This week we hear from Peter Hauer’s next door neighbor and his long time girlfriend. The neighboring family that Peter Hauer was closest with, refuse to believe, even to this day, that Peter killed Walter Smith. The week the crime took place, Peter had been driving the grandmother every day to see her sick husband in the hospitalWe heard that Peter went through the trouble of doing his laundry, and he’d made a bulk food purchase the week that Walter Smith was missing, friends and neighbors question why he would’ve bothered to do this if he was suicidalPeter’s longtime girlfriend thinks he did, in fact, type the noteAnd we heard about what could possibly be a bullet hole in Peter Hauer’s skull

5. Ripple Effect

True Crime Podcast, for mature audiences. Buried, Not Forgotten is about the mysterious deaths of Walter Smith and Peter Hauer, in the summer of 1975. Smith never returned from a bike ride from his summer job at Watoga State Park in Pocahontas County, West Virginia. A large-scale search was initiated that week, and volunteer cavers and West Virginia State Police would eventually discover Walter Smith’s body in a cave, under a pile of rocks, on private property. The property owner, Peter Hauer, was a leading expert on saltpeter mining, an accomplished cave explorer, historian and treasurer of the American Spelean History Association. Hauer went missing that same week, shortly after being interviewed by investigators. Some people believe the story in the police report; Peter killed Walter, then took his own life, but many friends and neighbors refuse to believe that is what really happened. In the course of the project, Buried Not Forgotten uncovered information about the police report, FBI investigation, and first-hand accounts that paint a very different picture from what police believed in 1975. Listen to those closest to the case, in their own words, as the truth gets even stranger than it seems at first.