The views and opinions expressed in Cold and Missing are exclusively those of the hosts.
All parties mentioned are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
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Welcome back everyone.
Welcome back to Cold and Missing.
I'm your host, Ali McLaughlin.
I'm your co-host, Eli Sulkowski.
And happy new year.
Yeah, happy new year everyone.
This is our first episode of 2023.
Yeah, I'm very excited.
What do you have for me today?
I got a good one for you today.
So we're back on Cold, Missing, Cold, Missing where we trade off.
And so we're on a cold case.
In December, we covered Tito J. Garcia Quintanilla and we are covering Lesley Sparrow this week.
And this case takes place in October of 1979.
And it takes place mainly in Louisville, Kentucky, but we're going to talk about a couple of
different places in Kentucky.
So it's centered around Louisville though.
Let me tell you a little bit about Lesley Sparrow.
So Lesley in 1979, she's 35 years old and she's originally from England.
She's from Dartford, Kent, and her mother, father, and sister all still live over in
England, but she moved to the United States in 1964.
So she's been living here for over 10 years.
She is described as self-reliant and independent, a delightful person to be around, but she's
also a daredevil.
Her favorite sports or activities, she loves whitewater rafting, she's part of a ski club.
She really loves extreme sports, which I think is really cool.
Yeah, that's really cool.
Yeah.
When she first moved to the United States in 1964, she first lived in Atlanta, Georgia,
and she was married to a man in the Air Force, but they divorced in 1975.
And by all accounts, it was an amicable divorce.
Everything was okay.
And she wanted to take her maiden name back, which is Sparrow.
And she said that the Sparrow family had been granted the right to spit in the streets of
London and she wanted to keep that privilege.
So when she divorced, she was like, I'm getting that name back because I want to spit in London.
All right.
She worked in labor relations for Anaconda Aluminum Company.
She started in 1964 and had climbed the corporate ladder and had transferred to their Louisville,
Kentucky office in December of 1977 after her divorce.
So while she had been in the United States for some time, she was newer to the Louisville
area, only having lived there a few years by 1979.
And Charles Ebert, who was the corporate security liaison of the parent company of this company
she worked for, he's quoted as saying, quote, she was a very independent woman.
She would take on challenges.
She had a lot of spirit, a lot of confidence.
So this is a woman who gets life.
We love that.
So Friday, October 12th, 1979, Lesley is at work.
She's last seen at her job at Anaconda Aluminum Company.
And she tells a coworker that her boyfriend had invited her to a skydiving competition
in Arizona for the weekend.
And she was stoked on it because she had never been skydiving before.
So she was excited to go do this.
I feel like if I sky dove, I pass out immediately.
Yeah.
Well, jumping from an airplane is not for everybody, but she was stoked on it.
Yeah.
And she was going to go via a private plane.
So a friend of a friend was going to fly them from the Lunkin Airport in Cincinnati, Ohio
to Arizona.
So like a little commuter plane.
So she tells those plans to her coworker.
She's so excited on it.
And after work on Friday, she sets off towards Cincinnati, which is where she's going to
be flying out of.
So then on Sunday, October 14th, 1979, a hotel cleaning person at the Best Western Fountain
Inn in Boone County, Kentucky.
So this is about one and a half hours from Louisville, Kentucky, but 15 miles south of
Cincinnati.
So it's really close to the Kentucky, Ohio.
Oh, that's like where we were when we traveled.
Okay.
Yeah.
Got it.
So she notices blood near a car in the parking lot and calls police.
The car is a silver...
What?
Blood in what kind of way?
So she notices blood around a car.
Like spilled or like a lot?
It doesn't say exactly what it was, but it does say that she notices a lot of blood,
like around a car in the parking lot.
So she calls police.
The car is a silver 1978 Monte Carlo Chevy, and it belonged to Lesley.
This is Lesley's car.
Police find Lesley in the trunk of her car and describe her murder as overkill.
So she's found in her car, in the trunk of her car, parked in this hotel parking lot.
I did not see that coming.
A lot of blood was also found in the passenger side, along with a crack in the windshield
police believe was from a ricocheting bullet.
Police believe she was killed in the car shortly after she had arrived in the area on Friday.
And what day did...
So she was found on Sunday.
Oh, that...
Okay.
Inside the car were Lesley's weekend bags packed with clothes and toiletries.
And Lesley had not checked into the hotel where her body was found, like in the parking
lot.
And she was in the parking lot of the hotel?
Yeah.
She had not checked into that hotel or any nearby hotels, because it's near an airport.
You know, there's a lot of hotels in the area, but she had not checked into any hotel.
To me, someone was waiting for her.
But there was blood found in a bathroom of the bus western.
So it's unclear if it's Lesley's blood, somebody else's blood, but there was blood found in
a bathroom in that hotel.
Okay.
But we don't have any details of whose room that is.
That's all very hush-hush.
And there's no CCTV footage because...
It's 1979.
Yeah.
So on Tuesday, October 16th, this is just a couple days after she's found, Lesley's
autopsy is conducted by coroner Don Stith.
And she's ID'd through her dental records.
So they don't know who she is, but ultimately she's ID'd through her dental records.
Her body was that... that she wasn't identifiable by someone looking at her?
Yeah.
Because again, it was overkill.
And according to her autopsy results, and just a trigger warning here, she was shot
in the head six times with a 25 caliber weapon.
And she was also hit in the head 15 times with a blunt instrument believed to be a tire
iron.
There was no evidence of sexual assault.
And at this time, police have no suspects.
So about a week after the murder, I couldn't find a clear date on this, but it's the week
following her murder.
Police find Lesley's wallet and part of an address book discarded on a rural road.
Near the items was a man's blue shirt covered in blood.
So then on October 30th, Lesley's memorial service is held at the Duncan Memorial Chapel
in Crestwood, Kentucky.
And then not a lot of news comes out.
And in December of 1979, so a little over two months later, her company puts up a $25,000
reward for info leading to the arrest of her killer.
Her company does?
Her company does this.
And this is actually really interesting.
So Charles Ebert, who I had quoted earlier, he's the corporate security for Atlantic Richfield
Co., which is the parent company that owns Anaconda Aluminum, which Lesley worked for.
And Charles says the company was working on a pilot program to offer rewards when their
employees are killed violently.
The company has found that women who transfer from city to city were particularly vulnerable
to violent crimes, quote, having moved away from family and friends, end quote.
So this company had had several employees murdered violently.
I hate the way that that is worded.
I'm sorry.
Like women aren't vulnerable.
Men are abusive.
Yes.
And I know you already know that, and you don't have to keep it in there.
I'm just like, I'm feeling really angry for you right now that women are just so easily
discarded across the board and that she was in a fucking trunk.
That's disgusting that, I mean, we've talked about how men are, but that they do that shit.
So for this company, there had been a Los Angeles service operator who was murdered
pretty violently, and then a high level manager in Philadelphia was also murdered violently.
So this company just knows the people who work for us maybe might be murdered?
Yeah.
And so they have this pilot program to offer rewards to get information for their, specifically
just for employees of violent deaths, murders.
That's bananas.
Is that, that's like a real thing that existed?
That was a real thing that existed in 1979 for this company.
And we actually will have, the company took out ads and newspapers, so we'll put up on
our Instagram, like a copy of the ad that was put out essentially for information for
her murder by her company.
So in December, again, a little over two months after her murder, Captain Donald Stamper,
who is commander of the Boone Florence felony squad, said no one was working full time on
the case and it was significantly slowed down since all of the info was coming out of Louisville,
which was about an hour and a half away.
But he had learned some important info and the skydiving show was phony.
No parachute show was scheduled for the time and location given to Lesley.
And there's no internet, you can't just like search that before you go.
Yeah.
But, you know, for a skydiving competition, you, even in 1979, you had to like schedule
it, you know, you had to clear the skies for people to be doing that.
But so that event was never happening, never took place.
It was phony.
And the private plane was also fake.
No evidence that one was ever scheduled at the airport and no one ever came forward to
say that they were the ones that were going to be doing the flying or had access to it.
And apparently in this invite that Lesley had received for the skydiving competition
from her boyfriend, it's revealed later that her boyfriend had sent her the invite, in
the invitation was also like two sets of couples that she knew.
And they had no idea about it apparently either.
So like she was kind of tricked into heading this way by means of like, you don't have
to pay for a flight, it's already paid for, we're going to do this cool thing and these
people you already know are coming.
So investigators, oh, I mentioned this, that they believe she was killed shortly after
arriving in the area.
They also believe the motive was jealousy, quote, the boyfriend-girlfriend variety, end
quote.
But there's also a single report that robbery could have been a motive.
And I wonder if this is coming because her wallet was taken from the scene and later
showed up discarded.
But the investigators seem to believe that the main motive was jealousy.
And in December of 1979, investigators have zeroed in on two people.
The first is a man from Louisville that had been seen near Lesley's home days before the
murder.
He had worked for Anaconda and this man was married and his wife was told that her husband
was a suspect.
Him and Lesley were seen dining at the Celestial Restaurant in Mount Adams, which is right
outside of Cincinnati, Ohio.
So they were going about an hour and a half away to go out to eat.
So that way nobody would see them.
So this man, he's never named by police, this man declined to take a polygraph test.
And he was also possibly connected to a Ford truck theft ring that was happening in Louisville
at this time, so like kind of an organized crime of a bunch of Ford trucks being stolen.
So he's a suspect, but then they also have a person of interest, which was a man who
had been laid off from Anaconda months before.
So not nearly as much as the suspect, but he's a person of interest.
Police say they still have leads to investigate, such as a woman who called Anaconda and warned
that women employees sleeping with male employees, quote, will end up like that other lady, end
quote, which police assumed was referring to Lesley.
So January 10th, 1980, in a new year, it's only been about three months, four months
since Lesley has been killed.
The reward offer brought by her company, no new leads come out of this, and police remain
convinced that the crime is centered around Louisville, but no arrests have been made.
And there's no attempt to pass off the case to Louisville police in the seventies and
eighties.
I know we've talked about this before, but police weren't always willing to help each
other or do what's right by the victims.
Yes.
It was more about like, who found it first?
Yeah.
It's like, this is my case, even though I can't investigate it to the extent it needs to be,
because again, it's before the internet, before cell phones, you're trying to interview people,
track them down.
Like you really have to be in the city to do that.
February 23rd, 1981.
So this is a year plus that she has been murdered at this point.
The case is stagnant, but police feel sure they know who did it.
And Major Don Stamper, he says, quote, we feel sure we have our man, but we want solid
evidence before making an arrest.
We have a room full of circumstantial evidence, end quote.
So to me, it feels like police, since there's like no real updates, no real new evidence
between like 1980 and 1981, to me, I think the police are like, this guy did it.
We don't have the evidence yet.
And it feels like they might've stopped working the case because they were like very convinced
it's this person.
Cause again, the next update doesn't come until November 27th of 1983.
So this is four plus years she's been murdered at this point.
Investigators say they have tried to bring charges against their main suspects, but quote,
the Commonwealth attorney, well, he's the one to decide and he didn't feel that there
was enough to try the guy on, end quote.
And again, this is Major Don Stamper.
So to me, I don't know, something about like 1983, if like the DA, the Commonwealth attorney,
if they're saying there's not enough evidence, there's not enough evidence.
They used to try people very thinly back in the day, especially before like DNA, like
you could really get somebody on circumstantial evidence.
But for like the DA to say there was not enough at this time, I'm like, okay, there probably
was not enough evidence.
And then the case really stops there.
It seems like the police tried to bring charges, but there wasn't enough.
So they were like, all right, well, this guy did it, but we can't close it yet.
And the next update comes in July of 2020.
Yeah.
Wow.
That's in the pandemic.
Yeah.
And the reason her story comes up again is because an Eagle Scout for his Eagle Scout
project takes on clearing an old cemetery.
And this cemetery is known as the Poorhouse Cemetery, but its official name is the Boone
County Infirmary Cemetery.
So Lesley's family was not able to get her body home, cost a lot of money to transport
a body, especially overseas.
So her body went unclaimed until the 90s.
And then it was buried in this Poorhouse Cemetery.
And so the Eagle Scout learns her story by clearing the cemetery and getting it all nice
and clean.
And so he starts raising money for a proper headstone for Lesley after learning about
her story.
Just a good young man.
Wow.
Yeah.
I'm really glad that that human exists.
But this does get a lot of interest in Lesley's case going again.
And the Cincinnati Inquirer actually does, they get a lot of the case files from the
police and they actually reveal so much information.
So when I was researching this until I found the 2020 Cincinnati Inquirer, you didn't
know that her boyfriend had invited her to the skydiving show.
You didn't know there was blood found inside of the hotel.
You didn't, like, those details were kept out of the public eye for so long.
Why is that?
Well here's my take on why some of this stuff was released.
I will also say though that you understand quite a bit more about like all of those rules.
Like I don't understand like gag orders.
I don't understand what's public record, what's not.
I don't understand why.
So thank you for always explaining it to me.
Of course.
So I think that the reason they released so much information that wasn't redacted or gave
so much out is because their main suspect, this guy that they've tried to bring charges
against before in the past, he as of 2020, he had died.
So as of today, the main suspect is dead in the case.
So to me, it almost feels like a trial by media of saying like, by just releasing the
fact that her boyfriend invited her to this fake show, to me, I feel very suspicious of
this ex-boyfriend who was married and she gets invited to, like you said earlier, it
sounded like somebody was waiting for her.
So it's like, who would be waiting for her?
Maybe the boyfriend that invited her.
So I think that's why so much of the information gets released in 2020.
But in October of 2020, police revealed they are reviewing fingerprints that were recovered
from her car and also from her address book that was found on the side of the road.
But no hits, no updates as of 2020.
So if anybody has any information about what happened to Lesley Sparrow in 1979, you are
encouraged to call the Boone County Sheriff at 859-334-2175, or you can email them at
bcs at boonecountyk.com.
And the sources for today's podcast, Fox 19, The Evening Centennial, The Courier Journal,
and The Cincinnati Inquirer.
But that is the case of Lesley Sparrow.
And it is, again, a cold case.
The main suspect is dead.
But I have to think that if it is this person, somebody else knows.
Like he had to have said something in his life, or if there was like a jealousy, you
know, this woman calls saying that people will end up like the other lady, might be
more than one person.
No new plan.
I don't know.
I truly don't know.
But it sounds like there's like, perhaps a whole world of, I don't know, misbehavior
happening like within that company.
Yeah.
The company aspect of them having this pilot program, I mean, I do a lot of research into
these things, and I've seen companies offer, you know, money in the past, but never as
like a specific pilot program.
Like, it's never been described like that.
It's like our employee was killed and we would like some answers.
Here is some money that we are putting or adding to the reward fund, you know, whatever
it may be.
And it was the first time the company was like, actually, we have a pilot program just
for this.
We have encountered this before.
A pilot program for murder.
Yeah.
And he was...
What?
The guy, Charles Ebert, he was like, it's been very successful.
Like it's been successful in getting information for us.
And you know, it was really, in reading it, it kind of seems like it was more for employees
than for the public.
Like it was to get employees talking, which again, the main suspects and the person of
interest were both employees or former employees of Anaconda where Lesley had worked.
And you know, her job working...
Yeah, she worked in labor relations.
So she would do like a kind of an HR position.
Like she would have to do some reprimanding.
She would have to work with the union.
She would lay people off.
So there could be misdirected anger at the company kind of pointed right at Lesley for
somebody.
You know, like somebody that's just angry they lost their job or whatever.
But yeah, that's the case of Lesley Sparrow.
If you enjoy our podcast, you can follow us on Instagram.
Like I mentioned earlier, we're going to be posting photos.
We always post pictures from our cases.
Also, we had some people reach out in response to our last few episodes about Tito.
They wanted to know ways that they could help Faith.
We interviewed Faith in a couple of our episodes in December.
And Faith has started a GoFundMe to help hire a private investigator to help with Tito or
to help find Tito.
So if you go to our Instagram, you can find the GoFundMe in the link in our bio.
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And if you would like to support Cold and Missing in 2023 as we continue our podcasting
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that come with it.
That's all of us though.
Thank you so much, Al.
I feel like I learned a lot.
I'm eager to look up information about this and hopefully get her name back out there.
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, that's all from us though.
Have a good week and stay safe, y'all.
Thanks, y'all.
Thank you so much, everybody.