Secrets and Strays | 3

A warning to our listeners. This series contains discussion of mental illness, suicide, and domestic abuse. Who do you think she was? Oh, we made up stories. People don't just show up to East Texas. There's usually a reason they end up where they are. I really don't believe she killed herself. She was there on one day and then I'm saying she didn't show up. Have we uncovered up conspiracy indirectly? Too many unentused questions. She was scared that she was alive after they said she was dead. That's right. And then fries or chips? I'll do fries. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. We can go ahead and maybe get started when our food comes. We can take a little pause, food break, and then talk about the market. Well, my memory is not what it used to be, but I can remember stuff from a long time ago better than I can last weeks. Well, that's good. It's good for us. That's very convenient for us. My name is Dale Jollof. I grew up in Athens and met Sue and Koshra. I don't even know when I met her. It was sometime in the early 90s. And we hung out. We lived together for a little while before she passed away. How did you meet her? That's a good question. I was thinking about that last night. I think we met at some computer classes out at the Trinity Valley Community College. What do you do now? I work for Dell. I've been in this now for basically with the same company now for 15 years now. For 10-15 years, something like that. I started with them in 2007. Seven. You and we got married. I would love for you to introduce yourself, too. I'm Rose Jollof. I'm Dale's wife. And that's why I'm here. Sue was very bubbly and she had a very pronounced British accent. No matter where she was, that was the thing that stood out to everybody. She could pretty much, I don't see him timidate, but there was nobody that really taught back to her very much. She would use that British accent to the maximum effect. And you know, small town in these Texas is fascinating to everybody. Everybody loved it. Not only was it British, but she was female. So it was just like, I'm off to flying. She came to work at that little computer company that was working for at the time. And I ran a Bolton board system. I don't know if you guys are probably not old enough to remember what those are, but I ran the first one in Henderson County. Well, I would say it was the first one, but it was one of the first ones. And I was the first one to have internet access. This is how you computer stuff. What does she do? It would suggest to me she was running like a private bulletin board service or something. We have email through a satellite fee. And so you can get online on the BBS and send email to anybody else that had an email account, which back then was very rare. But she and I played around with that a lot. And there were a number of people that were going to Trinity Valley Community College, which was Matt Michelle, Jeremy, and at the time his girlfriend and stuff. And all those guys were much younger than me, and they cut, they dialed into the BBS. And there were some games that we had on that system. And there were multiplayer games. So you had to call in, you take your turns, and then somebody else would call in and take their turns, and that sort of thing. And so that's how we all met. We would all wind up at somebody's house on Friday or Saturday night, and everybody liked to play dominoes, which for a bunch of young kids was kind of strange, I thought, but you know, we'd all play dominoes, and the youngest of the crowd of us would usually be drinking and Siu would drink to your coffee. I don't think I ever saw her drink out of all. So, you know, eventually the game would devolve into, you know, if you took too long to play your hand, or you lost the turn, or whatever you had to, you know, finish some challenge, and she would always make everybody say these British Lumberx. Amazing. Do you remember any of them? Well, the one that I remember the most was about the Feson Pluckers son. So, I remember it, but I'm not sure that I really want to try to say it while I'm being recorded. I will mess it up. Uh-oh, what happened? It looks like there was some technical difficulty with the recording. I'm sorry. I'm having computer problems, so I'm trying not to... There we go. Cool. Sorry about that. My name is Jeremy Thomas. I am the Provost at Oklahoma City Community College, and I've been an educator for a little over 22 years. I'm originally from Texas living in Oklahoma, and enjoy what I did day in and day out. And how did you know Siu? As the internet has, uh, did not exist in my age group as an undergraduate. During my freshman year, we would take our computers and we would dial into a thing called a bulletin board and play little computer games and things like that. But a guy we ran that, his name was Dale, and Dale dated Siu. We would meet on Thursday nights and play dominoes, and Siu would come and give us all a hard time. How would you give you a hard time? You know, it's not very hard. If you spend any time with me, you will definitely hear the East Texas twang come out. So, um, you know, the language differences Siu found that funny. So, like, talking about knocking somebody up is actually knocking on their door. It's not what we think it is, you know, in American slang. So, she'd like to make comparisons and, uh, easy target. But what was your initial impression of her, especially with her accent and being in the middle of Texas? Sure. You always wonder, how did you get lost and end up there? People don't just show up to East Texas and there's usually a reason they end up where they are. But that's something Siu never talked about. So, I don't know how she ended up there. Initial impression, she liked to have a good time. And I don't say that in a way like, I can never recall her drinking, for example. I do believe she smoked. You're really pressing my memory on this. You're talking about almost 30 years ago. That would be 29 years ago, actually. So, I mean, it's, it's a long time ago. What all did you do? You said you played dominoes. You just hung out? Yeah, it was just to hang out night. Thursday night, if you didn't have a football game on Saturday, was the last night before everybody went home. So, that was the hangout night. I actually recently found a picture of her from one of those Thursday night events. They will be edited if they ever get shared. I love it. I would love to see them, whatever you're willing to share. Sure. That would be awesome. She was, like I said, she was always just bubbly and, and a lot of fun to be around. And she was always taking in strays. And I was probably one of those. So, you know, I think one of the reasons why I don't remember a lot of that details of that time is because I was going through a divorce. And it was not particularly pretty. So, you know. How much did Sue know about what was going on in your life at that time? I don't pretty much everything. Like I said, I was a mess, man. I talked to anybody that listened. So, I probably owed her way more money than I realized. I was working for that computer company. I was making the fantastic sum of about $14,000, $15,000 a year there. I was paying a vast majority of my income to child support. And I mean, she wasn't paying my child support. I didn't have, you know, like, you know, have for a payday. If I was lucky, I had $20 bucks. It wasn't like I was going to take her anywhere. You said that you worked at this computer company together. Did you all work from home with that? No, back then that wasn't a thing. I didn't think so. I'm just wondering if that could, because she had this computer room in her house when she died. That was full of some high-tech equipment at a whole bunch of floppy disks. Would that be explained by... Yeah, that was mostly from that Bolton board that we ran. As a matter of fact, that room that you're talking about was the extra bedroom in that house. And what we did is I went in there with basically two by fours and some plywood and set up the table along one wall. And that's where, you know, for a long time, we had the satellite dish out in our backyard. And kind of ran that BBS from there. It was more of a hobby than it was anything else. But that little company that I worked for contributed to some of the costs. And, you know, of course we begged our users for donations and stuff. The thing I remember most about that was I had the seat further from the door. And her seat was directly in front of the door going into that room. And like I said, she was always picking up strays. And so she was at work one day. And one of the mechanics came in and they had had a car that was parked out in the back of the lot. And apparently a stray cat had bought her kittens in and put them under the hood of the car. And so when they brought the car in, there was one of the little kittens was left. Well, she brought it home. I mean, it was young enough we had to bottle feed it for several weeks. They found it on August the 2nd, so she named it 82. And that cat would, she would be sitting in that chair with her elbows on the arm of the chair. And that cat would sneak up behind her. And I'd seen coming up out of the corner of my eye and he did this all the time. And he would just jump up and nipper on the back of the elbow. And it would make her so upset. And it's like, and she got to where, you know, as he would come up, I guess she would hear him or something and she would just swing her arm backwards like that and catch him. But that was, I don't know, I just, you know, we had a lot of fun. It was, I had a lot of fun with her. And, you know, it was, matter of fact, the next girlfriend I had after her was her. I'm about 19 years later. So he says, you have to tell the truth. This is a podcast. You can't be lying because they'll check those facts. I didn't believe a woman ate a meal meal. I'm like, huh? You said that she wasn't really a drinker. What, did you know her as a smoker or did she use any drugs or anything? Never saw her use any drugs for that matter. I don't think I even saw her take prescription medication. I opened up the cabinet prescription drugs. I mean, field. I think she used to smoke, but she didn't anymore. I smoked around that time frame. So she may have been smoking too. I don't know. And you said that you sort of lived with her on and off? Is that right? How long do you think you were together? At least two or three years. I really can't say for sure. It's not like it is today where you have pictures and things like that on your phone. You can go back through to look at dates and stuff like that. We'd probably known each other for six months, maybe more. I don't know before, you know, I started living with her. It was one of those things where I come over and we'd hang out and I went up standing at night and eventually I just stayed there. Were you able to find any pictures of her or anything? Interesting. No pictures of her? We have her driver's license photo. That's it. You know, back then you didn't have cameras on your phone, right? Yeah. So for that matter, if you go back and you look, there's not a lot of pictures of me during that time either. You thought she had a missing tooth? Is that right? She did. I want to say if I'm looking at her, it'll take us being on the left side of the upper. Did she ever get an implant or anything like that? Not while I knew her now. Could you describe her like what she looked like? She was, I don't know, about my height and she had like, blonde silver hair. She is a dirty blonde. She was a green man. And she usually worked down around her shoulders and she usually wore glasses. I want to say she had a hazel colored eyes. Light blue, maybe. Jeremy, what are some things that you remember distinctly about her appearance? I just remember having really long hair. I seem to recall her wearing a lot of makeup. That could be wrong. But I seem to remember that. Nothing stands out. I mean, you're talking about the early 90s. We all wore bad clothing. Bad hair, bad clothing. I was going to ask what sort of timeframe did you know her? Do you remember like years? Yes. It seems like I recall meeting Dale in the fall of 92, which would have been my freshman year. And it was in the spring that we started hanging out, which would have been when Sue started coming along. I left after that year and went out of state and went to school. I came back two years later maybe and visited and I believe I saw her then. So that had been 94, 95, somewhere in that time period. And then I don't ever recall seeing her after that. In that time, that elapsed. Did she change at all? I don't think so. Nothing that I remember. She seemed like Sue. She made teddy bears by hand. Stay for a look at all of these teddy bears. They were just kind of strong all over the place. Apparently she would bought that as a business from somebody who was doing it. I guess on the side or whatever to make a little extra money. By the time I met her though, she still had some of the materials and stuff that she used. But she really didn't do anything with her anymore. Yeah, she wasn't still making them in her spare time or anything. I mean, she'd work on stuff in her spare time when she had nothing else to do. But if she knew somebody that wanted one, she'd try to make them one. That's worth it. And we've heard that she likes to go shooting. Do you know anything about that? Yeah, she had a... I don't know what you're talking about. At the time, I really wasn't that in the guns myself. But she was a very good marksman. And I never got to see her do it. But she had several trophies and stuff from a competition she had been in. And she had at least one pistol that was like a single shot for... Typically, those tend to be more accurate. And she had a pistol that was kind of her personal self-defense thing. When I wasn't around, she'd sleep with it under the pillow. Did you get the sense that she had something specific that she was afraid of? Or just general protection? No, not really. I'd never really thought that she was paranoid about anything. But, you know, she was going out fighting and put a fight in. If that makes sense, I mean, you know, she was not going to let anybody take advantage of her. Did you feel like she was hiding anything? Well, I don't say hiding. I said, like, there was a whole bunch there that she just wasn't unpacking. And she wasn't going to talk about, you know, especially stuff about her. She told me at one point that she had had a child when she was really young. The little booties and a little bonnet. I think she said a baby. I got the impression that she felt like she was forced to give up the child. That, you know, there wasn't really her choice. And that she got married or came over with this guy in the military. My impression was that that was not a very good relationship, I guess. I don't know any other concrete details in that. And that's what prompted her just to gather as much stuff as she could get the car in drive. And I asked her, well, Tyne, why did you come to Athens of all places? Because Athens was a small town very conservative. I was in high school before we actually had any sort of business that stayed open past about eight o'clock at night. She just said, well, the scenery was nice. I found that weird. Yeah, into the day and she stopped and she said, I just kind of stayed. What's your name? What do you say? So she watched Singer and... I don't know if I think about Singer and his family. So I know there's a pretty view. What's number four? One video, Shen. You know, I find out. Or, you know, I don't know where she was from, but it may have looked like what she grew up around. I don't know. She never really said. But the thing that always struck me as most odd was, I remember pondering telling me, you know, that when she came to work for him, she gave him a social security number for tax purposes, right? That's important. It came back, well, that's not the right one. You know, or there's some issue with it, and so she would give him another one. You take a few months for this that, you know, eventually filter back. You know, there's a problem with this when you can't use that social security number. And apparently that happened at least once or twice. I've been a three years. Did she ever offer any sort of explanation for why she had multiple social security numbers? Nope. Now, she didn't talk to me about that. That was something that Ponder spoke to me about Atrush past away. And Ponder was your boss at the computer company? Yes. And it kind of fed into that sense that she really was running from something or hiding from something that wasn't blatantly apparent, and was probably contributed to why she didn't really want to talk about her past. Maybe while you're in it, each odd thing, you just take it at face value. I don't know. I mean, we're just different people. I'm had to and not know how old they are, but when you look back on it and you just see one after the other, that's where you know, so maybe when you're in it. I can say this. At the time, I was going through a lot, and I was probably not the most, I was pretty self-centered, I guess, at that point. I mean, it really worked in certain to guess what was going on around me. And I like said, based on her personality, being very positive and kind of assertive, I guess, if she needed something for me, all she had to do was say it and ask. Is speaking of the age thing, did she ever tell you how old she was? No, that was one of the things. If anybody asked, you just don't ask me that period. I mean, I understand that when you're my age, how old were you guys? You guys have a birthday for her? September 13th, 1952. Yeah, that's quite a bit older than... Did you thought she was? Oh yeah, I always thought she was only like four or five more years older than me. Okay, so maybe the mid-90s, it's not for me to say that someone should be lying about their age or not. I mean, that is a personal thing. But I guess I just think the younger that you are, that you're not going to hide it. But, yeah, what do I know? Did she look younger? The nation did, yeah. How old would you have guessed that she was? I mean, I was... how old was I back in that? That's not a bigger now. Thirty years ago now. You were in your... you were thirty-three in 1996. So she would have been in her early 40s. Yeah, yeah. So I would have pegged her at the most, you know, thirty-four at the time. She was quite a bit older than you all, wasn't she? I would assume... because I don't know what Sue's actual age was. I'm forty-eight. I would assume that Sue was at least ten years older than me, at least. I mean, I always assumed Dale was about that age. I believe she was about twenty years older than you, actually. Oh well. But Dale also thought that she was about his age, maybe a couple years older, and I think she was ten years older than him. Oh well. For some reason, we just never asked. It's just something we never talked about. When Dale and Sue were dating, what... what was your impression of their relationship? Had they been together long? Did they seem serious or casual? Um, casual. They picked on each other a lot, which seemed pretty natural for their attitudes. They had a very similar attitude. I can never recall them arguing or fighting or any of that sort of stuff. It was, you know, picking back and forth, but we all seem to do that to each other, so. How did you find out about her passing? I got called over to her house. To be honest, I don't know why, because I got called over there, and they wouldn't let me go inside the house. Who called you? Actually, my mother did. This is the thing that's always kind of puzzling me. Apparently, they called my mother first. And it may have been just they called, you know, and they looked up. My name is the same as my dad's name. So maybe they just looked up the number and called that number and got my mom. And it was the police that called her. Yeah. Did Steve contact you after that? I've never spoken to Steve. Really? Yeah. Okay. Or at least not that I'm aware of. Were you also seeing each other at that time? Were you just good friends? Well, no, we weren't really. I mean, one of the things that, you know, it's not like we were. Had a falling out or we'd stop seeing each other, but I knew that. It was not going to be that much longer until I had my kids living with me again. So I had built a small house behind my parents' property on their property. And I was kind of getting that ready for the kids and moved all my junk out there and was staying out there more than I was staying with her. I mean, the equipment that was in that house when she passed away, that would have all been her stuff. Because I'd already started working on that little house out there. And I'd moved all that stuff and, you know, set up out there. The last time you were in that room, what was there, what did it look like? Just pretty much bare. I mean, you know, I don't remember there being more than maybe her PC there, than anything else. There may have been an old PC, you know, really old one that, you know, we weren't using anymore of the left there. What was on the walls, anything? So one of the things that Steve said happened while he was, he and his wife were cleaning out the house, is that the computer just sort of turned themselves on. And then the next morning, the computers were erased as far as he could tell. He said that the hard drives had been wiped. And he even, I think, pulled off some of those floppiness and they didn't have any data on them. Do you have any explanation or any idea what could have happened or what would have caused them to come on by themselves? No idea. I know she had her own personal computer, but again, I don't think there was any of that bolts and board stuff left there that she passed away. The floppies and stuff, they're really critical stuff, you know, the backups of the BBS. And that's probably what they were. Unless you had the software to recover it, it probably would look like. Were you ever able to get back into the house? Yeah, after they had cleaned everything out. And maybe that was Steve that asked me about that. Somebody had asked me, you know, if there was anything, I said, well, yeah, there's a few things in there I need to get. And I picked up those few things and that was it. Everything was gone. I mean, you know, all the stuff, you know, her computer that she used at home was gone, too. What details were you told about her dad? I knew that she had been sick and they said, well, you know, she threw up during the night and aspirated in that choker. That was the only thing I was told. When she got a bad flu instead of somebody staying there to make soup for her or do whatever, she just wondered everybody would leave her alone. She did not want anybody around her and she was feeling bad. Does it track to you then that she would have been dead for four days? I don't think it was four days. It was more like a day or two. Because she, the week before, she had gotten sick and I'd talked to her. And if she was sick and she said, look, just, you know, as usual, she said, leave me alone. Don't bother me. And quite frankly, the day that I think it was the day that her work finally called a welfare check-in with the police. And again, I don't know that for sure, but that's my assumption. You know, my plan had been to just go ahead and go by the house that afternoon after I got off work. Because, you know, I hadn't heard from her in a couple of days. Did she sound sick on the phone? The last time I talked to her, yeah. But, and all the times that I'd done here before, you know, she would start to get sick and, you know, you would, you know, leave me alone and it would be three or four days, maybe five days and she'd be back. One of the things that Steve said when he was cleaning out her house is that he just emptied several cabinets full of pill bottles. On the shelves, underneath the bathroom sink, everywhere on the top sink of the top cabinet. If there wasn't 20 different pill bottles on the top cabinet, then there wasn't one. I don't recall ever seen her even take prescription drugs. That's so, but you lived with her. So even if you didn't see her, you would have maybe seen the, you know, the small house. In other words, I can tell you that she didn't keep them in the kitchen cabinets. She didn't keep them in the bathroom and she didn't keep them in her closet. Did you attend her memorial service? Yes. It was held at the, in the Bel Air edition in Athens. It was over there in that church. But she was cremated. So that's what they told us. She was cremated and... How many people were there, do you remember? There was a lot of people there. Everybody from ACS and I think both dealershipless that she worked at. Like I said, she knew a lot of people and everybody that knew her was a loved her, you know. Do you remember if anyone spoke at her memorial, like what the service was like? That's some things I guess I've been trying to block out for a long time. Yeah. But I want to say the priest spoke, but I don't remember anybody else speaking, but that doesn't necessarily mean that nobody else did. That's just what I remember. Would you say that she was mysterious back then, like secretive, mysterious? Maybe. She didn't really talk about herself or her family or where she was from. So I'd have no idea exactly, you know, what part of the country she was from. I have no idea why she came over here. So all that sort of stuff I don't know. And she never shared. Did you find that strange at the time or was it just sort of, you know, I find it strange now. Yeah. So I mean, that's that's a little bit different. If I did, it just me knowing me, I probably would have picked at her about it just randomly. And if I got a strong indication that she really didn't want to talk about it, I would have dropped it. Why do you find it strange now looking back? You know, it's funny. Only recently has since, since you all started asking questions, the group is emailing again. And Dale, I think you'll interview him. And he sent a message to us saying, did you all know that she committed suicide? And they answered was no, I had no clue. So it surprises me based on what I know that surprised me. Why? You know, people who suffer from depression can hide it. It never came out when I was a rounder that I can recall. Yeah. I don't remember being standoffish, but there again, I mean, different types can have different ways of manifesting. So I just, it surprised me. I wouldn't have thought it. She always seemed peppy when she was around us. And so just a really kind of free spirit. It's the way I would kind of describe it. It just, just surprised me. I really don't believe she killed herself because she just wasn't that type of personality. And she didn't have that, you know, like I said, the explanation of her being there by herself. And you know, she slept on her back all the time, you know. So at least to me at the time, that was a very viable explanation. But, you know, I don't know, I wasn't there. It sounds weird that someone was sick with the flu. And then their death is a suicide. Like when you're sick, that's completely different. Mindsense, I don't know. It's one of those things, you know, somebody's there with you one day and they're gone the next. And that's like, I am with absolutely no clue of where she came from or anything like that. Because again, she just would not talk to anybody about it. And not being married to her, I had absolutely no legal access to any of that information. And I sure didn't have the resources to present anything. So... What do you think happened to her? I don't know. I mean, all I can tell you is I never saw her body after she passed. So... Did you ever hear of anyone who did? No. I mean, sort of the police officers that were in the house, when I got there, and I guess the autopsy that they did, but other than that, that was it. Who do you think she was? Oh, we made up stories. Well, you know, when somebody, Hansatz 2020 saw me, and you can go back and second guess anything. And by the way, your mind plays tricks on you when you start doing stuff like that, because you start making up these green deos things. So we started, at some point, one of us had mentioned, well, maybe she was in witness protection, and she ended up in Texas. And that's how, you know, that's the reason that we didn't know as much as we knew. Again, we didn't have any details, so we were just kind of making it up. I have a very specific question for you, which is, did you ever go shooting with her? Apparently she was a sharpshooter. Did you know that? I did not know that. That's actually pretty interesting. Sharpshooter. You know, by the way, you're playing to my story I have made up in my mind. Why is that? How? Tell me. Well, I mean, sharpshooter does talk about her background in a part of the world that nobody comes. So that kind of liens to the witness protection program or something. You know, you know, and there also seemed to recall that we also talked about, you know, was it an abusive relationship she had been trying to get away from? I mean, it wasn't just these green deos discussions that we had about secret agents and, you know, tinful hats and things like that. You know, we were just trying to piece it together after the fact. I have no clue. That's just my way of saying I have no clue. My imagination can get away from me. For sure. Same. To be honest. I mean, it's just, again, nobody goes to that part of the world unless it's on purpose. And so, and then when you don't know a lot of details, your mind will fill in what it thinks it should be. And we all love mystery shows. We all love all that sort of stuff. So we start piling in these little connections that may or may not even be there. Just thank you for taking the time. I'm talking about this. Thank you. It's been kind of fun remembering her because she was there in a big part of our lives and then just all of a sudden was gone. It was really... It was really hard. And it was kind of shocking and disturbing. I mean, you know, they're at the end though. I mean, I wasn't... I said, we weren't living together and we were never married. So... You were young people that don't typically... These, they don't die. You know, you don't have friends that, you know, died from being set. Hey, Bob. Hey, Caroline. How's it going? Good. Hey, Jenna. One thing that really struck me in this interview with Dale is that he told us he was running a bulletin board system out of Sue's house at this time. And he didn't know why the computers would turn on by themselves or why they would have been erased. But he did say that the reason she had those computers in her house was for this BBS. And even the floppy, as he said, would probably have been backups of the BBS. Also, the other person that we talked to, Jeremy, met them through the bulletin board. So it sounds like it was just a really big part of their lives at this time. Okay, well that makes sense to me. She very likely was a mod and then maybe gave up being a mod, but the equipment was still in her house. That would be pretty normal. And if they were running this BBS from the house, it sounds like maybe she would have had an always on internet connection, even though that was still pretty unusual for like a rural area at the time. Which to me, the idea of her computers being wiped remotely still feels really unlikely. But an always on connection makes it slightly more feasible. It's hard to explain in this kind of transition time in the early 90s how important bulletin boards were to people. I mean, most people weren't on the internet. And these were the first virtual gaming platforms. People were on the 18 hours a day. So all those floppy disks, they now make sense to me is just backup for the bulletin board. Yeah, that was Dale's guess too, actually. He said that that's probably what would have been on those floppy disks. But he also said that if someone were to try to open those floppy disks and recover the data using the wrong software, they could have looked blank to that person. Absolutely. Things are not as compatible or cross compatible back then as they are today. We're kind of used to things just working. You're plug in a printer and it just wakes up. If you put a Macintosh floppy disk into a Microsoft floppy disk reader back then, you probably wouldn't even get a blinking cursor. It would just look empty or even dead. So that makes sense to me. He also told this story that she shared with him about how she came to Athens. She told him that she came to America with a guy from the military. And when that relationship fell apart, she left New York, got in a car, just drove, ended up in Athens, Texas, stopped to look at the scenery and decided to stay. And that really surprised me because Athens is a fairly rural town. Yeah, it's a very Texas sort of town. Like there aren't any breathtaking vistas or crazy views or anything. Yeah, there's a central town square with an old courthouse and things like that. And there are some businesses that sort of radiate out from the town square. And then from there, it's just a lot of open land. There are a few lakes nearby and stuff like that. But for the most parts, it's fields and cows. And although, like Dale mentioned, maybe she grew up in the country. So maybe it was familiar. I don't know. It's a little hard to stomach as a story. It's very romantic. It's a very romantic idea of coming to a new place. But he did also say that he got the feeling that there was a previous relationship that had not gone well. And maybe she was trying to escape that relationship. Like maybe that's why she decided to pack everything up and just drive until she couldn't drive anymore. So let's say that one of her previous relationships did become violent or abusive in some way. Something we don't think about today in our digital age is that if you did that now, whoever was chasing you could probably find you. But back then, it would have worked. Yeah. I'm just going to a small town somewhere so he can never find me again. It would have worked. One of the other things that absolutely blew my mind in this conversation is that Dale said twice because I asked him to confirm it that he did not know so to use drugs. And he said specifically, I don't even think I saw her take prescription drugs while we were together. And that is completely on a different level than the 200 plus pill bottles that Steve said that he had to fill a black trash bag with. And the prescription bottles, according to Steve, were found in her bathroom. So he specifically mentioned, we didn't tell him that they were found in the bathroom. He was just like, well, I couldn't have been in these places. And one of the places he mentioned was the bathroom. Yeah. I just wonder because Dale did also sort of caveat a lot of the things he was saying by saying that he might not have been the most present, observant person during this time because he had a lot of personal stuff going on. Maybe she was taking prescriptions and he just never even noticed or thought about it because he was distracted with his own life. I know married couples where the guy would be like drugs. She's not taking any drugs and just not paying attention. But with that many bottles, I mean 200 plus bottles, that would be hard to miss. Although to be fair, we do know from other accounts of Sue that she didn't like to get too deep with people. She like to sort of keep them at arm's length. And I think honestly that suited Dale just fine for that time in his life. So I'm actually sitting here remembering that when I was 25, a woman who I was friends with for maybe four months and went on a pseudo date with once died. And I guess if you ask me questions about how she died, I would struggle with the details. This is almost exactly the same time for him. But still, it's pretty seared in my memory, you know, and she died of an accident. So when I'm sitting here thinking I can't remember what kind of an accident it was. So I mean, I guess things do get hazy. The more people we talk to, who were actually close to her, the more I'm like, where did we get this idea that she was such a private shut in kind of a person? That's actually interesting on the space, yeah. You know what the people were interviewing? The plan was to work backwards chronologically through Sue's life. But also, it seems like we're moving towards people who knew Sue the best. Like we started with the barks' tails, who knew Sue from around town but really only got involved with her after she died. And then we had Pat who was a work friend and now Jeremy who was kind of a casual friend and then Dale, who was her partner and lived with her for the last couple of years of her life. And the closer we get to Sue, the more I'm starting to think that the people who thought she was sort of isolated, didn't get close to anybody, sat alone in her empty house with her cat eating raw mandoodles, you know. I'm starting to think that those people really just didn't know her very well. I mean, it does seem like she didn't share a lot of details about her life, particularly about her past. But it definitely doesn't seem like she was a stay in her house, not get close to anybody, keeps herself, push everyone away kind of person. She just wasn't an offer up details kind of person. And do you have friends like that because I do? Oh yeah, I feel like I am one of those friends. Okay, yes, I am speaking for a friend when I don't like telling people details about my life. I happen to write about privacy. Yeah, for sure. I feel like I've become less of that kind of person. Like I've become a little bit more of an open book because I have personally realized how keeping things to yourself can sort of harm you psychologically. But yeah, I feel like it's not that strange to not share details, especially details about a family that you seem to be estranged from or a past that you're trying to escape from. You know, one of the things that Jeremy actually said was, even if I thought it was strange, there wasn't an internet that I could go digging. Because apparently he and those people that used to play dominoes with her stay in touch still, not as much obviously and like it's ebbed and flowed over the years. But they still talk and now that we are sort of digging into this story, they have started talking a little bit more and they all have their own conspiracy theories. They must have, especially if they're all in touch, they must have through the years discussed the death. I mean, you just said they all have conspiracy theories. Does that mean none of them believe the story as told? I mean, Dale, along with several other people that knew her at the time, have all said that they find it really hard to believe that she would have died by suicide. I take that with a, you know, several grains of salt because what does that even mean? How do you know whether someone is capable of something like that? I feel like people are really great at hiding feelings like that. But, you know, when multiple people say it, I feel like I have to at least take it into consideration that she was at least really good at hiding it. You know, if she was having those feelings, she at least presented herself in a way that seemed full of life and happy and, you know, not like she was trying to end it. Jenna, do you think that he loved her? I honestly don't know. I think he did. I kind of do, yeah. You would feel that, right? Yeah. I think he was trying to maybe temper it because he was there with his current wife, but just the way that he talked about her, I think he really did. I want to say one more thing before everyone leaves because it's bursting inside me. So my very Irish mother says all the time whenever I ask about our relatives, Bobby stopped digging up graves. They hate talking about the past. For the solve bunch of reasons we can get into some other time. But I'm surprised that so far everyone you've talked to has kind of left it at, please let me know what you find out. Not why are you bothering this woman? And you are down there helping all these other people maybe get closure. Tell me if I'm wrong, but so far all I've heard is people saying, well, here's what I know, please get back to me when you know something more. I find that pretty interesting. Yeah, pretty much. I'm going to surprise nobody's objected to you digging around. Okay, give me one second. Here's a picture and she's laughing. I mean, John Teeth Green. I love it. I actually had to scan these photos in because I mean they're that old. Yeah. And she's happy in these photos. I don't remember a sad suit. I don't remember a mad suit that the pictures that I sent to you, she's happy. And so that's how I remember suit. Next time on Undercover of Night. I kind of always felt like there was something chasing her. I don't know if she's nervous about some other crime here. There was something in her past that she didn't want to kill it up on her doorstep. I don't know why she didn't want me to know. There is a lot of unanswered questions. And nobody I know saw her about it. As an individual in this world, I'm a speck of sand on a very big desert. In her world, I think I was significant. I think I was something special. Undercover of Night is an Apple original podcast. Produced by Spoke Media and Castle View Productions. Our writer, host and showrunner is Jenna Burnett. Associate producers are Lucy Wong and Raya Smendoza. Our researcher is Hailey Nelson. Our consulting journalist is Bob Sullivan. Mix Sound Design and Original Music by Will Short, with additional music from Universal Production Music. Story Consulting by Brigham Mosley. Executive producers are Caroline Hamilton, Sherita Lynn Solis, Ted Barnhill, Heather Mansfield, Jernigan, Aliyah Tavikolian, and Keith Reynolds. If you have any information on Sue Knight, you can email us at info-sue-night-at-gmail.com. If you or someone you know need support, go to apple.com-slash-here-to-help-for-resources. Special thanks to Dale and Rose Jolliff and Jeremy Thomas for sharing their stories. Follow an Apple Podcast. Thanks for listening.