Crime Junkie

Snapshot · Crime Junkie

MURDERED: Joyce LePage Part 2

Explore episode Jul 27, 2026

Where this was said

Bruce Bierbaum: The Primary Suspect

At 32:50 · chapter starts 29:00

The weight of circumstantial evidence against Bruce Bierbaum is laid out in full. He has been married and divorced five or six times, and almost every divorce has prompted an ex-wife to call the sheriff's office. One said plainly that she believed he killed Joyce. Another pointed police toward Joyce's distinctive 3-foot blue metal coat rack with cow-horn decorations, which went missing from the apartment and was never recovered. The most chilling detail: a family member told police they found a poem Bruce wrote about a dead girl looking up at him from a river. Beyond that, a search of his name returned 35 criminal filings. The most serious was a 2014 domestic battery charge after he allegedly pinned his wife — 40 years his junior — against a wall at a friend's house. Two witnesses corroborated her account. Additionally, the Montana Board of Veterinary Medicine found he committed five violations for regularly giving animal medications to his children — discovered when his ex-wife reported him. None of this proves murder, Ashley is careful to say, but it is the sum total of why the sheriff has focused his investigation squarely on Bruce.

True Crime
No Blood on the Carpet — Rethinking the Murder Method

MURDERED: Joyce LePage Part 2 · Jul 27, 2026 True Crime

The green carpet taken from Stevens Hall the night Joyce vanished had no blood on it. If she was stabbed, as early FBI analysis suggested, blood evidence should exist on the carpet or her clothing. Sheriff Myers now believes those 'puncture marks' on her bones may have been caused by animal activity — not a knife.

Similar snapshots