Colleen Wood

Episode Transcript

The below text transcription was is intended for audience reference and search purposes. Because it is generated automatically by computer, please forgive mis-translations, spelling and the lack of really any structured grammar.

In mid-december of
year old colleen wood was planning to
embark on her dream trip
sailing around the world with her
partner and newfound love john paul
senior
when john paul resurfaced without
colleen her family was shocked to
discover that colleen’s traveling
companion was hiding some very big secrets

[Music]

this is episode 25, the colleen wood story

[Music]

hi amy hey megan want to let you know
that today’s episode
came from a listener of ours who wrote
in with this case suggestion because
colleen wood
was her grandmother that’s so
interesting i know and so i’d like to
say thank you first of all for being
willing to share this story with us
and for your willingness to also talk
through the details
had you heard of this case before i had
not heard of this case so i did a deep
dive on it
and uh so i’d like to dedicate this
episode to
mandy and to colleen woods family i hope
that we do what the justice it deserves
and i hope that maybe it helps
thank you mandy thank you so much
colleen lived
in akron ohio for most of her adult life
she had been married and divorced and
had raised
two sons mostly as a single mother she
worked in a hospital she had a good
long-term job
and in the mid-s to late s she was
also
involved in a long-term relationship
however in
colleen’s long-term relationship ended
and unfortunately the hospital where she
had worked for so many years laid off
a number of workers including colleen at
that point colleen’s children were grown
and she really didn’t feel the same ties
to ohio as once before
so she decided to follow her dreams and
her heart and she moved to florida
she worked as an office manager in a
fort lauderdale marina
and this was perfect for colleen because
she loved sailing and yachting and
that’s when i say she followed her dream
it was all about sailing around the
world and by all accounts everyone loved
colleen her boss the customers and
everyone who came into contact with her
said she was just a breath of fresh air
colleen bought a condo in boca raton and
she was really making a nice
life for herself there and by all
reports she was happy
about a year later in november
colleen met john paul senior a former
professional race car driver
about years old at the time who would
woo colleen
and eventually offer her the opportunity
that she’s been waiting for which is to
sail
around the world with him he offered her
her dream
colleen quit her job as an office
manager and packed up getting ready for
the trip of her lifetime how long had
she been with him at this point about a
year okay
colleen sold her place and got rid of
all of her belongings which really
concerned her family and friends but
colleen said she was planning a one-year
trip
and it was just too much and too long to
keep all of these things around and pay
for the storage
her friends and family met john paul so
there’s john paul senior and junior and
i’ll get to that in a little bit so they
met john paul and they seemed to like
him
and though people were worried about
colleen’s decisions they were also
really happy for her because she was so
excited about you know fulfilling this
lifelong dream
however john was also a heavy drinker
and he would become
verbally abusive and this was a
recurring problem in their relationship
one that neighbors could attest to and
one that colleen had discussed with her
family and friends as well
nevertheless colleen was happy and she
was committed to sailing around the
world with paul
on december rd colleen spoke with
her son michael and she said that she
would
send michael some gifts for the kids and
some other memorabilia
remember that colleen is a grandmother
at this point colleen then sent a letter
to her son saying
she would be back in touch with him
after a january trip she planned to take
with john paul
to key west but in the meantime she
spoke to her former boss
and she was a colleague and a friend and
this was on december th
and her boss invited her to the office
christmas party where colleen used to
work on december
th colleen said yes she and john were
in key west then but she would make it
for
the party but she never showed up and
she never sent those promised items to
her son
michael and by mid-january both
sons so she has two sons both todd and
michael were worried
because they have no contact from their
mother at this point and it’s been
several weeks
and they didn’t have which i thought was
a little strange john paul’s contact
information
so they start doing some research and
they find out that john paul is not
who he said he was what they find out
was pretty shocking
he had been a champion race car driver
which he had already revealed
and he had won several races by the way
including do you know the -hour le
mans in france
nope have you let’s see so you’ve never
heard of that race have you seen the
movie
ford versus ferrari nope well you should
because it was a great movie just so you
know this was uh ford versus ferrari was
about with matt damon and christian bale
and it was you know about
which car would win this this race which
is doesn’t sound very interesting to me
great movie that movie took place the
events of ford versus ferrari took place
in
and john paul appeared in the le mans
race in and he placed in this race
and many
others there are different classes in le
mans and he got fifth overall
and first in his class and you know the
class has to do with the engine and the
car type so
overall without going to all these
details he did very well
he was a well-known race car driver he
also by the way
had a son later on and they would become
a father-son
duo which one he’s a senior then he’s
senior right so john paul jr who’s
also going to play a role in this story
and in some of the things that you know
the family would find out about him so
keep that in mind
what else do we know about john paul
well we knew that he grew up in holland
attended harvard for his mba and worked
on wall street but he had also served a
very long sentence
prison sentence for drug smuggling money
laundering
and attempted murder and i’m assuming
colleen’s family
had not heard of these i wonder if
colleen knew i don’t think she knew
um so i can’t say for sure but i don’t
believe so in fact he had been in a
federal prison and only been released
just prior to meeting colleen wow i’m
thinking also he comes out
and he’s a federal felon and now he
needs to think about how he’s going to
make money as well colleen’s son michael
reported when he
read this feeling fear panic and now
he’s really worried now he’s like my mom
is seriously in
bad company and and i haven’t heard from
her and so i think they they sense the
danger at that point
and he called the police soon after
making you know this revelation but the
time that had elapsed had made
an investigation difficult there are you
know a couple of factors here first of
all it’s been a while
second of all she left with him on a
boat which is
very hard because they don’t know where
they are there’s no there’s no scene to
investigate at this point right when
someone’s reported missing you first
start by going to their house you look
at their car
at this point they have nothing to look
at michael also
found john paul’s daughter who said that
john paul sometimes contacted her you
would call
her she also said that she did know that
her father
and colleen had a big fight right before
christmas
now keep that in mind because the last
time anyone’s heard from colleen is on
december th
right before christmas michael
eventually he files
uh colleen sun files a missing person’s
report in fort lauderdale
i think it’s indicative of what was
happening because homicide detectives
start looking at
activities in april though so this
is
you know very much able four months
later john paul
calls colleen’s son michael so he’s he
hasn’t heard anything he’s been trying
to get in touch he’s he’s desperate can
i ask you a quick question was he on
parole at the time or he maxed out
oh no he was he was on pearl he was on
parole so he probably wasn’t supposed to
leave
amy so sorry stealing the thunder sorry
continue amy that will become very
important later on so good question
so john paul calls colleen’s son and i
mean
michael is just thrilled to have any
contact from him right so he
asks what’s what’s going on where’s my
mother and john paul says well i don’t
know we got into a big fight and she
left me
and michael asks john paul by the way
where are you and he said well i’m
sailing in europe
but police located john paul’s boat
island girl in a facility not too far
north of
key west that doesn’t sound like europe
i didn’t think so either okay so john
paul’s
told the story about you know a fight
they had and he’s lying about his
whereabouts does he not realize that
cell phone data pings no i guess he’s
not
worried and maybe you’re going to when
you hear more about john paul
and some of the mystery of him you might
understand why
the police went to interview john paul
at this point who spoke with them
and he said that he had a large fight
about money
with colleen money that she had loaned
him
and basically she left him afterwards i
think he told a story too i’m not
positive but i think he told a story
about her coming with two like
kind of burly looking guys and and
retrieving her belongings and kind of
that was it she was done with him
though john paul had skipped out on
federal probation
or federal parole they’re one in the
same in the federal system his violation
was never
reported i just want to point out this
is
hugely problematic i mean this happens
at times where a violation might not be
reported by a parole or probation
officer
but usually this is in cases where the
violations are not serious
we are talking about a very serious
felon here literally skipping out the
state this is
this is one of the most serious types of
offenses so i’m not
i’m very unclear as to how this wasn’t
reported and i’m assuming there’s foul
play here if we’re talking about it so
once again something that could have
possibly been prevented if everyone just
did their job i think we could have i
think there definitely was area for
prevention here i mean hindsight’s
but i agree
they didn’t have anything to hold him on
at that time right they have no evidence
of a crime
so they had to file his violation in
order to be able to
take him in okay that took a week or so
to move through the courts
and they needed it in order to get a
search warrant for that boat which was
right there right at their fingertips
but by the time they got back to the
marina it was gone
the boat and john paul had vanished
again detectives are learning a lot more
though about colleen and john paul so
detectives learned that colleen’s atm
had been used around december th
several times so with much more
frequency and that
she had been taking out large or someone
had been taking out large amounts of
cash
it didn’t look out like you know you or
i stopping for a hundred dollars for
everyday expenses
okay so who who’s taking this money well
the surveillance tape showed that
two different women were withdrawing
these huge amounts i know you’re like
that’s interesting i thought you were
gonna say john
he was paying those two women though so
the two women
yeah two women are taking these money
out they’re doing it at the behest of
john paul and basically
they don’t know anything about how the
police track them down sorry i’m getting
into the weeds on that
no i love it i mean the surveillance
tapes maybe uh maybe they had some
identifying information i don’t remember
specifically but
i’m sure there was some identifying but
i these women also they really didn’t
they didn’t have a relationship with him
and they didn’t really know him
they were just women like that he was
basically paying like here i’ll give you
bucks if you go to an atm
i would do that by shopping all right
so investigators also learned that john
paul was
placing ads for romantic sailing
partners using colleen’s credit cards to
buy these ads
and one of the ads it looks like was
purchased before colleen went missing uh
we were talking premeditation now it
doesn’t look good by the way
i’m not certain but i think that john
and colleen had also met through one of
these um
sailing ads like meetup kind of things
they also detectives came to believe
that colleen’s
the colleen woods sale of her house
cashing at her for k which she did
and other items were really at john’s
behest
when i watched an episode on this there
was an episode of uh on disappeared
a while ago i think it was called the
dark voyage they definitely
indicated that colleen had cashed in a
lot of the stuff and given the money to
john and he was handling the finances
not good okay at this point the police
are becoming you know they’re becoming
well aware of what’s going on they’re
seeing you know all the red flags here
and also
federal agencies had become involved
they were coordinating with fort
lauderdale police to find john paul and
his boat which was now
off at seas again this is also a problem
as you might realize because of
jurisdiction when you’re at sea
jurisdiction lies somewhere within i
forget what it is there’s certain
mileage
with the the area that you’re close to
but if you’re not within that area if
you’re out then there’s like maritime
jurisdiction
it becomes very complicated and that’s
great and i’m sure john knew that
i’m sure he did he knew that exactly i’m
sure now according to colleen’s family
john paul who started going by hans at
this point
fancy had several run-ins with the law
but he was always released when law and
enforcement seemingly didn’t have enough
to hold him and i think it’s because he
shows up in different countries at
different ports
you can’t get the paperwork quick enough
i think this guy is smart
also according to colleen’s family and
from a show i watched in john was
spotted in fiji and he had met a young
woman who he was having on the boat and
i don’t know if their plan was to sail
but it kind of looked like that
but her family recognized the name of
the boat and i think recognized him
and they basically helped get her off of
this boat and out of his company
but before she did this brave woman took
a computer off of john
paul’s boat and it turned out that
computer was colleen woods computer
once again you see the public really
stepping up doing
the police work that was really brave
that’s very brave and this explains a
lot of how
john was able to access all of her
financials
now let me ask you this if she’s alive
why wouldn’t she take her computer with
her
unfortunately it doesn’t look good no of
course clearly she would have taken her
computer with her
finally colleen’s family reported that
hans was spotted in madrid sometime
between and
where he docked his boat for
approximately days and the law
enforcement was supposed to bring him in
for a parole violation
he got away again without being detained
by madrid authorities
wow in john sold his
boat which he had renamed diamond girl
john paul still has an outstanding
warrant in the united states for
violating parole but
he has not returned or has not been
detected yet any time
in the united states in over years
but amy there’s a lot more to this story
[Music]
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how did john paul violate his parole
let me tell you about what happened john
paul and his son john paul jr were
caught by customs agents smuggling
marijuana in
and they were sentenced to probation and
a fine
but they were arrested again and what
does
john paul senior do on april
john paul shoots the witness who was
scheduled to testify against him
several times shoots him several times
but the man survives attempted murder
yes and john fled to switzerland where
he was arrested
and extradited back to the united states
so he’s a flight risk and they still
keep he has history of
jumping bail and they’re still okay so
he’s extradited back to the united
states in he worked out a plea deal
for a -year sentence
but he was released in good
behavior
this is before you know the truth all
the truth and sentencing laws were
passed and yeah
clearly that’s not very long you know
what’s interesting too is that he
actually attempted to escape from prison
as well
so he’s fled bell he’s attempted to
escape
and he still gets early release half of
his sentence
his son john paul jr only received a
five-year sentence but he would never
he never testified against his father
but this isn’t even all of what you need
to know amy okay
there’s still something more john paul
was
married john paul senior john paul
senior thank you
john paul so incredibly one of the most
interesting parts of the story that
seems to go
under the radar is john paul’s history
he was married
three times before meeting colleen he
married his first wife
young and they had john paul jr but they
eventually divorced and then he married
chalice alford in
but after one year of marriage in the
summer of
chalice disappears and has never been
heard from
again what a coincidence and what does
her grieving
not grieving but concerned husband do
well he divorces her
in absentia in so that he could
marry his third wife
hope who was another well-known race car
driver’s sister
but they would also later divorce she
didn’t disappear though she did not
disappear
i looked around this woman has never
been found i saw some facebook posts
regarding her case if anyone would like
to look into it
there were a couple of posts about how
she was in his company she was with him
and then she disappears
i would like to point out also that
there was there tended to be
a dismissal of women who went missing in
like the s and s
and i think this was before maybe
women’s lib the second movement
and victims rights where there was a lot
of like police officers went ah they
probably wandered off ah they’re
probably having fun
probably ran off with a boyfriend and i
think there was a penchant for not
taking these cases seriously and had
this been taken more
seriously we might not have had a
colleen wood but i will say at least
colleen wood’s
case gets attention if you want to look
into again that is
chalice alford and this was john paul’s
senior’s first wife
this this is what i what i believe
between december th and th colleen
wood was likely murdered though there is
no crime scene and no physical evidence
because it took place
at sea and because john paul disposed of
her body unfortunately at sea
friends and family believe that there
was an altercation
in which john paul killed colleen and
dumped her body into the ocean
but the real question here is whether
this was a spontaneous heat of passion
crime or was this planned from the start
seems planned i have to tell you i’ve
seen i think i’ve seen enough evidence
that i think this guy
was planning on making you know money
off of
a woman it happened to be colleen he
spent a year he wooed her
he convinces her offers her the dream so
i think this was premeditated
also of note here is that john paul’s
son
uh so his son john paul jr he has
huntington’s disease i don’t know if
you’ve ever heard of huntington’s i’ve
heard of it but i’m not that familiar
well all right huntington’s is a
progressive disease that causes
degeneration of the nerve cells
in the brain it’s it causes involuntary
muscle movements like
jerking or twitching um trouble with
swallowing
breathing a range of cognitive disorders
i mean the point is it’s very
degenerative and it’s a
very difficult disease for which there
is no cure and for which i read most
people
do not live longer than their late s
i’m not an expert in the field but the
reason this is relevant is because i
believe
now john paul jr might be about –
and john paul senior is now years old
and people are wondering if he’s going
to return to the united states
perhaps to see his son because you know
his son doesn’t have
an i don’t know what the reality is but
you know will he come back to see his
son
i’m personally keeping my fingers
crossed this will happen and
are the police on surveillance for that
i think so
i i definitely think they’re they’re on
the lookout who does the sun live with
you know does he have a caretaker does
he have a family he has a family okay
married has kids
and and i don’t know if they’ve ever
surveilled him and tried to i’m sure
they’ve tried to keep tabs to see if he
knew where his father was but
he’s never revealed the location if he
does know and we don’t know that he
knows anything
at all but that would be the only way at
this point the only way they’re really
going to get i mean they may be able to
find him but obviously he’s very clever
i mean he stays at sea
he changes boats he changes identities
you know he’s
he’s managed to elude authorities for a
long time so the only way
i think that i see them catching him at
this point is if he does re-enter the
united states he may be deceased
also he might be deceased that’s true i
do believe there were some reports
a couple of years ago people have maybe
seen him
it’s just that i think if he’s
recognized he leaves a port so colleen’s
case is cold
right now it is i mean nobody has been
held to justice for it
no and even if they even if john paul
reenters they can arrest him on the
parole violation
and then they have a body no they don’t
have you know how hard that is to
prosecute a nobody case
yeah i mean you’re really right amy no
body prosecutions are
very difficult it can be a terribly
challenging endeavor i mean without
someone’s body you can’t tell the cause
of death
you can’t tell the extent of the
injuries the timing of death which we
know can be kind of a window
but the body also gives us a lot of the
forensic evidence in a crime
and none of this was possible in
colleen’s case if you don’t have a body
according to former federal prosecutor
ted
dibiase the evidence will tend to
cluster around what he calls
the three legs of a stool have you ever
heard this
no okay i wasn’t sure it like sounded
familiar but i’m like nah
all right so the three legs of a stool
one of them is going to be the obvious
one and that’s going to be forensic
evidence
so blood hair fingerprints do you have
any idea what the other
would be not yet but i also want to say
without a body a lot of times that’s
where your forensics hair and everything
else goes
in this case there also is no crime
scene correct so no body no crime scene
you’re not getting forensics so no i’m
sorry i don’t know number two but you
just pointed out
the important part that the first stool
is gone like when he
or the first leg of his tool that the
three legs that’s gone you’re not
getting that
so the second is a confession from
friend or family members
not gonna happen in this case right not
happening in this case and the third one
is a confession from
suspect or defendant themselves so in
this case these three legs
none of them were present however this
is interesting because i wanted to
figure out like
how successful are no body prosecution
cases
and according to debiasi he wrote a book
um of all the cases that have been
no body prosecution since like the s
about have resulted in convictions i
thought that number was pretty high
that’s shocking to me i wouldn’t have
thought that i would have thought that
number
like guessing before i read it i kind of
was going around a shot
right i agree just really quickly uh one
of the earliest recorded no-body murder
convictions
is also one of the few cases where the
alleged victim might have still
been alive but it was pre-surveillance
and other technology
in that case andrew hudspeth was
convicted and hung in for the
murder of george watkins in arkansas
after watkins disappeared in . now
it turned out that hudsbeth
had an affair with watkins wife rebecca
and she told the authorities about it
but from what i understand there wasn’t
really overwhelming evidence in this
case
and there was still again the suspicion
that watkins was alive so
in that case i’m just going to talk
about a few of these nobody prosecution
cases because in that one
there wasn’t overwhelming evidence one
of the more famous cases that i know
about and that i teach about however
there was very strong evidence in but
nobody was the case of
albert fish and grace bud do you know
albert fish yes
absolutely yeah brace yourselves
everyone i’m sorry this one is awful
because fish was
an older man a serial killer but a
seemingly non-threatening
guy he was sort of older grandfatherly
looking
so i think that he was able to
infiltrate victims easier
and he actually lured ten-year-old grace
bud
from her home but with her parents
permission to take her to some type of
party and they just thought he is the
sweet neighborhood guy who’s taking her
to a
a party and so they said yes but he
lured the little girl to westchester
home where he strangled her
and then he ate her over the next
several days and then he sent a letter
to this poor girl’s parents
letting them know how good she tasted it
was i mean it’s one of the most horrific
cases
i know of he was sentenced to death in

and i believe was subjected to the
electric chair
more recently amy you’ve probably
watched the robert durst documentary i’m
not sure if you saw that but you know
the case
the jinx okay so you know authorities
have never charged durst with his wife
kathy’s murder because they never had a
body or as you pointed out
a crime scene so very hard to prosecute
actually amy you know a nobody case
quite well do you remember when you
covered on women in crime already of
course the sarah stern case
right so this is one that comes up a lot
when you’re looking up these nobody
prosecutions
as well and they were able to get it in
that case because they had such
overwhelming evidence
but that her body has never been found
right um again they had forensic
evidence though so they were able to get
the conviction
because they had a crime scene okay well
in colleen’s case
the evidence that they traditionally
would like without a body
just isn’t as strong as i could be
though i’m gonna point out that i still
think this is a highly prosecutable case
if they could bring in the first wife’s
disappearance i think that would have
a serious impact and then remember they
still have
john paul using atm cards possessing her
computer
lying to her son about his whereabouts
so i i i’m still confident that they
could
prosecute and possibly convict john paul
if i’m not mistaken though he’s well
into his s at this point i believe he
is .
all right so this brings up a very
interesting question
is he too old to be a threat so i want
to dive into this a little because
megan we talk a lot in our cases how the
majority of people age out of crime
we know that i think the numbers like
less than percent of offenders
older than recidivate compared to
percent of people under .
there is a huge age crime relationship
that is very well established
in criminology and actually more than
half of all offenders are arrested by
the time they are .
and megan do you know how long the
typical criminal career is i’m going to
say
years maybe years yep so it’s
actually to years
most violent criminals do continue
offending into their thirties but most
people age out of crime while they’re in
their twenties
so the question becomes what is the
purpose of punishment if you have
someone who’s well into their eighties
i want your opinion and then i’m going
to tell you of a really interesting case
i heard recently
okay are you going to tell people what
the five like the purposes of punishment
are or no
yeah so i teach about this a lot and
it’s always such an interesting
topic to me so the question becomes why
do we punish
people so there are five purposes of
punishment
so one purpose of punishment of course
is going to simply be retribution
we punish people because they did
something wrong another one is going to
be incapacitation
we punish someone so we can keep society
safe by removing them from society
rehabilitation which the hope is that
people come out better than they were
when they went in
there’s restitution and restoration
which is surrounding
closure for the victim and then lastly
we have deterrence
if we’re looking at someone who is about
years old
we know that their risk of offending is
extremely low
i think one of the strongest
explanations for why people age out of
crime
is that parts of the brain don’t fully
develop until
age . so this biological explanation i
think is a strong one
right because if the brain is not mature
then as the brain matures you’re less
likely to commit crime because you’re
more likely to understand
number one the long-term impact it could
have how it could affect you
instant gratification is not as
attractive as you know delayed
gratification
and also just the part of the brain that
experiences empathy
right i think you’re going along with
that yeah people mature out of crime
um i think once people gain autonomy and
independence too and they’re not
subjected to as many rules as when
they’re younger
uh it’s not fun anymore there’s no need
to rebel
i think people get physically um older
and tired i think
crime becomes somewhat physical and as
people age
like i don’t have the age i’m sorry i
don’t have the energy and as i did in my
s now in my s
so i understand the physical components
too yeah i think we saw that with the
golden state killer that he slowed down
as he got older and
i don’t remember if it was theorized or
if he actually said it was because he
could not
he used to restrain boyfriends while he
sexually assaulted you know the
girlfriends or the wives and
he just didn’t he wasn’t a young chap
anymore and he couldn’t do it right
i wonder if john paul it brings up when
i bring it back to john paul
i wonder if he aged out of crime at all
himself
after colleen i mean he was older he was
a year old man at the time he met
colleen about years on her
so he’s he’s actually defying what we
know about aging out of crime he’s a
unique offender
and i wonder if he got older and ever
aged out or
stopped or if he continued i wonder if
he continued to offend against
women or anyone else i wonder if he
continued to offend i mean it’s possible
we do know that there are some people
that don’t ever age out which is a nice
transition
have you heard of albert flick no okay
so this is pretty interesting it was a
case in maine
he was a year old man wow he was
sentenced in for stabbing a woman
but that’s not the interesting part
the interesting part
is he had murdered his wife years
prior
in the same exact way that he killed
this woman get out
so we’re looking at someone he had
killed his wife in
he was sentenced to years he got out
for good behavior after about years
after he was out he assaulted another
woman
went back to prison got out assaulted a
third woman
when he was sentenced the judge only
sentenced him to four years
noting that he would be years old at
the time of release and that is simply
too old to be a threat
well a few years later he fatally
stabbed this woman
so this is one of those really unique
cases
where similar to john paul it’s you know
this guy never aged at a crime
and if you it’s interesting we always
want the courts to rely on social
science to make their decisions
but when it comes to aging out it really
needs to be an individual decision
because
this guy albert flick he was a repeat
offender
there was no reason to believe that this
gentleman would have aged at a crime amy
that’s a really interesting point and i
think that
that case is unique in the same way as
you’re saying john paul is he is a
repeat offender
he did not desist and i have to believe
that he’s the type who might not age out
of crime that that might be his lifelong
enterprise
what about deterrence i would say
specific deterrence it’s not a specific
deterrent because if you’re years old
you’re going to die in prison anyway
probably
if they reincarcerate you correct okay
so i’m going to agree with you because
deterrence comes down to
specifics so does it deter john paul i
agree not applicable here but
i think punishing him serves the general
deterrence which means
by punishing him we’re sending a message
to society and i think the message is
you can’t simply get away with murder
because you are of a certain age or
certain
you know creed like i think the message
is not to allow
it to go unpunished so i think it serves
general deterrence i agree i think
general deterrence is a big one because
it’s telling people
go ahead and escape all you want but we
will find you and we will prosecute you
that’s why there’s no statute of
limitations on murder for that very
reason right
let’s move on is it what about
rehabilitation that doesn’t really apply
in this case as well
i don’t think rehabilitation is age
sorry i don’t think rehabilitation
applies and i think he’s just yeah
because of his age but he’s also too far
i would say gone in terms of personality
right narcissist
psychopathic personality if i or extreme
anti-social so i think he’s it’s too
late so i think at the end of the day if
we were to prosecute someone who’s well
into their s we’re serving the purpose
of retribution of course
right you did something and you deserve
this so i’m a retributivist at heart and
i can tell you that i believe
in punishment that is just but true
attributivists do not believe in
excessive punishment
just for pain we believe in as you know
proportionate
so i believe in proportionate punishment
and so
i do believe it serves retribution i
think most importantly
it serves the victim restitution piece
because when somebody is murdered we
want answers we want someone to be held
responsible somebody died and their
loved ones need closure
i agree i i think it serves restorative
justice for the families so i’m agreeing
with you
i like when in cases like this the
prosecutors
consult with the families and ask them
so maybe
you know colleen wood’s family maybe
they are they don’t care if he’s
prosecuted till the full extent and gets
life in prison because he’s old maybe it
would satisfy them
if he simply took a guilty plea and
admitted that he murdered her or maybe
it would satisfy them
if he were to talk about what happened
even though you couldn’t rely on you
know him being truthful
so i guess what i’m saying is it doesn’t
have to be the max punishment
even though it’s probably deserved here
i think it’s good when the
families are included and when they’re
dis or when they’re
you know opinions are taken into
consideration it really helps with the
restoration process
so i guess what i’m saying is if if he
is apprehended i really hope that
colleen’s family is included in this
process i definitely agree
now you spoke to her granddaughter do
they hold that hope that she is alive
somewhere
no they don’t they don’t they for them
for the most part no they
they understand that that colleen wood
is no longer
alive because they believe obviously she
would have contacted them oh yeah
she she was a very very doting mother
and you know she was very close with her
family and
they they know that she would have
contacted them by now so they don’t hold
out the hope
that colleen’s alive but they do hold
out hope that they’ll find out what
happened and i’ve heard this
from so many people you know they say
there’s no such thing as closure but
i’ve also heard victims family say
you know the the person i think the
right person was caught they were
punished but they’ve still never
admitted it i still don’t know how it
happened so part of the you know getting
justice is coming to the truth
i just said this recently and another
you know talk that we gave but
a lot of victims they just want to know
what happened so that they can put their
mind at rest and move on
and i sincerely hope that for colleen’s
family that they will be able to find
out
one day what really happened and get
some measure of justice thank you again
to mandy for sharing such a personal
story
thank you so much mandy we’re very
grateful that you chose to share this
with us thank you all for listening we’ll catch
you next time see you next time on women
and crime

[Music]

sources from today’s episode come from
the la times
the new york times a e tv.com
www.shalispal.com
an episode of disappeared and of course
colleen woods family
vengeance betrayal bad
hair leaning hi everyone this is
kimberly
and this is katie and we have a weekly
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