Brenda Gerow

All witnesses, suspects, and persons of interest are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Warning this episode contains graphic crime scene detail. Please listen with discretion. Welcome to Primetime Crime. I'm your host, Kylie. Let's talk right now in true crime, and then together we are going to work on warming up some cold cases. Let's go Hey, guys, welcome to this week's episode of Primetime Crime. It's Kylie and we are going to go ahead and get into this week's right now on True Crime update, and then we're going to get into the episode. So in Lori Valo Neews, she is of course currently in the process of motioning for a new trial, and she's bringing everything into it, even that fact that she was ill at the start of her trial. She's really doing the most as. She typically does. But I will keep you guys updated on what happens. I personally don't think she's going to get a new trial, but we never know, honestly. In other trying to get a new trial updates, we have Elec Murda. He is also working his way through trying to get a new trial, and unfortunately, I do think he has some thing as kind of going in his favor because we have the whole clerk of court being charged with dry tampering, so he has that kind of in his back pocket. There's also some alleged text message between Elick and Eddie Smith that's cousin Eddie if you followed along with the trial, and according to Eleck's team, these text messages would have potentially maybe made a difference in his defense if they had known about it. So it's going to be interesting to see what all is going to come of this. The South Carolina Attorney General has until August eighth to respond to everything, so we are kind of in a holding pattern for that. But if there is a new trial, it is going to be freaking insanity. And I am not sure that I am ready for all of this to happen again, because this is truly the case that never ends. It is non stop. I feel like I have truly lived in a Elik Myrdal whirlwind for the last several years of my life. It is non stop. But I will keep you updated on what comes of that. The Menenda's brother's hearing is coming up in August, and they are allowing the sexual abuse stuff to be brought in, so I think that's very interesting. I don't know what's going to happen in this hearing, but I do feel like their team has had a lot of time to prepare for everything that's going to transpire in this hearing, and they're able to bring in the different abuse things, which I think is a huge part of this case. And I am going to be staying on top of every little bit of development that happens in this one. We've kind of been in a holding pattern for a while because they have pushed all the parole stuff back as far as like the hearings and stuff, but is coming up, and it is coming up sooner rather than later. So I am going to try and keep you guys update it as best as I can. All Right, So, last thing I want to talk about. I think that I originally covered this story during my Right Now and True Crime updates at some point in time, but I wanted to share it. Update on Sam Haskell Junior. So he is the son of an ex Hollywood agent and he is accused of murdering his wife and her parents in twenty twenty three, and he was in jail and he passed away due to injuries from self harm, So we're going to kind of talk a little bit about that now. Now. He dismembered his wife and disposed of her in different bags and called somebody to haul these bags away, and when the person came to haul them away, realized, oh my gosh, this is probably human remains and contacted law enforcement and it just blew up into this whole thing. Her parents have never been found, so although they are presumed, their remains have never been found. So Sam was thirty seven. He did leave a suicide note, and he said in this note that he would miss his three young sons. He called them his best friends. He was not on suicide Watch. Although he previously had been on suicide Watch, he wasn't on it at the time of his death. And his whole plan with all of. This, allegedly was to get rid of his wife, essentially, and then he was going to leave his kids with his parents and leave to Japan with a twenty seven year old woman that he was having an affair with. There was some text messages that went back and forth, and I guess this was kind of mapped out and kind of the plan, And I honestly think that he thought he was going to get away with it, but because he was so dumb and disposed of her in such a horrific way and then had somebody else come to like haul away the remains and think that he wasn't going to get caught. He's a horrible person, and I wish that he had fessed up to where the bodies of her parents were before he decided to. End his life. His attorney said that his suicide was an attempt to avoid further media coverage because he was afraid for his boys. But I'm sorry, but you put yourself in this situation, and you put them in this situation. You created this. So I have not one single ounce of sympathy for him, and I feel so bad for his poor wife, her parents, their remaining family, their children who have had to experience losing both of their parents now, and their grandparents. It's just awful. How people can be so cruel and think that they are going to get away with such horrific acts of violence and then just go on to live their life as if nothing happened and not get caught. I cannot wrap my head around anyone that thinks that this kind of behavior is okay and how they can live with themselves day to day knowing that they stole three lives and they created hell for their remaining family and they can't even face up and be brave enough to take accountability for in prison and go through trial and all of that. And he just chose to end his life instead. So I think that tells you everything you need to know about the type of man Sam Haskell Junior is allegedly in my opinion, because unfortunately he was not able to get his day in court because he decided to end his life. So that is the right now and true crime update for the week, and we are going to get into today's episode. All right, guys, today. We are jumping in to a new unsolved case. Now. This one I recently featured on my Unsolved Sunday spotlight on Instagram, and as I was looking into it, I decided that this was a really good one to cover on the podcast because again, it's this case that needs more attention and needs more coverage, so hopefully somebody that knows something will come forward with information. So this episode, I'm going to be telling you about the unsolved homicide of a previously known Jane Doe, who was identified after thirty four years now, although there is a person of interest in her case, this person has never been charged and authorities are still very much looking for people that might have known this couple around the time that this girl disappeared in hopes that they can help piece together a mystery that has eluded authorities for so long. So we're going to be discussing the disappearance and subsequent murder of a woman who is named Brenda Garou. She finally got her name back after thirty four years of being a Jane Doe. For my research for this episode, I'm going to link all of my sources down below in the show notes. But I also listened to the podcast Anatomy of Murder and I will be sure to link that below in the show notes as well, if you guys want to listen. It's very end up, very insightful, and we are going to go ahead and get into Brenda's story now. Brenda Marie Garrow was born on February eighteenth of nineteen sixty to her parents, William Garrow and Brenda Louise Harriman. She also had a younger brother who was named Bill, and she was very very close with Bill. Brenda and Bill grew up in and out of different foster care homes and would often be separated in different homes at different times, but they did remain close despite this. Now, I don't know exactly the circumstances surrounding why they were in. Foster care, but that is how a lot. Of their formative years were spent, were in and out of these different foster homes. Despite being around three years apart, they had a lot in common. They liked the same music and would often go to concerts together. In the podcast I was referring to earlier, Bill said that Brenda took him to his first concert when he was only fourteen years old. Now, eventually their dad would remarry and they were brought back together and moved into a house that his dad and his new wife lived in. Around this time, Brenda had gotten a job as a bartender at a local biker bar that was located in Massachusetts, and that is where she met a man named John Jack Calhauser. And you were going to hear me talk a lot about this individual throughout the episode, and we are going to refer to him from here on out as Jack. So Bill had heard some not so great rumors about Jack, but of course Brenda had looked past all of that and really liked Jack. So Brenda and Jack were seemingly in a relationship. Now, keep in mind, Brenda is very young around this time. I'm not sure exactly how old she was when she met Jack, but around nineteen or twenty years old, So she is very very young, and she's impressionable, and obviously she really likes Jack, so she is more likely than not going to go along with anything that he proposes. So in early nineteen eighty, Brenda had told Bill that she was going to leave town with Jack, and then officially, in July of nineteen eighty, Brenda left with Jack on the back of his motorcycle, and with this she told her brother that she would eventually be back home. After two months of not hearing from his sister, Bill got a collect call from Brenda and she had told him she was in New Mexico and she had picked up some turquoise jewelry and wanted to mail it to him, which she did and he would receive it a couple of weeks later. In the midst of Brenda having gone off and eventually getting this collect call, Bill would become privy to information that Jack was on the run from the law because he was wanted for attempted murder. And this does kind of make sense in high sight, because Jack was so adamant about leaving the state, and Bill very much thinks that the reason that he was so adamant about leaving and Brenda going with him is because he was on the run from the law and he was a wanted man. Bill would later hear from his sister Brenda one final time, and at this point she had called him. She said she was in Arizona, and she was very short and to the point and very frank about the fact that she was going to be returning home soon. She didn't necessarily elaborate about what was going on, but she said she was coming home and she would be there soon. And Bill did get the impression that something was wrong, but needless to say, Brenda said she was coming home. So he was very happy to hear this because he and his sister were, like I said, extremely close. Unfortunately, this would be the last time that Bill would hear from a sister, and for the next thirty four years he would have no idea what happened to her. But I'm sure in all of these years, Bill never once thought that Brenda's life had come to such a tragic end. He really did think that she was still out there and just didn't want to be in contact anymore, which I'm sure was a whole different can of emotions for him, being that they were so close, and he was very much under the impression that Brenda was just not in contact anymore and didn't want to have anything to do with him. I can't even imagine either end of that spectrum and having to try to navigate any of that. So months went by and nobody had heard anything from Brenda. Bill of course became increasingly concerned because she said that she was going to be coming home and she still had it returned home. So Bill was worried, of course, because he and his sister were very very close and he hadn't heard from her. But at this point in time, Brenda had been gone for about a year and a half, and like I said, they had been in contact up until recently. So he went ahead and went to the police to file a missing person's report on Brenda. But he was basically told that Brenda was an adult and if she wants to disappear and go off on her own and doesn't want to be found, and then there's really nothing that law enforcement could do about that. So that is kind of where the story ends. Bill tried to go on with his life, obviously devastated that in his mind, his sister didn't want to have anything to do with him. Bill ended up moving out of his dad's house. He ended up getting his own apartment, and eventually would marry and go on to have children of his own. But all of this time there was always a lingering feeling of him wanting to know where his sister was and if she was okay. And he even had thought he had moved out, he had a new phone number, and Brenda didn't have really any way to contact him, so he thought that maybe she was trying to get in contact with him and she wasn't able to because he had left the home. He had left the phone number that she was able to get a hold of him by, So in the back of his mind he's thinking, maybe she is trying to get in contact with me. But she can't. So this one particular day, he had gone to the Social Security office to get an ID for his daughter, and while he was there. He had an idea of maybe trying to send a letter to Brenda, and that the office would be able to locate Brenda and send the letter and maybe in some way this would kind of help ease his mind as to if Brenda was okay or not. So Bill ended up writing a three page letter to his sister, and from what was said in the podcast that I listened to, it is assumed that the Social Security Office did send the letter, but nothing ever came back from it. So with this, Bill took it as that Brenda did not want to have contact with him, which of course was just devastating. Given the fact that they had always been so so close, and this was nineteen eighty one, things were a hicic of a lot different. You couldn't just pick up a cell phone and try to call somebody or text somebody and see what was going on. You couldn't track their location. He had no way of knowing where his sister was because the last time he heard from her she was in Arizona and she was on her way home, and then she never showed up. So that story, right there is sad in tragic thinking about Bill writing a three page letter to a sister that he's being told by a number of different people that she probably just doesn't want to have anything to do with her family, and she probably just willingly left on her own. Bill was young too when all of this was going on, and I can't even imagine what was going through his head with all of this, especially after he had moved out and started a family and all of that. Brenda was missing all of these really really important times in her little brother's life. So we're now going to switch gears a little bit, because unfortunately the story does take a tragic turn, and unfortunately Brenda did lose her life, but she was known as a Jane Doe for many, many years. In all of this time that Bill was thinking that she was out there and he was attempting different methods to try to make contact with her. She had been long deceased and was known as Pima County Jane Doe. On April eighth of nineteen eighty one, two men who were hunters were driving along a road into Sana, Arizona, and they saw a jacket that was hanging from a tree. But then upon further inspection, they discovered a body. The medical examiner had determined that the cause of death of this victim was strangulation and the death had likely occurred thirty six to forty eight hours before the body was found, putting the date of death as April sixth of nineteen eighty one. The body belonged to a female and they guestimated the age of the victim to be between eighteen and twenty two years old, and there were signs as well of a sexual assault. Although the body was. In advanced stages of decomposition, they were able to determine her hair color was blonde to white brown and that she had a fair complexion. She also had a noticeable white spot on the front of her teeth. They estimated her to be about five two and one hundred to two one hundred and ten pounds. She was found in denim jeans and white sox with palm palms. She had on a white braw blue underwear and brown suede shoes, and she had a blouse on that was navy blue and puffy with red floral sleeves. The jacket that was found nearby was a denim jacket. Dental information was also obtained from the body, and years later DNA was taken. They ended up extracting a DNA profile from her clothing in two thousand and six as well, which again advancements in DNA technology. We love to see it. At the time of her death, they were unable to get viable fingerprints, so they basically removed the victim's hands and sent them to the FBI for analysis. They were analyzed and uploaded. However, there was no match for anyone missing or anyone that had been in the database that had been charged with a crime. They compared her to several missing persons cases, but no matches were made. They thought she possibly could have been involved in the local county fair that had previously occurred shortly before her murder. Images of her clothing were featured on nick mech and in different news reports. They believed she may have been walking or running through a wooded area prior to her death as well, because she had scratches all over her body. Formed a sketch of the. Victim and it was released to the news media and to local papers, but nobody came forward. Unfortunately, in twenty twelve, they exhumed the remains and they were able to digitally create a photo of what the woman might have looked like using newer technology. Of course, law enforcement theorized that maybe this girl was a runaway. They thought she could have been a transient that was just kind of passing through Arizona. They thought maybe that she had possibly hitchtike to Arizona and she was just kind of lost. There was also some speculation from investigators initially that she could have also been a victim of the Golden State Killer. Despite all of this, her case remained unsolved. Now we are going to backtrack a little bit because we are now going back to nineteen ninety five. So authorities were in the process of building a case against a man, and you guessed it, were circling back to Jack Klhauser. So they were in the process of building a case against Jack for assault charges, and in the midst of searching his possessions, they found a photo of a woman holding flowers, And of course they asked Jack who it was and he refused to say anything about it. But for whatever reason, investigators thought that this photo had to be significant in some way, shape or form because Jack was carrying it on him. Now, it wasn't until twenty fourteen that authorities announced that they thought that this photograph was connected to the p MA County Jane Doe, and they decided that they were going to release the image to the public. Now, the reason that they thought that this could be related is because the woman in the photo very closely resembled the composite sketch of the victim, the facial reconstruction that was done, and the physical description of the victim that was known as p mccounty Jane Doe. They believed that the photo was taken between nineteen seventy nine and nineteen eighty one, which would also fit the timeframe of when the Jane Doe was found. Of course, Jack did not want to identify who this person was and was not helpful in any way, shape or form with the investigation. No shock there. So police circulated the photo and they did think that from the background of the photo that it might have been taken in Massachusetts, and they just kind of were going off on this hunch. So in December of twenty fourteen, police officially reached out to Bill Garo Junior and said that they believed his sister was the woman in this photograph. Bill would go on to tell. Them that his sister left in the early eighties with Jack and was never seen or heard from again. With all of this and all this information they had, in April of twenty fifteen, the body of Pima County Jane Doe was successfully a day as Brenda Garrow. It was announced to the public. It's September of twenty fifteen, and the body was returned to the Garrow family. Brenda's dad said that he didn't understand any possible motive for her murder and he couldn't wrap his head around it. So now we have got to get into the Jack of it all, because he has an extensive criminal history. I went down a rabbit hole in the sky John Joseph Calhauser, also known as Jack. So the incident that Bill had previously been told about was an assault on his ex girlfriend's new boyfriend. So we are going to read about that altercation now because I think it's really interesting and as far as the story goes, this is a really important part of Jack's story and the trajectory that he would go on. So here we go. I'm reading this straight from Caselaw dot find law dot com. I will link it below. Just before midnight on May nineteenth of nineteen seventy nine, Michael Rank drove Janet Richardson, his future wife, to the Veterans Administration Hospital in Bedford, where she worked as a nursing assistant on the night shift. As he drove past the Middlesex Community College lot, he noticed a car pull in behind him. It followed him along Route three to the Lale Connector. At that time, close to the Route four ninety five exit, the operator of the other vehicle pulled beside the driver's side. Of Rank's car. As Rank looked to his left, with the vehicle three feet away, he saw an orange flash and heard a pop. He felt a bullet strike his chin that drew blood. In relatively short order, the operator of the other vehicle squeezed off four more rounds. One went through Rank's left shoulder and another went through his back. He hunkered down, hoping to stay out of sight as the operator of the other car, which Rank noted to be a new white nineteen seventy eight Chevy Monte Carlo, continued to pursue him. Rank took the Plain Street exit, determined to make it to the Lao Police station. The attacking vehicle broke off of the pursuit when Rank got within a half a mile of assassination. Acting upon Rank's report of the shooting, Lao police found three tire marks and a broken window glass on the Lao Connector, near where Rain claimed to have been shot. The next morning, Janet Richardson, who shortly before had ended a romantic relationship with the defendant, visited Rank in the hospital. Then she went to the defendant's home. In front of the house was a white Monte Carlo. She spoke to the police lieutenant, who obtained a search warrant to inspect the vehicle. The search reinforcer suspicions that the defendant was the shooter. There were remarks comprised of copper and zinc on the headliner above the passenger side window, consistent with having been made by a hot brass shell casing ejected from a handgun fired by a driver extending his right arm toward the passenger's window. A total of five similar marks were found. Residue removed from the passenger's front seat, later analyzed by an FBI forensic expert, showed that the firearm was closer to the passenger side than the drivers when discharged. One bullet was recovered from Rank's body and another from his car. Both were twenty five caliber and featured a copper zinc alloy around the lead corps. When questioned by the police asked to his whereabouts on the occasion in question, the defendant claimed to have been with Debbie and Lawrence, so he. Couldn't have done the shooting. He stated further that after his date with Debbie, he went to Lichfield and then to Hudson, New Hampshire, where a police officer stopped him for driving on the wrong side of the road and gave him a verbal warning. He asserted he arrived home around two thirty am and worked on his motorcycle through the night. He claimed that he wouldn't own a twenty five caliber pistol. Eventually, the investigation led the police to conclude that the defendant story concerning his whereabouts were unsupported. When Deborah Florence was located, she turned over several letters written by the defendant to her approximately three weeks after ring shooting. In them, the defendant proposed that she can confirm being with him on the night in question and keep their statements to the police consistent. Eventually, in August of nineteen seventy nine, the defendant was indicted in the assault on Rank. Released on bail, The defendant fled to Arizona, but was rearrested more than fifteen years later and brought to trial on the assault charges and several other charges in November of nineteen ninety six. So when he was released on bail, he met Brenda and then they left the state and that was it, and then he was gone for fifteen years. Isn't that wildly insane? And this just wasn't an assault, This was an actual attempted murder. It always drives me crazy when a case like this happens. Somebody literally his goal to go there was to try to kill this man, and just because he wasn't successful doesn't mean that he didn't have malice an intent to kill. This was not all. This was attempted murder on Michael. And this shows nothing other than what type of man this guy is, in my opinion, So if you think that's all that Jack has done, you would be wrong. So Jack did have some different ties to Arizona, and it is believed that he murdered his wife, who was named Diane van Wreath, in nineteen ninety five. So Jack and Diane married in Nevada in nineteen eighty six, and at this time he was living under a different name, which was the name Donald J. Stecci, which was the name of a classmate of his previously. He stole his. Identity and his name basically, and this whole name change kept him from flying under the radar, probably to everybody, including his wife, Diane. And at the. Time that Diane disappeared, they were going through a divorce and her body still to this day, has never been found. Now we're going to read a little bit about her disappearance because I think it's important in the grand scheme of what we're talking about here. So Diane was last seen during the morning hours of August tenth of nineteen ninety five in Tucson, Arizona. She left from her home in Tucson and was on her way to her job at Tucson Electric Power. She worked as a research coordinator in the tax service office. And she never arrived to her job and has never been seen or heard from again. They did find her Ford Aerostar minivan on August twelfth, which was two days after she disappeared. They did say that the keys were found inside of the minivan, but there was no other evidence of her or where she had gone at the scene, and the authority stated that there was no indication of foul play, which I think there probably was indication of foul play because why would she leave her car with the keys inside or randomly parked. She was a mom. She would not have left her kids, her husband down or John Jack, whatever we're calling him. His fingerprints were found on the vehicle. Now, they aren't sure if Diane knew of his real identity, but she was in the process of divorcing him, and she was also trying to see custody of their two sons, so we likely have motive. And if there's anything that is. True is that people like this can recommit time and time and time again, typically until they get caught and put behind bars. So Jack was extradited back to Massachusetts shortly after Diane disappeared, and he was sentenced to twenty nine years for the nineteen seventy nine attempted murder, and the authorities at that point in time also classified Diane's case as a probable homicide. He of course pled no contest and was sentenced to twenty additional years in prison to be served concurrently with the established Massachusetts jail time. He was also convicted of another murder in nineteen seventy four of a man named Ronald Chapman, and this happened way before everything else, but for that he was sentenced to seven years, but he was out after only one year. And it just blows my mind time and time again with these stories. If they had actually served the jail time that they were supposed to after one murder, two murders, three murders, whatever it may be, attempted murder, whatever, they wouldn't be out to recommit the crime that we're talking about today. Allegedly. Of course, the murder of Ronald Chapman happened in December of nineteen seventy one when Jack was only seventeen years old, and he was convicted of manslaughter with the shooting death of fifty two year old Ronald Chapman. Again, like I said, he was sentenced to seven years in prison, but he got out after one year and he was paroled, so then he was free to go on in nineteen seventy nine to attempt to kill Michael Rink and then he ran off with Brenda and she disappeared, and then she became a Jane Doe and then he got married to Diane Vanreath under an assumed name that wasn't his name, what was a name of a classmate that he stole. And then in nineteen ninety. Five, she disappears as they were going through a divorce and she was seeking custody of their kids. Then in all of this, as they are building these different cases against him, they go through his belongings and they find a picture of Brenda and they officially are able to tie that to Pima County Jane Doe, and he is listed as a person of interest. So I hate to say this, but Jack has been out of prison since May eighth of twenty nineteen, and this just absolutely appalls me that this individual is out and about walking amongst us. Because one of these things on its own is pretty bad, but he has like five different things going against him, which isn't great. It's not great. Now, he has never been convicted or charge of anything to do with Brenda's murder. However, he is listed as a person of interest, but they do not have sufficient evidence to bring charges against him. He is currently seventy one years old, and from what I have found, he is still living in Arizona. So here is the call to action for this episode, because I think this is super important. If you were listening and you knew Brenda or Jack around the time that Brenda went missing in nineteen eighty nineteen eighty one, authorities want to hear from you. Brenda seemingly never had a chance because as soon as she was out of the foster care system. And had kind of aged out and was trying to get her life back on track, she had gotten a job. That's when Jack entered her life, and everything just snowballed from there and she ended up losing her life in a very very horrific way in Arizona, and she would remain a Jane Doe for many, many years, which is really really unfortunate because she had gone off kind of out on her own free will, and people really didn't take it seriously. And when I see people, I'm talking law enforcement. Of course, her brother took it seriously because he knew that when she didn't come back that something didn't feel right and attempted to report her missing and was basically. Told she left on her own. You really can't do a whole lot for somebody that doesn't want to be found, but all that time she had been brutally murdered. So if you. Knew Brenda or a Jack around that time, maybe ran into them, maybe knew of them, and maybe saw something you didn't realize you saw, you were asked to reach out to authorities to help solve Brenda's case. I am going to be posting pictures of Brenda on my Instagram and Facebook pages. I'm also going to post a picture of a younger Jack and a more recent picture of Jack as well. And I'm also going to post a photo of Diane van Reeth because her body has never been found and it's important for her family to be able to get the closure they need and hopefully bring her remains home. I do want to make it very clear that Jack Calhauser has not been charged in connection with Brenda Garrow's disappearance or murder. I want to make that very clear. He is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. But I do hope for Brenda's family that there is some resolution in her case because they deserve it. Bill, after all of these years, deserves. That, and I hope that he knows his sister loved him very very much, and my own opinion on it is that she was likely attempting to leave Arizona when her life was taken from her. But authorities very much need your help to help bring whoever is responsible for this to justice. So that is Brenda's story, a really sad and unfortunate one, but it's tangled up with all of this other stuff, so many other people and so many other cases, and there's just so much going on here. I had to make this its own episode because once I did the Unsolved Sunday spotlight, I was like, WHOA, this is episode worthy for sure, because there's a lot going on here and the more I dug, the more I found. So thank you guys so much for listening to Brenda's story. Be sure to check out the photos that I'm going to be posting on Instagram and Facebook. If you aren't following me on social media, please go over and follow me there on Facebook and Instagram. On Facebook, it's Primetime Crime Crime Is with a K and Instagram It's at Primetime Crime Pod again, Crime Is with a K. Thank you guys so much. As always, and I will see you next week for a brand new Unsolved, maybe Solved case honestly, because I think I'm doing a solved case next week, so I will see you then. Bye.