That's a Bad Sign

Disappearance of Joan Risch and murder of Yancy Noll

May 06, 2021 Emily Winchurch & Liz Mahoney Season 1 Episode 35
That's a Bad Sign
Disappearance of Joan Risch and murder of Yancy Noll
Show Notes Transcript

Joan Risch was a 31 year old mother and wife that disappeared under mysterious circumstances on October 24 1961. We might never know what happened, but to this day people are still astonished to how eerily similar this case is to the popular book and movie, Gone Girl.  Then we dive into the death of Yancy Noll, a popular wine steward who was shot and killed as he sat in his car at a stoplight in Seattle, Washington. Was this road rage? Or MURDER?

Sources
https://morbidology.com/gone-girl-joan-risch/
https://icestationpoetry.medium.com/into-thin-air-what-is-the-likeliest-explanation-for-the-disappearance-of-joan-risch-1bdd4953b4e
https://historichorrors.com/2019/04/04/the-mysterious-unsolved-disappearance-of-joan-risch/
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/5yitmk/the_very_strange_disappearance_of_joan_risch/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-student-of-murder/
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/defendant-in-yancy-noll-death-called-lsquoa-student-of-murderrsquo/

Support the show

Liz: [00:00:00] Hey guys, you're listening to, that's a bad sign. This is Liz 
Emily: [00:00:04] and I'm Emily. And this is your weekly true crime podcast. 
Liz: [00:00:08] Oh, I have a good recommendation this week. Hell yeah. So you're going to like this because. He came from a friend of a friend and I just finished a book called the silent 
Emily: [00:00:17] patient. Oh 
Liz: [00:00:18] my God.
It was so good. It's like a psychological thriller. It had a lot of twists and turns at the ends and it is just great. Honestly, finished it in like three days. So big shout out to Leslie for lending me the book. Also Leslie, 
Emily: [00:00:31] we know you listened. So hi. So my recommendation is something that everyone's been telling me to watch for the longest time, because they always say I love British crime shows.
So I started Sherlock. 
Liz: [00:00:44] Oh, I haven't seen that. 
Emily: [00:00:45] I started season one and I loved it. Season two. I only watched one episode and I wasn't my cup of tea, so I kind of stopped. So I highly recommend season one. 
Liz: [00:00:55] Okay.  
Emily: [00:00:57] yeah, I think it's on Hulu. No, no, no, no. It's on Netflix. 
Liz: [00:01:02] Okay. I'm trying to think if you have any thing else exciting to talk about.
Emily: [00:01:06] I think if we can use this as an opportunity to say guys, if you don't follow us on Instagram already, go ahead and do that really 
Liz: [00:01:14] funny. Wait, I lied. I was in the middle of a crime scene yesterday. Okay. Not in the middle of it, but I was at the scene of a crime yesterday. And I didn't tell you what I was home on long Island, dog sitting.
And I happened to go into town to get some groceries. And I saw a cop car at the end of the street. I thought nothing of it, because it was just one cop car, but then I got out of the car in the parking lot. And I have noticed that two helicopters were hovering over garden city. Oh my God. And so obviously I was like, I'm not going into the grocery store.
I have to go to the crime scene. So I walked over to where I had seen the one cop car, and then I looked down the street and the entire street was blocked off. Cop cars were everywhere. And then I walked closer. Obviously there was a whole group of people trying to find out what happened, lampposts were down and the railroad, you know, that thing that comes down when the trains come.
Yeah. That thing was completely broken. Like a car had crashed into a couple different lampposts and into the railroad track, and then it flipped over with someone drunk. I'm not sure about the details, but I was standing there in shock, taking pictures of it, of course. And somewhat bystander filled me in.
So basically they said there was a high-speed chase. Oh. And this person, she said it was a woman, which I find interesting, completely just crashed into everything on the right side of the road and then flipped over. And I don't. No, any more details. I tried to Google it today and I couldn't find any other info.
Emily: [00:02:48] Wow. All right. You should post those pictures to Instagram. When we go 
Liz: [00:02:52] live on Thursday, I should. And I'll keep you guys updated. If I find out what actually happened, because I'm really curious. 
Emily: [00:02:59] Okay. Cheers to that female driver 
Liz: [00:03:03] road rage.
Emily: [00:03:12] I am doing the disappearance of Joan Rish, who is a 31 year old mother and wife that disappeared under mysterious circumstances on October 25th, 1961. I 
Liz: [00:03:25] love disappearances. 
Emily: [00:03:27] So to give you some background, Joan actually had a very tragic childhood. Both of her parents died in a fire, so she actually had to leave and then go live with a foster family to be raised.
From there. Her foster father started molesting her when she told her foster mother what happened, her mom or foster mother immediately took her and her sister and moved away from the foster father that was abusing them, which is great for the foster mother to do, but still between her parents dying and then being sexually abused, just tragic things happening to this young girl.
But then eventually in 1954, Joan met Martin. They're both from Brooklyn and hit it off immediately. Joan ultimately left her career as an editorial assistant at a publishing company in New York city to settle down with Martin and start a family. This couple had two children, Lillian and David, and they lived in a home on old Bedford road in Lincoln, Massachusetts, but now it brings us to October 24th, 1961, the day of her disappearance.
Martin went on a business trip to New York, leaving Joan home with the children. Joan had a very busy day and took four year old Lillian to the dentist. They then returned home for lunch when they were home. She put her two year old son David down for a nap and then took Lillian next door to the neighbor's house.
The bakers to play with their son. Then around 4:15 PM. Lillian, the daughter left the Baker's home to go back to her house, which was right next door. When she went into the house, she turned around and ran back to the Baker saying that her mom had disappeared and quote there's red paint all over for the kitchen.
Liz: [00:05:14] Oh no. Whoa. My voice for a 
Emily: [00:05:18] Baker, the mother ran over to their house to see what was happening. And she saw that the kitchen was spattered with blood 
Liz: [00:05:26] and there you have tabs. 
Emily: [00:05:29] The blood. This is really sad, led up to David's nursery. The two year old who is sleeping, but thankfully he remained untouched, the blood then turned around and let out to a parked car in the driveway, specifically to the trunk area.
And then it 
Liz: [00:05:46] just stopped. Wait, the car was parked there. 
Emily: [00:05:50] Yeah. Oh yeah. So. There's a messy scene in the kitchen, through the house. However, the car is still there. When detectives arrived, they also noticed some odd things. Some of the blood had looked like it been wiped up. Also, there was a telephone book open to the page where emergency contacts should have been listed, but no contacts were written there.
But so it seemed like somebody like opened the book to the emergency contacts. Hmm. And they think that because it was right next to the phone, but the phone was ripped off from the wall and thrown into a trash can. 
Liz: [00:06:29] This is very dodgy. 
Emily: [00:06:32] There was an empty liquor bottle found in the trash, along with a few beer cans.
And when the police asked Martin, the husband, why all this alcohol was here, he said, the wife and I drank some liquor last night, we had cocktails and we finished the bottle, but he said, I have no idea where their beer bottles there. And we take out the trash every night that does not make sense. Also, nothing had appeared out of place.
Besides the blood, the house was pretty spotless and nothing was stolen. Last thing, when investigators really looked into the blood, they thought that the blood loss actually wasn't that big. If anything, it came from a superficial wound, but it looked a lot worse than what they actually believed. Okay. So that was the scene at the house.
I gave you guys a picture, but now I want to move over to some eyewitness testimonies from that day. So there's Barbara Baker, the neighbor who the children were playing at her house. When the police went to question her, she said that she had noticed Joan walking or running with her arms outstretched toward her car that was parked in the driveway.
However she saw Joan went to the car and then turned around to go back into the house. And that was 2:15 PM. 
Liz: [00:07:50] Okay. 
Emily: [00:07:51] She also said that it looked like Joan was holding something red. So now we think, is that how the 
Liz: [00:07:57] blood got out there? Yeah, like did she hurt herself by accident? 
Emily: [00:08:02] Now another neighbor told the police that approximately 3:20 PM.
She saw gray Oldsmobile sedan parked behind Jones' own car. So that's about an hour after Barbara Baker sees Joan another car's there. Weird then as news of Joan's disappearance started spreading throughout town, different motorists called in the police to report things that they saw. For instance, one motorist said that they saw a woman who they believed to be Joan walking along route one 28 in Waltham, Massachusetts.
So that would have meant. Joan left the house and was wandering on a highway. Yeah, that's 
Liz: [00:08:44] really strange. 
Emily: [00:08:45] Seems strange. Except another sighting came in around 2:15 PM and someone said they saw a woman walking on route two a, which was approximately 200 yards from the home wearing a loose fitting gray coat that came down to her knees and her handkerchief tied around her chin in a weird fashion.
She was quote, shuffling along and hunched over as though she were cold. I 
Liz: [00:09:10] don't even know what to think about this right now. 
Emily: [00:09:12] And if that doesn't seem weird enough, there's a third person who says that they saw a woman who had blood on both her legs. She was walking on route one 28 and appeared to be dazed.
Liz: [00:09:24] Okay. So it feels like, you know, eye witness testimony is not the most reliable as we all know, but three different sightings that are that similar something happened. And they 
Emily: [00:09:34] always had the same clothing and said that this woman was just walking in a very God manner, like totally out of it. So now these have an idea.
They said something happened to Joan in that house. And then she was spotted on the highway or two different highways. So they have a general idea of where she was traveling between the house and the three spottings. So they searched everywhere between the forests and ditch and even hospitals in the area, but they couldn't find any woman who matched this description.
So they couldn't find Joan or just any woman that these three different people saw. 
Liz: [00:10:08] Yeah. Like if it happened to be someone else, maybe they didn't find that person either. 
Emily: [00:10:13] Exactly. So now the police hit a dead end. Obviously nothing's coming out of the evidence in the home and they can't find the woman who they've been looking for.
So that brings us to a month later, when a reporter for the Lincoln, Massachusetts local newspaper, the fence viewer went to the public library to do some research, to see if there were similar cases related to Jones' disappearance. He did not find similar cases, but what he did find was very peculiar. A few months before Joan Resh banished, she took out 25 bucks from the library.
All were true crime and novel mysteries. Hmm. Now that's all I read. So I don't 
Liz: [00:10:56] really, I was, I was about to say that suspicious, but honestly that's what my Kindle looks like, but, 
Emily: [00:11:03] and this might be a stretch. You tell me what you think. One book Jonah taken out was called into thin air. And the plot was about a woman disappearing from her home.
And the only evidence left was bloodstains in the house. 
Liz: [00:11:18] So basically faking your own disappearance. Yeah. Very intrigued. Now this is some gone girl. 
Emily: [00:11:25] Shit. Everyone says that everyone says this case very much resembles gone girl. So now if you think that I didn't go to Reddit and start going over all the different conspiracy there is, you are crazy.
Liz: [00:11:37] And then you haven't been listening enough. So 
Emily: [00:11:39] let's go through one by one, the conspiracy theories. Yes. And you can let me know what you think. And the first one I think is pretty, I kind of left off on that note just now Joan staged a fake crime scene to make it appear she was abducted and starting a life elsewhere.
So people believe this mostly because she took out that book. 
Liz: [00:11:59] Yeah. I mean, that's. Incriminating. Well, I mean, 
Emily: [00:12:03] if I go missing don't think, Oh, she read gone girl. 
Liz: [00:12:06] Like if you looked at my Google history, you would think a whole lot of things. 
Emily: [00:12:12] Also people say this woman had a very troubled past as we talked about her parents and then her foster father.
However, everyone who talked about Joe and said, she didn't seem like she was that bothered by that. And obviously, maybe she was traumatized, but she was an older, strong woman now who was raising a family. You can't just speculate based on someone's past. 
Liz: [00:12:32] And it seems like she has fully moved on. Also, 
Emily: [00:12:35] she had a busy day where she was taking her kids to the dentist and then doing yard work.
They thought, you know, that's not a huge window of opportunity. Just disappear. 
Liz: [00:12:44] That's totally fair. 
Emily: [00:12:46] And also if she wanted to disappear, why wander down the highway all odd where, you know, someone, even a policeman could pull up, why put yourself in that position? 
Liz: [00:12:58] Right. And in broad daylight. Yeah. You could get caught.
Hmm. Okay. So 
Emily: [00:13:04] yay or nay to that one. What do you think? 
Liz: [00:13:06] I don't think, I don't think so. I agree. 
Emily: [00:13:09] Next Joan had a lover and a physical confrontation between the two resulted in her death. So why people believe this? They said, we know that there was a second car in the driveway that the neighbor saw. So somebody must've been there.
Was it a friend? Was it a traveling salesman? We don't know. Then somebody said there was all those beer bottles in the kitchen. So who was drinking those? 
Liz: [00:13:36] Yeah, that's really odd, but I have a hard time with that one because. Then he'd have to get her body out of the house in broad daylight again. And if people, it seems like people in the neighborhood saw some stuff that day, well, 
Emily: [00:13:50] did they get into an altercation?
And that he left. She was really distressed. She had a lot of blood loss and was confused and then was wandering. And then maybe the same person found her later, or somebody hit her and then tried to cover it up. Also, they said that would explain why the foam was ripped off the wall. 
Liz: [00:14:08] Yeah. Like, Oh no.
Don't even try to call the police. You can't. Okay. 
Emily: [00:14:13] Also the thought that she put her son down to bed and then took her daughter out of the house. Maybe she wanted privacy with, to be with this man. But again, that's all 
Liz: [00:14:23] speculate. Yeah. I feel like everything here is going to be no, I have the answer. 
Emily: [00:14:29] And also, I don't know, there's also this idea of like, well, not one of her friends was aware of the fact that she was having an affair and also she was only in this town for six months.
So that's a very short timeframe to start having an affair with somebody 
Liz: [00:14:44] to find a lover 
Emily: [00:14:46] and trust me, I had no kidding. Um, okay. Number three, am I on three? She had an abortion and it went terribly wrong. And the abortionist panicked. So there's two closely related theories. Some people say maybe when she went to the dentist, I'm doing air quotes.
That was actually the abortion. And she had complications later. Or the other one is she had an at-home abortion. And it went very wrong and abortions at this time were almost illegal. I actually was reading that in Massachusetts. If you want to have an abortion, you had to show medical certification that the unborn child was a threat to the mother's health or life.
Liz: [00:15:27] Yeah. I was about to ask that because this is, you said the sixties, right? Yeah. So 
Emily: [00:15:31] abortions were very much frowned upon and hard to come by. So, did she have an abortion? Something went wrong. She wants a phone for help. The person panicked because the doctor too would get in trouble, ripped off the phone.
Then she had so much blood loss, maybe she was wandering around. And that's why the people saw her on the side of the 
Liz: [00:15:51] street. Yeah. And the one person said she had blood on her legs. I guess my only question is why was she having an abortion? Well, 
Emily: [00:16:01] that's a good point. Because I did see people argue on Reddit saying that's such a small window of opportunity.
Why would she schedule an abortion during such a busy day? But then the thought is, well, this was the one day her husband wasn't 
Liz: [00:16:14] there. Exactly. This is very interesting. I don't hate that theory. 
Emily: [00:16:20] I mean, it's just such a stretch. They're 
Liz: [00:16:22] all crazy. I know this 
Emily: [00:16:25] is actually the one that I. Probably agree with, she had a terrible accident in the home and due to blood loss, she was very confused and wandered off.
Liz: [00:16:34] And then something happened, like you said, she got hit by a car or someone found her 
Emily: [00:16:38] this doesn't take into account the phone being 
Liz: [00:16:41] ripped off the wall or the beer or the beer, but the abortion thing doesn't talk that doesn't. Give any validation for the beer either? 
Emily: [00:16:50] Actually, I just saw this one, people thought that the beer, maybe she like got drunk before and it was a way to, um, set like a sedative.
Oh, 
Liz: [00:16:59] okay. 
Emily: [00:17:00] Again, I don't know. People performed abortions back 
Liz: [00:17:03] then, but especially at home ones, I can't imagine they were getting 
Emily: [00:17:06] hammered before I get over there and then 
Liz: [00:17:08] we'll do a little, gotta do it. Yeah. Gotta do. 
Emily: [00:17:11] Uh, yeah. So I guess maybe she was a closet alcoholic and then she was mowing the lawn and she hurt herself.
She 
Liz: [00:17:18] was delightful. People said she was doing yard work. Right. I was picturing gardening, but sure. And then 
Emily: [00:17:24] the last one, which I don't think there's any substantiation to that she committed suicide, 
Liz: [00:17:31] then where's her body. 
Emily: [00:17:33] Yeah. And also why do it, when you know your daughter's about to come right home?
Liz: [00:17:36] Yeah. There's better ways to figure that out. Now, at the end of the 
Emily: [00:17:41] day, there are no suspects in her disappearance. The husband had an alibi and he was in another state. People considered that the mailman did it for a bit, but he also has an alibi also around town. There were rumors that it was Robert Foster.
He worked for the national park service and was going door to door, talking to residents about a project that was being done to keep the town's historical appearance and. Obviously, after this came out of the disappearance, woman came forward saying that foster had overstayed his welcome in their home, making them feel uncomfortable, but he also had an alibi that checked out 
Liz: [00:18:21] damn.
Emily: [00:18:22] Now, over the years, Martin, the husband, he still held on hope that one day his wife would return home. He remained in the same home, buying her disappearance and kept it the same as it was before she disappeared. Despite the numerous prank calls he received, he refused to change his telephone number just in case she called, Oh, he died in 2009, never knowing what happened to his wife.
Liz: [00:18:47] That's, that's really sad. And this is one of those where we're definitely never going to know. I know. That's so upsetting, especially for the kids too, they had their whole lives ahead of them. And they're imagined they think about this all the time. 
Emily: [00:19:01] I actually read that both the kids turned out very fine and they did great in life.
It was the dad who was really stuck in the 
Liz: [00:19:07] past. So 
Emily: [00:19:09] what do you think if you had to 
Liz: [00:19:10] take a Gander? I don't know. I mean, I don't know why something tells me that the abortion thing there might be something to that. Um, but truly I'm, I'm not sure I. The thing is like, if she got injured and was like, so delirious, she put her coat on and everything.
And how could you make it that far down the highway, if you're losing that much blood? Well, why didn't anyone stop for her? That's the other thing, if you see someone walking down the side of the road, bleeding, even if you don't stop for them, because you don't have to call the police and tell 
Emily: [00:19:46] them, we always say this, and I understand if you don't want to stop because you don't know, this person could be crazy.
They called the 
Liz: [00:19:52] police. I don't know. I don't know if it was an accident. All right. So 
Emily: [00:19:57] let's move on 
Liz: [00:19:58] to the second part. Let's do it. It was frustrating as that is with no outcome. I was thinking I'm like, what is would really like this one?
Okay. We're back from our break. We just had to talk about hair and highlights and upkeep for the last 20 minutes. Literally all we talked about trying to be blonde is tough. It's really hard and expensive. You guys really just don't get it. 
Emily: [00:20:30] People who tell me my hair looks natural. I'm like you fools cost so much 
Liz: [00:20:35] money, even no idea.
Um, all right, well, let's jump into my story. Let's do it. Oh, right. My references this week are CBS news.com and the Seattle times.com. Okay. So at 7:00 PM on August. Oh my God. I wrote August 40th. I can't be right. No, it sounds about right. It's supposed to be 30th. All right. 7:00 PM on August 30th, 2012. Two friends named Kevin Watts and Angelo Rama were driving along interstate five, just North of Seattle.
When suddenly they heard five loud pops. The next thing they saw was a car speeding away into oncoming traffic. They thought it was pretty odd that a person was so impatient that they couldn't even wait at the red light. So when the light turned green, they started to chase the car. Now, I don't know what they thought they were going to end up doing.
Once they caught up to the person, Oh my God. They didn't. Because they said that this car went from zero to 60, in two or three seconds and was just gone. So they gave up on their chase and they returned to the scene where they had just come from and what they saw gave them a sinking feeling, because a Subaru that they had seen.
You know, back at the light was still sitting next to the curb, not moving with the engine running. And then they realized that the pops that they heard were actually gunshots. This is why you don't 
Emily: [00:22:03] chase a 
Liz: [00:22:03] random car. Oh yeah, no, I always am. Like, what if someone has a gun when they approached the Subaru or they saw a lot of blood and bullet holes in the car, the shooter had hit the victim four times in the head and attempted a fifth, but missed.
And that stray bullet ended up in the home of Patricia Schulmeister. She says she heard what sounded like an explosion. And when she went up to the window to see what happened, she tripped over a bullet in her living room. Had you tripped over a bullet? I don't know. It says, well, it said nearly tripped.
So I don't know. The bullet had gone through her fence and through the window of her house. And it hit a picture of her beloved cat named miss BP. Oh my gosh. And then it dropped to the floor now, soon after this happened, Ms. Schulmeister saw a crime scene unit outside of her house. So she went outside and tapped one of the guys on the shoulder and handed them this bullet.
Can you imagine how old is she? I don't know, but I'm picturing her being like in her seventies. I know me too. So that bullet was one of the only pieces of evidence that investigators had at first. And it was a nine millimeter fired from a Glock pistol. Detective Frank Clark said at the time quote, we didn't know if it was a targeted shooting or if it was a random shooting or anything about what it was.
They first thought it was a potential road rage incident, which is what we were just talking about. Yeah. So they realized that the victim, it was 42 year old Yancey Knoll friends described him as good natured and happy-go-lucky. So they said that the idea that he would have been involved in a road rage incident was just absurd.
Not like him at all. When his friend was asked if Nicole was reckless, the friend said no. And then when asked if Noll was ever verbally abusive, he said, God, no, not even close. He was so careful and mindful with how he interacted with people. Hmm. So now the police are confused because there's no one that anyone can think of that would want this person dead.
Interesting. So the whole scene was really curious. Five shots were fired with excellent accuracy and the shooter killed an old, just a few feet away from other people who were on the road. Kind of like in your story, in the middle of broad daylight. Yeah. Wow. After investigating the scene, police determined that NOLs window had been open and the shooter had shot through the passenger side window, into the car to kill Knoll.
The whole thing was just really weird. And the police said they had never seen anything like it. Now, like I said, there were witnesses, including those two friends that I talked about and they said that the shooter drove a silver BMW convertible with really nice silver rims. They also said that the top was down at the time of the shooting and that the car had a broken back window.
So now the police at least can be on the lookout for a car matching this description. One of the witnesses also helped a sketch artist come up with a pretty detailed sketch of the suspect and the police ended up releasing that picture into the media. To try and see if anyone could ID him. They also released photos of the car from a nearby security camera.
Obviously they're really grainy. So in the following weeks, the police stopped every silver BMW in the Seattle area. They also received hundreds of tips about dark haired suspects, driving a silver sports car, then on September 14th. So about two weeks after the murder, a woman called in with an anonymous tip.
She provided them with the name din Bowman and gave his address, which happened to be less than 10 blocks from the scene of the crime. So police then pulled up a photo of Bowman and it looked remarkably like the sketch. Oh, I actually took a screenshot to show you. Cause it's actually interesting. 
Emily: [00:26:01] We will put it on the Instagram.
Liz: [00:26:04] Okay. So Emily agrees, the sketch was identical. It does. So this seems like a good suspect, except that 29 year old din Bowman did not seem like the type of person who would commit this crime. He was a brilliant engineer who some people described as a true genius. Ooh. And I mean genius because he was just 12 years old when he entered college.
Oh. And by the time he was in his twenties, he opened his own boutique engineering company called vague industries. And they specialized in robotics. 
Emily: [00:26:36] Um, can I just pause and tell a quick side note? Yeah, my friend, who was an engineer in college, she had a middle schooler and one of her college classes and she had a genius in her class and she said that he would kill the curve.
Every test. He was just much smarter than all the middle schoolers. And sometimes his mom would come win with him. 
Liz: [00:26:56] That's so crazy. Oh my God. That's hilarious. So yes, it does happen 
Emily: [00:27:01] and they go to engineering. 
Liz: [00:27:03] In 2007, Bowman met Jennifer Palm, who was a successful dentist at an education seminar. And the two got married a year later.
So while this seems like an unlikely suspect, obviously it's their best lead. So police needed proof that Bowman actually owned a BMW. So they set up surveillance on his house. A full week went by with no sighting of a BMW, but then finally the garage door opened up just enough so that police could see a silver sports car inside.
Oh my God. And because of that, they were able to obtain a search warrant. So on September 21st, as Bauman was leaving for work, police arrested him. He had to wait two hours for the detectives to arrive at the station to question him. And while he was waiting, he didn't seem concerned at all. He had some snacks and some coffee, and then he complained that his time was being wasted and just was very lax also 
Emily: [00:28:01] to arrest him just because he has the same car seems pretty 
Liz: [00:28:05] circumstantial, I guess, maybe that combined with, I dunno if you can use an anonymous tip is actual evidence because like anyone could just call it and say their ex boyfriend did something.
Just thinking that. So I'm not sure, but they did arrest him and he didn't realize that his wife had agreed to be questioned and was in the next room. Uh, Oh, detective Dana Clark asked Jennifer if she had heard of any murders that happened within a few blocks of their house in the last few weeks. And she responded, I'm not sure she was questioned for almost four hours and she answered it.
Most of the questions with, I'm not sure. Okay. That's weird. Yeah. Also, honey, you got a lawyer. I know four hours now I'm calling 
Emily: [00:28:48] tabs. 
Liz: [00:28:48] So while this was going on, Bowman's car was being inspected and police can quickly tell that one of the back windows had recently been replaced. Ooh, there were also shards of glass on the floor of the car near that newly replaced window.
God. And so they think their theory is that this person shot through the glass of their own car, into the next car. So that's why the glass was, that's why the window was broken. Oh yeah. They also noticed that the rims had recently been painted black. Hmm. Yeah. Police were also searching their house at this time, which they described as surprisingly bare.
They didn't know how much Bowman made, but they did know that Jennifer alone made almost $250,000 a year, but there was hardly any bedroom furniture in their room and the mattress was on the floor. 
Emily: [00:29:41] Um, haven't you seen Kanye West and Kim Kardashians house. That's just how rich people do it. It's like 
Liz: [00:29:46] minimalism.
Maybe it's a, it's a vibe that we wouldn't know. Cause we're poor. No, I'm like, I'm going to get on Wayfair. In the kitchen of the house, police noticed a bunch of post-its on the fridge, but one of them in particular caught their eye. It said to the best shooter in the wild, wild West bang, bang X, X, L. Oh, what the fuck?
I know. And back at the station, when detectives finally got to Bowman to question him, he immediately lawyered up, like, didn't answer one question. So he pretty much said nothing to the police. And four months go by and Bowman is just sitting in jail the whole time, because his bail had been set for $10 million.
He can't afford that. It seems like now, while Bowman appeared really stoic in, you know, the interrogation room and in the courtroom at the bail hearing, he does have a quirky side because he and his wife talked to each other in baby voices and have pet names for each other. I know that some couples do this, but it's actually.
Like vomit inducing, how they talk to each other. Do you have quotes for me? Yeah. Well, first of all, he was bunny and she was snuggles. Okay. Let me hear the chit-chat. So there are recorded phone calls that they had while Bowman was in prison. No, I didn't even put all the quotes because there's so many, but one of them was Jennifer saying, you're my snugs or I'm your bunny hop and we cuddle.
Yeah. What I don't even know. And then she says, how's my little snuggle cake. I'm going to take that one. And it's kind of nice. So they just seem very, very strange. 
Emily: [00:31:30] Imagine the people who tap those calls, how 
Liz: [00:31:33] funny they thought it was. Yeah. You're probably listening to boring stuff all day. And then you hear that and you're like to turn it up.
Snuggle cake. So during this time, while Bowman was in jail, detectives had been building their homicide case against him. They discovered that for years, he had been downloading books, articles, and videos to his computer on the subject of death and murder. This is a quote from detective Clark, who said he definitely was someone who studied up on killing somebody and trying to get away with it.
What the fuck? And it's not that he had a little of it. He had tons of it 
Emily: [00:32:05] again, who is publishing this stuff. I 
Liz: [00:32:07] know. Cause it gets even worse. Bowman also was obsessed with James Bond and there were videos of him driving, speeding cars, around obstacle courses and videos of him shooting guns. There was also a training video on his computer on how to shoot someone through glass.
Oh no. Which is exactly what he did. My favorite. There was a book called arrest proof yourself. Which explained how to cover up a murder, how to get rid of a gun and how to get rid of gunshot residue, et cetera, et cetera. So the trial began on November 14th, 2014, two years after Yancey Knoll was murdered.
The prosecution opened with motive saying that this was a senseless crime that occurred only to fulfill a kind of quest, a quest to know what it would be like to kill someone. Oh my God. They proceeded to show the jury the thousands of pages that Bowman had on how to murder someone saying that this was clearly a premeditated murder.
One of the quotes from someone I'm not sure who, but it just said it was the equivalent of the library of Congress on death. That that's how much content he had. Now. The defense said this was not what happened. This was just a road rage situation that escalated Bowman takes the stand. And tells his story and he says it all started when Noll cut him off on the interstate, he said that Knoll was screaming.
Things like you better learn how to drive that fancy card, Dick boy, or you're going to get yourself fucked up. And then Bowman continued. He pointed his finger on his head as if it was a gun saying that Noah was making that gesture, that he was going to shoot him. He then says that Knoll threw a wine bottle at his head, which.
I'm not saying I don't have wine bottles in my car, but it's just not, I wouldn't give it up. Exactly. Actually one of Knoll's friends said, well, that's just ludicrous because no would never waste a bottle of wine on that. And I remember, and I really just identified with that. Yup. So Bowman says he feared for his life and that's when he pulled out his gun and shot him five times.
Oh boy, the jury deliberated for three days and came back with a guilty verdict. And at the sentencing when given a chance to speak, all Noel says is I'm disappointed that the jury didn't believe me, clearly, those books weren't that good, but it's also like every person who's been convicted of anything ever is saying, I'm upset that the jury didn't believe me.
Like you're not even saying you're innocent. So he was sentenced to at 29 years in prison and he attempted suicide in prison, but failed. Idiot. Oh, and also he and snuggles are now divorced. I was 
Emily: [00:34:57] going to say, did she know that he was a murderer? So 
Liz: [00:35:00] that's the other thing here. The detectives really do believe that she was involved in the coverup and she should be charged with a crime, but I'm guessing she wasn't.
No, and they don't have enough evidence to charge her, but they clearly think that she's. Involved. 
Emily: [00:35:18] Yeah. She knew he wanted to kill someone and she was like, let me help. You re like fulfill this fantasy. 
Liz: [00:35:24] My little bunny knuckle been so creepy. Um, but yeah, so he's still in jail 
Emily: [00:35:31] now just to think who was the anonymous 
Liz: [00:35:33] caller?
That is, that is the question. 
Emily: [00:35:37] Something he wasn't planning on. 
Liz: [00:35:39] And I w yeah, who was it? Also, it's really sad because his parents speak at the sentencing and they are in tears saying, this is our fault because we let him learn about guns as a method of pre like self protection. But then the judge even says, this is not your fault.
This is your son's fault. And then the son gets up there and all he can say is I'm pissed that the jury didn't believe me so crazy. I just feel really bad. Also. He probably 
Emily: [00:36:05] would have escalated if he didn't get 
Liz: [00:36:07] caught. Oh, yeah. I feel like once a person like that kills one person, there's no stopping them.
Yeah. 
Emily: [00:36:13] Thank God that caught him, 
Liz: [00:36:15] that anonymous caller. So we will wrap it up there. Yeah. And I guess, uh, if you ever have any info about a crime, give the police a shout. Either tell us 
Emily: [00:36:26] or 
Liz: [00:36:26] the police tell us first. All right, guys, we'll see you next week. Cheers. Cheers. .