Hello, everyone, Welcome to a special edition of The Pathway. Chili.
Ashley is not with us this week because she is off celebrating Thanksgiving, and
since Jewels and I are Canadian and don't celebrate Thanksgiving, this week, we
were still free, so we decided to do an episode with just the two
of us where I will be sharing the details about a case with Jewels that
she's not familiar with and she will offer her comments. And this week I'm
going to be doing the nineteen eighty five murders of Harold and Thelma Swain,
which is an interesting one because it was on the early days of Unsownes.
It wound up getting solved, but then it turned out to be wrongful conviction
and the man put in prison for the crime was set free a few years
ago, so this is technically unsolved again. And Jules, have you ever
heard of this case before? I've never heard of this case. When you
tell me about it with regards to the Unsolved Mysteries episode, it might ring
a bell. But when you told me about this initially, I was like,
Okay, I'm not going to google it, I'm not going to look
into it. And I think you told me Undisclosed did an entire season on
this case, or at least a couple episodes. I was really excited because
I'm like, there must be something really good here. And I love a
wrongful conviction case because at the end there's somebody who actually gets their freedom back.
But it's equal parts inspirational and infuriating. So I can't wait to hear
all about the story. And since you mentioned Undisclosed, one of the reasons
I wanted to revisit this is because I originally covered on the Trail went cold
in early July of two thousand eighteen, and by sheer coincidence, a few
weeks later, I discovered that Undisclosed was devoting an entire season to it because
they had done a deep dive investigation, so of course they released a lot
more information than my episode had. But to my shock, I actually got
invited to be a guest on one of their after shows with Colin Miller and
Susan Simpson, where we discussed the case. And of course it was intimidating
because they're brilliant legal experts and I'm not, so I had to try to
sound smart next to them. But the good news is is that their hard
work on this case did pay off since the conviction was overturned, and there
have been a lot of new developments in the case in recent years. I
don't think you had to pretend to be smart or to sound smart, okay,
because Ashley and I both have PhDs, and I think you're smarter than
both of us, So I don't think necessarily an education level is going to
be indicative of just how intelligent an individual is, and I think you are
one of the most intelligent people that I have ever met. Oh, thank
you very much. I appreciate that, and yes, Colin and Simpson told
me I did a good job as well. But oh, before we start,
one final detail, I wanted to mention a funny story is that when
we were recording the Undisclosed episode, right at the very end, as I
was talking about my podcast, the fire alarm went off in my apartment buildings
for a fire drill, so we had to cut the recording short. And
thankfully it happened at the end of the recording and not the beginning. Because
I know that when we record the path went Chili will sometimes have to stop
because jewels will have like sirens or a motorcycle or a protest outside her window,
and then we have to pause before until the noise goes away. Yeah,
it's super frustrating when it starts at the beginning, but at least it
was at the tail end. But I guess that's just part of modern condo
living. Things like that happen within the building and they're completely outside your control
and nobody knows that you're recording a podcast, and it's a big inconvenience.
Exactly. Yes, So when people listen to our final episodes, they have
no idea how many times we have to stop and start again because of little
glitches like that. So this particular case takes place in nineteen eighty five in
the small town of Waverley, Georgia, which is located in Camden County,
and it's a predominantly African American community, so our two victims were also African
American. It was a sixty six year old Harold Swain and his sixty three
year old wife, Thelma Swayin, who had been married for forty three years
at this point. Harold as a retired pulpwood worker and at this particular point
he is the deacon at the Rising Daughters Baptist church and is known for being
a very well liked and well respected community leader. On the evening of March
the eleventh, the Swains were holding their weekly Bible study with nine female parishioners
at their church, and at around eight fifty pm, one of the women
there, Vanzola Williams, had to excuse herself because she had to leave early
because of a previous engagement. But when Vanzola walked out into the vestibule,
she encountered a white man whom she described as being in his twenties and having
light colored, shoulder length hair, and the man told Vanzola, can you
tell this guy that I want to speak to him? Before he pointed at
Harold. So Vanzoli went back told Harold that there was a man who wanted
to see him in the vestibule, and then she escorted him back there before
leaving the church. But it was only a few seconds later when everyone in
the church heard a bunch of gunshots, and when Thelma heard that, she
started a panic. She ran into the vestibule herself and she wound up being
shot. So the other parishioners were just terrified and ran back into Harold's office
to hide and they tried calling the police, but it turned out that the
phone lines had actually at the church had actually previously been cut, meaning that
the killer likely did this and it was a premeditated murder. So one of
the parishioners had to sneak out the window go to a nearby convenience store to
call the police, and when they arrived, they found Harold and Thelma both
shot to death in the vestibule. Wow, I can't imagine the trauma that
would inflict on all the parishioners. Regardless of what your feelings are on religion,
the church should be a sacred place. This is a place where you're
doing a Bible study. He's a deacon of the church and his wife goes
to help him and she gets shot as well. I mean, was this
just indiscriminate, like we must eliminate all witnesses type of a thing with regards
to Thelma in your opinion, I don't think so, because Vanzola Williams was
allowed to leave right after she brought Harold to the vestibule. Like this was
a direct witness who communicated with the killer, but he didn't seem concerned about
her. He only cared about Harold and then and for for all I know,
he probably never intended on killing Thelma and only shot her because she happened
to run into the vestibule to help her husband. But he just wasn't concerned
about any of the other witnesses. And then he just fled the scene,
which gave off the impression that Harold was intentionally targeted. So did Venzola get
good look at his face? Oh? Yes, And this is going to
be one of the most controversial elements of this whole case, because she will
provide a description, but that as the years go by, she'll change her
story a little bit when identifying this man. Did the other parishioners get a
good look at him when Thelma went out to go see what was going on
with Harold in the vestibule or was the area that they were in like pretty
far away kind of like sequestered from the vestibule. Well, obviously van Zola
was the one who got the best look, but a lot of the other
parishioners would report having seen him through the doorway and the vestibule and provide a
description. But we've talked numerous times over the course of this podcast, how
eyewitness descriptions in cold cases can sometimes be very unreliable, and this turned out
to be a case study in that because as I was doing my research,
I found a original police report which put a list of all the eyewitness descriptions
provided by each of the eye witnesses who are there, and it's pretty shocking
just how much they differ, Like they'll provide different hair colors, different heights,
different clothing descriptions. And what's also shocking is that Vanzola like they would
find a pair of glasses in the vestibule and that they assume belong to the
killer. But Vanzola Williams claimed that the killer was not wearing glasses. Yet
some of these other witnesses who are a farther distance away, if you look
at that report, they described the killer as wearing glasses. So if you
can't even get a consistent account of a detail like that, then you know
that eyewitness testimony is very unreliable. The one thing that they have going for
them in this case is the fact that there are multiple eyewitnesses, So I
suppose what you could look for would be commonalities. It's kind of like the
jelly bean jar when you have one person guess how many jelly beans are in
a jar, and they're going to get it wrong. But you take the
average over like one hundred people and they get it within a few jelly beans.
So maybe if you have like ten people or five people saying he was
wearing glasses, then maybe there is a good chance that Vanzola Williams, although
she had a close up look, maybe she was the one who was wrong.
That is true because Vanzola would later change her story and then say that
yes, the killer was wearing glasses. But it could just be one of
those things where it was such a traumatic experience that her memory right afterwards,
she just wasn't thinking about something like that and gave an inaccurate description. But
when you find out that like multiple witnesses cannot even agree if the killer was
wearing glasses, then you know that you should never rely on eyewitness testimony as
your primary evidence, and certainly not when they change their eyewitness testimony, which
is typically never for nefarious purposes. It's because they would conflate the information that
other people have been giving them, especially like law enforcement. I'm sure in
this case when they're like, well, other witnesses eyewitnesses had seen eyeglasses,
and when you've heard that over and over and over again, you can then
your memory becomes malleable and you conflate those details, thinking, well, maybe
I do remember him wearing glasses, when that just isn't the case. So
it's just a big old mess, exactly. And that's probably what I think
happened with Maanzola, where she was convinced at first he didn't have glasses,
but as the years went on and police and other eyewitnesses said that the man
did, that's what compelled her to change her story, but it wasn't for
nefarious reasons. Now, talking more about the glasses, they were pretty unique
because they had very thick lenses, which meant that it was probably they had
a prescription for a far sided person. And the frame of the glasses appeared
to have been poked with a welding torch, and the ear pieces did not
match, as one of the ear pieces was wrapped in tape. So these
were pretty much makeshift glasses that had been pieced together from pieces of multiple glasses,
which seemed to suggest that whoever this person was, they were not something
with a someone with a lot of money who could afford its prescription for a
decent pair, and of course they likely left him behind the scene an obvious
panic, because it's been speculated that the killer got into a struggle with Harold
before he shot him, and it's possible that his glasses fell off and he
forgot to pick them up back up before he fled the church. I know
that when the man first showed up, nobody thought that there was anything unusual
about him, because the church was located next to Highway seventeen and it was
very common for transience to stop by who would ask for handouts or a free
meal. So I think Benzola figured that, well, this guy needed some
money and he's just wanted to ask Harold if he could get a meal or
some cash or something like that. But then when they checked Harold's pocket,
they discovered that he still had three hundred dollars in cash in there, So
it seemed obvious that robbery was not the motive for the crime, and that
he was probably specifically targeted. And of course, since he was such a
predominant leader in the African American community, they start of wondering if this might
have been a hate crime. Did van Zola independent of the kind of put
together glasses, or from somebody who would likely be of lower socioeconomic status or
just maybe extremely frugal. Did she say that the clothing that the individual that
she encountered that was going to see Harold, that that would have been somebody
who was transient. Did she mention the clothing, did they have a particular
smell? Did they seem unwashed? Did she give any details like that?
Because she was up close and personal, she didn't really say anything about the
clothing. I assumed it was just nothing distinct about it. The only thing
she really described was some scuffed snakeskin boots that he was wearing That would become
a big part of the investigation later on. Snake skin boots. Doesn't that
seem like an odd textile for shoes for someone who's transient. Yes, Like,
as the case goes on, it becomes very unlikely that the killer was
a transient, Like it was probably not a person with like a lot of
money to their name, but they probably did have a home and a job
and led a regular life. But I think they examined the transient angle later
on and then later discounted it. So the next major development would occur in
July, about four months after the crime took place, when a man named
Donnie Barantine, who originally hailed from Florida, was pulled over by the police
in Telfair County, Georgia, and he had a total of two accomplices with
him, and they found a whole bunch of unregistered weapons inside the trunk,
including a submachine gun. It turned out that Barentine and these men originally hailed
from Marianna, Florida, and one of the men who he was arrested with,
named Jeff Kettrell, said that I think he was probably sharing the story
because he was hoping to use it to get out of his own legal troubles
for being with the guns. But he claimed that a couple months earlier,
Barentine had showed up at a party in Florida with an unidentified accomplice and supposedly
started drunkingly waving a pistol around while bragging that he had murdered a black preacher
and his wife in at a Georgia church. And in retrospect, Kittrell believed
that these two men might have been that they might have been hair, these
two victims might have been harold and fell with Swain. It turned out when
they questioned Barentine, he initially denied ever doing that, but then they found
like three other witnesses for the party who corroborated that, yes, Barentine had
bragged while he was drunk about murdering a preacher and his wife. So Barentine
then changed his story and says, oh, yeah, I did say that,
but I was just kidding. I had read about the murders in the
papers and just felt like bragging about it. Weird joke, pal, I
mean, even if he did say it, it's also a weird flex to
be bragging openly about murdering a preacher and his wife. I found it interesting
that he also out that that they were black. So was Barentine white?
He was, yes, Yeah. Did he seem like he was racist in
any way or him or his accomplice were. Was there like a point that
they were drawing to the fact that they were black, like this was a
motivating factor. Uh, It's never kind of been clarified if he was racist.
But he was a career criminal, so he was obviously not a good
guy. And I guess it is possible that he just because he was drunk
and he was on drugs. He just read about this murder in the papers
and then just decided to brag about it for fun. But we talked about
this a lot of the time. In other cases we cover when we hear
about people like supposedly confessing to committing murders and then when their question by police,
they just said, oh, yeah, I said that, but I
was just kidding. And it's like, how many of us normal people will
just jokingly admit that we killed somebody so weird and no one is impressed,
I promise you exactly, he murdered a preacher and his wife, Like,
no one's like, oh, wow, you're the man. Nobody said that.
I just don't understand, Well, whatever motivate someone who say that,
unless they're just so proud of what they've done. It just seems like an
odd crime to attach yourself to just to be braggadocious, exactly. But it
doesn't sound like this was a very high, high brow club and stuff,
so it does not surprise me that maybe they just were the type of people
who like to brag about killing people just for fun at parties. But the
guy that was his accompliced when he was arrested. Jeff Kittrell. He claimed
that when they were pulled over with all the weapons in their vehicle, that
they had actually been on their way to make in Georgia to perform a hit
on a drug dealer, and that they'd been given instructions to cut the phone
lines at the dealer's house, which, as you recall, is what happened
at the church right before Harold and Thelma were killed. And Kitrell would also
say that he believed that Barentine may have murdered Harold Swain because Harold's son in
law was supposedly involved in drug dealing and had a drug debt to Barentine,
and Kittrell suspected that Barentine wanted to kill Harold in order to lure his son
in law out of hiding. But I don't really believe this story. I've
looked into the background of Harold's son in law and there's nothing to indicate that
he was involved in drugs, and Jeff Kittrell is not a reliable witness,
so I have a feeling he completely made that story up. And that sounds
like an expensive endeavor. So you hire a hit man to go after the
father in law and the mother in law and hopes to draw him out,
But then you've got to pay the hit man for murdering those two people.
How big of a drug debt would he have had, So let's just say
that it was ten thousand dollars a person to kill somebody. Did he have
a drug debt greater than twenty grand? I freaking doubt it? Oh yeah,
seriously. And it just seems like if you want the drug debt so
badly go after the son in law. It just seems like way too much
trouble to kill his father in law and his wife and his mother in law
and pretty much get all this publicity for a murder over the collection of a
drug debt. And do you really think it would draw him out if he
was in hiding and he was worried about being killed because he had this drug
debt. Do you really think he's going to show up for their funerals if
he knows that they were killed because of his drug debt? Exactly? Yes,
Like he's probably going to contact the authorities and want to be put into
witness protection and hiding, and that's only going to increase your problems, and
you're not going to get the drug debt exactly. So despite this questionable story,
the police looked into Barentine as a suspect because when he was questioned about
the same the Swayin murders, he failed a polygraph test and he did seem
to match the description of the man seen in the vestibule. They checked his
alibi time cards showed that he was at work in Marianna, Florida, until
three twenty nine that day, and since the murders took place at eight point
fifty, he still would have had enough time to make it there in time
to commit the murders. So they brought in van Zola Williams, who was
asked to look at a police lineup of Barentine, but even though she thought
he resembled the shooter, she could not positively identify him. Both, like
we mentioned the scuff snake skin boots, apparently Barentine was wearing them during the
police lineup and she thought they looked like the boots that the killer was wearing.
But it was also worth mentioning that she had originally described the killer as
having long hair, shoulder length hair, and by this point Barentine had short
hair, so it's possible that this kind of threw her off, but because
she was unable to make a positive identification, the local district attorney was reluctant
to file charges against Barentine because really the only evidence they had were the testimony
from the witnesses at the party who said that he had bragged about killing the
Swains. But because they were kind of like criminals who had a history of
alcohol and drug issues, they were not reliable witnesses. So that's why the
local authorities thought that the evidence wasn't strong enough to file charges. But Baron
Tyne still did go to prison and wound up serving five years on the weapons
charges because of all the guns he was carrying when he was pulled over.
He sounds like a really bad guy who's out there, you know, with
submachine guns, and he's apparently was on his way to commit a hit.
So I don't really think that anybody is upset that he went to prison.
But whether or not the change in haircut had something to do with Vanzola not
being able to identify him, I don't know how popular scuff snakeskin boots would
have been, but I do think in Florida in the nineteen eighties they probably
would have been more popular than they are now. Exactly. Yeah, it
sounds like they were probably more common back then, so that wasn't used as
conclusive evidence that Barentine was the shooter. So, like I said, the
case was shown on Unsolved Mysteries, I believe in late nineteen eighty eight.
This was one of the earliest episodes of the show, and this would be
the source of controversy. This is one of the rare times when the Unsawd
Mysteries episode would actually play a big role in the investigation because when they had
Robert Stack introduce it, he actually appeared on screen holding up the glasses that
the killer had left behind at the crime scene. And if you watch this
episode today, you're almost cringing because he is not actually wearing any gloves and
here he is handling like evidence from a murder scene right here on national television.
When the case was originally investigated by the Camden County Sheriff's Office, they
had to get because they weren't used to dealing with homicides. They had to
get assistance from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and the lead investigator was an
agent named Joe Gregory, and he would later say that any when he watched
Unsolved Mysteries, his jaw was wide open because the Camden County Sheriff's Office had
not asked the GBI for permission to showcase the glasses on television, and there
was apparently no chain of custody to make sure that certain people were like handling
the glasses and signing them over when they were appeared on television. And many
years later it would turn out that the glasses wound up going missing, and
the Candy County shriffs Office would say, well, the last time we remember
seeing it was when we gave them to the producers of Unsolved Mysteries, and
the producers would say, no, we're pretty certain that we gave the glasses
back to you after the episode air and after we were done filming it.
So these glasses just vanished without a trace, and no one knows what happened
to them. And it was all because the Sheriff's office did not establish a
proper chain of custody and these glasses mysteriously went missing after they were shown on
TV. Okay, so I don't think I knew much about this case,
but I have heard this specific detail because it was just so preposterous that somehow
Robert Stack would end up with these glasses. They could be the linch pin
in the case, they could have DNA evidence, and now there's no chain
of custody and the glasses are missing. It is just mind boggling that this
would happen. But I guess when we're looking back from twenty twenty three,
rules with evidence and the way that investigations are approached is very very different.
I mean not to give them a pass, but I think that some police
departments played it a little more loose and if there was the opportunity to get
a case exposure on unsolved mysteries, then maybe they would kind of breach a
boundary or two in order to make it happen. But you'd think that unsolved
mysteries would also just go and get permission before they put those glasses on television
or that you know, Robert Stack would have been instructed to wear latex gloves
or some kind of gloves. Well, they technically did get permission, they
got it from the Camden County Sheriff's office, but like they were working with
the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and I know the GBI said that, yeah,
if they had asked us, we would not have given them permission.
We would have just maybe shown a photograph of the glasses. Like I can
understand displaying the glasses because they were unique. They were packed together from among
number of different pieces, so I can understand putting them on television. But
you need to establish better chain of custody before you do that. And I
know they were not thinking of DNA evidence back in nineteen eighty eight, but
on the Undisclosed podcast Susan Simpson even made a joke that if they found the
glasses today and tested them for DNA, they would probably just identify that the
killer was Robert Stack because he held them. That's true. And I guess
when you've got two different law enforcement agencies who are basically investigating this and you
ask one of them, it's like when you ask mom or dad and you
get like a yes from mom, because you know Dad's going to say no.
So it's like, better asked the Comney County Sheriff's Department. Maybe we've
got a better chance of getting a yes than the GBI. It's just really
unfortunate because they could have had that evidence on there. It's a pretty good
chance if they would have preserved them properly. Because your glasses have a lot
of skin cells and sweat, they're rubbing up against you. Sometimes you get
a hair caught in there. I mean, it could have been a gold
mine for DNA with today's technology, but unfortunately they're basically a moot point now
exactly. And I have a feeling that the person who's about to go to
prison may not have been wrongfully convicted if they had still had the glasses as
evidenced by the time he went on trial. So the unsolved mystery segment did
not lead to any new developments in the case, and it would continue to
remain unsolved for another decade. And it was not until nineteen ninety eight when
the Camden's County Sheriff's Office, after they had made a bunch of high profile
drug busts, they suddenly had a whole bunch of new drug money in their
possessions, so they decided to use it to hire a cold case investigator named
Dale Bundy, who decided to take a fresh look at the case. He
started reinterviewing witnesses and one of the people he talked to was a woman named
Cora Fisher, who had been a witness at the church on the night the
murders took place, and even though she wasn't as close to the killer as
van Zola Williams, she said that she still got a decent look at him
through the vestibule doorway from behind a pew, and when Bundy interviewed her,
she made a surprising statement saying that she had recently been shown a photograph of
a man whom she believed was the killer. And of course this was complete
news to Bundy. He didn't know of anyone who was going around showing photographs
to eyewitnesses, and it turned out that the photograph had been shown to Kora
by a woman with a great name, Jane Beaver, who had come like
an amateur sleuth in this whole affair and pretty much cause a lot of issues
with the investigation. It would later turn out that Jane Biaver the photograph she
shown was a man named Dennis Perry, who had been her daughter Carol Ann's
ex boyfriend, though they had broken up I think a couple months before the
Swain murders took place. But for some reason, Jane got it into her
head that Dennis was the killer, and for some reason, she really really
did not like him. I don't know the details of how his relationship with
Carol Ane ended, but I think that Jane must have had an obsessive hatred
for him, that she not only was convinced that he was the killer,
but she was going around of her own volition talking to eyewitnesses from this crime
and showing his photograph and apparently during a private meeting Cora Fisher looked at a
photograph of Perry and said, oh my god, I think that's the man
that I saw at the church that night. Ugh, this is all kinds
of problematic. So we've got the Beeve out here going behind investigators backs,
talking to these eyewitnesses, and she's going to be poisoning the well because she's
going to be giving them information that would support that he is a really bad
guy and that he's capable of doing this, and that she herself believes that
he did this. So then you've got a situation where it could be confirmation
biased, where it's like, deep down, these people really want to help
and they're thinking and yeah, well, this is the guy you're presenting the
suspect. You're telling me that he's done ab and C and D, and
these sound like they could be things that could lead to what he's done here
with Harold and Thelma. So yeah, maybe he is the guy. Yeah.
This is just really kind of upsetting when somebody's got this personal vendetta and
they decided to exercise it by inserting themselves into an investigation without the investigator's knowledge.
Oh exactly. Like, I don't think Dennis Perry would have ever been
on the radar as a suspect if it wasn't for Jane Beaver. And the
ironic thing is that when Dale Bundy started looking through the files, he found
out that Perry had already been investigated back in the late nineteen eighties. He
did used to live in Camden County, like a short distance away from the
church, but he had moved to Jonesboro, Georgia, I think three months
before the murders and was currently working at a construction company in Atlanta. And
the lead investigator for the GBI at that time, Joe Gregory. Apparently Jane
Beaver had approached him during the late nineteen eighties and said that I believe he
might be the killer. So Gregory decided to look into Perry's alibi and found
out that on the day of the murders, he had been working at the
construction company in Atlanta till five pm, and because he did not own a
vehicle, he always hitched a ride with a coworker named Charlie Williamson, who
confirmed that, Yes, after we were done work, I drove Dennis home
and I dropped him off at five thirty pm. And of course you look
at the timeline the murders took place at eight point fifty as apparently like a
four hour drive nearly from Jonesborough all the way down to Camden County where the
murders took place. So Joe Gregory looks at this and he realizes, well,
I guess he could have made it, but it would be very,
very tight. You also have to factor in stuff like rush hour traffic in
Atlanta, and it also turned out that Perry did not own his own vehicles.
So Gregory pretty much said, yeah, I'm ruling this guy out as
a suspen. There's no way he could have done this. And you thought
that would have been it. But apparently Jane Beaver was so convinced that he
was the guy that she kept doing her own independent investigation and when she told
this new investigator, Dale Bundy, about Perry, he decided to take it
more seriously and decided to approach him as a suspect again, even though he
had already been cleared over a decade earlier. I'm just curious what he did
to Jane Beaver's daughter for her to hate him so deeply and to pursue this
vendetta, like, you know, letting things go. I mean, it
would be one thing if if he had, like you know, killed somebody
in her family or you know, taken away a child from her daughter.
But there's no indication of exactly what he did to inspire this hatred. Robin
uh No, because ironically, her daughter, Carol Anne, would provide testimonies,
would speak to investigators, and it does not sound like she hated Dennis
at all. She just said it was kind of an amicable breakup, and
she would actually contradict things that her own mother said. One of the reasons
that Dennis started being investigated as a suspect again is because Jane told investigators that
on the day before the murders took place, Dennis had apparently phoned her daughter
to say that he had returned to Camden County after hitching a ride on the
back of his brother's motorcycle, and that he had broken into his grandparents' home
to steal something. And of course, like Dale Bundy heard this and he
thought, oh, well, that explains it. He traveled all the way
down to Hear from Atlanta by riding a motorcycle. But then later on Carol
Ann would be interviewed in and says that, yes, I did have a
phone call from him back then saying that he was taking a trip down here
on a motorcycle. But I'm pretty sure it was not before the murders took
place. I'm pretty sure it was a different time period. And they even
checked with Dennis's grandparents and they say, I have no right collection of our
whole being broken into during this time period. What are they talking about.
But apparently like Bundy developed tunnel vision and he was so sure that Jane was
telling this truth about this motorcycle story that she formulated his own theory about him
using it his transportation to drive down there to commit the murders. It sounds
like Jane was potentially suffering from some mental health issues because from what it sounds
like, Caroline is saying this amicable breakup with Dennis Perry doesn't really go along
with what Jane Beaver is saying to law enforcement. She then sounds delusional and
obsessive. Oh yeah, like they did a more deep dive investigation into her
on the undisclosed season and apparently, yeah, she was suffering from mental health
problems during like the nineteen nineties and had become delusional. And what was crazy
is that she had claimed that, oh, when this case was featured on
Unsolved Mysteries, I phoned them multiple times and I left this tip about Dennis
Perry, but no one ever got back to me. But Susan Simpson said
that she actually got access to the original case file where all the tips that
were phoned into Unsolved Mysteries were actually included there, and she didn't find anything
from Jane Beaver, like no notes about tips about Dennis Perry. And after
further investigation, Susan thinks that the Swain murders were actually featured on another very
obscure true crime series in the early nineteen nineties. I can't even remember what
it's called, but I think the big clue was is that Jane had said
that she called the Unsolved Mysteries tip line because they had been offering a reward
and she wanted to collect on the reward. But if you watch the segment,
there's no mention of any reward whatsoever. So Susan has speculated that perhaps
that Jane called the tip line for this other TV show which was an Unsolved
Mysteries, that perhaps they offered a reward on that show and then just got
the two shows mixed up. But because this is a very obscure show,
they were never able to find any old copies of the episode or any of
their old tips. But right away, that just shows issues with the credibility
of Jane Beaver when she can't even remember the correct TV show that she called
into. It's too bad that investigators were so hell bent on pursuing Dennis Perry
as a suspect without really giving the weight that they should have to the alibi
with the coworker who drove him and the testimony that he didn't have a vehicle,
and even if he did, it would have been a real tight timeline.
He would have had to have jumped into that vehicle like a waiting vehicle
right away and then driven there pretty fast in order to murder Felman and Harold,
it just doesn't seem likely. And then when they talked to Carol Anne
and they say that actually what Jane Biaver is saying about him isn't accurate,
then you have to question is all the other information that she's giving about the
potential that he did this accurate or is she somehow misremembering? Is she delusional?
But they gave far too much weight to her testimony and to her opinions
about Dennis Perry, and that led them down the wrong path, oh exactly.
And talking about like the whole vehicle thing, you're wondering, even if
Perry was able to make this lengthy drive, there's also a question of motive,
like why would he drive all the way back to his hometown just to
kill this couple, this preacher. And this is another story provided by Jane
Bieber, saying that a few weeks before the murders, he had told her
that he had visited the home of one of his grandparents neighbors to borrow money,
but this guy laughed at him and ridiculed for him for it. So
it made Dennis very mad. And he apparently stood about the incident. And
while he never specifically referred to Harold Swain by name. He used racial slurs
to describe this man. So this gives off the impression that the murder was
a hate crime. Wouldn't it be kind of weird given that Jane Biaber hates
him so much that Dennis Perry would spend this time confiding in her exactly like
they He had already broken up with Carol Anne at this point, so I
have no idea why he's going up to hang out with her and give his
plans for murder in expressing hatred for someone he wants to kill, So this
conversation doesn't make any sense. And it was later confirmed that the Swains were
neighbors of Perry's grandparents, but he claimed that even though he knew who they
were, he had never met them before and had no reason to hate them
or anything like that. And another questionable thing is that they would later determine
that Dennis Perry had perfect twenty twenty vision and never wore glasses in his life,
which kind of goes against the evidence of the glasses being left behind at
the murder scene. But here's Jane Biaber saying that, oh yeah, I
saw him wearing glasses during our conversation, and he told me that he used
them for reading, And for whatever reason, investigators just took everything she said
out her word. Do you think that somehow Jane Beaver heard about the murder
of Harold and Thelma because of Dennis Perry's grandparents living next door, Like maybe
he told Caroline and then Caroline told Jane Beaver, and Jane Beaver was like,
oh, well, he must have been involved type of a thing,
That's what I'm thinking. Yeah, that maybe she just because they were like
such close neighbors, she just put it into her head like she had this
bias towards this guy and figured that even though he's no longer even living in
the area, he had to have made a special trip down here in order
to commit the murders. I mean, obviously, he wasn't known as a
saint. Like he did have a drinking problem back then, he had a
drug problem. He was once arrested for duy, but he had no known
history of violence, and everyone who knew him said he was not the type
of guy who would just throw around racial slurs to describe black people. So
this incident where he's saying that he's calling like Harold. All these like racial
slurs did not fit with his character, and also the fact that he supposedly
said that he asked Harold to borrow money, but Harold just laughed at him
and ridiculed for him, when by all accounts, Harold was a very kind,
generous man who would always help people out and give them money. So
it did not sound logical that he would laugh at someone for asking for a
loan. No, it just sounds like we really can't rely on anything that
Jane Beaver says. So. But despite of this, they decided to investigate
him as a suspect again, and they brought in Perry for questioning. Dale
Bundy did and even though he could, he supposedly denied that he killed the
Swains, and he continued to maintain that he had never even met them before.
During this lengthy interrogation session, he supposedly acknowledged that, well, I
was doing a lot of drugs at that time, so it is possible that
I could have made a trip back to Camden County and committed the murderers without
remembering it. And of course, following Perry's arrest, they would say that
he had made a so called confession in this interrogation session, but Dennis denied
this, and of course nobody recorded this session even though it was something like
three hours long. There were no investigator's notes, and there was only really
like a one or two page summary of what he had supposedly said, So
there was no actual record of this so called confession or him saying that,
oh I could have committed the murders and just not remembered it. So it
sounds like Bundy just made that up and that never actually happened. Yikes.
Yeah, you can't trust a confession where there's no recording and no investigator's notes.
You've got nothing to substantiate that. You've got a potential perpetrator who's just
saying, yeah, I was so messed up or like blacked out that I
basically could have done anything, you know what I mean. Like, it's
not like, oh, yeah, I committed the murders. It's I was
so effed up that I don't remember. You know, you could tell me
that I did ABC or D and sure I could have done any of those
things, because I literally have no memory of that timeframe, so anything is
possible. That is not the same thing as saying I committed the murders exactly.
And it's one thing to do something bad when you're so high on drugs
and can't remember it. But could you really make a four hour drive from
Jonesborrow to Campden County while you're in a drug fueled haze and not remember it.
No, I don't think so. I think that you probably would have
got into an accident or been pulled over at some point. It sounds far
too precise and on a very specific timeline. And also for him to get
that messed up on drugs, what so he got off his job at the
construction site, just did a bunch of drugs I got so high he can't
remember anything, and then drove there with the car that he doesn't have.
It just doesn't make any sense exactly. And I didn't hear anything about him
missing any shifts at work, like the day after or anything, so he
presumably had to make the four hour drive back. So did he just commit
this murder and then drive another four hours back to Jonesborough and then wake up
for work tomorrow as if everything was normal. I don't think so. I
don't think so either, And I think they're using the fact that he obviously
had drinking, you know, alcohol and drug issues at the time, as
just a door way into he could have done it. He did it,
but it just doesn't match the facts of the case exactly because this crime had
gone unsolved for nearly fifteen years at this point, and I think they were
just desperate and wanted to pit it on somebody. And of course they used
all this confiscated drug money to hire this new cold case investigator named Dale Bundy,
and they were probably thinking, well, I hope this money doesn't go
to waste. He'd better closed one of our cases soon, and that's pretty
much what happened here. It's so unfortunate when we look back at these wrongful
conviction cases because you can see all of the missteps, and there's so many
other avenues that they could have gone down. And if they would have actually
looked at Jane Beaver for what she was, an unfortunate woman who was suffering
from mental health issues and was clearly delusional, then they would have known to
pursue other avenues. But it's like they already had their minds made up and
they really wanted that conviction, and unfortunately we've seen that in so many cases
exactly. It'sretty much the same thing here. And while we're on the subject
of Jane Bieb, you heard me mention earlier that she had been going around
showcasing a photograph of Dennis Perry to one of the other witnesses from the church,
Cora Fisher. It turned out that she also did the same thing to
van Zola Williams, the one witness who was actually face to face with the
killer. When Joe Gregory was investigating Dennis Perry back in the late nineteen eighties,
he actually showed Vanzola a photo lineup with Perry's pitcher and she failed to
pick him out. So in Gregory's eyes, this was just one more piece
of evidence that Perry was not the killer. But lo and behold, Jane
Bieber, while doing her own independent investigation, showed van Zola Williams a photograph
of Dennis and then she suddenly started changing her mind and started thinking, oh,
maybe this was the guy I actually saw in the vestibule. And then
lo and behold, when Venzola Williams and Cora Fisher were later questioned by Dale
Bundy, they both positively identified Perry as the man they had seen at the
church. But the problem is that Bundy did not actually use the proper procedure,
because usually when you want someone to pick out a photo of a suspect,
you'll use a photo lineup and include the suspects picture in there and just
hope they pick out the right one to avoid any confirmation bias. But that's
not what happened here, as Bundy just showed van Zola and Cora Dennis's photograph
and said, is this the guy you saw? And both times they said
yes. And what makes it even more ridiculous is that when he went to
visit Cora Fisher on her home, she had actually suffered an accident where she
fell down and was a waiting for the ambulance to arrive to pick her up.
And while she was waiting on the floor, that's when he showed her
Dennis's picture, and that's when she picked him out and paid a positive identification.
And You're like, she's already in a stressed out situation because she suffered
a medical accident, she's waiting for an ambulance, So are you really going
to trust like the memory and the judgment of someone in that situation to identify
a killer that they saw from maybe like twenty feet away. The lack of
empathy there. He's clearly very gold driven. But this woman's had an accident.
The first portocol should be getting her the help that she needs. You
shouldn't be hovering over her with one photograph, being like, is this the
guy? She's in a compromised state. She's an incredible amount of pain,
and that's what you're concerned about. Bundy's just really not looking good in this
investigation. Definitely not like this is the only time I've ever seen this in
a cold case investigation. Like I've seen so much that I often failed to
be shocked anymore. But when I heard that story, I was shocked that
he's using this as evidence to charge a guy with murder, the identification of
a poor woman who's in pain, lying on the floor waiting for an ambulance.
So this seems like a good place to end part one, But join
us next week when we return to discuss part two of the murders of Harold
and Thelma Swayin. Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
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