Speaker 1: This podcast is intended for mature audiences.
Speaker 2: Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 1: Before Kelly Wilson vanished in nineteen ninety two, she had
Speaker 1: become really good friends with this local girl named Jennifer.
Speaker 1: Jennifer lived in Gilmer, Texas, just a few houses down
Speaker 1: from Kelly's family. Like Kelly, Jennifer was a senior in
Speaker 1: high school that year, but she went to a smaller
Speaker 1: school outside of town. When Kelly never came home from
Speaker 1: work on the night of January fifth, nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: Jennifer didn't even find out for a couple of days.
Speaker 1: When she heard the news, she hurried over to Kelly's house.
Speaker 3: One thing I do remember is that when I went
Speaker 3: to see her mom, Kathy, when I found out.
Speaker 4: That she was missing. I found out Tuesday.
Speaker 3: As I'm standing there talking to her mom, she's just saying,
Speaker 3: you know, Jennifer, they're saying that she's you know, they
Speaker 3: think she's just run away. She's like, there's no way
Speaker 3: she's run away. I mean she left her purse, she
Speaker 3: left her contact solutions, she.
Speaker 4: Left I mean she left everything.
Speaker 3: And she's like, and she left all this money she has.
Speaker 3: So she takes me in a room and she opens
Speaker 3: a drawer and she shows me just a lot of cash,
Speaker 3: a lot of cash.
Speaker 4: I'm just like, yeah, that's definitely weird.
Speaker 1: Jennifer had no idea what was Kelly doing with all
Speaker 1: that money.
Speaker 3: I think it's unusual that any of us would have
Speaker 3: a lot of cash. She worked it in TV. She
Speaker 3: would have gotten paid with a check.
Speaker 2: Are we talking like hundreds of dollars or more?
Speaker 4: I don't remember for sure, but it was significant.
Speaker 1: Joe Henry, the former video store manager, also said that
Speaker 1: Kelly was paid by never cash. Jennifer remembers another strange
Speaker 1: detail from the weekend in nineteen ninety two when Kelly vanished.
Speaker 1: The girls had gone out Friday night with another friend
Speaker 1: named Misty. I haven't been able to reach Misty. It
Speaker 1: was a quiet night in Gilmert Friday night.
Speaker 3: We just, I guess she could say, kind of wandering aimlessly.
Speaker 3: I think we did go out to some trailer house.
Speaker 3: Some guys lived out there, just you know, see what
Speaker 3: they were doing. It didn't we didn't stay long. I
Speaker 3: ended up happening to go home close to midnight or
Speaker 3: a little before, and her and Missy ended up staying
Speaker 3: out later.
Speaker 4: And so the next morning, you know.
Speaker 3: We kind of call each other or talking and kind
Speaker 3: of you know, recapping the night, and I'm curious to
Speaker 3: know if they ended up finding anything else to do.
Speaker 3: And you know, she's telling me, no, not really. You know,
Speaker 3: we stayed out another hour or so, and then we
Speaker 3: came home. And then as we're talking, she's like, you know,
Speaker 3: I think somebody came.
Speaker 4: To my window.
Speaker 1: Kelly's bedroom window was right next to a little side street.
Speaker 3: She's trying to sort out whether she's imagining this, she was,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 4: Maybe a little drunk, couldn't hearing.
Speaker 3: Things or dreamed it, or it really happened.
Speaker 4: But as she's you know, kind of talking out loud,
Speaker 4: she's just saying.
Speaker 3: You know, well, no, I think there were somebody there.
Speaker 3: You know, there were taking one windows, saying hey Kelly.
Speaker 3: She I guess convinced herself that yeah, maybe there was
Speaker 3: somebody actually there because she heard the dogs blocky. She
Speaker 3: couldn't really say who, I mean, she didn't know, she
Speaker 3: just knew it would sound like a couple of guys.
Speaker 1: Jennifer was still talking to Kelly's mom, Kathy, when they
Speaker 1: were joined by James York Brown, the officer investigating Kelly's disappearance,
Speaker 1: the strange guys knocking on Kelly's window that seemed like
Speaker 1: a clue Sergeant Brown might want to know about.
Speaker 3: Near the end of our visit, Brown shows up and
Speaker 3: she introduces me to him, and she.
Speaker 4: Says, you know, why don't you tell him.
Speaker 3: About Kelly's thinking somebody came to her window the other night,
Speaker 3: And so I tell him, you're thinking like.
Speaker 4: The movies, like well, maybe they can fingerprint the window
Speaker 4: sill or you know, stuff like that.
Speaker 3: Nothing ever came a bit like you know, I guess
Speaker 3: I asked her mom later, did he check?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 3: She's like, well, I think he looked, but they didn't
Speaker 3: really investigate that lead, I guess she could say. And
Speaker 3: I never got another I never I was never called
Speaker 3: about it, and I was never.
Speaker 4: Asked about it.
Speaker 3: And I think there's a lot of people her friend
Speaker 3: group that could say kind of like, yeah, there were
Speaker 3: a lot of kind.
Speaker 4: Of loose ends that weren't explored. So there was maybe,
Speaker 4: you know, another side to Kelly that some.
Speaker 3: Of us didn't know, or or just maybe on another side,
Speaker 3: but other things that she was involved in, perhaps.
Speaker 4: I remember going before that.
Speaker 3: Her injury and They were asking me all these questions
Speaker 3: about Kelly. They were asking me questionable things I didn't know.
Speaker 3: There were some pictures of Kelly naked that had circulated
Speaker 3: around the school. They asked me if I knew if
Speaker 3: she'd ever done cocaine. I was like no, and I
Speaker 3: mean we partied. I don't feel like she'd keep a
Speaker 3: lot from me, But I don't know because I've since
Speaker 3: learned things, you know, first hand.
Speaker 1: Things No one I've spoken to said they ever saw
Speaker 1: Kelly using any substances harder than alcohol and pot. But
Speaker 1: I heard something else that connects back to drugs. Kelly
Speaker 1: had this step cousin from Louisiana, where she'd lived before
Speaker 1: she moved to East Texas. The cousin didn't want to
Speaker 1: be recorded, but she says that Kelly confided in her
Speaker 1: during the fall semester of their senior year, when they
Speaker 1: took a campus tour of Louisiana State in Baton Rouge.
Speaker 6: She told me she wanted to move back to her
Speaker 6: dad's to get away from her ex. He was harassing her,
Speaker 6: demanding back gifts he had given her, wouldn't accept that
Speaker 6: they were done. She told me they broke up because
Speaker 6: he was dealing, and she was pissed because he tricked
Speaker 6: her into holding for him once when he was going
Speaker 6: to be gone for a weekend.
Speaker 1: Kelly didn't mention any names to her cousin, And I've
Speaker 1: looked at several guys Kelly dated and I haven't heard
Speaker 1: about any of them dealing drugs.
Speaker 3: People are afraid, I think of just throwing stuff out
Speaker 3: there willy nilly, because there are a lot of decent
Speaker 3: people that were maybe mixed up in this, and then
Speaker 3: maybe some shady characters too. But you don't know, you know,
Speaker 3: so you just you don't want to be careless.
Speaker 1: Jennifer also addresses claims made in the last episode that
Speaker 1: Kelly might have been taking money for sex. This sort
Speaker 1: of thing couldn't happen in Gilmer, right.
Speaker 4: Well, on one hand, I'm kind of like, wouldn't we know?
Speaker 3: I mean, like we were partying with Kelly and we
Speaker 3: weren't like judging, I mean, we.
Speaker 4: Were all up to no good for the most part,
Speaker 4: just having fun. But why wouldn't she tell us?
Speaker 3: But then again, if that was actually happening and we
Speaker 3: didn't know, well, then there was this other side of
Speaker 3: things that was going on, and we didn't know about it.
Speaker 3: I don't know what other girls, though.
Speaker 4: Would have been participating in that. There was this circle.
Speaker 3: You know, if there were two or three or four
Speaker 3: girls that were getting paid to have sex with older men,
Speaker 3: who else would it be?
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: One more rumor has floated out there for years. In
Speaker 1: episode one, Kelly's dad Robbie said, the last time he
Speaker 1: ever talked to his daughter, Kelly said she had something
Speaker 1: to tell him. Here's Kelly's friend, Michelle.
Speaker 7: I honestly don't think that the pregnancy, what is the
Speaker 7: reason why she's gone? I just don't in my heart
Speaker 7: of hearts, I don't feel like that.
Speaker 1: Michelle thinks Kelly found out something she wasn't supposed to know.
Speaker 7: As a young girl, you start questioning, you might get upset.
Speaker 7: I can't get ready to turn somebody in. Or she
Speaker 7: witnessed she knew about who was doing drugs. She probably
Speaker 7: I mean, she could have made a threat or anything,
Speaker 7: because she was upset about what had transpired. And if
Speaker 7: the whole community gets scared that she's going to take.
Speaker 8: Them down, they'll handle it.
Speaker 7: So my fear is that it's something she got in
Speaker 7: way too deep, and she got in way too deep,
Speaker 7: maybe because she was pregnant and getting upset and things
Speaker 7: were starting to at Snowball.
Speaker 1: According to Michelle, the day before Kelly disappeared, she told
Speaker 1: a couple of her friends that she needed to tell
Speaker 1: them something. There's no way to know if this is
Speaker 1: the same something Kelly wanted to tell her dad, Robbie.
Speaker 7: And then Saturday she went to work and she told
Speaker 7: them come by later because I have something I need
Speaker 7: to show you or tell you. I feel like she
Speaker 7: wanted them to come up there. She needed to show
Speaker 7: them something up there at the video store. I mean,
Speaker 7: keep in mind, back then, we did not have cell phones.
Speaker 8: You can't send pictures.
Speaker 7: If you want to talk to somebody, you're on a
Speaker 7: landline where somebody could be let listening to you. So
Speaker 7: you're probably not going to have a real in depth
Speaker 7: conversation on a landline. That could be detrimental. So you're
Speaker 7: going to want to have those conversations in person. So
Speaker 7: she wanted them to come back and wanted to show
Speaker 7: them something. And then they had volleyball tournaments and got
Speaker 7: into light and said we'll just catch up with her later,
Speaker 7: and so they never.
Speaker 9: Did go to me.
Speaker 1: All this speculation, rumor, and peculiar details raised more questions
Speaker 1: than answers. A week after my first call with private
Speaker 1: investigator Amanda Gammel, she and I agreed to meet at
Speaker 1: the local library. Amanda brought along her husband, Ricky, just
Speaker 1: in case I turned out to be a weirdo. Amanda
Speaker 1: had learned some other stuff about Kelly, things that had
Speaker 1: never been shared in public. As the private investigator for
Speaker 1: Kelly's mom, Kathy, Amanda wasn't exactly on team Robbie.
Speaker 10: There was a point in time that he had put
Speaker 10: Kelly in a mental institution, but he didn't tell you that,
Speaker 10: didn't he mut at all?
Speaker 11: And we are we're working on getting those records right
Speaker 11: Neil to see why, what, what was his motive for that?
Speaker 10: Why did he do that?
Speaker 1: Later I called and asked Robbie whether he'd ever had
Speaker 1: Kelly committed. He turned it back on Kathy.
Speaker 12: She would go weeks from her mother, and I'd come
Speaker 12: home from work and I could tell immediately Kathy had
Speaker 12: called and talked to her. Her entire personality and disposition
Speaker 12: which would be different, be agitated and all that kind
Speaker 12: of stuff. But anyway, long story shore when she was
Speaker 12: when Kelly was the last time she was living with us,
Speaker 12: she went on one of these tears after Kathy had
Speaker 12: agitated her and she tried to run away, and so yeah,
Speaker 12: I put her in in a hospital just for no
Speaker 12: other reason, to keep her from going back to her mother.
Speaker 12: But she wasn't there but a wink or so if
Speaker 12: I remember right, and I think Katy came and got
Speaker 12: her out.
Speaker 13: She was she diagnosed with any kind of psychic psyched
Speaker 13: I don't.
Speaker 12: I don't recall that she was well.
Speaker 2: She might have been, but she was.
Speaker 12: She was just a very confused young lady that her
Speaker 12: mother just kept, like I said, just kept things stirred up.
Speaker 1: Like Kelly's friend Michelle Amanda believes that Kelly might have
Speaker 1: been pregnant when she vanished.
Speaker 10: As I've continued to investigate and the more that I
Speaker 10: have found out, there were a lot of I'm just
Speaker 10: gonna say it, there was a lot of sexual payments
Speaker 10: made to Kelly by judges, lawyers, police officers.
Speaker 4: So that's where we.
Speaker 10: Get into the part where I told you that if
Speaker 10: we're not careful, we could have lives and danger. The
Speaker 10: FBI does investigate correction, and it's very possible at this
Speaker 10: point that it's all going to be linked together, and
Speaker 10: it's all tied together.
Speaker 4: We are pretty confident that she was pregnant.
Speaker 10: I don't know how far along she did lock older men.
Speaker 14: We do know that.
Speaker 4: We're looking at.
Speaker 10: We're looking at some bad people, I mean, with data doubt.
Speaker 1: Amanda and I talked so long the library closed for
Speaker 1: the day.
Speaker 4: Do you want to grab Sam?
Speaker 1: We reconvened in the parking lot. I shared a few
Speaker 1: things with Amanda that I'd heard things about Kathy. In
Speaker 1: the last episode, you heard Sergeant Brown allege that Kathy
Speaker 1: wanted to end the search for Kelly. But according to Amanda,
Speaker 1: Kathy said no such thing.
Speaker 15: The only person that she really truly did not like
Speaker 15: was James Brown, and that's because she felt like that
Speaker 15: he was covering things up and hiding things. What she
Speaker 15: told him was, you're gonna bring somebody else in here
Speaker 15: to help investigate this. I want my daughter found, she said.
Speaker 15: I remember saying something about that. She said, but I don't.
Speaker 15: She said, it's like half of half of things are
Speaker 15: a daze for me. And I said, like you were
Speaker 15: on autopilot. She said yes, And she said, but I don't.
Speaker 15: I never went in there and told him he's going
Speaker 15: to close this case. Why would I tell him to
Speaker 15: close the case on my daughter. Then they started, you know,
Speaker 15: pointing the finger at Kathy, and they went through separate
Speaker 15: ways because Kathy said, I'm not I'm not doing this.
Speaker 15: I'm not gonna deal with this. I'm looking for my daughter.
Speaker 15: You're not gonna sit here and tell me that I
Speaker 15: killed my daughter through Amanda.
Speaker 1: Cathy also rejected the claim that she was already talking
Speaker 1: about funeral arrangements the day after Kelly turned up missing.
Speaker 15: Okay, squash funeral arrangement talk. I'm going to squash that.
Speaker 15: And it was not that day that they got there,
Speaker 15: she said. At one point, we did talk about a funeral,
Speaker 15: she said, and it's because we had not had.
Speaker 8: Where is she?
Speaker 15: We still don't know where she is.
Speaker 1: Months into this, Amanda had her own theory about what
Speaker 1: happened to Kelly.
Speaker 15: So basically, what I'm gathering is the abduction took place.
Speaker 15: Several men, up to four or five were out on
Speaker 15: this piece of land.
Speaker 8: They sexually assaulted her.
Speaker 15: And killed her.
Speaker 4: And buried.
Speaker 15: So that's what I have to prove. We have an opportunity,
Speaker 15: a true, true, opportunity to solve. God is working. God
Speaker 15: is working, and all of us are coming together in
Speaker 15: the right time. And I believe that that I am
Speaker 15: a very spiritual person, and I believe that if we
Speaker 15: play our cards right, and we do it the correct way,
Speaker 15: and we followed this path, We're going to find the answers.
Speaker 1: From Imperative Entertainment. I'm wes Ferguson. This is Deviltown. This
Speaker 1: is Chapter nine secrets. You know who probably has more
Speaker 1: information than anyone about the disappearance of Kelly Wilson. The
Speaker 1: cops in theory, at least when I started reporting on
Speaker 1: Kelly's story back in the spring, the Gilmer Police Department
Speaker 1: was among the first places I called. Then I emailed,
Speaker 1: dropped by, phoned, and emailed a few more times. I
Speaker 1: visited the station in person on two other occasions. The
Speaker 1: police chief was never around. No one ever responded to
Speaker 1: any of my interview requests. The Gilmer police froze me out.
Speaker 1: If they wouldn't comment, maybe I could look at their
Speaker 1: old reports see what they missed. I filed a request
Speaker 1: for public information relating to the case. The city of
Speaker 1: Gilmer fought my request.
Speaker 16: We feel this is the largest and most important unsolved
Speaker 16: case in the city, county, and possibly the state of Texas.
Speaker 1: That's from a letter the City of Gilmer wrote to
Speaker 1: the Texas Attorney General's Office asking to keep their records hidden.
Speaker 1: Their argument. To this day, police are still receiving and
Speaker 1: looking into leads about Kelly.
Speaker 16: It is the opinion of the department that any non
Speaker 16: law enforcement investigation may disrupt the ongoing investigation into the case.
Speaker 1: The Attorney General sided with the Gilmer police. They were
Speaker 1: allowed to withhold the information from me. I had also
Speaker 1: asked for police files that related to the case on
Speaker 1: Joe Henry, the former video store manager. I got back
Speaker 1: one page of information with basically nothing useful on it.
Speaker 1: On one hand, I get it, you're in law enforcement.
Speaker 2: You're busy.
Speaker 1: You don't want to deal with some out of town
Speaker 1: journalists poking around. But come on, they've had thirty years
Speaker 1: to work the case. I tried a few retired cops.
Speaker 1: Most didn't respond or flat out decline to comment. There
Speaker 1: was an important exception.
Speaker 14: My name is Richard Sprul and I was a volunteer
Speaker 14: chaplain here and then I went full time police officer here.
Speaker 1: Richard Sprule still lives in Gilmer way back when I
Speaker 1: was a newspaper crime reporter. I interviewed him several times
Speaker 1: about a bunch of unrelated cases. That's why Richard's name
Speaker 1: jumped out to me when I was reading old news
Speaker 1: stories about Kelly Wilson and Sergeant James York Brown, the
Speaker 1: Gilmer caught falsely accused of killing her. It turns out
Speaker 1: Richard and James Brown were tight.
Speaker 14: We were pretty close. We're pretty good friends. He was
Speaker 14: a very good police officer. He watched out for a
Speaker 14: lot around town.
Speaker 1: Richard says he never doubted for a second that James
Speaker 1: Brown was innocent in Kelly's disappearance.
Speaker 9: There was no question in my mind.
Speaker 14: Some of the times that they were making accusations against him,
Speaker 14: I was actually with him during those times, so I
Speaker 14: knew that there was no truth to some of that,
Speaker 14: And so because there was no truth to some of them,
Speaker 14: I just assumed there's probably very little truth to any
Speaker 14: of it.
Speaker 9: When the indictments.
Speaker 14: Came down, I was on the city Council and they
Speaker 14: called a special meeting executive session. So I can't tell
Speaker 14: you everything that was said in there, but it was basically,
Speaker 14: we need to fire him.
Speaker 9: We don't need this. Uh, we don't need this kind
Speaker 9: of stuff on the city.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 14: I think it was decided that we would uh suspend
Speaker 14: him with pay uh until further investigation.
Speaker 1: Richard thought the decision to suspend James Brown was such
Speaker 1: a huge mistake he resigned his city council seat and protest.
Speaker 1: Richard went on to tell me a story about a
Speaker 1: member of the grand jury, this guy who later regretted
Speaker 1: indicting James Brown. When he said, suddenly, this.
Speaker 9: Friend, she's done these people wrong. A strong guy presented
Speaker 9: any evidence.
Speaker 1: He had a big puppy with him. This really dogs
Speaker 1: scrambled over to the countain where I was sitting.
Speaker 9: That's why I pat him, he said.
Speaker 14: And then they gave us a list of names and
Speaker 14: said these are the people that did it.
Speaker 9: And his statement was it got a little loud for
Speaker 9: a second, would you mind? He said? Uh.
Speaker 14: He said, they presented all the information about a black mass,
Speaker 14: about a sacrifice, and that we were so amazed and
Speaker 14: disgusted by all of this that if he had told
Speaker 14: this Sam Claus had done it, we would have indicted
Speaker 14: Santa Claus. And the worst part about this, it could
Speaker 14: have been stopped at any time, and nobody was willing
Speaker 14: to stand up and say stop.
Speaker 9: Do you think anybody could have done that?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 14: Absolutely, I mean the county commissioners had appointed the special
Speaker 14: prosecutor and the special investigators. They could have said something.
Speaker 14: The district judge could have said something. There were several places,
Speaker 14: you know, the grand jury, if they had been instructed
Speaker 14: on how grand jury is supposed to operate and what
Speaker 14: they're looking for, they could have said something, but they weren't.
Speaker 14: So that's what led to this big miscarriage of justice.
Speaker 1: Richard was so outraged by the false charges against Sergeant
Speaker 1: Brown he actually joined the police department full time to
Speaker 1: do more see if he could make a difference.
Speaker 14: That was one of the reasons that I would decided
Speaker 14: to go full time into law enforcement. That there was
Speaker 14: no reason that think should that that type of a
Speaker 14: miscarrier justice should ever happen with people watching it happen.
Speaker 13: Do you remember what were the what was the most
Speaker 13: promising lead of what actually.
Speaker 9: Happened, Kelly?
Speaker 14: There were there were two or three rumors that were
Speaker 14: going around. Sergeant Brown had investigated these as leads. He
Speaker 14: could never get anything definitive, could never get probable calls
Speaker 14: on either one. One of them was that she had
Speaker 14: attended a rave basically had ended up because of overdose
Speaker 14: or whatever. That she died and the kids they're panicked, uh,
Speaker 14: and went and hit her body. And that was that
Speaker 14: was one of them. That was that he was really
Speaker 14: strongly supporting the other one. Well, I don't know if
Speaker 14: I want to get into that part or not, because
Speaker 14: it involves a whole lot of other people that really
Speaker 14: had nothing to do with it. Uh No, not not
Speaker 14: so much. The curs as it was kell boyfriend at
Speaker 14: the time.
Speaker 9: Since passed away. Well, that's again part of it.
Speaker 14: She actually had a boyfriend that was in West Point,
Speaker 14: and while he was away in West Point, then she
Speaker 14: was dating this guy that has since passed away. Here,
Speaker 14: the allegation was that when the gentleman from West Point
Speaker 14: was coming back for Christmas, that the guy she was
Speaker 14: dating here, she told him, you need to stay away
Speaker 14: and don't come around while he's here, because I have
Speaker 14: a lot better future with him than I have with you.
Speaker 14: So I'm going to be with him while he's home
Speaker 14: on leave during the Christmas vacation and we'll see what
Speaker 14: happens afterwards.
Speaker 9: And so when he went back her disappearance. I want
Speaker 9: to say he went back on the.
Speaker 14: Second of January and her disappearance were just a couple
Speaker 14: of days after that, and the idea was that the
Speaker 14: guy who has since passed away got mad and whether
Speaker 14: intentionally or accidentally, calls her death in some way.
Speaker 1: I was able to track down the boyfriend who went
Speaker 1: to West Point. His name is Josh. He declined a
Speaker 1: phone interview, but responded to questions via email. Josh says
Speaker 1: he dated Kelly through most of her junior year when
Speaker 1: Josh was a senior. After he moved to New York
Speaker 1: to attend the military academy, they stayed in touch, even
Speaker 1: though Kelly was dating other guys. Back home for Christmas break,
Speaker 1: Josh says he met up with Kelly just once. You
Speaker 1: might remember in episode one, Kelly's friend Michelle brought up
Speaker 1: the same meeting. It was the last time she or
Speaker 1: Josh ever saw Kelly. During their last hangout, Josh says
Speaker 1: he and Kelly agreed to stay in touch and remain friendly,
Speaker 1: whether they remained a couple or not. Josh was already
Speaker 1: back at West Point when he learned the news of
Speaker 1: Kelly's disappearance. He says he has fond memories of her
Speaker 1: and thinks about her off and the other so called
Speaker 1: boyfriend was Chris d'on. We mentioned him earlier in the series.
Speaker 9: Chris didn't did with cancer in his thirties.
Speaker 17: He was once named publicly as the chiefs That's big,
Speaker 17: but they never could apparently get the goods of them,
Speaker 17: and even they were charged.
Speaker 1: Police say Chris had a violent history.
Speaker 14: There was a guy walking down the street and Chris
Speaker 14: stabbed him in the back as they drove by.
Speaker 1: But people who were friends with Chris and Kelly pretty
Speaker 1: much all insist that they weren't a serious couple and
Speaker 1: Chris had nothing to do with Kelly's disappearance.
Speaker 8: Bet your first easy target.
Speaker 7: I've had a lot of long conversations with Chris and
Speaker 7: there in my mind there's absolutely no way he could
Speaker 7: have had anything to do with it that.
Speaker 18: I talked to Chris on this on that night, and
Speaker 18: I never understood why the police weren't interested in that.
Speaker 18: I went to the police station and told them, I
Speaker 18: know y'all are looking into Chris, but I was on
Speaker 18: the phone with that and not a one person ever
Speaker 18: talked to me about it.
Speaker 5: If it wasn't Chris Denton, the ex boyfriend. And then
Speaker 5: there's somebody out there who ducked it and murdered Kelly Wilson.
Speaker 5: Who's yeah, potentially after that, free to go out and
Speaker 5: do it again.
Speaker 1: All right, Back to my interview with Richard, there was
Speaker 1: something else I'd been wondering, something weird involving the Gilmer cops.
Speaker 9: What about the theft at the police department of the files.
Speaker 9: I wasn't here when that happened, so I don't know
Speaker 9: that much about that.
Speaker 1: On Halloween Night in nineteen ninety four, someone broke into
Speaker 1: the Gilmer Police Department and stole a bunch of the
Speaker 1: case files about Kelly Wilson. This was several months after
Speaker 1: all the charges were dropped in the case against the
Speaker 1: group of suspects that included the Kerr family and James Brown.
Speaker 1: The break in went down between six point fifteen and
Speaker 1: eight fifty pm. The burglars came in through the sally
Speaker 1: Port door in the back of the station. They raided
Speaker 1: the patrol room and even the police chief's office, making
Speaker 1: off with a total of five boxes, including personnel records
Speaker 1: and old patrol logs. Remember Melvin Dodd, the charter member
Speaker 1: of the Justice for Kelly Wilson Committee. By random coincidence,
Speaker 1: Melvin took his thirteen kids trick or treating across the
Speaker 1: street from the police station around the same time police
Speaker 1: say the burglary occurred. Melvin's skeptical. He says, there were
Speaker 1: a Jillian trick or treaters around, someone would have noticed.
Speaker 19: It certainly didn't take place while tricker treating was going on, right,
Speaker 19: it would have been impossible for to that was that
Speaker 19: being detected. It was an inside job. There was too
Speaker 19: much information in there. So all kinds of records just
Speaker 19: disappeared from the face of the earth.
Speaker 1: The police wouldn't say how many documents were stolen, but
Speaker 1: they did say that none of the files were original records.
Speaker 1: They were supposedly just copies of documents provided a special prosecutor,
Speaker 1: Scott Lefford, during his investigation, which had ended nearly a
Speaker 1: year earlier.
Speaker 14: Okay, I know what you're talking about, now, I don't
Speaker 14: That was kind of you know, kept between the chief
Speaker 14: and Sergeant Brown as to what actually they were investigating on.
Speaker 2: That part of it.
Speaker 9: Who would have been able to do that?
Speaker 14: Who would have wanted to that? You know, why would
Speaker 14: you want to do that. The only thing that I
Speaker 14: could think of was that they felt that the case
Speaker 14: was leading in a particular direction toward a particular person,
Speaker 14: and they wanted to protect that person. Who Ever took
Speaker 14: the case file, why else would you want it?
Speaker 1: I really don't know. A news story in the Gilmer
Speaker 1: Mirror from nineteen ninety four states that police collected thirteen
Speaker 1: fingerprints from the break in, but I've never heard of
Speaker 1: anyone being arrested for it, and none of the news
Speaker 1: articles clarify whether the back door had been left unlocked,
Speaker 1: or if someone had a key, or if the door
Speaker 1: had been smashed in. You can speculate all day about
Speaker 1: this one who knew enough about the police department to
Speaker 1: quickly find Kelly Wilson's files when no one was around,
Speaker 1: but someone who maybe didn't realize the files were just copies.
Speaker 1: It's yet another weird little wrinkle in the Kelly Wilson saga.
Speaker 1: I thanked Richard Sproule for his time.
Speaker 2: Take care you.
Speaker 9: Actually put who'd good time to come? Because that was
Speaker 9: my son's dog. Our two dogs would have been all
Speaker 9: over you. They just love people.
Speaker 1: I love dogs, so would have been okay, okay. After
Speaker 1: leaving Richard's house. I drove out of town into the
Speaker 1: country on the Cherokee Trace. Remember the Trace is the
Speaker 1: old winding road where the Kerr family lived when they
Speaker 1: were wrongly accused of killing Kelly Wilson. Although many of
Speaker 1: the Kurrs are dead now, a few of the family
Speaker 1: members still claimed to live in a little house out there,
Speaker 1: according to the State Sex Offender Registry. I pulled into
Speaker 1: the unpaved driveway.
Speaker 2: I'm outside the curves.
Speaker 20: There's a bunch of no trespassing signs, so I hope
Speaker 20: this goes okay.
Speaker 1: No one came to the door. I drove back into town.
Speaker 1: Except for my interview with Richard. My reporting trip felt
Speaker 1: like a bust. I pulled over beside the railroad tracks
Speaker 1: and opened my laptop. I was sitting in the driver's seat,
Speaker 1: scrolling through my spreadsheet of people I still wanted to
Speaker 1: talk to, wondering what I should do next. Then out
Speaker 1: of the corner of my eye, a man walked up
Speaker 1: from behind my car. It was the same guy with
Speaker 1: the dog from Richard Sproule's house. He waved, so I
Speaker 1: rolled my window down. This is what he said. I
Speaker 1: know what happened to Kelly Wilson. So I'm parked by
Speaker 1: the tracks in Gilmer when this guy walks up to
Speaker 1: my window and he drops this bombshell about Kelly Wilson.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think fast. I asked if he wants
Speaker 1: to get in my car. He comes around to the
Speaker 1: passenger side.
Speaker 21: Now what I heard three black men whom he had
Speaker 21: arrested for drug possession and they got off on their charges.
Speaker 21: If they killed her because she was pregnant with his baby,
Speaker 21: and all three of them raped her, beat her, killed
Speaker 21: her in credit to the hogs.
Speaker 2: I know for a fact I've heard from all three
Speaker 2: of the guys. You're fucking kidding me. No, swear to God. Okay,
Speaker 2: so I.
Speaker 21: Was pregnant with the baby and it would have ruined
Speaker 21: his marriage.
Speaker 1: He named a well known person in Gilmour.
Speaker 2: Are these guys still around?
Speaker 21: Two of them are in prison now for other charges,
Speaker 21: One of them is still around, One of them still sells.
Speaker 13: Out here and down Really, well, what do you think
Speaker 13: would happen if I tried to talk to them?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 21: They're great uncle is a very good friend of mine,
Speaker 21: and he's the one who told me what happened and
Speaker 21: told me how they did it, where they did it,
Speaker 21: why they did it, And all three of the guys
Speaker 21: at one point or another, we're at a barbecue at
Speaker 21: his house and we're.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, yeah, that was us. I was like, no
Speaker 2: fucking way.
Speaker 21: I was like, why don't you say something about it
Speaker 21: to somebody?
Speaker 2: You know, just that y'all know what happened to her? Yeah,
Speaker 2: And they were like, oh no, we're not get in
Speaker 2: trouble for it.
Speaker 21: Ain't no way.
Speaker 2: Now do you mind telling me their names? I can't
Speaker 2: do that, really, no, I can't. Who who else would
Speaker 2: I talk to you? That Mike might know more? If
Speaker 2: you go into.
Speaker 9: The park Vinegar Hill?
Speaker 2: Do you know where that is? Okay? Shut over here?
Speaker 21: There were people around, just start asking if they've heard anything.
Speaker 21: It's kind of of where the dope houses are and everything.
Speaker 21: And she was on heroin, real bad. They all sold heroin.
Speaker 21: She was also tricking for money she was tricking with
Speaker 21: when she got pregnant.
Speaker 2: Would you mind showing me where Vinegar Hill is?
Speaker 1: It turns out this guy's name is Jared. He's Richard's son.
Speaker 1: Following Jared's directions, we drive through downtown across a highway
Speaker 1: and come to a more run down neighborhood on the
Speaker 1: edge of Gilmour. There's overgrown brush everywhere, the streets narrowed
Speaker 1: to a single lane like tunnels through a leafy forest.
Speaker 9: This park on the left is Vinegar Hill.
Speaker 21: Here, everything around this is called Vinegar Hill.
Speaker 2: Okay, And do you think like later in the day
Speaker 2: they people just kind of hanging.
Speaker 9: Out there when we hang out all around there about
Speaker 9: three o'clock.
Speaker 13: Uh huh, okay, let me just make all.
Speaker 2: Save it on mine.
Speaker 1: Matt Jared have only been like seven years old when
Speaker 1: Kelly disappeared. The rumor he'd always heard was that someone
Speaker 1: he knew sold drugs to Kelly and she overdosed.
Speaker 21: And the rumor that I've heard for years was that
Speaker 21: she od dope and that she was buried underneath the
Speaker 21: floor of the church. But I was told by the
Speaker 21: friend that's Mike, that's the that's by guy's great uncle anyway,
Speaker 21: that that's.
Speaker 2: Not what happened. Can we go see the uncle he
Speaker 2: just left. He was at the house when you were there.
Speaker 2: Really but no, I mean, he's not gonna talk about it.
Speaker 1: As he talked, Jared started kind of nervously squeezing this
Speaker 1: disposable water bottle in his hands. That's the crinkling noise
Speaker 1: you hear.
Speaker 21: The three guys and the great uncle are the only
Speaker 21: ones they've ever said anything Jimmy, and they're the ones
Speaker 21: who did it, So I don't know if anyone else
Speaker 21: who could really say anything like that. I had never
Speaker 21: even heard anything the rumors or anything about that until
Speaker 21: he told me that day.
Speaker 17: And then about three months after that, there was a barber.
Speaker 22: And I met the first one and he was, you.
Speaker 21: Know, just kind of nonchalant. Yeah, that's what happened, but
Speaker 21: didn't go into detail.
Speaker 1: I have to say, from the moment Jared sat down
Speaker 1: and started talking, I was skeptical. Some of his details
Speaker 1: were off. Plus here in the American South, blaming random
Speaker 1: black guys for violence against a white woman is a
Speaker 1: little on the nose. But Jared knew a lot about
Speaker 1: the case, and even Kelly's friends think she might have
Speaker 1: been pregnant. According to Jared, the slash tire was part
Speaker 1: of the murder plot.
Speaker 21: Flushed her tires so that she didn't have any choice
Speaker 21: but to go out with someone else that were like
Speaker 21: email presents, and supposedly she came to them a couple
Speaker 21: of years ago and said that she couldn't hold it anymore,
Speaker 21: and they said if she said something, they would kill her.
Speaker 16: Hmm.
Speaker 2: And that was the last tired about that. But I
Speaker 2: don't know who she was. Oh, you don't know her
Speaker 2: name or how to find out who she was.
Speaker 21: No, but I know that she's the one who got
Speaker 21: Kelly to come out with him.
Speaker 2: That not Oh my god. And she's had to live
Speaker 2: with that ever since.
Speaker 22: She knew what they were going to do to her,
Speaker 22: she knew they were hired for it, everything like that,
Speaker 22: and she did it for the dope. They gave her
Speaker 22: some dope for getting Kelly out of the house and
Speaker 22: get them to come with her.
Speaker 1: So, just to be clear, you're one hundred percent certain,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: That's what happened to ude.
Speaker 17: This person would not have said anything unless that's what happened.
Speaker 17: I mean, we're talking about a seven year old man.
Speaker 17: He's not just going to be talking rumors and gossip.
Speaker 17: And it was just straightforward, this is what happened. Don't
Speaker 17: even talk about the rumors that you heard because they're
Speaker 17: not true.
Speaker 13: I was like, oh, okay, can you think of anybody
Speaker 13: else who might be able to add something.
Speaker 2: Like I said, go to Vinegar Hill anyway. All right, man,
Speaker 2: it was nice to meet you, Ed, Jared, nice to
Speaker 2: meet you. I really appreciate you. Huh, take care well.
Speaker 12: Shit.
Speaker 1: I waited till three pm, then drove back to the park.
Speaker 1: It was deserted. I went back again and again every
Speaker 1: time I was in Gilmer last summer. I never saw
Speaker 1: any grown men hanging out, just some kids playing basketball.
Speaker 1: Once Jared had actually given me the guy's name, I
Speaker 1: found a nearby address for him, but it was an
Speaker 1: abandoned shack. I also called another guy, the one who
Speaker 1: was accused by Jared of dealing drugs to Kelly shortly
Speaker 1: before she vanished.
Speaker 23: He told me, I mean, and he told me some
Speaker 23: stuff that is just pretty wild. You had sold drugs
Speaker 23: to Kelly on the day that she died? Did that
Speaker 23: spring and Bow?
Speaker 1: This individual insisted he never sold drugs, and beyond that,
Speaker 1: was off to college the year Kelly disappeared.
Speaker 23: Yeah, so he's just like completely off base. So you
Speaker 23: you have no knowledge of what happened to Kelly?
Speaker 1: His answer, not at all. So I don't know. When
Speaker 1: Jared told me what he'd heard about Kelly, he didn't
Speaker 1: seem like he was high or hallucinating at the time,
Speaker 1: but I have to say he didn't really strike me
Speaker 1: as the most credible person either. I reached out to
Speaker 1: Jared again the other day. It had been several months
Speaker 1: since he knocked on my car window and we drove
Speaker 1: around Vinegar Hill. I wanted to see if he stood
Speaker 1: by his story.
Speaker 9: Hey, Jared, thanks for calling me back. How you been.
Speaker 21: How are you?
Speaker 9: Oh, I'm good.
Speaker 13: I just wanted just double check that you know you
Speaker 13: had said that, you know your older friend had told
Speaker 13: you that it was those three guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 13: I was not able to get in touch with with
Speaker 13: any of those people. I went by that park several times.
Speaker 22: I'm not given a name, but I've told you that before, and.
Speaker 13: Your older friend.
Speaker 2: You don't want to give me his name either.
Speaker 21: No, No, just chick because he would be very mad
Speaker 21: that I haven't said anything.
Speaker 11: M hm.
Speaker 2: It was said to me in the complehensive anyway.
Speaker 1: Thirty minutes after my conversation with Jared, he called me back.
Speaker 1: This time he had a prop. If I would give
Speaker 1: him one hundred and fifty bucks to pay off a ticket,
Speaker 1: he tell me all the names and share their phone numbers.
Speaker 2: I won't lie.
Speaker 1: Part of me was kind a tempted, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure about the ethics of that as a journalist.
Speaker 16: I'm okay, well, that's fine.
Speaker 23: That's just the only way I could do it.
Speaker 1: I'm sad, but I'm gonna have to decline that that's fine.
Speaker 2: I know what it's like to be in a.
Speaker 13: Jam, though, so I feel you.
Speaker 22: You're cool.
Speaker 21: I was just gonna let you know.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, I don't know about Jared. After this, we're
Speaker 1: down to the last episode of Deviltown. I want to
Speaker 1: take a closer look at Chris Denton and also check
Speaker 1: in with Amanda the Private Eye. There's been a shocking
Speaker 1: development in Kelly's case, one I haven't even had time
Speaker 1: to mention yet. We're going to take a two week
Speaker 1: break to give me time to get out there and
Speaker 1: do some more important reporting, and hopefully we'll have more
Speaker 1: answers by the time we're back. Deviltown is a production
Speaker 1: of Imperative Entertainment. It was written and created by me
Speaker 1: Wes Ferguson. Executive producer is Jason Hoak, Audio engineering and
Speaker 1: editing by Shane Freeman and Jason Hoak. Original score is
Speaker 1: by Robert Ellis, recording by Austin Sisler at east Side Studios.
Speaker 1: If you like the show, leave a review, and don't
Speaker 1: forget to tell your friends thanks for listening.