Episode Transcript
Transcripts are displayed as originally observed. Some content, including advertisements may have changed.
Use Ctrl + F to search
0:00
Okay. The kids are already asking
0:02
what's for dinner, but breaking news, empty
0:04
fridge. That's okay. I'll Instacart.
0:07
Add some organic asparagus and some farm
0:09
fresh chicken. Easy. Wait, is the
0:11
oldest vegetarian this week or was it gluten
0:13
free? Gluten free pasta? Cover it
0:15
either way. Card it. And finally, some
0:17
vegetarian gluten free olives for my well
0:19
earned cocktail. When your family shopping
0:21
list has more footnotes than groceries, the
0:24
world is your cart. Visit instacart
0:26
dot com or download the app and get free
0:28
delivery on your first order. Offer valid
0:30
for limited time. Minimum order ten dollars delivery
0:33
subject to availability, additional terms apply.
0:41
It was just total straight
0:44
radio silence from Beth, from
0:47
early morning December twenty second on,
0:50
except for one person, Her fiancee,
0:52
who claims that he talked her by phone and
0:54
saw her face to face. Other
0:57
than that, nobody that
0:59
really brought a great amount
1:01
of concern to us. You
1:03
start to become incredibly concerned
1:06
that something horrible has happened.
1:15
It's December twenty second just a
1:17
few days before Christmas in Des Moines,
1:19
Iowa. Ten year old Shonda,
1:21
and her three year old brother Jonathan are
1:24
giddy with excitement about the upcoming holiday.
1:27
Their mother, thirty one year old Beth
1:29
Ann Ricketts, loves to celebrate
1:31
Christmas and always tries to make it
1:33
special for the family. She would never
1:35
miss such an important day. But
1:37
three days later when Christmas finally
1:39
arrives, Bethan has vanished,
1:42
and her children are desperate for her
1:44
to return. I'm
1:53
Steve French, and this is unsolved
1:56
mysteries. Missing for
1:58
Christmas.
2:08
December twenty second nineteen ninety
2:10
seven is a cold and quiet morning
2:12
at the Des Moines Iowa home of Beth Anne Rickett
2:15
and her two children, Shonda and Jonathan.
2:18
Shonda knows her mother was in home because
2:20
she saw her leave earlier, so she's
2:22
surprised when at about ten AM,
2:24
her mother's boyfriend, Bill, comes
2:26
into the
2:26
house. I'm
2:30
making a bowl of frosted flakes. I'm sitting there.
2:32
Eating it and
2:35
all of a sudden the door
2:36
opens, so it's Bill. And
2:39
he's like, hey, I need you and Jonathan to
2:41
get ready. We're going to Gina's house
2:43
because, you know, my mom slipped on the ice and I gotta
2:45
take her to the hospital. And I was
2:47
like, What?
2:50
And he comes over to me and he's like, get
2:52
this stuff ready now.
2:55
And
2:56
I just remember being like, Oh my god.
2:58
I'm really scared. Okay. I
3:01
go and I wake up my brother and
3:03
get him dressed. And Bill is
3:05
frantic. He's up and down the stairs. I've been downstairs. I've
3:07
been downstairs outside backboard back and forth.
3:10
And he's like hurry up. Hurry up.
3:12
I'm just like, I'm hurrying.
3:15
Shonda and Jonathan are terrified as
3:17
they climb into Bill's car. Their mother
3:19
has never allowed them to ride with anyone
3:21
but
3:21
her. And the two children have never
3:23
been alone with Bill. I
3:26
just remember looking at my brother and
3:29
my little brother is just Do you're in the head light
3:31
sitting in the back seat just like, what
3:33
is going on? You could tell he
3:35
was just so scared. He was stiff.
3:37
And I'm
3:38
like, okay. He's scared. Scared. I'm
3:40
scared. This is abnormal. Shonda's
3:46
relieved to find out that Bill is taking
3:48
them to the home of Paul and Gina Christian.
3:50
Gina is Beth's closest friend
3:53
and the family spent a lot of time together.
3:56
Bill called on the
3:59
morning of December twenty second,
4:01
and he was very frantic. And
4:04
loud. Isn't that supposed to come out there
4:06
today to cut your hair? And I'm like, yes, we're
4:08
gonna have our Christmas leader. And
4:10
he's like, I have a family emergency,
4:13
and can you take the kids? I'm
4:15
like, sure, bring the kids out to me. And
4:19
when they got there,
4:21
Lishanda pretty much rammed
4:23
me. She just grabbed me
4:25
and she was scared. And
4:28
I was asking what is going
4:30
on and the show that was
4:33
telling me that she was scared
4:35
something's not right. I
4:37
start balling. I just
4:39
can't stop crying, and I am just
4:41
losing my stuff. And she's just
4:43
like, hey, calm down. It's okay. You're safe
4:45
now. I calmed
4:47
them down, I fed them.
4:50
We just did, you know,
4:52
silly family stuff that we do.
4:56
Beth, who's a hairstylist, is
4:58
supposed to be Gina's house at six thirty
5:00
to cut Gina's hair, but dinner
5:03
time comes and
5:03
goes, and Beth never shows up
5:05
or calls. I
5:09
tried to call anybody and everybody that
5:11
I could think of, hey, have you heard from
5:13
pests? Oh, okay.
5:15
As the evening were on and it got
5:17
dark. And in Iowa,
5:19
it is so cold. So
5:21
then you've got cold dark,
5:24
scary, no word
5:27
which is completely
5:30
unlike Beth. I started
5:32
getting really, really worried, but
5:34
I tried not to let
5:36
the kids know how
5:38
worried I was because I was trying
5:40
to keep them
5:41
calm. Lashonda was already worried
5:43
enough. No
5:45
one knows Beth better than Gina.
5:47
They met in nineteen ninety two when
5:50
they were both living in Midwest
5:51
City, Oklahoma, and the two hit
5:53
it off immediately. She
5:56
was contagious. Always
5:58
bright bright bright bright smile, very
6:01
upbeat, very
6:03
funny, very smart. The
6:07
hugest heart, and she didn't
6:09
even know a stranger. Trust me.
6:11
And everybody loved her. She was one of those people
6:13
that, you know, she walked into a room
6:15
and she led up the room just
6:18
with her smile and her personality. She
6:20
was great. Methian
6:23
was an amazing mom.
6:25
Amazing. Her kids
6:27
were first. She
6:29
loved them unconditionally. They
6:32
were her first thought.
6:38
Beth married young and had Shonda
6:41
right away. That marriage
6:43
didn't work out, but then a few years
6:45
later, She made a long haul trucker
6:47
named Ken Rickett, and it was love
6:49
at first sight. They got married
6:51
and soon Jonathan was born. When
6:53
he was six months old, the family moved
6:55
to Des Moines where a new Firestone Tire
6:57
Plant was hiring workers, and both
6:59
Beth and Ken got jobs there. Beth's
7:01
best friend Gina followed a few months
7:03
later. For a short time, their life
7:05
in Iowa was good. But after a
7:07
few years, Beth and Ken's marriage fell
7:09
apart. Because of Ken's growing
7:11
addiction to drugs. Ken
7:15
had a temper, especially
7:17
when he was doing drugs. And
7:20
that was a problem for him. He
7:23
was trying to get clean. I will
7:25
say that, but it wasn't going well. But
7:28
She was always the optimist that,
7:31
okay, I'm gonna help him. You
7:33
know, she's everybody's cheerleader.
7:38
Even after they separated, Beth and
7:40
Ken still maintained a friendly relationship.
7:43
Ken regularly saw the kids
7:45
and they both continued to work at the Firestone
7:47
plan. And that's where Beth
7:49
meets Bill, who's fifteen years
7:51
her senior. It's a classic case
7:53
of opposites attract, Beth
7:55
is bubbly and vivacious, and
7:57
Bill is serious and reserved. As
7:59
they begin to
8:00
date, Shonda notices a change in
8:02
her mother's behavior. Bill
8:05
shows up in the
8:07
whole, like, demeanor changes
8:09
and, like, the whole atmosphere kinda changed.
8:12
From like this happy, getting mood
8:14
to just very serious and
8:16
stoic. I just
8:18
found it so strange because my
8:20
mom loves to go out dancing. You
8:22
know, she loves going dancing.
8:25
So then now you're going from that
8:27
type of like being able to have that
8:29
freedom and go have fun and laugh and
8:31
dance and be with your friends too. We're
8:33
never leaving the house. You stay
8:35
home the entire time. He brings over
8:37
dinner. You know, don't even go out to eat and
8:39
you just sit here and watch movies at the
8:41
house.
8:43
I had told
8:45
her We've got to figure out what's going on with
8:47
this guy. Something is
8:49
not right. I mean, this isn't right. Why
8:51
is he not taking you out? Why is he not
8:54
introducing you to friends? I
8:56
mean, two years to why haven't you met
8:58
any family? Why haven't you
9:00
met anybody? She
9:02
was just kinda like under his
9:04
spell, you know, And eventually, their
9:07
personalities are gonna kinda clash.
9:11
After two years, Bill asks Beth
9:13
to marry him and they become engaged.
9:15
But by December nineteen ninety
9:17
seven, their relationship has become
9:19
strained and their issues come to
9:21
a head on December twenty first. The
9:23
night before Beth goes missing.
9:27
I just remember my brother and I were kind
9:30
of being annoying like siblings
9:32
do. I I sent to my room
9:34
and I stomped up the
9:36
stairs. And I told her I hated
9:38
her.
9:40
And I stayed in my room for the rest of the
9:43
night. You know, that's the
9:45
last conversation.
9:46
That I ever had with her. I
9:49
didn't mean it. I was just
9:50
a little punk kid, but
9:52
I can't believe I said that, you know.
9:55
The
9:56
next morning, you know, I wake up. And
9:59
I see my mom in the bathroom
10:01
getting ready. And
10:03
I wanted go tell her. I was sorry, you know, I wanted to
10:05
tell her I loved her and I wanted to go
10:07
talk to her and Bill would not let me talk to
10:09
her. He was like, no, you need to
10:11
go back bed, it's way too early for you
10:13
to give. It's five:thirty in the
10:14
morning, you need to go lay
10:16
down. He comes back
10:18
in the room with little alarm clock and he's
10:20
like, you can't get out of bed
10:22
until nine thirty. But
10:24
I was just so upset that he wouldn't even let
10:26
me tell her that I
10:28
was sorry or, like, I'd love her or any of
10:31
that. About
10:35
an hour later, Beth and Bill are in the
10:37
entry way preparing to leave for the
10:39
day when a defiant chonda
10:41
sneaks down the
10:42
stairs. I
10:45
am in the hallway listening
10:47
to their conversation. They're
10:49
about to go eat at Perkins, like
10:51
breakfast place. And I hear them kiss and
10:53
then they walk out and
10:55
they take separate cars.
10:58
So he pulls out of the driveway first,
11:00
and then she pulled out of the driveway. It
11:02
goes to the stop sign, and that's the last
11:04
time I ever saw her my
11:06
whole life.
11:09
It's later that morning that Bill
11:11
returns to Beth's home and takes
11:13
Shonda and Jonathan to Gena's house where
11:15
they wait all day and night for
11:17
Beth to show up. I
11:19
get everybody tucked in and
11:22
calmed down, and
11:25
I called the
11:25
police. And tried to report
11:28
Beth as missing.
11:29
I tried to explain to them she
11:32
would never leave her
11:34
children
11:35
ever. She would have at
11:37
least called me
11:39
and said she was running late
11:41
besides
11:41
out. She had already
11:44
planned all these things.
11:46
That giant, giant Christmas.
11:50
For her? No. No. She would have
11:52
never done that to children ever.
11:55
But the police won't hear
11:57
it because they said
11:59
that, you know, she's a grown doll.
12:01
We have to wait forty eight hours
12:03
before we can even think of
12:06
doing something like that.
12:09
What Gina doesn't know yet is that
12:11
on December twenty second, about eight
12:14
hours after Beth was last seen driving
12:16
away, The Des Moines Fire
12:18
Department responded to a report of a
12:20
House Fire at Beth's
12:21
home. This seemed
12:24
to be contained to the bedroom
12:26
that was Beth Ann's bedroom. Paul
12:29
Parasek is a sergeant with the Des Moines,
12:31
Iowa Police Department. The actual cause
12:33
and the source of the fire was never really to be
12:35
determined. It was undetermined origin.
12:38
When you look at the photographs, it's
12:40
very difficult to tell you can see that what was
12:42
burned burned
12:42
intensely, but it's difficult to
12:45
see from those photographs where it actually
12:47
started. The next morning
12:49
when a local TV station broadcast
12:51
a story about the fire at Beth's
12:53
home, Gina tries once
12:55
again to get law enforcement
12:56
involved. Our duplex
12:58
showed up on the neos, and that's when Gina was like,
13:00
you know what? I'm calling the cops.
13:03
She calls them and hey, their house was just on
13:05
the news burning down. So
13:07
can I go ahead and make a police report? Because
13:09
the mother has not contacted
13:10
us. A missing
13:13
person's case is finally opened,
13:15
and Beth's husband Ken is the first
13:17
person that police want to talk to. They
13:19
know he was at Beth's house the day of her disappearance
13:22
because firefighters discovered an angry
13:24
note he left hanging on her front
13:25
door. He was upset because no one was
13:28
home when he came by to take the kids to
13:30
a friend's birthday party. Once
13:32
we made contact with the
13:34
ex husband, It became pretty obvious to us that he
13:36
was not involved. He seemed very
13:38
genuine in his concern. His
13:40
behaviors didn't indicate to us
13:42
at all that he had any knowledge about
13:44
what it
13:44
happened. By midday on
13:46
Christmas Eve, Beth is still missing,
13:48
and Gina feels that not enough is
13:50
being done to find her. So she
13:52
calls local TV reporters and begs
13:54
them to spread the word about her friend's
13:56
disappearance and the mysterious fire.
14:00
That night, all
14:03
four TV stations in Des Moines,
14:05
Iowa had a
14:07
story on this missing mother
14:11
And after the first, you know,
14:13
the early edition of the news
14:14
hit, I get a call from
14:17
the detective. The detective
14:19
tells Gina that the Des Moines Police
14:21
Department has received an angry call
14:23
from Beth's fiance,
14:24
Bill. He's very upset that
14:27
been reported missing and
14:29
he said she's not missing. She's
14:31
very mad. She's called me.
14:33
She's called me a bunch of names. She cussed me
14:35
out. She doesn't know why we're doing
14:37
this tour. And the
14:39
detective who took that call at that time
14:41
actually canceled out the
14:42
case. And indicated that she was not missing.
14:45
Bill told the detective that Beth just
14:47
wanted to go away and be by
14:49
herself for a while to work some things
14:51
out. And he claimed to be in touch
14:53
with
14:53
her. They closed the case. They said,
14:56
oh, she's fine. I kept
14:58
trying to tell them no. She is
15:00
missing. This is not right and that's why I was so
15:02
frustrated because I did not feel like anybody was
15:04
listening to me. And I knew
15:06
for a fact something was terribly
15:08
wrong.
15:11
Officially one hour until your favorite
15:13
show premieres. Time to get some snacks
15:15
delivered through Instacart. Okay. Hey,
15:18
let's get some popcorn seltzer,
15:20
chocolate covered almonds, and oh,
15:22
wait, did they release the whole
15:24
season? Better cut some ice cream
15:26
for the two part finale. When your
15:28
day should be ending, but a new season is
15:30
starting, the world is
15:32
your cart. Visit instacart dot
15:34
com or download the app and get free delivery
15:36
on your first
15:36
order. Offer valid for a limited time.
15:39
Minimum order ten dollars. Additional
15:41
term supply. Gina
15:44
is convinced that Beth has met with
15:47
foul play because she knows
15:49
things about Beth and Bill's relationship that
15:51
no one else
15:51
knows. If she had
15:54
this conversation with me, this long
15:56
conversation about
15:58
how she was scared of Bill.
16:00
One of the people at the
16:02
factory came and told
16:04
her that he was on probation.
16:07
She didn't know this at all. And when
16:09
she confronted him with it, come
16:12
to find out he had
16:14
been on federal probation for
16:16
trying to rob a bank.
16:19
Gina is suspicious that Beth's
16:21
disappearance could be financially motivated
16:23
because Beth had recently come into
16:25
a large amount of money as the result of
16:27
a workplace injury
16:28
settlement. My mom
16:31
got at work and went to the doctor and the
16:33
doctor wrote a note and was like,
16:35
don't lift over ten pounds for right now and
16:37
let it heal and we'll check back on you and
16:39
then we'll let you know. She gives
16:41
the note to her supervisor.
16:43
And the supervisor was like, I don't know what to
16:45
tell you, we're short handed. You have to go here.
16:47
She goes in there. They're doing
16:49
their jobs and all of a sudden a
16:51
chain broke. The
16:53
tire fell off of the
16:55
assembly line and rolled on top of
16:57
her
16:57
body. The
16:59
financial settlement that Beth received gave her
17:01
enough money to upgrade her family's
17:03
lifestyle. She
17:05
was excited to just changed
17:08
our lives. And she was ready to
17:10
be like, okay, we're gonna have a really good life,
17:12
and we're actually gonna be able to do stuff, and we're gonna be
17:14
able to go on vacations. And
17:17
she was like, we're gonna find a place
17:19
to live. We're gonna find a
17:21
house. So she was just so excited
17:23
about being able to do
17:24
that.
17:24
I had never really seen my mom
17:27
like that. So I just
17:29
remember looking at her and being
17:30
like, oh, she's just really,
17:32
really happy person.
17:34
She had talked about trying
17:37
to take that money and
17:39
do a salon again.
17:41
She was so excited
17:44
about moving forward in
17:46
life and giving her kids
17:48
this giant Christmas that she hadn't
17:50
been able to do in years.
17:51
She was
17:53
Christmas shopping left and right,
17:55
buying all this stuff night everywhere she went downstairs
17:57
one day, and she said, you guys are
17:59
gonna love Christmas. You're gonna be
18:01
so happy. You're just gonna it's gonna
18:03
be
18:03
amazing. You're just gonna love Christmas. Bill,
18:08
however, had different plans for how
18:10
Beth should spend her settlement
18:11
money. He tried to get her
18:14
to get, like, a joint bank account
18:16
and he kept pushing and pushing, well,
18:18
if we're gonna be a team, you know, I
18:20
need to be on her new car and
18:23
she didn't feel comfortable with that. And
18:25
that's when he decided he was gonna
18:27
marry her and he loved
18:30
her Against her better
18:32
judgment, Beth agrees to put
18:34
Bill's name on her new car, but then
18:36
Beth discovers that besides her
18:38
fiance's arrest for bankruptcy, Bill
18:40
has another shocking skeleton hidden in his
18:43
closet. She
18:45
finds out he was married.
18:49
He
18:49
had an entire relationship
18:51
with someone else. He was
18:54
living a double life. She
18:56
was seriously, like, heartbroken over that. She was just like,
18:58
you know, I'm done with this. I don't wanna be with this
19:00
person anymore.
19:01
When she disappeared, she was in
19:04
the middle of trying to get rid of
19:06
it. And she told me if
19:08
anything happens to me, you
19:10
need to look at him real
19:12
close. You need to know, I don't trust
19:14
him. I'm scared of him.
19:18
Gina tells police about Beth's rocky
19:20
relationship with Bill.
19:22
Arguing that Beth is not fine despite
19:24
what Bill is saying. She tells them
19:26
about the settlement money that Beth kept in a
19:28
cash box in her bedroom. The
19:30
only room that caught fire the day she disappeared. And
19:33
why has no one seen Beth for days?
19:35
Why hasn't she contacted anyone,
19:38
especially her children? Police
19:40
finally agree that the circumstances
19:42
are suspicious and reopen Beth's
19:44
case as a possible
19:45
homicide, and they focus on
19:48
Bill. As a person of interest.
19:50
Once we ruled
19:51
out the ex husband, you start looking
19:53
at the fiance.
19:56
When you started looking at some of his behaviors that
19:58
really raised the red flag, the calling
20:00
in and saying that she contacted him and
20:02
she was mad about being a missing person.
20:04
She didn't get a hold of us, and
20:07
it just got even worse as
20:09
it went on. Over a
20:11
period of six or seven days,
20:13
And this is after this, she has gone missing.
20:16
He reports to us that he saw
20:18
her. He said that he had physical
20:20
contact with her either were he couldn't remember if it was
20:22
December thirtieth or December 31st,
20:25
and that she was kinda gathering
20:27
her thoughts, trying to figure out what she was going
20:29
to do, And he said that he was not
20:31
surprised to see that Beth was gone for
20:33
days, but he was only surprised that she didn't take
20:35
the kids with her. But he
20:37
offered us no guidance
20:39
suggestion or help and where we could
20:41
go and confirm that she was
20:43
okay. And he could offer up no
20:45
explanation as to why she wouldn't contact
20:47
anyone. And why he was the only person who had seen
20:48
her. Also, another
20:51
red flag. In early January,
20:53
he had taken both
20:56
his car and the car that
20:58
Beth Ann was last seen driving and
21:00
taking them to a car dealership traded both of them
21:02
in and got a new
21:02
car. There's a couple of questions
21:05
that come to your mind right away. Why did you
21:07
trade in both your cars? And
21:09
if Beth is okay and she's moving
21:10
around, how is she getting around? Within
21:14
a few days, Police find Beth's
21:17
car at the dealership that bought it from
21:18
Bill. We impounded it. We
21:21
examined it for evidence. that
21:23
time, the car had been detailed and
21:25
prepped for sale, so it had
21:27
been shampooed and vacuumed and
21:29
polished. There was nothing of
21:32
any significant evidentiary value.
21:34
Police
21:35
have many questions for Bill
21:37
and they invite him down to the station
21:39
for a formal interview. There
21:42
was one point where he said that he
21:44
was gonna come in and he didn't show
21:46
up. There was some follow-up done with
21:48
his probation officer who also indicated
21:50
to us that the fiance had no
21:52
intention of showing up. And then that's
21:54
when we lose contact with him.
21:56
As time went on
21:59
and new cases come in
22:01
and he slips, you know, from
22:03
the limelight here in Des Moines, he
22:05
was able to avoid ever going
22:07
face to face with us. That looks
22:09
like the behavior of someone who's trying
22:11
to hide something. As does a fire in
22:13
a home.
22:16
Despite all the suspicious circumstances,
22:19
there's not enough evidence to file
22:21
charges against
22:22
bill. And there are only theories about
22:24
why he might have wanted to harm path.
22:27
Motive is one thing that is often
22:29
very difficult to identify There's a
22:31
couple different theories here. One was
22:33
that it was about the
22:35
money. Another theory is that Beth had
22:37
become savvy to the fact that there were
22:39
other women in his life That is a potential
22:41
motive also to silence
22:42
her. With Beth still missing,
22:45
reluctantly Gina and Paul turned
22:47
Shonda and Jonathan over to
22:49
Ken Rickett on Christmas day.
22:51
Then because he was unable to care for the
22:53
kids, they were sent to live with other
22:55
members of Ken's
22:55
family, which added more misery
22:58
to an already tragic situation. The
23:00
people that we ended
23:02
up having to be with down here in
23:04
Oklahoma, you know, would make cruel
23:07
remarks, like, your mom's not
23:10
missing. She drove to a lake and stabbed
23:12
herself to get away from you,
23:14
like, you know, just awful awful
23:16
things. And so for the
23:18
longest time, I was
23:19
just, like, and
23:19
saw my fault. I
23:22
drove my mom away and it
23:24
was yeah.
23:26
I thought she was still
23:29
alive for a long time. I
23:31
really thought she
23:33
was just taking a break and
23:36
she'd just drive down the driveway one
23:38
day and come get us and
23:40
I wouldn't even be mad at her. I'd forgive her
23:43
and move on.
23:45
And I would just be happy that she's
23:47
back. And I think I held
23:49
up that hope for about five years
23:51
after her
23:51
disappearance. I think after the
23:54
fifth year, I was just done.
24:00
It's tough to stick with workout routines and making
24:02
time to hit the gym is sometimes even
24:04
harder. That's why Peloton offers options
24:06
that fit into your day with
24:09
thousands of on demand classes so you
24:11
can work out what is right for you.
24:13
Peloton goes beyond just the bike,
24:15
offering classes like yoga strength
24:17
training, hit, and boxing. Let
24:19
Peloton help you achieve your fitness
24:21
goals. Try Peloton risk free with a
24:23
thirty day home trial. New members only, not
24:25
of available in remote location. See additional terms
24:27
at one peloton dot com slash
24:30
home trial.
24:32
Almost twenty five years later,
24:34
Beth's disappearance remains an
24:36
open investigation, and detectives are
24:38
still hopeful they can bring this case
24:40
to a
24:41
close. At
24:43
this point,
24:43
we don't believe that she's alive.
24:45
What we
24:47
wanna do is put
24:49
the effort in to see what we can do to find best
24:52
fighting. I
24:52
was just speaking to our cadaver dog folks
24:55
that helped us out on another case
24:58
and I learned that their dogs can smell bones that are three hundred
25:00
years
25:00
old. So we've got a lot of
25:03
resources that are available to us once
25:05
we figure out where we wanna start
25:06
looking. We also want to go and we want to
25:09
find people who were there then,
25:11
people who knew Beth then, who think
25:13
they maybe have some
25:15
information or they might know something or maybe
25:17
they saw something or maybe they've thought about
25:19
this for years and didn't think it was
25:20
something, we want them to reach out
25:23
to us. For Shonda
25:27
and Jonathan losing their mother during
25:29
what was always the happiest time of the
25:31
year for the family, has had a lifelong
25:34
impact on their Christmas holidays. I
25:39
hated Christmas. I
25:41
hated it so much.
25:42
But I had to get over
25:44
that because I have a
25:47
baby. So I just
25:49
kinda take page out of my mom's book
25:51
and I played Christmas as special as I
25:53
possibly can and, you know,
25:55
my little kid actually loves Christmas.
25:57
He freaking loves
25:59
Christmas. He's
26:02
restored Christmas.
26:04
Yeah. My little
26:04
boy has restored Christmas. Every
26:09
December twenty second, I
26:12
will buy a big white kindle every year,
26:15
and I light it
26:18
every year. Because I'm never gonna
26:20
give up looking for her even
26:22
if it's just to put
26:24
her to rest. I just wanna
26:26
find her so we can get
26:28
some kind of closure because come
26:31
December, it will be twenty five years
26:33
ago that she
26:34
disappeared. And somebody
26:36
knows something. Last
26:41
week at church, they were talking
26:43
about forgiveness.
26:45
And I
26:45
cried the whole sermon.
26:47
No one
26:49
will ever understand. What
26:52
it's like to
26:53
pray over the person that killed your
26:56
peer. You pray over
26:58
their protection so that what day?
27:00
You can sit in a courtroom,
27:02
see justice
27:03
served. So you
27:06
have to pray
27:06
for them to be safe
27:09
so that you can someday sit
27:12
there and hear
27:14
justice for your parent
27:16
that
27:16
was taken from you. Because
27:21
that's what needs to happen. And
27:23
it's
27:23
not fair. When I start
27:25
fair. I did that. But
27:28
it's time to get justice from
27:30
what they've done
27:31
so that
27:32
we could have peace.
27:35
So that we can move on.
27:43
Beth and
27:47
Rickets disappeared
27:50
in Des Moines, Iowa onto December
27:52
twenty second nineteen ninety seven. If you
27:54
have any information about this case,
27:57
please contact the crimestoppers of
27:59
Central Iowa. At
28:01
515223
28:03
fourteen hundred. Leave a tip on
28:05
their website, WWW dot
28:07
crime stoppers of central iowa dot
28:10
com or submit a tip at
28:12
unsolved dot com. Next,
28:15
on unsolved mysteries. Imagination is
28:18
one thing, but you can't
28:20
imagine things moving in the air
28:22
across the room. You can't
28:24
imagine things being broken
28:26
right in front of you. It's one thing
28:29
to say imagination if it's
28:31
just one person, but when
28:33
you have forty, fifty, sixty
28:35
people who all have had
28:37
experiences. It's hard to say
28:39
imagination at that point. Unsold
28:41
mysteries is a production of Cosgrove Miro
28:43
productions and Cadence Thirteen, an
28:45
odyssey company. It is executive produced
28:47
by Terry Dunn Miro and Chris Corcoran.
28:51
Produced by Christine Lennig, Courtney
28:53
Annis, and Bill Schultz. The story
28:55
producer for this episode was Ann Toller,
28:57
and it was edited by Robert Wise.
28:59
From Cadence thirteen, editing, mixing, and mastering
29:01
by Chris Basil and Andy
Podchaser is the ultimate destination for podcast data, search, and discovery. Learn More