Evelyn Hartley

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2:00My name is Sarah Turney, and this is Voices for Justice.

2:10Today, I'm discussing the case of Evelyn Hartley, which makes me ask the question, how much of what we watch in true crime entertainment is actually true? And what happens when a story is rewritten for the screen, replacing a family's painful, decades-long mystery with a neat, tidy, and conclusive fictional story. The new season of Netflix Monster is a global phenomenon, but in its telling of the Ed Gein story, it presents a young woman named Evelyn Hartley as one of his confirmed victims. It's a gripping narrative. There's just one problem. According to the official investigation, It's not true.

2:54This is the case of Evelyn Hartley. Evelyn Grace Hartley was born on November 21, 1937 in Charleston, Illinois, to her parents Richard and Ethel Hartley. She was affectionately known to those close to her as Evie. She had two older brothers, Richard Jr. and Thomas, and a younger sister named Carolyn, sometimes called Caroline by the media. However, unfortunately, tragedy struck the family when they lost Richard Jr. to polio in 1946 at the age of 18. He passed away while serving in the Navy, stationed in Rhode Island. Just a few years later, around 1949, the family made a big decision to move from Charleston, Illinois, to La Crosse, Wisconsin, where Richard would work and eventually become a respected biology professor at La Crosse State College.

3:47Ethel was a homemaker. Now, back in the 50s, La Crosse was a quiet and charming city on the Mississippi River. Like we often see small towns depicted in film, its residents say it truly was the kind of city where you felt safe, and where violent crime against a child felt impossible. Until it wasn't. In October 1953, Evelyn was 14, almost 15 in about a month. She was a typical teenager of her era, living a life filled with school, friends, and family. She's been described as a brainy teenager, an honor student near the top of her class at La Crosse Central High School, who shared her father's passion for science.

4:29She was even known to conduct her own science experiments at home, but she also sang in the choir at her church and was a member of the girls' drama club at her school. Her best friend Mary said that she loved music and would walk down the street playing her ukulele singing. Like many girls her age, she also earned some extra money babysitting, which, unfortunately, is what would lead to her disappearance. One of her father's colleagues, a man named Viggo Rasmussen, needed a babysitter for his 20-month-old daughter for the big homecoming game at the college. After asking around, Evelyn's father recommended her as a responsible and reliable sitter.

5:07While Evelyn would have rather attended the game as well, she reluctantly agreed. It was a Saturday night, October 24, 1953. At about 6.30 p.m., Professor Rasmussen picked Evelyn up from her home and drove her to his home on Hochschler Drive. It's been described as a clear and bright night, illuminated not only by the full moon, but also by street and porch lights down the block. And this was a suburban area. there were about a dozen large picture windows that had a clear and unobstructed view of the home, yard, and where at least part of this crime would take place. Across the street sat a couple in their window listening to music, directly facing the home.

5:51Another neighbor was outside planting bushes a few houses down, and two women played gin rummy just a few feet away. Another neighbor was washing dishes in front of her kitchen window that looked directly into their back porch, kitchen, and one of the bedrooms. And their neighbor to the side of them was painting in his basement as Evelyn and her abductor would eventually walk past, leaving a trail of blood on the side of his home. But it seemed like a pretty safe and easy gig for Evelyn. The baby went down at 7, and all she really needed to do was cover her with a blanket 15 minutes after that.

6:27So, Evelyn came prepared for a pretty boring evening compared to the homecoming game. She brought her school books ready to get some studying in. It began as a normal night, but as the hours passed, a sense of unease began to grow in the Hartley household. Evelyn was diligent about checking in with her parents, but that night, her customary call home arranged for 8.30 p.m. never came. Her father Richard called the Rasmussen home just before 9 p.m., but got no answer. He then began calling their neighbors. and then the home one last time, assuming he likely dialed the wrong number. But again, there was no answer.

7:09He then drove to the Rasmussen home around 9.15 p.m. When he arrived, he found the house locked. The lights were on and he could hear the radio playing, so he kept knocking. He then began knocking on the windows, calling out Evelyn's name, something none of the neighbors would report hearing. His concern mounting to raw panic, he circled the house until he found an open basement window. He then climbed inside, using a small stepladder that had already been placed beneath the window. The scene he discovered was chilling. At the bottom of the basement stairs was just one of Evelyn's shoes. He found the other, and her brand new glasses on the floor of the living room upstairs, and her school books next to one of the chairs.

7:58Luckily, he found the Rasmussen's baby unharmed, peacefully sleeping in her crib. But his baby, Evelyn, was gone. In that single, terrifying moment of discovery, Richard Hartley stood at the epicenter of a mystery that would launch one of the largest and most desperate searches in the history of Wisconsin. This message is sponsored by Greenlight. Money is this invisible thread that ties us all together. It's something everyone has to deal with. That's why teaching kids about money isn't just smart, it's essential. Greenlight is a debit card and money app for families. It's a safe way to teach kids and teens about money.

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9:55more than 140 beverage ingredients. Visit goodtoknowfacts.org. Officers began arriving at the home just before 10 p.m., the baby still sleeping soundly through the chaos. While the police originally theorized that perhaps Evelyn just left with a boy, for some reason without her shoes, it became increasingly clear that this was not the case of a runaway teen. This was something far more sinister. Unfortunately, the clues left behind painted a grim picture of Evelyn's last known moments. Size 11 shoe prints, much larger than Evelyn's, were found in the flower bed, and matching muddy tracks were found in the rug inside the home.

10:37Investigators found pry marks on several of the windows. A screen from the basement window closest to the front of the house had been removed, and was now lying near the back of the home in the grass near a pool of blood. They theorize that it may have been used to attack Evelyn. According to reporting by Norma Lee Browning for the Chicago Tribune, there was a trail of blood and footprints winding around the neighbors' homes that covered the distance equal to about a city block. Blood found on the neighbor's garage would later test positive for the same blood type as Evelyn's, type A. Now, dogs were brought to the scene, and they traced the scent for about two blocks before it abruptly stopped at the street.

11:17The implication was clear and horrifying. Evelyn had likely been overpowered and forced into a vehicle. Investigators estimate that Evelyn had been running or possibly forcefully led across this path for 5 to 10 minutes before being placed into a waiting vehicle. It's also important to note that the baby had never been covered by a blanket, leading investigators to believe that Evelyn was likely attacked just minutes after the Rasmussens left for the game, indicating that someone may have been watching and waiting. The prevailing theory was that someone broke into the home through the basement window, attacked Evelyn, and forced her back through the same window, down the street, and into a vehicle before speeding away.

12:04These grim findings galvanized the community, turning their shock and fear into a unified call for action. The search for Evelyn Hartley was truly unprecedented. Within days, there were between 1 ,000 and 2 ,000 volunteers volunteers mobilizing to comb the area on foot. And her story made the front page of local papers for weeks. They displayed her picture alongside a description of the clothing she was wearing on the night she vanished. A white blouse, red jeans, and white bobby socks. This wasn't just a police operation. It was a city mobilized. Officers walked shoulder to shoulder with Boy Scouts.

12:43From the skies, the National Guard and the Civic Air Patrol scanned the landscape, while on the ground, Evelyn's classmates and the faculty her father worked with fanned out across the county, a community refusing to give up. Now, authorities took extraordinary measures. A program was initiated to inspect the trunk and backseat of every single car in the county. Cleared vehicles got a My Car Is Okay sticker. Police made public pleas to hunters and farmers, asking them to keep an eye out for any freshly turned earth. and in a somber and desperate move, they even exhumed recent graves to ensure that her body hadn't been hidden.

13:25There was also a reward fund established totaling about$6 ,600 or close to$80 ,000 today adjusted for inflation. But the holidays came and went without investigators getting any closer to finding Evelyn Hartley. In reporting by Norma Lee Browning for the Chicago Tribune, she explains that by January 1954, La Crosse was a different city. She describes residents as drawing their shades, bolting their windows and doors, girls only walking the streets in pairs, and said that the price of a babysitter became a premium luxury. And the police were admittedly baffled. Police Chief George Long said exactly that, that everywhere they turned, they were met with a stone wall.

14:11Chief of Detectives Leo Kim said, quote, somebody pulled a Houdini right in front of all those neighbors, end quote. It was being described as the perfect crime. They said the crime didn't fit any pattern they were familiar with, and they had no prime suspects. The community was also becoming restless, and according to reporter Normalee Browning, a bit suspicious. Some wondered how muddy prints were only found on the rug in the living room if the perpetrator entered through the basement window, and rumors were swirling about secret midnight phone calls between the chief of police and reporters.

14:50Neighbors began complaining about the lack of progress and said they were still waiting for investigators to speak with them three months after the abduction. But the Hartleys still had hope of finding their daughter and praised efforts made by investigators. Ethel Hartley said, quote, We have not given up hope. We know there's only a slim chance she's alive, but we have to keep on hoping. End quote. They also kept their porch light on every single night, all night for Evelyn, waiting for her return, and urged the public to remember what she looked like. Five foot six, dark hair, blue eyes, and very pretty.

15:30And they really did have a good reason to hold out hope, because the investigation was nowhere near its end. According to early reporting by Dion Henderson for the Arges Leader, in the spring of 1954, police pledged to administer polygraph tests to every single male student across three nearby high schools, about 2 ,000 students in total. At the time, they referred to it as the largest such test in the history of crime detection. This initiative was created after the passing of former Sheriff Ivan Wright, whose friend attributed his fatal heart attack to the strain of the fruitless investigation.

16:07This is when A.M. Josephson, a polygraph expert who formerly worked with the Army's Criminal Investigation Division, was brought in to head the new La Crosse Crime Lab. After reviewing the documents in Evelyn's case, this was his proposed solution to solve it. This really was unprecedented for a city of about 50 ,000 residents to have such dedicated law enforcement resources, and many were concerned about it bankrupting the county. It was controversial, but publicly backed by the district attorney, John Bosshard, who said they were taking measures to do this as frugally as possible. The article also explains that they were able to administer the test to about 20 to 30 students a day, and typically they're asked their name, where they live, what grade they were in, and if they knew what happened to Evelyn Hartley.

16:56Bossard described the process as an enjoyable reprieve from the normal school day, but added, quote, it wouldn't be a lark for the young man who couldn't truthfully say no to the big question, end quote. Four days into the process, he says they'd already generated a dozen leads, leads that unfortunately didn't go anywhere, but leads nonetheless. He also credited the test with creating a renewed interest in the case, Bossard said that he was hopeful that they would eventually get just a fragment of a tip that would lead them to finding Evelyn. However, investigators stopped administering the test after the first 300, due to concern and controversy from parents and the public.

17:39And just a year later, Josephson died by suicide, sparking more rumors, controversy, and just an overall dark cloud that lingered over Evelyn's case. I really can't overstate how large Evelyn's case was not just in the community but across the country at this point. When you search these archived news articles about her, you can find dozens of articles from the early days of the investigation. Her case and her face were everywhere. Now, of course, high-profile cases like this often become a magnet for both genuine tips and the cruel, and Evelyn's case was no exception. The Hartley family was forced to endure additional pain when a 20-year-old man named Jack Dufferin and a 15-year-old boy who has never been named but, quote, wanted some quick money, end quote, were arrested and convicted of attempted extortion.

18:35Basically, they tried to solicit a$500 ransom from the family in exchange for false information about Evelyn. Dufferin was criminally charged. While the boy was committed to a state school until age 21. Now, the investigation was also plagued by promising leads that just went nowhere. Not long after her disappearance, three boys in Minneapolis found a young girl on the street in the pouring rain. She told them she was Evelyn Hartley and that she needed help. But the girl was not Evelyn. In Hugo, Oklahoma, another girl resembling Evelyn signed a check-in book at a motel with the name George Miller, prompting the clerk to alert authorities.

19:19But by the time they got to the scene, the girl was gone. Just six days after Evelyn's disappearance, a pair of stained corduroy pants were found rolled up and stuffed in a culvert south of La Crosse. There were rumors that red cotton matching the pants Evelyn was wearing that night were found on the pants as well, and that the stains were confirmed to be human blood. Though, according to early reporting by the Daily News, police were reluctant to confirm these findings, but it was confirmed in reporting nearly a decade later to not only be human blood, but a match to Evelyn's blood type. The day after the pants were found, a pair of black, bloody, size 11 tennis shoes, the same size as the prints found at the scene, were found along Highway 14, about 11 miles southeast of La Crosse.

20:10Many locals said that they were not there while conducting the initial searches for Evelyn, but they were a match found for the prints on the rug and in the flower bed found outside the home. The problem was that authorities believed the shoes were worn by two different people at some point. Now, it is unclear in the reporting that I found as to why they believed this, but the crime lab chief said outright that they believed this to be true, stating that one of the wearers fit the shoe, while the other had much smaller feet. He added that the second person likely spent little time on sidewalks or gymnasiums.

20:44Now, they found out that this particular pair of shoes had not been sold in the cross for at least three years, and may have come from the neighboring town of Iroqua. About a block from where the shoes were found, someone else discovered a jacket with bloodstains on it, though whoever found it reportedly waited weeks before turning it over to authorities. Upon further inspection, they believed the jacket had been shortened through alterations by an amateur They also found a faded mark on the back that matched the description of two harnesses a local crafter made for two men the summer before Evelyn went missing Despite this extremely promising lead, the men were never identified Another person found a pair of bloody underwear later on But again, it didn't lead them to Evelyn Now, all of these items were sent off for testing by the state crime lab, which of course, back in the 1950s, was much more limited than the testing we know today.

21:44But, like the handprint on the garage, according to the Charlie Project, the blood found on the jacket was also a match to Evelyn's blood type, again type A, which, according to the American Red Cross, is a match for about 35 % of people in the U.S., at least today. Now, there were also more promising leads from witnesses near the home that night. One neighbor, Elvin Sadak, was sitting on his front porch that night when he said he heard three sharp screams around 7pm, about 15 minutes after the Rasmussens left for the game. He told investigators that he thought it was likely just children playing, but Elvin's wife, who was in the kitchen at the time, told investigators that she felt the scream sounded more dire to her.

22:29This would again correlate with the theory that Evelyn was taken shortly after the Rasmussens left and before 7.15pm when she was supposed to cover the baby with a blanket. Another witness, known for decades only as Mr. X but later revealed as Ed Hoffer, reported seeing two men and a girl walking down the street while he was driving that night. He said the girl appeared intoxicated and needed help walking. He described the girl as sandwiched between the two men, near where the trail of blood had ended. A few minutes later, he says he saw the same people in a Buick speeding to the west. He said one man was driving, and the other was in the back seat with the girl, who appeared to be resting her head on the back of the driver's seat.

23:15Hoffer was given and passed a polygraph test, which, as is a theme in this case, was enough for investigators to believe he was telling the truth. However, according to a 1954 report by the Daily News, the driver was later identified as a male college student. He was interviewed and eventually cleared as he too was polygraphed and provided an alibi that placed him far from the scene, though that alibi was apparently not ever fully confirmed. This really only added more confusion to the already complicated case. So who did this? Of course, they looked into Evelyn's father as well as Vigo Rasmussen, but they were considered to be extremely cooperative and were eventually ruled out.

24:01It's also worth noting here that the homecoming game was significant for many reasons. Not only did it mean that more locals were out of the house that night, but it also marked the end of a conference that included 400 student leaders from across the entire state of Wisconsin. Reporters theorized that maybe Evelyn had a date with one of these students that night and planned to have them come to the Rasmussen house while she babysat. However, her parents quickly discounted this theory, stating that Evelyn just wasn't dating, and her friends also made statements that they'd seen her cry due to not being asked out on dates.

24:37All around, it seems unlikely that Evelyn was planning to meet up with a boy that night. Now, another theory was that a man or a boy had come looking for the Rasmussen's other babysitter, a girl named Janice, and that something went awry there. But in my research, I found very conflicting reporting about whether or not Evelyn was actually a replacement for Janice that night, with one reporter stating outright that the initial reporting was incorrect. So take that for what you will. Another person they looked into was a 34-year-old La Crosse resident who was arrested after running from police about 30 miles away in Sparta, Wisconsin, on the night Evelyn went missing, but he was later cleared and released.

25:22A 15-year-old high school student in Madison, Wisconsin, was also arrested at his mother's request. Unfortunately, the details on why were limited, but he told investigators that he and Evelyn dated for six months. However, again, Evelyn's father denied this, saying Evelyn didn't have any type of dating life yet, which was also confirmed by her friends. This teenager was eventually cleared and released as well. Local resident 20-year-old Robert Snodgrass was also looked into after being arrested on an indecent exposure charge, but he had a solid alibi and was released. They looked at 43-year-old Harold Fork, a known sex offender, but again he had an alibi and was released.

26:09John Mulqueen, who had confessed to a different nearby homicide, was also looked into, but credit card charges placed him in Houston on the night of the abduction. Overall, they looked at upwards of 50 men who'd previously been charged with sex crimes, but they weren't able to establish any link to Evelyn. It seemed that every tip was pursued, and every lead was exhausted. As the weeks turned into years, every potential path was seemingly explored and ruled out. Nothing led them back to Evelyn. And then, four years after she went missing, another case dominated the media in Wisconsin, when investigators discovered a house of horrors in Plainfield belonging to a man named Ed Gein.

26:58Four years after Evelyn's disappearance, in 1957, the arrest of Ed Gein in Plainfield, Wisconsin sent a shockwave across the state. The horrors discovered on his farm were beyond comprehension. Ed Gein was a truly disturbed individual who inspired horror films like Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs. On his farm, they found the bodies and body parts of many women, including Mary Hogan and Bernice Worden, who were the only women Gein confessed to killing. The rest of the women had died of other causes and were later dug up by Gein post-mortem. But for investigators in La Crosse, Gein's arrest presented a tantalizing, though ultimately flawed, new lead in their cold case.

27:46Gein became a suspect for one simple reason, proximity. He had reportedly been visiting relatives in the La Crosse area around the time of Evelyn's abduction. Given his crimes, it was a logical connection to explore. But here, we must separate the investigative due diligence from dramatic fiction. So let's be absolutely clear about what the historical record shows. First, Ed Gein was questioned and consistently denied any involvement in Evelyn Hartley's disappearance, while openly confessing to his other crimes. Second, he passed two separate lie detector tests regarding the Hartley case, which we know meant a lot to investigators back in the 50s, but is ultimately not a reliable investigative tool.