Case 72-0173: Evidence at a Glance
I looked at the evidence today.
We walked down halls and down the flights of stairs that led to the basement of the Sheriff’s office.
Honest to god, I was excited to see so much of the building.
I waited in the garage while the evidence tech retrieved the 50-year-old objects that Joyce’s remains were wrapped up inside.
We examined a carpet and an old family blanket that was believed to be from the LePage children’s grandmother.
She was wrapped in three layers.
Family blanket
Military blanket
Large green carpet
We could not unwrap the military blanket or the panties sent initially for DNA testing. We were also unable to unwrap the carpet entirely.
Before examining the carpet and blankets, I proposed the usage of Luminol to see any potential bodily fluids. Fully understanding that she decomposed in the layers gives me hope that we could identify blood splatter, semen, or anything else on the carpet; we would have a confirmed location where Joyce was murdered; the carpet was taken from Stevens Hall at WSU.
This idea to use Luminol was quickly put to rest when I looked at the carpet.
It was a foolish thought. Yes, you would get DNA on the carpet. But on the carpet, you could find DNA profiles to anyone who ever walked on the carpet, touched the carpet, or even the wild animals that interacted with the carpet while scavenging in the canyon.
All in all, just being someone to look at this case and the evidence after very few other outsiders have, was an experience I would not forget.
An observation I noted on my phone was that the person had to have a lot of care toward her to wrap her in three separate layers.
Why so many layers if they were going to drop her remains into a deep gully in the middle of nowhere?
Personal Log and Mental Notes:
There is one particular picture of her body that I cannot get out of my head.
In this image, the blanket is wrapped tightly around her neck and cloaked under a light-colored blanket.
Her remains are scattered around her body.
I think about this picture every day. How she was wrapped and dragged down to the bottom must have been a high effort.
Regardless, I read about Detective Don Carlos Maupin today. And frankly, I am appalled by his speculatory and conspiracy-theorist approach to the case.
He wrote many things in the evidence binders based on what he imagined.
He wrote that the murderer was taller than her, stood behind her while stabbing her, and was right-handed.
We don’t have a location for the murder, and we don’t know the murder weapon. We also do not have a definitive date and time of death.
I am further disturbed by the fact that he REFUSED to accept evidence about a very damning person of interest.
That evidence was destroyed. Meaning we will never recover what was written and said.
Below are some direct quotes taken from the binder by Don Carlos Maupin:
“There is an entry in the case file about Joyce running into a girlfriend or someone in front of the CUB. The friend said that Joyce appeared to be troubled and when asked she responded that there was someone trying to get back into her life again and she didn’t know what to do about it (maybe it was [REDACTED], the Oakesdale teacher, that was supposed to take her to the boat races that weekend she came up missing”
“Also, would FBI give us a behavioral profile (is that possible with the limited stuff we have on her?) And could they venture an opinion on the physical attributes of the killer. I have made several assumptions as well to how she was killed….
The killer stood behind her
He was right handed
He was taller than she (she was 5-09), but the knife wounds FBI found on her ribs and vertebrae may be enough for them to tell us something.
Evidence Photo Gallery:
