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Speaker 6: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 6: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 6: written about them Geese, Bundy, Dahmer.
Speaker 3: The Nightstalker DTK.
Speaker 6: Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 6: and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with
Speaker 6: your host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 7: Good Evening. On August thirty first, nineteen seventy two, Helen Hanks,
Speaker 7: a pretty thirty four year old mother of three, disappeared
Speaker 7: from her place of employment at Willcox Advertising in Valdosta, Georgia.
Speaker 7: After a brief investigation by local and state authorities, the
Speaker 7: case went In the fall of nineteen eighty, a farmer
Speaker 7: clearing a field south of town discovered a buried object,
Speaker 7: a box containing the dismembered remains of the missing woman.
Speaker 7: After several months of investigation, police arrested Foxy Wilcox, his son,
Speaker 7: Keller Wilcox, and two long term African American employees of
Speaker 7: Wilcox Advertising. Keller was charged with Hank's murder and the
Speaker 7: others with concealing a death. The Wilcoxes were members of
Speaker 7: a prominent and wealthy Valdosta family. To defend their case,
Speaker 7: they hired famed defense attorney Bobby Lee Cook. Keller Wilcox's
Speaker 7: murder trial in January nineteen eighty two pitted Cook against
Speaker 7: a local prosecution team led by District Attorney Lamar Cole.
Speaker 7: The case against Wilcox was entirely circumstantial, making the outcome uncertain.
Speaker 7: After a trial marked by controversy and conflicting testimony, Wilcox
Speaker 7: was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, all the
Speaker 7: while proclaiming his innocence. In nineteen eighty five, he was
Speaker 7: freed by a federal judge based primarily on his the
Speaker 7: harsh interrogation of the black witnesses. The true story of
Speaker 7: this horrific murder has all the elements of a work
Speaker 7: of suspense fiction. Money, power, sex, race, and the haves
Speaker 7: versus the have nots. Multiple lives were forever changed. The
Speaker 7: outcome would have been totally different if the box had
Speaker 7: been buried only six inches deeper. The book that we're
Speaker 7: featuring this evening is six inches deeper, The Disappearance of
Speaker 7: Helen Hanks with my special guest author William Rowlings. Welcome
Speaker 7: to the program, and thank you very much for this interview.
Speaker 4: William Rowlings, it's my pleasure to be here. Thank you
Speaker 4: for asking me.
Speaker 7: Thank you so much, and congratulations on this book.
Speaker 3: I've just discovered it.
Speaker 7: As I mentioned speaking to you beforehand, this book was
Speaker 7: released in twenty twenty, but I've just discovered your work.
Speaker 7: And congratulations on this incredible Booklet's let's get right to Valdosta, Georgia.
Speaker 7: Maybe you can just tell us where this is. You
Speaker 7: say it's about fifteen miles to the south of the
Speaker 7: Florida state line. But tell us a little bit about
Speaker 7: Valdosta and the one person and a person named Ernest
Speaker 7: Keller will Cox, Sr. And how he came to be
Speaker 7: in the area and his background.
Speaker 4: Valdosta, Georgia is a town of perhaps forty thousand or
Speaker 4: so people in the extreme south of the site of Georgia.
Speaker 4: It's a part of the state that historically was nothing
Speaker 4: but great pine forest and later on became famous turpentine production.
Speaker 4: And in fact, most of this area is probably where
Speaker 4: they're on the vine because there's not a lot of industry.
Speaker 4: There's not a lot of agriculture there now. But Valdosta
Speaker 4: is different in the fact that the interstate in ninety
Speaker 4: five was put through in the nineteen sixties and it
Speaker 4: sort of became a regional center, sort of an island
Speaker 4: of urbanity in the middle of rurality to you, if
Speaker 4: I can use that term, and a lot of it's
Speaker 4: sort of the dominant town in the area. The Wilcoxes
Speaker 4: were there since the early part of the night of
Speaker 4: the twentieth century. Of the grandfather of Keller Wilcox, who
Speaker 4: was the prime person in this saga, was an attorney,
Speaker 4: as was his father, Foxy. They did well business wise
Speaker 4: and married well over the years, and so by the
Speaker 4: time this tale took place, they were a very well
Speaker 4: respected family because of their tenures. Things in the South
Speaker 4: have less to do with money than they do with
Speaker 4: family and social connections. But also they made a good
Speaker 4: bit of money and were fairly wealthy. They were, as
Speaker 4: I say in the book, I think the Krim dela
Speaker 4: Krim of the South Ast society.
Speaker 7: You talk about Foxy Wilcox being having a background with
Speaker 7: his grandfather being an attorney and his father, but you
Speaker 7: say that he soon lost interest in the law. Tell
Speaker 7: us about what his new interest was.
Speaker 4: To get this straight. The person eventually indicted most prominent
Speaker 4: with this murder was Keller Wilcox, who was born in
Speaker 4: nineteen fifty. His father, Foxy Wilcox, was an attorney who
Speaker 4: liked many attorneys over the years, may turn to something else,
Speaker 4: and he became very successful in the outdoor advertising business,
Speaker 4: and that's where much of the income came from. Keller,
Speaker 4: on the other hand, was at the time of this
Speaker 4: story began, was just in the midst of college, He
Speaker 4: had just gotten married, was a younger, younger man. He
Speaker 4: was the only child of his two parents, and certainly
Speaker 4: he was he had before him a bright future if
Speaker 4: he simply maintained that which he would inherit. So that
Speaker 4: sort of sets the background for what happened in August
Speaker 4: nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 7: You say there were prominent people in this community, but
Speaker 7: tell us a little bit more about this advertising company
Speaker 7: and its employees and what they actually did and some
Speaker 7: of the challenges or the real challenge that faced them
Speaker 7: in nineteen eighty to back.
Speaker 4: Up, outdoor advertising means basically billboards, and as you are
Speaker 4: probably aware, billboards are everywhere. Prior to the administration of
Speaker 4: London Johnson in the late nineteen sixties, they were unregulated
Speaker 4: more or less in federal highways, and the company, in fact,
Speaker 4: the entire industry, a billboard industry, faced a lot of
Speaker 4: challenges about getting their billboards up, but they did well.
Speaker 4: They did well, and both Foxy, the father and Keller
Speaker 4: and the son they've actually had, both had the same name,
Speaker 4: which is Ernest Keller Wilcox. They did quite well in
Speaker 4: the business and had markets all across South Georgia and
Speaker 4: North Florida. Things were really doing well. Their employees consisted
Speaker 4: of the father and son in the office and they
Speaker 4: would have a secretary perhaps plus a few salesman, but
Speaker 4: the main flute of their employees were persons who put
Speaker 4: up and took down the billboards. So these were all
Speaker 4: African American and that fact came into play later in
Speaker 4: the story.
Speaker 7: Now you talk about this business that they had, and
Speaker 7: they had a secretary that joined in nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 7: the same time that the same year that Keller joined
Speaker 7: his father in this company as a salesman and marketing.
Speaker 7: So tell us a little bit about Helen Griffin.
Speaker 4: Helen Griffin Hanks. She was married to a man named
Speaker 4: James Nykes, who was thirty four years old in nineteen
Speaker 4: seventy seventy two. She was the mother of three children.
Speaker 4: She had worked a very apparently very intelligent lady. From
Speaker 4: all that I had been able to find out, she
Speaker 4: had previously worked for another timber company there in Valdosta,
Speaker 4: but had come to work early in nineteen seventy two
Speaker 4: boy twenty percent rais, giving her a weekly salary of
Speaker 4: one hundred and twenty dollars per week. Her husband, James Hanks,
Speaker 4: was a prison guard making a modest salary, and between
Speaker 4: the two of them they were raising three children and
Speaker 4: probably struggling a bit. But she was saying to be
Speaker 4: very intelligent, very hard working, and very honest, assault of
Speaker 4: the earth kind of person who was in a position
Speaker 4: of secretary for this company.
Speaker 7: Tell us about the situation with Keller in terms of
Speaker 7: his marital status.
Speaker 4: Keller had been going to college at Valdosta College at
Speaker 4: the time it's now Valdosta State University. But he started
Speaker 4: off college and early on had wanted to go to
Speaker 4: medical students supposedly, but that didn't pad out, and actually
Speaker 4: after about in his third year of college, he actually
Speaker 4: dropped out and went to work for his fall. The
Speaker 4: full time, he had been going out with a girl
Speaker 4: named Jean King as Ja and King, and they were
Speaker 4: married in around the first of August nineteen seventy two. Incidentally,
Speaker 4: Jean's father, Willard King, at that time was working part
Speaker 4: time for Wilcox out in No Advertising Is doing various
Speaker 4: mechanic type of jobs and other related He would later
Speaker 4: become a full time employee of the company, but at
Speaker 4: the time he was working part time. So in August
Speaker 4: nineteen seventy two, Kerol Wilcox was a uly wit and
Speaker 4: things were apparently going f until one day.
Speaker 7: You want to talk about the Neil Johannson and merit,
Speaker 7: the switch up that happened in the marital life of
Speaker 7: these two couples, Well, I.
Speaker 4: Can that happens later on, sort of happens a bit
Speaker 4: later on in the story. He and Jean were a
Speaker 4: member of a social group and there was another fellow
Speaker 4: named Neil Johansson, who all reports was very handsome. Believe
Speaker 4: Joehansson was a very handsome police officer. He was married,
Speaker 4: as was Keller, and they ran in a social group together.
Speaker 4: A few years later, it turned out that both Jean
Speaker 4: Keller's wife and Neil Johansson's wife file for divorce within
Speaker 4: a few days of one another, and their divorces were
Speaker 4: granted within a few days of one another. A few
Speaker 4: weeks later later Onwned Jean married Neil Johansson and Keller
Speaker 4: was single. As things would go on, a few years later,
Speaker 4: Neil Johansson died under what I was there suspicious circumstances
Speaker 4: and was said to have died from autoerotic self expiciation.
Speaker 4: At least that was the consensus of the caroner and
Speaker 4: others who examined the situation at the time. Keller later
Speaker 4: went on to marry another lady and named Sonia, and
Speaker 4: he got married around the first of November nineteen eighty,
Speaker 4: so it had been his marriage to Jane was fairly
Speaker 4: short lived, and by nineteen eighty, which is a critical
Speaker 4: year in the story, he was he'd remarried for a
Speaker 4: second time. He'd remarried for a second he'd married for
Speaker 4: a second sex.
Speaker 7: I'm sorry, let's go back, and so let's go back
Speaker 7: to Lamar Advertising, and we talked about the situation where
Speaker 7: things were changing with the Beautification Act, but also that
Speaker 7: Lamar Advertising was offering accounting services to small companies like
Speaker 7: Wilcox Advertising. So on August twenty ninth, tell us about
Speaker 7: this plan and the plan from the for the company
Speaker 7: to meet in Atlanta with Foxy and Keller.
Speaker 4: It's kind of hard to imagine today, but back in
Speaker 4: the dark ages before computers, I guess we've all lived
Speaker 4: through those books were being kept by hand. But the
Speaker 4: nineteen nineties and the years that following were certainly transitioned
Speaker 4: when everyone moved from handwritten bookkeeping to a computerized bookkeeping.
Speaker 4: Wilcox Advertising recognized that it needed to move up in
Speaker 4: the world, so they had an affailiation agreement with Lamar
Speaker 4: Outdoor Advertising, which is still well known company in that field.
Speaker 8: Own.
Speaker 4: I believe it was August twenty ninth, nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 4: Keller and his father went to Atlanta, and you have
Speaker 4: to understand that's to the northern part of the state
Speaker 4: of Georgia. They drove to Atlanta and met with others,
Speaker 4: including the executives of the Lamar Advertising company. They stayed
Speaker 4: there for a couple of days and return back to
Speaker 4: Valdosta on the thirty first of office, arriving sometime that afternoon,
Speaker 4: and that the time of their arrival became a cryptical
Speaker 4: figure later.
Speaker 7: Now this is according to Foxy and Keller about their
Speaker 7: time arriving back from this trip back to the office.
Speaker 7: What do they observe, what do they report? How does
Speaker 7: the police find out about what happens? Tell us what
Speaker 7: happened soon as they get back to this office according
Speaker 7: to them.
Speaker 4: Well, according to them, they got back to the office,
Speaker 4: and the time actually varying, as they were several times
Speaker 4: that they sent that guy back to the office. But
Speaker 4: when they got there, it was apparently around four point
Speaker 4: thirty by the in between four and four thirty by
Speaker 4: the initial report. I want to make it clear. They
Speaker 4: came up and Helen Hanks, the secretary of her car
Speaker 4: was in the parking lot. The keys were in the ignition.
Speaker 4: They opened the office door, which was unlocked. The radio
Speaker 4: was playing, the lights were on, and they called for
Speaker 4: their secretary, Helen. She was not there. They said, oh,
Speaker 4: she must be in the restroom. That waited a few
Speaker 4: minutes and knocked on the door. She wasn't there. They
Speaker 4: searched the place according to the history that was given,
Speaker 4: and low and old she was gone. There was no
Speaker 4: indications to where she went and what happened. So they
Speaker 4: called the police. The police arrived perhaps around five point
Speaker 4: thirty or thereabouts. Again, there's some slight controversy. They made
Speaker 4: a fairly perfunctory investigation of the scene and they left
Speaker 4: thereafter the time that they left was a police left
Speaker 4: was an issue of controversy. The police said about six thirty.
Speaker 4: Others said perhaps his latest eight o'clock. That those numbers
Speaker 4: become important later on the story. As I noted, Keller
Speaker 4: had been married to Gene King for only about three weeks,
Speaker 4: and that night there was a party being given to
Speaker 4: the newlyweds at an elegant little country resort named Ocean Pond, right,
Speaker 4: and they would do there at seven o'clock. Well, for
Speaker 4: whatever reason they could did not arrive at that time.
Speaker 4: They called us and they'd be late, and didn't arrive
Speaker 4: until nine o'clock. They were apparently checking on the missing secretary.
Speaker 7: Now you talk about calling his wife, calling his wife
Speaker 7: Jean and telling her that he got in at a
Speaker 7: certain time, but that was around five o'clock. What did
Speaker 7: he say, and this is important later, what time did
Speaker 7: he say that he came in and what did he
Speaker 7: tell her at five o'clock regarding this Ocean Pond thing
Speaker 7: that he was supposed to attend on their behalf.
Speaker 4: Well, he told his wife initially that he got in
Speaker 4: at three point fifteen three point thirty in the afternoon. Later,
Speaker 4: as things would sort out, there was the authorities could
Speaker 4: establish a fairly good timeline as to when they left
Speaker 4: Atlanta and so forth, and so so that that seems
Speaker 4: like it would have been correct later when there were
Speaker 4: conversations with authorities. That time became later, perhaps four thirty.
Speaker 4: There's a difference of an hour hour and a half
Speaker 4: there as to when they actually arrived. Apparently they were
Speaker 4: in one car. They went to I believe the Elder
Speaker 4: will Cox's house. Fox's house, dropped him off, went back
Speaker 4: to the office, and then supposedly he the Elder will
Speaker 4: Cox Foxy came down to check on the situation. The party,
Speaker 4: which they knew the Worged were due to attend, they
Speaker 4: should have, of course gone together. This was a big deal,
Speaker 4: and as I said, these were these were prominent members
Speaker 4: of the community, and the party was sponsored by some
Speaker 4: other prominent members of the community. It was a social
Speaker 4: event and one that you would not dare be late to.
Speaker 4: And yet neither Foxy nor his were their own time.
Speaker 4: They both showed up together about nine o'clock in the evening.
Speaker 4: He told his wife that she should go ahead because
Speaker 4: he would be late. He had to work about how
Speaker 4: to see what was going on with the mission secretary.
Speaker 7: Now we didn't talk about that. Keller calls Helen Hanks,
Speaker 7: her husband, right, and then he comes to the office.
Speaker 7: What does he observe? What does he say he saw?
Speaker 4: Well, he was, as noted, a prism guard and he
Speaker 4: had gotten off work as our call, around four point
Speaker 4: thirty and by the time he got home it was
Speaker 4: around five. And it's about that time our little laughter
Speaker 4: when Keller called him and said Helen is missing. We
Speaker 4: don't know where she is. He lived in a city
Speaker 4: of Morgan, which would have taken him perhaps twenty twenty
Speaker 4: five minutes to get to her place of employment. And
Speaker 4: when he arrived, Keller was there and two policemen or
Speaker 4: three policemen eventually were there. He searched about, didn't find
Speaker 4: his wife. The interesting thing is that when he walked
Speaker 4: into the door, he observed are going through Helen's pocketbook
Speaker 4: looking for some keys. You have to understand that she
Speaker 4: was the secretary or I guess the words today would
Speaker 4: be the executive assistant, and she held the keys to
Speaker 4: such things as the gas tank when they used to
Speaker 4: gas up the trucks, and he handed the pocketbook to
Speaker 4: Helen's husband, James Hanks, and he fished around and found
Speaker 4: us out of keys and handed them back to Keller.
Speaker 4: These were apparently the keys to the lock on the
Speaker 4: gas pump, right, and Keller made the unusual statement which
Speaker 4: Hanks remembers in that Keller said, quote, she won't be
Speaker 4: needing these anymore. Quote at least that's what James Hanks,
Speaker 4: her husband said. He his words were wow.
Speaker 7: Now there is a assistant police chief, Lois Arnold, and
Speaker 7: he also serves as the department's investigative officer. He went
Speaker 7: to the will Cox advertising office a little bit later
Speaker 7: tell us what he observes and some of the things
Speaker 7: that right away or said to the media by police.
Speaker 4: Well, he went and looked around the office and did
Speaker 4: some I can use the word light interviewing, in my opinion,
Speaker 4: didn't really take didn't seem to take the case that seriously,
Speaker 4: and remarked fairly privately that she had probably run off
Speaker 4: with another man or something like this, which if you
Speaker 4: once you got to know the lady, it would have
Speaker 4: been totally foreign. Right, And so the case was pretty
Speaker 4: pretty much dismissed the case and the importance to the case. Oh,
Speaker 4: she's just gone, she'll come back. She got tired of
Speaker 4: living with her husband and ran off with someone else,
Speaker 4: and there's no evidence west.
Speaker 7: Of There were a couple of will Cox employees interviewed, though,
Speaker 7: and one was Jerry Davis and another one was John Goodman.
Speaker 7: Jerry Davis being one of the last people supposedly to
Speaker 7: have seen Helen Hanks. So what does he have to
Speaker 7: say in terms of what he saw.
Speaker 4: Well, he said that there had been interaction between Keller
Speaker 4: and Helen, and that is Keller had grabbed Helen by
Speaker 4: her rear end and she had turned around and slapped
Speaker 4: him and tried to slap him, and apparently he had
Speaker 4: been sexually harassing her. It was also said that Keller
Speaker 4: had referred to her using foul words and spoken badly
Speaker 4: about her, and something Keller later denied. But these were
Speaker 4: sort of unbiased reports that came along early in the case,
Speaker 4: before anybody knew what the fate of Helen Heights would
Speaker 4: eventually be, and so there was no doubt that there
Speaker 4: was evidence of sexual harassment there with Keller approaching Helen,
Speaker 4: despite the fact you'd only been married three weeks.
Speaker 7: Now, you say that was confirmed by a second employee,
Speaker 7: John Goodman, but also that there was confirmation of something
Speaker 7: else in terms of her dissatisfaction. What else was that?
Speaker 4: Yes, there was there were other It would come out
Speaker 4: later that she had spoken to at least two other
Speaker 4: female saying that she was being sexually harassed. Number one,
Speaker 4: number two in her pocketbook, which was still there in abandoned.
Speaker 4: There were applications for employment saying that she would be
Speaker 4: available to go to work on October first, which basically
Speaker 4: was one month for her disappearance. She intended to quit
Speaker 4: her job. She had expressed concern about several things, and
Speaker 4: this seemed to be quite well documented and at least
Speaker 4: up It came up later in the investigation, but there
Speaker 4: was no doubt that something had been going on there
Speaker 4: that had driven this woman to quit a job that
Speaker 4: she'd only had about eight or nine months. And see
Speaker 4: other employment.
Speaker 7: Now, there was a person named Willard King, and this
Speaker 7: is Keller's new father in law of just a few weeks,
Speaker 7: and he's a full time employee of Pepsicola Biling Company
Speaker 7: in Cordel. And we hadn't mentioned, but part of that
Speaker 7: trip that they had gone on. There was a stop
Speaker 7: in Cordel, tell us about Willard King and the Discovery remix.
Speaker 4: Well, and you know down here at South we pronounced
Speaker 4: things different. It's actually cordial, thank you. But he was
Speaker 4: working in Cordel, and on their way back from Atlanta,
Speaker 4: they stopped and met him, and he gave a timeline
Speaker 4: as approximate time as to when they left that city
Speaker 4: and headed to south of Valdosta. There was its I
Speaker 4: seventy five is Expressway, and that became critical later on
Speaker 4: in establishing the timeline as to when they actually got there.
Speaker 4: It's pretty it's a pretty much straight road without any
Speaker 4: any deviations, and so you could accurately calculate the rate
Speaker 4: of speed, which in those days was pretty fast, and
Speaker 4: that was important. The other thing was that he would
Speaker 4: come in on the weekends working part time at Wilcox's
Speaker 4: Advertising and do various repair work. And when he came
Speaker 4: in a few days after Helen's disappearance, he noticed that
Speaker 4: one of the boxes that he normally sent his chest
Speaker 4: was missing. When I say boxes, this advertising company had
Speaker 4: large boxes that measured perhaps four feet long, two feet
Speaker 4: wide two feet high that were covered with galvanized metal
Speaker 4: that were designed to withstand heavy use, and those were
Speaker 4: where the folded pieces of paper that would eventually put
Speaker 4: up a buildable, which were stored and carried. He noticed
Speaker 4: that a box was missing. In fact, he duly reported
Speaker 4: this to Keller, and Keller, who was sort of in
Speaker 4: charge of things at this point, sort of went back
Speaker 4: and forth and he said, well, I guess we should
Speaker 4: report that to the police. So he called up the
Speaker 4: police investigator that we discussed a moment ago. He came
Speaker 4: to investigator, came around, looked at it and said, yeah,
Speaker 4: well whatever, and didn't even make a note of it.
Speaker 4: This would turn out to be a important clue much later. Now.
Speaker 7: He basically is, you're right. He kind of dismisses this
Speaker 7: box and its importance. But someone else, within days of
Speaker 7: Governor Carter, there's a perceived crime wave. You as you're right,
Speaker 7: So they send Ronald Angel, the state's top criminal investigator
Speaker 7: and agent in charge of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation,
Speaker 7: to come into this investigation. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 7: about that.
Speaker 4: Well, it should be appreciated. This was one case, and
Speaker 4: the disappearance of Helen Hights was one case among several
Speaker 4: there had been some violent crimes that had been some
Speaker 4: rights that had been murders, and the perception was that
Speaker 4: crime was getting out of hand, and so the GBI,
Speaker 4: under the urging of the site's governor, moved came in
Speaker 4: and did investigated, and one of the prominent things they
Speaker 4: investigated was the disappearance of Helen hins Keller was interviewed
Speaker 4: at that time and really did not give a particularly
Speaker 4: different story from what he'd said earlier. He denied, and
Speaker 4: he and his father went Atlanta. He had an excuses
Speaker 4: to when he arrived and so forth and so on,
Speaker 4: and really it didn't anything. Although I will give the
Speaker 4: GBI credit for asking, they were not there at the outset,
Speaker 4: so they sort of came in after the fact and
Speaker 4: reviewed what had been done and said with gee, we
Speaker 4: don't know what else to do. It's a code case.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you say so. There was some investigation for three
Speaker 7: or four weeks, but basically no clear leads had been established,
Speaker 7: and the trail went cold.
Speaker 4: That's correct, trail went cold.
Speaker 7: You write very interestingly and plainantly that James Hank says, listen,
Speaker 7: she might have wanted to leave me, but there's no
Speaker 7: way she would have left these children.
Speaker 4: That's exactly right, and very, very almost pitiful situation. Over
Speaker 4: the fall, they having to explained to his three children
Speaker 4: that their mother's not coming back. He apparently they had
Speaker 4: a happy relationship and apparently everything was. It was difficult,
Speaker 4: perhaps financially, but they were a hard working family and
Speaker 4: the loss of his wife and his health was a
Speaker 4: devastating one, not only to him but also to his family.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you're right, that gets worse for the family while
Speaker 7: things get real rosy for the Wilcox Advertising Company and
Speaker 7: Keller and Foxy and Company, but for the family, taunts
Speaker 7: at school for the children, and then one day, to
Speaker 7: their horror, there's another woman in the home. And things
Speaker 7: are different completely, aren't they.
Speaker 4: There are At some point later James brought home another woman.
Speaker 4: His wife was gone, you know, no one knew where
Speaker 4: she was, no one had said that she was dead,
Speaker 4: and he started seeing another woman. And when they brought
Speaker 4: her home, and that of course made matters worse. The
Speaker 4: older daughter, Lucy, they were three children. The older daughter
Speaker 4: moved out at that point, horrified by this, and the
Speaker 4: younger two children didn't have much choice. David and Penny
Speaker 4: stay there and finished there. Both of them did quite
Speaker 4: well at life. I saw all the children did well
Speaker 4: at life, but they stayed there and say, I didn't
Speaker 4: have another choice. And so it brought the family up, obviously,
Speaker 4: and in a way that was even equally tragic. Not
Speaker 4: only would their mother having abandoned their father bringing in
Speaker 4: a new woman, which I thought was something that was
Speaker 4: horrific to the children's psychological wellbeing.
Speaker 7: You're right that the Keller joins the Chamber of Commerce
Speaker 7: and various other groups and is active in the community.
Speaker 7: And we just we had talked about the marriage switch.
Speaker 7: So let's do that again because that's important to what
Speaker 7: happens soon after. What was that again, we'll talk about
Speaker 7: the marriage happening, the one marriage is all the other
Speaker 7: one and the switch of partners and Neil Johansson.
Speaker 4: Well, in October, I think of the same year that
Speaker 4: Johansen died, Keller married another lady, Sonia the last year
Speaker 4: I believe her last name was, and that was in October,
Speaker 4: and actually it was several years later I have my
Speaker 4: knights from It was in October of nineteen aged that
Speaker 4: they married. And that was that day with significance because
Speaker 4: something happened later in the month of October nineteen eighty,
Speaker 4: if you'd like to talk about that, or if you
Speaker 4: want to review some other stuff before the findings of
Speaker 4: October nineteen eighty I November nineteen eighty.
Speaker 7: Forgive me, well, let's talk about what happens in that
Speaker 7: interim before the discovery by the Blanton brothers in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 7: But you say three thousand and seven days missing. What
Speaker 7: happens in that interim period of time in terms of
Speaker 7: the investigation, if anything?
Speaker 4: Nothing. Basically it was a go okase there were reports
Speaker 4: quote unquote of sightings of Helen Hunks. There's one particular
Speaker 4: episode I talk about a book from Penny the daughter
Speaker 4: who saw a woman who looked like she thought this
Speaker 4: was her missing mother, and she followed her up and
Speaker 4: turned around, and when she saw she realized it was
Speaker 4: not her mother. The children certainly held out hope if
Speaker 4: her husband did. The Willcoxes continued to do well. Keller
Speaker 4: became an active member community that joining the Rotary Club
Speaker 4: and so forth, became active in the state organization of
Speaker 4: outdoor Advertising and so forth, and so own. And when
Speaker 4: he remarried it looked like things were going very well.
Speaker 4: And the Helen Hinks family had sort of declined and
Speaker 4: fallen apart, but the Wilcoxes were doing fine until the
Speaker 4: Blattens came along.
Speaker 7: Yes, and he was a volunteer auxiliary policeman as well
Speaker 7: from the mid seventies.
Speaker 4: He was, and I should address that too. One thing
Speaker 4: about this was you always wondered why someone would volunteer
Speaker 4: to be a volunteer auxiliary policeman, because, well, what happens
Speaker 4: when you were a member of the police auxiliary. You
Speaker 4: get to wear some sort of a uniform and kind
Speaker 4: of hang out with the police, and also you know
Speaker 4: what's going on. So if anything, had any news had
Speaker 4: broken on the missing person's case of Helen Heights, he
Speaker 4: would have been the first to know about it. And
Speaker 4: there were several episodes during that period of time when
Speaker 4: supposedly the missing Helen Hainks had called or sent word
Speaker 4: that she was alive and well and not to worry
Speaker 4: about me as if she'd run off, and retrospectively, there
Speaker 4: was always question as to who was behind those strange
Speaker 4: messages that were received, as it turned out that they
Speaker 4: were obviously not the case. No one ever knew.
Speaker 7: Let's talk about the discovery on November twenty fourth, nineteen eighty.
Speaker 4: November twenty fourth, nineteen eighty two, farmers were clearing what
Speaker 4: it's known in the rural South as new ground. There
Speaker 4: was the Blanton brothers had purchased a several hundred acre
Speaker 4: tract of land which formerly had been in timber. They
Speaker 4: were in the timber business, but they decided that this
Speaker 4: property would be more valuable if it were cleared and
Speaker 4: used for agriculture, so they cut the timber. And in
Speaker 4: order to prepare the land for agriculture, you've got to
Speaker 4: remove the stumps and the roots in the ground so
Speaker 4: that it can be plowed, and it has the land
Speaker 4: has to be shaped. We're doing this and using what's
Speaker 4: call as a chisel plow, or more coloquially called a
Speaker 4: root rate, which is a type of plow that you
Speaker 4: pull behind a tractor that has big times that dig
Speaker 4: into the soil perhaps eight or ten to twelve inches deep,
Speaker 4: depending on what kind of flower you're using. These grabbed
Speaker 4: the roots under the ground and actually pull them out
Speaker 4: of the ground, almost rake them out of the ground.
Speaker 4: So you've cleared the stumps. You're going through and getting
Speaker 4: up the smaller roots so you can plant it and
Speaker 4: lo and behold. They're driving along one afternoon and the
Speaker 4: plow hangs up on something underground and brother, one of
Speaker 4: the brothers was driving the tractor and stopped and looked
Speaker 4: back there, and he called his other brother who came
Speaker 4: over and looked in the ground, and it looked like
Speaker 4: they'd hit an underground box of some sort. You know,
Speaker 4: what is this doing here? You know, in the middle
Speaker 4: of nowhere. I should comment that this was south of Valdosta,
Speaker 4: perhaps a ten or fifteen minute drive from Wilcox Outdoor Advertising,
Speaker 4: not that far, but it was in a rural area. Again,
Speaker 4: I want to stress at Valdosta is not is an
Speaker 4: island of urbanity and a sea of royality. You don't
Speaker 4: have to go very far before you're in the country, right,
Speaker 4: And this was on a dirt road not that far away.
Speaker 4: And so he looked down there and said, well, let's
Speaker 4: just see if we can't jerk it out of the
Speaker 4: ground with the rout right by catching one of the
Speaker 4: times on the box and just pulling it up. And
Speaker 4: when he did, he noticed there were bones in the box.
Speaker 4: And it's like, oh, like this is a problem. And
Speaker 4: so the police were called. They came to the site
Speaker 4: immediately there was an investigation and site that crime seeing
Speaker 4: people were called as well and Keler being notified, and
Speaker 4: I remember the police auxiliary was also there to see
Speaker 4: the box being dug up, and it was he who
Speaker 4: identified this as being similar to the missing box that
Speaker 4: had been noted by his father in law right after
Speaker 4: Helen Hikes went missing. So that was the first sort
Speaker 4: of serious clue that something was going on the box
Speaker 4: was there was obviously an investigation. It didn't take very
Speaker 4: long to develop to discover that the skeleton. There was
Speaker 4: a skeleton inside this box, along with a number of
Speaker 4: other findings which I'll get to in a moment. The
Speaker 4: skull was taken to a dentist too rapidly identify this
Speaker 4: as being the remainders of Helen Heinz based on some
Speaker 4: dental work that he had done earlier.
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Speaker 7: You talked about the discovery of this box, and but
Speaker 7: other than Helen Hayes soon to be identified Skelton, in
Speaker 7: this box, there are some contentious things in regards to
Speaker 7: rigor mortis and dismemberment. As we mentioned in the opening,
Speaker 7: we talked about dismemberment.
Speaker 4: Right what the situation is there, there were some other
Speaker 4: very important things discovered under the box. Under the box
Speaker 4: and that's the key. It was apparently thrown into the
Speaker 4: grave before the box of the ersat's grave. Before the
Speaker 4: box was were address and underclothing fra Patty's girdle, that
Speaker 4: kind of thing, and a set of at least one
Speaker 4: set of keys there. Those were important. They were under
Speaker 4: the box and so those are important things. And the
Speaker 4: dismember months the dismemberment was not initially known or noted
Speaker 4: despite the small size of the box, you have to
Speaker 4: understand that the box was kind of torn up a
Speaker 4: bit as they tried to get it out of the ground.
Speaker 4: And it's hard to realize how a person who measures
Speaker 4: five feet nine inches it could be in that box,
Speaker 4: but apparently she was. And later on when there was
Speaker 4: when we get to that part, someone noted that she
Speaker 4: had been dismembered, and later they re examined the bones
Speaker 4: and saw signs of that.
Speaker 7: Now, how do police proceed with this very new development?
Speaker 7: These same people were there were like Lois Arnold, the
Speaker 7: assistant police chief that was dismissing this case. How does
Speaker 7: this proceed? And who comes into this case as well?
Speaker 4: Well, you have to understand that this was a complicated
Speaker 4: and uncertain case. With the discovery of the body, everybody
Speaker 4: everyone said, oh gosh, and the police started investigating. Well,
Speaker 4: it didn't take them very long to realize that here
Speaker 4: is a woman who was at her place of employment
Speaker 4: who goes missing and her remains are found inside of
Speaker 4: a box that came from her place of employment. So
Speaker 4: obviously the prime suspects were people who worked there. So
Speaker 4: there was killer and his fallen and the remainder. Of
Speaker 4: the employees were a number of African American males who
Speaker 4: did the who did the sign work. They were brought
Speaker 4: in and interviewed in some detail, and one of them
Speaker 4: said remarked that her legs appeared to have been severed,
Speaker 4: and the police said, oh gosh, we didn't see that.
Speaker 9: And the examination initially so between, but they would in
Speaker 9: the months that followed re exhume her remains compared, but
Speaker 9: re exum her body having examined, and there were certain
Speaker 9: cut marks on the bones that appeared strongly to suggest
Speaker 9: that the legs had back been severed from the body
Speaker 9: in order to put this her body inside this box.
Speaker 4: The investigation dragged on. By April nineteen eighty one, the
Speaker 4: prime suspects appeared to be Keller the son and Foxy
Speaker 4: the father, plus two African American males, one of whom
Speaker 4: was quite elderly and was beginning to sound a little
Speaker 4: bit as if he were having memory parls. Once the
Speaker 4: police thought they had a good case, in early July
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty one, which was approximately seven months a little
Speaker 4: bit more than seven months after discovery of the body,
Speaker 4: they arrested Keller on a charge of murder and arrested
Speaker 4: at the same time, he's falled in two black males
Speaker 4: as conceding a death.
Speaker 7: Right, and that's Ed Rentz. He was a seventy seven
Speaker 7: year old man, you say, and Lorenzo Marshall sixty nine,
Speaker 7: So they're both and both longtime employees. That's correct, and
Speaker 7: also the right away Keller calls will B. Coleman, local
Speaker 7: attorney who he was related to by marriage.
Speaker 4: Yes, once Keller. Once the police showed up at Keller's
Speaker 4: house in the middle of night. He came to the
Speaker 4: door and according to his account, was surprised that they
Speaker 4: showed up, but they told him that he needed to
Speaker 4: come downtown so we can talk about things, and he
Speaker 4: kept saying why. The police asked politely, do you want
Speaker 4: to get a lawyer? And he said, why should I
Speaker 4: need a lawyer? And they told his wife at that
Speaker 4: point as quite as he needed one, and they said
Speaker 4: we're arresting him for murder, at which point he asked
Speaker 4: for a lawyer and called his wilber Coman. Cohan was
Speaker 4: a very good lawyer and was one of the integral
Speaker 4: members of Keller's defense team. Thereafter, he was taken to
Speaker 4: jail and In the meantime, his father and ed Rintz
Speaker 4: and Lorenzo Marshall, the two other black males, were arrested
Speaker 4: and while taken to jail the next day they were
Speaker 4: bonded out and everybody went home. But that started again
Speaker 4: along legal saga you talk about.
Speaker 7: What was brought in was famed attorney Bobby Lee Cook,
Speaker 7: highly respected high profile cases, and Lamar Cole was the
Speaker 7: chosen as the district attorney. And then they had to
Speaker 7: have a committal hearing to make sure there was enough
Speaker 7: evidence to take before the grand jury. What is what
Speaker 7: was it the state reveal at that time, Well.
Speaker 4: The statement basically reviewed the review of the testimony of
Speaker 4: the black employees that they had in fact been contacted
Speaker 4: on that night of August thirty first, nineteen seventy two
Speaker 4: by their employer who and again the testimony was a
Speaker 4: little inconsistent from one to the other, but basically they
Speaker 4: were picked up, they were told to load a box
Speaker 4: in the back of the pickup truck, they were told
Speaker 4: to drive that they rode went in the pickup truck
Speaker 4: with Keller and his father to a place away from
Speaker 4: town which is where the box was found, and they
Speaker 4: were told to dig a hole. Keller and his father
Speaker 4: watched while they died and dug a hole about waste deep,
Speaker 4: at which time the rain started, so they had to
Speaker 4: quit and go back. As a separate bit of testimony,
Speaker 4: they asked what was in the box. One of the
Speaker 4: two ed Rint said that it was the body of Ms. Hanks,
Speaker 4: who at the time was nude, whose legs had been
Speaker 4: cut off and were put in in a separate package
Speaker 4: inside that box. And this the order of the bones
Speaker 4: had been jumbled up when when it was being excavated off.
Speaker 4: It was not anything that My perception was that it
Speaker 4: wasn't anything that police did in error, but trying to
Speaker 4: jerk it out of the ground with a plow sort
Speaker 4: of jumble things up inside the box. That was testimony
Speaker 4: that came up, came in so they felt like they
Speaker 4: had sufficient of it, sufficient of it to hold Keller
Speaker 4: and his fall and buying them over at that time,
Speaker 4: I should say that it concealing of death was a
Speaker 4: misdemeanor in Georgia and is now felling, and so Keller
Speaker 4: was charged. Obviously they were felling a homicide. No others
Speaker 4: were charged with Mister Menu.
Speaker 7: Neeless to say by September fourth, there's a grand jury indictment,
Speaker 7: and so how does it go for there? What's house
Speaker 7: the proceedings?
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, they had hired Bobby Lee Cook,
Speaker 4: and of course I'm sure many listeners are familiar with
Speaker 4: Bobby Lee Cook, who passed away, I believe last year,
Speaker 4: one of one of the America's premier criminal defense attorneys.
Speaker 4: Probably had participated in the Wayne Williams Murna trial right
Speaker 4: also in the Midnight The Garden of Good and Evil.
Speaker 4: What did one of the trials there? He was said
Speaker 4: to be the role model for Matlock, something that he
Speaker 4: was kind of halfway, but he was extremely well done.
Speaker 4: I live in this part of the world down here,
Speaker 4: and I never one going out of the courthouse square
Speaker 4: one day and seeing this fancy Rolls Royce park there
Speaker 4: and I said, I said, who is that? I said, Oh,
Speaker 4: that's Bobby Lee Cook. He always comes in the show
Speaker 4: with Earl's Royce and so he had a certain style
Speaker 4: about it, and he was known to be a wizard
Speaker 4: in the courtroom. At least he had a reputation that
Speaker 4: he carefully burnished to make sure that everyone knew he
Speaker 4: was a wizard in the courtroom. So he was also very,
Speaker 4: very expensive, according to everything I could find out, and
Speaker 4: the Wilcox just could afford him. So they are You
Speaker 4: asked what happened between the time of the indictment and
Speaker 4: the time of the eventual trial, which was scheduled for
Speaker 4: early nineteen eighty two, There was a series of liminary hearings,
Speaker 4: motions and so forth that precede most trials. Nothing of drum,
Speaker 4: nothing dramatic, happened in that time period.
Speaker 7: What I thought was interesting. I don't know how typical
Speaker 7: it is from state to state, but the Hanks family
Speaker 7: hired a special prosecutor to assist Lamar Cole in the prosecution.
Speaker 4: That is correct, and that's no longer the practice in
Speaker 4: the state, but it has been a traditionally along practice
Speaker 4: in Georgia that the family can hire their own special
Speaker 4: prosecutor to assist. There obviously changes in the forty odd
Speaker 4: years since the trial, and that was one. Also, there
Speaker 4: are other such things as the number of strikes when
Speaker 4: interviewing the potential jurors. It used to be that one
Speaker 4: side got meant the defense got twice as many strikes
Speaker 4: as the prosecution, and so forth. Those evolved changed That interesting.
Speaker 7: Interesting. Let's talk about this trial and the fundamentals, the
Speaker 7: prosecution's fundamentals, what they are trying to focus on and
Speaker 7: emphasize before we talk about Bobby Lee Cook and WILLB.
Speaker 7: Coleman and their approach.
Speaker 4: The prosecution's case was made difficult by the fact that
Speaker 4: it was a case of circumstantial circumstantial evidence. And you say,
Speaker 4: oh gee, well, you have to think about it. Many,
Speaker 4: if not most, violent crimes are frequently not witnessed by
Speaker 4: anyone except the victim and the perpetrate right rave and
Speaker 4: murder and things like that, so these cases are often
Speaker 4: circumstantial cases. The motivation here was felt to be a
Speaker 4: sexual one. Keller had been known to be harassing his
Speaker 4: as secretary, and that seemed to be well documented. He
Speaker 4: denied it, where there were others who who seemed to
Speaker 4: give good testimony. The other thing was the discrepancy in
Speaker 4: the timelines that were given by the indicted, that is,
Speaker 4: the Willcoxes versus what the investigators could come up with.
Speaker 4: It appears, based on the investigators of evidence, that the
Speaker 4: Wilcoxes could have arrived home as early as perhaps three
Speaker 4: point fifteen or three point thirty, and that the police
Speaker 4: left and they didn't show up at the party until
Speaker 4: nine o'clock. So it looks like there's a period minimum
Speaker 4: of three hours an hour and a half in the
Speaker 4: afternoon and an hour and a half in the evening
Speaker 4: after the police leave of the Wilcox advertising that are
Speaker 4: unaccounted for. And it was the prosecution's contention that this
Speaker 4: serioit of was when the body was hidden initially and
Speaker 4: later they made an attempt to bury it. In testimony
Speaker 4: from the from the Rents and Lorenzo Marshall, the two employees,
Speaker 4: it was said that they were unable to complete to
Speaker 4: burial that night so came back at a later time.
Speaker 4: It may have been later that evening or it may
Speaker 4: have been another day. You have to understand that work
Speaker 4: eight years. By that time, it had been actually about
Speaker 4: ten years since the event, and their memories seemed faded.
Speaker 4: But it was clear that they hidn't bury of the
Speaker 4: body initially, but came back either later that night or
Speaker 4: within a day too and buried the body. Those that
Speaker 4: was the main things, and there were other things to
Speaker 4: some other part of us, which I'll discuss if you'd.
Speaker 7: Like, sure, but let's talk about the Bobby Lee Cook
Speaker 7: and what he he how he approaches the cross examination,
Speaker 7: and where he focuses in terms of testimony. He believes
Speaker 7: that police have been misconduct in their behavior.
Speaker 4: It's interesting to read transcripts. Transcripts are like the script
Speaker 4: for play, and you almost have to read them out
Speaker 4: loud to really understand them, and it's fascinating. Cook was
Speaker 4: nothing else of real showman in the courtroom, and there's
Speaker 4: reference made to him raising his voice and whispering at
Speaker 4: times and just being very dramatic in the way he spoke.
Speaker 4: He was given very much to hyperbole, saying this is
Speaker 4: the worst case of anything that I've ever seen in
Speaker 4: my three or four decades of practicing law, and so
Speaker 4: for what's happening to that effect, and he basically sought
Speaker 4: to focus on the fact that there was well, I
Speaker 4: say Cook and COVID as well, there was no hard
Speaker 4: evidence to tie Caler Wilcox to the case. I want
Speaker 4: to make it clear in case it's not at this
Speaker 4: point we're only talking about the trial of Caler Wilcox
Speaker 4: because he was the only one who came to trial,
Speaker 4: and I don't want to make that right, Okay, there
Speaker 4: was no hard evidence to tie tie Keller to the murder. No,
Speaker 4: this was in the days, of course before DNA, but
Speaker 4: there was nothing else that specifically tied him to the murder.
Speaker 4: The fact that the the witnesses, all of whom were
Speaker 4: African American, were interrogated harshly to say the least was
Speaker 4: not anything that police should be proud of, and was
Speaker 4: contended to be something that was may have tested some
Speaker 4: doubt as to the veracity of their testimony. And basically
Speaker 4: they just attacked the case left and right. Any any
Speaker 4: bit of any bit of evidence or any conclusion that
Speaker 4: that prosecution drew the defense whild say, oh, that's just crazy.
Speaker 7: Let's talk about the crucial evidence that was possibly inadvertently
Speaker 7: thrown into that grave and provided evidence at this trial.
Speaker 7: Talk about those keys.
Speaker 4: There was several things one have to give Lamar Cole credit.
Speaker 4: One was the this was this was said to be
Speaker 4: a sex crime. And one of the things they noted
Speaker 4: was that the deceased Helen Hanks apparently had been strangled
Speaker 4: with a rope. There was evidence presented by experts that
Speaker 4: this rope made probably was looped around her neck. There
Speaker 4: was evidence that her clothing, that is, her dress, she
Speaker 4: had on a blue dress brad underclosed had been cut
Speaker 4: off her body and presumably presumably were when she was
Speaker 4: tied up and everything, and these these were all and
Speaker 4: similar things. The main thing that seemed to be important
Speaker 4: was the keys. If you recall earlier, I said that
Speaker 4: when James Hanks came up there, I came to the
Speaker 4: place to the office. There he saw kel Wilcox digging
Speaker 4: through Helen's pocketbook and the comment was about she won't
Speaker 4: be needing these anymore. Well, two things. When they got
Speaker 4: back to the office later it was quote unquote discovered
Speaker 4: that the key and the lot to the gas pump
Speaker 4: was missing. Kenn Hinks would have been in charge of that.
Speaker 4: Those keys were apparently in her pocketbook and were apparently
Speaker 4: given to Keller. Whether or not they got accidentally caught
Speaker 4: up into stuff that was thrown into the grave, that
Speaker 4: was a major consideration. So it may have been that
Speaker 4: this was accidentally leaving evidence. The second thing was that
Speaker 4: Keller there was a pickup truck it was very described
Speaker 4: as tan or something like that that Keller drove. There
Speaker 4: were only two keys to that pickup truck. They obviously
Speaker 4: drove it there and then obviously drove it back it
Speaker 4: was Keller's truck, so he had to have one key
Speaker 4: to crank it up with, and the other key to
Speaker 4: that truck was found in the bottom of the grave,
Speaker 4: so that was considered very strong evidence in terms and
Speaker 4: physical evidence that supported the prosecution's contention that Keller was
Speaker 4: in in fact, the murderer.
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Speaker 7: Now despite Bobby Lee Cook and will By Coleman and
Speaker 7: their best efforts to cast out uh Keller. When he
Speaker 7: testifies at that trial, you say, doesn't do himself any good,
Speaker 7: not what he had wanted. He has to stick to
Speaker 7: his father's timeline and basic story. What is the verdict?
Speaker 7: The jury deliberates for a short period of time.
Speaker 4: Tell us about that verdict was that Keller was found
Speaker 4: guilty of murder and was sentenced to life in prison
Speaker 4: for the murder and additional twelve years for concealing and death,
Speaker 4: which was the misbemanum that he was all convicted of.
Speaker 4: The jury was polled later and they were There was
Speaker 4: a long period of several appeals over the years, and
Speaker 4: one of they were initially reluctant to speak. One of them,
Speaker 4: said that he was a little uncertain until Foxy Willcox,
Speaker 4: the fall that took the stan and testified definitively about
Speaker 4: the timeline, and then Keller had to back him up,
Speaker 4: and he said he realized that the Willcoxes were simply lying,
Speaker 4: and he said everything else fell into place at that point.
Speaker 4: It was Keller ended up going to prison for initially
Speaker 4: for a while.
Speaker 7: Yes, you talk about it. He goes to prison, and
Speaker 7: obviously will be Coleman as you say, he's outraged at
Speaker 7: this verdict and continues to want to appeal this sentence
Speaker 7: and conviction. So there are numerous appeals, and there are
Speaker 7: state appeals, and when those are exhausted, it goes to
Speaker 7: federal appeals.
Speaker 3: Tell us what.
Speaker 7: Happens in the case of a Judge Owens.
Speaker 4: Judge Wilber Owen was he's recently been a station within
Speaker 4: the last few years. It was a federal judge from Macon, Georgia,
Speaker 4: which was the area of federal court. He was prevailed
Speaker 4: upon the defense to look at this case. Thought he
Speaker 4: was involved fairly early, but said that he could not
Speaker 4: get involved as a judge until they had run the
Speaker 4: state appeals. The appeals basically for a new trial or
Speaker 4: an overturned verdict, who ran the entire gament of the
Speaker 4: state judicial system to the Georgia Supreme Court, in which
Speaker 4: case it went to the federal system. Wilber Owen was outraged,
Speaker 4: he stated because of the way the African American witnesses
Speaker 4: were interviewed, and stated that he believed that the evidence
Speaker 4: when their testimony was excluded, that the evidence was insufficient
Speaker 4: to convict Keller, and so basically in early nineteen eighty
Speaker 4: late nineteen eighty five, he let him out of jail.
Speaker 4: He let him, freed him from the state prison system
Speaker 4: and said that unless new evidence was found that Keller
Speaker 4: was completely off the hook Q under the he could
Speaker 4: not be retried because the double jeffty cause that I'm
Speaker 4: just not allowed to repeat charges for the same offense.
Speaker 4: And it looked like Keller was going to rejoin his
Speaker 4: second wife and get on with his life.
Speaker 10: But the state chose to appeal this system to the
Speaker 10: in the federal court system, and Owens Owens ruling was
Speaker 10: overturned and Keller was sent back to jail.
Speaker 4: After a brief a period of I recall about four
Speaker 4: and a half months of freedom there for a while
Speaker 4: the case eventually went to the U. S. Supreme Court.
Speaker 7: The U.
Speaker 4: Supreme Court did not did not think that it needed
Speaker 4: to be reviewed, and they confirmed the opinion of the
Speaker 4: Eleventh Circuit Court, which is the federal district that we're in.
Speaker 7: It's interesting they affirmed the overturned pardon me, Jude Jowens' decision.
Speaker 4: Right, I'm sorry if I didn't say that correctly. They
Speaker 4: did overturn Jude Joryns' decision, forgive me, And it was
Speaker 4: the federal system that said, well back to prison.
Speaker 7: Right, and then that over that overturning was affirmed, and
Speaker 7: regardlesse of the language. But you said, what was very
Speaker 7: interesting was the amount of reversals when you looked, and
Speaker 7: when they looked, or when authorities looked, that Owen had
Speaker 7: the most reversals of any federal judge.
Speaker 4: Well, you know this is if I can inject a
Speaker 4: little personal note in here when I write. When I
Speaker 4: write something like this, I don't think that I should
Speaker 4: be editorializing. I don't think I should be, you know,
Speaker 4: giving my opinion as an author. I wanted I want
Speaker 4: to do the Joe Roddy, just the facts, man. I
Speaker 4: want to present present the store as it happened and
Speaker 4: let the reader make his or her own decision. But
Speaker 4: in this case it was it was a controversial decision,
Speaker 4: to say the very least overturned conviction. Owen's decision decision
Speaker 4: was very controversial to to free color. And at that
Speaker 4: time I just happened to notice in the American Bar
Speaker 4: Journal ABA Journal, American Bar Association Journal that someone had
Speaker 4: looked at the which federal judges had their rulings overturned,
Speaker 4: and Wilbo wins at the time it was the winner.
Speaker 4: He'd had more rulings overturned than any other judge. He
Speaker 4: got very enraged at this, but that was the case,
Speaker 4: and this was sent another ruling of which he was overturned.
Speaker 4: It was It wasn't my research. It was a new
Speaker 4: quote in an article from the American ABA Journal.
Speaker 7: Right, you talk about Keller trying for parole and being denied.
Speaker 7: Of course, the Hanks family is obviously in opposition, and
Speaker 7: he states that he claims his innocence throughout this parole process.
Speaker 7: How does that change? When does that change tell us
Speaker 7: about him finally getting parole.
Speaker 4: He changed lawyers after he'd been in prison for a while,
Speaker 4: and in after he'd served nearly twenty five years. He
Speaker 4: hired a different law firm to represent him. The law
Speaker 4: firm and one of the attorneys in that law was
Speaker 4: actually the former Attorney general who had put him back
Speaker 4: in jail, put him back in prison by peeling his
Speaker 4: ruling to the collaborate circuit. Now the same individual is
Speaker 4: now in private practice, so he agrees to take up
Speaker 4: Keller's case and get him out of the prison. Yeah,
Speaker 4: they tried to. They tried to get him released on
Speaker 4: the merits, that is to say that the same arguments
Speaker 4: that had been rejected by multiple course, and when that
Speaker 4: didn't work, they tried simthing to say, well, he's just
Speaker 4: served too long in prison. It was twenty five years,
Speaker 4: and so eventually that worked and he was freed in
Speaker 4: two thousand and eight. I believe has been has been
Speaker 4: pre since.
Speaker 7: And what I found was very very interesting, and as
Speaker 7: you right as well, is that he denied that he
Speaker 7: had committed the crime for so long. Then this he
Speaker 7: brings in a brings in a firm, a law firm
Speaker 7: to help him. And basically one of the criteria for
Speaker 7: parole always is that this recognition that you committed the
Speaker 7: responsibility for tip or the crime itself and some kind
Speaker 7: of genuine or a show of remorse.
Speaker 4: Well, that's that's true, and I should address that he
Speaker 4: was represented by Mike Mike Bowers and Tom Morgan who
Speaker 4: was the attorneys for his appeal, and in he had
Speaker 4: he had sometime during this time frame written a letter
Speaker 4: to the parole board where he quote unquote confessed and
Speaker 4: in this letter, it's handwritten letter and I have a
Speaker 4: copy of it. It was in the files. It says
Speaker 4: that he regretted I'm quoted. I want to acknowledge and
Speaker 4: accept responsibility for the death of Helen Hinks on August
Speaker 4: thirty one, nineteen seventy two. Quote we got into an
Speaker 4: argument and I lost my temper. I did not mean
Speaker 4: to hurt her. End quote. He denied sexual assault, stated
Speaker 4: he was not present, and Miss Hinks's body was buried.
Speaker 4: And the headline on the local paper when this was
Speaker 4: made public said was, quote will Cox confesses. Question mark
Speaker 4: this confession where it was one where he took response
Speaker 4: stability and admitted his culpability to admitted his culpability and
Speaker 4: expressed his sorrow. But it didn't really match the fact,
Speaker 4: and so it was considered by many to be a
Speaker 4: somewhat cynical document to get him paroled, but he was
Speaker 4: paroled and has been out since that period of time.
Speaker 7: Yes, very very interesting. You talk about karma and you
Speaker 7: call it karma in your epilogue only six inches deeper,
Speaker 7: and that it's importance.
Speaker 4: Let me let me get personal here, and and you know,
Speaker 4: people say, you know why you shot, why'd you choose
Speaker 4: to write this book, or why why this? And that
Speaker 4: you know followed this case. I'm in nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 4: I was absolutely fascinated by this case. And back in
Speaker 4: the day, I used to read the newspaper in the
Speaker 4: morning when I come into my office and sit there,
Speaker 4: and if it was something fascinating, I tear it out,
Speaker 4: put it in a drawer. About once a year I
Speaker 4: look at it and I realized at the end of
Speaker 4: the year I had just a whole huge stack of
Speaker 4: clippings about this. This was in the day for computers.
Speaker 4: I had a whole stack of clippings about the Wilcox
Speaker 4: murder case. And I don't know what fascinated me, but
Speaker 4: in writing this story, one thing that struck me is
Speaker 4: this all of us, in some way, shape or form,
Speaker 4: lesser or greater have a fear of something that we
Speaker 4: have done, or something we're afraid that someone might find
Speaker 4: out about. It may be something minor. Perhaps when you
Speaker 4: were five years old you stole a candy bar from
Speaker 4: the local convenience store and your mother said, don't you
Speaker 4: ever do that. What may be that you're an adult
Speaker 4: and you cheated on your spouse but managed to get
Speaker 4: away with a group from your employer. But everybody has something,
Speaker 4: something somewhere that there just don't want made puppet. Can
Speaker 4: you imagine what it's like to be hand some wealthy
Speaker 4: married have everything you want, and at night, when you
Speaker 4: turn out the lights and you're all alone by yourself
Speaker 4: in the bed, you sit there and say, there's a
Speaker 4: buried body out there, and if it ever is found,
Speaker 4: my whole life will blowed and everything I have will
Speaker 4: go bad. The situation here, everyone's life was taking one direction,
Speaker 4: one trajectory, good, bad, and different whatever. And then when
Speaker 4: this box was dug up, everything changed. And if the
Speaker 4: box had only been very six inches deeper, none of
Speaker 4: this would happen and we would be having this conversation.
Speaker 4: That's the fascinating thing about this book, and that's why
Speaker 4: I'm label the last little one paragraph epilogue Carmel Krma.
Speaker 7: Yeah. I think it's also interesting and similar to many
Speaker 7: stories that the victim inadvertently helps solve this case very
Speaker 7: much by that dress catching up into that padlock. And
Speaker 7: I'm sure that some of that evidence was inadvertently thrown
Speaker 7: into that gravesite. I want to thank you so much,
Speaker 7: William Rowlings for six inches Deeper The Disappearance of Helen Hanks.
Speaker 7: Do you have a website that people might want to
Speaker 7: take a look at more.
Speaker 4: Fur you do, and if you can remember my name,
Speaker 4: you can get it. It's simply www dot William Rawlings
Speaker 4: w l l I A r A w l I
Speaker 4: n gs William Rawlings dot com. And it has my
Speaker 4: speaking engagements. It has a review of my books, both
Speaker 4: fiction and nonfiction. This book, by the way, was I
Speaker 4: think my tenth book. My twelfth book has just been released,
Speaker 4: and my thirteenth book is coming out next year. So
Speaker 4: I continue to ride.
Speaker 7: Thank you so much. Six inches Deeper the Disappearance of
Speaker 7: Helen Hanks. Thank you so much, William Rawlings. You have
Speaker 7: a great evening and good night.
Speaker 4: Thank you