Hi, I'm Courtney.
And I'm Patrick.
And this is our True Crime Podcast.
Evil Pudding.
We are a husband and wife duo.
I'm ex-military and law enforcement.
And I'm a true crime professional fanatic.
And we will together cover the most depraved and most shocking offenders and events that
you probably have ever heard of.
That's right.
Only the most evil are covered here.
So join us once a week as we serve up some Evil Pudding.
Hi everyone.
This is Deb from Dying to be Found.
Before we get started, I just wanted to say that episodes contain disturbing discussions
on harmful acts and crimes against animals and or humankind.
Recordings are not intended for young or sensitive audiences due to the content nature of this
podcast.
Listener discretion is strongly advised.
Hi everyone.
This is Deb, your host from Dying to be Found.
I do have some co-hosts here to help me out today.
We have a married couple from Texas who have a lot to say about true crime.
We have Patrick, an ex-cop and Courtney, a true crime guru from Evil Pudding.
Hi guys.
Hello everyone.
Thank you so much for having us, Deb.
We're so excited to be here.
I couldn't do this without you.
This is great.
I'm excited that you are here.
I'm excited that everybody seems to be taking really nicely to the dash.
It's really cool to have you guys.
So thanks for being here.
You cannot make amazing what you're doing over there.
Thanks.
Well, before we get started, I wanted to say I'm trying to give my listeners a little taste
of some of the podcasts that I listen to.
You guys have great storylines.
You have great energy.
And what I'm doing here on the dash is to bring great podcasters on board, ask you guys
a couple of questions and just do a mini story on my own to let you guys help me out with
that.
You cannot wait for the story.
Well, I think really we talked about this before we started recording that I would say
that our podcasts are a little bit similar in style as far as how Courtney, you and I
present the storyline.
And it's really cool to meet people that I wouldn't otherwise know.
So this is really good.
I haven't had any awkward silences yet.
So that's really good.
That's good.
I don't think that'll be a problem with us.
We're talkers.
Yeah, I have plenty to say.
Don't worry.
Good.
I do want to warn you guys.
I have had a few tears or two.
Mainly I get those from my daughter Shelby, but I have possibly had some fellow podcasters
tear up a little bit.
So just warning.
Yeah.
I don't think that's going to happen today, but
It's the nature of the business.
I mean, we're talking about people's lives that were taken tragically and a lot of times
horrifically.
So yeah, it happens on our end too.
You just don't see us because yeah.
Yeah.
And also we can edit it out.
Yeah, we can edit it out so you don't hear how to get no teary.
I get it.
So I've got a small list of interview questions for you guys and most of them are standard
questions about your podcast, but I do like to throw in maybe one or two to switch things
up.
So my first question is of all hobbies that you as a married couple are going to do together.
Why a true crime podcast?
Oh, that's a great question.
Yeah.
I guess I'll take that one.
That's usually me that answers that.
So I think it was like towards the end of COVID or COVID had just started winding down
and people were starting to go back out, but there still wasn't a lot to do.
And she's amazingly staying at home with the kids all the time.
She takes care of them so well.
I'm at work and then she's like, I want to do something.
So we were just joking around.
She's been listening to podcasts.
I hadn't really listened to any other than like Joe Rogan at that point.
And she was like, let's do a podcast.
I'm like, you know what?
Cool.
We can figure it out.
I mean, I work in tech for a living, so it's like I can figure out the tech side of it.
Let's do it.
And then we did.
She wrote up an episode and we jokingly, if you ever listened to our first one, we were
like, hey, we'll probably have your mom and my mom listen to this.
And they don't even listen.
They have never listened to it.
And then it just kind of, we kind of fell in love with it after we did one.
We tried to do, I was skeptical.
Like we're going to do one or two, whatever.
And then we did a first one and I was like, this is kind of fun.
Yeah, it's just became, it became time for me and her to spend together.
Yeah.
Every week.
It's almost like a date night.
It's like we have time that we slot every week to spend together and just kind of, you
know, have a couple of drinks, talk about a story.
I do my silliness on there if you will.
And then it's just, that's how it kind of started.
It's kind of evolved from there.
That's amazing.
My, my date night with my husband is to go out to the Mexican restaurant once a week,
but podcasting is cool too.
We do that too.
We just kind of enjoy spending time doing it together and just kind of worked out that
way.
Yeah.
It's fun.
So what have you guys learned from each other doing this podcast?
How much she can research.
Holy crap.
Do you have a research background, Courtney?
I do not have a research background.
I should, but, but I do not.
It's just her personality.
Yeah.
It's just my, I, once I hone in on something, she locks in, I lock in and it's, it's just
my personality.
I'll, I'll become kind of an expert on something.
But you couple that with the empathetic side of her.
She really wants to make sure everything she does is, especially the victims and people
that still survive some of these stories.
She wants to make sure she doesn't upset them or say the wrong thing or, you know.
Yeah.
That's been our number one concern is at first I said, I was only going to do the cases like
Ted Bundy, you know, the bigger cases that are always covered.
And then there was a few cases that fell into my lap or I was asked to cover where the victims
are very much still alive and active on social media.
And it's been a huge deal as we've grown a little bit to maintain integrity and telling
the story.
It's, it's not easy to do, you know, as you know, there's.
Yeah.
There's a lot of ethics involved and I know that's really kind of controversial.
There's a lot of people out there saying, are you trying to make money off of it?
I personally, even if I were to make money, I've got buy me a coffee.
If you guys want to donate, I've gotten one or two donations, not a ton.
But if I were to make money, I would totally put that towards, I've already got some not
for profits that I'm looking at.
So if it ever comes to that, I don't think it ever will.
And that is okay.
That's okay.
Yeah.
And just bringing awareness and making sure that we are telling factual events and things
like that, but also being respectful, especially for those people that are still out there
and living their life.
Absolutely.
And that's the thing that we, that's the thing that we kind of talked about behind the scenes
when we were doing it is, yeah, we want to tell these stories, but we want to tell them
not to remember the monster.
Right.
We want to remember the people that were affected by the monster.
Yes.
And I don't touch too much on the big name cases.
Right.
I'm going to contradict myself in just a little while because you'll see why, but I am going
to contradict myself a little bit, but it's not really about that person.
It's about other people.
So yeah, we try not to, but like she says, a lot of people are like, Hey, you guys need
to cover this kid.
Okay.
We'll cover that.
Cause everyone's at like, Patreons or friends.
Hey, cover that.
And we're like, okay.
Okay.
And then we try to find the ones that are just like, never heard of it ever.
Well, I'll give you an example.
I listened to you guys did the black Dahlia.
Yes.
So did I, but I didn't know that you guys did black Dahlia.
Right.
And there were so many things in your episode that your perspective was completely different
from mine.
And that's the cool thing.
You can listen to the same story, but everybody has a different perspective.
Completely.
Especially like episodes like that one or like the one we're doing this week.
We just recorded the other day for we're doing Lizzie Borden.
Those unsolved ones are so much fun to do with other podcasts or listen to other people
because they're unsolved.
So it's just literally speculation what happened and everyone has their own opinion based on
what they understand or what they think.
So those are ones that are always fun to listen to.
I like to bring cases up that are unsolved because it always keeps it on the table and
it always keeps the visibility there.
So I mean, it works for you in most cases.
So yeah, there's so many different ways.
Well, what time of day do you guys record?
When do you guys find yourselves most productive?
How does that work?
Well, definitely evenings.
It's evenings.
We try to stay away from the weekends because our weekends are hectic with all the kids.
So it's usually later in the week whenever she's ready, you know, Wednesday, Thursday,
Friday-ish.
Right.
And then I still have a job so I'm going to do one like at home.
Yeah, we're not paying the bills with this.
Not yet.
Do you guys record the same day every week?
We try to.
It's usually towards the end of the week, I would say.
It really depends on the, honestly, it depends on the kids' schedule.
It's usually Thursday or Friday.
It just depends on which one's more hectic and who's running all over the place that day.
And yeah, we are, to answer your question, where I am personally much more productive
on a podcast level in the evenings.
That after I have everything done, everybody's fed.
Well, you can relax and you can just kind of get into it.
You're not worried about people going here and there or cleaning this or cleaning that
or whatever.
True.
I think my daughter deals a lot with that right now.
Me personally, I have two dogs and a husband at home.
So yeah, I got lots of time on my hands.
Well, that's work.
That is a lot of work.
It's a lot of work.
How do people react when they find out you're a True Chrome podcaster?
I think we have different experiences.
So you go ahead.
You go first.
It's always why?
Like how?
Like what?
But if they know us, they know her and how much of a True Crime horror fanatic she is.
My phone case is literally all the horror.
I have this awesome water bottle, but I'm missing a sticker, I think.
Oh yeah, we can take care of that.
Don't worry.
If they know us, they know that me being an ex-cop, ex-military and her being a True Crime
fanatic, it makes sense.
But most people are just like, really?
Why?
And we're like, we tried it and we fell in love with it.
I don't know why.
I don't know what else to tell you.
It is good.
It's so much fun.
And then everybody that you meet along the way, I don't know if you guys have been to
CrimeCon yet, but there's a lot of talk.
The one in September, is that the one in Florida?
Yeah, because Shelby and I are talking about going there too.
We might meet up.
What topics do you guys decide to cover?
Is this the joint effort?
Courtney, do you come and just say, okay, this is what we're doing today?
It's a joint effort sometimes.
Sometimes Pat will do a patisserie, as we call it, where he tells me a story and he
finds those topics on his own.
And he usually blows me away with it.
But I like to surprise him if I can.
There are some times I just can't keep it away because-
And that's how we know our whole premise in the beginning is you were telling a story
that I had no idea about what I was trying to react to as we're doing it.
But then obviously when people are like, hey, cover Lizzie Borden, it's like, okay, I know
that story.
But this is one of our Patreon members first crack.
If they recommend it, we'll cover it.
And I have this one Patreon member who became a friend and she finds these cases that have
just destroyed me.
And she has just become our resident content creator.
She's crazy.
I mean, she comes up with this story you've never even seen.
And then you hear the story and you're like, how did I never know this story?
You can't sleep at night kind of cases.
If you haven't heard the episode about our satanic panic.
That is, I'm very close.
I am a binge listener.
I just have to start from beginning to end.
And I know that one's coming up.
Yeah.
Right.
And that case, I still loosely remember that one.
That's something else.
But yeah, so I usually have these cases that I feel are huge, but very little known.
And that was kind of how I started.
Not many people talk about it.
And then it kind of evolved into people recommending cases and going from there.
And you know, as soon as you start getting people recommending, everyone's going to be
like, hey, I want to hear Ted Bundy.
Hey, I want to hear Ed Gein.
Hey, I want to hear so and so.
You're like, okay, we'll do it.
Yeah.
But when she does, like we joked about it when the cheese does it, it's like four episodes
for her to do one of those because she goes so deep.
So you're the same way with yours.
When you want to do those well known ones, you want to get everything.
Yes.
Yeah.
You want to give people something that they didn't know.
We all know Ted Bundy.
Okay.
What's something that they didn't know?
That's what she takes away from it the most is at the end of every episode, especially
if it's like even like Lizzie Borden that we just recorded, she'll ask me and she's
like, did you know all that?
And I'm like, hell no.
And she's like, okay, good.
That's one of the things that I've discovered as well is that even if it's an older case,
there's still information to be found, newer articles, even as early as 2022, even 2023.
You can still get additional information based on when it was first in the news.
So yeah, that's the cool part about it.
One cool thing I thought about Lizzie Borden, not to go too much on a tangent, but I have
an 18 year old and we sat down and we watched a movie together about Lizzie Borden and she
said, wait, wasn't Lizzie Borden a child?
And I said, no, girl, she was in her mid thirties when this happened.
And she said, what, because she's depicted and I didn't realize this, she's depicted
a lot as a child.
Or early twenties or very, very young.
Right, right.
She was single and lived at home.
So, and I guess that would make it much more interesting, right?
And it kind of, it kind of gets, it's like folklore, you know, the facts get lost over
the years.
It's really cool.
It's cool to break down old cases like that.
I love it.
It really is.
And that's the stuff I'm talking with my sister, Beth, about this season.
And I know that's on the list.
I did one recently, I did an episode recently, and then I had a listener say, hey, you did
that one.
Can you please do this one?
So I pushed that one because it's been heard a lot, but it'll, it'll come down the pipe
waste sooner or later.
Yeah.
Oh, absolutely.
And it's always fun to learn new things about the case.
Yeah.
So what is your favorite episode?
Do you have one?
I have one.
You know, my favorite episode.
What is it?
I don't, I guess.
The Runaway Devil?
Oh, yes.
That is the case that I heard last year before we did it.
And it is just...
Jasmine Richards.
I don't know.
It has just stuck with me to the fact that just the whole case in itself, and then the
fact that at 23 years old, she was completely off parole, completely back in the world,
and no one even knows where she is now.
And she killed her whole entire family to include her eight year old brother.
And she's just out on the streets.
Yeah.
And that one's, that one's probably my favorite just because of that case.
And she can tell you, we heard somebody else cover it at one point, and it's just, it's
stuck with me ever since I heard about it.
Right.
It's just crazy.
I think my favorite case would have to be, ooh, if I had to guess.
I don't know if I could even pinpoint it down to one favorite case.
I figured you'd say Hinterkifex just because you liked saying that one.
Hinterkifex.
Maybe Hinterkifex right up there.
That's baffling to me.
Any of our old timey cases are my favorite.
And I know they don't do as well, but for me, they're so much fun to go back.
That's just fascinating to me.
If I could do that only, I would be happy.
All right.
I'm going to throw one at you here.
If you were to have a last meal, what would it be?
I know what, I know what mine would be easy because I've actually had this conversation
with people.
It would be chicken fried steak and white gravy, the country gravy and mashed potatoes
with the white gravy on it, of course.
Oh, wow.
And then it would be cherry pop tarts and ice cream.
Yum.
That sounds delicious.
No vegetable.
I didn't hear a vegetable though.
Did I hear a vegetable?
If we're dying, we don't need vegetables.
We don't need vegetables if we're dying.
That's true.
How about you, Patrick?
Mine would be like a whole buffet.
I don't know.
A buffet?
Because I'm having like raisin canes, chicken fingers out there.
Loaded mashed potatoes.
Okay.
Yeah.
So nice hearty meals over there.
Is that what you eat in Texas?
I want to eat.
I think it's the Irish in me.
That's all I ever eat.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I can literally live on mashed potatoes.
Same actually.
All right.
Is there anything else that you guys want our listeners to know about Evil Pudding or
you guys, Patrick, Courtney?
No, definitely just check us out.
We're happy to be here and check us out.
Where can we check you out?
We have our Instagram is Evil Pudding.
Is it podcast?
I need to go back and check.
Evil Pudding podcast and then on our Patreon also under the same name and we're on Spotify.
We're on iHeart.
And you go to our Instagram has links to all the things we have.
It has links to Spotify, has links to Patreon, Twitter, email, everything on there.
So go to Instagram at Evil Pudding podcast and find everything else right there in the
one spot.
Yes.
Or you can email us Evil Pudding podcast at Gmail.
We want to know there for information.
Case recommendations.
We have a case back form that you can recommend cases and we will do them.
Okay.
Well, thank you so much.
I've learned so much about you and that's amazing.
You guys are great.
I can't wait to hear your next episode.
Are you ready to get into my mini story here?
We are ready.
We're ready for the meat and potatoes.
All right.
We talked about a few high profile cases.
I personally do not do a ton of those.
I've done a couple, but we are going to touch on one today.
And when I say we're just going to touch on it, it's really not about this person.
That's your little hint on the direction we're going here.
And hopefully you'll pick up on who this is because I will go into it just a little bit.
But let me start by giving you some information on another case.
You'll see where I'm going with this because I'm not going to be making today's episode
about one of the victims of the high profile case and we'll just go from there.
So here we go.
In June, 1979, a young white male was discovered deceased with multiple shotgun wounds in the
greater San Francisco area of California.
Investigators named him John Doe number 89 and they would spend the next 36 years trying
to give him an identity.
So one of these cold cases.
But what we're going to do here is we're actually going to fast forward to 2011.
Oh wow.
Okay.
Yep.
Because it went that long without having an identity and there was not a lot of information
to go on in this case, but we'll get there.
We're going to fast forward into 2011 where Sheriff Tom Dart from the Chicago area police
decided to revisit some old cold cases from way back in the 1970s.
Do you guys have any idea what was going on in Chicago during the 1970s regarding true
crime?
Do you have an idea?
I'm racking my brain.
We're stuck in California missing people because it's the decade of the serial killer.
So when I was doing my research, I too was trying to make this connection, but we're
going to concentrate on Chicago right now because there was a very famous serial killer
who was very active around that time in Chicago.
Have you heard of John Wayne Gacy?
Yeah, I was about to say that name.
No way.
That's why I was making that face.
I was making a face, is that Gacy?
Yeah.
If anybody is not familiar with him, he is definitely a high profile serial killer.
He's the infamous clown killer who went by the name of Pogo, Pogo the Clown.
Yes.
He's probably one of the top 10 most famous serial killers in the US.
Oh yeah.
Gosh.
I saw a documentary on him.
He just blended in.
He's a true officer.
Horrible.
He killed 33 young men and teenage boys between 1972 and 1978.
33.
Got away with it for that long.
I don't know why because she said Chicago.
I went to HH home even though it was like a decade or like a century later.
I'm like-
Well, it's not in the 70s.
Well, Gacy went on to be executed in 1994 for these crimes.
And when he met his fate, eight of those 33 young men or boys had not yet been identified.
So that's the direction that we're going with this today.
I'm not going to spend a ton of time on Gacy here, but you'll see the connection as we
go along.
Okay.
In 2011, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart reopened the Gacy case in hopes of making headway for
those eight victims that were unnamed in this case.
Court's office made a public appeal to anyone to come forward if they had a loved one who
met the profile of Gacy's victims, which was young missing white males that may have gone
missing from the Chicago's North side area during the 1970s.
Kudos to him for getting out there and reopening all this.
Absolutely.
If it wasn't for him, I mean, who knows?
Just wait.
Oh, watch.
All right, so I mentioned Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart's office requested that eight of
Gacy's unidentified victims would be exhumed in the hopes that they could be identified
through DNA testing.
And that's something that I talk a lot about on this mini series, The Dash.
So I mean, again, we said so many things come up decades after the case.
And in this case, Sheriff Dart wanted to see if he could get more answers.
DNA was pretty established by then.
That was the direction he was going in.
Within weeks of the bodies being exhumed, one of the eight victims was identified as
a William George Bundy.
And William was initially given the name victim number 19 until his sister came forward after
Sheriff Dart's public plea.
I'm going to tell you upfront, this is not the young man that went missing at the beginning
of this episode, but you'll see how all this goes into play.
I was wondering if it was.
Yeah.
What are the things I like to do?
And I just, this is me personally, I just feel like these victims have to have names.
They have to have voices.
I just didn't want William George Bundy to be just, I needed for him to be a piece of
this case.
Victim number 19 for the rest of the time?
Right.
Yes, exactly.
He was a person, he had a family.
Yeah.
And his sister came forward after Sheriff Dart's public plea.
She had provided familial DNA that helped to identify him, so good for her.
Amazing.
That kind of puts things into perspectives for me because you had just mentioned Patrick,
victim number 19.
Yeah.
William needed a name here.
But then again, 19, that's a big number.
It's a large number.
Yeah.
William was a 19 year old young man who had gone missing in October, 1976 when he just
went out for a party.
He was just a typical teenager doing his thing.
He had forgotten his wallet at home, so when he left the party to retrieve it, he was never
seen again.
Oh gosh.
Just a victim of circumstance.
If he had never been to the wall, he probably never would have left the party and would
never have been picked up by Daisy.
Didn't do anything wrong during his life.
I know.
And so I have to sit here.
These are just extra things I think about, like where did they cross paths?
Absolutely.
Do you know if he was walking or was he driving?
Very little information was out there, but I did find that when he was approached or
whenever they did come across each other, authorities do believe that William had been
lured by Gacy under the premise of coming to work for that construction company that
we all know that he worked with.
That was Gacy's MO at the time.
So of course, you're 19 years old, you're going to make good money.
Of course you're going to be lured in.
Vile creature.
Yup.
Well, this is where I'm going to stop talking about Gacy now because in my opinion, he's
gotten way too much publicity, but you will see how this connects in just a minute, which
is really the good part of this entire story.
We're going to go back to John Doe number 89 back in California.
And he was the young man that was found shot to death in San Francisco.
Based on Sheriff Dart's public plea to identify Gacy's eight victims, it took another three
years before one family member came forward to report that her half brother, Andre or
Andy Drath fit Gacy's victim profile.
I mean, I say good for Sheriff Dart for keeping that campaign alive that long.
He really put a lot of effort into this.
And this is after Gacy had been executed as well.
Yes.
15 years after Gacy was executed.
I mean, this is a solved case.
He's just doing this to give these families a little word closure, but-
It is closure.
I don't use that word too much.
I just say give answers because there's something they have to live with.
At least they can at that point say, this is what happened and not just sit there and
wonder for 20 years, whatever.
It's horrible that some of these families, they just don't know what happens to their
loved ones.
And that's worse.
That's worse.
Because you're in limbo, you have hope.
At least they have an answer at this point.
So now they can process.
Because you can't really process and deal if you don't ever know.
Do I warn them?
Are they still alive?
Did they run away?
So now we have five unanswered questions and two, they probably have a grave to go to.
That in itself is probably helpful.
Absolutely.
There's just too many unanswered, I don't know.
I'm not there.
I don't know how to, I would process that.
Well, couldn't even, again, put myself in the situation.
I would literally be hunting for 20 years.
I would be drawing every day.
I see that, Patrick.
All right.
Now, Dr. Willa Wertheimer, Andy's younger half-sister, came forward after DART turned
the campaign into pretty much, honestly, probably a manhunt of sorts.
Came forward to report that she had last seen Andy in Chicago between late 1978 or early
1979.
This is still when Gacy was active.
And he had plans of moving between Chicago, Illinois and San Francisco, California.
So Willa submitted her DNA to investigators in 2014, which was then entered into the combined
DNA index system, which is also known as CODIS.
For our listeners, that's a federal DNA database that cross-references DNA with unidentified
victims or unself cases.
We love CODIS.
We talk about it all the time.
We're the game changers, especially when you talk about the 70s with all the...
We wish it was around.
... especially in California, when there were so many serial killers active in California
and so many Jane and John Doe's popping up everywhere.
So one of the things that Willa had said, she had a public plea, was for anybody who
has a family member who might be missing, she says, go get your DNA, have it sent off
to the CODIS and maybe that'll open up or at least solve some more cases.
I don't know how I feel about that.
How do you guys feel about that?
See, it's hard for me to have a negative feeling only because so many cases have been solved
with familial DNA.
With the Golden State College, you remember how huge that was when it was solved years
later and he was old when he got put away for that.
But I get the other side of it.
I do get the other side of it.
These families that have actually moved on want to go relive that trauma of their loved
one disappearing from 20, 30, 40 years ago.
Do you really want to bring that all up?
Because you're talking about parents that are probably now 60, 70 years old, kids that
are...
They've moved on with life.
It's a double edged sword.
It can be a double edged sword.
So true.
It is super useful to solve these cases and put some of these monsters away who otherwise...
He would have died, the Golden State Killer, without ever have been found out.
Well in May 2015, the results from Dr. Wertheimer's DNA sample came back and it was not a match
to any of Gacy's victims, but it was a match to that young male who died of the multiple
gunshot wounds in San Francisco in 1979.
This is Andy Drath, her half brother, and she had not seen him in 36 years when they
discovered who he was.
Oh wow.
Well, let's talk about Andy for just a moment.
He was initially raised by a single mother who eventually married and had a baby girl
who was Willa, Andy's half sister.
Goodness.
Love that name by the way.
I know.
That's so sweet.
Well, unfortunately Andy's mom passed away when he was very young and he was sent away
to live with his grandfather.
Now Andy apparently did not take his mother's death very well because he suffered from a
lot of problems while he was growing up as he was getting older.
I can't imagine losing a parent at that age that again, I've never been in that situation,
but I can imagine if, especially if you're close.
The only parent too.
But the only parent.
Exactly.
That's what I was thinking when I was reviewing this this morning.
I was like, oh, that poor child.
I know.
It was essentially an orphan at that point.
Well Andy's grandfather was unable to manage Andy's troublesome behavior as he got older.
So when he was 14 years old, Andy's grandfather put him in foster care.
He just couldn't handle him anymore.
By June, 1979, Andy was 16 years old and actively attempting to get guardianship transferred
over to California at the time that he disappeared.
So I'm thinking I was not able to find any information on this.
Was he trying to locate his dad?
I couldn't find any articles in that, but if he was trying to get guardianship, that's
all I can kind of assume.
I don't like to assume too much.
Now here's another thought and I don't know he could have possibly run away, told his
sister he was going to get guardianship and just run away from foster care.
You guys hear about those stories as well.
Well Lord knows what happened to him in foster care too.
I mean it's just a horrible sad situation.
You hear horrible stories of foster care in general, but especially in the 60s, 70s, 80s.
Oh yeah.
Well back in June, 1979, when Andy was discovered in California, several tissue samples were
collected and preserved during his autopsy.
The medical examiner also took Andy's dental records, plus made note of a little tattoo
that he had reading Andy, which was later identified by his sister Willa.
So that was how he was identified later.
And in this instance, Andy was ruled out as one of John Wayne Gacy's victims, but it was
Gacy's case that helped to identify him when Sheriff Dart made his appeal to the public.
Wow.
She came forward because of that.
Yeah.
Amazing.
I know.
I mean, it was cool.
Hail Mary, like, hey, maybe it is.
Who knows?
The stars lined up though.
I mean, it was-
They did.
I have goosebumps.
And this is why I brought Gacy into this for just a second, because if it weren't for Sheriff
Dart, poor Andy would still probably be number 89.
Yeah, exactly.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
After receiving closure on her brother's disappearance, that's the word I'm going to use.
I don't particularly like it, but in this instance, this is when Willa did come forward
to say, hey, if you do have missing people or missing family members, please consider
going and submitting your DNA to CODIS.
You can at least get an answer to find out if they are deceased or not.
Yeah.
And I definitely see her point.
Yeah.
Well, since Sheriff Dart reopened the Gacy case in 2011, several victims have been identified
and not all of them were even related, just like with Andy Draft.
Not all of them were related to the Gacy case, several more family members came forward,
just like Willa had done.
Five additional cases of missing persons were solved by locating them alive and well, reuniting
them with their families.
And there's no mention as to the circumstances of why they went missing or anything like
that that's irrelevant.
It's just basically, I'm thrilled these cases got called.
They're alive and well.
Absolutely.
Right.
That's an interesting point, because if you...
Obviously, you've done a lot of research on cases in that time period.
How many in the 70s, especially in California, did these kids go hitchhiking and missing
and the cops didn't do anything?
They're like, they just ran away.
Yes.
How many times did you hear all those cases when you're talking about any of those killers
in the second and even think of them?
Any of the 70s killers in California?
Yeah.
Our Ed Kemper case recently, they interviewed a bunch of policemen today that were policemen
back then and they were begging kids on college campuses because that's how you got from point
A to point B, you hitchhike.
They were supplying shuttles and they're like, you got to stop doing this.
And when all the parents would go to the cops, they're like, my kid wouldn't do this.
They're like, hey, this is what kids do.
They'll show up.
They still say that today.
So I did an episode on Brandon Swanson.
I think he was at a party and he was probably 19 years old.
Same thing.
They're all about the police saying, ah, they're old enough, they'll come home, just give them
24 hours.
I think there's laws in place now that basically say that, hey, we can't wait that 24 hours,
especially if it's a younger child or even a young adult.
Definitely if it's a younger child.
Yeah.
There's certain circumstances depending on the age and what's going on.
I also recently, because I asked somebody about it and they said that it varies from-
Well, state to state is different.
State to state.
And it's also situational.
There are states that will make you wait 24 hours to see if they turn up.
And it's just that it's got to stop.
I know Texas is not one of those states because I can tell you just driving to work all the
time, you have those billboards up and the alerts are amber alerts.
Yes.
It blasts it all over you as soon as they happen.
They say that a lot of the criminals that take these people, they turn themselves in
very quickly because they see their names up there, their license plate number up there.
Oh yeah, they get paranoid because they see all their information being blasted everywhere.
They get punished.
I'm going to get caught anyway.
So I just need to-
And we need more of that.
We can't wait 24 hours, especially with children.
And we need to listen to the families.
If a mom or a dad or a brother-
They know the kid does.
They know their kid.
If I know that my kid's not going to run away, they're-
Don't tell me that this is what kids do and my kid doesn't do this kind of thing.
Absolutely.
I mean, you know your own kids.
Yeah.
I think you can judge law enforcement in a lot of these cases being ex-law enforcement
because there's so many missteps are made that would have prevented murders and all
these horrific crimes down the line if they had just done their job at the beginning.
It's one of the most frustrating things dealing with true crime.
And I'm sure you've come across those.
Whereas if the cops had done the right thing on the first victim or the first incident,
like, okay, how many times is this?
There's kids that were murderers when they were 16, 17 and they're like, eh, they were
formed at 19.
How is that possible?
And their original record is expunged.
Oh my gosh, that was with temper.
That's the Jasmine Richard single that drives me nuts.
It just-
Youngest multiple murder in Canada's history is free at 23, not even on parole.
Makes you want to spit nails.
Yeah.
So back to the good news here.
Five additional cases of missing persons were solved by locating additional missing persons,
reuniting them with their families.
Two more missing person cases were solved, but authorities discovered this a little bit
too late.
They had already died of natural causes over the years, but it just goes to show you that
as persistent as they were, they actually got the closure that families were looking
for.
Four unrelated cases were also solved, including that of Andy Draff.
So ultimately it's somewhat bittersweet to me.
I hate saying his name.
Gacy's case helped to solve all of these other cases.
I was going to say, you got to look at it.
There was some good from that monster.
Yes.
Because-
Not from him, but from his case of being a monster, somebody else looked at it and was
like, maybe I can fix or find something from it.
And there's some good came out of it.
He wasn't going to offer up the information.
Yeah, absolutely.
One thing about him I always said is, if you watch interviews with Bundy, he at least,
or Kemper, you can say horrible people, but they had a charm where you could see how you
would fall for that and feel safe in their presence.
And they all have that same temperament or persona or something.
They do something about it.
But me, Gacy, just looks like, or would he speak-
Like Pogo the Clown.
Yeah.
He's just insulting.
He's demeaning.
Awful.
Yeah.
Well, we don't like him.
Well, if you guys have heard enough of my little dash series here, you'll know that
that's it.
I'm done.
That's the story of Andy Draff.
That's a good story though.
That was amazing how the two correlated and how we could look at something positive to
come from such a reprehensible human being and situation.
So that was amazing.
Well, if our listeners have any information or believe that your relatives were a victim
to John Wayne Gacy, please call the Cook County Sheriff's Office at 708-865-6244.
Well, Courtney and Patrick, I loved being here with you today.
This was so great.
I love meeting new people.
You guys are amazing.
I highly recommend Evil Pudding to our listeners here.
And I try to look everybody up and to be honest with you, I can't find a ton of information
other than the internet taking me directly to your podcast or your Instagram and things
like that.
So I did find your Instagram at Evil Pudding podcast.
I also found Twitter at Evil Pudding pod plus stream wherever it is that you guys get your
podcasts.
You definitely need to go check out Patrick and Courtney at Evil Pudding.
Right.
Love to have you.
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