It's one of the most mysterious disappearances we've ever covered. In the space of minutes, Judy Martins disappears from the campus of Kent State university, never to be seen again. How could this happen? And where is she? Check out our other show The Prosecutors: Legal Briefs for discussion on cases, controversial topics, or conversation with content creators This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Get Prosecutors Podcast Merch: https://www.bonfire.com/store/prosecutors-podcast/ Join the Gallery on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/g/4oHFF4agcAvBhm3o/ Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ProsecutorsPod Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/prosecutorspod/ Check out our website for case resources: https://prosecutorspodcast.com/ Hang out with us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@prosecutorspodSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What happened to Judy Martins?
I'm Brett.
And I'm Alice.
And we are The Prosecutors. Today on The Prosecutors, a young woman vanishes on the campus of Kent State University. To this day, no sign of Judy Martins has ever been found and her case remains unsolved. Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of The Prosecutors. I'm Brett and I'm joined as always by my bodacious co-host, Alice.
Hey Brett. That's an English word. So congratulations. You've gone back to the English language and thanks. I feel anything but bodacious. Brett just looked at my face and he was like, are you okay? And I was like, this is how I always look. I'm just tired.
Whatever, Alice. Quit complaining. Rub some dirt on it.
It's true. Throw some dirt on it.
If we weren't recording this in September, I probably would have made some sort of election pun because today is election day for those of you in the United States. Oh, that's crazy. If you're listening to this. So get out there and vote.
Oh, man.
I'll tell you the same thing I told you four years ago. If your person wins, they won't be as good as you think they're going to be. If the other guy wins, they won't be as bad as you think they're going to be. So you'll be disappointed either way.
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Chapter 2: What details surround Judy's disappearance?
That brings us to Tuesday, May 23rd, 1978. So sometime between noon and 1 p.m., Judy talked to her ex-boyfriend, Jim Young, on the phone. He reported that she did not seem disturbed or upset over anything, just a regular conversation. Now, as Brett mentioned before, they're not dating at this time, but obviously they're still in contact. Jim was on house arrest at this time.
for shooting some guns while he was drunk. He previously shot himself in the knee at a bar. So that's why they're on a phone call, because he couldn't go anywhere. He was at home. But I think it's also worth noting kind of what he's on house arrest for. It is for shooting guns, but it kind of sounds like a stupid, drunken accident. And he doesn't
appeared to be like a violent person because the only person he'd really only shot was himself, probably because he was drunk and not necessarily trying to go after someone.
And it seems like Jim, he definitely had an issue with alcohol. He would get drunk, he would shoot guns, shoot himself in the knee, shoot out of his apartment window. I think he shot his windows out at one point. He is on house arrest. I don't think it's like house arrest now. I don't know that he had like a beeper on, so it's not that it would have been impossible for him to leave, but...
You know, he's probably not in a situation where he's necessarily just going to make a jaunt down to campus, you know, make the hour and a half drive or whatever to campus. Given his situation, he definitely has some instability. He's had sort of a rough life.
He's obviously had some of these abuse problems, which are, you know, once again, just things to keep in the back of your mind as you're moving through this case.
Around one o'clock that day, James Kragic, a fellow KSU student whom Judy briefly dated, reports seeing her in Prentice Hall cafeteria. He said that Judy was sitting with one of her friends, Kevin Greer. So, of course, the police talked to Kevin. Kevin reports he was eating lunch with Judy and another student named Steve. James Kragic approached them and borrowed some coupons from Judy.
She told him to make sure he pays her back because she would need them before the end of the year. Again, this is noteworthy because so far we have everyone who sees her or talks to her saying that everything seems pretty normal. Again, she's not isolated. She's not eating by herself. She doesn't seem down. In fact, she's sitting amongst friends and having kind of regular conversations.
somewhat mundane conversations about paying back coupons. And if you were planning to run away, for example, and never use coupons again in the area, you wouldn't care if someone took your coupons and never paid them back. So it's noteworthy that she says, I plan on using them sometime this year, so don't forget to pay me back. That should cut against the whole running off voluntarily.
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Chapter 3: Who were the last people to see Judy?
There's a parking lot there now, but it doesn't seem like it was there at the time. It seems like one of those dorms she had to walk between was eventually torn down and turned to a parking lot. Unsurprisingly, the campus has changed a lot in the last 50 years. I mean, where I went to college, Alabama, has changed so much. I mean, I can't even find anything now. That was only 20 years ago.
It's hard to even imagine how different it is. The parking lot thing is kind of important though, because if you're thinking about what happened to her, this is such a short distance and it isn't going to take much time.
And if someone's going to grab her, having a parking lot, you can imagine somebody sitting there, they see a woman walking alone and they start to think, I'm going to take this target of opportunity basically and do something. you might be thinking, how is it possible that no one else saw her on this busy college campus walking to her dorm room? Well, I want to remind you a few things.
Number one, we're approaching the Memorial Day weekend. School is pretty much wrapping up. The school is a ghost town at this point. It really is just sort of the RAs who are living there and sort of managing things. Some few students who were there. That's about it. At the time, Kent was a commuter campus. There were a lot of commuters, so there wouldn't have been a lot of people there anyway.
And the people in the dorms It's also 2.30 in the morning, so a lot of people were asleep. I'll just tell you, I remember going to college, a very large campus with a lot of people, staying up really late all the time. We would often go wandering through campus. We'd go smoke a cigar or whatever. We'd just take off in the middle of the night.
And it was not unusual to not see a single person out that late. So it does not surprise me that no one saw her. Obviously, there are no security cameras. There's nothing like that. All we have is Charlie saying, I saw her leave, and I assumed she was going home. And she was walking literally a hundred yards from one dorm to another on a walk that should have taken her a matter of minutes.
But it seems like something happened in that period, and she was never seen again. So let's jump forward. And let me just go and tell you this. This is my opinion, and I'm going to go ahead and ruin the rest of the episode for you. Everything else we're going to talk about in the timeline, in my opinion, is a complete waste of time.
We're going to give you a whole bunch of sightings of people who saw her here and saw her there and all this other stuff. They're all fake, okay? Nobody saw her in any of these places. And I'll tell you why I think that. Because as we said, what she was wearing that day has never been found. She wasn't wearing the red wig the next day. That stuff would have been in her dorm room. It wasn't.
So I am of the opinion that this is the moment. By this point, something happened to her. So with that spoiler given... 1.30 the next day. So David Horning will later report to police that he saw a woman matching Judy's physical description and clothing at a bus stop on Main Street near Drek's sub shop.
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