pam lives at a small house on lincoln
street with two roommates she'd moved in
just three months ago but over dinner
with her father she admits
she's already having second thoughts
she says we're behind on a rant and she
goes i'm tired of it and i want to know
if it would be okay with you if i move
back home
and i told her absolutely i didn't want
you moving out to begin with and i said
um
when do you want to do this she said
well i'm going to come to the house on
saturday
and do laundry
so we finished having dinner and uh
she left and that was the last time i
saw pam
alive
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pam was born june 25th 1969
at k.i sawyer air force base in the
upper peninsula michigan
pamela was the oldest of the four of us
pam was very much outgoing she was part
of a group of friends that liked cb
radios and her handle was dark angel
in june of 1988 she moves in with her
best friend shelley norgaard
i said i'm i'm opposed to that you've
got your own room here at home you've
got your own private entrance but she
did anyway i was kind of upset about
that be honest with you
they realized they weren't able to
afford the rent fully so then they had a
third roommate jeremy anderson who had
moved in with them
from
what i remember the three of them
got along pretty well
mundy came
and i called the place where she works
and i ask her boss i said is pam there
he goes no
she didn't show up for work
so
at that point they called the police
department
i went to pam's house with a sergeant by
name of bill hobbs and or it was
answered by shelly norgaard they found
pam's purse her driver's license
medicine all her personal effects were
still there
bill hobbs and myself sat down at the
kitchen table with shelly
and
asked her if she knew anything
and she said that she believed pam had
gone out partying
she wasn't really worried of anything
happening to her
and she said that they had a joint
checking account to to pay the rent
and shelly
deposited her portion of it
and then pam pitts had emptied the
account and wasn't paying the rent and
so she was a little upset about that
gordo's pit is in a wooded area it was a
place that a lot of the local kids would
go to party
and so this one person is sifting
through some refuse and he sees a human
foot sticking out
there was a big pile of garbage bags and
a lane
on top of the pile was
an unknown body
that had been totally consumed by fire
melted into the wrist bones
was what appeared to be a bracelet
and you could make out just a couple of
letters of dark and a couple of letters
of angel on that
there was a lot of trash around her and
on her the injuries to her body
were
gruesome
the sheer brutality of what happened to
her was the most striking thing so we
suspected that pam had been killed and
stored somewhere
and then deposited on the garbage pile
and burned
detectives turned to pam's housemates
shelly and jeremy
they want to know where the two were on
september 16th
the last day anyone saw pam alive
jeremy's alibi was that he was at a
football game that night
and that was kind of a significant event
and then he hung out with a couple guys
shelley said that on the night of the
16th she got off work she went and
picked up her boyfriend ray
who were you with the night of the 16th
don
john
and terry i don't know their last names
and she said that they got done around 2
30 or so in the morning
you sure you didn't take pam out to the
pits
i'm
positive
so
the police focused on that
talking to ray clerks to see if shelly
was telling the truth and they
corroborated what she had said
detectives ask ray to take a polygraph
he agrees
and passes
with no new leads to fuel the
investigation
like the dying embers of the fire that
consumed her
the case of this dark angel's fiery
demise grows cold
i mean they were pretty good about
periodically updating me for a while you
know and then as time went on i wasn't
hearing
much of anything
yet this case with all its strange
twists is about to take another odd turn
there were some embry-riddle students
exploring a mine
out iron springs road found a body in a
vertical mine shaft
and reported it to law enforcement
the body was positively identified as
ray clerk's
he had been shot in the head
ray was the boyfriend of pam's roommate
shelley norgaard
to me
if you think that's a coincidence
there's something wrong with you you
know
police begin their investigation by
matching tire tracks found at the mine
entrance to a pickup recently borrowed
by none other than
shelley norgaard
shelly was interviewed at the time of
her interview in the house they found
blood and at a certain point they walked
up to her car and could immediately
smell i think they documented it as the
smell of death
they found blood in the trunk of her car
that ended up being you know the same
type as rays
detectives also find a nine millimeter
luger revolver under the front seat
so they actually had some physical
evidence to charge shelley
despite norgard's not guilty plea the
evidence is stacking up against her a
ballistics analysis chose shelley's gun
is the same caliber as the weapon used
to kill ray clerks after two years of
claiming she was innocent
norgaard reverses course
and admits she murdered ray clerks but i
believe she killed ray in the apartment
and then ray's body was in the trunk of
that car and i sat out there until
shelley was able to borrow a four-wheel
drive truck go to her car remove ray's
body
put it in the truck drive it up the
mountain to that mine shaft
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your guard is sentenced to 20 years with
no parole
she's given credit for the two years she
has already served awaiting trial
her release date would be in 2011.
shelley's conviction in rey's death now
paints shelly in a whole different light
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forty-two-year-old shelley norgaard
completes her sentence there had to be
something we missed so from day one that
was it what did we miss what do we have
that will provide us the clue we need to
solve this case
all penal institutions in the united
states pretty much all of them
record phone calls between inmates and
the outside there was a series of phone
calls between shelly and her father
where there was tension in so far as her
dad was concerned that she was going to
be arrested immediately upon leaving the
jail
hi hi what's going on
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he kept making reference to that night
referring to the night pam went missing
well that's what i've been thinking for
20 years but then i don't know exactly
you've never told me what actually
happened
i'm kind of up in the air again
and she comes back
i got a moment
i had a huge moment
and then the line goes completely silent
that was a giant aha moment that
actually led me to go to the county
attorney's office and seek an indictment
[Music]
hello
miss snoridar yes
sergeant
i'd like to talk to you about 1988
am i under arrest
you are under arrest
for murder of pamela pets
what we decided on as a family and i've
taken a lot of criticism for this
is that
we would
offer her a plea deal where if she
confessed to the crime
and gave us the details
of what happened and why that she would
be released on time served it was more
important to get the confession and the
conviction behind shelley's name than it
was for the time
so we offered the plea deal and
surprisingly she agreed to it
and so we went into court
and she stood up and she said
i murdered pam pitts
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shelley was upset with pam because the
checking account was overdrawn
and shelley
was really upset with pam about her
moving out because she couldn't afford
to pay the rent on her own and she
didn't have anywhere to go
so shelley was out looking for pam and
she knew that she goes to gordo pitts
for parties
and so when she found pam she confronted
her they got into a fight she just you
know lost it she said i
punched her and knocked her down and got
on top of her and i just kept punching
and punching and punching
until she
stopped breathing
and then she heard voices coming and she
realized pam wasn't moving
and she left
that was shelley's final story that's
all we got
i don't feel that what shelly stated in
her allocation was genuine
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she didn't have to say what happened
afterwards so
we're led to believe that shelley just
left pam's body out there and that
somebody else came along and burned it
and you know
desecrated her body i mean
it doesn't add up
she gave no other details and we were
not allowed to ask any questions
so the legal handcuffs i felt were put
on us
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of course if it were up to me she'd be
in prison for the rest of her life but
we don't live in a perfect world
she's a two-time convicted murderer
and my advice to her husband is sleep
with one eye open
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you