THE RACHEL BURKHEIMER CASE

so today's video is finally gonna be another solved true crime case i'm sorry i've had so much time off since violent crimes week i don't know if you can tell by my voice but i sound disgusting and that's because i'm ill right now uh so i'll try not to sound too gross but yeah hopefully we're back on track now and hopefully there's going to be regular uploads from here but today we are going to be talking about the solved case of rachel burkheimer quickly before i get into it i just want to give my usual disclaimer that i mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone that i talk about in this video this video is for educational purposes and everything that i'm about to say is just information that i have found on the internet and i'm compiling into one video so rachel rose berkheimer was an 18 year old girl born on january 16 1984 in washington in the usa she lived with her parents bill and denise along with her older sister megan in a city right on the edge of washington named everett her mother denise describes her as a precious special person she was very likable very well behaved and just an all-round good girl rachel was very athletic and from a very early age as well she was on a bunch of different sports teams and everyone said that she was like one of the best if not the best on these sports teams rachel was really funny as well her father bill believed she could have had a really successful career in comedy or on stage she could just make people laugh so easily but the career that rachel really wanted was to be a vet she absolutely adored animals well to be fair a vet was kind of her more practical dream career but her like ultimate dream career was to be an actress and she was really determined and ambitious as well she would write her weekly goals on her mirror every week and then she'd be able to like cross them off as she'd done them like i said she was really likable and so she had a bunch of friends she was really quite popular to the point where her father bill called himself her personal answering machine because that many people were bringing the house that he always had to answer in the early 2000s when rachel was still in high school so she was like 16 17 at this point she lost six of her friends in separate really tragic ways one of them drowned one of them was in an accidental shooting one of them took their own life and all of these different losses really took their toll on rachel but the death that seemed to affect rachel the most was the death of her very best friend named corey haynes who passed away in a car crash rachel and carrie were very close her father says that they were like soul mates they acted like brother and sister and all of this grief was very apparent in rachel all her family just kind of watched her deteriorate in front of their eyes she stopped cracking jokes as often she wasn't as outgoing or ambitious and by age 18 rachel decided to drop out of high school early and she made friends with the kind of people that she'd never really associated with before like i said rachel was very nice she was very well behaved and sensible and so were all of her friends but this new friend group were like the complete opposite of that this group most of them had criminal records for violence charges drug charges they would steal drugs they would take drugs all day they would drink all the time it was such a difference to what rachel used to have the way she got into this group was in 2001 she attended a party where she met a man named john anderson who was two years older than her and of course john introduced her to the rest of his group and she liked them and she was fully aware that they were very dangerous and so she never told her family about this new group of friends but then one day rachel's father received a phone bill for hundred and forty dollars and so he thought well this must be a mistake so he started checking it to see where all this money had gone out from and he found that rachel had been calling the local jail and as it turned out these calls were to year twenty-year-old john anderson who was saving time in prison like i said before john and his friends all had lengthy criminal records ranging from like violence charges to drug charges to robbery charges but it wasn't just that it was actually much more than that john and all of his friends were actually a part of a gang that they called the north west mafia and no one in this gang had a job or went to school they ranged in age from like 16 all the way to 32 no one in this gang did anything they just sat around all day took drugs sold drugs stole drugs played video games got drunk and obviously at this point it had all caught up with john anderson and he was serving time for something i don't know what but that didn't stop him communicating with his now girlfriend rachel burkheimer he would call her from jail but also write physical letters to her and these letters were very intense very overwhelming it was all about john's feelings towards rachel and it was kind of obsessive i've got some quotes here from those letters he said you are my world you are my everything you make my heart beat you make me function and you make me think i don't think that i could or would ever want to live without your love on one of these letters he simply wrote i love you 33 times over and over again another quote i don't know any other way of showing you that you are so special to me i would murder a million people if i had to just to be with you and so rachel's father bill kind of sat down and said look you can't be doing this this isn't good you can't be going out with someone that's in jail and of course rachel saw the good in john anderson and she was saying no he's just going through something right now as soon as he gets out he'll get his life back on track and that'll be it we'll be fine but rachel's father was only saying all of that because he was a criminal rachel's father had no idea how obsessive and possessive john anderson could be over rachel and rachel seemed to be a good girlfriend to john she never cheated she never went behind his back she never did anything to provoke this but anderson was so insecure that every time he met up with rachel he would smell her hair and her claws to make sure that she hadn't been with other men rachel's sister megan also noticed a lot of bruises on rachel and although it can't be confirmed that those were from john anderson it seemed as though it was and whenever megan would try to talk about it with rachel trying to ask her where she'd got these bruises from and whatever rachel would never want to talk about it she just kind of shrug it off or ignore it but eventually a time came when john anderson was still locked up that her family finally got her to kind of open up about this secret relationship that she'd been having and so rachel went into her older sister megan's bedroom and they sat on her bed and they were talking into the early hours of the morning and rachel was scared she was telling megan about his possessiveness his jealousy that he always thought that she was cheating on him and she would say that john would make threats quite often and so following this conversation with megan this kind of opened rachel's eyes and so she decided to break things off with anderson who was still in prison and now she was going to try and like reclaim her life back she started going to church again she started seeing her family and friends more and the old rachel was kind of coming back rachel's father remembers going out onto the porch one morning and seeing rachel and remembering her looking so radiant and so full of life this was a rachel that he hadn't seen in months and it was that morning that rachel told her father that she'd recently made a new friend a friend going through a very similar situation to her his name was maurice rivas and he was a former member of transitioning out member of john anderson's gang the northwest mafia and that was how rachel had known him up until now as part of the gang and he just like rachel was 18 years old they were both in this really kind of crappy lifestyle that revolved around crime and everything but whereas her past had been very good she'd had a good upbringing she had a good family a good home setting maurice's was the complete opposite he was put into foster care from a very young age his kind of closest biological family contact was his grandmother he had absolutely nothing to do with his mother or father and so when he found this kind of family in this gang it was a family type bond that they had he really kind of latched on to that and he really enjoyed being a part of this gang but something about seeing rachel leave and improve her life really kind of inspired maurice and so he wanted to do the same thing he wanted rachel to help him and so the two of them rachel and maurice decided together that they were going to go back to school they were gonna graduate and they were gonna get their lives back they were gonna have a normal life from this point on and this seemed to be going quite well for a few weeks until john anderson got out of jail and the two of them just kind of fell back into that old life rachel and anderson quickly got back together once he got out of jail although this time it was a lot more on and off rachel wasn't taking quite as much as she used to so like before she used to just let him treat her like crap and she would just put up with it this time he would treat her like crap and she would break up with him but then she'd take him back like the next day and this was a very regular occurrence and the last time that the two of them split up rachel was like okay that's it now i don't ever want to go back to him and she actually started seeing his friend which i'm sure you can imagine made anderson go completely off the rails and from there john anderson hated rachel and this kind of planted a seed in his mind that when it was mixed with like his drug-filled paranoia and delusions it turned into something much much bigger he began telling all his friends that rachel was a traitor and that she was sharing their secrets their gang secrets with other people including their rival gang now we don't know if any of this is true or if it's partly true or if it was just all anderson's delusions and paranoia but for him it was very real and because it was real to him it was also real to his friends why would his friends not believe him and so they all began hitting rachel somehow word got around that there was a hit on rachel a hit meaning that someone wanted to kill her and rightfully so she was terrified and so she went to her older sister megan about it but megan just believed it was the boys just acting tough and giving out false threats to try and scare rachel into maybe not telling these gang secrets or whatever they weren't actually gonna do it so then on september 23 2002 rachel burkheimer was invited to a party i say a party it wasn't a party really it was just the gang kind of sat around in one of their houses drinking doing drugs playing video games but rachel really wanted to go she was really eager to prove herself at this point she really wanted to just speak to them and get them back on her side she was really good at that her dad said she knew that she hadn't done anything wrong and so she wanted to put that right so at about 3 p.m maurice and rachel head over to this party and everything's going well everyone's talking drinking doing drugs whatever they're having a good time but of course that didn't last for long after a while john anderson bursts through the door and he is not happy the story changes depending on what kind of sauce you're getting it from which is so frustrating i couldn't find two sources that said the same story some of them say that anderson wasn't invited to this party and so he found out about it somehow and kind of broke in and was very angry at everyone another version of it is that anderson was out in the garden digging a hull or something and they were all supposed to be helping him and he was frustrated doing it by himself so he walked in and found rachel there whatever the story john anderson burst through this door and he is so angry he begins shouting at all the members of the gang he was punching a few of them trying to start fights and then eventually guns are drawn and quickly this is really out of hand and rachel quickly realized that this was really out of hand she got scared and so she got up and tried to sneak towards the door and get out but she didn't get to the door anderson grabbed her as she was running away from him by her hair he pulled her back punched her in the face and then threw her on the floor and then before she knew it the rest of the gang had circled around her and everyone was just beating her and kicking her and this went on for a few minutes with one of the men even shouting to another member of the gang to turn up the radio to drown out rachel's screams and then it quickly became clear that this whole situation being invited to the party john anderson bursting in and being angry it wasn't all a coincidence this had been a plan all along and all of the gang were in on it so obviously all those weeks ago when john anderson was in jail rachel left him and she stopped replying to his calls and his letters and everything and john as you can imagine was really upset and really angry and so he instructed maurice rivers rachel's new friend that they were gonna work together and get a new life together he instructed maurice rivas to befriend rachel and gain her trust and then eventually invited to a little gathering at one of their houses where they could all drink and take drugs and everything and it was then part of the plan that anderson would burst in and find rachel there start a fight with all of his gang friends and then eventually rachel would be involved so before we go back to the timeline i just want to introduce you to our different gang members at this point so of course there was 20 year old john anderson and 18 year old maurice rebus and it later turned out that maurice reverse was actually a former roommate of john anderson's there was 22 year old john whittaker who was nicknamed witt and he was also one of john anderson's former roommates from when he lived in mukultia seventeen-year-old matthew durham and sixteen-year-old nathan lovelace who were both maurice rivas's school friends from when he was in high school there was yusuf jihad whose nickname was kevin and he was the oldest member of the gang at 32 years old and it was his house where they had this kind of gathering party thing and yusuf was also believed to be the kind of leader of this gang and so he was the one that recruited all these younger boys including john anderson there was 22 year old jeffrey barth and he was a neighbour of youssifs and 20 year old tony williams who was girlfriend's cousin and also yusuf's neighbor so returning to the timeline the gang all had now dropped this facade that this was all a coincidence and it was very clear that they were all in on it together after beating rachel they then tied her ankles tied her wrists taped over her mouth so that none of the neighbors could hear her screaming they then grabbed her and took her to yusef's garage and left her there for hours while they went back inside and decided what they were going to do next see they'd planned this whole thing but they hadn't planned after the plan they'd only planned half of it they'd only plan to get her there and then like ambush her but they didn't know what to do with her now there was talk of ransom anderson believed that rachel's loving father bill would pay a lot of money to get his daughter back there was talk of gang rape and further beatings but the boys just kind of couldn't decide what they wanted to do and so they didn't decide for them there was no rush they knew that rachel couldn't go anywhere she was tied up in the garage and so they took their time they ordered a pizza they played video games they took drugs and they just kind of stopped thinking about it and this went on for five hours until 9pm when the garage door finally opened again but it wasn't a member of the gang it was a woman it was yusef's girlfriend trisa connor she just arrived home gone into a garage and there she found this girl beaten and tied up and so she goes into her house she greets all the men and whatever and then she sneaks off into the kitchen and grabs a kitchen knife she then went back to the garage and began trying to cut off rachel's ankle restraints so that rachel could run away but she didn't get very far before the men followed her out anderson pushed trissa out of the way so she couldn't cut rachel free and trissa began shouting at the men saying you shouldn't have done this anyway you shouldn't have brought her here she then said that she would call the police if they didn't take rachel off of the property not if they didn't let rachel go just make sure you get off of my property so the men did as they were told they grabbed a black duffel bag and put rachel inside it zipped it up and then put it in the boot of a jeep and drove away they were driving around for hours just aimlessly trying to figure out what to do with it because they hadn't figured out what to do with it they just spent the last five hours just doing drugs and playing video games and eating pizza there was talk of maybe just letting her go she'd learned a lesson now she wasn't gonna tell any gang secrets or whatever they believed she was doing she would have learned a lesson by now they thought well we could just get a hotel for a few days and stay with her until all of her wounds like heal up and whatever and then just let her go but of course that didn't happen it wasn't actually up to the men in that car driving her around what was gonna happen to rachel because at this point john anderson wasn't with them and so as the men were thinking about this they were thinking hang on why are we stressing about what to do with her when it's not even our mess this is john anderson's mess we can pick him up and he can decide what to do but as it was there was no room in the car to pick anderson up that's obviously why he wasn't in the car in the first place and so they pulled up onto this kind of mountain trail named mill creek by this point it was around 11 p.m maurice rivas gets out of the jeep he goes round to the trunk pulls out this duffel bag with rachel bergheimer still inside it and the two of them we're at this mountain trail for the rest of them to go and pick up john anderson some sources say that maurice spoke to rachel for a little bit while they were waiting for the rest of them and he was saying things like he thinks it'll be okay and he thinks they'll let her go and rachel was pleading with maurice to just let her go her family would pay as much money as they needed to just let her go although she could tell that there wasn't really much hope rachel burkheimer knew that she was gonna die and so she looked at maurice rivas and she pleaded with him just please don't drown me anything but drowning i couldn't find what maurice said to her or anything like that but at some point he zipped up this duffel bag again and they waited until the rest of them got back so meanwhile the men were in the car going to pick up john anderson and they got to where he lived and john got in the car with a bunch of shovels and a pick and he just kind of sat there and said drive when they finally arrived back at this mountain trail they drove the car out to a kind of softer bit of land and there john anderson and john whittaker began digging maurice rivas stayed over by the car and he was like drinking and smoking and john anderson got really angry at him for not joining in and so i shouted to him to come and help and as they were digging rachel began making noises from this duffel bag and sir john anderson went over to it and hit it as hard as he could with a shovel to shut her up after some more digging anderson let rachel burkheimer out of this duffel bag and untied her and then he ordered john whitaker to undress her and take off all her kind of jewelry and everything but rachel said no i can do it myself i can undress myself and she did all the way down to her last ring which she actually pleaded with anderson to let her keep on see this ring was actually given to her by her best friend that died in the car crash corey haynes and if she was gonna die she wanted to die with that on but of course anderson said no and ordered her to take it off and so she did as she was told and then she collapsed to the floor and began praying to which anderson said don't worry you'll be up there soon too and then anderson ordered rachel burkheimer to go and lay in this grave that they dug for her face down in the dirt and she did it was then that anderson took out a gun and began shooting it in the back and in the head he shot around half his bullets and then his gun actually got jammed and so he stopped for a couple of seconds kind of cleared his gun out and then shot the rest of his bullets as well so all the men including anderson then filled up the rest of this grave and then on the drive home anderson said to the rest of them that loose ends will be cut off meaning that if anyone involved in this snitched on anyone or told anyone that this had happened then they would probably be killed and if not then then their family once they got back some of the men then drove rachel's car by her ex's house possibly to maybe frame him for a disappearance meanwhile anderson disposes of the gun by throwing it in a nearby pond while maurice rivas and matthew durham gather all of rachel's clothes and all the jewelry and put them in a pillowcase and try and burn them after about a day or two rachel's family were getting very worried obviously she hadn't come home she hadn't contacted anyone although honestly this wasn't entirely out of character like i said she'd fallen back into this gang life she was going out and not telling anyone where she was every single day she was breaking the law this wasn't unlike her and while the family obviously wasn't happy with it they trusted her to come back it was nothing that she hadn't done before she'd always come back every time why wouldn't she this time going on day three and there was still no sign of rachel still no calls or anything and so her family said right enough is enough if she's not here tomorrow morning when we wake up we go to the police station and we file a missing person's report and of course she wasn't back the next morning and that's exactly what they did very quickly search parties were going out looking for rachel there were missing persons posters all over the town they were doing public appeals on the news all we know is rachel would not be away this long without contacting someone and we do know that wherever she is that she's not there by choice and this was quickly becoming a very well-known missing persons case in that area and so it wasn't long until there was a breakthrough one of the gang members mothers jeffrey bath's mother came forward to police saying that she knew that the boys often used matthew durham's jeep to get around i don't know if she knew anything about rachel or about that night or anything or if she knew that her son was involved in any way but she knew that the boys used that jeep and so she thought it would be of use to tell the police and so police brought 17 year old matthew durham in for questioning and they basically just sat him down and said look we know that you know something about this you can tell us now and you can get less time for snitching on your friends or you can do it quietly and get a longer sentence and so of course he snitched on all of his friends he also led detectives to the specific mountain trail where they'd killed rachel although because it was dark and he didn't really know his way around there he didn't know exactly where the body was and so police brought in search teams and cadaver dogs and they were searching this whole massive area for days until eventually one of the cadaver dogs alerted to a specific spot so searchers grabbed a shovel and began digging and they literally didn't even have to put it in twice the first time they put the shovel in they hit something and that was human flesh it was rachel burkheimer and so her body was recovered and she was actually found with her hands in a praying position underneath her meanwhile back at the police station matthew durham was telling police everything they wanted to know because he wanted that shorter sentence he told him who he was with where they lived exactly what every single person's part in the murder was of course he told police that they'd started off in yusuf's home which was where this kind of party was being held and so police went straight there and got a search warrant and there they found the pillowcase with the burnt remains of rachel's clothing and jewelry in it and so now they could confirm that durham back at the police station was completely telling the truth as the search was continuing of this mountain trail and the dogs were going around and search teams were going around they also found a gun in one of the ponds and of course it's not a coincidence that a girl had been found shot to death and there was a gun ditched in a pond of course that was the murder weapon but just to confirm police tested the bullet casings found at the site of rachel's murder with the ones that this gun used and of course those kind of bullets were used in that gun meanwhile at john anderson's home where none of this had actually taken place they found the same duct tape that was used to cover rachel's mouth and the shovels that we used to dig her grave so all in all eight people were arrested and put on trial which is the whole eight that i told you about earlier five of these eight boys took a plea deal so they pled guilty to whatever their charges were i'll tell you in a second so they could all get lesser sentences so the first of one of these five boys to plead guilty to their charges was 16 year old nathan loveless he was charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree kidnapping and first-degree rendering criminal assistance he was essentially just there he didn't do anything but he also didn't do anything to stop it and so he had to serve some time for that and so for those charges he was sentenced to just 30 days in prison although he probably only served about two weeks probably less of that next was 20 year old tony williams he was charged with first-degree murder first-degree kidnapping and conspiracy to commit kidnapping tony williams was the one to duct tape rachel's mouth and he was also the one to turn up the radio to drown out her screams and for his part in this whole thing he was sentenced to just nine years 22 year old jeffrey barth was charged with all the same as the last one first degree murder first degree kidnap and conspiracy to commit kidnapping he was present when rachel was held hostage and he also bragged to some of his inmates that he hit rachel with the barrel of his gun and for that he was sentenced to 10 years so now we're getting on to the kind of bigger sentences still bear in mind that these men pled guilty seventeen-year-old matthew durham was charged with first-degree murder of course it was him driving the jeep he was driving toward that mountain trail knowing full well that rachel was gonna be murdered there and for that he was sentenced to 26 years 18 year old maurice rivers was charged with first-degree murder again he helped with this whole abduction plot he was the biggest part of this abduction plot he also helped to dig rachel's grave and also helped to bury her in that grave and for that he was sentenced to 26 years and the last three men didn't take plea deals they didn't plead guilty at first and so they still had to go on trial and these were of course john anderson john whitaker and yusuf jihad john anderson all the way through his trial behaved shockingly he would smile at the courtroom cameras he would laugh at some of the things being said in court he would turn and look at rachel's family and wink at them 20 year old john anderson was of course found guilty of all of his charges and he potentially faced the death penalty but was ultimately just given life in prison 22 year old john whittaker was also found guilty of all of his charges and he too could have faced the death penalty but again he wasn't given it and he was just sentenced to life in prison 32 year old yousef jihad was again found guilty of all of his charges and he was sentenced to 37 years in prison but yeah that completes this case a really really heavy one but yeah thank you so so much for watching this video if you enjoyed make sure to leave a big thumbs up because that really helps me out subscribe down below if you want to see some more content from me a huge thank you to all of my channel members all of their names are on screen right now if you want to become a channel member you can just click the link in the description or if you're on a desktop you can click the join button under the video if you become a channel member you'll get your name on this end card and you'll also have access to a members only community tab where i will ask for care suggestions do polls to see what cases come next and you can just have a lot more say in what you see on the channel but yeah thank you so so much for watching and i will see you in the next one [Music] bye [Music] you

Channel: Eleanor Neale

Views: 1,519,473

Keywords: makeup, tutorial, eleanor, neale, eleanor neale, eleanor neale true crime, review, beauty, 2019, vlog, mystery, unsolved, unsolved mystery, true crime, solved, rachel burkheimer, rachel, burkheimer, john anderson, anderson, crime watch daily, crime watch, troubled romance, bad boy, shanda sharer, chills, criminally listed, kendall rae, rob gavagan, allen ivanov, delia day, the grindr killer, russell bohling, danelle hallan, documentary, bbc, itv, podcast, crime, news, lauren agee

Id: Zad2bH80fbU

Length: 29min 57sec (1797 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 07 2019