MAR 27, 2021
Jonelle Matthews case: Steven Pankey, former political candidate, inserts himself into the case of a missing girl and ends up a murder suspect - CBS News
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More than three decades after Jonelle's disappearance, one-time Idaho gubernatorial candidate and former Greeley resident Steven Dana Pankey became a person of interest in the case.
Pankey has publicly said he never met Jonelle Matthews. Yet, his indictment points to repeated statements implicating Pankey – made by Pankey. He allegedly volunteered, without being asked, what he claimed were details about when Matthews died. He also drew up a list of persons of interest with his name on it, according to the indictment.
Pankey has been charged with Jonelle's murder and will stand trial in July. He pleaded not guilty. "He's a talkative guy," says Anthony Viorst, Pankey's attorney. "But he's not a murderer."
Instead, says Viorst, Pankey craves attention. "Mr. Pankey wanted to be a person of interest," Viorst says. "Mr. Pankey could have laid low. … Nobody would have charged him. … Mr. Pankey loves the limelight."
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STEVE PANKEY [to KMVT]: I heard that a girl was missing from Greeley, Colorado.
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STEVE PANKEY [to KMVT]: I lived in Greeley, Colorado, from 1973 …
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STEVE PANKEY [to KMVT]: I contacted the FBI.
STEVE PANKEY [to KMVT]: I knew more than I wanted to know, OK.
STEVE PANKEY [to KMVT]: I told the FBI I want to talk to you. It may or may not have something to do with the Jonelle Matthews case.
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Mayor John Gates: I had met him in about the mid-1970s.
Richard Schlesinger: You remember that?
Mayor John Gates: I do. Yeah, he worked for my father. … So, I remember meeting him.
Greeley Mayor and former police officer John Gates knew Steven Pankey
, and says he was not considered a person of interest in the early days when Jonelle first disappeared.
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Steve Pankey claims that seven days after Jonelle disappeared, his father-in-law — a groundskeeper at a Greeley cemetery — shared some disturbing information.
STEVE PANKEY [to KMVT]: He told me that a cop had contacted him and said that he had a body he wanted to be buried.
Pankey told KMVT that he shared the information with the FBI, because he feared that somehow someone might be trying to implicate him in Jonelle's murder.
STEVE PANKEY [to KMVT]: I want to at least be on record that I talked to you, so I don't get possibly an obstruction of justice charge.
It's a wild sounding story and "48 Hours" can't confirm it or even that he went to the FBI, but law enforcement records show that Pankey had other unrelated run-ins with Greeley police. They describe mostly minor and non-violent allegations, like creating a nuisance and harassment. In fact, the day before Jonelle disappeared, Pankey was arrested at a bank for harassment and criminal trespass.
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Anthony Viorst: The kind of thing that's happened to Mr. Pankey over the years. He's had periodic sort of spats with people because he is an irascible, prickly guy.
But police clearly think it's more than that and seem to be looking closely at Pankey's past — possibly including a case from 1977, when a 26-year-old Pankey was charged with sexually assaulting a woman he met in church.
In a four-hour episode of the
"Unfound" podcast recorded in November 2019, Pankey claims he was dating his accuser.
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Anthony Viorst: There was a sexual encounter. And she later said it was nonconsensual.
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Jim Matthews: He was not a youth worker at our church. He was the janitor.
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The Pankey family bounced around from state to state for a while. In 1989 they settled in Idaho, but Pankey admits he could not stop thinking about Jonelle.
STEVE PANKEY [to KMVT]: It would be in the back of my mind about this case … so I called … the guy who lived next door … I just asked, did they ever resolve that Jonelle Matthews thing? And he said, no, not to his knowledge.
But Pankey might have been more than just curious. In 1999 he told the Idaho Supreme Court, after a conviction for once again causing a scene in a bank, that the conviction — which was dismissed years later — was in part an "attempt to force" him "to become an informant" in Jonelle's disappearance. He also wrote that he feared he might "get the death penalty for revealing the location of" her body.
Richard Schlesinger: See, that's weird. I mean, why would he say that if he didn't know where Jonelle Matthews was buried?
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Anthony Viorst | Pankey's defense attorney: Nobody ever reported a shot fired in the neighborhood.
Richard Schlesinger: They say that he owned a gun in 1984, that he lived within a few miles of Jonelle Matthews, and that he lived within 10 miles of where her body was found. What do you make of those things?
Anthony Viorst: Well, you probably just described … 20 or 30,000 men in — in the Greeley metropolitan area. … And the place where the body was found was … in a very remote location that he had no connection to.
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The indictment cites several examples where Pankey "Intentionally inserted himself in the investigation." Including a document filed as part of his own divorce in 2003, where, for reasons that are clear only to Pankey, he wrote that Jonelle's family should be told she "died before crossing 10th st. [sic]" That's close to where her choir concert was held the night she vanished.
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Richard Schlesinger: Why would he interject himself into the case?
Anthony Viorst: I can't answer that because I can't get into his head, but I do think, again, it's a combination of sort of obsessive-compulsive behavior and, you know, perhaps even mental illness.
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When Jonelle Matthews first disappeared, investigators had only one piece of physical evidence — those footprints in the snow outside the Matthews home that somebody, possibly her abductor, had tried to conceal by using a garden rake.
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Only the Matthews family, investigators and presumably the killer knew about those raked over footprints. And that is what made a 2019 conversation that investigators had with Steven Pankey so interesting.
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But the indictment says Pankey knew of and discussed a crucial piece of evidence from the Matthews house withheld from the public by law enforcement: specifically, a rake was used to obliterate shoe impressions in the snow.
Mayor John Gates: I guess the moral of the story is if you're involved in criminal activity and you talk about it, eventually you're gonna say something that crosses that line into an area that you shouldn't know if you weren't involved.
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Anthony Viorst: So, here's what I'll say. … I can't tell you everything that I know … Because I have attorney-client privilege and I'm still in the process of preparing the defense of my client, all right? But suffice it to say that we have reason to believe that that information was divulged to him, um, to Mr. Pankey.
Richard Schlesinger: By whom?
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Anthony Viorst: I will say. By law enforcement. It's our position that it was divulged by law enforcement. All right?
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