In The Weeds

What this episode is about

In June 1986, a detective in San Antonio investigates two interconnected cases—a missing nurse and a murdered teenage girl—drawing eerie parallels between the women that suggest a potential serial killer at work. As he delves deeper into the mystery, the story unfolds against the backdrop of the missing woman's troubled marriage and her struggles with personal identity.

Key takeaways

• In 1986 San Antonio, a missing mom and a murdered teen mirrored each other—tragedy intertwined in unexpected ways.
• Kathy Lipkcom's glow of newfound freedom vanished, shadowed by a heart-wrenching series of events no one saw coming.
• Hindsight is 20/20: Bill’s note to Kathy might’ve been the last glimpse of hope, a heartbreaking gesture lost in time.
• The universe has a dark sense of humor; reliable nurses sometimes vanish, leaving friends to piece together haunting mysteries.
• Love can be both liberation and peril; Kathy's search for happiness tragically spiraled into a grim uncertainty.

Who speaks in this episode?

• MrBallen (Host) · 27 min speaking
• Kathy Lipkcom (Guest)
• Bill Lipkcom (Guest)
• Dr. David Pearl (Guest)
• Sergeant Sal Marin (Guest)
• Clint Richards (Guest)
• Sarah Bowers (Guest)

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: Kathy Lipkcom, Bill Lipkcom, Air Force, Sarah Bowers
2. 5:00 – 10:00: Air Force, Sergeant Sal Marin, Dr. David Pearl, Sarah Bowers
3. 10:00 – 15:00: Kathy Lipkcom, Air Force
4. 15:00 – 20:00: Air Force, Bill Lipkcom, Kathy Lipkcom
5. 20:00 – 25:00: Air Force, Dr. David Pearl
6. 25:00 – 30:00: Kathy Lipkcom, Air Force, Bill Lipkcom, WAPS test
7. 30:00 – 34:10: Clint Richards, Bill Lipkcom, WAPS test, Air Force

Notable quotes from "In The Weeds"

• Kathy was supposed to pick the kids up from Bill's house, but she hadn't shown up, and she wasn't answering her phone.

  about Kathy Lipkcom · at 3:32

• The call just rang without an answer and Sarah eventually hung up and returned to her desk. But over the next hour, Sarah could barely focus because all she could think about…

  about Sarah Bowers · at 5:34

• That afternoon, homicide investigator Sergeant Sal Marin sat in his office at the sheriff's station trying to ID the victim that police had just found on the side of the road. Marin had started off.

  about War County Sheriff's Office · at 9:22

• About an hour later, Marin met Cathy's husband, Bill Lipkcom, at the sheriff's station. Marin was aware that Bill was a decorated member of the Air Force and that he was very young to be a master sergeant, which was a pretty high rank.

  about Air Force · at 15:58

• Like her boyfriend was even simpler. It was because he was her boss. Cathy's boyfriend's name was Dr. David Pearl. It was Dr. Pearl, who on the Monday that Kathy failed to show…

  about Dr. David Pearl · at 20:51

• The friend who dumped the body was Clint Richards. And the killer was Cathy's soon-to-be ex-husband, Bill Lipkcom.

  about Bill Lipkcom · at 30:35

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Kathy Lipkcom — Person · Victim / central figure in the case narrative · 8 mentions · first at 1:39
  Her disappearance and subsequent identification as the homicide victim drives the entire investigation and reveals the motive tied to an Air Force promotion test cheating scandal.
• Bill Lipkcom — Person · Primary perpetrator (revealed later) / initial spouse-suspect with alibi · 7 mentions · first at 3:18
  Kathy’s soon-to-be ex-husband; initially interviewed as a classic divorce-motive suspect, later identified as the killer who staged the scene and used his children to support a false alibi.
• Sergeant Sal Marin — Person · Lead homicide investigator / narrator’s investigative focal point · 1 mention · first at 9:26
  As the homicide investigator/sergeant, he connects the missing-person and homicide threads, develops early theories (serial killer, military link), and conducts key interviews (Bill, Dr. Pearl).
  It would turn out that Marin had been correct in his assessment that Cathy's killer had acted with the plan and had deliberately posed her body, but he had been wrong about why. Bill and Clint had.
• Clint Richards — Person · Accomplice / body-dumper and stager (revealed later) · 4 mentions · first at 27:36
  Air Force colleague of Bill; ultimately identified as the friend who transported the body, staged the scene (rolled clothes, planted red hairs), and later cooperated to avoid prosecution.
  The friend who dumped the body was Clint Richards. And the killer was Cathy's soon-to-be ex-husband, Bill Lipkcom.
• Dr. David Pearl — Person · Key suspect / victim’s boss and boyfriend · 2 mentions · first at 6:08
  Kathy’s boss and secret boyfriend; becomes Marin’s main suspect mid-investigation due to affair dynamics, then lawyers up and is not charged in the narrative.
• Sarah Bowers — Person · Coworker witness / early missing-person escalator · 2 mentions · first at 4:51
  Kathy’s coworker and friend who notices her absence, alerts Dr. Pearl, and enters Kathy’s apartment with the manager—helping establish the timeline and concern early in the case.

Companies & orgs

• Air Force — Company · Affiliation · 11 mentions · first at 3:18
  Bill Lipkcom's affiliation with the Air Force is central to the plot, including the WAPS test cheating scandal that led to the murder.
• War County Sheriff's Office — Company · Investigator · 4 mentions
  The law enforcement agency responsible for investigating Kathy Lipkcom's murder.

Concepts & topics

• WAPS test — Concept · Core topic · 3 mentions · first at 26:50
  The Weighted Airman Promotion Systems Test is the central motive for the murder, as Bill Lipkcom cheated on it and Kathy threatened to expose him.
  With Cathy's death, both the killer and the friend were now certain that no one would ever know that the killer had cheated on the promotional exam that the Air Force called the Weighted Airman.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 On a Monday afternoon in 1986, a detective sergeant in San Antonio, Texas, sat in his office and puzzled over two separate cases that landed on his desk that morning. One was a missing person's case. A mother of two never showed up to work that morning at the clinic where she was a respected nurse, and none of her friends, co-workers, or family members could get in touch with her. The other case involved a murder. A body had turned up in a grassy field along a deserted two-lane road, and it appeared to be a teenage girl. The sergeant looked back and forth between the description of the missing mom and the pictures of the dead young woman.

0:35 These women were so similar in appearance that he wondered if this may have been the work of a serial killer. But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week. Once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, please buy the follow button a very nice pair of slippers. but each week secretly break into their house and replace those slippers with an identical pair that is slightly larger. Okay, let's get into today's story.

1:36 On a muggy Saturday night on June 7th, 1986, 29-year-old Kathy Lipkcom parked her car in front of an apartment complex in San Antonio, Texas, and reached into her purse for a tube of lipstick. Kathy tilted the rearview mirror toward her face and touched up her lips. And as she looked at her reflection and swept her platinum bangs to the side of her forehead, she almost didn't recognize herself. There was a glow on her face that she hadn't seen in a long time, not since she'd been a newlywed. These days, the happy parts of Cathy's marriage felt very far in the past. Over the last 8 years, she and her husband had had two children who they both loved deeply. But Kathy had come to feel increasingly trapped in her life until just about a month ago when she and her husband had finally agreed to separate. To Kathy, that decision felt like it gave her back her freedom, and she knew that who she

2:25 was seeing now in the rearview mirror of her brand new car was a brand new woman. Kathy grabbed her purse from the passenger seat, got out of the car, and walked towards the large apartment building up ahead. And suddenly, she felt really nervous, but it was the good kind of nervous. She had butterflies in her stomach because she was on the way to spend the night with her new boyfriend, who she had fallen completely in love with. Kathy's soon-to-be ex-husband had the kids. And for at least a little while, Kathy could put all her worries out of her mind. So, she walked up two flights of stairs to the third floor of the building and then rang the doorbell of her boyfriend's apartment. Kathy heard footsteps drawing closer and then the door opened up and Kathy beamed at the man standing there.

3:07 The man grabbed Kathy and kissed her, led her inside, and shut the door behind them. The next evening, Cathy's soon-to-be ex-husband, 30-year-old Air Force Master Sergeant Bill Lipkcom, buckled their four-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter into the backseat of his car and began driving to the other side of town, where Kathy had just moved into her own apartment. Kathy was supposed to pick the kids up from Bill's house, but she hadn't shown up, and she wasn't answering her phone. So, now Bill was driving the kids to her.

3:42 When they got to Cathy's building, Bill knocked on the front door of Cathy's unit, which was on the ground floor, and he and the kids waited there in silence. When she didn't answer the door, Bill knocked again, but still there was no answer. He turned to his kids and tried to smile because he didn't want to upset them, but he knew this was actually really weird. Kathy was never even late picking up their kids, so the idea that she just would blow it off entirely and then also not be home made no sense. Bill told the kids to wait at the door and then he walked back to his car. He got a notepad, a pen, and a roll of tape out of the glove box and walked back to the building. Bill wrote a note stating that he and the kids were there at 6:45 and would try again later. Then he stuck that note to Cathy's front door. Then he looked down at the kids and asked them if they wanted to write their mom a

4:31 note, too. The little girl nodded and took the pen from her dad and scribbled onto the pad. And Bill tore out the page and stuck that to the door as well. The note read in large block letters, "Mommy, we love you." A day later, at around 9:30 a.m. on Monday morning, a woman working at a university health clinic named Sarah Bowers, had a question for Kathy Lipkcom, who was one of the nurses that she worked with. So Sarah walked over to Cathy's office. But when she stepped inside, it was empty, and Sarah saw that a bunch of pink while you were out memos had piled up on Cathy's desk. Sarah walked in and picked up one of the messages and read it. It was from Cathy's husband, Bill. He had called in an hour earlier looking for his wife.

5:15 And this, coupled with the stack of other notes that were very similar, gave Sarah a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach because Kathy was one of the most reliable nurses in the clinic, like where had she gone? Why hadn't she called in? Sarah picked up the phone and dialed Cathy's apartment number. She knew it because she and Kathy were actually friends outside of work. But the call just rang without an answer and Sarah eventually hung up and returned to her desk. But over the next hour, Sarah could barely focus because all she could think about was Kathy. She kept looking up at the clock on the wall, watching the minutes tick by, hoping to see her friend walk into the office with a totally reasonable explanation for why she was late, or even without an explanation. It didn't matter, so long as Sarah knew Kathy was okay.

6:00 By the time the clock struck 10 that morning and Kathy still had not shown up to work, Sarah could not stand it any longer. She got up and walked directly to the office of her and Cathy's boss, Dr. David Pearl. When Dr. Pearl saw Sarah standing at his door with a troubled look on her face, he asked her what was wrong. Sarah told him that Kathy was 2 hours late to work and she was not answering her phone. And based on the notes on her desk that were piling up, her husband had also not heard from her either. At this, Dr.

6:29 Pearl furrowed his brow. Kathy hadn't mentioned anything to him about being late or absent that day. It made him concerned that she might be sick or maybe even injured and couldn't get to the phone. So, he asked Sarah to drive over to Cathy's apartment to check on her. Sarah sped over to Cathy's apartment, which was only about 10 minutes away. When she got there, she found the notes on the door and she knocked, but there was no answer. And so feeling kind of desperate, she ran to get the building manager and begged the woman to let her into her friend's apartment. Now, the manager knew this was against company policy to do this, but she could see how upset Sarah was. So, she unlocked Cathy's door and let Sarah go inside.

7:10 And what Sarah found inside sent her panic through the roof. The apartment was perfectly neat and tidy. It didn't look like anything bad had happened here, but there was no sign of Kathy. In fact, it looked like she had not been home for days.

7:38 At around the same time, about 15 mi away, an airman who worked at the local Air Force base was driving to work down a two-lane road outside of town when he noticed something lying in the grass on the side of the road. The airman pulled over to the shoulder and got out of his car to investigate. He walked off the road and into the grass and stared down into the weeds in utter disbelief. When he got over the initial shock, he ran back to his car, drove to the nearest house, and called the police. It took police officers from the Bear County Sheriff's Office just a few minutes to arrive at the spot on the road where the airman had made his discovery. It was a strange location for a 911 call. The area was pretty much deserted. And this road was basically only used by Air Force personnel who drove in and out of the base. The police got out of their cruiser and walked to the side of the road into some spiky

8:30 grass. And just a few feet in, they stopped. For a minute, they just stood there together in silence looking down. Because there, lying in the weeds below, they saw the dead body of what looked like a teenage girl. She was naked and covered with ants, and they saw thin trails of blood on the sides of her mouth. But as horrifying as all of that was, the officers were actually much more fixated on something else. The girl's body was contorted. Her legs were bent at the knee and her ankles were crossed as if she had been sitting criss-cross style. Her torso had been folded forward, so her chest was resting on her legs, and there was some kind of fabric under her foot. The officers had been to enough crime scenes to know that this girl's body had not just been tossed out of a car quickly by a person trying to get rid of evidence. Instead, her body had been carefully posed like whoever killed her wanted her to be

9:20 found. That afternoon, homicide investigator Sergeant Sal Marin sat in his office at the sheriff's station trying to ID the victim that police had just found on the side of the road. Marin had started off pretty confident that he would be able to figure out who it was pretty quickly. From the looks of things, the victim appeared to be a teenager and she had been healthy, well cared for, and well-groomed. In other words, she looked like she probably had a family who would definitely report her missing right away. But so far, Marin had not been able to find any missing person's reports that matched her description, and he thought that was strange.

9:59 Just then, a secretary came by and dropped off the medical examiner's report from the autopsy along with the crime scene report. Marin grabbed the medical examiner's report first, and as soon as he opened it, he grimaced. The victim had been sexually assaulted and strangled to death, most likely on Sunday night, so one day before she was found. Her body appeared to have been posed soon after her death before rigger mortise had set in, which is the stiffening of the body after death. And to Marin, this felt off. Usually when young women were murdered, the killer was someone they knew, either a partner, friend, or a family member who acted out of rage or jealousy. Sadly, it wasn't unusual to see sexual assault or strangulation in cases like this. But it was extremely unusual to see such deliberate posing of the body. Killers who know their victims often tried to cover them up, not display them. Posing

10:53 a body was evidence of a careful and deliberate killer acting with a plan. It was something that sadists and serial killers did. And it made Marin think that his killer was likely a stranger to the victim. And that was bad news because killings by strangers were among the hardest to solve. The suspect pool was enormous because the killer could be anyone. But as Marin continued through the report, he spotted what he thought might be his first clue. Four strands of long red hair that were found on the girl's body. The girl was a blonde, which meant the red hairs could have come from her killer. The medical examiner had examined these hairs under a microscope, and they found they had been dyed red, and they had no roots.

11:36 And Marin wasn't sure what to make of this. The hair could be from a wig, or they could be from a woman's head, but Marin found it highly unlikely that his killer was female. He put the autopsy report down and picked up the crime scene report. And here, Marin found his second clue. The victim's clothing, which was a pair of Levi's jeans and a t-shirt, had been placed underneath her right foot by the killer. And what Marin noticed was the clothing had been rolled up rather than folded. Marin picked up a pen and wrote down the word military in the margins. Marin knew that people in the military were trained to roll up their clothes instead of folding them because it was more compact and efficient. And the girl's body had been found on a road used almost exclusively by members of the Air Force. But before Marin got too deep into his theories on the killer, his first priority was to find the dead girl's identity. Only then

12:29 would he be able to begin retracing her last moments and figuring out who she had contact with in her final days. So over the next hour, he began reaching out to local radio and TV stations, asking producers to broadcast news of the crime every half hour with a description of the young victim. He got the story placement at the top of the afternoon news. Later, at 5:00 p.m., when still no tips had come in, Marin was getting ready to leave and grab something to eat. But just as he was standing up from his desk, his office door swung open and a deputy handed him a single piece of paper. It was a missing person's report for a woman named Kathy Lipkcom. Her family had just called to report that no one had seen or heard from her since Saturday. And the second Marin started reading the report, he felt a rush of adrenaline. Kathy was petite, blonde, and had gone missing right around the time the medical

13:20 examiner believed his victim had been killed. Marin thought Kathy might be his victim. But then his eyes settled on Cathy's age, and he felt his excitement drain away. Kathy was 29 years old, almost 30. But the dead woman found on the side of the road looked a full decade younger than that at least. So Kathy didn't seem to be a match for his homicide victim. Still, Marin wondered if this missing person's report about Kathy Lipsgum was a different kind of clue in his case. Because based on Cathy's physical description, it was eerie how similar the two women were.

13:54 Marin felt his appetite vanish and he sat back down at his desk. He was starting to fear that he could have a serial killer on his hands who was hunting petite blonde women and that Kathy could actually be his second victim. A few hours later, Sergeant Marin's efforts to get the description of his victim blasted out onto the airwaves paid off. By this point, Marin was at home on his couch watching TV when his phone rang. He walked into the kitchen and picked it up. It was the medical examiner's office calling to tell him that a woman watching the news had heard about the discovery of the body and realized that the description of the young victim matched a friend of hers perfectly. At first, this woman had not wanted to believe it, so she actually had gone to her friend's apartment to check on her. But when her friend did not answer the door, the woman had called the police, and the police

14:47 directed this woman to the medical examiner's office, where she would positively identify the body. Marin's victim finally had a name. When Marin heard the name, he immediately turned to the coffee maker on his counter and started brewing a pot. He was going to have to go straight back to work. Because Marin did not have two victims on his hands, he had just one. The dead body of the girl by the side of the road and the missing Kathy Lipkcom were one and the same. Kathy, despite being 29 years old, was just unusually young-looking. This meant that Marin's theory of the case that he might be dealing with a serial killer, had become a bit more unlikely. He still viewed the posing of the body as evidence that the killer was a stranger to the victim, acting on a calculated plan rather than a sudden burst of emotion, but he was down to just one victim. And now that his victim did have an identity, Marin had to do the part of

15:41 his job that he hated the most, and that was to tell his victim's family about the murder. About an hour later, Marin met Cathy's husband, Bill Lipkcom, at the sheriff's station. Marin was aware that Bill was a decorated member of the Air Force and that he was very young to be a master sergeant, which was a pretty high rank. So, Marin knew that the smartest way to approach Bill was to be formal and polite rather than aggressive. even though divorce was a classic motive for murder and Bill was a natural suspect. So in the interview room, Marin reached out and shook Bill's hand and told him he was very sorry about his wife. He promised to do everything he could to bring her killer to justice. But while Marin was giving Bill his condolences, he was also looking Bill over very carefully, visually checking his arms, his hands, and his face for any signs of injury, like bruises, scratches, or

16:43 fingernail marks that might be evidence of a recent struggle. But except for the fact that Bill was pale and sweating, he appeared to be physically unharmed. Marin opened up his notepad and asked Bill where he was over the weekend when Kathy had gone missing. Bill said he had been with his and Cathy's children since Friday afternoon. He said they didn't do much, just kind of hung around the house, Bill said Marin could talk to the kids and they would tell him the same thing. Marin nodded and then asked Bill how long Kathy had been living in her new apartment. When Bill sighed at the question, Marin looked up from his pad.

17:16 He was surprised to see that Bill almost looked angry. Bill shook his head and told Marin that Kathy had only been in the new place for about a week or so, but the neighborhood it was in had been a point of contention between them. He said he'd warned Cathy it was a bad area. He didn't like the seedy bars and strip joints all over the place, but Kathy had refused to listen to him. The apartment was close to her work, and she told him it was not his business anyway. Bill shook his head again and looked down at the table, and Marin could tell that clearly the separation between Bill and Kathy was still pretty raw. He told Bill he had just one more question, and then he'd let Bill go home to his kids.

17:53 Marin explained to Bill that based on the location where Cathy's body was found and the way her clothes were rolled up, not folded, he thought there could be a military connection. He asked Bill if any of his fellow airmen might have had a problem with Cathy or if one of Bill's subordinates could have been angry at him. And with this question, Bill went from looking upset at Kathy to looking upset at Marin. He said, "No, absolutely not. His friends at the Air Force all loved Kathy, and he got along great with the people he worked with, regardless of rank. He didn't have any enemies, and no one he knew could have done anything like this. Marin sat back studying Bill. He could tell Bill was worn out and getting frustrated, but he didn't find that particularly suspicious given the circumstances. Marin decided that the best move was just to tell Bill to go home. It was late and he'd get better interviews in the morning. The

18:44 next morning, Sergeant Marin interviewed Bill and Cathy's two young kids, and they confirmed their father's story. They had been with their dad all weekend, just like he'd said. So, Marin decided he had to start from square one. First, he decided to interview Cathy's neighbors to see if anyone had spotted a person lurking outside her apartment. If the killer was a stranger to Cathy, like Marin suspected, then they would likely have found her by simply running into her somewhere, and it was possible they might have followed her home. And right away when he started to canvas, he got a tip and a surprise because one of Cathy's neighbors told him that on the day Cathy's body was found, he saw a suspicious person walk up to Cathy's door and then just lurked there for a few minutes before walking away. And the neighbor said this person was a woman, not a man, which was not what Marin was expecting. When he asked the neighbor

19:35 for a physical description of this woman, the neighbor paused and thought for a second, saying he hadn't gotten a very good look. But then his eyes lit up as he remembered one crucial detail. The suspicious woman had long red hair, just like the four strands of long red hair the medical examiner had found on the victim's body. Sergeant Marin spent the next couple of days talking to Cathy's family, friends, and co-workers, probing for any information about a red-haired woman in Cathy's orbit. But not one single person had any idea who that could be. Instead, Cathy's friends and family had a different idea for a suspect, Cathy's new boyfriend. Kathy had only been dating this man for a few weeks, but she was already saying she was madly in love with him. But some of her friends thought the boyfriend was bad news. The first reason for this was because he was married. The boyfriend kept telling

20:28 Kathy that he and his wife were separating and would be divorced soon. And although Kathy believed him, none of her friends did. This boyfriend also had a reputation for sleeping around and promising every woman he was with that he was going to leave his wife for them. In fact, he was known for keeping a bachelor pad apartment where he could entertain his various girlfriends without his wife's knowledge. And another reason Cathy's friends didn't like her boyfriend was even simpler. It was because he was her boss. Cathy's boyfriend's name was Dr. David Pearl. It was Dr. Pearl, who on the Monday that Kathy failed to show up for work, sent her co-orker Sarah to Cathy's house to check on her. Cathy's friends knew she had been spending time with Dr. Pearl when she didn't have the kids with her.

21:11 And that caught Marin's attention because the kids had been with their father on Saturday night, which as far as police knew was the last time anyone had seen Kathy alive. Marin wanted to know if Kathy had gone to meet Dr. Pearl that night. And so a few days into his investigation, Marin found himself putting the red-haired woman on the back burner for a new number one suspect. Cathy's boss and boyfriend, Dr. Pearl.

21:43 Almost a week after Kathy was murdered, Marin sat at his desk in police headquarters making a list of possible scenarios while he waited for uniformed officers to bring Dr. Pearl in to be interviewed. He thought maybe Kathy had been pushing Dr. Pearl to get a divorce. Maybe Kathy threatened to tell his wife. Or maybe Marin thought the doctor's wife had already found out about the affair and taken revenge on Cathy. Marin sat back at his desk and wondered if the suspicious red-haired woman who had been seen at Cathy's apartment the day her body was found could be Dr. Pearl's wife. Just then, a uniformed officer knocked on Marin's door to tell him that Dr. Pearl was waiting for him. Marin stood up and followed the officer back to the little interview room where Dr.

22:25 Pearl was sitting, looking perfectly calm and in control. When Marin walked in, Dr. Pearl immediately reached out and shook his hand. And then before Marin could ask even one question, the doctor began telling him how shocked he was by Cathy's death. The doctor said it just didn't make any sense because he had just seen Kathy a day or two before she died, and she had seemed totally fine. Marin nodded, being careful to keep his facial expression neutral. When Dr. Pearl was done saying how sorry he was for Kathy, Marin looked down at his pad and asked in a very deliberate voice where and when exactly had the doctor last seen Kathy. And at this, the doctor went silent. Marin knew it was clear from his tone that he already knew where and when Dr. Pearl had last seen Kathy.

23:11 Like he knew about the affair and it was obvious. But what Marin was doing with this question was testing how this very smooth suspect reacted to a little bit of pressure. Dr. Pearl stared at Marin for a few seconds with a polite but completely blank expression on his face. And after a tense moment, the doctor gave an apologetic smile and said, "I'm sorry, but I'm going to need to speak to my lawyer." On Saturday, June 15th, so a week after Kathy had been murdered, Marin was at home taking a day off to try to clear his head. This case had felt like trying to put together pieces from three different puzzles into one coherent picture. None of the clues made sense together. The posing of the body suggested a methodical killer who did not know the victim, but Marin's best suspect was Cathy's boyfriend. The rolled up clothes suggested the killer had a military background, and Cathy's soon to be ex-husband was a member of

24:04 the Air Force. but he had a rock-solid alibi, and none of his friends or colleagues had any real link to Cathy. The sexual assault suggested that the killer was a man, but the long red hairs on the body and the suspicious red-haired woman at Cathy's door were evidence that there was a female involved. And beyond all these contradictions, there was very little in the way of actual physical evidence to tie any suspect at all to the murder scene. So, when Dr. Pearl had lawyered up during his interview. Marin had had no choice but to let him walk out of police headquarters without charging him. And since then, the only thing he learned was that Dr. Pearl's wife did not have red hair and had never been to Cathy's apartment.

24:44 Just then, Marin heard his phone ring and he hopped up. He hoped it was someone calling to tell him there had been a new break in the case, just like the last time he got a call at home. But when he answered, it was just more bad news. A crime scene tech told him that Cathy's car had been found in the parking lot of a restaurant a mile from her apartment. Forensic investigators had searched it for fingerprints, but they came up empty. Someone had wiped it clean. Over the next few weeks, every lead Marin tried to chase went nowhere. And slowly, newer homicide cases started to pile up, and they began to take up more and more of Marin's time. Marin did return to Cathy's case every few weeks, hoping he'd spot something he missed.

25:28 But no matter how many times he read the different reports, nothing in them made any more sense than it had in the beginning. A month or two into the investigation, Cathy's mother had called Marin, and he promised her he would make sure that Cathy's murder was not forgotten. But as the months piled up, the case just got colder. By the one-year anniversary of Cathy's death, the only thing Marin knew for sure was that whoever killed Kathy had not killed again, at least not in the area of Bear County. There had been no other murders reported with the posing of the body or the long red hairs or the rolledup clothing. By the 2-year anniversary of Cathy's death, Marin had begun to dread the calls from Cathy's family because the only thing he had to offer them were apologies.

26:12 It was not until late 1988, so more than 2 years after Kathy was murdered, that all the blurry pieces of evidence finally snapped into focus. And it happened because Kathy's family hired a private investigator. When this PI heard about the initial handling of the case and the huge mistake made in thinking that the body of Kathy Lipkcom was that of a teenage girl, he decided to start the investigation all over again. And in doing so, he discovered a critical piece of evidence that somehow the police had missed. That evidence was Cathy's date book. In this date book, Cathy had written cryptic notes about something called the WAPS test. The PI didn't know what a WAPS test was, but apparently someone Kathy knew had all the answers to this test and was passing them around. To the PI, this sounded like Kathy knew something about some kind of cheating scandal. Not like adultery, like actual cheating on a test. But the

27:08 PI wondered who in Cathy's orbit would be taking a standardized test. It didn't make sense for anyone at Cathy's job, which was at a medical office. On a hunch, the PI called the nearby Air Force base, and that's when he realized he was holding the link that completed the chain of evidence and broke the case wide open. Now, the PI worked with the Air Force as well as Sergeant Marin to bring in a man who had until the discovery of the date book flown completely under the radar. His name was Clint Richards, and he had worked with Cathy's soon-to-be ex-husband, Bill Lipkcom, in the Air Force. And when investigators brought Clinton to talk, he told them everything.

27:54 Based on Clint's story and evidence gathered throughout the investigation, the following is a reconstruction of what police believe happened to Kathy Lipkcom on the night of June 8th, 1986. That night, the killer sat patiently inside of their home on their couch, waiting for Kathy to arrive. They'd been expecting her. And when the killer heard knocking, they walked across the room, put a smile on their face, and opened their front door. There was Kathy, exactly on time as usual. The killer gestured for her to come inside, and she stepped over the threshold while the killer shut the door behind her. As soon as Kathy looked around the room, she realized something was wrong. It was too quiet. But the killer was expecting this. When Kathy turned to confront them, the killer pushed her to the ground and raped her. Then they grabbed an electrical cord they had hidden nearby, climbed on top of Kathy, and

28:54 wrapped it around her neck. As they pulled, Kathy tried to fight back, but after several minutes, it was too much, and she stopped moving. After Kathy was dead, the killer stood up, crossed the room, and opened a cedar chest. Then they dragged Cathy's limp body across the floor. They folded her at the waist, picked her up, and jammed her inside of the chest, crossing her legs so she'd fit. Once the chest was closed, the killer called a friend. A few hours later, the killer and the friend carried the cedar chest with Cathy's body inside, out of the killer's apartment, and loaded it into the friend's vehicle. Then, the killer handed the friend four strands of long red hair and walked back inside of their house. The friend drove off with Cathy's body and the hair.

29:43 After a few minutes, the friend turned their car onto a deserted two-lane road outside of town. They pulled over, removed Cathy's body from the chest, and carefully placed her on the ground on the shoulder of the road. Then the friends set about staging the scene to look as if the killer had posed Cathy's body on purpose. They rolled up Cathy's clothing and placed it underneath her right foot. And then they laid the four long red hairs on top of Cathy's body. Finally, when the scene was perfect, the friend got back into their car and drove home.

30:17 With Cathy's death, both the killer and the friend were now certain that no one would ever know that the killer had cheated on the promotional exam that the Air Force called the Weighted Airman Promotion Systems Test, or as everybody called it for short, the WAPS test. The friend who dumped the body was Clint Richards. And the killer was Cathy's soon-to-be ex-husband, Bill Lipkcom. It was Bill, the young master sergeant who had moved up the Air Force ranks with shocking speed, who had cheated on the WAPS test. Kathy knew about it, and she had threatened to expose him during their divorce because she wanted Bill to give her full custody of the children.

30:59 It would turn out that Marin had been correct in his assessment that Cathy's killer had acted with the plan and had deliberately posed her body, but he had been wrong about why. Bill and Clint had worked together to stage the crime scene to make it look like a murder committed by a sadistic rapist. Those long red hairs were part of that staging, meant to throw the police off, and they had worked even better than either Bill or Clint had expected. And this was because of a chain of events that police themselves had set in motion in their early efforts to identify the body found on the side of the road when they believed the victim was significantly younger than she was. Police had put the description of the victim out to the media and a friend of Cathy's had heard it. That friend had been the one to make the identification of Cathy's body, but she only did so after going to Cathy's apartment to check on her. The

31:50 suspicious red-headed woman the neighbor had seen was actually just Cathy's friend. It was a total coincidence, but it had confused investigators for years. Meanwhile, Bill had escaped suspicion with his alibi because he had told his young children to lie to the police about being with him all night. Bill had preemptively suggested to Marin that Marin should talk to his kids because he knew they would lie for him. It was only when the PI began poking around on the case that Bill's 9-year-old daughter finally found the courage to tell the truth. She had not been with her dad the night her mom was killed. Instead, her dad's friend, Clint Richards, had taken her and her brother out for dinner. That was why when Kathy arrived at Bill's house right on time to pick up her kids like she always was, she found the house too quiet and realized her kids were not there. When Kathy turned around to confront Bill, he raped and killed her.

32:46 Clint Richards avoided prosecution for cooperating with authorities. As for Bill Lipkcom, he plead guilty to Cathy's murder in order to avoid the death penalty, and he was sentenced to 60 years in prison. However, he was granted an early release in May of 2021.

33:15 Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast. If you like today's story and you're looking for more strange, dark, and mysterious content, be sure to check out all our studios podcasts. They are this one, the Mr. Ballin podcast. We also have Mr. Ballins's medical mysteries, bedtime stories, wartime stories, and also RunFool. To find those other podcasts, all you have to do is search for Ballin Studios wherever you listen to your podcasts. To watch hundreds more stories just like the one you heard today, head over to our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin. So, that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see you.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "In The Weeds"?

MrBallen (Host), Kathy Lipkcom (Guest), Bill Lipkcom (Guest), Dr. David Pearl (Guest), Sergeant Sal Marin (Guest), Clint Richards (Guest), Sarah Bowers (Guest).

What is "In The Weeds" about?

In June 1986, a detective in San Antonio investigates two interconnected cases—a missing nurse and a murdered teenage girl—drawing eerie parallels between the women that suggest a potential serial killer at work. As he delves deeper into the mystery, the story unfolds against the backdrop of the missing woman's troubled marriage and her struggles with personal identity.

What is mentioned in this MrBallen Podcast episode?

9 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Kathy Lipkcom, Bill Lipkcom, WAPS test, Air Force, Sergeant Sal Marin, Clint Richards. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "In The Weeds"?

The episode runs 34 min; the transcript is about 6,293 words in 45 timestamped sections.

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