S3E9: Tennessee

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This podcast is based on information sourced primarily from police and media reports, but certain names and other identifying details may have been changed or altered for privacy and security reasons. While the events and cases discussed are based on real investigations, some aspects may be simplified for time and for narrative purposes. Voice actors have been used to read from statements or documents. All information presented is intended solely to inform and raise awareness. Hosts may discuss theories regarding the cases examined in this podcast, but such discussions are not intended to and should not be considered by the listener to be legal conclusions. All persons discussed are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
Listener discretion is advised.

**Ana Lalley** (1:02)
This is Chief Ana Lalley. Welcome to Somebody Knows Something, a podcast from the Elgin Police Department's Cold Case Unit. In this podcast, we will shed new light on cold cases in the city of Elgin by sharing untold details and by encouraging anyone with information to come forward. You will come along with real cold case detectives as they investigate active cold cases in real time and seek justice for the victims and closure for their families.
We believe that the Elgin Police Department and our community can work together to bring closure to cold cases. Because we know that in these cases, Somebody Knows Something.

**Andrew Houghton** (1:45)
Hello, and welcome to Somebody Knows Something, the Elgin Police Department Cold Case Podcast. My name is Detective Andrew Houghton.

**Chris Hall** (1:52)
I'm Detective Chris Hall.

**Beth Sterricker** (1:53)
And I'm Detective Beth Sterricker.

**Chris Hall** (1:55)
On our last episode, we walked our listeners through our family tree project, and we discussed that we needed specific DNA for Wyteria's family called MTDNA. We also appealed to our listeners to consider providing DNA to law enforcement to help with the enormous backlog of unidentified people in NamUs, and to help solve cold cases.

**Andrew Houghton** (2:14)
We ended our last episode by telling our listeners we had finally located some extended family for Wyteria, who agreed to assist us with this case, and agreed to provide the DNA that we need for Wyteria's investigation. For this episode, Beth is joining us as we work further on the case, and travel to Tennessee to collect that DNA. But before we hit the road, let's talk a little bit about the last time Elgin Police worked on this case back in 2014, and how that connects back to Wyteria's home state of Tennessee.

**Chris Hall** (2:48)
As our listeners know, Wyteria had a lot of ties to Tennessee. She was born and raised there, had her first child there, and as we recently learned, actually lived there briefly in 1976
With the nearly four month time window we have, she could be in Illinois or Tennessee or other neighboring states. So when we do our NamUs search for her, we plan to include Tennessee and neighboring states in our search. Plus, after visiting the Joliet Motor Hotel, we know that some of the tenants at that property also went to another hotel that the Zima family owned in Texas. So we now need to consider Texas and other states between Illinois and Texas as well.

**Beth Sterricker** (3:26)
Yes, we do. And coincidentally, when we were doing our family tree research, we learned that Wyteria did have some extended family in Texas.
We even spoke to some of them, but they were on her paternal side. So they didn't meet the MT DNA requirements that we have. But because we know that she had family connections in Texas, that area might be another viable option for her.

**Andrew Houghton** (3:46)
That's true. So we obviously are going to consider Texas now for a few reasons.
When we filtered NamUs and searched to include Illinois and the states that border us, plus Texas and Tennessee, we discovered nearly 300 potential sets of unidentified remains that could be an option for our case. And thanks to Beth, as Chris said, we recently learned that Wyteria also was living in Tennessee in 1976 But as we read the case file, we also learned that police did some additional digging there back in 2014

**Beth Sterricker** (4:12)
Back in 2014, the Elgin Police Department was validating Wyteria's entry into leads to assure that she was still listed as missing. Leads validations are something that we conduct annually to ensure that people in the system are updated with new information, removed when needed, and so that we make sure that the entry still exists.
As you said earlier in the season, Wyteria's original leads entry had an error which wasn't discovered for months, so she actually wasn't listed in the system for nearly a year.