The Trail Went Cold - Episode 276 - Paul Armstrong, Steven Lombard & Karen Wright

The Trail Went Cold

Robin Warder

True Crime, Tv & Film

4.5 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 11 May 2022

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

December 17, 1993. Merced, California. 27-year old Paul Armstrong, a tow truck operator employed by RTS Towing, vanishes without explanation from his home. Later that day, 34-year old Steven Lombard, another tow truck operator from the same company, goes to the towing yard to pick up his paycheque before he also disappears and his abandoned pick-up truck is found in a K-Mart parking lot the following morning. Over 15 years later, the owner of RTS Towing, Randal Wright, becomes a person of interest in the disappearance of his 50-year old estranged wife, Karen Wright, who vanishes from their vacation home in Mexico. While there is suspicion that Randal might have been involved in all of these disappearances, no trace of any of the victims is ever found. On this week’s episode of “The Trail Went Cold”, we will be covering a trio of unsolved missing persons cases and explore whether or not they are actually connected to each other. After that… the trail went cold. If you have any information about this case, please contact the Merced County Sheriff’s Office at (209) 385-7445. Thanks Ana Luisa. Get 10% off at shop.analuisa.com/cold by using the promo code “cold”. Additional Reading: https://charleyproject.org/case/paul-henry-armstrong https://charleyproject.org/case/steven-lincoln-lombard https://www.mercedsunstar.com/latest-news/article3240379.html https://abc30.com/archive/6719241/ https://sanbenito.com/updated-former-local-missing-in-mexico-for-3-months/ https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/crime/article24554236.html https://www.mercedsunstar.com/news/local/article3251777.html https://www.modbee.com/latest-news/article3127847.html https://www.modbee.com/latest-news/article3133722.html https://www.newspapers.com/image/784386582/ https://www.newspapers.com/image/784386631 https://www.newspapers.com/image/667636945/ “The Trail Went Cold” is on Patreon! Visit www.patreon.com/thetrailwentcold to become a patron and gain access to our exclusive bonus content. “The Trail Went Cold” is going to be appearing on podcast row at “Crimecon UK” at the Leonardo Royal Hotel & Spa in London on June 11-12, 2022. To get a 10 % discount on the purchase of tickets to the event, please use our specialized promo code, “COLD22”, by visiting https://www.crimecon.co.uk. “The Trail Went Cold” is now doing a weekly livestream show on GetVokl every Thursday from 7:00-8:00 PM ET as part of their “True Crime Thursday” line-up. For more information, please visit their website. The Trail Went Cold is produced and edited by Magill Foote. All music is composed by Vince Nitro.

Transcript

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0:00.0	We would like to send out a special thanks to Anna Louisa for supporting the trail and cold.
0:04.4	Anna Louisa makes beautiful sustainable jewelry at fair prices.
0:08.4	For 10% off, go to shop.analuisa.com slash. Shop dot An A-N-A-L-U-I-S-A dot com slash cold and use the promo code cold.
0:17.8	Enjoy the show.
0:19.5	December 17th, 1993 Merced, California.
0:25.0	27-year-old Paul Armstrong, a tow truck operator employed by RTS Towing, vanishes with an explanation from his home.
0:33.0	Later that day, 34-year-old Stephen Lombard,
0:36.0	another tow truck operator from the same company,
0:39.0	goes to the towing yard to pick up his paycheck
0:42.0	before he also disappears and his abandoned pickup truck has found in a Kmart parking lot the following morning.
0:48.0	Over 15 years later, the owner of RTS towing, Randall Wright, becomes a person of interest in the disappearance of his 50-year-old
0:56.0	a strange wife, Karen Wright, who vanishes from their vacation home in Mexico.
1:01.2	There is suspicion that Randall might have been involved in all three of these
1:04.2	disappearances but no trace of any of the victims is ever found. After that the
1:09.5	trail went cold. I'm going to Oh, uh, yeah. Oh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh,
1:35.0	uh, okay. Hello everyone and welcome to our latest episode of the Trail went cold.
1:50.0	I'm your host Robin Warder and today we're going to be exploring not one, not two, but three
1:56.1	missing persons cases. The 1993 disappearances of Paul Armstrong and Stephen Lombard
2:01.8	as well as the 2009 disappearance of Karen Wright.
2:05.7	And I think it's safe to say that this might be one of the most bizarre stories we've ever
2:09.4	featured.
2:10.9	It's not uncommon for our podcast to cover multiple cold cases on the same episode,
	...

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