The Murder of Lindy Biechler

Hi, I'm Holly and I'm Haley. Welcome to Mountain Mysteries Tales from Appalachia. Welcome back everybody. Hello.

So it's been a interesting few weeks. I had a tree fall. Yeah, across my driveway. Thank God.

It was my driveway and not my house. Yeah, one of the big ones in your yard. But not one of the ones like in the front yard, kind of on the other side of my driveway. Okay.

But anyway, so I had put my son in a bed and I was laying a bed reading actually. And it was thundering. We had tons of storms lately, just constant rain and thunderstorms and anyway. So it was raining and I was reading and I heard and then I was like, oh God, and house shook.

And so my first thought is like, did something get in our house? Oh my God, and all these things. And so I look outside and I can see it. It has just gone straight across our driveway.

Huge tree. And I was like, oh wow. So my neighbor texts me and she's like, I just heard it like, are you guys okay? And I was like, yeah, we're okay.

It fell across my driveway. And she's like, I'm going to send my husband out to see if like there's anything like maybe he could move it. So let me tell you about my neighbor. Very kind, very sweet.

He is like a data analyst for some big, you know, California company. So he works from home. He's a very kind of nerdy guy. Not really.

That's like, you know, Mr. Wood, you know, like chopping up wood and stuff. Like he's not your go to God, right? But he nonetheless went out there to see if he could move it.

So I get a text back that says he could not, which was not a surprise. Wow. And so I was like, okay. And they were like, can you even get out of your driveway?

So I was like, I know, we'll figure that out in the morning. So morning comes and I told him I said about it. He's so excited. Can't he has waited his whole life or something like this?

And he was like, not to worry. I got my chains off. So he goes in and he gets his child chains off that makes these like noises and it lights up. And it is very cool.

But obviously doesn't do a thing. He was so excited. He was like, let me have that tree. Let me add it.

So I take a picture with him in front of, you know, he's in front of the tree. And he was like, Mom, I'm trying, but I don't know. I just don't think I'm gonna get anywhere. We probably need a real chainsaw.

I was like, I think we do. We do. So I think it would work. He kept, you know, so I end up driving through my lawn.

Yeah. And you know, so drive through my lawn and I'm able to like get out and go to work and I get a text from my other neighbor. And he says, I'll have this clear for you in about an hour. He again is another work from home, like data, kind of guy.

But he's young and he's a little more like he camps and you know, so he came down and he cut it up for me and said, would you okay if I like have some of this wood? And I was like, take all of it. Take it all. It's all yours.

So he did it was so kind. Like what I would get. I was just so excited. But he left the excess stuff on the sides of my driveway.

And so I paid my lawn guy a lot of money to get rid of all that extra brush and all that stuff. And oh my gosh, it was such a mess. It ended up being expensive, but it could have been a lot more expensive. It could have been our lives.

It could have been our house. Like, you know, so in the end, I'm grateful. But let me tell you what, I'm over the trees and I'm over the storms. And yeah, yeah, it's been crazy here.

I've got two dead trees in my backyard that I am just waiting for them to fall. Yep. It's a matter of time. It's a matter of time.

This one was completely dead and it's probably a 150 year old tree. Like it was massive and only like half of it fell. Oh, that's good. Yeah.

But still that's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. So start up a good times.

Yeah. So we had a Tuesday episode, which is awesome this week. Yeah. Hey, we and I if you notice the audio is a little different because we were recording it via Zoom, you all because I have COVID because we are actually going to pack in some episodes this week for you guys.

So, you know, the next one to hear over a couple of weeks will be recorded via Zoom. So hope you enjoy that. Yeah, sorry. Yeah.

Well, I didn't want to spread the gift of COVID. It's the gift that keeps on giving. That's keep on giving. And we need to stop it in its track.

So we're gonna, you know, not intermingle. That'll be good. We don't want anybody else to get it. My son has interrupted enough tonight.

We were trying to do our Tuesday episode and he kept coming in constantly. He would not go then. He thought Haley and he was like, Oh, wait a minute. She's here.

She, you know, and I kept saying like, no, she's up here and Haley's have like black in the screen. You know, like, no, not here. No, not me. Not me.

He is finally asleep. It is. It's a miracle. Yeah.

He told me I was mean. You're so mean making me go to bed. I was like, I know, I know. You're going to be begging to go to bed when you're like, give it like 10, 12 years.

Yeah. I've, yeah, I'm hopeful because my mom says all the time, like, just wait till he's a teenager, you won't be able to wake him up. You'll be dying to like bedtime with him. And I'm like, that sounds great.

Right. Yeah, because right now I can't like, you know, make dinner without him up my button around the corner. So like, Mom, look at me. Mom, you see me do this.

I'm watching you do this. Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom. I need a minute. So yeah, Lacey's cute.

God, he's cute. That's, you know, he has many redeeming qualities and cute as a big one. Yeah. He's very cute.

Funny. Yeah. Yeah. All the things.

Yeah. Well, what's the story about this week? Oh, is it me? Oh, is it mine?

Yeah, I totally do mine. I don't know. I mean, we don't have our shit together. I just want to line.

Okay, I did Tuesday. So I'm sure they're tired of hearing my voice. No, no, let's give you a break. Okay.

And we'll do my story. Pull it up here for us. Sounds good. All right.

So today, we are going to December of 1975. And for context, as to what was happening, I like to give, you know, a little info about, you know, the world. So the number one song was Fly Robin Fly by Silver Convention. Do you know that one?

Can't say I do fly Robin Fly up up to this. Hey, no. Okay. So I know a lot of like, disco, my parents were being into that.

The number one movie at the box office was a crime comedy called Let's Do It Again, starring Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby. I mean, a side reveal is pretty cool because it was a movie with an all black cat. Oh, yeah. 70s.

70s. Yeah. Yeah. Groundbreaking.

I understand it. I actually had heard of it, but I need to check it out. Yeah. So in the rest of the country of Laos, Laos, Laos, falls to communist forces and the United Nation General Assembly voted to approve the declaration on the rights of this disabled person.

So essentially giving disabled people more empowerment, particularly when it came to like group homes and these institutions that were deemed pretty cool and inhumane. So it really focused on the treatment of these individuals and so creating laws around that, which it's amazing that it took into 1975 to do that. Right. So anyway, all right.

Now we are headed to town, excuse me, Manor Township, Pennsylvania. Manor Township is in the central western side of Pennsylvania. It's pretty relatively rural as an area and it's made up of about 22,000 people as of the 2020 census. So pretty small.

Yeah. The closest big city is Hershey, which is where they make the chocolate and apparently smells like chocolate in that city. Would you ever been to the park? I haven't, but I have been to Hershey.

I've been to the park. It's pretty cool. Isn't that neat? I need to go.

So it lies west about 48 miles away from Hershey, according to Google. Cool. So yeah, Manor Township is made up of mostly blue collar workers just trying to get by, support their families, you know. So now that we know a little bit more about the area, let's move on to the event of December 5th, 1975.

So we've got Lindy Sue Little, who was born in 1956. Her parents got to bores when she was a toddler. So she primarily lived with her mother Eleanor. Okay.

Lindy's dad remarried when she was 10 years old, her dad has a son named Michael, whom they referred to as Mike. So it's important to mention Mike because he kind of becomes a large part of the story as we go along. So Lindy is described by her brother as having a free spirit, being very loyal and a really hard worker. When Lindy was a senior in high school, she met a man by the name of Philip.

Now I'm going to mess this up, but I believe it's Biesler or Bessler. Philip worked at the Hertz Renekar Company while simultaneously attending a state college. So Lindy fell hard for Phil. The two started dating and after two years together, they got married in front of all their friends and family in early 1975.

So a couple of months before our story starts. At this point, Lindy's just 19 years old. So really young, but you know, kind of knows what she wants to do. Lindy was so excited because she and Phil found an apartment to live in.

And I think there's something really exciting about having your first place on your own. You know, I don't know, I loved it. Like you can set it up how you want. You feel like a grownup.

Yeah. So Lindy and her husband lived on the first floor in apartment 104A of the Spring Manor apartments, all seemed well until Lindy began telling her husband that she felt really uneasy in the apartment. Lindy worked the day shift while her husband worked second shift. So that meant that like during the early part of the evening until Phil got home around 11 she was by herself.

So she kept saying like she felt like someone was watching her. And her husband, you know, like he took her seriously, but there's not like a lot of proof, like maybe just her like the first time on her own. And so that's what he kind of chopped it up to like, well, you know, she's never really like lived on her own and I'm at work and you know, maybe her mind just kind of playing tricks on her. I don't know.

I probably think that too. I mean, I always liked living by myself. Yeah. Even now you kind of sort of do because you and your brother are sort of opposite in your shifts, right?

Yeah. He's yeah, he works usually like two to 11 and I work like 733 to 34. So we don't see each other hardly ever. I see him ordering the summer because I'm home.

Well, like this week he's gone all week. So. Do you hear him come in in the middle of the night? Not anymore.

I when we first started living together, I did. I was not used to it. But now- Can I freak you out? Initially?

No, because I knew it was him. Oh. But now it's like, I did, doesn't even wake me up. Wow.

Since your aunt is over break, do you have to wake him up to go to workers? He's pretty good at the end of on his own. I mean, he's an adult. So I figure, you know, hey, if you're late, that's on you.

Yeah, it's true. No, he like held it up. But he won't like come downstairs even. It's a little time to go to work.

That's funny. I like never see him. But it's fine. I mean, it's ideal.

My son wakes me up at the butt private dog. So there is no sleeping in. I don't ever have to worry about being like the work ever. He, you know, 530 in the morning.

He's up. We're ready to go. He's like, let's go. What are we doing?

Can I land your bed? You want to watch something about monster trucks? We good? Yeah.

So yeah. But for Lindy, she was feeling super duper uneasy. And again, her husband's like, he takes it seriously. And he's consoling.

He's very sweet. But he's also like, you know, he's trying to rationalize it a little bit. You know, like, I think it's true if it's something like we can't see or like necessarily put our finger on. We want to rationalize it like, okay, why is she feeling this way?

You know what I mean? Like, it could just be this or, you know, maybe it's an older apartment complex. So maybe she's hearing, you know, noises like the settling or maybe somebody above the apartment's making noise. And that's what she's hearing or, you know, thinking she's seeing things, you know?

Yeah, you really just need to get an animal. That's what I did. It's true. When I moved into my first apartment, I was like, you know, I'll just get, I'll just get a cat.

And that will solve my problem. Exactly. And let the cat attack the intruder. Just gave me an excuse for whatever noises I heard.

It's true. Well, and your, that apartment was haunted that you didn't. It was so haunted. So the cat's really didn't do anything for you in that way.

I mean, I still was able to be like, oh, it's probably the cat. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I get it. I get it. I will say on times where my son is with his parental, other parental figure, and I am home alone, I am a little more hyper-vigilant on like, what was that? You know, and I'm not a gay to community.

It's not like, you know, Randy would let just anybody in, you know? I mean, he does let you in, though. So yeah. Yeah.

But anyway, I digress. So what I do, I'm like, let me check in like, in the shower, make sure to, you know, like, I do have those moments, but and rationally, like thinking about it, like, why is it different when my son's here? Like, he's not gonna be like, don't worry, mom. I got this, you know?

So yeah, it's so weird. But so pretty soon, though, Lindy was telling her husband and family that she felt like someone was following her when she'd go out. Oh, I don't like that. So we're talking about like, away from the apartment.

So she kept saying like, I see the same car behind me. Like, I would turn off on a road like so with they like, she just kept getting this really uneasy feeling like something is not right. So things start to escalate when Lindy sees a man peering through her sliding glass door. And remember, they live on the first floor.

So the person would have just walked up to their like patio and been able to look in. I don't like that. That was creepy. Yeah.

So Lindy was home alone at the time and screamed. The man disappeared and Lindy called her husband at work. She told him what happened and declared like, that's it. I am not staying home alone anymore.

Like, you need to like change your work schedule. You need to do something. But I'm not doing this anymore. Like, nope.

And so Phil was like, okay, cool. So I guess he talked with his boss, he was able to like shift his work schedules. Then he could be home at night with Lindy and they could kind of have a mirror schedule. Yeah.

So one night they heard their stand up mirror fall over. And Lindy was bariqued out. Yeah. So Phil, someone's in the house.

Like, you got to go check blah, blah, blah. And so Phil like checks every piece of the apartment. Like every inch, nobody's there. The mirror just kind of fell over.

I guess from the way it was described, I guess it was kind of like not dirty anyway. So, you know, maybe an animal knocked it over or something, but there was a rational explanation for it. But it really didn't ease Lindy's mind. Well, she was like, someone was at this apartment.

So Phil just is like, it's okay, you know, he's trying to like calm her down, but she is on edge. So every little thing that she sees and hears at this point is just it's escalating. You know, it's making her feel even more anxious. So let's go on to December 5, 1975.

Lindy went to work that day like she normally would. And then when she left work, she went to visit Phil. Phil was still at her car company. And he was going to be working late.

It was just one of those things that he couldn't really get out of. So they made a plan. So Lindy's and uncle were like, listen, we can meet you at like 845, 830. We can pick you up from your house and you can come to a basketball game with us.

And she's like, yeah, cool. Sounds good. Because they knew how scared she was. So she says, bye to her husband.

And she told him, hey listen, I'm going to head to the grocery store before I go home. I'm going to pick up a few things, go home, probably change my clothes, hang out for a little bit. And then my ankle coming at me. So he's like, cool.

Sounds like a lance. And so she goes to the store, arrives home a little after 7pm. And she went back and forth to the car, bringing her bags multiple times because she had a lot. So on this night, like I said, Phil was working.

So he wasn't there. So she had this time. So she arrives home about seven. She has about an hour and a half before her aunt and uncle are coming to pick her up.

So she has this period where she is going to be alone. But I'm sure like, teeny on, you know, like trying to like, find yourself up, like, she's an hour and a half. Like, we're good. We're good.

So around 8.30, her aunt and uncle arrive at her apartment to come and pick her up. And her aunt comes to the door and knocks and no one answers the door. So she realizes, okay, and she looks and the door's unlocked. She goes to like, pull the door and it's unlocked, which is so strange.

Because Lindy is like obsessive about making sure that every door is locked and every, you know, because she's scared honestly. So her aunt, whose name is Celeste, got a really uneasy feeling. Celeste proceeds into the house calling out Lindy's name and like announcing her arrival like, Lindy, hey, it's your aunt's last, you know, I'm here and ready to go. Like, your uncle's in the car waiting, like, let's do this.

And Celeste notices an overturned lamp in the living room, giving her an even greater sense of anxiety. So she continues to move throughout the house calling for Lindy, who does not respond. She goes from room to room and finally arrives in the kitchen. This is where she finds Lindy lined face up on the kitchen floor.

Celeste runs to her and sees a butcher knife sticking out of her neck. Oh my gosh. Lindy was not breathing and appeared to be deceased. Celeste, her aunt was horrified and quickly turned to the kitchen phone and called for the police.

When the police arrived on the scene, they quickly assessed and discovered that Lindy had been stabbed multiple times with a small kitchen knife and a butcher knife was used to stab her through the neck. They also noticed that Lindy's cans and underwear were pulled down, which led them to believe that she had potentially been sexually assaulted. Police called her husband Phil at work to notify him and he was obviously distraught. The one night they had to work late and leaves her home alone is the one night that something happens.

So I can't even imagine the guilt in all the feelings he would be feeling. Right. Lindy's parents were contacted as well and her father was so overwhelmed by grief. He actually had to be restrained.

He was just off the chain. So you ask yourself, what was the purpose of this attack? Was it just sexually-natured? Was it the person stalking her?

Was this robbery? What was this? Clearly this person knew that her husband wasn't there, that she was alone. So the police really don't know the whole story of Lindy's peeping Tom at this point.

So they're kind of just going on what they can assess at the scene, what they see, like there's an overturned lamp. So was there a struggle? What's happening? So the first thing they noticed is that nothing is touched in the apartment.

Besides the overturned lamp, there are no stolen items. There's a TV there, there's a record player, the jewelry's there, the car's there. So nothing has been stolen. So they quickly ruled out robbery as a motive.

Based on eyewitnesses account, they could verify that the murder had to occur between 715 when Lindy was seen arriving home and before 845 when her aunt and her volcano came. So this gave the killer, you know, over an hour to commit the assault and leave. There was no sign of forced entry, which leads one to believe that either Lindy knew her attacker and let them in or the individual, excuse me, stuck in snuck into her home while she was out at the car getting her groceries. So that seems much more plausible to me.

That somebody snuck in. So out of scene, there was blood found on the lower part of the kitchen walls and the floor. A bloody shoe print was found next to Lindy's body. Based on the size of the shoe print, police felt pretty confident that the suspect was likely a male.

Police went door to door in the apartment complex to see if anyone had heard or seen anything. Police were also trying to, you know, suss out some of the neighbors to see if maybe they had been involved, but no one really seemed likely, at least early on. So Lindy's husband had an alibi because they did check him out because that is your first thought, right? Like, hmm, maybe it's the husband.

Yeah, it's all the husband. Absolutely. So they checked him out pretty thoroughly and he wasn't working the whole time. He had an alibi.

You know, it didn't seem like he was conspiring with somebody. He had no reason for her to die, basically. Neighbors did tell police about a car that was double parking at the complex. The car had its lights on and a motor running between 7 and 8.30 pm without any occupant inside.

And then after 8.30, the car was gone. So the car was described as a darkly as sedan, possibly a Chevy or Ford bottle. So they got this piece. Lindy's body was taken for autopsy and it was determined that she had put up a heck of a fight for her life.

She had defensive wounds on her hands where she tried to fight off her attacker. She was stabbed 19 times, two of which pierced her heart. The stabs of the heart were made with two different knives, one being the smaller knife that we mentioned and the other, the butcher knife that ended up being in her neck. So at the crime scene, the butcher knife was missing from the block.

So they concluded that this was Lindy's knife that was in the block in her kitchen. The other knife was not found. So police theorized that whoever came and attacked Lindy took the knife back with them. So this lead you to suspect this was probably a plan to attack because he was just carrying like a kitchen knife.

You know, he rolls up with their kitchen knife. Right, can't say that I do that. No, so very strange. Back to the autopsy, the coroner determined that Lindy died from excessive blood loss, which appeared to me the stabbing through the heart.

And while two stabbings to the chest most likely killed her, the perpetrator continued to stab her. So she was dead prior to the other stab wounds. They were done post-mortem. So again, kind of an overkill situation.

That's rage. Absolutely. Absolutely. So the last blow was to the neck with the butcher knife that went so far that it got stuck.

And that actually ended the needless laying because the killer couldn't pull it back. Oh, yeah. And like use that, police were like, this is a crime of passion. Like nobody else would just it's it's excessive, you know, blood fibers and fingerprints were lifted and sore as evidence.

It appeared that Lindy was sexually assaulted, but it couldn't be proven that she had been penetrated. They did find fluids on her pants and underwear, leading them to think that someone had gotten some type of sexual gratification and release, but they couldn't prove that there had been any type of physical penetration of her body. If that makes sense. Investigators looked again at family members but ruled them out very quickly.

Within two months of the murder, police had interviewed close to 300 people, but no one appeared to be their suspect. In April of 1976, a woman named Mary Schilling was stabbed 12 times and killed. Mary, excuse me, Mary lived only about 15 miles from Lindy, leading police to wonder if the two murders were connected. Was this the work potentially of a serial killer?

Quickly however, Mary's killer ended up being found and was convicted for the crime. So this rolled out the whole serial killer and they talked to this man who had said, yeah, I killed Mary. He totally came out with it, but he was not the killer of Lindy. So they kept working the case.

Their back to square one. The case actually started to lose some of its momentum because other cases take priority. But on Christmas, the day after Christmas in 1976, so a year after Lindy's murder, her family went to her gravestone to visit her and lay holiday flowers at her headstone. And they were pretty quiet to discover that someone had desecrated her grave.

Her headstone appeared to the edge like stab. And there was red paint all over it. Like blood. And her headstone was the only one that had been vandalized in that Methodist cemetery.

So definitely targeted. Police wondered if this was a killer or if it was someone playing a horrifically cruel joke. Nothing at that time really came up until about a month later when police received an anonymous letter in the mail. So the letter was two pages long and half of it was in cursive and the other was in like print handwriting.

And it seemed like it was written by two different people. So like the curse of handwriting appeared to be written by the killer. And the print handwriting was a friend of a killer, the killer, a female by the name of Janice Crumb. But you get weird.

Yeah. So investigators quickly were like, okay, so we got a name. Like let's look into this Janice Crumb person. So they found a lady who lived locally that name.

Of course, they like go to speak with her. But she's like, how much are you talking about? She has no idea. So it became very clear that someone used this woman's name to just connect her to these letters, but she had nothing to do with it.

So they used some handwriting experts to, you know, look at the letter and see what they could come up with. And the handwriting expert said like they thought the curse of the print with the exact same person. So weird. Yeah.

Like, who does this kind of stuff? You know, like, she's a people. Exactly. Somebody has a lot of time on her hands, you know, like, this is insane.

So what I want to say about this letter, because I'm not going to like dive into like what it said, because I just don't think that this individual needs anymore notoriety. But basically, this person just writes that he got turned on by seeing her lying in a pool of blood. And he was the one who desecrated her grave, giving it 19 stab wounds just like she got. The writer kind of egged on the police chief and stated that if this letter was printed in the Friday and Saturday evening editions of the newspaper, like, if they did it and they printed it, then he would confess he would come forward.

But if they didn't do it, then they would never get him just kind of taunted the police. So this person stated that they were educated and highly regarded in the community. But the crime occurred because this individual was using drugs and tended to do bad things when under the influence of amphetamine. Okay.

Yeah. Like what? It's so crazy. Yeah.

Yeah. So I know, I know. So this person claims to have been taking drugs for headaches and express remorse for what they had done saying, quote, I need a priest, end quote. I think you need a long word in a priest.

Oh, yeah. A priest, a therapist, maybe locked up, you know, lots of things, lots of things. Because I would guess that it was probably this person who desecrated the grave. Maybe, yeah, police were not willing to put the letter in the newspaper.

They were like, no, we're not going to play this game because we don't want this person getting this notoriety, right? Largely because at the time, and you know, I was alive in 1975, so I was trying to like look for context was a little bit at the time the zodiac killer had written letters like this to the police and like newspaper and like kind of taunting. So they felt like essentially this was a copycat. Right.

And they actually thought that the writer was a woman. Interesting. Yeah. So they think that a woman wrote this letter, but they don't think that this woman had any connection to the crime.

Isn't that crazy? She just wanted to know, right? We heard. Yeah.

Yeah. This whole thing with like the letter, it really didn't go anywhere like initially, it seemed like, okay, so maybe we have something, but it just kind of went cold. Like everything just sort of went flat and nobody heard anything else until 2006. Oh, wow.

Yeah. So we're talking 29 years later. A set of crime experts met to discuss Lindy's cold case and police decided at that point we need to reopen the case in interview potential suspects. So my lady's brother, who we talked about the one who's 10 years younger than her, he really advocated for the case to be investigated.

He was like, listen, whatever you need, like you've got the family support, do it. He even worked with another missing person or killed person's brother to put up a billboard asking to bring attention to the case and this happened around 2007. So eventually DNA that was found on her body was tested. So the semen that was found on her underwear was tested in the mid 2000s.

So in 1975, there was no DNA, but fortunately the police were really great in this case in 75 and they secured all of the evidence and they kept it preserved for all those years. So they had a good enough sample to be able to test it. Yeah, isn't that like huge props to the cops back then, like huge props because a lot of times that's unheard of. Right.

So they were able to look at the DNA, which was still viable. That's crazy. It's amazing. So it was tested and sadly, there was no match to anyone in the system.

So meaning that whomever committed this crime had never been incarcerated or arrested. Okay. So this means that this person is just out there living their life. Yeah.

I don't either make sure about super creepy. So for a couple of years, like nothing's happening, like, yeah, they have this DNA, but they're just really hoping like maybe he'll get picked up, like maybe something will happen and we'll figure out like who this is. It takes a couple years, but by 2021, police across the country were having pretty great success using genetic genealogy to solve crimes. So essentially what they do with genetic genealogy is they take a DNA profile and they compare it against genetic matches on like things like, you know, ancestry.com and 23andMe and those kinds of things.

And they're able to create a family tree and narrow it down to they can figure out who the suspect is. So police and genealogists alike have their fingers crossed that they will be able to find the person who killed Lindy. So they submit the DNA evidence and they start building their family tree, right? So after several months, a name is given to the police.

They have found a familial match and they think they know who the man is. So DNA experts call the police and they say, okay, we've looked at all this and we believe your killer is a man by the name of David Senna-Pole. David was 19 at the time of the murder. Say, may just Lindy, he just so happened to be living in the same apartment complex just a few months prior to the crime.

He had moved out in August and the crime happened in December. So he was familiar with the apartment complex. He had probably seen Lindy at the complex, but police were like, okay, you know, we've got a name, but we really need to make sure that this is our guy. We can't just, you know, blow this with some random arrest.

We've got to make sure. So police started following him around and David, because they thought, well, maybe he will like throw something out, right? Like let's get his trash or maybe there's a cigarette or a coffee cup or something we could get with his DNA. So sure enough, they're following David and David goes on a trip with his family.

So he goes to the airport and he throws out some garbage, including an empty coffee cup. So police swiftly pick up the coffee cup, they take it for testing. A little while later, the test comes back and it is a 100% DNA match to the DNA found at the apartment complex on Lindy's underwear in 1975. We had our killer.

That's crazy. Isn't it? Isn't it? It's amazing.

So in 2022, nearly 47 years after the murder, police swiftly descend on Simpoli's hat. He's been living in normal life for all this time. He was marrying a kid and at this point he's in his late 60s. Yeah, he has only lived five minutes from the apartment complex for all these years.

He was that close the whole time. That's crazy. When they bring him in, he confesses to the crime and due to his confession, he was given a plea deal. If he agrees to be in charge with aggravated assaults, third degree murder and burglary, they wouldn't seek the debt.

So he sentenced to 25 to 30 years in prison because there's no trial to deeply bark. He did though, however, go in front of the court just to give a little more. I guess they would go for maybe sentencing, I guess, an interstate state in your plea bargain. He didn't say why he didn't necessarily, but he did say with tears coming down his eyes, I would just like to apologize to everyone, including my wife.

Can you imagine how shocked the wife probably is in his family? Like his kids do like my dad, the murder? Yeah, it's insane. So this was really all the court heard from David.

Lindy's husband, Bill, who actually went on to remarry in 1990, but always kept Lindy really close to his heart and desperately wanted her case at his all. He appeared in court at David sentencing and said the following. So Phil just said, listen, I was so surprised and pleased that a pretty girl like Lindy would even find me interesting and want to get to know me. He said that Lindy encouraged him to enroll in college and become an art teacher.

And he said, like, she worked at a greenhouse and she had hoped one day to open a flower shop or her own and they had all these dreams together. He said, quote, my family adored her and she loved them. She wanted to have a family someday and grow old to get the fairy tale marriage, end quote. But he also talked about like the grief that he had suffered through the years of her loss and not knowing who had done this.

He said, quote, I built walls around myself to shield me from my own emotions. Although it might have helped, I never discussed how it felt or sought any counseling. I learned that people are reluctant to talk to you about a murder. It's an ugly word, he said.

He also said, to live out Lindy's hopes for me. Like he said, I finished college, I went on to graduate school, I became an artist. He said, I even was able to commit to another relationship, end quote. I just think like, how sad this is for him, you know?

He said that he was a very lonely existence for a long time. And he said at times I used alcohol and drugs to hide or cloud my grief. So he addressed it by looking at the Nepali directly. And he said the following, David, you took a huge part of my life for me and caused me an extraordinary amount of pain and suffering for so many years.

While others had to live their lives with the terrible consequences of the murder you committed, you got to live your life. While I forgive you because my God tells me to, you need to pay for your actions. End quote. I wonder, you know, it makes you wonder like how he felt sharing that.

Yeah. You know, because it was important to hear like how this impacted Phil's life and actually other members of her family were there too to kind of talk about how that impacted them. But yeah, so in the end, they were able to find this guy, they were able to lock him up. And he's now paying the price for a murder he committed all those years prior.

And it wouldn't have been solved without genetic genealogy. How crazy? Isn't that crazy? Yeah.

Wow. Oh, I know, that's a long one. So sorry about that, y'all. But that's like, a lot.

It is a lot. It's like, that's what I've loved genealogy. It's fascinating. But I feel like genetic genealogy is just like, oh, think about how many crimes now they can solve things that maybe weren't solvable before.

The biggest thing is you just have to make sure DNA is still viable. But yeah, so pretty cool. All right, y'all. Well, that's all for this episode.

How can they reach us? Yeah, if you want to send us an email, you can do so at mountainistories.appolaccion at gmail.com. Find us on our Facebook, Mountain Mysteries Tales from Appalachia. Find us on our Instagram at mountainistories.appolaccia and check us out on our Patreon for some bonus content, patreon.com slash mountain mysteries.

That's right. And I am going to give Manner Township EA a shout out for this episode. It's about your town. Yeah.

Nice. All right. Well, stay tuned for next Thursday when Haley shares a very exciting tale. Bye.

Bye.