28 Sep 2026 · 41m · Ashley Flowers, Brit Prawat, Annie Elise · 26 quoted facts
A 1983 murder that sat untouched for decades was solved because careful, patient work (preserved blood, genetic genealogy and a re-run fingerprint search) pointed to two dead men, Steven Hardy and Charlie Sneed. Investigators say the evidence suggests the two took part in a robbery that ended with Dorothy "Toby" Tate shot on a California beach road. Prosecutors found probable cause, though neither man can be tried.
The episode's tension is that every clue fit together imperfectly. Hardy's DNA put him at the scene but his life looked non-violent, and Sneed's fingerprints came from a can that might have been unrelated. No one can say who fired the shot, and unmatched male touch DNA on Toby's clothing hints that a third person may still be unidentified.
Detective Clint Cole sent blood droplets that led away from the van for testing. Because the droplets showed active bleeding and Toby never left the van, they were likely the killer's, and they produced an unknown male DNA profile.
The profile matched no one in the national DNA database, even with a search for relatives. Building family trees from genetic databases, with help from Parabon NanoLabs, finally produced the name Steven Hardy.
Forensic specialist Shelby Liddell chose to run the Coke can prints through the FBI system from scratch instead of comparing them to Hardy. That produced a different name, Charlie Sneed, which linked a second man to the scene.
The district attorney decided there was probable cause to prosecute both men had they been alive. California's felony murder rule would have made both liable for a death during a robbery, even without proof of who fired.
Male DNA on Toby's clothing, consistent with her being dragged, matches neither Hardy nor Sneed. It could come from an old investigator or someone at the autopsy, but everyone present at the autopsy is dead, so the question stays open.
Dorothy "Toby" Tate was a 41-year-old traveler who lived in and drove a camper van. She was shot once below the left ear with a .45 caliber pistol on a dirt road near Highway 1 in San Luis Obispo County, California, in November 1983.
Detective Clint Cole had preserved blood from the scene tested, and it gave an unknown male DNA profile. Genetic genealogy (tracing relatives through DNA databases) led to Steven Hardy, and a fresh fingerprint search tied a second man, Charlie Sneed, to the scene.
Both Hardy and Sneed are dead; Sneed died in 2014. The district attorney said there was probable cause to prosecute them if they were alive, but a trial is impossible.
Ashley Flowers explains that, in California before 2019, if a group committed a crime and someone died during it, everyone involved could be charged with murder. That applies even to someone who didn't intend a death or take part in the killing.
Not entirely. Male touch DNA on Toby's clothing matches neither suspect or any known person of interest, so a third person may have been involved, and detectives asked the public for tips.
Stated by the speakers. Each quote matches the transcript, which shows what was said, not that it is true.
On November 15, 1983, San Luis Obispo County sheriff's deputies were sent to what looked like a car accident on a dirt road off Highway 1 near the beach.
“When sheriff's deputies are dispatched to the scene of what seems like a car accident on a dirt road just off Highway one by the beach.”
Toby Tate was killed by a single gunshot below her left ear from a .45 caliber pistol.
“It is a single gunshot wound below the woman's left ear from a forty five caliber pistol that killed her.”
Toby Tate was 41 years old and the oldest of three sisters; her sister Priscilla described her as a free spirit.
“They learned that forty one year old Toby was the oldest of three girls, and according to her sister Priscilla, she was a free spirit.”
The campground where Toby Tate self-registered, San Simeon State Park, was about ten miles from where she was found.
“It's San Simeon State Park, which is about ten miles from the crime scene.”
The California Highway Patrol's accident analysis described the suspect vehicle as a half- or three-quarter-ton pickup with a bed height of 42 to 43 inches, gray or silver-gray.
“Suspect vehicle unknown make, half or three quarter ton pickup, with a bed height of forty two inches to forty three inches.”
Investigators lifted latent fingerprints from a Coke can found near the crime scene, which became their main hope for identifying a suspect.
“What they were more keyed in on was a coke can that they found near the scene. They were able to pull some latent fingerprints off of that”
In November 1985, the Bakersfield Police Department called investigators because a pawn shop had received Toby Tate's camera.
“in November of 1985, like out of the blue, investigators get a call from the Bakersfield Police Department in California”
Toby Tate's stolen camera was entered into an automated stolen property system in 1983, which is how its serial number flagged when it was pawned.
“Back in 1983, Toby's camera had been entered into the automated stolen property system.”
A Bakersfield gas station owner said he bought the camera for $100 from two unidentified men, and no record of the sale existed.
“And he tells investigators that he bought the camera from two men who walked into his gas station one day and offered him the camera for a hundred bucks”
Toby Tate's father died of a heart attack two months after her murder.
“Two months after Toby's murder, her dad died of a heart attack”
Detective Clint Cole joined the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Office in 1990 and in 2017 became its first cold case unsolved homicide detective.
“Now he's not new, he has been with the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Office since 1990.”
DNA from the blood droplets near the van produced an unknown male profile that matched no one in the national CODIS database.
“What they get back is an unknown male DNA profile that doesn't match anyone in the CODIS database.”
California law allows searches of the CODIS DNA database for relatives of an unknown profile, but that search found no lead in this case.
“Now, because this is California, their laws allow you to search CODIS for familial links, too.”
Genealogist C. C. Moore of Parabon NanoLabs built the family tree and passed leads to Detective Jeff Robichaud.
“they get C. C. Moore at Parabon NanoLabs involved, and as she works out the family tree, she passes off leads to Cole's partner, Detective Jeff Robichaud.”
Steven Hardy, the man identified by the DNA, was a Vietnam War veteran who grew up in Ventura, California, and had no felony convictions.
“Hardy was a Vietnam war vet who grew up in Ventura, California.”
Steven Hardy's sister told detectives he had a pronounced limp around the time of the murder, which he blamed on being run over while helping a woman on Route 1.
“around the time that the murder happened, her brother had this pronounced limp.”
Fingerprints from the Coke can matched Charlie Sneed of Texas in the FBI fingerprint system, not Steven Hardy.
“The prints do not match Steven Hardy, they match a man in the fingerprint system named Charlie Sneed, and this dude is from Texas.”
In June 1983, Charlie Sneed shot up the car of his estranged wife's friend Deborah with a high-powered rifle.
“He went over in the middle of the night with a high-powered rifle to shoot up her car while in the driveway.”
New Braunfels police arrested Sneed in September 1983 for reckless discharge of a firearm, and their report described his truck as a beige Chevy, not gray.
“Their report makes note of his 1983 beige Chevy pickup truck, hm.”
Steven Hardy was arrested in Texas for a bad check in February 1984, which supported a link to Sneed's circle.
“He was arrested for a bad check in February of 1984.”
On January 7, 2026, the district attorney found sufficient probable cause to prosecute Hardy and Sneed had they been alive.
“And on January seventh, 2026, forty two years after Toby's murder, the DA writes back saying that there is sufficient probable cause to support a prosecution of the suspects if they were still alive.”
Hardy's 1984 fingerprint card noted a scar on his lower left index finger, which detectives suspect may have come from broken van glass, though its origin is unknown.
“when Hardy was arrested in 1984, they fingerprinted him, and on the fingerprint card, they mentioned that he had a scar on his lower left index finger.”
California's felony murder rule, before changes in 2019, let everyone in a group committing a crime be charged with murder if someone died during it.
“before 2019, the rule meant that if a group of people commit a crime and then someone dies during that crime,”
Charlie Sneed served twenty years in prison for the later hostage incident, was released in 2009 and died in 2014.
“So he spent twenty years in prison for that, got out in 2009, but then died in 2014.”
The solution to Toby Tate's murder was announced on January 20, 2026, and her sister Priscilla attended the press conference in San Luis Obispo.
“Regardless, the solve got announced publicly on January twentieth, 2026, and Priscilla flew to San Luis Obispo to attend the press conference.”
Male touch DNA on Toby Tate's clothing, consistent with her being dragged, matches neither Hardy nor Sneed.
“Well, there was male touch DNA present on her clothing that was consistent with that.”
Deputies find a damaged camper van and a woman shot to death in the cargo area, which shows this was murder and not a crash.
“There is blood spatter by the driver's seat”
Her sister describes a free-spirited traveler who held many jobs, which explains why she was on this stretch of coast.
“She had spent her adulthood traveling around the country in her van”
Sand, a phone call and a shell casing let investigators reconstruct how Toby was attacked after a beach walk with her dogs.
“Toby left her campsite that evening, safe and sound, went to the beach”
A pawned camera in 1985 yields a long chain of handoffs but no suspect, and the case is shelved for decades.
“somebody had just brought in Toby's camera.”
Toby's father, sister and niece all suffered after her death, and her sister Priscilla kept calling for updates.
“Two months after Toby's murder, her dad died of a heart attack”
Detective Clint Cole takes over, and preserved blood produces a DNA profile that genealogy traces to Steven Hardy.
“The DNA belongs to Steven Hardy, and that name is nowhere in the files.”
A careful, unbiased fingerprint search names Charlie Sneed instead of Hardy, which adds a second suspect.
“She doesn't want confirmation bias to get anywhere near her work”
Sneed's 1983 offenses in Texas show a pattern of gun violence in the months before the murder.
“Charlie Sneed is from New Braunfels, Texas, with a violent history.”
The DA finds probable cause against both dead men, but unmatched touch DNA suggests there may be a third person.
“sufficient probable cause to support a prosecution of the suspects”
DNA on Toby's clothing matches neither suspect, which leaves open who moved her body.
“male touch DNA present on her clothing that was consistent with that.”
When you're out in nature, you learn to trust your instincts. You pay attention to the trail, your surroundings, and you stay alert to protect yourself from harm. But what if the biggest threat isn't the environment at all? On Park Predators, host Delia D'Ambra explores true crime cases that happen in national parks and remote wildernesses, the places we usually think of as safe and peaceful. Each episode reveals what happened and how much more there is beneath the surface.
Listen to Park Predators now, wherever you get your podcasts. Hi Crime Junkies, I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.
And I'm Britt.
And today I'm gonna 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 forty 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. Let me take you back to November fifteenth, 1983, just before eleven 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 one 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 noticed 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 forty five 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 forty one 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 Esmerelda. 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 Esmerelda. 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.
Okay, but Colorado, what was she doing out in California then?
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. And then from there, she was gonna travel down to LA. 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 fourteenth, 1983. And then she did from there, her and her dogs took off for LA. 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 aunt's.
It's San Simeon State Park, which is about ten miles from the crime scene. Now, detectives checked this out to see if anyone there had seen her with people or noticed like 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, cause 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 fourteenth, and it happened right where she was found at the beach.
Not the campsite. So how do they know that exactly?
Cause 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 gonna head south to LA. 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 twenty 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.
And I mean, it obviously wasn't like a random person's car, or they probably would have reported it.
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, so they think that it probably fell out of the suspect's pocket, like while they were moving her.
Okay, but what I can't figure out is like, why stick around to move her and risk getting caught? Like that's gonna take more time.
So 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 are thinking that, like, a body slumped over in the driver's seat People are gonna is, yeah,
notice that.
that's gonna draw a lot more unwanted attention as opposed to just like a van that maybe looks like it got into an Or if there's no accident.
one there, maybe it's abandoned, no one's there, you don't think about it.
Yes, so that's the they went with. But as I was like in this, I don't know why. I kind of wondered if maybe they had to move her. Like, in my mind, I don't know, to grab a wallet and a camera, that's quick. Like you do it and you clear out of there. Who cares if somebody sees? But what if her van, right, we're saying it hit their vehicle? Like, what if it kinda, like, locked into it?
Like, W- is it possible that they needed to get her out of the driver's seat so that they could move it to dislodge their car without causing more damage? And like, we asked about this, and the detective said that, sure, that's possible, but that's not the theory that early investigators ever ran with. Either way, the damage caused by the collision was their potential saving grace. Because even though investigators don't really know anything about their suspect, what they can put out is information about their suspect's vehicle.
The California Highway Patrol has this accident investigation team that can basically analyze everything about a crash paint transfers, tire tracks, types of damage, and then predict what kind of vehicle, like, was involved. And here's what they get. I'm actually just gonna have you read it.
Okay. Suspect vehicle unknown make, half or three quarter ton pickup, with a bed height of forty two inches to forty three inches. Color gray or silver gray, with damage to the driver's side rear corner of bed and bumper. Vehicle has a wheelbase of 129 inches, and the bed is rectangular. It may have a camper shell on bed. So, Okay,
Crimestoppers puts this description out and offers a cash reward for information. While investigators check with any local body shops in the area to see if any truck matching that description has come in for repair. And they also scour the local pawn shops looking for Toby's camera. But they come up with nothing on either front.
okay, but you're saying they they're looking like locally. Highway one basically runs up and down the entire state of California, right? So this guy doesn't have to be or stay local.
yeah. And if he's not, that's just gonna make this case all the more difficult to solve with the resources that they had in 1983. Because there is no nationwide print databases, forget DNA databases, they can't DNA, even. Yeah, like, they can't make DNA I profiles yet.
mean, did they get any physical evidence from the scene? I mean, it sounds like there was that cigarette, but anything else?
so, yeah, they found that cigarette, they collected it, but that wasn't a used one, so I don't even know how hopeful anyone was about that. What they were more keyed in on was a coke can that they found near the scene. They were able to pull some latent fingerprints off of that, and after not finding any suspect prints in her van, this really was their best shot at IDing somebody. Though it's only good if they have somebody to compare these prints to.
Yeah, tell me if I'm missing something, but it might not be connected at all, right? Like, I, is that like a beach location?
I asked. But according to detectives, the can was close enough to the van to be considered within the crime scene. But I mean, like, But it could have yes, of course,
been there before.
there's. There's nothing saying definitively that it was left there by Toby's killer. So I think they would probably have a hard time ruling people out just based on the Coke can. But if there is somebody that you can rule in, right, like, and
If you have someone that you're already looking at and you're like, and they happen to match the COA
that'd be another story. That would place them there, in the same spot where Toby was murdered. And depending on what else led them, right, like you're saying, like, again, it could give them something
right. Like, did they have a gray truck that was in the shop more or on camera?
exactly. And actually, for almost two years, they have very few people to compare these prints to. I mean, we're grasping at straws here. But then, one day in November of 1985, like out of the blue, investigators get a call from the Bakersfield Police Department in California, which is like two and a half hours east of San Luis Obispo. Turns out, they had been contacted by a local pawn shop because somebody had just brought in Toby's camera.
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Back in 1983, Toby's camera had been entered into the automated stolen property system. So when somebody tried to pawn it two years later, the serial number immediately flagged as a stolen item. So that's how the pawn shop knew to call authorities, and then the sheriff's office sprang into action. The man who pawned the camera was named Michael Lee Queen. But of course, nothing is that easy. Once investigators track him down, he tells them that he got the camera from somebody else, Of course, so they track that person down too.
What do you know? He also got the camera from somebody else, and this is the camera that has lived a thousand lives. Because investigators ended up tracking these camera handoffs down for like about a year, through like four more people, all the way back to a gas station owner in Bakersfield. And he tells investigators that he bought the camera from two men who walked into his gas station one day and offered him the camera for a hundred bucks, which he decided to buy for his son's birthday.
Neither man identified themselves, and there was no record of the transaction.
of course.
Now, the guy did his best to describe these two guys, like, I know they tried making composite sketches, but I don't know how good they were or how much faith investigators had in them. Because, as far as I can tell, those were never released to the public.
I mean, is there a chance they think he was lying?
I don't get that impression at all. And according to detectives, like nobody in this whole camera line matched the prints from the scene, like they tested everybody. So I think I don't. I don't know why they didn't pass out the photo, but But like, everything like,
in everybody's story was lining up.
and they're sh- they're pretty sure that everyone they talked to was not Toby's killer. And at this point, detectives told us that the case was about as cold as a cold case could get. It got put on a shelf, and that's where it stayed for decades. There was nobody even assigned to it. All the while, Toby's family was struggling to make sense of how and why their lives were suddenly upended. I mean, the grief was like an infection that continued to just, like, rip through their family long after November of 1983.
Two months after Toby's murder, her dad died of a heart attack, which Priscilla says she knows was because of a broken heart, because her heart was broken, too. And she told us that Toby was the only person in the world who really accepted her for who she was. And in the wake of her death, Priscilla stopped believing in God, she stopped going to church, she stopped singing. Toby's younger sister Judy struggled with alcohol use, though that didn't stop her from calling the sheriff's department every year for updates that didn't come.
And Judy's daughter Elisa, who was seven when her aunt Toby died, she grew up with her own struggles. And in 1996, she ended up taking her own life. Eight months after that, Judy passed away, too, from a tragic accident where she fell down the stairs on Toby's birthday of all days. So Priscilla, the only Tate sister left, took on the responsibility of calling the sheriff's office every year. And while she said that they couldn't have been more kind, she didn't get much more than Judy did.
And she sort of just resigned herself to thinking that, like, crimes like these are never solved, like it's just never gonna go anywhere. Still, though, she never stopped calling. And in hindsight, those calls might have done more to move this case forward than anything else. Because fast forward to 2018, Priscilla thinks to call the sheriff's office after the Golden State Killer is arrested to ask if he could have been the one to kill Toby.
Same year, same time.
Yes, but his MO was totally different, like he never attacked anyone in their car. That at least that not that we know of. So they're pretty quick to tell her they don't think he's their guy for this. But Priscilla is in the right headspace because there was evidence collected and preserved in Toby's case that could eventually be used to solve it. The way that the Golden State Killer was right, like it was just gonna take the right detective to come along and do it.
Enter Detective Clint Cole. Now he's not new, he has been with the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Office since 1990. He actually just resigned this year, but in 2017, he became the first investigator assigned to the agency's newly created position of cold case unsolved homicide detective. And that's why, about two years after Priscilla called asking about the Golden State Killer, she gets this out of the blue call. And on the other end is this man who says, Hi, I'm Detective Cole and I'm gonna solve your sister's murder.
I've said it before, I'll say it again. I love this guy.
yes, this is not the first time that we have talked about Detective Cole. And that's because this man is out here solving cold cases right and left.
I mean, yeah, he's the one who helped solve the Kristen Smart Yeah, and case.
he was San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Office first and only cold case detective. Like I said, so, as you can imagine, when he comes in, he does have dozens of cases on his docket. That's why he didn't get started on Toby's until 2019. But this man has a process. Before he ever makes that call to Priscilla, he has to get his ducks in a row, right? He digitizes the files, cataloging testable evidence. And while the detectives back in the day honed in on that Coke can, to Cole, the blood droplets leading away from Toby's van are what really seem promising.
The droplets suggest active bleeding. We know that Toby never left the inside of her van, so that means
the blood belongs to the somehow, killer.
probably, like, he probably cut himself now, granted, like, could her blood somehow have been on something? Maybe, but they don't, they don't think that that's the most likely scenario. And sure enough, when he sends that sample that, thank God, they still had preserved, that he sends it off to be tested. What they get back is an unknown male DNA profile that doesn't match anyone in the CODIS database.
So definitely not the Golden State killer, cause He's already he's there.
in the S, yeah, he's in the system by that point. Now, because this is California, their laws allow you to search CODIS for familial links, too. Like, does the killer have a brother or an uncle in prison? So this even, like, widens, like, their search pool, but even that comes up empty, too. So the next step is genealogy. Detective Cole gets a profile created to start looking for potential relatives in genetic databases, and then he has to hit pause.
Because that is right when the Kristen Smart case starts breaking, and per sheriff's orders, he basically has to drop everything else to get that across the finish line, which obviously he did. So Toby's case gets kind of punted to others who can at least, like, pitch in part of their time to help keep things moving. It's not like it totally stops. And they get C. C. Moore at Parabon NanoLabs involved, and as she works out the family tree, she passes off leads to Cole's partner, Detective Jeff Robichaud.
And of course, it was not easy, it never is, right? They find the suspect's father, great. But but this guy has no record of having sons.
of course.
So then they have to map out mom's family tree. And that's when they realized that their suspect was raised by a different man and probably never knew his biological father. And anyways, I am zipping through a lot of work that took months to complete, but in the end, they do get a name. The DNA belongs to Steven Hardy, and that name is nowhere in the files. So Detective Robichaud's next step is to find out everything he can about this guy, but everything he learns just ends up confusing him more.
Now, by this point, Steven Hardy is deceased, so it's not like Robichaud can just go talk to him. But nothing he is seeing is making him think that this guy is really their suspect. Like, Hardy was a Vietnam war vet who grew up in Ventura, California. He lived a fairly low-key life. He separated from his wife after the war, but they continued to see each other. He was a chain smoker, struggled with drinking, but importantly, had no felony convictions ever.
Now he had, like, a record in California for some DUIs and other minor alcohol related charges, but nothing involving like violence that Robichaud could find.
Okay, but isn't that kind of always the story now with a lot of IGG matches? I mean, the Golden State Killer kind of wrote the playbook, like unassuming Yeah, but normal life.
W- at the time, Robichaud, he is like, he had never had a case of his like this before. Like this was a first, and he just did not know what to think,
Well, and I I mean, I brought up Golden State Killer, but he also had murdered more than a dozen people over the decade. This would just kind of be a one off murder.
And it's not like Hardy's DNA pings on any other cases in CODIS, right? Plus, there was a real issue. Robichaud could never put Hardy in San Luis Obispo. Honestly, he said. If he didn't have this guy's DNA saying he was there, he likely would have looked the other way when it came to this guy. There were only two things that stood out that made them really believe that the blood evidence wasn't some kind of fluke. One is that thirty something year old Hardy, who has a girlfriend and a steady job, suddenly did seem to have become transient after Toby's murder.
almost like something set him off down a different path.
Hm, two. The family member that connected him, like through genealogy, was Hardy's sister. And when they talked to her, she told them that around the time that the murder happened, her brother had this pronounced limp. And when she asked him about it, he said that he was out on Route one trying to help a woman whose car was on the side of the road when this oncoming car ran over his foot. And Robichaud, he thought, like, that's a really weird story to tell, eerily similar to kind of Toby's whole situation.
yeah, and I mean, like, don't people say the best lies have, like, a grain of truth to them?
Yeah, and in like, plus, like Detective Coles in his eyes, he said. Like, if a car hits you on the side of the highway, like, you're gonna have a bit more damage than just like a little bit of a limp.
Yeah, like a limp is almost like a car actually, like, slow rolled over your foot. I don't know, going at a super low speed in a parking lot, so right?
Robichaud, he can't put his finger on it. But even still, even with these two weird things, something just isn't sitting right. So he decides to double confirm by going back to the evidence, to the one thing that they have been using to rule people in or out since 1983,
The print on that Coke can,
right? So he taps a woman named Shelby Liddell, this forensic specialist with the sheriff's office, who we're told is something of a wizard when it comes to fingerprint analysis. Robichaud, he basically says to her, like, Hey, we have a suspect. Can you run the prints from the scene against him to confirm? Typically, what that would mean is that Shelby would get the exemplar prints from the suspect and the latent prints from the soda can and look at them side by side.
That is not what Shelby does, and the reason why is important. She doesn't want confirmation bias to get anywhere near her work, especially if she has to defend it in court. So rather than do this like one to one comparison before ever pulling the exemplar prints, she decides to just run the latent prints through the FBI's print system again herself, like, start from scratch. And actually, before I get into this, like, quick crash course on this, like on how it works, cause I don't think we've ever, like, gone over it.
And I actually, I know we haven't, because I didn't truly know myself until our reporter Nicole, like, sat down in the lab with Shelby and got a master class. So the basic process is like you run a latent print through the system and it returns a list of possible matches with a score. Not just like, this is it.
But like, 100%'s the best, and then like 75%'s pretty good, 25% is like, TBD.
so then it's up to the lab tech to, like, go in and independently verify everything. So this is what Shelby does with the COcan prints. But when she gets the list back, the scores aren't even super great. So she starts going through the matches one by one, ruling them out, ruling them out. And when she gets to number four, she is like, Okay, bingo, this is a match, I've got a match here. So that's when she goes and she looks at the name, and it is not the suspect name that detectives gave her.
So just to double check, she tries the whole process again with another print that was lifted from, like, a different finger from the COcan. Runs through the list, finds a match, looks at the name. Same guy, not their suspect. And Shelby literally has, like, a second person double check her work just to make sure. But they reach the same conclusion. The prints do not match Steven Hardy, they match a man in the fingerprint system named Charlie Sneed, and this dude is from Texas.
Like, at least with Steven Hardy, he was in the same state, right? So it's even hard to be like, why was his print at the scene? So once again, detectives Robichaud and Cole don't know what to make of this, but they know that none of the science is wrong. It has been checked over and over again at this point. They're missing a piece of the puzzle.
but we said at the top, like, the Coke can might not be connected.
Yes, and maybe you could write it off that easily, except when they look into Charlie Sneed, he is exactly the type of person who would commit a crime like this.
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Charlie Sneed is from New Braunfels, Texas, with a violent history. I'm talking a destroyed car, being reckless with guns and literally holding someone hostage. So let's start in June of eighty three. This is just five months before Toby's murder. Sneed was in the process of divorcing his wife, and he had decided to go over to her best friend Deborah's house to pay her a visit. Because for some reason, he blamed her for the divorce. Now, Sneed didn't wanna talk to her.
He went over in the middle of the night with a high-powered rifle to shoot up her car while in the driveway. What so aggressively, by the way, that Deborah thinks he was trying to blow up her car. She obviously woke up, and when she looked out her window, she saw Charlie in the street, putting the rifle back behind the back seat of his pickup truck before just like driving off.
A silver or silver gray or gray pickup truck.
It doesn't say in this report, but there is another report that brings up this truck. So, three months after that incident, in September of eighty three, this is now just two months before Toby's murder. Charlie Sneed went out to a random area in, like, the middle of nowhere, Texas, highly intoxicated, and just starts shooting off his rifle at nothing. Unbeknownst to him, on the bluff directly above him were two New Braunfels police officers on break. So they go down and arrest him for reckless discharge of a firearm.
Their report makes note of his 1983 beige Chevy pickup truck, hm. And not gray or silver.
what kind of vehicle did Hardy have?
So this is the thing we don't know what Steven Hardy drove, but not for a lack of trying,
I believe you, okay? So were these two working together?
maybe. But like, P, like, the detectives still don't have anything that connects Hardy Like they might be, and Sneed.
but we have no idea why or how they They're would be.
not from the same place, they're not related, so that's what Robichaud goes in search of, like, what is the connection here? So what he does is he tracks down one of the officers who arrested Sneed back in eighty three. Now he's retired by that point, but Robichaud is looking for anything like, point me in the right direction, even. Well, immediate jackpot. This officer remembers Charlie Sneed, all right, knew him really well, actually, because the two had gone to school together.
So now comes the important question. Had he heard of Steven Hardy? And right away, the officer's like, Yep, he was here for about a month or two, and he and Sneed used to run together. Robichaud ends up confirming that when he finds a criminal record for Hardy out of Texas. He was arrested for a bad check in February of 1984. Again, this would be after Toby's murder, now. Now Robichaud is also able to find a number of stolen vehicle reports filed by Hardy to San Antonio Police Department.
And this is where he went down a rabbit hole, trying to connect Hardy to a silver truck with the right damage, but he never could. Still, in all the digging, there is clearly enough connecting these two men around the time of the murder. And there's physical evidence that suggests both of them were at this scene, that they were likely working together to rob Toby, and then one of them pulled the trigger before they both fled the scene.
This is the theory that Detectives Cole and Robichaud present to the ADA, along with all of their supporting evidence. And on January seventh, 2026, forty two years after Toby's murder, the DA writes back saying that there is sufficient probable cause to support a prosecution of the suspects if they were still alive. Because Sneed is also deceased by this point.
So we'll never know who pulled the trigger,
No, the murder weapon has never been found, but given Sneed's history, both detectives believe that he was the shooter. Interestingly, though, when Hardy was arrested in 1984, they fingerprinted him, and on the fingerprint card, they mentioned that he had a scar on his lower left index finger. Which, when you think back to, like, the crime scene, what he's connected to,
which he could have gotten then during the shooting.
it's possible. Like the detectives suspect that he cut himself on one of the broken van windows. But the truth is, we have no way of knowing where that scar came from. We don't even know w- like what he was bleeding from, and we know he left his blood there, but we don't know why or how. And really, it doesn't matter, I mean, not legally speaking anyway, because in California, there is a felony murder rule. Now that's recently become like a bit more complicated, but before 2019, the rule meant that if a group of people commit a crime and then someone dies during that crime,
everyone gets charged with murder, or could be
even if you had no role in the actual killing itself, even if you didn't intend for anyone to die. Now, as far as we know, Hardy didn't commit any more violent crimes after this, but Sneed kept up the same violent antics. So after Toby's murder, he went back to Texas, still going after his ex's best friend, Deborah.
Still because of the divorce,
Actually, well, so, according to the offense report, this time he was after Deborah because he wanted her to drop the charges that she filed when he shot up her car years earlier.
because of the divorce, right?
Same line, yeah. And this time he switched up his strategy, though. So instead of going straight at Deborah, he went after her ex-husband, taking him hostage outside of a bar,
what?
pointing a gun to his head and forcing him to drive them both to Deborah's house. When they got there, though, this guy fought Sneed off and then called police after Sneed ran away. Or so he thought, because when officers respond to Deborah's house, they find that Sneed actually didn't go very far. He was hiding in Deborah's closet.
oh my god.
So he spent twenty years in prison for that, got out in 2009, but then died in 2014. So, like I said, any answers that he might have had about what happened or who played what role, gone with him. Regardless, the solve got announced publicly on January twentieth, 2026, and Priscilla flew to San Luis Obispo to attend the press conference. It was actually her first time ever being in the county, and until that moment, she told detectives she had this, like, very dark, evil picture of this area in her mind.
But when Detective Robichaud takes her out to the scene of the crime and to the campground, Priscilla said that it actually kind of unexpectedly brought her a lot of peace. Like, just knowing that the beautiful California coastline was the last thing her sister saw, she told us it was finally like putting a period at the end of a sentence. But there is a bit of a question mark that I wanna leave people with, something that has been bothering Detective Robichaud.
Remember how crime scene investigators determined that Toby was dragged from the driver's seat where she was shot, like to the back of the van, right? Well, there was male touch DNA present on her clothing that was consistent with that. According to Robichaud, it's degraded to the point where you can only compare one to one. But they did a comparison with Hardy and with Ashley. Sneed. The DNA doesn't match either of them or any known persons of interest detectives have thought to compare it to thus far.
So there are a few options here. That DNA could belong to one of the old investigators at the scene or medical examiners, like someone present at the autopsy. I mean, Shelby has certainly seen that before, especially in some of these older cases. But unfortunately, according to Detective Cole, everyone who was present at the autopsy is dead, so they can't go get their DNA.
right. So it could be that, or we might have a third suspect who could be able to tell us exactly what happened.
Yeah, so this is kind of where I think our crime junkies come in. If anyone out there listening by any chance knows something about the 1983 homicide of Dorothy Toby Tate on Highway one in San Luis Obispo, or if you knew Charlie Sneed or Steven Hardy, or anyone that they used to hang out with in Texas or California, please come forward. You can reach the San Luis Obispo Sheriff's Office Detectives Division at eight zero five seven eight one four five zero zero, or, if you'd rather stay anonymous, you can call the San Luis Obispo County Crime Stoppers at eight zero five five four nine seven eight six seven.
Crime Junkie is an audio Chuck production. I think Chuck would approve. Woo.
When the nights grow longer, the shadows start to stir, and that can only mean one thing Full body chills is back. This season, step inside original tales where every doorway leads somewhere darker, every stranger carries a secret, and nothing is ever quite what it seems. Each story takes you somewhere new, but be careful, you never know what might follow you home. So gather round, listen close, and stream Full Body Chills wherever you get your podcasts.
Growing up in a small town, I know how deeply a crime can shake a local community, and I know that what makes the headlines is rarely the full story. That's what Kylie Lowe explores on her show Dark Down East. She digs into cases from Maine and New England, using original reporting, archival records, and conversations with the people who knew them best. Each episode takes you inside the communities these stories shaped and the families who never stop searching for answers.
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