The Traffic Stop (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

0:00Before dawn in March of 1997, a police captain was patrolling the outskirts of a small town in North Carolina when up ahead he saw there was this jeep parked on the shoulder of the highway with its headlights on. Now, the vehicle was suspicious enough that the captain pulled over and he walked up to the jeep. And as he got closer to it, he heard the engine running and he saw the driver's side window was down, but when he walked around to that side of the car, he saw nobody was inside. However, as he was standing there, a cell phone on the passenger seat began to ring. But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place because that's all we do.

0:41So if that's of interest to you, the next time you go on vacation with the follow button and all your friends, be sure to take lots of pictures. But when you post those pictures to social media, be sure you first systematically Photoshop the follow button out of every picture. Okay, let's get into today's story.

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2:20In the early morning hours of Saturday, March 29, 1997, a blonde 26-year-old waitress named Kim Medlin carried a tray of filet mignon through a topless bar in Charlotte, North Carolina, while wearing a leotard and tights. She made her way through the cigar-smoke-filled room, past the stage where all the half-naked women were busy pole dancing. Kim worked here at the men's club three or four nights a week, and for the most part, she liked the job. It paid well, and by working the night shift, it left her days free, so she could focus on her two real passions, which were taking care of her horses and decorating her brand new house.

2:56So Kim and her husband Bridger had recently bought a seven-acre plot of land outside the nearby town of Monroe, where Bridger had actually grown up. They'd spent the past year building their dream home, including a barn for their three horses, and now that the construction was done, they had finally started moving in and decorating. Now, as Kim delivered the filet mignons to a table of middle-aged businessmen, she glanced over at the clock on the wall, and she felt a surge of excitement when she saw that there was less than an hour left in her shift. Kim had the next three days off, and she planned to use all that free time to finish some of the smaller moving projects that still needed to get done, like just unpacking boxes and hanging some pictures.

3:35So she flashed the businessman a smile and then went to check on her other tables.

3:43An hour later, a little after 2 a.m., Kim walked out the back entrance of the bar, now wearing a baggy sweatshirt instead of her work uniform, and she called out a goodbye over her shoulder to some co-workers and then walked over to where her red Jeep was parked along the side of the building. She got in, dropped her purse onto the cow print seat cover on the passenger seat, turned on the car, and then turned on some music for the hour-long drive home.

4:09A half an hour later, Kim drove south down Old Charlotte Highway, a secluded two-lane road that was pretty much deserted at this hour. She used to find this commute kind of relaxing, but lately it had been making her nervous to be driving alone late at night. And the reason for that was because a couple of weeks ago, while she was driving home from work around this same time of night, she'd been involved in a really scary road rage incident. Another vehicle had come up from behind and started tailgating her and honking their horn at her repeatedly for really no apparent reason. Kim had been afraid that this was a customer from the men's club who was now following her home.

4:44And it freaked her out so much that she'd actually pulled over into a convenience store parking lot because she saw there was a police car parked in there as well. And so she'd gone right over to the officer to ask for help. He'd promised to go and try and track down this road rager. And he'd even sent out a broadcast over the police radio, telling all the other officers to keep an eye out for Kim's car on the night she was working in case anyone gave her more trouble. And so now, even though, you know, that road rager had never been caught, Kim did feel better knowing that the police had her back.

5:15But again, because the road rager had not been caught, she was still a bit scared about driving home alone. So tonight, to calm her nerves, she fished out her cell phone out of her purse and just called her husband, Bridger. When he answered, he told her that he was actually on the road too. He was still driving back from a gig DJing at a prom in a town two hours away, but he was almost home. After chatting for a few minutes, Bridger told Kim that he was actually pulling into their driveway and that he would call her right back once he got inside the house. So Kim said fine and said goodbye and they hung up and she kept on driving.

5:48Then about 15 minutes later, so a little before 3am, her phone rang and it was Bridger again, calling back like he had promised he would. And he asked Kim if she was close and she told him that she was just passing by Union Station Restaurant, which meant she was maybe about 20 minutes away from home. Bridger said he was pretty tired and he was getting ready for bed, and in case he was asleep by the time she got in, he wished her good night. And Kim said good night back, and then she hung up, and she put her phone down on the passenger seat. But just as Kim turned her attention back towards the road, a sudden bright light almost blinded her.

6:21She looked in the rearview mirror and saw headlights right behind her. About an hour later, Kim's husband Bridger sat up in bed and looked over with the clock on his nightstand. It was 3.59 a.m., an hour after having spoken to Kim. I mean, she should have been home 20 minutes after that phone call, and she still wasn't back. So he got out of bed, and he checked every room in their two-story house, but Kim wasn't in any of them. There was no sign of her. Then Bridger looked out the window, and he saw her Jeep wasn't in the driveway either. So at this point, he hurried into the kitchen, and he picked up the phone and he dialed Kim's cell phone number and it rang a few times and then a strange male voice answered.

7:04Bridger asked who he was speaking to and the man told him he was a police officer with the Monroe Public Safety Department. Bridger asked him, okay, well, where's my wife? And the officer told him that he didn't know. He had just come across a red Jeep idling on the side of the road and found this phone inside of it and it was ringing and so he answered it. But he said, there's nobody here.

7:31Several minutes later, so this is a little bit after 4 a.m. on March 29, 1997, Assistant Chief Bobby Hulk, a police investigator with the Monroe Public Safety Department, drove north along Old Charlotte Highway. He drove his patrol car past parking lots and houses until he reached the very edge of town. And finally, he saw what he was looking for. A red Jeep parked along the opposite side of the road, with another patrol car parked right behind it. He pulled a U-turn and parked on the shoulder, and as he got out of his car, he recognized Captain David Simpson standing there, waiting for him. Simpson told Chief Hulk that he had just found this Jeep idling on the side of the road about 15 minutes ago with its headlights on, and he had walked up.

8:12There had been nobody inside of it. But when he looked in, there was a cell phone, and it began to ring. And so, you know, acting on instinct, he answered the phone. And it was a man named Bridger Medlin who was calling saying, I'm looking for my wife. This is her phone. She hasn't come home. And Captain Simpson also said that he actually recognized this Jeep from a random run-in he had had two weeks earlier outside of a convenience store with Kim Medlin. And so he put it together and he's like, okay, Bridger's calling. This is definitely Kim's car, but Kim's nowhere to be found. And Hulk actually recognized Kim's name because he actually happened to be friends with Kim's husband, Bridger.

8:48And so he pulled out his flashlight and he began looking inside the Jeep. And right away, he saw there was a wallet lying open on the passenger seat. And when he looked inside the wallet, there were credit cards, there was cash, but there was like this clear section of the wallet where obviously you would slide your driver's license and there was nothing there. So it very much looked like her license had been pulled out on purpose. Now, their initial theory was, okay, well, maybe Kim got pulled over by a police officer and took out her license to hand to the cop. But in a department as small as Monroe's, there were only a few officers on duty at this time of night.

9:24And when Assistant Chief Hulk asked Captain Simpson, had any of the on-duty officers pulled anybody over that night, Simpson was already all over it. He had checked and he said, no, none of our officers pulled anybody over. So this made Hulk wonder if maybe Kim had been pulled over by somebody posing as a cop. There had actually been dozens of reports over the years of so-called blue light bandits pretending to be police officers in order to harass drivers, especially young women. But those cases were really quite rare, even though they did happen, so Hulk didn't want to jump to any conclusions quite yet.

10:00Just then, Hulk heard a truck engine and saw headlights approaching up the highway. So he set the wallet back down on the seat and then walked over to where a black pickup truck was now pulling to a stop right behind Hulk's car. A tall man with blonde hair got out of the driver's seat and right away Hulk knew who it was. It was his friend and Kim's husband, Bridger. And Bridger looked frantic and he demanded to know what had happened to his wife. But Hulk told him to calm down that they were here to try to figure out what happened to his wife and where she went. Hulk went on to say that, look, like we showed up and we just found her car here.

10:37But there were no broken windows or slashed tires or any sign of a struggle. So it was possible that maybe Kim just ran into car trouble and maybe she went out to go find help. But then, without asking for permission, Bridger pushed past Hulk and just climbed right inside of the Jeep's driver's seat and said, well, let's test your theory right now and see whether the car was working. Hulk told him to get out of the Jeep, but Bridger just totally ignored him. And then he put his wife's car in drive and moved it forward a few inches. Then he put it in reverse and he drove it backward, ultimately parking it in its original place, showing that they worked just fine.

11:12And even though at this point, Hulk was kind of annoyed with Bridger for what he had just done, he couldn't help but think, this is bad. Something's going on here. And so Hulk walked over to his car and he radioed the dispatcher for reinforcements. and he asked them to bring a police dog so they could try to track Kim's scent in case she left on foot.

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14:10A few minutes later, two more police cars pulled up to the scene, and a few officers and a police dog got out. Hulk opened the doors to the jeep, and the dog went in and sniffed around, you know, getting familiar with the scent of Kim's belongings. Then the dog seemed to pick up a trail on the ground, and so the officers told Bridger, who clearly wanted to go with them, to stay put, you know, stay with your truck, and then they followed the dog down the road for about 100 yards or so until it turned onto a driveway. Hulk and the others followed the dog up this long driveway towards a small house nestled in the trees right off the highway.

14:43And the dog sniffed all the way up to the garage and then stopped. That was where Kim's trail ended. And so Hulk went up to the house and rang the doorbell. And a minute later, a man answered. And despite the late hour, he looked totally awake and not particularly surprised to see cops at his door. Hull cast the man who he was and whether or not he had seen or heard anything unusual in the past couple of hours near his property. The man said his name was Nathan Hargit, and about an hour ago, so maybe around 3.45 a.m., he'd been woken up by a strange car loitering near his garage. Nathan said he hadn't recognized the car, but he noticed that it had Texas plates, and that there also had been a woman with blonde hair in the back seat.

15:25Hulk asked Nathan for permission to search his property, and Nathan told them to go right ahead. And so Hulk directed the other officers to search the inside of the house, while he clicked on his flashlight and headed over to the garage. When he got there, he turned the handle of a door on the side of the garage, and he found it was unlocked. So he pushed the door open, and he shined his flashlight inside, but all he saw was a truck and some gardening tools. There was no sign of Kim. By the time dawn broke around 6 a.m. that morning, this had become officially a missing persons case. So police began a search of the woods around the old Charlotte Highway with help from members of the community.

16:04Meanwhile, Hulk and Simpson went back to the station to speak to one of the dispatchers who had been on duty that night. After speaking to that homeowner, Nathan, and searching his house in his garage, he had been ruled out as a suspect. So now they were focused on finding that car with the Texas plates that Nathan had seen loitering outside of his garage. So they were hoping that maybe there was a report of a traffic stop or maybe a suspicious car in the area or anything that might help figure out who was driving that car. But the dispatcher said again that really there had been no stops, nothing that night.

16:39However, there had been one incident in the area that night. It was around 2 a.m., so it was about an hour before Kim was last heard from. They'd gotten a call about a car that had run into a ditch, not too far from where Kim's Jeep was found. Hulk asked who had responded to that call, and the dispatcher said it was car 491, which was driven by a young rookie officer named Josh Griffin. Hulk immediately gave Officer Griffin a phone call and asked if he had seen or heard anything unusual while he was out responding to that car in the ditch. But Griffin said no. He actually said that his shift was over around the time that driver had flagged him down for help.

17:16So he had actually just called for a tow truck. And when it got there, maybe a little bit after 2.30 a.m., Griffin said he just went home. Hulk hung up the phone feeling pretty disappointed. Bridger said the last time he heard from his wife Kim was around 3 a.m. So if this car was already being towed away by 2.30 a.m., then it definitely was not the same car that Nathan saw loitering outside of his garage. and the driver of that car in the ditch was likely not a suspect. Hulk sighed in frustration, but then another idea occurred to him. He asked Captain Simpson to elaborate on that random run-in he had had with Kim a couple of weeks earlier.

17:54Now, this was sort of a long shot to bring it up again, but Hulk wondered if maybe the same driver from the road rage incident could have maybe come back and, you know, maybe chased Kim off the road or something. Simpson said he would go dig up the report that he had filed on the incident, and then he left to go find it. About half an hour later, Hulk sat at his desk reading through a copy of the Road Ridge police report. It said that in the very early morning hours of Saturday, March 15th, so exactly two weeks before Kim's disappearance, Kim had pulled into a convenience store and flagged down Captain Simpson and another officer named Roger Griffin.

18:30So Officer Josh Griffin is the one who responded to the car stuck in the ditch, Officer Roger Griffin is actually Josh's father, and he was with Captain Simpson that night. So the report said that Simpson and his partner, Roger Griffin, had actually caught up with the car that was harassing Kim a little bit further down the road. There were two men inside the car, Eric Williams and George Connell, and they claimed that they thought Kim was actually the one harassing them by flashing her lights at them. And so to Simpson and to Griffin, it seemed like a big misunderstanding, so the officers had just let them go.

19:04But Hulk, now looking at this through a very different lens, felt like he needed to speak to Eric and George regardless. And so in the report, he found the contact information for Eric and George and he called them both up. But it turned out they both had airtight alibis for the night of Kim's disappearance. But even still, it struck Hulk as very odd that Kim had gone missing from her car on the same road at the same time of night and on the same night of the week as the road rage incident just two weeks earlier. And he had a hard time believing it was all just, you know, one big coincidence.

19:41The next day, just after sunset on Sunday, March 30th, Hulk drove down Westwood Industrial Drive, a deserted dead-end street at the edge of town, about two miles from where Kim's Jeep was found. And as he was driving, he saw at the end of the street there were a couple of police cars parked there. And so he pulled his own car behind them, and he got out. He walked into the trees, where where he could see the beams of several flashlights moving around in the darkness. And as he got closer, he saw officers putting up police tape around a small clearing. And then on the ground in that clearing, he saw a pair of feet in sneakers poking out from underneath a pile of roofing shingles and branches.

20:17The police had gotten a call earlier that evening from two men who were part of the community search effort for Kim. And they said to police that they had found a body in the woods in this spot, but they hadn't touched it. And so now with Hulk on the scene, the forensics team removed the shingles and branches that were covering the body, and Hulk pulled out his flashlight and knelt down to get a better look. And he saw right away it was a deceased woman, and it was definitely Kim Medlin. She was only wearing a pair of shorts, a bra, and a sweatshirt that had been pulled up over her head. One side of her face was very badly beaten, and there were also cuts and bruises all over her neck, and there were some scrapes on her knees.

20:57and her necklace and wedding ring were still on, so her killer had not robbed her. Hulk stood back as the forensics team untangled Kim's sweatshirt from around her wrists so they could collect clippings of her fingernails in case she had maybe scratched off a trace of her killer's DNA. And as Hulk watched one of these forensics officers go to put the sweatshirt inside of an evidence bag, he suddenly noticed something and shouted for the officer to stop. Hulk stepped closer and he shined his flashlight on the sweatshirt's fabric and it revealed a shoe print. And so he told the officers to send that sweatshirt to the crime lab and see if they could figure out the size and type of shoe that had left that print.

21:35But while he would have to wait for those results, he knew he had a couple of other big clues to help narrow down a suspect. The first was the location of Kim's body. Westwood Industrial Drive was known as Lover's Lane. So basically a secluded, out-of-the-way spot where people often went to be alone. and the fact that Kim's killer had thought to take her there meant they were probably a local and familiar with the area. Now, it was still theoretically possible that she'd just been run off the road by some stranger for some reason, or maybe a customer had followed her home from work, or maybe it was a blue light bandit impersonating a police officer.

22:11But the second big clue was that there was no sign of a struggle at Kim's Jeep. And because of that, Hulk did not think she had been kidnapped by a stranger. He thought it was far more likely that she had gotten out of her car for somebody that she knew and trusted. The very next day, Monday, March 31st, Hulk sat down in an interrogation room with his friend and first murder suspect, Kim's husband, Bridger. Bridger had been really pushy and really in some ways over-involved in the investigation from literally the moment Kim's Jeep was found. He'd messed with the crime scene by getting into the Jeep without permission, and now Hulk had information that Bridger had lied about his alibi.

22:53So when Kim first went missing, Bridger had told the police that he got home around 2.30 that morning, he called Kim for a brief chat a little before 3, and then he immediately went to bed. But now a police officer had told Hulk that he had seen Bridger's black pickup truck driving around the center of town around 2.30 a.m., which was nowhere near Bridger's house and nowhere near the route he would have taken to get back from his DJing gig. So once Hulk sat down, immediately he could see that Bridger was visibly distraught. I mean, he's just learned that his wife was found dead, but Hulk had a job to do.