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True Crime All The Time Unsolved

The Akron Spree Murders

True Crime All The Time Unsolved

PodcastOne

True Crime

4.75.9K Ratings

🗓️ 3 January 2021

⏱️ 49 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

From August to December 1987, a series of murders were committed in the Akron, Ohio area that stumped the authorities. Four women, Janice Christensen, Joann Bartholomew, Marcia Piotter, and Barbara Blatnik were murdered. Janice, Joann, and Marcia were in their 30s or 40s and married, while Barbara was only 17-years-old and still in high school. Police struggled to figure out if the four murders were connected. Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss the details of these brutal murders. Valuable evidence, including DNA, was collected at the scenes. But, police were unable to solve the murders and the cases all went cold. A cold case team revisited Barbara Balatnik's case in 2019, trying to find her killer through the use of forensic genealogy. This resulted in the May 2020 arrest of a man named James Zastawnik. But, many questions remain. Will a jury convict Zastawnik of Barbara's murder and will police be able to tie him to any of the other three murders that they've felt for so many years are related. You can support the show at patreon.com/truecrimeallthetime Visit the show's website at truecrimeallthetime.com for contact, merchandise, and donation information. An Emash Digital Production See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0

technical based Memorial

0:30.0

Hello everyone and welcome to episode 193 of the True Crime All the Time Unsolved Podcast.

0:40.6

I'm Mike Ferguson and with me as always is my partner in True Crime.

0:44.7

Mike Gibson, give me how are you, man.

0:46.2

I'm good, man.

0:47.2

How are you?

0:48.2

I'm doing great.

0:49.2

You and I had a wonderful week off last week.

0:52.2

That was kind of amazing because we don't get too many of those.

0:55.9

Spent a lot of time with family.

0:58.3

Had Christmas.

0:59.4

It was very nice.

1:00.4

Wait, we were off last week.

1:02.4

Yeah.

1:03.4

You had me here.

1:04.4

No.

1:05.4

No, you must have been somewhere else podcast.

1:08.2

You must have been in somebody else's studio, man.

1:10.2

I'm the way you were.

1:11.4

Well, it was kind of a cool studio.

1:14.4

That's good.

1:15.4

As long as you did some good work.

...

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