[SPEAKER_03]: If you saw her walking her dogs in the Minnesota snow, we're shopping at Fleet Farm and faded jeans in a winter coat.
[SPEAKER_03]: You probably wouldn't think, warrior.
[SPEAKER_03]: But Jill Houston has spent the last three decades doing something most people would have given up a long time ago.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like a modern-day Don Quixote, tilting it windmills in the shape of courthouses in case files, Jill has chased justice for her neighbor Pearl, with nothing but her memory, her grief, and her relentless belief the Pearl was murdered.
[SPEAKER_03]: She's lost everything along the way, her health, her family, her peace of mind, but she refuses to let go.
[SPEAKER_03]: She's written letters, tracked down retired firemen dug through forensic reports and confronted county officials who'd rather the case stay buried, not because she loves the fight, but because she believes they're still truth to be found.
[SPEAKER_03]: But what is truth, and how do we know it when we see it?
[SPEAKER_03]: In an age of misinformation, conflicting memories and stories that bend depending on who's telling them.
[SPEAKER_03]: This podcast is about more than just what happened to Pearl.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's about the nature of truth itself, how it gets lost, how it gets buried, and what it takes, what it costs to dig it up again.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm Ryan Dixon, and this is the true story of Jill Houston, and her impossible quest to make the world listen.
[SPEAKER_03]: From Boyd's Media, this is murdered by mistake.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's December 1993 in Crow Wing County, Minnesota.
[SPEAKER_03]: The ground is frozen solid.
[SPEAKER_03]: The roads are slick with eyes, smoke curls from chimneys and towns like Brainard, Nesua, and Cross Lake.
[SPEAKER_03]: out here, people live by habit, morning coffee, evening chores, church on Sunday.
[SPEAKER_03]: The kind of place where the days are short, the nights are long, and the cold creeps into your bones, whether you like it or not.
[SPEAKER_03]: Here's how Crowing County Attorney Don Ryan, a major player in our story explains it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Growing counties located in central Minnesota, a lot of people will consider it something north, but if you picture the state of Minnesota in your head, and you'd be hard-pressed to put a county more central than we actually are centralized in the state itself.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're a very, first area in the summers and action in the winter's now, a lot of lakes that type of thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: Our base population, I believe, is right around in our essence,
[SPEAKER_04]: But in the summer months for the big week and a month, that will triple if not quite Rupa, with all the people coming up to enjoy the resorts and their cabins and stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Crow Wing isn't flashy, it's not loud.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a county of stoic faces and tight-lipped families.
[SPEAKER_03]: Problems get handled quietly.
[SPEAKER_03]: People don't go digging.
[SPEAKER_03]: And when something bad happens, folks look away or they pretend it didn't happen at all.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the world Jill Houston lived in.
[SPEAKER_03]: a nurse, a horsewoman, a mother, twice divorce, scraping by but proud, her farms sat on a quiet stretch of road just outside of town, one driveway away from her elderly neighbor Pearl.
[SPEAKER_03]: Jill had seen a lot in her life, but nothing could prepare her for what she saw that night.
[SPEAKER_03]: Nothing could prepare her for what would be taken from her, or for how hard it would be to convince anyone to believe her.
[SPEAKER_03]: Because in Crowing County, truth moves slower than snow melt.
[SPEAKER_03]: And justice, if it comes at all, comes quiet.
[SPEAKER_00]: The night of Pearl's death, I was driving home from the hospital after working a double shift.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was 25 degrees below zero, and I was so thankful that my truck started.
[SPEAKER_00]: Going by my neighbor's house, I always looked after them and I slowed my truck down as I came close to my driveway.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I went by Pearl's house, there was a flicker of light in the kitchen window.
[SPEAKER_00]: and that was odd.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her house was always dark.
[SPEAKER_00]: There also was a white car part behind a pine tree, off of the driveway, which was unusual.
[SPEAKER_00]: The branches of the pine tree covered the windshield, but I could see the headlights of the car and they were round.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought at the time I should call Pearl's son but then Pearl's granddaughter has a white car and it was close to Christmas and I felt that she was probably home for the holidays.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I got home I put on my warm down clothing over my uniform and went out to the barn.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had two horses in a pond behind Pearls' house.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were the two stallions that I brought back from Oklahoma.
[SPEAKER_00]: They had blankets on and they needed to be fed.
[SPEAKER_00]: The horses' names were timber buck and timber chip.
[SPEAKER_00]: To the end of the shed there was the gate that went into their pan.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they weren't there.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're always waiting for me, but something was wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I poured the buckets into the grain and I went looking for my horses.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I found them.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were frightened, they were scared.
[SPEAKER_00]: They blew the air out of the nose.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were trying to smell the danger.
[SPEAKER_00]: Their tails were up, their heads arched.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I had to go and find out what was wrong, what was that was bothering them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I walked down down to the end of the fence line.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I got to the fence, all of a sudden, the lights came on in the house.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I could hear arguing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could tell that it was a man in a woman, but I couldn't make out what they were seeing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this was totally unnatural because this family was not confrontational, but I could hear, I could hear Pearl's voice, but I didn't know what she said.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had no idea what had happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: All I remembered was I was scared, but I did not know what I was scared of.
[SPEAKER_03]: Later that night Jill set her along for 9 a.m. just like she always did, but something felt off.
[SPEAKER_03]: There was a gap in her memory she couldn't explain, 30 minutes gone, vanished from her mind like smoke in the cold night air.
[SPEAKER_03]: She knew she'd come home, fed the horses, walked the property, but between midnight and 1230 there was nothing.
[SPEAKER_03]: Just static, just silence, like someone had blacked out a reel of film.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yet, if she hoped sleep would silence her turmoil, she was very wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was my cousin, they had heard on the CB radio that there was a fire at Pearl's house.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she called to tell me that maybe I should go over there and help.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm trained in cardiac life support.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I told my cousin, I can't go over there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she was furious with me, why I wouldn't go.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just kept telling her, I couldn't go.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I saw the fire truck go by.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I told my cousin while the fire truck is on the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hung up and probably 5-10 minutes later, she called me back to tell me that Pearl was dead.
[SPEAKER_03]: Immediately after getting the news, Jill called her twin sister Jane.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was living in Minneapolis and an apartment, and I got this phone call.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Joe was just sobbing, just sobbing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she said that, it should have been me, it should have been me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she said, what is wrong with you?
[SPEAKER_01]: And she said, it should have been me, it should have been me.
[SPEAKER_03]: Even now, Jill isn't quite sure why she told her sister this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know why I said that.
[SPEAKER_00]: In my mind, I was uncomfortable and I just told them it was supposed to have been me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know I was really uneasy when I worked to work at noon.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was obsessed with trying to find out I'll Pearl Ride.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I talked to the secretary at the desk, asking her if she knew how Pearl had died.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had to know there was something inside me that I just had to know how she died.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the next day I went over to the gas station and talked to Pearl's daughter-in-law, and asked her right out how did Pearl die.
[SPEAKER_00]: and she told me that she was up baking and she had a heart attack and when she fell her clothing caught fire.
[SPEAKER_00]: I felt an extreme sense of release.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't have to worry anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't have to know anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just like the the way to the world was lifted off my shoulders.
[SPEAKER_00]: And from that point on, I never remembered anything about Pearl.
[SPEAKER_00]: until the end of May.
[SPEAKER_03]: We never really know the people around us, neighbors, friends, even the strangers we pass in small towns or bythings from.
[SPEAKER_03]: Any one of them can end up changing the course of our lives forever.
[SPEAKER_03]: Sometimes it's in ways we could never imagine.
[SPEAKER_03]: In this story, a single friendship, a chance encounter, even a simple exchange of trust would ripple outward, linking Jill Houston's life to pearls in a way that would prove
[SPEAKER_03]: But before we return to Pearl's death, I want you to hear from the people who knew Pearl, because to understand the danger that crept into Jill's life, you first have to understand the woman at the center of it all, and what she meant to those around her.
[SPEAKER_03]: Bill Cromett was one of Jill's oldest friends and also someone who fondly remembered Pearl.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yes, Pearl was a relatively large lady, not obese, but heavy.
[SPEAKER_05]: She had terrible arthritis in her fingers, as I recall in her last years, and it was probably from needing bread and making up all those fine desserts.
[SPEAKER_05]: She was a nice looking lady, always well-kept.
[SPEAKER_05]: When I was about 14 or 12, we had a summer cabin on White Face Lake, which was about two miles from where Pearl lived.
[SPEAKER_05]: Pearl was the pastry cook at Piny Ridge Lodge.
[SPEAKER_05]: And the owners of the lodge had a son my age, so I spent a lot of time over in the summers over at Piney Ridge's lodge, and that's where I first met Pearl.
[SPEAKER_05]: She would make extra desserts for the guests, and then my friend Mickey, and I would sneak in the back door of the kitchen and Pearl would always have cinnamon rolls or pie, or some kind of treats that she'd slip to us, unbeknownst to
[SPEAKER_05]: My mother, who was the owner of the lodge, and that I would say I met a pearl there when I was about twelve.
[SPEAKER_05]: I would describe Pearl as a very loving lady.
[SPEAKER_05]: She was a bit a bit stoic I would say to the outsiders, but if you got to know her, she was very sweet.
[SPEAKER_05]: As time went on, and I got into high school, and we'd moved out to a white-free sleigh of in a full-time basis, and often, when I'd go to and from town, I'd stop at Pearl's house, because I knew she always had pastries on this shelf, and she was always happy to give me a glass of milk in a pastry as I passed by.
[SPEAKER_03]: Jill's first encounter with Pearl was as a teenager when they worked together.
[SPEAKER_00]: I met Pearl.
[SPEAKER_00]: just before my junior year in high school.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got a job at Tiny Ridge Resort about 10 miles from my home.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pearl was the head cook there and I was a waitress and she helped me with my job.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had to
[SPEAKER_00]: memorize all of my orders.
[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't write anything down and had to come into the kitchen and verbally give her all my orders.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I managed to get through that in the summer.
[SPEAKER_03]: According to Jill's twin sister Jane, as they continue to work together, Jill and Pearl's bond deepen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just a sweet heart, sweet grandma is like how I saw Pearl, just a sweet heart, so soft spoken.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we do anything for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, going to church and she's very sweet.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was nothing aggressive about Pearl at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: She was like a grandma to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, Joe loved her.
[SPEAKER_03]: And there is no better moment that exemplifies the quiet strong familial bond, Jill and Pearl shared than this.
[SPEAKER_00]: One day, she made a whole gallon of mayonnaise.
[SPEAKER_00]: It took her all day to make it, and she asked me to take it to the cooler.
[SPEAKER_00]: I picked up the gallon of mayonnaise, walked to the cooler, and when I reached for the door, I dropped the mayonnaise onto the cement floor.
[SPEAKER_00]: I felt just terrible as I walked back into the kitchen and I just looked at her and she smiled and never said a word.
[SPEAKER_03]: After working together, Jill and Pearl lost touch until years later when they became neighbors.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I moved back to Pine River in May of 1989,
[SPEAKER_00]: I moved right next door to Pearl.
[SPEAKER_00]: She came over that week with a plan of her fresh homemade donuts and welcomed me to the neighborhood.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hadn't seen her for 30 some years and it was so nice to see my former friend.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now older, Pearl still had her indomitable spirit even if her body was fighting against the tide of aging.
[SPEAKER_05]: She had terrible arthritis in her fingers as I recall in her last years and it was probably from needing bread and making all those fine desserts.
[SPEAKER_03]: Despite living next door to one another, Jill and Pearl never redeveloped the bond they shared so many years ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though Pearl and I were neighbors, she'd have real close to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't get to see her much, but I did see her family, and I know that she was well-respected in the neighbor fund.
[SPEAKER_00]: And greatly missed when she lost her life.
[SPEAKER_03]: And as Dawn crept into that tragic night, Pearl's home was now a crime scene.
[SPEAKER_03]: One of the first officers to arrive was a young deputy named DJ Downey.
[SPEAKER_03]: At the time, he was just another uniform on the scene.
[SPEAKER_03]: The Downey wouldn't stay in the background for long.
[SPEAKER_03]: He'd go on to become an investigator and eventually one of the central figures in this story.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I was actually a patrol deputy at the time and we got the call in the morning because there was some kind of delivery guy.
[SPEAKER_06]: I don't know if it was UPS or something along the lines that went to the house and observed that there was something arrived there and then he called it in and
[SPEAKER_06]: the fire department was called, but the fire was out.
[SPEAKER_06]: It wasn't an active fire when we got there.
[SPEAKER_06]: And so the fire was pretty much isolated to just the kitchen area of the residents.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I believe this was, you think I would even like to the day, but it seemed like it was just prior to Christmas or right after Christmas.
[SPEAKER_06]: The information that we had was that Pearl lived there alone, Elderly Lady, had been widowed.
[SPEAKER_06]: She had been with her family the night before, had kind of a family gathering, had her over for dinner, she had been dropped off and had stated that it was her plan to be doing some baking that night.
[SPEAKER_06]: I would say,
[SPEAKER_06]: Well, she would have been unrecognizable.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, her hair, those types of any hair on her body, would have been burned, she was definitely not just succumb to smoke inhalation, but had some pretty bad burning to her body.
[SPEAKER_03]: While Jill would eventually challenge some of the circumstances of the investigation, even early on there was one element that seemed strange to the officers on the scene.
[SPEAKER_06]: I think the fact that the fire didn't engulf the entire house, I mean obviously I'm not a fireman, I've never claimed to be a fireman and I am aware that you can have circumstances where the oxygen is, it's all burned out by the fire that's there and it kind of puts a cell phone.
[SPEAKER_06]: Obviously anytime there's a death in a fire, we have it investigated, investigators
[SPEAKER_06]: But I do know the pan was in the oven with the char broiled food that had been in there like a baking something.
[SPEAKER_06]: I can't remember if it was cupcakes or cookies or something.
[SPEAKER_06]: I think at the time without it was possible there was like a can.
[SPEAKER_06]: Can't remember if the can of bacon grease or something like that, maybe she had been cooking something on the oven and was as a greased fire that just kind of got that I had very quick on her.
[SPEAKER_03]: After Pearl's death, her body was sent for autopsy.
[SPEAKER_03]: The clinical next step in what the authorities still considered an accident.
[SPEAKER_03]: Late out on a cold table under fluorescent light, her final story was meant to be read in tissue and bone, in smoke-stained lungs and fragile remains, but even under the examiner's scalpel, the truth of what happened that night would not easily reveal itself.
[SPEAKER_06]: death of investigation, one of one of fire deaths is is they're trying or set to the esophagus, which would tell you that the person was alive at the time of the fire.
[SPEAKER_06]: And because if they're alive at the time of the fire, then you have to have either someone, uh, some kind of, uh, an injury.
[SPEAKER_06]: that incapacitated them, or a gunshot, or suffocation, you know, you can even find Petitia in the eyes, even on a burn body.
[SPEAKER_06]: So, and in that case, there was a shot in the airway of Pearl and, and so, in a case like that, we would kind of let the circumstances lead us to
[SPEAKER_03]: and unlike so many other ways to commit crime, there's always an elusive mystery to fire.
[SPEAKER_06]: I can tell you that every death in a fire, you can make it seem suspicious, because fire does what it's gonna do.
[SPEAKER_06]: There's so many components, the oxygen, and what kind of things were the kindling for the fire and all those sorts of things.
[SPEAKER_06]: So fire deaths,
[SPEAKER_06]: They're very tricky.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's not like you can ever say 100% let's you have a video of videoing someone You know when the fire occurs and then going down You're always gonna have people say well, there's a chance that someone else started the fire.
[SPEAKER_06]: So this scene other than the fact that I didn't burn the whole house down I don't remember anything standing out in my mind
[SPEAKER_06]: fall play during the initial investigation, nothing was ever considered.
[SPEAKER_03]: At the time, the police dismissed Pearl's death as nothing more than a tragic accident.
[SPEAKER_03]: The case was closed, the questions buried, and life moved on.
[SPEAKER_03]: Jill tried to accept that version of events, pushing aside her and ease the way one forces a door shut against the wind.
[SPEAKER_03]: For months, she spoke of it little, thought of it less, but four months later during a chancing counter with Pearls' daughter in La Carole, the silence broke.
[SPEAKER_03]: Memories she had pressed down, images she had tried to forget came rushing back with a force she could no longer ignore.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it wasn't until me of 1994, when I went back to the gas station to fill up my
[SPEAKER_00]: that I said to her daughter-in-law that I was going to Missouri and she said, well, have a good trip.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I told her, I would because I wasn't going near Rochester where my ex husband lived.
[SPEAKER_00]: And her, she said in her deep voice, does he know where you live?
[SPEAKER_00]: Does he know what color house you have?
[SPEAKER_00]: And that kind of threw me back.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I got into my truck.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as I was driving home, I was getting more agitated.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was actually getting angry at Carol.
[SPEAKER_00]: By the time I got home, I was crying.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I went to the phone and I called her up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I screamed at her.
[SPEAKER_00]: I said, you told me she died of a heart attack.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Carol said, no Jill, we just wanted people to know that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we told them that she was uppaking and that she died of a heart attack.
[SPEAKER_00]: And from that point on, my mind was just engrossed in trying to remember what happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I made my trip to Missouri, and all the way down I was talking to my friend.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then it dawned on her.
[SPEAKER_03]: There had been two minute pearls house that night.
[SPEAKER_03]: The memory was fragmented little more than a flash, but it was undeniable.
[SPEAKER_03]: Two men.
[SPEAKER_03]: That was all she could recall, yet it was enough to change everything.
[SPEAKER_03]: When Jill returned home, the weight of it pressed so heavily that she knew she had to act.
[SPEAKER_03]: She needed to call the sheriff's office to make an appointment with the deputy and finally tell someone what she remembered, that there were two minute Pearl's house the night she died.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're still, she suddenly realized she knew who they were.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I started to remember the two guys at Pearl's house, I gradually remembered,
[SPEAKER_00]: the one in particular, the short die was actually a part of my husband's.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the other guy I had met, but I couldn't place him right at first.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I figured that this recognizing them that it would have to have been my ex husband that sent them to Pearl's house when they went to the wrong house.
[SPEAKER_03]: Jill immediately leapt into action.
[SPEAKER_03]: From Carol, Pearls' daughter-in-law, she was told who was in charge of the case.
[SPEAKER_03]: Jill had drove immediately to meet the investigator, but a motion soon overtook her.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we got to the police station, I couldn't talk.
[SPEAKER_00]: I sat there crying.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I must have made a fool of myself because I wanted to tell him so bad who was there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had so much trouble talking, I guess I was hysterical.
[SPEAKER_03]: But slowly, through tears and gas, the truth Jill had buried surfaced.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the house, I recognized the voice of Pearl, but not the man that she was talking to.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could tell she was upset, but I couldn't make out what she was saying.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then a small man came out of the house.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he walked to the end of the deck, and he lit a cigarette, and then he walked back towards the door, the south, on the south side of the house.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was like he was trying to hear what was going on in the house because he would walk back and forth towards the door.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then all of a sudden there was a huge explosion.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a crack, and the whole sky lit up.
[SPEAKER_00]: It sounded like somebody had slammed a screen door.
[SPEAKER_03]: For the police, the case was settled.
[SPEAKER_03]: Pearl's death written off as a tragic accident.
[SPEAKER_03]: So when Jill suddenly returned with a new story, they were surprised, even suspicious.
[SPEAKER_03]: Why had she stayed silent for so long?
[SPEAKER_03]: Why did her memories change now?
[SPEAKER_03]: Crowing County Attorney Don Ryan says such occurrences aren't all that out of the ordinary.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I can say that we have had other cases where people have blocked things out if you will.
[SPEAKER_04]: Using my terminology, not the medical professionals terminology, and then at a later point, we'll remember something, or they might
[SPEAKER_04]: remember a little bit up front and then they'll remember more later and I know there's all kinds of debate about how in there's evidence of support that you know you can change your person's memory or recollection based on how you question it and you give them the data and particularly if you're an expert in that kind of area and stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I would say it's really common but it's not unusual for someone to have delayed recollection as far as I'm concerned.
[SPEAKER_03]: But to DJ Downey and the other investigators, Jill's news stories seemed highly improbable.
[SPEAKER_06]: From reading the reports in the case file, a Larson, who was the investigator at the time, he's not retired.
[SPEAKER_06]: He was contacted by Ms. Houston.
[SPEAKER_06]: I want to say four to six months after this fire occurred and the information she had to share with us was all based upon a dream that she stated she had.
[SPEAKER_06]: And, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh uh, uh uh, uh uh, uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh
[SPEAKER_06]: I can say that that's not necessarily the most credible thing that we have to go on when we're looking to open up a death investigation or re-open up a death investigation.
[SPEAKER_06]: But I do know that Bessgator Larson tried to take what she had to say, but weighed on the facts that she was giving her at the time.
[SPEAKER_06]: And it was his determination as well as the Colony Attorney at that time that nothing
[SPEAKER_06]: until later.
[SPEAKER_06]: Obviously with trauma, you can have repressed memories that will come out, but this isn't a situation where Miss Houston said, oh, I didn't hear anything that night or came forward that night or had concerns that night or it wasn't just a matter of her memory coming back to her, she inserted her into this.
[SPEAKER_06]: resorted herself in this investigation, all of a sudden, six months later, and was like, hey, and then again, it wasn't, this is my memory.
[SPEAKER_06]: It was, I had a dream that this was my memory.
[SPEAKER_03]: Jill's passionate belief that Pearl was murdered was not enough to move forward in the eyes of the law, according to Crowing County Attorney Don Ryan.
[SPEAKER_03]: While not the county attorney at the time of Pearl's death, he still sheds light on the steps taken to classify a death as murder.
[SPEAKER_04]: I need to as the county attorney and the head prosecutor for Croring County, at least for felonies and things like that, make determination whether ethically we believe we can prosecute someone because we have a sufficient evidence, some of that will.
[SPEAKER_04]: be a determination of the credibility of evidence, not necessarily the credibility of an individual, just because we believe the evidence doesn't support what individual ASA and but is more support of what individual BSA and for instance, doesn't mean that we're being negative in respect to any individual.
[SPEAKER_04]: But we have to weigh the evidence, what can we prove in court is there put beyond a reasonable doctor prosecute.
[SPEAKER_03]: For the law enforcement of Crow Wing County, Jill's story did not meet those markers, Pearl's death remained accidental.
[SPEAKER_03]: For Don Ryan, dealing with people like Jill was just part of what came with being a prosecutor.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not unusual for people to come in and push.
[SPEAKER_04]: In fact, some of the hardest things for any county attorney but for me to do is when I have to meet with someone and explain to them why I'm not going to prosecute the person that just ran their mother over who was jogging at sunset in a dark suit and ran out in the farm of a car and the person hadn't been drinking and wasn't on their phone and just didn't have time to react in this.
[SPEAKER_04]: The horrible tragedy was just not something that's
[SPEAKER_04]: Unfortunately, it happens that comes with the territory, but we've also prosecuted a lot of murders in my 30 years as well.
[SPEAKER_03]: But as unbelievable as Jill's story first sounds, could it be true?
[SPEAKER_03]: Could Pearl's death have been miscategorized as an accident instead of murder, and had her murderers gone to the wrong place?
[SPEAKER_03]: A terrible mistake of address and chance when their true target was Jill,
[SPEAKER_03]: Were still, could the mastermind behind this murder be the person Jill had loved more than anyone?
[SPEAKER_03]: The man who had haunted her long after their marriage ended, the one figure who terrified her more than anyone else.
[SPEAKER_03]: Her ex-husband, Ed.
[SPEAKER_03]: Next time, unmertered by mistake.
[SPEAKER_03]: Men, lies, and money.
[SPEAKER_03]: How Jill's marriage to Ed unraveled and how the financial betrayal that nearly ruined her bay have set the stage for murder.
[SPEAKER_02]: Murdered by Mistake is a production of Voyage Media, the series is produced by Nat Mendole and Dan Bettamor, executive produced by Jill Houston, investigated, lead-reported, and written by Ryan Dixon.
[SPEAKER_02]: Edited, sound design, and mixed by Nick, Mist city, original music by Carlos Gonzalez.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're enjoying the show, please give us a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts or anywhere you're listening.
[SPEAKER_02]: And subscribe now for future episodes.
[SPEAKER_02]: The podcast is based on Jill's book of the same name, which is available on Amazon.
[SPEAKER_02]: A link is in the show notes.
[SPEAKER_02]: murdered by mistake is based on the testimony and memoir of Jill Houston, as well as independent reporting by Ryan Dixon.
[SPEAKER_02]: At every step of the way, we've attempted to corroborate Jill's account, and you'll hear that in interviews with people who disagree with her version of events.
[SPEAKER_02]: Ultimately, the truth is up to you, the listener.
[SPEAKER_02]: Our role is to give you all the information and let you decide.