Debra Horn

Warning, this episode contains graphic crime scene detail as well as talk of sexual assault. Please listen with discretion. Warning this episode contains graphic crime scene detail. Please listen with discretion. All witnesses, suspects, and pursons of interest are considered innocent until proven guilty in a. Court of law. Welcome to Primetime Crime. I'm your host, Kylie. Let's talk right now in true crime, and then together we're 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 get into a few a little right now in true crime things, and then we're going to get on with today's episode. So I do have an update in. The brand and loss in case now. This is one I've been following since it started. I pretty regularly. I feel like bring you updates here on right now in true crime. And I also did a whole episode on Brandon's case earlier on in the podcast. So if you haven't give in that episode of listen, I suggest you do so. So this was posted to the help Find Brandon Lawson facebook page. I'm going to go ahead and. Read the post in its entirety update. This past Saturday, a small search party returned to the property Brandon was found on. After a couple hours of searching, they found Brandon's cell phone. It was located near a large group of cactus bushes, about two hundred and fifty yards away from where Brandon's clothing was found. Though it was heavily sun damaged, it was intact even after twelve years. Private investigator Jason Watts contacted the Coke County Sheriff's office and a deputy came out and collected at all. We will be exploring options to see if we can have digital forensics done. We will update everyone as soon as we can. Thank you Lord for providing, Thank you all. Thank you Jason, Dylan, Ryan and Alexa for going back out Good eyes Dylan, so wild that after so long, Brandon's cell phone has been found. Now, the area where Brandon's remains were found and the cell phone were found, it is very dense. Obviously there's a lot of cactus. It is literally like looking for a needle in a haystack. And the fact that they went back out there and were able to find Brandon's cell phone and it's still intact after all of this time. That is crazy when you think about all of the weather that that phone has seen over the years. So it is going to be really interesting to see what ends up happening, because for me, there are still so many more questions with Brandon's case than anything. The nine to one one call that Brandon made really really bothers me. I don't think it's as cut and dry as law enforcement believes. I think there's more to it. I really do think there's more here. So I'll be sure to keep you guys updated. But that is the late which after twelve years, that is a massive discovery. All right. Our next update is a very interesting one and definitely something that we are going to celebrate because this person was missing for many, many years and they were found safe. So this next story is about a North Carolina woman who vanished almost twenty five years ago, and like I said, it's good news she's been found alive. So her name is Michelle Hundley Smith and she was reported missing on December thirty first of two thousand and one, and she was last seen reportedly on December ninth of two thousand and one. She had left her home to go Christmas shopping at Kmart in Virginia. She was thirty eight years old at the time and married. She had three children. Her husband was the first person who reported her missing. Her kids were fourteen and eight and nineteen, so herr Amanda, who was fourteen years old when her mom disappeared, created a Facebook page in twenty eighteen to basically collect tips on her mother's case and try and keep her name out there, and she would also write a really sweet annual birthday message to her mom. Well. In the last week, Michelle was found safe, alive and well. They were able to officially find her after they received a notification through a national missing person's database that she was alive and well now. According to the Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page, He said that Michelle reported that the reason that she left was due to ongoing domestic issues. However, did not elaborate on that. Detectives looked into everything and said that there was no probable cause to pursue any criminal charges. Although she was technically a missing person for all of those years, she left on her own free will. I've obviously seen a lot of comments of people just asking how she could leave her children, but we don't know what type of situation she was in truly. At the time. Now, her daughter Amanda has of course posted and expressed her. Feelings after learning that her mom. Is still alive decades later. She is quoted as saying, I am astatic, I am pissed, I am heartbroken. I am all over the map. Will I have a relationship once more with my mom? Honestly, I can't answer that because I don't even know. My initial reaction would be yes, absolutely, but then I think of all the hurt. But even then, my mom is only human. Just as we all are. Everything I have been through in life, I can absolutely understand taking off and leaving. I am not saying that she gets off scott free without accountability or responsibility, because she absolutely needs. To do that. What I am saying is that I am a her as well. And while this isn't something to be proud of at all, it's a part of being human. Now, Michelle does not want her whereabouts shared. She wants to remain wherever she is and have that location be undisclosed, so the public is not going to get that information, and I think that's fair. Whatever she went through obviously is very traumatic. It seems that Amanda is understanding also she does want to hold her accountable. Again, I super respect Amanda and the way that she has gone about everything because I can't even imagine the array of emotions she must be having, And that is kind of the story. The case is closed, she is safe, she is well, and we do not know at this point if she has had any contact with her family since all of this broke. But I think all we can do is hope and pray that Amanda is able to salvage a relationship with her mom and that they can move forward and hopefully establish something, and if not, then just hope and pray that Amanda is able to overcome everything that's happened to her in the last week, because that I can't even imagine how she must be feeling. But at the end of the day, at least there is a little bit of resolution and the family can continue to move forward with what they know and just kind of take it from there. So that's the update on Michelle Smith. All right. Moving on to Corey Richins. She is on trial right now for the alleged murder of her husband, Eric Richins, and the trial has only been We're in Day four. Day three ended a little bit early due to some unforeseen circumstances, so we're only in day four and I personally don't see that this is going to end well for Corey. I think at the end of the day, Eric is going to get the justice that he so very well deserves. If you want a daily trial updates, follow pretty Lies and alibis. She'll do daily updates on everything from the trial happenings of that day, and that is how I stay in tune with everything that's going on, because there is a lot right now and it's so hard. To keep up. But she is doing daily updates and they are so helpful. If you want a short synopsis of what happened in trial, she'll go through all the witnesses and it's just really informative and a good way to keep up without having to sit through hours and hours of trial because there is hours and hours of trial here and this trial is expected to last quite a bit, so tune in for that and I'm going to keep you updated as things go. But so far we've heard from a few different witnesses and I just don't think things are looking. Good for Corey, So stay tuned. For more. I will be sure to keep you updated if anything crazy happens during the trial. All right, next thing up that I want. To talk about is there was a case of this young thirteen year old girl named Sarah Greer. She was sexually assaulted and murdered in Cloverdale, California, in nineteen eighty two. So Sarah was thirteen years old. She left a friend's house on Sunday, May twenty third of nineteen eighty two. She left the house to go walk downtown and at some point she. Was accosted by a man near an alley. She was sexually assaulted and ended up being strangled to death using her own shorts, which is just terrible. The next morning, her body was found by a fireman who was walking home. After his shift at the firehouse. And initially in nineteen eighty two, the investigation was limited by the forensic sciences of the day, and in two thousand and three, criminalists with the California Department of Justice were able to go in and develop a profile using some sperm that was collected from Sarah's underwear, but at that point in time, there was no matches in the database. In two thousand and one, the Cloverdale Police Department ended up hiring a private investigator to try and help with the investigation, and they also enlisted help from the FBI to help identify the source of this DNA. The FBI was able to get into some familial genealogical databases and they were able to conclude that the source of the DNA collected from Sarah belonged to one of four brothers. So they then conducted the surveillance and they were able to to collect a discarded cigarette from one of the brothers that they suspected, and sure enough, the DNA analysis confirmed that this person was in fact a match for the person who had murdered Sarah. And this guy is named James Oliver Eunick, and he was arrested in July of twenty twenty four, and he denied knowing Sarah. He didn't remember anything that had happened back on May twenty third of nineteen eighty two. And this ended up. Going to trial, and during his testimony he went through and explained that yes he did know Sarah, and here is the story that he spun because this man is really something he really thought he was doing something. Here he said that thirteen year old Sarah had propositioned him for sex while he was in an arcade playing a video game, and he said that they ended up having consensual sex, and then he basically said somebody else must have come along after that and murdered her and dumped her body. And that is the explanation for why his DNA was found inside of Sarah's underwear. He really thought that this explanation was going to get him off. Well, he was wrong. The jury found him guilty after about two hours and he is expected to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, and he will never see the light of day again. Now he is sixty four years old. Currently he has been living a majority of his life after committing this crime out of jail, and I'm sure that he is probably offended more than just once. Just my opinion, but I do think that when I say time is running out for these perpetrators, and these predators who commit these horrific crimes, committed these horrific crimes back in the day, their time is running out because advancements in technology are happening rapidly every single day, every single minute of the day. There's a new advancement happening. And investigators are getting wise and they're starting to use all this new technology that is available to them. They're using investigative genetic genealogy. They're going on and building these family trees and doing the familial DNA. It's all starting to come to a head, and all of these people that perpetrated all of these crimes should be terrified because their time is running out. And that's exactly what happened during this one. So I'm so glad that they were able to find him, convict him, and he is never getting out of prison again. Okay, moving on. The last thing I want to talk about, of course, is Nancy Guthrie, because this has just been almost a month of the unknown. So Savannah Guthrie, who is Nancy's daughter, came out with another video and said that they are now offering a million dollar reward leading to information about Nancy is Savannah did elude in the video that she knows that there is a high probability that Nancy is no longer with us, no longer alive. And there's just so much here. There's so much that's been going on, and last night, which let's see today's Thursday, so last night was Wednesday. There was a statement that was released because there's been a lot more activity going on at Nancy's house. There was people there all day yesterday. I've seen different reports that something is going on behind the scenes. Obviously we don't know exactly what, but I am going to continue to try and stay on top of it. I feel like this whole investigation has been a hot mess from start to current, and there just has to be more going on behind the scenes that we are not privy to because none of this is making any sense. But if there is anything else breaking, I will be sure to bring it to you. But that is kind of the latest of where we're at now. We're kind of in a holding pattern, coming up on one month since Nancy disappeared. There is so much going on here. I can't even try and keep up or think about keeping up going along with all that has been going on. It's just been a wild ride, for sure. But I'll continue to keep you guys updated. Also, if you haven't entered my giveaway, I am giving away some Primetime crime merch, a Amazon gift card, some other little goodies in there. You have until Saturday evening to enter. I will draw a winner Saturday evening the end of February. This is just a giveaway to celebrate almost my three year pod anniversary, which is in March. So I'm just giving away some goodies, so be sure to enter. All you have to do to enter is share the post to your social media tag some friends. You can leave me a review on Apple or Spotify and send me. A screenshot of that. All of those are entries. You can enter as many times as you want, so be sure to enter so I can pick one of you to win, and I will be doing more giveaways. I'm gonna try to do them at least a couple of times a year. The podcast Sweatshirt is quite popular, so I think I'm going to maybe do another giveaway of one of those a little later on in the year, so stay tuned for that. And we're gonna go ahead and get into today's episode. All righty guys, today we are jumping into a brand new case. So on today's episode, I'm gonna be telling you about the nineteen sixty nine unsolved abduction and murder of eleven year old Deborah horn Out of Allenstown, New Hampshire. Deborah's case is honestly, so very interesting to me, and there are so many aspects of it that are just gonna leave you with way more questions than answers. There's also some other local cases that very well could be connected to Deborah's as well. Everything kind of happened around the same time around the area that Deborah was taken. Could it all be connected? It is very very possible. We're going to talk about all of it in the episode and break it all down. Let's go ahead and get into Deborah's story. Deborah Lee Horn was born on September twenty sixth of nineteen fifty seven to her parents, Myrtle Lee Horn and Kenneth Horn. She had one brother. Although Deborah was eleven years old, she was a very tiny child. She was about four feet four inches tall and only about fifty pounds. Very petite, very tiny. It was a typical Wednesday morning on the day of January twenty ninth of nineteen sixty nine. It was cold, rainy, and because of the temperature, the rain had frozen into a layer of ice. That morning, Deborah had gotten up and got ready for school. She picked out and put on a white turtle necktop and layered it under a gold jumper. She wore a gold watch, an oval stone ring, and silver earrings. It was a cold morning, so she did decide to put on her jacket and her snow boots and she made her way out the door to catch her school bus with her brother. Her and her brother walked a short distance to the bus stop, and on the way there, Deborah accidentally slipped on a patch of ice and hit her head. Her brother helped her up and they decided to walk back home to check in with their parents and make sure that Deborah was okay. Deborah's parents decided that they were going to let her stay home from school and rest and of course, monitor be sure she was okay after her fall, but her parents still had to go to work, so they left around nine am to get to their jobs, and by the time that they did leave for work, it was reported that Deborah said that she was feeling better, and Deborah's mom was planning on coming home around lunchtime to check on her daughter, and that's exactly what she did. Around noon, Myrtle made her way home when she was suddenly struck with worry. One of the two family poodles was outside in the front yard and the front door was left wide open. Myrtle noticed that Deborah's winter coat and snow boots were still inside the home. Knowing that Deborah couldn't have gone far without her winter clothes, she began looking around the house for Deborah, and then she proceeded to call some of Deborah's friends and check in with neighbors, just trying to figure. Out what happened to Deborah. But during all of this she had a terrible feeling that something horrible had happened to her daughter. Law enforcement was notified that Deborah was missing, and at this point it seemed like Deborah had obviously been abducted from her home. Search parties ensued over the next few days, and these were pretty extensive searches. A volunteer search party of over one hundred people searched the area near the Horn family property. Search dogs were used, as well as divers who went down into the partially frozen Suncook River. The National Guard also assisted in the search for Deborah as well. They searched the property of state parks via aircrafts, and they also searched acres in Bearbruck. There was a ton of land to cover and due to the weather conditions, it was very difficult for them, but they kept up their efforts in the search for Deborah. After all, she was. Only eleven years old, and as we know, the first forty eight hours after he disappearance are the most crucial in an investigation. On January thirtieth, police dogs did hit on some blood that was found not far from the Horn family home. They ended up sending this blood off for testing and it was determined that the blood was mixed with mucus, meaning it was likely from someone clearing their throat, coughing and then spitting it up. Gross of course, but determined not to be connected to Deborah in any way, shape or form. Police attempted to do everything that they could to try and locate Deborah. They also interviewed different people in the neighborhood as well, and they did believe possibly that Deborah's abduction could have been connected to a neighbor of the Horns who had some stuff stolen recently from his property. Now, this individual, their neighbor, was preparing for a home renovation and some of the stuff he had planned to use for it was stolen, particularly a pipe fitting was stolen, and that was actually found in the Horns yard. After Deborah was taken. Investigators also did their best to look into local predators, those with any sexual misconduct, and they were doing whatever they could to try and locate the person that would have taken Deborah. In the months following Deborah's abduction, a man named Angela Navarro came forward to a New Hampshire newscaster and said that he had information on Debora's case. Angelo was thirty five years old and claimed to have information about where Deborah could be found. He then demanded to get the full twenty thousand dollars in exchange for her return and said he would kill her if the money wasn't left at a supermarket in Manchester, New Hampshire. Angelo truly was the worst kind of person in my opinion, because he was taking advantage of the Horns pain of losing their daughter to try and profit. He didn't have any idea. Where Deborah was or her whereabouts, and he eventually was arrested and charged with extortion. On August tenth of nineteen sixty nine, three teenagers on vacation with their families when exploring in a wooded area in Sandown, New Hampshire. They happened upon an abandoned car. It was a nineteen fifty two Plymouth that was parked on a small hill about two hundred feet away from any type of access road. When they saw it, it of course peeped their curiosity and they began to kind of look in it inspect it, and one of them ended up popping the trunk to discover human remains. There was a gold ring with an oval stone and a silver earring as well in the trunk. The remains were highly decomposed and they were found without clothing. Once investigators came to the scene, they thought the remains could possibly belong to a child, but they didn't want to immediately jump to the conclusions because there was also another missing girl at this point in time. She was actually a woman, twenty nine year old woman, and there was speculation that they could have belonged to her, and she was twenty nine year old Luella Blakesley, and she went missing from hook Set on July fourth of that same year. Unfortunately, those rumors were soon put to rest when the remains were determined to belong to Deborah via dental records and the jewelry that was also found in the trunk the same jewelry that she had put on that morning before she went off to go to school. So naturally you would think whoever owned this vehicle is probably the person that abducted and killed Deborah, but. That wasn't the case. Who did this car belong to They quickly identified the owner and he lived about one thousand feet away from where the abandoned car was. The car had been there with some other abandoned cars for about four to seven years now. The owner had claimed that he hadn't seen anything suspicious, and although the body was found in. His car, they were able to rule. Him out as having any involvement in her disappearance and death. The autopsy that Deborah did have an injury to the back of her head, which at that point they weren't sure if that was from her fall earlier in the day or there was also an injury there that contributed to her death. Unfortunately, they weren't able to officially determine a definitive cause of death, and due to the advanced decomposition of the remains, they believed that Deborah had been placed in the trunk shortly after she went missing, possibly even the same day. By mid August, investigators were no closer to identifying a suspect in Debor's case. That was until a man named Robert Briest was arrested in New Hampshire. And let me tell you, we are about to go down the Robert Briest rabbit hole. And this guy is something else. I don't have any words for all of the bad things that this man did. And everything is going to kind of make sense as to why Robert Priest was from and center of this investigation. Because Robert, as it turns out, was. Also connected to somebody else who was also missing, and that is none other than Luella Blakesley, who I mentioned earlier in this episode. We are going to get into all of that, but trigger warning, Robert Briest not a good guy allegedly in my opinion, We're going to go ahead and talk about the Robert Breast of it all right now. So, like I said, Robert Breest was arrested and brought up on charges of assaulting a frenchwoman who was touring in the New Hampshire area. This woman and her friend had been hitchhiking and Robert picked them up and drove them to his house, where he went on to assault the frenchwoman and then threatened her life with a gun, and they, of course. Were able to escape luckily. And he would go on to claim he was innocent of all charges and that he was being framed. But he also offered up during that that this wasn't his first brush with law enforcement, and he said he had been questioned in two ongoing cases, the disappearances of Luella Blakesley and Deborah Horn. Now I mentioned. Earlier about Lluella Blakesley, and the reason that Luella's case and Deborah's case intersect is because of Robert Briest. So let's backpedal a little bit and talk about Luella and how we got here, because I think the backstory is important, And although there is nothing ae hundred percent confirmed to connect the two cases, the Robert Briest of it all remains. And if you google Deborah Horn's name, Luella Blakesley pops up and vice versa. So Luella was twenty nine. Years old, she was a school teacher and she had settled to life in Hooks at New Hampshire, but she had done quite a bit of traveling before settling down in New Hampshire, and she had intended on leaving the States again someday, but unfortunately she never got that chance. She became involved in an on again, off again relationship with Robert Briest, and she had very much made the decision from what people have reported, that she was going to try and leave Robert after a set of circumstances that we're going to talk about in a little bit, but he basically wouldn't take no for an answer. She left her father's home on July fourth of nineteen sixty nine for a date with Robert. Now, Robert had said that she never showed up. The search for Luella was massive, and all of this was happening just six months after Deborah Horn went missing. When Deborah's remains were found in August, there was a media circus that ensued and there was a lot of rumors in speculation. There was a hearing on August twenty seventh where a motion was filed to commit Robert to a hospital for observation. This is on the heels of his arrest for an assault on the frenchwoman. Now, during the hearing, it was confirmed by police that he had been questioned about his involvement in both cases. He was questioned about his whereabouts the day that Deborah went missing, as well as his relationship with Luella. When law enforcement went to the home that Robert stayed at, his mom had answered the door and basically said that she was expecting their visit. End quote. Whatever he did, it's not his fault end quote. And then she went on to explain that Robert had this issue with blackouts and even went on to show investigators a door that Robert had put his fist through with no recollection of doing so. There was also an interaction a police chief had with Robert where he admitted to hitting Luella and putting her in a car and taking her to Sutton and burying her. Now, this was not a conversation he was having about Luella's disappearance. He offered this up voluntarily. They were not questioning him about Louela. She didn't even come up. He's the one who brought this up. It was then that they decided that they wanted to admit him to the hospital for a mental evaluation, and basically gave the hospital until October to make their determination if he was mentally competent or not. He was determined to be mentally competent and returned to jail to prep for his trial in the assault case with the frenchwoman. Now, this French woman ended up having some ongoing health issues and she couldn't travel back to the States to testify against Robert, so the charges ended up being dropped and Robert was let out of jail. In February of nineteen seventy one, eighteen year old Susan Randall was found deceased in the Memorac River in Concord, New Hampshire. She had been beaten, sexually assaulted, and discarded. She was beaten so badly that she was nearly unrecognizable. And it turns out that they had a suspect, and it was none other than Robert Breest himself. They continued forward with the indictment of Robert Briest in early spring of nineteen seventy two for Susan Randall's murder. He was found guilty on first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison, where he remains today. Now I do want to be very clear. I'm going to say that Robert has always maintained his innocence in Susan's case. His family supports him. He attempted to try and get a new trial in twenty sixteen, stating that the DNA evidence will clear him, and he has fought multiple times for parole, although he has been denied. DNA evidence from Susan's fingernails did contain a couple of different male DNA profiles, one of which was linked to Robert, the other one was not identified. In May of nineteen ninety eight, Luella's remains were finally found in Hopkinton, New Hampshire and were officially identified as Zuela's. The remains were buried in a shallow grave and there were belongs of Luela found there as well. In the midst of this discovery, Robert was up for parole and the court said that he could get out, but they wanted him to admit his guilt. They wanted him to take responsibility for his role in Susan's death and take sexual offender rehabilitation courses, but he refused. He said that he didn't want to admit to something that wasn't true. Now, I'll be honest, I think that this aspect of things is very interesting because he easily could have gotten parole if he had admitted to his role and been willing to go through the courses and such, but he refused to do that. And we could look at this one of two ways. Either he truly is innocent and wrongfully convicted, or he is just very manipulative, and the reports of him being very manipulative and convincing are coming out in this way, even all this time later. I truly don't know what to think. But then I go back to when a law enforcement showed up to the house that he was staying at and his mom answered the door, and she instantly said it wasn't his fault. He has these blackout moments and there's times that he does stuff that he just doesn't remember. To me, that's a really weird statement for somebody to make for no reason. They hadn't even. Started to question her yet, and she was offering up this information, So to me, that's just also very interesting. We also have Susan Randall, We have the frenchwoman, both picked up while they were hitchhiking, although he was never convicted of anything to do with the frenchwoman's assault. We also have the giant question mark of Luella Blakesley and his connection to her and her disappearance and subsequent murder, and then the Deborah Horn of it all. Now, there was a lot. Of people that started to speak out against Robert Breest in his release when he was up for parole. There was a friend to Susan's who had come forward and said that she was terrified of Robert. He had stalked her. When she was only seventeen years old and knew everything about her in just a few days. Luella's friends and family also came forward and said that Robert was a pathological liar. He had manipulated Luela lied about working towards being a doctor when he had first met her, when he actually was working as a carpenter, which there's nothing wrong with working as a carpenter, just don't lie and say that you're working towards becoming a doctor. When Robert was arrested on charges a possession of a firearm, Luella realized that he might not be exactly who she thought he was, and she decided at that point that she maybe was going to try to break things off, but he was able to work his way back in with her. But then he was questioned about where he was the day that Deborah went missing, and Luella allegedly became very upset by this and she tried to leave him, but he allegedly stalked and intimidated her. Pattern of abuse continued. Luella had confided in friends and family about her fears about Robert. She had told her brother to protect her diaries in case anything happened to her, almost like she knew that her life was in danger and that she worried about what Robert may do. Luella's diary was in fact returned to the family in twenty thirteen, and although we don't know the contents of it, a lot of it was written in French, reportedly to conceal its contents from Robert at the time. So where does this leave Deborah's case? Her case is still unsolved. Luella's case is still unsolved. There is also two other. Deaths in nineteen sixty eight in nineteen seventy one that some speculate could be connected to Deborah's as well. June eleventh, nineteen sixty eight, fifteen year old Joanne Dunham went missing from Charleston, New Hampshire and was found the next day sexually assaulted and her cause of death was determined to be asphyxiation. On November twenty first of nineteen seventy one, thirteen year old Kathy Lynn Glottie disappeared while running an errand in Franklin, New Hampshire. Her remains were located in a wooded area and it was determined that she had been sexually assaulted and had multiple force trauma to her head, neck, and abdomen. Both are unsolved and both have resemblance to Deborah's case. Deborah was adducted from her home. Was it a crime of opportunity? Had somebody been watching her? Was it somebody she knew? There are so many questions here that just remain unanswered, and I truly think that in order for this one to be solved, along with the other ones to be solved, somebody is going to have to come forward with what they know. Now, I do want to be clear going back to Robert, he has maintained his innocence in Susan's death although he was convicted. He also maintains his innocence in Lluella's case as well. Now I realized I just went on this majorly long tangent talking Aboutla and Deborah and Robert and how they could be connected. But I also have to be honest, there is nothing concrete that we have that I saw during my research of Deborah's case that one hundred percent connects him to Debora's case. If you google Deborah Horn's Namelluela. Blakesley is right there with it. These cases have become connected over the years, so naturally, when you look up Deborah, you're gonna find Robert Briest's name, And it could be entirely possible that initial investigators kind of had tunnel vision. And all these years later, Deborah's case still isn't solved. And the reason it's not solved is because they're looking in the wrong direction, or they very well could be looking in the right direction, and the evidence just isn't there. There is so much unknown and uncertain about all of these cases, and unfortunately none of them have been brought to justice. And I'm hoping that with the advancements in DNA technology, they'll be able to officially link a suspect to all of them, but at. This point that has not been done. I do want to. Reiterate that Robert has only been convicted of Susan Randall's murder, although, like I said, he maintains his innocence. The DNA evidence and all the other evidence that has linked him to her death has been up for question and scrutiny in the court system. Like I said, his family continues to stand by his side. He was married for decades to the same woman, and she was always steadfast in her husband's innocence. She unfortunately passed away in twenty twenty. After all of my research on this case and all of the other side research that I had to do with these other cases, I honestly leave this one with way more questions than answers. And I think that's kind of where law enforcement is as well, because all of these years later, all of these cases I've talked about in this episode, besides Susan Randall, are unsolved. At the end of the day. Deborah was a sweet eleven year old girl. She was taken from her home, violently killed, and left in the trunk in an abandoned car. Her story matters, her case matters, her life mattered, and I hope that her case, along with the ones of Luella Blakesley and the case of the other two young girls, Kathy Lynn Glottie and Joeyanne Dunham, are finally solved once and for all. They could all be connected, they could all be completely separate perpetrators. One does not know until all of the evidence comes together and they're able. To come up with the suspect. But I do believe that there is someone out there that knows something about these cases, whether they're all connected or not. Somebody out there knows something and they need to come forward with what they know, because it has been a heck of a long time. It's twenty twenty six. If you you've been sitting on a secret of something, you know, you need to come forward. Robert Briest is eighty eight years old and he still sits in a Massachusetts prison to this day. I'm hopeful that we will get some breaking news in Deborah Horn's case, Luela Blakesley's case, the other two cases. These are all cases. That happened around the same time, all in New Hampshire, and there is a chance that they are all connected. It could be a serial offender, it could be a serial predator. But I'm just hopeful that with all the advances in DNA technology, that these will be solved and we will have answers once and for all. Deborah would be celebrating her sixty ninth birthday this year, and I think that really puts it into perspective of how much time has passed since this case happened, since Deborah's murder happened, and that family has had to live with the unknown questioning who took Deborah from them? Is this person doing this to other children, other families, destroying other families. It just, to me doesn't make a whole lot of sense because Deborah wasn't supposed to be home from school that day. So when I talked earlier about it being a crime of opportunity, was it a type of situation where somebody saw Deborah fall on the ice, kind of watched her go back home and decided to kind of stake out the house, and then saw her parents leave and saw her brother leave for school and decide that they were going to strike and try to abduct Deborah. It just doesn't really seem like it makes a whole lot of sense that this was just a random person that stumbled upon a situation where an eleven year old girl was home alone and decided. To take advantage of it. It doesn't make. Sense that this is the first time that whoever did this, the perpetrator decided that they were going to take an eleven year old girl and murder her for god. Knows what reason. It seems that, in my opinion, it was probably somebody that had been watching the home for a while, probably a local, somebody very comfortable in the environment. Didn't feel like they stood out, so they were able to kind of creep around. That's just my opinion on the matter. But I do think it's somebody that lived locally and was very comfortable. Because who just marches up to a home. And abducts an eleven year old girl in broad daylight, mind you, and is able to get away sight unseen. It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. But regardless of that, whoever did this to Deborah, whoever did this to the other three victims we spoke about in this case, that person needs to be found. They need to be apprehended and prosecuted to the fullest extent if they are still alive. That is, because it has. Been a long time since this happened, of course, so that is it for this week's episode. Thank you guys so much for listening to Deborah's story. Her story is important. Although it's been many decades, it's still matters, and the person that's out there that did this needs to be apprehended. And the other side quest that we went on during this episode to talk about the three other victims, they also matter, They're important, and whoever took their lives, they deserve to be apprehended and prosecuted to the fullest. Whether it's the same person or it's four completely separate people. For these four completely separate cases, we really don't know. But one day I think we will know, because the advances in technology are rapidly progressing, and one day we're going to. Have answers to the four of these cases. My hope and prayer is that that happens sooner rather than later. So thank you guys. As always, I will see you next week for a brand new unsolved case. Have a great weekend ahead, and I will see you then. Bye.