It's a story many people know - In the dead of night, a teenage girl finds herself alone in a house, the children she's caring for sound asleep upstairs. She's settled in, watching television, when a phone call breaks the silence. A voice on the other end, cold and sinister, whispers, “Check the children.'" At first, she dismisses it as a prank, but the calls persist, each one more unnerving than the last. Fear begins to claw at her, gripping her heart with icy fingers. Desperate and terrified, she dials 911, and the police promise to trace the next call. When it comes, they call her back, urging her to get the kids and leave the house immediately. She runs from the home and when the police arrive they tell her that the calls were coming from inside the house and a deranged killer has murdered the children.
There are many different variations of this urban legend. In some versions everyone survives, in other versions no one survives, but the basic premise is always the same.
Although there are no known cases that specifically match the scenario from that urban legend, there is one particular murder that is thought to be the inspiration for the chilling tale, but you might want to curb your expectations because I can tell you that this episode is going to take us into a true horror story where we discuss two haunting, unsolved murders and the disturbing reality of racial injustice in the southern United States in the 1940s.
Sources:
The Babysitter Murder: The Story of Janett Christman and Marylou Jenkins from A True Crime Blog & Podcast
Who killed Janett Christman? from Columbia Daily Tribune
Janett Christman 1950 Missouri from Newspapers.com
The Execution of Floyd Cochran from Columbia Daily Tribune
Episode 146 - Janett Christman from The Trail Went Cold
See ya next Wednesday!
Intro/Outro Music: A Creepy Music from Music Unlimited
Instagram: @wickedwithinpodcast
Website: wickedwithinpodcast.com
It's a story many people know - In the dead of night, a teenage girl finds herself alone in a house, the children she's caring for sound asleep upstairs. She's settled in, watching television, when a phone call breaks the silence. A voice on the other end, cold and sinister, whispers, “Check the children.'" At first, she dismisses it as a prank, but the calls persist, each one more unnerving than the last. Fear begins to claw at her, gripping her heart with icy fingers. Desperate and terrified, she dials 911, and the police promise to trace the next call. When it comes, they call her back, urging her to get the kids and leave the house immediately. She runs from the home and when the police arrive they tell her that the calls were coming from inside the house and a deranged killer has murdered the children.
There are many different variations of this urban legend. In some versions everyone survives, in other versions no one survives, but the basic premise is always the same.
Although there are no known cases that specifically match the scenario from that urban legend, there is one particular murder that is thought to be the inspiration for the chilling tale, but you might want to curb your expectations because I can tell you that this episode is going to take us into a true horror story where we discuss two haunting, unsolved murders and the disturbing reality of racial injustice in the southern United States in the 1940s.
Sources:
The Babysitter Murder: The Story of Janett Christman and Marylou Jenkins from A True Crime Blog & Podcast
Who killed Janett Christman? from Columbia Daily Tribune
Janett Christman 1950 Missouri from Newspapers.com
The Execution of Floyd Cochran from Columbia Daily Tribune
Episode 146 - Janett Christman from The Trail Went Cold
See ya next Wednesday!
Intro/Outro Music: A Creepy Music from Music Unlimited
Instagram: @wickedwithinpodcast
Website: wickedwithinpodcast.com
I'm Kate and I'm Tolly, and welcome to Wicked Within. This week we are back with another True Crime case and we are continuing with our spooky season lineup, and last week I kind of mentioned that this one is about kind of possibly the origin story for an urban legend. So so that is why this is part of the spooky season, because this is one of those urban legends that did give me the creeps. Bloody Mary was kind of one of those ones. Are was like oh yeah, this is like a fun little like weird party game, but this one actually just scared me. There's nothing fun about it.
Speaker 1:So yeah, anyway. So we are going to just dive right on in and I'm going to start by kind of giving the general overview of this urban legend. In the dead of night, a teenage girl finds herself alone in a house. The children she's caring for sound asleep upstairs. She settled in watching television. When a phone call breaks the silence. A voice on the other end of the line, cold and sinister whispers. Check the children at first.
Speaker 2:No, I have a lot of worst fears I've noticed is like the month goes on I keep saying worst fear. But that was chilling, mm. Hmm.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this one, like I said this, gives me the heebie-jeebies.
Speaker 2:I also want to know because, specifically since you said that line, if there is background noise of my child crying, it's because he does not want to go to bed and not because he may or may not be getting murdered.
Speaker 1:So, okay, yeah, that is a good clarifying point. Yeah, yeah, good to know. Yeah, at first she dismisses it as a prank, but the calls persist, each one more unnerving than the last. Fear begins to clot. I'm tearing up.
Speaker 2:I haven't heard this one before. I don't think so.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, I don't think so. Like check on the children. I feel like that would have resonated with me. Okay, wow.
Speaker 1:Fear begins to clot her, gripping her heart with icy fingers. Desperate and terrified, she dials 911. And the police promise to trace the next call. When it comes, they call her back, urging her to get the kids and leave the house immediately. She runs from the home and when the police arrive on the scene, they tell her that the calls were coming from inside the house and her deranged killer has murdered the children.
Speaker 2:Wait did she not check on the children this entire time?
Speaker 1:She didn't check on the kids the entire time. I think is the general idea. Now here's the thing. There are a lot of different variations of the Serban legend. In some versions everyone survives. In other versions no one survives. But the basic premise is usually the same In some cases. I think the first time I heard it, it was like this babysitter was watching the kids and she kept going upstairs to check on them but she was getting really creeped out by like. I've heard two different versions. It's either an angel statue or a clown figure or something like that that the family had. And so she calls the parents or they call her and she's like hey, is it okay if I just put like a sheet over the you know the clown or the angel figure that you have, because it's really creeping me out? And they say we don't have an angel statue In.
Speaker 2:Mm, hmm, mm, hmm, I don't feel like. Maybe that's when I've heard like a lot of the like. We don't have that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes, so this is. They're all variations on the same story and this is that story. Okay, okay, although there are no known cases that specifically match the scenario from that urban legend, there is one particular murder that is thought to be the inspiration for this chilling tale. But you might want to curb your expectations, because I can tell you that this episode is going to take us into a true horror story where we discuss two haunting, unsolved murders and the disturbing reality of racial injustice in the Southern United States in the 1940s, which I bet is not at all where you expected to go with this urban legend. Yeah, yeah. Well, here we are All right.
Speaker 1:On March 18, 1850, ed and Ann Romack were planning for a rare night out in their hometown of Columbia, missouri. The couple lived just outside of town in a rural home and Ann was several months pregnant with their second child. Their oldest child, gregory, was three years old. So they asked 13 year old Jeanette Christman if she could babysit for them. Jeanette was born on March 21, 1936 to Charles and Lula May Christman. She was the oldest of three sisters and an eighth grade student at Jefferson Junior High School. Jeanette was a talented musician and regularly played piano and sang in the choir. She was very involved in her church and was known for being mature for her age. Her parents owned Ernie's Cafe and Steakhouse and the family lived in an apartment located above the restaurant. Jeanette was originally supposed to attend a school party with some of her friends on the evening of March 18th, but she had just purchased a burgundy suit for Easter and she wanted to save money so that she could pay her parents back for her new clothes.
Speaker 1:Jeanette arrived at the Romack's house at 7.30 that evening. The weather was awful, with temperatures dipping down into the 20s and freezing rain covering the roads and high winds. But when she arrived, little Gregory was already fast asleep and Ann Romack assured her that he would probably sleep through the night without an issue. Before Ann and Ed left the house, ed directed Jeanette's attention to the shotgun that the couple kept near their front door. He showed her how to load, unload and fire the gun and reminded her to turn on the porch light if anyone knocked and not to open the door for strangers. Jeanette happily agreed and the Romack's left to go play bridge with some friends, or they were playing some kind of card game. I heard bridge.
Speaker 2:It feels like such an old person thing, but it really does.
Speaker 1:I think that's what I learned from this. If it was in fact bridge, I'm not sure that it was. What I learned is that? I think I was like, oh, I just thought that that was a game for people who are at least over 50, if not over 80. I think that what it really is is that, by the time it rolled around, is that the 80-year-olds were just playing the game that they used to play when they were in their 30s. Actually, nothing changed. We were just misunderstood. Yeah, we misunderstood the situation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sometime between 1030 to 11, a panicked call came into the local police station. Officer Roy McCowan answered the call, only to hear panicked babbling and come quick from a girl or woman on the other end of the line. Mccowan urged the caller to calm down and to tell him where to find her, but then the other line went silent. Yeah, tracing phone calls looked a lot different in the 1950s. Although it was sometimes a possibility to trace an unknown caller, the switchboard operators had already left work for the evening and there was no way to find out who had made the call or where the call had come from. Officer Macau, yes, it does indeed. Also what?
Speaker 2:I would expect in the 1950s though.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like unsurprising, yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Officer Macau had truly believed that the person on the other end of the call was in trouble, but he didn't know how to find her and he just hoped and prayed that she would call back.
Speaker 2:But she never did.
Speaker 1:Later that evening the Romacs called their home, but they heard a busy signal and assumed that Jeanette was on the line with friends or family. The Romacs returned home at 1.35 am to find their porch light on and their blinds open. They were surprised to discover that the front door had been left unlocked. But nothing could have prepared them for the horror inside their own home.
Speaker 2:They were wild, and if they were playing bridge until 1.30 am.
Speaker 1:What I did, think that I was like. I was like I could not be out that late at this point in my life.
Speaker 2:Let alone playing bridge or just card games in general. Like I couldn't even do cards against humanity for that long, I definitely was the person that fell asleep on the couch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I mean, at a certain point I love games, like love games, but at a certain point I need to go home and sleep and that point is basically after 11 pm and that's push and mid. So yeah, jeanette Crisman was lying on the floor of the living room with her legs spread apart and her skirt pushed all the way up.
Speaker 1:The phone was lying near her body. Ed rushed over to her, while Anne rushed to check on little Gregory, who was still fast asleep in his crib with no signs of harm. Oh my gosh. Unfortunately, jeanette was already dead. Local law enforcement were notified and quickly arrived on the scene.
Speaker 1:Since the Romax house was technically located just outside the city limits of Columbia, the murder fell under the jurisdiction of the Sheriff's Office rather than the Columbia City Police. The Sheriff's Office noted many things at the scene. First, jeanette had put up a substantial fight. There was blood leading from the kitchen phone down the hallway and into the living room. Both the front door and back doors of the house had been left unlocked and one of the side windows had been broken with a garden hoe that the Romax identified from their own home. An autopsy would reveal that Jeanette had been sexually assaulted. The medical examiner also found numerous scratches to her face, small puncture wounds to both sides of her head and severe blunt force trauma to the head. Though the cause of death was ruled a strangulation, jeanette's body was discovered with an electrical cord wrapped around her neck. The cord had been cut from an iron found in the Romax house.
Speaker 2:Interesting. I'm interested about these puncture wounds. Yes, I was interested in that too, the part that goes in the outlet is kind of what I thought they were really small, very fine point.
Speaker 1:almost more like the size of this is grim, but almost more along the sides of those metal skewers that they use for kebabs or something like that it was a little bit closer to that, or the tip of a pen or something along those lines, which we will probably learn more about that later. So put a pin in that.
Speaker 2:I wonder if she called 911 once she heard that, with the window crashing like just a kind of dial, leave a message and then got smurdered.
Speaker 1:I have a lot of thoughts and questions about it. I am going to save them for later as more things kind of unfold throughout the rest of the episode. But I still wonder that.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so that question doesn't get answered, but I have the same wondering. Bloody fingerprints found at the scene were taken into evidence and bloodhounds were called to trace the scent of the killer. They tracked a trail from the house to the corner of West Boulevard and West Ash Street, but the scent ended there. Since the next day was Sunday, news of Jeanette's murder didn't make the local news until Monday, march 20th, just a day before Jeanette would have turned 14 years old. I know that's yeah. Although the case started with the best of intentions, investigators soon ran into a few roadblocks that proved difficult to overcome. First there was the jurisdictional issue. As I mentioned earlier, the investigation technically fell under the purview of the Boone County Sheriff's Office, but the Columbia Police had their own theories and methods, and the two law enforcement agencies often found themselves at odds. Police Chief E M Pond ordered round-the-clock surveillance of the Romax home for almost two weeks after the murder, and dozens of interviews were conducted, one of which resulted in an unsubstantiated confession and another one resulted in claims of abuse from the police. And they did all of this without notifying Sheriff Powell of their actions or intentions. So things are going really well, yep. The other roadblock revolved around another murder that had happened just a few years earlier, but had many of the same eerie features as the murder of Jeanette Christman.
Speaker 1:Mary Lynn Jenkins was born on August 28th 1926. She was the youngest child of Jacques and Dorothy Jenkins. Mary Lou was known for being quiet, studious and family-oriented. After high school she began taking classes at Stevens College and on February 5th 1946, she spent the afternoon at Town Hall, a club on campus. Mary Lou was invited to spend the night at a friend's house, but she decided to go home and study instead.
Speaker 1:Mary Lou lived in a small house in Columbia with her mother, dorothy, though her parents were still married. Mary Lou's father, jacques, had moved to Kansas City for work and her older brother, oren, a World War II veteran, lived with him there. Mary Lou's older sister, jacqueline, was married and living in Denver, colorado. At the time.
Speaker 1:Around 10 pm, dorothy went to another house in the neighborhood to take care of some elderly neighbors. Before she left, dorothy told Mary Lou to open the blinds and turn on the porch light and call her at the neighbor's house if anything went wrong. I will say those are a lot of steps to do all at the same time. If something goes wrong, you're supposed to turn on the porch light, open the blinds which in my experience can take a half minute and also make a phone call if something goes wrong. Too many steps, don't overcomplicate it. As Dorothy left the house, mary Lou latched the screen door and locked the front door behind her. Fifteen minutes later, a couple of neighbors heard blood-curdling screams, but they assumed that the sound was coming from their rabbits and they didn't go out to investigate the source of the noise.
Speaker 2:I'm concerned that their rabbits are making blood-curdling noises on the regular where they're like. That's the rabbits again, dear.
Speaker 1:That's kind of what I feel about it too, I mean because I mean, here's the thing. And yes, if they're making blood-curdling screaming noises on the reg, I have questions. I don't have rabbits, I have dogs, so maybe rabbits are just screaming animals. No one told me that, though. I know about goats, didn't know that about rabbits. And if they aren't screaming on the reg, you should probably go out to investigate why they are screaming at this particular time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we can assume. If that's not a rabbit thing, why assume it's your rabbits? Also, earlier today I was decorating Halloween and I heard like a scream scream and I was like, is this like haunted house thing or is this like murder thing? Yeah, it was a very concerning month for screams. It was like dusk. I don't know. I was concerned, but I was like I have no idea where it came from. I just heard scream.
Speaker 1:I feel like I've mentioned this before, but I used to live out in the deep dark woods, and when I say the deep dark woods I truly mean it. We were, I think we were at least a mile and a half from the closest neighbor. There was no cell service where we were. The internet was sketchy, the power worked but did go out sometimes because, again, we were in the woods and we haven't buried the power lines for some reason in this state, which would certainly help a lot, especially in wooded areas. So so it was very sketchy and I actually used to stay out there, sometimes alone, because Michael was working night, so I would sometimes have to spend the night by myself, in fact frequently five nights a week. And the thing is is that on a couple of nights I heard screaming coming from the parking area that was located near our house and I was like here's the thing, babe, I cannot help you. I will call 911 if I think that something is going on, but I I there is not a lot that I can do right now.
Speaker 2:If you're murdered in the parking lot, you're kind of on your own, I am.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then I realized, so the thing that I did find out an animal that is a bit of a screamer there are two actually that lived out there. One is raccoons raccoons scream and foxes. And we knew, and we knew that there was like a family of foxes that was living basically just across the creek from us. So we kind of were like, okay, that's definitely a fox scream and not a people scream. So now I'm actually getting really good at it, so I guess maybe I is. What I'm saying is that I shouldn't judge too much.
Speaker 2:Well, and I was also going to say that house had very creepy features, so I I personally would have been on edge anyway, thinking scary pale underground man was going to crawl out of my basement in that house, my basement or my attic crawl space or any other number in the bedroom.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was a. It was a house of horrors for a few reasons, but it was a fun time. At midnight, Dorothy looked out the front window of the house that she was staying in and noticed that the porch light at her house was turned on, but there hadn't been a phone call, so she assumed all was well, which is not what I would assume personally, given that you gave her very specific instructions, but I don't want to. You know, it was a different time and maybe she didn't listen to a bunch of true crime podcasts that make her paranoid.
Speaker 2:Well, he also said like it was a lot of instructions, very specific instructions, like in a normal circumstance, I probably still would have forgotten at least one step Right, and also, if you're being attacked like you're not going to remember all of those steps.
Speaker 1:This is what I'm saying. This is why I was like Dorothy, I like, I believe that the mom, I believe she was perfectly well intentioned and again, it was a different time, so you're probably not as paranoid at that point in time as I would be now, but like if. I saw even one of those things I'd be like danger. Call the police immediately.
Speaker 2:So yeah, where your actual instincts like no red flags to you, but like at least one of those things, a literal light bulb.
Speaker 1:Yeah oh hello. Anyway, it's fine. I do feel bad for Dorothy because obviously that is awful. The porch light was still on the next morning when Dorothy went home at 6am. The screen door was unlatched, but the front door was locked. Mary Lou didn't answer the door when her mother knocked, so Dorothy broke a side window and climbed through. When she walked into the living room she found Mary Lou lying on the floor with an electrical cord wrapped around her neck.
Speaker 2:I see the pattern here.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes. Dorothy rushed over to unwrap the cord around her daughter's neck, but when she didn't respond, dorothy called the police. Police arrived to find a grizzly murder scene. Mary Lou had been badly beaten and was covered in bruises. She was wearing a blue patterned pajama top and a maroon robe. Her pajama pants had been torn and were found on the floor beneath one of her feet. An autopsy revealed that Mary Lou had been sexually assaulted and strangled to death. There was no sign of forced entry indicating that Mary Lou may have known her killer. Now, I'm sure that you have probably noticed that this crime feels spookily similar to the murder of Jeanette Christman, which is obviously awful and may suggest the presence of a serial killer in Columbia, missouri. But that's not even the biggest problem, at least not for the police. No, the biggest issue is that a man had already been tried, convicted and executed for the murder of Mary Lou Jenkins. This does not look good, no, no, it does not.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Oh, no, yeah, and I'm afraid it's going to get worse, because I'm going to tell you a little bit more about this. This is truly a horror story in all the ways that you think it will be, and also other ways that you don't expect it to be when you start the story. So who was this alleged murderer and how did they find him? Well, for a while, it looks like police weren't going to catch the killer. The community was in a panic, and young girls and women were told to stay in at night, despite the fact that the murder happened when the victim was in fact, already in at home. So they felt like they needed to make an arrest sometime soon. And this was the American South in the 1940s. So I'm sure that it's not surprising that the police's attention soon turned to the black community.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:Yep Police went to Douglas, the first through 12th grade school for African Americans, and lined up all the teenage boys and examined their faces for scratches, because they thought that Mary Lou put up quite a fight. Ten days after the murder, 20 black teens were brought into the Columbia police station for questioning, but fortunately they still couldn't identify any probable suspects. Then, on February 23, 1946, floyd Cochran shot and killed his wife May. He fled the scene and tried to take his own life by drinking lye water when police caught up with him near the old dump about a half a mile away from the Jenkins home Feels dramatic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, he probably knew that that wasn't going to turn out well for him, and we're going to find out a little bit more about Floyd Cochran as we go on here. At first, the police thought that they had just picked up a person in the midst of a mental health crisis, so they planned to commit him to the Fulton State Hospital for further examination. But when Floyd's brother, turner, and his wife, lola, went to the house to get May's signature on the commitment papers, they found her body and she was already dead. Oh yeah. When they learned that Floyd Cochran had killed his wife, police began to wonder if he was responsible for Mary Lou Jenkins' murder at will, despite the fact that these two crimes have really no similarity whatsoever, apart from the fact that there is a murdered woman.
Speaker 2:There's no electrical cord, there's no sexual assault.
Speaker 1:No, no, it's his wife versus this other almost random person. It's just, yeah, I'll get into it, I'm not going to get up on my soapbox quite yet. Police questioned him overnight, two nights in a row, as an angry mob gathered outside. After the second night of keeping him up all night to interrogate him, officers proudly proclaimed that Floyd Cochran had confessed both to the murder of his wife, may, and to the murder of Mary Lou Jenkins. Did he actually? No? No, of course he didn't. I mean, here's the thing I don't usually speak in absolutes because especially, but no, he didn't. I feel very confident in just saying no, that's not what happened. It's pretty clear that he did kill his wife, the evidence lines up there, but he didn't kill Mary Lou Jenkins. I am 99% sure.
Speaker 2:Did not confess that. No, no, that's under direct.
Speaker 1:That's the thing. Yeah, was it a reasonable environment to accept an accurate confession? No, it was not. Here we are, I will say there is. The only connection that I could somewhat find between the two of them is that Floyd Cochran was somewhat of a. He did collect trash from the neighborhood and her house, mary Lou's house, was on his route, so occasionally he picked up trash for the family, and that is the only connection here.
Speaker 1:So, all right, let's put some context behind this confession. First, there are a lot of people who would buckle to police pressure after two days of questioning with little to no sleep. Second, floyd Cochran had a long, documented history of mental and intellectual struggles. He was actually rejected for the draft during World War II because he had the mentality that was more on par with a 10 year old than a 20 something. Third, this arrest happened 23 years after the murder of James T Scott, a young black man who had been accused of raping a white girl and was lynched by an angry mob. Because this is the American South, floyd could hear the large angry crowd outside and was likely scared for his life as well. He should have been.
Speaker 1:Cochran later recanted his confession, but the damage was already done. Floyd Cochran pled guilty to the murder of his wife on May 7th 1946 and was given a 15 year prison sentence On May 27th. Cochran pled not guilty to the murder of Mary Lou Jenkins in front of an all white jury. Apart from the confession, there was very little time Cochran to the crime. He had occasionally collected trash from the family, just like I said, and Floyd's claims that he approached the front door to ask for money for collecting the trash in order to gain access to the house, despite the fact that he had an alibi for the time of the murder.
Speaker 2:Oh, what was it?
Speaker 1:I believe he was seen in a different part of town, both by family and by numerous other people, probably all of whom were also part of the African American community. So they were like we don't have to include these people.
Speaker 2:You're just covering for each other, because that's what you guys do. We're not going to believe you because we are fully committed to this very wrong hypothesis.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, we've really just decided on the narrative and we're going to stick to it and, honestly, it's likely that the jury made up their minds before the trial even started. Floyd Cochran was found guilty and executed in a gas chamber on September 26th 1947. Gas chamber here's the thing I think. Especially in 1947, two years after the end of World War II, it is a really bad look to execute anybody. That is an extra level of just disconnection. To be like this is still a viable means of execution.
Speaker 2:But I have.
Speaker 1:yeah, as you can see, I have a lot of things. And here's the thing and this is another part of the reason why I really do believe that it is likely that he did kill his wife because he did plead guilty to the crime, and another reason why I believe that he didn't kill Mary Lou Jenkins because he was like no, I plead not guilty to that. But I also will say that, even though he did murder his wife, he was given a 15-year prison sentence for that and yet was sentenced to death for the murder of a white woman.
Speaker 1:So, I'm sure that they were like well, this one was probably a crime of passion and it wasn't premeditated, and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:But I think that that's not really what it was about in here. If we are Just allow me to, I'm just going to take a drink of water and let my blood pressure just kind of settle back down. So, based off of everything that I just described, there are obviously a lot of moving parts in this puzzle. I think that most people with even a sliver of sense do not believe that Floyd Cochran was responsible for the murder of Mary Lou Jenkins and although it is likely that he was responsible for the murder of his wife, he did not deserve to die and it's likely that the true killer was still free when Cochran was awaiting his fate in prison.
Speaker 1:Since the Boone County Sheriff's Office didn't play much of a role in the arrest and conviction of Cochran, they were able to approach the murder of Jeanette Christman with a fresh perspective, and Sheriff Powell quickly zeroed in on a new suspect based on some of the evidence at the scene. First, they hypothesized that the broken window had been staged to make it look as if the house had been broken into. Interesting yes, there are a couple of reasons for this Number one. The Romax said that the garden hoe that was used to break the window was normally stored inside of the house, not outside in like a garden shed or someplace else.
Speaker 2:Also interesting. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:And number two, the killer would have had to climb over the piano that had been placed right in front of that window, and there was little evidence to suggest that anyone had climbed over or on the piano, because there were like things on there that had been disturbed.
Speaker 2:Oh, mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:Additionally, the front door was unlocked when the Romax returned home that evening. To them this meant that the murderer was someone who Jeanette knew and would have opened the door for To me. I wouldn't necessarily assume that a murderer would like climb out of the window just because he came in. That way he might have just been like well, I've done my murdery thing and so I'm just going to walk right out the front door, rather than having to climb out this window like the criminal that I am.
Speaker 2:I think about that sometimes Like how, when people escape, like walk out of a murder scene. Yeah, Is it really just front door? I mean, back door makes sense to me, but definitely not climbing out of the window again unless you're in like a rush.
Speaker 1:Yeah and like, yes, like if you, if you are in a specific room and you feel like you don't have a way to make it to an actual door, to the outside, that is the only situation in which climbing back through the window makes sense.
Speaker 1:So when you were saying that, maybe she heard like the window shatter and maybe that was the point at which she tried to grab the phone in the kitchen and then she ran out to the living room to try to get to the phone there it does. It kind of does beg the question for me Like, did she hear the window shatter Did? Did she accidentally unlock the back door or did the Romax forget to lock it before they left and she just didn't know. And she heard somebody coming through the back door and was like I need to make a phone call, or you know, did she know the person? And they started to attack her.
Speaker 1:So she ran to the kitchen, because I think that they even said that there was a blood trail leading from the kitchen to the living room, and so if that's the case, then it indicates to me that maybe she did invite the person in, and so this again, the whole thing is just very complex and complicated. So I have a lot of a lot of questions here. Yeah, and it's just going to get worse because another truly eerie detail revolved around the electrical cord wrapped around Jeanette's neck. That cord came from an iron in another room of the house, with all the numerous items that the killer could have used as a murder weapon, they chose the one located in another room, which seemed to suggest that the killer was familiar with the layout of the house and the items in the house, and, with that in mind, it's time to introduce the prime suspect in this case.
Speaker 2:So at this point because you had said that at this point, the original suspect of murders and similar like events, the person was already tried, found guilty, executed. That was the same guy who killed his wife. Yes, that is who we're talking about when we say he was already tried, executed.
Speaker 1:Yes, that is exactly right. Yeah, because the murder of Mary Lou Jenkins happened within the city limits of Columbia, missouri. The Columbia Police Department handled that case, and so they were the ones who arrested Floyd Cochran and put him on trial and everything like that I mean, obviously, working with the district attorney and stuff like that. And then when Jeanette Crispin was murdered, her case fell under the jurisdiction of the Boone County Sheriff's Office. So even though I, in my personal opinion, I think that, in particular, the Columbia Police Department had like a really good reason, or not a really good reason, they certainly had a motive for wanting to, you know, be like, oh, we've got to go like in a completely different direction than these cases can't be, you know, at all connected.
Speaker 1:The Sheriff's Department, I don't think, were bogged down by any such issues because they weren't the ones who arrested Floyd Cochran in the first place. So that's another again more complicated pieces to add to this puzzle. Okay, so, with all that being said, we are going to meet our prime suspect, who, so his name is spelled Robert Mueller, like the Mueller report, but it's not the same guy because it's many, many years ago. So, yeah, this, yeah, we'll get to it, but no, it's not the same guy.
Speaker 1:And actually his name is pronounced Mueller, I believe. So. Okay, Mm, hmm, even though it's spelled the same way. So Robert Mueller was a World War Two veteran living in Columbia with his wife and young children. He worked as a tailor to support his family and he was well known in the community. Robert Mueller had asked Jeanette if she would be willing to babysit his children on the evening she was killed. But she told him that she couldn't because she had already agreed to babysit for the Romax baggy thing. So he knows where she's going to be. Robert Mueller and Ed Romack had been friends since high school but and Romack was not a fan. Ann said that she was often uncomfortable with Mueller and in later testimony Ann said that Mueller was at their house a couple of days before Jeanette's murder and that he ran his hands suggestively over her dress and tried to grope her over and stress, over and stress yeah. So she describes him as a man who quote doesn't use his words, he uses his hands.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I hate that Straight to jail and also said that he had heard Mueller commenting appreciatively about Jeanette, quote well developed for keeping in mind that she is 13 years old.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she died. She died right before she turned 14.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and even if she was 14, she would still be 14 years old and he would be a 27 year old man. So it's a yuck. Don't do that. Don't do that person. This is all very troubling on its own.
Speaker 1:Mueller knew Jeanette, since she had often babysat his children, and he knew that she was going to be alone on the evening of March 18. He also knew where the iron was located because he had been at the Romax house just two days before the murder to help with some tailoring, and he always carried a mechanical pencil that may have matched the numerous puncture marks found on Jeanette's head. You see where I'm going here. Mueller called Ed the day after the murder and asked him if he needed any help cleaning up the house, which may have seemed like a kind, neighborly thing to do. But here's the problem.
Speaker 1:Earlier in the episode I mentioned that Jeanette was murdered on a Saturday night, but really early Sunday morning. But news of her death didn't make it through town until Monday morning. So Some papers, hmm. How did Mueller know about the crime on Sunday morning? He also told Ed that the broken window was probably just a red herring and that it would have been much easier to knock on the front door and tell Jeanette that Ed just needed more poker chips for their card game.
Speaker 2:That was very specific.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just was like not that anybody was thinking about it, but this is what I was going to do. I was going to commit murder.
Speaker 2:I actually had to do processing because I was like, why is he being so specific about this?
Speaker 1:Who would be that dumb? Yeah, but sometimes they do be that dumb.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like if I had to do it over again, I would have just done it this way is basically what I heard from it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. So even if we can find a reasonable explanation for all of those other details, which I really can't, the last piece of evidence may be the most damning of all. Mueller had been at the card games of Romax, had attended, but he left at around 10pm saying that he needed to meet a doctor at his house because his son was sick. He returned an hour to an hour and a half later saying that everything was fine, but when the police asked said doctor about this appointment, he told them that it never happened.
Speaker 2:So he was missing for an hour and a half.
Speaker 1:So what was an hour to an hour and a half?
Speaker 2:No alibi, no witnesses, and the doctor was like, not me, man, yeah it couldn't, couldn't be me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I am one of the most indecisive people I know, and even I have a hard time explaining all that evidence. So it's not surprising that Sheriff Powell wanted to have a nice long chat with Robert Mueller, but he didn't feel like handling the interrogation like a normal person. So on May 4, 1950, he got one of his deputies and a lawyer to accompany him as he picked up Mueller and drove him out to a farmhouse owned by Deputy Sheriff Julius, I think, is how you would say that, which is a great name, by the way, julius, it's either Wedemier, wedemier or, if you're doing it the German way, which I believe it is, it should be Wedemier, which I love Anyway, and that is where he was questioned overnight. This feels like it's against policy. Yeah, you should not do that. Obviously that's not a good thing to do.
Speaker 1:Mueller never confessed to the murder, so in the morning Sheriff Powell took him to Jefferson City for a polygraph test, which he passed.
Speaker 1:It's unknown if Mueller's fingerprints and footprints were compared to the prints found at the scene, but his mechanical pencil did match the puncture wins on Jeanette's head.
Speaker 1:It's worth noting that any fingerprints left at the scene probably would have been explained away by his attorney, unless they had been left in blood or in a particularly suspicious area. Since Mueller had visited the Romax home on numerous occasions, the facts were brought before a grand jury to determine if there was enough evidence to indict Robert Mueller for murder. The prosecuting attorney was not informed of the late night interrogation at the farmhouse, but the polygraph results were admitted into evidence and at the time the unreliability of polygraph tests was not very well known. The grand jury did not find enough evidence to indict Robert Mueller and he was allowed to return to his family. Mueller did attempt to sue Powell and the two deputies for his unlawful interrogation, but he lost the case. Funnily enough, it actually wasn't a super publicly well-known thing that he had been interrogated or had been the subject of this grand jury trial up until the point where he was like I would like to sue you. And then it became public knowledge.
Speaker 1:But either way, he found that he couldn't continue with his life as usual in Columbia, so Mueller rejoined the Air Force and relocated his family. He died in 2006 at the age of 83 in Santa Clara County, california. The Romax struggled with the trauma of Jeanette's death for years and eventually the couple moved their family away from Columbia. They actually were so affected by it, in fact they hired their own private investigator to see if they could find out anything more about what happened to her. It was still a dead end, but they tried. Jeanette's father, charles, passed away in 1974 and her mother, lou LaMaye, passed away in 2006, without ever knowing what happened to their daughter.
Speaker 1:As far as I can tell, jeanette's two older sisters are still alive and have families of their own, so that, in particular, the story of Jeanette Christman is kind of thought to be the inspiration for the babysitter and the man upstairs Urban Legend, which is what I think that's called. And this is a wild case. When I started it I knew that it was obviously going to be grim, but I did not realize that it was taking me down the path that it was taking me where three people would die and you know, it just all feels just really sad and very disturbing and also a little bit like a bit of it's a rabbit hole.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So a couple of things about this. I think that it is at least there's a high possibility that whoever murdered Mary Lou Jenkins is also responsible for the murder of Jeanette Christman, because it was in the same general area. They even both happened as you know, cliches it sounds on dark, stormy nights, and they were just so similar. So I just you know, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that they're connected. In fact, I would even lean more towards the possibility of them being connected. I think it's very clear.
Speaker 2:I thought it was the same person, same MO. Oh, that's the word I was looking for earlier.
Speaker 1:You got there eventually.
Speaker 2:Sam Got there eventually?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it does we know if, if Robert Mueller was the person who was responsible for Jeanette Christman's death and also Mary Lou Jenkins death, it does beg question. We know the connection was there with Jeanette, but what was the connection to Mary Lou?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was trying. I was literally about to ask and I was like did I miss that, because I can't see one immediately.
Speaker 1:Yes, so Mary Lou Jenkins and Robert Mueller would have actually been in a high school at the same time as one another and they weren't in the same graduating class, but they would have had some overlap and Columbia, especially at the time, was not that big of a town. So at that kind of you know, in that high school it wouldn't be surprising to me if older and upperclassmen were certainly aware of each other. And Mary Lou Jenkins was, was very, you know, very sweet, very pretty. She seemed really well liked and everything, even though she was pretty quiet and studious. I could totally see people being like aware of her, especially again in like a small town and that kind of setting, but like what prompted that, though, like you haven't, you've known her.
Speaker 2:You know her through high school, like it's been. How was he?
Speaker 1:Well, he was 27 when when Jeanette Christman was murdered, and she was murdered in 1950. And then Mary Lou Jenkins was murdered in 1946. So, such as four years. Yeah, so he would have been 23 at the time, yeah, like graduated 18,.
Speaker 2:Five years later, she still stuck on your mind. So you decide that you're going to assault her.
Speaker 1:Or she was available you know, you know what I'm saying Like she was just there and he noticed that she was alone that evening, or something like that. Oh, something else I will note is that, you know, for a good chunk of post high school he was away because he was a soldier in World War II.
Speaker 2:Oh, right, mm hmm.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so there are definitely some interesting things. There are a few things that that do lead me. I guess that there here's some. Here's just some interesting things that I note about both of these these murder scenes. Definitely no forced entry with the case of Mary Lou Jenkins, because no windows were smashed or anything like that. The door was found unlocked, but the front screen door was left unlatched and that's not how Mary Lou had had set it up when her mom left the night before. So that's an interesting thing there. So it looks like maybe the killer locks the door on their way out.
Speaker 1:I don't really know what happened there, it's just interesting. And then you have the Jeanette Christman thing, so that's also really interesting because she was, you know, we had that situation where both doors were unlocked and there was also a broken window. I will also say that in both of those situations it doesn't. The killer did not bring a weapon to the scene and they didn't use like a traditional weapon either. In both of those situations they used an electrical cord found from an item within the house. So it also makes me wonder again was this something that they planned to do? Did somebody you know knock on the door with, pretending that they had, you know, some kind of reason for being there, possibly make sexual advantage, which were then rebuffed, and then they go from that and an escalation into murder.
Speaker 2:I think his comments about like the window could be red herring it reminds me of like I'm sure I saw it like on criminal minds, where like perpetrator likes to go back to the scene of the crime to see what can be figured out, and it was probably something that he thought was so brilliant that he needed to talk about it because no one else was. And further, I mean, knowing what I know now would have been like that's sus, not to mention your quasi. If I could do it again, this is what I do instead.
Speaker 1:Right, it's like oh, Jay Simpson, if I did it, you literally wrote a book on it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is. It's definitely interesting. I it's so funny to me because, like, from my perspective, I'm like, how could you be that dumb, like nobody's that stupid? But obviously a lot of people are that stupid and they like, like it. They're like, oh my gosh, look at how like clever I am. Aren't I so smart? And I want to recognize for how intelligent I am and what like good choices I made. Well, that is not how everybody else sees it, but you know, but that is how they see it. So good choices is relative here, yeah, I guess.
Speaker 1:So I wouldn't say that I am like 100% dead set on Robert Mueller being the the murderer of Jeanette Christman and definitely not Mary Lou Jenkins and I and I could entertain the possibility that the murder of Jeanette Christman was a copycat crime. I will say that his the things that add up for Robert Mueller are. There are a lot of them. You know the fact that he knew that she was going to be there alone. They already had a relationship with one another because of the babysitting. He knew where the the iron was kept so that he could find the electrical cord. He would have known his way around the house and, of course, the doctor's appointment.
Speaker 1:It's all very circumstantial but it does add up to, I think, reasonable suspicion at the very least. I am really curious about a couple of things. I'm curious if they did ever check his fingerprints against any of the prints found at the house. I would be curious to know if any of the fingerprints were determined to be from an unknown person or if they were all from Jeanette. That is one thing that I wonder about.
Speaker 2:Was fingerprinting scenes not standard at that point?
Speaker 1:It was. It should have been standard at that point. And they did say that they collected fingerprints from the scene. But again, they might have turned out to be, if they weren't bloody fingerprints, they probably turned out to be from the family. If it wasn't that, they could have been from the family's friends or from their extended family or something like that. And if they were left in blood, it's possible that they were too smeared to get a positive identification or that they traced back to Jeanette herself or any combination of those things.
Speaker 2:And I think you even mentioned like even if his fingerprints were found, it was pretty easy to explain away.
Speaker 1:It would have been. I mean, any defense attorney like worth anything would have questioned non bloody fingerprints left at the scene because he was there, he was, he was friends with Ed, so it would have made sense to see his fingerprints in certain areas it would have even made sense to see his fingerprints on the electrical cord, because he was a tailor, yeah, and it was from an iron. So it was, yeah, it was just a whole thing and I don't know if they were collecting as many you know, details or items from Mary Lou Jenkins case and I, you know, overall the entire. I think the entire field of forensics was just a little bit less thorough at the time, so I don't think that things were as like standardized as we hope that they are today.
Speaker 2:Well, and I mean the interrogation happened like in a barn, yeah. So obviously, even if there was like a set policy system, they were not obviously likely to follow every single policy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So I think that you know it was just kind of a mess from the get go. I'm not sure how it would have worked out and again, because it was five years after World War II, I do think that particularly, you know, white World War II veterans were going to be given the benefit of the doubt. I think in certain situations more so than your average citizen would have been. So that's another factor as well. I can imagine a world where Robert Mueller was lying about his son's doctor's appointment to have an affair.
Speaker 1:Oh okay, rather than to go kill somebody.
Speaker 1:Okay so that's something worth taking in. You know? Just something along those lines I was just trying to figure out. I was like, all right, why would you lie about you know being gone for an hour and hour and a half on this weird Saturday night that you wouldn't just like come forward about, and the only two things that I can think of are crimes or affairs, which is a crime of the heart. I'm just kidding. So, yeah, I don't know. I would think that if he had been interrogated for that long and he was able to back up having like an affair or something like that through, you know, like just a statement from his mistress or whoever it was, that he would have done that. But I'm not sure, you know, maybe I trust mom's like creepy vibes, like something's off about him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would think so too. I will note that Robert Mueller's daughter has come forward and she said that he was an amazing father and she can't really reconcile the theories against him with the dad that she knew. But I can easily imagine a world because we have seen it time and time again where you have a you know, a murderer who can be a perfectly pleasant husband and father and a soul, a murderer. So some people are able to compartmentalize their lives and their personalities so that those two things don't overlap in ways that they're not expecting. So I just think that that's, you know. It's worth taking into consideration that that is her experience, and it's also worth taking into consideration that that doesn't always mean that somebody is innocent.
Speaker 1:I do wonder. I don't think it would really be worth an exhumation at this point. I would be curious to see if any kind of DNA could be collected, but I don't think that it could be at this point in time. So, unfortunately, I think that we're just going to have to let this one you know. I think that this is going to remain unsolved for a while, if not forever. But here's to hoping you know something, something happens so that we can find out what happened to Jeanette Christman and to Mary Lou Jenkinson, so that Floyd Carpenter can get his name officially cleared.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that might be the worst. Like, yeah, fall out, not fall out. I want to say like side effect collateral yes, the worst collateral during all of this. Like obviously it is not ideal, it's not true that those women got murdered, but it's cool.
Speaker 1:A man died who wouldn't have died if he hadn't been wrongfully convicted. Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you had done like a more thorough investigation or like believed the witnesses Not had tunnel vision. It was like it sends or sets a really bad precedence for like whoever's future cases, whether it's the investigators, future cases to like not believe all of these witness statements and then future witness statements are admissible, or even the judges like cases in the future. Like it just sets a really bad precedence.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because you wanted so badly to put someone to death, not just behind bars. To death, yeah, In a very less than I mean. Death penalty is less than ideal in general, but a gas chamber Like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, particularly Very uncouth, yeah, in a particularly awful manner.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:But not a good way of looking at that. It's definitely an interesting case that spirals into this bigger web of awfulness and it is, as I said, it is probably the inspiration for that urban legend. So now you know, and so if anybody says it, you can be like you should listen to the coverage of that case on Wicked Within podcast and tell your friends about this episode. So yeah, that is, that is this week's case, and next week we are going to be back with another true crime case. It's a very well known case, but we are going to be, you know, giving our own particular perspective on it, and it should be. It's definitely interesting. There are a lot of theories, so until next time, bye, Goodbye. If you liked the show, please leave us a great review and don't forget to subscribe on Spotify, apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also find us on Facebook and Instagram at Wicked Within podcast.