Cold Case MHS: Monsters and Demons · Randy Hubbard

Season 4: Episode 2: Secrets on the Farm - Murder of Evelin Ashbaugh

September 9, 2024·24 min·2 clips

She was found dead in her upstairs bedroom on May 5th, 2007.

The show opens with a familiar greeting and a plain promise about real education meeting real life. Randy Hubbard and Lydia Lisko introduce the episode, then hand things over to Emma, Katie, and Maddie as they work through the case of Evelyn Ashbaugh. She was a farmer from Delaware, Ohio, and she raised llamas. The students explain that the operation had grown costly, with investors, over 50 llamas, and a history of multiple foreclosures before the llama venture even began. Evelyn was found dead in her upstairs bedroom on May 5, 2007. The next morning, a farm hand named Rick Paddingale was tending the llamas, giving them water and food, and noticed that Evelyn was not outside helping him as she usually would. He went back to the house to look for her, and that search led to her body in the bedroom. The students spend time on the house itself, because the scene matters. A wooden ladder was propped against the side of the house up to the second floor, where her room was. The window to her room had been slashed open. Her bedroom was ransacked, while the rest of the house did not show the same signs of forced entry. The injuries are described as severe. She was stabbed in the back, and she was stabbed up to 10 times, maybe more, in the lower neck and upper chest area. The students walk through more than one possible sequence for the attack. They raise the possibility that she was stabbed while sleeping, and they point to finger wounds that could suggest a defense. They are careful about what can actually be proven. Captain Savage helped with some information, but the group could not get every detail they wanted about exactly where Evelyn was found. What they did receive was an autopsy report and a printout of her death certificate from the Delaware County coroner's office, which helped them sort through the case details. The episode keeps the unanswered parts in view, which fits a case that never settles into one clean story.

As heard by us

A farm death, a slashed window, and a record that still leaves gaps.

Cold Case MHS follows the case of Evelyn Ashbaugh, a Delaware, Ohio llama farmer found dead in her upstairs bedroom on May 5, 2007, and it makes the farm feel central to the mystery.

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Why you'd press play

If you want a student-led farm death case with llamas, a ladder, and a slashed window, press play.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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