conscious and was able to be kind of forcibly pushed up and out through this window and then just kind of carried almost like, you know, I'm not trying to be funny, but like a weekend at Bernie's thing where they're trying to carry her down the street and make it look like she's just like drunk or something and not injured. Yeah. Blocks away too.
Right. I didn't realize my thoughts on the window and the screen were incorrect until you just explained it. Somebody is outside. They try one window. They try another window. They have a device that's trying to pry the windows. We know that because there are pry marks. They look at the basement window. The basement window opens inside into the basement upward. There's no screen.
On the inside of the window, the screen is on the outside. Because the window wouldn't be able to open if the screen was on the inside, and most screens on windows are on the outside. So what they did was they just popped that screen off with whatever they had to pry, and that's why it was outside. And then they pushed the window open, they kind of shuffled down the brick wall there, and maybe they look around, there's a ladder, and they prep it right away. And they open up the window and they latch it so it stays open at the top there. Because we could see that in the picture, that it was open still. So there definitely had to have been a second person involved in this, I think, to help pull Evelyn out from the basement. But that person had to have known.
that where the entry point was was going to be where they were going to pull the girl out. Again, much easier to take her out the front door, and it's going to raise a lot less eyebrows if you see a couple of people leaving a house. Yeah, that's definitely a good point, too. It doesn't seem like there's a ton of people around. The development is new, so maybe not all the houses are filled yet. Yeah, still, though, there aren't many trees and things like that. Now, just looking at the photo, it does seem like the window they probably went in and likely came out of would have blocked the view of the house next door.
Um, because that's like directly to the, I guess the left side of that house. So I don't know if there was a property to the right side of that house or if there were people in that property. Um, but if, had they left through the front door, they actually might've been seen by that neighbor that wouldn't have seen them leaving, uh, out the window. Yeah. Yeah. Good point. Good point. But that's just one neighbor. I just don't know how many there are in that, in the neighborhood. Right. Cause we have limited, uh, pictures of this. We just have.
a certain area that we see through a sketch and through black and white pictures here. The circle of blood, the 18 inch circle of blood that's found near the basement window tells me that she's pulled out and she's like left there for a period of time where the blood can drain on the ground. So, so someone's helping pull her out and they get her up through that little half circle. Well, which is only about like 18 inches deep, I'm guessing, maybe a foot deep. And they pull her up there, lay her down. Maybe the person coming up out of the basement needs a hand. So they help that person get out through the basement as well. And then they pick her up and like you said, carry her. Two blocks away. Yeah, to the car. So that's very strange, I think, in a case like this, that there are two people. And, you know, we just kind of went through those steps that...
suggests that it would certainly have been much easier to abduct Evelyn if there were two people. And the eyewitness, if that eyewitness was correct, then yeah, then there were two people who did it. Crazy to me that neither of those two people talked over the years. Nothing came between them, apparently, to get one of them to go to the police or something about the other one. How do two people concoct an insane, murderous plan like this and then execute it? Well, how about this for a theory? One person gets in through the basement window, attacks Evelyn, there's a fight.
We know that her shoes are found at the bottom of the basement stairs, or at least one shoe was found. So she's in the basement. What if she had escaped to the basement? and looked at the window as an escape path after she'd been hitched. So she's still bleeding and she puts the ladder there. She opens up the basement window and that's her escape route. But the person who's trying to abduct her, just one person exits the front door, goes around to outside and pulls her out and continues the abduction. Yeah, I mean, I guess that's possible. That's how I'm trying to rationalize it being just one person. But that discounts the eyewitness saying that he saw this twice, saw two men and a woman. Also, I think it would be pretty coincidental if, you know, there was a struggle and she kind of just coincidentally ran out the same window that the abductor ran in.
Instead of the front door. Yeah, yeah. Also, Janice, the child. Yeah. Aren't you just kind of curious what Janice was told throughout her life? Do you think she ever knew? Yeah, she was probably told. Yeah, that's a great point, because it definitely seems to have changed the Rasmussen parents, and I'm sure that got to the daughters as well. That was a really scary thought. What's also just scary is, like, were these people, and I'm just going to say people are abductors at this point, like, did they target the initial babysitter, or were they just waiting?
It just happened to be there and it was an opportunistic thing when they saw Evelyn walk in and then the parents of that house leave. Like, I just don't understand how all that came together so quick because by looking at the timeline, it's like she was out of the house probably within an hour. So I don't know if I feel like any specific person was targeted. I feel like whoever did this knew that the town would be occupied by the homecoming game and there were probably going to be families that... enlisted the help of babysitters so they knew that there would be some you know young women 15 14 15 16 year old girl in one of these homes with a young kid yeah because they're not going to bring the baby to the football game exactly so vulnerable alone the town is empty ish and you have these people who obviously knew that this was happening and they picked this home because they knew that there was a girl there a 15 year old girl there was no other neighbor saying that they saw people stalking their home or an attempted burglary or something like that this really reminded me a bit of um
the town that feared sundown about the text arcana yeah 1946 killing spree and i'm not saying that they're connected but i don't know maybe people were like influenced by that maybe they had heard that because it just gave me that like that no jump in a murder you know that that gave this gave me that feeling too but yeah that town that feared sundown because i was just wondering like what was happening in like the pop culture of the times around 1953 and this is only a few years later i just can't believe this uh these artifacts that had been recovered never led to anything i hope the i also hope like the builders of that new development were investigated something tells me that people hanging around that area would have a better understanding of like what houses were occupied at that time and things like that that's kind of where my head went initially yeah i hadn't even thought of that yeah but it does seem like a younger kid overall or a younger person overall like early 20s or something like that, riding like a dirt bike type vehicle. I just want to quote Kathleen here with one of the questions that she has, or one of her observations that she finds interesting, is that the Rasmusens left Evelyn alone at 6.45. And it appears she was abducted and gone by, she says, 7.15, but it was sometime after 7.15. So at least 7.15 and beyond because of the child Janice who she put to bed but didn't cover yet. And the abduction likely would have taken at least 10 minutes.
I don't know. We could even say five minutes. I don't know. But it would take a short period of time. I don't know whether or not the windows had been attempted to be pried open before or whenever. So it was pretty immediate that her abduction took place. Kickoff for the game was 7.30. So if the people who abducted her were operating around the time frame of the game...
They were actually thinking, like, everybody is watching kickoff. Like, kickoff has started. So she was abducted pretty much at kickoff of the game. And they didn't wait until maybe 8 or 8.30. Who knows where the game's at at that point, right? Could be a blow-up. People could start leaving. So I really feel like, you know, after reading Kathleen's observations here, I really feel like the game was a key component to this. Yeah, yeah, definitely seems like part of the plan. Very strange. Gosh, yeah. I know the police and the community seem to have really wanted to solve this case. I just can't believe that it didn't get solved. I also would have to imagine the...
abductors probably, like, didn't go to that high school and probably didn't live in that immediate town. I think it may be a few towns over or something. Yeah. Because I just feel like they would have found them. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's so many connections. There's so many ways to find them. The shoes, the whizzer bike. And no one in that town, like, apparently no one in that town had a whizzer bike.
Or they cleared people who did, I guess. Yeah. I wonder how long it took, if ever, that people in lacrosse started to allow their children to babysit again. I wonder if they ever were like, I feel good not locking my door. We don't have to put bars up on our home, on our windows. Yeah, I don't know. Time was definitely affected by that.
For a long time, I would imagine. All right, everyone. Thanks a lot for listening. This is kind of a perplexing mystery, and I wish we had more answers here, but unfortunately we don't. This is the part where I say nothing awkwardly. All right, everyone. Please follow us on social media at MissingCSM. Hey, please give us a good rating and review, and don't forget to like and subscribe. Thanks a lot for listening.
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