The Happy Face Killer’s Unknown Victim – Patricia Skiple | Show Notes

The Happy Face Killer’s Unknown Victim – Patricia Skiple | Part 1 of 1 | Tuesday August 16, 2022

The Happy Face Killer’s Unknown Victim – Patricia Skiple | Part 2 of 2 | Tuesday August 30, 2022

We have all heard about those rare murder cases where a suspect is charged and convicted of murder, even though the victim’s body, was never found.

There is another side of this case coin: a body, a suspect and a firm conviction in court, without knowing who this unidentified Jane Doe is

It opens up another tragic tale that somewhere, someone is missing a family member or friend, who appeared to disappear.  Add a few decades to this mystery, and it feel hopeless to even think about it.

Of course the convicted suspect is known, a serial killer coined The Happy Face Killer named Keith Hunter Jesperson.

This is the story of Patricia ‘Patsy’ Skiple, that was known as ‘Blue Pacheco’ to her Cold Case investigator, Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano, with the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office in California.

With Cat’s help, we tell the story in two parts of the painstaking and detailed investigation that took place to ultimately return Patsy’s name, and provide answers to her family, using DNA in a fairly new light.

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Show Transcripts

Part 1 of 2

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

There was a female who was found on the side of a roadway. This particular person was found off of Pacheco Pass in unincorporated Gilroy. Pacheco Pass is also known as California state route 152.

Announcer:

Warning. The podcast you’re about to listen to may contain graphic descriptions of violent assaults, murder, and adult language. Listener discretion is advised.

Wendy Lyons:

Welcome to the Murder Police Podcast, the Happy Face Killer’s Unknown Victim, Patricia Skipple, Part 1 of 2.

Wendy Lyons:

Welcome back to the Murder Police Podcast. I am Wendy.

David Lyons:

And I’m David.

Wendy Lyons:

Well, David, why don’t you share with our listeners what this episode is about.

David Lyons:

Another deep dive into a murder case. We’re going to talk about the well known Happy Face killer in California and the fact that he had a victim that nobody knew who it was for decades. We always hear about those cases where you have nobody and we make a prosecution. This was maybe just as tragic in the idea that they have a body, they have a suspect, they convict him, they put him in prison, but it took decades to identify. And we’re going to take the listeners to what it’s like to talk to the Sergeant Cat Catalano, with the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s office, about how much work goes in to identifying somebody that we don’t know.

Wendy Lyons:

Ironically, as you and, well, everyone know, I’m such a true crime enthusiast. They had just put on Hulu, not long before we did this, episodes on the Happy Face killer. And at that time, I didn’t know we were going to be bringing this on, but I did go back and watch that. And at this time when this aired, they had not released who Patricia Skipple was. So it was neat doing the podcast and then going back and watching it again. And knowing that the officers talked about unknown victims that he didn’t release or maybe he didn’t know their names, but knowing that we knew part of that puzzle, thanks to Cat sharing this with us.

David Lyons:

Exactly. I think that’s why I was excited we got to meet the lead detective that was part of a large team responsible for the last few decades. And so let’s let the listeners hear how much work goes in the background for something that we just see as a news headline one day.

Wendy Lyons:

All right. Awesome. Well, let’s get into it.

Wendy Lyons:

Welcome to the Murder Police Podcast. Today we are talking with Cat with Santa Clara County Sheriff’s office, and we are going to be discussing the 1993 murder of Patricia Skipple, also known as Patsy.

David Lyons:

Cat, go ahead and let us and the audience know exactly who you are aside from Cat, and where you are and what you do.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

For them. Yeah, I’m Shannon Catalano. I’m currently a detective Sergeant with the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s office. I am assigned to oversee the human trafficking unit and to homicide. As a collateral duty, I also am a member of our crime scene investigators team. I work CSI as well.

David Lyons:

Gotcha. How long have you been in law enforcement, Cat?

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

I started with the sheriff’s office about 14 years ago. It will be 15 years coming up this September. And aside from working at the sheriff’s office, I married my best friend, Steven Catalano about 14 years ago as well. Thankfully, he does not work in this field. He works in something totally different, he’s a chef. But we met back when I was in graduate school at Loyola University in Chicago. We have three kids. So Jackson is our oldest and Tyler’s our middle and Wyatt is our youngest. Jackson likes to play chess. Tyler’s a dancer. She just won the Grand National Champion Titleship this year. And my little one’s starting his first season of football. So he’s really excited about that. We’re busy.

David Lyons:

Needless to stay you…. I was going to say you definitely stay busy.

Wendy Lyons:

Stay busy. And at least, hey, you’ve got somebody to cook dinner for you so that’s always a bonus.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

All the time. That’s true. Anything you want, he can make it so that’s always great.

David Lyons:

Nice. What got you interested in law enforcement?

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Well, I think that one of the things that I find be really rewarding about law enforcement in general is that we are able to do something small every day and it’s something different every day. And ultimately, those little small actions can end up having a really big impact on other people’s lives. There’s not a lot of professions that offer that opportunity time and time again. I feel like that is the reason why I wanted to get into law enforcement. I feel like that’s the way I like to live my life, just doing small things that have a positive effect for other people. This job allows me to do that over and over again. Every day, the job gives back tenfold what you put in.

David Lyons:

Agreed. And I love the analogy with the small things, because a lot of people that get interested from watching maybe cops or one of the live police shows is I don’t think they understand that you’re going to move the world maybe in tiny ways instead of giant ones.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Definitely.

David Lyons:

I think it makes a healthier… Yeah, I think you’re a healthier cop if you come on board knowing that it’s going to be small increments instead of life saving things every day, because otherwise it’s kind of boring, right?

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Yeah.

Wendy Lyons:

Well, Cat, why don’t you tell us a little bit about what this case is all about? As I said, it’s from 1993. So why don’t you dig in a little deeper and give us some back history on it?

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Sure. To me, this case, and I think to our agency as a whole, that this case is really all about the pursuit of pursuing and just really being persistent in order to give a family answers about what happened to their loved one. For this case, we didn’t know, as we were investigating it, who this person was, who this woman was, but we knew she was someone’s daughter. And we were really interested in trying to figure out who this victim was and ultimately wanted to give her name back. For this case, it was all about not settling for her to forever be called Jane Doe.

Wendy Lyons:

Well, let me rewind a little and tell our listeners because I’m sure if I’m thinking this, they likely are thinking the same. Tell us a little history on where she was found, how she was found. Did someone stumble upon her? What made her become this unknown Jane Doe?

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Yeah. So this case happened back in 1993. There was a female who was found on the side of a roadway. At that time, I would’ve been about 10 years old. So it’s pretty astonishing to think about the time difference. This particular person was found off of Pacheco Pass in unincorporated Gilroy. Pacheco Pass is also known as California state route 152. I actually grew up in Gilroy in that town where she was found. A person who was driving truck of their own, who stopped on the side of the roadway, discovered this person back in June of 1993, on June 3rd. At the time, she was clad in blue clothing. Later when I started working on this case, that’s how I came to call this case with my agency Blue Pacheco.

Wendy Lyons:

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David Lyons:

Do you have any idea what happened with the case prior to you getting hold of it? And then of course we’d like to know how you got involved. But do you have any idea what efforts were made or how time passed in all that time before you got hold of it?

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

This was a case where the Sheriff’s office never stopped pursuing this case. It was handed from detective after detective, after detective even as time passed by to where nobody was stopping their efforts to try to figure out who this person was. The history of this case is many sketch artists’ renditions being completed and shown to people throughout several law enforcement agencies and members of the community. It included several detectives speaking with the public and with media outlets to try to raise awareness for this case. And ultimately this case had 26 years of work put into it before I ever started working on the case. I was only able to be successful in this case because of all the hard work of the detectives, the civilians, the patrol officers and death investigators and everybody else that came before me. Ultimately, this case is unique because in 1994 there was kind of a break in the case. So I can talk about that too.

David Lyons:

Oh, absolutely. And how encouraging to the family to know that despite being passed on from detective to detective, that it still had all that focus, because that’s a huge thing for victims’ families. The more time goes on, the more hopeless I think things get. We’re actually good friends with somebody, I believe, from a two year old murder in our what? Fifth or sixth detective now, I believe.

Wendy Lyons:

Seventh.

David Lyons:

Seventh. Yeah, because of the turnover in law enforcement plays a big role in that right now in the current era were in. But what a fantastic message and hope for people that are out there listening is it. Just because we don’t hear anything doesn’t mean there’s not efforts going on.

Wendy Lyons:

When she was found, when this victim was found, was it obvious what the method of death was? Did it look like she had been hit by a car? Or she had been shot? She had been… What was the perceived method of death at that time? And secondly, was there any missing persons filed? Were people looking? Did she match a missing Jane Doe?? Or was it just truly nothing was known about her until this break in this case?

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

It wasn’t apparent how she died when she was found. There were several persons of interest who detectives tried to compare who we had found with other missing persons, but ultimately all of those leads led to no identifications. So there weren’t any missing persons who ended up being thought to be our Jane Doe. Although the detectives at the time looked at several potential missing persons to see if they were a fit, and they were not.

David Lyons:

And I’d have to add too back then that record keeping databases, the things we take for granted these days, just didn’t exist. And methods of communication were not very sophisticated at all. And that always made that difficult back when she was found too.

Wendy Lyons:

So in ’94 you had a slight break. What was that?

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

We didn’t know it at the time. Our agency didn’t know it for sure at the time. But back in 1994, an Oregon newspaper ended up running a five part series called the Happy Face Serial Killer. An anonymous letter writer claimed to have committed five murders throughout the west. And four of those five cases were unsolved. And the case that was “solved” was later determined to have two wrongfully convicted persons charged with one of the homicides. And this Happy Face serial killer signed his anonymous letters with a Happy Face symbol, which is how he was dubbed the name Happy Face serial killer. It was later determined that that person was an individual by the name of Keith Hunter Jesperson. And that was kind of the beginning of determining who was responsible for the homicide of our Jane Doe.

David Lyons:

Tell us more. How did it evolve from there?

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

So there were some things that you mentioned previously about the communications being different back then versus now in 2022. Back then, there was a lot of communication between that newspaper and between the law enforcement agencies that these anonymous letters had associations with. And ultimately, there were some things that were disclosed that were unique to the case that were not available to the public down the road, where Jesperson wrote a letter to our district attorney, eventually describing how he murdered our Jane Doe and again providing those unique details about the killing that weren’t available to the public. And ultimately, he ended up being charged in her death. So that’s another thing that’s really unique about this case, is that we have a conviction. It was several years later that conviction occurred. He wasn’t convicted of homicide until July 27th back in 2007. After that conviction, he still was not able to disclose the name of our Jane Doe and she remained a Jane Doe.

David Lyons:

That’s got to be kind of frustrating. On the one side, you get a conviction, but on the other side, like we’d started out with, you have a family somewhere that has no idea, that has no idea who this is or what their fate was.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

When I got assigned to the Detective Bureau, that was in 2015 when I first started, and I started kind of as a general detective. I worked in a general crimes assignment, but I did have a unique opportunity to work under another Sergeant, Rick Alanis. He was my supervisor who kind of schooled me up on cold cases and how to work cold cases initially. He really unraveled the case of Arlis Perry, who was killed at the Stanford Memorial Church back in the ’70s. And that unique opportunity kind of prepared me for this case. After working with him and in general crimes, I got moved up north to the major crimes unit and eventually and the homicide unit. While I was working CSI, I also had another unique opportunity to work with Sergeant Noe Cortez who also resolved and untangled the case of Leslie Perloff, which was another homicide, which was done by a serial killer of a Stanford graduate.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

So both of those two cases really prepared me for when I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to work cold case. When I was reviewing this cold case in particular, that really bothered me that there was a conviction of this prolific serial killer and we still didn’t have the name of the person who he actually killed. And just in my heart, I felt like we had to do everything possible to just exhaust every option to really determine who Blue Pacheco was and we couldn’t give up or stop until we did. And I feel there was a lot of detectives that came before me that felt that exact same way.

David Lyons:

I’m sure there’s probably several in retirement that probably think of it often. Some of them just stick with you, I think. They just stick with you. Just real quick, because you talked about being fortunate enough to go to cold case, which I’m jealous. I always said that if I was going to go back one day, which is not likely, but if I was, it would be to maybe work cold cases with some of the people I used to work with in the old days. Are there any of the basic premises about cold case investigation that stand out to you that might be different than picking up a regular case that’s just happened?

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Definitely. I think cold cases are unique because people call them cold cases. But I don’t like to think of them as cold cases. I like to think of them as open cases, because a lot of times the information that you need are living in the files and the evidence that you have. And that’s not always, but sometimes. And things that are different when you’re working these open cases are that, somebody… If you just think about who you were as a human, 30 years ago versus now, you might be a completely different person. And the willingness or the cooperativeness of some of the people who are involved in investigations back when a case initially occurred might have been different than it is now.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

So all of these open cases are ones that are true opportunities to still be pursued differently. And if you do get the opportunity to work these cases, the great part is that you’re a fresh new set of eyes. You’re looking at something that people have looked at for a long period of time. And you have an opportunity to try to bring something new to the table or maybe technology now that didn’t exist back when the case initially occurred. To me, these open cases are just full of opportunities to be furthered. And even in some of the cases that I work on, you might just move it forward for the next detective. Maybe you’re not the one that resolves it, but you just try to do what you can do to move it forward for the next person who’s going to be in that same role.

David Lyons:

I mean, it kind of becomes a living document or a living case. I like that. And I like the way you talked about them being open, because I know even back in the day we had a status called pended, which wasn’t cleared [inaudible 00:18:14] a UCR clearance. And it was actually, we would debate that. We would debate it because it felt awkward to use the word pend because that gave the idea that it was going to go on a shelf. I think that’s how much most of us care, is that felt very awkward even to say we’re pending this case for more investigation, it or more new information. But I think that’s the best way to look at it, is they become living documents or they should become living documents with a lot of effort that goes into them.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Absolutely.

Wendy Lyons:

So you have the Happy Face killer that you all are fairly confident that has killed miss Skipple at the time, you didn’t know who she was. What transpired to give her a name? How did she become Patricia or Patsy? Was it family came forward? Was it DNA? How did that come to be?

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Yeah. So we were just talking about how sometimes a case that was looked at back in say 1993 versus 2022 has different investigative options. And this was a case that when we were reviewing it, I determined that it would be a good candidate for forensic genetic genealogy. A lot of people are given this opportunity now to use this new DNA option to help to identify who their victims are, their Jane Does and their John Does, and in our case, Blue Pacheco.

David Lyons:

Well, tell us more about this new technology, this new field of study, because I think it’s fascinating from somebody that is an old man back in the day, mitochondrial DNA was kind of like a future thing, but tell us about this. And then more specifically, do you have to get specific training and what not to be able to work in that world?

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Some people do obtain specific training. A lot of law enforcement agencies will utilize forensic genetic genealogy services through a third party. For myself, when I started getting interested in forensic genetic genealogy, I decided to start pursuing a graduate certificate in that at New Haven University in Connecticut. The director of the program out there is Dr. Claire Glynn. I would really recommend it for people in law enforcement who really want to take their genealogy pursuits further, and for civilians too who are really interested in genealogy. But that is kind of the newer cutting edge program for this that exists currently.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Basically, DNA in this sense is kind of used for us to just understand what our connections are between people. And when you look at the tool in cases, sometimes you’ll have a certain profile where you’ll have a match right away, quickly, a very close connection. And sometimes when you use this tool, you don’t. Basically when you’re using this tool, you use something to kind of compare what these relationships and connections are between people. That’s called centimorgan. And really as centimorgan is a measure of kind of genetic linkages. And basically, the number of centimorgans that I share with another person helps me identify what my relationship is to that person.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

So for example, you might share 3,500 sent to centimorgans with your parent or your child. And with a sixth cousin, you might share 21. Our hope when we started looking at this case with our Blue Pacheco was that we would hopefully develop a closer connection with someone, that we would hopefully be able to determine was a close family relationship. But that is not what happened in this case. In this case, it ended up being a very far removed connection, kind of in about the fourth or fifth cousin range. So pretty far connection from who we were trying to identify.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

I know a lot of people get kind of confused. “Well, how does this work? How does law enforcement do that? How exactly is this process happening?” Basically, a lot of people that do genealogy tests for themselves want to know more about maybe their family or maybe their heritage, or maybe their adoptees and they want to try to find family connection of a parent or sibling. They buy a commercial kit from FamilyTreeDNA, ancestry.com, 23andMe and MyHeritage, that sort of thing. But those platforms let you look at your connections predominantly with other users within that same platform. So separate from that, there is a hub called GEDmatch. GEDmatch allows users to kind of upload their DNA data from ancestry.com or 23andMe or whatever commercial test you took so that you can kind of see other connections with people who use different companies than yourself.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

As a user, when you do that, there’s an option for you to opt in to help law enforcement, their investigations, to identify like in this case, a Jane Doe. That is what we did. So we decided that we were going to try to pursue forensic genetic genealogy to try to identify our Blue Pacheco. I did not do this pursue on my own. There are several commercial companies that do investigative forensic genetic genealogy, and I decided with my organization to partner with the DNA Doe Project. I could tell you a little bit about the DNA Doe Project too, if you’d like.

David Lyons:

Oh, most certainly. Most certainly.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Okay. So the DNA Doe Project, it’s a nonprofit organization. They are predominantly focused on only identifying Jane and John Does, human remains cases. For me, when I was considering who would be a great fit for this case, I thought that this case might be difficult and I wanted to partner with somebody that I knew would continue to investigate the case even if it got very difficult. That is exactly what happened in this case. There was a lot of endogamy involved in this, which means essentially if you go back generations and generations and generations, there’s a lot of people who kind of share those same connections and linkages because they’re coming from smaller, say, towns and villages and areas. This case ended up being very difficult. Cairen Binder and Harmony were the two people from the DNA Doe Project who I worked most closely with. They were phenomenal to work with on this case.

David Lyons:

So again, they just do human remains, correct? It is unidentified human remains as their whole focus.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

That’s correct. That’s their whole focus. And like I said, they are nonprofit. So it’s great because they get some wonderful funding for that. I will mention Harmony’s last name because I didn’t say it before, but it’s Harmony Bronson. The two of them and I started in 2019, together, pursuing this. It was really a back and forth between us of. I needed to do my job in order for them to continue their research and helping to identify next likely targets. And the same is true with me. I needed them to pursue their research in order for me to identify the next contacts and forge through that.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

And so what that looked like sometimes, and most of the time, since 2019 all the way through 2021 was me calling people out of the blue and over the phone explaining to them who I was and what I was doing and also explaining that I could only give them very minimal, limited details and asking them if they would either participate in taking a test if I sent them a test for free. And then asking them after they took the test to upload it into GEDmatch, or inquiring if they had already taken a test and asking them to upload it into GEDmatch and opt in to law enforcement being able to use it. It’s a really tedious process on this case, because like I said, our initial connection was pretty far removed from who our Blue Pacheco was.

David Lyons:

And it’s an investigation, site investigation. I think when you get to those specialties, a lot of people that aren’t around and don’t understand that it has a breadth and a heartbeat of its own to…

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Yeah, I would say it’s great. Because ultimately, like I work for a larger agency, but there’s a lot of smaller agencies that just don’t have funding for these types of cases. So it’s an excellent opportunity for smaller agencies who want to pursue something to identify the unknown human remains and can have it either partially or fully funded by them if needed.

David Lyons:

Gotcha. Yeah. And the other thing too that’s neat is that while people are doing that natural curiosity about where they come from and where their family is that there’s an option to participate with law enforcement investigations, which is kind of neat because you’re actually maybe going to have a shot at answering some questions for somebody that need to be answered. So that’s pretty special in and of itself.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

I agree. I think for law enforcement it’s really tough because initially GEDmatch used to opt in all the users automatically. And then there was kind of a privacy concern that was expressed and they did the reverse. They made it so that you had to opt in on your own accord. And a lot of people just don’t know that that’s an option. And I think right now JMA probably has about 1.4 million users, but that does not mean that they’re all opted into law enforcement. But then you look at something like ancestry.com who has several millions of users and you just imagine if we could access that, that’d be amazing. I think a lot of people who use it don’t even know that that’s a possibility. I think there’s a lot of people who use these commercial kits for their own reasons, whether it’s through ancestry or FamilyTreeDNA or 23andMe and MyHeritage. And they don’t even know that there’s an option to upload their data into GEDmatch to help law enforcement. If everybody did that, that would help to identify these people who we have no idea who they are for their families.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Yeah, that’s something that it’s a pretty incredible thing that’s available for us to use now.

David Lyons:

And pretty commendable of people that would be willing to do that. So maybe they listen to this show, we’ll get the awareness up on that a little bit.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Yeah, that would be amazing.

Wendy Lyons:

So back to Patsy, was she, I’m assuming, just buried as a Jane Doe and was then exhumed? Or how did this match up?

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

You mean when she was initially found?

Wendy Lyons:

Yes.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Or do you mean how…

Wendy Lyons:

When she was initially found.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

When she was-

Wendy Lyons:

Yes. Okay. Yeah, of course. When Patricia was initially found she was not buried. I will say that she was just dumped on the side of the roadway. And at the time, detectives from the past, and then over time, were able to preserve some good DNA samples for being able to pursue genealogy.

David Lyons:

That’s what I was going to talk about too, is that you may not have access to exactly where the samples came from. But just the idea that there was usable DNA from something, that, oh, that’s pretty special itself. Pretty special itself.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

When Patricia was found on the side of the road, she would have been 44 or 45 years old. I can’t make a definitive determination about that, because on the day that she was found, it was very close to her birthday. I can’t discuss with definitive certainty if she was 44 or 45, but she was either 44 or 45. So she was a young lady, very young.

Wendy Lyons:

So at what point in the investigation… I guess after she was identified, was family contacted? Or was it difficult finding relatives?

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

When we’re doing these forensic genetic genealogy investigations and when I was talking about how we would call people out of the blue and ask for them if they would consider helping us by either testing or uploading their data to GEDmatch if they’d already tested, we know as investigators as we’re getting closer and closer to our target, that eventually we will likely come across or possibly come across somebody who may know our victim. In this case, that’s essentially what happened.

Wendy Lyons:

Hey, you know there’s more to this story so go download the next episode like the true crime fan that you are.

David Lyons:

The Murder Police Podcast is hosted by Wendy and David Lyons and was created to honor the lives of crime victims so their names are never forgotten. It is produced, recorded and edited by David Lyons. The Murder Police Podcast can be found on your favorite Apple or Android podcast platform, as well as at murderpolicepodcast.com, where you’ll find show notes, transcripts, information about our presenters and a link to the official Murder Police Podcast merch store where you can purchase a huge variety of Murder Police Podcast swag. We are also on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, which is closed caption for those that are hearing impaired. Just search for the Murder Police Podcast and you will find us.

David Lyons:

If you have enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe for more and give us five stars and a written review on Apple Podcast or wherever you download your podcast. Make sure you set your player to automatically download new episodes so you get the new ones as soon as they drop. And please, tell your friends.

David Lyons:

Lock it down, Judy.

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Part 2 of 2

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Sometimes, if you have limited materials left, whether it be physical evidence or DNA evidence, you really have to decide is now the right time to consume what you have, or is it better to preserve it? Because if you think about what existed five years ago versus now, it’s completely different.

Wendy:

Warning. The podcast you’re about to listen to may contain graphic descriptions of violent assaults, murder, and adult language. Listener discretion is advised.

Wendy Lyons:

Welcome to the Murder Police Podcast, the happy face killers, unknown victim, Patricia Skiple, part two of two.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

We know as investigators as we’re getting closer and closer to our target, that eventually we will likely come across or possibly come across somebody who may know our victim. In this case, that’s essentially what happened on one of the calls where I was speaking with somebody, inquiring with them because we had identified them as being the next closest target that we wanted to look at. This person started talking to me about a family member who actually told me about having two missing family members. I’m currently still in touch with this family member, but that was a pivotal moment in the case, because I knew at that point, that probably most likely my Jane Doe was one of these missing family members of this person.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

At that point, genealogy is not something that we use to conclusively determine a person is who they are. We usually like to separately obtain different DNA type sample of a known family member to confirm that it is in fact the person who we believe it to be and that’s what we did in this case. I partnered with detective, his name is Jim O’Connor from the Oregon State Police, to assist me with getting a sample from a family member to aid in the confirmation.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Ultimately, we as law enforcement here, don’t make formal identification. The medical examiner coroner’s office does that. Our Blue Pacheco was identified as Patricia Skiple on April 13th of 2022. That’s just a few months ago when we finally were able to have the formal identification made. Our office led by Sheriff Lori Smith, has always supported cold case investigations and has recognized the importance of really doing the right thing with these investigations, as has my direct captain, Dan Rodriguez, and my office really recognized the importance of traveling out of state to be able to tell the living immediate family members about what happened to Patricia.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Earlier I had talked a little bit about my partner, Sergeant and [Noey 00:03:31] Cortez, who was one of the people who helped me learn about cold case investigations early on when I started in the major crimes and homicide unit, and he accompanied with me out of state and we went to Oregon and Washington State, were able to drive to these different addresses and knock on the door of some of Patricia’s siblings and one of her children and tell them what happened to their family member.

David Lyons:

Well, that’s great. Hey, real quick hats off to the sheriff and the rest of the staff for taking cold case investigations and maintaining them because we’ve talked a little bit on the show before with cold case investigations that when police departments face budget and personnel issues, as far as people to be able to work on cases, but in a lot of places, cold case investigation takes a back burner because it’s looked at as something that’s extra and doesn’t compete with the things going on in a moment, so that’s fantastic that your sheriff and your staff recognize that. And if you can, just because I don’t want people to think you just picked up the phone and hit the lottery one day, any idea roughly how many calls or leads were followed before you got that one where it was like, “I have this person I know of with two missing people.” Any idea of what the breadth of that time or that effort was?

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

It took so many targets to be identified. One of our analysts here, Rebecca Logan, helped me with some of the research on some of the targets and I reached out even to some law enforcement partners in Canada who helped with identifying some targets. But ultimately I would say hundreds of targets were identified. Each time those targets were identified, I called them each individually myself, and before we did the genetic genealogy, I probably couldn’t even put a number of the amount of leads that prior detectives banned, just patrol officers had tracked down over the years, hundreds.

David Lyons:

Good. I just didn’t, sometimes if people are listening quickly without paying attention, it does sound like you pick up the phone, you get that great news, you go to lunch, and come back and get on the next one. And obviously this case years of persistence, like you talked about, for sure.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Yeah, and it was so, so rewarding to be able to go out of state and talk with her siblings and her child. I feel anybody who has a career in law enforcement knows that there’s a lot of rewarding opportunities and over the years, I feel our office has given us a lot of rewarding opportunities, but being able to give answers to Patsy’s family was something we were determined to give them and several people just poured hours of dedication into doing that. That was remarkable. That’s something that was very meaningful to me as a person and as a detective.

David Lyons:

Did it strike them at all when you were talking to them about the idea that not only now do we know who she was, but that she fell victim to a notorious or well known serial killer? Did they have any impressions on that?

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Yes. One of the siblings was very disappointed to learn that he was a long haul trucker because he actually had a high regard for long haul trucking, that was very disappointing for him. Another sibling just had a hard time wrapping their head around not only has their loved one been missing for years, but something horrible happened because there’s a lot of people who are unidentified, who die of natural causes, not necessarily homicide and definitely not homicide or murder from a serial killer and a very prolific serial killer.

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Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Ultimately with one of the siblings before Patsy went missing, Patsy’s sister, Gloria White, which is one of the siblings who I went to talk to, Gloria White’s own daughter Martha Evans disappeared in 1990 prior to when my victim went missing. If you can even imagine the torture of not knowing what happened to your sister, but also let alone your daughter as well. She’s still living with wondering what happened to her daughter, and it’s just awful for Gloria. She was able to know what happened to her sister and that was powerful for her to just have answers as to what happened.

David Lyons:

That’s unfathomable. Any idea on the age of her daughter when she went missing, when Gloria’s daughter went missing?

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Let’s see, Martha goes by Marty. She was in her thirties.

Wendy Lyons:

Was it just kind of a-

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Yeah.

Wendy Lyons:

… just disappeared out of the blue, like supposed to be somewhere and didn’t show or didn’t make it back home after work?

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

My understanding is she attended a wedding and returned home, had a couple of emotional type phone calls, went to a gas station, and had a sibling who met her at a gas station, and assisted her with getting the car to start, and that was the last time she was seen. She left the gas station and nobody ever saw her again.

David Lyons:

We’ll reach out to Gloria, because that sounds like a story that doesn’t need to be suppressed in history either, I think the word needs to be out on that for sure.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Yeah, well, it’s interesting how sometimes different cases that you work on have connections and through working this case, I was able to connect with the detective on Marty Evans’ case and this case has been resolved, but it’s also opened another opportunity for another open case to be heard again and looked at again, even though it has been reviewed and worked on for years and years and years, just like this one by that agency. It’s interesting how the cases can connect sometimes and how these opportunities come along for you to forge relationships with other law enforcement partners.

David Lyons:

Oh, for sure. Just through serendipity sometimes I guess.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

I had to weigh with my office, what we as a whole thought would be best and what would we want if our family member, our mom, our sister had been murdered. I just couldn’t fathom that happening over a phone call. It had to be in person and is that something that you give a heads up for or something you just go try to do? Sometimes this job is just a combination of faith and this is one of those examples where my partner, Sergeant Cortez and I, when we flew out to Oregon, knew that when we rented a car and drove to these different residences that we thought were where each of these siblings lived and in Washington State where these family members live, that hopefully they weren’t going to be on vacation and hopefully they were going to be home or not at work when we stopped by.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

But my office took these notifications very seriously like I told you. We formally identified her on April 13th and we flew out to Oregon the very next day, April 14th, as soon as we possibly could. It was like a leap of faith being able to go to these different addresses and literally knock on the door and hope that they were going to be there to answer when we got there. Fortunately for us, we hit the jackpot with that, of course, under very sad circumstances, did we have to meet each one of them, but they were all lovely and so grateful to hear what happened in person face to face. They all were home. In that sense, it all worked out to where we were able to meet with each of them in person.

Wendy Lyons:

I guess they had just maybe formulated in their own minds what happened to her, whether it was they suspicioned it was a murder or maybe they thought maybe she just decided to start another life somewhere else. Did they tell you that they kind of felt all along that she was a victim of something like this?

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

There were different sentiments expressed, including that they just had no idea what happened to her, that she was here one day and then all of a sudden wasn’t. Gloria did express, that’s her sister, that she knew as soon as I got there that I was there to tell her about Patsy. I’m not sure if it’s because we had a phone conversation before or not, but she knew that that’s what I was there to tell her about. Her other sibling, one of them just had no idea what happened and said, essentially, “I’d see faces and sometimes think, ‘Oh, that’s her. No, it’s not.'” Been living with that for years. Always kind of looking for her, always hoping to find her.

David Lyons:

This may be out of sync too a little bit. Did you ever locate a real missing person report for Patricia Skiple that was on file from the year she disappeared?

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

She was never formally reported missing.

Wendy Lyons:

Because it actually happens. Even to this day.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Yeah. It’s very common for a lot of different reasons. Sometimes, and it’s a different time too. There’s a different awareness now in 2022 of the availability for reporting family members missing or for making missing persons reports than there was a long time ago. Especially if somebody thought that someone was going to come back, maybe that they were never reported missing, but thought at some point somebody else within their family did, there’s a lot of different reasons that can be the reason why somebody wasn’t formally reported missing.

David Lyons:

Absolutely.

Wendy Lyons:

How many children did Patsy have? I know you mentioned you met one of her children.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Patsy had two children

Wendy Lyons:

Now was she married as well when she went missing?

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Patsy had two children and she was previously married. She was not married at the time.

Wendy Lyons:

I guess maybe were some suspicions that ex-husband had something to do with it or was it not that kind of relationship?

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

My understanding is that was not ever a suspicion, that nobody thought that. Yeah.

David Lyons:

Did you get a chance to learn anything more about who Patsy was, her personality, what she did, was there any kind of disclosure about what her life was like before she went missing?

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Yeah, my understanding was that Patsy grew up in a really loving family that had two really hard working parents and there were several siblings and fun family celebrations and that she loved being a mom to her two children and enjoyed the family.

David Lyons:

That’s good to know. That’s another thing that happens with time is that all of that personal stuff just goes away as well.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Yeah. It looked like when she was little, based on some of the photographs that the family shared with me, that she liked to spend a lot of time with her family doing things outside and outdoors, playing by the water, things like that. Patricia right now would be 74 years old.

Wendy Lyons:

Wow.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

At the time that she went missing again, she was either 44 or 45 years old. When she was found currently, if she was living and here with us today, she would be 74. Both of her children were grown.

Wendy Lyons:

Shifting gears now onto her murder, you did say he was a serial killer. There’s some documentaries of people may know that Happy Face Killer, but Keith Jespersen, what can you tell us about him?

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Keith Hunter Jespersen was really active in the nineties with his killings. He has claimed to be responsible for several murders, but there are eight that are confirmed. Let’s see, he had three kids. I’m just trying to think about what I can remember. He had three children, he was divorced. There was a lot of media attention around that one case that I mentioned where there was kind of that false conviction for somebody who claimed one of his homicides and really if that hadn’t happened, who knows if we would’ve known that he was responsible for ours, because really that was the beginning of him wanting to claim responsibility for not just that murder, but other murders that he had committed.

David Lyons:

That is a stroke of fate for sure. I don’t want to say luck, but to have some, were they false confessions or just false convictions? What were they?

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Yes. It included a false confession, it did include a false confession.

David Lyons:

That would get his pride up then right? That’s a little different than putting somebody in jail accidentally but if somebody bragging about your work, I guess he probably took that personally maybe.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

That case is a really interesting, that’s a really interesting case to read about.

Wendy Lyons:

Yeah. I was reading up while you all were talking about cold cases. I was reading on him and-

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Mm-hmm.

Wendy Lyons:

… it actually talked about that, how he confessed for that and then drew the first smiley face on the letter and then how it wasn’t his case, it was actually a pretty good read. He’s a tall guy, six foot eight it said, so he’s-

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Yes, a big-

Wendy Lyons:

Yeah.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

… man.

Wendy Lyons:

A big guy.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

David Lyons:

Is he still alive?

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Yeah, he’s still alive right now. He is still in the Oregon State Penitentiary. He is currently serving life without parole there. Like I said, he has eight confirmed homicides, but has claimed more than that.

David Lyons:

Which I think is pretty typical of them in a lot of cases.

Wendy Lyons:

Yeah. It actually said he claimed 100-

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Yeah, I think-

Wendy Lyons:

… five.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Yeah, I just think about my time in the Bureau. Again, I started in 2015 and then between then and now I rotated out for one year. It’s just interesting how fortunate I’ve been to be at an agency where, I mentioned with you guys three cold cases that have been untangled and resolved. Two of those cases, including this one, involved a serial killer. That’s unique to have that opportunity to be able to provide some answers for families, for three families, in such a short period of time.

David Lyons:

Very rewarding, like you said, for everybody. There’s so much benefit from that.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

It’s interesting talking about it with you guys because I don’t usually think about all of the little things that accumulate to this one big ending. It really was a series of small steps over a long period of time that got to the conclusion where Blue Pacheco finally was given her name back and I just think that’s the goal. That’s what drives these cold that are actually open cases to keep being pursued because those family members deserve to know what happened to them.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

I think another unique thing about my agency is that we have our CSI in house. A lot of agencies don’t necessarily do that. They either have a crime lab that assists them, which ours does on occasion, but our CSI is in house so our CSI members, we’re involved in all the processing and so that gives, I think, our investigators who have that CSI experience a unique perspective when we’re looking at cases, considering the different types of evidence because we have great familiarity with what the current processes are that can be used. That, I think, played a role in benefiting me in this case as well, that my agency gave me the opportunity to work on CSI before working in homicide.

David Lyons:

Just have that cross knowledge for sure.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Yeah. It makes a big difference when you kind of have all the different perspectives to be able to consider what you’re going to do with what because that’s another thing that’s interesting about these older cases is that sometimes if you have limited materials left, whether it be physical evidence or DNA evidence, you really have to decide is now the right time to consume what you have or is it better to preserve it? Because if you think about what existed five years ago versus now, it’s completely different. So I would also imagine five years from now versus now there will also be better, improved options, especially for DNA. On some of these older cases when you have physical evidence items or just DNA, if it’s pretty deteriorated, sometimes it’s better to wait rather than to consume it right now.

David Lyons:

Big decision. Yeah. A big decision. As DNA was evolving, that argument started, especially in the early days.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Yeah.

David Lyons:

Where you’d look at when you took, before PCR when you had to have very large comparatively, very large pieces of sample, I remember [crosstalk 00:22:17].

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Uh-huh.

David Lyons:

Where even a defense and a prosecution may disagree in the moment over, well, we want to do it now, but same thing you’re saying is that, well, if we consume it, we don’t get the benefit from anything that could be right around the corner. And it has grown at lightning speed, lightning speed.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Definitely. It’s really interesting to me that my career has a lot of inclusion of DNA and just how things are unique with each person. My littlest son, he actually has a rare disease that’s called pediatric mastocytosis. It’s just really interesting because for his disease, that’s something that I’ve worked really hard to raise awareness about his disease and then also to raise funds for research for his disease. But it’s just interesting how, again, you can take these small little steps and then end up having these really big outcomes that can be meaningful for so many people. I find that to be true amongst the families within the pediatric mastocytosis community and then that mirrors how I feel like myself and a lot of my coworkers conduct themselves here in the office. It’s like we know that all these little small steps can end up having such a big outcome for so many people, just so far beyond what our limited scope or interest is within what we’re working on.

David Lyons:

It takes a se succession of people with a lot of humility that we always talk about, that are in it for the right reasons, that check any kind of ego and put it aside, knowing that this thing that feels simple today or doesn’t feel like can make a huge difference instead of if you had somebody that was egotistical, that they wanted to hold all of the facts or not release some or whatever, or get jealous. That’s rare, but it still happens every now and then.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Yeah, it’s so true because you never know how these cases are connected with one another. You could be a patrol officer handling a stolen vehicle and collect something from that and at the time have no idea how that relates to a homicide that isn’t discovered for several months down the road later and if that patrol officer hadn’t taken that one step initially, that connection to the homicide would’ve never been made. You just never know how whatever that small contribution is that you’re doing is going to end up playing a bigger role in the bigger picture.

David Lyons:

So true, why you never take shortcuts. You never take shortcuts,.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Definitely.

David Lyons:

Everything is treated the way it should.

David Lyons:

If you had to give some advice to somebody that was thinking about going in into cold case investigations or is just getting ready to start, and maybe even somebody that’s doing it from their home because it’s becoming a more and more popular genre out there where people are doing internet investigations or whatnot, when it comes to working older cases, what kind of advice would you give to somebody that wanted to reach into the past like that? What are some tenets that you could give them?

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

If somebody were going to start pursuing an older case, I would suggest that they start by placing themselves in the timeframe that the actual case began. That doesn’t mean just familiarizing yourself with who that victim was, it means all the people that are living within that case file, making sure you do your best efforts to reach back out to everybody that was involved, whether it’s other officers, friends, getting names of friends and family members that weren’t included in that case file. You basically need to make those cases live currently as they did back whenever the case happened. At the end of the day, just remember the ultimate goal is that you are there for that victim and many times, in this case, who don’t have their names, your goal is to give them their life back, even though they’re deceased.

David Lyons:

Excellent. Excellent.

Wendy Lyons:

Well, Cat, thank you so much for taking your time to join us on the Murder Police Podcast and share with us this story of Patricia Skiple, I’m glad, who now has a name associated with her horrendous murder. Thank you for the tireless effort you put into this case, into to letting her be someone known, especially back to her family who was wondering all these years what happened to her.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

There’s just so many people that helped over the years and who contributed to the success of this case. Even one of my coworkers, who’s a civilian [Jue Valles 00:26:59] who helped digitize everything. Again, just taking everything from 1993 and making it 2022 current, it’s a whole evolution of all those small steps into something big. I couldn’t be more grateful for my office giving me the opportunity to work on cases like this. Very fortunate at work and in my personal life with my family, very grateful.

David Lyons:

Yeah, excellent work, and again, in acknowledging the team effort over decades, decades, that everybody plays a role in that, that it’s a long term stretch for that. Well, for sure, thank you too, for taking the time. Good to hear and see you again. It’d been months since I’ve been out on the West Coast and with you all in your group that day, but it’s always good to bump into you again.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Yeah.

David Lyons:

Thank the sheriff again, pass that along for letting us borrow you for a little over an hour. We’re very grateful to her.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Of course.

David Lyons:

… and for getting that message across, because we can’t do that without the support of our bosses. No doubt, for sure.

Detective Sergeant Shannon ‘Cat’ Catalano:

Definitely.

David Lyons:

The Murder Police Podcast is hosted by Wendy and David Lyons and was created to honor the lives of crime victims so their names are never forgotten. It is produced, recorded, and edited by David Lyons. The Murder Police Podcast can be found on your favorite Apple or Android podcast platform as well as at murderpolicepodcast.com, where you’ll find show notes, transcripts, information about our presenters, and a link to the official Murder Police Podcast merch store, where you can purchase a huge variety of Murder Police Podcast swag. We are also on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, which is closed caption for those that are hearing impaired. Just search for the Murder Police Podcast and you’ll find us.

David Lyons:

If you have enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe for more and give us five stars and a written review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you download your podcasts. Make sure you set your player to automatically download new episodes so you get the new ones as soon as they drop. And please tell your friends.

David Lyons:

Lock it down, Judy.