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I'm your host, Mark.
And I'm Courtney.
And this is Mountain State Mysteries.
The case we have for you today is about a woman who seemed to have it all.
A loving husband, a 19 month old daughter, a family who loved her and plans for the future.
That is, until two men stole it all away from her.
This is the case of Patricia Sue Richmond.
Patricia Sue Brogan Richmond was born on February 23, 1954, to Thelma Jean Thompson Brogan
and Homer Harrison Brogan.
In 1971, between her junior and senior year, Susie was dating Bruce Richmond.
The two got married in Parisburg, Virginia.
Susie ended up dropping out of high school due to her getting pregnant with her daughter,
Angela Arlene, and giving birth in March of 1972.
The couple would move to Pluto Road in Shady Spring, West Virginia.
Everything was perfect in Susie's life.
That is, until November 8, 1973.
The morning of November 8, 1973 started out as a normal day for Susie.
She was wearing a white dress, a blue sweater, white boots, and a red ribbon tied in her black wig.
She dropped off Angie at her parents' home in Beaver, West Virginia at 10.30 am.
Thelma said in an interview with the Raleigh Register,
quote, it was 10.45 am on Thursday when she left.
I know because she asked me what time it was.
I'll never forget that day, end quote.
According to Susie's mom Thelma, Susie was going to deliver some Amway products to customers on
Old Crow Road in Beaver.
After dropping off the products, Susie met up with her friend before she took her grandmother
to Ransom's Market in Beaver.
After taking her grandmother to Ransom's Market,
Susie was seen at the Emiko service station around noon.
The same Emiko service station that Margie Dodd was abducted from.
Susie was driving her orange 1970s Volkswagen Beetle with the West Virginia license plate
7D-2267.
After she left the Emiko station, she drove her grandmother home.
For some reason, Susie did not return to her parents' home like she was going to.
As the day went on, Thelma got more and more worried about her daughter.
So she called the police to report Susie as a possible missing person.
She was of course told to wait 24 hours to a couple of days because her daughter may have
simply ran off.
The hours turned into days and there was still no word from Susie.
Bruce felt like something was wrong so he posted a $1,000 reward which would be $7,217.55
in 2024.
The reward was for any information leading to the return of Susie.
Over 100 of Susie's friends and relatives started to organize search parties to search the area.
The search included a helicopter to look for possible car accidents that cannot be seen on
the ground. Bruce even went up to the sky twice in a friend's airplane in hopes to find Susie's
orange Volkswagen Beetle.
What no one knew while searching is that tips had already came in involving the disappearance of Susie.
On November 8th, the day Susie went missing, calls were being made in Minden, West Virginia.
About 48 minutes away from Pluto Road where Susie and Bruce lived, residents reported a car
that was on fire over the hill at the Concho trash dump.
Thelma said in her interview with the Raleigh Register, quote,
Nine days after she was missing, they found her car over an embankment near Minden.
It had been saturated with gas and burned, but it sat there for about a week before anyone went to
investigate it.
Neighbors told me they called the police about it when it was on fire, end quote.
The car was finally investigated on November 16th.
In an article, it said, quote, A burn car identified by state police as belonging to Patricia Sue
Richmond, 19 of Pluto Road in Shady Spring was found Friday over an embankment at Minden.
She had been missing since November 8th, reportedly leaving her 19 month old baby with her mother,
saying she was going to visit a friend for about an hour and a half.
Police said an extensive search by more than a hundred friends and relatives has turned
up nothing.
Police said the case is being investigated by Trooper J. O. Cole of the Beckley State
Police Detachment.
Anyone having information concerning the woman last seen in Beaver, old Crow Road area should
contact state police headquarters, end quote.
Investigators with the state police searched through the remains of the vehicle and searched
the surrounding area.
Sadly, there was no trace of Susie or anyone else.
Authorities were able to determine that the vehicle did not go over the embankment due
to an accident, but that it had been rolled over the embankment.
The traces of gas showed them that it had been set on purpose.
Authorities were able to find one single clue from the burnt remains of the vehicle,
a gold wedding band with the name Gold Circle engraved on it.
From our research, we gathered that Gold Circle was a discount department store, mostly covering
Ohio, New York, Kentucky, and Western Pennsylvania.
To us, it looked like it could be the same vibe as Kmart selling clothes, bedding, jewelry,
electronics.
You name it, they sold it.
Gold Circle stayed in business from 1967 to 1988.
And from our research, there was not a Gold Circle store in West Virginia.
However, authorities believe that the ring belonged to Susie.
However, her family told them that it didn't.
Another thing that made authorities scratch their heads was how did Susie's Volkswagen
end up in Minden?
While investigators were trying to find Susie, there were two men raccoon hunting at Plum
Orchard Lake in Fayette County, West Virginia.
Around 11 p.m., James Shea and Harvey Williams were on the eastern shore of Plum Orchard
Lake when they found the remains of Susie lying at the base of an overturned tree,
approximately 50 yards from the road.
The man went and found the superintendent and told him they found a person's body with
its, quote, head blown off, end quote.
The superintendent at Plum Orchard Lake called the state police.
This state, a decomposition, made identification impossible.
When they saw a white dress and a blue sweater, they knew it was the same type of clothing
Susie was wearing on the day she went missing.
The state of her remains made it impossible to determine if sexual assault had occurred.
Susie's dress, bra and skirt were filmed wrapped around her neck.
A GenCare ambulance driver said that Susie's face looked as if it had either been
in a way by animals or being beyond recognition.
Susie's body was taken to the Tyree Funeral Home in Oak Hill, West Virginia,
where an autopsy was performed by Dr. M. Jamil Ahmed, a Beckley pathologist.
Susie's body was positively identified by her dentist who checked her teeth with dental charts.
Dr. Newell said he could not immediately see any indications of other physical injury
other than the decomposed face.
Dr. Newell said the body must have been in a particular spot for several days.
Despite the clothing being wrapped around Susie's neck, Dr. Newell said the cause of death was due
to two stab wounds in the area of the left breast which punctured the lung and caused hemorrhaging.
The murder weapon was never identified, but it was determined to have a blunt end to it.
Police kept investigating the crime scene and they discovered Susie's wig with the red ribbon attached,
a dental plate and a gold chain with the emblem of a selling ship on it.
The only thing at the crime scene that belonged to Susie was the wig with the red ribbon attached,
dental plate and a gold chain who it belonged to is still a mystery to this day.
Police did notice one of the items of Susie's was missing, the white boots she had been wearing
were not at the crime scene or even at the scene of her burned car.
One of the main questions police had in this case was how did Susie end up at Plum Orchard Lake
in her car burned over an embankment in Menden a round trip of 30 miles?
With all the media coverage of this case, police started to get some tips on what happened to
Susie on November 8th, 1973. Two salesmen who worked at the Murphy Mart in the Raleigh Mall area
of Beckley contacted the state police. The two men reported around 1.30pm on November 8th.
They both observed an African-American male with a petite Caucasian female with dark hair sitting
inside a bright orange Volkswagen Beetle. They both said the woman did not appear to be an
any distress. Something about it just fell off to them. The female was seated on the passenger side
of the car by the male within the driver's seat. They said the male seemed to be having trouble
with the car as he attempted to drive out of the parking lot. To both men, the action of the man
in the driver's seat were similar to those of someone who had never driven a stick shift before.
They witnessed the man turn on to what was route 19 and 21 heading north towards Mount Hope.
One of the men who witnessed this thought he recognized a woman in the car. So he was smart
and hurried up and got something to ride on and wrote down the car's license plate number.
The day after Susie's body was found, the salesman gave the piece of paper to the police.
And by what seemed just pure luck, it was the same license plate number that was on the back of
Susie's car. So the state police started to wonder why Susie drove all the way into Beckley.
It wasn't something that seemed to be in her plans. But from the podcast, Cold Case Crew,
they have said they believe that Susie used to work at a restaurant in the area. A restaurant
that is still there in the same spot. Today, although it may be a new building. Susie was
rumored to have worked at Long John Silver's at some point and was said to still have some
friends that work there. So maybe she just went there for some lunch or to stop in and say hi
to a friend that was working. It did cross my mind while putting this episode together
that maybe she was delivering some Amway products to someone that wasn't home and she knew they were
at work. So maybe she just went there to drop them off. 30 minutes later around 2pm, not one,
not two. But three different cold truck drivers spotted Susie's car driving along the narrow
mending drive. The sighting happened near where Susie's car was actually pushed over the embankment
and set on fire. All three drivers said that the car was flying down the road with the windows rolled
down and the cold drivers saw two African American men, one driving, one in the passenger seat,
and a Caucasian female seated in between them. These sightings caused police to focus on the
mending area. They actually ended up finding out that one of the residents who reported Susie's
car being on fire had a story they wanted to hear. A man who we were going to call Robert saw the
flames from the car and went to investigate it himself. At the top of the hill, Robert saw two
African American men walking up towards the road and away from the car. Robert thought that there
could have been an accident so he asked the men if anyone had been heard. One of the men said no
and said that they had been the only ones in the car. So Robert offered to drive the man back to
the main road but the two men refused and continued on foot. Mind you, this is November in West Virginia
and we all know how cold it gets the second the sun goes down. So why did these men refuse to get
in to a track to help them get away from the scene of the burning car? Quicker blows my mind.
However, when Robert told this encounter to the police, he described the men as African American
ages around 19 to 20 years old. Robert described one of the men wearing what he called army pants,
army jacket, and his height was around six foot and his complexion was medium and he had a slight
stutter. He also noticed he had a square face diver's watch with a wide band and black boots.
But what stood out to him about these boots is that the right boot sole was built up three to
four inches higher than the left boot. Robert described the other man as five foot six inches
tall with the stocky build, a leather cap with built in ear muffs, and an afro hairstyle.
With the accounts given by the salesman, truck drivers, and Robert, please think that the description
of the men seemed to be a perfect match. However, the descriptions of the men were still too vague
to release composite sketches. Along with this, police found it hard to put together a perfect
timeline of Susie's day. Like we said earlier, Susie was last seen around noon at the Amaco
service station in Beaver. Two hours later, Susie's car in a woman thought to be Susie was seen in the
Raleigh Mall, Beckley Plaza area of Beckley, roughly six miles away. Side note, like we said in the
episode of Marjorie Dodd, this area has basically not changed and the bank Margie worked at at the time
is still in the same area. So it's still exactly just six miles away from the service station.
30 minutes later, Susie's vehicle was spotted on Menden Drive near the Concho trash dump from
where Susie's car was dumped and where her body was dumped were 10 miles away from each other.
I think this is what really stumped police in the investigation. How did they get her
car from point A, which would be Menden Drive to point B, which would be Plum Orchard Lake?
To me, if Susie's car was taken to Plum Orchard Lake, people would have saw it.
I mean, Scarborough is a very populated area where houses are all around and to get on the
interstate, you have to go by houses no matter what way you go. The more Susie's friends and
families pressed for questions, they began starting to receive threatening phone calls
and letters mail to them. The calls and letters basically all carry the same message,
leave the matter alone or your younger daughter Sharon's life will be in danger.
With time, this case lost the media intention and fearful for the threats to Sharon,
Thelma, Homer, and Bruce stayed as quiet as they could about Susie's case. In July of 1974,
Bruce married Roberta Ayers and became a Methodist minister. And in 1989, when Angela married her
husband, Bruce lit a single candle in honor of Susie. Sadly, the investigation into the murder
of Patricia Sue Brogan Richmond went cold and has yet to be solved. If you have any information on
the murder of Patricia Sue Brogan Richmond, please call Crime Stoppers at 304-255-STOP.
That's 304-255-7867. You can even submit a tip at
www.crimestoppersofrallycounty.com or on the p3 app. You are not required to give your name
and are able to submit anonymously. Courtney, do you have any final thoughts on this case?
I just felt it's another case that her family was failed. She was failed justice. I mean, I understand
that her body was decomposed, but I also still feel at the same time that she could have possibly
been sexually assaulted. Even though the medical examiner said no, I just kind of feel that it was
possibility with her clothes and everything up around her neck. And I mean, they would have had
to hit a major vein for her to bleed out. And that would be her cause of death. And I feel maybe
some strangulation was put in there also too. I do know that a majority of stabbing victims,
it is not because they got stabbed to death. It is because there is multiple stab wounds
that causes them to bleed out. And that is actually what their cause of death is,
not just single handedly being stabbed. I hate this because her baby was robbed of a mother.
And her husband was robbed of a wife. And her family was robbed of an aunt,
a niece, a sister, cousin, everything. Her family was robbed. And I feel that in a way that
it's a possibility this could be somebody who knew the family for the fact that they were
putting threats against her younger sister. Mark, do you have any final thoughts?
I kind of debated on talking about this and I don't think I'll get into it,
but there is a rumor around how and about this case. I kind of believe it and I kind of don't.
If you know the rumor I'm talking about, you definitely do know what I'm talking about.
I still wish they had evidence to do DNA testing on. I wish that they could find the dental plate.
I wish they could do DNA on the ring on the... There was a necklace, right? Yes, I wish they
could find the necklace. And I never knew this until really going into this case that I'm actually
related to one of the men who found her body. I've never really been out to Plum Orchard
rather than one time and I never knew about this case. I do know it's secluded. So it's
literally just like a happenstance that they found her, I believe. Like you, I do kind of
worried about the sexual assault aspect of this case and to me you would have to be strangled with
all of that stuff wrapped around your neck. And you know, I know, which I don't think we left in
this case, but there were different license plates. There was a license plate in the back of the car.
So that kind of leads to the rumor of it not being her vehicle that she kind of just slapped
her license plate on it because she had a bug and it might have been the same color and such.
Can I say something? My very first car was a 1969 Volkswagen Beetle. It was my very first car.
And the way that the one man described how they were sitting in that car,
there is no bench seat in that front seat. See, I always wondered if she could just been in like
the back seat. She would have been in the center back for it to have appeared that way. That's
the only thing I could think of. Because in my bag, it was the driver's seat, your clutch,
well, your stick shift was in the middle and then your passenger seat. Yeah. And then you had a bench
seat in the back. Yeah, to me, she would have had to been in the back. Yeah, that's the only way possible.
There was also in other reports, Burry Mountain Road. There is no way that they could have went
from Murphy Mart where like Elder Bearman and all that stuff was to Thurman,
get up on Burry Mountain Road or no, it would have been they would have had they would have had
to drive through Beckley, go through Stanford, go past Prince and loop cut up, go by houses and get on
Burry Mountain Road, which took me and Courtney actually did this during the break. It was
October of last year. We done it. I wasn't. I'm happy you remember. So it took us two hours,
no cell phone service. We kind of had a guess what way to go at one point.
And we were kind of shocked where we like popped out at. So to me, Burry Mountain Road just
has never been a factor in this to me. They went down through Mount Hope through
wherever to get to Palomortr Lake. They killed her and then went to Menden, burned the car to try
to get rid of evidence at the Contra Dump. And technically, they were kind of caught in a way.
And the reason why we feel like Burry Mountain doesn't pay much of any aspect. It just it doesn't
add up. There is no way you would have to be the most skill driver to get down that road. There's
no way somebody could have been flying down that road, especially with cold trucks, because that
road is so small. It's very narrow. There was only two other vehicles on that day on the road that
day. And we passed one and I'm like Courtney, I don't think we can do this. She's like, you got it.
You got it. And luckily we did get it. And I mean, the road is very well graveled. So I don't know
how it would have been back in the day. I figured it would have been good from cold trucks and stuff
being on. I feel it would have been like if it was graveled where the cold trucks had traveled
over it, it would have packed down like any other gravel road. So possibly that could have given them
a little bit of speed, but even at the same aspect, I don't see them being able to fly around through
there, especially with cold trucks. Me neither. Because I mean, if you drove like cut off one of
those cold trucks and they went off that hill, they would be over the mountain. They would go
into Thurman, like into houses, into the train depot, all of this. So I mean, it really makes no sense.
Stay tuned for the next episode where we are going to tell you about the case of the socialite
from Charleston, West Virginia. If you find yourself enjoying Mountain State mysteries,
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