Speaker 1: This podcast is intended for mature audiences.
Speaker 2: Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 1: Last spring, I wrote a letter to Kelly Wilson's mom, Kathy.
Speaker 1: The thirtieth anniversary of Kelly's disappearance from Gilmer, Texas had
Speaker 1: just passed that January. I introduced myself and asked if
Speaker 1: we could meet. A few weeks later, my phone rang
Speaker 1: an anonymous call. When I picked up, I instantly recognized
Speaker 1: Cathy's voice. She has a Southern accent. It's kind of twangy.
Speaker 1: She was polite, but she didn't have much to say.
Speaker 1: To my disappointment, Kathy declined to meet for an interview.
Speaker 1: She said she had good reason not to talk. There
Speaker 1: were new developments in the search for her daughter, Kelly.
Speaker 1: Kathy didn't want to do anything to compromise the case.
Speaker 1: I had also written a letter to Kelly's dad, Robbie.
Speaker 1: Unlike his ex wife, Robbie was happy to meet.
Speaker 3: Hey, mister Wilson. Yes, Hey, I'm west Ferguson.
Speaker 4: Oh we have a couple weeks.
Speaker 3: Yes, sir, very nice to meet you.
Speaker 5: Good to meet you.
Speaker 1: Robbie looked really good for seventy years old. He spent
Speaker 1: decades working in management at paper Mills. We're retired now.
Speaker 1: He wears a tidy gray beard and stays fit on
Speaker 1: the golf course. And he lives in a lake house
Speaker 1: in Nakadish, the small town in Louisiana where Kelly grew
Speaker 1: up before she moved to East Texas as a teenager.
Speaker 3: Beautiful home. Yeah, yeah, from Texas right.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: It was clear most of the way, and then past
Speaker 3: twenty minutes or so started coming down, all right, ah,
Speaker 3: right on the water.
Speaker 1: The view from the lake through Robbie's back window was stunning.
Speaker 1: Sheets of rain swept across the water, rippling the surface.
Speaker 1: We set down in the living room. Although Robbie's second wife, Waverlin,
Speaker 1: died in twenty twenty, you could still feel a woman's
Speaker 1: presence in all the furniture and home decor. I explained
Speaker 1: to Robbie why I was so interested in Kelly's case,
Speaker 1: that I was twelve years old when she vanished, that
Speaker 1: my first newspaper editor had given me the idea that
Speaker 1: maybe I could help find Kelly. I had always, you know,
Speaker 1: wanted to come back to the story because you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of it just didn't really make sense.
Speaker 6: It's a long sworded twisted boots and just went on
Speaker 6: with the story that propersed you. Now it's a nice
Speaker 6: cold case. Now there's a lot of there's a lot
Speaker 6: of questions. There's more questions than answers to this thing.
Speaker 3: For sure.
Speaker 7: I'm not a father yet, and I can't imagine what
Speaker 7: that's like.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's not it's not easy, and you don't you know,
Speaker 6: I don't know how you deal with it other than
Speaker 6: the fact that.
Speaker 5: You just wake up every day to live.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 6: You get to the day and you wake up the
Speaker 6: next day and you do it again, you know, and
Speaker 6: it gets easier, but it never goes away.
Speaker 1: I asked Robbie to tell me what he remembered about
Speaker 1: Kelly when she still lived with him in Louisiana.
Speaker 5: Did she have.
Speaker 3: Hobbies, pastimes? You know what he's telling me? More about
Speaker 3: her personality?
Speaker 2: She I mean, she.
Speaker 6: Had schoogle activities, you know, I think she was she
Speaker 6: might have been in what do you call it? And
Speaker 6: she not the cheerleaders, but the pep squad and all
Speaker 6: that kind of thing in school. Had pretty typical young
Speaker 6: lady type activities. She kind of liked myth a little bit.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 6: Some of the sciences. She was small enough she could
Speaker 6: have done whatever she wanted.
Speaker 1: But Kelly was also headstrong. We got into that in
Speaker 1: the first episode, how Kelly bucked against the rules of
Speaker 1: Robbie's house. He was a single dad doing his best,
Speaker 1: and he says his daughter was more than a handful.
Speaker 3: I grew up with two brothers.
Speaker 5: I didn't have any idea what to do with with
Speaker 5: a teenage daughter.
Speaker 6: Actually one that was, you know, pretty attractive, very outgoing.
Speaker 6: I mean, she was a handful from the time she
Speaker 6: was and Kelly matured way way. It is almost unfair
Speaker 6: she I mean she retured from like she was eleven
Speaker 6: and a half years old, and until she turned fifteen
Speaker 6: or sixteen, she didn't actually had a brain in her head.
Speaker 6: And I guess the homeowners were just raging, you know,
Speaker 6: a couple with the fact that her parents split up
Speaker 6: and her mother was steadily just agitating the situation to
Speaker 6: get at.
Speaker 5: Me, Frankie.
Speaker 6: Her mother and I both grew up in a little
Speaker 6: town called Plain Dealing. I don't know if you've contacted
Speaker 6: her mother or I talked to her yesterday.
Speaker 5: I don't even know where she I guess she's still
Speaker 5: in Plaine DeLand.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Plain Dealing is a tiny town in northwestern Louisiana.
Speaker 5: Just out of curiosity, she'd whe her to talk to you.
Speaker 3: She said, no, that's a surprise.
Speaker 1: Robbie and Kelly's mom, Kathy, are estranged. They haven't spoken
Speaker 1: since nineteen ninety four. Of that is due to their
Speaker 1: ugly divorce and custody battle for Kelly and her little
Speaker 1: brother Kyle, but also Robbie has leveled serious accusations against Kathy,
Speaker 1: wondering if she knows more about her daughter's disappearance than
Speaker 1: she's letting on.
Speaker 3: What do you think is the most plausible thing that happened?
Speaker 5: You know, I still go back to the family.
Speaker 6: I mean, if you look at if you look at
Speaker 6: these kinds of things statistically, that's where it's almost always
Speaker 6: is now what happened and how it happened. I couldn't
Speaker 6: I mean, you couldn't you let your imagination run wild.
Speaker 1: Remember, Kelly's stepdad, Robert Carlson, was the first person to
Speaker 1: find her eighty five Dodge Charger beside the video store
Speaker 1: on the morning after she vanished. According to the first
Speaker 1: news reports about Kelly's case, Robert told police he went
Speaker 1: out looking for Kelly at five am. Later, he would
Speaker 1: say he actually went searching two hours earlier, at three
Speaker 1: in the morning. Either way, the car was unlocked when
Speaker 1: he found it, a tire was slashed, and Kelly's purse
Speaker 1: was inside the vehicle.
Speaker 6: First of all, you rely on the fact that her
Speaker 6: purse was in the car strictly on what he says.
Speaker 6: You know, her stepdad says, right, You really don't know
Speaker 6: other than what he's telling you. Is that true or
Speaker 6: not true? Just depends on whether it has any reason
Speaker 6: alive why I was even out looking for at three
Speaker 6: am on this particular not any of the others she
Speaker 6: I mean, obviously out of his true you know, being
Speaker 6: out and party.
Speaker 1: And don't forget Kelly's tire had also been slashed outside
Speaker 1: the video store just two nights before she disappeared to
Speaker 1: get her right home that time on Friday. I've been
Speaker 1: told that Kelly called her stepdad to come pick her up.
Speaker 1: I have also heard that Kelly simply drove home on
Speaker 1: the flat tire on Sunday night when Kelly vanished. Practically
Speaker 1: every news report has repeated the detail that store manager
Speaker 1: Joe Henry was the last person to see her. But
Speaker 1: I found one report, just one that told a different story.
Speaker 1: It claimed the skateboarders who were on the town square
Speaker 1: that night watched Kelly go back inside the video store
Speaker 1: after her tire was slashed. The skater supposedly watched Kelly
Speaker 1: make a phone call. Who did Kelly call her stepdad
Speaker 1: or someone else? From Imperative Entertainment, I'm Wes Ferguson. This
Speaker 1: is Deviltown. This is Chapter eight Older Men. Over the years,
Speaker 1: Robbie Wilson has often questioned whether his ex wife, Kathy Carlson,
Speaker 1: had anything to do with Kelly's disappearance. One of Robbie's
Speaker 1: theories that he shared with law enforcement back in the
Speaker 1: nineties is that somehow Kelly found out her brother Kyle's
Speaker 1: blood type proved that he was not actually Robbie's son.
Speaker 1: Here's a direct quote from an investigator's report, which is
Speaker 1: publicly available from the Attorney General's office. Kelly was going
Speaker 1: to tell this to Robbie, and this may have been
Speaker 1: a motive. If Kathy Carlson had a hand in Kelly's demise,
Speaker 1: This seems really far fetched to me. Robert and Kathy
Speaker 1: Carlson have always adamantly denied involvement in Kelly's disappearance. And remember,
Speaker 1: Kelly's purse was in the car. If her stepdad had
Speaker 1: given her a ride home, she wouldn't have left her
Speaker 1: purse behind. Then again, we only have the stepdad's word
Speaker 1: about the purse.
Speaker 6: You know the issue was a perseh you know, been
Speaker 6: in a car or was it in a car? Who knows.
Speaker 1: Another wrinkle in the case involves the key to Kelly's
Speaker 1: Dodge charger. When Kelly's stepdad, Robert, discovered her car beside
Speaker 1: the video store early Monday morning, that key was nowhere
Speaker 1: to be found. Just days after Kelly's disappearance, the same
Speaker 1: key mysteriously appeared in their yard like someone who knew
Speaker 1: where Kelly lived drove by, tossed the key out the window,
Speaker 1: and drove away. This rumor has been swirling around Gilmer
Speaker 1: for decades, and I've been able to confirm it. This
Speaker 1: is what Kelly's mom and stepdad say happened. Kelly's dad,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, Robbie questions whether they're telling the truth.
Speaker 1: He wonders if Kelly got a ride home that night,
Speaker 1: just like she did two nights earlier, something happened and
Speaker 1: Kelly died. Robbie's theory is that her mom and stepdad
Speaker 1: made up the story of finding her purse in the
Speaker 1: unlocked car and the key in the yard to cover
Speaker 1: up something else, something worse. Again, this is all conjecture
Speaker 1: on Robbie's part. Robbie also claims that Cathy was already
Speaker 1: talking about funeral arrangements on the first morning Kelly didn't
Speaker 1: come home. Kelly had barely been missing at that point,
Speaker 1: no one knew anything. Robbie says it didn't sit well
Speaker 1: with him. Kathy's reaction to her missing daughter left other
Speaker 1: people in Gilmer scratching their heads as well.
Speaker 8: Anyway, her mom came in for a long time d
Speaker 8: asked man long about her mom.
Speaker 1: That was Joe Henry, who worked with Kelly and was
Speaker 1: the last person to talk to her at the video store.
Speaker 1: Here's local news reporter Philip Williams.
Speaker 9: The one thing about her mother that seems strange to
Speaker 9: me was Kathy. You would think the average mother of
Speaker 9: a teenage girl who very likely has been murdered would
Speaker 9: be boo who, boo who. When I would talk to
Speaker 9: Kathy Carlson, her mindset seemed to be anger that the
Speaker 9: cops hadn't gotten anything done. I never saw her show
Speaker 9: any grief. Now, different people handled grief differently, but you know,
Speaker 9: it just seems strange to me. The times that I
Speaker 9: talked to and it was a number of times that
Speaker 9: I never saw her sheditated, choke up, or anything like that,
Speaker 9: and that seemed odd.
Speaker 1: The detective leading the search for Kelly, Sergeant James York Brown,
Speaker 1: said Kathy even tried to shut down his investigation.
Speaker 10: Orse winner and became one Kitty's clue. That's when it's
Speaker 10: really sent up red flags.
Speaker 3: Did she say why she wanted the case closed?
Speaker 5: She was tired of it all.
Speaker 10: That's not a good reason. And I said that won't happen.
Speaker 10: Could we find her and bring her home?
Speaker 1: It was strange, but, like Philip Williams pointed out, everyone
Speaker 1: handles grief in their own way. Beyond these idle suspicions,
Speaker 1: I have not found a lick of evidence linking Kathy
Speaker 1: to the crime. Let's get back to Robbie's house in Louisiana.
Speaker 1: He and I had been talking for about half an
Speaker 1: hour when he offered to play a taping of an
Speaker 1: old news special about Kelly's case. I was carrying my
Speaker 1: stuff into Robbie's bedroom, whereas TV is when he brought
Speaker 1: up Kathy again, let's go in here.
Speaker 5: With the big team. Okay, she declined to speak with you.
Speaker 7: Huh, well she said that, but she uh big Old
Speaker 7: TV said that there's she has engaged with some new
Speaker 7: investigator and didn't want to compromise it.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: I won't call BS on that. I talked to Kathy,
Speaker 5: she declined.
Speaker 3: And you're the first person that I've actually met with.
Speaker 6: It doesn't surprise me. She didn't want to. I can't answer. Yeah, well,
Speaker 6: and I can't answer. I can't tell you all that,
Speaker 6: you know, I'm like I said, I won't I'm won't
Speaker 6: call BS on it.
Speaker 5: She got somebody investigating.
Speaker 1: After my interview with Robbie ended and I talked to
Speaker 1: a few more people, I wanted to let Kathy know
Speaker 1: that he and others were tossing around all these allegations
Speaker 1: against her. If nothing else, Kathy should have a chance
Speaker 1: to defend herself. I couldn't find a phone number, so
Speaker 1: I wrote another letter. Three days later, I got a
Speaker 1: call from a number I didn't recognize.
Speaker 11: Hello, Wes, this is Amanda Gamble. I'm a private investigator.
Speaker 11: That is investigating Kelly Wilson's case. Ms Kathy has received
Speaker 11: another letter from you. If you could give me a
Speaker 11: call back, I would sure appreciate it. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Huh So there really was a private investigator, someone named
Speaker 1: Amanda Gamble. I called her back.
Speaker 12: I just wanted to talk to you briefly about Chilley's case.
Speaker 12: I know more than likely and you can tell me
Speaker 12: if I'm wrong that the narrative that you're going to
Speaker 12: go with is what's been published at this point. Correct.
Speaker 3: Well, no, ma'am.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to interview everyone I can to create a
Speaker 1: new narrative that's as complete and accurate as possible.
Speaker 12: What I can tell you is that we are very
Speaker 12: deep into the investigation of this case, to the point
Speaker 12: to where shortly we'll be turning everything over to the FBI.
Speaker 12: We've had to reinvestigate the case as if it's never
Speaker 12: been investigated, and it could be a huge detriment to
Speaker 12: the case at this point if we give any information
Speaker 12: not already published and out in public record. We have
Speaker 12: found new evidence and it has taken us in a
Speaker 12: completely different direction, and so we would really like to
Speaker 12: thoroughly investigate this case for justice for Kelly and to
Speaker 12: hopefully locate her body. And I feel that if we
Speaker 12: if we released any information at this time, that's going
Speaker 12: to jeopardize that. Okay, well, I completely understand that, and
Speaker 12: I would not want to want one would not want
Speaker 12: to jeopardize that either.
Speaker 3: What's your Do you.
Speaker 6: Have any any timeline for when you think you'll be
Speaker 6: ready to give that to the DA's office.
Speaker 12: We're not going to the DA's office. We're going to
Speaker 12: go straight to THEB So I would say probably three
Speaker 12: to six months at the at the most, honestly, and
Speaker 12: I'll tell you this, the the truth is going to
Speaker 12: be stranger within the fiction. What's been printed at this
Speaker 12: point is just fiction. You know. I've talked to Mss
Speaker 12: Cathy and and you know, she's just been through a
Speaker 12: lot as far as media goes. They kind of put
Speaker 12: her through the wringer for you know, thirty years ago.
Speaker 12: More than anything, it was you know, hugely published, Kelly's
Speaker 12: case was, but it just wasn't ever investigated. And you know,
Speaker 12: thirty years later, she still doesn't have her daughter till
Speaker 12: later rest. And that's our main objective is to get
Speaker 12: justice and find Kelly. We're in a very pivotal point
Speaker 12: of the investigation right now. The tithes of tongues. Anything
Speaker 12: that we say at this point that is released in
Speaker 12: any way, shake, fashion, or form, could jeopardize the case.
Speaker 12: And I just don't want that to happen. Understood completely,
Speaker 12: And I'll tell you now, the one thing with Mss
Speaker 12: Cathy is you know her trust and her you know,
Speaker 12: she has lost a lot of faith and a lot
Speaker 12: of people, and a lot of trust and a lot
Speaker 12: of people, and you know, building that rapport with her
Speaker 12: is what is most important because she is a very
Speaker 12: very gentle and good hearted lady and a mother that
Speaker 12: can't greet, that has more that cannot greet. Like I said,
Speaker 12: we have gathered new evidence and there are things that
Speaker 12: did come up thirty years ago that they never ever released,
Speaker 12: that they never further investigated. They swept it completely under
Speaker 12: the rugs and they went with their narrative. That narrative.
Speaker 12: You can see where that went. It went absolutely nowhere
Speaker 12: and was thrown out of port. You know, all of
Speaker 12: the Satanic panic was just a smoke. Strange, that's all
Speaker 12: that was. I'm just letting you know the truth is
Speaker 12: stranger than the fiction. But I think you will, you know,
Speaker 12: if you enjoy telling the truth and you enjoy getting
Speaker 12: the truth out there, I think that you will really
Speaker 12: appreciate the story. But at this point, I'm still completely
Speaker 12: covertly investigating it. And if we let anything out in
Speaker 12: any way, that's gonna blow my cover, and that could
Speaker 12: also hurt and harm people. I mean it really could.
Speaker 12: It could put people's lives in danger, and we don't
Speaker 12: want that. We don't want that at all.
Speaker 1: I found out from Amanda that she and I are
Speaker 1: basically the same age. She grew up in a little
Speaker 1: town near Gilmer, and like me, had always wondered what
Speaker 1: happened to Kelly. So when Amanda got her private investigator's license,
Speaker 1: she offered to work for Kathy pro bono. Amanda had
Speaker 1: only been on the case three months, and she'd already
Speaker 1: found so much.
Speaker 12: I'm kind of locked up. Fright train is the way
Speaker 12: I would describe myself. Once I get started on something,
Speaker 12: and once I start finding leads and once I start
Speaker 12: finding truth, I barrel through and I don't stop it.
Speaker 12: I'm trying to not let the stone in turn. And
Speaker 12: if you'll just kind of hang on with us and
Speaker 12: how hold out, I could let you know, Hey, this
Speaker 12: is six and a halfned and be there and your story.
Speaker 13: Would be.
Speaker 4: Cute.
Speaker 1: Amanda told me she'd filed a request for the case
Speaker 1: files from the Attorney General's office. I let her know
Speaker 1: I already had a copy of the AG's files at
Speaker 1: a cost of seven hundred and twenty dollars. My access
Speaker 1: to the files seemed to pique a man's interest. This
Speaker 1: job was pro bono.
Speaker 12: After all, I'm also in the process of getting stuff
Speaker 12: from the FBI.
Speaker 3: Two.
Speaker 12: We're on the same page you're with Do you have
Speaker 12: your private.
Speaker 13: Vestcut of Boston?
Speaker 3: No, I don't. I'm just a journalist.
Speaker 12: I'm trying to figure out what to do here with.
Speaker 3: Me.
Speaker 12: I'm almost tempted, and I'll be quite honest.
Speaker 9: With you.
Speaker 12: To work with you on this, but nothing can be
Speaker 12: released until it's time to take it to the FBI.
Speaker 3: I could agree to that.
Speaker 12: You and I can get together as soon as possible.
Speaker 12: We'll sit down together. I'll show you everything that I have,
Speaker 12: and we can go from there. You can do some interviews,
Speaker 12: we can do something together. I can do something, but
Speaker 12: we share what we've got, and I think we would
Speaker 12: make a bigger headway quicker, I will tell you my
Speaker 12: main suspect is without a doubt.
Speaker 1: Sorry, I promised Amanda I wouldn't give this away just yet.
Speaker 1: From here on out, I have to be pretty careful
Speaker 1: about what I disclose, not to be overly dramatic about it.
Speaker 1: All in due time, right. Ever since that first phone call,
Speaker 1: Amanda and I have been talking through everyone who might
Speaker 1: be a suspect in Kelly's disappearance. What about Joe Henry,
Speaker 1: the video store manager. Sure, Joe was the last person
Speaker 1: to see Kelly on the night she vanished, but he
Speaker 1: had an alibi. He'd gone to the grocery store and
Speaker 1: talked to a friend on the phone after getting off work. Plus,
Speaker 1: Joe just seems like a nice guy to me. Philip Williams,
Speaker 1: the local news reporter, is always quick to vouch for Joe.
Speaker 1: A month after my first trip to Gilmer, I went
Speaker 1: to see Philip again. I found him sitting in an
Speaker 1: old recliner near the front door of his furniture store
Speaker 1: right off the town square.
Speaker 2: Jo Henry up here to that Burger place?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I popped in the same day I talked to you.
Speaker 9: Joe and I had known each other a long time
Speaker 9: when all this happened. He was one of my best friends,
Speaker 9: and poor guy talking about being in the wrong place
Speaker 9: at the wrong time.
Speaker 2: Naturally he looked like a suspect because he walked out
Speaker 2: with her that night.
Speaker 9: Well, ain't no way, and hell, Joe Henry kill anybody
Speaker 9: unless it was self defense. I mean, he's just you know,
Speaker 9: never has been a violent person.
Speaker 2: He has been squeaming this year about talking about it.
Speaker 9: And one thing you're probably going to discover, and I
Speaker 9: want to explain this to you in case you do,
Speaker 9: if you don't already know, Joe has a conviction for
Speaker 9: child or audi.
Speaker 2: That happened eighteen years ago or so.
Speaker 12: Now.
Speaker 9: What happened was he had a friend who was into
Speaker 9: it heavy. Joe had told him to get rid of it,
Speaker 9: and he's certainly no pediphile. He was downloading zip, zip
Speaker 9: bounds and knees groups for this guy who is now dead.
Speaker 2: They came and got Joe's computer one day.
Speaker 9: And found ten images on there, and Joe told me
Speaker 9: that he was downloaded stuff for his Tony and couldn't
Speaker 9: see what he was download when turn that was child
Speaker 9: pornography and I traced it to his computer.
Speaker 2: So he played no contest.
Speaker 1: Philip told me that Joe's lawyer advised him to accept
Speaker 1: a plea deal even though he was innocent, to avoid
Speaker 1: the risk of a long prison sentence. On January fifth,
Speaker 1: two thousand and five, by sheer coincidence, thirteen years to
Speaker 1: the day since Kelly was last seen, Joe pleaded no
Speaker 1: contest to possession of child pornography, a third degree felony.
Speaker 1: He was given five years probation.
Speaker 9: Satisfactory completed his provide with no sweat. Of course, his
Speaker 9: picture was on TV and everything as a wonder didn't
Speaker 9: ruin his business. But in any event, I've never believed
Speaker 9: he was.
Speaker 2: Guilty, and I mean talk to people like me. I've
Speaker 2: known him a long time. Deptay, you ain't know Wayne
Speaker 2: hall So.
Speaker 9: Hendry's child less through pedophile, but I figured you might
Speaker 9: uncover this in the course of your research, and I
Speaker 9: wanted you to know what the truth story, as far
Speaker 9: as I.
Speaker 5: Believe it to be.
Speaker 1: I know Philip wants to believe the best of his friend,
Speaker 1: but just to be sure, I got my hands on
Speaker 1: his case file. One of the documents was an affidavit
Speaker 1: the cops used to secure the search warrant of Joe's
Speaker 1: house and his burger place. According to the affidavit, Joe's
Speaker 1: problems started when another guy from Gilbert named Tony Elardo
Speaker 1: got busted with five thousand images of child porn. He
Speaker 1: had it on computers, floppy disks, compact discs, and removable
Speaker 1: hard drives. When Lardo was arrested, he told the police
Speaker 1: he got most of the illegal porn from Joe. One
Speaker 1: of the hard drives even had Joe's written on it
Speaker 1: in black marker. If that wasn't bad enough, the FBI
Speaker 1: had also seized the database of a Fort Worth company
Speaker 1: that offered memberships for child porn websites. According to the affidavit,
Speaker 1: Joe Henry's name and personal information were right there in
Speaker 1: the database. The police were able to prove that Joe
Speaker 1: had even used his own credit cards to purchase the memberships.
Speaker 1: It's horrifying, and yet none of that means Joe had
Speaker 1: a hand in Kelly's disappearance. I had no idea about
Speaker 1: any of this when I first met Joe at his
Speaker 1: burger joint, But it turns out Joe had a reputation
Speaker 1: for inappropriate behavior with the high school girls who worked
Speaker 1: with him at the video store.
Speaker 14: Then that's all.
Speaker 15: Joe was the creepiest person on the face planet.
Speaker 1: This is Kelly's high school friend Lee Taylor.
Speaker 15: He just was a creeper. He gave us all the oh,
Speaker 15: you know, he just was always lurking around, always lurking around.
Speaker 15: My mom grew up with Joe, and I remember her
Speaker 15: being uneasy about us, all of us girls hanging out
Speaker 15: up there. All my friends were working at the movie store,
Speaker 15: and I wanted to work at the movie store with
Speaker 15: all my friends, and she would not let me. My
Speaker 15: mother would not. She was like, I don't want you
Speaker 15: around him.
Speaker 1: Joe has even admitted that he wants propositioned Kelly. He
Speaker 1: was in his mid thirties and she was seventeen. Although
Speaker 1: Joe has always maintained that he offered her one thousand
Speaker 1: dollars for sex as a joke.
Speaker 15: I want to say, like one thousand dollars I have
Speaker 15: sex with him or something, you know, And in nineteen
Speaker 15: ninety one, one thousand dollars was a lot of money,
Speaker 15: and you know, and I remember we would tell her
Speaker 15: you need to watch out for her. He is a
Speaker 15: total fucking creepster. Right grows yup and she's like, oh,
Speaker 15: I know he's harmless. Do you remember her staying one
Speaker 15: time like, oh, he's tried to get me to be
Speaker 15: with him or something like that.
Speaker 1: Joe has also admitted that he pulled down Kelly's sweatpants
Speaker 1: another time when he was trying to give her a wedgie.
Speaker 1: To be honest, this is shocking to me, but I
Speaker 1: remember how a lot of older men acted around teenage
Speaker 1: girls when I was younger. Other grown ups just kind
Speaker 1: of turned a blind eye to these men, bosses, teachers,
Speaker 1: church leaders. It was innocent flirting till it wasn't. Here's
Speaker 1: Kelly's other friend, Michelle, the one who lived with Kelly's
Speaker 1: family after she had a baby during their junior year.
Speaker 14: So many things were normalized, Like I remember in high
Speaker 14: school there were kids sleeping with coaches. I didn't get
Speaker 14: into that, but a lot of girls did. So I
Speaker 14: just feel like there was something going on in the
Speaker 14: community that we didn't know about, and it was making
Speaker 14: it too acceptable. And when you're that age, when you're
Speaker 14: fifteen or six, I have three daughters, When you're that age,
Speaker 14: you can taking advantage of so easily, and things can
Speaker 14: be normalized so quickly that you feel like those type
Speaker 14: of things are okay when they're not and you don't
Speaker 14: realize you're being victimized. That's what's very frustrating to me
Speaker 14: because I feel like that was going on, so it
Speaker 14: was different and you didn't have social media. People weren't blasted,
Speaker 14: and I feel like a lot of these older people
Speaker 14: were protected, like they just didn't believe young girls very much,
Speaker 14: you know, And that's why it's really hard for young
Speaker 14: girls to come forward because says, well, they were intoxicated,
Speaker 14: so they didn't know what they were doing, so they
Speaker 14: agreed to it. They shouldn't have been wearing a skirt
Speaker 14: that short, they asked for it. There's so many things
Speaker 14: that if a young girl comes forward, she even starts
Speaker 14: to have her own friends or you know, people at
Speaker 14: school saying, well, she's a slut anyway, you know, she's
Speaker 14: always sleeping around, and so it makes it very very
Speaker 14: hard for a young female to ever come forward because
Speaker 14: they start being criticized. And I don't care how big
Speaker 14: of a slut you are, you don't deserve to be
Speaker 14: taken advantage of. You don't deserve to be raped.
Speaker 1: During their junior year, when Michelle was still living with
Speaker 1: Kelly's family, There was a night that Kelly didn't come home.
Speaker 14: Miss Cathy was panicking and had me calling everybody. But
Speaker 14: I was making phone calls and calling people I knew
Speaker 14: to call, which was probably younger people.
Speaker 13: Have you seen Kelly's Kelly with you? Have you seen her?
Speaker 14: And I was doing all of those things and pacing,
Speaker 14: you know, rather in the living room or in the kitchen.
Speaker 14: It was dark outside, and I saw carlight, and when
Speaker 14: I saw car lights, got outside.
Speaker 13: But by the time I got outside.
Speaker 14: And got down the steps, they were getting back in
Speaker 14: the car pulling off.
Speaker 13: So I did.
Speaker 14: My focus was on Kelly, not on the car, because
Speaker 14: I can tell she needed assistance. So I hollered for
Speaker 14: Miss Kathy and I ran out there to get her.
Speaker 14: So and I know it was somebody older dropping her off.
Speaker 14: She was dressed in a long black gown and that
Speaker 14: long blonde hair was tousled up on her head. I
Speaker 14: mean she looked thirty and they dropped her off so
Speaker 14: and she wasn't coherent. They propped her up against the fence.
Speaker 14: But you've probably seen her dealt with the intoxicated person,
Speaker 14: whether it's alcohol or drug use, whatever it is. She
Speaker 14: wasn't like a sleep, passed out, but just wasn't with it,
Speaker 14: you know what I mean. She told me the next
Speaker 14: day that she couldn't remember anything, and I just I
Speaker 14: didn't believe her.
Speaker 13: But I didn't press her either.
Speaker 14: I mean, she had done so much for me if
Speaker 14: she'd made a mistake, I just really didn't want to
Speaker 14: hold her feet to the fire. But I do wish
Speaker 14: now i'd ask more questions. I was too young to
Speaker 14: know to ask more questions, and it drives me nuts
Speaker 14: because I feel like I could have found out a
Speaker 14: lot more what was going on with her because I
Speaker 14: had no idea what she had stepped off into.
Speaker 1: Michelle is being hard on herself. Afterward, she tried to
Speaker 1: find out who the car belonged to.
Speaker 13: It was a black luxury car.
Speaker 14: I asked around at school, does anybody know whose car
Speaker 14: this is?
Speaker 1: Michelle doesn't want to reveal anything more about the car,
Speaker 1: at least not yet. Just to be clear, since we
Speaker 1: mentioned him a minute ago, Joe Henry did not have
Speaker 1: a black luxury car. He drove a pickup truck. This
Speaker 1: was someone else. And there was this one dude, Clint,
Speaker 1: who was pushing thirty when he met Kelly during her
Speaker 1: junior year. At the time, Kelly had an after school
Speaker 1: job at a buffet restaurant. How did you meet Kelly?
Speaker 16: Through my youngest sister. They worked together at the Golden
Speaker 16: Crowle there in Gilmourt. I was working out of town
Speaker 16: pipeline and stuff. I'd come in on the weekends occasionally,
Speaker 16: and we had a little bonfire party one night at
Speaker 16: my mom and dad's house. She was a young Preddie
Speaker 16: Blunt had a girl. We probably didn't, you know, I
Speaker 16: don't even want to call it dating, because I mean
Speaker 16: I was going all the time. It probably wasn't several
Speaker 16: times that I seen her.
Speaker 3: Where would you all go?
Speaker 16: Hell, I don't remember it's going anywhere. She would come
Speaker 16: out to the house. I'd already drove fourteen hours to
Speaker 16: come home, and usually it was just you know, uh,
Speaker 16: drink alcohol and do what folks do you know? It's
Speaker 16: kind of a deal. I made good money. I could
Speaker 16: come in for a job and give her a hundred
Speaker 16: dollars bills, send her the mall.
Speaker 5: She was a happy girl.
Speaker 16: Six times in three months is all I ever seen her.
Speaker 16: And I hadn't seen her in probably nine months when
Speaker 16: she disappeared. Hell, I'd already got red. She was a
Speaker 16: sweet girl. Well, like I say, you know, I was
Speaker 16: older than her and that was probably just a flinging
Speaker 16: deal for her or something other, just because you know,
Speaker 16: I had one hundred dollars bills in my pocket or something.
Speaker 3: Did she could you tell? Did she kind of expect
Speaker 3: that or was it.
Speaker 16: Just I No, No, she didn't ask me for money
Speaker 16: at all. I would just say, hey, here's a hunter,
Speaker 16: go dropping because I had plenty.
Speaker 1: The way Clint puts it, Kelly was casual fun on
Speaker 1: the rare occasions he was back in town from work.
Speaker 1: But her friend Michelle remembers Kelly taking their relationship pretty seriously.
Speaker 14: She was dating him when I moved in with her,
Speaker 14: and when my parents found out that she was dating him,
Speaker 14: they talked to Miss Kathy, and Miss Kathy made her
Speaker 14: break up with me. She spent two days in that
Speaker 14: bedroom balling and squalling over that. Whatever Kelly was doing
Speaker 14: was normalized. I don't feel like she thought she was
Speaker 14: being taken advantage of. I think what she was doing
Speaker 14: she felt like it.
Speaker 13: It was okay.
Speaker 1: Like Clint said, he was already married by the time
Speaker 1: Kelly went missing. The night Kelly disappeared Clint and his
Speaker 1: wife were competing in an all night bingo tournament at
Speaker 1: their church. It's pretty clear he had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with Kelly's disappearance. The other day, I tried to stop
Speaker 1: by Joe's place. There was a note on the window
Speaker 1: his burger joint was closed due to a health issue.
Speaker 1: If he was really sick, I didn't want to bother him,
Speaker 1: but I also needed to ask him some difficult questions.
Speaker 1: So I looked up Joe's home address and knocked on
Speaker 1: his door.
Speaker 5: Hey, where's come yet?
Speaker 1: Yes, sir, man, i've been seeing I heard that.
Speaker 5: What's wrong?
Speaker 8: I've got to think out acolasia and it's a man.
Speaker 3: It just got me down. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: I almost didn't recognize Joe. He was in a bathrobe,
Speaker 1: skin and bone. It had been a few months since
Speaker 1: I saw him last, but he looked like he'd aged
Speaker 1: twenty years.
Speaker 3: Do you think you're going to be on the mend?
Speaker 3: Are you feeling any better at all? Well, I'm feeling better.
Speaker 4: I lost I went down from two ten to nine.
Speaker 3: Well, I can tell you're very slim now.
Speaker 2: And I've lost all my strength on my muscle mass.
Speaker 2: I was eating supper one night and the food wouldn't
Speaker 2: go down.
Speaker 8: It hung right here, and then I started throwing up.
Speaker 2: For two months.
Speaker 1: It took his doctors a long time to figure out
Speaker 1: what was wrong. Eventually they gave Joe some botox injections
Speaker 1: in his stomach.
Speaker 8: Well, then about three hours, I was starting to get
Speaker 8: appetite back, and I'm I'm eating pretty good now, but
Speaker 8: I just have lost all my strength and I don't
Speaker 8: even know if I'm gonna be able to go back
Speaker 8: to work.
Speaker 3: So I told everyone that.
Speaker 17: I haven't made a decision on that yet, but if
Speaker 17: I don't get back to where I need to be,
Speaker 17: then there's no way I can work.
Speaker 1: Joe says he will probably wait till next year to
Speaker 1: see if he is well enough to reopen the burger joint.
Speaker 1: If not, he'll probably have to sell it and retire.
Speaker 17: My customers say that if I'm not there, or if
Speaker 17: I'm not cooking them, it's not.
Speaker 1: Not kind of hamburg Of course, I hadn't come to
Speaker 1: Joe's house to ask him about Hamburgers this difficult question.
Speaker 3: But the thousand dollars.
Speaker 4: Oh yes, that was totally out of context. That was
Speaker 4: just some horseplay that was not definitely not serious, no,
Speaker 4: just you know, just saying things you shouldn't absolutely not.
Speaker 4: But yeah, they blew that all out of out of whack.
Speaker 4: But that was horseplay. That and just saying things that
Speaker 4: you shouldn't do. But now that was that was certainly
Speaker 4: not done, but taken out of context as to what
Speaker 4: it was, what was saying it.
Speaker 1: Joe said he'd earned a thousand dollars from his side
Speaker 1: hustle repairing BCRs. Kelly was taking the money out of
Speaker 1: the cash drawer when Joe made the joke. He thinks
Speaker 1: the customer overheard him.
Speaker 4: It is just jumped, very embarrassing after that came out,
Speaker 4: but it was it was I assure he was just
Speaker 4: junk top. Sam Founs was brought up.
Speaker 12: That was.
Speaker 3: I think it was like pulling pulling up, Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: right that way. It was what's the word?
Speaker 4: What's what are they call when you pull your pants up?
Speaker 4: Aggie Weggie, Well again that was, you know, one of
Speaker 4: those things. And she jumped and I came down and
Speaker 4: I didn't go look and I'm like, oh sorry, you.
Speaker 3: Know, and that was totally wrong.
Speaker 4: She would have been doing that kind of stuff just
Speaker 4: for us playing. But that was what that was a past.
Speaker 1: I pressed Joe on a few other things. If he
Speaker 1: knew about Kelly seeing older men, maybe with money changing hands,
Speaker 1: if he'd heard where her body might be buried, a
Speaker 1: few other rumors I'd heard around town. Joe didn't seem
Speaker 1: to know anything more than what he'd already told me.
Speaker 1: After a while, I got up to leave. Joe gave
Speaker 1: me a plastic grocery bag so I could gather some
Speaker 1: pears from the tree in his front yard.
Speaker 4: Always come by anytime you want too, Yes, sir, I'm always.
Speaker 5: Here at now.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, keep feeling better, keep eating well, I'm gonna keep
Speaker 1: eat that ice cream.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna eat all ice cream on the handle.
Speaker 1: As I've mentioned before, police eliminated Joe as a suspect
Speaker 1: a long time ago. There are other leads to follow
Speaker 1: people to interview. One interesting thing that Amanda, the private
Speaker 1: investigator told me involves Kelly's friend group. They were teenage
Speaker 1: girls when Kelly disappeared in nineteen ninety two. Now they're moms,
Speaker 1: some with teenagers of their own. Earlier this year, around
Speaker 1: the thirtieth anniversary of Kelly's disappearance, Kelly's friends got back
Speaker 1: together to talk trade notes. What do you remember? What
Speaker 1: did you tell police?
Speaker 14: That they ignored and all of us girls talked about it,
Speaker 14: and none of us were really involved in the search.
Speaker 14: They didn't involve this. I didn't want involvement from her friends,
Speaker 14: and we were young and weren't aggressive enough to say, hey,
Speaker 14: what's going on. We were really depending on the adults
Speaker 14: in the community to do what needed to be done.
Speaker 1: For whatever reason, the adults weren't that interested in what
Speaker 1: the girls knew. On top of that, back then, Michelle
Speaker 1: had another reason to keep her distance from the case,
Speaker 1: a warning from her own mom and stepdad.
Speaker 16: Yeah.
Speaker 14: One of the things that was very alarming to me
Speaker 14: is that, you know, my parents were very involved in
Speaker 14: a different world, and they sat me and my best
Speaker 14: friend down after she was gone and we had gone
Speaker 14: through all the questions and did everything we were supposed
Speaker 14: to do. They sat us down then said, now that
Speaker 14: you've you know, gone through all this, don't talk to
Speaker 14: anybody else, don't talk to investigators, don't talk to the media.
Speaker 14: I think they are more concerned with the media. They said,
Speaker 14: you really need to stay quiet, and you need to
Speaker 14: stay out of everything, because this has nothing to do
Speaker 14: with the teenagers. They're looking at it has to do
Speaker 14: with higher ups in the community. And my stepdad put
Speaker 14: the fear of God in us. He said, your life
Speaker 14: will be in grave danger if you get too involved
Speaker 14: in this case.
Speaker 1: We get into that next time on Deviletown.
Speaker 18: I'm just gonna say it. There was a lot of
Speaker 18: sexual payments made to Killy. We are pretty confident that
Speaker 18: she was pregnant. We're looking at wereking some bad people.
Speaker 18: I mean, with that a doubt and if we're not careful,
Speaker 18: we could have lives.
Speaker 2: And thank you.
Speaker 1: Deviltown is a production of Imperative Entertainment. It was written
Speaker 1: and created by me Wes Ferguson. Executive producer is Jason Hoak.
Speaker 1: Audio engineering and editing by Shane Freeman and Jason Hoak.
Speaker 1: Original score is by Robert Ellis. Recording by Austin Sissler
Speaker 1: at Eastside Studios. If you like the show, leave a
Speaker 1: review and don't forget to tell your friends thanks for listening.