236: The Disappearance of Elizabeth Sullivan & the Tech Rapist

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Elizabeth Sullivan was struggling. She’d married her military husband following a whirlwind romance a few years earlier. Shortly after they married, the Navy relocated the couple to San Diego. So, Elizabeth found herself far from friends and family, often alone, with two young children. She and her husband, Matthew, argued. He got violent with her. Elizabeth told her friends she’d had enough. She was going to leave Matthew. They never heard from her again.

Then Kristin tells us about a series of rapes that gripped Texas Tech in 1984 and 1985. Young women were being raped late at night, often while they were parking their cars. Police sketches of the attacker all looked different enough that many young Black men were afraid to go on campus late at night, for fear that they’d be mistaken for the Tech Rapist. Eventually, female police officers began posing as students in an attempt to bait the rapist. About a week into the undercover operation, police were certain they’d caught the right guy — Tim Cole. They were wrong.

And now for a note about our process. For each episode, Kristin reads a bunch of articles, then spits them back out in her very limited vocabulary. Brandi copies and pastes from the best sources on the web. And sometimes Wikipedia. (No shade, Wikipedia. We love you.) We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the real experts who covered these cases.

In this episode, Kristin pulled from:
“Tim Cole” episodes of Vindicated
“Timothy Cole” InnocenceTexas.org
“Cole case,” by Jena Williams for Texas Monthly
“The Innocent Man: Timothy Cole,” by Matt Sell for Everything Lubbock
“Judge clears dead Texas man of rape conviction,” Associated Press, NBC News
“A push to award a degree to a symbol of injustice,” by Reeve Hamilton for The Texas Tribune
“Statue of Tim Cole to be unveiled soon,” by Anna Tinsley for The Star-Telegram
“Innocence now on display,” by Mitch Mitchell for The Star-Telegram
“Victim aims to clear name of dead man convicted of attack,” by Max B. Baker for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram
“Innocence lost in attack, but courage was found,” by Bob Ray Sanders for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram
“‘You are a victim, just like my son was,’” by Max B. Baker for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram
“A day of vindication for innocent man, family,” by Max B. Baker for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram
“DNA in 1985 rape exonerates man who died behind bars,” Associated Press, Los Angeles Times
“The Cole Truth,” by Fred McKinley for the Texas Observer

In this episode, Brandi pulled from:
“Secrets by the Bay” episode Dateline
“Elizabeth Sullivan” chillingcrimes.com
“Timeline: The Disappearance of Elizabeth Sullivan” by Monica Garske, San Diego 7 News
“Ex-Navy Man Who ‘Brutally Murdered' Wife in San Diego in 2014 Sentenced” by Monica Garske and Christina Bravo, San Diego 7 News
“Ex-Navy Sailor Murdered Wife with Children in Other Room, Then Froze Body and Claimed She'd Left” by Steve Helling, people.com
“Husband gets 16 years to life for killing wife, dumping body in bay two years later” by Teri Figueroa, The San Diego Union-Tribune
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