Whispers in the dark, phenomenon that slipped past the logic, legends that refuse to die. When the unknown stirs, its trail leads to our podcast, So Supernatural. I'm Yvette Gentile. And I'm her sister, Rasha Pecoraro. Together, we explore all of the world's most bizarre mysteries. Listen to So Supernatural every Friday, wherever you get your podcasts. Our card this week is Tangie Sims, the Nine of Diamonds from Colorado. Tangie Sims was found murdered a week before Halloween in 1996 in Aurora. The lead detectives on her case described her death as brutally violent and fueled by anger. And from the beginning, they were committed to trying to find her killer. But even with biological evidence and one very strong suspect, Tangie's case ended up going cold. Now, in many episodes of The Deck, you have heard me talk about how detectives hope that new technology will help them revisit old evidence one day, how they're still waiting for new science to solve their case. But today, you're going to hear a different story about what happens when all that waiting finally pays off and investigators get the answers that they have been hoping for all along. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is The Deck. Detective Joe Petruccelli pulled into the parking lot of the Aurora Police Department just before 8 a.m. on October 24, 1996, ready for a regular day on the job. Which, as cliche as it sounds, normally started with a coffee and donuts. But as soon as he walked inside, he knew the day would be anything but regular. When I came into work, the boss says, we got a body in an alley in North Aurora. Go take care of it. Detective Petrocelli took the order and drove over to an alley in a residential part of Aurora. And as he got out of his car and walked toward where the police and paramedics had started to preserve the crime scene, he saw what they were gathered around. The young woman that they were all there for was lying in the dirt between trash cans and lilac bushes. Her clothes were half off. There was a black Raiders jacket and a blue t-shirt that were bunched up around her neck and her head, covering her face, while her jeans and a pair of multicolored boxers were pulled down. She'd been wearing underwear beneath those, but even that had been ripped and stretched, like someone had tried to tear them off. On her breasts, I saw vertical cuts that came across. Like if you're going to cut something, you would cut it like that. So I could see these vertical cuts on her chest, but I couldn't see her face. And none of those wounds he could see looked fatal. I didn't know exactly how she died at the time that I got there because most of her injuries were covered up with her jacket. We normally do not touch the body. The only one who's allowed to do that is the coroner. So he's on his way. So it'll be just a matter of him getting there and we'll be able to take it off and see what her other injuries are. So while he waited, he started taking stock of what he could see on her and the scene around her. She was missing one shoe but still wearing some jewelry, rings, a necklace, and a small gold watch that had stopped at 7.14. I'm looking for anything that would just strike me as unusual, something broken, something moved, something with blood on it. It wasn't long before he spotted exactly that. Near the woman's body, he found a spatter of blood on a trash bag. And as they fanned out even further, he spotted the woman's other shoe, which had been discarded in a bush further down the alley. And he didn't just take this shoe and call it a day. He let this clue lead him to the next. I mean, I had to get in that bush to find the blood. Get in that bush, as in crawl, on his hands and knees, where he found more crucial evidence. A few leaves spattered with red. Now, of course, we can't take the whole bush. So they took leaves. We picked the leaves that were bloody. The coroner arrived not long after this, and they were finally able to fully assess the woman in the alley. And to their shock, her wound suggested that this scene, if she was killed there, should have been a heck of a lot bloodier than the couple of drops on some leaves they found. And first thing we did is we pulled the jacket down. And at this point, I could see the puncture wounds to her head. she suffered a skull fracture from one of these. And her throat was cut twice. In addition to those wounds and the visible ones on her chest, the back of her head, scalp, face, and ear had been sliced with a knife multiple times. Her face and neck had bruises and her hands and fingers were cut. Cuts investigators believe were defensive wounds from trying to fend off or grab the knife that her attacker held. This is a brutal person. And I mean, I've seen a lot of murders, and I've seen a lot of murders that are overkills. So that usually tells me that we got a lot of anger going on here. And she had to be bleeding like crazy, especially with a knife, because the blood just goes everywhere, all on you, and it just goes everywhere. But blood wasn't everywhere. This was a disposal site. Footprints and drag marks indicated that maybe she'd been dragged into the alley after being transported in some sort of vehicle. Now, for all the blood evidence they didn't have without a crime scene, there was one piece of blood evidence they did have that might be more important than all the rest. There was a stain near this woman's hip, a smear that didn't look like it came from any of her wounds. The blood on her was the most important blood because it was on her. And the only way it could have been there is if he had reached down and touched her. And it was where her pants had been pulled down. And it was where the underwear was pulled apart. And that blood, when I saw it there, I knew just by looking at the blood and how it was on there, that he pulled her pants down. And he had cut himself and didn't know it. on her body was the blood of the murderer. We didn't know who he was. That was only speculation, of course. A lot more testing would need to be done before they could say that was certainty. And if it was their killers, a lot more investigating needed to be done before they had someone to compare it to. And to get to a suspect, they needed to first ID their victim, which was unusually easy in this case. In the woman's pockets was a birth certificate. for Tangie Sims. Officers ran that name through the system and found a criminal record. Arrest for prostitution and solicitation, possession of cocaine and larceny. And they had a mugshot. 25-year-old Tangie was their woman in the alley, and fingerprints taken during her autopsy that afternoon confirmed it. Along with her identity, the autopsy also revealed a few more critical pieces of information. One, it confirmed that it was the wound to her neck that ultimately killed her. Two, despite the exposed way in which she was found and the torn underwear, the Emmy said that it wasn't clear if she'd been sexually assaulted. And three, there was an additional wound, apart and away from the cut to her throat and the mutilation to her breasts, and this wound in particular stood out to Detective Petruccelli Whoever killed her had turned Tangie over and stabbed her just once on her butt What told me more about that than anything was the knife wound in her butt Why stab her in the butt if you're going to cut her throat? Detective Petruccelli wondered if this wound held some significance. And to find out, he had to start talking to people who knew Tangi. Now, Tangi's family was from Tennessee, where she'd lived most of her life. Detective Petrocelli heard from Tangie's friends that she had children, but it wasn't clear whether they'd ever come to Colorado with her or if they were back in Tennessee with Tangie's mom. He said he doesn't remember speaking to Tangie's mom directly, and we haven't been able to track down any of her family while reporting on this case either. But he learned that she had only been in Aurora for a few years, and given her arrest record, it was clear that some of her time in the city had been spent doing sex work. And he knew where to go to find the locals who might have known her, Colfax Street. That's the strip in Aurora where most sex workers regularly posted up. He was able to confirm that she regularly worked that route. And Tangie stood out because one of her legs had been severely injured when she was shot five times, which led to her having limited mobility and often using a wheelchair. So she was well known. And word of her murder was spreading fast. When Tangie got killed, the rumors went wild in that community. And everybody had an idea. Everybody knew who did it. Everybody said I should do this. Calls started pouring in with tips and information. Some credible, some not. Detective Petrocelli said that he vetted every lead. Half the battle was parsing out which stories were true and what parts of them were embellished or changed through the grapevine. But through all of it, he was able to narrow down the last confirmed sighting of Tangie to the night before she was found in that alley. A friend of hers named Dana Hill said that she had been sitting at a bus stop watching Tangie work, and she saw Tangie walk toward a parked green and black tractor-trailer truck. She didn't actually see her get in it, but when the truck left, she wasn't standing on the other side. So in other words, physically saw the truck pull up, physically saw Tangie talk to him, physically saw the truck leave, and Tangie was gone. Detective Petrucelli also heard that Tangie had gotten into other vehicles that night and then come back. So it's possible that Tangie came back alive and well and Dana just never saw her. But he couldn't find anyone else to tell him as much. And he couldn't find anyone who had information about that green and black truck or its driver. But plenty of people had information about a more regular figure in Tangie's life. Detective Petruccelli learned that Tangie got into a relationship sometime after moving to Aurora. Her boyfriend was a man named Dwayne Gregory. He was also allegedly her pimp, according to an officer who knew Tangie from Colfax Street. Now, most people didn't call this guy Dwayne, though. He went by Taz. And from what Tangie's friends were saying, their relationship wasn't a good one. Yeah, he's beat her before. In fact, she left him one time for him beating her up. They weren't getting along. He had already threatened to kill her. Police records show that Taz and Tangie both had DV-related arrests on their records. Taz specifically had multiple, including DV charges in June 1995, a little over a year before Tangie's murder. The police records we reviewed don't specify whether these arrests stemmed from incidents together or involved other people. But Detective Petruccelli said that Aurora police had responded to domestic violence incidents involving both Taz and Tangie as a couple. Plus, a friend of Tangie's told detectives that Tangie carried knives to protect herself from Taz. And a week before her murder, she apparently had gotten into a really bad fight with him. One where, according to a few of Tangie's friends, Tangie had stabbed Taz once. Right in the butt. The same place where Tangie herself had been stabbed. So now, that injury that once seemed so separate from the rest took on new meaning. I'm thinking, this is a, here, take that. You deserve this, you know? This started just as Detective Petruccelli's theory. But he needed to talk to Taz, who conveniently had an active warrant out for failure to appear in court, which meant that it was simple to arrest him and take him into custody for questioning. Taz seemed to have virtually no reaction to learning that his live-in girlfriend had just been found murdered. And he didn't have much to say. So detectives were left to hope that they could collect things that would do the talking for him. They took Taz's clothes and jewelry into evidence, scraped his fingernails, and even photographed some small cuts on his body. And then they got a search warrant for his home. They didn't find anything at his house that would help, just some of Tanji's stuff, but like, duh, she lived there. I mean, really, it was his blood that was going to tell them everything they needed to know. By now, they were starting to get results back on the blood collected at the crime scene. And Detective Petrucelli's hunch had been right. The smear of blood on Tangie's hip wasn't hers. Neither was the blood on the leaves or the trash bag. And it all appeared to belong to the same person. Petrucelli was pretty confident who that person was going to be. He was my best suspect. When I talked to my partners about this and everything, he thought he was too. I mean, and we're both thinking the same thing. Why would you stick her someplace like the butt? Unless you got one of those yourself. So you give me one, I'll give you one back. That's how I was thinking. At that time, I was real confident that it was Taz, and if I'd made a bet on it, I would have lost my money. Hi, everyone. Ashley here with some exciting news. The deck will not only land right here in your feed for you to listen to every week, but now we are also on camera for you to watch on YouTube. Now you can see the cards, the case files, and the people behind the coldest cases as I share these stories with you. So no matter where you get your podcasts, whether you prefer to listen, to watch, or maybe both, I will be there with stories you need to hear. Join me for The Deck on YouTube. Subscribe to AudioChuck Investigates on YouTube today. When Detective Petruccelli was told the test results were in, comparing the unknown blood in Tangie's crime scene to her violent boyfriend, he was willing to bet it was case closed. Good thing he didn't. His DNA was different. And so that tells me right there, you're barking up the wrong tree. This is the wrong guy. So just when he thought he was at the finish line, Petruccelli had to start back at square one. Maybe not square one. He at least had this unknown sample now. And he also had a specific Colorado law on his side. The statute, Colorado Criminal Procedure Rule 41.1, means that members of law enforcement have a significantly lower threshold to meet to gather certain evidence, including forensic evidence like blood or DNA swaps. In Colorado, an officer just needs to demonstrate to a judge that there's reasonable suspicion of involvement in a crime and be specific about what kind of evidence they need. Rule 41.1 means that for all the names that came up in his investigation, Detective Petrucelli was able to get samples to compare to the blood at the scene. And it wasn't just Taz's name that had come up. Turns out... Many people didn't like her. She had many enemies. And that was because she would say, hey, I could get you drugs, give me the money, I'll go get it, I'll be right back. She wouldn't come back. So he ran a number of tests. And I went for a year trying and searching and getting more DNA evidence and all of it that I got came back negative, negative, negative. And finally I ran out of leads and I had to park it for a while And until something got better or something come up or somebody knocked on my door saying hey Which spoiler alert didn happen Instead that where Tangi case went cold Until around 2008 or 2009, when another Aurora homicide detective named Steve Connor started going through cold cases to digitize them. And he was evaluating which ones might have good evidence to work now that they were in the new millennium. Tangi's case seemed prime for solving, if everything listed on paper was actually still in the evidence room. It's going to sound silly, but the first steps we take is to make sure that we still have the evidence. There were several cases where I went through and I'm going, where's the evidence? And no one knew. And the deal with that, too, is any blood evidence has to be refrigerated. And it can't be in a plastic bag because it'll, you know, decompose after a while and be basically useless. Unlike many of the cases we cover, all of Tangy's evidence was filed correctly, stored properly, ready to be tested against new suspects. And by new suspects, Detective Connor meant strangers. I was 100% certain that the suspects that Detective Priticelli looked at were not people that I was looking for based upon their submitting to blood tests, having the blood compared to the blood at the crime scene, and coming up with a negative. That just leaves you with a stranger. And they're the hardest homicide cases to solve are the stranger ones. In the rare case of a stranger homicide, it's hard to know where to start. CODIS is the easy answer, but when they passed the DNA sample they had onto the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to be entered, nothing came back. And without a solid lead pointing them at someone or in any real direction, they were again stalled. Until one eager detective came knocking in 2018, Mike Prince. He'd been working active homicide cases for a few years, But one day, he approached Detective Connor and asked for a cold case. I thought, yeah, sure, take this one. It's good. It's a good case. And he took it and ran with it. Detective Prince passed away in 2022, so we weren't able to talk to him about his work. But Detective Connor worked closely with him, and so he was able to tell us how Prince took this case from stalled to solved. Detective Connor knew forensic testing had evolved rapidly since that blood had first been tested. Now they could ask the lab to do much more advanced searches with their suspect's DNA. Step one was to check the state database to see if that DNA profile matched anyone who was in the Colorado system. But no dice. They already knew there wasn't anything in CODIS, but just like their state database was separate, they knew other states had their own databases too. So they began asking neighboring states to run their sample. And when that yielded nothing, they even asked Interpol. By 2018, familial DNA searching was the new hot thing, so they tried that too. And that didn't get them anywhere either. But he had one last hope. If you're deep in the true crime world, this won't be news to you, but familial DNA searching was the predecessor to what is mostly used now, investigative genetic genealogy. Now, Connor had to get a little creative to fund this. No budget at the time. But he knew some folks at Metro Denver Crime Stoppers, which had a program offering rewards for info that helped solve cold cases. So he pitched the idea that maybe those funds could be put toward DNA testing. And he got the green light. And what do you know? Bada bing, bada boom. I mean, it took a little longer than that, obviously, but for purposes of our story, boom. He received a report back from a genetic genealogist named Joan Hanlon. And it was good news. She drilled it down to a pretty small group of people in North Dakota. It was narrowed down to this family. And they were all in the Fargo, Bismarck area. So he said, our guy's going to be up here. I said, we're going to North Dakota, I guess. So in August of 2019, the two detectives boarded a flight to go see a man named Nels Backman. The only real plan we had was we kind of stay aloof, knock on the front door and hope he lets us in. It was a loose plan, but it worked. Nels answered the door and agreed to talk to detectives. We didn't tell him initially it was a homicide case, just a crime that occurred in Colorado. and the person we're looking for is not you, but it's possibly someone related to you. And this seemed to pique Nels' interest quite a bit. Because it turns out this guy was very passionate about genealogy. He even had made a full family tree. Would you like to see it? Of course they want to see it. Detective Connor said that when Nels stepped away to grab it, he threw a glance at Detective Prince. We looked and laughed. I mean, we go, you don't have to really say anything. You just give him a look and just start laughing like, this guy's done the work for us. And then he comes back in, you know, full cop mode at that point. Both detectives knew it was highly likely that one of these names in this book was their killer. But instead of guessing blindly, they put the question to Nels. If you were to pick somebody in this circle of family here to have killed somebody, who would you pick? Without hesitation, Nels just looks and points and says, this guy right here. Hi, everyone. Ashley here with some exciting news. The deck will not only land right here in your feed for you to listen to every week, but now we are also on camera for you to watch on YouTube. Now you can see the cards, the case files, and the people behind the coldest cases as I share these stories with you. So no matter where you get your podcasts, whether you prefer to listen, to watch, or maybe both, I will be there with stories you need to hear. Join me for The Deck on YouTube. Subscribe to AudioChuck Investigates on YouTube today. When Detective Connor looked down to see where Nell's finger was pointing on the Backman family tree, he saw a man named Wes Backman. Wes. He said he's a violent person, he gets drunk, he's on drugs, he attacks people, he's just a bad guy. He's an over-the-road trucker. Which immediately stuck out to Detective Connor, because he remembered that statement from Tangie's friend. The last person to see Tangie alive was her good friend. and she had seen Tangie enter into, I think, a green and black semi-tractor, no trailer, on the night that she disappeared. That was where her focus was on the tractor trailer. Nels hadn't been in touch with Wes in a while, so he couldn't tell detectives where to find him. But he did get them one step closer. He said if anyone knows where Wes is, it would be Wes's sister. Her name is Beta Jo Wall. Try talking to her. So first thing the next day, detectives went to Bismarck and knocked on Beta Joe's door. And she said the same thing. Wes, if anybody killed anybody, it was Wes and the entire family. So we right then and there knew it was probably him. She told them that Wes had threatened their own mother with a knife in the past. Yes, he was a long-haul trucker. And you know what? He may have even lived in Colorado at one point. But with all this good news indicating that they were on the right track, came one crushing blow. When detectives asked where Wes was nowadays, his sister told them that he was deceased. That didn't mean they were completely out of luck, though. They could still exhume his body to get a DNA sample. And then I said, well, can you tell us where he's buried? He was cremated. Strike two. But then as we're talking more, we found out that Wes had a daughter in Idaho. It only took a couple of months before Connor and Prince were in Idaho sitting across from Stephanie Shoup Wes Backman daughter They told her that her dad may be a suspect in a homicide And just like other family members they'd spoken to, she didn't seem at all surprised. And we said, well, she was stabbed to death. Doesn't surprise me. I mean, just flat. I mean, it was really no shock. Detectives told Stephanie that the only way they could know for sure if her father was responsible was if they compared her DNA to the blood left at the crime scene. They explained that they had the kit with them and all they needed to do was a simple swab. Detective Connor said that she gave them a look and then told them to do it. So we put everything into an envelope and then it was odd. She didn't say, call and let me know if it's him. it's call me and let me know when it's him. She got that call just over a week later. Wesley was the father of Stephanie and also the person who contributed to the blood that was left behind at the crime scene. Detective Connor said that when Detective Prince got the report, he could see a mix of emotions. I could see there was some gratification, some satisfaction, disappointment to the fact that we couldn't go out and physically arrest him and interview him and charge him. On one hand, Detective Prince was able to call Tangi's family and finally give them some answers. According to Detective Connor, Detective Prince notified Tangi's mom, who had taken care of Tangi's son and daughter, who were quite young when she was killed. He could tell them with certainty who had killed Tangi. But that also came with the knowledge that they'd never get to face him in court, and they would never know why. This solve came with one of those lessons that Detective Petrucelli had to learn the hard way, one that he hopes other detectives will take note of. You know, I just got this tunnel vision, which in my business you're not supposed to have. But the thing was is that I was so set on finding her killer and Taz just fit the killer profile that I wanted him to fit. And it came right down to the thing that he had nothing to do with it. I'm glad that we know who did it because we'll put so much work into it. But all it tells me is that the person that I thought did it wasn't the person that did it. But the good thing about it is we know who the right person is. But that doesn't mean all their questions are answered. They actually got some new ones. After confirmation that Wes Backman was their killer, detectives couldn't help but wonder, how likely was it that Tangy was the only person he ever killed? I mean, they knew he'd been a long-haul trucker after leaving the military, moving around often. So tracking him turned out to be next to impossible. I mean, trucking in the 90s was even more of a Wild West than it is now. There was often no boss to report to, no time card to punch, just long drives and lots of truck stops along the way. The connection between crime and long-haul trucking has been documented in multiple cases of convicted serial killers. And some of those killers have picked up their victims at truck stops and then killed them inside their trucks in some other location. Prosecutors and investigators have gone so far as to call some of these trucks mobile crime labs or traveling torture chambers driving along America's highways. A former assistant director of the FBI, Frank Figluzzi, recently released a book that details the connection the agency has drawn between long-haul truck drivers and serial murders. The FBI even has a dedicated task force, the Highway Serial Killings Initiative, that is solely focused on tracking murders committed by long-haul truckers. The Bureau publicly acknowledged the initiative back in 2009 because, as Frank writes in his book, quote, there were too many bodies across too many jurisdictions and not enough answers, end quote. An analyst from that task force told Frank that the FBI has compiled a list of at least 850 murders that they believe were committed by long-haul truckers, and that today there are hundreds of unsolved killings that were likely committed by truckers, including multiple serial killers. In his book Long Haul, Frank explains how women involved in sex work are easy targets for serial killers who work as truckers. Frank wrote that these two communities of people exist in this intersection of being transient, untraceable, and oftentimes isolated. Known serial killers who killed while working as long-haul truckers often picked up their victims in one town, assaulted or killed them in another town or state, and then sometimes across several, and then they would leave their bodies in yet another city or state. Frank's work illuminates how someone like Wes Backman escaped detection in Tangie's case and why it's not far-fetched to think that he may have other victims. Detectives Connor and Prince had a gut reaction that gave them the same suspicion. They found it hard to imagine that this was Wes's first time doing something this violent or his only one. So Detective Connor and Detective Prince entered the case into the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program database. IDing Wes and listing details of Tangie's murder. That sends a alert out nationwide. Hey, here's what's going on in Colorado. With this type of homicide on this date, we're looking for anything similar. They geared themselves up for calls to just start streaming in. But the phone never rang. No one ever contacted them to connect Wes to any other victims. Detective Connor admits that he's not so sure anymore that a call like that will ever come. And as more years tick by without any hits in CODIS, he thinks it's less and less likely that Wes has other victims out there. Could it pop someday? Maybe. I mean, I have my hopes, but I'm having a lot more doubts than hopes. But Detective Connor wants you to rack your brain for any unsolved cases that might be linked to Wes. Someone whose family member has a, you know, a friend or a relative who met their, you know, met their demise under similar circumstances. Maybe they could inspire that agency to look into it a little deeper. And that agency might not be anywhere near Aurora. The fact that he was that mobile for that many years, it could be anywhere. In the back of my mind, I'm thinking, there's a lot of missing persons out there, a lot of unidentified bodies out there. Could he be involved in that? Sure. Can I prove it? Probably not. But it's a possibility. Oh, there's always a possibility. If you or someone you know is looking for answers in an unsolved case, and you think there might be a connection to Tangi's killer, Wes Bathman, Contact Aurora Police Cold Case Detective Jason McDonald at 303-739-6013. We'll also put his email in the show notes. And if you want to remain anonymous, you can call the Metro Denver Crime Stoppers tip line at 720-913-7867. The Deck is an Audio Chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about The Deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com. I think Chuck would approve. Hi, everyone. Ashley Flowers here. If you're like me, diving into true crime is about more than just the details of a case. It is also about giving a voice to the victims and understanding the lives behind the headlines. And this is what host Kylie Lowe does each week on her podcast, Dark Down East. Every Thursday, Kylie dives into New England's most gripping mysteries, uncovering stories in a way you won't hear anywhere else. And she digs through archives, connects with families and shines a light on the voices that deserve to be heard. From cold cases to moments of long-awaited justice, Dark Down East is the perfect blend of investigations and honoring the stories behind them. You can find Dark Down East now, wherever you're listening.
