Darlene Hulse: Part 1

All witnesses purchase of interest, and suspects are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Warning, this episode contains graphic crime scene detail as well as talk of sexual assault. It may be sensitive for some listeners. 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 to this week's episode of Primetime Crime. It's Kylie. We are going to go ahead and get into right now on true crime. We have quite a bit that we need to talk about, so let's go ahead and dive right in. Also, I want to start the episode off by saying I have had like ongoing mic problems. I didn't know what the problem was. I ordered a new mic, still having the same ongoing issue. I finally figured out what the issue is. So this intro should probably sound a lot better quality, a lot louder than the actual episode, but I promise it will be fixed and everything from here on out should sound a lot better. And I apologize because I am not a technology savvy human and sometimes technology doesn't get along with me. So we are back on track. Knew, Mike knew all of the things. All is working well, and we are going to go ahead and talk right now in true crime. So first thing is first. First thing I want to talk about is a girl named Caitlin Connolly. I probably haven't brought her up on this podcast, but she was convicted of manslaughter in twenty seventeen for poisoning her boss. My friends over at Love Mary Kill did a wonderful episode where they talk all about everything that transpired, but essentially she was sentenced to twenty three years in prison for poisoning Mary Yoda, and Mary was her boss, but Mary was also her ex boyfriend's mother, so it was a whole convoluted story. So her first trial ended on a hung jury, and then she was convicted and her second trial and then there was a ruling that the court granted her appeal on the grounds of ineffective assistance of counsel. So although they did overturn it, there could be a potential third trial where they will try to get another conviction. So I'll keep you guys updated on that. If you haven't, go ahead and go over to Love Mary Kill's podcast and search for Mary Yoda. And you will see their episode series on Mary and you can hear the whole story from start to finish because they do, as always a fantastic job at end depth covering these cases. So I want to give an update on another story that I don't think I really talked much about on here. I've talked some about sex stortion and all of the stuff that is going on currently with sext and how teens are being targeted on social media apps Facebook, Instagram and others, and they are basically being scammed by these creepy men and they are sex storted. Essentially, they convince them to send pictures of themselves and then they say, unless you pay me X amount of money, I'm going to share all of these images, which often can be a little sexual in nature. I'm going to send all of these images to your friends and family, and your life is going to be over. And the kid doesn't see any way out and ends up committing suicide. It is an epidemic. It is happening. It is real, and it is vile and horrible, and these demons that are doing it need to be held responsible. So there was a seventeen year old in twenty twenty two named Gavin Guffey and his family. His father in particular, has really taken it upon himself to spread awareness the message of sextortion. I heard him speak a crime con And finally this last week, they extradited a twenty four year old from Nigeria to the United States to face prosecution in the sextortion of Gavin that led to his suicide and his death. And I think this is so freaking huge because once they realize that there is accountability that is going to be had in these situations, that it's not all fun and games. There are real people behind who you're sex storting. Gavin's dad said even after his death, he was in contact with these people and they were also trying to extort money out of Gavin's cousin. And horrible, You're already dealing with the death of your loved one and then these people are still at it. They truly don't give a shit, and it's time to stand up and it is time to get these people behind bars away from praying on our children. It is awful and horrible, and these things are happening on regular social media sites. The profiles are staying up. Nobody is doing anything about it, and Gavin's dad and some other parents of other children who have been sextorted are also standing up against the fight to sextortion. So thank god we have finally movement in this case. Hopefully all of this goes well and this man is put behind bars for the rest of time because he is a literal piece of crap allegedly. Okay, moving on to Ellen Greenberg news. Now, this has been a long time coming, fourteen years in the making since Ellen lost her life and it was ruled a suicide. So this all started kind of earlier this week when the medical examiner who made the original determination that her death was a suicide came out and said, since issuing the amended death certificate, I have become aware of additional information I did not have at the time of issuing the amended death certificate, which may have impacted my opinion. And it goes on so on and so forth, but ends with it is my professional opinion Ellen's manner of death should be designated as something other than suicide, which I've talked about it before. I have very strong values and beliefs about Ellen's death. It was not a suicide and I'm glad that this medical examiner came forward and admitted that they were wrong and that the death should be classified as something other than suicide. So then on Monday, officially the City of Philadelphia Medical Examiner's office has agreed to officially reopen and review Ellen's death. That is huge. So on the Justice for Ellen Instagram page the family Rights the settlement comes in exchange for Ellen's parents agree to settle their lawsuits against the city. The favorable settlement came together quickly after original medical examiners signed a statement over the weekend stating that Ellen did not commit suicide. This is a tremendous victory. After the medical examiner completes their new review, our expectation is at the Prosecutor's office or the FBI will criminally investigate Ellen's murder. More to come, but today we celebrate Ellen. Now. I am elated by this news. This is such a big deal. Her family never left their foot come off the gas ever. Ever. Ever, in fourteen years, they have continued to fight. They have been turned down time and time and time again, and they have continued to fight. Mostly what I see out there is major support for Ellen and her family and people realizing that yeah, Ellen's death is suspicious and something needs to be done. But in any case, especially one that is in the public eye, there is going to be scrutiny any time a family is questioning things that go against law enforcement or what the medical examiner says. But I just want to make a quick PSA. I think anyone listening to this podcast is pretty open minded and realizes that there are true victims behind these stories, and their story continues even after the podcast episode ends. But nobody ever wants to be placed into a situation where their family member loses their life, especially under circumstances that might be a little suspicious or might be deemed as an accidental death or suicide. And you have to kind of come to terms with the fact that your loved one is gone, and then you also have to come to terms with the fact that maybe things don't look great, maybe things look a little different. Maybe in your heart of hearts, you know your family member and you know that they would never harm themselves or that things just don't look up to par and you want to question. You want to question law enforcements rulings, you want to question the medical examiner's rulings. You have every right to do that, and you have every right to do that without people attacking you for literally doing what you think is best in your situation for your family member and the circumstances surrounding their passing or disappearance, whatever the case may be. We can't judge a family member or a scenario where somebody is questioning something just because it's uncomfortable for people or it makes law enforcement look not so great. It is not up to us to make that decision. If the family feels that something is suspicious, they have every right and they should question because if you listen to my podcast, you know law enforcement they make mistakes. We're all human at the end of the day, we all make mistakes, and yeah, sometime times we need that extra layer of accountability to help keep people accountable, hold people accountable, make sure that things are done the right way. If I was ever in a situation where somebody in my family was taken tragically, you bet your ass I would be crossing my t's and dotting my eyes to make sure that everything was done in the proper way. And I don't think anyone out there has any room to judge anybody that is a grieving from losing a loved one and be questioning what law enforcement has ruled, whether they ruled it a suicide, whether they ruled it accidental. They have every single right to try to rectify what happened, and maybe in that they're gonna uncover that maybe things weren't done right in the investigation. Maybe there is some areas that need to be looked at again, and Ellen Greenberg's case is a prime example of this. Obviously, I'm not really taught talking to my listeners here, but us in a general sense, as a society, we have to be nicer, more understanding, more compassionate, more empathetic towards these family members who have lost loved ones. So I'm going to step off my soapbox now, but justice for Ellen is on its freaking way and I am so elated about this news. Second to last thing I want to talk about real quick is Lori Valo does not vibe with Court TV. She doesn't want them at her next trial and said that her and her husband, Chad Dabll are basically being slandered and libeled by Court TV. I don't even have words like this is the same Lorii Valo that was charged with the murder, conspiracy to murder her two children Tammy day Bell. She's about to go on trial for the murder of her husband, Charles Valo, and attempted murder of her ex nephew in law Brandon Boudreaux. This gal has zero legs to stand on and I don't even know why she thinks that Court TV is the one that is being derogatory when literally she's the one that created all of this madness. That just goes to show you that she ain't all right upstairs. She knows what she's talking about, but she doesn't rationalize in reason like a normal human, and she has an excuse for everything, and it drives me insane. So anyways, that is what's going on right now with Lori Valo. It's gonna be so interesting to see her represent herself in her trial. I cannot freaking wait for that. All Right, last thing I want to talk about, and then we're going to get into the episode. We are still awaiting a decision from the judge in the Brian Coberger trial in regards to if the investigative genealogy is going to be allowed in I personally think that the judge is leaning more towards the side of allowing it, but it all is going to depend on what his final conclusion is because he does have to take everything into account and into consideration because he is a judge and he has to be fair and unbiased. So I'll let you guys know as soon as that announcement is dropped, it should be coming here within the next day or so. So if that does happen, I will be sure to share it and post on my social media. If you're not following me on social media, please go do so right now. I am Primetime Crime with a k Over on Facebook and Primetime Crime Pod on Instagram. I don't have a TikTok or YouTube yet, but those will be coming in the next few months. Lord Willing, And yeah, that is kind of where we stand with things right now. And if you do listen to the podcast, you are a regular listener and you enjoy the podcast, please consider giving me a five star review wherever you listen. It really helps push the podcast out to other people in the true crime space and get more eyes and ears on these unsolved cases that desperately need everyone's attention. So with all of that, we are going to go ahead and get into this week's episode. Today, I'm going to be telling you about a case that spans forty years. We are going to be talking about the unsolved abduction and murder of a woman twenty eight years old who was a wife and mother of three named Darlene Holtz from Argus, Indiana, a town of only fifteen hundred people at the time. Although this case leaves us with way more questions than answers, I do believe it's solvable, especially because, also we'll find out in this episode we have two eye witnesses, although unfortunately they were young children at the time. There is a sketch of said suspect and an unknown distinctive car. The person who did this is out there, and I suspect that Darlene is likely not their only victim. For my research, I found some articles online that are going to be linked in the show notes. I also listened to season one of the Deck Investigates podcasts by Ashley Flowers of Crime Junkie fame. She did a really good job of investigating this case explaining everything, and I'm going to be referencing the podcast throughout. Most of the information I'm going to be presenting is from that podcast, and it took on a whole life of its own when Ashley got involved, and a lot more information was uncovered. So I'm going to link that podcast in the show notes, and I want to be sure to give credit. Most of what I'm going to talk about and what I'm going to tell you about today is from that podcast and from Ashley. Darlene Hols was born on October fifteenth of nineteen fifty five. She was described as generous and well respected. She was married to a man named Ronald Hols, and together they had three children, three girls, Marie who was eight years old, Melissa who was six, and Kristin who was only a few weeks shy of being twelve months old at the time of Darlene's murder in nineteen eighty four. So it was a normal Friday morning, August seventeenth, nineteen eighty four. Ron had left for work as usual around five am. Darlene's father in law, who was named Harvey, he lived nearby, and he had dropped off a bunch of bananas that were kind of on the super super ripe side. They were a little mushy for baby Kristin. He visited and chatted with his grandkids and left by about nine thirty am. So it was around that time that Darlene was getting everything ready to take Kristin, her youngest, to a doctor's appointment. And it was just a regular summer day at the Holst home, nothing out of the ordinary. Darlene had told Melissa and Marie to go ahead and get in the bathtub so that they could all get ready to go to Kristen's appointment. Now it was at this time that the lives of Marie, Melissa, and Kristen and Ron would forever change. There was a knock on the door. Darlene was confused because she wasn't expecting a package or anything, and Marie, who was the oldest, even remembers hearing her mother say this as she went to answer the door. The girls tried to listen for more, but what they heard wasn't exactly words. It was more of distinct noises, kind of grunting and growling sounds that they heard when their mother answered the door. And kids think very innocently, and they were in the bathroom in the bathtub, the girls hear these growling noises and they think, oh my gosh, Mom and dad brought us a puppy, and that's what they thought it was. They thought their parents had surprised them with a puppy because that had happened in the past. Marie ended up popping out of the tub from the bathroom to the den, and it was there that she saw a stranger, a man, pushing her mom to the ground and trying to put duct tape over her mouth. Darlene was fighting, screaming, flailing about and fighting back. She was not going to let anyone hurt her or her children, and this man seemingly had entered the home and now had full access to them. Marie ran to call for help, but this was before the time of nine one one, so she dialed one of the only numbers she knew, which was her aunt's number, and it was nineteen eighty four, so it was a rotary phone, so this of course took longer. Marie remembers she didn't think that the man looked scary like to look at him, he wasn't a scary looking man, but he was hurting her mom, so she knew that he wasn't a good person. As Marie was trying her hard as to dial this number and get help for her mom. The attack was still taking place. The man was essentially dragging Darlene by her hair to the kitchen, where he then reaches for Marie and then fully pulls the phone off of the wall. He did attempt to grab Marie, but Darlene pulled her run and she grabbed her sister and they ran. Now, these girls are fresh out of the bath, they are not dressed. They're terrified. They're six years old and eight years old. They're running down a gravel road for their literal lives. Their sister is still in the house with this deranged psychopath, and their poor mom is being attacked. I can't even imagine the fear that they felt. Now, as a thirty eight year old person, I can't imagine dealing with this. I cannot even imagine doing it at six and eight. No idea how they are even able to do this, but they did so. Like I said, they were running barefoot on this gravel road. And Marie said she's never even felt like she could run faster than she ran that day. She didn't even feel like she was in any pain from the gravel hitting her bare feet. She was just doing everything she could to try to save her mom. They ran to their grandparents' house and immediately saw their grandma Doris, and through tears and trauma, they told her what was going on, and the cops ended up being called. Within fifteen minutes, the cops were at the holest home. Now they initially thought that they were going into a robbery, and they quickly realized it was anything but that Darlene was nowhere to be found. There was a blood trail that indicated that Darlene had been drug from the den to the front door, and then the trail essentially went cold in the driveway, alluding to the fact that she had been placed inside of a vehicle and they had driven off. The police called for backup once they realized this wasn't just a robbery, and they found twelve month old baby Kristen, unharmed, sitting in the middle of the living room. But she was covered in blood and this was the blood of her mother. Luckily, Kristen was unharmed. There was no scrapes, cut anything on her at all. The blood that was on her was her mother's. So this attack that was perpetrated on Darlene was vicious. They knew that Darlene had obviously lost a lot of blood and needed to get help quickly. The suspect had attacked Darlene with a fireplace poker from Darlene's own fireplace and then abducted her. The remainder of the fireplace tools were scattered on the living room floor, but the fireplace poker, which they suspected was likely the weapon used, was missing. At this point in time, Ron was informed that something had happened at home and they were going to send a car to come get him and bring him home. As he waited, he called his parents. He was trying to figure out what was going on because they didn't give him any detail, and he talked to his mom and she told him the kids are okay, but we don't know where Darlene is, and he was super, super distraught. Police began their investigation to try and figure out where Darlene was. The girls were able to get a pretty good look at this man. They described him as a man in his late twenties or thirties, about six foot tall, with long blonde hair with streaks, about one hundred and forty five to one hundred and fifty pounds. He was clean shaven. He had light eyes and a thin nose. He was wearing a dark tan shirt with stripes, a grayish brown pair of corduroy pants, and tan leather work shoes. Another important detail was the suspect's car. It was a greenish blue late model Saban between nineteen seventy nineteen seventy four and it was in pretty poor condition. It had rests on the sides. The pain job on the car wasn't great, and there was also a neighbor that had seen the car when they had driven by the wholest home the morning of the attack, and the neighbor described the car's hood as being self painted. So from there they analyzed the crime scene. They found some bloody rocks near the front step. They found some hair on the porch. There was also duct tape on the porch. They found a single Nike tennis shoe by the front door, along with more duct tape. There was also a smock that was collected that seems it had been ripped off of Darlene during the struggle, and they found the phone that was ripped off of the wall while Marie was trying to call for help. They dusted the phone for Prince, but they ended up getting nothing. Authorities began a very extensive ground search for Darlene and the suspect. There was a ransom call that was received at some point during this However, authorities believed that it was fake because the details the caller gave did not match up with the crime scene. Police interviewed Harvey, who was Darlene's father in law and Ron's dad. He was there that morning to drop off the bananas for Kristen, and this very much helps them figure out kind of the timeline of when the attack happened. Around six pm that day, the police announced that they had stopped a man with blonde hair who was driving a Grand Prix car and they ended up bringing this man in. They took Marie and Melissa to see the man and his car, and they ended up saying that that wasn't him. The car didn't match and a guy did it match. So from this point they wanted to come up with sketches of this man to distribute to the public. So they were able to come up with two of them, and in my opinion, I think, considering Melissa and Marie were young, these sketches are extremely well done and this suspect has a pretty specific look. Somebody knows who this person is. You can look at that and say, oh, yeah, that looks like so and so. I also think that the image of this man is burned into their memory and they know what he looks like. There's no questioning what this man looks like. They were in a trauma response, and sometimes we're you're in a trauma response like that, you absorb everything, no matter how ramped up you are, you absorb everything. And they do say in the Deck Investigates podcast season one that after the sketch was finally put together that it did look like the guy that attacked their mom. So very interesting the way that they went about, you know, figuring out what this person looked like, and that the girls were able to come up with seemingly a sketch of somebody that is a real person and is responsible for attacking their mom. So the first night after Darlene was taken was obviously super tough on all of the family. They ended up staying with Dars and Harvey that night, and the girls were so worried that the man was going to come back for them. Ron did his best to try to assure them that this wasn't going to happen. And he was a dad, so he did everything he could to protect his So the next day there was a man named Walter who came into town for work. And Walter had no idea what was going on in Argus. He had no idea that there was a man hunt going on, or he had no idea that there was a mom of three who had been abducted. He seemingly wandered into a town that was in disarray. Around two thirty PM, a call came in that a man had found a body in the woods and the location of where this body was found was just about six miles from the holes home. The victim was found fully clothed. She had on one shoe, which was a Nike shoe that matched the shoe that was left behind at the Hole's home crime scene. And this body was found by Walter, the man I was just speaking about, who was a timber buyer and was in the woods marking trees to cut down. She was found about forty feet away from a rarely used dirt road. So whoever placed this body here knew what he was doing because her body wasn't visible from the road. So if it wasn't for this timber buyer being in the woods that day, she likely wouldn't have been found for some time, if at all. Honestly, this wasn't a place that they even had on their radar, and I think this had to be some type of divine intervention like they had. He had to be there that day to find her, to kind of get things moving in the direction that they needed to move. If this man wasn't in town for work looking to cut down trees, she probably wouldn't have been found. Darlene's autopsy revealed she was killed between nine am and twelve am the previous day. Darlene's cause of death was several blows to her head with the fireplace poker and blunt Forest trauma was listed as the cause of death. She had not been sexually assaulted. The toxicology result showed no drugs or alcohol in her system when she died, so none of this made sense. Darlene and Ron were very strong laced, They attended church, They tended to their family. They kind of stuck to themselves, so who would want to hurt Darlene. Darlene and Ron had a good marriage. Darlene was shy, she kind of did her own thing. They would leave the house only as a family. They just kind of did their own thing. Authorities believe that her abductor and killer was familiar with the area because of where her body was dumped. Like I said, it wasn't an area that would be known to somebody passing through town. There was also a full fence that kind of surrounded this wooded area, meaning that it would be difficult for somebody carrying a body to access it. But there was a small area that there was a broken gate, and locals would enter through this broken gate to go fishing or mushroom hunting. So authorities speculated that this is how the suspect was able to add ass the area. But this again is another point to this person being familiar to the area. This isn't something that a random person with a body just happens to stumble upon to dispose of. Authorities do not believe that Darlene knew her killer. Robbery was quickly ruled out as a motive because there was nothing taken from the host home. But I do want to kind of circle back and interject my own thoughts and feelings on her not knowing her killer. I'm not sure why law enforcement came to this conclusion because I think it screams that she knew her attacker, or at least he knew her. Maybe he had been watching her, knew that she was going to be home alone. This guy didn't go into the house with a weapon, so was the crime sexually motivated? Did he go into the house with intense to sexually assault her and when she fought back, it quickly turned violent and he grabbed the first thing he could, which was the fireplace poker, and went after her. I don't personally think that was a random man out for a drive who decided he was going to go randomly into this house see who was there, and then violently attack them with the fireplace poker that just happened to be there in the living room. Now, that is simply just my opinion. I'm not sure if law enforcement has other reasons for coming out and saying they don't believe she knew her attacker, but it just doesn't seem random to me. If nothing else, this person was watching her and watching the family's moves, so they knew that she was going to be alone with the children that day. Authorities believe that the killer did first identify himself as a delivery man to get Darlene to open the door, and when she refused to let him in, that is where the struggle began, which is the growling and grunting noises that the girls heard. Authorities also believed that although Darlene wasn't sexually assaulted, that this was the motive for the attack, and like I said earlier, I do think that that is a likely scenario. And Darlene was a badass and fought back because she had no choice, because she had to protect her children, and that is exactly what she did. Although she lost her life, her children were safe and unharmed, at least in a physical sense. So I know everybody is probably wondering because the husband does always suspect numero uno. But Ron had an airtight alibi. He was at work that day in Plymouth, Indiana, during the time that Darlene was abducted and killed. Ron was never a suspect. He took and passed two separate lie detector tests. He was doing everything he could to help the investigation. But law enforcement knew if they ever were to prosecute the case against whoever they found to be their suspect, that they would very much try to target Ron because he was going to be an easy target, so they had to do pretty much everything they could to prove that he wasn't involved. And this was very easy to do because Ron is just another living victim in this whole saga. So we're now going to move on to some of the suspects we've seen in Darlene's case. I'm going to go into them and cover them pretty thoroughly so we can see why they became persons of interest in Darlene's case. And honestly, every single one of them chucks all of the boxes and you'll definitely be able to see why they were all suspects at different points in time. As I was listening to Ashley's podcast and going through all of the different suspects, every time she would bring one up, I'd be like, Oh, Yeah, that's definitely the guy, and then before I know it, we were moved on to another one and I was just as convinced that that was the guy. So we're now going to go through all of them and talk about them, like I said, in detail, and try to work this out together because this case is simply such a wild rabbit hole and I don't even have words for how much I've gone into it in the last couple of weeks trying to navigate everything. So shortly before Darlene's body was found, after the kidnapping and the attack, a tip ended up coming in and it was a pretty broad tip. The tip basically said that investigators should check out the home of a woman named Thelma Burns. She lived in the area. Now, this tipster is named Jim, and he said there was a lot of unsavory people who stayed at Thelma's house and kind of hinted around at there being possible drug activity and just all around shade of behavior. So essentially he was hinting that maybe somebody at this home could be related to Darlene's abduction and attack. So police then went to talk to Jim the following evening, which is now right after Darlene's body was found, and at this point he went into a lot more detail about his tip, and he zeroed in on a guy who was named Daniel Bender, who went by the nicknamed Danny, and Danny was twenty two years old. Jim basically said that a week before Darlene's murder, he had met Thelma at the laundrymat and this guy named Dan Danny was with her and Jim had arranged to buy drugs from Thelma that evening and they had made plans to meet later to go to a party. So that night, Danny and Jim were driving to go buy a beer for a keg for the party, and Danny had just kind of been talking to Jim while they were driving, and Danny said that he was a clepto and he had been in prison before for robbery, and Jim said at this point, he pointed out the Holes home and said that it would be a good home to rob He talked about the owner who worked at a specific business, which is the same company that Ron worked for, and how they had a lot of money. Now, Jim very much stuck to the story from the start, and law enforcement decided that this was a pretty big tip to come in and they decided that they were going to investigate Danny. He did have a criminal record and had been in prison before for kidnapping in Texas and had just gotten released on July first. When they attempted to locate him, they couldn't find Danny to bring him in, and they were questioning people around town, so word was kind of spreading that he had left town, which automatically makes him look even more suspicious. So police started asking around about Danny, and it eventually got back to him that police were asking questions about him possibly being related to the murder of Darlene. So Danny was in Colorado at this point in time and decided to call them. And Danny said he had been out west since before the murder and that he had a friend that could vouch for him, and he said he had left Indiana August fifteenth for a job. He said he didn't know Darlene. He did it o Ron, and they told him that he needed to come back to Indiana to take a polygraph test. He of course, basically denied everything. He said that he had a family member that worked at the same company that Ron worked at, but denied saying that he would ever rob the Holes home and denied knowing them, although he said he might have heard the last name Hols before. He said he hadn't robbed anyone since he had gotten out of jail in July, and he denied having this conversation with Jim and said in the convo that I had with Jim, we talked about another house that would be a good house to rob, not the Holes Home. The polygraph test came back as deceptive, but as we know, this isn't a proof of guilt or innocence either way. Investigators decided to try and talk to those that knew Danny well, and he did have some relatives that were tied to a junk yard, so they thought possibly maybe this is where the rusty old car came from, but to no avail, nothing was found. Danny didn't personally own a car of his own, so they knew that if he was the guy, that he had to have gotten this car from somewhere, and they weren't able to track this car down, and Danny didn't have much else to offer. He very much stuck to his story of saying he didn't know anything about Darlene or who killed her. But Danny didn't exactly deny saying that he had talked about robbing the Holes Home. When they questioned him about it again, he said maybe I said it, maybe not. Basically, he wasn't going to give anything up, and it sounded like he didn't want to snitch because maybe he had had this conversation with somebody else, or they had said something to him about robbing the holes home. Regardless, it's just kind of sketchy. Cops were able to keep Danny in jail on unrelated charges while they kind of continued the investigation into him, and they were of course still trying to investigate this lead that Jim had given them. While Danny was in prison, he wrote a letter to Thelma and he denied any involvement and said if he knew what happened, he'd fess up, but he didn't know, and he basically alluded that he was being held in a small room questioned for hours trying to get him to confess. They showed him crime scene photos of Darlene, which he said very much messed him up. And honestly, Danny isn't the most likable guy and he made some bad choices. But these tactics are often used in investigations and a lot of the times false confessions come from them. So it's very interesting to say the least, that they were very much zeroed in on Danny because he was the only person at this point in time that was the person of interest. But at the end of the day, an Illinois police officer came forward and said that he had stopped Danny and his friend who were hitchhiking on the fifteenth of August just across the Illinois state line. They said that they were headed out west, just like Danny had previously said, and they knew that there would be no way that he would be able to make it back to Argus to commit the crime on the seventeenth. So Danny Bender was officially ruled out. So although probably not the best guy, made some really poor choices, that doesn't make him a killer. And luckily he stuck to his guns and he didn't falsely confess to a murder, or he would probably be in jail for that murder. So that is why investigations are so important. That they do it thoroughly and they do it in the right way so you don't get those false confessions. Danny was twenty two, so he was very young. He was being questioned in a horrific homicide. It happens all the time West Memphis three prime example of false confessions when you're innocent. So there would soon be another suspect who was named Robert Suborski, and he very much the description of the suspect and very much similar to Danny. He had also recently left town. He was now with a traveling carnival in Alabama. So Indiana's law enforcement had Alabama's police bring in Robert and they administered him a polygraph test, and of course he denied everything. However, he did show up as being deceptive on the polygraph test. Indiana investigators then decided to bring him back to Indiana for questioning, and he was very calm and cooperative, very much willing to help. And once they did get him back to Indiana, they decided to give him one of their own polygraphs tests, and it did show up that he was showing some deception and that he did not tell the complete truth. He did say that he wasn't Argust the day of the murder, but he didn't get into August until that afternoon, and he went and filled out a job up location. The job application did end up being tracked down and it was in fact filled out by Robert, but they didn't really have a whole lot to go on, so they ended up letting him go, and they ended up doing fingerprints just to have kind of in their back pocket before they ended up officially letting him go. On October twenty sixth of nineteen eighty four, police got their strongest lead to date. There was a individual who had been shot and killed by Amarillo police in Texas the day before, on October twenty fifth. So this man was named William Richard Mock aka Ricky Mock. I'm going to be referring to him as Ricky threw out. So basically what happened was Ricky was in Amarillo and he went into a convenience store. He held it at gunpoint and ended up getting away with some cash. He left and was pulled over a few hours later by a cop who had stopped him because he noticed that he had Indiana license plates, and Ricky, assuming that this was it He's been caught, got out and started shooting at the officer, who quickly returned fire, and Ricky ended up being killed. Upon searching his vehicle, the officer found more stolen cash in his car other items that were related back to Indiana, where he was also wanted for some different armed robberies. Word ended up getting back to investigators in Indiana and they went to Ricky's apartment where he lived in Indiana, and they located a newspaper clipping that had two different stories on it. One was a story about Darlene's murder, and there was also an article about a wanted fugitive who was wanted for armed robbery but had evaded police to this point. There was also some clothes which were found in his apartment that appeared to have blood on them, so police thought that this could be their smoking gun. They quickly sent the clothing items off to be tested to see if these items and the blood on them matched Darlene's blood. They looked into his background and he really was known for mostly armed robberies, but he never really had heard anybody in the process. He very much fit the description of the kidnapper, but Melissa and Marie said that that wasn't the guy that they saw when they saw his picture. Upon further investigation, they did discover that Ricky and Danny bender social circles kind of did intersect, but it wasn't uncommon. It was a small town. They were both kind of petty criminals, so it makes sense that they kind of knew some of the same people. But they wondered if he was in town the day of Darlene's abduction and could they prove it. There was a phone call that was placed from Ricky's apartment which he had in Logansport, Indiana, and it was placed at ten o'clock in the morning on August seventeenth, which one hundred percent proves he was in town, but he wasn't the guy since Darlene was said to be abducted around nine point thirty in the morning. They verified the phone call and the person that was on the other end of the phone call said it was Ricky. It was a normal phone call, normal conversation, nothing out of the ordinary. And there was another friend who vouched that she had gone over shortly after that and Ricky was at his apartment and again he was acting normal, nothing out of the ordinary. So it very much looks like Ricky is innocent. There would be no way for him to commit this horrific crime, dump the body, and then get back to his apartment to make this phone call to this friend. The timeline just didn't add up, so everything was looking and pointing to Ricky not being involved. But the testing on the clothing came back and it was in fact human blood, and it did say that it was consistent with that of Darlene's, but it was the eighties and the level to which they could test blood and the consistency of the blood to match it wasn't great, so they ended up having the FBI analyze it to confirm, and it came back that it was, in fact, not Darlene's blood. There was also a few hairs that they were able to test, and those didn't match Ricky either. Most of them were actually hairs from Darlene's head, So essentially, Ricky wasn't the guy, although there were things that make him definitely look like he could have been a guilty party. The Plymouth Bureau of the South Bend Tribune went ahead and published an article that basically said that Ricky, who was now dead, was likely not the killer. But Ron Holts very much clung to this theory as fact and even told his daughters that whoever hurt your mom, they are dead now. And I really think that Ron truly found comfort in this theory and very much wanted to believe that Ricky was the guilty party because it made him feel better, I'm sure, and it made his daughters feel better. So yeah, he clung to that belief that this was the man and do I believe that Ricky could potentially be responsible. I feel like there is a chance. Of course, there's always a chance, but I don't know. I feel like Ricky kind of seemed to be a dead end. There's always a chance, though. So here we have three suspects, all seemingly strong leads at some point during the investigation, and all come up as not the one who ended up killing Darlene. So the killer is likely still out there walking amongst the residents of Argust, because could this person that did this horrific crime be walking amongst them? And could they be essentially planning another crime because they got away with this one. There were so many unknowns with this case and just so many unanswered questions. So Ron did everything that he could to try to normalize his daughter's lives and try to come to terms with what happened, and he did end up remarrying. He married a woman named Chris, and she was a substitute teacher, so she was familiar with the children, and the children were familiar with her, and Ron and Chris are still married to this day, and they also had a child together, so that gave a sibling to Kristin Marie and Melissa, and I really think that Ron and Chris did everything they could to try to shield the family from this traumatic thing that had happened. And it was a small town, so of course everybody knew about it and talked about it, and I'm sure the girls still had underlying fears. I'm sure Ron had underlying fears too, but they did try their best to figure out a new normal. And as much as I don't want to make this a two parter, I have to because there is so much more that we have to talk about. In the next part of this episode, I am going to talk about some other crimes that happened in Indiana near Argus close to the time of Darlene's murder. I'm also going to talk about what happened when Ashley Flowers from Crime Junkie, who produced the first season of The Deck, investigates, which is all about Darlene. Like I said, once she gets involved, this story takes kind of a whole different avenue and I think her investigating and her digging in working with the family really has helped propel the case to where it is today. So we have a lot more to cover. I wanted to be sure to be thorough about it, So in the next episode we're going to be talking about all of that. This is kind of the groundwork of Darlene's murder, the investigation, a few different suspects. Again, I want to credit Ashley Flowers of the Deck Investigates podcast for a lot of this information, along with some of the articles listed below in the show notes. But that is part one. Part two is going to be a wild ride because we have other things to talk about, other murders to talk about, and if there could be a possible connection. And then Darlene's family, after years of not knowing or hearing anything, finally start to ask questions and get involved, and then Ashley gets involved, and our team gets involved, and it kind of just propels things into a different direction and gives the case way more attention than it's ever had before. So we're going to talk about all of that in the next part. I thank you guys so so much for listening to Darlene's Store Part one, and I hope you guys have a fantastic weekend, and I will see you next week for part two. Stay safe and I will see you then. Bye.