MURDERED: Dorothy “Toby” Tate

Crime Junkie

This episode recounts the decades-long investigation into the 1983 murder of Dorothy 'Toby' Tate in San Luis Obispo. After the case went col

Key takeaways

• Detective Clint Cole used DNA genealogy to identify Stephen Hardy as a potential suspect via blood droplets at the scene.
• Fingerprint analysis on a discarded Coke can matched Charlie Sneed rather than the initial DNA lead, Hardy.
• A stolen camera belonging to Tate was pawned in Bakersfield in 1985, creating a trail of handoffs back to Texas.
• Investigators linked Hardy and Sneed through shared criminal connections and history in New Braunfels, Texas.
• The investigation relied on the 'felony murder rule' to suggest both men could be held responsible for the death.

Main topics

• Cold case resolution
• DNA genealogy
• Forensic fingerprinting

Notable quotes

This is the story of Dorothy Toby Tate.

Conclusion

A testament to how persistent detective work and evolving forensic tec

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:00) If you know me, you know I love stories that make me go, wait, what? The kind that stop you in your tracks and send you straight down a rabbit hole. And my friend Delia D'Ambra tells stories just like that on Park Predators. Every Tuesday, Delia investigates true crime cases that unfold in the world's most beautiful places. From national parks to hiking trails, she reveals the shocking crimes, mysterious disappearances, and unsettling encounters hidden beneath the postcard-perfect scenery. Speaker 5 (0:27) If you're Speaker 4 (0:27) ready to discover what's beyond the trailhead, listen to Park Predators wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 5 (0:33) Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And today, I'm going to tell you about a case that nobody thought would ever be resolved. One that spent decades collecting dust in a file box at the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Office with nobody even assigned to it at all. Until two detectives decided to take another look. And all of a sudden, after 40 years, the hazy picture of a fatal 1983 burglary gone wrong started to come into focus and preserved DNA evidence revealed a twist that no one saw coming. This is the story of Dorothy Toby Tate. Speaker 5 (1:46) Let me take you back to November 15th, 1983, just before 11 a.m., when sheriff's deputies are dispatched to the scene of what seems like a car accident on a dirt road just off Highway 1 by the beach. There, they find a 1980 Chevy camper van like halfway off the road. Its passenger side fender is damaged, the hood is slightly bent, and both front passenger windows are shattered. Though it's unclear what caused the damage because there is nothing else around. It doesn't look like the wreckage from a fatal crash by any means, more of like a low-speed collision. But someone was clearly injured. There is blood spatter by the driver's seat and blood running down the inside of the driver's door. Strangely, though, both the driver and passenger seats are empty. And that's when deputies notice something is seeping out from the closed sliding door of the van and like pooling in the dirt. And when a deputy slides open the van's rear door, he finds the source. It is coming from the woman who must have been in the driver's seat because she is laying on the floor of the cargo area, clearly dead from a wound to her head, which is where all that blood was coming from. But there is no way she got that wound. from this minor crash. It is a single gunshot wound below the woman's left ear from a .45 caliber pistol that killed her. Now, there's also a dog in the van with this woman, alive and unharmed. And then there is another dog wandering around outside. And judging by the two leashes still draped around this woman's neck, those were likely her babies. Now... How everything fits together isn't totally clear yet, like when the crash happened or how she got from the front seat to the back. But one thing is clear. There may have been a vehicle collision, but this death was not the result of an accident. This was murder. And judging from the trail of blood droplets leading away from the van, somebody walked away from this incident alive. But who that was? And what role they might have played in this, only time would tell. For now, they felt pretty confident that their victim was Toby Tate. She didn't have a wallet or an ID in the van, but luggage in the back that had a name on the tags along with an address in Texas led them to Toby's family. So that's how investigators began to fill in some of the blanks. They learned that 41-year-old Toby was the oldest of three girls, and according to her sister Priscilla, She was a free spirit. She had spent her adulthood traveling around the country in her van, which she named Esmeralda. And I love a woman who has, like, led multiple lives, not in, like, a devious double life kind of way, but, like, the kind of person who takes chances, who's tried things and, like, reinvented themselves in hopes of finding something or finding themselves. So Toby traveled all over with Esmeralda. I mean, she picked up gigs as a nanny, a bartender, a photographer, even. a dog breeder at one point. And all along the way, she would gather friends. In fact, just as an aside, Priscilla told us that after Toby died, their dad was just downright shocked at the number of letters that started coming in from people mourning Toby from all over the country. Now, in the years before her murder, Toby worked on an indigenous reserve in British Columbia, restoring a church. And then she moved back home with her family in Dallas, where she designed gardens. But she had just bought her own house in Colorado where she planned to grow her cleaning business. Speaker 4 (5:30) Okay, but Colorado, what was she doing out in California then? Speaker 5 (5:33) She was being an amazing niece because Priscilla told us that Toby had driven up to the Bay Area because one of her twin aunts had passed away and the other one had never spent a birthday alone before. So Toby's plan was to like take her van, take her two dogs out there to like be with her aunt. From there, she was going to travel down to L.A. to visit a friend, like kind of camping along the way. Now, detectives are able to confirm that Toby had made it to her aunt's house. She was actually there the morning before she was found. This would have been November 14th, 1983. And then she did, from there, her and her dogs took off for L.A. But from the location of the crime scene, it seems like she only made it about halfway. A receipt on Toby's dashboard showed that she had checked into a campground by the beach on the same afternoon that she had left her aunts. It's San Simeon State Park, which is about 10 miles from the crime scene. Now, detectives checked this out to see if anyone there had seen her with people or noticed somebody paying attention to her. Nobody had. But that might have been because, as detectives learn from a ranger, Toby had done a self-registration, which is what you do when there is nobody on duty. You basically fill out a receipt, attach your money to it, and then like drop it in this little lockbox. Strangely, though, when the ranger looks into this, he finds two receipts for that same campsite. He finds Toby's and then he finds another person's. Except this second person didn't fill out their receipt properly. Like they wrote down their name, but under license plate, they just put Arizona, like no number. And of course, investigators are wondering if maybe this is where Toby encountered somebody. But it's also possible that this double registration was just a total fluke because it's not like she was attacked there at the campsite, right? Now, they determined that she died sometime in the evening hours of the 14th. And it happened right where she was found, at the beach. Speaker 4 (7:33) Not the campsite. But how do they know that exactly? Speaker 5 (7:37) Because all of the evidence that paints a picture for them. Starting with what they find from Priscilla. So she says that she talked to her sister on the phone the night before her murder. And Toby said that her dogs had never been to the Pacific Ocean. So she was going to head south to L.A. and she wanted to take them for a run on the beach. Now, Toby was fully clothed when she was found. Even had her shoes on and socks on. But the coroner found sand between her toes. So that, the call with Priscilla and the location of her van, just steps away from the beach, kind of bring things into focus. So investigators think that Toby left her campsite that evening, safe and sound, went to the beach with her dogs to run. And then when she got back to her van, she was ambushed. But they think that it all started about 20 yards up from where the van ultimately landed. Because up that way is where they found a bullet casing. So they think that Toby started up her van, as evidenced by them finding keys in the ignition and it being in the on position. But just as she began to move, whoever ambushed her was like still standing outside of her van and shot her through the driver's side window, which they can tell from the shattered glass. They can tell that from the bullet trajectory and the blood patterns. Given the location of the gunshot wound, she would have died instantly. But the thinking is that the van continued rolling after Toby had been shot. So it wasn't until her van hit something that it knocked her foot off the gas and then like rolled to a stop. And investigators believe that something was likely the suspect's vehicle. Probably one of the only other vehicles out there at the time of her murder. Speaker 4 (9:20) And I mean, it obviously wasn't like a random person's car or they probably would have reported it. Speaker 5 (9:25) Precisely. Now... Because she died instantly, they know that she couldn't have crawled into the back of the van on her own. Meaning the suspect moved her there then. Correct. It seems like the suspect gets into the van and drags her out of the driver's seat into where she would ultimately be found in the back. And they dropped something while doing this. A cigarette is found next to Toby's body in the back and she wasn't a smoker. They think that it probably fell out of the suspect's pocket, like, while they were moving her. Speaker 4 (9:58) Okay, but what I can't figure out is, like, why stick around to move her and risk getting caught? Like, that's going to take more time. So Speaker 5 (10:05) the detectives that we talked to theorized that, like, this whole ambush was just some kind of robbery scheme. There's no sign of sexual assault, but valuable items were missing from Toby's van, like her wallet and this camera that her family said that she had with her. So the theory that police went with at the time was that the suspect probably wanted to buy some time to get what they came for and then like get out of Dodge. And they're thinking that like a body slumped over in the driver's seat. People are going to notice that. Yeah,