April

They give us a hotel room.

I will say they feed us well. There are break stations on every floor. There's a huge market, a place called the barn. Oh, that sounds nice.

Do the hotel rooms have tissue boxes? There is in the bathroom. I should have thought ahead and brought it over close to me.

Much less editing for you, Mark. Exactly.

Okay, so I am one of four girls, so three sisters. I know my poor dad. Your lucky dad.

That's right. Girl dads are the best. And he really is the best. So I'm the second in line. And what first caught my attention as a child is that all of my sisters have blonde hair and blue eyes or green eyes. My dad has this bright blonde hair and these really bright blue eyes. My mom, red hair, green eyes. I came out dark, dark head of hair, really dark eyes.

Second born, we can kind of chalk that up to like, okay, there's some genes in there that are going further back. Like it happens.

I thought about all this growing up. There's also the fact that my sisters are all very rambunctious. They love to dance, very social. I was like the anti-social child. Monica, I love to read Harry Potter, kind of off in my corner, very introverted. So just felt very different.

And then tack onto that throughout our childhood, we would go out to eat at restaurants or even in school, people would ask us how we were related. We had the same last name, obviously they knew we were. When we said sisters, everybody often asked, Are we full blood sisters? This is mid late 90s, early 2000s. So that sort of got me questioning. I do feel different. What's going on here?

So I did ask my parents a couple of times. Is there something I need to know? Was always told no. I asked my grandparents. I was always told there was nothing more I needed to know. But I never let this go as a topic. So the running joke in my family to me was that I was the milkman's baby.

Good. You guys have heard the phrase. So fast forward, I've asked this question to my mom, even into my adulthood.

Right. And there's something fun about the mystery of it all. But same answer every time. I have two children. Shout out to Brody and Brynn, their little arm cherries in the making. Oh, we love that. I'm looking at both of them and I'm like, they really look like me and my husband. And they really look like each other.

Biologically speaking, now I can look at my dad and my mom and say, something's not adding up here. So I decide at 30, I'm going to take a DNA test. I don't tell anyone. I get the DNA test. I take it. It comes back several weeks later and there's nothing earth shattering. I get some third, fourth cousins, but there is one person who comes up. He's a first cousin and I don't recognize the name.

So I messaged the guy and he responds back a couple of days later and he tells me that he's actually adopted. Oh, that's confusing. Not a lot to go on.

I was trying to crack this nut without anyone knowing just so I could have the results myself, but not break open any big secrets of the family. I was trying to be very demure, very mindful. My two younger sisters look just like my dad. Older one looks like my mom. So I talked to my younger sister and she said she's going to take the same DNA test.

And a few weeks go by and we both get the email and we say, OK, we're going to call each other before we open it. And we opened it. We are half sisters, niece or aunt.

I felt like this is my lifelong mystery solved. I knew that something was up the whole time and I was right. My family is still my family. My mom and dad divorced, by the way, when I was 18. So they're not together anymore. And I think maybe she doesn't know who my dad is, or maybe she's just not 100% sure. And that's why she never wanted to tell me.

There's some secrets she doesn't want to confess to. But now I have these results. I know for sure there's nothing more to hide. And I want to know who the person could be. So I call her up and I say, mom. Misty and I took a DNA test and guess what? We're half sisters. She really took it like a champ. And she was very matter of fact. She said, okay, his name is Jim.

He was 10, 12 years older than me. He was going through a divorce. He's got two other kids. I mean, it's just bombshell after bombshell. She knew this guy. They dated for a little bit. But here's the real kicker. She met him because she was working at a pharmacy. And this man drove the Borden's dairy milk truck.

That's so cool.

And that was the part of the conversation that I stopped and I laughed and I said, do you mean to tell me that I really am the milkman's baby?

There was a separation. She was only 21 when I was born.

Very young, very much haven't figured out life yet.

There's a little bit of some drama here. My mom says that he knew, but when I went and talked to him, because really I wanted to thank him for knowing that I wasn't his biologically, but still raising me the same as my sister. never treated me any differently.

He got really emotional when I had the conversation with him because he said he really didn't know that she had sort of alluded to it once, but then took it back and never brought it up again.

They were not together when I told them. And I'll tell you, my grandparents are actually who had the hardest time with it because I'm so close to them. And of course, this is my grandpa on my dad who raised me side. He will still find old pictures of distant relative family members that he thinks I resemble. Oh.

That's okay. I love him. He's my papa, and that'll never change.

I found him. I got to give my younger sister a little surprise. I didn't actually mean to tell her in that way. I just messaged her to ask her. For her dad contact info. And I didn't give her a reason why. And she joked back to me and said, why are you my long lost sister?

I did get to meet him and kind of hear about his family history and very pleasant guy. But my life worked out the exact way it was supposed to, because he even said he wouldn't have been in a place to be a really great father for me at that time in his life. So it really worked out.

I appreciate that. Now I know there's a history of breast cancer in the family. Never knew that before. So these are good things to know. That's true. Thanks for sharing that.

Of course. Thank you guys so much for having me. Would it be okay? Can I take a picture of us?

All right, everybody, say cheese.

I am actually at a place called Deloitte University. I'm in learning and development, and I'm actually here all week delivering five different learning programs.

I just wrapped up one called Future Forward. It was so fun. Lots of very interesting activities. Lots of conversation about what the future of our workplace looks like and how to be agile and adaptable. All the buzzwords. Deloitte, the big accounting firm? That's right. We have our own hotel slash university. Wow, that's incredible.

Yeah, I mean, I'm hearing him. It sounds like he's super responsible. I mean, fantasy baseball priorities. No, I get it.

You don't remember the kiss. You definitely don't get to count it. No, you're not getting, like, points for that at all.

I mean, he did have pretty nice lips, but still.

I mean, can you promise that you're going to get a full night's sleep and like never, ever tell anybody besides everybody that's listening to this show that you fell asleep during our first kiss?

All right, but I'm not paying for a single thing. Not one single thing. Okay.

Hi, am I on the air right now?

Yeah, that's what we're known for.

Okay, what's going on? What is this?

I mean, I don't know. I just I'm mostly like this is kind of strange to be like blasting out on the radio. You know what I mean? Totally.

OK, well, I mean, look, most of the date was positive. He's a fun guy. He's cute. OK, but I mean, I'm surprised that he doesn't know. Like, I mean, I think there was a point where we kind of. At least I definitely couldn't, and I thought he probably also felt we could not come back from.

Yeah. All right. Well, we went out to, you know, whatever. We were out for the whole night, and he walks me to my car.

It's the very end of the evening. And I like things had gone well. We were certainly flirty.

And we get to my car and he just kind of stands there. And I'm like, OK, I'll make the first move. I lean in to kiss him. Yeah. And he was very like what I thought was polite, like just like being very gentle. And he's just kind of like not really doing too much with the kissing. And then it's kind of just like not much is happening at all.

Well, yeah, you could say that because when I opened my eyes, I realized that he's sleeping. He has fallen asleep.

I mean, he was kind of leaning against my car, but he was out.

When did he wake up? When I was like, dude, are you asleep? And then he just kind of like opened his eyes and laughed a little bit and was like, okay, see ya.

Lawrence? Are you joking me right now? He's been listening this whole time? He needed to hear it. He really did.

Oh, my God. This is exactly what I'm talking about. This is humiliating. No, don't.

I mean, weird, I guess.

It is weird, Noah.

I am confused about you saying you picked a place based on my interests and singing being the specific thing and choosing a baseball game.

She sounds excited. I mean, I wanted to sing last week, and I didn't get to, so I mean, I guess.

Okay. Something's got a hold of me, lady. Okay. Don't know myself anymore.

It helps that my voice is a little scratchy today. It makes me sound better.

Wait, hold on just a second.

You're asking me out for him? Noah, get up. Ask me yourself. Tell me you're taking me to karaoke and I want sushi too.

Fine.

Hello?

What's happening? Do I know you?

I mean, I've seen it on TikTok.

And it's not that big of a deal, though.

I mean, I do usually scroll past them because I hate a two-parter.

Like the guy I went on a date with recently. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Am I being pranked right now?

I mean, I thought it was bad.

I mean, pretty much as soon as we got there, because I guess he was trying to surprise me, but he, I mean, he told me he was going to take me somewhere. to sing because he like looked at my profile and we had talked about like, yeah, I like to sing and I like used to perform and I don't anymore. So I thought it would be like karaoke or an open mic night or something.

And he we it was a baseball game.

I mean, honestly, I hate sports like I just I will never be impressed by watching somebody throw or catch or hit a ball. Like, I couldn't care less. I need a plot if I'm going to be watching people do something.

Yeah.

A baseball game is kind of a bad situation for a first date because, like, You're not even facing each other. And then I'm like, am I supposed to be talking to you or am I supposed to be watching the ball? Like what?

I mean, I don't go to games, so I don't know what the vibe is.

Oh, great. Oh, she never listens to part two.

It is what it is. I mean, quite frankly, I don't think any of us at different times throughout the story look any better than the next, right? Like, we're a family struggling. Like I said, I mean, I know I'm going to take some heat for pointing my finger at him and doing so, so... Like, I mean, up until the pain, I was absolutely 100% sure that my father was a serial killer.

I have no fear about the repercussions for what I've had to do because I've had to do what I had to do so that we could figure things out. We could either put my dad in place or take him out of place. And that's what we've been able to do, you know, in order to move on. You know, and I'm not going to ask you to to paint me as a rosy character or a villain. Like, I just do you know what I'm saying?

Like, yeah, it's one of those things where it is what it is. I mean, that's the truth is the truth. And I'm just so sick of dealing in in lies and like hidden information that I just like the truth is the truth. And, you know, not all truths are great. Not all truths are cheerful and pretty. You know, some of them are heartbreaking and it is what it is.

and that's unfortunately when people take the lives of other people i know this is going to sound really horrible to say but in some ways heidi had it the easiest out of all of us you know what i mean by that like just you know like when she died she died um it was brutal but we have we have been living in this fucking nightmare for 40 something years

The torture, the pain, just the questions, the darkness, the secrets, just everything. It's just this whole whirlwind cycle. And people, when they take other people's lives, they don't realize, like, it's the survivors. It's the survivors that suffer greatly their entire lives. I'm not going to lie. I'm not disappointed. I'm relieved. But I'm still shocked.

I'm still shocked because, man, when I tell you I was 100%, I mean, the bones in my body told me. I got goosebumps, you know, when things started coming together, like just real goosebumps. And he's just such a son of a bitch that it just, it made sense. It made, I guess for me, it made sense. It made all of his bizarre, horrific, abusive, neglectful behaviors make sense to me.

And now I have to start over and try to make sense of this disgusting human being. I know it probably just sounds really, really bad to say, but, like, in my mind, I was just like, okay, you know what? Like, Mike... My dad's a murderer. Like that explains all of his behaviors. That explains everything.

It explains his emotional outbursts, his violent rages, his inability to be affectionate to his children, you know, his constant need to scare and to just all these horrible, horrible things that he did to all of us growing up, including his own life. Like it just explains away all those behaviors. And now I'm left going, okay, so he's not a murderer, but Like, what are you?

See, now I'm getting emotional. Yes, for me, I just... To explain what we all fucking went through as kids. Because none of it made sense. None of it made sense. Ugh, so painful. Because you see her. You heard her voice. Like, she was so vibrant. And, like... She was like a butterfly. She was just always flying about. She was always doing something silly, something fun.

And it's like you have all of that, and then it's smoothed out.

Through this whole journey, I came across another case that has another sketch from a witness sketch, and that sketch is a mirror image to this person. It was... Absolutely terrifying and relieving all at once when I saw this sketch because it is a mirror image of this person that I've thought all along and that it could be connected to the River Valley killings as well.

So Barry and Linda, they were getting rid of, they were cleaning out the basement and they were getting basically like baby books, everything they were throwing away of Heidi's. And my brother Jason happened to be down there. And so he grabbed everything that they were going to throw away. and he took it to his house, but he didn't look through it.

So when we were searching and searching and searching, and the police were like, we don't have it, I said to the police, is it possible you gave it back to the parents? And they said, absolutely not. That would have been part of our evidence. We would not have given it back to them.

However, Jason and Gwen went through just to look through that box of stuff, and all the diaries were in there, except there was one year missing, and the diary that led up to her death, there were about... I don't know, like five or more pages that were ripped out.

And now one year is missing. It's the year prior to her death. Okay. And five or so pages leading up to her death were ripped out of the diary. And this is what Jason found. And this is what Jason found. And so when he brought it to me, I immediately contacted the police and... And I handed over—after I read them all, I handed over all the diaries to the police.

Now, either my parents ripped those pages out and burned that one diary that obviously—because, again, I read all the diaries. There's nothing compromising in any of that stuff.

um about my family and we know we know because it's on record that there was damaging information about my family in there about my dad specifically we know that but it's nowhere to be found so that tells me that it's in do we know that for a fact that there is damaging information yes we do

We know that there was damaging information in the diaries because there are newspaper clippings about the trial where they argued over whether the defense should have access to the information that was in the diaries that was so damaging to the family.

Bill Boss, who was a prosecuting attorney, lived in Norwich. And so I went to his house and I sat in his kitchen and he went over everything. And I asked him point blank at that time, you know, are you sure my dad had nothing to do with this? And he looked at me point blank and he said, I know for a fact that it was Delbert Tallman.

But I will say that if we didn't know that it was Delbert Tallman at the time and we had no suspects, your dad would have been the first person we looked at because of the contents of the diary. And I said, what were the contents of the diary? And he said they talked about the abuse.

Definitely you can't hear boots. There's no way. Take a walk first. Take a walk? Okay.

Bill Boss, who was a prosecuting attorney, lived in Norwich. So I looked in the phone book for his name, and I called the number, and it was his home, and he was retired, and he invited me to his home. And so I went to his house, and I sat in his kitchen, and he went over everything. And I asked him point blank at that time, are you sure my dad had nothing to do with this?

And he looked at me, point blank, and he said, absolutely, I know for a fact that it was Delbert Tallman, but I will say that if we didn't know that it was Delbert Tallman at the time and we had no suspects, your dad would have been the first person we looked at because of the contents of the diary. And I said, what were the contents of the diary? And he said they talked about the abuse.

And that's where all these years of questioning sexual abuse have come from because Bill Boss stated that to me. So Boss said to you directly that that's what was in Heidi's diary?

Hi, thanks for having me. Sure, what's up? So I'm wanting to know how I can help my 71-year-old mother who has no retirement. She has a home and she's considering selling the home in order to be able to make it about 50 more years. But she's kind of in a rock and a hard place. And I didn't know if there's a way she can invest a little or find a way to maybe get a little extra money.

None at all.

It's probably about $175,000. But then she has to decide whether to rent or to go purchase another smaller home or a trailer. Where does she live? She's in Evansville, and so she's in Indiana.

Indiana.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, she has Social Security, but she's afraid to get a job because then she'll lose her insurance, her Medicare.

She's only getting $900 a month about right now.

She is. She's actually pretty stubborn. I love her to death, but she's very independent and a bit stubborn, but I love her. And I keep saying, well, maybe... If you could do this or that, she's kind of very adamant about not being in a community or being somewhere because she's 71 in April, but she thinks she's 50. Yeah, I know that feeling. Yeah.

She's been a caregiver her whole life, a CNA or an at-home caregiver. She actually left being a CNA to go take care of her mother at the last five years of her life. And that's kind of why she's in this position. Where's your dad? Her dad?

Oh, my dad. Unfortunately, my dad is not in the picture. He's

Well, then how do you navigate the not having insurance then?

Right. Well, she was living off the inheritance or the money that was left to her from her brother when he passed.

It's almost already gone. That's why she's kind of in this position now.

Well, hello. First of all, I'd like to say thank you so much for having me on your show. I feel truly humbled by it.

Yeah, thank you. Back before Thanksgiving, I discovered your show and I started listening actively. And I thought, you know, my whole setup of how I did money and business was very much off. And I thought, I've got to start rearranging things and get on the baby step. My husband and I are on the baby steps.

We secured the first step and we were also getting, um, listening to some of your advice about having all of our accounts merged. So we had put our savings and our checking account together in both names. And my husband had had a separate account, um, that he'd had for probably about 25 years. And I told him, I said, you should really put me on that account.

This way we can, you know, put some money in that too. And it was a good thing I started listening to your show because it really helped me discover really what was going on. I'd always been pretty active, proactive with my own money as much as I could be, as much as I knew how to be.

But on the 2nd of December, my husband had called about his other account, which the longest time it had been pretty dormant. I think he had, well, exactly, he had $100.26 in there for the longest time. And the bank had told him that he was overdrawn $3,000. And he, of course, called me immediately and told me, how can this be? I said, you need to call the bank back and ask what's going on here.

So he called the bank and they had told him that the teller or whatever had given out $3,000 and it got written off his account because his account was one number off from a customer that had it withdrawn from his account, which really made no sense to us. We couldn't understand how.

But it gets even crazier what we've been going through with it because they said that this had happened back in May of 2024. And here we are in December. And they'd said, well, we closed your account in July, July 8th. And we were like, we never got notice of this. And my husband wasn't as proactive with this other account because he figured, oh, it's there. I don't have to worry about it.

And I just thought, oh, no. So we got a letter from them, you know, saying even a copy saying we're sorry there was a mistake and even showing us the teller's number and the individual's name of who got the money. But it didn't solve our problem.

They said the bank then told us they would send us a check for $100.26, which is what my husband had in the account, and he told them, I'm not doing business with you folks because this is nuts.

But they had put my husband into check systems and also gave him a negative credit report across the board, and we were just like... I can't believe this is happening.

But, you know, that's not all, though, because we got the check for $100.26. We thought, okay, it's over. We're done. They're going to fix it. That's not what happened. Then, December 19th, they sent us a check for $2,899.74, and we're like, What's going on here? And a paper saying that, you know, you're still in check systems. You can deal with this with them. And we're like, what?

So I contacted an attorney. No. Because if you add the $2,899.74 with $100.26, you come to $3,000. So they were still making us look like we had a black eye, my husband.

We were like, what's going on here?

They told us, oh, no, we can come and – we'll even come to your house and pick the check up. I said, I've never heard of stuff like this before.

No, it's a big bank. Yes. Which we were just shocked by.

We did, and they did send them a letter, and they said they're still going to clear it with check systems, so we're waiting for that to happen.

Well, we had moved and we had given our new address, but nothing had ever come here.

Yeah.

He says he did.

Oh, he said he did.

It's like, wow, how did this happen? It sat there for so long.

Well, I can say I'm just glad that I did tap into your show and got more proactive with checking.

No, I haven't done that yet. I'm just getting started, like I said, before Thanksgiving. Just discovered your program and just getting started.

Thank you for saying that. You're awesome.

Okay.