June Goodman

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1:37Voices for Justice is a podcast that uses adult language and discusses sensitive and potentially triggering topics including violence, abuse, and murder. This podcast may not be appropriate for younger audiences. All parties are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Some names have been changed or omitted per their request or for safety purposes. Listener discretion is advised. My name is Sarah Turney, and this is Voices for Justice.

2:09Today I'm discussing the case of June Goodman. In a small town like Snowflake, Arizona, history lives in the names people carry. Some families helped build the town, shaped its institutions, and remained deeply embedded in its power structure for generations. When June Goodman disappeared in 2003, her case didn't just leave behind one haunting mystery, it opened the door to many. Was she the victim of opportunity? A known predator? A dangerous secret? Or a connection to something or someone much closer to home? June was 66 years old, A widow, a mail carrier, a grandmother, and a great-grandmother.

2:53By all accounts, she should have been safe in the quiet rhythm of small-town life. But disappearances like this don't happen in a vacuum, and in June's case, there are far too many possibilities to ignore. This is the case of June Goodman.

3:12It's 7 a.m. on Saturday, March 29, 2003 in Snowflake, Arizona, and 56-year-old Pat Fawcett is trying to call her older sister, 66-year-old June Goodman, but she's not answering the phone. They had dinner the night before at Pat's house, so it's been less than 12 hours since they last spoke. It's just not like June to not answer, but Pat doesn't think much of it. Until she gets a call shortly after 8 a.m. It's not June returning her call, though. It's the Snowflake post office where June has worked as a mail carrier for the last 20 years. Pat's June's emergency contact, and June didn't show up for work this morning.

3:53She also didn't call in, which is extremely unusual for her. Not only is June an excellent and reliable worker, but she also usually gets to work early, so a no-call no-show is definitely cause for concern. Pat wastes exactly no time and immediately gets in the car and drives over to June's house. It's a ranch-style home on Concho Road, set pretty far back from an extremely rural highway east of the city center of Snowflake at the end of a quarter-mile-long, winding dirt and gravel road. So it's a pretty isolated area, but it's far from new to June. She's been in this home for about 25 years, and has been alone in it for about two and a half years since her husband John passed away in October 2000.

4:39It's also worth noting that outside of her home, the town of Snowflake is a truly rural Arizona town. It's about three hours northeast of Phoenix, and it's small, about 6 ,000 people, spread out, and extremely tight-knit. So June is a 66-year-old widow who lives alone with her dogs in a rural area who didn't show up for work and isn't answering her phone. Pat is taking this very seriously. But unfortunately, when she gets to June's house, it's not what I imagined she was hoping for. When Pat finally makes her way up the driveway, she sees June's USPS work van parked in its normal spot. Her personal vehicle was with her daughter who needed to borrow it.

5:21It looks like June made her way home from dinner last night just fine. So far, none of this is out of the ordinary except for June just not being at work. But the outdoor floodlights were still on, which is unusual for them to be on during the day. And when Pat goes into the house, she can hear something. But it's not June. The TV's on. On the counter is June's purse, and her billfold was there too. But the back sliding glass door is open. Now, Pat can't see any sign of a struggle. Nothing seems to be broken or even disturbed. And all of June's valuables are still in the house. Everything from her jewelry to her shoe collection was all accounted for.

6:07And her dogs were still there too. The scene really seems to paint this picture that June watched TV the night before, got up, turned on the outdoor floodlights, walked out the back door, and never came back. I mean, everything is there except for June. So Pat immediately calls the police to report her sister missing, and the search for June began that morning. Now, Snowflake is a desert landscape, so you have to watch out for things like cactus, snakes, scorpions, coyotes, and even mountain lions. But it's also directly north of the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, so there's a possibility of seeing a black bear.

6:51And I think there's this common misconception that everywhere in Arizona is hot. So I just want you guys to know that March in northern Arizona is cold. On this particular day, the low was below freezing at about 24 degrees, with a high of only 46 degrees. So it's a rough climate with predators, and it's cold. Which also means that June could have been out there somewhere facing the same dangers as the searchers. One theory I've seen proposed in June's case is that she was watching TV in her recliner in front of her large picture window, when either she saw someone coming up the driveway or her dogs began barking at something.

7:31She goes outside to check and see what it was, and she was attacked by something or someone. But of course, that is just a theory. Investigators, helicopters, members of the sheriff's posse, professional trackers, and tracking dogs fanned out for miles in every direction surrounding June's home. But they don't find anything. According to reporting by Mark Schaefer for the Arizona Republic, they don't even find a footprint, or sock print since all of June's shoes were found in her home. Commander Larry Dunnigan with the Navajo County Sheriff's Office said, quote, When Mrs. Goodman walked out that back door, it was like she disappeared into thin air.

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10:4466-year-old June Goodman has seemingly disappeared without a trace from her isolated snowflake home. Nothing is missing, but the back door was left open and the TV was left on. It's as if June was interrupted by someone or something and never made her way back home. So investigators get to work building the best timeline they can of June's last movements. According to reporting by Mark Schaefer for the Arizona Republic, Pat says that when she last saw her sister the night before, they spent about two hours discussing the future, specifically their retirement plans. June was planning to retire from USPS in July after 20 years.

11:22She was really just a matter of weeks away. This, and June's love for her family in general, lead Pat and the rest of her family to believe that she wouldn't just leave her life without telling anyone. But back to the timeline. Their dinner lasts from about 6pm to 8pm. Then at 8.25pm, June is recorded at Ed's Market on Main Street, where she buys exactly four candy bars. But after that, they don't know. Like I told you, June's work van was at her home, but there's no confirmation that she was the person who drove it there. However, we do know that according to Pat, it was parked in its usual spot, which combined with none of her shoes being missing, leads investigators to believe that she likely made it home that night without incident.

12:10And they quickly assume that June was met with foul play. They just don't know how, by whom, or maybe by what. There's nothing outside of her home to indicate that she was attacked by an animal or anything else. Like I said, they didn't find a single footprint or sock print around her home or in the desert surrounding it. This part really stunned me, so I looked up how long prints in the desert can last. If it's a little wet and muddy, tracks would last for weeks, apparently in some cases for centuries. But that doesn't appear to be what we're dealing with here, where I'd imagine that they'd find prints from June going into her home after getting back from dinner in the market, or tracks going out her open back door.

12:54I mean, some indication that she entered or left that house. So, I'm not an expert, but I think that we can safely eliminate those conditions as a possibility. But if the dirt near June's home is like many areas of the desert, if it wasn't very compact, and there was a decent amount of wind, tracks could disappear in a matter of minutes. That goes for both footprints and tire tracks. Now, while I was able to find the basic temperature forecast for March 28, 2003, I was not able to find any information about the wind, so I can't say for sure that there were likely tracks that were quickly blown away.

13:33but it does feel more likely than June being magically teleported out of her home somehow. But again, that is just a theory. Which is largely what we're left with, because it doesn't seem that investigators have anything solid. If they processed her home forensically, that information hasn't been released to the public. Of course, they do speak with Pat and the rest of June's family to start building out their list of potential persons of interest. But before we dive into that, I want to talk about June's family, because many people believe it could play a factor into her disappearance. To do that, we need to go all the way back to the 1800s when the town of Snowflake was created.

14:17Snowflake, Arizona is one of those towns where the local history isn't background noise. It was a settlement built around a family, shared religious heritage, and dense intergenerational ties that made the community feel both deeply rooted and deeply connected, and also possibly made June a target. So let's get into it. As many of you probably know, Arizona became the 48th state in 1912, but 34 years before that, in 1878, a man named William J. Flake led five families into the Silver Creek Valley. He'd bought the Rancho Rio Plata, and was a part of a broader effort by leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to establish colonies across the Southwest.

15:01Later that same year, LDS Apostle Aratus Snow made a visit to the settlement, and the new town was named by combining their surnames Snow and Flake. So, obviously, from the beginning, the Flake family was woven into the town's identity, and Snowflake was laid out in the traditional City of Zion pattern. This is basically large square blocks and unusually wide streets. In other words, Snowflake was not only founded by Mormon colonists, it was physically designed to reflect their ideas about community, order, and permanence. So in the town of Snowflake, the Flake name isn't just a surname on a mailbox.

15:37It's embedded into the town's origin story, its civic institutions, and its local identity. So it'll probably come as no surprise that William J. Flake's descendants remained prominent in the area for generations. And by the late 20th and early 21st century, two of the better-known public figures carrying that name were Jake Flake and Jeff Flake. At this point, you're probably wondering what any of this has to do with June Goodman. Well, Jake Flake and Jeff Flake are her cousins. So let's dig a little bit deeper into these modern connections. Jake Flake was born and raised in Snowflake. He was a rancher, businessman, and a major figure in Arizona state politics.

16:21He was elected to the legislature in 1996, served eight years in the Arizona House, including two years as Speaker of the House, and then served in the Arizona Senate until his death in 2008. He also served on local school boards, irrigation boards, hospital boards, and agricultural organizations. He was really the kind of politician who grew out of the town rather than merely representing it. But Jeff Flake is the nationally known member of the family. He was born in Snowflake in 1962, named in part for his great-great-grandfather, and later served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2001 to 2013, and then in the U.S.

17:02Senate from 2013 to 2019. So even though Jeff Flake's career became national, his public identity was still closely tied to the little town his family helped found. And Jeff and Jake were also related to each other. Jake Flake was Jeff Flake's uncle. So this family's political presence stretched from the Arizona state capitol to Washington, D.C. By 2003, when June Goodman disappeared, the Flake family name already carried real weight in Arizona politics. So all of that is really the heart of the Snowflake backdrop. This was a town literally named for the Flake family, physically shaped by the religious colony they helped establish, and socially defined by multi-generational family networks that remained visible well into the 2000s.

17:50June Goodman's story sits inside that larger history. She disappeared from a place founded by her extended family's ancestors, in a town where the Flake name had become political, historical, and symbolic. Her case isn't only a missing person case in rural Arizona. It's, in a very real sense, a rupture inside of one of Snowflake's oldest and most recognizable families. One second, you're finally cleaning out the gutters. The next, the fire alarm blares from inside. Smoke billows out the kitchen window. These are the wake-up calls that happen daily. In one second, everything can change. ADT knows that nobody wants to feel unsafe or unprepared for an emergency, especially in their own home.

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19:13Visit ADT.com to learn more. Your little one grew three inches overnight. Adorable. Also, expensive. Sell their pint-sized pieces on Depop and list them in minutes with no selling fees. Because somewhere, a dad refuses to pay full price for the clothes his kids will outgrow tomorrow. And he's ready to buy your son's entire wardrobe right now. Consider your future growth bird budget secured. Start selling on Depop, where taste recognizes taste. Payment processing fees and boosting fees still apply. See website for details. We've gone over the circumstances of June's disappearance. And we've gone over the history of Snowflake and her ties to the Flake family.

19:54Now, let's get into who the police investigated. In total, they report looking into about 40 people early on, but they and June's family have only publicly discussed a few. When investigators speak to Pat, she tells them about a local handyman who June hired to repair her TV about a month before she went missing. But apparently, after taking the TV to repair it, he returned it to June still broken. When June followed up, he asked to come back to take a look, but she refused to let him into her home and told her sister that he made her uncomfortable and uneasy. So that's our possible person of interest number one.

20:31June's family also mentions another publicly unnamed man who wanted to pursue a romantic relationship with June, but she rejected him. They theorize he may have taken June against her will. That's really all we know, but that's our possible person of interest number two. Now let me tell you about the man who has been publicly named as a suspect, 44-year-old Patrick Michael Kahn. Kahn was on June's rural mail route, but it seems that at some point in early 2002, he stopped complying with their policy requiring official designated street addresses. I'm not gonna lie, I'm a city girl and this confused me, so I looked it up.

21:13Apparently, in some rural areas, people would use descriptors of where to deliver mail instead of an exact street address. So like, deliver to the big blue house at the end of Main Street, as opposed to 123 Main Street. Most of you probably already knew that, but if you didn't, there you go. So when this policy changed, again about a year before June went missing, Khan was upset that he was no longer receiving mail at his home, and he approached June on her mail route, and they had what's really only been described as a large confrontation. June did make an official report about this to her supervisor, but it didn't end there.

21:51After that, Khan went down to the post office, and in front of many witnesses, he threatened to kill June. So you can see why police publicly named him as a suspect. Pat also confirmed that June discussed this with her and was deathly afraid of this man. And I can see why. Not long after that, in February 2002, Kahn was named the prime suspect in another case, the murder of 46-year-old Snowflake resident Donald Eugene Sewell. So let's go through it. On February 11, 2002, police were called about a vehicle found crashed into a tree off Highway 77, about a mile north of the Cottonwood Wash Bridge.

22:38When emergency responders got to the scene, they found Donald Eugene Sewell in his car deceased. Investigators concluded that he'd been shot 13 times. He was trying to drive away when he crashed. Pretty quickly, they narrowed their sights on Patrick Michael Kahn. It seems that Donald was shot with a Russian-made semi-automatic pistol. While the gun was never found, witnesses reported that Kahn tried to sell the exact model of gun shortly after the murder. They also found shell casings at not one, but two former properties owned by Kahn that matched those found at the crime scene. And just like June, two witnesses reported seeing a confrontation between Donald and Kahn not long before the shots were fired.

23:22And one witness later identified Kahn in a photo lineup. The motive was quickly identified. The men did have a history of bad confrontations with each other, and apparently, Kahn thought Donald was a police informant, quote, trying to get him, end quote. But when investigators approached Kahn, he told them he didn't have any negative history with Donald, and suggested that he was killed by a police officer. Now, while they were building the case against Kahn, he allegedly exposed himself to passing motorists while he was being searched by police during a traffic stop. He was later charged with possession of marijuana in this incident.

24:03But that's far from all. Buckle up, this is a long story. Not long after, he was arrested on many other unrelated felonies, including kidnapping, aggravated assault, and seven counts of child molestation. So this is a very dangerous man. However, he was released on his own recognizance in August 2002. It looks like county prosecutors didn't provide Kahn's attorney with certain requested audio and videotapes, and they failed to abide by his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial. In Arizona, the law says 90 days. So the prosecutors know that they're not going to meet this deadline, and their options are either to have the entire case dismissed or to have the evidence deemed inadmissible.

24:52So instead, they release him without dropping the charges. A few months later, on October 30th, he was convicted of one count of child molestation. But he wasn't present for that. He ran. He didn't show up for that or a hearing for his two other cases. He has a lot of pending charges at this point. But not to worry. In November 2002, the Navajo County Sheriff's Department was contacted by officials in Española, New Mexico. They said they had him in custody on shoplifting charges. According to reporting by Donna Rescorla for the White Mountain Independent, Commander Larry Dunnigan at the Navajo County Sheriff's Office told the media he'd sent an officer to retrieve Kahn and bring him back to Arizona, and that Kahn had been booked into a Department of Corrections facility in Winslow, Arizona, within Navajo County.

25:46But a few months later, a judge ordered Kahn to go to the Navajo County Jail so he could attend a case management conference on his two other cases. And when the hearing starts, the judge is told Kahn wasn't at the jail. Now, Kahn's attorney was also very upset that his client had been taken into the DOC in the first place before he was even sentenced, so the whole thing is a mess to begin with. But somehow, it just keeps getting worse. They find out that Kahn wasn't at the DOC facility in Winslow either He'd never even been extradited from New Mexico It looks like New Mexico fought it So they could prosecute him for the shoplifting charges Before sending him back to Arizona And somehow, Commander Dunnigan, the prosecutor, Kahn's attorney And both the DOC and county jail didn't catch any of this So obviously, Kahn's court date is rescheduled while they try to get him extradited from New Mexico.

26:48But again, it gets worse. Enter Detective Roy Hayes from the Snowflake Taylor Police Department. He gets an anonymous tip from someone saying that Patrick Michael Kahn called them. So Hayes is like, oh, he called you from the jail in New Mexico? What did he say? And the tipster says, no, I don't believe the call was from New Mexico. And it didn't appear to come from a jail either. So, Hayes calls up the jail in New Mexico and asks for a picture of Patrick Michael Kahn. He tells them he just wants to make sure that they have the right guy. And you guys, when he gets the photo, it's not him. For almost six months, they thought that this child molester, murderer, was in custody when he wasn't.