MURDERED: Joyce LePage Part 1
episodePreviously titled “MURDERED: Joyce LePage” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 3, 2026
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Klaas Olsson
Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And the story I have for you today starts almost 55 years ago. But don't call this a cold case. Because things, even all these years later, are heating back up. Everything centers around one July night on the campus of Washington State University. A co-ed and a big swath of carpet go missing from a residence hall no one was supposed to be in. Where her car ended up, where her keys were found, and where her body was left are all clues that point at different people. There have been many theories about what happened to Joyce LePage over the years, but only six viable ones seem to remain. And maybe our sleuths out there can help us see what is missing as we try to figure out who killed Joyce LePage.
I'm about to take you back to a time that we and a lot of our audience have only ever witnessed in the movies, the early 1970s. Now, what you might know about the time was that President Nixon has just declared the war on drugs. Some of the Pentagon Papers are being released and many Americans are taking to the streets to protest the Vietnam War. For some, these issues were part of the everyday fabric of July 1971. And for others, they probably felt a whole world away. Take, for instance, Joyce LePage, a 21-year-old farmer's daughter in eastern Washington whose focus that summer was on young love, meditating, skydiving, and school.
I'm sorry, Ashley, when are we going to take our own advice and like stay out of Washington for once?
Listen, every time we cover a case there, it leads to another one, which is actually how we found Joyce's story. So back to the summer in 1971. Joyce is subleasing a room in an off-campus apartment while taking summer courses in chemistry and German at WSU in Pullman, which is on the eastern side of the state. Now, I've always said college roommates are a coin toss. I found both of mine on Craigslist. It's a story for another day, but you're either going to like be absolute best friends or you'll want nothing to do with one another. There's not a whole lot in between. I actually had both. And for Joyce and her roommate, Bruce Bierbaum, they fall into that second category, at least as far as Joyce is concerned.
She finds Bruce kind of annoying, so much so that she had actually been avoiding sleeping at her own place. In a letter scrawled in her messy handwriting, Joyce explained to a friend where she had been crashing instead. So I'm going to have a voice actor read a portion of the letter.
Stevens Hall is being worked on this summer, so I have taken over the building. I play their piano, watch TV, sleep, shower, even bathe in there. It's my private hideaway for the rest of the summer.
It wasn't a secret among Joyce's friends that she was spending time at Stevens Hall. But concerns had been expressed about her getting caught. So she writes in that same letter that she was taking precautions.
I even used their hidden parking place that the police can't see from the road. Yesterday morning, a workman stumbled upon me accidentally. I had spent the night in the head resident's room. He thought I was the head resident, I guess, because he asked me if I knew where the storm windows were, then apologized and left.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–6:23
2
How did Joyce LePage’s last confirmed sighting on July 22, 1971 unfold?
6:23–31:24
3
What clues were found at Stevens Hall the morning after Joyce vanished?
31:24–45:13
4
Why was Joyce’s car found parked by a fraternity and what did the initial processing reveal?
45:13–47:30