The Butterfly Effect: Identifying the Does, one case at a time

Every year over 4,000 unidentified bodies are recovered in the United States. 600,000 people are reported as missing, and thousands more go unreported. The Butterfly Effect is an investigative podcast that seeks to reunite the nameless with their identities.

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Speaker 1: Hey guys, it's Josh and I am going to share

with you a podcast. And this is not one that

has been sent to me from a network. This is

a podcast by a listener of true crime bullshit who

has become a great friend, Maxine. I asked Maxine to

send me a synopsis, and this is what she wrote.

I'm just an average true crime consumer and was looking

for ways to make a meaningful impact on the cases

I loved to listen to. I planned on gathering research

for someone else, but the dough I stumbled upon already

had a name, and her name basically changed everything I

knew about the true part of true crime. I'm just

a girl who likes podcasts making my own podcast. And

while that is adorable and humble and very much Maxine,

the truth is this show is so much more than that.

Every year, over four thousand unidentified bodies are recovered in

the United States alone, six hundred thousand people are reported

as missing, and thousands more go unreported. The Butterfly Effect

Maxine Show is an investigative podcast that seeks to reunite

the nameless with their identities. And I can tell you,

having known Maxine for about six years now, She is

incredibly passionate about this case, and I've watched her go

from being interested in this case to investigating this case

to creating this podcast, and it's a journey very similar

to mine. She starts dipping her toe in and ends

with some of the most incredible revelations. The work she's

done in such a short period of time is amazing,

and that's why you should check out The Butterfly Effect

wherever you listen to podcasts. Here's the first episode. Listen

to it now, and if you like what you hear,

subscribe to The Butterfly Effect. I am floored by what

Maxine has done with this investigation, and you will be too.

Speaker 2: A note to listeners, various words have been inserted into

quotes for clarity. This episode discusses potentially distressing topics, including

drug use, suicide, sex, work, and autopsies. If you or

someone you know is struggling, call or text nine eight eight.

It's an unusually hot November morning in Albuquerque when I

pass a rundown motel on University Boulevard. The entire fall

and winter season here had been warm, unseasonably so, and

I want to roll down my car windows to let

the breeze in, but I know better. Honestly, this isn't

a rough area of town by far. But I pass

the motel and keep on towards the University of New Mexico,

knowing eventually I'll intersect the International District, and that's where

things tend to get well rough. As a New Mexican native,

sometimes it feels like the walls of the safer parts

of the city of Albuquerque are closing in, leaving pockets

of gated communities and wealth. Funded by the National Laboratories

and Amazon, Kaight seven reported in twenty twenty three that

Albuquerque ranked seventeenth most dangerous among seventy of the largest

cities in the nation. Their reporting was based on trends

for crimes like rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Even more unsettling, though,

is the rise in homicide numbers. In twenty twenty one,

the city of Albuquerque reported one hundred and six homicides.

The next year, that number rose to one hundred and fifteen,

an eight percent increase. Of course, it's not just the

land of enchantment. Societal issues surrounding drug use, access to

adequate health care, and rising costs of living have contributed

to poverty in every state, and New Mexico has never

been an exception. All this is to say, I expect

to feel unsettled driving past the Seagull Select Motel as

I make my way to an appointment down the road.

After all, a woman died there in room two thirty

three on a warm day just like this one. After

weeks of preliminary research, I find myself knowing more than

I could have imagined about a stranger who died years

before I was born. But people die everywhere all the time.

I suppose the feeling might be more prominent if I

were to pass by the house that once belonged to

the Watts family in Colorado, or the vacant lot where

Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment building was torn down in Milwaukee. The

woman who died in Room two thirty three wasn't murdered.

According to her official autopsy report, performed by doctor Ross

Zumwalt of the Office of the Medical Examiner in nineteen

ninety one. Her cause of death was hanging, and her

manner of death was ruled a suicide, morbid but not uncommon.

So why does it matter? Well, I have this mantra.

Everyone is Someone's someone. I didn't invent that, and I

don't know where I read it first, but the words

play in my head. Often, podcasting has a pretty low

barrier of entry, and though the true crime genre is

now described as oversaturated, we've seen everyday people make real

differences like other casual or rabid consumers. I followed up

and vanished Cereal and your own backyard with fervor against

my better judgment, I deeply internalized the pursuit of justice

for cal Poly student Kristen Smart. Plenty of podcasts I

listened to and with a call to action, not just

if you have a tip, submit it here, but sharing

missing persons posters, calling local representatives, and donating to causes

that help victims. But after all of that, I still

felt a pit in my stomach, after hearing the closing

music and Chris Lambert's soft exit of next time, Could

I do more? So? I began googling. Hey, Google, look

up podcasts that focus on crime in New Mexico. The

most prevalent search result was a podcast I already knew about,

True Consequences, hosted by Eric carter landin Eric's baby brother

Jacob was murdered in nineteen eighty seven, and if I

had to summarize New Mexico's justice system in one sentence,

I'd tell you that just a few years ago, New

Mexico had a statute of limitations on murder. Enough said,

As a survivor and an advocate, Eric has a unique

connection to the stories he tells. And it's not just

because he lives in New Mexico. I have no credentials, authority,

or lived experience with violent crime, and the idea of

contacting a grieving family to what ask them to speak

to me about the worst day of their life as

content for a podcast nobody has ever heard of? To

what end? In my avid listening, I heard time and

time again about the effects of victim exploitation in this

kind of storytelling, and I wanted no part in that.

But there had to be something I could do, some

niche I could fit myself into to help someone to

tell stories the right way. More googling, Hey Google, how

many unidentified bodies are there in New Mecaco. Spoiler alert,

There's no quick AI overview to answer that question, but

the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System can. As of

recording this episode, NamUs has twenty three unidentified person's listings

for Albuquerque. At first, the number seemed alarmingly small, but

NamUs can only report what information it's fed by police.

There's an unspoken understanding that crimes of all kinds here

are never reported. I kept filtering, looking only at cases

that weren't likely to have newer technologies being used to

solve them. A twenty something amateur podcaster has nothing on

DNA usually anyway, So before nineteen ninety nine, then the

number of listings dropped to nine. Okay, now we're getting somewhere.

Most of these holder cases didn't have much evidence at all,

much less publicly attached to their NamUs profile. I figure

my best bet would be to pick a case with

the most public available evidence and go from there. And

after only a few minutes I found one. A reconstruction,

a few scene photos, evidence logs. I wrote down the

number so I could refer back case two nine two six.

I couldn't have predicted how this case would change my life. Truly,

it all started with the name miss listing, or more accurately,

it started with a feeling of irritation. I'm not an idiot.

Albuquerque and Bernoaleo police departments were swamped, just like every

other police force in America, and I've had my own

experiences with them well before I started this journey. According

to the City of Albuquerque's government website, response times for

emergency calls are down to just seven and a half

minutes for the Albuquerque metro as of twenty twenty four.

It's a nice idea that you can ask any local

and they'll tell you it can sometimes take hours, and

that's even if APD shows up at all. You can

include me in that group of locals. Allegedly, despite that knowledge,

some naive part of me just assumed all the department

would need is a little nudge on a case like

this one namous case up two nine two six, Per

the listing on NamUs dot gov, a woman between the

ages of twenty five to thirty five was quote found

in a locked motel room by a motel security guard

end quote. She was hanging by a strap from a

suitcase found in the room and had been there for days.

Apparently the body was too decomposed to make a positive ID,

and there was no ID in the wallet on the table. Instead,

investigators found five hundred dollars bills various amounts of beer

bottles and some photos. I'm obviously not a seasoned investigator,

but I'd consumed enough true crime to guess my next steps.

Huddled under a pile of blankets on my couch, I

plugged in my laptop and began searching for media releases.

The amount of recent videos and articles popping up when

I typed in woman found dead motel Albuquerque wasn't a shock.

Speaker 1: Albuquerque police are investigating a deadly shooting. Paramedics found her

unresponsive in a hotel room just yesterday. APD is investigating

a homicide that happened outside a Motel six near quors

An Eyelift.

Speaker 2: I could have spent hours looking with that search alone,

but when I narrowed down, things started to peque my interest.

The first useful link was from a website called the

Unidentified Wiki. It's sort of set up like Wikipedia, with information, photos,

and links to various sources, and there's one for my

Jane Doe. The page mostly has the same information as names,

which is a good thing because that source is verified.

But as I'm reading, I am noticing some things I

haven't read before. According to the wiki page, quote between

nine thirty PM and eleven PM. On June third, nineteen

ninety one, a local truck driver named Eduardo Colin arrived

at a Super eight motel in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He

rented a room for two people for one night and

was expected to check out at eleven AM the following day.

Eduardo provided legitimate information on the registered tration slip except

for a false vehicle license plate number. Eduardo was given

room two thirty three end. Apparently no one saw another

person with this Eduardo call in guy, but he rented

a room for two people. Let me back up here

for a moment and give you some context. If you're

not from Albuquerque, you probably won't know the significance of

some of the locations. In this case. The city is

a grid, and for the most part, the streets are

ordered easily enough to get even a visitor where they

need to be. But there's a three point nine square

mile strip of road situated along Route sixty six called

Central Avenue. Back in the late thirties and early forties,

the city of Albuquerque experienced a major population boom, and

the area around Central filled up, bolstered by businesses that

profited from Route sixty six. But all that changed in

the sixties when Kirtland Air Force Base transitioned to on

base housing and Route sixty six lost its traffic to

I forty. After that, crime in the area seemed to skyrocket.

A nineteen ninety one article from the Albuquerque Journal described

East Central as quote a loose jointed carnival of sex, drugs,

and booze end quote. It was around two thousand and

nine when the city attempted to rebrand the area, and

the neighborhood became known officially as the International District, But

in twenty seventeen, the Albuquerque Journal reported that it was

quote the most violent place in the city in the

past three years end quote. Just a year later, the

Journal called the International District quote the worst neighborhood in

New Mexico for the health and well being of young

chi children end quote. The government may refer to the

area as the International District, but locals call it something else,

the war zone. Finding people passed out on the sidewalk,

unmoving on blistering hot summer days, a constant police presence

that somehow never feels like enough, addicts brandishing both invisible

and very visible weapons. The crisis seems to be slowly

expanding over the geographical walls that make up the International District. Honestly,

I could read use statistics all day, but numbers being

thrown into thin air wouldn't paint the true picture of

this area and what it represents the many ways society

continues to let our most vulnerable citizens down. I'm not

a professional podcaster, but I was an emergency medical technician

for a short time, and I did my clinical rotations

in ambulances crossing through these streets. The city is bursting

at the seams with culture, with promise. But if my

time in the Albuquerque EMS system has taught me anything

it's that you can have compassion for your fellow man

and fear him at the same time. My drive past

the Siegel Select Motel where Jane Doe was found takes

me to the intersection of University Boulevard and Central Avenue.

Albuquerque was a different place in nineteen ninety one, sure,

but the principle of Trucker motels remains the same now.

That motel boasts a long term rate and extended stay options.

But when Jane Doe died, the building was a Super eight.

The address itself is situated between two points of interest,

the Interstate and Central Avenue. I don't think I have

to fill in the blanks here. For the past month,

I've been scrolling through Google and YouTube trying to find

official sources of information on Jane Doe. One of the

biggest clues was a widely distributed FBI ViCAP poster. ViCAP

stands for Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, think America's most Wanted.

The posters are supposed to catch your attention, obviously, but

there's something incredible about this case and the evidence attached

to it. Within seconds of googling Albuquerque Jane Doe, I

find myself staring back at her. It's not a macabre

post mortem autopsy photo. It's not the expressionless gray reconstruction

posted with her unidentified Wiki listing. It's her a grainy,

washed out picture of a woman with wild permed, orange

tinted hair. She's mugging for the camera, her eyes and

mouth wide open, like she's over exaggerating shock. The photo

is one of two on her ViCAP poster with the

caption quote photo of victim found with her possessions. Yeah,

you heard that right. There's a photo of an unidentified

woman in life found at the scene of her death.

That photo was distributed through FBI channels all over America,

presumably in nearly thirty three years. No one has come

forward to identify her. How is that possible? There's got

to be more to this story, so let's take it

back one more time to the very beginning. A name

is listing, a VICP, a photo, and a true crime

consumer attempting to tackle something so much bigger than myself.

Thirty three years well, that seems far too long to

be away from her family. I'm officially in full research mode.

Searching Albuquerque Jane Doe brings up a variety of websites,

but Reddit threads are the most prevalent. Until now, I'd

never really used Reddit, but it's no surprise there would

be threads similar to the unidentified wiki with information, and

wouldn't you know it, the very first link was titled

I've probably identified the Albuquerque Jane Doe aka Becca, promising

the thread was a link to a missing person's case.

I'll spare you the details because this obviously wasn't a match.

Commenters disagreed with the arrogance of the poster and cited

all the parent differences in height and weight for reference.

According to NamUs, the Albuquerque Jane Doe would have been

roughly five to seven and one hundred and forty pounds.

What's more interesting is the way almost every post refers

to Jane Doe by the name Becca. What did I miss?

Sure enough, the viscap poster had a note quote based

on a recent tip, investigators believe the woman's name is Becca.

She was reportedly from the Los Angeles County area, possibly

Resida or Silmar, California, and flew from either Los Angeles

or Burbank to Albuquerque. End quote. This case was getting

weirder by the minute. Reddit has quite a few threads

on Becca, but I noticed quickly that the information on

each post and each comment really contradicted the others. Some

people even claim to be in touch with law enforcement

to confirm certain aspects of the investigation. A few scattered

links to Google docs with supposedly reputable information led nowhere.

Albuquerque Jane Doe's Reddit presence is like a game of telephone.

Every time the info was passed on, it got a

little jumbled until the narrative was nothing like the original source.

If the misinformation is this rampant online it's better to

stick to the facts and work my way through the timeline.

I need to get my hands on official documents here

in New Mexico. The Office of the Medical Investigator is

part of the UNM Hospital system. After determining what paperwork

needed to be sent where I had to decide what

exact records I should ask for. My research left me

with more questions than answers about Jane Doe and the

circumstances of that night in June on University Boulevard. If

I wanted to solve this puzzle, I would need well

everything come on Investigating Division.

Speaker 1: How may I direct your call.

Speaker 2: The Bernoleo County. Jane Doe was found in a Super

eight motel on twenty five hundred University Drive Northeast in Albuquerque,

New Mexico, on June fifth, nineteen ninety one. She had

strawberry blonde hair and hazel eyes. She was five seven

and approximately one hundred and forty pounds. She may have

been called Rebecca or Rebecca and could have been living

in Silmar or Resita in Los Angeles County, California. If

you have any information about her identity, call the Bernoleo

County Sheriff's office at five zero five two four two

two six seven seven, or contact the FBI's Albuquerque Field

office at five zero five eight eight nine one three

zero zero. The Butterfly Effect is independently produced by me Maxine,

with additional production and research assistance by Jordan Taylor, music

mixing by Ryan Delgobo, artwork and mixing by Buffy Case

Special thanks to Laura Norton, Jordan Taylor, Hailey Gray, and

Aslen O'Neill. Thank you for listening. Please rate and review

the show wherever you find your podcasts