Accused: The Unsolved Murder of Elizabeth Andes

By Amber Hunt and Amanda Rossmann

Transcripts from the popular true-crime podcast tell the story of one of Ohio’s infamous cold cases: the fatal stabbing of a Miami University graduate.
 
When Elizabeth Andes was found bound, stabbed, and strangled in her Ohio apartment in 1978, police and prosecutors decided within hours it was an open-and-shut case.

Within days, Bob Young, a 23-year-old football player who’d found his college sweetheart’s lifeless body on their bedroom floor, was charged with her murder. To this day, police and prosecutors still say they had the right guy—even though two juries, one criminal and one civil, disagreed, and Young walked away a free man.

Beth’s case went cold. Nearly four decades later, two Cincinnati reporters re-examined the murder and discovered that law enforcement ignored leads that might have uncovered who really killed Beth Andes.

It wasn’t that there weren’t other people to look at. There were plenty. But no one bothered . . . until now.
 
“A must-read for true crime fans, as well as people with even just a passing interest in the machinations of the legal system.”—The True Crime Files

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 18, 2018
• ISBN: 9781635764536

Amber Hunt

Amber Hunt is a journalist for the Detroit Free Press. She has received numerous awards including the 2005 Al Nakkula Award for Police Reporting, the only national award dedicated to crime coverage, and is a 2011 Knight-Wallace Fellow. She has appeared on NBC’s Dateline and A&E’s Crime Stories, among other TV shows. She lives in Michigan.

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Diversion Books

A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1004

New York, New York 10016

www.DiversionBooks.com

Copyright © 2018 by Amber Hunt and Amanda Rossmann

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

For more information, email [e-mail]

First Diversion Books edition September 2018.

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-63576-454-3

eBook ISBN: 978-1-63576-453-6

LSIDB/1809

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

EPISODE 1

EPISODE 2

EPISODE 3

EPISODE 4

EPISODE 5

EPISODE 6

EPISODE 7

EPISODE 8

EPISODE 9

INTRODUCTION

I’VE NEVER BEEN ONE TO think things happen for a reason. It’s too tidy a mentality, too dismissive of the dead.

My cousin, Natalie, died when we were seven. It haunted me until it inspired me, and, through that experience, I can assign it reason. But I’m still unable to think of any cosmic justification for a sweet and precocious seven-year-old to take her last breath. We weren’t even given a solid cause. Reye’s Syndrome, the pathologist guessed, pointing to the mysterious disease that swells kids’ brains and livers. My introduction to mortality was presented with a shrug.

So when Elizabeth Andes’s case landed on my desk, I wasn’t open to the notion that it landed there with purpose.

Instead, I tallied the coincidences.

Beth, as her friends called her, was killed just a few months after I was born in 1978. She died in an apartment for which she signed the lease on my actual date of birth. Her case stagnated for decades, and then happened to come to me at the exact right time. I had written true crime books by then and knew how to organize hefty research. More than that, I had a new boss who trusted me and who was willing to take bold risks, and I had an editor willing to lobby on my behalf for extra time. I was even assigned a partner, Amanda Rossmann, with whom I immediately clicked.

It’s hard to explain to nonjournalists how rare this confluence is. Newsrooms today are decimated; that part, everyone knows. What you don’t see are the internal struggles. I’ve been a reporter for more than twenty years. In the past five, I’d started leaving more and more meetings near tears when bosses put too much emphasis on metrics and clicks and too little on the idealistic reasons I became a journalist. That’s not to say the emphasis wasn’t warranted. Newsrooms are decimated because we need readers, and we measure readers these days with clicks. Editors and publishers have to worry about numbers. But most people who become journalists do it to change the world. We work long hours for lousy pay because we feed off the idea that truth matters, that we can make a difference by shedding light on stories that would otherwise remain shrouded. Our motivation isn’t on what sells; it’s on what matters.

For those of us who took on her story, Beth matters. She did from the very first day.

To hammer that home, we hung her picture front and center in the war room where we did the bulk of our year’s worth of investigation into her case. I describe the picture in the first episode of Accused, the transcripts for which are between these covers. Two years after that episode debuted, I still have that picture on my phone. I see Beth nearly daily. I think of her even more frequently.

I’ve covered a lot of murders, and some are equally haunting. Beth is no more important than any other victim of the nearly 200,000 murders that remain unsolved in America. Each was someone’s daughter or son, someone’s friend, someone’s lover. But what struck me most about this case was how solvable it appeared. There were so many avenues overlooked by detectives, so much ego clouding their judgment. When you’re tasked with solving crimes, you can’t put blinders on to all the possibilities. You can’t allow your theory to become the only one you’ll consider.

That might be why more journalists find themselves sleuthing these days, as evidenced by podcasts like ours. Journalists are trained to assume we don’t know the answer. We’re trained to question even ourselves. No human is without bias, and every good journalist I know makes an effort to know their biases and work against them. Every single story we tackle must be written with the assumption that someone has made a mistake. If your mother says she loves you, check it out. There’s a reason that’s our adage. We never take any piece of information for granted.

Amy Wilson and Peter Bhatia—my boss and my boss’s boss, respectively—are some of the purest-hearted journalists I’ve ever met. Without them, this project would never have happened. Peter walked into the Cincinnati Enquirer’s newsroom in the spring of 2015 and announced that he was shifting the newsgatherers’ focus away from numbers. Instead, we’d concentrate on the journalism. It might seem like a matter of semantics, but for most journalists, this is the shift in thinking we need to find the energy to get out of bed in the morning. Journalists get a bad rap these days, and I’m quick to criticize those who slant their stories and resort to scaremongering. Not everyone who self-applies the journalist badge actually is one. But most of us, fallible though we all are, are simply overgrown, status quo bucking teenagers who need to believe we can make a difference. Peter gave us permission to try.

Amy went to bat for me every time my vision for Beth’s story changed. First, I thought it’d be a print story. Then, maybe a series. When the scope of the investigatory ineptitude became clear and my vision morphed into a podcast, she had no reason to trust I could pull it off. I’d barely done a radio interview, much less report outright for audio. Still, she trusted me, and Peter agreed. Go for it, they said. Do good journalism.

I couldn’t have done so without Amanda. Whenever my energy would flag, she’d be there with a new theory to perk me back up. I can be pragmatic, quick to consider statistics and likelihood. She’s got a conspiracy theory streak in her, and that’s important when you’re trying to keep an open mind. Anything is possible, after all. Statistics aren’t laws.

We started our investigation with a packet compiled by Deb Lydon, one of the most dedicated lawyers I’ve ever seen at work. Lydon does believe things happen for a reason. She’s driven to help this family, for no pay and no glory. She’s stayed up late, tracked down witnesses, and pulled one autopsy report after another in search of clues. She answers to what she deems the highest of callings—when Amanda was feeling under the weather one day, she promised, without hesitation, to pray.

Lydon had already brought her research to the Oxford Police Department, which in turn had presented the case to the Vidocq Society, which is this volunteer group of crime-fighting experts that meets monthly in Philadelphia to evaluate cold cases and suggest new avenues of investigation. Despite that effort, police made no real progress on the case. The original suspect—who had decades earlier been acquitted by a jury—was not publicly cleared. Nothing was reported in the press. Lydon, frustrated by the stagnation, brought her research to the Enquirer.

From there, our investigation began in earnest. I read the trial transcripts, an array of highlighters in hand. I color coded everything of import: yellow for the investigation, pink for personal tidbits about Beth, magenta for potential suspects. We made spreadsheets of possible sources, meticulously documenting our attempts to locate them. I called countless courthouses nationwide to do background checks on random names that appeared in the margins of police memos. We scoured newspapers searching for any corroboration on alibis.

Episode 7 chronicles our battle with the evidence. There’s still a certain basement I’d love to check.

Amanda and I have both tackled our load of hefty projects during our careers, but none previous had ever compared. We became consumed. We lost sleep. After one particularly unnerving phone call, I invested in a home security system. I’ve never been so paranoid in my life, despite having written about countless murders before. Something about this one stuck. How could it stay unsolved for so long? Is there a reason police and prosecutors are so adamant about declaring it closed?

Any discomfort we felt surely paled in comparison to what Beth’s family and friends endured—including the man originally charged with her murder. Without Bob Young, Sue Parmelee, and Hallie and Rich Micali, our work in this case would have been superficial. Amanda and I will be forever grateful to them, not just for sharing their memories, but for being willing to tell the world just how much Beth’s loss still affected them forty years after her murder.

We invested as much as we did because the case was important to them, and it became special to us. What we didn’t know—and what’s proved immeasurably rewarding—is how much it would resonate with others. We continue to get feedback that’s both validating and humbling. Among the emails from strangers:

I keep thinking about Beth Andes…I have been praying since I started listening that the truth will someday be uncovered, and Beth’s family and friends will know who took this wonderful woman away from them.

"I want to thank you for the work you and your team did in making Accused…(I’m) just so proud of the work women are doing. Proud, and less scared than I used to be because we will not be silenced. People of all genders are supporting women more and more, and I hope that this leads to fewer murders."

Your series inspired me to donate to the Innocence Project.

"I hope that this type of in-depth and story-based reporting will continue to remain a valued asset in the budgets of the Enquirer and like news sources."

If there are ways I can petition these people on the behalf of you and Beth and everyone, I would be open to your direction.

You were incredible investigators. The work you put into this shows.

Brava—for your chops, your commitment, and your character. Keep going!

My experience before this has been an occasional note of kudos for every ten messages of vitriol. People don’t reach out often to tell journalists when they’ve done well, when their work has imprinted. We can only deduce that this particular reaction is because we told the story in this particular manner—with our voices in their ears, our listeners were invited to witness the process. I consider it my job as a journalist to make people care. This experiment taught me that the more transparent you are with your intentions and your process, the more attainable that goal becomes.

Accused was the first newspaper-produced true crime podcast to hit the number one spot on iTunes across all categories. To date, the season one episodes have been listened to more than 10 million times. We so routinely get case suggestions from listeners that we’ve started passing them along to reporters in other markets. There’s no shortage of unsolved murders to investigate, and they all deserve attention.

It’s worth noting that the Oxford police weren’t happy with the work we did here. Their stated reasons vacillated depending on the day and the messenger. At times, they worried we were making them look bad. Other times they said we were interfering with their own ongoing investigation. As such, we held back a few details and gave them breathing room to continue their work after the season aired. We of all people know that a thorough investigation requires diligence and follow through.

What you’ll read in this book is our first year of work on Beth’s case. It is not our last word. Our hope is that by releasing these transcripts, we’ll again draw attention to a case that desperately needs police cooperation to be closed. As of the writing of this foreword, Beth’s case still isn’t on Ohio’s list of unsolved murders, despite assurances to us two years ago she’d be added. Key witnesses still haven’t been interviewed. People we’ve deemed interesting—assessments that police agreed with in an in-person meeting in March of 2016—still haven’t been contacted by proper authorities.

Cold cases are solvable. If you want proof, look up the Tara Grinstead case out of Georgia and the East Area Rapist in California. Both got media attention—thanks to a podcast and a book, respectively—which helped lead to charges in each. What those two cold cases had in common were police investigators willing to continue the search. Beth deserves the same attention. We will continue to implore Oxford, Ohio officials to do their jobs, and we will be thorns in their sides until they do. We need that from them. Journalists can shed light, but we can’t request search warrants and subpoenas.

If, in these pages, you find a detail we undervalued or overlooked, consider passing that insight along. We have theories, but we could be wrong. Fresh eyes are welcome.

In the first episode of Beth’s story, I said it’s our goal to solve this murder. That goal stands.

Beth’s family and friends deserve an answer. That’s reason enough for me.

Amber Hunt

April 2018

EPISODE 1

AMBER HUNT: In some ways, I feel like a stalker.

For nearly a year, I’ve been tracking every waking moment, every conversation, every move of a woman named Elizabeth Wells Andes. I never met her, but I have her picture on my wall and my desktop and my cellphone. I know her face so well that when I flipped through a yearbook and saw an uncaptioned side profile picture of her as a freshman in high school, I recognized her right away. I’d never even seen her profile before, but I had studied her face.

My favorite photo of her looks like it was shot in someone’s backyard. She’s looking at the camera and flashing this engaging smile, the type that makes you smile right back, even though you’re only looking at a picture. Even though we’ve never talked, I feel like I know her. I think I would have liked her, which makes the other photos I have of Beth even harder to look at.

Naked, bound, and bruised, Beth was murdered when she was just twenty-three years old. She was strangled first and then stabbed—fourteen punctures in her chest and six more in her neck. The coroner ruled she hadn’t been sexually assaulted, though claw marks on her thighs seem to hint that someone might have tried. The photos are so awful, so at odds with the happy memories of Beth that her friends and family have.

SUE PARMELEE: I remember her certainly having really been pretty happy, smiling, laughing, calm, having a good time.

AMBER: This is Sue Parmelee, one of Beth’s best friends.

SUE: Yeah, I think she was happy with her family. She was happy with…she, you know, she had graduated, had a degree, was a pretty good student. Her personality just was easygoing.

AMBER: There are some people in your life who, if you’re honest with yourself, you’d have to admit seem a likelier target for something bad, something violent, to happen to than the rest of your friends. It’s not PC to say it, and it certainly doesn’t mean anyone ever deserves being targeted, but there are risk factors: selling drugs, being a hothead, prone to fistfights. Beth was none of those things.

RICH MICALI: How do you have a very good friend—who’s your wife’s best friend—who we would have been lifelong friends? 

AMBER: That’s Rich Micali, a college friend who married one of Beth’s roommates.

RICH: If you’re hit by a car, there was a plane crash, you have a heart attack, OK, I get it. But to be brutalized this way was very hard to see and to deal with, and so.

AMBER: Rich is a lot older now, older than he could have imagined himself way back when Beth died on December 28, 1978. He and his wife Hallie are grandparents now, just like most of Beth’s friends. Beth should be here, they say. She should be nearing retirement, enjoying grandkids of her own. She missed Rich and Hallie’s wedding and the birth of their children, and their ups and downs and trials and tribulations. More than that, she missed all of her own.

Obviously this is a tale about a murder, but I feel it needs to be qualified. I’ve told a lot of murder stories in my twenty years as a journalist, and this one’s different. It’s complicated and political and frustrating as hell. The people who are usually front and center trying to solve crimes are strangely quiet on this one, and there seems to be a reason.

As much as this tale is about murder, it’s also about a system and officials that might have fingered the wrong guy, and even thirty-seven years later seem determined to pretend there’s no chance they made a mistake.

Let’s start at the beginning.

The year is 1978. Jimmy Carter is President. Laverne and Shirley is a top TV show, followed by Happy Days, and newcomer Mork & Mindy, starring a young and manic Robin Williams. It was a big year for movies, too. Grease, The Deer Hunter, Heaven Can Wait, and one of my personal favorites, Dawn of the Dead.

The city is Oxford, Ohio, a college town about forty-five minutes north of Cincinnati. It’s home to Miami University, where Beth Andes studied for four and a half years. This is the type of town that transforms over summer and winter breaks, when the 15,000-plus students flee back home and the city’s left with fewer than 20,000 full-time residents.

It’s without question a beautiful campus with stately red brick buildings and cream-colored trim. The yearbook talks about the Miami Mystique, and students I’ve talked to say that’s more than just self-congratulations.

STUDENT 1: You had the shops, you had a really nice campus. It wasn’t really rural or urban. It was just kind of in the middle, so I liked that too.

AMBER: OK, and it’s still kind of close to a big town, right?

STUDENT 1: Yeah, you have options. It’s not small, small.

STUDENT 2: Oxford is the ultimate college town, honestly. This street we’re on right now is called High Street, and, I think, within a square mile there are twenty bars or something like that. It’s crazy. It’s unbelievable.

STUDENT 3: It’s actually, population-wise, I call it the perfect mix because I can go to class every day and see somebody new, but at the same time I’ll see somebody I know. So I catch up with friends, I see friends everywhere, but there’s

Reviews for Accused

[cherylk_44 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I really, really struggled with this book. This saddens me as I was looking forward to it. After, having recently read Sadie in the format of a podcast, I was interested in the fact that this book was a podcast as well. Yet, in this case, it did not work. It read kind of clunky. Plus, I was really pissed off by the fact that the authorities were focused on just the boyfriend. Once, they had him, it was like they didn't want to hear or consider any other theories; even if the evidence was not crystal clear. After feeling like I was stopping and going while reading this book and only getting a third of the way. Which by the way took me almost a month to get this far into the book, I was done with the book and put it down for good.