Two Unsolved Cases on Josh's Birthday

Stafford County, Virginia, 1990. A property owner clearing brush found a human skull under a fence line beside a country road. No other bones. No cause of death. No name. It took thirty one years, a genealogy lab in Texas, and DNA from a father and a brother before anyone could say who he was. The road he was found beside is called Joshua Road. Shane went looking for cases that landed on Josh's birthday, and that is what he came back with.

Kim and Shane set this one up as a surprise. Cupcakes, a handmade ring from a Florida artisan, a card printed on plantable wildflower seed paper, and nine recorded birthday messages from listeners who have talked with us for years without ever hearing each other's voices. Then Shane runs the bit he ran for Kim in episode 180: two real cases that share the date. An ocean apart, on the same day in 1990, a man in England vanished out of a parked car and a skull turned up in a Virginia field.

Timeline of Events

September 28, 1990: Andrew Bedford, 27, of Huntingdon, is last seen early that evening eating takeaway in a light blue Ford Cortina on Factory Bank in Ramsey, Cambridgeshire. His girlfriend expected him home by six. September 28, 1990: The same day, in Stafford County, Virginia, a property owner working a field finds a human skull under a fence line beside Joshua Road. No other remains are ever recovered. September 30, 1990: Cambridgeshire police arrest three people on suspicion of Andrew's murder. None are charged. 1990: The Smithsonian examines the Virginia skull and reports a white male, fifteen to eighteen, dead one to three years before he was found. Cause and manner of death are left undetermined. 1992: Police drain a pond on Field Road in Ramsey after information that Andrew was shot. April 10, 2015: Cambridgeshire relaunches the case as Operation Ongar and treats it as murder, naming a since demolished garage, Mongrel Cars, as the likely scene. June 2015: Pieces of bone believed to be human are recovered off Stocking Fen Road in a thirteen day search. Andrew has still never been found. 2020: Police say the leads are exhausted. Eight people were arrested over thirty years. Nobody was charged, and the prime suspect is dead. February 18, 2022: Stafford County identifies the skull as Timothy Alan Mangum, last confirmed alive between 1983 and 1984, after a Texas laboratory traced a father and a brother. How he died has never been answered.

What You Will Hear

Nine listener birthday messages, including one from Coven