And welcome to the after party podcast is the 21st day of February 2023 9 o'one in the morning. I just finished the the radio show and walked right down here before we get started with our guest Lou

Regus we are we're going to talk about Haven poker real quick and I want to say thanks and how much fun I had playing that game on the plane and then when I was in Mexico and I am I'm over 40 wins now man. I'm I think I'm pretty damn good at poker is what I'm thinking I have

I think like 186. Yeah, I'm dominating. You play it all the time. It's my 22. It's my new time killer. Download Haven poker. It's free on the app store and then make sure you enter the promo code Power Trip within the first 48 hours to double your initial bankroll. So if you want to play heads up poker against your friends. It's super fun. There's like an adventure element to it as well. You collect cards and open chests and then play poker. I love that I get to slice them in half after I win.

That's my favorite part. I don't like getting sliced in half. I've got 37 wins. I overestimated. I have 198. So if you if you want to play against the power trip. My handle is KFA and cove. Yeah, can I change my handle. I wonder. I still change it to KFA and hockey. But I'm just hockey. HWKY. What is your saucy? I'm just meat sauce. Yeah, not KFA and meat sauce. Somebody is doing that right. Right. Anyway, super fun. Haven poker is the best. I am Haven Pokers. One of the main reasons we came back is because

we have a sponsor that we are proud to be partners with. So let's go. Please, please sign up and don't forget to use that hashtag Power Trip. Lou Regus. First of all, I'm saying your name, right? That's right. Okay. I just want to make sure. It's the best name and news. Period. Thanks. Appreciate it. Are you a poker player at all? Not really. No, I'm not either. Don't worry about it. But I am an initials board game player. I overzoom. The boys from high school. Man, that's the best man. Well, I'll tell you if we got to get you into play the game now. Now we're all friends. I'm always the reader. And so I feel like I'm good.

But that might all be in my head. Yeah. Yeah. I get accused of that of being the host all the time and not having to throw my hat into the ring and move whether or not I could get my ass kicked or not. But yeah, I don't know. So I'm glad you guys like it, though. People. Yeah. There's one one in particular friend who just dominates every time. Awesome. Yeah. No kidding. Well, welcome aboard. Where are you from, by the way, Lou? Wheaton, Minnesota. It's a small town on the western border of the state. What's it by? Ortonville as you run the weather map. Okay. That was a high school rival. You know, I played gigs in Ortonville before. Believe it or not.

Because I've played I think every city and Minnesota. So grew up there. Went to college. Where were you? Where were you? I'm here in the Twin Cities. Right. Have you always worked in the Twin Cities? Do you go? I started out in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Hello. Hello, land is what they call it. Yeah. And then went from there to Tucson, Arizona, went from there to Buffalo, New York. So that was a shock. Whoa. And then coming back to Minneapolis was an easier transition. Wow. You went from Arizona to Buffalo, New York as a reporter. Yep. I was there when they had like a seven foot snowfall within two days. You know, so I'm

looking forward to whatever, whatever happens here. I've only ever been to Buffalo in the winter for football and Snowcross. Yeah. What's it like in the summertime in Buffalo? Oh, it's lovely. It's a mild summer. It doesn't get as hot there as it does here. It's just, you know, nice in the 70s and 80s. It really never gets to 90 degrees there. Yeah. I love that. I love the downtown. I love the city. Did you like living there? Yeah, I did. And the people once you become part of Buffalo, they embrace you there. And so you're one of them. And that's kind of nice. So when did you get into journalism? Because I went to the J.S.

School of the U as well. But I panicked at the last second and picked journalism because I went to the you not knowing what I wanted to be. So I had to panic at the last second and picked journalism. Did you know in middle school, high school college? When did you have like a cute story? Like some people do like interviewing their family and friends with a little recorder. But we did have this teacher in high school. I had a game called current events challenge. It's like a jeopardy game. And you had to read the newspaper to be good at it. And you got extra credit. And it was competitive. It's fun. So yeah. I read the newspaper every single day in high school.

Which is pretty nuts when you think about that nowadays. But so that got me interested in like current events and whatnot. And then I did a lot of like writing and kind of did the school newspaper in high school. And so it's just kind of one of those things where it's like I love to write. And how do you find a way to make money doing that? And journalism was a good way to do it. Sure. Then I kind of grew into like the whole reporting and tracking people down and stuff like that. Right. But I'm going to guess in now that you've written a book. I mean, I don't know if this is your first book. It is. Yeah. A lot of those skills came into play in this. I can't imagine the amount of research that went into doing this.

I'm going to start at the very beginning. But just on the whole, when did you start writing the book about this? So when I lived in Sioux Falls, when I worked there, I covered the case for three years. But keep in mind, I'm 22 years old when I'm there. I don't have the same same ability to question people on difficult things that I do now in my 40s. So I worked on it back then. But then when I moved back to Minneapolis, you know, I'm not going to give away the ultimate spoiler. But we figured out what happened to these two missing girls.

Wow. And I didn't see enough answers coming out of South Dakota. And I was like, in the families, they kept in contact with me. And they were asking me questions. And I said, if you guys are all good with it, I'll go back and I'll work on a book. And I'll get you all the answers that you've ever wanted. And that's what I did. It took three, four years. Spoiler alert. But did you get them the answers they were looking for? Yeah, absolutely. Wow. The sister of one of the victims told me that she got more relief and closure from reading the book than she ever got, you know, from the authorities. When when they

were told what happened, which is good for you, but also pretty sad, right? Oh, yeah, there's a lot of sad. Terrifying. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. What a nightmare. So do me a favor again. I just wanted to get everybody to know you a little bit. First of all, the story runs Thursday night. Is that right? The book. The book is out today. Okay. I didn't know if you had a story that's separately that was running. No, no, no. Okay. Got you. I'm sorry about that. So the book is out today. Yes. It's officially out today. I'll book banished in Vermillion. Okay. And you can get it anywhere. Yep. Barnes and Noble.

Or Amazon is probably the easiest way for anyone. How nervous are you right now? It's it's it's it's not a it's not a scared nervous. It's more I'm on that high. You know, I got I got that adrenaline going. Gotcha. Um, so and I will ask you a million questions. But do me a favor for anybody. First of all, start at the beginning of the case, but also just for people unfamiliar. Where's Vermillion located in regards to South Dakota? So it's it's toward the southeast corner of South Dakota. And Vermillion is where the University of South Dakota is. Okay. Gotcha. And so it's um,

it's it's a pretty small town, you know, and you know, it's not like when cities are anything, but it's a it's a college town. It's like it's a classic, you know, small town that has a college. So they have a lot of youth as opposed to other towns. The same the same way there. But then also there's a lot of friction because, you know, it's a very conservative state. Very conservative region. But then, you know, where the university is kind of a liberal area. You know, this takes place in 1971. And so with that in context 1972 is when they lowered the voting age to 18. There's anti-war marches.

Everywhere, including there. Wow. And there literally were hippie communes out in the countryside there because of the college crowd that was attracted to Vermillion, South Dakota. Wow. I do me a favor because I love South Dakota. But in regards to what you were saying, how far are we talking from like the Black Hills sturgicide? Okay. So it's closer to Sioux Falls. It's okay. It's less than a hour from Sioux Falls. Okay. Gotcha. All right. Understood. Okay. Thank you. So just give us the the the cliff notes at the beginning of the case. Tell us the actual story. So two high school juniors Pam Jackson and Sherry Miller are on their way.

To the end of the year party thrown by the seniors, a keg party out in the countryside at a gravel pits, which is kind of where kids out in the country. So this day still probably party, you know, to get cover from the roads and the grownups and whatnot. So these are not the type of girls that usually would go to parties. But it was the end of the year and of their junior year. And they kind of wanted to get out there and, you know, make a name meet some new people make a name for themselves or whatever. And they keep getting lost. And they keep asking people for directions because it's hard to find even for people that know where where they're supposedly going. It's hard to

find. And they're following some boys there eventually. The boys eventually get there, turn around and the girls are not there anymore. And so the girls disappeared. They were never seen again after that night. So this was in a car, though, correct? They were driving a car. Yeah, in old 1960s, Suda Baker, Lark, which it was kind of a junky old car. And by 1971, Suda Baker had already gone out of business. So it wasn't even a car that was made anymore. There are all kinds of like disappearing and plain sight stories. Why this one? So.

It was treated at the time, horribly by law enforcement who just told the parents all they ran away and they'll be home soon. And there were a lot, you know, at that time, parent, a big generational divide at that time in the anti-war era, right? So there was a lot of like, they just ran away. They'll be home, stop worrying. And nobody looked into it in any fashion back then. But then later on, 30 years later in the early 2000s, when I was working there, he got reopened as a cold case with the idea that made

maybe they were murdered and with a very specific suspect in mind. And that's where the story gets crazy.

And as you know, by doing all the research for this, a lot of stuff in the 70s and early 80s, all the documentaries and stuff that you watch on Hulu Netflix and all that, you find out that police stations close to each other, they didn't share any information.

Bingo. That's a huge thing that happened back in those cases where that was always their answer. Well, we have no idea. Well, have you checked with them?

...