Transcript of The After Show: Her Last Note

This show is sponsored by Killer Ken, a podcast from ID. Family dynamics can be tricky, and sometimes even the people closest to you can become the most dangerous. Killer Ken from ID explores real cases about how family life can fall deep into manipulation, obsession, and murder. Unpack what happens when rivalry and desire for control lead investigators and relatives questioning what fueled some of the darkest crimes ever committed. Does evil run in the family? Listen to Kill or Ken wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi there, everybody, and welcome to 2020, The After Show. I'm Deborah Roberts, and I'm so happy you're with us today. I have to tell you, if you saw 2020's episode this past week, you know it was quite riveting. And if you didn't, you are in for some interesting details. I have to say that as a correspondent, but also as a mom, there are certain stories that just really stick with me, particularly when they involve young people. And in this case, the story that we are talking about involves a 19-year-old college student, Jessie Blodgett, who was found murdered. She was a talented musician from Hartford, Wisconsin, a theater person. And on July 15th, 2013, her mom went into her bedroom in her home and found her daughter cold, blue, not breathing. Obviously, she was distraught by that. But then once she called 911, she noticed that she had marks around her neck that appeared to be strangulation. She had been killed in her own home. This is a story that was just absolutely horrific for this community. Jessie murdered in her home, and the man responsible for the crime was essentially right there, hiding in plain sight.

Well, today we're going to talk not only about the story and what you may have seen if you saw our 2020 episode, but we're going to also provide some bonus material, some information that you didn't see in our 2020 episode. It was called Her Last Note, and it details the disturbing relationship between Jessie and her killer, which surprised so many people there. The emotional twist and turns of this story. We're going to take you inside the courtroom. All of that from Stephanie Ramos, the correspondent who was on this story. And I always enjoy talking to you, Steph, because you have not only such insight, but also bring such passion to these stories and such storytelling to these. And this is like your what, second or third story with 2020 now?

Yes, this is my second. You're on it. I passed the first test. It's been incredible. I love working with this team. These stories, they take you through these twists and turns. And I also get to meet so many people that are involved with this, that have lived this. And it's an honor to be able to tell their story.

Let's start off by talking about you as a mom. I'm a mom. And this story really gave me goosebumps because I have kids who are 20s, and your kids are younger, but a 19-year-old girl full of promise at home. She's in between semesters at school, Jessie. Tell me about you as a mom when you approach this story. I mean, obviously, we have to try to be distant in a way, but it's very hard, isn't it? Right.

It is. It is hard to compartmentalize, but we have to as journalists. But you're absolutely right. Going into this story, you feel for the family, and you obviously never want to envision being in a position like that. Jessie was this young woman doing all the right things. She had such a promising future. Like you mentioned, she was a college student, and trying to stay busy, teaching students, giving piano lessons, and joining the local theater group.

And as a mom, when you think about her mother finding her in her bedroom dead. I mean, and then nine 911 call that we heard, Stephanie.

It's awful. It's absolutely awful and heartbreaking. You hear Jessie's mother in that 911 call. You hear her pain, you hear her desperation, and just her trying to help her daughter, but also knowing that she's gone. She's saying that she's gone. And while we were there visiting Hartford, we went to the house. Jessie's family doesn't live there anymore, but the family that does live there now was gracious enough to let us see the room. And it gives you chills because this is where her mother found her. This is where she lost her baby girl, their only child. It is absolutely heartbreaking. It's very difficult to listen to, but you can feel her pain, especially being a parent. It's never anything that you want to envision or wish on anybody.

It's unfathomable.

It's gut-wrenching. And as a mom, you have to say, This is horrific. Obviously, you don't want to go through anything like this, but it is our job to share this story. Jessie's parents, they want to keep her memory alive, and they have done so much to do that. And that's why we're there. We're there to tell that story.

And to highlight that. And we're going to talk more about what they did after the fact later. But let's just talk about the community. Okay, Hartford, Wisconsin. I had never heard of it before. Small town, America, the Midwest. What did you find when you got there in terms of the community and the reaction to such a tragic story?

Yeah. Hartford, Wisconsin. Lovely town. Like you said, small town. We got a chance to visit a lot of the spaces that Jessie would often visit from her theater group. She had been in the production of Fiddler on the Roof. We got to visit the theater and interview folks there. And also coffee shop that she would frequent often. After school, She would go there with friends. She would play the piano. And you really got a sense that this is a tight-knit community. Everybody knows each other. They know what happened to Jessie Blodget. Everybody was shaken when they learned of this. And they're also trying to keep Jessie's memory alive.

One of the things that was interesting about the case when we portrayed it on television was that it was unique in how police actually solved the case. Talk to us a little bit about the unique ways that police actually began to put this together.

Yes. So days before Jessie's murder, there had been an attack in a park nearby, just a few miles away. This young woman named Melissa was in the park walking her dog. She noticed a vehicle had been parked there for quite some time. She didn't think anything of it. Like you said, this was a town. This was an area, even surrounding neighborhoods. They weren't known for crime. So Melissa is walking her dog through the park. She's coming back to her car, and she notices the same vehicle that had been parked there. When she first arrived, she looks and notices there's a young man sitting in the driver's seat, and she explained to us that he looked at her and then hid back in the car. She starts walking to her car, still not panicked. She still thinks nothing of it. She thinks nothing of it. She continues to walk to her car, and something tells her, Turn around. She feels a presence, and there he was. There was this young man right behind her holding a knife. This attack happened days before Jessie's murder.

And it would prove to be significant, too. The police began to look at this. Now, when they heard from Melissa about what had happened, tell us a little bit about this, because there's this van. Police began questioning a guy by the name of Dan Bartelt. Tell us how he entered the picture. Right.

So Melissa is at the park, and she is now fighting off this young man. Doesn't know who he is. He's got a knife. She is fighting for her life. Melissa, at this point, has grabbed the knife blade. She's holding Doing that- That's impressive. Absolutely impressive. At this point, this young man asks her, Can I just go? He's given up. He's figured, Okay, this woman is not going to... She's not going down. She's fighting for her life. He turns around and he leaves. She grabs the knife. She runs to her car, tosses it in her car, and takes off. She's dating a guy at the time. She runs to his parents house. That's where they call police, and that's when police get involved and start asking her what happened. And initially, police didn't believe her. What? Which is they really thought she was making it up. They couldn't believe that such a violent attack would have taken place in their town.

And that she was able to overpower the guy and grab the knife and all of that. But ultimately, They do start looking. They look at this vehicle, and they're able to track it down. They're able to figure out who owns this vehicle, and that leads them to Dan Bartel.

So a few weeks before Melissa's attack, a police officer notices this vehicle parked there at the park, makes a note of the license plate, and moves on. Now, when he hears that this young woman, Melissa, has been attacked in that same park- He starts to put those two together. And she's now identified or has given a description of the vehicle that was there. They put two and two together and run the plate, learn, or figure out who that car belongs to, and pinpoint Dan Bartelt.

So they start talking to him about this attack, but then he hits on something that leads police to connect him to Jessie's murder.

At the time when they called him to say, We need you to come to the police station to ask you a few questions about Melissa's attack, he was with Jesse's family, mourning her at the family. At the Vigil. At the Vigil, which was being held at Jessie's home. So Jessie's mom hugs him goodbye. The friends drop him off at the police station. So now he's being questioned by investigators. He basically admits, Yeah, I was at the park. I wanted to instill fear. I've been feeling a certain way. I've been feeling scared, and I wanted someone else to feel the same way. And then investigators bring up Jessie, and he goes on to say how horrible it is. And man, too bad she was sexually assaulted. And investigators in that moment, smart, quick thinking, make a note of that, speak with the investigators that are looking into Jessie's case and realize no one should have known that.

Yeah. Ding, ding, ding, ding. The bells go off. Well, it's interesting because he was, and you talked about this in the piece on Friday night, that he was amongst the crowd that was there for a vigil. And it's reminiscent of those stories that we do when there's an arsonist, right? And then they show up to see the fire and see what happened afterwards. And police often will find the person in the crowd who actually was responsible. And in this case, now they're looking at Dan Bartelt. So how does he even connect to this? Because, again, you're talking about this tight-knit community. Jessie was a theater person. A lot of her friends were theater people, and he knew Jessie. They had actually dated in high school, so he was in her orbit.

Absolutely in her orbit. It's so tragic just to think that he knew her family so well. He knew Jessie so well, was such close friends with her and everybody else. And we've discussed this. When you're part of a theater group, I'm a theater kid. You're tight. You've got a group that is focused on the arts. You all share this passion.

There's a camaraderie there.

There's It was a camaraderie. So here we see Jessie and Dan. They dated in high school briefly, but they remained friends, and they wrote music together. They sang together. They had this shared talent. And so many of Jessie's friends shared with us that they would look at the two of them and say, Gosh, you're so lucky to have each other, even as friends now. You're so lucky to be able to share in all that you do together. And it's just really tragic that clearly he was seeing her in a different way.

Yeah, which is so, so disturbing. Well, there's more there. So you stay here. Don't go anywhere, which you won't. And don't you go anywhere, because when we come back, we're going to share some bonus information, bonus details about this story that you didn't hear about before. More information about Jess see, and Dan's relationship, and also details from Dan's girlfriend. So don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

This show is sponsored by Killer Ken, a podcast from ID. Family dynamics can be tricky, and sometimes even the people closest to you can become the most dangerous. Killer Ken from ID explores real cases about how family life can fall deep into manipulation, obsession, and murder. Unpack what happens when rivalry and desire for control lead investigators and relatives questioning what fueled some of the darkest crimes times ever committed. Does evil run in the family? Listen to Kill or Can wherever you get your podcasts.

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Show me the way. Welcome back to 2020, The After Show. I'm sitting here with Stephanie Ramos talking about our most recent 2020 episode, which was called Her Last Note, centers around the story of 19-year-old Jessie Blodget. And by the way, that title touches on the fact that she was an aspiring musician. She actually taught music lessons to children. And this is something that was just really, really, I think, heartbreaking in this story to talk about this young woman who was full of life, a performer who had been on stage. She started Fiddler on the Roof, we just talked about, had a couple of performances in that recently under her belt. And so when police are trying to solve her murder, they're asking around, as they often will do, if it's a married couple, they will go to the spouse. If it's somebody like this, they'll go to their friend. Oh, absolutely.

I mean, investigators are fully aware of who they needed to talk to, and that this was... That Jessie's circle of friends were performers. They were actors. They were musicians. As we mentioned earlier, Dan slipped while being investigated about a completely separate attack. We interviewed one of Jessie's friends who said that the two were just really close, really talented. But clearly, this young man was troubled. He had this act going. But deep down inside, he was a troubled, very troubled young man that was looking into really dark things online.

In fact, you mentioned one of the things that didn't make it into our piece, but you talked about, and we talked about this, too, the two of us. A bonus detail was that one of his friends talked about a book that he was writing that had some eerie similarities to what actually happened to Jessie?

This friend who we interviewed, one of Jessie's friends, said that the two main characters in this book were named Jessica and D. And she says that Jessica's parents were both pediatricians, Jessica, in the book, and Jessie's actual parents were both chiropractors. So there were a lot of eerie similarities.

Also creating a story, a line that fit what his dark imagination was all about.

It was this sick love connection in the book, but also he was making that a reality.

Well, let's talk about the investigation, because when you talk to investigators and you went deep inside their investigation, and you said how they stumbled upon really a stroke of luck when they were investigating this case, because oftentimes these detectives will go rummaging through garbage or places that might reveal something, some evidence to them. And that happened when they were actually lucky, a stroke of luck.

Oh, absolutely. So as Dan is being interviewed by investigators, they're, of course, they're asking him where he was the day Jesse was murdered. So he tells him exactly where he was, at the park. Luckily for police, the trash bins at that park park had not been dumped out yet.

And typically, they would have been.

They would have been. It was scheduled to be cleaned out. The bins had been scheduled to be cleaned out. They hadn't. So when police go and they retrace his steps, there's one camera there at the park. He was spotted on that surveillance camera. They go back there, they look in every single bin, and they find a bin. In that garbage bin, they found a cereal box. And inside that cereal box, they found tape, antiseptic wipe that had blood on it, and ropes. And all of that was eventually tied to Dan. The cereal box had a UPC code on it. They were able to track that cereal box to the local grocery store, and it was a stroke of luck. Here they are in the park. They're just looking for any type of evidence. The garbage had not been picked up. It had been days after Jessie's murder. They look inside, and that's everything they needed.

The treasure trove of evidence. The investigation is always so fascinating to our viewers, and in this case, some of our listeners, too, how they put all of this together. So ultimately, Dan Bartelt is arrested. He's charged in Jesse's murder. He's facing possible life in prison without parole. This was a big shocker to everybody in this community. One of the things that didn't make it into our episode is that Dan's girlfriend testified for the state, for the prosecution in this case against Dan.

Dan's girlfriend, Ashley. They had discussed getting married. That's what Ashley shared. And she described them during the trial as best friends. And she shared that Dan had been lying about his job to her. One thing that Ashley also mentioned was that on the day of the murder, she got a missed call from him while he was supposedly at work. They got together sometime after three o'clock at her house. They hung out, had dinner, and watched TV. And she says there was nothing unusual about his behavior. Here you have a young man who's just murdered someone violently that same day.

And just casually watching TV and hanging out.

Exactly. She says there was nothing unusual about him. He was his normal self on the day of the murder.

There were a lot of chilling moments in this story, Steph. When we come back, we're going to talk about what Jessie's dad said to Dan Bartelt in the courtroom. So stick around.

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Welcome back to 2020 The After Show. I am speaking with my colleague, Stephanie Ramos, about our most recent episode of 2020 called Her Last Note, the chilling story of 19-year-old Jessie Blodgett, who was found murdered by a young man who turned out to be a former friend of hers, classmate, someone she'd even dated in high school. Dan Bartelt goes to trial. He's eventually convicted, first-degree intentional homicide. And then he gets a sentence of life without parole, the possibility of parole. But one of the things that was so, I think, also heart-wrenching in this story was that it was a tale of two mothers also, Jessie's mom, who's lost her daughter, but then also Dan's mother, who is heartbroken over what had happened with her son. That was hard to watch.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is a mother and the father. They thought they had done everything right. And they're being told by Dan that he's going off to work. Dan's mom was packing him lunch every single day.

So they're deceived by him as well.

They were also deceived.

Let's talk about the moment in the courtroom that really surprised a lot of us and that was just really, I I think, riveting in your story. And that was Jesse's father, Buck Blodgett, who spoke during court in a victim's impact statement and surprised a lot of people. But also, I guess maybe it's a touching thing, too, when he said to Dan that he was able to forgive him.

Jesse's dad was able to forgive Dan. I think for those who know him well, weren't necessarily surprised because that's the type of person he is. That is the exact feeling I got when I interviewed in Hartford, Wisconsin. It's this overwhelming just compassion and love, and just... He obviously misses his daughter, but he shared with us that he needed to move forward. He couldn't be upset with Dan, even knowing that he had welcomed Dan into their home on a regular basis.

And such a betrayal.

Such a betrayal. What Buck has done in starting this organization in Jessie's name- And let's talk about this organization, because one of things that many times these people do that we interview is that they find purpose in something that has just tragically happened.

And he has done that. He's founded an organization called Love is Greater Than Hate.

Love is Greater Than Hate Project. Yeah.

Tell us about this.

He dedicated this project to ending interpersonal violence and promoting forgiveness. So he's turned his family's pain into purpose, and that's what drives him. And Buck has been able to share Jessie's memory and share with the community and really across the country just what this organization means and how to stop this type of violence and also how to spot it, how to identify a person who might be going down this same path.

Yeah, for people who didn't see those signs, to give you some ideas. Well, that's the one thing I think that always gives us a little bit of hope at the end of these tragic episodes is that oftentimes family members will find a way to keep shining a light on the name of the person saying their name in a positive way. And Jessie Blodgett's name now has a purpose a good cause and hopefully something that will change lives attached to it going forward. It was just a remarkable story, Steph. Thank you. I'm sure it's going to stick with you for a while. Oh, absolutely. So thank you, Steph. Thank you very much, Deborah. Always great having you here. And always great having you all join us, too. So thank you so much for being a part of this program and taking this with you. Remember, you can also catch 2020 on Friday nights, 9: 00 PM Eastern, all 2020 episodes on ABC. And of course, you can stream episodes like this one on Disney+ and Hulu.

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