Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Everyone's told a lie, but what happens when one lie becomes a life, a movement, a conspiracy? I'm Josh Dean, host of Chameleon, and I uncover true stories of deception scams so intimate and convincing they fooled the people closest to them. These aren't strangers. They're lovers, friends, and trusted allies. Because the most dangerous cons don't feel like crimes. They feel personal.
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Our card this week is Lois West, the Ace of Hearts from Virginia. It's been almost 40 years since 24-year-old Lois West was found dead inside an abandoned house in eastern Virginia. And despite many sightings of her in what were likely the final hours of her life, police have never been able to determine who killed her. But that doesn't mean they won't.
There is still evidence on file from 1986 that might fill in some of the holes that have plagued this case for 40 years. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is The Deck. This story starts at an abandoned house on Richmond Road in Williamsburg all the way back in 1986.
At the time, there was no one living in the house. The owners were renovating it to either rent or sell, and it had been vacant for quite some time.
Jake Rice is a retired investigator for James City County Police Department in Eastern Virginia. Nowadays, he's a civilian employee working property and evidence, and also cold cases.
In the house, there was no furniture, as in beds, any kind of dressers, anything of that sort. There was a bathtub, a sink, and a toilet in the bathroom.
A company owned the rancher-style house, so it's not like a family or a bunch of roommates were fixing the place up. Save for a pest control guy going in to do a check, no one had been there for one or two weeks at the least. Or at least no one should have been in that house until a contractor named Peter Smith arrived on the morning of August 15th to do some flooring work.
From the reports that we have from back then, the individual said he unlocked the front door, and as you went in the door, there was a small hallway, and to the left would have been a bathroom. And that's where he was going to do the work on the floor.
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Chapter 2: Who was Lois West and what happened to her?
We know that it had been raining and was muddy of the 13th at least of August.
Police checked for a pulse, but I have to imagine that was more procedural than anything else. Lying there as still as she was, with her face submerged in water and fully clothed, I imagine that they were pretty certain that she was already gone, even before the lack of a pulse told them so.
But what exactly happened to her, who she was, and how she ended up here in a locked, vacant house, that they had no clue about. though the answers would come quickly. As for how this woman got into the house.
Well, we do know that there was a couple windows that were cracked, but they appeared that nobody had went through them. It's noted that one of the doors was locked from over near the carport, but it was not pulled all the way shut. So someone could have thought that they locked the door, but didn't, and it didn't pull all the way shut.
But the doors were locked, but one of them was partially open.
So, probably that. It's not the only explanation for how, but it does feel like the most obvious. Less obvious was the who. Who was this woman? She didn't have any ID on her, and there were no personal effects anywhere else in the house, like a purse or anything. The only things that gave them even a small clue were a U.S.
Army class ring on the woman's left hand with the letter S etched in a blue stone and the inscription L. West written on the inside of her shirt.
So the police department, of course, was trying to figure out, was there anyone missing in the area that had been reported missing, runaway, anything else?
That led them to a woman missing from Eastern State Hospital, a psychiatric hospital in Williamsburg, Virginia, about four miles from the house on Richmond Road.
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Chapter 3: What clues were found at the scene of Lois West's death?
She had a young son that her mother cared for.
Mary Alice told officers that her daughter wasn't always easy to pin down.
Lois was a wanderer, as was described back then by her mother. She would go places by hitchhiking. She was known to have some mental health issues. She had attempted cutting her wrists on several times, and that is where she got committed to Eastern State. And Eastern State, she had been in and out of several times, and a lot of those were voluntary admissions also, where she checked herself in.
Though Mary Alice explained to detectives that Lois had been in and out of Eastern State for suicidal ideation, we can't confirm exactly what condition she was in treatment for. And we can't ask her parents directly because they've since passed away. But clearly she was getting help with her mental health.
Our reporter did talk to Lois' son, but he had no recollection of his mom, said he was raised by his grandparents who rarely talked about Lois. So everything we learned about Lois from her mom came from the pages of the police file. And Investigator Rice explained that those files reflect that Lois was fairly close to her family.
She used to call her mom at least once throughout the day sometime. From what I get from reading this case, she was just one of those free-willed people that didn't want to be just at one place.
The main thing that we have is that she was a very easygoing person that could be a friend with anyone, could walk, wander with someone, and that she liked to hitchhike is one of the ways that she got around. She didn't drive, so she would hitchhike places. which is, you know, one of those things that back then it was done quite often, but it was also known as a very dangerous thing to do.
Lois may have been a wanderer, and she may have been more willing to take rides from people she didn't know. But when police talked to Mary Alice, she was pretty clear. Lois wouldn't just wander into an abandoned house. Here's what she did know. Mary Alice confirmed Lois had been discharged from Eastern State on August 11th.
This is three days before she was found dead in the house on Richmond Road. That day, she hitchhiked home back to her house in Gloucester, Virginia.
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