The Short Family Homicide Part 2

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

How are you doing this week? I'm well. Okay, good. I'm well.

So I'm kind of doing any crazy thing. I don't think I even told you about it yet. So I, there's a local like professional theater like company around where I live. I know what it is.

And I am auditioning for their summer season. How exciting. So they're doing some really cool shows and there's a lot that have like big casts and I think some really cool like I'm going, I'm not going for any like lead roles or anything. I just kind of, I'm gonna, I'm gonna throw my name in for, they had to like, fill out a thing and say like what I be comfortable with like an ensemble role or under say or like anything.

I was like, whatever. Yeah. But there's a no one must be the star. I was like, it's like whatever doesn't matter.

And the pictures I've got to the smaller. So I, yeah, I'm hoping for, there's a couple of really cool shows they're doing that I really want to get into. So, amazing. I've always wanted to do that.

Fiddler on the roof is one. I really want to be in Fiddler. I'm like going, just going for that one for a dance role. Like, I don't even care if I speak at all.

And I just like wanted to be in that show. That would be really cool and really cool. But there's a couple of other like ones I haven't really heard of as much. And some that are like written by like local people.

That's amazing. So I'm really excited to, you know, even if it is just like ensemble background, whatever. Like, I don't care. When you win your first Academy award, will you thank me?

I will. Okay. Absolutely. Well, I had to do the first time in my life, I've had to do a performance resume, which is totally different than like your work experience resume.

So I had to do one of those and like, I didn't have a current headshot with me because I've cut my hair. Yeah. So my hair shorter and you want to like them to see kind of what you look like now. So I have a very unprofessional like shot of my face that I sent in.

That was like in me in my bathroom, pretty much just like a selfie. Maybe not the best lighting. Not the best lighting. Didn't have like really a whole lot of makeup on.

So I look kind of scary, but they can kind of get a general idea. It's in the background. It was not in the background. I didn't make sure that.

So, you know, it just wasn't great. But you know, I was just made it. It was fine. But I had to do like a whole thing where like all of your like performance backgrounds and things like that.

And like, what skills do you have? That's pretty hefty though for you. I mean, I didn't put like, did you put this podcast? I did not put this podcast.

I should have. It's like asking me about stuff in the audition. I'll mention that. You should say I have a voice for radio.

I have the face for radio. That's what I tell people. No, no, so I put like, because I've done, done two professional shows in my life. One when I was eight years old or seven, I was seven years old.

You've been in the business since you were a kid. I did the sound of music when I was seven. I was a Marta, the second youngest child. I did that and I did as in the miracle worker about Helen Keller's life.

And I played blind girl number three. I was in like one seeking. Blind girl number three. Hayley Tove is fine.

Yeah, it was interesting. Wow. Sorry, Ellen. She's done.

This just speaks to our professionals. Yeah, it's rough. It's usually me that's coughing up along. So I am excited for you.

And I want your name and likes. I really do. That's what I want to say. I want to go and like everything in lights.

Yeah. Well, I'm hoping that whatever's happening with my voice clears up by when I have to audition. I also sound like I'm dying. I have to because I did partner that could sing.

Can you? A little. Yeah. That's my dad.

I mean, I've done like, I did musicals and like church wire and things like that. I think that we should start a band. Yeah. Yeah.

So I sing constantly. Yeah. I don't care if anybody likes it. Right.

I just think so. Well, and like my voice has changed so much over the years. I think so. Because you see what I was like a teenager and even younger, I was a very high soprano.

Me too. Like I sang very high. I could hit all those high notes. And now as I've gotten older, I definitely sing more in like the like low soprano to alto.

Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of where I land. I think naturally your voice changes and deepens.

When you're younger, you have you tend to have a higher pitch voice. And as you get older, it gets a little bit deeper. Yeah. Yeah.

I think it's just natural. So I think I sing much more on an alto level, which for some shows is really good. Yeah. Because it is mostly alto parts.

So I'm thinking maybe with like a big ensemble, like they'll need some of those voices. Like, I don't think I need to be front and center for any of that type of work. But I am going to go in and like they got a call for the professionals. And you had to like prepare monologue and like a dance reel and all this stuff.

And I was like, no, thank you. So I submitted the community forum. I was like, I'll just go in blind. That's amazing.

You know, so I used to do theater in high school. That was my big thing. I directed shows, I wrote plays. We basically did everything.

I mean, we built sets. We, you know, and I acted a lot. So I did a lot of improv, which was just so much fun. And anytime at my job, you know, you go to a meeting or whatever, and or a training and they're like, okay, now we're going to do a role play.

I instantly see people lose their mind of, oh my God, how are we going to do this? And I'm like, hop diggity. I love role play. I just like, I hate doing them because they're just so like role plays in like our past work environment.

They're just so unrealistic. And I'm like, I hate this, but they're so funny. You are so funny. It is kind of it's kind of fun.

So I remember never allowed to be partners. No, no, we were. We did do work one time. And that was the last time.

What was that? Motivational interviewing? Motivational interviewing. We were in it together.

And we just started laughing. Well, we couldn't come up with anything we wanted to change about ourselves because you know, we're just such a good people. So we just made up like, more things about us. About what we said, like, I want to stop, you know, killing people or something crazy.

I think it was like, we were on the coke or something on the crack or something. Or something like I want to stop doing crack. Yeah, I'm being structured and appreciate that. No, we still got a certificate.

I'm hilarious. Oh my gosh. And then we had other people joining in and it was pretty funny, but then the trainer really looked pissed. So, but I think ours was the most accurate representation of motivational interviewing.

That is true. We did a good job. We didn't actually hit all of the points I wanted to hear you saying it. And made it a comedy.

Exactly. Oh my God, it was amazing. We did our change roller. We did.

Where are you on the ruler? Exactly. How willing are you to change? And I told them not at all.

I like my drugs. I was like, all right, you're at a zero. How do we get to a one? He was like, why are we not at a negative one?

Well, well, we are actually. We are. I wasn't ready. You weren't ready.

How can we get there? Take away the drugs. Okay. That would help.

Okay. It's not a real low stick. Well, slowly we knew off, you know, we were the ones in the tavern selling drugs. Yeah, remember that.

That's true. That's true. It's tough. That was several episodes ago, you all the way.

But honestly, I mean, we pop out and pop in stories throughout history. So you just never know. Yeah. But that was fun.

I'll let you know if I get any of the shows. Please do. I want to come. Oh, yeah.

Can I tackle you? Absolutely. I mean, it's a very small theater. So hey, yeah, it's small.

I would be the proud mom. I would be the next one. I would be front row. I'm like front row.

Yes. I'd be like, smile, sparkle, baby, sparkle. Oh, I'd be so excited. I would.

Oh my gosh. Yeah, this shows usually run like they usually run like two weeks. So you have to do that show for two weeks. Wow.

So I remember doing the Miragor for that long. Is this like a summer stock kind of thing? Yeah, they do like six or six to eight shows. That is phenomenal.

Every like different shows every summer. I am almost certain my high school theater teacher is with that. Oh, cool. Yeah.

I think they're only casting for like five or six of them. So I think they're doing I think there's one that's fully professional cast. Maybe two that are fully professional and one that's just like a one man show type thing. I need a one woman show.

That'd be great. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

We updated. That would be so boring. That would be great. Let me know.

Absolutely. All right, y'all. So you have waited. You have pined.

You have said how many days how many days until I get to here? Part two. There you go. Seven seven.

So a whole week. So I'm sorry to keep you in the state of limbo. How dare I? It's just anymore.

We've had that conversation. I think depending on which Catholic you ask, they will have a different answer. Okay. So the newer Catholics will say, well, there's no things limbo.

You ask my grandma and she was like, I'm in it right now. Like, you know, like, kind of seriously. So she really believes in limbo. Got it.

All right. You know, so if I don't like the answer, I get from one. I can just keep asking until I get there. And so I want excellent.

That's what I wanted to hear. Thank you. You're welcome. All right.

So really quickly, if you didn't hear it last week, I'm going to do a really quick overview. I mean, I'm so free to skip over if you guys don't need this. So this story takes place in Oak level, Virginia. This is the story of Michael Short, his wife, Mary, and their nine year old daughter, Jennifer.

They have a home that they also work out of. Michael owns a mobile home moving company where he actually moves mobile homes from one destination to another. On August 15th, 2002, he has found dead shot in the head with a 22 caliber gun. His wife is found in her bed, again, shot in the head deceased with a 22 caliber gun.

And their daughter, Jennifer is not deceased, but she's missing. And she is assumed to be kidnapped. So the police are following every lead possible to try and find Jennifer and figure out who this killer is and what the motive is. So last time we left, we have a community searching for Jennifer, where in September, so a month later, there's no sign of Jennifer, although lots of tips have come into the police.

There haven't been anything like that they could go on. Nothing really strong that pointed them in one direction or another. So we're going to pick up here with part two. Okay, I'm ready.

So it's early September 2002 in rural Rockingham County, North Carolina. Okay. So we're going over the line in Virginia to North Carolina. So this is about 30 miles south of the Short family home.

Eddie Alberthoam sits on several acres of land that includes an uncapped kept right yard in desperate need of mowing. Sounds like my yard. So Eddie's walking around his property when he discovers a brown haired wig in the grass. Just a wig?

It's a brunette wig. Yeah. Eddie thought this was strange. So he picked it up, kind of looked at it and threw the wig away.

Okay, so like sometimes out in the country, like people will go and like dump garbage or dump old couches or just crap. So he probably thought, yeah, this is strange, but people do weird stuff. Yeah, they dump weird things and different, you know? Yeah, and like people are stupid and you know, or like things like they throw things out of the car window or whatever.

Like we find stuff that there's a field across from where my grandparents lived and you find random trash in that field. Yeah, and maybe, you know, it was like somebody's Halloween wig or something. Oh, yeah. You know, they just like threw it or, you know, you just don't know.

Right. So it could have come from anywhere. It really could have. So he didn't think too much of it.

Like I said, he tossed it. Yeah. A few days later, Eddie's daughter showed him some animal teeth that she found on the property and he was like, Oh, cool. Yeah.

Again, when you live out in the country, it's not uncommon for animals to die and like, you know, you find animal pieces. Yes. We had, so I grew up on a dairy farm and we found like the cows will lose their teeth all the time. Like just as, you know, they age and you know, eating and teeth fall out and we would find their teeth, you know, when we're cleaning lots or whatever.

And my grandmother had a whole jar of cats. I'm sure she still has somewhere. Yeah. I'm sure she does.

But then you'd also find like, you know, when an animal died or whatever, like out of barn, you have like raccoons and possums and cats and, you know, things in the natural cycle of life, things die and become skeletons and, you know, whatever. And then you find like pieces of bone and like it's kind of cool sometimes, like, you know, because they've been scavenged and like the bones are clean and circle of life. So like we found like, I mean, like, I found like pieces of animal jaws. Like pieces of like animal jaws.

I've had like teeth in them still and like, I found old turtle shells that are, you know, clean out and yeah, just like neat, like neat stuff like that. I love the bones. I love the appreciation that comes from you about and they were cleaned out because other animals ate the carcass. They did.

Yeah. They cleaned. If they've been in the sun, they've been bleached. Right.

Pretty much. Yeah. It's cool. Circle of life.

It is. It's like, I mean, it's a, it's that is like a farm kid, country kid type thing. Like that's just something that's totally normal. Dust defined.

Like if I were to walk out onto the property, even now, like in fine bones, like it wouldn't be weird to me because like, you know, there's a lot of animals out there. All right. It is. So that's what Eddie thought.

It was the circle of life animal teeth. So on September 26, Eddie let his two dogs out to play near the pond on his property. The dogs appeared to be fighting over something that he initially thought looked like a cleaned out turtle shell and he was like, okay. Yeah.

So he's like, come on boys, come over here. So he's like breaking it up, give it to me, you know. So he inspects it and it's not a turtle shell. It looked like a fragment of an animal school.

So like maybe sometimes a cow or deer or something of that effect. It's a fragment. I think yeah, like what could what you would immediately think of, like what I would immediately think of. Maybe dog.

Yeah. Or coyote. Yeah. Because we have we have a ton of coyotes, even just in my neighborhood, we have a lot of coyotes.

Yeah. But we also donkeys up on the hill. So that takes care of that. What a rich, diverse neighborhood you have.

We're actually one of the only streets in the city limits of zone for agriculture. I know you were telling me you can have chickens. Yeah, we have chickens, goats. We can have agriculture up and down.

It's a very like residential street. Like, I can saw at my yard. You can see your neighbors, you know, like, that's amazing. Yeah, but we can have a we can have animals.

A little duck on a leash. Well, some of our neighbors have chickens and they're like out on the road sometimes. You're not watching for kids crossing. Well, but if you do, does that mean you get to eat it?

Granny did hit one one time. Did you eat it? It actually lived. Oh, I got up and just hopped right up.

He didn't truck. Chicken. Bear Stauff and hoping for chicken and dolphins. I know that.

Yeah. No, he's carried. He was like, not today, granny, not today. So Eddie broke up the fight, finds this animal skull, and he's like, huh, I mean, okay.

That's weird. Yeah. Yeah. Shortly after, Eddie's daughter was around the pond again and she found some more animal parts, but they look different.

And Eddie suspected, um, it's not an animal. Yeah, I thought that's where we were going. This is a human. Yeah.

Eddie called the Rocky Ham County police who swiftly descended on the property. They dragged the pond and found several bones and bone fragments, including a skull with a bullet hole in the back of the head. Police feared this may be the body of Jennifer Short. Yeah.

But initially, the bones looked to be that of an older person. So they were like, okay, you know, it's not. So police reported out that the body was not Jennifer's, that they had to do some DNA analysis. And you know, until that was completed, they could not prove, you know, with absolute certainty that this was or wasn't Jennifer Short.

So forensic analysis of the bones showed that the victim was female and had been shot in the back of the head with a 22. 22. There we go. Yep.

There it is. DNA compared against Michael and Mary's profile proved that the body found in Mr. Albert's pond was in fact that of nine year old Jennifer Short. Jennifer too had been shot in the head and her body parts were strewn about the property 30 miles south of where she'd been kidnapped.

So I guess that wasn't a wig. No, it was a wig. I, well, I don't know. It probably was her hair.

Probably was her hair. Yeah. Not all of Jennifer's body was recovered though. Even though police thoroughly searched the area, they couldn't find all of it.

I mean, if this is a kind of a country-ish area. And if animals, you're going to scavengers. Exactly. So we have no idea if Jennifer experienced any other type of violence because we just don't have all of her to show.

So do you all recall last time when I mentioned the eyewitnesses claiming that they had seen a white male and a flat bud truck near the short home, that ball cap? The man was said to be in his 40s with a baseball cap and a weathered appearance. Well, after police announced the body of Jennifer Short had been discovered, a tip came forward about a local man in North Carolina who lived down the road from where the body was found. Wow.

Like a mile down the road. Dang. He was living in a house that he was renting on this property where he also kept his mobile home. Ooh.

Yeah. This man's name was Garrison Bowman. He went by Gary. Mr.

Bowman was in his 60s and was living in his mobile home off and on the land that he rented. So he had the, from what I understand, he had the mobile home kind of parked, but he lived in this house that he was renting on this property. Yeah. Okay.

His landlord, who was named Mr. Lemon, claimed, yeah. All right. What a name.

I know. Claim that Mr. Bowman was an interesting character who claimed that he had hired a man in Virginia to come and move his mobile home. But the guy took his money and never did the job.

Okay. Weird. So if you were calm, Michael Short lived in Virginia and had a business where he moved mobile homes. So just saying.

The landlord also revealed to police that Mr. Bowman was mad about getting screwed out of money that he had made a threat that he would kill this guy. Okay. Yeah.

He could just kill this guy. He took my money. The landlord also stated that he saw Mr. Bowman building a false bottom for his 2001 Ford van.

That's a weird thing to build. That's a super weird thing to build. A shed. You know, maybe a shelf.

That's kind of where I'm at. Yeah. Maybe build a shelf like here we go. But a false bottom for your van.

For your van. Like what you putting in there. Exactly. It's very strange.

It's too late in the game for it to be moonshine. It's never too late. It is never too late for moonshine. Yeah.

But you're right. Once we got past prohibition, we just didn't get it anymore. Right. Right.

You kind of do what you want. I don't know what lightning. Yeah. Good stuff.

Yes it is. Ever been a cell has a splire. Everybody does. I mean like you know like the person you get your moonshine from.

That's true. Who do you get your moonshine from? I'm not going to help them. Oh, all right.

You're like everybody has one. Everybody has a dealer in the south. For your moonshine. Or your moonshine.

You can actually legally make it. You just can't sell it. True that. Yeah.

Yeah. So keep that hush hush hush hush. So all that seems a little suspect, right? Yeah.

It doesn't work. Like we're kind of building a case for this guy Gary. Gary's looking so hot. Gary's not looking so hot.

False bottom in his van. That's scary. Retined man from Virginia who owns like a mobile moving company. Like all these pieces are kind of coming together.

But keep in mind all of these pieces have been released to the public as well. Okay. So just know that that information was out there. Got it.

Please instantly turn their attention to Gary Bowman. As they reach the area where his home once stood, they find the property empty. Like no mobile home. Like the house obviously is there.

But there's no mobile home and there's no Gary Bowman. Neighbor said that Gary had been gone and had left mid-April a couple days after the murder. Again, this is like not looking so good. I don't look good for Gary.

The landlord, Mr. Lemon, reported that Mr. Bowman had left town and when he went into the rental home, he discovered several maps of Virginia. One with a circle around the area in Henry County where the shorts lived.

It's not looking good for Gary. It's not looking good. Gary, if you didn't do this, this is not. Someone has really...

Someone's pissed at you, Gary. Yeah, this is bad Gary. Absolutely. I'm worried for you.

Gary Bowman had been known to carry a 22-caliber handgun and has a criminal history, mostly for petty crimes and intoxication because well, Gary was a heavy drinker. Gary, I'm worried. That's a lot of white lightning. Worried Gary.

Are you? I am. All right. I'm glad you are.

So settle in. Yes. It's gonna get bad. Well, for Gary.

Well, maybe. All right. Whatever. You let me know.

You want any white lightning? If you're offering. I don't have any, but I do have some whiskey. Oh, what's in love with you?

Hey, my girl, I'm gonna use that. I love whiskey. You bought me whiskey for Christmas one year. Yes, but that was so long ago.

It was like 2020. Yeah, I think it was. It was like 2020 or 2021. Yeah, that's a long time ago.

Did you drink through it? Probably in 2020. Probably in 2020. Yeah, it really was.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a cute bottle. That is true.

Yeah. My friend, she actually the other day, I was chatting with her and I was like, have you been drinking? And she was like, how do you know that? And I said, I smell whiskey on your breath.

And she's not an alcoholic, please, please know that. But anyway, she had just, you know, it was nighttime. It was safe all the things. Right.

Right. She had had, you know, a little shot of whiskey. She had a really rough day and she was like, Oh, I just need this little shot of whiskey. But I it was so funny because she didn't think I could pick up on it.

I was like, I smell your breath. Right. Yeah. Like I can see you're talking to me.

I can smell the whiskey. That's what it is. And it smells good to come or you want to share? You want to?

Hey, where are you taking a shot? You didn't give me. Right. Yeah.

I love the whiskey. So apparently Gary kind of liked it all. So police put out an APB for Gary Bowman. Gary was nowhere to be found.

And they couldn't even find him in the United States. Eventually they tracked him down because he was in jail. Oh, in Canada. Wow.

Yeah. On immigration charges. Gary. See Gary attempted to cross the border, but was stopped because when they pulled his records, he had like DUI charges in the United States.

And due to Canada, Canada's immigration laws, they can't allow a person on like one of charges and charges into their country. Right. So the Canadian, the royal Canadian mounted police had him in custody. Got it.

Yeah. So by this point, the FBI gets involved with the case and all of them take a little trippy trip to Canada where they talk to him and Canada is like, Oh sure. Hey, how about it? Hey, this is your guy.

We don't want him. It's not us. We don't want him. Our country's clean.

We don't want this crap. We don't want his mobile home. Right. He's just doing all that.

And by the way, the whole mobile home was from 1968. So it wasn't like it was like, that's got to smell. It's got to have been in those like really old mobile homes. Like no matter how clean, old smoke, like that's a smell.

I feel like no matter how clean of a person they are, it just has a smell. It does. I don't know if it's like the breaking down of the plastics and everything else. It is that old carpet, old shag, like old shag, but that you know, some dog has pooped on a lot.

You know that there's been maybe some water leaks and they have a mold smell to it. Yeah. You know, somebody smoked in it. Oh, yeah.

So like all of those smells together, I agree. It's a distinct smell. And I'm sure those Canadian mallet police are like, Oh, our horse is picking up on your mobile home. If you're from Canada, I'm so sorry.

But are we? I don't know. Probably not. Anyway, so they go and visit him and they have a little talky talk with him.

So like I said, the FBI is involved and they're a little firmer in the talks and that kind of thing. So they were talking to him and just said, so what's your interest in Virginia? And he's like, what? Well, they take a phone book and throw it at you.

You're not tough. It's kind of like it's in movies. Yeah. So eventually, Bowman heads back to the United States because Canada says never again, we hate that smell.

So he again is interviewed at this point, he's 66 years old and he works as a carpenter. Wow. When asked why he fled to Canada, Bowman stayed, he wasn't fleeing. He had planned to move his mobile home to Alaska or Canada.

Like that was the plan all along. It's 1960s mobile home. Things were falling off of it. Things were not going to be well insulated.

He's not going to make it long. No, he's not up there in that little guy. No, he's probably, I mean, coming from the south, you probably don't have that skill set. No, that's not going to end.

Well, lots. I imagine on the highway, just like lots of pieces of flying off and drivers are like, oh my god, I'm avoiding this. Yeah, that's dangerous, man. Yeah, the door to work is just getting the fake bottom.

Maybe he made is like falling off and all the things maybe sparking a little bit. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I see that too. And we're like, who is this guy?

Get this guy out the road. That kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah.

So this was the plan all along though. That was the plan. Like, nope, I wasn't fleeing. I know it seems like that.

I was just moving. I was moving. And he says, I let my landlord know this. Like I told my landlord as of August, you know, 17th, I would be packing up, taking my little mobile home and heading north.

So the landlord knew this. Yeah. But the landlord says something completely opposite. Like, oh no, he just moved away.

Yeah. So something to know here. Bowman's mobile home and the house that he rented said about a mile away from where Jennifer's body was found. And while he was older than the man the eyewitnesses had said, because remember they said, oh, some white guy in his 40s.

Yeah. He often wear a baseball cap and he had sort of a worn looking face and presentation, you know, obviously probably had a hard life probably was smoking doing all those things in the mobile home. So it could have been that maybe they got the age wrong. Like he was a white dude.

He was just 20 years older. So could have been. Could have been. Gary asserted he was not the killer of Michael Mary or Jennifer.

Like he did not know these people. He also said that he didn't know what the landlord was talking about. He was like, I don't know what you're talking about maps and all these other things about threatening someone. He was like, I plan to move this mobile home myself.

Yeah. Like I didn't have anybody moving it for me. Like I have the capability with my van to move it. I don't need somebody.

So this was really strange. It's really weird. Very, very strange. So he was never arrested officially.

He did go in front of like a grand jury in Roanoke, but they didn't have enough to indict him. Okay. So they let him go. He was always however considered a person of interest.

It's important to note here that Gary Bowman had initially agreed to give his landlord the mobile home. Oh, and then he planned to move to Alaska without it. He was like, okay. So I'll just leave it here.

You know, if you want to take it or have run it out or whatever, you know, no problem. And I'm just going to move up north. So Mr. Bowman threw a curveball when he decided that he was going to leave the mobile home and deed it to a friend who lived in Michigan.

So when he told the landlord this, like, hey, by the way, my friends come in and they're going to come and take it. So, so deals off. So sorry. Sorry about it.

I'm still leaving. But peace. The landlord was said to be furious and wanted to get even with him. But it was his mobile home.

It was not the landlord's model. Right. Like he could do the last one. Gary could do whatever he wanted because Gary had promised the landlord the mobile home and said, Oh, you can have this.

I'm going to go up north and get back on his word. Yep. Went back on his word. And so now the landlord is feeling pretty screwed over.

So could this be someone trying to frame him or make him look suspicious? Sounds like it. I mean, it's doing a pretty good job. Remember the whole false bottom.

Yeah. Okay. So the police actually impounded his van. There was no false bottom.

And there seemed to be no physical or forensic evidence to link him to Jennifer Michael or Mary. Weird. Yeah. So this whole claim was untrue.

Yeah. And actually Gary maintained his innocence and took a polygraph test, which he passed. Interesting. It's just so strange.

Yeah. So police actually pulled Gary's phone records from July to August of 2002 just to see who he was calling just to kind of prove a connection. So if they could see that he called Michael short, they could confirm like, Okay, you did know this guy. So they pulled the records.

And at this time, people didn't really use cell phones. So they pulled their lines, obviously. And there were calls made to Canada, Michigan and New Jersey. There were no calls made to Virginia.

All right. I'm Tim Gary. You would think he was hiring. He was hiring someone to move to up north, you know, to move his his mobile home to Alaska that he would be calling Virginia a whole lot and coordinating with Michael on doing that.

Right. How to do it. Yeah. But there was no call of that that he never contacted Virginia, the state of Virginia at all.

That's weird. Anyone. Gary went in front of the grand jury and like I said, no charges could be filed against him because there just really wasn't evidence to support it. So it was thrown out.

He was released. For his part, many of Gary Bowman's friends stepped up for him and claimed that he was actually a really good man and couldn't have done this. One of his friends even said like, I have a nine year old son and he's so good with him. And like when they work on mechanics and like things together, like he really helps him and he's just really kind.

I could not see him doing this. Most people admitted like, yeah, like a drink. Yeah, like he was, you know, the town drinker. But he's the nice.

But he's a nice guy. Like, yes, he drinks, but that doesn't make him a killer. Right. Or a bad person.

Yeah, that's a huge leap to go to. So after strong leads and dead ends, by 2003, the case goes cold. In 2006, several members of the Henry County Sheriff's Department were invited on racketeering charges. Wow.

But investigators say that in no way played any part in the murder case. Like there, but it does call into question like some politics, right? So like, was there anything that was like hidden? There's so much in this case where they're not saying anything.