The neighbor no one suspected.
To his neighbors, Warren Forrest was a doting father, a handsome husband, and a Vietnam veteran who drove a blue Ford van. He was quiet, polite, and always willing to help. He didn’t drink. He kept to himself. On the surface, he looked like the picture of postwar normalcy.
But what happens behind closed doors—and beneath layers of social camouflage—is something else entirely.
In Episode 5, the Stolen Voices team digs into Forrest’s carefully curated double life and examines how his charm and ability to manipulate people allowed him to gather enough signatures from the staff at Western State Mental Hospital to secure his early release. Drawing from interviews with those who knew him, court records, and police reports, reveals a portrait of a man who straddled the line between model citizen and monstrous predator.
This episode examines how charm, presentation, and social bias can cloud even the most obvious danger. We explore Forrest’s employment with Clark County, his access to parks and remote land, and how his family life shielded him from suspicion. To some he was just a good-looking neighbor, helpful and friendly.
In January of 1975 Forrest was found not guilty by reason of insanity for the attack on the woman we are calling Susan, whom he kidnapped, stabbed and left for dead in a shallow grave. He was institutionalized at Western State Mental Hospital. While at Western, a fellow patient, a young woman named Karen Wiles, was found murdered less than 10 miles from the hospital, but Forrest was not interviewed as a suspect, despite having access to a vehicle during his stay at Western.
In episode 5 listeners also hear from surviving relatives and law enforcement officials who would come to see past the façade—and uncover a chilling truth. Warren Forrest didn’t just blend in. He weaponized trust.
By the time police caught up to him, the damage was done. Multiple young women had vanished, the suspected work of Warren Forrest. Others, like Norma Jean and Susan, were left holding the trauma—and the truth.
The monster in the woods didn’t look like a monster. He looked like a neighbor.
