(dramatic music)
- All those years,
Nobody ever tried to figure out
What happened to my sister, lori.
Her death was not ruled as a homicide.
It was ruled as undetermined natural causes.
A 15 year old girl is gonna walk about 10 miles,
Take all her clothes off in the woods
And then walk another five miles naked,
And lay down in a ditch,
And pull foliage over her.
I never thought it would be solved,
But don't ever give up,
Somebody somewhere knows something.
Now 45 years later, I want to make sure families know
There is hope.
(dramatic music)
(wind blowing)
Good boy.
Oh, what a good dog you are.
He has the most beautiful blue eyes.
I probably should have named him, paul,
After paul newman or frank, after frank sinatra.
He has been licensed as an emotional therapy dog.
He helps me when I talk about my sister.
He will put one paw here and one paw here
And let me just cry on his shoulder.
(ambient music)
I've told this story so many times,
It never seems to get easier.
(gentle piano music)
(eerie music)
(school bell rings)
I was in eighth grade at east moore junior high school,
And lori was a sophomore.
I was 13, she was 15.
I'm the bratty, little sister.
(calm music)
It was a Friday night.
Everybody went to the football game.
Lori went to a couple people's parties
After the football game.
She was supposed to spend the night with one of her friends.
- [bill] by 11, the next morning,
Lori still hasn't come home.
(eerie dramatic music)
- Lori nesson's mother started to make some phone calls
To friends to see if anybody had seen lori
Or if she had spent the night somewhere.
- They said no.
The last that they had heard is,
Lori was just gonna go home.
She's gonna walk home.
It was 1974.
We walked places.
- And then she contacted the columbus police department
To file a missing person's report.
- My mother was scared to death,
But she would not portray that to me
Because she did not want to scare me.
(dramatic music)
- [bill] toni and lori's mother, joyce,
Is raising her two girls on her own.
- My parents divorced.
I'm not sure what year.
I was really little.
I wanna say, maybe five.
- [bill] lori didn't let her parents' divorce
Stand in her way.
She was focused and determined from a young age.
- She was a kid, but she was so ahead of her time.
She was a volunteer on mcgovern's campaign in 1972.
- I just wanna warn the american people
Just as clearly as I can, don't buy this nixon lie.
- So she would've been 12.
I mean, wrap your head around that,
12 years old and is
Volunteering
To work on a presidential campaign.
She was off-the-charts smart, and she was extremely active
In israeli rights.
My family is jewish.
She was so deep, and so sensitive,
And so wanted to be a voice
For anybody that didn't have one.
(gentle piano music)
Lori would never disappear.
She might come home a little late,
But never ever would she disappear.
(gentle piano music)
- [bill] lori had been missing for just a few hours
When a call comes into a police department in a nearby town.
- A husband and wife were hunting for hedge apples,
And they see deceased, a young female
Laying in a ditch.
(dramatic music)
- Detectives responded and they document
That it's a white female in her late teens.
- She had no clothes on.
She did have what appeared to be some bruising
On her left arm.
It was not obvious to them
What had caused the death of this young woman.
- They don't see any telltale sign,
Like a rope around the neck, or a gunshot wound,
Or anything like that.
And then they examined the bottom of her feet,
Which appeared to be for the most part clean.
- It led the investigators after the fact to believe that
Whatever happened to the young woman
Happened somewhere else
And then she was left there on rose hill road.
(ambient music)
(clock ticking)
- [bill] the coroner takes the jane doe's body
To the morgue.
The story hits the local news that night.
(gentle piano music)
- A friend of lori's called the police department
And notified them that a friend of his
Matched the description of the young woman
That was found in reynoldsburg deceased.
- [bill] police ask joyce nesson to come to the morgue
To identify her daughter's body.
- She said, I need to talk to you about lori.
And I looked at her and I said, "oh, well, what about her?"
And she said, "she's not coming home.
She's, she's gone, she died."
(somber music)
I didn't understand.
One minute she was there the next minute she was gone.
(gentle piano music)
(ominous music)
- The autopsy was conducted the next day.
It was determined that she did have
Some kind of sexual relation with somebody,
But it was not ruled that she was raped.
(ominous music)
And the manner of death was not ruled homicide.
They just weren't able to determine what that reason was.
- It's possible that she had a drug overdose
Or she died of some other cause,
And was taken there by someone who panicked and dumped them.
The toxicology report is still pending
And so they continue to investigate this
As a suspicious death.
So the investigators,
They do just a number of different interviews
With fellow friends, students, parents,
Just about anybody who had contact with her
Through the football game or any of these after parties.
- Lori was last seen by a friend leaving the party
At about 10 after midnight.
And then again, within a few minutes after that
Two more friends that happened to be driving by
Saw lori walking.
- [bill] lori lives just a few minutes walk away
From the party she'd gone to.
Lori's body was found miles away from her home.
Investigators believe she'd accepted a ride from someone.
(ominous music)
- Everybody was very adamant
About lori would not get into a car with a stranger.
No way, okay?
So the police said that she got into a car
With someone she knew.
- In my experience, people are killed by,
More often than not, by people that they know.
(ominous music)
- This nice little jewish group of kids
Now started looking at each other like,
"well, who did she get in the car with?"
(dramatic music)
- We've never talked about lori, ever.
It was too painful for my mom.
I truly 100% believe that if lori
Would've been an only child,
I do not believe my mom would have survived it.
She had me.
So she still had to go on.
(piano music)
- [bill] lori's murder dominates the local news.
And that leads to tips.
One of those tips stands out above the rest.
- They receive a call from a woman named donna up
Who worked at mount carmel east hospital
And had been on her way to work
At around 5:45 in the morning.
And she says,
I recall seeing a girl dressed in similar clothing
To what lori nesson was wearing when she went missing.
- She also reports that she saw a small red colored car
That was pulled off in a lane
That to locals was called lovers lane.
So they did focus on people that had access
To the red car.
- Scott richards drove a red mustang.
Lori and scott were like super, super close,
Like best friends.
And he lived on the same street as us.
- Scott richards, who was around 16,
He hosted the after party at his parents' house
That she first went to after the football game.
(dramatic music)
- He was in their circle of friends and acquaintances,
But her friends said he was strange
And we think he could do something like that.
It wasn't just like one person,
And the more information you get on somebody,
And the more people are telling you the same thing,
That information carries more weight than other.
So police acted on that.
They went and interviewed scott richards as the suspect.
- He's able through his parents and himself
To account for his whereabouts and the timeframe
From the after party
To when she's found dead.
So even though there may be some lingering doubts,
There's no ring door camera video,
And there's no cell phone gpsing,
So they can't even really go out and verify someone's story.
They have to take it at face value.
(dramatic music)
- Reynoldsburg police actually got a phone call
That somebody had found shoes on the side of the road
In gahanna, which is a neighboring suburb.
And then another report came in
That the sweater and her jeans were found.
The clothing was located approximately three miles
From where lori's body was found.
- [bill] lori's clothes and shoes are strewn
Along the right side of the road.
- It would be logical to draw the idea
That there were perhaps two people in the car
When that clothing was thrown out.
Someone's driving and then
Someone's in the passenger's side
From where the clothing went out the window.
(piano music)
- Earlier in the investigation,
The investigators came across information
That lori's mom had filed a report back in August of 1973.
- [bill] according to the report,
Lori, who was 14 at the time, was leaving school,
But a man tried to lure her into his car.
She escaped, ran home and told her mother what happened.
(dramatic music)
- An officer puts two and two together and says,
I think I know who this is,
'cause this is somebody that they had dealt with.
His name was eugene guay.
He was known to operate in that area
On the east side of columbus.
And he would try and lure girls into his car.
- Mr. Guay was followed to a bar
Where it was noted that mr. Guay had
What looked like to be, maybe, like, an infected laceration
On his head or his face,
And that he could have been injured in a struggle
If lori was fighting for her life.
- And they decided,
Hey, we should probably talk to this guy.
He's very, non-committal on his whereabouts
Around the timeframe of the crime.
Nothing that they're able to confirm.
He doesn't have an alibi.
They actually have a photograph of her
And they show it to him.
Not only does he recognize her, he makes a comment about,
"yeah, I didn't like her because she had braces."
And so that raises some of the red flags
For the investigators that this is somebody
That we should really zero in on.
(tense music)
(dramatic piano music)
- Eugene guay absolutely denied being involved
With lori's death.
(dramatic music)
They offered him a polygraph and he agreed to that.
(piano music)
- The investigators receive a phone message
From the attorney that now represents eugene guay,
Who says that he will not be taking the polygraph.
They do get permission via consent to search his vehicle
In the hopes that they might find something
That would link eugene guay to lori nesson,
And they don't come up with any evidence.
Once he retains an attorney,
There really isn't anything left for them to do.
(piano music)
- The toxicology results came back from lori's autopsy
And there was no drugs or no alcohol in her blood.
- Once they received the final coroner's report,
It's not ruled as a homicide,
It's ruled as a accidental death from unknown origin.
There's more questions than answers.
- You didn't have to be some kind of brain
To look at the circumstances surrounding her death
And where her clothes were and where her body was
In relation to where we lived.
How anybody could rule that as anything but a homicide
Is beyond me.
- [bill] the accidental death ruling
Means the end of the investigation.
Lori's case goes as cold as ohio's icy winter winds.
(dramatic music)
Her family tries to pick up the pieces.
Joyce wants to make sure toni can lead a normal life.
(ominous music)
- My mom made me go back to school.
She got me involved in riding horses.
I played sports and got good grades and a boyfriend.
(calm music)
My mom was always a very, very vivacious person
That loved to entertain, loved to go to parties,
Loved to dance, and then it all stopped.
She went to work and she came home.
There was always something missing,
And it was lori.
I always wondered who took my sister from me.
At some point, there's gotta be
Some kind of answer somewhere,
But I didn't know where to go or how to get it.
(calm guitar music)
- I came across the case August of 2019
While looking through the file room.
What piqued my curiosity is the death certificate
Did not list a manner of death as homicide,
It was listed as undetermined.
- [bill] though he's not a detective,
Patrol officer craig brafford
Spends his free time reexamining local cold cases.
- When lori went missing,
She was the same age as my daughter was.
She was 15 years old.
And I couldn't imagine going through the next 46 years
With no answers.
- [bill] officer brafford gets permission
From the deputy chief to investigate the case
On his own time.
He gathers the case files and pores over the autopsy photos.
- There were some injuries that were not listed,
Some trauma may have been behind her left ear,
But my "a-ha" moment was there was one photograph in particular
Of a detective that lifted up lori's upper lip
And there was a lot, a lot of damage,
Which was consistent with possibly being rubbed
Against the top braces that lori had.
So someone could have been mashing her mouth down
To try to keep her quiet.
This was a clear, clear, obvious homicide.
(gentle piano music)
- I never thought it would be solved
Because how could it be?
It wasn't even ruled a homicide.
All those years,
Nobody ever, ever,
Cared about what happened to her
Until craig brafford.
(piano music)
- I contacted toni.
I felt she deserved answers.
Her family deserved answers.
And I felt that we had an opportunity now to do this,
To do it right.
- He said, "well,
"I don't wanna reopen an old wound,
"but I would like to talk to you about your sister."
And literally the minute he said that
It was like somebody punched me in the stomach.
So the first thing that I said to craig
When I finally could catch my breath was,
You can't reopen something that was never closed.
- [bill] before brafford can move forward,
He has to convince the coroner that lori's death
Wasn't accidental and that she was murdered.
- The county coroner and some of the other physicians
Would have to sit down and review all the aspects
Of the case before the elected coroner would sign off on it.
- [bill] in September of of 2020,
After five months of deliberation,
The coroner's office comes back with a decision.
- The manner of death had been overturned
From undetermined to homicidal violence.
- Craig got her case reopened,
And for the first time in 45 years,
I felt that somebody actually cared about lori.
And so it was extremely emotional for me.
And I mean, just look at my...
Can you see my hand?
Just thinking about that.
- That was extremely satisfying,
But we still had an uphill battle on our hands
Because we still had an investigation to conduct.
The two main people that had been looked at at the time
A eugene guay, and a friend of lori's, scott richard
Had both passed away several years ago.
- [bill] detectives hope new forensic technology
Will give them a solid lead.
They submit lori's clothing to the crime lab
For dna testing.
- Unfortunately this case came in
Right before the start of the covid pandemic
And that did slow progress.
Like most of the country, we were working from home
And definitely can't do dna analysis from my house.
- [bill] suspects from 1975 have died.
That combined with the global pandemic
Slows the case to a crawl.
- Here it is November, and I got nothing.
(piano music)
And that's when I called lieutenant early,
And I said, I'm going to the media.
Somebody somewhere knows something
And we need to find that person.
- Toni was very adamant about the fact
That she wanted to run a news story on it.
So one of our local reporters from a news channel here
Was willing to do that.
(dramatic piano music)
- I get a phone call from my cousin, jean.
She says, "have you seen this story on tv
About lori nesson?"
I said, "no, I haven't."
And she said, "well, this sounds just like karen."
So she called the police department.
(dramatic music)
- [bill] 17 year old, karen adams had been murdered
Just six months after lori, back in 1975.
- And if you were to draw a straight line
Between the locations
Of both of those victims,
It's probably only
Two and a half miles at best.
We felt very strongly that there might be a connection
Between these two crimes.
(dramatic music)
(dramatic piano music)
- A detective from the reynoldsburg police department
Contacted me in reference to a cold case homicide
That I solved back in 2011.
It was the karen adams case.
(dramatic music)
- [bill] at the time of her murder,
Karen adams lived just 10 minutes from lori nesson.
The night she was killed,
17 year old karen told her parents
She was going out for about an hour.
She drove off and never came back.
- She said she was going to see a friend
About a scarf that she'd left over there,
And she was gonna go get it, she'd be right back.
11 o'clock turned around
And we knew something was going on then.
Karen was never out late at night.
The next morning, karen was reported missing.
I was driving around, talking with her friends,
Trying to find my sister.
I found her car in a parking lot.
I knew something was wrong.
She would've never left that car.
Never.
- [bill] just a few months earlier,
Karen finally saved enough from waitressing
To buy the 1965 mercury comet, her first car.
- I'd worked on it a little bit,
Fixed it up a little bit for her,
And I remember her taking me for a ride,
And how happy she was to have that car.
That's the only memory that I kind of keep,
Me and her riding around that car.
(dramatic music)
Karen was the third of five children,
Four girls, one boy.
I'm the oldest.
She's special to our family.
Had a great sense of humor.
She was looking so much forward to her future.
(gentle piano music)
- It was roughly six to eight miles east of white hall
Where karen lived,
Two people just happened to look in the ditch
And saw a body.
- We got the call from the police.
They'd found her body.
It's like somebody just pulled my guts out of me.
All I could think of was how karen's last few moments were.
- She had some marks on her neck and once they took her
From the scene and did the autopsy,
Obviously that was confirmed
That, one, she was sexually assaulted,
And two, that she was strangled to death.
There were no witnesses or fingerprints.
Detectives followed as many leads as they could.
They spent a good six months to a year on it.
They interviewed everyone they could,
And ran outta leads.
- The family was, "hey, what are you people doing?"
I asked to see the file on karen.
They wouldn't show it to me.
I just couldn't get any answers.
I tried bribing people, that didn't help.
And then it got colder and colder and colder,
And pretty soon everybody forgets.
(gentle music)
- [bill] cold case detective, chuck clark
Is searching the database for an inactive case to take on.
What he finds, karen adams file.
- Her case seemed to have one of the highest probabilities
Of being solved,
Mainly because dna had come around.
- [bill] a 2010 forensic test on karen's clothes
Reveals the dna profiles of two unknown males.
- They put him in codis,
Which is the system that identifies suspects.
One came back as unknown,
And one was a known male that had done time in prison
For rape and kidnapping.
And his name was robert meyer.
- [bill] meyer had been arrested and convicted for raping
And kidnapping two women in toledo, ohio, in 1976,
Just a year after karen adams murder.
He spent 25 years in prison and was released in 2001.
- When he was released,
He was required to provide a dna sample
Because of his conviction.
- We just needed to get a dna swab from him
To verify the hit that I got codis from the lab.
We knocked on his door,
Mr. Meyer was very cordial, very polite,
And he was very compliant.
So I got dna swabs from each cheek
And took those swabs right to the lab to be compared.
- Detectives showed up my door,
They said they had a dna hit with codis.
And soon as they get the evidence confirmed,
They were gonna arrest him.
It all came back like a flood.
The same feeling that I got
When I found out that karen had got killed, I got again.
They never told me the name, what they told me was,
It was a 71 year old convicted rapist
That was living in cincinnati.
Well, all you have to do
Is go to the hamilton county sex offender website
And figure out how many 71 year old guys you got there.
(dramatic music)
One.
(tense music)
I got an address off the website,
I went down to see him.
I took my gun
And I knocked on his order. (dramatic music)
(dramatic piano music)
- I kept thinking about my sister's last moments
And how bad I wanted to hurt robert meyer.
I had the gun in my pocket.
He opened the door.
"what do you want?"
Inside my head was ringing like I was gonna blow up.
I stood within two feet of him
And I didn't see his face, I seen my mother's face.
(dramatic music)
I just couldn't do it.
He doesn't deserve that much...
Attention.
There's no way I could kill that man
And put my mother through more heartache over this.
I just turned around and walked away.
(piano music)
- As soon as we got the confirmation dna,
I had mr. Meyer transported
To the cincinnati police department
To a detective bureau where I conducted an interview.
- I got the feeling that he actually didn't remember.
I think it would've been possible,
Who knows how many other crimes he committed against women?
- He arrested him, he pleads guilty to murder.
He was convicted, sentenced, 25 years and life.
He died four years later.
- [bill] meyer's arrest and death bring some closure
To the case,
But the identity of karen's other attacker
Is still a mystery.
- I discovered that he had an accomplice in toledo,
That person's name was charles weber.
- Robert meyer and charles weber actually met in prison
Back in the early to mid 1960s.
They lived together as soon as they get out of prison.
And one of them's out of prison, not two weeks,
And we have lori nesson show up dead.
Around six months later,
We have karen adams who is found dead,
And then weber and meyer actually moved to toledo, ohio.
And they attempted twice more
To abduct, sexually assault, and murder two more victims.
Charles weber went to prison until 1989,
And he was released and he died three years later,
So we didn't have the opportunity to get his dna.
(dramatic music)
- [bill] four years later in March of 2016,
Detective clark tracks down charles weber's biological son,
And using familial dna, confirms weber
Was the second suspect in karen adams' murder.
- It is such a relief to find out who did this
And move on with your life,
And keep the memories of what you had that were good
And let the rest of it go.
But that is the hardest thing to do.
(gentle music)
- We received calls with people saying that a news story
About the death of lori nesson,
And it sounded very similar to the death of karen adams.
(dramatic music)
I contacted devonie herdeman at the dna lab.
She was actually familiar with the karen adams case
Because she had done the dna analysis on it.
- So I'd started comparing karen's profile
From her underwear to the profile from lori's jeans.
They were identical.
(tense music)
And not only did we get one foreign individual,
But the same two foreign individuals
That did this to lori.
I screamed, I screamed at my desk.
- [bill] the dna match and the stories
From weber and meyer's surviving victims
Lead to a theory about what happened
The night lori nesson was murdered.
- The women in toledo said that they tried to approach them
Under the guise of needing help.
And then once they got close to the car,
They jump out and would grab 'em.
- I think they forced her into the vehicle.
They sexually assaulted her
And then decided that killing her
Was the best way of concealing their crime.
- [bill] convinced that weber and meyer's killed lori,
Investigators finally have answers
For lori's sister, toni.
- Once craig told me that lori's case had been solved
And they're both dead,
I think I did ask,
Is there any way that we could exhume their bodies
So that I could run over them with my truck multiple times?
(somber piano music)
I'm very upset that they never had to pay
For what they did to my sister.
But I can't spend the rest of my life
Being concerned with them.
(somber piano music)
So what we did on July 13th, which was my 60th birthday,
We did a very small memorial service at the graveside.
My mom is buried next to lori,
And I got to tell them both that lori's case was solved
And that they could rest in peace.
(somber piano music)
- Me and toni nesson has become very good friends over this.
We'll always be in this together.
And we talk quite often about the need
To do shows like this, to get the word out.
(somber piano music)
And law enforcement and the families all believe
That there are other victims out there, we're sure of that.
If you know of anybody that sounds like this story,
Contact your local authorities.
(somber music)
- I want to make sure that these families out there
And friends don't ever give up,
Don't ever give up.
There's always some sort of hope.
And if my story can help another family,
Then all of the pain that I've been through is worth it.
(somber music)