Jonelle Matthews

[Music] hi I'm jacine and I'm Courtney and this is caffeinated crimes Mary Christmas nope that's next week isn't it yes this is the week before we episode the Tuesday before instead of the Tuesday after yes because you know also we just spent 10 minutes discussing our recording schedule and release schedule for the next month and I still [ __ ] it up we literally just 30 seconds before I hit record finish this conversation all of December is Christmas so yeah it really is yeah um speaking of Christmas I watched something today I have not watched in years and I just want to know if you have heard of it or seen it or if the listeners have because Kevin was like the [ __ ] is this um but it's called rocking reindeer Christmas let me show you a picture of the reindeer because once you see the reindeer okay you'll know show me the before um but um it was it was cheesy but it it was good it was a good time um I remember me good cheesy Christmas movie me and my sister used to be like obsessed with it um so this is like what the reindeer looked like no I've never seen or heard of this in my life okay it was a good housekeeping kids sing along Christmas thing um but basically I'll give you like the synopsis is okay Blitzen is upset because he's at the back you know he's the last one okay um so he decides he's gonna throw this really cool like Christmas party for Santa and then he's gonna like ask santa to like be at the front instead of Dasher basically so okay that's kind of the whole thing it's like a little 30 minute thing it is so cheesy but it was so nostalgic and it was so fun and Kevin was just kind of looking at me like he's like what am I watching I texted my sister and I was like I just watched Rock and reindeer Christmas and she was like OMG OMG did Kevin Love it did he love it Kevin's like you guys can watch that together from now yeah he's like please don't include me but yeah I don't know it was something we watched It's like a little 30 minute like special I guess but me and my sister used to watch it all the time and now I'm like that's funny was this just a niche me and my sister thing like do other people um yeah we need to put a poll out try to remember when this episode comes I'll post like the picture because like if I just heard Rock and reindeer Christmas I'd be like I don't know but like the way those reindeer are dressed like you know when she showed me that picture I was like oh yeah I've literally never this my almost like Santa where they give like these big bellies I don't know why oh man but I also love when you like remember some very specific like show from your childhood that other people are just like I have no clue what you're talking about and you're like no like it was this and people are just like I don't know what you're what what you mean but um we didn't watch anything Christmas related today but what we did watch was the original 1950 Cinderella and also Beauty and the Beast so it was a good night here you should watch the Beauty and the Beast Christmas one that is a wonderful idea Courtney I will do that if she's seen Beauty and the Beast now she is to see like the Christmas special one well we only got like halfway through Beauty and the Beast so we'll have to finish it tomorrow and then watch the Christmas one so we're just going to get a bunch of TV time this week it'll be good it's Christmas that's what it's for right it's Christmas hold on Christmas movies don't count against screen time okay it just oh it's all highlighted it just reminds me um Kevin and I have a list of Christmas uh movies that we need to watch so I'm putting that on there because I forgot about it perfect until now if you want to come over not tomorrow no not Thursday no we'll figure out Friday and Saturday I know that's like wait a minute in February get together we we'll watch it but yeah that was a good idea she loved the songs we had to listen to it the whole time she was in the bathtub um so she hasn't even finished it yet but she is like talking about it non-stop so and Beauty and the Beast for those who don't know is my favorite like Disney movie favorite Disney princess but just some of the like lines in it are just really funny as like an adult you know like where it's like o Sak blue and like you know it's like kind of like cursing in French and then like um when he when the Beast is like I just want to do something nice for her and he's like oh promises you won't keep like funny things like that where it's like as a kid you didn't pick up on it but like it's like the adults can enjoy like the humor in it too yeah like it has a little something for everybody and the songs are fantastic I mean just fantastic great and then you get to the end of the movie and have Selen Deion singing it in the credits o good I was going to say we had to pause it like halfway through to eat dinner and then you know do bath and bedtime and all that stuff but Andrew was playing it for her um the Selen Deion version and singing every single word and I was like oh I did not realize that you had this entire song memorized and he's like of course I do I was like oh okay that's like a couple weeks word for word American Pie came on and I was just like singing it and Kevin was like this is a 10-minute song how do you know every lyric and I'm like I don't know I just do I used to sing that song to Millie all the time when she was a baby when she would like like when she was a baby baby and I would put her in her bouncer and take a shower and she would cry because I wasn't holding her and she would only stop crying if I was singing to her and of course when you're like sleep deprived and like stressed out and you're like trying to think of any song that you know and that's the longest song I know so we would just sing it over and over because I'm like okay I got plenty of content here lot of lyrics yeah yeah me and my dad used to play that we used to have like i' play piano and he' play guitar we'd like play songs and sing them and we'd always do that one in like every verse so I love it it's a good it's a classic it's a good one it is a classic all right well unless you have anything El I guess we're not going to be happy anymore we're into a real sad one yeah we're just gonna we're just gonna take it on down now sorry guys um did want to give you guys a lesser known like Christmas themed one um this one I mean it's crazy and I have never heard of this one um so yeah let us know if you guys have or not we don't have any updates this one has a lot of good discussion on it too cuz yeah I got thoughts at the end and I'm ready okay for us to flesh out those thoughts ready to discuss let's do it okay so our sources this week are an episode of 48 hours which is season 34 episode 56 called who killed Janel Matthews um an episode of crime junkie called episode wanted a Christmas killer also a CBS News article an investigation discovery article the Coloradan and I'm really sorry if I missed pronounce that it's codian I'm just kidding I really don't know I'm sure the colorodans coloradans will let us know um a KDVR article and a Denver Post article Janelle Matthews went missing in 1984 after a Christmas concert she vanished Without a Trace and her family would not have answers for nearly three decades so Jim and Gloria Matthews had moved to gy Colorado in 1978 to raise their daughters Jennifer and Janelle um gy was described as your typical town in every True Crime Story just a small town people rely locked their doors kids would ride their bikes around just that town we all hear of especially in the 80s 90s in these true crime stories especially in Colorado like I feel like a lot of mine have been like Colorado towns being like in the 80s it was just this but it feels like that so much like in every one we do which I mean I'm sure it was people just in the 70s 80s no matter where you were probably just didn't lock your doors but it's just yeah yeah it was the town that you imagin it was in exactly um the Matthews were a very close family um Gloria worked at a restaurant and Jim was an elementary school principal they were very involved in their Church they just had a very full life and in 1984 Janelle was 12 years old and Jennifer was 16 years old Janelle was described as sweet bubbly and fun she was very kind and nice just the life of the party um Jim said that you would know the second Janelle entered her room she loved attention and she would hang out often with Darla JY jent and Deanna Ross um so they would have sleepovers and birthday parties and just had a big group of friends so like your typical like 12-year-old doing all of these things yeah on December 20th 1984 Janelle begged her parents to let her go to school um so she had been sick and had missed the two days of school prior to that um and she really wanted to go to school because the choir concert was that night like she had made some presents for friends at school so she's like okay I've been out sick but like I really and it's probably I would assume one of the last days before Christmas break so she's like I really want to go to school today yeah so her parents did allow her to go to school but they said after the concert she should come home and rest so her sister Jennifer had a basketball game that night and Gloria her mom was flying out that night to be in California to see her family um her dad hadn't been in good health so she was like flying out there to see him and help out so James Dropped Janelle off at their choir concert after school and then went to see Jennifer's game so Deanna and her father gave Janelle a ride home after the concert at around 800 or 8:30 p.m. um her dad waited until he saw the light flicker in the house before leaving so that was like her sign that she was inside like everything was okay so he's like okay like I can leave now um and Diana's father did notice that the garage door was open which he thought was kind of strange but she had given him the okay so he went ahead and left um at around 8:30 p.m. someone called to Matthew's home phone and Janelle answered it was a teacher at the elementary school that Jim worked at and she was letting him know that she was sick and she would need a substitute for the next day so Janelle made a note of it and left it near the phone for her dad to see Jim came home around 9:30 p.m. and he also noticed the garage door being open um so he could tell that Janelle had been there and he called out for her but there was no answer and Jennifer got home around 9:30 or 10:00 p.m. and she had come home separately from Jim so Jim asked her like if she knew where she was but she thought Janelle should also be home and nothing in the house really looked out of place he thought maybe she was at a friend's house but after calling around he got really worried and he did decide to call the police and say his daughter was missing um he really didn't think that she would run away she loved Christmas and presents and it just didn't fit into her character to run away I mean you're 12 and Christmas is 5 days away like and you're in what seems to be a happy family it would be very strange to pick that time to run away yeah um her shoes were also at the house and only a pair of slippers were left so like why would she leave with no shoes and like not really any of her belongings why wouldn't you find your Christmas presents take them take everyone you know if you're going to run away like you're probably going to especially 12 like I feel like if you have the idea to run away you're going to like pack a huge bag and you I need all my stuff like you're not just G to walk out with basically no shoes on yeah and like you said also see like what your Christmas presents are like they're probably right there like let me just take them with me yeah um so they sent two or three detectives to the Matthews home to search for any clues they asked around to the neighbors but no one had seen or heard anything suspicious and they didn't really find much besides like it had been snowing and they did uncover some Footprints by the house and they also think that a gas can was missing so this wasn't revealed to the public until decades later but the footprints were found just outside the house and someone had tried to like rake the footprints using a garden rake outside of the garage um there were no fingerprints and if there was DNA again this was the 80s so there wasn't really anything they could do in terms of analyzing it um so that night Gloria called to let Jim know that she made it to California and he had to let her know that Janelle was missing and she said that she just immediately had this bad feeling so with not many leads they turned to look at Jim Matthews as a suspect um they thought he was too calm and he was one of the last people in her family to have seen her or had access to her while she was at the house after the concert and before Jennifer got home like there was that window where it's just his word before somebody else is involved um and we also know that you know especially in child cases parents family are usually one of the first people to look at so Jim was given a lie detector test by the FBI and he actually failed um he also took one with local police but he was very distraught and he told them like he was just being honest and telling them everything he knew um and we've talked about it many times before that lie detectors are not valid investigative tools especially for like distraught family members like you're in a very heightened sense of arousal like you're not going to get a very accurate reading yeah and they said like the person from the FBI who like came to do the light detector test was called like um like the best interrogator on the east side of the Mississippi so this is like being interrogated for a lie detector test not even just like answering questions like yeah and you're distraught like you're gonna you're gonna fail like your daughter's missing you're gonna fail yep um another another suspect did come up in their investigation so police learned that Janelle had been adopted as an infant so Jim and Gloria had struggled to get pregnant after Jennifer and they were living in California at the time and an agency placed Janelle with the family um Janelle did know she was adopted but she didn't know her mother and Janelle's biological mother was only 13 years old when she gave birth to Janelle so they're wondering if maybe this woman came looking for her however both Jim and Janelle's biological mother were eventually cleared so a group of gy residents tried to work hard to keep Janelle's name alive and they called it the rescue Janelle committee um and they didn't make many many things happen um Janelle actually became one of the first missing children whose photo appeared on milk cartons across the US and President Ronald Reagan even mentioned Janelle's name in a speech about missing children so the case was getting some national [Music] attention in 1985 a local gy agency had found a piece of a scalp with dark brown hair and they thought it was similar to Janelle's um it was a very very small piece and it had been brought to a farmhouse by a dog so gy police finally got possession and sent it off to the FBI for analysis and it took months to get results but finally in October of 1985 the results did come back and it was determined to be inconclusive um after that they did ask Gloria to look at the scalp but she said that the hair didn't feel right and she didn't believe that it was her daughter's which also just like your daughter's missing and then you have to like touch a piece of scalp to try and figure out if it's hers like exactly oh it is so heartbreaking it really is this whole case is it's rough um but Janelle's family and friends could only attract national attention for so long and the case did eventually go cold two years after her disappearance Jim Gloria and Jennifer decided to move away from gy and it did take eight years to get another lead in the case so in 1992 gy police got a phone call from South Dakota they said a man was arrested and they found a lot of newspaper clippings that were about a lot of missing children including Janelle but after the investigation he was nowhere near gy and had no connection to her in 1994 Jim and Gloria had Janelle legally declared dead and they had a little ceremony and set up a place where they could visit her in 1996 they got a letter in the mail from Janelle's birthmother and she was wanting to finally meet Janelle so Gloria had to contact her and let her know what had happened to Janelle which is like again so heartbreaking heartbreaking because they were saying too like Janelle wanted to eventually meet her birth mom yeah and then for Janelle's birth mom who gave birth a 13 so God knows what tragedy she went through ex finally is ready to like reconnect with her daughter and then has to find out that she's just missing and they don't know what happened to her yeah like that's so awful um and the case just continues to be cold with no more leads or Suspects so Jim and Gloria moved around a lot after Janelle's disappearance um as we mentioned earlier they moved from gy two years after she disappeared but they would go on to live internationally such as in the Philippines and Jim and Gloria did retire in Costa Rica around 2018 they were actually planning on moving back to the states to be closer to Jennifer so there were little glimmers of hope of finding Janelle like in 2014 when remains were found near gy but it ended up not being her a girl also came forward saying she was Janelle but that wasn't true um but in 2018 gy Police Department said that they're taking a fresh look at the case so they think maybe there are people they can talk to who hadn't been interviewed in 1984 and police also released a video from the Christmas concert the night of December 20th um the video seems to focus a lot on Janelle but if you'll remember none of Janelle's family was there that night so the police don't release where this video came from um and it is also possible that the video was cropped to highlight Janelle not that it was necessarily taken zoomed in on Janelle mhm um people do speculate in the comments of the video that Janelle's looking at someone and like makes a face um this isn't confirmed again just speculation however after the announcement in 2018 there wasn't much more news going on about the case and it kind of fell from headlines and police weren't really releasing much else unfortunately Janelle was found on July 23rd 2019 when a bulldozer operator uncovered the bones um so a crew had been digging in a remote stretch of land just southeast of gy and they said that they'd found human remains with a gunshot wound to the Head they were confirmed by the coroner to be Janelle Matthews and she was wearing the same clothes that she was last seen wearing that night and she was more than 20 miles from her home in August 2019 Jim and Gloria were finally able to give Janelle a proper burial so after her remains were found a kind of random man became a person of interest and his name was Steven Panky um he had previously run for governor of Idaho and for Sheriff um he was adamant that he'd never met her or known her um but Steve himself like had actually reached out to the FBI about the case like he's kind of inserting himself into the case um so they did search his home and Twin Falls Idaho um and the News started to pick up on this mostly because Stephen himself started talking about it and just wouldn't shut up about it basically like he was talking to anyone who would listen about this case um and even after his Hess search he did an interview with the local news station and he was like yeah the FB FBI came in they were in full SWAT gear they're pointing rifles at me and he's like I voluntarily gave my DNA I offered to do a polygraph um but it seemed like he really started to offer to give his DNA after he clicked on an article in August 2019 that said there was no DNA in the case so he's like I gave my DNA but people also knew that he probably read this article saying there was no DNA so no harm no foul if you know there's nothing to test it against exactly so in 1984 Steven did live in gy about two miles from the Matthews home and at the time he was married and had a 5-year-old son um he wasn't questioned in the early days of the investigation um Stephen says he does have an alibi for the night Janelle disappeared and he said he was at home with his wife and child which is not the best alibi especially yeah 30 years later right um okay yeah and the day after he said he left gy for 5 days um that they went to California to celebrate Christmas with his parents um he said he didn't hear about Janelle missing until they were driving back on December 26th and a month actually a month after Janelle's disappearance stevenh inserted himself into the investigation then so not only once her remains were found but also once supposedly he had heard she was missing um so he went to the Fort Collins FBI office and he said seven days after her disappearance his father-in-law who was a grounds Keeper at a grey Cemetery shared some disturbing information he told Steve that a cop had contacted him and said he had a bu a body that he wanted buried so he said he wanted to tell them so they had it on record and that he wouldn't be charged with an obstruction of justice charge later on he was like I'm just telling you cuz I'm so scared that I'm going to get charged because I didn't tell you so the FBI has never confirmed if this story is true or not this is just Steven's account of what happened um another time he told the FBI that he was a minister and learned information about the killing through a pastoral confession which was not true he was never a minister or a Catholic priest I guess I don't really know where else people confess like that I mean I grew we didn't really go to the pastor and be like sir I have sinned like we didn't really do that I think that's solely a Catholic thing but maybe other religions do it let us know yeah so Stephen had other unrelated run-ins with the police and gy they were mostly minor including creating a nuisance and harassment um so the day before Janelle disappeared stevenh was arrested at a bank for harassment and Criminal Trespass so he'd argued with a bank teller and the police were called um but the records for that were no longer available um police try to look more into his past and they do find a case in 1977 when a then 26-year-old Steven pinky was charged with sexually assaulting a woman he'd met in church so in 2019 he talked about the case because again he's doing all these interviews and talking about absolutely the man can't shut up about anything yeah so he said he was a youth pastor at a church and he claims he was dating his accuser he said she was 23 and there was a sexual encounter and that she just later said it was non-consensual so okay yeah so later the woman did ask for the charges to be dropped but again this is the 70s doesn't mean it didn't happen yeah so Jim Matthews actually later joined the church that Stephen peny said he was a youth pastor at and he's like that's not true Stephen was a janitor he wasn't a youth pastor so oh okay yeah um so the 48 Hours episode did mention that Jim and Gloria were shocked when stevenh was named a suspect because they didn't know who he was so I don't know if this revelation of like him being a janitor versus youth pastor was like after they learned of his name like if maybe Stephen Was the janitor left the Matthews family came in then afterward heard it or I don't know if they meant they were shocked and had never heard of him like never heard of him being a suspect in the case yeah I was a little confused on that if you have watched it before or know more I don't know maybe this is your thing you research let me know but it was a little confusing because they're like no we'd never heard of him but then like later he was like oh yeah he was a p he was a janitor not a pastor so I don't know you know what I'm saying I was a little confused at that point yeah that's a little confusing um gy was a small town too so maybe they knew of him but like just not as a suspect so maybe that's more so like what they meant like MH I've never heard of him in association with this case yeah or maybe like they someone who knew him then because they're like oh like we've never heard of them but then once his name came out friends were like oh yeah like I knew that you know yeah and like hearing him do interviews and he's like I'm a youth pastor and he's like well I was a part of that church and like I know he was a janitor before you know something I don't know but just that I don't want to miss speak and maybe I was just confused but it did say both where they were shocked never heard of him and then also Jim Matthews was saying he was a janitor not a youth pastor so that's good to put both out there so cover all of our bases yeah um so in 1986 Stephen his young son and his pregnant wife moved away from gy um they moved around quite a bit but eventually settled in Idaho in 1989 Steven did letter later say in his 2019 interview that he never stopped thinking about Janelle in the case he's like just one of those cases you remember like I even would call up a neighbor asking if they ever like resolved that case like I just remember hearing about it being in the same town I was interested in it um so in a 1999 i h case again for causing a scene in a bank he just loves to go to Banks and cause scenes what are you doing in all these Banks like good Lord enough to call the cops you know Banks see a lot yeah so um but in this case stepen told the Idaho Supreme Court that they wanted him to be an informant in the jelle Matthews case um he also said he was scared he'd get the death penalty for revealing the location of Janelle's body don't know what this has to do with causing a scene in a bank okay yeah so throughout the years even more weird and strange behavior for Steven occurred that made them believe like they had circumstantial evidence like he's obsessed with this case keeps inserting himself like why does he keep doing this so one former acquaintance who knew him in Idaho Kevin Schneider said his son was friends with Steph's son Mark he said there was like a few odd happenings at the house like his son one time said the family dog wouldn't stop barking and it just really agitated Stephen and so he just closed the dog's muscle with duct tape oh oh like kind of weird um Behavior not at all um he also said Mark was like really really unhappy at the house so much so that he actually lived with him for about six years so so much so like his son was like I'm gonna live with you guys because I don't like being in this house wow and for six years like that's not that's a long time period yeah it's not like six months or anything yeah they said six years and I was like so in 2001 Steven's wife Angela Hicks filed for divorce and Steven moved to shonne Idaho so 2004 with no law enforcement experience besides his arrests um Stephen ran for Sheriff and he lost okay well that's good at least so in 2008 um he thought about running for sheriff in twinfalls but instead he's like I'm gonna run for Sheriff and shonne again and he lost again um he was not discouraged though this did not put him out um he then instead went on to run for lieutenant governor which is like I had to look it up is apparently a big thing I didn't know what it was it's like vice president for Governors basically I'm sure it's more complicated than that but it's like the same okay so but like you run separately not like as a party like you do for president don't know like you separately elect like a governor and a lieutenant governor not like a package deal guess I think that makes more sense because he ran for that like he didn't run with anyone for that I just know because I was like what is the lieutenant governor and it was like they're a step below the governor and if like anything happens to the governor they like they would get promoted to governor and they would also like act as Governor if he's not there I don't know I gota which is funny because never in my entire life have I ever thought about what happens to a governor if something happens to a governor and there has to be a backup never once has this crossed my mind to even think about what I even looked it up and you asked a followup question I was like no clue Noe didn't get that far I read the first line on Google and that was it yeah I don't even know if saying it's like vice president is 100% accurate that's just what I interpreted it as that it's like you have governor and then a step below is like Lieutenant Governor and like they can take over if something happens to the governor or whatever interesting okay so he ran for that once and also for governor twice oh okay uh he did not win um there's also this really weird story that came out of his run for governor he ran under the constitutional party I don't know um but he claimed he also went to like a convention for the Constitutional party and that they like gave him like an exorcism basically the [ __ ] is wrong with this man and then like the the party was like that didn't happen I we don't know what he's talking about like he's just coming up with these like stories it's kind of wild like I don't know he's wild yeah um so his second attempt for running for governor uh was in 2018 and he lost so he started buying a lot of guns as you do um so six weeks after Janelle's remains were found um was when greedy police really started to investigate him and then after this he ran for Sheriff again so he's currently a person of interest for a murdered child and he runs for Sheriff again wow wow yeah his Sheriff page is still up too if you want to look at it I found it when I was searching yikes however Stephen was indicted on kidnapping and murder charges so on October 12th 2020 step Dana peny was arrested for kidnapping and first-degree murder so Steven's defense attorney didn't believe they had a motive or enough evidence because again it's a lot of like circumstantial evidence um but on October thir 13th 2021 his trial began the case was 37 years old so it was difficult like as I said not really physical evidence but they have a lot of circumstantial evidence um so they had witnesses to Steven's Behavior they had him on record multiple times saying he had vital evidence in the Janelle case like he keeps telling police this so gy Mayor John Gates who also used to be like a detective like in the police department but he's mayor now um was a prosecution witness because Stephen had written a letter to the media accusing him of being a person of interest in Janelle's case but in the same letter Stephen also lists himself as a person of interest like what in the world so he writes a letter to the to the um to like the media and he's like these are the this is the story of the case like Janelle Matthews went like what we've been doing Janelle Matthews went missing on December 20 1984 D Persons of Interest Mayor John Gates Stephen Dana peny and he wrote this letter I'm so confused I'm also confused so Angela Hicks who is Steph's ex-wife testified about what happened on December 21st 1984 so she said Sten came home and just out of the blue announced they were going on the trip to California he was like hurry up get ready to go go pack what we need and that they needed to leave before daylight the next day and they were going to go go to Big Bear for Christmas so on the way back Steven demanded that she turn on the radio so this shocked Angela because Steven was like had banned radio and television use in their house a year earlier he was like no music no TV no radio no newspapers and he's like this is going to be a Godly home and we're not going to have TV and radio things are getting a little little out there yeah however on their trip back he was obsessed and he was like having her like flip dials to like find the news and she was like this went on for hours where he was like flip to this station flipped to this station flip to a different station like Stephen had said like oh I was driving back and uh the radio was on and I heard about Janelle missing but his wife is like ex-wife is like no he had me like frantically searching for a radio station talking about it yeah once they were back in gy Steven drove past their house and went to the grocery store I mean it's the first thing you do once you drive back from I don't know how far Big Bear California is from gy Colorado but I assume it's a drive um drives right past the house goes to grocery store and made to Angela by the local news and search for news about Janelle okay so yeah she testified that he wanted her to read like each article out loud and Angela said he would bring up Janelle over the years and kind of act strangely when others brought her up and she got really concerned when she found a note in the trash and in his handwriting on legal paper he'd written snow outside Matthew's house was raped so if you remember when we're talking about earlier only Janelle's family in investigators and the killer knew about this detail so they said like oh Footprints were found but they did not release that they had been like Rak yeah so and Stephen also mentioned this detail in his 2019 interview with investigators which again was not released to the general public which is a pretty big piece of circumstantial evidence there like that he knew about this so Anthony vior who is Steven's attorney says I agree it's a big piece of evidence but they believe that like police told stepen the detail and he was led to talk about it so he's saying like yes Steph brought it up but like the police are corrupt and like fed the information to him which is possible could definitely have happened yeah yeah he also said more people knew about the raped Footprints um and he is giving his Reasonable Doubt of an alternative suspect um in Norris Drake and he said that he knew about the raped footprint um and they're saying Norris Drake is who's responsible for Janelle's murder so in the years after her murder Drake was arrested on various different misdemeanor charges no one really knew like who this was but North Drake had been questioned by police about Janelle's disappearance um his mother and sister lived across the street from the Matthews home and he was visiting his mother on December 20th so pretty good suspect too um and there was no struggle at the Matthews home so they think maybe like Janelle had seen him around before like visiting his mom's sister frequently and maybe she was comfortable like letting him in or going with him somewhere um Drake was also absent for several hours on the night of December 20th however his mother said at the Time Janelle went missing he was at her house so this is when like Police Stopped investigating him don't really know if that's a solid Alibi doesn't mean he couldn't have kept her somewhere and then later when he disappeared do something um and an ex-girlfriend of Drake's also told the defense that Drake had an interest in young girls especially ones that had just reached puberty which Janelle was um so Norris Drake died in 2007 so he couldn't really speak for himself or defend himself in any way it's kind of just other people speaking for him and so many thought the defense could have presented decent enough Reasonable Doubt especially in a circumstantial case so the proc ution also believes that Steven could have targeted Janelle because of his racist ideologies that showed up in his writings so Janelle was Latino and they believe that could be a reason he attacked her because since then in his rambling writings he was clearly racist in a kind of strange turn of events Steven actually chose to take the stand um Steph said he was a liar and he would make up stuff out of bit bitterness like the father-in-law story um he did it to Target people he hat ated like his father-in-law and Mayor John Gates so he's like it's just my polite way of flipping them the bird just accusing them of murder is my polite way of flipping them the bird yeah so he said Angela was a liar and was only lying to get revenge on him he said the trip had been planned for a while and that they were only casually listening to the radio he denied that he was obsessed with the case um he testified for two days but it was often rambling like they were like frequent time s the judge had to be like Stephen answer the question because he would just start rambling on um but kind of what his testimony boiled down to is he just kind of kept saying you know I'm a pathological liar but I'm now telling you the truth like I've lied about a lot of stuff but I'm telling the truth now like now you should believe me for sure so before trial uh Stephen did an interview with a news station and a journalist brought up how there is someone commenting on news articles about the case that appears to be Steven so they asked him about it um like one of the comments said without a deal this may never be resolved so they're like asking him like is this you and he's like yeah it's me um yeah so he stands by that comment and says it didn't necessarily mean make a deal with him um but he also had conversations with investigators that he was like hinting at wanting a deal or immunity so it's like kind of weird that he's commenting on these articles being like you know without a deal like nothing's going to happen it's like does that mean I deal with you like again just odd it just like implies some kind of knowledge about who did it you know what I mean yeah so in his closing statement Anthony viewers said that his client lives in a world of conspiracy paranoia and low self-esteem um he brought up questions of his mental health like thinking like maybe he's just not he does have some like mental illness that could be contributing to all of this um he said he's only obsessed with the case because he's just like a true crime junkie um and then he just tells White Lies often that's it like um however the prosecution is like no this is not the case he is a master manipulator he's like intentional with all of this so the jury went on to deliberate on November 2nd 2021 um and the jury came to a decision two days later so on the count of making false reports to authorities they found him guilty um this count was kind of a no-brainer he went on the stand and admitted he lied to police about the father-in-law comment so like that's a no-brainer that one's guilty he admitted to it however on the rest of the counts the jury deadlocked and they couldn't come to unanimous verdict and the judge declared a mistrial so the prosecution did go ahead forward with the second trial that started in 2022 so on October 31st 2022 a jury found Steven peny guilty of second deegree kidnapping with the use of a deadly weapon and felony murder and he was not found guilty of first degree murder he was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 20 years for the second degree kidnapping with use of a deadly weapon and felony murder so he was given credit for time already served in prison for his charge of like false reporting to authorities that he was found guilty of like in the previous trial Stephen did make a statement and Saidi am a Christian I will be in heaven I am innocent and this is not Justice for Janelle and Steph's attorneys do say they plan on appealing his conviction I haven't seen anything about an appeal as of December 2023 or where that is going um so at the moment Stephen pinky is in prison serving time guilty of Janelle's murder so this is the case of the murder of Janelle Matthews um so my question jacine is do you believe Stephen pinky did it I don't know I okay so I feel like this is a case where if I was on the jury I could not have convicted with the evidence that's presented but also feel like he probably did kind of do it I don't know what do you think it's a tough one um I go back and forth again like I feel like I could defend it either way because he a lot of the evidence evidence against him is circumstantial and like what people are saying so like his ex-wife's testimony is extremely damning but it is his ex-wife and he's saying she's out for Revenge but it's also been like 20 years since their divorce and I hope as a grown woman that she wouldn't Purge her Pur Purge herself commit perjury is it Purge herself what is the verb of P perjure perjure yourself hold on that she wouldn't commit perjury while Jacks set up over your ex-husband of 20 years you know like yes it is perjury yourself but okay you know I just hope that you know the prosecution would not put her on the stand if they truly believe she was lying and I hope 20 years after your divorce that you would not just be Tred to attacking your ex-husband on such serious charges yeah like for kidnapping and murdering a child like that's a lot to like oh I'm mad at you I'm gonna 20 years later you know um and then also like their alternate suspect um Norris Drake I feel like I mean all we have is this ex-girlfriend being like he was into little girls like we don't actually know if he was or not though or again is that just what his ex-girlfriend said at some point in time so of course he's dead so there's no way to defend himself um so he's the perfect alternate suspect for the defense I mean he can't defend himself and there's also no physical evidence like it's not like they could say oh we definitely know it's not these people because we can rule them out like you can't rule anyone out with any kind of physical evidence so like a very could have been that person it was the 80s I feel like it was a lot easier to get away with something like this and I also didn't see any and again correct me if anyone knows any alternate information with an actual reliable source not just what you think um of Stephen owning a gun in 1984 I don't know what records recordkeeping was like yeah for gun ownership true so um I know he did start buying a lot of guns in 2018 don't know for sure about his gun ownership back in the 80s I mean it was Colorado kind of a small town I feel like most people did have at least one gun yeah but I didn't see anything like definitive about knowing he owned a gun back then either yeah and I feel like then too it was probably a lot easier to like buy a gun like under the radar like not have like any kind of you know paper trail that you did buy a gun so he could have and there is nothing that would you know say one way or the other it just feels so like why would you go to such lengths to keep like bringing yourself to their attention either way like you keep inserting yourself yeah keep over and over and over again you write a letter to the media like calling yourself a person of interest yeah so it's like why would you do that if you did it but why would you do that if you didn't didn't do it to me like that behavior doesn't make sense in either scenario so I don't know how to I don't know how to place it there yeah I I do hope for the sake of Janelle and her family that they have the right person behind bars and for the sake of Stephen Panky I do hope he's not a person who is innocent Behind Bars wrongly convicted but also he kind of has a hisory not so much of killing but of not doing great things um yeah and just like his lawyer being like Oh it's just because he's like a crime junkie he's like a true crime junkie he loves True Crime but he doesn't seem to be obsessing and inserting himself in these other cases in anything else yeah exactly so just a little teaser for you guys for our patreon episode for next week we are covering the murder of John Bonet Ramsey so look out for that if you guys want to hear that um but we're you know in that whole rabbit hole right now um and there are a lot of people who like had information about her who had newspaper clippings who were very obsessed with the case who have been cleared by forensic evidence so it's like and that happened here too because like that guy in South Dakota had clippings but they were like he was nowhere near you know yeah so it's like it does happen where people like get obsessed with like one cas but they truly aren't responsible I don't know John B is also brought up in the discussion of this because it's like this is another girl from Colorado who went missing around Christmas presumably from her home yeah people don't know her name like they know John B's name and I mean John B happened 10 years after um yeah yeah you guys will have to let us know what you think I mean I'm I don't feel like I can fully like be like he 100% did it like I can't say that I don't think um yeah and if Janelle's family happens to be listening I don't mean that in a disrespectful way I just absolutely any case with circumstantial evidence it's really hard like I do the circumstantial evidence I'm like can't I think he did it um but with no physical and him being like I'm innocent is kind of hard with him not confessing but and him lying about like so many other things too that it's like do you have some mental illness where you are just this pathological liar who for some reason feels the need to insert yourself in these things and confess to things that you did not do because you do have a history of this behavior in other areas of your life MH I don't know it's tough it's tough it's tough and it's just a really really tragic case that you know she went missing and it took 37 years like just to find her yeah um um and they had to go through two trials probably an appeal who knows what's going to happen like yeah just her poor family like you just you see them in the videos and just how sad they look like so hard yeah definitely okay um little transition before we awkward awkwardly get into our perk of the week but we had a first where the audio just stopped recording um like two paragraphs to go and cuz my computer said it was full of space so that was the uh the first time that that's ever happened so here we are on take two and hopefully I just heard recording stopped and I was like looking at Jacqueline and then she looked surprised and I was like you're like I wasn't done talking actually yeah so hopefully this all meshed well together and you guys couldn't tell until I said that but we'll see what happens with this ending I know I started and was like was I in the middle of a weird sentence I don't know fix it I'll send an audio clip if I need to to fix it it'll we'll we'll make it work we always do somehow we've made it work where I've had you re-record my entire part talking to myself talking to Courtney's recording so true the best though that one did not turn out the greatest but you know it did not turn out very good it's out there that being said Courtney what is your prick of the week so my perck of the week and I don't know if I've ever made this author my perk of the week or not but um um Abby gimenez I think it's how you say her last name um just everything she writes has me in a complete choke cold I I [ __ ] love every single one of her books I've read like she's like Emily Henry level to me where whatever she writes I'm going to love it um but I read her book that came out this year um in the like Part of Your World Series and it was just so good it was so good and it had like it has like dual points of view it's a romance they're all romances so you kind of know like what's going to happen but she also talks about like real topics within it too like yeah not always happy things are happening in the books but like you know it's not all rainbows and butterflies the whole time but it's like a dual thing and I just I really loved it because like the male character suffered from like really bad like anxiety and like social anxiety which I thought was really fun to read a character with anxiety but also like portrayed as the male and I thought that was really nice but just like I don't think that happens very often so yeah like in books not in real life yeah yeah yeah yeah you know usually like the women are more portrayed like that so the fact that she had like the male character and like just like hearing him like talk about stuff and I was like I relate so hard to this man in his anxiety um no but yours truly was the book I read read part of your world first if you read it because I me you don't have to but like this character is introduced in the first book so it helps to get like two characters backstory yeah into this kind of but nice yeah if you also read her friend zone series I also adore that I just kind of want to go back and read all her books they're just so good yeah um I don't think I've ever read anything by her oh my I double check but it doesn't sound familiar my sister is the one who like recommended like the friend own one to me and the first book I read I was like what the [ __ ] cuz they really mag happens in it it didn't expect it to actually happen I was like oh this is a romance it'll be fine was not fine not fine but I don't know she just like writes really well where you're just like captivated and you just I just love it it made me feel warm and fuzzy and it gave me a book hangover struggled through my next book but yeah that happens yeah it was is very good so I'd recommend everyone just go read her books because it's just it's like a I mean it'll be kind of sad like I cried a lot in some of her books but it's just like a warm hug CU yeah you know it's going to end happy in the end it's going to be a roller coaster getting there but just so good um but yeah that is my perk of the week jacine what is your perk of the week um so my perk of the week we talked about a few weeks ago how Courtney and I just ran a half marathon so we've been busy training for that so we haven't been going to our dance class that we typically go to that I'm pretty sure we've talked about on this podcast would be weird if we didn't so I mean especially during Co when every morning we were like waking up well weekend morning we're waking up together um but yeah so we finally last night got to go back to our dance class after like three months I think it's been um so that was very nice it was very nice to move our bodies in that way um I was so scared I'd be so lost but I remembered a lot of it I was like okay okay here we go there were a few that I was like oh but I do that even when I do the same dance over and over and I still you know [ __ ] it up but but yeah I definitely felt more natural than I was worried I could have felt coming back from such a Break um but yeah and it's also our time to you know get together in person and do something fun together so happy and that's what I miss so much is like going to work out together and then like a reason to see each other at least once a week um because life gets so busy that sometimes we just like don't physically see each other even though we live in the same city and so it was like a little time that we'd always see each other and catch up you know work out together because like sometimes you just don't want to out like you just don't want to but you get your ass out of bed on a Saturday morning and you drive down to a little studio and you dance yeah exactly cuz like when you're meeting your friends it's much harder to like back out cuz they're like no okay I meeting my friends I got to give up and actually go yeah yeah like the amount of times I texted jacine being like H I don't know and she's like I have my clothes on i'm like [ __ ] okay I'll be there you're like I mean I'll cancel if you do and I'm like I'm I'm already ready to go okay I was I was like oh she's going cancel too and then she's like I'm ready to go and I was like fine no but so much but okay I'm coming no but yeah it was super fun yeah it was so yeah definitely let us know your thoughts on this case um if you guys have seen anything else out there that we did not include in our sources that we should look at that you think is important information to know you guys know where to find us on all the things um as previously mentioned on patreon.com caffinated crimes we will be covering the murder of John Benet Ramsey next Thursday come out Thursday we're putting it behind a pay wall so we don't get sued yes and we also will speak very carefully on that case oh yeah the second I see Burke Ramsay has subscribed to your patreon it's getting pulled so you better listen quick cuz you know he's just out here waiting to listen to our patreon um yeah and also that will be our 40th bonus episode so 39 others that you guys can listen to over there also coming up on our 200th episode here in two weeks so come celebrate that with us with a fun not fun but a non murder case yes a murder and that will be on the regular feed it'll just be on patreon but it'll be add free on patreon because if there's an an episode that has an ad in it on patreon those are all ad free Discord access a shout out well shout out your name in the podcast are you ever like I wish they would just say my name we can if you sign up pins stickers you know all kinds of good stuff we got some videos up there we'll try to get those going again soon if people watch them we'll upload them we have everyone it'd be an unedited video episode of us recording the zoom and it's chaotic it gets a little unhinged sometimes a lot of times on my end or you might have to scroll through 10 minutes of me giggling and not being able to get my life together you know if you want to watch that happens that happens I'm really selling it here if you want to see the hot dog fingers in all their Glory we will upload that oh boy this is getting unhinged we need to wrap this up yeah anyway patreon.com crimes give us five stars Spotify Like Us on YouTube give nice comments because there's been some like kind of questionable comments lately where I'm like can you'all be nice I don't know if you saw the most recent one anyway anyway please leave us nice comments like subscribe um but in the meantime go have a cup of coffee and don't commit a [Music] crime