Transcript of Accident or Murder — What Really Happened to Casey Pitzer?

Criminally Obsessed
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00:00:00

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Cribsly Obsessed. I'm Anne Emerson. St. Patrick's Day is coming up, and it's supposed to be the luckiest day of the year. But for a young mom in Ohio, it was her last. Casey Pitzer was born in a tiny rural town in Ohio. And on St. Patrick's Day, 13 years ago, she put on her new cowboy boots and headed out to the local bars, ready to blow off a little steam with her girlfriends. But Casey never made it back home. And the only clue to what really happened to the young mom was her a teal green cowboy boots found by a retention pond not far from her body. The investigation into her death left her father cold. I'm here today with Greg Pitzer, Casey's dad, and Darryl Petrie, who is the Pitzer family advocate. Beyond local news coverage, no one's really delved into this case until now. Our criminally obsessed documentary, Dead Silence: The Casey Pitzer Investigation, is coming out March 6. Let's get into it. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. The documentary was incredibly powerful, and you both speak so eloquently about Casey and what happened. Greg, you're Casey's father.

00:01:20

Tell me what girl she was.

00:01:22

My daughter was a very good daughter. She was a very good kid, never cried, always real good, straight A student. Student, worked, raised two kids by herself, bought her house by herself, and just everything was working out good for her.

00:01:40

Tell me about where you live a little bit, where your family hails from.

00:01:45

We live there in Wilmington, Port William. In Port William, a little town out of Wilmington.

00:01:50

How long have you lived in Wilmington in that area?

00:01:53

Fifty-seven years.

00:01:55

I guess in a small town that you've been for 57 years, everybody knows everybody, right?

00:02:03

I do.

00:02:04

It seems that way, yeah. You run into a lot of people that you know. Casey, she didn't have any type of troubled past or any type of criminal Convictions, no E-Rides. She was a responsible person, and it was just another responsible evening. I know she's portrayed as this stumbling drunk, but the video contradicts that. Right.

00:02:30

Darryl, how did you get involved in this case?

00:02:31

I heard about Greg's daughter's case, and I reached out to Greg, and he met with me, and he provided me with this evidence here. I started looking at it, and it didn't take me long to realize He's like, This is a big problem. Greg looked at me and he said, What would you do if this was your daughter, Darryl? I told him, I said, I will treat this like it was my own child's case. I have for the last four years, I've treated this like it was my own. I think it would be very helpful if people could just jump in this man's shoes and say, What if this was my child? What extent would I go to get to the truth and lawfully get to the truth? And that's why I jumped into this. And that's why I've kept my nose to the ground on this is because I promised them I would treat it like it was my own child's case.

00:03:22

Yeah, I mean, you would go to the ends of the earth, right? You wouldn't. It's like you have, too, Greg. I would do the same thing as a mom.

00:03:30

I felt terrible for him because he was telling me the stories about how he would fight him and how he would challenge it and how he'd question. And then they kept calling him crazy. And he was telling me a story about one time where he was creating this big post on social media, and he spent... How long you spent? About an hour and a half. An hour and a half typing it up, and then it just disappeared because he deleted it. He's got one hand. So once he told me that, I was like, he's basically got one arm tied behind his back trying to solve this. So I promised him he could use my right-hand. I couldn't type a lot faster than his hand can now.

00:04:06

You've turned into his right-hand man, literally.

00:04:10

I'm literally his right-hand man. We work together.

00:04:13

That's wonderful, Greg. It's so good to have an advocate like that. Now, I just want to jump into it so that our viewers can understand what occurred. Can you take me back to St. Patrick's Day, 2013, and tell me, Darryl and Greg, if you could tell me what happened. There was surveillance video of this, that she had been out partying with her friends. Then what happened after she left the bar? For those of you watching on YouTube right now, you'll see that surveillance footage right here.

00:04:49

Well, what we could see from the video is it appears that she was taken off walking down the road. There's a Walmart surveillance video that captures a Like a silhouette of a person. You can't identify it to be Casey, but you could see someone moving across the road, and it appears she's headed towards her home in Sabina. But when she left the bar, there's some questions of why she left the bar, because she just called her ex-boyfriend, but they were in the process of reconciling. There was an incident caught on that outside patio where it appears maybe a bouncer and Casey had some type of physical altercation. Casey Cee appeared to be passive from what we could see. She backed up when the bouncer approached her. She sat down after the incident occurred. In the video, you can see that after that altercation with the bouncer, she clearly walked out of the bar on her own and away from confrontation. We're still wondering why she would leave the bar when she just called her boyfriend on the phone to come pick her up.

00:05:54

She's never seen after that surveillance video, is she? She's never seen again until much later. Tell me, after the surveillance video, what happens as far as Casey's disappearance? When are the police called in to help find Casey? When do you realize that Casey's not where she's supposed to be?

00:06:21

The police were called when her ex-boyfriend Eric Hags showed up at the bar and realized that she was missing. I know they were trying to point the finger at him, but he's the one that called the police. Her ex-boyfriend Eric Hague did everything he could to try to find her that night.

00:06:37

So the ex-boyfriend calls the police, reports her missing, and the police, what did they do next?

00:06:43

Well, they started a search, and they set off a perimeter around the pond.

00:06:49

How did we get to the pond?

00:06:52

No idea how that happened. I think it was just... It had a perimeter, it had a fence, so it's a good area to point at for them if they wanted to contain something, and we believe that's what happened.

00:07:03

The location and layout of this pond is really, really important. We'll throw up a photo here. It's really about what was not found at this scene at the pond.

00:07:13

The police actually pushed everybody off around the pond and said that they sealed it off, and then they said that the area was contaminated, so they didn't even process the pond. No footprint's leading into the pond, into that area. Nothing was found that would leave her into that pond. The only evidence that was connecting Casey to the pond was a pair of boots that they said that they found in the pond, but there's no pictures of this evidence. The problem with that is when the family received the boots from the police, the boots had no mud on them. In order to get to that pond, in order to get across that highway into that pond, you had to track across a very deep and soggy, muddy ditch.

00:08:02

For those of you watching, I would love to show you a picture of Casey's boots, but that's the frustrating thing. We don't have photos. We just have to rely on what we're hearing about them. We do have a recreated image used in the documentary of what the boots might have looked like. She had a very unique pair of boots, right? And what did they look like? Why were they so unique?

00:08:22

They were like a cowboy boot that the girls were wearing at the time. I don't know the name of them, but she just got them. They were brand new. And them girls that had them on said they were shaking them and you couldn't even shake them off. They said, they were really hard to get off. Now, she went across that ditch. She would have lost her boots in that ditch. Plus, she had a five-foot fence to climb with Bob wire. Now, she's so drunk. She's 5 foot tall. How does she climb that fence and not have her shoes or pants, not have anything torn or tore up? Now, when she gets across this fence, now, what does she do? Did she stop and take her boots off? Because that's where they found her boots. Her body was clear on the other side of the pond is where they found her body.

00:09:10

Something interesting, Greg, you said that the detective showed you a picture of those boots at the time? Right. What did it look like? Were the boots in the pond when they showed them to you?

00:09:21

He just took a picture of a boot and said, Is that the kind she wore? I didn't know, so I took it over to my daughter, and then she broke down.

00:09:28

Was it in the grass or was it in the mud or I don't even remember. At the time, the detective showed Greg a picture of these boots, and they wanted to connect her to that pond. That's the only bridge from Casey into that pond is this picture of these boots. But the picture of the boots is no... They admit to have them, but they're gone.

00:09:50

The picture is?

00:09:52

The picture of the boots, the Justin Calvary boots that were supposedly in this pond, there is no picture of that evidence. They have none. They won't provide them, but they showed them to him back in 2013. I had to take them on his phone. That's as close as he's ever got to getting copies of those photos. When investigators set up their their area, their investigated area, they had to put boards over that ditch in order to get across that ditch. So there would obviously be imprints from a boot and mud on the boot if she walked across that ditch. And if you look at the Google Earth image of that pond, there's no way around getting into that pond without crossing that ditch.

00:10:38

From the time that she went missing to the time that you got the call that she had been found at this pond, what was that like?

00:10:47

I went and got a guy who works for a state that has a dog, a tracking dog. He brought his dog in, and his dog hit right on her boots. As soon as he got across fence, he got her boots. Then he run around the pond where they found her body, and he hit on that, he jumped in the water, biting it, show that there was a body there. It took them eight days to get her out this pond. That was a brand new pond, nothing in it, no debris, nothing. You could see the tracks on the bottom of the pond. Now, you're going to tell me it took eight days to find my daughter in that pond.

00:11:26

Well, and then when they did find her, and this was just so It's disturbing when I heard this that she actually had this grass in her hand. She was holding on to grass when they found her body. I'll warn you, it's disturbing. I'm going to throw up this picture right now on the screen so you can really see what we're talking about here. And if you're listening, it's Casey's fist gripping this grass. It really is so upsetting.

00:11:52

A circumstance about that is when Casey was said to fall in this pond, it was on the highway side of that pond. That's where the dogs on her boots was on the highway side of the pond. Now, she was found in open water on the other side of the pond. So my question is, how does she have grass in her hand if she fell in this pond?

00:12:13

And how far away is this pond in relation in this small town from the bar that she had been at the night before and where she was supposedly heading, which was supposed to be home. You'll see a map on the screen here to give you an idea of the proximity. It really is such a small town.

00:12:32

Yeah, about a mile. And we feel like it was about a mile. The pond was a mile away from the bar, and she was walking towards Sabina, and I think she was forced off the property. Now, if you look in the reports, one of the bouncer says that they had to get physical with Casey in prior incidents. But for some reason, none of the detectives ever delved into that and found out these prior incidents where they had to get physical with her. They literally said that they had to physically put her in a car to get her to leave. And what's wild about the video is misalleged best friend-I'll throw that video on the screen for you all here again. She wasn't interacting in the video with Casey like they were best friends. They weren't even looked like they were communicating. So Casey was supposedly leaving with this girl, but she was dancing with another girl, came to the bar with another person, and just none of the stories have made any sense along the whole way.

00:13:28

It's also because you're seeing one thing and hearing another, right?

00:13:32

She's so drunk, she's staggering, but then you could see that she leaves fluidly and looks like someone that didn't have that much to drink.

00:13:39

She was ever dancing for a half hour.

00:13:43

I don't know if you saw the coroner's report, but the coroner, there was only a death intake form that was filled out on her. There was never, by any coroner, by any investigative agency, there was never an official coroner investigative report. That is mandatory in the state of Ohio, and there's suspicious circumstances around the death. And there still isn't one to this day. So technically, the investigation is incomplete.

00:14:08

And so there was no investigative report. Was it labeled a suspicious death, or what did the autopsy say?

00:14:15

Yes. If it's labeled a suspicious death. The investigation from day one, according to the chief at the time, he told the newspaper that it was treated like a criminal investigation since day one. And in the subpoenaed records, it said in the When you're in a phone records, it says that it was a criminal investigation.

00:14:33

Okay. Well, in the autopsy, it said that she had drowned. Now, was she drowned or did she drown? I guess that's also part of the interpretation Was she drowned or did she drown on her own?

00:14:47

It says with alcohol intoxication contributing. But the fact is, for someone to be drinking to have an alcohol test, provided to them seven days later while they've been submerging in water is not even feasible. No. I mean, it's not an accurate test. For them to base alcohol intoxication seven days later when her body was in a pond, it shouldn't even have been used.

00:15:12

You have 48 hours to do that test, and then they done it, what, seven, eight days later?

00:15:18

Yeah.

00:15:19

Greg, you had someone you knew who had a dog that could track, go out there and pinpoint where we believe the boots, where we believe Casey was found. But why did it take eight days for them to find the body?

00:15:37

It took eight days, but what's wild about that, about them taking eight days, is that there's a picture of a sonar image that they provided to the family. Only one.

00:15:49

I had not seen this before, but I'll get it up on the screen for you now.

00:15:52

It shows a body, clearly a human body. The investigators listed a rope and a milk crate in the photo. They pointed out it, they labeled it, and that was never mentioned again anywhere in the case file, nowhere. Just the picture, image, sonar, milk crate and rope, never recovered. That's so strange. So After they found that image, on the 18th is when that target hit that claimed happened. The chief detective told the newspaper that they found a target hit.

00:16:27

When you say target hit, Darryl, tell me That's what you're talking about.

00:16:31

The sonar image lists that they're... It literally lists the depth at 8. 9 feet, and it shows that they were... Like, literally, it could have got her with a pole from a boat at 8. 9 feet away from the body. What What was wild about that was they had Boone County Water Rescue, very renowned water rescue, come through. They had their ROV. They went through the pond. They did several laps, didn't find anything. But then just a day or two later, her body just, there she is in open water, where they went right over the passage, never could relocate the body after they picked it up on Sonr. Now, when her body was picked up on Sonr, instead of doing the rescue right then and there, the chief detective said to send everybody home, and that they were going to shut it down for reasons out of his control, is what he said.

00:17:25

Wow, there's just so many questions. So it's understandable why we're still looking at this case as if it almost feels like it was like yesterday, with the way you're able to go through this information.

00:17:40

Also, can I say that when she went walking towards her house, the girls that come to pick her up had her purse, her phone, and her keys to her house.

00:17:51

They had all that in the car?

00:17:53

In the car, and they turned the opposite way.

00:17:57

Designated driver, and they went the opposite way.

00:17:59

And knowing they had her purse and keys and phone.

00:18:02

That's so awful. This was when she had left the bar, when they had all left the bar, they had all of that in the car. They had left the car. So Casey really had no way to communicate with anyone to get home. She wasn't close either from that bar. She would not have been very close, was she?

00:18:21

8, 9 miles away. What I think happened was she was hoping her boyfriend would come down and pick her up, and it wasn't her boyfriend that found her. It was those two guys.

00:18:30

Well, talk to me about these two men. They admitted they were the last people with Casey the night she died. What do we know about them? I want to play some of the footage we have of these two men here.

00:18:40

We know that they failed two polygraphs. Now, back in 2013, they failed. On the 19th and 20th, they failed the polygraphs. Now, one was deceptive and the other was inconclusive. But if you go to the video of the polygraph, that polygrapher tells him in the inconclusive test, You failed. So he didn't act like it was even close to being a patsman.

00:19:03

I mean, there's a reason why that polygraph test was given to the police Department, right? To do the test. They wanted to know whether or not these guys were telling the truth.

00:19:14

Why else How did he do it? So with the polygraph test, on the 20th, when the second failed his polygraph test, Willemicton backed off, and they let the Clinton County Sheriff's office get involved and do all the investigation with his witnesses. And in the Sheriff's office policy, it says to do a follow-up investigation.

00:19:35

So what do you think happened?

00:19:37

Don't know. We don't understand how the Sheriff's office could get involved after failed polygraph tests and then not ask a single question. And even to this day, even after the failed polygraph at last March, the prosecutor even said, he wrote a big spiel out and said that this polygraph is too hard to... It's too much to ignore. This is the same one they use in FBI investigations. And he even went to Dave Winter, the investigative reporter, and told him, he said, If polygraphs were failed, that he would expect further investigation. And That never occurred.

00:20:16

Well, do we know that she had jumped out of the car when she got her? Whatever happened with these two men, the story that I've heard so far is that they said that they were giving her a ride home that got muddled with going somewhere else, and lo and behold, she ends up jumping out of the car, according to their take. What part of that story jibes with what you're talking about?

00:20:49

The Chief Detekive in the newspaper referred to those two as Good Samaritans. Good Samaritans, what? But he failed to acknowledge that they both failed a polygraph test.

00:21:01

So they were Good Samaritans, why, in his words?

00:21:04

Because they were trying to pick her up and find her and take her home.

00:21:07

Was there any relationship before this?

00:21:10

One of them knew her, met her a couple of times, he said, and the other one never met her as far as he-he might have seen her around. He said that they never-he referred to Casey as that girl and that crazy bitch, is what he called her.

00:21:25

Were they ever named as a suspect? Were these men ever named publicly as suspects in the case?

00:21:31

Yeah, they were listed as good Samaritans, yet they had a failed polygraph test. Yes, yet the chief in the case said it was criminal investigation since day one. They were treated like suspects, but they weren't labeled suspects, if that makes any sense.

00:21:50

According to reports, Casey left the bar on foot and started her long walk home. Two men picked her up. Casey only knew one of them. It's also been reported that she jumped out of the car at some point. We don't know why or where that was exactly. For our purposes, just so we understand, if we looked at the investigative file right now, they were not ever named as people of interest or suspects, but they were asked to do a polygraph test when they found out that they had been in contact with Casey, right?

00:22:20

Yes.

00:22:21

Okay. I was just trying to get that straight. I'd love to talk about a moment that I got to watch in the that was just literally was so heartbreaking. And that, of course, is when you go to the memorial to Casey, and I think it's near that retention pond, it just really punches you in the gut. It really shows how long this struggle has been over the years. Can you tell me what toll this has taken from you?

00:22:53

It's hard. Every time I go out there, I mean, she was my first born daughter, and she was a very good kid. It's hard. I mean, if you lose a kid, that's the worst thing that ever happened to a parent, especially under these circumstances.

00:23:10

He's expressed to me like his hard time to sleeping. I can't sleep. It's just been an ongoing thing for 13 years now.

00:23:19

I mean, as far as financially, I would think for you to stay dedicated to this course of action, to try and get to the truth, get some justice for Casey Has it been a burden?

00:23:32

Yes, it has been a very heavy burden. Money-wise, we're having trouble with the money.

00:23:38

Yeah, we've put a lot of money. I put a lot of my own money into it. I bought them an attorney a few times. We've had some mild success with getting some records, but even the courts haven't treated us fairly. They seem to skip past all the exhibits that we put in front of them, and then don't force them to to provide these records. Don't double-check. The court deemed that Wilmington provided all these records in a case, but he hasn't been provided one chain of custody record showing that any of the evidence was handled properly. It just blows me away that a judge can see the case and think that the records were produced when there is no chain of custody records. The main thing, these records, they probably still exist somewhere, but In 2013, there were subpoenas that were issued for seven phone records in the case. But the family has only been provided with Casey's phone record. That's it. Phone records would show the GPS, the geo-fencing data that would pinpoint locations at the time, but we've never been provided that.

00:24:48

Is it too late now?

00:24:50

You would think that when an investigator puts in an evidence preservation letter to a phone company like Verizon and AT&T, that they would store those records permanently. Right. And so those evidence preservation letters were sent to AT&T and Verizon. Ondly, we don't have any records that cooperate with those subpoenas.

00:25:12

Well, you bring up the cellular records. The cellular records are a big one. What are some of the other pieces of evidence that we're going to learn about in this documentary that are very strange, that may have been destroyed?

00:25:26

In the Ohio Biological Evidence Preservation Laws, under Section 2933. 82, it says that these agencies, these government retention agencies, are to hold these and store biological evidence such as clothing so that DNA can be taken from clothing or shirt. When the coroner's office in Dayton did the autopsy, they released the clothes not to the police Department, but to the funeral home who destroyed these clothes because they smelled smelled bad.

00:26:00

Smell like pond, he said.

00:26:02

And they were untested, never tested, and they were destroyed actively during an investigation. Right. Which was, according to the county prosecutor, who I have recorded, the county prosecutor in this case says that evidence being destroyed was a violation of that law. It is a violation. And also, he said that the rape kit that was destroyed, the, I guess, sexual assault examination kit, I guess, Sake, or Sake is what they would call it. The same. So that rape kit was destroyed just six years after her investigation, and there was never any reason given. Records were withheld regarding that, and it wasn't until a change of administration until we got new records that showed that her rape kit was destroyed unlawfully.

00:26:54

I just want to bring up the discoloration around her neck. I'm going to put up another incredibly difficult but incredibly important photo. You can see what we're talking about here. It's just so unnerving. I think these beads that normally symbolize a party, care-free, fun, everything that St. Patrick's Day should have been for Casey. But another point within this evidence that seems to be difficult for them to obtain or look at. I was hearing about how there were blurry photos from the autopsy. What did you You're saying it may be an exhumation is in order to understand what was going on around her neck. Can you explain what that was that they found around her neck on her body?

00:27:42

In the autopsy report, if you look at the autopsy report, it says it was unremarkable. We could clearly see this abnormal... It looked like an abnormal mark, something that you would expect an explanation for, at least. A clinical explanation, but we never got that. The autopsy photos that we were provided have only... Up in date, and only show Casey's neck cramped down like this, where you can't even see the mark. It's like they were trying to hide it at the coroner's office. Now, we can see the mark in the on-scene photos when they took pictures of her body on-scene, but not one time in the autopsy report, nor any autopsy photos, is that mark explained or revealed?

00:28:27

When the first autopsy photo said, I got They blurred her head out.

00:28:31

Yeah, they were blacked out in that.

00:28:33

Yeah.

00:28:34

I'll tell you something else that's really wild is, so back in 2013, Greg requested records from the Dayton corner's office that performed the autopsy. He was provided a partial of those records. He had receipts. We have the receipts. We have the envelope that they sent to him. Then when we went back up there, Clinton County directed us to go back to Dayton to get these records. When we showed up there to Dayton, and they denied him, turned him down, and got really aggressive with us when we showed up there in Dayton.

00:29:07

Called the police and had us escort out of the building. The police jurisdiction ended at the sidewalk. That's the Sheriff's office Sheriff looked out the door, he closed it, and went on.

00:29:20

Well, Darryl, you're Greg's Marci's Law Advocate, is that correct?

00:29:24

It's a Marci's Law Victim Representative, a designated Marci's law a victim representative.

00:29:31

Tell me what that means for us that are not in Ohio, so we understand what that means.

00:29:36

Okay, so Marcy's Law was passed in Ohio. It was such a huge amount of voters passed it under... It was like 80 plus % of voters voted it in. And what Marcy's Law does, it gives victims a voice, a right to be heard, a right to be treated fairly, a right to be treated with dignity. So the county prosecutor designated Greg as a Marcy's Law victim. He acknowledged me as a Marcy's law victim representative, which I have the right to speak for him. I have the right to advocate for him and to help him in any which way I can. And I'm also his legal power of attorney because he's missing his writing in And like I said, he's leveraging my right-hand through that power of attorney.

00:30:20

Greg, if Casey were able to hear us right now talking about this case, about the fact that you fought and that you brought Darryl on to fight with you, what do you think she's thinking right now as she looks down on you and sees the work you're doing?

00:30:39

I think she's smiling down on me, and she's got her hand on my shoulder, guiding me slowly, but she's there. She's there with me all the time.

00:30:50

I mean, Greg, I believe that. As she helps you and guides you through this as well, I mean, I feel like this is going to mean a lot for other families, what you're doing.

00:31:04

Right. It needs to. Every family should have the same rights to records. Every family should have the same type of investigation. Thorough. Every family should have access to information and be able to question these investigators when they don't feel like things are being done properly. That's what Pitzer's law, what I've developed. I think I think that addresses all that. One of the biggest problems with Casey's case is that it's so fragmented. There's all these different agencies that were involved, and you have to do a separate records request for every one of these agencies, and then they'll point you at the other agency. There should be a universal prosecutorial file where our county prosecutor must sign off on that. So has to be held accountable because with the way they have it set up now, you could never hold anybody accountable. They can always point the finger at the other agency. It's like, point you this way. You don't know which way to go, and they give you the run-around. And what they do, they try to wear you out to where you'll just quit pursuing them. Greg, in 2013, fought for years, but then eventually, he got tired and he fizzled out.

00:32:24

So I was able to help him like a tag team boxer. He just smacked my hand I joined in because I was already really aggravated and directing my attention towards them. When I found his daughter's case, I was like, This is the one that will get them all. This is the one that will take all of them out, and it'll restore integrity in law enforcement in our community because making things look like it's not and reframing, and that's not the way it's supposed to work.

00:32:55

I mean, the persistence, the relentlessness. I talk about a lot in these cases where we have not found the truth yet. Our viewers know that the most important thing to do is to keep the awareness alive, right? To keep that voice for your loved one there, so people know that this is still going on. Do you think we will get to a place of truth on Casey's case? Do you still have hope?

00:33:29

Oh, yes. We're going to get to the bottom of it one way or the other.

00:33:34

Yeah, and what we're hoping to do is raise some money so we can get some investigators, independent investigators involved. We've seen that there was a former FBI agent set up an investigative site where you can reach out to them and hire them to come do independent investigations. Greg has been openly... He's been open about the want to have her exhumed, but Honestly, with the evidence that I see and that I've went through, I don't think that she'll have to be exhumed to get a conviction in this case. I think it's just a matter of getting a neutral prosecutor.

00:34:12

Getting a prosecutor.

00:34:14

Now, and a judge. If you don't mind, I'd like to talk about what's occurred in 2025. In April of 2025, Greg was designated a Marcy's Law Victim Representative. They released all the evidence, polygraphs and everything to him. This prosecutor, our county prosecutor, told us that he was going to get the FBI involved, that he was going to get the Warren County Sheriff's office involved to conduct the last polygraph test because they did the most recent investigative lead. And so he was trying to say that he was going to hand this case off to them. Well, when it got time to do that, instead of giving it to Warren County or the FBI, he gave it to a civil litigation firm out of Columbus and hired insurance attorneys that were masquerading as special prosecutors. And so they come down. June 23rd, they were appointed to the case, Casey's case. There has not been one single question asked in over six months, seven months, nothing. That's so frustrating. Then they finally withdraw from the case. And so now Greg's left without a prosecutor to even confer with. And in Marcy's law, it says that he has the right to to confer with the prosecutor.

00:35:31

But when there's no prosecutor to confer with, who do you confer with?

00:35:34

What's he supposed to do?

00:35:37

The Marcy's law, it's under Article 1, Section 10A of the Ohio Constitution, which is in the Ohio Victim Bill of Rights, it says that he has the right to confer with the prosecutor. There is no prosecutor that will confer with him.

00:35:53

There's a lot of work that needs to be done on this case. I'm glad to see that, Darryl, you can stay with Greg as you guys navigate this. He needs a right-hand man like you. It gives me a lot of hope for other victims out there and victims' families that deserve a light on their cases as well. And hopefully this will give them hope by watching this documentary, which is so remarkable and beautifully done, to give a voice to the voiceless in this case. I thank you so much for sharing your story with me today. And I hope everybody watches this documentary. I want my viewers out there to please drop a comment and let Greg know what you're thinking, Darryl, what you're thinking. If you've been through a situation like this or have information that may help the Casey Pitzer story finally come to the truth and bring closure to your wonderful family.

00:36:56

What we would ask is that if you could ask your viewers to dive into this with us because we haven't caught everything. There's a lot of things out there. If there's a bunch of eyes on this case, we may learn new things that we didn't know. This is the book that I've written that dives into this whole case. It's called The Citizens Arrest of Clinton County, Ohio. It's the true stories of Casey Pitzer and Andy Napier. It tells us about our investigation and what's gone on in the last four years.

00:37:26

I would love to share it with our viewers, and absolutely We have a lot of very dedicated armchair detectives in internet slews out there that are very talented and have come to me with incredible information. So 100%, if there's anyone that wants to dive into the Casey Pitzer's story and case and investigation, this is the time to do it.

00:37:50

Yeah. And so this book, it should be live on Amazon within the week. I have an interactive website that has all the exhibits that's also going to be launched within the week, and it's under wehelpothers. Com, or you can find it under the citizensarrest. Com as well.

00:38:08

That's wonderful to hear. Thank you so much, and thank you for doing the work that you do as well. So I'll end this for now, but we'll hear if there's any updates, my God, please let us know. We certainly want to be a part of finding the truth in these cases. We don't stop either.

00:38:27

Yeah, I was looking at your work, and you You're an incredible person, Anne, and I wanted to thank you for reaching out to us in the information so very much. Thank you for helping all the victims that you've helped, Bray.

00:38:37

Well, thank you so much. It means a lot to me because we go down these rabbit holes as we do, right? And we never really know what we're going to pull out of the rabbit hole. Sometimes it's something that can make a difference, and sometimes it'll just get us one step closer. As my granny always said, you just don't know what all the pieces of the puzzle are until they get put together. Somebody may have a piece of that puzzle that's going to just finish the picture for you. Yeah, right.

00:39:07

We're close. We're very close.

00:39:08

I'm so glad they could join us for this conversation today. Be sure to drop a comment below and tell me what you think about this case, how it was handled, and what should have been done differently. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Be sure to like, subscribe, and follow us at Cribsly Obsessed for more important conversations like this one. Of course, be sure to watch Dead Silence: The Casey Pitzer Investigation. I want to hear what you think of the documentary, and leave your comments below. Thanks.

Episode description

Watch the Criminally Obsessed original documentary "Dead Silence: The Casey Pitzer Investigation" out now on our YouTube channel.

“She's got her hand on my shoulder guiding me slowly. But she's there. She's there with me all the time."    

Nearly thirteen years ago, a day meant to celebrate luck and joy took a dark turn for 32-year-old mother Casey Pitzer. She was last seen leaving a bar in Wilmington, Ohio the night before St. Patrick’s Day 2013... and was later discovered a week later in a retention pond, her death ruled an accidental drowning. But failed polygraphs, destroyed evidence and buried questions tell a different story.

The family’s painful and complicated fight for answers continues to this day. For more than a decade, Casey’s loved ones have lived with questions, heartbreak, and a relentless determination to seek the truth. Casey’s case is close to our hearts here at Criminally Obsessed, and we’re here to make sure it remains in the spotlight. 

Senior Investigative reporter Anne Emerson sits down with Greg Pitzer, Casey’s father, and Darrell Petrey, the Pitzer family’s advocate. They take us through the timeline and key evidence in the case, speak candidly about the toll of a 13-year search for answers, and share their latest efforts in an unwavering fight for justice. 

 The full documentary will also air Saturday, March 7th, at 7pm ET on WKRC-TV/Local 12 in Cincinnati, Columbus WSYX-TV/ABC 6 in Columbus and WKEF-TV/ABC 22 in Dayton. 

Our conversation with Casey’s loved ones is a powerful reminder that this is more than a headline - it’s a family’s fight, and it’s far from finished. 

Subscribe, like, and follow Criminally Obsessed for ongoing coverage and expert insight into the cases everyone is talking about.  

We’re headed to CrimeCon Vegas in May! Make sure you’re following us on all platforms for more exciting @CrimeCon updates coming soon.