MURDERED: Joyce LePage Part 2

Crime Junkie

This episode explores the unsolved 1971 disappearance and murder of WSU student Joyce LePage, focusing on suspects tied to her meditation group, including Mark Wadley, whose past includes allegations of violence and poss

Key takeaways

• Mark Wadley’s alleged history of strangulation attempts and drug involvement was never fully investigated.

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Crime Junkies, in case you missed it, the summer merch collection is officially live, but do not wait to shop. These items are not going to last long, I can promise you. So if you have been eyeing, maybe that beach towel, the lawyer tote, or a new go-to-tree, now is the time to grab it. Head to the link in the show notes and start shopping before the collection is gone for good. All right, I'm not going to take up any more time. Let's just jump right in to today's episode. Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Brett. Last episode, I told you the story of Joyce LePage, a WSU student who went missing from Stevens Hall on campus in 1971. The same night in 1971 that a swath of green carpet from the building went missing too. And 55 years after that, we still don't know what happened to Joyce on July 22nd, 1971. Over the year, years, police have developed a number of suspects and theories, and I'm walking you through six of them. Last episode, I told you about Mike Finch, who investigators cleared with a past polygraph in 2013, despite a shaky alibi and changing timeline. They also cleared a tile setter who was working just yards from Stevens Hall the night that Joyce vanished because he, too, passed a polygraph. And although Ted Bundy seemed like a contender in the case of a Brown-haired missing Pacific Northwest Coed in the 70s, most investigators agree that it is much more likely that Joyce was killed by someone a little closer to home, maybe even her new home. Because it turns out, Joyce was planning to move to a house not far from where her abandoned car was found. And one man inside that house has a scary past that Joyce talked about in her letters. Let's dive back in. because I've got three more theories to tell you about, starting with the meditation group theory. I told you, Joyce was one in a million. She was adventurous and curious. She had her pilot's license by the time she was 18. And at 21, she was taking skydiving lessons. And the summer that she was killed, one of Joyce's focuses was meditation. And I don't mean in a casual sense. Joyce was an initiated member. of Sims, the Student International Meditation Society. The group practiced transcendental meditation. They gathered for group meditations weekly, and Joyce had even traveled to Spokane for a week-long course on meditation a month before she vanished. Joyce was socially linked to at least three other people from Sims, this married couple named Mike and Celeste Lindberg, and another guy named Mark Wadley. I'll just refer to them as the Medi. meditation group. Well, Mike and Celeste were the leaders of Sims, and Mark was their roommate, and they all lived at 400 Howard Street. This matters because their house was just three or four houses away from where Joyce's car was found on Opel Street, and Joyce was planning to move in with them in the fall. The meditation group offered her a room that upcoming semester because Mike and Celeste were going to be going to Spain. Mark needed to fill their room to cover rent, and they all knew that Joyce wasn't happy living with Bruce. So are we thinking that Joyce drove to their house on the night of the 22nd? And that's just like the closest parking space she could find. Anything is a possibility, especially because try as they might, police were finding zero connection between Joyce and the frat house that her car was parked closest to. So if she is the one who drove her car there and it wasn't just randomly dumped by somebody, it would stand to reason that she may have been there to visit someone in her meditation. group. Wait, did they not notice her car parked there the whole time she was MIA? No, they did, or at least one of them did. When police went knocking at the door of 400 Howard in the very early days of the missing person investigation, it was the single guy, Mark, who answered. And he says that he knows Joyce, and he had noticed her car parked down the road, but that he didn't know where she was, nor did he even realize that she was missing. According to what the officer wrote, he said he'd only just met Joyce the month before. They had never dated or anything he said. And he tells them about the whole new roommate situation, but very much like keeps his connection to Joyce, like at an arm'sling. But the officer notes that his demeanor is just like off. I mean, in the case file, the officer writes that Mark seems nervous. And then something weird happens, like mid-conversation. The officer notices that the other guy who lives at the house, house, Mike. He drives by, but instead of stopping, he like keeps driving. And when the officer left, they like keep surveilling the house just to see what happens. And they notice that Mike only goes to the house after they left. That's suss. Don't love it. So the detective made it a point to follow up with Mike. Yeah. Now, it's later in August, 1971, by the time they get with Mike Lindberg. So Joyce is still just missing at this point. We're a month out. And he says he knows Joyce for longer than Mark, about a year ever since she was initiated into Sims. And all he knew about her outside of the group was that she wasn't getting along with her roommate Bruce, but he didn't really know why. He suspected that it was because Bruce was, quote, a little weird and probably, quote, involved in drugs. And he says drug use is forbidden for members of Sims. He said the last time he saw Joyce was July 17th when she came over and joined him, his wife Celeste, and Mark for dinner. And then after dinner, all four of them drove out to Eden Valley, which is this like scenic area out near the river. Now here he drops a little tidbit. Mike tells police that he thinks Mark is attracted to Joyce, but he doesn't think that Joyce is interested in Mark. Did he just offer up that info about Mark? Unclear. Like, okay. Unclear. Because the case file I'm working with, I mean, they're all from. 1971, many of which are like handwritten. But if I read between the lines, I get the sense that they like asked him point blank about Mark's interest in Joyce because there is one line in the files that says Mark asked Joyce out on a date, which Mark denied. Now Mike also tells police that unlike Mark, he had not even noticed that Joyce's car was parked 100 feet from his front door for over a week. And both Mike and Mark agreed to take polygraphs. And I find the results. very interesting. After Mike's test, the officer concludes that while he doesn't think Mike was directly involved, he did seem quite nervous throughout the test. And he notes that he showed concern in answering one question in particular. Do you think Mark is involved in Joyce's disappearance? Now, when they pressed Mike about this after the polygraph, he said, quote, I don't know why it would show that, but maybe I am holding back because I feel. a certain responsibility towards Joyce. Responsibility for what? I don't know. But the conclusions from Mark's polygraph were a bit different. They said that he seemed calm, but that there was a couple of spots where they noted a heart rate spike. Once, when he was asked if he knew if Joyce was still alive, and then another time when they asked Mark if he had been inside Joyce's car. But the report notes when they asked if he had been in her car, they asked if he'd been in their July 23rd. And there was not a notable change. So the officer summarizes that based on this test, Mark can't be eliminated as a suspect. I feel like he squeaked by there with that were you in her car question? Because like they asked him about the 23rd, not the 22nd. I know. But I don't think that was an old. oversight. I think that that was based on what information they had at the time. So when officers first went looking for Joyce, like the day that she's officially reported missing, Bruce, remember, wasn't home for them to talk to, but they actually did catch a neighbor across the street, this guy named Dave Parks. Well, he told officers that he was friends with Joyce, knew her, and he last saw her leaving her apartment on July 23rd at 10 a.m. with two long-haired guys that he didn't recognize. and they all got into a car. Now, once this was a homicide investigation, police became a little less confident in that sighting, but it's still worth noting. And it is clearly what they were driving home, like here in this polygraph with Mark. And did Mike and Mark have long hair? Dude, somehow, nobody notes that in the case file. And I haven't run across any pictures of these guys from that era. But, like, for the record, like, I don't think that sighting could be right, right? Like, police seem to think that the neighbor must have been mistaken or gotten the date wrong because, again, go back to, like, the timeline of this. This carpet is discovered missing before 8.30 a.m. on the 23rd. So, like, it had to have gone missing overnight on the 22nd. If Joyce is wrapped inside the carpet, like, she's already dead by then. And did they ever talk to Mike's wife Celeste? They did, but she didn't have a whole lot to add. She just mentioned that the last time she saw Joyce was that night that they all, like, did dinner. They drove to that Eden Valley. So just kind of confirming all that. Yeah, and it's worth noting that throughout the case file, this night does get mentioned as like July 16th or 17th, depending on who you ask. I'm not sure that that matters, but she didn't really offer up anything new. But I actually found something new that's actually old, hidden in the case file. And it's something written in Joyce's own words about Mark. I almost miss this piece because it is written in Joyce's handwriting, which to be honest is like kind of hard to read. Girl after my own heart. I know. And it seems to be this letter that she was writing to her boyfriend David Arthur, the one that they found in her purse at Stevens Hall when they first discovered the carpet was missing. So I'm going to have a voice actor read a portion of the letter. I had dinner with Celeste, Michael, and Mark the other night. afterward we drove around until dark then we stopped in at a rummage sale in palu's city and got ice cream cones we had a very good time i discovered that mark once stayed at a mental institution for trying to strangle people he also i suspect was the informer to a narc for this big drug bus two years ago okay just a casual mention of strangulation in a letter to your boyfriend there is no other mention of the these allegations about Mark anywhere in the case file. No mention of this when they talk to Mark or anyone in the meditation group. And I don't see them trying to really nail down his history, like ever. From what we can tell, no past or present investigator has even looked into this. And yes, the history is the most interesting allegation. But the one about him being a CI or a narc is just as big to me. Because, in the history, If Mark was involved in some way as the polygraph would suggest, maybe someone was more inclined to look the other way and keep Mark out