Wicked Wanderings
Delve into the enigmatic realms of the mysterious, unearth tales of haunting encounters, explore the chilling depths of true crime, and unravel the threads of the unexplained. Join us on the Wicked Wanderings Podcast for a riveting journey through the realms of the unknown and the haunting mysteries that linger in the shadows.
Wicked Wanderings
Ep. 47: Tanya Weber
Ever wondered how a small-town murder case from 1965 can be cracked open decades later through modern technology? You're in for a thrilling ride as we unravel the oldest unsolved murder case in Utah, the tragic story of 17-year-old Tanya Weber.
Transport yourself back to Logan, Utah in 1965, where the chilling murder of Tanya Weber left a lasting scar on the community. Hear about the initial investigation that quickly zeroed in on Owen Kimball, a local man whose guilt was debated for years despite intriguing evidence. This episode takes a riveting turn as we explore breakthroughs in DNA technology that brought new light to the case, even touching on the emotional and psychological toll on Tanya's family and the community. As we wrap up, we briefly introduce the unsolved homicide of Jafet Robles from 2017, urging listeners to contribute any information they might have. Join us for a journey filled with humor, suspense, and a relentless quest for justice.
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Wicked Wanderings is hosted by Hannah & Courtney and it's produced by Rob Fitzpatrick. Music by Sascha Ende.
Wicked Wanderings is a Production of Studio 113
I went to physical therapy for my shoulder and they were trying to figure out if it's like all connected my neck, my shoulder and down my arm. My neck, my back, but apparently there's a neck stretching machine and I was placed in it for like 17 minutes.
Speaker 3:That sounds like a torture device.
Speaker 1:Yes, but it kind of felt good, it hurts, so good. Yeah, you've done it. Yeah, I walked out.
Speaker 3:I'm like this feels kind of good. Oh God, Okay, Okay.
Speaker 1:Hi, I'm Jess and I'm Hannah.
Speaker 3:Join us as we delve into true crime, paranormal encounters and all things spooky. So grab your flashlight and get ready to wander into the darkness with us. This is Wicked Wanderings. Hello Hannah, hi Jessica.
Speaker 1:Hello Rob.
Speaker 2:Hello.
Speaker 1:And hello Courtney, our special guest for Recording Night.
Speaker 3:Like our first ever fan is here.
Speaker 2:Yes, is this really your first episode?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Wow, yeah, she's been refusing to come on.
Speaker 3:No, it's been a saga of unfortunate events. The first time my car's engine tried to blow, that's what she said. No, I'm just kidding. I'm kidding.
Speaker 1:No, it really did, I can produce receipts. I don't know what happened the second time she has evidence.
Speaker 3:I think we had girls night and then we just kept drinking. Didn't record, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's right, we did not record anything.
Speaker 2:I mean, that sounds like us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're happy that you're, and Courtney was both of our bosses at one point.
Speaker 3:Well, she was my friend first. Well, co-worker, friend, boss, friend, again, always friend. Is that our current status, friend? Why do you look confused? I don't know. Is that your question? No, okay, did I have my boss face on?
Speaker 1:Yes, okay so our episode episode tonight, my episode for tonight. I was actually thinking about doing it back before I did israel keys, oh, okay but. I didn't really have a lot of information back then, okay, and so I'm like I mean, you know I a long episode, so that's why I put it aside. However, there has been a recent event as of June 26.
Speaker 2:Is this the one you teased the last episode?
Speaker 1:Yes, so I was home visiting my family and my dad told me about it, and apparently I don't remember this, but but throughout our childhood, when we'd go to utah for vacations, he would point out the house that the murderer lived in. I don't remember I was still young, but that was like the thing when you're a kid. Yeah, like my older sister remembers and my mom's like I wish you would quit talking about that anyway, besides who goes to utah for vacation. It was to see our family.
Speaker 1:I mean right, but it was to see our family okay, fair um, which I think I'd get into in my second paragraph anyway. So recent developments as of june and um. So now I going to talk to you about Tanya Weber, who used to be Utah's oldest unsolved case.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, back to.
Speaker 1:Utah, Obviously. Why would I travel there if it? Wasn't about anyway, I originally thought that my dad knew Tanya, but apparently she was a couple of years older than him and they didn't go to school, and I think he was 14 at the time, so I think he was just in the area Okay yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And this took place in Logan, utah, which until recently kind of kept that hometown feel Like. Both my grandparents grew up there and a lot of my family and extended family still live in that area and that's where we would go on vacation when we lived in colorado. We'd drive eight hours through wyoming and um go to logan to visit my grandparents. No disney world for me until I was in my late 30s, but it kind of has that like stuck in 1950s feel oh yeah, stuck in time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that, but now I think they're all about developing every spare part of land everywhere in utah. So logan isn't um it's also a college town. Utah state university is there and.
Speaker 1:And it's in Cache Valley, which is a beautiful valley in between two large mountain ranges. It's absolutely gorgeous and it was settled in 1859. By big surprise, mormon settlers sent by Brigham Young to find an area for a fort near the Logan River, which you would imagine like this big river to set a fort. No, a stream Like the Connecticut River river which you would imagine like this big river to set up. No, like the connecticut river, it's like a little, just a little guy in comparison to the connecticut river, so smaller than the connecticut oh, like big time, it was more like a, a stream.
Speaker 1:Yeah, basically, I mean what? What is like river status? How do you come from a stream to a river?
Speaker 3:I don't know, I mean, you can, if you want well I think, like the biggest river I think we have in the us is the mississippi right yeah, and that's like two times the width of connecticut, isn't it?
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 3:No, I don't know, I'm just nodding my head in agreement yeah, where's jonathan? I feel like this would be a random fact he would know and he would bring in oh God, what's that? Tom Sawyer. He'd bring in Tom Sawyer somehow. Mark Twain, yeah, he would intertwine it.
Speaker 1:This is probably one of the whitest towns in America Whitest Whitest oh whitest Whit the whitest towns in America Whitest Whitest, oh whitest Whitest. As of 2010, 83.9% were white.
Speaker 3:Have they been in Wells Maine?
Speaker 1:No, but I'm curious as to what their percentage is. Yeah, I got curious as to what the whitest city in America was, and it's Haleah, florida, at 92.6. The rest are in the west. That was the only one on the East Coast.
Speaker 3:That's boring.
Speaker 1:So fun fact for the episode White people are boring.
Speaker 3:I'll tell you that they are.
Speaker 1:So I'm telling you this to give you a picture of what Logan was like, and this happened in 1965. So it's still obviously Old Town, phil, and, like I said, college town with a relatively low crime rate, even now in 2024. But in June 1965, it was a lot lower and this case was the first homicide that that city had had in over 30 years, aside from a man who committed some murder or suicide with his family. Maybe I'll do that case someday.
Speaker 3:Tanya weber was a 17 year old senior at logan high school I'm sorry, I thought you were gonna say she was a sex worker.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm like what? What's on jessica's mind? Noneanya is what's on my mind. Tanya Weber was a 17-year-old senior at Logan High School and on June 25th she and three friends went to a wedding reception and she even caught the bouquet. After the wedding, her and her friends went to a pizza joint and she was eventually dropped off at her house at 1145. When she got to the door, tanya realized that she had left her purse in her friend's car. Her parents and siblings were at a reunion in Idaho and she was the only one home, so she needed her keys to get in the house. Her friend that had dropped her off only lived a few blocks away, so Tanya started running that way. But Tanya never made it those few blocks.
Speaker 1:Tanya's body was found the following morning, two blocks from her home. She was partially clothed and had been hidden in the bushes at a neighbor's house. There was no evidence of a struggle, but her body was dragged about 30 feet and her hips and the back of her legs had dirt on them, and then she was placed face down in the bushes. The pathologist's report showed that she died somewhere between midnight and 2 am and there was no evidence of sexual assault, thank God. But the cause of her death was strangulation by hand and there was a stocking knotted around her neck. But the pathologist didn't think that was responsible and was more of an afterthought, as she had bruises on her neck from hands the stocking was an afterthought yeah, like they're trying to cover up the bruising on the dead body.
Speaker 3:They were hiding in a bush but that just draws attention to it.
Speaker 1:Right, draws attention to itself yeah it's a dead body in a bush yeah I mean good point, or like maybe, if I hide this and they'll, you know, think it was this and not my hands that did it.
Speaker 3:I don't know I don't know interesting. Yeah, were they the ones she was wearing?
Speaker 1:yes, um, another stocking and shoe was found close by. An investigation was obviously conducted by the police and they interviewed probably a thousand people at the time. Wow, that's.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry, that's a lot, mm. Hmm, I mean that's a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which is how we know. She at least made it to her door because the bouquet that she caught was sitting on the porch and a neighbor had been up late watching TV and had seen Tanya run past his window. So not like like running away from somebody but running towards, you know, just running. So she knew the person. Maybe, possibly, we'll get there, maybe, but next to it there was also an article about a search for a missing logan man. They quickly found a person of interest, 26 year old owen kimball. He was known to be in the area at the time of her murder, but a couple days later there was an article in the local newspaper about police closing in on an unnamed suspect in her murder. But there was also an article about a search for a missing logan man. He had disappeared two days following the murder and he had told his wife he was going up logan canyon to collect bait for an upcoming fishing trip for her, their two young sons, neither article provided.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry he was climbing up a mountain to get bait for fishing.
Speaker 1:No, going through a canyon. So the canyon is like where the road goes through the mountains, gotcha okay, that makes a little more sense and it's like actual mountains, mountains. We have mountains. No, you don't. Mount tom is a hill, not a mountain what about mount graylock?
Speaker 3:yeah, mount graylock is a mountain.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a mountain have you been to mount? Graylock yeah, I have. I've been at the top of it and looked at all the states.
Speaker 3:It's not a mountain but it's not a mountain, doesn't doesn't constitute as a mountain he had disappeared two days following the murder.
Speaker 1:He had told his wife. Neither article provided a name, but both were talking about owen kimball. Neither article provided a name, but both were talking about owen kimball. After four days of intense searching, kimball's pickup truck was finally spotted in heavy brush at the end of spring hollow by a civilian pilot flying over mount logan. Police eventually reached the truck and they found Kimball dead inside with material stuffed in the truck's tailpipe that douche canoe had killed himself.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:An article in the newspaper the following day had named Kimball as the prime suspect in the murder. There were several pieces of evidence that were later revealed to be a shoe print and clothing fibers that connected him to the murder. His wife and in-laws insisted that he hadn't done it. Tanya's parents were quoted at the time saying that they were satisfied that the killer had been identified, but the case was listed as unsolved. One interesting thing is that the murder happened only a month after a new Utah law was put in place. This law eliminated the use of coroner's juries to determine fault in a homicide that involved a deceased suspect that could not be put on trial.
Speaker 2:What is a coroner's jury?
Speaker 1:Yeah, they used to do it more so in the olden days. Yeah, they used to do it more so in the olden days, like I know we talked about in the Villisca episode, like they had a coroner's jury at the crime scene to kind of determine.
Speaker 2:Oh, coroners, coroners, coroners, okay, coroners.
Speaker 1:Corner, corner, jury, coroners. That's her Western accent coming out. So this jury would be on scene Well in like the Villisca time, but they would just determine the fault of the homicide, Like it was just like a jury to decide a group of people.
Speaker 2:Okay, I understand.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the police didn't have any evidence that pointed to another suspect and this case would eventually go cold or, in better words, in my opinion, unresolved and it would stay that way for 59 years.
Speaker 1:Tanya's younger sister, Rhonda, was interviewed by the Herald Journal News in 2015, which is a local newspaper. She was 14 years old at the time of her sister's murder and she remembers that the murder cast a dark shadow on the family that never lifted. Rhonda said that her family rarely discussed it and she stated in the article we didn't have counseling or things like that back then, so it was pretty hard to deal with and we were kind of on our own. Rhonda reported in a different article that she remembers the police coming up to the family reunion in Idaho and taking her parents outside to tell them what happened. Ronda, however, was not privy to the information about the case at the time of the murder and her sister's case had nagged her for years and in the 90s she had so many questions she eventually went to the police station and requested the records, but there was nothing.
Speaker 3:There was no records or nothing. She didn't know Well no records.
Speaker 1:Like I said earlier, logan wasn't a very big town and I guess they would send the older records to Ogden Police Department, which is where I used to live, just saying, which is a lightly larger city roughly 50 miles south of Logan, just saying, which is lightly a larger city roughly 50 miles south of logan. Ronda reached out to ogden and eventually got a one-page report with a few basic pieces of information.
Speaker 1:She figured yeah she figured that it that was the end of it. But a year later logan pd called her and said they found boxes containing documents of people they interviewed and in the article she said she wasn't in the right space in her life to kind of review that stuff, so she never went and picked it up. Several chiefs over the years had reopened the case in the hopes of bringing closure to the family. They had a good suspect in Kimball but didn't have the evidence that linked him, at least not yet. But in 2022, logan Police reopened the case again and were able to with the use of new DNA technology and a grant. I guess they didn't have the funding, so they got a grant to re-examine Tanya's clothing. They discovered a mixture of several males which is interesting of males' DNA on her clothing. I'm not entirely sure what the various male DNA on the clothing was, if it was as a whole, if it was all over her clothing, just different, different males, or if there was like it all together. That sounds kind of weird, don't you think?
Speaker 3:Yeah, the way it's worded is definitely yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, it makes me think like first crime mind Like, OK, was this like a gang rape? Or was it like but they said she wasn't sexually assaulted. Exactly that's what I was thinking of too. So was it just like a?
Speaker 3:follicles that didn't wear proper gloves.
Speaker 1:Well, it could be.
Speaker 3:That was a. Thing.
Speaker 1:So it's not, obviously not semen, but she was at a wedding that night and she could have been dancing. Or just hugging.
Speaker 3:You see relatives that you haven't seen in a while.
Speaker 1:And also they didn't use gloves.
Speaker 1:back then there wasn't really much knowledge, so you're absolutely right, Then they were a smaller police station, so they obviously didn't have the resources and things to get on top of it Exactly for sure, but the police got an order signed from a judge to exhume Owen Kimball's body to get a DNA sample from his bone and muscle tissue, which they did on November 2nd 2023.
Speaker 1:On June 26, 2024, 59 years to the day police announced that Owen Kimball's DNA was found on Tanya's sweater. Remember there was no evidence of sexual assault, so, like we just talked about, it could be touch DNA or some other kind of form, and that she was at a wedding and around other people, but there should be no reason for Owen Kimball's DNA to be on her. I was thinking about why he would kill her. They didn't live that far from each other and it seems like it was a small town, so they would have known each other. And I was thinking as I was writing this episode that neighbors report owen kimball had a reputation of being a peeping tom, so I was thinking well, maybe she caught him right, maybe she was running him and confronted him and at first I was like, yeah, that's, that's kind of plausible.
Speaker 1:But there was no sign of a struggle right.
Speaker 3:So don't you think? Yeah, she must have been approached by him in a way that she thought was going to be safe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and I don't even know where we were. But there was also no sign of a struggle, so I doubt she confronted him. But I did find another article for the Cash Daily News where they interviewed the Logan police lieutenant Brett Randall, and he states, and I quote, and here I am quoting, and here I am quoting it appears that there may have been some stalking at the time or certainly some infatuation with her. Apparently, at the time of the murder they found notes that he had written with her name on it and a picture of her circled. There were also fibers on her clothing that were eventually connected to him as well. But what really happened that night we will never know, because the two people that do know are dead. One was the victim and one was a coward, in my humble opinion. But tanya's family can finally have some closure and utah's oldest unsolved case has officially been solved, and that, my dear wanderers, is the murder of tanya weber can I say something?
Speaker 3:yes, ma'am, I'm wondering if he just loved her too hard and I this is what I'm thinking plot twist so if this was his only murder and he was peeping in on her and he had pictures of her, what if he was like, oh my god, I'm so like, yeah, mentally something's wrong, right, but he is so infatuated with her and he, she denies him and he just is so like, well, that's what I was wondering too.
Speaker 1:I was having the same thought, because how do you?
Speaker 3:just go straight to murder. Right, and it was an accident.
Speaker 1:And then he felt bad about it and offed himself yeah, that's a very good you know, look at you be so smart. I know I don't know if we should be concerned or proud. You know we're proud.
Speaker 3:It's a fine line yeah.
Speaker 1:But yeah, love, yeah, that could very well be. That's a good point.
Speaker 3:That would be kind of sad. Yeah, I know Right, it would be kind of a different twist on it. It's messed up, it's wrong. Did he just love her too hard?
Speaker 1:That mental health line, yeah that mental health line always makes it.
Speaker 3:I think that's our twist right Is our mental health backgrounds, yeah, and it gives us that other.
Speaker 2:That insider Might not approve, but we can understand.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Absolutely All right, all right. Now we are doing the deck of missing Massachusetts since New Englanders Unsolved homicide of Jafet Robles, j-a-f-e-t. What was it?
Speaker 3:Jafet Jafet Robles. Well, I'm sure it sounds French. Can you spell it again J-A-F-E-T.
Speaker 1:What's the last name? R-o-b-f-e-t. And what's last?
Speaker 3:name r-o-b-l-e-s.
Speaker 1:Oh, robles, yeah, jeffay robles, okay sorry if I pronounce your name wrong. On september 11 2017, employees of the chickpea department of public works found the victim's body in Zot Park in Chicopee with a gunshot wound in the back. If you have any information regarding Jeffet Robles, call 1-855-MA-SOLVE. And he is the three of hearts and Courtney. Thanks for joining us. Thanks.
Speaker 2:Courtney.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's been fun. If you guys only knew what we talked about behind the scenes, you would probably stop listening or listen more.
Speaker 3:Who knows, maybe someday. Yes, don't tell your mom about us.
Speaker 2:Hey, and if you can just do us a favor, if you're on Spotify or Apple, definitely give us a rating. We haven't gotten a couple, we haven't gotten any in a couple months, so give us a five star rating and that will boost us up in the algorithm.
Speaker 1:Also, we discounted our merch right.
Speaker 2:Yes, all of our shirts and hoodies. They are at new prices reduced tremendously from what they were before, and we got new colors and we're most likely going to have a shirt ready for September for spooky season.
Speaker 1:Jonathan's working on our spooky trip. I'm so excited. I'm glad I'm involved this year and yeah, so goodnight Wanderers, goodnight bye, bye, thanks for listening today.
Speaker 3:Wicked Wanderings is hosted by Hannah Fitzpatrick and me, jess Goonan, and. It's hosted by Hannah Fitzpatrick and me, jess Gunan.
Speaker 2:And it's produced by Rob Fitzpatrick.
Speaker 3:Music by Sasha N. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to leave us a rating and review.
Speaker 1:And be sure to follow us on all our socials. You can find the links down in the show notes.
Speaker 3:And if you're looking for some Wicked Cozy t-shirts or hoodies, head over to our merch store.
Speaker 1:Thank you for being a part of the Wicked Wanderings community. We appreciate each and every one of you.
Speaker 3:Stay curious, keep exploring and always remember to keep on wandering. Thank you.
