IL IL - Audrey Cardenas, 24, Murdered, Belleville, June 1988

[Gardener1850]

30 years later, victim's mom finds an overlooked detail in murder investigation

Belleville News-Democrat intern Audrey Cardenas died on Sunday, June 19, 1988.
For 30 years, that’s what police, prosecutors, a judge, an appellate court, Cardenas’ mother, Billie Fowler, and those who knew of Belleville’s most notorious murder have always believed.

A two-page police report that somehow went unnoticed for three decades changed all that in an instant. Four lines in that report took Fowler’s breath away.
Her Audrey had still been alive that following Monday morning.
"It just jumped off the page at me," Fowler said in an interview from her home in Texas. "It just shocked me. All these years I have been told she was killed on a Sunday. Now she was alive and cashing a check on a Monday?"
The report, written by retired Belleville Police Detective Mike Boyne, was dated June 23, 1988, and detailed an interview between detectives and a Boatmen’s Bank teller, Susan Jasiewicz. She told police that Cardenas was at the bank walk-up window, cashing her paycheck, producing her Texas driver's license for identification, at 8:30 a.m. on Monday, June 20, 1988. Jasiewicz told police she remembered because she'd just bought a cotton, short-sleeved Madras shirt just like the one Cardenas was wearing that morning.
Three decades later, Jasiewicz is still sure she cashed Cardenas’ check on that Monday morning.
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Fowler wants the case to be reopened, she said in a telephone interview with the BND.

Christine, who also believes the case should be reopened, said the information that Cardenas was alive on Monday is believable, because the bank director and teller confirmed it.

It raises essential questions about the original police investigation, he said.

Also among those police reports was an interview with an employee at a Fairview Heights modeling school and agency, the former John Casablanca Modeling Center. Cardenas completed an application at the agency at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, June 18, according to police reports. In a headshot photograph attached to the application, Cardenas is wearing the same Madras-style shirt.

Casablanca employees told investigators that Cardenas was supposed to call their office on Monday. She didn’t.
Fowler was surprised to learn about the visit to the modeling agency. She described her daughter as someone not interested in make-up or fashion.
The modeling agency interview didn't come up when Fowler talked to her daughter on the phone that Saturday night. Cardenas was lonely and homesick. Cardenas was "miserable" and wanted to come home, Fowler said. She'd been in Belleville about 10 days.

Fowler encouraged her daughter to stay on the job and finish the intern program.
Fowler found a series of similar photographs on Cardenas' dining room table at the newspaper intern's apartment in Belleville. In each photo, Cardenas is wearing the same pastel multicolored shirt that Jasiecwicz remembered. Fowler recalled the shirt because a friend of hers had given it to Audrey as a gift when she graduated from Texas A&M a few weeks before she left for Belleville. Fowler used one of the pictures she found for the missing person poster that was printed before Cardenas' body was found.

Read more here: http://www.bnd.com/news/local/article209633319.html#storylink=cpy
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[Gardener1850]

Timeline of events

April 25, 2018 11:24 AM
Updated 1 hour 13 minutes ago

Editor’s note: This story was originally published April 28, 2000
▪ June 19, 1988 — Belleville News-Democrat reporting intern Audrey Cardenas was last seen alive. Cardenas, a College Station, Texas, native, had moved into Belleville only 10 days earlier.
▪ June 26, 1988 — A custodian for Belleville Township High School East discovered Cardenas’ remains in a dry creek bed near the school’s parking lot. Decomposition kept the medical examiner from determining the cause of death. Findings indicated she did not die from a blow to the head.
The same day, police found Rodney Woidtke walking inside the cordoned-off crime scene area. He was unresponsive and carrying a knapsack containing personal items, including letters about his sexual fantasies.
Woidtke first denied involvement in the crime, but said he spent time in Alton Mental Health Center and heard voices. A detective questioned his sexual preference and he got upset, saying he did not want to become a homosexual. Woidtke made three conflicting confessions: first saying he hit Cardenas in the head with a pipe; then recanting; then saying he didn’t hit her and that she was alive when he left her; then saying he hit her three or four times.
▪ July 1988 — Psychologist Daniel Cuneo diagnosed Woidtke as being a paranoid schizophrenic who claimed to have sex with Cardenas so police would not think he was a homosexual. Cuneo said when Woidtke gave the inconsistent statements to police, he was hallucinating, actively schizophrenic, delusional and unmedicated.
▪ Aug. 16, 1988 — Woidtke was charged with Cardenas’ murder. Because he was indigent, the court appointed assistant public defender Brian Trentman to represent him. However, on Cuneo’s recommendation, Woidtke was found unfit to stand trial.
▪ July 1989 — Cuneo determined Woidtke to be fit to stand trial following a year of medication and therapy at Chester Mental Health Center.
▪ Aug. 25, 1989 — After four days of testimony, St. Clair County Associate Judge Richard Aguirre convicted Woidtke of murdering Cardenas. Woidtke’s own incriminating statements were the strongest evidence. No physical evidence tied Woidtke to the killing.
▪ Sept. 27, 1989 — The day before Woidtke was scheduled to be sentenced, disgruntled former Illinois Department of Public Aid case worker Dale Anderson stabbed to death Belleville resident Jolaine Lanman, who was pregnant, and her 3-year-old son. Before he killed her, he forced her to write a note stating that she and Cardenas were killed by Anderson’s three Public Aid supervisors.
▪ Sept. 28, 1989 — Woidtke was sentenced to 45 years in prison.

Read more of timeline at link: http://www.bnd.com/news/local/article209793874.html#storylink=cpy

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[markgb1234]

30 years later, victim's mom finds an overlooked detail in murder investigation

Read more here: 30 years later, victim's mom finds an overlooked detail in murder investigation
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I have been interested in this case for awhile and have been doing some research. If she did cash a check at 8:30 am on Monday morning and was due at work at 10:am. How is it that she decided to run at least several miles and show up for work? According to the teller she had a nice shirt on (one she used for a photo for a modeling agency). She was 3 or 4 blocks from work from the bank. She would have gone home (maybe 9 to 10 blocks) from the bank changed clothes and ran from her apt to Belleville East high school (about a mile away). Im just trying to figure out a way this all went down.

 

[dotr]

https://www.bnd.com/news/local/crime/article289224709.html

BY MIKE KOZIATEK JUNE 24, 2024

''Now Cardenas’ mother, Billie Fowler, a Texas resident, wants the Belleville Police Department to see if advancements in DNA technology applied to identify suspects in criminal cases could be used to solve her daughter’s murder.''

''Cardenas was petite and ran everyday unless there was bad weather. She only weighed about 100 pounds and because of her petite size, people would notice her, Fowler said
“She had beautiful black hair and a lot of it,” Fowler said. “I wouldn’t call her glamorous, but she was very cute.” Fowler described her daughter’s personality as “very friendly, outgoing but cautious.” She would make friends with someone as soon as “she felt that you were an OK person.”