Dead of the Night Podcast · Kenneth Bailey

Ep 3: The Dark Side of Emmett

November 23, 2020·39 min·3 clips

Isaac's Grindr profile picture is a cropped photo of his missing girlfriend Devin.

The first lead feels intimate. A caller tells the host that Isaac, missing Devin Riesling's boyfriend, appears to be on Grindr. It starts as rumor, but the episode treats it like the kind of detail that can change the pressure around a case. The host does not gloat over it. He sets it beside what is already known: Devin vanished on February 9th, 2019, Isaac was near the place where her car was later found, and he was seen washing his car the next day. That is one sore spot. The white van is another, because Isaac's brother John drives one like the van Patty said followed Devin before she disappeared. Then the story moves to the Rogers property, where ground penetrating radar found abnormalities under foundations poured around the time Marie Watson disappeared. What investigators recovered is hard to shake: a green t-shirt stained with a red-brown substance, bone fragments, and so many mixed bones that the amount slowed the work. Sandy's account sits next to that evidence. At least one fragment was believed to be a human shin bone, and the apparent saw marks lined up with Sandy's claim about dismemberment with saws. But the testing never really answers the question. Only a few fragments were selected, the results were inconclusive, and nothing has been tested again since the 1996 discovery. The host turns that gap into the episode's sharpest accusation. DNA technology has improved, and he argues that proof may still be sitting in evidence while police refuse retesting or private testing. Dorothy and Mike Rogers were never charged for Marie Watson's murder, and the episode ties that unresolved case to missing homeless and runaway children. Garrett is the last door. The closing tape has the host calling him after someone says the match to Devin's car is too exact to shrug off. Garrett is not shocked. He sounds like he expected the podcast to find him, which leaves the case feeling open, procedural, and worse than before.

As heard by us

A screenshot and a van give the case its darkest, most persuasive edge.

A missing-student case opens with a Grindr screenshot that turns the temperature down fast: Isaac, Devin Riesling's boyfriend, shows up on the app, and the image lines up with the poster for Devin herself.

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Why you'd press play

Press play if a Grindr screenshot might crack a disappearance wide open.

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