Aileen Conway

Warning. This episode contains graphic crime scene detail and may be sensitive for some listeners. It is solvable. It was solvable two weeks after it happened. March twenty fifth, two thousand and four, Cross Plains, Tennessee their last day question Mark. Jennifer Just twenty one, stands in the kitchen of her boyfriend Joey Benton's family home, where she and her two year old daughter, Adriana Wicks have been living. She has the. Only phone in the home in her hand and is on a call with her father. Jennifer expresses how the night before, she and her boyfriend's parents, joe and Cindy Benton, had been involved in a very heated argument. In fact, it was so heated that Jennifer was still rattled from the night before. She moves the. Receiver down to talk to a muffled female voice coming from behind her. She then says goodbye to her father and hangs up the phone. And what happens next, Well, that's what we're here to find out, isn't it. Jennifer and Adriana Wicks have not been seen or heard from since March twenty five, two thousand and four. I'm a True crime investigative podcaster living in the same town where the Wicks girls went missing. Hi, I'm Jules and I've teamed up with Jennifer's sister Casey Robinson to ask some big questions from our little hush town that we've been too afraid to ask each other over the last twenty years. Where are Jennifer and Adriana Wicks? Small Town's talk and guess what we're listening? Missing in Hushtown is coming twenty twenty four. Wherever you get your podcasts. The entire first season will drop in August. We'll see you then. Welcome to Primetime Crime. I'm your host, Kylie. Let's talk right now on true crime, and then together we are going to work on warming up some cold cases. Let's go. Hey, guys, welcome back to another episode of Primetime Crime. It's Kylie. We are going to go ahead and dive into right now on true crime. First order of business in the never ending Scott Peterson saga. So I've talked about it on the pod before. The La Innocence Project did pick up Scott's case in the He is a convicted murderer of his wife and unborn son, Connor. So there has been allegedly this evidence that was never tested for DNA, and the La Innocence Project and Scott's defense team want this evidence tested, so the judge officially has agreed to complete DNA testing on the duct tape that was found on Lacy's body, and his team very much thinks that this evidence is going to exonerate him. So it'll be really interesting to see what ends up happening with this whole case and saga. I have always been a big proponent of Scott being guilty. I think that the circumstantial evidence surrounding the case showed us that he had motive and means, and his actions following didn't really match with some who was a mourning husband and soon to be father. But the one thing that always super bothered me about this case is that I don't think Scott is a super smart guy, and I don't think that he really had a plan, and the fact that there was no forensics left behind always has bothered me. I feel like in the Chris Watts case, he left behind so much evidence because he was an idiot and he didn't plan, and his plan was pretty much interrupted when Sheanan's friend tipped law enforcement off that Chanan was missing. Now in Lacy's case, he didn't necessarily have a plan. But I also don't think that Scott is that smart. So if anything, I think this DNA evidence is going to work against Scott because I do feel like there is a ninety nine point nine percent chance that Scott is the one who killed his wife, Lacy and their unborn son. But I will continue to follow this and keep you guys updated because I do think it's going to be a very interesting little journey to kind of go on and see what they're going to try to come up with with this, because DNA evidence does not lie. But I will continue to keep you guys updated on all of that switching gears. I don't know if any of you guys have been following this Black Swan murder trial, but it is the trial against a woman named Ashley Benifield who is on trial for murdering her husband Greg Benifield. Of course they are charging her with murder. She said that she killed him in self defense, so there is a lot of different dynamics to this case. Pretty lies and alibis. My girl Gigi has been doing daily recaps on her podcast, so if you want a little more in depth coverage. I do suggest you go listen to her. She does the best trial coverage. I first found her, I want to say it was during Lori VA or Elec Murda. I can't remember which one. I think it must have been Elec Murda. But I have been a loyal listener ever since and her trial coverage is, in my opinion, just the best, and I look forward to every single episode she puts out. But Ashley took the stand at the end of last week and basically is just trying to in her defense say this was self defense, he was abusive, this is what was going on. But the way that Doug was shot, he wasn't necessarily facing Ashley. And they also talked about how his stance was when he was shot, meaning he wasn't in attack mode, he wasn't trying to harm Ashley, and that this was just a callous murder. So it's going to be interesting to see what comes out with this and what ends up transpiring, and I will continue to keep you updated. But I do suggest you check out Pretty Liza and Alibis because she does the best of the best job at covering these cases. Last thing I want to talk about is over the weekend, the crime scene photos from the d D Blanchard Gypsy Road Blanchard homicide have surface. Now, there have been a few crime scene photos that have emerged over the years, but this was like a huge dump of photos, actual crime scene photos, the photos of the home, which, holy moly, is an absolute hoarder's paradise, absolute shambles. I just have no words for the condition of that house and the condition in which they were living like it probably should have been condemned. And then, of course the actual homicide photos are chilling and horrific, but they are on the Internet and on a Google share drive for public consumption. If you so want to look at them, they can easily be found by a simple Google search. But I do feel like we need to talk about Gypsy because I talked about her initially when she was getting ready to be released from prison. Once she was released, does anyone watch her show on Lifetime Life After lock Up, because I need to talk about it. And if you don't watch, go ahead and skip forward to the end of this right now in True Crime and get into the episode. But I have so many thoughts, so just to give you a little cliffs notes version if you don't watch and are interested. So Gypsy got out of prison earlier this year, and she was at the time married to this guy named Ryan who had written her in prison and they were pen pals and then they ended up getting married while she was still incarcerated. She got released and went to live with her now husband, now depicted on the Lifetime show Ryan, her husband is very protective of Gypsy, and Gypsy said that she felt like he was too controlling and it reminded her of living with her mom all over again, which is a really scary traumatic thing if that is the case. Because she was an abused child. We cannot deny that she was an abused child, and to kind of fall back into a pattern of going right back to a similar situation to what you were in before, it has to be really scary if that is the truth. I do not know if Ryan was controlling. That is just what Gypsy said on the show. So in the midst of all of that, Gypsy and her stepmother are semi in communication with Gypsy's ex fiancee, Ken, And in the midst of her and Ryan having these marital issues and having these conversations about their relationship, Gypsy ends up being back in contact with Ken and then eventually is deciding that she wants to divorce Ryan and be into a relationship with Ken. And there's a phone call that Gypsy has where she's talking to Ryan and she said, I want to get a divorce and within six to nine months, I'm going to be in a relationship with Ken. And this is all playing out on the show like it's playing out in real time, but it's playing out on the show, and she essentially breaks up with Ryan, files for divorce, and then before you know it, Gypsy is announcing that she's pregnant on social media with Ken's baby, and the timeline is not timelining right, So she breaks up with Ryan and then just a couple of weeks later concedes this baby with Ken. Now Louisiana is messy, and if you are legally married and you are pregnant, the person who are you're legally married to is the person who will go on the birth certificate, despite the fact that that might not be the legal dad until the divorce is final. Ryan is going to go on the birth certificate, and then there's going to have to be paternity tests and I think it's just going to get super duper messy because people are already questioning this child's paternity. Is it Ryan's baby? Is it Ken's baby? Gypsy said it's Ken's baby. I will believe her until we are proven otherwise. But I just think that this whole thing is just so messy and it's very interesting, and I'm really glad that Life after Lockup exists because I want to watch it all play out. I'm not gonna lie. I love a reality TV moment and I love like a true crime thing, so when they intersect, I'm intrigued. I'm not gonna lie. I'm intrigued. So that is the right now in true crime. Check out the photos if you are interested in that kind of thing. And thank you for letting me talk out my life after lock up feelings, because I have a lot of feelings about life after Lockup and all of the things that have been happening in the last few weeks. It's been a wild ride. So we are gonna go ahead and get started with today's episode. Okay, guys, today we are jumping in to talk about the unsolved murder of a woman named a Lean Conway. This story ran on Unsolved Mysteries, the OG Unsolved Mysteries with Robert Stack and we are still talking about it today because it is still an unsolved case. So we are going to go ahead and dive right in. Aileen was born a Leen in Anderson June fifteenth of nineteen thirty five in Lawton, Oklahoma. She would eventually marry Pat Conway, and together they had seven children. At the time of her death, she was fifty years old. Her and Pat had been married for a total of thirty three years. They lived and raised their family in Lawton, Oklahoma. She was born there and that is where she would lose her life. On the morning of April twenty ninth, nineteen eighty six. A Leen had disappeared from the family's home around ten forty in the morning. There was a farmer who had noticed a large cloud of smoke coming from a nearby road, and he ended up calling the authorities, and once the Oklahoma Highway Patrol arrived, which was about twenty minutes after the fact, they found a burning car embedded into a deserted bridge, and the fire was actually so intense that it had melted into the guardrail into which the car had crashed. Authorities also noticed a body inside, but they were unable to get to it initially because the fire was raging so much. Once the flames were eventually under control, the body was located and it was burned beyond recognition. They had noticed that there were some skid marks present at the site and they kind of were able to project that the car crash happened at a higher rate of speed, and they projected between fifty and sixty miles per hour. So initially it just seemed like this car crash was just a horrific accident that had turned tragic and someone had lost their life. They ended up running the plates on the car and discovered that the car belonged to a man named Pat Conway, and the victim later was identific as a lean Now. The Conways lived about fifteen miles away from the crash site. Law enforcement eventually came out and said that this was a single vehicle fatality accident, but things started happening after the fact that made Aileen's husband Pat think that there was something more to this. This was more than just an accident, and he thought that his wife could have potentially been a victim of foul play. So a few hours after the accident, Pat had returned home and he noticed that the patio door was wide open. He also had found a Leen's purse sitting on a chair, and her license and glasses were still inside of the purse. And these are things that a normal person would carry with them, and Eileen was no different. She always would have her purse, her glasses, her license with her wherever she went. He also found that the ironing board and iron that was still on was set up almost like she had been there getting ready to iron something and was interrupted. There was also a garden hose that was running into the swimming pool that was in their backyard. And then Pat continued to go through the house, went to the master bedroom and he noticed that the bathtub was full of water and that the home phone that was sitting right there was also off the hook. He thought maybe Aileen had been doing chores of sorts around the house and had attempted to make a phone call, possibly to call for help, to call nine one one, and was interrupted. And Pat also had a really hard time trying to figure out why Eileen was on that desolate country road, especially alone, because she was not the type of person that would wander off and go in places she wasn't familiar with, and the area that Eileen's car was found wasn't an area that either one of them had been familiar with or had ever traveled before, and she had no reason to be out there, so he decided for there. He felt like there was something more going on here and he wanted to reach out to someone for help, and he contacted Ray Anderson of the District Attorney's office at that time, so Ray initially thought that Pat was just kind of grieving. He didn't want to really reconcile the fact that his wife had been taken in a tragic way. But once Pat kind of shared with him some of the things that he had found, he also began to suspect that this might be more than just a single car fatality accident and there might have been something more sinister going on. So a few days following this, Pat and Ray Anderson decided to go to the crash site to kind of see things for themselves. About two hundred feet from the bridge, they found a church bulletin, and this was from the church that Pat and Aileen had attended, and Pat said he remembers that this bulletin was in the car. It was on the car's dashboard the last time he saw it. But then he also said Aileen always drove with the windows up and the air conditioning on, meaning that if she had been going down the road and this bulletin happened to fly out the window, it would have been impossible because she didn't ever drive with her windows down, the windows were up, the air conditioning was on. So this led them to believe that Aileen could have potentially been with somebody else and the car would have been stopped when this church bulletin had come out of the car. So they believed that whoever was with her that day is the one that caused the accident, and they did it in order to make it look like a single car accident, and then they fled the scene. So as a result of this investigation by Ray Anderson, the Lawton District Attorney changed the official cause of death from accidental to unexplained. The DA then asked the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation and the State Fire Marshal to evaluate the likelihood of arson because although the car had crashed, there was also a fire that was involved and this could have potentially been set intentionally to conceal the identity of the victim and get rid of any forensic evidence that could have been left behind at the scene. I've done many a story where people are murdered and then the area that their bodies are is set on fire in order to conceal this evidence. So there's not really a stretch here to think that this accident happened and then a fire occurred to try to conceal the identity of whose vehicle this was and who was in the vehicle. So a guy named Sunny Sansum of the Fire Marshals Department was contacted, and he became suspicious because he had looked at the accident scene photographs and he saw a large amount of fire damage inside of the car, and it was very very significant. It was completely burned android and he thought that it looked very similar to if the gasoline had been used to start a fire versus a natural fire that occurred because of a car accident. Another thing that was interesting was that the gas cap was missing from the car, and he said that in most arson cases where there is a vehicle involved, the gas cap does end up getting removed because it's usually done to help make sure that the fire actually spreads, and that is exactly what happened in this case, so it appeared. So they did do some burn tests on the dashboard and upholstery samples of a car very similar to Aleen's. They were trying to figure out if they thought that the inside had been doused with gasoline or if it had just caught fire because of the accident, and they ended up taking a blow torch to the material, the same material that was used to make the dashboard and the upholstery in Eileen's car, and when the blow torch was removed, the fire immediately went out. And it's a flame retarded material, so if it does catch on fire, it typically will not start to billow and turn into more of a fire. Then they took gasoline and soaked these materials with gasoline and it ended up setting it ablaze and it was completely destroyed. So from there they decided that there's no way that without an accelerant like gasoline, the car would not have burned as extensively as it did. So we're definitely looking here at an accident with a arson involvement for sure. So the question remains, why was a leen on that bridge in the car without her personal belongings that day. Why did she leave everything behind at home seemingly in the middle of chores. What happened? So there are a couple of theories. There had been some burglaries in the neighborhood where Eileen and Pat had lived in the weeks months prior to her death, and Pat thinks that this potentially could be what happened. He thinks that potentially it could have been a burglary. There were a couple, maybe one or two people inside of the home. They didn't realize that Aileen was home, and when they ended up getting into the home, they found Aileen was there, and they didn't want to leave her there in case she would be able to identify them. There's also an article out there that says that there was some jewelry missing from the home, which also supports the burglar theory. There's also been some speculation that Aileen had some type of medical condition, like a medical emergency, and she ended up leaving the house at a hurry and then ended up crashing the car to do this, but there's no evidence to that. I think, honestly, people just try to grasp it straws to try to figure out how this potentially could have happened. But Pat is definitely of the mindset that someone hurt Aileen intentionally and her death, and he always continued to search for answers. He did remarry in nineteen eighty eight. He married a woman named Pat coincidentally, and he always pushed for answers into what happened to a Leen. He was at the forefront of this case trying to figure out what happened to his wife. I'm going to play a clip from the Unsolved Mysteries episode it originally aired November twenty ninth of nineteen eighty seven, and I am going to play a little clip where we get to hear from Pat himself, and then we're gonna talk a little bit about where the case stands today and go from there. The thing that really got mountainting was the phone being off the hook. Is though she'd attempted to make a phone call, possibly the police department, we have no way on who. Between me and the kids, one would say one thing and one another, and we start putting it together and right away we find out, well, there was no accident at all. We are now going to hear from Ray Anderson from the District Attorney's office. He is the one who Pat had initially contacted and who really helped propel this case forward. The first impression that I had of this case when I met with mister Conway was that of a spouse that was left alone and behind, not expecting the tragedy that happened, and looking for an excuse or looking for some reason why this happened other than just being an accident. However, when you start looking at the extenuating and surrounding circumstances, the way that she left her house, then it leads you to believe that there is a possibility that there could be foul play. I had you on, I take that side of the road and I'll take this side. Just kind of look for anything that might look. Familiar or amuse us. So there we heard from Ray Anderson, and then we have Pat and Ray actually going to crash site to try to do their own little investigation and see if they can find anything. And honestly, I have to give props to Ray Anderson for actually listening to Pat and going out to the crash site kind of realizing that there might be more to this than meets the eye, because it would have been really, really easy just to close this case and say it was a single car accident tragedy, this woman will lost her life, but there wasn't anything suspicious about it. But Pat kept pushing and Ray really met him halfway on that, and I think that's the reason that we're still talking about this case today. We are now going to hear some final words from Pat again. This was nineteen eighty seven that this Unsolved Mysteries episode came out, a year after Aileen was killed, and at this point he obviously wanted answers, and I will tell you Pat never stopped looking for answers. So let's hear a little bit more from Pat, and then we are going to talk about where the case stands today. Pat Conway is still searching for answers. Even though you're discouraged, you keep pushing it. Every day. You constantly think about it when you go to bed of an I or get up of the morning. It's on your mind all the time, and somehow it needs to be solved. I'll never clear as far as trying to solve the case. Aileen was survived by her husband, of course, Pat, and the four daughters and three sons. Like I said, Pat remarried in nineteen eighty eight a woman named Patricia Durbin, and they got married in Lawton and lived in Lawton, and he continued on trying to rebuild his life, always trying to figure out what happened to his wife, Aileen. And he did this until his death in August of twenty thirteen, at eighty one year years old. Pat never stopped searching for answers into what happened to his wife. Unfortunately, in twenty eighteen, Pat and a lean son, Fred, passed away at the age of fifty six. It looks like he passed away in Tennessee. Another really unfortunate circumstance for this poor family to not know what happened and just to have her death clouded in such suspicion has to do weigh on them every single day. I know that Pat literally went to his grave fighting for answers. He had commented that if he lived to be one hundred years old, he was still going to be searching for answers as to what happened to a Leen. And that's exactly what he did. So as of today, the case, of course remains unsolved, and we are at the point now where the perpetrator or perpetrators of this crime are likely very elderly or no longer even with us anymore. And it just takes one person to know what happened. It takes one person to confess deathbed confession this is what happened, to give the family closure and give the family answers. There is still a reward being offered leading for information that will lead to a conviction in this case. But because of the timeframe in which this happened, it happened in nineteen eighty six, and it happened before I was born, So that really goes to show you how long this case has gone without resolution, without any kind of information leading to what happened. Aileen was a wife, she was a mother, She lived in lat in her entire life. She lost her life in Lawton. Somebody obviously took her life in Lawton, and it has gone unsolved for thirty eight years. Over thirty eight years at this point, and that is really sad and tragic. But it just takes one person to say that they know something and get the ball rolling in the right direction. A lot of the people that initially worked this case are also no longer living, and that is also something that leads the case to not being solved because the people that originally investigated it and looked into it are no longer there to keep propelling it forward. Pat is no longer here to keep propelling it forward. But we can't let Eileen's name fade off into oblivion and not talk about her story because her story is important and there is somebody out there that knows something, even if they don't realize it, they know something that could lead to figuring out what happened to Eileen, just to give the family answers. I don't know what her remaining children think about the case. I'm sure that they all supported their father and they think that he was onto something with everything that he had brought up. And I hope that they do get resolution in Eileen's case and we do get some answers. Never too late to solve a cold case. This one is thirty eight years old, and why not now right? Why not now? So share a Leen story. I'm gonna be posting all the family photos and pictures of some of the things pertaining to Aileen's death on my Instagram and Facebook pages. Please follow me there so you can see all of that and share this episode with at least one person. You never know who you're going to reach in a situation like this, so I really appreciate you guys as always for listening, and I will see you on Friday for a brand new Unsolved case and I hope you have a great week ahead. Bye. Welcome to the Dead Podcast. I'm your host, Desi, and on this podcast, I discuss all things spooky and weird, from ghosts, demons, religion, to folklore, urban legends, true crime, and all things paranormal, with some horror movie reviews sprinkled in. So join me on the spooky Ride.