Original subtitles

[narrator] Rachanda Pickle is still missing.

Friends and family scramble for answers.

What really happened that day?

How did it happen?

Only the one who took her knew the truth.

And, of course, the trees.

The trees always saw the monster's deception.

[John Ackroyd speaking]

[officer speaking]

John goes to work.

Comes back early.

Which, in and of itself, is not unusual.

But it's... It's a flag. Why would he come home early?

He talks to Rachanda.

He leaves.

He comes back, she's gone.

He's not too worried about her

even though he doesn't see her anywhere.

The location.

Those things are flags.

And as the afternoon and the evening wears on,

there's still no concern,

that's gonna be a flag.

[Noelle] The whole thing seems very odd.

No one is calling 911 on a 13-year-old child,

you know, in this rugged environment,

who rarely strayed from home.

Then this development happens

that really stood out to investigators.

On the day of his stepdaughter's disappearance,

he is all over Linda.

And then, when asked by police,

"Well, how was it?"

He goes on to describe this encounter.

Anybody that's been a parent knows

the gut-wrenching feeling

when your kids are five minutes late

let alone...

You come home, they're not there and you can't find them.

That being said, before she is reported missing,

that night, they had the nest sex of their married life.

[Mike] Detectives were suspicious

'cause in other cases,

men may have difficulty getting an erection

unless they are committing an act of violence.

[Mandy] Sweet Home, is, you know, right there in the foothills.

And so there's green trees,

and beautiful mountains

and it's just like this picturesque little quaint, small town.

Some days it can be, like, idyllic and sunny

and you look out, and you're like, "It's so beautiful here."

It looks so pretty to the eye.

But the spirit is not pretty.

I remember thinking, "Sweet Home?

"There's nothing sweet about this place."

There's a lot of hidden secrets inside that town.

I remember talking to the officers.

I remember telling them,

you know, "We know who did this.

"We know what happened."

One day, when Rachanda's nine or ten,

she started coming to school with real, real apparent signs of abuse.

She was not doing her hair as much,

which was a big deal before.

She was anxious.

Not smiling as much.

And just sad.

And, like, I do remember,

she had a black eye

and she had a little cut under her eye.

[Michelle] She would, literally, count down the hours.

There'd be two... Exactly two hours

before we'd have to go home.

She was like, "Oh, my gosh.

"Two hours and we're going home."

And I'm like, "I know."

'Cause I didn't wanna go home either.

[Mandy] Well, my stepdad was very physically,

emotionally abusive,

sexually abusive.

And that's... that was our life.

[Michelle] I mean, it's not like I asked Rachanda,

"Are you being molested?" You know.

I just remember, she taps me on the shoulder,

and she said, um...

"You know what you told me that happened to you and Mandy?"

And I said, "Yeah?"

She's like, "Well, that's happening to me."

Her stepdad, John Ackroyd,

was coming in to her room.

[Mandy] I think that is what brought out a lot of our talks

and just knowing that we all felt like we're going to hell.

[Byron] I remember one night,

I'm 14, Rachanda's 13.

My mom was gone. I think she was staying down at Sweet Home.

And it was just John Rachanda and me.

And I don't even know how I woke up but woke up.

And there was John in Rachanda's bedroom,

kneeling down on the side of her bed

and Rachanda's there in bed

and it was weird, I'm like, "What's going on?"

Allegedly, John heard Rachanda, you know,

possibly having a nightmare.

Screaming, "Mom, no!" And went in there.

And I thought that was weird.

So when I asked Rachanda, "What's going on?"

She... "I don't wanna talk about it." I'm like...

"'Chanda, what's going on?"

[Mandy] One day, Rachanda told an adult

a trusted person, what was happening.

[Michelle] And we were like, "Good for you, Rachanda. Good for you."

But she honestly...

Uh, she never said anything,

what happened after that.

[Mandy] I also had confided in the same adult

about what was happening in our home.

And I remember just saying,

"I'm tired of getting beat up. I'm tire of getting hit.

"I'm tired of my stepdad coming into our room."

And I remember, in my heart,

I felt like I was at the end of a tunnel

I knew the police officers were coming.

We were gonna be saved.

And then, this trusted person,

is like, "They didn't really feel like you were telling the truth.

So they're not... They're not gonna do anything.

And I left it at that.

And so, when Rachanda went and told them,

I felt, in my heart,

that nothing happened.

That they ignored her.

[Michelle] And she was really, really scared.

Because she told about the abuse.

So she was scared on what John Ackroyd

might do.

[Noelle] It requires so much for a child to come forward.

And then, for that, to be treated with indifference

is deeply upsetting.

Clearly, there was a culture that allowed men not to be held accountable.

Sexual abuse and rape, at the time,

was not investigated

and treated the way it is by police today.

[people shouting indistinctly]

[Lynn] While we were out searching in the woods, for Rachanda,

I was one of the people that was assigned to be with John.

And he would talk about things that were so strange.

Talking about, like, his daughter's... Stepdaughter's breast size.

And what she's wearing.

And about her period.

We kept talking about Rachanda in the past tense.

Not the present.

Then, when we decided to change on to some other subject,

that's when he started talking about... about Kaye Turner.

[Gary] It's about August.

So it would've been eight months after Kaye Turner went missing.

This guy comes into the store.

And says that he found some clothes in the woods.

I remember it really vividly.

It's etched there because it was strange.

He just said he was the last one to see her alive.

I didn't know at the time.

That was Ackroyd.

[Noelle] John Ackroyd goes to the Camp Sherman store

and says, "I found the missing jogger's clothing."

Then he says, "Why did I have to find her?

"I was the last one to see her alive."

It's an alarming statement.

And he would later say,

he was the last person to see his stepdaughter, Rachanda, alive.

[Gary] Ackroyd brought me here.

This was kind of a thicket.

So, from the road, you couldn't see in here.

This area right here, is where the clothes were.

They were just put there,

which was odd.

[Noelle] These clothes appeared to be on top of the pine needles.

Investigators would later surmise

that he had placed these things there.

[Gary] He didn't say much. He seemed exited.

Like he... Like he got excited seeing these clothes.

Minutes after that, big police showed up, the real guys.

[William] We went and searched the area.

We found a lower jaw bone.

Couple of bones.

Ad it was determined it was Kaye Turner.

While I was waiting by the road, talking to the store owner,

John Ackroyd came up.

I didn't know him.

Hadn't really talked to him before.

When Kaye Turner vanished,

on Christmas Eve, 1978,

police set up a roadblock.

Um, they began to look for potential suspects.

John Ackroyd's name had emerged early on

because he had been seen by another highway worker

who knew John from work.

[William] When Ackroyd's name came up,

we interviewed him about Kaye Turner.

He said he did see her.

[Noelle] On January 11th, John Ackroyd is interviewed.

John Ackroyd is treated as nothing more than a witness.

John was just a good, old boy. A local guy.

He liked to hunt, fish,

do things outdoors.

Police did seem to be particularly interested in

following up with him as a suspect.

Eight months after Kaye Turner has gone missing,

Kaye's friends put up a $1,000 reward.

And then, out of nowhere...

John Ackroyd claims he's found these clothing in the woods.

[William] As soon as I found out

Ackroyd had found these articles,

I had a... I had a suspicion

that John Ackroyd was...

Knew more than he was telling us...

and asked him to take a polygraph.

Well, he failed the polygraph.

[birds chirping]

[Butch] I was a detective sergeant.

And a lieutenant for the Oregon State Police had come to my office,

asking me if I knew John Ackroyd.

And I said, "Yeah, for a fact, I do."

I said, "I kinda grew up with him."

And I knew his mother.

We'd been in the same community all our lives.

And he said, "Well...

"He's had something to do with that Kaye Turner thing."

And I said, "How do you know that?"

He said, "I polygraphed him and he's dirty."

1958-'59 school year.

That was at Pleasant Valley.

I knew John Ackroyd because we went to school from...

From the first grade to the 12th grade.

We were never close friends.

He was...

quiet.

Kind of a loner type.

Uh, I never really knew him

to have much association with anybody.

I remember an incident in... in the sixth grade.

There were a couple of little rabbits

that lived right there, where we got off the bus.

And one day, John set one of those rabbits on fire.

Somebody said, "John, you set that rabbit on fire!"

And the rabbit was... scurried off.

And he just kinda had a grin on his face, like...

He was proud of what he'd done.

I thought, you know, "Why?"

I was raised that you don't hurt anything or kill anything

unless you're gonna eat it, you know.

You didn't go shooting deer just for the horns,

you know, unless you needed the meat.

You just... You just didn't kill anything.

After Kaye Turner came up missing,

I reached out to the investigators.

From the standpoint that

I thought that it might be a little more difficult

for John to avoid pertinent questions with me

than a total stranger.

Because I knew John's mom.

We worked together, in law enforcement, in the late '70s.

At that time, there was only one police officer in Sweet Home

on the graveyard shift, and that was me.

And she was the dispatcher.

I'd quite often ask her about John.

You know, as what we had to talk about.

[radio chatter]

Some of the police officers came to interview me.

I was really disappointed on how they perceived me.

They asked me questions that were totally inappropriate.

I don't think they had ever had that type of investigation, before.

And at that time, I ended the conversation,

I said, "We have nothing to talk about."

[Noelle] At the time of Turner's disappearance,

law enforcement weren't necessarily in the habit

of collaborating and sharing.

And we're talking about a rural law enforcement agency.

Me, in the Jefferson County Sheriff's office.

And we're talking about, you know, a small community,

and the Oregon State Police.

And there's not email. No one's sending these reports to one another.

[Butch] Small town politics.

Law enforcement doesn't share a lot of information with other...

Unless it's a need-to-know basis.

[Noelle] After Ackroyd finds Kaye Turner's clothing in the woods,

his story begins to shift.

After he failed the polygraph,

I interviewed him in my office.

And he denied everything except...

He said that he talked to her.

[Noelle] He discloses that he spoke with Kaye.

That they actually had a brief conversation.

They exchanged holiday greetings.

And it's all very charming and cordial.

[William] The polygraph asked if he'd ever touched Kaye Turner.

And he said no.

But the polygraph showed that he did.

So we ask him about not touching her.

And he said, well, he did touch her in February,

when she was laying on top of the snow.

That's be two months after she disappeared.

There were three feet of snow in February that year.

She couldn't have been on top of the snow.

[Noelle] What he ends up admitting... acknowledging is that

he find a decomposing body in the woods,

and that he stops and touches these remains

and then does not tell anyone

despite knowing about the extensive search and investigation for Kaye.

His disclosure is disturbing.

Because it's... It's very graphic.

He says that he saw a body lying next to a large log.

That he was repulsed by what he saw.

That he had seen her neck had been slashed.

And that it appeared she had a bullet wound in her chest.

So, suggesting how she had been killed.

You know, she had been cut or stabbed and then she had been shot.

Another element emerges

in this crucial Oregon State Police interview.

And that is that John Ackroyd was not alone.

He was with his friend, Roger Dale Beck.

So, police go interview Roger and Roger's wife, Pam.

Pam Beck provided an alibi for Roger Beck and John Ackroyd.

According to Pam, Ackroyd arrived at their house on Christmas Eve morning.

And Ackroyd and Beck did not go out that day.

There are all of these troubling signs

that implicate Ackroyd in the murder of Kaye Turner

But there is actually no physical evidence.

There's no eyewitness. There's no clarity.

That Ackroyd was involved.

[William] We had no evidence to hold him

so we let him go.

[narrator] The woods witnessed exactly what John had done.

Helpless, they watched him walk free,

to hide once more.

Justice failed.

What else would happen before he stopped?

[horns honking]

[Lynn] It was very important to Durr

that we keep the spirit of Kaye Turner alive.

He even checked me up before I made a drive

to the top of Santiam Pass,

introduced me to John, personally.

To look at him, you wouldn't think

he was the smartest person in the world.

But John was clever.

Clayton Durr told me this is the guy that killed Kaye Turner.

He says, "You need to know this guy

"because this'll happen again sometime."

And the next time we came across John Ackroyd,

his stepdaughter shows up as missing.

And John's back in the spotlight again.

[Noelle] For me, as a journalist on the story,

you're asking questions, "Well, who is this guy?"

I thought, "Well, I'm gonna dig in

"to the big file cabinet."

Buried among all that was this slim set of reports

that showed Ackroyd had had this violent encounter

with a stranger,

a year before Kaye Turner's murder.

It was an incredibly important moment in the timeline

of Ackroyd's criminal exploits.

This woman, she had not talked about this since it happened.

[Marlene] John Ackroyd could have been stopped.

If the police would have listened to me,

none of this would have ever happened.

I'm never gonna forget about what happened that night.

Every time I wash... I can never get him out of my mind,

I can never get that dirt off.

I still can't, and I'm 66.

There was times I'd wake up in the middle of the night, screaming.

And flailing, and throwing punches and kicking.

I gave my husband a black eye once.

It was always right there with me.

It was like he was on my shoulders.

Like i was carrying him on my shoulders

but no one could see him or feel him but me.

[crowd cheering]

My husband Bill and I, we went to the rodeo.

And got all dressed up.

We used to wear, you know, cutoff work pants

and gym pants,

you know, to take care of a baby, all day long.

And it was the first time I had on a pair of jeans, real nice.

Looking good and smelling sweet.

And I had these boots on that I waited for a very long time

and my husband did without to buy me those boots, for me.

We got there and that's when I started drinking beers.

And... Though they really hit me fast

'cause I hadn't been drinking since... What?

Eight months and then nine months. It had been over a year.

We had some food and then some people came over.

"Oh, Bill, I heard you were over." Some buddies of his.

"Let's go to this bar."

I can't go in a bar.

I was 19.

You have to be 21 in Oregon to get in a bar and drink.

So, I got angry.

"No, we came here, you and me,

"first time we've been out since, you know..."

But he hadn't seen his buddies in so long and blah-blah-blah.

So, I said, "Fine, I'm going home."

I was always used to hitchhiking.

In Oregon, back in those days,

you didn't have to really worry about it.

So I went to Highway 20 and I stuck my thumb out.

And lo and behold, the first ride I got was John Ackroyd.

He pulls over and I run up to the truck.

And I opened the door and I kinda glanced at the door like this,

and got all the way in and shut it.

Then I looked at the little knob

that you push up and down for the lock, and there wasn't any.

By that time, he was off on Highway 20, driving.

I passed out and I went to sleep.

Just before dusk, I feel my feet being grabbed

and he was dragging me out by my feet o the passenger side

And my head hit every... from the seat to the car... truck floor,

and to the outside edge of the truck,

the door, and then, all of a sudden, the ground.

And I... I tried to te... to scream. I couldn't scream.

He even put the knife to my throat.

And it hurt. 'Cause he pressed.

And he says, "You're gonna do every [bleep] thing I tell you to do, aren't ya?"

And I go, "Yes, sir.

"What do you want? Anything I'll do anything you want.

"Just don't hurt me."

He took my pants by the front of them, belt and all

and just ripped all the way down to the boots.

And then he got pissed 'cause he couldn't get 'em further

so he took a knife and he [bleep] cut my boots off.

I wanted my baby to have a mother,

I had to stay alive for her.

That's all I pictured in my head, was her little bald head.

Perfectly round.

Afterwards, I was, like, in a fetal position

'cause I was in pain.

And he was, like, you know, um...

zipping up his pants.

Straightening up his jacket and shirt and stuff.

And I go... And he looked at me and he goes, "Now what do I do with you?"

I said, "Take me home."

I was just being nice to him

because I wanted to go back to my baby.

I had John Ackroyd drop me off

at Bill's mom's house.

So, I'm knocking, knocking.

And that's when she came to the door

and I go, "I've just been raped, he raped me!

- "Please call the police." - [siren wailing]

The police came over and they took a report.

After they did that, I left and went to the hospital

and did the rape kit.

And then they ask me if I would submit to a lie-detector

and I go, "Yeah, I'll do it."

Because I know I was telling the truth.

They asked if I egged him on.

If I, you know, came on to him, you know, sexually.

Was I flirting with him, you know?

"Do you do drugs, Marlene?"

"How much were you drinking?" "That much?"

The police made me feel like a liar.

Why would a mother of a little, tiny baby

that's breastfeeding lie... [scoffs]

lie about a rape?

[Noelle] His explanation was

Marlene, she had come onto him.

And he just kind of submitted to her.

And that, apparently, made sense to the detective.

[Marlene] I felt stupid. They made me feel stupid.

Little woman, brown woman, don't know what she was talking about.

[scoffs]

They made me feel like it was my fault.

[Marlene] They questioned him.

Didn't prosecute him or even arrest him.

They believed him and not me.

How does that fly?

[Marlene] After that incident with John Ackroyd,

I was so scared...

so paranoid that he was gonna come back and finish me off.

'Cause I... You know, I told on him.

That's how I got insomnia.

I'd get up, two or three time, in the middle of the night

check every single lock, every single door.

[Noelle] He got away with it.

If he would have been held accountable,

you know, it could have had a chilling effect on him.

He would have been known as someone with a rape conviction.

Sometimes I almost wish that he would have killed me

but I don't do that anymore.

Especially after I found out that 13-year-old girl.

Really? A child?

It's just heartbreaking.

[narrator] Marlene tried, but no one listened.

Her pleas were silenced.

The monster was allowed to continue hunting.

Getting bolder.

[Byron] My family, in general, was close with John, you know.

My grandmother loved John. Loved John,

In her eyes, he was the perfect son-in-law.

My grandmother died thinking John was completely innocent.

That the law and everybody in the State

was just against John, just trying to destroy the family.

When you're around a family, you know, a lot of people are high school dropouts.

And then you have this guy that appears to have all of his [bleep] together.

And he wants to come and be a part of the family

and marry, you know, their daughter, which is my mom.

They all felt like it was a step up.

They didn't wanna let go of that... The happy ever after, kinda.

[Jennifer] Well, for me, 'cause I was sexually assaulted

throughout most of my childhood

by older men...

John was one of the very few that never abused me.

So, to me, that was a win,

I felt comfortable and safe whenever John was around.

[Byron] I mean, I didn't like the spankings and beatings that we got.

I definitely knew that wasn't normal.

I knew that wasn't normal.

I knew that my other friends, that I went to school with,

didn't suffer the crap that me and my sister did.

[Noelle] This was a hellish existence for Rachanda and her brother.

Ackroyd disclosed in one police interview

that he had made a paddle that he would use to discipline Rachanda.

[Corinna] He was a good liar.

He was truly two different people.

I never saw the John

that Linda and the kids had to live with.

[Mark] When Rachanda went missing,

he was just like a good old boy, you know.

"I'm just here to help."

John would come up with these theories on what a guy would do.

With John, it was always an... another person.

[officer] Mmm-hmm.

[officer] Mmm-hmm.

"A guy would do this." And, "A guy would do that."

I was convinced he was demonstrating to me what he'd done.

When he talked about tying her up,

there was a search done of the house and his truck

and there was rope with Rachanda's hair

in the back f John's truck.

He talked about holding her down

which was indicating

that she was struggling, yet still alive.

And there was blood found on the bedspread

near the front door of the house.

[narrator] The woods have a way of getting darker,

entombing secrets.

Secrets John hopes will never see the light.

[Jennifer] John was a Jekyll and Hyde kind of person.

He's Hyde when he was my uncle.

Somebody I can count on.

When he was doing bad things,

that's Jekyll.

But one time, I was with John, in his truck.

It was a while after Rachanda came out missing.

And he decided to go off on some side road.

It was all brushy and secluded.

The bushes came right up to the door, on both sides.

It was that dense.

And he said to me,

"You know, you could hide a body in here and nobody would ever find it."

I said, "Yeah, you can. Can't you?"

And he said, "Yeah. Do you have to go potty?"

And I said, "No, I'm good."

And I had to go really, really bad.

But something told me to stay near the truck.

I watched him as he went straight down to the left

and then, I couldn't see him anymore.

I was terrified.

And I've never been afraid of John, like that.

At the time, I wasn't aware

that John was capable of murder.

I just blocked it out of my mind.

But you can bet your sweet bottom

if I would have gotten out of that truck,

he would have killed me.

[Jennifer] When Rachanda came up missing,

a week went by,

two weeks, three weeks.

Now it was...

She ain't coming back.

[Byron] I need to know where my sister is.

This is what you guys are...

You guys are supposed to be the good guys helping us out.

Help us out.

Let me know what's going on.

This is my sister. This is my blood.

This is my best friend, you know.

Where is she?

[narrator] The monster is free.

And they are no closer to finding Rachanda.

[Mark] We searched for Rachanda everywhere.

And we couldn't find her.

The evidence, the blood spots and the rope,

were problematic for us

because she lived there.

There are many ways that she could have bled.

She could have cut herself.

She could have had a nosebleed.

We didn't have any DNA evidence

to tie John directly to it.

It was very clear to all of us

that he had taken her life.

But we didn't have a body.

At that point in time, they would not prosecute without a body.

You've gotta be able to prove

that she met with foul play

and she was killed.

If you can't prove your case,

You can't go try him again. They're done. And you lost.

And they're out there, free.

Everything kinda just...

went back to normal.

It was over pretty fast.

The searches were over before school even started.

[Michelle] Being that young and feeling helpless...

The beginning of seventh grade was horrible.

[sobs]

because she wasn't there.

[Byron] All I know is that my sister's gone

and my family's destroyed.

It's done. [bleep] game over.

Here we are, in the world, by yourself.

I'd give up everything. Even if that meant my last breath.

[sobs]

just to let her know that I love her. i miss her.

[sobs]

[narrator] They sense, as with Kaye Turner,

Rachanda's life had come to an end.

John Ackroyd remains unscathed

and enjoys his freedom.

[Corinna] After Rachanda went missing,

I don't think anybody suspected John Ackroyd

capable of doing anything like that.

A lot of the guys were like, "There's no way."

And then we started hearing that he actually had been

the main suspect in Kaye Turner's murder

and he found Kaye's body.

I think everybody up there was shocked.

You just think back. How many times have you seen him?

How many times have you talked to him?

How many times when you're with him

in the maintenance shop at night?

We didn't want him up there anymore. We weren't comfortable.

Our only phone on the compound, that was available to us,

was one phone up in the wash-house in the trailer shed.

We kept telling the police we spend a lot of time alone here, as women.

They got quite a bit of pressure.

So they moved him.

And we were thankful to see him go.

John Ackroyd was transferred from the Santiam junction

to Corvallis, Highway Department.

And I said, "That's nuts!

"That's a college town full of girls!

"That's crazy!"

But I wasn't in control.

When we heard that John had been moved

to the Highway Department in Corvallis,

we were like, "Holy [bleep], who's thinking that one through?"

We need to truly get this guy before he kills again.

Nobody wants to have a serial killer in their backyard.

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