Monday, Mar 7, 2022 • 45min
MURDERED: Erica Gene Shultz
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From the moment her sister Erica’s phone went to voice mail, Emily Corbin knew something was wrong. But thanks to all those true crime shows – and countless episodes of Crime Junkie – she also knew exactly what she had to do to find her. Her tenacity not only led police to Erica, but helped solve her murder and two others -- and took the worst kind of serial predator off the streets.
Anyone with information that may be helpful to investigators regarding Harold David Haulman III and other possible victims should call the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI or submit a tip online at tips.fbi.gov
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Ashley Flowers
Brit Prawat
Transcript
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Break
Speaker 2
00:38
This Was a multiple
Murder
. Six bodies, 6 victims. Six members of the DeFeo family shot dead in their home. Only one left alive to tell the story of what happened on the new podcast. Very scary people. How a true crime story was transformed into a piece of horror history. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts, high crime junkies.Share
Ashley Flowers
01:05
I'm your host Ashley Flowers.
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Brit Prawat
01:07
And I'm brit.
Share
Ashley Flowers
01:08
And the story I have for you today is one that first came to our attention in the spring of 2021. When we got an email from a listener named Emily that started like this.
Share
01:18
Hello, Ashley and Brit. My name is Emily and until December six of 2020 I was a religious listener and
Crime Junkie
fan club member. I still love you both and your show. I had to stop listening for a while because my twenty six year old Autistic
sister went missing and I became a full time investigator working eighteen plus hour days trying to find her.Share
01:40
I used a lot of my
Crime Junkie
knowledge. My sister's name is Erica Gene Shultz and she was from Bloomsburg Pennsylvania
. She went on to tell us the most incredible story of one sister fighting for justice for another, and she sent us another text message that said quote "It's because of Crime Junkie
that I had the knowledge and the courage to take the actions necessary", end quote and I truly believe it's because of the actions she took, that a serial predator was taken off the streets.Share
02:10
Emily asked us to tell her sister's story, and really it's her story too because she thinks our platform could help get the word out and possibly help others find closure. So with the help of her sister, Emily here is the story of Erica Gene Shultz.
Share
02:59
At around noon on Saturday December 5th, 2020 Emily Corbin is working from home in
Bloomsburg Pennsylvania
when she hears a notification on her phone, it's a text from someone she knows named Donna and she wants to know if Emily's sister, twenty-six year old Erica Shultz happened to be with her.Share
03:15
Donna has something that she needs to drop off to Erica's apartment but she hasn't been able to get ahold of Erica and she isn't answering her phone. Now Emily says, "No." Erica isn't with her but she says like don't worry, I'll track her down and have her, give you a call back. Emily punches in her sister's number.
Share
03:29
But Erica doesn't answer for her either, which isn't a super big deal. Emily knows that Erica loves her a good like Saturday morning sleeping so she's either at home in bed with the ringer off or maybe she just got called in last minute to cover an extra shift at work and if that's the case their mom probably drove her there.
Share
03:48
But Emily checks with their mom who says that, "She hasn't seen or heard from Erica yet that day" either. Emily calls her own husband Cody and asks him to just swing by the
Weis Market
where Erica works on his way home and see if she's there, but she's not. Cody goes from there to Erica's apartment but she's not there either.Share
04:05
So, all four of them, Emily and her mom, Donna and Cody start taking turns calling Erica's cell over and over all afternoon, Emily is racking her brain trying to figure out where her sister could possibly be. She knows Erica's schedule pretty well. They talk every day. I mean even several times a day and there's not much that goes on in either of their lives without the other one knowing about it.
Share
Brit Prawat
04:27
So, when was the last time that Emily spoke to or even saw her sister?
Share
Ashley Flowers
04:31
Well, she spoke to her the night before.
Susan Schwartz
reported for the Press Enterprise
that Emily face timed with her sister around eight o'clock on Friday night and at that point Erica had been home in her PJ's working on a puzzle and getting ready for bed.Share
04:44
There was nothing out of the ordinary about that conversation, like they chatted about the puzzle and Erica joked about how she and her cat Luna, we're working on it together, it wasn't a lengthy call by any means just like a "good night, love you, talked to in the morning" kind of thing. Not hearing from her sister until noon. She can brush that off.
Share
05:00
But as the hours tick by, her worry is really starting to grow. Because Erica talks to her family all of the time. And by all of the time, I mean like it would not be out of character for her to call her mom and sister like fifteen times in a day or more according to that
Press Enterprise
piece.Share
Brit Prawat
05:16
Oh, wow. So, they're a pretty tight bunch.
Share
Ashley Flowers
05:19
Really tight. But actually in Erica's case it's actually more than just like being close to family. You see, Erica is
Autistic
and while she is very independent in lots of ways like she has a job, she has her own place, all of that. She still relies on her mom and sister for a lot of things like she doesn't have a license.Share
05:35
So, usually one of them drives her like to and from work for example, but again Erica also has her own life, she has her own friends, she has her own interests. And it is totally possible that Emily doesn't know every single thing that's going on every minute of her sister's life. But Emily thinks that if her sister had made any plans she didn't know about, there has to be a record of it somewhere.
Share
05:54
Like if Erica used facebook or instagram or something like that, Emily might be able to get into her accounts and find out who she was meeting and where. And for some people that might be more of a, you know, wouldn't it be nice if we had that kind of info kind of thing? But Emily Corbin is not some people, she is our people she told our team quote "I have been a
Crime Junkie
for a long time and would constantly talk to Cody and Erica about the importance of passwords and having a go missing folder." End quote.Share
Brit Prawat
06:20
I love this girl already. Oh, my goodness.
Share
Ashley Flowers
06:23
I swear my
Crime Junkie
heart grew three sizes when I read that. So, yeah, Emily for sure doesn't know all of her sisters usernames and passwords but she knows enough to give her a leg up. Plus, Erica had logged into facebook a few times before on Emily's phone which set up an auto fill. So, Emily was able to access several of her sister's accounts right away like that very afternoon. Unfortunately though, if Erica had made plans with someone, it wasn't through any of those channels.Share
Brit Prawat
06:49
Okay, but it's still great to have those things like locked, loaded, ready to go, even just so she can watch them for activity or at least I mean that's what I'd be doing and I mean actually you have an "If I go missing" folder, I have an "If I go missing" folder we have an "If I go missing" folder template on our website that all of our Crime Junkies can download it's there use it.
Share
Ashley Flowers
07:08
We did that episode a long time ago. But for anyone who's knew or didn't realize there's literally something you can download on our website. We have an "If I go missing" folder that has just tons of information and at the end of the day right like Emily said that they didn't have everything but she had enough to at least get started.
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Brit Prawat
07:23
Right. And like, our folder I feel like covers a lot but there's still things that if you think they're important put them in there.
Share
Ashley Flowers
07:29
And again you hope you never have to use that. You hope you are never in the position Emily is. But when you are you don't want to be looking back wishing you had made something. By four p. m, Emily and her mom are concerned enough that they decide to head to Erica's apartment. Now she wasn't there earlier. But again they're thinking like okay if she went somewhere with a friend which they think she might have maybe she's back now. Maybe her phone died or something.
Share
07:51
But when they show up, they get no answer. So, they used the key that each of them had to let themselves in, and the moment they walked through the door, they know that something is wrong. The first thing that they noticed is that Luna's food and water dish are turned upside down and empty. It looked to them like Luna was trying to get what little bit of food was left inside the automatic dishes.
Share
08:12
Now, Emily and her mom both know that if Erica was planning on being away, she would have made sure that there was plenty of food and water for Luna. And she would have told one or both of them about it so they could take care of Luna while she was gone, and listen, if I'm ever gone and there were no plans made for Chuck all the red flags, my husband murdered me.
Share
08:29
And that's kind of how like Emily is saying Erica feels about her cat, like there's no way in the world she would just like leave and like leave her to fend for herself. And there's a reason for that. Like, again, it's not just that she's a beloved pet, she's actually an
Emotional Support Animal
and for Erica to even have Luna. Emily told us that she had to sign papers saying that if something ever happened to her sister, she would take responsibility for the cat.Share
Brit Prawat
08:51
So, is there anything else in Erica's place that seems off as they keep looking?
Share
Ashley Flowers
08:56
Yes, so her medications are actually left there next to the kitchen sink. Like she would always put out like her daily medication each day so she didn't forget to take them and Saturday's pills were sitting there untouched. But still, they're like, you know things happen, people forget, people get tied up, it doesn't necessarily mean anything.
Share
09:14
So, they keep looking, they check the drawer where Erica kept her medications. Maybe she grabbed the next day's dose by accident, but the rest of the month of December was all there. This worries them a little bit more, and there's something else that they can't shake. Erica's winter coat is lying on the couch. And this is December in
Pennsylvania
. People don't just venture outside for any length of time without a coat.Share
Brit Prawat
09:36
I was gonna say, I mean I would maybe like run to my car real quick without a coat but if I was going to be gone for more than a couple of minutes I'd want my coat with me for sure.
Share
Ashley Flowers
09:45
And again remember Eric doesn't have a license, she doesn't have a car, she doesn't drive, but she did have this purple Columbia Fleece that she would sometimes wear as a jacket on milder days or if she was just going to be outside, like you're saying for like long enough to climb into someone else's car.
Share
09:59
But even that they find hanging in the closet. Her overnight bag was in the closet too. And as far as they could tell, the only things missing were her purse and her cellphone and Erica herself. So, the next thing they do is look around for any clues as to where she may have gone or who she may have met, but they find nothing. So, with an uneasy feeling Emily and her mom decide that all they can really do is go home, keep trying Erica's phone and hope for the best.
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Brit Prawat
10:28
So, they don't report her missing?
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Ashley Flowers
10:30
No, not at this point Emily told us that like so many others, she and her mom were under the impression that they should wait twenty-four hours before filing a missing persons report. And so they decided to give it a day before involving police. And again another crime drinking rule here. That's not an actual rule anywhere. Now that's not guaranteeing that when you go, police won't tell you that. That's not saying that they promised to take the report. There are agencies that still won't take it.
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Speaker 5
10:53
There's no official rule that you have to wait if you ever find yourself in a situation like this. But they thought that this was a rule. So, they go home and again in the back of their minds there's still this sliver of hope that this has all just been a series of unfortunate events, and Erica is just going to like show up, she's gonna like explain everything away once she walks through the door now they know that she's scheduled to work at five p. m. on Sunday.
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Ashley Flowers
11:17
So, that's kind of like the marker they put in their mind. Like if Erica doesn't show up at home by four to get ready then we're going to call police. But neither of them realized just how long those twenty-four hours was going to be and after trying all day Sunday to reach Erica by phone by about 3:30, they just can't wait any longer.
Share
11:34
They grabbed their stuff and head back to Erica's apartment to wait for her there. The next ninety minutes feels like hours. They call the
Weis Market
to double check that Erica's on the schedule and she is. So, Emily called her husband Cody and asks him to go sit in the Weis parking lot and just watch to see if maybe someone else drops Erica off for her shift?Share
11:54
Emily told us she had a reason for asking Cody to stake out the parking lot more than just to put eyes on her sister. She said quote, "I was thinking that maybe if she was with someone and they took her directly to work, I could get their description or license plate and check that person out." End quote.
Share
Brit Prawat
12:09
I mean, I don't blame her. If someone had my sister off the grid for that long. I want to check them out to.
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Ashley Flowers
12:14
But Erica doesn't show, solo or with anyone.
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Speaker 5
12:17
She is officially a no call, no show. And that is absolutely one hundred percent not like her. She wouldn't do that ever. So, at about ten after five, Emily calls 911 and officially reports her sister missing. She gives them all the details when they last saw her, how she wasn't answering her phone, didn't show up to work, didn't take her medications or winter coat, didn't even leave food for her cat.
Share
Ashley Flowers
12:39
She tells them Erica is especially vulnerable because of her autism. According to Emily, even though Erica was twenty-six she had the mentality of someone closer to fifteen, which Emily says opened her up to being easily manipulated and she was very trusting.
Share
Speaker 5
12:54
Now this part of the story is a little bit of a punch in the gut to me and kind of makes me think that even if Emily and her mom had gone to the police sooner, nothing would have happened because the officer tells Emily to just wait a little bit longer and if Erica doesn't show up by 6:30, maybe call back then and then we'll start the paperwork.
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Brit Prawat
13:11
Okay. What the heck is ninety more minutes going to do? When they've already waited twenty-four hours? I mean more than that. Really?
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Ashley Flowers
13:18
I don't know for sure. I keep coming back to this one thing that Emily told us, which I'm going to actually get you to read.
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Brit Prawat
13:23
She says, quote, "We live in a small town and the police don't have a lot of experience with situations like this, especially when someone has an intellectual disability. They asked us if Erica could have met someone and moved away to start a new life or if she just went away with friends for a couple of days and would return soon, they were all valid questions but not for our situation. Erica didn't drive, she didn't miss her medications or work. She was living her best life. I would never ever leave us or her cat behind." End quote.
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Ashley Flowers
13:51
Eventually police agreed to open a missing persons investigation. Emily and her mom are still at Erica's apartment at this point, and so they check her laptop for any passwords to social media or other sites, anything that might help them access her accounts. And then they take the laptop and an old cellphone of Erica's to give to the police. Emily and her mom get no sleep that night and though she tries to work from home the next day it's incredibly difficult.
Share
14:16
Her mind is going a million miles a minute thankfully Emily told us she has an awesome boss who tells her you know what, don't worry about work, just do what you need to do. And of course Emily isn't an investigator, she doesn't actually know what to do, but she said she had listened to enough episodes of this show. She had watched enough Dateline in 2020 to know that the key to finding Erica is out there somewhere and she's not just going to sit idly by and wait for police to find it.
Share
14:41
No one, knows Erica better than she does. Which means no one is better equipped to find her. So, she starts her own investigation.
Share
Break
Ashley Flowers
16:09
Emily grabs this pink glittery notebook out of the bottom of her desk drawer and opens it up to the first page. She writes the date on top Monday, December 7th, 2020 and she starts to write, she writes the exact time of her last conversation with Erica and everything she can remember about it.
Share
16:27
She writes about the text from Donna, and when it came in she writes down every single call she made to Erica's phone and what time she made them. She writes about going to the apartment and what she saw, what was there and what was missing. She notes all of the people she or Cody or her mom called or text or spoke to what they asked what was said in her gut. Emily knows that her sister didn't just leave on her own.
Share
16:48
She had to have gone with someone, she just doesn't know who, but she figures there has to be a way to find out. And so that's when Emily switches into what I can only describe as like a full on
Crime Junkie
mode. She calls the building manager of her sister's apartment complex to see if they have any security cameras.Share
17:04
They don't, so she calls the
NAPA Auto Parts
store behind the building to see if they have any cameras, but they don't, she makes a missing persons poster and put it up on Facebook asking for people to share it as far and wide as possible. She calls Erica's therapist and asked her to report Erica missing to police and share with them any relevant notes or information from previous sessions.Share
17:24
She calls the State social worker that Erica works with and asked her to do the same on the advice of a friend Emily reaches out to the area agency on aging and while her sister doesn't exactly fit the usual bill for their clientele, they do have experience tracking down missing person. So, they actually assign a caseworker who starts calling area hospitals and women's shelters looking for Erica.
Share
Brit Prawat
17:44
So, are police doing anything at this point? Or is it just one hundred percent Emily's investigation? Like I'm thinking about things that it would be hard for family members to do. Like get access to phone records or bank statements like that kind of thing.
Share
Ashley Flowers
17:57
Well, I'm not sure about police at this point, but actually Emily is able to log into Erica's bank account which lists the last transaction at a local restaurant on the evening of Thursday, December 3rd. Now Cody happens to know the bartender at that restaurant so he reaches out to see if they can check on their security footage to see who was there to pick up the food because it was like a take out order or something.
Share
18:18
The friend says that he's going to try and look to see who picked it up, but again something you can do right that second. So, he'll have to get back to him now. The phone records on the other hand are a little more complicated simply because Erica had switched providers just like a few weeks before, and so there really wasn't much of a record to access yet.
Share
Speaker 5
18:36
But Emily is able to check Erica's voicemail for messages by calling Erica's number and then entering the pin, which she knew. But the only messages are from herself, their mom, Cody, Donna and another friend of Erica's named Adam and all of the voicemails were them asking Erica to call them back because they were worried. Emily also logs into Erica's MeetMe and plenty of fish accounts because she's thinking that if Erica isn't with anyone they know, maybe she met someone online.
Share
19:02
Erica hadn't been seeing anyone seriously and she hadn't mentioned anyone new lately either. Not for like several weeks.
Share
Ashley Flowers
19:08
The last person Emily knew about was this guy Dave and she remembers talking about him because Erica had said that he'd come to
Bloomsburg
and cooked her an Italian dinner and they watched a movie together. And Emily was like, oh that's you know super nice, what did he make?Share
19:21
And Erica had said English muffin pizza with sauce and cheese, and Emily just like looked at her and said that's not an Italian dinner, that is a crime. And then they both like cracked up laughing about it.
Share
Brit Prawat
19:32
So, did Erica tell her sister anything else about this guy or just about this English muffin pizza dinner? Like did she see him again after that?
Share
Speaker 5
19:42
Well, let me just send you another few lines from Emily's notes that you can read.
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Brit Prawat
19:47
It says quote "Whenever Erica would talk about someone new, I would talk to her like one of my friends and try to get as much information about them as possible. I would ask for their date of birth so I could see if they were astrologically compatible. But really it was for me to look them up and see if they were ever arrested in
Pennsylvania
and I would do a google deep dive on them. When I tried to get more information about Dave, Erica was hesitant, she said he was older and he didn't want her to tell her family about him because we wouldn't understand.Share
20:14
I told her I have friends that are older and younger than me and gave her a few examples. She finally told me he was forty-six, and from
Pine Grove.
"End quote.Share
Ashley Flowers
20:23
Now according to a piece in
The Daily Item
by Francis Scarcella, she had met this Dave guy online through MeetMe, but Emily went through every line of Erica's messaging history on the app and there was nothing recent from him or anyone else. And in and around all of that. Emily is calling all of Erica's friends and coworkers.Share
Speaker 5
20:42
The media, a local P. I, the district Attorney's office, State police, local police, anyone and everyone who might had even the slightest chance of knowing where Erica might be. And Brit, that's just what Emily did on Monday. That is one day.
Share
Brit Prawat
20:57
Oh my God, that is astounding and amazing and powerful and incredible. Like I'm about to cry.
Share
Ashley Flowers
21:03
Before she goes to bed that night, Emily types out a long text to her sister, telling her everything she did that day and she writes it purposefully in a way that if someone has Erica and if someone has her phone maybe they would see this. And of course there is always the chance that Erica had run away.
Share
21:22
It's highly unlikely but not totally impossible. So, she adds a line saying that all she wants is to know that Erica is okay just in case. The next day Emily wakes up, she opens her pink notebook and picks right back up where she left off the day before, making phone calls, sending out missing persons posters, scouring Erica's online accounts and racking her brain for even the tiniest kernel of information that might help to point her toward her sister.
Share
21:49
And she finally gets a little break when she learns the name of the person who picked up Erica's take out the Thursday before, Ted.
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Brit Prawat
21:57
Does Emily know someone named Ted?
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Ashley Flowers
21:60
Emily doesn't know him personally. But she knows that Ted is a friend of Erica. Someone that she knew Erica trusted, according to Jill Whelan reporting for
Citizens Voice
the day before he dropped off the take out which would been Wednesday, December 2nd. Erica had asked Ted to put a GPS
tracking app on her phone.Share
Brit Prawat
22:16
Did she say why she wanted a tracking app?
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Ashley Flowers
22:19
Well Ted, says that Erica told him she was planning to meet up with a guy that she'd met online and she had seen in person before too. But only like one other time. And apparently this guy was saying that he wanted her to pack up everything and run away with him. But there was something about him that made Erica uneasy.
Share
22:35
For one, she told Ted that the guy was awful to her cat and Ted told her that you know if you feel uncomfortable you really should trust your gut and not meet up with this guy at all anymore. But Erica kind of just brushed it off like I'm just gonna see how it goes.
Share
Brit Prawat
22:49
Did Erica give Ted a name though? Like is he able to tell Emily who this guy was?
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Ashley Flowers
22:54
Oh, as soon as she hears about this, Emily knows exactly who Erica is talking about, she was talking about meeting up with Dave. And actually that whole mean to her cat thing. That's another thing Erica had brought up a few weeks back during that conversation that they had about Dave.
Share
Brit Prawat
23:08
I mean I would not be able to let that one slide. It is a major red flag.
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Ashley Flowers
23:13
Oh, for Emily too. She told her being mean to small animals is like
Serial Killer
101, that she didn't think she needed to be friends with this guy. And Erica told Emily that she didn't think she'd be seeing him again because of the way he was with Luna. But she must have had a change of heart though. Clearly she still had enough reservations about this guy to request that tracking app and give Ted access to it.Share
23:34
So, anyways when Ted heard that Erica was missing, he went into the app right away to see where Erica's phone last pinged. And according to Caroline Foreback's reporting for
Eyewitness News,
when he pulls it up, he's able to tell her that the last place Erica's phone ping was just off the interstate forty minutes away in Milton
.Share
Brit Prawat
23:52
Okay. But do we know when?
Share
Ashley Flowers
23:54
Emily says that she doesn't know exactly when the last ping was but she did say that Erica's phone was last active on December 4th. Now we know for sure Erica was home at eight o'clock that night. Since that's when she and Emily were on facetime together which means that it must have been sometime after that but before midnight.
Share
Brit Prawat
24:12
Okay, gotcha. So, does Erica know anyone in
Milton
or have any specific reason to go there? Because that Dave guy wasn't even from there was he?Share
Ashley Flowers
24:22
Right, no. He said that he was from
Pine Grove
which is in a totally different direction. So, Emily can't wrap her head around this at all. She doesn't know of any reason that her sister would be in Milton
or even driving through. But whatever, at least it's something police send some officers out to Milton
to search the area around where Erica's phone last ping and while they do that, Emily calls all of the local hotels in the area to see if anyone with Erica's name or anyone matching her description had checked in.Share
24:49
She calls the hospitals to asking the same thing but she doesn't get anywhere with either. She even drives up there herself to look around and hang missing person fliers at local businesses and truck stops. By the end of the day, this is now day four since Emily last spoke to her sister.
Share
25:03
Her resolve to find Erica is stronger than ever. She's got a team of volunteers and she has this huge cork board on the wall where they're tracking accounts and passwords, posting documents and marking all the hospitals they call, in every town where someone puts up flyers.
Share
25:18
Emily told us the next few days are kind of a blur for her, in terms of what happened when. She coordinates a volunteer run search of the area around Erica's apartment building and the woods nearby. She goes with police to Erica's apartment to collect evidence.
Share
25:31
They print out phone statements from before Erica switch providers and they go line by line through all of the numbers cross referencing with their own phones and trying to identify every single person that her sister had talked to or texted.
Share
25:44
Deep in her gut, Emily says that she knew she was looking for Dave, and she knew that if they could find Dave they would find Erica. But without having access to her sister's most recent text messages, Emily feels like she's kind of at a standstill and this is where police with all of their access and resources are able to step in and take over. According to Susan Schwartz's reporting for the
Press Enterprise,
Bloomsburg
Police are able to get Erica's most recent phone records from Verizon
and wouldn't you know it, those records show the very thing Emily knew would be out there somewhere.Share
26:18
It turns out Erica received two text messages from the same number back to back at 8:43 p. m on the night she disappeared. The first one said "Surprise" and the second "knock, knock."
Share
26:32
Erica responded to those texts though, I couldn't find anything in the source material about what she said and Emily doesn't know either. We know they had a brief exchange though, but after that her phone activity stopped completely.
Share
Brit Prawat
26:44
So, who does the number belong to?
Share
Ashley Flowers
26:46
Well, that's not quite as easy to figure out as it might sound, because it turns out that the phone is a burner. But, they are able to run some data on that phone and what they find was truly chilling. Whoever had that phone was sending those text messages from inside
Erica's
apartment building.Share
Break
Ashley Flowers
28:15
They could tell the burner phone was with Erica or at least Erica's phone all the way from her place to
Milton.
At that point. Erica's phone is turned off. But the burner phone stays on in Milton
for like forty minutes, but then that goes dark too. Now, how police get from untraceable burner phone to a suspect is unclear to me from the source material for this case. But they do, and it turns out the person it belonged to is fourty-two year old Harold David Holman the third.Share
Brit Prawat
28:45
Harold David. As in Dave?
Share
Ashley Flowers
28:48
Yes, this is the guy Erica had met on the dating site who went by Dave, the one that gave pretty much everyone a bad vibe. Now the timeline is a little fuzzy here for two reasons. First, this is now the police investigation which we don't have as much insight to as Emily's investigation. But also I think it just takes some time for police to track Harold down.
Share
Brit Prawat
29:09
Just because the phone he used is a burner?
Share
Ashley Flowers
29:11
That's part of it, but the other part is he actually doesn't have a permanent address at this point and not only that, but he's also a
Truck Driver
, so he's all over the place all of the time anyway. But this is actually playing out the week before christmas and they do know where his parents live in Battle Creek
Michigan
, so they figure there's at least a decent chance that he's visiting them for the holidays.Share
29:31
So, they head to
Battle Creek
and that's exactly where police find him on December 23rd when they reach him, it's not like he's arrested on the spot or anything, they just want to talk to him at this point. So, they schedule a follow up interview for the next day. But before they leave they stick a tracking device on his vehicle just in case he decides to make a run for it.Share
29:52
And that tracker comes in real handy the next day when surprise, surprise! Harold doesn't show up for his interview. Instead, the
Gps
tracker tells them that Harold is on the move and heading back to Pennsylvania
all the way to Duncannon
where his wife lives.Share
Brit Prawat
30:08
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This guy's got a wife?
Share
Ashley Flowers
30:11
And estranged wife. But yeah, he does. Her name is Anne and they've been separated since July of 2020. In part because he wouldn't stop seeing other women. But that is where police track him to her house, where he arrives just after ten P. M. on Christmas Day.
Share
30:27
Though they don't do anything or move in on him right away. And I'm not quite sure if they wanted to watch him more or get their ducks in a row. But whatever their plan was, I promise you this next part wasn't part of it. The next day on December 26th, an officer with the railway police just happens to find Harold walking along the train tracks near his wife's place in
Duncannon
.Share
30:48
When the railway officer approaches him though, Harold immediately pulls out a box cutter and starts slashing his arms saying like, "What's wrong with me? I need to die for my sins." The railway officer ends up calling an ambulance to take him to a hospital and detectives meet him there despite all those vaguely confessiony, statements that he was making at the train tracks earlier.
Share
31:09
He actually refuses to talk to police at first. But their persistent, they tell him that they know he was with Erica the night she went missing. They know he was the last person to speak with her before she vanished. And they also know that he is the only person who can give Erica's family the closure they need, then right from his hospital bed. Harold starts to talk, he tells investigators that he drove to Erica's house that night totally unplanned and surprised her at her apartment.
Share
31:37
He says he asked her to come with him for a drive and she agreed. One of Francis Scarcella's stories in
The Daily Item
mentions them talking and walking in the woods near Hobby Road which is this long stretch of county road that's basically a mix of dense woods and farmland. Harold says that he attacked Erica while they were walking through the woods. He just pulled out a Mallet
and started to hit her with it. Not just once but like a dozen times, and then he says that he stabbed her at least that many times with a Kitchen Knife
.Share
32:10
Why?
Share
32:11
Police have the same question, and they asked him repeatedly, why? But he doesn't really have a reason. He says he just did it. He says he left her body there right where the attack happened, but took her phone purse both weapons and drove back towards
Bloomsburg
and all the way to Milton
where he tossed them over the side of a bridge.Share
Brit Prawat
32:31
So, Erica was never in
Milton
at all?Share
Ashley Flowers
32:34
Nope, that's just where he tossed her phone. Police bring Harold a map and he shows them where they'll find Erica's body and when a search team goes out the next morning to that location, that's exactly what they find. Just where Harold said it would be with injuries that matched the story he told them from the hospital bed. The same day they find Erica's body. They charged Harold Holman with her
Murder
and begin what everyone hopes will be the final heartbreaking chapter of Erica's story.Share
32:60
But heralds arrest is not as it turns out the ending to this story because after seeing the media coverage about Erica's
Murder
and Harold's arrest, police get a call from a woman named Tasha Feaster, who tells them that the same guy they just arrested for Erica's Murder
had been dating her twenty-five year old sister, Diana Phillips. Just before her disappearance in June of 2018.Share
33:25
Tianna lived in
Berwick
Pennsylvania
at the time, which is like twenty minutes from Bloomsburg
. She was a mom of a two year old and a five year old and she had a long term boyfriend named Scott. But her and Scott's relationship was pretty turbulent, always on and off. And during the off times for like a year before she went missing, she had been seeing a man that she had met on an online dating app. She knew him as Dave, and Tasha did too until she saw his face on the news and recognized Harold as the same guy.Share
Brit Prawat
33:54
So, how was he not connected to her case earlier? If they dated for what? Like a year?
Share
Ashley Flowers
33:60
Well, the police did question him. In fact, according to Susan Schwartz's reporting for the
Press Enterprise
, when Tianna's cousin called to officially report her missing to police, she told them thatTiannaa had plans with Dave that very night. Her cousin told them thaTiannana and her boyfriend had gotten into a fight and that she'd called Dave to pick her up at a friend's place after and then no one saw her after that.Share
34:20
So the
Berwick
Police at the time like called him obviously. But apparently he told them that he didn't even make it to Berwick
that night. He said that he'd been on his way to pick her up. She called and said like, oh, never mind.Share
34:32
So, then he just turned around and went home. And I guess police must have just taken his word for it at the time because as far as I can tell, the only person who was truly persistent in searching for Tianna in the two and a half years since she'd been missing was her sister, Tasha. Who tells investigators that she had this gut feeling from the start, that something horrible had happened toTiannaa and that this Dave guy was somehow involved.
Share
34:53
She even called and texted many times, sometimes daily to ask him about Tianna and where she was, but Dave always denied having anything to do with it.
Share
Brit Prawat
35:03
So, this is like such a story of sisters, the true heroes.
Share
Ashley Flowers
35:07
Truly! The more investigators now finally look into the detail of Tianna's case, the more similarities they see with Erica's. They went missing from towns within twenty minutes of each other. They have a similar look and they both had disabilities that made them especially vulnerable.
Share
35:24
And most importantly, they both knew Harold Hallman and had met him through a dating site. It's too much of a coincidence not to explore further. So, police asked Harold about it. And he tells them that he had picked Tianna up, drove her to Hobby Road and bludgeoned her with a
Hammer
and then cut her throat. Again, they asked him why and this time he says, "Because my wife asked me to."Share
Brit Prawat
35:48
I'm sorry what?
Share
Ashley Flowers
35:49
They asked Harold estranged wife Anne about it and she says that she knew Harold had been involved with Tianna. She says she found out about it because Tianna's boyfriend Scott had called her up and told her. So, she had confronted Harold who she says went pretty much bonkers and started talking about killing Tianna and her boyfriend and tells police that she didn't think he was serious about it. Just that he was like angry in the face of getting caught.
Share
36:14
And she says that's what she thought even as he apparently looked for locations online that he could take them to kill them or dump their bodies. Even as he told her that he was going to scout some of those locations in person. Even as he drove off in her car on June 13, 2018, she didn't even believe him when he returned home the next day and told her he killed Tianna. She only started to believe him after he left for a few hours and came back with photos of what he said was Tianna's dead body.
Share
Brit Prawat
36:46
But she didn't call the authorities at all?
Share
Ashley Flowers
36:49
She didn't, nor did she call them, a few months later when according to Francis Scarcella reporting in
The Daily Item
, he drove her to the stretch of woods along Hoppy Road, got out of the vehicle, walked into the woods and came back with what he said was Tianna's skull, her rib cage and her clothes in a black garbage bag.Share
37:09
She tells police that he drove for hours over toward the Ohio State line and put that bag in a dumpster behind a movie theater, but Anne tells them that she has something else. A letter he had given her. That might be all police need to prove that he murdered Tianna.
Share
Break
Speaker 5
39:28
Here, but I'm going to get you to read that letter which was printed in Amanda Christman's peace for the standard speaker.
Share
Brit Prawat
39:34
Quote, "To whom it may concern, on June 13th, 2018 I drove to
Berwick
P. A., and picked up Tianna and Phillips and took her for a drive. We ended up somewhere in the woods east of Berwick
P. A. After walking into the woods, I pulled a knife from my pocket and attacked her from behind cutting her throat as she gasped for her last breath of air, I stabbed her repeatedly in the side of the neck, back and arms.Share
39:59
I then returned to the crime scene months later and achieved any and all evidence and disposed of it in a dumpster. Not sure exactly where. I Harold. David. Holman the third committed this crime on my own and of my own free will. David Holman. "End quote.
Share
Ashley Flowers
40:14
Just when they're ready to close the book on this guy and get him for two murders. Harold starts alluding to a third victim, a twenty-one year old who went missing from
Battle Creek
Michigan in June of 2005. Her name was Ashley Parlier. And like Erica and Tianna, she had disabilities. That made her super trusting and therefore particularly vulnerable to predators like Harold.Share
40:37
Ashley was pregnant at the time or at least that's what her parents suspected. They confronted her about it because they wanted her to be getting regular medical care, which she hadn't been, and that led to an argument. According to Trace Christenson's reporting for the
Battle Creek Enquirer
. After the argument, Ashley left to go for a walk ostensibly to clear her head. She went for walks all the time. But this time she didn't come home that afternoon or the next day or the next and no one ever heard from her again.Share
Brit Prawat
41:04
Was Harold a person of interest in that investigation?
Share
Ashley Flowers
41:07
His name didn't even come up in that investigation. Ashley's sister Nicole Kampen says she didn't know Harold or even know of him but they had some shared social circles apparently. And Ashley's parents had at least met the guy once. Harold says that she was with them at a bowling alley in
Battle Creek
when they met the first time.Share
41:27
So, it's a little weird to me because it seems like it wouldn't have taken a ton of investigative prowess to at least have her parents mention him. But how Ashley and Harold relationship played out from there and how much her parents or friends knew about it isn't clear.
Share
41:42
But clearly it did progress to the point that Harold says he thought he might be the person responsible for her pregnancy if anything at the time. Nicole felt like police focused mostly on her parents instead of other suspects.
Share
41:54
They sadly both passed away in 2020 before any of the truth came to light. And it's not totally that police didn't follow other leads, they did. It's just that there were very few leads to follow. Tips would come in and police would look at them. But it was Ashley's sister Nicole who did a lot of the legwork just like Emily and she's the one who kept the case alive for all those years.
Share
Speaker 5
42:17
According to a W. B. R. E. P. A home page series called Tracking A Killer by journalist Caroline foreback, Harold tells detectives that he knocked Ashley unconscious during an argument, then took her to a remote wooded area and bludgeoned her to death. He must have left her body in that location because he tells police that he went back there later and only found bones.
Share
42:38
He shows them on a map where both Ashley and Tianna's bodies had been and police in
Berwick
and in Battle Creek
searched extensively. At one point they even bring Harold to Battle Creek
to direct them where to search but they aren't able to locate remains for either woman. But they don't actually need bodies to charge Harold for Murder
, especially not with a confession, it takes time, but in May of 2021, authorities in Pennsylvania
charge Harold with a second count of first degree Murder
in connection with Tianna's disappearance and her presumed death.Share
43:08
And in July of that year, he was charged for Ashley's
Murder
too.Share
Brit Prawat
43:12
So, do we know for sure that there aren't more victims out there?
Share
Ashley Flowers
43:16
Oh, we actually know for sure that there are other victims out there. At least one that police are aware of a twenty-one year old named Joseph Lawrence Whitehurst, who went by J whose bludgeoned body was found in the woods near the
Ramstein Air Base
in Germany
back in June of 1999, Harold had been living there at the time first with his parents, but then solo after they returned to the states.Share
Brit Prawat
43:37
And he confessed to that
Murder
too?Share
Ashley Flowers
43:39
Well, within a few days of finding Jay's body, German authorities had Harold in custody and he straight up confessed even back then to beating Jay to death with a stick after an argument. This according to reporting at the time by Kevin Daughtry in
European Stars And Stripes
though police wouldn't share details about what they argued about or anything like that.Share
Brit Prawat
43:58
So, wait a second, he murdered someone in
Germany
in 1999 pled guilty, but then he's back in Michigan
by at least 2005 when Ashley went missing?Share
Ashley Flowers
44:08
Yep, Harold was only twenty years old at the time, which means that under German law at least back then, he was considered a juvenile
Stars And Stripes
picked up a story written by reporter Amanda Christman, which says that the court also found Harold had a quote "Diminished mental state." End quote. Specifically, a Schizophrenia
diagnosis, he ended up having the charge reduced to manslaughter and was sentenced to six years in a German reform school.Share
Speaker 5
44:35
But clearly he got out early because by 2002 he was back living in
Battle Creek
. So Erica, Tianna, Ashley and Jay are the victims we know about, there could be others that we don't. Harold moved around a lot over the years, Pennsylvania,
Michigan,
California,
Maryland,
Illinois
and as far away as Europe. Not only that, but we know he made a living as a professional Truck Driver
, which could have put him just about anywhere.Share
Brit Prawat
45:02
I would not be surprised to learn that there are other victims. This guy clearly has a type when it comes to his victims, which is hugely important information for police. And I wouldn't even be surprised if he confesses to other murders in the future just so he can get his name back out there.
Share
Ashley Flowers
45:16
Well, journalist Caroline Foreback actually sat down with Harold as part of that Tracking A Killer series for
Eyewitness News
. And during the interview, he mentioned that his wife had told police there could be as many as ten victims. But he says that's not true. He says what police have now is everything.Share
45:33
But you know, authorities aren't taking his word for it first of all, because he has a track record for lying to them and to everyone else that he comes into contact with his wife, the women he met online and who knows who else. But more than that he's a
Serial Killer
. And by his own admission, he felt the urge to kill and acted on that urge. That is why he killed Jay Whitehurst in Germany
.Share
45:55
That is why he killed Erica and Tianna to and probably also Ashley. And there are huge chunks of time where we're supposed to believe that Harold was inactive. I mean the biggest chunk being that 13 year gap between Ashley's
Murder
in 2005 and Tianna is in 2018.Share
46:12
I mean, his M. O sounds really spur of the moment on the surface, but it's not, this guy was methodical. He used online dating apps to prey on vulnerable young women. He initiated friendships and spent weeks or even months earning their trust. He did his best to ensure that his victims left no trace. And he went to great lengths not to leave a trail himself.
Share
46:35
He used disposable cellphones, he made sure his cell phones were powered off and then drove his victims to remote, heavily wooded locations away from where they lived and where he lived. He used the same type of weapons to beat and then stabbed his victims and he disposed of those weapons after the fact. And he would go back weeks or months later, maybe even longer to the locations where the bodies were and all the while this dude is going about his life. Like none of it ever happened.
Share
47:02
During the interview, I mentioned Harold told Caroline Foreback, quote, "Nothing, no drug can ever equate to that experience. There's nothing out there. Your mind is just, well, for me it was just gone." End quote. And I believe that this is the core of why Emily wanted her sister's story told, I said at the top, she said it's so that perhaps other people can find closure if there are other victims out there who don't have answers, who might be connected to Harold maybe hearing this story will set off some alarm bells or just bring up an old memory.
Share
47:37
In the fall of 2021
Harold Holman
was sentenced to two life sentences for killing Erica and Tianna with no possibility of parole, because he pled guilty. He avoided the death penalty at that time. He was awaiting to be extradited to Michigan
though, I don't think that's happened as of this recording yet.Share
47:53
The
FBI
had been working to develop a criminal profile that police could cross reference against open missing persons cases all across the U. S and again, while no new victims have been identified yet, that doesn't mean there aren't any others out there because, people like Harold don't just stop. They can't stop. They have to be stopped by police.Share
48:12
Yes, they should be stopping them. But we saw in these stories, it also took the persistence of people like Emily and Tasha and Nicole who did their own investigations, uncovered their own leads and identified their own suspects. I hope none of you listening to this episode will ever be in Emily's shoes or will ever need to know how to conduct your own investigation.
Share
48:35
But the truth is every week Emily was listening to
Crime Junkie
and she never thought she would need to know that either. But she paid attention and that paid off again, that's why she wanted us to tell this story. I have said it a hundred times these stories aren't just entertainment.Share
48:50
Sometimes families need your help, but other times the people living these stories want you to learn something from their own tragedy. So, you can hopefully avoid your own or worst case scenario, you'll know what to do in the face of one.
Share
49:02
I truly believe, if not for Emily, Harold Holman might still be out there prowling the internet for victims. If not for all of the sisters in these stories, we might never have seen Justice for Erica, Tianna or Ashley.
Share
Break
Ashley Flowers
50:02
We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.
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Break
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