Presumed Dead | FULL EPISODE | The New Detectives

When three women disappear without a trace investigators search for clues and find themselves on the trail of a cunning serial killer witnesses

detectives

can't find a missing woman solving this case requires an act of God when a woman disappears beneath her The The rooftop's own investigators suspect she was murdered, but getting to the bottom of it will require sophisticated technology. Most murder investigations begin with a body, but when the body is missing,

detectives

face their biggest challenge: catching a killer when the victim is

presumed

dead

. It was Monday, June 19, 1989 when police in the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park Kansas received a call from concerned parents.

Her daughter Joan Butler, 24, had not shown up for work that morning, she had not even called on the phone, no one had seen her. Since early the day before, even though she had been absent for just over 24 hours, her parents were convinced that something terrible must have happened to prevent her from communicating with anyone. The police agreed to check on her when investigators searched Joan's apartment with one of her friends and found no sign. of her and according to Detective Pat Hinckle, there were no signs that she planned to be out, the bags had not been packed, the makeup was still around the sink, it did not appear that any clothes had been removed from the apartment, so the only thing missing was Joan, They found out that Joan had spent Saturday night with her friends, that was the last time they saw her.

Joan Butler was not the type of person to leave without saying a word. She saw her parents at least once a week and socialized often with her friends whom she would not miss. She was working for no good reason in her apartment. Her friend pointed out to the police the clothes Joan was last wearing, so she had definitely arrived home, but her purse and car disappeared during roll call on Tuesday morning. The mystery. A check from the butler's bank had been deepened. The account revealed that 300, the daily maximum, had been withdrawn from an ATM at 6 a.m. on Sunday, just two hours after she was last seen.

It happened again early Monday and Tuesday. All ATMs were in the Kansas City area. None had video cameras. The pattern suggested that someone else had control of Joan Butler's account and perhaps had control of Joan. He had come down and played. Her family and friends posted fliers throughout Kansas City describing Joan and her car and asking for help finding her. Her disappearance made the news but she appeared. There were no leads until a week later, on June 25, police received their first tip. Joan's car had been seen outside an apartment complex 40 miles from her home. The man with the Jones keys told the officer that he had borrowed them from his friend who was inside him.

The officer suggested they go inside. and fix things the suspect began to escort the officer inside then he left, took the police officer by surprise and escaped quickly the officer learned that the fugitive was a painting contractor named ricky cho and the men were his team, he also told him They said that Cho recently started driving a new red car, Joan Butler's car, when the police examined the trunk, they discovered that part of the carpet had been cut, they also found a dark stain, they assumed it was Joan Butler's blood, according to Detective Hinkle, if that were the case, prove that he had not left of his own free will, any experienced officer would suspect that the trunk had possibly been used to store the person who belonged to the car.

You know the missing person investigators couldn't be sure was Jones. blood without having a sample of it to compare, they hope that the new forensic technique called reverse paternity can help them. It works according to the theory that a person's DNA shares the same traits as their parents' DNA by closely observing both parents. The researchers DNA testers could estimate what their children's DNA would look like. Blood samples would have to be taken from Butler's mother and father. DNA would then be extracted and compared from the blood found in Joan Butler's car. The meticulous process would take unicorn weeks while awaiting analysis from the stain detectives did a background check on ricky cho the name turned out to be an alias one of many his real name was richard grissom he was a 28 year old ex-convict with a record almost As old as he is Heather Keaton his criminal his background included a history of forgery, a history of car theft and a previous conviction for murder in which he killed an elderly woman in the town of Leavenworth, Kansas.

He was charged as a juvenile for that crime and served only a few years before returning to prison. Street Grissom's father was African-American and his mother was Asian, giving her a surprising combination of traits that allowed her to drastically alter his appearance over a decade of crimes and disguises that he had evaded. The police worked on the equation. The sudden disappearance of a young woman. An exhausted bank. The account and a stolen car influence a convicted murderer named Richard Grissom and the result pointed to a kidnapping, possibly a murder if Joan Butler wasn't

dead

, but investigators feared she would soon be police deployed around Kansas City interviewing friends and colleagues.

Grissom, but no one. He admitted seeing it after Joan Butler's bank account was emptied, trace of her also evaporating. Investigators had no further clues. Then, on Monday, June 26, David Rouche received a message that his daughter Christine was sick and would not be coming to his optical lab where he later worked. The day Roosh went to her house to check on her, she was not there nor was her roommate Theresa Brown, who she had also called because she was sick. Christine's car was gone. None of the women had checked into a hospital and none of her friends had seen them.

The women seemed to simply disappear the next day their families filed missing persons reports both women were well-liked among family and close friends Christine, 22, enjoyed working in her father's store Teresa, also 22, had saved enough money to enroll in college neither of The women had no problems to speak of and neither of them were the type to shirk their responsibilities, acting as if the mess in their house was out of place. They searched the apartment for clues that their wallets were missing but, curiously, left A curling iron turned on - everything was very disturbing, especially so soon after Joan Butler's disappearance.

Joan Butler's detectives collected hairs and fibers, including two dark hairs found on the roommate's bedding that did not appear to belong to either woman. . No blood was found in the apartment. No weapon was found. There are no signs of forced entry or struggle. In short, there is no evidence of a crime. the front door hadn't been forced if there had been an intruder it was someone the women knew or someone with a key it wasn't a great case to turn over to district attorney paul morrison we didn't have a crime scene here so there were a lot of fragments different, so our task was to try to see what we could piece together from that and build a scenario and reconstruct what we think happened.

Detectives learned that the passed keys had been given to a painting company. The Richard Grissom Paint Company. What started as a missing person case now looked like a series of kidnappings the day after police searched Christine and Teresa's apartment. Christine's abandoned car was found a few hundred meters from her house, on the driver's side fender there were fresh flecks of blue paint, but inside they found no viable clues later, a check of the partner's bank records fourth showed another sinister parallel with joan butler, his accounts were quickly emptied through multiple transactions, but if investigators hoped to link richard grissom to the missing women they would need solid evidence that emerged in the laboratory when the dark hairs found in The room, the rich bedding, the hair turned out to be of Afro-Asian origin, like the suspect, who was not the only one among Grissom's employees.

Police learned that he had rented a locker for his business. Detectives obtained a search warrant. To take a look inside, they collected some hairs and, outside of a potentially larger clue, a six-foot-long piece of duct tape rolled up and embedded with hair about every eight inches was a large amount of long human hairs and then a space and then long human hair. As if the tape had been used as a gag and put around someone's mouth, investigators hope this was what they needed to link Grissom to the victims. They compared the hairs on the tape to those collected from hairbrushes. hair of the missing women, but the sun had bleached the hair found on the ceiling making a definitive comparison impossible which along with the gag suggested she had been held there against her will the discovery raised more questions than it answered why not there were signs of her roommate Theresa Brown or Joan Butler where the women were now as investigators pondered these questions the case moved forward on another front the test results of the bloodstain found in Joan Butler's trunk had returned from the lab the DNA in the sample closely matched his parents' DNA physical evidence now linked grissom to two of the three victims his and grissoms whereabouts remained a mystery as police searched for richard grissom their search took them from kansas city to grand view missouri 22 miles away grissom's own car was found abandoned in a parking lot and was taken to the police impound lot where detectives spent five hours processing the incriminating contents, found fake IDs and stolen credit cards, some belonging to christine rush and teresa brown, the police also found the keys to their apartment, joan butler's house and dozens of other family members were brought in to identify The elements that connected the criminal to his victims were now more than circumstantial, but until now It was debatable.

Richard Grissom was in the dirt and the police were no closer to catching him. Christine's father identified three rings belonging to his daughter, but there are still no signs. From Christine, Three days into the investigation, hopes of finding the women alive were fading as police continued to investigate, they learned from an informant that on the same day Roosh and Brown disappeared, Grissom had rented a second storage locker in the kansas suburb of stanley, he stopped using it just three days later, the manager told police a young woman had paid for the unit, but she filled out the application under the direction of a man, the manager could not positively identify Grissom's photo, he recalled that the woman seemed distressed as if she needed help, she signed her name roosh, but the woman the manager identified in the photo was Theresa Brown.

There seemed to be no reason for Teresa to pretend to be Christine unless she had no other choice. Detectives searched the locker but found no signs of violence or other clues and then left. They saw something familiar, blue paint. This storage facility had a computerized access gate where you have to punch in a series of codes, your PIN if you want, and then it would allow you to enter the storage facility. The poles were placed quite close to the touch panel and it was evident that several cars had crashed into these poles in the past the paint was similar to the paint found on Christine's car the police took chips from the poles and the vehicle and sent them away to the Johnson County Crime Lab where forensic examiner Gary Dirks analyzed the question: The paint chip showed no difference compared to the known paint that was removed from a blue concrete post next to the storage shed Richard Grissom rented. .

The blue chip helped police paint a picture of what might have happened in the storage shed. Our belief about the uh comings and goings from this storage facility was that that's where he was hiding, that's where he was hiding from the police and that's where he was probably hiding Christine Rouge and quite possibly Theresa Brown, as the police continued. from Kansas City. In their search for three missing women, one last clue turned up across town, courtesy of an 18-year-old good Samaritan. He was on his way home from work when he saw something on the side of the road, it looked like someone had lost his valuables. checkbook credit cards receipts and otherspapers the young man decided to contact the owner her name was christine roosh the police found four checks missing from the ledger they were tracked down and recovered on the morning of monday june 26 the day christine called in sick and cashed them at the counters of four branches of his bank in one hour his account was emptied of 2400 none of the transactions were filmed but the police believed that Grissom was with christine can look at his checks as he signs them that morning clearly christine roos you know very Consistent and legible writing with each check, the signature it gets more and more degraded to the point where the last one you can barely read and can only imagine, you know, Christine sitting in the front seat of a car knowing that, what?

Her destination could be at 10 p.m. that same day christine drove to an ATM in belton missouri and cleaned out her friend teresa brown's bank account the police believe that at that point grissom had already killed teresa and christine was next these are the last photos taken of christine alive Kansas City police were desperate to capture the elusive construction paper Richard Grissom and called him, then they had a break. Grissom slipped up and told his friends where he was going, they informed the police, who detained him in Texas and brought him back to Kansas, the police.

They didn't have bodies yet, but they had a long chain of evidence leading to Richard Grissom, in addition to stolen jewelry and empty bank accounts, they accumulated a large amount of forensic evidence, blood stains, paint chips and hair samples. Each piece of forensic evidence alone probably didn't make or break the case, but the consistent thing about all of those small pieces of evidence was that they all pointed directly to Richard Grissom as the perpetrator of these crimes on November 4, 1990. Richard Grissom was convicted of kidnapping, robbery, robbery, fraud and murder. He is serving multiple life sentences. In Kansas State Prison, Grissom never explained what happened in Kansas City, but police have their own theories.

Grissom had the keys to Christine Roosh and Teresa Brown's apartment, so getting in was no problem for him. He also worked at Joan Butler's apartment complex and obtained a key to her unit. To this day, the whereabouts of the missing women remains a mystery. closely watched by Richard Grissom. I think Grissom is a real power freak and I think this is the last act of defiance from him that he was able to overcome before the police in order to prove that he is superior in some way because the investigators have never done that. was able to find the bodies and I think that is the last letter from him.

A determined and experienced killer can tax the resources of a police department, but so can a killer who acts on impulse. Elizabeth New Jersey is an industrial city and a residential suburb of New York City like any city. It has its share of crime and its police force is trained to handle anything that may arise through deadly force or clever detective work. Once a criminal is in their sights, they don't give up shortly after 6 a.m. On Wednesday, August 5, 1992, a mechanic arrived. to work in his auto shop he saw a car parked outside that didn't belong there and discovered that the owner was Karen Sherrier.

He called her to pick up her car, but her parents said she was not home and they had not heard from her. Within two days her family was alarmed to learn that Karen had not shown up for work that her car had been abandoned her sister reported her missing Detective Christopher Kenney was assigned to the case the family was definitely worried from the beginning It was not like her not calling anyone or contacting anyone for a period of time. She has many friends located here in Elizabeth. Her family was on the coast and she would be in contact with someone at this time whom she had not called.

Someone or spoke to someone from family law enforcement learned that Karen had been out for a night on the town two days before one of the bars she stopped at was right across the street from where her car was found the same day she was found. Karen Sherrier was reported missing, the police began a search to find her, taking her three blocks away to the Elizabeth City recreational dock along the Elizabeth River, there a police dog detected Karen's scent and was Headed to the dock and then the trail went cold, the search for Karen Sherrier led New Jersey detectives to the last place they saw her: the bar across the street where her car was parked.

The owner and one of her clients recalled seeing Karen early on the morning of Tuesday, August 4. She was with a man named Joseph Sabita. Detectives called Zubita for questioning after learning that he had been paroled a few months earlier. According to Detective Kenny, at that time he seemed like a likely suspect. The criminal record showed that he had been arrested numerous times in the past and that he had also been arrested for a rape and spent time in prison for a rape. Zubita admitted to being with sharia the night he disappeared. He explained that they went bar-hopping on Monday the third and early on the morning of the fourth they ended up at a tavern on Front Street.

She said Sharia was taking him home when they passed a man she knew she had stopped, Zabita came out, the other man got on that man Zabita said that was the last time she saw Karen, she said she didn't know the man's name. another man or where they were During the interview, detectives noticed a crescent-shaped bruise on Zibita's arm. He explained that he had caught it on the tailgate of a pickup truck. He allowed detectives to take photographs for the record. Once we finished interviewing him and talking to him that night. We had let him go because we had no evidence to hold him.

The detectives did not believe Zabita's story. The bruise on his arm looked a lot like a bite mark. To be sure they sent the photographs to forensic dental consultant Haskell, who questioned me. I did determine it by looking. In the photographs, in my opinion, this was a human bite mark and, uh, it was a matter of finding the teeth that matched this bite mark. If Karen Sherrier made that mark, it would prove that more things happened than Zubita admitted, but to match the mark. teeth that left the mark investigators still had to find sherrier the next day they were back at the port this time they brought in an officer from the new jersey state police missing persons unit again the search was futile with no word from karen sharia and no reason for her to disappear on her own the investigators had to assume she was dead detective kenny had no motive no evidence no body no case yet he kept his suspect in his sights zabita was the last person seen with karen sherrier we would call Mr.

Zibita in us I would talk to him, I would talk to him again, he basically stuck to his story and we spent about three months trying to find Karen Sugar's body. The police had tried everything from interviewing witnesses to tracking with bloodhounds and had come up empty. The victim's family applied pressure to keep searching, Karen Sherry's family and friends came to us and asked us to do a search, they want to do a search, they feel like they want to do something to try to find her, they told us they would come out, They would make up brochures, They got volunteers The researchers agreed to do one more search, but then Mother Nature intervened.

The worst storm in a century hit the New Jersey coast and roiled the entire Elizabeth River shoreline once flooding subsided. Sharier's family insisted that the search continue. About 30 police officers, firefighters and civilians combed. on the banks of the Elizabeth River, not far from where Karen's car had been found, but the chances of finding something now seemed astronomical, they searched all day without finding anything and then, near the railroad bridge, a searcher noticed something between the weeds a few meters from the water. At the edge he had found a human skull, apparently swept away by the storm and then abandoned when the waters receded.

It was a surprising find, but if they were the remains of Karen Sherrier, the teeth would provide positive proof, except every last one of them was there. When the search for Karen Sherrier was lost, I found a skull in the Elizabeth River, but without the teeth, the first solid clue seemed completely useless. The investigators brought in Haskell, asking him to return to the case to apply his experience. His first find was disturbing. The examination of the skull suggested to me. that the teeth had been forcibly or traumatically removed from the skull even though teeth were missing, Askin found distinctive features in the skull, the shape of the sockets where the teeth had been, the shape of the roots, and a distinctively shaped bone along the sinuses, he then compared his findings to x-rays of the skull taken by Sherrier's dentist.

There was no doubt in the questioner's mind that the skull was Karen Sherriers. Armed with these findings, the detectives returned to the house. of the zabitas and they served an arrest warrant against joseph sabita at the station reviewed his story, we explained to him what we think happened uh we told him what evidence we had uh after talking to josephita for a while josephine admits to us that he did in fact kill Karen Charity as before, Zubita said they left the tavern at the victim's house. In the car they had already spent several hours together and he had little by little gained the trust of Sharia, then she betrayed him, they drove to an access road next to the Elizabeth River, there he ordered him to stop the car, they began to fight and Zabita punched Karen in the face. he couldn't remember how many times he hit her once he hit her she didn't move he was nervous worried sabita left her there then he parked his car in front of the body shop and walked home what happened there he never explained why he cut off The police chief The victim's report speculates that Zabita, concerned after being questioned about the crime, returned to the scene and attempted to destroy the victim's physical identification.

In our legal system, a confession may not guarantee a conviction. Cases are based on the merits of evidence without the victim's teeth. Investigators could not prove that she made the bite mark on Zabita's arm. They had nothing to definitively link her suspect to her, so they asked Sabita to show them where she dumped her body. Police divers never found the remains. Detectives built their case based on what they had eyewitnesses. who saw zabita with the victim on his last night alive and x-rays of the victim's skull joseph sabita pleaded guilty to aggravated murder and was sentenced to life in prison will not be eligible for parole for 25 years investigators traced the murder of karen sherrier to a chance encounter with a sinister stranger detectives in south portland, maine, had much less to go on on august 16, 1991, police were called to the home of william and pearl bruns.

Pearl's daughter, Elaine, was worried because she had not heard from her mother in three days. Pearl was never far from home and always called her detective. Linda Barker talked to Elaine. The daughter was very adamant that her mother always called her at at least once or twice during the week she calls me about two three times a week the first thing she did The detective noticed that there were drops of dried blood that started in the kitchen sink and went around the house. I saw drops of blood in the sink. I saw drops of blood. When you enter the bathroom, and in the bathroom sink, in fact, there were many drops of blood.

Blood in several places in the house Elaine explained that her mother was hemophilic and bled easily when Pearl had cut herself in the kitchen the day Elaine last saw her and ran to the bathroom to bandage her uterus in the path she should have left. . a trail aside from the disconcerting blood stains, most of Brun's house was clean and tidy, but the bedroom was a shampoo, yeah, I don't know where it would have gone, but this is not the way it happened, it seemed as if Pearl had been interrupted. as she was packing to leave oh look there's a little more blood in the suitcase there were more drops of blood like I said even a small cut climbing up it's unusual on the shelf elaine noticed something that bothered her more than the blood well she never took the friendship of her mother.

She is her best friend, she got it 14 years ago and it has never been like this. Elaine explained that Pearl never went anywhere without him and now you found out that she did. She also said that Pearl had not taken her car. Pearl loved her cadillac and it was still in the garage. and said there was no way her mother would leave without her beloved cadillac, the cadillac might have been the only thing loved in the home after five years, Bruns' marriage had soured, Elaine said the last time she saw Pearl was depressed, her credit cards were maxed out.

Her husband complained about the expense of pearls. PearlHe had told Elaine that she would be better off dead. He wondered if Pearl had done something reckless. There was no sign of her anywhere in the house. The only place Portland police hadn't searched was a location. Pearl rarely ventured with the seller, they didn't find her but they found more of her blood, it was red not brown so she looked fresh. You agree, this doesn't look like blood. With Pearl he is nowhere to be found, the logical person to ask was her husband. william was a truck driver who was on the road when he returned william bruns summed up his last day with pearl after elaine left he said an argument broke out over the same old thing money around six in the afternoon he left the house he said it was He went to a donut shop, ran some errands, and then stopped for dinner when he got home.

Pearl wasn't there, she didn't come back and he never thought about it again. It became very apparent that she just didn't leave and he just didn't care. Barker launched an exhaustive investigation into the whereabouts of Pearl Bronze. He questioned the neighbors. He visited Pearl's old haunts. No one had seen Pearl since she was reported missing. town, it seemed like she had left on her own or not really left at all without any sign of Pearl, the detective returned to talk to William Bruns, a casual comment turned into a potential lead, I said, geez, Bill, do you have one?

You already had your carpet cleaned and he says, “Oh no, I haven't cleaned it at all” and I said “well, so you replaced it.” I mean, this is like a new carpet. I mean, that's how clean it was and he said no. "I didn't clean it and I didn't replace it, but a check with the neighbors revealed that I had rented a commercial carpet cleaner a few days earlier. Why I covered up such a trivial matter made investigators more suspicious. Now it's been two months. since pearl bruns had been lost to sight no one had seen her or heard of her the police suspected that she was not simply missing but had been murdered they had handled the case as a homicide they used cadaver dogs to continue their search they combed rivers and woods and other places where a body would probably be hidden none turned up his main suspect was william bruns who still seemed indifferent to the disappearance of his wife bruns drove his refrigerated delivery truck all over new england and up to canada if he were the murderer, he could having gotten rid of his wife anywhere a check of the truck revealed that it had been cleaned, no traces of blood were found in Maine.

Homicide investigations are conducted by state police. Sergeant Mike Harriman was assigned to the case Harriman started with the Brun house, if only to rule it out. We wanted to better search the house and surrounding areas to see if possibly Pearl's remains were inside the house in the basement or in the surrounding area possibly buried in a shallow grave. On November 17 investigators made another visit to William Bruns, this time they brought a cadaver dog. search the woods around the house the search was another dead end in the basement the dog detected something but when the police dug they found nothing while the search was going on harriman interviewed william suddenly the normally stoic bruns looked shocked.

He collapsed and started crying and we thought Well, maybe we're going to start hearing something here and then he just reiterated that he wouldn't hurt my pearl now that the case had moved forward. From missing persons to homicides the detectives analyzed the dark brown stains found all over Bruns' house maybe it wasn't all pearls maybe it wasn't even blood they didn't want to overlook any details at the state crime lab forensic expert ron kaufman performed two tests the first simple test would determine if the stains were actually blood and it was positive the second test would determine if the blood was human it used an enzyme that reacts to the proteins in human blood it reacted showing that the blood was human but the laboratory could not To determine if the blood was pearls, we had no record of the type of Mrs.

Brown's blood, so we finally sent samples of the blood we found in the suitcase along with a blood sample from her daughter and that daughter's biological father to a private DNA laboratory. where they performed what they call reverse paternity testing on the samples the reverse paternity test came back with a match the blood came from pearl bronze the blood evidence gave the state police enough evidence for a warrant he returned to bruns' house and This time they indicated foul play, they sprayed the entire house with luminol, a chemical that makes even the slightest trace of blood glow in the dark.

The detectives were amazed by the results. The entire area lit up bright green. The entire carpet. Wall. It was pretty amazing. In fact, you could even see footsteps where someone had walked through the blood and you could also see where someone had cleaned the carpet. You could see the back and forth movements where someone had tried to clean it and actually cleaned it with the naked eye, but the luminol. were able to collect the blood, the detectives sent the stains to the forensic laboratory because they feared it was Pearl's blood in fatal quantities. Detectives concluded that William Bruns had lied about more than just cleaning her carpet, but to prove the murder they needed the body.

The police believed Pearl Bruns was murdered in her home but they weren't entirely sure they would find the body there the cadaver dogs couldn't identify anything sergeant Mike Harriman knew they needed more drastic measures we had the option of removing the house from the foundation and dig that seller with a backhoe or find an alternative means which was a ground penetrating radar to thoroughly scan that basement and see if there was a disturbance in that soil. Ground-penetrating radar emits high-frequency radio waves toward the earth. The reflected waves can detect anything from fuel tanks to power lines by revealing changes in soil structure.

Detectives turned to geophysicist Scott Culkin to conduct the search. If he thinks that the layers of soil are laid horizontally, they have a certain structure and if that structure is engaged with a shovel, a backhoe, someone is excavating the structure of the soil. it is destroyed again if someone had dug in bruns basement the gpr would reveal it on the morning of 9/11 the detectives returned with another warrant the gpr made pass after pass through the dirt floor we have one approximately 90 minutes into the reconnaissance the gpr detected an anomaly At one location where the soil was disturbed, we informed the main state police of the presence of an anomalous area and that anomalous area was approximately five feet by eighteen inches wide, suggesting the presence of some type burial pit.

There was something down there and the digging started afterwards. Five minutes later, the police discovered an elongated object wrapped in plastic and tied with rope. It was a human body. The body was taken to the medical examiner's office for an autopsy on one arm. They found a wristwatch with the name Pearl Bruns engraved on it. The examination showed that the victim had received a severe blow to the face, it was more than her fragile body could bear. He had a broken eye socket. She had a broken cheekbone. at home that day she would have survived her injuries confronted with the evidence william bruns pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter was sentenced to 15 years bruns never explained why he let his wife bleed to death without calling for help the police knew the couple was arguing such Perhaps because of Pearl's expenses, the half-packed suitcase implied that she was threatening to leave.

What is certain is the case against William Bruns. The forensic analyzes in this case were extremely important. He had done a considerable amount of legwork over the past year and still didn't have the tools that the state police actually had, the cadaver dog, the luminol, access to ground penetrating radar, all of these tools made the discovery of Pearl's body without us literally being able to continue searching for her. The moment the police had to present a body to prove a murder you can no longer prove murder when the victim is simply

presumed

dead