Madeline Edman, 15 went missing from La Crosse, Wisconsin on July 29, 2005. Madeline and her mother were doing laundry at the local laundromat on the corner of St. James & Calendonia St. Madi decided to leave before her mother was finished and walked out the door. Her mother thought nothing of it but began to get worried when the teenager hadn’t returned home by that evening. Kathy Edman filed a missing person’s report for her daughter, but no clues ever emerged.
Some reports say her grandmother thinks the teenager isn’t missing at all. She thinks the girl wanted to disappear. Due to her troubled childhood, and her mother’s arrests; perhaps this is the case, but as a child, someone needs to care and look for her. It’s not like she’s an adult and made this decision. The local police agree with my point of view on this case. Her case is classed as a “possible endangered runaway,” but the police haven’t ruled out homicide, or human trafficking.
The authorities have created an age progression photo hoping to generate leads. If Madi is still in the area of La Crosse, there hasn’t been official sightings to verify it.
I find it strange that a teenager can go missing, and yet her own family assumes she ran away. If you travel down Calendonia street, you will come across a Catholic church. Could this troubled teen have sought refuge there? Has any investigation gone in this angle? I don’t know, but I think it would be a good place to start. Maybe someone felt sorry for her and helped her disappear.
Two months after her daughter’s disappearance, Kathy Edman was arrested and charged with encouraging or contributing to the delinquency of a child, drug possession, and distribution to a child under 17.
In 2008, a body was recovered only 172 miles away from the laundromat that closely resembled the missing teen. It was later ruled out, and Madeline Edman’s case remains unsolved. If you have any information, please contact:
WISCONSIN CLEARINGHOUSE FOR MISSING & EXPLOITED CHILDREN & ADULTS 1-800-THE-HOPE
Watch Synova’s Chasing Justice Video About This Case:
Follow the heart-rending cases Synova first wrote about on her blog in 2018. Filled with missing persons’ cases, unsolved homicides, and even serial killer cases, this book will give you a greater insight into the shattered lives behind every story. Cases Included in this book: Jayme Closs, Haley Owens, Josh Robinson, Timothy Cunningham, Carol Blades, Pam Hupp, Arthur Ream, Angela Hammond, The Springfield Three, Jennifer Harris, Danny King, Angie Yarnell, Jack Robinson, Madelin Edman, Alexis Patterson, Amber Wilde, Sandra Bertolas, Jennifer Casper-Ross, Crystal Soulier, Jody Ricard, Carmen Owens, Brandon Tyree McCullough & The I-70 Serial Killer
It was a quiet Monday morning at a local mall in Phoenix, Arizona. The employees were recovering from the mad rush of Black Friday events, and the busy shopping season was well underway. An armored truck was busy making its rounds picking up the weekend’s receipts when it pulled into the parking lot of the AMC movie theater. Robert “Keith” Palomares, 24 was the truck’s “hopper” so he jumped from the vehicle and headed inside never realizing this would be his last day on Earth. He was being hunted by a Murderous Missionary.
As the guard exited the theater a hooded thief pulled out a .45 semi-automatic Glock and shot six times hitting the unsuspecting guard in the head with five of the six rounds. He was down immediately without a chance to defend himself. As the young man lay bleeding to death the thief mounted a blue and silver mountain bike and took off down the alleyway. Palomares died on the scene. He was a newlywed of only 15 months.
The police had little to go on in this case in the way of forensic evidence until the gunman’s bike was found stashed under a bush only half a mile away. The man had forgotten to wipe the handles for fingerprints, but this evidence would bring even more questions.
Witnesses had described the shooter as a Hispanic male in his mid-twenties, but the evidence showed a 35-year-old Mormon surfer boy. Jason Derek Brown wasn’t your typical street thug. By all accounts, it looked like he was raised in a good, financially stable, family in Laguna Beach. His family are active Mormons. Brown spent two years as a missionary in France after high school. He got married and then enrolled in the master’s program at the Monterrey Institute of International Studies. It seemed like he had a good life ahead of him, but somewhere in the 1990’s he changed.
Brown divorced his wife and took his party life on the road. He collected lavish cars, ATVs, and toys, but no one ever seen him go to work. Somehow, he always had a boat load of cash. Over the next ten years, Brown traveled around the U.S. creating various scams to fund his lavish lifestyle. Still, how does a Mormon missionary turn into a scheming conman and then into a cold-blooded killer? Perhaps it was his financial troubles, or perhaps it was a drug addiction. We may never know, but in Phoenix, Arizona Brown had morphed into a murderous killer stalking his prey. He went out and purchased a hand gun and took his conceal and carry course that day. He stayed at a friend’s house for a week and stalked the armored truck to learn its routes. The day before the murder, Brown left his friend without explanation and rented a hotel room. The day before the murder, Brown took his gun out to the desert for some target practice.
During this practice session he inadvertently shot a man’s vehicle and promised to pay for the damages. Brown gave Max Newton his name, address, and phone number and promised to send a check if Newton would get an estimate of the damage. Fast forward within a few hours of the shooting and Brown gets the phone call from Newton. Again, Brown calmly promised to send Newton a cashier’s check. The price for the repairs was $1300.
Before the robbery, Brown parked his BMW a mile from the movie theater and pulls out his mountain bike. Witnesses at his hotel remember him trying to fit the large bike into the two-seater. Brown takes out across the alleyway and ends up at the theater and waits. He kills the guard, takes the money, hops on his bike and is well out of the area before the police arrive on scene.
With all the evidence one would think Jason Brown would be rotting in a jail cell somewhere, but that’s not the case. After his picture is seen on the news, Brown takes off towards Mexico leaving an electronic trail of credit card purchases along the way. The FBI is in hot pursuit until the trail goes cold. Somehow his Cadillac Escalade is found abandoned not at the Mexican border, but in Portland Oregon. The FBI believe he crossed over into Canada and no one has seen him since. Strangely, Max Newman received a cashier’s check in the mail for $1,300 just as promised.
It’s been almost 20 years. Brown speaks fluent French, and some speculate that he could have returned to Paris. Others wonder if he is hiding in the Mormon community. Whatever the case, Jason Brown has not paid for his crimes and was placed on the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted list on December 8, 2007. He is one of the few people to be taken off the list without being captured. As of December 2022, he was taken off the list. It was determined that he no longer fit the criteria. That doesn’t mean he’s no longer a threat, but it does mean that he’s not getting as much marketing as a top-ten criminal.
As always if you have any information regarding Jason Derek Brown please contact your local FBI office. 1-800- CALLFBI
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Follow the heart-rending cases Synova first wrote about on her blog in 2018. Filled with missing persons’ cases, unsolved homicides, and even serial killer cases, this book will give you a greater insight into the shattered lives behind every story. Cases Included in this book: Jayme Closs, Haley Owens, Josh Robinson, Timothy Cunningham, Carol Blades, Pam Hupp, Arthur Ream, Angela Hammond, The Springfield Three, Jennifer Harris, Danny King, Angie Yarnell, Jack Robinson, Madelin Edman, Alexis Patterson, Amber Wilde, Sandra Bertolas, Jennifer Casper-Ross, Crystal Soulier, Jody Ricard, Carmen Owens, Brandon Tyree McCullough & The I-70 Serial Killer
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In the cold early morning hours of February 28th, 2022, a 911 call came to Madison County operators at approximately 4:40 AM. A young man named Timmy Dees told the operator he was being threatened by a friend who had brought him to Fredericktown earlier that evening.
Sadly, this phone call was not recorded because the recording equipment went down the December before, and they wouldn’t get new equipment installed until mid-March. But whatever the reason for the equipment malfunction, it does not excuse the fact that they didn’t follow standard procedure and keep an operator on the line with Timmy until police arrived on scene. If they had, Timmy might still be alive today. We would at least have a better idea of what happened to him on that cold winter night.
According to the 911 incident report, the officer showed up at the scene at 4:48 AM, but Timmy was nowhere to be found. Strangely, the officer didn’t even look for him. The friend that was supposed to be threatening him was there. (We will call him Mr. C.) Mr C. and the other two men at the house all said Timmy left a short time earlier.
Mr. C. had warrants out for his arrest for unrelated issues. The officer decided to arrest him on the spot and took him to jail. No one went out into the night to look for Timmy. Later, the officer would give an interview and claim that he figured the conflict was over because the man told him Timmy wasn’t there.
Timmy’s mother, Barbara, would become concerned after not hearing from her son for a few days. He had been talking to her nearly every day since his brother had died several months before. Now she hadn’t heard from him in days. Barbara called in a missing persons report for her son on March 2nd.
Timmy Dees was last seen at 1:30 AM on surveillance video at a local gas station. He withdrew $160 from the ATM and bought a round of Gatorades for his friends. They played the slot machines at the station for a while and then disappeared from video. Strangely, Barbara was able to dig up a receipt from Timmy’s card. I don’t know how she acquired the receipt, and frankly, I didn’t ask. This receipt shows Timmy’s card was tried three times at 9:11 AM that next morning, approximately four and a half hours after the 911 call. At first, it was theorized that someone had tried to use it with the wrong PIN number, but I doubt it. The receipt says, “failed to read EMV card. (3 failures)” That makes me think someone swiped the card, but the machine couldn’t read it. Whatever the case, it was used several hours after Timmy was last seen, and no one knows who tried to use it.
Over the next few weeks and months, Barbara would fight and organize six searches without the police department’s help. They even brought in search dogs, which the local PD was not happy about. Just across the side road from the property where Timmy called is a set of storage units. During one of the searches, one of the search dogs alearted at two units, numbers five and six.
One storage unit was opened and searched, but the police wouldn’t allow the other one to open even though they had the owner’s permission. While everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon here and shout “police corruption,” I suggest you wait for a minute. There’s a difference between a civilian search and a law enforcement search. In order to do a “lawful” search without a warrant, police must have permission from not only the owner but also the renter. If they did not have both, then the police couldn’t have lawfully broken into that storage unit. Barbara was told the high school resource officer had rented the second storage unit. I just want to know why a warrant wasn’t pursued so they could legally get into that unit.
screenshot of thekansascitystar.com
Five months later, on July 21st, 2022, Timmy’s body would be found 184 yards away from the house where he made the phone call. That is slightly over half of a football field away. Just to be fair here, I must note that the exact location of the phone call was never determined. The basic location was surmised from the cell tower his phone pinged off of. Either way, it was less than a football field away from the house the police were called to that morning.
His remains were skeletonized by this point. He had some strange things in his pocket, including a yellow device, which some people claim to be a tracking device. To me, it looks a lot like the key fob I have to get into my local gym. Barbara said it’s not his, whatever it is. Just to add to this mystery, his wallet and debit card were in his pants pocket when he was found. How could someone have used it nearly 5 hours later, and it winds up in his pocket?
Barbara is called in and she snaps pictures of her son’s bones. One of his teeth was missing, and his permanent retainer was gone. By the time she sees him in the funeral home, his tooth has been replaced, and everything looks good. And yet, on the report, they do not report that he ever had a tooth missing. Also, there’s a small, unusual hole right behind his front teeth. Of course, no one seems to care about that either. Or the fact that his lower jaw is a completely different color than the rest of his skeletal remains. I contend if they were in the same environment, deteriorating at the same time, they would have all been basically the same color. I’m curious to see if that lower jaw even belongs to Timmy. If it doesn’t, why would someone change it? I contend if it was changed, it was to cover up the truth.
Despite all of this, the police still cannot tell Barbara what happened to her son in the early hours before dawn. They said they didn’t see any stab wounds on the bones. They didn’t see any bullet holes in the bones. So they’ve just left it undetermined.
Barbara is still fighting for justice in this case. She got some help from an ex-CSI named Mr. Steve. Together, they are still gathering evidence and have presented it to the prosecuting attorney in hopes of getting him to reopen the case. But how can this case be solved now? I have four different things that I think they can do to help solve it.
One month after Timmy went missing, someone logged into his Facebook page. It shows a “check-in” at Fredericktown on March 27, 2022. Someone should check the IP address and see who logged into his account and what device they used. That might generate leads.
Next, I would like someone to really investigate the tiny hole behind his top teeth. It’s suspiciously placed right behind that tooth that was missing for a while. Could that have been made by a small caliber handgun?
Thirdly, I think someone should run down the lead and see where that card was used at 9:11 AM. Where was it used? Are there any surveillance cameras in the area?
Fourth, I think someone should run a DNA test on those reappearing teeth and make sure they are Timmy’s. Maybe they aren’t, and this case could be taken down another path.
I don’t know if law enforcement will pick up this case again or follow these leads, but I can guarantee you one thing. Barbara will continue to fight for answers until the day she leaves this Earth.
Photo courstesy of Timmy’s family
Barbara has a petition with Change.org to gather signatures in the hope of getting Timmy’s case reopened. Please follow the link in the back of this book and sign the petition. Together, we can make a difference for this grieving mother.
Chaos rules in a small Southeastern Missouri County. Madison County spans 500 square miles and has a population of approximately 13,000 people. The county seat is Fredericktown with a population of approximately 4,000 people. This rural county should be a safe place in beautiful Americana, but it hides a dark secret. Fredericktown is one of the most dangerous places to live in America. Check out this quote from neighborhoodscout.com.
“With a crime rate of 31 per one thousand residents, Fredericktown has one of the highest crime rates in America compared to all communities of all sizes – from the smallest towns to the very largest cities. One’s chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime here is one in 32.”
I started researching one case sent to me by a desperate grandmother. That case led me to fifteen more. Then I realized this county has had murder, corruption, and chaos since before the Wild West days. This book will start with a lynching by a Fredericktown mob in 1844. Hold onto your seats when you read this one. You’re in for a wild, chaotic ride through rural Missouri.
