Chapter 1: What tragic event is at the center of The Barefoot Witness story?
In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered.
I wonder which emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer.
For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, Blood and Water. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.
Hello everybody, I'm Debra Roberts and it's so good to have you with us for our new episode of 2020 The After Show where we take you behind the scenes and show you a little bit of a close-up look of our recording. Today we're going to take a different take on a story that I think still lingers for so many of us here.
Chapter 2: How did the three-year-old witness contribute to the investigation?
It certainly does for me. It begins with an image that we had in our piece for 2020 that is so hard to shake. A toddler wandering around a Louisiana parking lot clutching a pillow. And she's pointing to her mom's car when she is finally discovered. And inside that car is a purse, keys, and a lot of blood. In fact, the little three-year-old had blood on her feet.
And the child became what we called for our episode, the barefoot witness. Because sadly, she was a witness to something that was pretty horrific.
we would later discover as we were putting our piece together that the little girl's mom was a popular school teacher her name was lintel washington and at that moment she was missing police began a search to find her and days later sadly she was found dead dumped in a drainage ditch
It was a heartbreaking story, one that I am still, I think, struggling to sort of piece together in my head how it could have happened. I spent time down in Louisiana in a sugar cane field where all of this played out tragically, and I met actually that little girl later on.
Chapter 3: What challenges did the producers face while covering this sensitive story?
This episode isn't just about how authorities solved the murder, though. It's about how the truth happened. can come from even the smallest of voices. And in this case, it did from a toddler. Well, here to talk about this story, which I think we are all still talking about, is my colleague and 2020 coordinating producer, Susan Welsh. Hey, Susan.
Hey, Debra. Good to see you. Good to see you, too.
Well, you and I have done this before on the podcast, but it's always great when we get a chance to sort of debrief in person. And you're passionate about these stories that we cover. And this was one that grabbed your passion from the very beginning.
oh it really did and particularly because of that video that you're talking about because i'm a mom you're a mom from the moment you see that video with this little girl running around and she is clutching a pillow she's barefoot i was clutching my chest you know holding my breath just because you know that there's nobody around she's there by herself and something is definitely yeah something something bad had happened and we knew that from the very beginning well a kind stranger
shows up and eventually calls 911, which is how this all unfolds. But as I said, there was blood in the car, no parent there. And the little girl says something about a Mr. Robbie, and that would be pivotal. But just the idea that she was able to talk about that.
Tell me about your initial approach to this story, because on this podcast, we'd like to give people a sense of how these stories came together.
Yeah.
And you've got to contact family members to see if they'll talk about something that was just absolutely horrific and devastating in their lives. Then we have to tread lightly because there's a child involved. Give us a sense of how you approach this story once we knew we wanted to cover it.
yeah i think that one of the ways we certainly knew we wanted to talk to the family and friends of lintel because so many of them just sort of you know rallied around after we found out what happened and wanted to be there for her young daughter and just wanted to be there as family and friends.
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Chapter 4: Who was Lintel Washington and what impact did she have on her community?
We found Lintel's best friend, Melissa Mason. And Melissa was intentional. about making sure that the story got out and making sure that she and others would be able to represent Lintel because Lintel could no longer speak for herself.
And so once we started talking to Melissa about her best friend, Melissa was able to help us find a few more friends and some colleagues, even a student of Lintel's that said, of course, we'll talk to you because we want the world to know who she was.
And you're great at that too, building that trust. So let's talk about the story. So there's a massive search. This little girl has been found. She's mentioned this name. Police are trying to figure what this means. There's a massive search for Lentel in the very beginning. In fact, we kind of retraced those steps for our program.
We sent boats out to look at the area to give people a better sense of what this was all about.
This was indeed a massive area. This is the bayou in Louisiana. There's all... all sorts of elements that are there um you know the the muddy waters the alligators it's just a large swath of land in iberville parish down in louisiana is where we were this area was just massive and it but it was also one of the places that we we wanted to show you just how massive it was
that we got on a boat on the waterway, a waterway they called Whiskey Bay, to basically show us like this is where, unfortunately, this is where bodies get dumped. So this is one of the first places we looked. But we were able to sort of capture that by being on the boat. and showing all that they were able to do when they were first doing the search.
And they did talk to us about that. So I went down there and I remember looking at that in those sugar cane fields and we found the area where Lintel's body would eventually be found. And I got a chance to see this place and it was clearly off the beaten path. It is not a place that you would ever expect that somebody would have been, you know, found, but she was.
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Chapter 5: What led police to focus on Robert Marks as a suspect?
And police also made a very sad discovery, which is that she was pregnant. She was five months pregnant. And that was sort of factor into the investigation. Ronnie Hebert took me out there to show me this location. And he talked about how remote it was. Let's take a listen to some of our conversation. Well, this is certainly off the beaten path.
It is, really. As you see, all the cane they got, right? Right. And it's miles and miles of cane.
Right.
And I was assuming that he had figured there's no way anybody would find this body.
Would anything have led you back here just searching?
Absolutely not.
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Chapter 6: How did the little girl's testimony influence the trial?
No. There's no reason to come back here. The only people that would come here would be the workers that raised this cane.
So you got the call, and where had they found a body?
Right up in this area right here. This is going to dead end right here. The canal runs this way and also makes a left right here. Okay. And she was located right up in that area right there.
The worker had been checking out the fields and stumbled upon this area.
Right. She was right here in this area right here. Like I said, you know, at that time they had some water in this ditch at that time. Because to me it was a watery grave. Absolutely no disregard for her, just dumped it, you know.
And there was no question in your mind she had been dumped there?
Absolutely. She was a transfer, dumped. Nothing on the scene showed that this was the actual area where she would have been shot at.
What was that like for this area? There had been this massive search, then they finally find this body. You don't always get to solve these cases. What was that like for you all?
Well, it's actually a great relief for us, for the family. Because I can about imagine, I keep thinking about that poor child.
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Chapter 7: What is the current status of Robert Marks after his conviction?
I mean, her mom's gone and her family gives them closure. Can't never bring Lintel back, but at least they know they can give her a proper burial.
Investigator Susan would find a sandal that would match Lintel's sandal. So they would eventually be able to conclude that that was her body that they found. It was a really horrible scene. And he remembered the muddy conditions and trying to find it out there. And it was sort of perplexing when they talked about if somebody wanted to get rid of a body, this was a place to dump it.
And I guess if they hadn't conducted this massive search, you know, she very well, her body could have just like been buried out there for a long time and unrecognizable.
Yeah, no, that's very true. I mean, because as you pointed out, this was a remote area. So I think what struck everyone is that clearly whoever did this did not want Lintel to be found. You know, I remember her friend Melissa once again saying we were so afraid if she was out there because she'd be eaten up by the alligators.
It was just like that imagery of what would happen to her out in the elements. So they felt very strongly if they didn't find her soon, you wouldn't find her.
Yeah.
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Chapter 8: How is the barefoot witness doing today and what is her family's legacy?
Well, we're going to tell you more about how they found her. And then ultimately I was able to talk to that little girl who was actually growing up. And I'm going to tell you more about that. We're going to sneak in a break. And when we come back, we'll talk more about the barefoot witness and what she told police and what she told me. So stay with us.
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We are back now with Susan Welsh, 2020 Coordinating Producer, who is helping me break down and sharing some of her thoughts about our 2020 episode called The Barefoot Witness. It is one that we have not forgotten about here around 2020. Beloved teacher Lintel Washington was found shot dead. to death after her young daughter was seen wandering along in a parking lot with blood on her feet.
Police would eventually find her mother's body, sadly, in a field. The little girl, though, revealed some clues, repeatedly saying, as I said to Susan, Mr. Robbie. And police were trying to piece that together. Who is Mr. Robbie? And let's talk about how that played. I mean, this three-year-old kid is able to give a little bit of a a major clue in this investigation.
Yeah, absolutely. She put Robert Marks right in the center of this case. The assistant principal. Robert Marks, the assistant principal of the school where Lintel worked. That's right, because there was no DNA and there was no weapon. But once they spoke with the daughter, this little girl, they realized, oh, there is someone that we should be looking at. And she kept saying, Mr. Robby.
And eventually they found in talking to family and friends, there was only one person that she would call Mr. Robbie. And that's what led them to the assistant principal, Robert Marks.
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