The King Road Killings: An Idaho Murder Mystery · ABC News

Introducing "The Hand in the Window"

·27 min·2 clips

A woman escaping a sleeping kidnapper signals police through a window with her hand.

1. The King Road Killings: An Idaho Murder Mystery introduces The Hand in the Window, a 2020 ABC Audio true-crime episode about a 911 rescue in Ashland, Ohio. 2. John Quinones narrates the ABC Audio program, while Sarah Miller and Officer Curt Dorsey provide firsthand accounts of the emergency response. 3. The episode asks how Sarah Miller and Ashland police could locate Jane Doe before her sleeping kidnapper woke up. 4. Sarah Miller had worked as a 911 dispatcher for more than two decades and regularly managed six to eight computer screens. 5. In September 2016, Miller was preparing to end an overnight shift when Jane Doe whispered that she had been abducted. 6. Jane Doe identified the 4th Street Laundromat and described a nearby house where the man holding her captive was sleeping. 7. Miller learned that the kidnapper was white, approximately six feet tall, around 175 pounds, and armed with a taser. 8. Jane Doe said a chair blocked her bedroom door and could make noise if she tried to escape. 9. Ashland Police Division officers drove without sirens because waking the kidnapper could endanger Jane Doe. 10. Officers found two nearly identical pale-yellow houses near East 4th Street and Colvert Court, leaving them uncertain where to enter. 11. Jane Doe eventually pushed the chair aside and moved toward a side door while officers searched outside. 12. Curt Dorsey remembered accidentally making noise at one house before seeing a woman at the other house. 13. Jane Doe's hand against the side-door window gave officers the location they had been searching for. 14. Miller and Dorsey describe relief mixed with fear because the kidnapper was still asleep and his weapons were unknown. 15. Jane Doe later said phone alarms had been sounding every five minutes to keep the kidnapper awake before he dozed off. 16. Miller said she relied on remaining calm, while Dorsey attributed the successful search partly to possible divine intervention. 17. The episode uses interview excerpts, narrated scene-setting, police recollections, and recorded 911-call details. 18. The investigative style moves from a quiet rural-town setting to a tightly paced account of officers locating the correct house. 19. Best for listeners interested in 911 calls, police rescues, and unresolved true-crime investigations. 20. Listeners seeking a short, nonviolent crime story might skip this episode.

As heard by us

A locked-room 911 call gives this true-crime opener its steady pulse.

Sarah Miller, a veteran 911 dispatcher in Ashland, Ohio, keeps the focus on a whisper-quiet emergency call that depends on exact, restrained decisions.

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Why you'd press play

You get a whispered 911 call, locked doors, and a dispatcher who has to make fast decisions with almost no room for error.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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