Episode 360: Jessica Gutierrez

The First Degree

Alexis Linkletter and Jac Vanek

True Crime, Society & Culture, News

4.5 • 10K Ratings

🗓️ 16 July 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On June 6, 1986, a single mom of three awakes to find her 4-year-old daughter has been abducted from her bed near Lexington, South Carolina. The family is desperate to find her. The girl’s sister tells law enforcement she saw a man in a ‘magic hat’ carry her sister out the window. However, there is no sign of the youngster. The days, weeks, months, and years pass without answers as the missing girl’s mother battles racism, corruption, and a bungled police investigation that ignores key evidence. Finally, decades after the abduction, and with the involvement of a private investigator, an arrest is made. The young girl’s family is entirely unsurprised at the perpetrator’s identity - it was someone they suspected all along. In episode 360, Jac and Alexis detail the heartbreaking abduction and murder of Jessica Gutierrez at the hands of Thomas Eric McDowell, and the importance of law enforcement listening to families, instead of stonewalling them.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The first degree.
0:02.0	First degree.
0:03.0	First degree.
0:04.0	First degree.
0:05.0	First degree.
0:06.0	The first degree.
0:07.0	You see it on the news.
0:10.0	You see it on the paper.
0:11.0	You see it on Facebook.
0:13.0	These things are supposed to happen in movies, not in real life.
0:24.3	The little girls kidnapped at 4, 2 o'clock in the morning,
0:28.5	10 and 2 o'clock in the morning, from her bedrooms down to sleep.
0:32.2	Her older sister was in that room sleeping as well.
0:36.8	Saturday morning when they get up and they're looking for the little girl and they can't find her.
0:43.9	And I know that if that was LAPD in my era, that was a solved case immediately, a day, two days at the max.
0:50.6	Jailhouse informants, pictures of the people, enough to go and at least talk to the dude, you know,
0:55.0	and arrest upon probable cause it holding for 48 hours until you can come up with everything. I haven't been involved in law enforcement in 30 years, and yet here I am trying to help them solve their case.
1:01.0	And I don't know if we did anything to make it have that case reopened.
1:05.0	It was so good to get involved to get into case, and even better that a person was brought to justice and got the sentence he deserved,
1:13.3	I don't think the family will ever be the same again.
1:18.6	Welcome to the first degree, the true crime podcast that you might end up on. My name is Jack Fannick.
1:23.6	I'm sitting here with the Alexis Link Letter. Happy hump day, people. Happy hump day.
	...

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