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The End

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Tonight on Unsolved Mysteries

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Susan Walsh was a woman who lived on the edge,

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a stripper turned journalist who's chosen assignments plunger into a hazardous stew of Russian mobsters and self-proclaimed vampires.

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In the end, however, Susan Walsh's walk on the wild side may have led to her death.

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His name is Oliver. He walks and acts like a human being.

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His very existence is a source of mystery and wonder.

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Perhaps Oliver is just a talented chimpanzee, but perhaps he is something more.

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Her death has become America's tragedy.

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Jean-Benet Ramsey, molested and murdered in her own home.

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Five weeks later, police have yet to confirm a motive or name a suspect.

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In Newport News, Virginia, the young mother's joy turns to despair when her newborn baby is diagnosed with a light-threatening blood disorder.

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The only hope is an emergency transfusion, courtesy of an anonymous donor.

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Join me for another intriguing edition of Unsolved Mysteries.

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The Life of a Wild Life Sanctuary

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This is a primarily primate wildlife sanctuary in San Antonio, Texas.

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A retirement home of sorts for some 500 wild animals who have been rescued from circuses, side shows and medical labs.

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In April of 1996, a dozen chimpanzees, released from a research facility, arrived at the preserve.

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After years of confinement, most moved in pained halting steps.

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But one was remarkably different. His name is Oliver.

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Hi, Ollie.

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Wow, Ollie, you stand up. Look at you.

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When Oliver came outside for the first time, he'd been nine years in a lab cage.

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He walked out and he walked upright in a way that no chimp who was trained to walk upright would ever walk.

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Ollie.

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His back is straight, his shoulders back, and his knees are locked. It's unique.

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Unique would be an understatement. In his youth, Oliver had been an international celebrity, heralded as proof of the legendary Bigfoot, or perhaps the elusive missing link.

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Some speculated that Oliver was a member of a new, as yet undiscovered species, or even the offspring of an unspeakable union between human and chimpanzee.

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Since long before I helped start Primarily Primates, I had heard about the ape called Oliver.

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I'd collected old tabloid articles, and I really wondered, is this the same Oliver?

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I wasn't quite sure until I saw him. And there's no doubt.

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This is the upright walking ape who had become a living legend.

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For a legend, Oliver's origins were unremarkable. He was imported from Africa as an infant in 1960.

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From the outset, animal trainer Frank Berger knew he had a very special ape on his hands.

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The first thing I noticed with him, he was ball-headed. Chimbs have hair, brightly thick.

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His bone structure, his head was smaller. He had a narrower face.

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But looks weren't the only thing that made Oliver different. His human-like behavior was equally startling.

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One day I sat at the desk, and he come crawled to me, and all of a sudden he took a hold of my pants slack, and he stand straight up.

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I almost faint. And within one and a half years that animal stand up in front of me, and never I saw him without.

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I've seen a lot of chimps, but I've never seen one just like him.

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Over the next decade, Oliver's unique characteristics made him a popular sideshow attraction in various circuses.

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Then in 1975, a magazine article caught the attention of a Manhattan attorney named Michael Miller.

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Miller vividly recalls his first encounter with Oliver.

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In walks this almost four and a half foot or five foot creature, his hair bristling, and walking absolutely upright.

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As they say, as advertised, I could not believe what I saw.

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Miller took these snapshots that day.

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A few hours later, he purchased Oliver from Frank Burger for the sum of $8,000.

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The news hit the wires and sparked a media onslaught.

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There were many, many, many questions about Oliver.

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Enthusiastic to the point of being wild. People were offering me money for the story. I had no interest in it.

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I said, I really want the story to get out, but I want to get the story out to attract serious attention from the scientific community.

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This creature may have interest and importance. That turned me on.

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That spring, at the Explorers Club annual banquet in New York City, Oliver created a sensation.

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It was an amazing experience because it was King Kong. I mean, that was truly King Kong.

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I would say that there was a consensus there too, that this is a very aberrant chimpanzee.

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They were always grounding it in, this is a chimpanzee who's aberrant.

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And I understood that because I wasn't offering them as something else.

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But when I would say, can you explain the aberration? That would be interesting.

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The answer was always the same. No, we can't.

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The Explorers Club was the start of a whirlwind career.

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In 1976, Oliver was invited to appear on a television program in Japan.

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For three weeks, he toured the country, causing a stir wherever he went.

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You could feel the interest, the intent looking at this creature.

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But my favorite evening is we were on the road going from city to city.

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And they have wonderful traditions in Japan. When you travel, you go to these country ends.

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You get undressed, you bathe, and then you put on a cotton, a cotta or robe.

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Then you sit down and have dinner, and somebody asked if he enjoys eating and drinking.

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I said, well, I know he enjoys a beer. And they gave him a liter of beer, which he drank chagoluk style.

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Didn't come up for air, and then let out this enormous burp.

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And he's got a very big chest, so it was a very loud burp. We all laughed.

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And then Oliver sat back and had a cigar, and we sat there.

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And after a while, it was like, it was no longer a spectacle.

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Throughout the tour, Oliver underwent a series of medical exams.

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The results were presented on a television special entitled Mr. Oliver, Man or Ape.

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A blood test suggested that Oliver had 48 chromosomes, the number normally associated with a chimpanzee.

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Curiously though, two of the 40 cells contained 47 chromosomes, one more than a man and one less than a chimp.

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The Japanese doctors, however, attributed the discrepancy to human error.

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When the Japanese tour ended, Michael Miller found he could no longer support Oliver,

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and reluctantly donated him to a wild animal park in California.

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He was billed as a missing link.

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They had a window where the public could walk past him and look in and see him in his exhibit.

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They did take him out a number of times onto a stage for the press to take a look at him for publicity.

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But otherwise, he was generally in this enclosure alone where people could walk past the window and see him.

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When the animal park went out of business, Oliver bounced from trainer to trainer.

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He eventually wound up in a research lab.

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There he languished in a 5 by 7 foot cage for nine long years.

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Fortunately, Oliver was never used in any experiments, and just last year he was rescued by primarily primates.

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Behavioral primatologist Linda Brent observed some of Oliver's early rehabilitation.

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I had the impression when I saw Oliver walking by Peterly that he had possibly been trained to walk by Peterly.

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He could do it for quite a while.

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I don't think he's anything but a chimpanzee.

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And I think a lot of the both physical and behavioral characteristics can easily be explained by his past.

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However, the folks at Primarily Primates refused to speculate until all of the evidence is in.

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I know that there are other animals out there we haven't found yet.

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Oliver very well could be very special in that he could be the only example around of a whole new species.

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Last December, a very special reunion took place between Oliver and his first owner, Frank Berger.

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They hadn't seen each other in 20 years.

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Where's Oliver?

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Oliver, my God, where you been? Where you been? Oh, God!

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Attorney Michael Miller was also present.

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He looks happier. He looks much more peaceful than I remember.

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It's delightful to see that he's in such a great environment and that he's cared for finally.

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That's very, very satisfying, very rewarding.

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Science hopes that Oliver's golden years will be rewarding in other ways as well.

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In the near future, genetic testing may finally solve the mystery of who or what Oliver truly is.

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At the age of 36, Oliver could very well live for another 20 years.

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Even if he proves to be just an ordinary chimpanzee, those who norm in full agreement on one thing,

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Oliver is a remarkable creature whose warm and gentle personality has touched countless lives.

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Next, when Dustin Johnson was five years old, his mother was murdered by her own brother.

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Now Dustin believes his uncle has killed again.

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And later, in New York City, an exotic dancer turned reporter vanishes without a trace.

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Also, the shocking murder of Jean-Benet Ramsey has outraged the nation and put investigators on the defensive.

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The End

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It was June 27, 1982. But to Dustin Johnson, it still seems like yesterday.

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Get your coat up.

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You gonna have fun with Daddy this weekend?

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Dustin was five years old. His father picked him up for a custody visit.

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Dustin didn't know it, but he was saying goodbye to his mother for the last time.

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Give Mommy a hug.

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Give me a kiss. I love you.

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Where's your bag?

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Remember my mom getting me ready to go with my dad?

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She gave me a hug and a kiss. Goodbye. I told her she'd see me when I come back.

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But then I come back and Mom wasn't there.

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That weekend, Patricia Johnson was murdered.

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Nine days would pass before her naked, decomposing body was found.

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Two weeks later, another shock.

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Patricia's own brother, Dennis Keith Smith, confessed to the crime.

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He was sentenced to life in prison on a charge of second-degree murder.

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Dustin was taken in by his mother's parents.

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When Dennis Smith was paroled ten years later, he moved into the same house.

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On a daily basis, in the hallway and over dinner,

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Dustin Johnson had to face the man who had killed his mother.

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The uneasy truce lasted about a year, until another local woman mysteriously disappeared.

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Dustin soon became convinced that his uncle Dennis Keith Smith was somehow involved.

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Your lunch is made.

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Thanks, honey.

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Dan and Carolyn Killaby lived just three miles from Dustin.

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The morning of Saturday, November 11, 1995, found the Killabies patching up an argument.

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You know, you're making something out of nothing.

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Well, it's something to me.

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I know. I know it is.

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We didn't have to hash everything out and yell and scream at each other.

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We didn't do it that way.

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Often times, we were just a wink and a smile would do it.

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You know, and that would be the end of it.

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We don't have the kids tonight, so why don't we just get together and have dinner,

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spend some time together?

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OK. All right.

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It promised to be a romantic evening, just the two of them.

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But before Dan left work, his brother would call and invite him to drop by.

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I figured I'd still make it home in plenty of time.

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So I went to see my brother, Dave, and we ended up going down to Tavern down the street.

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We had a beer and we started shooting some pool.

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Turned out there was a blazer game on. We started watching that.

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We had a couple more beers.

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And I had decided just to stay behind at his place and chose not to drive home.

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Dan didn't call home until 1 a.m.

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Hi, Carolyn.

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It's me. Listen, I'm going to stay at Dave's tonight.

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I had a few beers, so you know, I better just stay here.

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I will see you in the morning.

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Home.

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Sunday morning, Dan returned to an empty house.

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His message was still on the machine.

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Honey?

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Carolyn.

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Dan assumed that Carolyn was deliberately not calling home,

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giving him a taste of his own medicine.

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On Sunday night, he began to worry.

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Hello, Susan.

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Yeah, this is Dan.

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Dan went through his wife's phone book A to Z,

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but no one could account for Carolyn Killaby.

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Carolyn still hadn't shown up by 6 a.m. Monday morning when she was due at work.

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Dan and his brother cruise the streets of Vancouver looking for any sign of Carolyn.

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They found her car in the parking lot of a popular nightclub.

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There's her car.

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The morning barmaid was the guy that worked there Saturday night,

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and she said, yeah, I saw your wife.

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She was in Saturday night. That's the last time I saw her.

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So at that point, you know, panic set in.

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The car was there, and my wife was nowhere to be found.

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When the story hit the local paper, one fact jumped out at Dustin Johnson.

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I found a name by the name of Dennis in the newspaper,

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and I continued to read that the lady was missing,

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and I had this feeling that that person by the name of Dennis might be my uncle.

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This might be a weird conversation.

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Dustin found Dan Killaby's number in the local phone directory.

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Yeah.

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I just was reading through there and found the name of Dennis.

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Do you know what Dennis' last name is?

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He called me and said he'd saw the article,

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and if this Dennis that was mentioned in the article was, in fact, Dennis Keith Smith,

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that that was his uncle, and he wanted to let me know that he had murdered his mother in 1982.

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Authorities have not yet released the last name of the man seen with Carolyn.

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Dan called detectives to check out Dustin's hunch.

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But he said that he thinks that the man Dennis that you're looking for, his name is Dennis Smith,

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and he said that this guy is a murderer.

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Is that true?

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There was a long pause from the detectives, and I knew right then it was the person.

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At that point in time, I think right then and there, I knew my wife had been killed.

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Right there.

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A witness helped police reconstruct what was very likely Carolyn Killaby's last evening alive.

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You can tell on her face she's been crying.

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She was alone. She didn't want to be with anybody. She's upset.

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If she would have one more drink, she would have been passed out probably going to the hospital.

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She was really bad off.

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She's trouble.

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Dennis Smith was a club regular.

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According to the witness, Smith had had his eye on Carolyn all night long.

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At around 11.30, he made his move.

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It's just the way he walked up to her is as if his old friends, but she didn't know who she was with.

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He spoke to her for a few seconds.

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She lifted her head up.

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She had one arm around his neck and had a hold of it and walked out with her.

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Carolyn disappeared the night of November 11th.

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Less than 72 hours later, detectives decided it was time to have a talk with Dennis Smith.

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Who was it you talked to?

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He was the bouncer.

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You talked to the bouncer. What did you tell him?

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We talked to him for quite a long time.

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Did you tell the bouncer about this person?

224
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His story changed a little bit, but not enough to make a big difference.

225
00:19:31,000 --> 00:19:34,000
Okay, he said the waitress or bartender?

226
00:19:35,000 --> 00:19:38,000
Which is it? Probably isn't both of them at this point, right?

227
00:19:38,000 --> 00:19:48,000
He would laugh at times for no real apparent reason, which is very indicative of someone that's trying to be deceitful.

228
00:19:48,000 --> 00:19:50,000
You were in your truck for 45 minutes.

229
00:19:50,000 --> 00:19:51,000
Yeah, it was.

230
00:19:51,000 --> 00:19:53,000
What happened?

231
00:19:53,000 --> 00:19:55,000
Come on.

232
00:19:56,000 --> 00:19:58,000
Come on, Dennis, we're all adults. What's going on?

233
00:19:58,000 --> 00:20:00,000
What happens?

234
00:20:00,000 --> 00:20:04,000
She attacked me, so I'm winded and I'm pretty tired after that.

235
00:20:04,000 --> 00:20:06,000
Maybe she attacked you.

236
00:20:06,000 --> 00:20:08,000
No, no.

237
00:20:08,000 --> 00:20:12,000
So I'm talking about, come on, we had sex, and then I left.

238
00:20:12,000 --> 00:20:20,000
And then as I got out of the truck, and I go around, and then I see this guy, and he's got the stickiness in him.

239
00:20:20,000 --> 00:20:24,000
Smith went on to claim that the stranger threatened him and then took Carolyn away.

240
00:20:24,000 --> 00:20:25,000
It was a stick.

241
00:20:25,000 --> 00:20:31,000
Detectives had a hard time believing the story, especially when they inspected Smith's pickup truck.

242
00:20:34,000 --> 00:20:36,000
Oh, man, that's more than a cigarette burn.

243
00:20:36,000 --> 00:20:39,000
Yeah, it looks like he took a torch to it.

244
00:20:39,000 --> 00:20:43,000
It was not just the gaping hole in the seat that aroused suspicions.

245
00:20:43,000 --> 00:20:49,000
The seat cover had been removed, and every inch of carpening had been stripped off the floor.

246
00:20:50,000 --> 00:20:55,000
At that point, basically, I knew that Dennis was hiding something from us.

247
00:20:55,000 --> 00:21:02,000
Maybe any evidence that Carolyn was in his truck, or that something bad happened to her in the truck.

248
00:21:02,000 --> 00:21:12,000
However, without proof that Carolyn was dead, suspicions alone were not enough to keep Dennis Smith in custody, let alone bring him to trial.

249
00:21:12,000 --> 00:21:17,000
By the time authorities amassed enough evidence to charge him with murder, Smith had left town.

250
00:21:17,000 --> 00:21:20,000
Our program flushed him out of hiding.

251
00:21:20,000 --> 00:21:24,000
Here's Keely Shay Smith with the dramatic details.

252
00:21:24,000 --> 00:21:30,000
Bob Dennis Smith fled Washington and kept running until he reached the other side of the country.

253
00:21:30,000 --> 00:21:35,000
He ended up in the town of New Smyrna Beach, Florida, where he introduced himself as Dave Sanborn.

254
00:21:35,000 --> 00:21:39,000
But by any name, he still looked like Dennis Keith Smith.

255
00:21:40,000 --> 00:21:49,000
On the night we profiled the accused killer, Tracy Hoddleman and John Cummings got together to watch the show with their new friend Dave Sanborn.

256
00:21:49,000 --> 00:21:55,000
He kind of started getting nervous, and I said, oh my gosh, Johnny, look who that looks like.

257
00:21:55,000 --> 00:22:01,000
And he was sitting right next to me, and they started describing the color of his tattoos that were on his arm.

258
00:22:01,000 --> 00:22:06,000
And I looked over and I said, you have those color tattoos, you know?

259
00:22:06,000 --> 00:22:09,000
And he asked me, is there anything else on? He didn't want to watch the show.

260
00:22:09,000 --> 00:22:11,000
And I said, no, I like the show. I'll watch it.

261
00:22:11,000 --> 00:22:16,000
And he, you know, got up and went in the kitchen and he started pacing around.

262
00:22:16,000 --> 00:22:21,000
When Smith drove off in their car and disappeared, John and Tracy notified authorities.

263
00:22:21,000 --> 00:22:25,000
Police caught up with Smith two days later at this intersection.

264
00:22:25,000 --> 00:22:28,000
He did not give up easily.

265
00:22:28,000 --> 00:22:32,000
He turned and charged the officers in a fight ensued.

266
00:22:32,000 --> 00:22:38,000
During the course of that fight, he attempted to remove the firearm from one of the officers.

267
00:22:38,000 --> 00:22:48,000
He was beginning to successfully remove that firearm when the second officer fired a single shot, striking Mr. Smith in the neck.

268
00:22:48,000 --> 00:22:51,000
Smith was also shot in the wrist during the struggle.

269
00:22:51,000 --> 00:22:56,000
After two weeks in the hospital, he had recovered enough to appear in a Florida court.

270
00:23:02,000 --> 00:23:16,000
Music

271
00:23:16,000 --> 00:23:21,000
Coming up, the tragic and perplexing death of Jean Benet Ramsey.

272
00:23:21,000 --> 00:23:24,000
What do the police know about her killer?

273
00:23:25,000 --> 00:23:34,000
But first, a dangerous blood disorder leaves a newborn infant at serious risk until an anonymous good Samaritan comes to the rescue.

274
00:23:34,000 --> 00:23:40,000
Music

275
00:23:40,000 --> 00:23:49,000
Music

276
00:23:49,000 --> 00:23:54,000
June 22, 1966, Newport News, Virginia.

277
00:23:54,000 --> 00:23:56,000
Hello?

278
00:23:56,000 --> 00:23:59,000
An urgent call for help in the middle of the night.

279
00:23:59,000 --> 00:24:02,000
But the young man who responds is not a surgeon or a paramedic.

280
00:24:02,000 --> 00:24:08,000
He is a blood donor, an unsung hero, someone to help save the life of a newborn infant.

281
00:24:08,000 --> 00:24:10,000
All right, I'll get there since I can.

282
00:24:10,000 --> 00:24:18,000
Music

283
00:24:18,000 --> 00:24:21,000
Come on, Ann. Good, good.

284
00:24:21,000 --> 00:24:26,000
Twenty-four hours earlier, Ann Wilson had given birth to her second daughter, Renee.

285
00:24:26,000 --> 00:24:32,000
Ann's first child was born Breach, and she prayed that Renee would be delivered without complication.

286
00:24:32,000 --> 00:24:34,000
Ann!

287
00:24:34,000 --> 00:24:40,000
You have yourself a girl. Look at this. Oh my gosh.

288
00:24:40,000 --> 00:24:43,000
Ann!

289
00:24:43,000 --> 00:24:47,000
Labor went very smoothly, very quick. Renee was born in 1102.

290
00:24:47,000 --> 00:24:54,000
I was excited and happy to be having any baby, and of course I checked her fingers and checked her toes and all that to make sure she was all there.

291
00:24:54,000 --> 00:24:59,000
And I thought she was the most beautiful baby I had ever seen in my life because she was so pretty.

292
00:24:59,000 --> 00:25:04,000
And nothing abnormal about her looking at all to me.

293
00:25:04,000 --> 00:25:07,000
Did you say hi, Daddy? Say hi, Daddy.

294
00:25:07,000 --> 00:25:16,000
We'd had a problem with the first daughter, and we thought the doctor assured us that everything was okay with Renee.

295
00:25:16,000 --> 00:25:23,000
We just thought everything was good to go, and then this problem came up with her blood.

296
00:25:23,000 --> 00:25:32,000
It was more than just a problem. Renee was in serious trouble. She had a rare blood disorder, which can be fatal.

297
00:25:32,000 --> 00:25:40,000
Well, we've just completed all the tests on your little girl, and I'm afraid the results confirmed that she's going to need a complete blood transfusion.

298
00:25:40,000 --> 00:25:46,000
And what that means is she needs to have all of her blood replaced by that of a donor, a life donor.

299
00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:49,000
So we are looking right now to find that donor and make that transfusion.

300
00:25:49,000 --> 00:25:51,000
I'll give her my blood.

301
00:25:51,000 --> 00:25:56,000
I wish it was that simple, but your blood type isn't right, and neither is your husband's, so we need to find her first...

302
00:25:56,000 --> 00:26:06,000
The first test that was done told them that the white corpuscles were eating up her red blood corpuscles, and that they were going to have to give Renee a transfusion.

303
00:26:06,000 --> 00:26:14,000
This would be a complete transfusion if they were going to have to drain all the blood out of her body and put blood back in from a donor.

304
00:26:14,000 --> 00:26:24,000
It was very scary not realizing really what was going on and not having anybody to ask any questions, and in the middle of the night as well.

305
00:26:25,000 --> 00:26:31,000
There were only three potential donors within driving distance of the hospital.

306
00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:39,000
For whatever reason, fate, luck, or mere happenstance, the anonymous young stranger was a donor who responded first.

307
00:26:39,000 --> 00:26:44,000
OK, thanks, Sheriff.

308
00:26:44,000 --> 00:26:53,000
As far as knowing who that person was or how they would contact them, I didn't really have any idea, and I think I was so caught up in the thought of, you know,

309
00:26:53,000 --> 00:27:01,000
what was taking place with Renee that I didn't really think about the donor.

310
00:27:01,000 --> 00:27:04,000
With no time to spare, the transfusion began.

311
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By Ann Wilson's account, the procedure lasted until 3 a.m.

312
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I drifted off into, like, a twilight sleep, I guess, and then I must have, you know, really gone to sleep,

313
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because the next thing I remember was the doctor came in and tapped me on my hand.

314
00:27:24,000 --> 00:27:26,000
Mrs. Wilson.

315
00:27:26,000 --> 00:27:31,000
Good news. I just checked on Renee and she's going to be just fine.

316
00:27:31,000 --> 00:27:34,000
The transfusion was a complete success.

317
00:27:34,000 --> 00:27:37,000
I'm so happy.

318
00:27:37,000 --> 00:27:41,000
Well, I'm going to go get some sleep. You have some pleasant dreams now.

319
00:27:41,000 --> 00:27:42,000
You too.

320
00:27:42,000 --> 00:27:44,000
See you in the morning.

321
00:27:45,000 --> 00:27:51,000
Baby Renee quickly recovered and soon went home with her parents.

322
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She led a perfectly normal childhood and was as happy and healthy as both of her sisters.

323
00:27:56,000 --> 00:28:05,000
It wasn't until she was a teenager that Renee learned about the mysterious stranger who singed her act of kindness and saved her life.

324
00:28:05,000 --> 00:28:13,000
I want to find him just to shake his hand or just to give him a hug and say thank you for saving my life.

325
00:28:13,000 --> 00:28:16,000
I have a lot to look forward to.

326
00:28:16,000 --> 00:28:20,000
And I'm just very grateful that he didn't say no.

327
00:28:20,000 --> 00:28:28,000
You know, I can't come to the hospital to give the blood now or I'm too tired or no, I have to be up in three hours for work.

328
00:28:28,000 --> 00:28:34,000
Sorry, you know, because I wouldn't be here if he had done that.

329
00:28:34,000 --> 00:28:39,000
Unfortunately, there are no records that would help identify the unknown good Samaritan.

330
00:28:39,000 --> 00:28:45,000
Ann Wilson recalls that he was in his mid-twenties and had dark hair and eyes. He was now being as mid-fifties.

331
00:28:45,000 --> 00:28:51,000
In 1966, the man lived near the Riverside Hospital in Newport News, Virginia.

332
00:28:51,000 --> 00:28:57,000
Next, stripping took her inside the sex industry and close to the mob.

333
00:28:57,000 --> 00:29:01,000
Curiosity drew her to the bizarre rituals of modern-day vampires.

334
00:29:01,000 --> 00:29:05,000
And no one knows what made Susan Walsh disappear.

335
00:29:10,000 --> 00:29:15,000
The End

336
00:29:20,000 --> 00:29:24,000
Hey, David, why are you over here today? Don't watch so much television, OK? Read a book or something.

337
00:29:24,000 --> 00:29:32,000
July 16, 1996. Susan Walsh was in a hurry. She dropped off her son, David, with her estranged husband.

338
00:29:32,000 --> 00:29:34,000
She never said exactly where she was going.

339
00:29:34,000 --> 00:29:35,000
Thanks, Mark.

340
00:29:35,000 --> 00:29:36,000
You'll be back, right?

341
00:29:36,000 --> 00:29:43,000
Oh, yeah. I got to make a couple of phone calls and run a few errands, OK? In just a few minutes, right?

342
00:29:43,000 --> 00:29:46,000
But it wouldn't be a matter of minutes at all.

343
00:29:46,000 --> 00:29:52,000
That morning, 36-year-old Susan Walsh walked away from her home and her life.

344
00:29:52,000 --> 00:29:58,000
She disappeared into the streets of Nutley, New Jersey, the brief commuter train trip from Manhattan.

345
00:29:59,000 --> 00:30:06,000
What happened to Susan Walsh? The police believe she simply chose to disappear.

346
00:30:06,000 --> 00:30:14,000
But the truth is elusive and may be far more sinister. Some say Susan Walsh was murdered by mobsters.

347
00:30:14,000 --> 00:30:21,000
Some say she overdosed on drugs. Others believe she vanished into a subterranean culture of sex and danger

348
00:30:21,000 --> 00:30:24,000
that lured her in and never let go.

349
00:30:25,000 --> 00:30:32,000
From the time Susan Walsh was a little girl, her dream was to be a poet and writer.

350
00:30:32,000 --> 00:30:37,000
But a broken home and unhappy childhood made reaching that goal a constant struggle.

351
00:30:40,000 --> 00:30:46,000
By the time Susan was in her 20s, she was instead an admitted alcoholic, a drug addict, a stripper.

352
00:30:46,000 --> 00:30:51,000
Still, she kept her dream alive. Stripping paid her way through college.

353
00:30:52,000 --> 00:30:56,000
When Susan graduated in 1984, she cleaned up her act.

354
00:30:59,000 --> 00:31:00,000
Mark!

355
00:31:00,000 --> 00:31:02,000
Yeah. Okay.

356
00:31:02,000 --> 00:31:09,000
By 1988, Susan had been sober for four years. She had married and most important, she'd become a devoted mother.

357
00:31:09,000 --> 00:31:11,000
We're making cookie faces.

358
00:31:11,000 --> 00:31:14,000
Looks just like me.

359
00:31:14,000 --> 00:31:19,000
Susan loved her son very much and she was always there for her son.

360
00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:26,000
The two things that meant a lot to her were her son and her career as a journalist.

361
00:31:29,000 --> 00:31:36,000
Eventually, Susan and her husband separated. Though Susan still dreamed of being a writer, she had a tough time getting breaks.

362
00:31:36,000 --> 00:31:42,000
To support her son, she went back to stripping, unable to resist the easy money and seductive lifestyle.

363
00:31:43,000 --> 00:31:49,000
Susan would say she was like an addict and that the whole sex business was kind of like an addiction.

364
00:31:49,000 --> 00:31:52,000
And she was trying to break this addiction.

365
00:31:52,000 --> 00:31:57,000
She will talk endlessly on an intellectual level against dancing.

366
00:31:57,000 --> 00:32:02,000
And sometimes with great articulation, you know, you feel like this is great, profound stuff.

367
00:32:02,000 --> 00:32:05,000
And then, you know, she's out there doing it.

368
00:32:05,000 --> 00:32:08,000
Hey, Natalie, lunch in half an hour, okay?

369
00:32:08,000 --> 00:32:13,000
Ironically, stripping helped provide the critical boost to Susan's journalistic career.

370
00:32:13,000 --> 00:32:20,000
Eventually, she landed an internship at New York's free-wheeling village voice, researching the sex industry.

371
00:32:20,000 --> 00:32:29,000
She soon turned up a hot story. Russian mobsters in New Jersey were allegedly forcing young Russian women to work in strip clubs like slaves.

372
00:32:29,000 --> 00:32:31,000
Hi, Susan. How you doing?

373
00:32:31,000 --> 00:32:32,000
That's the call I've been waiting for.

374
00:32:32,000 --> 00:32:33,000
The van guy?

375
00:32:33,000 --> 00:32:35,000
I think he's going to take me to the head guy.

376
00:32:35,000 --> 00:32:37,000
The head of the mob?

377
00:32:37,000 --> 00:32:39,000
When he's supposed to be out there?

378
00:32:39,000 --> 00:32:40,000
Tonight, 11 o'clock, right?

379
00:32:40,000 --> 00:32:42,000
Susan was a fantastic researcher.

380
00:32:42,000 --> 00:32:44,000
She really poured herself into this.

381
00:32:44,000 --> 00:32:46,000
She spent hour after hour, day after day.

382
00:32:46,000 --> 00:32:52,000
Then she got into the situation where a lot of these clubs in New Jersey have silent partners.

383
00:32:52,000 --> 00:32:55,000
Some of the people were alleged to be in organized crime.

384
00:32:55,000 --> 00:33:01,000
The managers in these clubs began to side with the Russian women against the Russian manager.

385
00:33:01,000 --> 00:33:03,000
So it was like the two mobs meet.

386
00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:07,000
And Susan then, of course, loved this thing, and she got right in the middle of it.

387
00:33:07,000 --> 00:33:12,000
Susan earned praise for the Russian mob article, but she also got threats.

388
00:33:12,000 --> 00:33:14,000
Susan felt she may have made enemies.

389
00:33:14,000 --> 00:33:20,000
Her next big project may also have put her in jeopardy.

390
00:33:20,000 --> 00:33:22,000
Susan, watch for the village voice.

391
00:33:22,000 --> 00:33:25,000
Do you know what, Jericho?

392
00:33:25,000 --> 00:33:31,000
In the early 90s, bizarre vampire clubs began springing up in New York's Greenwich Village.

393
00:33:31,000 --> 00:33:34,000
The clubs boasted a dicey clientele.

394
00:33:34,000 --> 00:33:39,000
Many claimed to be real blood drinkers.

395
00:33:39,000 --> 00:33:41,000
This is the first time I've been in, actually, one of the clubs.

396
00:33:41,000 --> 00:33:47,000
And what I was really hoping was to find somebody that I could actually just maybe go down to the village, you know, have a group.

397
00:33:47,000 --> 00:33:54,000
Susan was so taken by the vampire world, she even started dating a man who claimed to be one of the undead.

398
00:33:54,000 --> 00:33:55,000
The village voice?

399
00:33:55,000 --> 00:34:02,000
Susan wrote a detailed article, but in this case, her journalistic judgment seemed skewed.

400
00:34:02,000 --> 00:34:05,000
She sort of, like, took it and whole clothed.

401
00:34:05,000 --> 00:34:13,000
And she believed a lot of the things that these guys were telling her, you know, about how there were secret murders and so on and so forth in the vampire world.

402
00:34:13,000 --> 00:34:16,000
Are there a lot of regular or so at the clubs?

403
00:34:16,000 --> 00:34:23,000
She would come and say to me, I met these two guys and they got this van and it was very scary and I don't know whether she fell in their van.

404
00:34:23,000 --> 00:34:31,000
And so I said, you know, hey, look, don't go in the van because they might not be vampires, you know.

405
00:34:31,000 --> 00:34:36,000
To Susan's disappointment, the village voice never ran her article on vampires.

406
00:34:36,000 --> 00:34:42,000
But in June of 1996, the month before she disappeared, Susan's career was again on an uptick.

407
00:34:42,000 --> 00:34:50,000
She had done the primary research for a book by James Ridgway and Sylvia Plachy, Red Light, inside the sex industry.

408
00:34:50,000 --> 00:34:56,000
However, the night of the publishers' party, James Ridgway noticed that Susan's wrists were bandaged.

409
00:34:56,000 --> 00:34:59,000
Susan, something I want to answer.

410
00:34:59,000 --> 00:35:02,000
What is this?

411
00:35:02,000 --> 00:35:06,000
OK, this is nothing, all right. This is me in the shower, just, you know, want to see what it felt like, OK?

412
00:35:06,000 --> 00:35:07,000
Want to see what it's like.

413
00:35:07,000 --> 00:35:09,000
Yeah, it's cool, OK? It's totally cool.

414
00:35:09,000 --> 00:35:15,000
Ridgway was also concerned that Susan was taking tranquilizers and it started drinking again.

415
00:35:15,000 --> 00:35:17,000
Right, I'm going to see you right here.

416
00:35:17,000 --> 00:35:22,000
And I just said, oh, Susan, you know, for an alcoholic to do this is like really bad, you know.

417
00:35:22,000 --> 00:35:27,000
And I said, you've got to go to AA. Please go to AA. Please go to the doctor.

418
00:35:27,000 --> 00:35:29,000
He's still dancing, so why are you still dancing?

419
00:35:29,000 --> 00:35:32,000
By now Susan was back to dancing full time.

420
00:35:32,000 --> 00:35:38,000
In a documentary being made by an old friend, Susan talked about what a toll stripping had taken.

421
00:35:38,000 --> 00:35:43,000
It's draining me, and I've been in it four and a half years, four years too long, I'd say.

422
00:35:43,000 --> 00:35:46,000
And I'm stuck in this conundrum because I feel so drained.

423
00:35:46,000 --> 00:35:52,000
And on damage right now, I will get that. Very damaged from this business. I'm hurting. Very bad.

424
00:35:52,000 --> 00:35:58,000
I was with her two days before she disappeared and she said she had bronchitis, emphysema, and an ulcer.

425
00:35:58,000 --> 00:36:01,000
She said she had been in the hospital twice that week.

426
00:36:01,000 --> 00:36:12,000
She's talked about her mood swings and being depressed and about just holding on to live.

427
00:36:12,000 --> 00:36:14,000
You'll be back, right?

428
00:36:14,000 --> 00:36:17,000
Yeah, just a few minutes, right?

429
00:36:17,000 --> 00:36:22,000
48 hours after Jill last saw Susan, the mystery began.

430
00:36:22,000 --> 00:36:26,000
Did Susan collapse somewhere because of her depression and poor health?

431
00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:32,000
If so, police say her body would have been found or she would have surfaced in a hospital.

432
00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:40,000
Her continued absence forces her friends and family to paint scenarios that are much darker.

433
00:36:40,000 --> 00:36:45,000
I think Susan was probably pretty hooked on drugs.

434
00:36:45,000 --> 00:36:49,000
And I think she went out and probably called somebody to come and get her.

435
00:36:49,000 --> 00:36:55,000
And then she went and she may very well have OD'd.

436
00:36:55,000 --> 00:37:04,000
And she may very well have OD'd in the presence of someone who knew her and was frightened to do anything about it.

437
00:37:04,000 --> 00:37:07,000
The police have a completely different theory.

438
00:37:07,000 --> 00:37:10,000
I believe that Susan Walsh is alive.

439
00:37:10,000 --> 00:37:20,000
For someone no reason to meet this time, she opted to leave her family at home, which she has a perfect right to do.

440
00:37:20,000 --> 00:37:30,000
Detective Ryan has talked to a number of people who believe they've actually seen Susan, including her old friend Melissa Hines.

441
00:37:30,000 --> 00:37:32,000
Susan!

442
00:37:32,000 --> 00:37:35,000
Susan!

443
00:37:36,000 --> 00:37:43,000
I definitely think it was her. I'm positive that I seen Susan on one day after she disappeared.

444
00:37:43,000 --> 00:37:48,000
A license plate number that Melissa Hines provided to us, we did track down.

445
00:37:48,000 --> 00:37:51,000
We spoke to the owner and operator of that vehicle.

446
00:37:51,000 --> 00:37:54,000
He had been with a woman fitting the description of Susan.

447
00:37:54,000 --> 00:38:04,000
He did view photographs and felt he was pretty sure that had been her, but again, we had no positive identification of Susan Walsh at that time.

448
00:38:05,000 --> 00:38:11,000
Melissa believes that if Susan is alive, she may be deliberately hiding out.

449
00:38:11,000 --> 00:38:23,000
Susan definitely felt that she was in danger. She was scared for her life and I think she was also scared her son's life could be in danger too.

450
00:38:23,000 --> 00:38:32,000
Susan actually told me that she wasn't going to make it. In the next year, she felt that she was going to be killed.

451
00:38:33,000 --> 00:38:37,000
I believe there's a chance that the mob was after her.

452
00:38:37,000 --> 00:38:44,000
People in organized crime were concerned that Susan had information that would send them to jail.

453
00:38:44,000 --> 00:38:48,000
According to Susan, that was the case.

454
00:38:48,000 --> 00:38:51,000
Someone was definitely following Susan.

455
00:38:54,000 --> 00:39:00,000
I thought at first that it was just her imagination, but I seen it with my own eyes.

456
00:39:02,000 --> 00:39:15,000
I would see cars follow her. Both of us, people follow my car. She was in my car, so it was definitely somebody was stalking her.

457
00:39:16,000 --> 00:39:21,000
Who could have been following Susan Walsh? Was she the target of a mob hit?

458
00:39:21,000 --> 00:39:25,000
Did she cross paths with the wrong person in the vampire clubs?

459
00:39:25,000 --> 00:39:30,000
Or was she the victim of her own paranoia brought on by drug use?

460
00:39:31,000 --> 00:39:39,000
Susan Walsh is 36 years old. She is 5'6", weighs 110 pounds and has blue eyes and bleach blonde hair.

461
00:39:42,000 --> 00:39:51,000
Next, she was poisoned, accomplished beyond her years. She is mourned by the entire country. Who killed Jean-Benet Ramsey?

462
00:40:01,000 --> 00:40:11,000
The following story originally aired on January 31, 1997. It does not include the most recent developments in the case.

463
00:40:15,000 --> 00:40:23,000
In death, she has become America's sweetheart, but the haunting images of a poised, sophisticated woman child cloaked the reality.

464
00:40:23,000 --> 00:40:26,000
She could have been anyone's daughter, anyone's neighbor.

465
00:40:27,000 --> 00:40:34,000
Offstage, Jean-Benet Ramsey was probably like most other 6-year-old girls, sensitive, fragile and vulnerable.

466
00:40:35,000 --> 00:40:42,000
Now she is gone, sexually assaulted and strangled in the basement of her own home on Christmas night, 1996.

467
00:40:45,000 --> 00:40:50,000
It's been 5 weeks and the entire country is demanding to know who committed this horrible crime.

468
00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:57,000
The initial shock is given away to a kind of national anxiety and given rise to other questions.

469
00:40:58,000 --> 00:41:04,000
Why is it taking so long? What do the police know? Why haven't they found a suspect or cleared the family?

470
00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:12,000
The questions may seem unfair to investigators, but they are understandable. After all, there is a killer at large.

471
00:41:13,000 --> 00:41:20,000
This elegant home in Boulder, Colorado is where Jean-Benet Ramsey lived and died.

472
00:41:21,000 --> 00:41:29,000
Boulder itself is a place where murder almost never happens. Jean-Benet was a city's only homicide victim during all of 1996.

473
00:41:31,000 --> 00:41:33,000
Her father, John, is a millionaire businessman.

474
00:41:34,000 --> 00:41:41,000
Her mother, Patricia, is a former Miss West Virginia who guided Jean-Benet's well-documented career as a child beauty queen.

475
00:41:43,000 --> 00:41:49,000
Today the details of the case, like the fairy tale family history, are agonizingly familiar.

476
00:41:50,000 --> 00:41:56,000
The ransom note found the morning after Christmas demanding the peculiar sum of $118,000.

477
00:41:57,000 --> 00:42:01,000
The discovery of full 8 hours later, her Jean-Benet's body in the basement.

478
00:42:02,000 --> 00:42:10,000
John Ramsey's panic-stricken decision to carry his daughter upstairs, thus disturbing the crime scene and destroying crucial evidence.

479
00:42:11,000 --> 00:42:18,000
The stunning revelation that the ransom note and an apparent practice note were written on notepad paper from the Ramsey home.

480
00:42:19,000 --> 00:42:27,000
And finally, widespread speculation that someone in the family was involved, coupled with widespread criticism or the police investigation.

481
00:42:29,000 --> 00:42:37,000
They have said that they're playing it exactly by the book. They may be withholding evidence that they can use to identify the killer.

482
00:42:38,000 --> 00:42:41,000
I think they would say this is proper procedure.

483
00:42:42,000 --> 00:42:53,000
It appeared to me that the beginning of the investigation, the police did not seem to be doing as thorough a job as they would, which would be try to get every piece of information.

484
00:42:54,000 --> 00:43:05,000
And in this particular case, it may have something to do with the prominence of the family or that they were, you know, unused to a murder investigation or something like that, in boulders.

485
00:43:07,000 --> 00:43:16,000
We have never contended that anyone is or is not a suspect. We have not ruled anybody in nor have we ruled anybody out. We are continuing the investigation.

486
00:43:18,000 --> 00:43:28,000
Despite the lack of a known suspect or suspects, the Boulder Police Chief has assured local residents that they have nothing to fear. There is not a crazed child killer on the loose.

487
00:43:29,000 --> 00:43:41,000
Stranger child homicide is rare. So I would be likely to place my investigative resources more on people who had access to the child rather than people on the outside.

488
00:43:42,000 --> 00:43:52,000
All the things that I've learned about the family would point away from the immediate family. Obviously, you can't rule out anyone in this, and I'm sure the police have not ruled out anyone.

489
00:43:53,000 --> 00:44:04,000
In the eyes of many, the fact that the crime scene was essentially closed, limited to the home itself, makes John and Patsy Ramsey natural suspects.

490
00:44:05,000 --> 00:44:14,000
In addition, much has been made of the Ramsey's apparent reluctance to cooperate with the police, and the fact that they both hired individual attorneys within days of their daughter's death.

491
00:44:15,000 --> 00:44:27,000
For their part, the Ramsey's have repeatedly denied any knowledge of the murder. Friends and neighbors have been quick to come to their defense, insisting that the family is above reproach and beyond suspicion.

492
00:44:28,000 --> 00:44:31,000
But if not one of the Ramsey's, then who?

493
00:44:32,000 --> 00:44:43,000
That is a $64,000 question. If it were as simple as a family member, I would have expected an arrest very early in this case.

494
00:44:44,000 --> 00:44:49,000
I would have thought that they would have come up with some lab evidence that would have tied someone to the murder.

495
00:44:50,000 --> 00:45:07,000
Either that hasn't happened, or they don't have a suspect, or they have a suspect, but they're trying to make sure that they have dotted every I and crossed every T, and they've got this person dead cold, before they actually make an arrest.

496
00:45:07,000 --> 00:45:32,000
On our next Unsolved Mysteries, when rock and roll star Kurt Cobain was found dead in his home, all the experts said it was suicide. But this private investigator is convinced that the truth about Cobain's death has yet to be revealed.

497
00:45:32,000 --> 00:45:39,000
Join me next time for another fascinating hour of Unsolved Mysteries.