WANTED: Justice for Rhys Pocan & MMIW Part 2

0:00Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And this is part two of our look into Reese Pocan's story. So if you haven't heard the first part, please go back and listen, because we're picking up right where we left off. When our reporter Emily realizes that this case goes way beyond Reese, and she discovers a disturbing pattern of dismemberments turning up all around Wisconsin. This episode will focus on two of those other victims, and everything that we could find out about their cases from loved ones, detectives, tribal chiefs, coroners, and police reports. This is the story of Ray Tortolot and Julia Baez.

1:14By searching through newspaper archives and public records databases, our reporter Emily started finding more dismemberment victims in Wisconsin. In the years surrounding Reese's murder, at least 12 people, 11 of them women, were found, whose heads or hands had been cut off during or after their murders. Now, a handful of these women are still unidentified, and most of the cases have never been solved. All in different jurisdictions? For the most part, yes, which we're thinking is maybe why no one has kind of looked at this holistically before. And, like, when you see this, we haven't come across something like this.

1:53Like, who are you supposed to tell? I mean, like, we have the most badass group of women here at Audiochuck doing the absolute Lord's work, But like try calling up the FBI and saying that you have a podcast and there might be a serial killer. Right. Honestly, it's going to be a little easier because Crime Junkie actually is pretty well known now. We have a lot of law enforcement fans like, thanks, guys. But other podcasts have made fools of themselves by calling the FBI and they end up becoming the butt of like Internet jokes. So Emily tried reaching out to various FBI field offices in Wisconsin, but like only ever got connected with a PIO who then never even returned a call or an email.

2:31But undeterred, she, you know, compiles everything that she's found into a document that she sends off to Detective Hatch, who trusts her. And in turn, he sends it to the FBI field office in Milwaukee. And here is what was in that document. Our list begins in 1982, when the partial remains of a Jane Doe are found in Caledonia, which is in southeast Wisconsin. According to the Doe Project, they're still trying to identify her. But the woman was likely between 45 and 60 years old and had given birth at some point in her life. Then, in March of 1983, in Racine, which, by the way, is just 11 miles from Caledonia, a woman's arms, hands, and legs are found buried in a backyard.

3:17She's identified as 51-year-old Helen Sebastian. I have truly become obsessed with Helen's case, and I hope to bring you a whole episode on her one of these days. But today's not that day. So seven months after that, in October of 1983, dismembered partial remains of a man are found in Petrifying Springs Park in Kenosha County, a mere 15 minutes south of where Helen's dismembered body was found. This person is identified as 18-year-old Eric Hansen. He's our only male victim. Now, in May 1984, in Vernon County, which is western Wisconsin, a woman is found lying on the side of a gravel road a few miles outside of the town of Westby with her hands cut off and major trauma to her head.

4:02She has still never been identified, but she was likely in her 60s and wore dentures. That's what they know about her. And her hands have still never been found. 30 minutes west of there, in February 1985, 24-year-old Terry Dalloway is found decapitated and on fire in a rural part of Vernon County. Now, Terry's case was unsolved, but there actually was a break in the case in the fall of 2024 when charges were brought against a man named Michael Pop. Now, he pleaded not guilty in January of this year, actually. So, like, developments in her case are actively underway. Unclear if Pop is a suspect in any other cases.

4:39If this is like the outlier on all this, I don't know. It's still actively unfolding. Then in spring of 1987, Indigenous woman Ray Tortolot's dismembered body is found on the Menominee Reservation in northern Wisconsin. Then in the summer of 1989, we know Reese vanishes from Milwaukee, and then her remains are found in Sheboygan County and then the Vernon Marsh area in Waukesha County. The next comes on Thanksgiving Day, 1990. That's when the clothes and skeletal remains of a Jane Doe are found by deer hunters in Price County. Through dental records, they're identified as belonging to Susan Poupart, who is an indigenous woman who vanished from a reservation in northern Wisconsin six months prior to being found.

5:20Now, Susie's story has a lot of twists and turns. Our reporters became really interested in it while researching these cases. So that's the one I'm actually going to be covering on the deck, which, again, is the other weekly podcast I host. So just keep an eye out for that one as well. Also in the fall of 1990, a Jane Doe's dismembered remains are found buried in a number of plastic bags near Black River Falls, Wisconsin. Her torso is buried in one bag. Her limbs are buried in a separate bag. Her head is never found. And this woman is later identified as Julia Baez. And I'm going to tell you about her case in this episode.

5:57But after her, in 1991, a woman's body is found with severed hands at the Goose Lake Wildlife Preserve in Dane County, Wisconsin. Her hands had been cut off and are later found in Walworth County. She's laid to rest as a Jane Doe, but later identified as Doris McLeod. A man convicted of sex trafficking has long been suspected in the teenager's murder. Then in October 2002, Boy Scouts find the skull and lower mandible of a Jane Doe in a ravine in St. Croix County, which is like far western Wisconsin. And authorities have said that they likely belong to a Native American woman between the ages of 35 and 50.

6:37And then lastly, in 2021, you heard that right, 2021, a skull is discovered in Oneida County, Wisconsin, which is found way up north, not far from Vilas County. The skull is missing a lower jawbone. And last I heard, investigators are working with anthropologists to determine who it could have belonged to. But a source told us that they thought that this person could have been Native American. And here's the wild part. So that is our list that we're working with. One of the women on that list, the one I said I'm going to be covering, Ray Tortolot, she's Reese Pocan's cousin. What? Yeah. The connections are too bizarre to ignore.

7:19There really should have been a statewide task force or something, but because the cases were mostly in separate counties, no one was connecting the dots until now. So I need to step back from Reese's story and tell you about two of the other cases that we're going to dive into, starting with Reese's cousin, Ray Tortolot. So if you Google Ray, the first thing that pops up is this beautiful portrait of her when she was a Menominee tribal princess. From the people we spoke to, it sounded like Ray was super involved on the reservation. And the reservation is the last place she was ever seen, on October 14th, 1986.

7:58That's when Ray, who was 18 at the time, went to a small house party. At the time, the Green Bay Press-Gazette reported that there were six other people at that party, all of whom Ray was friends with. So the story goes like this.

8:15Around midnight on October 14th, Ray says that she wants to leave the party and she gets a ride from one of the other party goers. But when they get to her house, she doesn't want to go inside. So they kind of just drive around the reservation for a while and then they head back to the party. And then a little while later, Ray leaves the party again. But no one knows exactly when she ducked out that time or if she was with anyone when she did. I'm assuming this is all happening a little while after midnight, but honestly, the reports are like, they're really slim, not super detailed. So she walks out, and then poof, she is just gone.

8:54She never makes it home, and the next day, she's nowhere to be found. She gets reported missing to the tribal police, who act pretty quickly to put together search parties with canines. Like, they question everyone at the party that night. They contact other reservations and Indian centers, and they also searched the house where the party was, but they didn't find anything helpful. So this search for Rae goes on for two and a half weeks, but there is just no sign of her. And around this time, the tribal police chief tells the Green Bay Press-Gazette, quote, I've kind of given up a little bit, but I'll be out there looking again later on.

9:30Well, that's not exactly what you want to hear from an investigator. No, but like to his credit, I mean, he actually contacts the FBI for assistance in the search. but they basically tell him that they can't conduct a full-scale investigation without evidence of a crime. They say there is, quote, nothing to indicate to us that foul play was involved or that there was a federal problem, which is, like, a frustrating response to me, especially considering, like, it is tribal land and that is FBI jurisdiction. Right. So, at one point, detectives put a call out in the papers asking anyone who might have given Ray a ride during the early morning hours of October 15th to call them.

10:09No one does. Which to me makes that alleged ride that she got all the more suspicious. And for me, I always like can't quite wrap my head around the statement, there's no evidence of foul play because there isn't evidence of not foul play. Like what does that mean? It's kind of your job to find the evidence. Yeah, and it's usually the families, right, who are shouting that from the rooftops. And that's how it was for Ray's family. Ray's mom, Josephine, tells the local papers that Ray had gone off on her own before, but it was usually for like three or four days, and they always knew where she was.

10:44Josephine says that Ray didn't seem unhappy or distressed before the party, and apparently she had planned to be in a friend's wedding several days after she went missing. Plus, right before Ray went missing, she had just become a mom. Her newborn daughter, Elise, was not even two months old. And listen, I know new momming is like the hardest thing in the world. I cannot imagine doing it at 18. But everyone who knew Ray felt it in their bones. She wouldn't have left her daughter. But as for detectives with no leads, they're like really scraping the barrel. They even connect with a Native American psychic from Chicago who apparently tells them that Ray is either dead or in serious trouble.

11:25And the psychic actually describes an area where Ray's body might be, which detectives promptly searched to no avail. It's always so wild to me that psychics were just like regularly involved in investigations back then. And like, and why they write them off so much now. And actually, in particular, this psychic, their name's Robin Furman, and she used her clairvoyant abilities to help with a number of police investigations in Wisconsin and other states. She claimed that she could get impressions, basically, of missing people. And I'm not sure if it's because of Robin or because of something else that I don't know about.

12:00But around this time, investigators change their tune, finally, to say that they do believe that Ray may be dead. But when asked whether or not foul play is involved in the case, they say, and I'm quoting here, yes and no. And before you ask, like, I have no idea what they meant by that. Investigators never really explain that cryptic answer, but they do tell reporters that they have several suspects, including the men who, like, Ray allegedly got a ride with, like, from the party, like, to her house and then back. Wait, detectives know who they are? So they do, but no names are ever released to the public.

12:38In fact, I've never seen names in criminal cases so closely guarded. The chief of the tribal police, Chief Keith Tortolot, wouldn't even tell us their names off the record. Quick question. Is Tortolot a common name there? No. So here's the thing. So the chief is actually Ray's cousin. Would that also make him cousins with Reese? Yep. I think they were like first cousins once removed. So like this case is personal for him, I would say. Anyway, they believe they know who gave Ray a ride. Again, that first time. We're not talking about like, we don't know of anyone who like after the second time she left.

13:16From the party back to the party. But they clearly don't have proof of anything because months go by without any arrests or new information. It's just like this flood of rumors. But those rumors must hold a little truth to them. Or just the sheer amount of time that goes by with no word from Ray finally holds more weight. Because four months in, investigators officially announced that Ray Tortolot's case has become a murder probe and that they're calling in the FBI. Now, again, investigators won't say why they believe Ray was murdered. They say they have a suspect in mind, but just not enough evidence for an arrest.

13:53Again, names of the suspect or suspects never released. And then in April of 1987, two months later, detectives are finally able to prove their assumption. Ray was murdered. The announcement comes after a hunter stumbles across a bra strap while he's out walking in a remote area of the Menominee Indian Reservation, which leads him then to a headless female body. Pretty much every article at the time about the discovery mentions Ray in some way. So she is definitely on investigators' minds, but they don't want to say anything without proof. It's three days later when Josephine is able to identify the body as belonging to her daughter based on her clothing.

14:36And then a scientific identification comes through DNA testing, but that doesn't happen for 10 years. But at the time, detectives trust Josephine's word. Now, an autopsy is also done, and the manner of death is ruled a homicide. But Chief Tortolot told us that for a number of reasons, mainly the state of the decomposition and the swampy area where the body was found and the missing head, the coroner wasn't able to determine a cause of death. And honestly, Britt, after this ruling, very little progress at all is made in Reyes' case. And as much as we tried to dig into this case on our own, we ran into a lot of hurdles and a lot of roadblocks.

15:17For one, as Chief Tortolot told us, Ray's case file is very thin. Her investigation went cold almost immediately. And the work that has been done has been like extremely hush-hush. Plus, people on the reservation are hesitant to talk about it, even to Elise, Ray's daughter. When I was growing up, I really didn't hear a lot of stuff like that. I would just hear people just say, like, oh, you look like your mom, or oh, your mom was a really nice dancer. I mean, they would just say that. They wouldn't talk about that. I think it seemed like that whole part was shielded from me, honestly, from everybody.

16:00So it's really hard to talk about everybody on the reservation, I want to say. I think it really hit hard for everybody when that happened. I can see how much pain it is for them, honestly. Still, like, you can still see it to this day, like it happened yesterday. It was a very touchy subject, I guess I want to say, for everybody, honestly. because even like to this day, where my mom was that night, I know where she was, but I know who was at the house. And if I ask, I asked one time, I said, I was like, can we talk about that? Can we talk about that night? And then they actually were like, no, I don't want to talk about it.

16:55And it's weird because it's me that's saying it, that's asking them. But I think the people who are at the house, I mean, those are her friends. You know what I mean? I think they carry a certain kind of guilt about that. And I get that from a perspective, I guess. But it's something that has bothered me a lot. I mean, if you really looked at how close this house was where she was to where my grandparents live, it's literally a block away. It's crazy. Maybe because of a lack of cooperation, maybe for a zillion other reasons, the investigation stalls. Though no excuse is an acceptable one to Elise and her family.

17:48They don't feel like investigators did enough at the time. and she's heard that there was lost evidence in the case and she thinks that multiple agencies didn't coordinate well. It seemed to her to just be a mess. But they didn't just mess up a job the way that you or I might screw up like a spreadsheet. This is her mom's literal life. And you only get one shot at the early days of an investigation and now that's lost. Investigators' hope back then was that if they could find Ray's head, maybe that would give them some physical evidence to work with. But they searched for five months without locating it.

18:26Were her hands removed like Reese's too? I don't know because not all of Ray's remains were found. Police told us that it was only her lower half that was found. And that, and again, we know her head was never found. And Ray aside, is there any theory around why hands and heads were removed? I mean, to prevent identification, but could there be some other reason? Yeah, we kept asking detectives that very question during our reporting, and nobody could say for sure. I mean, they pointed out that obviously if a killer was like a seasoned criminal, like you're saying, they might do that for identification purposes.

18:59It's also possible that this is like depending on, you know, who the killer was, what the relationship, the motive was, like just plain revenge could be another factor. We also had some sources tell us that in certain cultures, it is a belief that someone can't rest in peace without being buried fully intact. So there could be several different factors at play. But to go back to Ray's case, we spoke with Chief Tortola and he said he still has suspects in Ray's case and no one has been excluded as a person of interest. Unfortunately, though, lots of people that he wanted to talk to have since passed away.

19:34and he hoped maybe for a deathbed confession in this case, but that's never happened. He says he did do some DNA testing though. On what? I don't know on what. He wouldn't tell us. But I think the what is the wrong question because that's what I was getting to. There is a question that is far more interesting to ask. So the who they did testing with is one that I was like fascinated with Because at one point, Chief Tortolot said that he had his DNA tested to prove that he wasn't involved. Like the FBI asked him for it or he did that as part of his investigation? Not clear. Like we tried to ask the FBI, but they never got back to us.

20:20And Chief Tortolot said no one has been ruled out as a person of interest. Correct. But he's also been working this case since the beginning. Like he's the guy that's been heading it up from the tribal side for almost 30 years. Yeah. So I feel like the FBI would have stepped in if he was a real person of interest. I don't know. And for all I know, there isn't even DNA evidence to compare stuff to. Like, that's something that they wouldn't share. It's all so muddy and complicated. And we were this close to getting an interview, like, with one of the detectives working on this case. Emily actually reached out to the detective who is directly assigned.

20:58He agreed to talk, but then Chief Tortolot wouldn't authorize the interview. And since our coverage has been ongoing for like years now, we even went back and asked again. And the detective said that he isn't allowed to do media interviews. I don't know if that's because of the shared jurisdiction with the FBI or why everyone is so hush-hush on Ray's case, why Chief Tortolot doesn't want him talking. but it seems like they don't want people asking questions or like getting the word out, which in my opinion just hurts their chances of actually receiving tips in her case. So at a certain point in her adulthood, Elise gets to the point where she feels like she needs to take matters into her own hands, conduct her own interviews with Ray's closest friends.

21:44And honestly, her primary goal isn't even to get her mom's murder solved. She wants to just learn more about her mom and keep her name alive through conversation. I mean, it sucks because I don't have memories. I think we have two pictures together. I think that's all we have. And it sucks because I don't know what she was like. I don't know. I hear a lot of stuff, but I wish I got to know that myself. Not knowing how her voice is or, I don't know. what was her favorite hobbies? What is she like doing? Like, because I don't know any of that stuff. Is that stuff her family can share with her? Didn't you mention something about Ray's mom?

22:33So yeah, Josephine. And Ray had a sister too. And that's who Elise lived with. And she had her dad. But Elise, she said she never felt like she could ask questions because anytime Ray would come up, it would just make everyone so upset. So she really grew up with her mom being this taboo subject in her family. And of course, we know the extended family is also reckoning with the death of another relative. And were they close? Like, I know cousins can mean, like, very different things for different families. I know. We don't know exactly how close they were as cousins, but they definitely crossed paths on the Menominee Reservation where they grew up.

23:09Reese's daughter, Michelle, remembers seeing Ray perform at powwows, or like traditional Native American culture celebrations. She performed as a dancer. And I know that Reese knew about Ray's murder because of a tip that Hatch found buried in Reese's case file. A tip in Reese's case file about Ray, and it is chilling. The tip is from a woman named Geraldine, or Jerry, one of Reese's friends from church. And when interviewed by police in 1990, Geraldine reveals that just two months before Reese went missing, Reese confided something in her. And here is Detective Nathan Hatch. Reese had stated that she was scared and depressed.

23:55And when Geraldine questioned her, Reese indicated that Reese was in danger. Reese confided in Jerry that she was afraid that she would end up like her cousin Ray, tortellot. Reese had commented something to the effect that, he's going to cut off my head. He already killed my cousin. and Reese had supposedly made this individual really mad at her, and he swore he was going to do this to her. He who? This is going to eat you alive. She told Jerry a name, but Jerry couldn't remember the name. You've got to be kidding me. I wish. She basically predicted exactly what was going to happen to her. I know.

24:33It seems almost impossible that investigators never connected the two murders, but they just never compared notes. In fact, we actually connected the investigators in both cases just this past year in October 2024. And that's when they finally sat down and had their first ever meeting. Wait, I don't understand. Reese told someone that she was afraid that she was going to end up like her cousin, that someone was mad at her. Someone was going to cut off her head. Yes. A couple months later, the exact thing happens. I know. Exactly like she predicted. And no one looked into it. Not until our reporting team came along.

25:13I wish these different counties would just talk to each other more. I know. So they're talking 2024, but like no huge breakthroughs happened at this fall meeting. It did finally bring together tribal police, the county detectives, the feds, the state investigative agencies. They basically went down the POI list in both Ray and Reese's case to see if there were any overlaps. Unfortunately, no one knows who. Again, it all comes back to what is the name that Reese told Jerry? Who was she afraid of? But nobody knows. I do know that what comes out of this big meeting, everyone coming together, is that investigators, detectives all left that meeting with a new to-do list full of leads that they wanted to follow up on that are still underway as of this recording of this episode.

26:03And the whole jurisdiction thing seems to be a major hurdle, though not just in Ray and Reese's cases, but in most of the Wisconsin dismemberment cases that Emily and I found. And I asked Detective Hatch about these two. Has there been any determination on whether any of them are connected or suspected to be? Fully, no. I've reached out to a handful of detectives from some of those cases and got like a thumbnail of the scenario of what happened in those cases. I didn't hear anything that would lead me to believe that they are related except for one that is really interesting to me. Can you talk about the one that you think there's potential for?

26:49Yeah, there's a woman named Leah Beas. She was, I believe, 36 years old. I believe she was Puerto Rican, and she was a mother of four. And she was ultimately abducted from Milwaukee. And in October of 90, her dismembered body was found in plastic bags, garbage bags, in a shallow grave by mushroom hunters in the village of Brockway, which is in Jackson County, directly across the river from Black River Falls. So I reached out to the Sensitive Crimes Unit at Milwaukee Police Department, and I was able to get my hands on a report. And as I put Julia's address, it was only just a few blocks from Reese, and it was only a half a block from National Avenue.