Speaker 1: So one of the weird little wrinkles in the mystery
Speaker 1: of Kelly Wilson's disappearance is that her tire was slashed
Speaker 1: on the Courthouse square on the night she vanished, and
Speaker 1: we're told that this slash tire had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with her disappearance. Here's what newspaper reporter Philip Williams had
Speaker 1: to say.
Speaker 2: He's last her tires, she disappears, but he didn't have
Speaker 2: thing to do with the disappearance or as the law was.
Speaker 1: Concerned in this episode. I'm going to tell you something
Speaker 1: else about Kelly and slash tires, and I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe you can help me make sense of this. From
Speaker 1: Free Range Productions in association with Imperative Entertainment, I'm West
Speaker 1: Ferguson and this is Deviltown, Chapter fourteen, Slashed Tires. So
Speaker 1: a while back, I was reading through this Reddit thread
Speaker 1: about Kelly's case when I saw a comment from an
Speaker 1: old friend of hers. The thing is, though this friend
Speaker 1: was not from Gilmer, texas she knew Kelly Wilson from
Speaker 1: Nakodish Louisiana. We've talked so much about Gilmer throughout the series,
Speaker 1: but I never really knew much about Kelly's life before Gilmer,
Speaker 1: because you know, she spent nearly her entire childhood up
Speaker 1: till her junior year of high school in nakadish. I
Speaker 1: talked to Kelly's dad, Robbie, but you know, a dad
Speaker 1: only knows so much, so I reach out to this
Speaker 1: person on Reddit and she emails me. We end up
Speaker 1: talking on the phone, and believe it or not, she
Speaker 1: knew something kind of strange about Kelly and those slash tires.
Speaker 1: And we'll get to that pretty quick. But first I
Speaker 1: want to tell you about Kelly because her friend Laurence
Speaker 1: Seal knew a side of Kelly that hardly anybody I've
Speaker 1: talked to for this show ever saw. They'd been friends
Speaker 1: since junior high.
Speaker 3: We met when Kelly and I were both in seventh grade,
Speaker 3: but she went to a different school, but she was
Speaker 3: started dating my brother, who was two years older than me,
Speaker 3: and I just remember she was beautiful and super nice,
Speaker 3: and then we went to school together in ninth grade
Speaker 3: and I kind of was intimidated by her because she's
Speaker 3: just really, really confident, a really confident girl.
Speaker 1: That confidence is the thing that just about everybody who
Speaker 1: knew Kelly brings up. Lauren included when she.
Speaker 3: Would talk to you, her eyes would just kind of
Speaker 3: they'd never stray away from your own. She had confidence
Speaker 3: about her and she was no nonsense, just straightforward, but
Speaker 3: very fun. She was just a really cool girl, just
Speaker 3: very mature for her age. She always just seemed like
Speaker 3: she'd been there and done that, but she never met
Speaker 3: an enemy, I don't think. Just very confident, sure of herself,
Speaker 3: very smart, very pretty. She was very adult as me
Speaker 3: being the same age. I just looked at her as
Speaker 3: thinking she just had all the wisdom of the world.
Speaker 1: Lauren was a little younger than Kelly and a little shyer,
Speaker 1: and Kelly kind of took her under her wing. What
Speaker 1: she remembers is mostly small stuff, the kind of thing
Speaker 1: you only remember about a friend.
Speaker 3: Our friend Christy. She had a white, cheavy step side,
Speaker 3: like an older choke that was really badass. And it
Speaker 3: was the three of us in the front and Kelly
Speaker 3: was in the middle, and our entertainment was to ride
Speaker 3: up and down this street quote unquote one of the
Speaker 3: main streets in knack and Is, but we called it
Speaker 3: the Strip.
Speaker 1: And there's one thing about writing around in that truck
Speaker 1: that Lauren still remembers clear as Day.
Speaker 3: She really, really really liked that song by Leta Ford
Speaker 3: and Ozzy Osbourne. If I close my eyes forever and
Speaker 3: I just remember she was just seen at the top
Speaker 3: of her lungs, and I remember thinking, she has a
Speaker 3: really good voice too. That's not fair, because she's really pretty,
Speaker 3: really smart.
Speaker 1: So she could sing too, apparently. And look, it'd be
Speaker 1: really easy thirty plus years down the road to turn
Speaker 1: Kelly into some kind of saint. That happens a lot
Speaker 1: with these cases. But that's not what Lauren does. She
Speaker 1: just talks about her like a regular teenage girl.
Speaker 3: What I liked about her is that she just was upfront.
Speaker 3: She didn't sugarcoat anything, but she wasn't mean either. She
Speaker 3: liked being the leader, and definitely she was someone that
Speaker 3: people would follow.
Speaker 1: She kept her grades up too, but not in a
Speaker 1: way that would cost her any fun.
Speaker 3: She would be like, oh, yeah, I'll be fine on
Speaker 3: the test. I'm still going to go out and party
Speaker 3: till like one o'clock and you know, get everything done,
Speaker 3: and she did so.
Speaker 1: Now you might remember from earlier in the series that
Speaker 1: Kelly's folks were split up, and to this day, I
Speaker 1: don't think they still agree on much, including a big
Speaker 1: question whether Kelly even wanted to be in Gilmour at
Speaker 1: all or whether she was trying to get back to Louisiana.
Speaker 1: Lauren remembers the day Kelly left Nackadish.
Speaker 3: And I ran into her in the hall and she said,
Speaker 3: I have to move to Gilmore because I guess she'd
Speaker 3: been fighting with her dad. And I was like, well,
Speaker 3: when you go in, she's like today, and I just
Speaker 3: won't ever forget her face because she just looked shocked
Speaker 3: that she had to leave. By that was the last
Speaker 3: time I taught to her.
Speaker 1: Today, not next month, not at the end of the
Speaker 1: school year.
Speaker 3: That same day, she says, friendly to everybody, always had
Speaker 3: a smile on her face. I never saw her where
Speaker 3: she was crying or upset, except for the last day
Speaker 3: I talked to her. She wasn't even crying then. She
Speaker 3: just kind of looked concerned, like she didn't want to
Speaker 3: do it, you know, she just didn't want to move,
Speaker 3: but she was going and getting her stuff, checking out
Speaker 3: of all the classes. She just seems shocked, and I
Speaker 3: just we didn't have a lot of time to talk,
Speaker 3: and it was kind of like our kept saying no, no,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm really going to move. She's like, Lauren,
Speaker 3: I'm leaving today, like, oh my god. And that was it,
Speaker 3: little hug and she was gone.
Speaker 1: And that was it. Kelly went off to Gilmer and
Speaker 1: then that January she was gone. When I spoke with Lauren,
Speaker 1: she kept coming back to how alive.
Speaker 3: Kelly was some huge blue eyes that would just staring
Speaker 3: into your soul sometime. Always had big ground her face,
Speaker 3: a lot of big hair. But big hair was in
Speaker 3: back then, right, always in fashion. No matter what it was,
Speaker 3: she was wearing it. She was a trendsetter. It's insane.
Speaker 3: And she was a good person and she was a
Speaker 3: fun to be around, and she was she would light
Speaker 3: up any room, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: I asked her at the end of our conversation if
Speaker 1: there was anything else she wanted people to know about
Speaker 1: her friend.
Speaker 3: She was very vibrant, very alive. And that's why it's
Speaker 3: so hard to picture hers. I just don't want to picture,
Speaker 3: but you know, like it just ended so like a
Speaker 3: candle going out, like ooh, like.
Speaker 1: A candle going out. Lauren was fifteen, sixteen years old
Speaker 1: the last time she saw Kelly. She's in her early
Speaker 1: fifties now. And Kelly's still that girl in the middle
Speaker 1: of the truck after the break. Older guys and slash tires.
Speaker 1: Kelly Wilson, like a lot of teenagers, had a type
Speaker 1: older guys, the bad news kind, and Lauren tagging along
Speaker 1: tended to like the same ones.
Speaker 3: We often had crushes on the same guys too. Like
Speaker 3: she was a guy David Kirkland who was kind of
Speaker 3: no good. He slashed both of our tires on one night,
Speaker 3: not just ours, but it was a couple of other
Speaker 3: people like him and his gang. What are they called,
Speaker 3: the what is it regulators? Oh my god, it's so stupid. Anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think he ended up having to go to the
Speaker 3: Marines or jail, and I think he went marines. But
Speaker 3: he was just that bad boy, older guy. I guess.
Speaker 1: So a guy slashes her tires and you'd think that's
Speaker 1: the end of it, but it wasn't. Kelly liked him anyway.
Speaker 1: She liked him even though he slashed her tires.
Speaker 3: Mmm, yeah, kind of I did too. I don't know why.
Speaker 1: When I said that seemed like a strange reason to
Speaker 1: keep liking somebody, Lauren didn't disagree.
Speaker 3: It is weird, and I'm thinking here. As I'm talking
Speaker 3: about it, I'm like, yeah, I still liked him. I'm
Speaker 3: thinking to my why didn't like him? I don't know.
Speaker 3: Even after I moved, I remember thinking, uh, you know,
Speaker 3: I don't know high school girl stuff. That's all I
Speaker 3: can say.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: Let me be extremely careful here, because I am not
Speaker 1: telling you that this guy David had anything to do
Speaker 1: with what happened to Kelly. There's no reason to think that.
Speaker 1: By Lauren's telling, he was some teenage kid in Louisiana
Speaker 1: who slashed a few tires and then went off and
Speaker 1: joined the Marines. That's about it. What stuck with me
Speaker 1: was smaller than that, and stranger because slash tires show
Speaker 1: up one other time in Kelly's story, at the worst
Speaker 1: possible moment. You've been following the show, so you know
Speaker 1: this next part, but real quick, because we got into
Speaker 1: all of this back in episode two. Here's the short version.
Speaker 4: Seventeen year old high school senior was last seen on
Speaker 4: January fifth, nineteen ninety two. She had just finished working
Speaker 4: a shift at a local video store when she headed
Speaker 4: to the bank to make a deposit. That night, the
Speaker 4: money made it into the account, but Kelly never made
Speaker 4: it home.
Speaker 1: The morning after Kelly disappeared in January of nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: her car turns up beside the video store in Gilmer
Speaker 1: where she worked. He's missing a bottle of vodka inside,
Speaker 1: no signs of any struggle, and her left rear tire
Speaker 1: is slashed, and not just a little puncture, it slashed
Speaker 1: so bad the tire has come off the rim.
Speaker 4: The next morning, her car still found sitting outside of
Speaker 4: her job. One of the tires had been slashed. Her belonging,
Speaker 4: including her purse, still inside of the car. The keys
Speaker 4: were missing, and now so was Kelly gone without a trace.
Speaker 1: A couple months later, this seventeen year old kid named
Speaker 1: Michael Bibe admits that it was him. He pleads guilty
Speaker 1: to a misdemeanor, and the police write the whole thing
Speaker 1: off as random, just vandalism, nothing to do with Kelly's disappearance.
Speaker 1: And that wasn't even the only tire. Somebody had slashed
Speaker 1: one of Kelly's tires two nights earlier, on the Friday,
Speaker 1: and the girl who worked with her at the video
Speaker 1: store got one slashed right around then too. I've talked
Speaker 1: about all this on the show before, and I even
Speaker 1: said a while back that I couldn't shake the feeling
Speaker 1: that a slash tire might be somebody's extremely juvenile idea
Speaker 1: of a romantic gesture, danger, and attraction all rolled into one.
Speaker 1: So you can see why Lauren's story really stuck with me.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure any of this will really help the case,
Speaker 1: you know, like help us understand what happened to Kelly
Speaker 1: that night. In fact, my original producer even cut the
Speaker 1: entire interview with Lauren from an earlier episode because it
Speaker 1: just didn't quite fit in with the whole true crime
Speaker 1: thing that we do. It's just a weird coincidence. And
Speaker 1: you know, a teenage crush in Louisiana is also a
Speaker 1: whole different world from a crime scene in Gilmer. We're
Speaker 1: talking different boys, different states, years apart. All I'm saying is,
Speaker 1: once you've heard both, it's hard not to want to
Speaker 1: try and connect the two, not in a real, just
Speaker 1: the facts kind of way, but just in a strange phenomenon.
Speaker 1: Michael Bibe was seventeen back then, like I said, and
Speaker 1: he had dropped out of high school, and I guess
Speaker 1: he was just hanging out on the square that night.
Speaker 1: Here's newspaper reporter Philip Williams again.
Speaker 2: The guy That's last or tire. He was brought in
Speaker 2: the court, played guilty to a Miss Demainor, and I
Speaker 2: was there when he was sentenced, but apparently, through a
Speaker 2: remarkable coincidence, he had nothing to do with her disappearance.
Speaker 1: Michael got a fine for the slash tire and he
Speaker 1: was sentenced to ninety days in jail for criminal mischief.
Speaker 1: He ended up serving forty five days, and he was
Speaker 1: interviewed by gilmert Police Sergeant James York Brown, the lead investigator,
Speaker 1: and he was also interviewed by the FBI. I don't
Speaker 1: have access to any of those interviews, but it seems
Speaker 1: clear that law enforcement didn't really have anything on him.
Speaker 1: The Gilmer police chief back then was Al McAllister, and
Speaker 1: he told the Gilmer Mirror that Biby was either the
Speaker 1: unluckiest guy in the world or he knows more than
Speaker 1: he told us. Michael also allegedly got the crap beat
Speaker 1: out of him by Kelly's brother and her stepbrother. After
Speaker 1: doing his jail time, he moved to another state and
Speaker 1: he still lives there. I've come across a few rumors
Speaker 1: about Michael online and some people have passed along a
Speaker 1: few other leads to me. They're interesting, but it's all
Speaker 1: secondhand stuff that I couldn't confirm for the podcast. I
Speaker 1: have tried to speak with him for a year at
Speaker 1: this point. I've exchanged a ton of messages with his wife,
Speaker 1: and I've chatted a little with his daughter. They listened
Speaker 1: to the podcast and they both said they would try
Speaker 1: to convince Michael to talk, but so far that hasn't happened.
Speaker 1: I also offered to drive up there and talk to
Speaker 1: him in person, but that hasn't happened either. Michael's daughter
Speaker 1: said he's just a really private person, and this is
Speaker 1: what his wife said. I'm going to be completely honest
Speaker 1: with you. Michael doesn't do people at all, well new people,
Speaker 1: and I guess I would be a new person. The
Speaker 1: couple just celebrated their thirtieth wedding anniversary, and his wife
Speaker 1: told me that to this day she has still never
Speaker 1: asked Michael what happened that night. She did say that
Speaker 1: their kids have been harassed because of the publicity from
Speaker 1: the case, and if that's true, that's really unfortunate. But no,
Speaker 1: I mean I have to say that after all this,
Speaker 1: I still don't really have a good answer for you
Speaker 1: about the slash tire. What I do have and what
Speaker 1: I'm going to leave you with for now is Lauren.
Speaker 3: When I heard what happened to her, I mean, it's
Speaker 3: never left my head.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Lauren was somebody who loved Kelly way before any of this,
Speaker 1: and who's never been able to shake Kelly's memory.
Speaker 3: It's just one of those things that just sticks with
Speaker 3: you and you just wonder all the time what happened
Speaker 3: to her and she stuff for you know, all that,
Speaker 3: and I just walking my dog at night, I always
Speaker 3: think of her, you know.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's been a long time too, it
Speaker 1: really has.
Speaker 3: It just doesn't go away though.
Speaker 1: Next time on Deviltown, We're headed back to Gilmour. Deviltown
Speaker 1: is a free range production and association with Imperative Entertainment.
Speaker 1: The show is created by me Wes Ferguson. This episode
Speaker 1: was produced by Aslan Gaddis, music by Robert Ellis. To
Speaker 1: keep up with us, check out our free newsletter at
Speaker 1: Unforgotten pod dot com. As always, thank you for listening.