TCU Professor Vanished in Broad Daylight: Laura Lee Crane | Signal 51 Chronicles Case 5 Ep 1

This is the signal 51 Chronicles. Vanished in broad daylight. I'm John Henry. This is my
compadre here. Jake White, retired sergeant of the 4th Police Department. Jake
what's the word? The word is, uh, we're about to start telling some stories here. A
good one too. Well, yeah, compelling, compelling. See, you're the writer here. We
join you here from an undisclosed location in Fort Worth, Texas. Better known to
some as Caltown. Lots of cows unmade here in the old days. Back to the day of the slaughterhouse.
My how things have changed. Converting, converting, moo moo to the food chain. Yeah. Oh, yeah,
that's stock. Oh, yeah, stockyards are nothing like they don't know. Maybe it hasn't different
kind of food chain. We've talked about the hell's half acre before. Oh, yeah. And in a
couple of weeks, we're going to talk about it again with the story line that we've got
cooking. All right. I like it. I like it. Uh, they do, they do still process meat down
there. Well, they sell it anyway. Standard, our friends standard meter down there. Yeah.
Just built a new, just built a new, uh, built a new processing center. So yeah, they do.
I don't know where we're going down there. Not that often. Yeah, I got down there time
at time, but it's always related to some sort of event. Yeah. A gala, a gala. Yes. That
your day job doing some writing on something. Yeah. Or see any events down there. No, you
should start in seeing events. No, no. I've had to give some public remarks from time to
time. We're going to turn you into an MC. You know what? Uh, I did a year ago this time.
I officiated a wedding. Yeah. I remember you thought. Yeah. In Florida,
Dakota, our friend Dakota, Dave Donano and his, yeah, precious, beloved, stuff.
I'm probably going to hell for having an officiated wedding, but it's good business.
I'm, hey, that's something that we haven't I too have officiated wedding. People make good money
officiating weddings. I know it. I think I have fun at it. Fun at it. Fun at it. That voice you
hear on the other side is our superstar producer, Ashley. Hello, friends. I was going to start
making ghost noises and then decided not to. I missed my opportunity. Yeah. Squandered that chance.
Yeah. She was, she, I think she reigns over Hood County. Of course.
All right. Well, you say we go to the blotter. The blotter it is. Let's do it.
It's got a fourth. Let's go to Mid-Lothian, Texas. Okay.
First week of March, 2026.
It's approximately 03 22 hours. Am I saying that right? Good enough. Well enough.
That'll work at 322 in the morning. Yes. February 12. I was actually, I'm sorry. Last week of February.
Oh, I know where this one is going. Nellis County deputy observed a vehicle shooting from the
roadway near farm to market 875 and farm to market 663 in Mid-Lothian. Okay.
When the deputy attempted to stop the vehicle, the driver fled, put the pedal to the metal
and let it blow. Okay. Leading deputies on an hour long pursuit. That went through neighboring
jurisdictions for multiple law enforcement agencies assisted. And that thing ended not far from here.
Not far from here. On Camp Bowie Boulevard in Fort Worth, Texas. The blue of Fort Worth, Texas
deployed the tire spikes. Bringing that pursuit to an end. Yeah. With a all sorts of
rolled over and I wouldn't buy there a couple hours afterwards and they were already
replant in the bushes and the median. Fixing this sprinklers. That can't be a business district.
They're on top of it. Well, when I came into work, I had to go down that way to get to work and
it was like 830 and it was just still blocked off, carted off. So there are four occupants in this
fleeing vehicle. Actually, there are five. Four were transported to the hospital.
One of those fellas had to go to the ICU because I think he was knocked out, but I think he's
on the mend. I think he's on the mend. One of those guys was not transported and he went straight
to police custody. Thankfully, no law enforcement officers were injured in this incident.
They assure us that additional details will be released as they become available.
I wonder why, yeah, I wonder why were they run? I mean, there were, I know they're shooting a gun,
but I mean, I wonder, I wonder why they came here. I think they were just whatever road they
could find. That's a long one, man. 30 miles, I think, from Mid-Lothian to here. Yeah, it's
pretty long. So the guys involved in this say Miguel on Hell Lopez, 18, okay. Damian DeLon,
Amada, 18, Jose Alvarado, 21, Guadalupe Alvarado, 24, Fernando, Alba, Jr. 26, and I got
$10. It says alcohol was a factor of the factoring all this. I will not take you on that one. I would
agree that there's probably that probably had something to do, I would think. Wow. So all five of
these guys face aggravated assault against a public servant. Yeah, they're shooting at the cops
during the chase, dude. It's a first degree felony. Yeah. So they, I mean, you got to think if these
guys wake up in the morning, what in the world did we get ourselves into over a bottle of
Jack Daniels or Jose Cuervo or whatever? I don't. You've got, you've surely you've got
pursued a pretty good pursuit story. I had one that went to Ellis County. Really? Yeah,
off. It was a long time. Well, I mean, it was a rather unevent, I mean, I say uneventful, I mean,
it was a high-speed car chase, which they, I mean, honestly, that is probably one of the most fun
things in cop world. Yeah, I was going to say there's every cop I ever talked to, there's a definite
rush that goes with. Yeah, they're fun. A pursuit. They're definitely fun. I mean, they can be
dangerous as hell. Oh, God. Yeah. You got to, like, kind of weigh everything, but yeah, we had one
that went there probably, I don't know, 2017, 2018. I was actually the sergeant. Yeah. And it was so
long. I don't want to say it started to get boring, but the excitement certainly waned started to
wear off. And we all, it started over off of, like, 20 in McCart. What do we think this fellow
was? Oh, he touched them all. Don't quote me on all the specifics, but I know that he was involved
in stolen car, cut off an ankle monitor. He was on parole for some kind of purse snatching,
left a dope house. So he kind of touched multiple elements of check several boxes. Yeah,
checked a lot of boxes. And so that'll get that'll get blue behind you. Is that what you're saying?
It will. It will. There's a funny, well, not funny and unfortunate parts. I don't know. I
will get to this. So it's long. And it, it, it, it's not, wasn't crazy dangerous. I mean,
there was a lot of traffic. What time of day? This is a minute kind of around that rush hour time,
just right before five, six o'clock. Yeah. Yeah, somewhere around there. And so it goes all the way
down 20 through Grand Prix, through Arlington, through Grand Prix, through Dallas, and we get off it.
I think 45 or whatever starts cutting sound. And I mean, 207. Yeah. Yeah. And then everybody is
throwing spike strips. Finally, somebody deploys a spike strip and tires start to go flat.
The guy rolls on 45 and get get it or not rolls. He's, I mean, he's starting slow down because
the car's not going to go. And jumps out the median, takes off run in a DPS officer. I don't
remember what he was. He had a not a standard uniform on unmarked truck, comes in, cuts him off,
takes the guy into custody. Like I said, I mean, a litany of charges of criminal offences,
criminal charges. And I remember getting back in my car. Now, during the chase, it was so long,
I start, cause all the news helicopters were up. Yeah. Of course, I'm calling my buddies. I'm like,
hey, dude, turn it on the news. And they did. And they're like, are you in that? And I'm like, you
know, I don't remember what my car was. 180 or whatever the car number was. And so it went
that long to where all of that stuff wore off. And then did you have to stop at any point,
get a Diablo sandwich? No, no, I didn't. I did it on the way back, have to stop and get gas.
Cause that, well, I mean, you know, you are, like I said, it was a decent, a decent distance.
And I just remember after the fact, and this is sadly the state of police work now,
where I get in my car and within less than five minutes. My commander at the time, he's a great
dude. Call me, he's like, hey, what's up with that car chase? I mean, it's car chase. I mean,
yeah, I got off his ankle monitor, stolen car, he got off my no house. Okay, why did
you go so long? I don't even know how to answer it just didn't stop. And we had no way to stop it.
We had no way to stop it. And I thought to myself, it's a pretty unfortunate state of affairs when
that quickly things are getting questioned. Oh, yeah. Well, you know what I mean? Yeah.
Obviously, there wasn't anything wrong with it. It wasn't that big of a deal. It was just different.
That was one of the, that was not a pinnacle moment to where I realized things had changed.
And look, I mean, I'm not, I don't object to things changing, but it's a different world.
Different time. So totally. So you guys apprehended this fellow,
branded on and custody he was. We did have another one running back to Terrick County, Texas
to face charges, face charges of all that, all that stuff you listed off plus now,
whatever the charge is for evading arrest or what that. I mean, that was probably on the,
well, I don't know, stay jail felony third. I don't remember what it is now, but we had some long.
We had one that was in, um, started in Hillsboro and ended in Fort Worth. That was a good one.
Star in Hillsboro. Yeah. Oh, you aren't, you didn't start that. Oh, yeah, we didn't.
Oh, you were, you were all in some cigarette bandits. Really? And we, yeah. We followed
them all the way to wake up. What is a cigarette bandit? How these things were going around at night
breaking into these gas stations. And they were stealing, you know, like 25, 30, 50 cards of
cigarettes. How many ever they could take. And they were hitting Fort Worth pretty hard or the area.
And so we got on to them and, um, found that they were going south on 35 with some technology.
And so we've started following, we followed them all the way to wake up. And they pulled in,
it was the, uh, Walmart gas stations, whatever those are called. They pulled in and stopped,
the check stop, get any collaches while you're, no, no, it's closed. This is late. This is
three, two, three o'clock in the morning. I think they're open online. But anyway, they might,
well, they might have been. And, um, so they pulled into this gas station in Waco.
And there's a McClendon County Sheriff's Deputy in the parking lot. We were just disappointed
at, to say the least, right? Because again, we followed them from Fort Worth to Waco,
all to have their efforts spoiled by explain that. What, what was the problem with the sheriff's
deputy and the, because they're not going to break into the store with the sheriff's deputy.
Oh, I, okay. I see. I thought you like mad. I thought you had something on them. It was just
their random. Okay. Okay. I got you. So they leave, they, they've circled the parking lot. They
leave and they start going back north on 35. Well, we had passed another one in Hillsboro.
And so we figured, okay, we can probably get ahead of them, get set up,
and watch what happens. So sure, I mean, you, we got to do titan in the bushes,
sure, not they pull in. They would smash this door with this sledgehammer. There's like three or
four of them. They'd run inside, like legitimately had like pillowcases that they were filling up.
And so they, they're inside for maybe two minutes at the most. They all come running out.
Huge pillow sacks. He got them from in the car. And we're going to follow them back to Fort
Worth because we don't want what happened to happen. Yeah. So we're a pursuit. We're in the middle
of nowhere. So at the time, our communicate, our radios do not, did not work well. So we're doing
everything over cell phones, did not work well away from Fort Worth. And so somebody had the
bright idea, not me to call Hillsboro PD. There's two cars. There's like six suspects in the two cars.
And so Hillsboro PD goes to pull them over and both of them take off. One of them, I mean,
you can only chase one. We're in, we're in unmarked cars. I was in a Ford F250. Oh wow. Yeah.
Those do not go very fast. I know they, well, I couldn't keep up. Not even close to keeping up. And so
one car pulls off onto whatever county road they get away. And then the other one, they chased them
all the way from Hillsboro City limits to East Fort Worth, like over off of like 287 in Sun Valley,
where they were apprehended. But we had a, we had a perfect take down plan, ready to go.
We had plenty of fourth officers like right there at the city limits, had the helicopter ready to
go. Why did you, what was, what was behind the decision to call Hillsboro? As opposed to not
following through on this plan. Somebody, somebody thought it was a good idea. I don't know why.
I have no clue. I don't know why. I mean, we had a pretty well planned out. And then
somebody had this went out on their own, made a stupid decision. So it ended up like that. So,
but they didn't have it. They had tons. I mean, like 100 cartons of cigarettes.
The only good thing was because this offense happened in Hill County. They,
the Hillsboro officer was like, hey, I'll take it. Hill County is probably a little more strict
on criminal offenses than than one parent county. So I don't ever, I never followed up with it
after that. It was just a long car chase. But you took the, you took the cigarette bandits down.
We took them down. We took them down. At least temporarily. Yeah. They probably were sent
up, sent up the creek for a little bit at least. I would think. Yeah. Yeah. I would think so.
All right. Well, let's move on to one of
of Fort Worth's worst incidents, I think, in the last 25 years, at least, maybe even longer.
And that is the case of the abduction and murder of Laura Lee Crane, notable local educator
who was director of the star point school, a school for learning disabilities at TCU.
And on this particular day, January 30th, 2004, she left her home on Bel Air Drive in West
Fort Worth in the late morning hours. Driving her 1999 Nissan Centra,
Miss Crane first stopped at a friend's home before heading to a local grocery store to do some
routine shopping off for grocery lists. A short time after leaving her friend's home, she pulled
into a parking space at Tom Thumb on 3050 Healing Street. That store is in the prime location
there. It's located in the affluent area, in an affluent area of Fort Worth. The haunted
intersection, it is, it is lots of traffic and easy access there.
Not far from there, probably not even, I'm not even quarter mile, I think, is the notorious
colon Davis mansion, side of the double murder in 1976 that touched off a series of sensational
trials all over Texas. But it's only been in the last, even today, 35 to 40 years,
that developers got their hands on what was once just ranch land. The Edward's ranch is what
that was. It's ranch land as far as the eye can see. The Trinity River very casually meandering by
I'm sure it was just gorgeous back this day. And like any Friday morning of this Tom Thumb,
the lot was packed full of cars, undoubtedly adding to the congestion
where neighbors undoubtedly doing their shopping for that coming Sunday Super Bowl party. The
Patriots and Panthers were meeting at Super Bowl 38. We just got to know at Super Bowl 60, didn't we?
Yeah. So the store sandwiched between various retail locations and restaurants. It's just kind of
your typical strip shopping center. Miss Crane's husband expected her return by one. And when she
didn't return by four worried family members called Fort Worth PD to report missing.
And after receiving that call, police opened a signal 51 investigation.
And all they had to go on initially was that Miss Crane stopped by her friend's house and planned to
go to Tom Thumb. No one even knew she made it there. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So quickly, um,
police learned that three of Laura's credit cards had been used to withdraw over 600 in cash.
And there were some other charges on them. I think in total is around 775.
Her husband described these cash withdrawals as uncharacteristic. Right. Obviously she's not pulling out
600 bucks too often from the ATM, especially when she's going to a friend's house to. Yep. So we got
something weird there. Crane's husband also told responding officers that if Crane was running late,
it was normal for her to call. If she hadn't done that. So that also worried them.
The responding patrol officers requested a missing persons detective to respond to the scene.
Upon arrival, the missing persons detective interviewed the family who told police
that Laura didn't have any medical problems, no dementia related problems.
This was a first. She didn't have any prior episodes of going missing or A-wall, if you will.
With that, the police checked the hospitals. I checked with the medical examiner.
Start starting with some of the basics. Right. What if she wasn't a car wreck? What if you know
what if something she had fallen? Who knows? Yeah. What if there was some sort of said in
mental episodes? None of those. Not medical examiner, no info, hospitals, no info.
Next, detectives contacted Laura's bank and spoke with a fraud investigator who said that on
January 30th, from 1257 PM to 308 PM, Laura's credit cards were used nine times
at various locations in Fort Worth. Obviously, also unusual.
So we've got the behind the scenes stuff going on, right? We've got the detectives looking
at, you know, credit card info. Next, police or it's 2004. So techniques, things are different.
Police launchers, launchers, search for Laura. So like I said, now keep in mind in 2004,
things were a little bit more difficult. Yeah, what about technology, right?
There's not the technology then is not what we have now, right? There's no
license plate recognition cameras that are everywhere. There's no
cell phone tracking mechanisms, if you will. Social media, none of that existed back then, right? Yeah.
So oftentimes it was getting the word out that the person was missing and cops and volunteers
kind of searching the back alleys, if you will. Where could someone hide? Or where, you know,
in the worst case scenario, someone's dead, where are they going to dump the body?
The river's right nearby. The river's right there. Yeah, I mean, and it still wasn't as
near as developed as it is now. That whole new neighborhood was still Wingsland. So that's what
happened in this case. I mean, a slew of cops, a slew of volunteers. There was some frustration
for the search party. We're going to get into that in a little bit, but it centered on information,
not being disseminated quickly enough. The search, though, for the most part, was confined only two
areas where Crane was missing from and her home. The search party looking for Laura, Laura Lee Crane
was large, yielded nothing. The retired educator disappeared in plain sight, broad daylight.
One possible lead popped up, though, in the late evening hours on January 30th, a fourth police
sergeant on routine patrol spotted a vehicle at East Vickery and Thrall Street in East Fort Worth.
The vehicle matched the description of Crane's vehicle. The first three license plate characters
were the same. The driver and the officer made eye contact. However, the car took off and got away.
So there was an aside to this story. There was a contentious political issue coinciding
with disappearance. 18 months before Miss Crane disappeared, the four housing authority purchased
the Stonegate villa apartments with designs on relocating residents of the Ripley Arnold housing,
government housing complex. Do you remember that? Oh, yeah, very well. How's big news back then?
It was. People were freaking out. It was ugly. Upon us to the plan, we're concerned about a criminal
element moving in. No one wanted to admit it, then, and they still don't, but of course,
it was hard to miss the racial overtones that were obvious. The Stonegate villas were
located less than a mile away from this tom thum. Since its construction 10 or so years before,
it was TCU students and young professionals who called the Stonegate villas home.
The apartments, the multi-family complex, backs up to colonial country club. So when the
four housing authority purchased the 550 plus unit complex for $31 million, their plan was to set
aside 20% of the units for low income housing. And of course, at the center of the opposition was
concerned about crime. Fears were abundant about sex offenders and like criminal element moving
into this mostly flue and area. While this was not likely, the only reason cops can find their search,
rest assured, it was on the minds of the cops and residents of the area. Now Jake, age played a role
in this initial part of the investigation. Yeah. Seems like there's one quite similar going on
in present day. There is, yeah. The Guthrie case and Tucson. Yeah, it's not. She was in rate.
Is 80s, 84 I think. Yeah. Yeah. So the age of the missing persons matters because it can guide
the search efforts, right? They're not as on foot at least, not as mobile or not as, you know,
probably not going to find them deep in the woods or something like that on their own doing.
In this case, Laura, she was 77 years old. Again, she had no known medical conditions
that would have suggested she had become confused, had become confused or lost.
But often when an elderly person is reported missing, it's not uncommon for police to
think it's just that she lost, not abducted. I mean, think of how many times you see those,
what do they call them, gray alerts, I think? Gray alerts, yeah. Silver alerts. Silver alerts. Sorry,
silver alerts. You see those silver alerts all over, you know, you see them all the time and many,
many times, you know, it's going to be somebody in your late 70s, 80s who are driving from their
home to their kids' house wherever and something sets in. I mean, yeah, exactly. I mean, suspect just
because she had no known symptoms of that and something just snapped and she becomes lost.
I think the other thing too is where we're at, the type of crime, the busy part of town.
The busy part of town. That intersection is very busy still is to this day, very busy.
Oh, yeah. A fluent part of town. Hundreds of thousands of cars go through there every day.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's packed. Yeah. And probably more, not, I mean, yeah, definitely more now that
all that stuff's opened up. But I think this is not a common crime. I mean, these are the scary crimes
people hear about, you know, much like the new story of the Guthrie disappearance in Arizona.
I mean, it just doesn't happen that often. So likelihood of a kidnapping, broad daylight,
busy part of town, a fluent area, doesn't really happen that often.
So one thing I did find interesting, the responding officer was concerned enough
that foul play was suspected. He called detectives. This was a quick decision
and his concern was possibly justified. And now quickly, I don't know exactly how quickly,
right? But how does that happen? Like, does responding officer, does he have that liberty just to
say, hey, there's something we're going on. It's yet to call like a supervisor. There's something
to this. Yeah. He's faced with a couple of choices. Hey, look, nothing's probably at foul here.
I'm going to do a missing or a person's missing person or check the box where this goes. Yeah.
Whoever this responding officer was, that wasn't the case. He sensed, or she sensed that something
was out of place to where, hey, we better kind of take this to the next level. And they did.
So we're going to fast forward two days. February 1, 2004, 102 in the morning,
throws of like the prime time of criminal activity. The old saying, nothing good happens
after midnight. I think is a relatively accurate statement. And we are there at 102. We are there at 102.
And by there, we are now in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, three hour, three and a half hours north.
Three and a half hours north, right up by 35. Oklahoma City police officer Jeff Paget
locates a car driving erratically in a hotel parking lot in Northeast, in Northeast Oklahoma City.
After the car failed to use a turn signal, officer Paget initiates a traffic stop.
As officer Paget is walking up to the car, a dispatcher notifies him and says that the car is
registered to a missing person from Fort Worth, who was possibly in danger.
What goes to the mind of a police officer when you get that information, you get notified the
car belongs to missing person. The car is stolen something of the sort of what's what's going through.
So I think it depends. Obviously depends on the details. Depends on the cop. I don't know
this Paget guy. I don't know. I mean, we're what, 22 years later, it could have been a brand new
rookie. It could have been experienced. I don't know. I think it's not likely that it was at 102 in the
morning. And I don't know this for sure, but I feel relatively confident in saying Paget could
care less if a car uses this turn signal or not. I also don't know the makeup of crime in Oklahoma
City. But if he's at a hotel at 102 in the morning, and he pulls a car over for not using this
turn signal, he had just looking for something more. He's not. Well, and we'd mentioned that, I think
I mentioned that he'd been driving, he noticed he'd been driving erratically driving erratically.
He wants to see, hey, what else is going on? And we'll get into some of that coming up too.
So I think it depends, though. I think that in this case,
Paget's approach was good, meaning what's run through the list of options that he has, right?
It's one o'clock in the morning, probably some CD motel that he's probably made a lot of
arrests out of him before. Yeah, drugs, nothing good. It's probably going on up there. Right.
So as you're walking up to the car and they tell you, hey, this car is owned by a missing person
who's possibly in danger in Fort Worth, Texas. Yeah, you can treat it like a felony traffic stop and
wait for other units to get there. You've got your gun out. You're yelling for everybody to get
out of the car. You're doing it the safe way. Yeah, which no harm. I'm not, wouldn't be critical of that.
Or Paget, I just have a sneak and suspicion that he was probably a pretty decent cop. I could be
wrong, but I have the sneak and suspicions like that he was because he went with a pretty cool
technique of, I'm going to describe it as I'm just going to play this off, right? He goes with,
I'm just going to play this off routine and see what happens, you know, because they didn't flee.
They pulled over. They pulled over. They didn't get out of the car and run. Right.
Now, he's got that, that couple second period where he's walking up to the car or standing at the
car where it could have gone bad. So, like I said, I think his approach of, I'm just going to go
up and act like I don't know that this car belongs to a missing person out of Fort Worth who's
possibly in danger. Yeah. So he asked a driver, hey, do you have anything illegal on you? Yeah,
sounds like pretty reasonable. Common probably question. Yeah, yeah, especially. So again,
at one o'clock in the morning, probably in some hotel, blah, blah, blah, like we just talk.
Seedy hotel, that approach, that technique, so far, things are, or it was a good move that he made.
So I'm kind of picturing myself in this officer's shoes, you know,
and of course, I'm not a trained police officer, but I'm aware this car could be linked to a very
serious crime. It would seem like my reaction would be completely different than what he's,
what he's done here. Like, you know, do you have, do you have your hand near your gun,
thinking something wild might just happen right here? I mean, even that can have a drawback,
right? I mean, just, you know, just, you know, because then people are like, why are you hit
your hand on your gun? You know what I mean? Like, you've got to play it completely cool, like
completely cool. And again, experience matters, not tenure, not how long somebody's been a cop,
but experience. I mean, if this guy's over in a high-crime area day in and day out,
stopping cars, he knows, yeah, far he can push the envelope. All right. He also knows, hey,
I've got probably three or four other cops that are going to be here pretty quick. Yeah,
so all I got to do is stall for a short time. Because the dispatchers pilot, I know that this,
that there's a situation. Yeah. And one of the other things, like I said, he's playing this off.
So he can go up to the car and be like, hey, I'm off to our page at Oklahoma City Police,
this car is registered to a missing person out of Fort Worth, Texas, who's in danger,
and then they're just going to take off. Or he can say, hey, you guys got anything on you?
Like, I mean, you know, it's a high-crime area. Yeah, we're at this hotel. I've met a lot of drug
arrests. Almost, almost created a conversation to, to delay him. You guys probably aren't involved in
that, but I just, you know, I just want to know if, hey, drugs in the car or anything like that.
Pretty common question to ask back then, probably still today.
But I think he did this again. I go back to that stall tactic.
If he knows, hey, I've got like at least at least one other guy coming, or a girl coming,
female male, female officer coming. I got one other person coming. I just need to stall them for
a second, because I am going to get to the bottom of this. Right? So this car is very important.
Obviously, in this case, we're talking about Laura Lee Crane's car.
If Laura Lee Crane is impossible to think that she's being held against her will,
she's tied up in the trunk of the car. Paget knows none of this. Yeah. Is it possible? Sure,
it's possible. Not probable, but you can't rule that out. You cannot,
when he's undoubtedly also made a scan of the car, so he knows that she's not in the passenger
exactly. Exactly. But he cannot run the risk of this car getting away. I mean, you can't,
I mean, it's a Nissan Center. This thing is not hauling ass more than likely. But again,
you do not want to get in a car chase with this car. Worst case scenario, she's in the trunk of the
car. The car gets away. You hit a curb, blow out your tire. I mean, there's some people do get away
in car chases. Yeah. I mean, that does happen. You cannot run this risk. I've never gotten away
in my car chases, but it's different. And the other thing is is where, you know, where do they go?
Now they do have an Oklahoma tie. We'll get to this. But again, Paget knows nothing more
other than this car is registered to somebody who might be in danger. He doesn't know Laura
Lee Crane. He doesn't know what forest police are doing, what they had been doing to find her.
He's not again, times are different, right? I mean, he honestly has an old school computer in his
car that has very basic details. Today, it's a lot easier. He could have gotten to that a lot.
Hell, he could have Googled it and found out all about this case. This is a big deal. Yeah.
So what's he, what's he wind up, what's he want to ask him? So on this traffic stop, he wants
search car. He wants to search car. And the driver said they never problem with it.
He tells Paget that they are in Oklahoma City for vacation or an Oklahoma for vacation. And he was
from Fort Worth. No offense. I don't want to go vacation in Oklahoma. Yeah. No offense, Oklahoma.
No offense. Officer Paget asked the driver, if you could pat him down for weapons,
driver reply, sure. The pat down was conducted. The driver's placed in handcuffs
and secured in the back of the patrol car. Now, also in the car, female front passenger.
He asked her if she has anything illegal on her. She replies, yes, I have a crack pipe in my purse.
Again, very, very common response to a 2004 cop question at a CD motel at one o'clock in the
morning. I've got a crack pipe on me. So why should he admit to this? Back then and probably
to this day, people did not necessarily fear the misdemeanor charge of a drug paraphernalia case.
It's a ticket. Yeah. When that big of a deal. And you can almost use that as a diversion. You know,
here, here, this is what you should be looking for. Exactly. Yeah. Precisely. Yeah. So she admits to it.
So finds the crack pipe next, next up. Now knowing this was no ordinary stop, Oklahoma City
officers asked if they could search the room, which was room 11 of the relaxant. The relaxant.
Nothing good happens after midnight at the relaxant. I don't know if anything ever good,
but I don't know. The room, that's where they were staying. That's where they were staying.
They wanted to search it. So what do you think they were? Well, what were they,
what do you think they were helping to find in room 11? Lord Lee Crane. Again, kind of a long shot
that that was the case. When they searched the room, they did not find her, but they did find
items. They believed to be indicators of people attempting to change their appearance. Specifically,
the items were clothes and hair dye and a trash can. The driver, Edward Busby, was placed under a
rest for traffic infractions. And the passenger, Kathleen Kitty Latimer, she went by, was placed
under a rest for a crack pipe containing cocaine residue. So there's a few things done packer.
Like we talked about, not an ordinary traffic stop. Probably a high crime area, low-budge hotel.
One o'clock in the morning, one o'clock in the morning.
Paget was there, he was in the right place at the right time. And you clearly had the right guy
invest it, making this traffic stop because he knew just like that responding full-worth officer,
this is pretty serious. We need to kind of take this to the next level. What do I think a lot of
cops would have done in Paget's case at least now? Even then I suppose.
Now I don't want to say they would have freaked out literally, but I don't know if they would have
been quick-witted enough like boom. The good ones, the good ones, 100%, that's why I think this guy's,
I mean I hope I'm not. I hope he wasn't some like piece of crap cop. I'm just based on all of
this one story, right? But I'm hoping that he was a good one because he knows, hey I need to,
I want to get into that room. I want to see what's in that room. And he did and there's obviously
evidence in there. But again these locations, I mean they're to this day. I mean we have plenty of
them. They're everywhere, right? And there's nothing good that really happens at them.
Any even medium-sized American city has these things all over the place?
Oh yeah, yeah. It's the fear that everyone has when they travel to the unknown location.
Yeah, well yeah, yeah exactly. Because sometimes they'll have decent names.
Right. Well you know our infamous Las Vegas trail just down the street, not far from here.
I don't know if I've been one of the worst, oh that one on the freeway?
Yeah, one of the worst hotels in America, it's certainly in the Southwest. It had to be up there.
It had to have been in the top 10 without question. That one was bad. Good God. So what do you
find in these things? You know, particularly in this one? I mean all of it. Drostos drugs.
All of it. You name it. People hiding. People hiding the whole shebang. So with that being said,
Oklahoma City Police interview, Busby and Latimer. So I think what we'll do is we're
we'll call it a break here. Call it a break here. And we'll come back to the next one and go into more
detail. Find out what happens. All right, good stuff. Do not before you leave wherever you are
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