 On a winter night in a small community near Denver, Colorado, Jim Matthews arrived home late. He expected to find his 12-year-old daughter who had been dropped off after a Christmas concert, but when he called out, hey, Janelle, the house was eerily quiet. His daughter's shoes were on the floor, but she was gone, and it would be 35 years before she would be found. Dead. After the discovery of Janelle Matthews' body in 2019, the police turned their attention to a man who had told law enforcement years ago that he knew something, but they dismissed him. The man did seem obsessed with the case, but is that all he was? A true crime fanatic or a killer. Wondery and campsite media's shocking true crime podcast, Suspect, is back for a second season, with a story that attempts to separate fact from fiction, compulsion from guilt, and one man's true crime obsession from a motive for murder. I'm about to play a short clip from Suspect, Vanished in the Snow, and while you're listening, you can follow Suspect wherever you get podcasts, and if you're a prime member, you can binge all six episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. You can download the Amazon Music app today. I've also placed a link to it in the show notes to make it easy. Weld County is a desert. It feels relatively warm outside for Colorado in December, and the sky is just this Caribbean blue. It's winter, but it's hot out, dry and dusty. The snow-capped Rocky Mountains are all behind us. Ahead, it's flat. The horizon goes on forever. I feel like we're in the Wikipedia tumbleweeds. Don't you feel rich in tumbleweeds? Rich in tumbleweeds. Yeah. Oh, shit. People tear ass down this road. A few of the trucks passing us are souped up, brand new, tires jacked high. Oil and gas workers apparently unbothered by speed limits if there is a speed limit out here. We're relieved to turn into a dirt driveway of a lone rambling house. Hi, guys. Hello again. Nice to meet you. I'm Jodi. Vance and Jodi Gilliland live so far from most of their neighbors that it's easier to drive to see them. Across from their house is a field that stretches about a thousand acres. It's full of brush and weeds. The kind of place where people often, well, abandon things. Old mattresses, washers and dryers, even boats. It's like, wow. Almost tended to hook that up and take it home and see what I can do. But no, I mean, people still do dump things out here, but it's usually quick and run, quick and run. I mean, what they can show off the back of a truck in two seconds. In the summer of 2019, Vance and Jodi were in their kitchen when they saw blue and red lights flashing across the perimeter of their property. All of a sudden, there was cop cars going by and I was like, uh-oh. Up until it was dark actually, they were out there. And they were out there forever. Vance and Jodi soon learned those oil and gas workers and their fancy pickups. They'd unearthed a small human skull with a single bullet hole in it. And authorities knew exactly who the remains belonged to. It is the cold case that has baffled the Greeley community for nearly 35 years. But tonight, police may be closer to figuring out what happened to Janelle Matthews. The 12-year-old disappeared from her home in late 1984. Her remains were discovered this week by a construction crew in rural Weld County. Gone for 35 years today, human remains founded in oil and gas site in Greeley, giving investigators new leads on a decades-old cold case. Like a lot of Colorado residents who had been following Janelle's case since the 1980s, Vance and Jodi watched the news reports with fascination. They waited to hear what would happen next, hoping that the remains in the field would finally lead investigators to the killer. As it turned out, it wouldn't be nearly so simple. This is a story about obsession, my own, sure. So I am working on a podcast about the Janelle Matthews case. I know you know about that case, right? I assume you're probably Wilvers. I thought I'd try you one last time. But also the obsession of a community that kept pushing to find Janelle to get her name into the national spotlight and all the way to the White House. For example, I learned about Janelle Matthews of Greeley, Colorado who would have celebrated a happy 13th birthday with her family just last month. And it's about the obsessions of a self-described true crime junkie, a man who had started talking about the Janelle Matthews case just a few days after police responded to a distress call from her home. And over the next 35 years, he kept talking and talking. It was just me trying to be a big man in the case. He's a busy body. He gets himself in the middle of murder cases, but that doesn't necessarily mean he actually was involved in them. People are like, oh, he's just crazy, and he's just a ding-bat or whatever else. And he's harmless. He wouldn't hurt anybody. He's such a good liar that he can convince the juror that he wasn't involved. So, you know, he's a liar. He is. He's a good one. I turn around and I said, you're going to be arrested for obstructing if you don't get back in your car. And he says, don't fuck with me, Officer Edgerton. I've buried more people than you'll know. When you shot Janelle Matthews in the forehead, was she begging for her life? Never have. Season 2 of Suspect. Vanished in the snow. If you like what you just heard and you want to hear the rest of it, you can binge all six episodes ad-free on Amazon Music if you're a prime member. You can download the Amazon Music app today. I've placed a link in the show notes for you to do just that.