Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome back to Postmortem. I'm your host, Anne-Marie Green. And joining me today is 48 Hours correspondent Natalie Morales. We are going to discuss the case of Debra Atrops. Now, back in 1988, the young mother was found strangled to death in the trunk of her car in Oregon. For decades, her murder remained unsolved, and it would take 37 years to bring her killer to justice.
Joining me now is Natalie. Hi, Anne-Marie. Good to be with you. Hey, Natalie. It's always good to be with you. This is one of those hours that I just kind of went back and forth. I was so convinced that they, you know, that they had the right suspect and then they had the wrong suspect. I just I was ping ponging.
I think even for me, as I was reporting on this case, it was I was very conflicted. Even our producers, we were conflicted. But this case was cold for over 30 years, so really it was all about figuring out what new evidence could be presented at trial.
If you haven't listened to the 48 Hours episode yet, you can find the full audio version just below this episode in your podcast feed. Go take a listen and then come on back for the conversation. Deborah, or Debbie Atrops, was last seen alive on Tuesday, November 29th, 1988.
Chapter 2: What happened to Debbie Atrops in 1988?
Her husband, Bob Atrops, first reported her missing to Oregon police when he said she never arrived to pick up their baby daughter, Rihanna, from Bob's house. So I should point out that Bob and her, they are estranged, right? So they have been separated. But Bob calls the police
Like, pretty quickly after he felt that she should have been picking up their daughter, he tells them that Debbie was running about three hours late from a hairdressing appointment. So to me, this was, like, the first indication. Like, very early on, I thought, oh, yeah, he's the one. Because I just... It just seemed like three hours was too soon to be calling the police.
And at least in the portion of the 911 call that we heard, it's not like he said, I've been everywhere. I went to her apartment. I called the hairdresser. Like it just something about the 911 call seemed off.
Yeah, all valid points, Anne-Marie, you know, and actually really wasn't even three hours because her appointment ended at 7.15. She was expected back at Bob Atrop's house around 7.30, 8 o'clock. So he's calling really less than two hours after that time frame.
And police, well, Detective O'Connell, I should say, who was one of the initial people who was on this case, he said that felt strange to him, too. It's sort of that Shakespearean, you know, that quote, thou doth protest too much. And prosecutors believe those phone calls were almost to try to make police believe that he wasn't involved.
Interesting. Now, he does say back in 1988, he tells police that he called other people. He says he called the babysitter, called Debbie's boss and her parents from his home phone. But the problem with that is that it couldn't be confirmed because there was no record of these phone calls on his home phone. And they were long distance. So they should have been a record someplace. Yeah.
Yeah. And I should remind people, this is 1988. This is Oregon. So calling from one town to the other town, that could sometimes be a long distance call. Bob lived about 30 miles from where Debbie's parents lived. So all these phone calls should have been recorded somewhere as long distance calls on a phone bill. So it became a big part of the mystery was where are these calls?
Now, we know that he did place these calls because he Debbie's parents did confirm and her stepfather confirmed that they received the calls. The babysitter confirmed that she received a call. So the question is, where did he make the calls from? Investigators believe that Bob maybe had, you know, committed the murder and was just trying to get rid of the car and dispose of Debbie's body.
And that's when he made those calls as he was out and about. Were they looking for, I don't know, public telephone, like telephone booths or whatever? They actually went around and looked at all the public pay phones that they could find. They tried to get phone records off the pay phones. But that said, you can't go around and trace and track every pay phone in the neighborhood.
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Chapter 3: What were the early signs pointing to Bob Atrops as a suspect?
they consider and they look at. And they did search outside Bob's house. They, in fact, checked his driveway, which was a gravel and muddy sort of driveway. They took pictures of that driveway. They even took a mud sample of the driveway and the lawn as well, because on the top of the car, the hood of the car, it appeared there had been some mud evidence that had been wiped away. On
Debbie Atrop's body on her coat. They found mud on her shoes. They were muddied as well. So they were trying to match the sample of mud specifically and also trying to verify the tire tracks. Now, they never could verify her tire tracks on his driveway. A lot of people, a lot of friends were visiting in the time that he reported Debbie missing.
Obviously, a lot of people very concerned about Debbie. So police were never able to definitively say whether or not Debbie had come back to the house based on tire tracks.
So then let's talk about their relationship. We know they're estranged, but I mean, do we know anything about the nature of their relationship at the time that she goes missing?
She was living, as I said, in this whole other apartment. She was also involved in an entirely new relationship with a man named John Pearson. Friends said that Debbie was very afraid of Bob finding out that she was already dating this guy, John Pearson, with somebody she worked with. And Bob apparently knew her boss. They were good friends.
So it wouldn't be, you know, too crazy for him to find out. But Debbie's friend, Tammy Nelson, also said back in 1988 that Bob Adrops had a temper that he had actually had choked her, according to Debbie, shortly before she moved out. And, you know, she had even told friends, if something happens to me, Bob did it.
Yeah, those are definitely some famous last words. But she is dating this other person, John Pearson, which is what... started me when I was watching The Hour moving away from Bob as a suspect. He was interviewed by police. He told police that he had been with his estranged wife and children on the night of Debbie's disappearance.
But he also gave a detailed description, a really detailed description of Debbie's car and what was in the trunk. And it just I know I can't even tell you really what's in my trunk right now. So it just seems like an odd thing.
amount of detail to remember you know yeah i mean it was a very detailed description of what was in the trunk um you know john told police even how could a body even fit in the trunk which kind of strange like that words to say he thought the trunk was too small and so i asked the prosecutors allison brown and chris lumen about that take a listen
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