Lost Women of Highway 20 (2023) s01e03 Episode Script

1
John Ackroyd left
a trail of devastation
in his wake.
They know him,
what he did to Kaye Turner,
to Rachanda.
And now, 80 miles to the west,
on Highway 20,
he is on the move
to new hunting grounds.
I never got
anything more
than "John Ackroyd's gonna
start reporting to your shop,
and you can't tell anybody
why he's here."
But Rachanda
having disappeared
under very
weird circumstances,
everybody were starting
to then get
pretty concerned about John
being around.
They were all saying
the same thing,
"Why is he here?"
But the police want him
somewhere where they can
monitor his behaviors.
I thought,
"This is the most stupid thing
I ever heard."
He was made, what they call,
a roving field mechanic.
He could be driving
130 miles a day,
and you're gonna monitor him?
Give me a break.
There were weeks on in
that I never even saw him.
He was on the road.
He was gone.
And John wasn't stupid.
He knew why he was there.
He was just like,
"Yeah, go ahead.
Try and catch me."
Lebanon and Sweet Home
are 13 miles apart.
It's a big straight stretch
of nothing.
We call it The Narrows.
There is nothing to do
in Lebanon,
literally nothing,
except for go to Shari's.
That was a hangout
on Highway 20.
I mean, that was the thing
to do.
It was someplace to go.
It was a safe place to go.
We could just laugh
and be ourselves
and spend time together.
We played CB tag,
talked on the CB radios.
All the cars had CB radios.
You could talk to somebody
in another car,
kind of, like,
a moving cell phone
but attached to your car.
Kind of like
a chat room,
just randomly talking
to people.
We'd get on there
and say their CB handle.
Mine was Okey-1.
Say, "Hey, Okey-1,
are you out there?"
I'd say,
"Hi, I'm Lady Know-It-All."
That was my handle,
Lady Know-It-All.
Because I knew everything.
Speed Demon, Speed Wagon.
Bunny.
Night Rider.
General Public, GP.
I don't know why
she called herself that.
It's so weird.
And that's when,
at Shari's,
I first met John Ackroyd.
When he
introduced himself,
he said, "I'm The Pervert."
That was his CB radio handle.
The Pervert.
And immediately,
phew, something goes off
in my brain
and I'm like, "Why would you
say that so loud
in front of a bunch of women?"
Right?
"There's something up
with this guy."
I knew that
there was something not right.
People would say,
"Give him a chance.
Give him a chance."
"Oh, you're always
so suspicious of people."
I'm like, "Yeah.
No fooling.
This guy says
he's The Pervert."
But after that, he didn't talk
to any of us, really.
The only people he really
ever talked to
were Melissa and Sheila.
They were just kids.
Both were really cute girls.
They were funny.
They were normal
teenage girls,
laughing and joking.
You would've thought
they were sisters.
You know that song,
"Girls Just Like To Have Fun"?
That reminds me of Melissa.
Yeah.
She just wanted to have fun.
Just so full of life
-and she bounced into a room.
-Oh, yeah.
She didn't walk into a room.
She was just bouncing
all the time, you know?
- A lot of energy.
- Yeah.
She was like,
a little bit of country
and a little bit
of rock and roll.
When two teenage girls
sometimes get together,
you know, they start being
a little rebellious.
I don't think either one
of them had
a real structured upbringing.
Not that I'm saying anything
negative about their parents.
I just think that, um
there wasn't structure,
so they were
all over the place.
They didn't have a nickel.
So they
they couldn't buy food.
They couldn't buy drinks.
They didn't have anything.
We'd be at Shari's,
and one of them would whisper
in my ear,
"Will you take us
to your house
so we can take a shower?
Or can you take us
to your house
so we can put on makeup?"
I don't want people
to have the misconception
that Melissa and Sheila
were bad.
They weren't out looking
for trouble.
They were looking
to get their needs met.
Melissa, especially,
that's what I think
she needed most,
food, shelter,
love, companionship
from somebody who cared.
That's how Ackroyd would,
you know,
get her to pay attention
to him.
He was, like,
obsessed with her.
But once he got her attention,
then he became possessive.
He never bought anything
for Sheila, only Melissa.
And he would buy her nachos,
and he would, like,
lean over against her,
put his hand on her leg,
you know.
She would get sour cream
on her face
and he'd wipe it off and then
lick it on his
Blech.
Just weird stuff, you know?
Always trying to touch her.
So I said to Melissa,
"It seems creepy,
like he's wanting
something more from you."
And she goes, "Tut, oh, Kim,
he's like my dad."
But you could just tell
by the way he groomed Melissa
that he had done this before.
Finally,
people see John
for the monster he truly is.
Soon, others will join
the fight to stop him.
Thirty-six-year-old
Bill Hanlon
was recently appointed
to the office
of Jefferson County DA
by Governor Neil Goldschmidt.
When I took over
the office,
my secretary had a
had a note,
"Call Linn County
district attorney."
So I called him up.
He says,
"Hey, have you heard
Ever heard of John Ackroyd?"
And I said, "Yeah,
John Ackroyd killed
Kaye Turner,
but nobody could prove it."
And he said, "Well,
his stepdaughter disappeared,
and we're having a meeting
tomorrow in Sweet Home PD,
and we'd like you to come
and bring everything you know
about John Ackroyd."
That's where
it all started for me.
I was just
a new detective.
I was the baby, the rookie,
you know, the gofer guy.
I says, "What can I do
to help?"
My lieutenant, he says,
"Keep track of them case files
for us
and we'll let you know
if we need any help."
But I realize that none
of those reports
had ever been
gathered into one place.
They were scattered around
in different agencies.
But from the reports
that I read,
they reached a point
in Kaye Turner case
where they were sure
that Ackroyd's the guy.
But John had an alibi.
John Ackroyd was
with his friend,
and hunting partner,
Roger Dale Beck.
Roger Beck was married
to my dad's sister, Pam.
John, my dad and Pam
grew up together.
Pam told the cops
that John and Roger
were at home
and attested to the certain
hours that they were there.
She alibied them.
Roger could get
mean and violent.
And when he got drunk,
he would be even worse.
We heard that
Pam divorced Roger,
and she had moved
to California.
An ex-wife not covering
for some dirtbag anymore
is really a great source
of information.
So I went to California,
walked up to her front door,
knocked on the door.
And there were two things
that really surprised me.
She told me, "I knew
you were coming," and
"I lied like hell back then."
There's some times
you run across events
that, kind of, lead you
to believe
that you're right
in the middle,
right at the center.
When I talked to Pam,
yeah, that was
one of those times.
She was telling me
that she had lied
for John and Roger.
At the time
of the disappearance
of Kaye Turner,
they had come in
with blood on them,
and they made statements
to her
about accidentally killing
a jogger.
I could feel the hair on
the back of my neck stand up
as I spoke with her,
because I realized
at that point
that the hunch I had
had worked out
the way it should.
I came back to Oregon
and I met with Bill Hanlon.
That was
the turning point in the case.
She told us that they were
talking about knives and guns,
and they had blood
all over 'em
and how to get rid
of the evidence.
At that point, Roger Beck
wasn't a suspect at all.
So that refocused the case
on two defendants.
At that point,
things really got busy.
From then on, it was like,
"Go back to California,
ask this and this and this.
See if you can find out
more about this."
Let's go find that truck.
Where's the evidence at now?"
Ackroyd was roaming
around our county.
And if we weren't successful,
we could continue to find
dead women around our county
for the rest
of Ackroyd's life.
So we had to make sure
we did it right.
If we lost, we could've never
prosecuted that again.
Double jeopardy means
you can't be held accountable
for a crime twice.
Prosecution has one shot
at you.
That's why I was willing
to work evenings and weekends
for all those years.
That's why Mark dedicated
so much time.
I became the local volunteer
deputy of Camp Sherman.
It's a labor of love.
You don't get paid.
We never wanna give up
on solving a case.
The detectives know
their time is running out.
And in May, 1992, it does.
Melissa came to me
one day
and she said, "I'm going
camping with my family,
and it should be lots of fun,
and I get to take
Sheila with me.
I'm gonna put on
my bathing suit
and I'm gonna try to work
on my tan."
-We rented five camp spots
over at the coast
-Mmm-hmm.
for a family reunion.
We had that all week,
fishing and crabbing,
making clam chowder.
But that day
when they came in and said,
"Oh, we're going camping,"
The Perv was there.
And he said,
"Oh, where are you
camping at?"
And they said,
"Oh, we don't know exactly
where we're camping at
but somewhere in Newport."
And he says,
"Well, I'm throwing a party
in Newport on Saturday night."
So they were
gonna go camping, right?
And he's gonna miraculously
throw a party in Newport
on this Saturday night.
And I remember telling
Melissa and Sheila,
"Do not hook up
with The Perv."
They were like,
"Why would we do that?"
But I could tell
on Melissa's face
that something was up.
And I said,
"Melissa, I'm not kidding."
Melissa and Sheila
were supposed to spend
the whole weekend there,
but I don't
You know how
teenage girls are.
They're just
Ants in their pants.
"Gotta go, gotta go."
And I guess they were
at the phonebooth
at the campsite,
calling everybody
they can think of
to come and get 'em or get
a ride back to Sweet Home.
It was like
two weeks after
when I first heard that
they never showed back up.
We just figured
they ran away
'cause let's be honest,
they were always
running around.
So we just figured
they ran away,
they'll be back.
They'll show up.
Melissa would call.
She would call
and let us know where she was.
And when she come up
missing that time,
no calls, nothing.
Melissa's parents,
they knew something was wrong,
so did Sheila's parents.
Sheila's parents said
she'd always call.
The police said, "Well, why
didn't you call us sooner?"
"Well, because it's not
abnormal for her to go,
but it's abnormal
for her not to call."
And the police just put it
on the back-burner.
- Her parents called repeatedly.
- -Yeah.
But they felt ignored,
-like the police wasn't taking
anything seriously.
-Yeah.
They were viewed as runaways
by the police.
They asked a couple
of questions
over couple of people
and then it was like, "Mmm,
we ain't nothing to go on."
In the case
of Kaye Turner,
there was no smoking gun,
there was
no forensic evidence,
but there were
little bits and pieces
that added
to the circumstantial evidence
linking Ackroyd to the crime.
Eventually we felt like
we had enough
to charge John Ackroyd.
So we wanted to talk
to the judge.
And he said,
"That's not strong enough
for the grand jury."
So we backed up and
got together again.
And that's when
the US Fish and Wildlife Lab
got involved.
They had a new
high-tech forensic lab.
So we took down
Kaye's clothes.
And it took them a long time
but they found
a lot of great stuff.
They determined that
the tears in the shirt
were a stab wound.
They found lead fragments
on her shirt
that they determined
were shots or bullet holes.
He knew we were after him.
But he was more than happy
to get the news media story.
They're trying to tie me in
because I went down
We went out there at morning
and poached a deer.
Would you be
willing to take
a lie detector test
if questions we asked you
about Kaye Turner's murder?
Already did.
How'd it go?
I don't know.
That was 14 years ago.
And with all the stuff
that went down about that,
I don't think if I ever
found another body
in the woods
that I'd say anything
about it.
He is depicting this
as wild coincidences,
and these are misfortunes
that have befallen him.
John talked about the wounds
on Kaye Turner's body
when he had found her
in February.
And then we found
this forensic anthropologist
who was able to testify for us
that Ackroyd's description
of that scene
had to have been within
two or three days of
the moment that he killed her.
What do you think
of the charges
against you, Mr. Ackroyd?
I don't know all of 'em.
Ackroyd
and another man, Roger Beck,
are charged with kidnapping,
raping
and killing Kaye Turner.
Everybody knew
about my sister.
It's the most exciting thing
that's happened in that town
in a while,
you know, that's front page.
I started getting
tormented at school and stuff,
you know, bullied
and picked on.
"I heard your stepdad
killed your sister."
When my mom
and I would be alone,
I'd ask my mom,
"You think John could've
done it?"
And she'd get upset.
She'd get upset, you know,
how dare I even
ask that question?
And then, I think,
one of the last times
when I asked my mom,
"Do you think
John could do it?" And she
I think she was
cooking breakfast,
and she threw down the spatula
and she's like,
"I don't know, Byron,
you tell me.
Did John do it?
'Cause I want to know, too."
Somebody said,
"Did you see The Perv?"
And I'm like, "No."
They're like, "That's the guy
that murdered that girl."
And I'm like, "What?
What do you mean?"
So that's when I found out
John Ackroyd and The Perv
were the same person.
At last,
after decades,
the monster has been caught.
But he leaves
one final heartbreak
for his pursuers to find.
It was just
five months
after the girls went missing
when they found the bodies.
That was devastating.
You know, you wonder
how much they suffered.
How could I have helped her?
How could I have stopped it?
This whole thing still
I mean, it hurts
and it angers me
after all this time.
And I just
It's sad and I'm never gonna
be at peace with it
because it's not okay.
I have nightmares to this day.
I can hear her voice
calling to me.
And it's hard.
Sorry.
It's affected me my
whole life, as a mom.
I mean, their moms will
never be the same.
I knew exactly that it
was him.
It fit all the patterns.
He worked on that route.
So I went and talked to
the Lincoln County
and said, "Hey, you really
need to take a look at
this cat,
he's done this and this
and this and we're at this
point in our investigation."
And you can't say, "Hey, now,
listen damn it, this is the
only way.
We're right, you're wrong."
It doesn't work that way.
Two more women,
eternally silenced.
Will the monster ever
be stopped?
Will they finally trap him?
One of the most significant
moments was when we played
the interview
that Ackroyd did.
He told this TV guy, he said,
"Yeah, they know who killed
Kaye."
What's his name?
Roger.
Roger?
I think Beck.
Friend of your?
Not really. He's a friend of
friends of mine.
It's his best friend,
you know.
His ex-wife and Ackroyd had
been main squeeze
in high school.
It just shows that he
was just totally.
Totally trying to avoid
any culpability.
Good evening, it's October the
5th, a Tuesday, 1993. I'm
Mike Smith.
And I'm Carrie Gilman.
John Ackroyd is accused
of killing Kaye Jean Turner
almost 15 years ago, as Turner
was jogging on Christmas eve
in Camp Sherman.
This afternoon both
prosecution and defense gave
their closing arguments,
and now, will await a verdict.
His job is to put doubt in
the mind of the jury.
And if he can create enough
doubt, they'll find him
not guilty.
I didn't watch the jury.
When they walked in, I didn't
have any indication from them
what they were gonna do.
If we weren't successful,
he was gonna kill other women.
A jury tonight has reached its
decision in the trial of John
Arthur Ackroyd.
Ackroyd was convicted this
evening of killing Kaye Jean
Turner.
Another man charged into
the death of Turner will have
a separate trial,
beginning on April 18th.
He buried himself.
His lies throughout
all the way to the end,
all of those lies just
just aggregated to bury him.
Kaye's husband Noel Turner
thought the sense of relief
would be much greater
than it is.
You know, I feel like justice
has been served.
But it's not like the total
weight's off your back.
I mean, maybe it's just gonna
be there.
Mom got off the phone and
stuff and I was, like,
"What's up?"
And she's, like, "John got
convicted of the murder of
Kaye Turner."
I'm like, "Whoa."
'Cause at that time that's
when I'm starting to, kind of,
shift.
Like, "I don't think this
guy is innocent."
My mom was trying to
justify it.
When we talked with her and
tell her that we thought John
was probably responsible
for Rachanda's death.
She would get on board with it
then drift back to whatever
her basic default was,
supporting John or just doing
what he said.
I don't think it took very
much for John Ackroyd to
control Linda Ackroyd.
For 20 years,
Ackroyd rots in prison.
20 years, questions
go unanswered.
John Ackroyd had been in
prison for, you know, several
years.
We get word there was some
possibility that he would get
paroled.
They say, "In cold cases, time
is your friend."
People's opinions change.
I was hoping I would go
talk to John and he would
have a change of heart.
How can I get John Arthur
Ackroyd to actually
talk to me
without giving me a
line of crap?
It was getting close to
Christmas time.
I proposed to him, "How about
you tell me where she is,
we find her, you take
us there,
and we'll let you have
Christmas dinner with
your family?"
He just, he wouldn't
take the bait, if you will.
So we wanted to bring
John Arthur Ackroyd to
trial on Rachanda's case.
My hope was that through
plea negotiations,
that he would tell us
where she was.
Walking up the stairs into
the court room,
my anxiety started going up.
I mean, there was once
I thought, "Man, can I even
do this?"
Do we take it to trial or
do we allow John to plead
it out?
This is kind of like, "What do
I do? My mom ain't here and my
dad's in prison."
The two people who should
be here because this is their
child.
You know, and I'm like, "What
what is going to be the
difference
if we get a conviction or
if he pleads to this?" And
they're like, "Nothing."
Ackroyd cut a deal with
Linn County authorities to
enter a no-contest plea for
Rachanda's death
in an exchange, he would not
seek parole.
But as a part of the plea,
he's not giving up the
location of Byron's sister.
I had two goals,
Ackroyd would stay in prison.
And two, Byron will get
justice. Then we would
get Rachanda's body back.
And, I think for me,
it's kind of a failure.
Byron deserves a little bit
of justice,
closure.
Ackroyd made
the plea in open court,
but then the judge immediately
signed an order to seal
the records.
It was highly unusual, because
pleas, typically, are a
matter of public record.
Attorneys with extensive
experience in Oregon's
criminal courts
told The Oregonian that
they've never heard of
such a thing.
So it was extraordinary.
It protected Ackroyd to have
it sealed?
Does it serve the
prosecution?
I don't know.
It took me a lot of
years to actually get to
the point where
I realized that John is the
one that killed my sister.
'Cause you would have to admit
that
someone that you cared about,
someone that you thought loved
you,
someone that you loved
yourself, would do something
that heinous and hurtful.
But hearing him actually plead
no contest to the charges,
to me that was just every
ounce of me knowing that
John killed my sister.
If you were accused of murder,
are you gonna take that
no-contest plea?
No.
John Ackroyd
is guilty.
Kaye Turner's killer is
behind bars.
But what about the
other victims?
Who will speak for
those who have never been
found,
who's deaths remain unsolved?
They were silenced in life.
Can they be heard now?
I was retired from the
DA's office,
and I missed a large portion
of my job,
I read that the previous DA
had opened up three cold
cases.
And that he was forming a
task force to investigate
them.
And so in May of 2009, I said
I would love to help your
cold case task force.
We started looking into the
Melissa Sanders and Sheila
Swanson case.
What I wanted for Melissa and
Sheila was to have someone
held accountable.
I wanted to solve it for the
girls and for their families
and for the community.
I mean, this community has had
this black cloud hanging over
them of these murdered girls.
At the crime scene, Sheila and
Melissa were found about 50
feet off of Hayes Creek road.
I'm thinking that the one body
was over in this area,
and the other was about
50 feet away, just on the
other side of that stump.
The medical examiner could not
determine cause of death.
But he did note that there
were several large fissures
in one of them's abdomen and
one of them's chest area,
that could be indicative of
a knife wound.
They found near
Sheila's body part of a rivet.
- The girls wouldn't have a rivet.
- -Right.
Why would they have a rivet?
But a mechanic would.
One of the things they also
found was a beaded
seat cushion
and that was something almost
all of the ODOT coworkers had
and that was missing out of
Ackroyd's truck when it
was searched.
Around the time the girls were
reported missing,
one of the few ODOT workers
that worked after hours.
-They couldn't say the exact
time.
-Right.
Somewhere between ten
to midnight.
They heard the door bang.
And so they went out to see
who it was.
And there was Ackroyd getting
out of his truck,
and his arms are covered in
dried blood from the tip of
his fingers to his elbows,
on both arms.
Wow, man,
what happened to you?
You're afraid when you see
something like that.
The first reaction is that
they got hurt.
Second reaction
from what they said, "That was
way too much blood to be his."
And he told them, "You know, I
was coming back from Newport,
and some guy had hit a
deer and I helped him salvage
some meat."
And they didn't think anything
of it until John gets
arrested
and they found the bodies in
the area where John had been
working.
We were building a really good
circumstantial case.
We really were gaining
momentum
and moving forward.
And then all of a sudden,
Ackroyd dies.
I was really taken aback
by that.
Because it kind of stopped
what we were trying so hard
to do.
We failed because he died,
so we didn't get there
fast enough, you know.
We just didn't get there
fast enough.
The thing that was the most
disturbing was that Sheila and
Melissa go missing
the night of May 3rd, 1992.
John Ackroyd is arrested on
June 12th, 1992.
They came so close to
missing him.
When the two
young girls died,
I felt like we failed.
Completely.
Because we left the guy on
the street,
and he did it again.
In order to be
considered a serial killer,
you have to have killed
three or more people.
So finding out that John
Ackroyd murdered Sheila
and Melissa,
put him in that category.
There were a cluster of
disappearances that occurred
in the late 70's
off of Highway-20.
John Ackroyd started working
for the Oregon Department of
Transportation
in January 1978.
In his position as an ODO
driver, I'm sure he's coming
across women who were stranded
and need road-side assistance.
And they would trust him.
I mean, he's a state worker,
driving a state truck.
They're out on the side of
the road, you know, probably
in the middle of the night,
who else were they gonna trust
to get them to a safe place?
It's just
an eerie thing to think about
a serial killer roaming up and
down Highway-20
in a state truck, abducting
and murdering women.
I wonder how many more women
are murdered and missing that
we just don't know about,
because of all the years that
he was driving up and down
that highway.
Melissa and Sheila,
they were found on Highway-20
towards the coast.
So,
we'll go over here,
a little bit farther up,
one of the unidentified
skeletons we have is
Swamp Mountain Doe.
We don't know her story.
Because we don't know who
she is. We know she was
under 30.
Then you go up the road about
10 miles and that's where
Snow Creek Doe was found,
which is another skeletal
remains.
And this area here, is where
Elizabeth Mussler was found
at Thistle Creek Boat Ramp.
Mussler lived in the
Jolly Roger Apartments
on Highway-20.
John Ackroyd's younger
sister lived in that same
apartment complex.
So one day, she leaves her
apartment and she's standing
in the parking lot
waiting for her dad to pick
her up to take her to an
eye appointment,
and she's never seen again.
Another few miles was
Karen Lee and Rodney Grissom.
They were two, I think,
runaways.
They were last seen in
Sweet Home.
Karen Lee was talking on
the phone and she said,
"I gotta go, my ride's here."
Logging crew found clothing
in 1978, that belonged
to Karen.
And then about four years
later, just about a
1/4-mile away,
that's where Rodney's clothing
and some other articles were
found.
These are victims whose either
their possessions or their
remains were found
in the same, kind of, broad
swath off of Highway-20,
where Ackroyd would've worked
and lived and hunted
and fished.
These are the areas that
he knew very well. So these
cases have long been, kind of,
associated with John Ackroyd.
You know, in the case of Kaye,
her case was solved,
and ended with a conviction of
two men who killed her,
and they went to prison
for a long period of time.
But that wasn't the case for
the other people.
It certainly wasn't the case
for Rachanda,
whose case was sealed and
received no attention from
the press.
And it definitely wasn't the
case either for Melissa
Sanders and Sheila Swanson,
who were overlooked in life
as they were in death.
Their families were with none
of whatever healing may come
from a trial.
It wasn't the case
for Marlene,
who's report of a rape just
sat in a file drawer
for years.
She suffered quietly,
never being able to find any
kind of peace or healing,
being ignored by a system.
And the cost for that was
extraordinary for other women
he would encounter.
So this is actually about what
happens when you ignore women.
If they would've believed one
iota of my story,
this would never have ever
happened, ever.
Those poor women would
still be alive.
I took my own power back,
I had too. No one else was
gonna give it to me.
I want women to know that
they don't have to cower
back down.
Stay strong.
Stand your ground.
We give life.
We should be a force
to be reckoned with.
When people say, "The best
days of your life are when you
get married
and have your children,"
they're not joking, man.
Greatest moments in time.
And to know that my sister
didn't get that opportunity,
is very difficult.
I knew when I had kids,
it was gonna be way different.
Just thinking about that day,
like what Rachanda might have
had to go through,
it was preventable.
Well, listen to your children.
If a child comes to you and
they're telling you
something's happening,
just go look, just go
investigate, just talk to
them.
I will take care of my
children, I will take care of
any child around me.
And I will fight for them.
I would fight for them until
I absolutely have no breath
left in me.
If Rachanda was able to be
a mama, she would've done the
same thing.
Her children would've been the
most loved and well-cared for.
She would've broke the cycle.
Because we broke the cycle.