Speaker 1: With Lucky Land Slots, you can get lucky just about anywhere.
Speaker 2: Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today.
Speaker 3: Has anyone seen the bride and broom? Sri?
Speaker 4: Sorry we're here. We were getting lucky in the limo
Speaker 4: when we lost track of time.
Speaker 5: No Lucky Land casino with cash prizes that add up
Speaker 5: quicker than a guess registered Well.
Speaker 3: In that case, I pronounce you lucky thanks for free.
Speaker 1: At Lucky Landslots dot com. Daily bonuses are waiting. No
Speaker 1: purchase necessary boid. We're prohibited by lock EIGHTEAM plus terms
Speaker 1: and conditions APPLAG see website for details.
Speaker 6: It is Ryan here and I have a question for you.
Speaker 6: What do you do when you win?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 6: Are you at fist pumper, a wooo, a handclap or
Speaker 6: a high fiver? I kind of like the high five.
Speaker 6: But if you want to hone in on those winning moves,
Speaker 6: check out Chumbuck Casino At chumbacasino dot com choose some
Speaker 6: hundreds of social casino style games for your chance to
Speaker 6: redeem serious cash prizes. There are new game releases weekly,
Speaker 6: plus free daily bonuses, so don't wait. Start having the
Speaker 6: most fun ever at Chumbuck Casino dot com nope.
Speaker 4: We're not necessary dally revoid where everybody lost conditions eating.
Speaker 1: Plus With Lucky Land Slots, you can get lucky just
Speaker 1: about anywhere.
Speaker 2: Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today.
Speaker 3: Has anyone seen the bride and groom? Sorry?
Speaker 4: Sorry, we're here. We were getting lucky in the limo
Speaker 4: and we lost track of time.
Speaker 6: No Lucky Land casino with cash prizes that add up
Speaker 6: quicker than a guess registered.
Speaker 3: In that case, I pronounce you lucky.
Speaker 1: Play for free at lucky landslots dot com. Daily bonuses
Speaker 1: are waiting. No purchase necessary board. We're prohibited by long
Speaker 1: eighteen plus terms and conditions applying. See website for details.
Speaker 3: Lucky Land Casino asking people what's the weirdest place you've
Speaker 3: gotten lucky?
Speaker 1: Lucky in line at the Delhi I guess.
Speaker 6: Ah, in my dentist's office more than once. Actually do
Speaker 6: I have to say?
Speaker 3: Yes? You do?
Speaker 6: In the car before my kid's PTA meeting?
Speaker 3: Really?
Speaker 6: Yes, excuse me?
Speaker 3: What's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky?
Speaker 1: I never win and tell.
Speaker 2: Well, there you have it.
Speaker 6: You could get lucky anywhere playing at lucky landslots dot com.
Speaker 6: Play for free right now.
Speaker 3: Are you feeling lucky. Nope, you necessary to.
Speaker 2: Get You are now listening to True Murder, The most
Speaker 2: shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that
Speaker 2: have written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker, DTK.
Speaker 2: Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 2: and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with
Speaker 2: your host, journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 5: Good Evening. This real life tragedy began on a stormy
Speaker 5: night with a knock at the front door. A friend
Speaker 5: needed help with his car. What happened to Carl, Lisa, Gregory,
Speaker 5: and Felie that night is worse than any fictional horror
Speaker 5: story you've ever read or seen on the big screen.
Speaker 5: Little girls should never have to live in a barrel.
Speaker 5: Award winning journalist and best selling author George Jared takes
Speaker 5: readers on a gripping and chilling journey with his latest
Speaker 5: true crime book, The Creek Side Bones, Realities more horrifying
Speaker 5: than fiction. The book details how the Elliott family in Dalton, Arkansas,
Speaker 5: lived in constant fear in the summer nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 5: how they met their fates as ghastly. Jarrett covered two
Speaker 5: murder trials in connection with the case, and provides his
Speaker 5: own theories as to how and why the Elliott family
Speaker 5: was murdered. Four other murder cases are also detailed in
Speaker 5: the book. Sidney Nicole Randall was a beauty pageant queen
Speaker 5: about to enter high school when a monster stole her
Speaker 5: away in the dark. Bridget's Sellars was a mother of
Speaker 5: three who vanished without a trace while on a walk
Speaker 5: down Peace Valley Road. Her fate is incomprehensible. Bob Castleman
Speaker 5: was a respected attorney in Vietnam War vet until the
Speaker 5: drugs murder, a live copperhead snake Native American artifact fraud
Speaker 5: consumed his life. The book also includes an update on
Speaker 5: the unsolved Rebecca Gould case. Twenty two year old college
Speaker 5: student was murdered September twentieth, two thousand and four in Melbourne, Arkansas.
Speaker 5: There are suspects in the case, but to this day,
Speaker 5: no one has been jailed for her brutal death. The
Speaker 5: book that we're featuring this evening is The Creek Side Bones.
Speaker 5: Reality is more Horrifying than Fiction. With my special guest
Speaker 5: journalist and author George Jared, Welcome to the program and
Speaker 5: thank you very much. For agreeing to this interview, George Jared,
Speaker 5: thank you for having me. Thank you very much again.
Speaker 5: Another series of cases I had no idea about and yes,
Speaker 5: much much worse than fiction. Horrifying. Let's jump right into
Speaker 5: this this especially. You start off with this incredible story
Speaker 5: as we mentioned of the Elliots, Lisa and Carl. Carl
Speaker 5: Elliott's thirty years old. And you talk about the two kids.
Speaker 5: Felicia is eight and Gregory is seven years old, and
Speaker 5: the father and stepmom live very close and this is
Speaker 5: in Dalton, Arkansas, and you talk about Hardy, Arkansas too.
Speaker 5: So set the stage for you talk about them living
Speaker 5: very close to her parents in a trailer. So set
Speaker 5: that stage. What was the living accommodations, and tell us
Speaker 5: a little bit about Lisa and Carl, what was going
Speaker 5: on at that time and what as you described the
Speaker 5: area and what it's known for, tell us a little
Speaker 5: bit about this. Set to stage July twenty ninth, nineteen
Speaker 5: ninety eight.
Speaker 4: Dalton is a small town in northern Arkansas. It's a
Speaker 4: kind of a unique and interesting place. It's the only
Speaker 4: county uh in the United States where five navigable rivers
Speaker 4: are located. It's a very rural. It's actually a really
Speaker 4: beautiful place, a lot of rolling hills, cattle farms, and
Speaker 4: in fact, the two oldest structures still on their original
Speaker 4: foundation west of the Mississippi River are in Dalton, the
Speaker 4: Rice Upshaw House and the Looney Tavern. They spend millions
Speaker 4: of dollars restoring these two structures. So it's a very
Speaker 4: historic and beautiful place. And but there's also another part
Speaker 4: of it, you know, it is there's that there's a
Speaker 4: sparse population there and it's just the kind of place
Speaker 4: that's really convenient if you're in the drug trade. It's
Speaker 4: a it's a good place to live. As a heart,
Speaker 4: it's hard for law enforcement to get in there. Everybody
Speaker 4: knows everybody out in a place like Dalton. Carl and
Speaker 4: Lisa they lived in a house. It was a family house,
Speaker 4: and Lisa's dad and stepmother lived in a trailer adjacent
Speaker 4: to their house. And the father, of believe, he had
Speaker 4: some I think he had some hearing problems and he
Speaker 4: had some mental issues, as did the stepmother. So they
Speaker 4: were not when this whole thing went down. They really
Speaker 4: weren't like reliable witnesses. I guess it's the best way
Speaker 4: to put it. You know, they were elderly and incapable
Speaker 4: of giving the police any really good information. Carl was
Speaker 4: a carpenter and a mechanic. Like you said before. They
Speaker 4: had two kids. They had Felicia who was eight and
Speaker 4: Gregory who was six. What happened in the summer of
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety eight is they were Carl was involved in
Speaker 4: some like minor drug stuff with the Green family. The
Speaker 4: Greens were really just a violent group of people who
Speaker 4: lived up in Randolph County. Their patriarch, Billy Green, he
Speaker 4: was a big time drug trafficker. Just the drug stuff
Speaker 4: alone would have kept him in prison for the rest
Speaker 4: of his life once he was finally charged the conviction
Speaker 4: on those uh. In those cases, Billy had his oldest son, Chad,
Speaker 4: and they were just about inseparable. He was really he
Speaker 4: was really brutal to his son. But they were in
Speaker 4: the drug trade together and Carl was friends with Chad,
Speaker 4: and something happened in the summer of nineteen ninety eight
Speaker 4: with the dynamics between the Greens and Carl. There were
Speaker 4: rumors that he stole a number of marijuana plants from them.
Speaker 4: There are other rumors that he took cash a couple
Speaker 4: of weeks before the murders, Lisa was she asked the
Speaker 4: guy if he would loan them ten thousand dollars to
Speaker 4: pay out the debt. So there was all this stuff
Speaker 4: was swirling other family members who came to visit the Elliots.
Speaker 4: They would sleep at night with baseball bats in their
Speaker 4: beds for fear that somebuddy would show up at their door.
Speaker 4: And this all culminated on July twenty ninth, nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 4: Carl's family, they were getting ready to go to bed,
Speaker 4: and it was an arches the door. Chad Green he
Speaker 4: had a truck and it had broken down about a
Speaker 4: mile from their house along the Eleven Point River. So
Speaker 4: Carl gets up, puts his shoes on, gets into his Thunderbird,
Speaker 4: and ruts Chad back to his truck, pouring down the rain.
Speaker 4: And no one knows what happened at that sandbar. All
Speaker 4: they know I was within a few minutes, Carl has
Speaker 4: shot twice and his body has been slung into the
Speaker 4: Eleven Point River. The Thunderbird returns, the door opens, the
Speaker 4: little boy comes running up to the door, and I
Speaker 4: just you know, from seeing the crime stain photo that
Speaker 4: were more than likely happened. The kids saw the thunderbird
Speaker 4: pull thought it was his dad, so we just ran
Speaker 4: the door and greeted his head. But when the door opened,
Speaker 4: the killer came inside, crushed the kid's head like an
Speaker 4: eggshell with a tire school, and then jammed the pointed
Speaker 4: end of it through the kid's throat and he bled
Speaker 4: out all over the floor. And then the mother came
Speaker 4: in to try to save her son, and the killer
Speaker 4: hit her twenty seven times with this tire tool, and
Speaker 4: there was blood everywhere. I talked to one detective about
Speaker 4: this case, and he said, and he was a veteran,
Speaker 4: he had covered many murder cases or investigated many murder cases.
Speaker 4: He said he had never seen a crime scene like
Speaker 4: this his entire lifecause they had nightmares about it for years.
Speaker 4: And so, once the killer is done with the mother,
Speaker 4: the killer goes into Felicia's room and there's a picture
Speaker 4: of the tire till dropped amongst all of her stepped
Speaker 4: animals that were in the pot she's hiding under her bed.
Speaker 4: Killer takes her, wraps her in a blanket and puts
Speaker 4: her in the trunk of the thunderbird. Well as a
Speaker 4: killer or killers are getting ready to leave, they noticed
Speaker 4: something in the yard, something moving, and what it was.
Speaker 4: It was Lisa. She had woken up. They thought she
Speaker 4: was dead. She woke up. She climbed out the window
Speaker 4: of the of the kitchen and she was crawling across
Speaker 4: the yard to get to her parents' house. And when
Speaker 4: she gets there, she literally gets to the door. Her
Speaker 4: hand is on the door. There's actually a bloody handprint
Speaker 4: that you can see. The killer or killers run up
Speaker 4: behind her, slash her throat all the way across, and
Speaker 4: she bleeds out on their porch. They didn't know she
Speaker 4: was there till the next morning, and because they couldn't
Speaker 4: open the door, and they didn't know it was jamming
Speaker 4: the door. And so a little girl's taken. There's a
Speaker 4: lot they don't They don't know definitively what happened to her.
Speaker 4: There's a lots of stories, but they do know that
Speaker 4: her bones were found in a creek a couple of
Speaker 4: years later, about a half a mile from the Green
Speaker 4: clan's house, Billy Green's house, and it was out in
Speaker 4: the middle of nowhere. And that's why I titled the
Speaker 4: book The Creek Sidebones, because that's where they found Felicia.
Speaker 5: Let's go back just a little bit, because right away,
Speaker 5: after this brutal murder and this crime scene that you
Speaker 5: say that even veterans still have nightmares. A boat the
Speaker 5: first logical suspect, because Carl and Felicia are missing. So
Speaker 5: let's go back to how everything is discovered. But also
Speaker 5: Carl is the suspect initially, isn't he? So tell us
Speaker 5: what happens next.
Speaker 4: Yes, he was a suspect. You know when they found
Speaker 4: Litha and Gregory's body is the next morning, you know
Speaker 4: he was missing. Felicia was missing. So the first assumption
Speaker 4: was that he had killed his wife and son and
Speaker 4: taken his daughter. That theory ended on August second, nineteen
Speaker 4: ninety eight, when they found his body in the river,
Speaker 4: and from that point on they knew they were The
Speaker 4: police knew that they were dealing with they were going
Speaker 4: to have to find some unknown person or persons who
Speaker 4: committed this crime. And the Greens were identified as semi
Speaker 4: suspects kind of early on the first couple months of
Speaker 4: the investigation, and they were interviewed a couple of times.
Speaker 4: Chad was and the problem was that there was very
Speaker 4: little forensic or DNA evidence of the crime scene. They
Speaker 4: just had nothing to go with. But as time went on,
Speaker 4: you know, like I said, in a little place like Dalton,
Speaker 4: everybody knows everybody and stories start to get out. And
Speaker 4: so the police within a year or two were starting
Speaker 4: to hear some pretty strong mathinations that the Greens were
Speaker 4: involved in the murders and they and they knew that
Speaker 4: Carl and the Greens had been involved in some drug
Speaker 4: trafficking together. So they were for several years they would
Speaker 4: bring them in an interview them, but they never could
Speaker 4: pin anything to them. What changed, And ironically enough, it
Speaker 4: was five years to the day. It was July twenty nine,
Speaker 4: two thousand and three. Mary Green, Billy's former wife, She
Speaker 4: finally confessed the crime to the police. She told them
Speaker 4: exactly what happened, what she was told by her son,
Speaker 4: and some things that Billy had said. And so so
Speaker 4: five years to the day they arrested two. Immediately they
Speaker 4: tried to get Chad to turn on Billy, so they
Speaker 4: wanted to turn him into a witness. That gave him
Speaker 4: a sweetheart deal. They said, hey, if you will testify
Speaker 4: against your father, we'll give you thirty seven years in
Speaker 4: prison for all four capital murders, and he also had
Speaker 4: an unrelated sexual assault of the child crime that had
Speaker 4: been was that he was having to deal with as well.
Speaker 4: So they just packaged it all together and they said,
Speaker 4: thirty seven years testify against your dad. He agreed to it.
Speaker 4: So then in two thousand and four, Billy goes to trial,
Speaker 4: he's convicted, He's sat on Arkansas's death row, and the
Speaker 4: case was basically it was over. You know, everybody was
Speaker 4: happy and as far as well, let me back up
Speaker 4: a little bit. So during the trial, a woman got
Speaker 4: on the stand and said that she was scared of
Speaker 4: Billy and that she thought that he might have had
Speaker 4: something to do with the murder of her nephew. Well,
Speaker 4: and you know this, Dan, You know, when you're testifying
Speaker 4: in a capital murder case or any case, you have
Speaker 4: to kind of stick. You have to stick to the
Speaker 4: fact of that case. You can't, you know, bring up
Speaker 4: things like that. So the judge should have declared a
Speaker 4: mistrial right there. He didn't, so on appeal the conviction
Speaker 4: was thrown out. Now prosecutors were in for a surprise
Speaker 4: because obviously they were going to immediately retry him. Well,
Speaker 4: they got a surprise when Chad said, I'm not going
Speaker 4: to testify gus by Dad's second time, and so they
Speaker 4: had that had a quandary and actually was about to
Speaker 4: go to the US Supreme Court because his lawyers were
Speaker 4: claiming double jeopardy because prosecutor said, okay, fine, we're not
Speaker 4: going to testify you. We're going to do We're just
Speaker 4: going to recharge you with all four counts capital murder
Speaker 4: and the sexual assault, and his lawyers argued that no, no,
Speaker 4: you can't do that. It's double that would violate his
Speaker 4: double jeopardy rights. So eventually it did work its way
Speaker 4: through the court system, and basically the finding was was
Speaker 4: that if he didn't agree to the plea deal, then
Speaker 4: it didn't exist, so they couldn't violate his double jeopardy laws.
Speaker 4: So Chad was charged with war counts, capital murder, the
Speaker 4: sex assault charge. On the sex assault charge alone, he
Speaker 4: got think fifty years and then of course they go
Speaker 4: to trial in Uh I believe it was September twenty eleven,
Speaker 4: and basically chad prosecutors were able to prove that Chad
Speaker 4: was a lot more culpable in the murders than what
Speaker 4: was initially thought. Initially, the police had made the had
Speaker 4: the theory that Billy, that Billy was the mastermind, and
Speaker 4: that Chad was just the unwilling duke who went along
Speaker 4: with his dad and did what he was told. Well,
Speaker 4: I always had a there was always a problem with
Speaker 4: that for me studying the case. For one simple reason.
Speaker 4: Billy was a very sophisticated criminal. He had like radios
Speaker 4: at his house, he was monitoring police traffic all the time,
Speaker 4: had informants everywhere that he paid off to keep information
Speaker 4: for him and get information for him. And the one
Speaker 4: thing that surprised him about the whole incident was the
Speaker 4: little girl was taken. And Billy, for all of his
Speaker 4: horrible deeds in life, I never came across any any
Speaker 4: any time that he'd been charged with like pedophilia, and Chad,
Speaker 4: you know that sex assault charge that he had previously
Speaker 4: was for molesting an eight year old girl. And so
Speaker 4: just in my mind, I was sitting there going, Okay,
Speaker 4: whoever did this? The motivation was the little girl because
Speaker 4: she was taken, And I'll never forget it. During Chad's trial.
Speaker 4: Number one and another thing that would have probably caused
Speaker 4: this case to go back to court anyway was defensor
Speaker 4: prosecutors didn't divulge back in two thousand and four that
Speaker 4: Chad actually confessed to the murders, that he said he
Speaker 4: did them all by himself and his dad wasn't even involved,
Speaker 4: and he did this with a like an attorney in
Speaker 4: a private investigator. He consessed it. Well, they never divulged
Speaker 4: that to Billy's defense team at that time, so right there,
Speaker 4: I mean, it was almost it was almost bad enough
Speaker 4: that the judge in the case had to even consider
Speaker 4: if Billy was going to go to trial a second
Speaker 4: time once this was found out in twenty eleven, but
Speaker 4: then he finally decided to go ahead and let it
Speaker 4: move forward. So in my mind, I just don't think
Speaker 4: if Billy had been there at the crime scene, I
Speaker 4: don't think he would have allowed Chad to take the
Speaker 4: girl because the girl would have led the police right
Speaker 4: to them and back at his trial, and it was
Speaker 4: a really surreal moment, I had an innate who testified
Speaker 4: that Chad bragged about the killing and he said that
Speaker 4: he talked about the little girl, and I want to
Speaker 4: just a heartbreaking, crushing moment. The guy gets on the
Speaker 4: stand and said that, you know, he wanted to enjoy
Speaker 4: her because she was going to die anyway. And I
Speaker 4: remember just looking at the juror c and of course
Speaker 4: the family members are all in there, their crying. I mean,
Speaker 4: I have a lump in my throat, and you know
Speaker 4: I've covered many murder cases. So anyway, Chad was convicted
Speaker 4: and so was Billy. Later he was his trials in
Speaker 4: twenty twelve. They were both given life without parole. And
Speaker 4: the reason they weren't given death sentences in the cases
Speaker 4: is because the case is circumstantial. Mary Green, Chad's mother
Speaker 4: and Billy's former wife, had to testify. She was the
Speaker 4: most crucial witness, and prosecutors were afraid that if the
Speaker 4: death penalty was on the table, especially with her son,
Speaker 4: that she might not be as forthcoming in her testimony.
Speaker 4: So they had to take that off the table. And
Speaker 4: so both these guys are in prison for the rest
Speaker 4: of their lives now. And I tell people, when you
Speaker 4: read this story, when you research this case, it is
Speaker 4: about You've never watched a horror movie or read a
Speaker 4: horror novel any worse than what happened to that family.
Speaker 4: I mean, the Crimking photos are just brutal. I mean
Speaker 4: it was literally you hear the term bloodbath, and it's
Speaker 4: a lot. Literally, that house was a wash in blood.
Speaker 4: The autopsic phetos of Lisa Elliott. I seen many many
Speaker 4: autopsy phellows, and hers would the absolute most heartbreaking.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, you got to see that. I've never experienced
Speaker 5: crime scene photos and if I can avoid it, I will.
Speaker 3: Ye.
Speaker 5: What you talk about we was really fascinating part of
Speaker 5: this book, and I wanted to ask you too. I
Speaker 5: don't know if you come to this conclusion, but it
Speaker 5: seems very irresponsible. It would seem even on the little
Speaker 5: limited amount of evidence that they had, because you uncovered
Speaker 5: a lot of stuff, and it came out later when
Speaker 5: Chad was put in that position against his father to
Speaker 5: try to mount some kind of defense. So you talk
Speaker 5: about the evidence that was there that there was two killers,
Speaker 5: and there was evidence from Mary about the phone call
Speaker 5: and from Chad's ex girlfriend. So they put this thing
Speaker 5: together that there certainly was a call, that there certainly
Speaker 5: was a lot of evidence to say that they were
Speaker 5: both involved. So it seemed irresponsible to me in that
Speaker 5: first trial to be able to convict Billy completely and
Speaker 5: no culpability on Chad's part. It seemed talk more about
Speaker 5: the dilemma that Mary had Billy's wife and Chad's mother
Speaker 5: in this and what it seemed, at least in your regards,
Speaker 5: your respect that it seemed what she was trying to
Speaker 5: do at trial for her son and against her husband.
Speaker 4: Well, it was clearly obvious to me. Here's the thing
Speaker 4: about you know, being a journalist, and I know that
Speaker 4: you can appreciate this. A lot of many people don't
Speaker 4: ever step through the courtroom the you know, like the
Speaker 4: like people who sit on jury's. The only time they're
Speaker 4: ever in a courtroom is the day there and they're
Speaker 4: on a jury. A lot of the people who testify
Speaker 4: in these capital murder cases, they don't have the totality
Speaker 4: of what was of the what happened in the courtroom
Speaker 4: because they can't be in there when other people are testifying.
Speaker 4: And so as a reporter, you kind of you get
Speaker 4: to sit there and you get to listen to every
Speaker 4: single person testify.
Speaker 1: Wait, the lucky land slots. You can get lucky just
Speaker 1: about anywhere.
Speaker 3: It's your captain speaking. We've got clear runway and the
Speaker 3: weather's fine, but we're just going to circle up here
Speaker 3: a while and get lucky. Oh no, nothing like that
Speaker 3: it's just these cash prizes add up quick. So I
Speaker 3: suggest you sit back, keep your trade table up right,
Speaker 3: and start getting Lucky.
Speaker 1: Pay for free at Lucky landslops dot com. Are you
Speaker 1: feeling lucky? No purchase necessary void. We're prohibited by Law
Speaker 1: eighteen plus. Terms and conditions apply see website for details.
Speaker 4: You talk to the jurors afterwards, you talk to the
Speaker 4: family members during so you get you have you have
Speaker 4: an insight that really no one else can get. And
Speaker 4: it was pretty obvious to me after covering both capital
Speaker 4: murder cases and seeing Mary Custofy, she was really trying
Speaker 4: to minimize Chad's involvement. She got Chad sided a couple
Speaker 4: of times because she would say, well, if Chad did it, it
Speaker 4: was because Billy told him to. You know. It was
Speaker 4: kind of one of those deals. And they even asked her,
Speaker 4: you know, and obviously when you gave the intro. You know,
Speaker 4: one of the stories about the little girl is that
Speaker 4: she was kept she was tied up and kept in
Speaker 4: a garage in a barrel. And they they asked Mary,
Speaker 4: they said, did you ever ask Chad about where the
Speaker 4: girl was kept and how what happened to her? And
Speaker 4: she just cried and said, no, I never asked, and
Speaker 4: they said why, and she said, because I didn't want
Speaker 4: to know, so so she tried. But and again she
Speaker 4: was obviously very traumatized during Billy's trial. I mean she
Speaker 4: was walking a court soon she saw him. I mean
Speaker 4: you could you could see in her face. I mean,
Speaker 4: the man had traumatized her a lot. So she but
Speaker 4: she was a pretty she was credible, I thought she
Speaker 4: and as any mother would do, she tried to protect
Speaker 4: her son to some degree, but at the end of
Speaker 4: the day, she still gave the critical facts that they needed.
Speaker 4: You know, there was a phone call the night of
Speaker 4: the murders Billy left. He said he had to help
Speaker 4: Chad clean up a mess and so and I always
Speaker 4: took that, you know, like the prosecutors always took that
Speaker 4: comment from that night to me that he was going
Speaker 4: to help Chad kill the family. And again, Billy being
Speaker 4: a sophisticated criminal, I don't know why if they were
Speaker 4: gonna kill him that night, I don't know why wouldn't
Speaker 4: have been better planned out, I guess the best way
Speaker 4: to put it, you know, And why would they kill
Speaker 4: the whole family when they could just kill Carl and
Speaker 4: you know, and they would probably there would be less
Speaker 4: you know, when you when you kill a family of
Speaker 4: four like that, I mean that that makes national news,
Speaker 4: you know. But if you just kill another another guy
Speaker 4: involved in the drug trade with you, you know, there's a
Speaker 4: good chance they won't even solve that crime. I mean,
Speaker 4: that's just just a hard fact, but it's true. And
Speaker 4: so that's it was in my opinion, that Carl had
Speaker 4: some superficial wounds to his neck, like somebody maybe scraped
Speaker 4: him with a knife. They weren't, they weren't like thrust,
Speaker 4: you know from a knife and you know, been killing
Speaker 4: the people with a tire tool in the house. I mean,
Speaker 4: that's just you just grab whatever. That's just kind of
Speaker 4: one of those things where you just grab whatever's handy
Speaker 4: to try to hit somebody with it. So anyway, I
Speaker 4: just think that that Billy, I've said this before, I
Speaker 4: don't think anything to do with with Carl or Lisa
Speaker 4: or Gregory's death. I think it's possible he might have
Speaker 4: killed Felicia though that maybe he found out that Chad had.
Speaker 4: There was one story that was that several people testified
Speaker 4: to in court that Chad had fallen in love with
Speaker 4: Felicia after keeping her for a couple of days, and
Speaker 4: they couldn't kill her, and that his dad had to
Speaker 4: do it because he knew as soon as he found
Speaker 4: out that Chad had kept her, he knew that the police,
Speaker 4: she would lead the police directly to them. So he
Speaker 4: took her up to the creak and flit her throat
Speaker 4: and she drowned in this wet creek. So I think
Speaker 4: that's possible. I talked to Billy right after the convictions.
Speaker 4: I mean, as soon as the gavel went down the
Speaker 4: judge called the recess. I went up to him. His
Speaker 4: defense attorneys they would freely let him talk to me.
Speaker 4: So and he looked sincere when he said, I didn't
Speaker 4: do this, But like I said, there's part feel sorry
Speaker 4: for a guy. You know, his his rap sheet is very,
Speaker 4: very long. He's committed many, many other brutal crimes. So
Speaker 4: he and like I said, he would be in jail
Speaker 4: for the rest of his life anyway, on all the
Speaker 4: drug charges he'd convicted the previous to all of this.
Speaker 5: And these drug charges too. Why they really he was
Speaker 5: important is because you say he was it was much
Speaker 5: harder to convict him with the circumstantial evidence of murder,
Speaker 5: but to tie him in with a drug dealing and
Speaker 5: homicide connectioned or connected was much easier and attainable. But
Speaker 5: this is guy who is an important person that they
Speaker 5: think has killed before in the commission of his drug business.
Speaker 4: Yes, and he uh yeah, very possible. Lots of rumors. Never,
Speaker 4: like I said, he was never convicted of any of these,
Speaker 4: but there were there are lots of rumors. He lived
Speaker 4: in southern Missouri for several years, a lot of nefarious
Speaker 4: connections up in that area. He was actually shot and
Speaker 4: all but died himself at a at a barroom brawl
Speaker 4: one night. But yeah, it's there, it's he was. He's
Speaker 4: a rough guy. I've been asked the question several times,
Speaker 4: you know, like you like, who's the worst person you've
Speaker 4: ever been around? And I would tell him, without a doubt,
Speaker 4: it's Chad Green And right behind him is his dad, Billy.
Speaker 5: Do you think? What do you think? Because you provide
Speaker 5: that in in this book conclusions to all these cases,
Speaker 5: You're right there. What was your conclusion on how this
Speaker 5: went down? And why?
Speaker 4: What I believe is that Chad was out that night
Speaker 4: and he was just he was out driving around his car.
Speaker 4: His truck broke down by the river, and it was
Speaker 4: about a mile from Carl's house. I think he went
Speaker 4: back up to He walked up to the house, asked
Speaker 4: Carl to help him. I think they went down to
Speaker 4: the river. They probably consumed drugs together. Chad had a
Speaker 4: really bad habit when he got high at parties and stuff,
Speaker 4: he would take out his twenty two and shoot at
Speaker 4: people because he thought it was funny. And I think
Speaker 4: what happened in this case is they either got into
Speaker 4: an argument or Chad was doing the stupid thing that
Speaker 4: he always did when he got high. He pulled the
Speaker 4: gun out, and I think he accidentally shot Karl, and
Speaker 4: when he did, he freaked out. He shot him again.
Speaker 4: He got his pocket knife out and he was gonna
Speaker 4: slit his throat, and then he thought, no, I'm not
Speaker 4: gonna do that. He did anyway, so he threw him
Speaker 4: in the river. And he knew that Lisa had just
Speaker 4: made him a glass of tea before he left the
Speaker 4: house with Carl. So he went back up to the house,
Speaker 4: and he knew that all the family members knew that
Speaker 4: he had left with Carl, and if they found Carl's
Speaker 4: body in the river. Chad would be the primary suspect.
Speaker 4: He knew that he would go to prison, so he
Speaker 4: went up there and slaughtered that family to protect himself.
Speaker 4: He was a pedophile. The little girl. There's actually been
Speaker 4: some remembers that he had already started to molest her
Speaker 4: before the murders, and so I think he took her then,
Speaker 4: and that's what I think happened. But then I think
Speaker 4: Billy tried to help him cover it up after the fact.
Speaker 5: So you don't believe it was on orders to kill
Speaker 5: this family or collect this debt from Carl.
Speaker 4: No, I believe that. I believe that Billy had threatened
Speaker 4: Chad because Carl was his friend. A few weeks prior
Speaker 4: to the murders, Mary was in her flower garden and
Speaker 4: she her flower beds, and she overheard a conversation between
Speaker 4: Billy and Chad, basically where Billy was telling Chad, you
Speaker 4: better get my stuff from Carl or you and him
Speaker 4: are gonna get it, which you know, and there was
Speaker 4: a theory floated for years that it was over ten
Speaker 4: pot plants. Well, I again, Billy's a sophisticated criminal. He
Speaker 4: might go and beat Carl up over some pot plants.
Speaker 4: But I really don't think he would kill him over
Speaker 4: it because just just for the simple fact that again,
Speaker 4: that's gonna lead the police right to you, and it's
Speaker 4: gonna shut your drug operation down. So again it's is
Speaker 4: it possible. Yes, I mean, we'll probably never really know
Speaker 4: what happened, but I think just from the circumstances, the
Speaker 4: clumsiness of it, that's the main thing. I mean, they
Speaker 4: left the tire tool at the house. There is no
Speaker 4: way Billy Green is leaving that entire tool at that house, so,
Speaker 4: you know, and just the fact that they weren't it
Speaker 4: was ill prepared. I mean, like I said before, if
Speaker 4: you if you want to deal with Carl and him
Speaker 4: not paying a debt or stealing drugs from you, you're
Speaker 4: not gonna kill his whole family. I mean, even it
Speaker 4: comes to the point where you decide you're gonna kill him,
Speaker 4: you're gonna you're gonna find some other way to do it.
Speaker 5: Credible, horrible case. Let's go to the case of Sydney
Speaker 5: Nicole Randall, another heartbreaking case. You talk about this. So
Speaker 5: she's a fifth grader and walnut Ridge, rural southern town,
Speaker 5: Northern Arkansas, Lawrence County, tell us again set the stage
Speaker 5: for this, and you talk about her mother, Denise Cornell.
Speaker 5: She's a cancer survivor, and Sidney has a stepfather, John Cornell,
Speaker 5: big guy two hundred and fifty pounds, mid thirties. Tell
Speaker 5: us a little bit about their family situation there in
Speaker 5: walnut Ridge. What's going on March twenty thirteen.
Speaker 4: Well, actually, Sydney was in She was in the fifth
Speaker 4: grade when my wife first encountered her. My wife's a
Speaker 4: fifth grade science teacher, and Sydney was. Sydney was one
Speaker 4: of her students in the first class that she ever taught.
Speaker 4: Lawrence County is a farming community or not. Wawrin County
Speaker 4: won't is a farming community in Lawrence County. It's uh.
Speaker 4: It sits on the near the Black River, which kind
Speaker 4: of biper kates the Ozark Mountain region and the Mississippi
Speaker 4: Delta region. So when you come to walnut Ridge, you're
Speaker 4: coming into the first you know, bigger Delta town coming
Speaker 4: out of the Ozark Foothills. Lots of soybeans, peanuts, corn,
Speaker 4: just a lot, just an agricultural area. And what happened
Speaker 4: was Sydney was in the eighth grade. She was a
Speaker 4: beauty pageant queen. She was on the flagline team for
Speaker 4: the band. I knew her. She my daughter plays softball.
Speaker 4: She would come to She was friends with several girls
Speaker 4: and my daughter plays softball with and so she'd come
Speaker 4: and watch them play. I would go on my wife's
Speaker 4: classroom occasionally and I would see Sydney in there. You know.
Speaker 4: She h she was a pretty and respectful girl. She
Speaker 4: everybody loved her. I mean, she was a great kid.
Speaker 4: And so what happened is on March tenth, twenty thirteen,
Speaker 4: her her and her stepfather vanished. And what happened was
Speaker 4: Denise was a fell asleep that night. She had had
Speaker 4: I believe she had back surgery, and she had taken
Speaker 4: a xanax or something like that that it kind of
Speaker 4: knocked her out. And so when she woke up, it
Speaker 4: was like three o'clock in the morning, she noticed John
Speaker 4: wasn't in bed with her, and she went around the
Speaker 4: house checking on her three kids, and she noticed that
Speaker 4: Sydney was missing, and so she started calling around and
Speaker 4: none of her friends knew where she was at. You know,
Speaker 4: at first, she thought maybe she just snuck out. You know,
Speaker 4: she's an eighth grader, I mean kids do stuff like that,
Speaker 4: and maybe John went out to look for you know,
Speaker 4: that was kind of what she was thinking. Well, none
Speaker 4: of her friends had any idea, so she called to
Speaker 4: the hospital to see if maybe there was some accident
Speaker 4: or something happened, and then she called the police because
Speaker 4: John's wallace and his cell phone all that was still
Speaker 4: at the house. So right around the time she was
Speaker 4: waiting outside, this is like three thirty four o'clock in
Speaker 4: the morning. And there's always been a little confusion about this,
Speaker 4: about the date just for or the time just because
Speaker 4: of the simple fact that time changed that night. So
Speaker 4: it was just kind of a weird thing. So she's waiting, Well,
Speaker 4: John's truck pulls into the driveway and she said, sit
Speaker 4: me with you and he said no, and she said, well,
Speaker 4: she's missing and he said that's that's BS and he
Speaker 4: said he's going to the police to follow a report.
Speaker 4: So he leaves. Well, the police officer rise a few
Speaker 4: minutes later and Denise is like, did my husband come
Speaker 4: and follow the police report me? The police officer says no.
Speaker 4: And so anyway, so all the next day she's out
Speaker 4: looking for I had heard something I caught like the
Speaker 4: tail end of a missing girl and Walnut Ridge story
Speaker 4: on when I was watching news, I didn't catch the name.
Speaker 4: But and you know this, it's not a very It's
Speaker 4: not uncommon for a stepfather to you know, be blessing
Speaker 4: his a step child and then you know, they take
Speaker 4: off together and they're found in some other state. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's not a it's unfortunate, but it's not an uncommon tale. So, uh,
Speaker 4: my wife calls me. That was on a Sunday on
Speaker 4: Monday morning, my wife called me at my office and
Speaker 4: she's panics. She said, Sydney's missing. And I was like,
Speaker 4: I said, well, they'll find her, you know, don't worry
Speaker 4: about it, you know. But then at three o'clock that afternoon,
Speaker 4: they found John's body on a gravel road just outside
Speaker 4: of wal A Ridge and he had shot himself. And
Speaker 4: so at that point we knew it was bad. And
Speaker 4: it's a really weird thing, like and you know, I've
Speaker 4: been a journalists for a long time. It's a really
Speaker 4: weird thing writing about someone you knew, and it was
Speaker 4: it was heartbreaking. I had a lot of like inside
Speaker 4: access to the family just because they knew my wife.
Speaker 4: She was their kids teacher. I knew all my kids knew,
Speaker 4: I mean, everybody knew her. So I was able to get,
Speaker 4: like a lot of times when the family wouldn't talk
Speaker 4: to anybody, it's still talk to me. And so I
Speaker 4: was able to write stories about it. But you know,
Speaker 4: the days and weeks went on, they never found that
Speaker 4: hadn't found her. And of course, as springtime comes along,
Speaker 4: you know, foliage starts to grow, the landscape starts to change,
Speaker 4: and so there was kind of an assumption that they
Speaker 4: didn't find her, you know, before spring started, that they
Speaker 4: may never find her. So but that all changed. On
Speaker 4: May eighteenth, twenty thirteen, a guy was out fishing with
Speaker 4: his family. They were they were checking some drop lines
Speaker 4: on the Black River and they looked over and there
Speaker 4: was some there's trees that grew up through the river bed,
Speaker 4: and they looked over and they noticed what looked like
Speaker 4: a mannequin at first, and they went over there. Of course,
Speaker 4: the father immediately knew that it was a body as
Speaker 4: soon as he would have got a little closer. So
Speaker 4: that he got the rest of the younger kids and
Speaker 4: the rest of the pantam Hoover's downriver, and then him
Speaker 4: and his oldest son went back, they called the police.
Speaker 4: I was actually at the park playing basketball with my kids,
Speaker 4: and when the word came, it's amazing. I remember when
Speaker 4: I first started as a reporter, you know, you go
Speaker 4: down on the police station, you know, you got to
Speaker 4: you gotta try to find some way to get them
Speaker 4: to give you information. Nowadays with Facebook, you know, I
Speaker 4: think I knew within seventh great minutes of the of
Speaker 4: the call going into the nine on one center that
Speaker 4: they found her. And it was simply because people share
Speaker 4: that stuff on social media now, you know. And so anyway,
Speaker 4: they confirmed it was her a day or two later,
Speaker 4: and it was just a really it's a heartbreaking case.
Speaker 4: It's it's just it's just her her soul to know
Speaker 4: that that little girl. And and I'll say this, I
Speaker 4: got her autopsy reports and they found her DNA on
Speaker 4: his tenis. So they know that he raped and killed
Speaker 4: her before that she was raped before she was killed,
Speaker 4: and they uh and I and I again in the book,
Speaker 4: I talk about this. I think probably what happened was
Speaker 4: is he he was having violent sex with her, and
Speaker 4: I think he hurt her and then he didn't know
Speaker 4: what to do. He freaked out he hit her, hit
Speaker 4: her over the head. She got from a blunt forced
Speaker 4: trauma to the head and she drowned. So he hit
Speaker 4: her in the head and he threw her threw in
Speaker 4: the river and she drowned. And so anyway, and you know,
Speaker 4: a case like this is it's really tough because I
Speaker 4: actually had to deal with some of his family members
Speaker 4: and you know, they don't want to believe that he's
Speaker 4: this horrible rapist, murder monster. But the problem is is
Speaker 4: that he was. He did these things. And you know,
Speaker 4: in my reporting, I didn't say anything about where they
Speaker 4: found her DNA. I just said they found her on him.
Speaker 4: And then I had to tell one of his family
Speaker 4: members that you know, hey, they actually found it on
Speaker 4: a team. That's there's no doubt that her DNA should
Speaker 4: not be there. And if he had gotten back into
Speaker 4: that house, and I've always I've contemplated this, if he
Speaker 4: had gotten back in the house at night, let's just
Speaker 4: say Denise doesn't wake up, he slips back into bed,
Speaker 4: and then there's no proof at all that he had
Speaker 4: anything to do with her murder.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a terrifying idea, I thought, yep. And there
Speaker 5: was Ben the younger son or the son. Pardon me.
Speaker 5: He had also said, yeah, he had confirmed that John
Speaker 5: Cornell was abusing his daughter, stepdaughter.
Speaker 4: Yes, what happened was he he started gifting Sydney right
Speaker 4: several months before this, he was buying he bought her
Speaker 4: a laptop. He would buy her pageant dresses. I mean,
Speaker 4: he took her pageant dress shopping. And you know right there,
Speaker 4: that's I mean, that's just that is that a bizarre behavior?
Speaker 4: Anybody could you can see that. And he he wouldn't
Speaker 4: learn to have a boyfriend. He he would take herself
Speaker 4: one away from her all the time. He didn't want
Speaker 4: boys around her. And you know, and beneath you know,
Speaker 4: she in the police report she talks about, you know,
Speaker 4: their sex life changing pretty dramatically because of the sergers
Speaker 4: she had had, and and she began to suspect that,
Speaker 4: you know, that he might be molesting her. You know,
Speaker 4: they lived in a pretty small house. It wasn't like
Speaker 4: I mean, I imagine they all they all knew what was
Speaker 4: going on.
Speaker 5: That's incredible. Let's use this as an opportunity, George to
Speaker 5: stop for a second to talk about our sponsor today
Speaker 5: Warby Parker Warby Parker has started as a collaboration between
Speaker 5: four close friends. Warby Porker was conceived as an alternative
Speaker 5: to the overpriced and blend eyewear available today. Warby Parker's
Speaker 5: vintage inspired with a contemporary twist. Every pair is a
Speaker 5: custom fit with anti reflective polycarbonate prescription lenses. They have
Speaker 5: a free home tryon program. Order five pairs of glasses
Speaker 5: and try them on for five days. There's no obligation
Speaker 5: to buy. They ship free and include a pre parayd
Speaker 5: return shipping label. Head to Warbyparker dot com slash true
Speaker 5: Murdered order your free home tryons today. Glasses start at
Speaker 5: ninety five dollars including prescription lenses and lenses include anti
Speaker 5: glare and anti scratch coatings. For every pair you buy,
Speaker 5: also a pair is distributed to someone in need. The
Speaker 5: glasses look fantastic, by the way, and the tryon program
Speaker 5: is really really easy and I like getting other people's
Speaker 5: opinions about the glasses before I even purchase them. Do
Speaker 5: you have an iPhone X make sure to download Warbi
Speaker 5: Parker's app, where you can use is their brand new
Speaker 5: feature Find your Fit. Find your Fit uses the iPhone
Speaker 5: x's true depth camera to map and measure key facial features.
Speaker 5: Using these measurements, find your fit recommends approximately twelve Warbi
Speaker 5: Parker frames that are likely the best fit for your face.
Speaker 5: The process is seamless and takes only a few seconds.
Speaker 5: After that, you head to Warbyparker dot com slash True
Speaker 5: Murder and place your home try on orders. Make sure
Speaker 5: to don't download the Warby Parker app from iTunes App store.
Speaker 5: They built this great app which allows you to take
Speaker 5: photos wearing all of the frames. You can stitch it
Speaker 5: into a video and then you can share it with
Speaker 5: your friends and your family and basically pick the winner
Speaker 5: for the ones that you really liked. So go to
Speaker 5: Parker dot com slash true Murder and order your home
Speaker 5: Try on today. That's warby Parker dot com slash True
Speaker 5: Murder Now, George. In your chapter three, you talk about
Speaker 5: another missing person's case. You start off with this that
Speaker 5: you're shopping, you notice a missing person's poster a young
Speaker 5: mother named Bridget Sellers and it made an impression. And
Speaker 5: now you talk about a year later, you're working your
Speaker 5: first serious newspaper reporting job at an area wide media
Speaker 5: in Salem, Arkansas. Tell us about how this very impressive
Speaker 5: missing poster has made a very big impression on you.
Speaker 5: What happened with bridget Sellers and this story.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I just graduated from college and I
Speaker 4: went on a trip to Europe. I've been gone for
Speaker 4: about a month, and I the first night I came back,
Speaker 4: I was just at a local store, shopping, walk through
Speaker 4: the doors. It was, you know, like a really nice,
Speaker 4: warm spring night. I look over on the wall and
Speaker 4: I see this picture of this woman, and it left
Speaker 4: an impression on me because she kind of looked like
Speaker 4: my wife in the picture. So I just kind of
Speaker 4: noticed it for whatever reason, and who knows why, I
Speaker 4: just it just never left me. I wasn't working at
Speaker 4: a newspaper at that time. About a year year and
Speaker 4: a half later, I started working at a newspaper. And
Speaker 4: you know, as a reporter, you keep lists of stories
Speaker 4: that you want to work on, you know, and when
Speaker 4: there's no breaking news or not covering a meeting or whatnot,
Speaker 4: you just have a list of things you want to
Speaker 4: work on. One day, I was working on my list
Speaker 4: and I thought, I wonder if they ever did any
Speaker 4: stories about this missing woman. So I go into my
Speaker 4: editor's office a guy named David Cox, who is one
Speaker 4: of the best editors I've ever had. I walked in,
Speaker 4: I said, David, did you guys ever do any stories
Speaker 4: about a missing mother? And he had no idea what
Speaker 4: I was talking about. So I started doing some dinger
Speaker 4: and that I found out that this mother of three
Speaker 4: had gone for a walk on a road called Peace
Speaker 4: Valley Road, ironically enough, and it connects two towns. Horseshoe
Speaker 4: Bend is the retirement community in ash Flat. It's just
Speaker 4: a rural thoroughfare, you know, people, it's not heavily traveled.
Speaker 4: There's you know, sporadic houses and farms along this place.
Speaker 4: There's a cemetery in church, you know, all this kind
Speaker 4: of thing. Well, I got the name of the ant
Speaker 4: who put the posters up, but and there had been
Speaker 4: a number, a phone number that was associated with her,
Speaker 4: and I called the number. It was disconnected. I think
Speaker 4: I got an address. Maybe I tried to go. I'm
Speaker 4: literally the kind of reporter I will go to someone's house.
Speaker 4: I've done it before. So I went to the house
Speaker 4: they were They didn't live there, no more, nobody knew
Speaker 4: where they were at. So I kind of just gave
Speaker 4: up on it. Well, my sister was at the same
Speaker 4: store a couple of years later buying a sprinkler for
Speaker 4: my kids to play with, and she brought it home.
Speaker 4: The sprinkler just totally sucks. So we decided we were
Speaker 4: going to go to horshe Then there's a lake there
Speaker 4: and we thought we'd just go swimming at the lake. Well,
Speaker 4: we're driving down Peace Valley Road and my sister's telling
Speaker 4: me a story about how she met a woman in
Speaker 4: line at the store. And the woman was a dog
Speaker 4: breeder and she had that Saint Bernard puppy that my
Speaker 4: sister's friend might be interested in. So the woman gave
Speaker 4: her a card. Well, of course it was me and
Speaker 4: and so I immediately called her right there on the road.
Speaker 4: I called it in and I'm like, hey, I want
Speaker 4: to do a story about your missing niece. And she
Speaker 4: said great, She goes she was mad the police weren't
Speaker 4: looking for you know, nobody was doing anything to try
Speaker 4: to find this girl. So I go, when I do
Speaker 4: the story, she actually lived on Peace Valley Road, And
Speaker 4: the dynamic is that she lived on Peace Valley Road,
Speaker 4: and so did an uncle on Bridget's dad side. He
Speaker 4: also lived on Peace Valley Road, and I asked her
Speaker 4: she had any idea who might have done this, who
Speaker 4: could have taken her. She didn't give me any names,
Speaker 4: but it was pretty obvious to me that she was
Speaker 4: pretty scared of the other uncle on Bridget's dad's side.
Speaker 4: So the police finally there was a jurisdiction issue. There's
Speaker 4: two counties that meet right there, Sharp and Izard Counties,
Speaker 4: and so the police had some There was jurisdiction issues.
Speaker 4: They didn't know if it was their case because she
Speaker 4: was walking on the road, you know which agency should
Speaker 4: take care of this. So finally they searched his property
Speaker 4: and they don't find anything, but he was pretty clearly
Speaker 4: the suspect, and just the backup a little bit. When
Speaker 4: I went to the Ants house, I mean it was
Speaker 4: unbelievably sealthy. I mean I've literally gone on drug range
Speaker 4: where I saw some I saw an officer lose half
Speaker 4: his hand one time. I felt safer there than I
Speaker 4: was at this house. I mean, there were tip bulls
Speaker 4: everywhere rott Wiler's. They were breeding I think timber wolves.
Speaker 4: It was really it was a crazy scene. And of
Speaker 4: course bridges Son was living with them a little. It
Speaker 4: was a little guys about two or three, and I
Speaker 4: took a picture of him on a swing set. And
Speaker 4: so anyway, the police searched the property, they don't find anything. Well,
Speaker 4: a few months ago by I actually took a different
Speaker 4: newspaper job well, and I get a tip that they're
Speaker 4: going to go they're going to go check this guy's
Speaker 4: house again, and this time they're going to clean out
Speaker 4: his sewer tank. And they do that and they find
Speaker 4: some of her She had a she had kind of
Speaker 4: a bone deformity that affected her fingers, and they found
Speaker 4: some finger bones in there and they were tested for
Speaker 4: and they had this bone before me that she had,
Speaker 4: so they knew that her body had been in there.
Speaker 4: What was really bizarre is that none of her bigger
Speaker 4: bones were found out and like her skull or torso.
Speaker 4: And what they think happened is he actually after the
Speaker 4: first search, uh the Jerry Stevens, they think that he
Speaker 4: They think that he went back into that septic tank
Speaker 4: and actually fished her big bones out. Nobody knows what
Speaker 4: he did with them. So and that the day after
Speaker 4: they find these bones that they were gonna charge them
Speaker 4: with capital murder. He actually ended up dying from cancer.
Speaker 4: So he never got convicted in that.
Speaker 5: In that case, and you looked into his background, you
Speaker 5: talk about previous violence. We'll say, tell us a little
Speaker 5: bit about that. What you found in terms of this
Speaker 5: past violent record.
Speaker 4: He had. He had shot and killed I believe his
Speaker 4: own father back in the seventies. I think they ended
Speaker 4: up ruling it a justified homicide. And then he also
Speaker 4: he had also had been charged and convicted of some
Speaker 4: sexual miss conduct with Bridget when she was a child.
Speaker 4: And there's no when Bridget went for a walk that
Speaker 4: day on the road, she got into a fight with
Speaker 4: her aunt because her aunt wanted her. You know, she
Speaker 4: had she had been doing some dabbling into minor drug stuff.
Speaker 4: She had been an irresponsible mother. I mean, I think
Speaker 4: he could probably safely say that, and so that at
Speaker 4: least two of the kids were living with that end
Speaker 4: at the time, and they got she got mad and
Speaker 4: that's why she went for a walk and when her
Speaker 4: killer came upon her. I don't know if he killed
Speaker 4: her because of the minor the minor sexual misconduct charge
Speaker 4: that he had leveled against him years before, or there's
Speaker 4: other you know, other rumors that he she he made
Speaker 4: it involved in some drug stuff and she was involved
Speaker 4: with him. But for whatever reason, he came upon her
Speaker 4: that day and he killed her. I mean he chopped
Speaker 4: her up and he stuffed her and sept.
Speaker 5: You talk about the incredible search, and I found this
Speaker 5: very interesting too. They had everything from cadaver dogs, and
Speaker 5: they had so they had gone by that septic tank.
Speaker 5: Could you say there was he you theorize or other
Speaker 5: people theorized that he went and took like the skull
Speaker 5: out or the Torso obviously they would have been there
Speaker 5: if they would have searched. So they speculate that he
Speaker 5: took them out. But these cadaver dogs tell us why
Speaker 5: they couldn't detect anything even though they had this incredible
Speaker 5: search for Brigitte.
Speaker 4: You know, I've wondered about that the police officers that
Speaker 4: I talked to about this, because they had several caver
Speaker 4: dogs out on the property and they never hit on
Speaker 4: the septic tank. I think that just the overwhelming mix
Speaker 4: of smells in the septic tank probably confused the dogs,
Speaker 4: or if they hit on the septic tank, they may
Speaker 4: not have like it might be common for dogs to
Speaker 4: hit on theptic tanks just because of the bell. So
Speaker 4: I never could get a clear answer on that. I
Speaker 4: will say this. You know, I've been doing this for
Speaker 4: a long time. I read a lot about different murder cases.
Speaker 4: I've never heard of anybody stuffing a body in a
Speaker 4: septic tank like that. So you know, maybe that's just
Speaker 4: a place you can hide, you know, one, and it
Speaker 4: just makes it that much harder for the dogs to hit.
Speaker 5: I think so. Yeah, And you say that maybe Becky Jones,
Speaker 5: what was the speculation that she may have known that
Speaker 5: Jerry Stevens killed Bridget?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think she. I think she probably at least
Speaker 4: suspected it. She didn't tell me that, but when when
Speaker 4: his name was brought up, you know, she she really
Speaker 4: didn't want to talk about him, so she obviously knew
Speaker 4: he was a dangerous guy. She also knew there was
Speaker 4: a connection between him and Bridget, so it she I mean,
Speaker 4: I could tell that was definitely something there. I don't
Speaker 4: think she wanted to speculate. But you know, if your
Speaker 4: niece goes missing, you know there's a guy who possibly
Speaker 4: has a motive that lives literally as a crowth live,
Speaker 4: you know, just a few hundred yards from you. Like
Speaker 4: I said, it's a rural area. If she went for
Speaker 4: a walk. You know, the chances of him coming upon
Speaker 4: her pretty good. So I think she probably had some suspicion,
Speaker 4: but you know, she was pretty If she suspected he
Speaker 4: killed her, she was definitely keeping it to herself with
Speaker 4: me anyway.
Speaker 5: Wow, you take us to another story where a farm
Speaker 5: service store where they would sell products related to farms
Speaker 5: in walnut Ridge, Arkansas. Again, and this this attendant name
Speaker 5: Moore's working there for about seventeen years, and he sees
Speaker 5: this Bob Castleman, sixty year old guy. This is a
Speaker 5: April twenty eleven, and he's got this canister of Coleman
Speaker 5: camp fuel. Tell us a little bit about more and
Speaker 5: the cooperation with police and why this canister of Coleman
Speaker 5: camp fuel is caused for suspicion. Tell us this story
Speaker 5: that you start off with.
Speaker 4: Well, the reason that is suspicious is in Arkansas and
Speaker 4: a lot of southern states, poor states, there's been just
Speaker 4: an epidemic of meth amphetamine use. There's a lot of
Speaker 4: people who make methamphetamine. It's cheap to make, it's highly addictive.
Speaker 4: And this Bob Castleman guy, he had gone into the
Speaker 4: farm service store there in walnut Ridge and he was
Speaker 4: buying some components from two being camp firefield. There's just
Speaker 4: certain earmarks for making methan, petamine and those products. You know,
Speaker 4: and you kind of when you see people who are
Speaker 4: addicted to Matthew, you immediately know who they are. I
Speaker 4: walk into a courtroom, you know, during a a court day,
Speaker 4: and you know, you can you can see out in
Speaker 4: the crowd, you can look you know who's addicted the
Speaker 4: mess and who's not me. It's it's obvious. And so
Speaker 4: he saw he saw Bob Cassleman, He saw him try
Speaker 4: to buy some components. He knew that he was trying
Speaker 4: to buy these to make math and and so he
Speaker 4: calls the police and sure enough they find a bunch
Speaker 4: of this stuff. Well, Bob, it's an interesting story. He
Speaker 4: he was a a he spent some time he was
Speaker 4: he was an attorney. He had spent some time as
Speaker 4: a judge. He had graduated, you know, from law school.
Speaker 4: He was a Vietnam Vet. In fact, his brother was
Speaker 4: one of the prosecutors on the Billy and Chad Green
Speaker 4: murder trials. So he came from a family of lawyers
Speaker 4: and he just devolved into this this criminal and all started.
Speaker 4: No one, I mean, I'm sure someone knows, but he had,
Speaker 4: you know, he he had a pretty highly successful law
Speaker 4: practice there in a town called Pocahontas, which is the
Speaker 4: county seat in Randolph County. And you know, he made
Speaker 4: a lot of money. He was connected to a lot
Speaker 4: of people and very well liked, by the way, a
Speaker 4: lot of people liked Bob Castleman. And he had a son,
Speaker 4: and the son had gotten into a dispute with one
Speaker 4: of their neighbors and he the dispute escalated to the
Speaker 4: point where the sun actually went over to the neighbor's
Speaker 4: house and had destroyed part of their yard, Like he
Speaker 4: drove his suv into their yard and he did donuts
Speaker 4: or whatever you would do, destroyed the yard. Well. When
Speaker 4: he was coming back home later that night, as he
Speaker 4: was passing by the neighbor's house, the neighbor was outside
Speaker 4: with a gun and actually shot into his suv a
Speaker 4: number of times and almost killed him. You know, one
Speaker 4: bullet landed just a just literally inches from his head.
Speaker 4: And so Bob, you know, obviously wanted the neighbor to
Speaker 4: be charged with you know, aggravated assault, you know, and
Speaker 4: go to prison. Well at the police finally after about
Speaker 4: a year told him. They said, hey, this was back
Speaker 4: in two thousand and one, told him that he's only
Speaker 4: getting get charged with like a misdemeanor assault charge because
Speaker 4: they credibly thought that the guy was fearing for his
Speaker 4: life when when the sun was coming back down there.
Speaker 4: And so Bob decides to mail a live copperhead to
Speaker 4: this family and the woman they drop it in the
Speaker 4: post office there in town, this cylindrical tube with this
Speaker 4: live copperhead in it. Well, they checked her mail one
Speaker 4: day and this tube is in there. They opened. The
Speaker 4: woman opens the tube. They're sitting in a truck, her
Speaker 4: husband's driving. She's sitting in the middle, and they've got
Speaker 4: a friend who's sitting on the other side of her,
Speaker 4: and in the back seat they've got another person and
Speaker 4: two kids. I think one of them was going to
Speaker 4: like a babe like a carve seat. And she opens
Speaker 4: the tube and the snake pops out right at her face.
Speaker 4: She said that the snake guy within a couple of
Speaker 4: inches of her head. Well, she throws the box, the
Speaker 4: whole thing onto the guy that's sitting next to her,
Speaker 4: that he tosses it out the window. The box landed
Speaker 4: in a way that did it trapped the snake, and
Speaker 4: so the police were able to come and they they
Speaker 4: shot the snake. It didn't take him very long to
Speaker 4: figure out who sent it and why, and so he's charged.
Speaker 4: Of course, here's the thing. When you mail something like that,
Speaker 4: it becomes a federal crime. And of course the story
Speaker 4: made international news. I mean, it's just so bizarre, you know,
Speaker 4: somebody mainly a live snake to an temper. And so
Speaker 4: he got charged in federal court. He lost his law license,
Speaker 4: you know. Uh, he went to prison for several years,
Speaker 4: so did the Sun. And when he got back out,
Speaker 4: he had fund something to do, and he did. He
Speaker 4: got mixed stuff into drugs, making mess. His family owned
Speaker 4: a large far out in a rural part of Randolph County,
Speaker 4: and so they would go there and they would make
Speaker 4: their mess, you know. And so he he he got
Speaker 4: he got busted a couple of times for you know,
Speaker 4: some other drug stuff. And then finally this whole incident
Speaker 4: that we were talking about, the armed service store went
Speaker 4: down not too long after that. They busted a major
Speaker 4: drug ring and it and it was like eight or
Speaker 4: nine people involved. One of them was the police chief
Speaker 4: in Pocahontas's wife. There were some other pretty prominent people. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it was. It was a big time. It was a
Speaker 4: big deal, and and it was a federal drug probe. Well,
Speaker 4: and you know this, Dan, it's when you get eight
Speaker 4: or nine people in a conspiracy, the first thing you
Speaker 4: do is you try to get some of the you get,
Speaker 4: you get, you get the littler fish to try to
Speaker 4: to to uh go after the big fish. So you
Speaker 4: give them plea dealer and they testify, and it was
Speaker 4: pretty obvious that, you know, federal, the US Attorney's working
Speaker 4: this case, they were going to go after Bob. He
Speaker 4: was the one they wanted and his son. So they
Speaker 4: start cutting deals with all these people. You know, hey,
Speaker 4: you're gonna and so it got to a point where
Speaker 4: they were getting closer and closer to Bob. There was
Speaker 4: a guy named Travis Perkins who he was the main
Speaker 4: the main guy as far as making mass. He was
Speaker 4: friends with the son, he he knew the ins and
Speaker 4: out of the operation, and he was the one person
Speaker 4: who could tie this all together for police, well or
Speaker 4: for prosecutors, excuse me. Well, three days before he was
Speaker 4: going to testify in in federal courts, he's found dead
Speaker 4: in his apartments and of course, as you can imagine,
Speaker 4: the primary suspect was Bob and a primary suspects. Well,
Speaker 4: eventually they don't have any evidence of he was shot
Speaker 4: a single time.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 4: Here's the thing. To this day, I don't think by
Speaker 4: the FBI investigated, they haven't released any information about the murder.
Speaker 4: The only reason I knew anything about the murder was
Speaker 4: actually talked to the guy who found Travis. And so anyway,
Speaker 4: eventually it got to a culminating point where the prosecutors
Speaker 4: were basically and they were going to go after Jared
Speaker 4: really hard. And Bob was always really worried that about
Speaker 4: the son being in prisoned obviously, so finally Jared they
Speaker 4: cut the deal where Jared's actually gonna testify against this
Speaker 4: that and see, here's the thing. Bob had never, never,
Speaker 4: was never charged with Travis's murder, but the drug if
Speaker 4: you can prove that a homicide was connected to a
Speaker 4: federal drug case, the enhancements would basically put him in
Speaker 4: jail for the rest of his life. So, through kind
Speaker 4: of a quirk in the law, they got Jared on
Speaker 4: the stand and he testified that his father killed Travis
Speaker 4: to keep him quiet. And so because they because they
Speaker 4: were able to successfully prove that a that a homicide
Speaker 4: was attached to this this drugg ring. Then everything was
Speaker 4: in hand. So he's you know, he's gonna be in
Speaker 4: jail for forty five or fifty years now, you know,
Speaker 4: and he's already sixty, so I mean, he's essentially got
Speaker 4: a live sentence. So and and then Jared got a
Speaker 4: much lesser sentence the son, you know, for his involvement
Speaker 4: in all this. So it's just a really I always
Speaker 4: say this. And by the way, going back just a
Speaker 4: little bit before he actually got arrested the drug robe,
Speaker 4: he he loved to collect Native American artifacts and and
Speaker 4: obviously there's a there's a deep and rich Native American
Speaker 4: history up in that part of Arkansas. The town is
Speaker 4: named Pocahontas, I mean, so you know, there's a lot
Speaker 4: of Native Americans who lived there for seven, eight, nine
Speaker 4: thousand years ago. I mean, it's they used to hunt
Speaker 4: and fish along the Black River there. And so he
Speaker 4: collected all this stuff. Well, he needed money for his defense,
Speaker 4: you know, expenses, so he had insurance on this elaborate
Speaker 4: Native American Indian collection, and he claimed that they got stolen. Well,
Speaker 4: the FBI went to a friend's house about twenty five
Speaker 4: miles away and found all this stuff in the living room.
Speaker 4: So he got charged with that you know, mail fraud
Speaker 4: basically because he had you know, sent the communication to
Speaker 4: the insurance company. I'm saying, falsifying that he had lost
Speaker 4: this stuff had been stolen. So I tell peoples all
Speaker 4: this time, his story is one of the most interesting
Speaker 4: criminal cases that you will find, just because of the
Speaker 4: family history, his position in life, and how it just
Speaker 4: all just went off the rails for him.
Speaker 5: Absolutely. Now you talk about and we talk about in
Speaker 5: the opening about the update on the unsolved Rebecca Gould case,
Speaker 5: tell us a little bit more about the Rebecca Gould case.
Speaker 4: The Rebecca Gould is a very deeply personal case to me.
Speaker 4: It's the first murder case I ever recovered. I was
Speaker 4: actually out there the day they found their body. Again,
Speaker 4: very rare to even as a journalist, to actually be
Speaker 4: out with the search party and you know, actually find
Speaker 4: the body when they're out looking for it. And so
Speaker 4: basically what happened is I, I, you know, I would
Speaker 4: call the sheriff's departments, you know, every week, the police,
Speaker 4: you know, you know the routine you call them out,
Speaker 4: try to see what's going on. Well, this girl, this
Speaker 4: twenty erial college student, she vanished from a friend's house
Speaker 4: on September twentieth, two thousand and four, in Melbourne, Arkansas.
Speaker 4: And it was just it was kind of a weird case.
Speaker 4: She had dropped her friend off at work. She was
Speaker 4: supposed to go pick up a sister and head back
Speaker 4: to Northwest Arkansas where she was a college student. And
Speaker 4: she was in She was in Melbourne's visiting friends over
Speaker 4: the weekend. And so she goes back to the friend's
Speaker 4: house to collect her stuff and I think to probably
Speaker 4: take a nap just by the just because she she
Speaker 4: put like a breakfast sandwich in a microwave and so
Speaker 4: and literally was still sitting in there when the police finally,
Speaker 4: you know, went through the house. Well, something happened to her.
Speaker 4: She vanished. Her car keys were there, her purse was there,
Speaker 4: everything was left, but she was gone. And so I,
Speaker 4: you know, I catch wind of this, of her disappearance,
Speaker 4: and I got to during that week, I kind of
Speaker 4: got to know her family a little bit. Her dad
Speaker 4: is a real prominent dentist and a nice guy. And
Speaker 4: and then she's got a bunch of sisters, and you know,
Speaker 4: they were all seem like really real nice ladies and
Speaker 4: they were out looking for her. And so that a
Speaker 4: week later passed forward to a week later. I'm in
Speaker 4: Melbourne at the courthouse. I hear some ladies talking about
Speaker 4: searchers out out in a particular area off the road,
Speaker 4: and I ask them where it's at. They tell me,
Speaker 4: I go out there and they found her and I
Speaker 4: saw her. I'll never forget it, just again, gut wrenching.
Speaker 4: And so I go back to the Sheriff's office. Well,
Speaker 4: a rumor started to circulate that they found the body,
Speaker 4: and her dad came up to me and said, Hey,
Speaker 4: did they find my daughter? And I said, I said, Larry,
Speaker 4: his name is Larry Gould. I said, Larry, you really
Speaker 4: need to talk to the sheriff. And he kind of
Speaker 4: grabbed hold of me and he said it again, and
Speaker 4: I was like, yes, they did. And in my first
Speaker 4: book that I wrote, which is in West Memphis, I
Speaker 4: was a little reticent to describe her body because I
Speaker 4: didn't even tell her family that I was writing a
Speaker 4: chapter about this, and so I kind of just I
Speaker 4: didn't describe it. I just couldn't because I didn't know
Speaker 4: if they knew or if they didn't want people knowing
Speaker 4: those kinds of details because it was personal, you know,
Speaker 4: I met him. So on the second book, The Creekside Bones,
Speaker 4: you know, I actually this is kind of an interesting
Speaker 4: side story. So her case has never been solved. It's
Speaker 4: basically a cold case. Now. She was hitting the head,
Speaker 4: possibly with a piano leg of all things. And so
Speaker 4: I that was the last time I saw her. Dad
Speaker 4: was during this whole that day that her body was found.
Speaker 4: So I'm doing a book signing at a library in
Speaker 4: April twenty sixteen, and my first book was about the
Speaker 4: West Memphis three case. I you know, I've written like
Speaker 4: a hundred stories about that case and news stories and so,
Speaker 4: but I included the chapter about Rebecca because I in
Speaker 4: hope so and you know this, all it takes is
Speaker 4: for one person to crack this case wide of them
Speaker 4: as in many cases, you know, like when Mary Green
Speaker 4: walked in the police station and told them the truth
Speaker 4: that day that broke that case open. So I always think, Okay,
Speaker 4: if we just get enough stories out there, if we
Speaker 4: generate enough buzz about it, eventually somebody go to crack.
Speaker 4: In this case, will get solved. So at every book signing,
Speaker 4: when I would pitch the book to anybody, I would
Speaker 4: always at the end go back to that, to this story.
Speaker 4: And so I'm at this book signing and I asked
Speaker 4: this guy, sod, so, do you want want to buy
Speaker 4: a book? And he says no, he says, I want
Speaker 4: to buy ten of them, and I'm like, okay. So
Speaker 4: I grabbed ten books. And there was a photographer there
Speaker 4: from a magazine doing a spread on my book, and
Speaker 4: I told the photographer I whispered to her, I said
Speaker 4: whatever I told him, I need to tell everybody, you know.
Speaker 4: And so this guy, I flip over the first book
Speaker 4: and I go, who do I need to sign this to?
Speaker 4: And he reaches in his pocket and he pulls out
Speaker 4: a ribbon with a faith on it and it's Rebecca's
Speaker 4: face and he sets it on the book. And as
Speaker 4: soon as he did it, I knew who he was.
Speaker 4: When when I had seen Larry, you know, years before,
Speaker 4: he was obviously uncapped, wearing a hat, not shaving, you know,
Speaker 4: he just looked disheveled, unobviously for obviously just couldn't find
Speaker 4: his daughter. And so he of course I got up.
Speaker 4: I gave a hugbull start crying. You know how that goes.
Speaker 4: And so to this day it's that was about a
Speaker 4: year and a half ago. I see him, I go
Speaker 4: seeing periodically. I've written stories about it and giving them
Speaker 4: away for free to newspapers and other publications, just so
Speaker 4: they will so that word will still heard, the memory
Speaker 4: of what happened to her doesn't die, and hopefully somebody
Speaker 4: will come forward with incredible information that can solve the case.
Speaker 5: Absolutely. Now you talk about that this because it is
Speaker 5: a little misleading that the Witches of West Memphis is
Speaker 5: just about the West Memphis three, meaning Damian Eckles, Jason Baldwin,
Speaker 5: and jesse ms Kelly convicted in nineteen ninety three. But
Speaker 5: you include those other stories. So tell us a little
Speaker 5: bit about just the stories that aren't involved with Damien
Speaker 5: Eckles and Jason Baldwin and miss Kelly that you've included
Speaker 5: in Witches in West Memphis.
Speaker 4: In that book, I included the the prologue is about
Speaker 4: Rebecca Gould, what we just talked about, and then I
Speaker 4: included another murder case in there, involving eleven year old
Speaker 4: named Jessica Williams. And the reason I included that in
Speaker 4: that book. And I know, I'm sure a lot of
Speaker 4: people who a lot of your listeners are familiar with
Speaker 4: the West Memphis three case. You know, that case blowed
Speaker 4: down to a false confession by Jesse Miss Kelly Junior.
Speaker 4: If you believe the confession, then you think they're guilty.
Speaker 4: If you don't believe the confession, then you think they're
Speaker 4: answer and so in that it's a really interesting case.
Speaker 4: So Jessica Williams, there was almost the West mempistery were
Speaker 4: released from prison on August nineteenth, twenty eleven, well almost
Speaker 4: two years to the day. This little eleven year old girl,
Speaker 4: Jessica Williams was playing in her yard in a little
Speaker 4: town called Gosnells, not far from the Mississippi River, and
Speaker 4: her dad. She was out with her bike and she
Speaker 4: had a puppy named Ryback that she kept in a
Speaker 4: you know, like she had a little basket on the
Speaker 4: front of the bike, so she put the puppy in there,
Speaker 4: and she's riding around, you know, just like little girls do.
Speaker 4: And her dad's south the second time she's gone, and
Speaker 4: they live out in a rural area. They live down
Speaker 4: a gravel road, and so he goes out to look
Speaker 4: for her, and within a few minutes he finds her
Speaker 4: bike on the side of the road, and then he
Speaker 4: calls the police. They spend all night searching. Gosnell's actually
Speaker 4: maybe an hour's drive from West Memphis, and it's in
Speaker 4: the it's actually in the same judicial district as West Memphis,
Speaker 4: meaning the prosecutor in the West Memphis three cases also
Speaker 4: is also that's his territory as well. He prosecutes cases
Speaker 4: in that area too. So the next morning, a couple
Speaker 4: of girls on ATV they find the dog walking about
Speaker 4: eleven miles down a gravel road, eleven miles from her house.
Speaker 4: So searchers take the dog back to the spot where
Speaker 4: the dog was found, and of course the dog leads
Speaker 4: them right to her body. She was found in a
Speaker 4: like a drainage ditch, just off of a bridge. And
Speaker 4: so within twenty four hours, her seventeen year old mentally
Speaker 4: indigent neighbor who rode the school bus with her, a
Speaker 4: guy named Christopher Saddle, He confesses to her murder, and
Speaker 4: he even gets a couple of details right well, so
Speaker 4: they give him a two million dollar bond. They throw
Speaker 4: away the key, you know, they throw him in jail,
Speaker 4: throw away the key and everybody. The judge put the
Speaker 4: gag order, so there's no information coming out. Of Course,
Speaker 4: I know the prosecutor really well over there, and so
Speaker 4: I talked to him and I kept asking him the
Speaker 4: same question. One thing that just bothered me about it
Speaker 4: was he didn't have a car, and he was out
Speaker 4: helping her dad look for her within thirty minutes of
Speaker 4: her disappearance. This Christopher sal and so in my mind,
Speaker 4: I was there going how did how did he get
Speaker 4: her out there? And then how did he get back
Speaker 4: in time to help her dad look for And they say, well,
Speaker 4: there's gaggler. We can't talk about it, you know, blah
Speaker 4: blah blah blah blah. Well, they found one sperm cell
Speaker 4: on her body during her autops seat and then only
Speaker 4: found one and they DNA tested it and it didn't
Speaker 4: belong to Christopher Soalth. It belonged to another neighbor who'd
Speaker 4: come home early from work that day, who had little
Speaker 4: kids that played with her. So he got charged with
Speaker 4: raping the girl. And then eventually, after seven eight months,
Speaker 4: I can't remember exactly how much time he spent in jail,
Speaker 4: but they finally had to release him, and then they
Speaker 4: finally had to say that he had falsely confessed to
Speaker 4: the girl's murder. And I included it because a lot
Speaker 4: of people don't think that false confession happened. And I
Speaker 4: will get that all the time, people say, I just
Speaker 4: don't believe in false confessions. I will go and speak
Speaker 4: to high school groups, I will go and speak to
Speaker 4: college groups, and one of the questions I will ask them,
Speaker 4: would you ever confess to a murder you didn't commit?
Speaker 4: And Dan, I'm telling you right now everything. Well, time
Speaker 4: I do it, a couple of kids will raise their
Speaker 4: hands and I'll ask them to come up and I'll
Speaker 4: say why would you do it? And a lot of
Speaker 4: times I'll say, well, if the police are asking me
Speaker 4: this question, they must think I know something so I'm
Speaker 4: trying to help them. Or they say they would do
Speaker 4: it to try to help a loved one or a friend.
Speaker 4: And it's a very consistent pattern. They all say very
Speaker 4: similar things, and they all say every group I've ever
Speaker 4: talked to, at least one or two hands a child,
Speaker 4: and sometimes more than that.
Speaker 5: That is incredible. Why we mentioned your book, The Witches
Speaker 5: of West Memphis is because you're back on true murder
Speaker 5: for in the new year, starting off the new year
Speaker 5: January third, so we're going to be talking about that.
Speaker 5: What I found interesting, very interesting, is that you say
Speaker 5: you've done about one hundred articles and nobody has written
Speaker 5: more articles about the West Memphis three case. Is that true?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's what I've been told that. You know, there's
Speaker 4: been several documentaries made about the case. Ammy Berg did
Speaker 4: a documentary called West of Memphis. When she first started
Speaker 4: that project, she contacted me and I asked her why
Speaker 4: she contacted me, and she said, from the research she
Speaker 4: had done, I had written more stories about it than
Speaker 4: anyone else. So then I called Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky,
Speaker 4: you know, the two guys who did the Paradise Lost franchise,
Speaker 4: the three documentaries about the case. And Bruce told me
Speaker 4: he said, oh, he said for sure, because when they
Speaker 4: would come to town, when they especially when they were
Speaker 4: filming Paradise Lost three Purgatory, you know, I would hang
Speaker 4: out with them. I would do interviews with them and
Speaker 4: we would go around, and so I knew them really well.
Speaker 4: They're good, good guys. Of course, Bruce obviously passed away
Speaker 4: a few years ago, but actually ran into Joe. Let's see,
Speaker 4: he was he was in Little Rock in April. The
Speaker 4: state of Arkansas in April was going to execute eight
Speaker 4: inmates because they're the chemicals they used to you know,
Speaker 4: to the lethal injection chemicals they used were about to
Speaker 4: run out of date. So they catched a kind of
Speaker 4: a crazy plan to try to you know, kill eight
Speaker 4: death row guys, and I ended up killing four, and
Speaker 4: I was I was there for three of the four executions.
Speaker 4: But anyway, Joe was in Little Rock. Damian Eckles came
Speaker 4: back to Arkansas to try to protest against the executions,
Speaker 4: and then Johnny Depp was with him, and it was
Speaker 4: kind of a weird scheme. I was standing there at
Speaker 4: the Capitol steps, you know, this big protest rally going on.
Speaker 4: You know, there's media from all over the country, so
Speaker 4: it was pretty widely covered. I looked over beside the
Speaker 4: Capitol steps and I see Johnny Death and Danny Neckles
Speaker 4: and Damian Neckle's wife, Laurie's standing there with a couple
Speaker 4: of bodyguards, and so I just walked over and started
Speaker 4: talking to him. Of course, you know, I had interviewed
Speaker 4: Eckles several times, including while he was on death rows.
Speaker 4: So but yeah, I from the research i've I don't
Speaker 4: even think it's close as far as how many stories
Speaker 4: I was. I worked at a newspaper in Jone Burrow
Speaker 4: where all the RULD thirty seven hearings were held for
Speaker 4: and those were just post conviction hearings to try to
Speaker 4: get new trials, and they had I mean, we're talking
Speaker 4: hundreds of hours of them being in court trying to
Speaker 4: get new trials. And I thought it was interesting. You know,
Speaker 4: in your intro, you were talking about Ted Bundy, the
Speaker 4: forensic old oncologist who I d. Ted Bundy actually testified
Speaker 4: in West Memphis three case, and I interviewed him. I
Speaker 4: gottened doctor Richard Suban, and of course and obviously we'll
Speaker 4: go into that all that and all the other forensic
Speaker 4: experts who testified in the case. And so basically it
Speaker 4: was just my happenstance that I've actually written more stories
Speaker 4: about that case than the body, just because I simply
Speaker 4: happened to be My office was, you know, just a
Speaker 4: few blocks away from the courtroom, so I was there
Speaker 4: every day for you know, over several year period. You know,
Speaker 4: they would have a whole week every day you know,
Speaker 4: nine to five. I've testimony, and so I was the
Speaker 4: associated Press. I wouldn't do stories for them and for
Speaker 4: our local newspapers.
Speaker 5: So yeah, it's a very controversial case. Obviously, in on
Speaker 5: True Murder, we've handled three different authors with different viewpoints.
Speaker 5: So we're going to be looking forward to hearing your
Speaker 5: take on this which is in West Memphis. I want
Speaker 5: to thank you very much, George for coming on and
Speaker 5: talking about the Creek Side Bones. Do you have a
Speaker 5: Facebook page website where people might look for other work
Speaker 5: or a Facebook page for this book.
Speaker 4: I have an author's Facebook page, It's author George Jared
Speaker 4: and you can go there, just send me a firm request.
Speaker 4: I talked to people there all the time. I came
Speaker 4: to a stunning conclusion about a year and a half
Speaker 4: ago that pretty much everybody lived on social media now
Speaker 4: and so Facebook, Instagram stuff like that's just about effective.
Speaker 4: It's having a website nowadays. So but yeah, they can
Speaker 4: friend me there that they can get my books on
Speaker 4: Amazon or at Barnes and Noble wherever they want to
Speaker 4: get them, and I am more than happy. You know,
Speaker 4: like some of these cases are controversial, especially West Side
Speaker 4: is three. I have debated many times with people who
Speaker 4: are on different sides of the issue, and I have
Speaker 4: no problem doing that, you know, I you know, there's
Speaker 4: no way to definitively know what happened to those three kids,
Speaker 4: but there it's there's a lot of evidence at points
Speaker 4: in certain directions.
Speaker 5: It is certainly a case that captivated the imagination of
Speaker 5: audiences and still does to this day. And the responses
Speaker 5: from those programs have been very heated and very divergent
Speaker 5: in their opinions. So really looking forward to that January third,
Speaker 5: ushering in the new year on True Murder. Thank you
Speaker 5: very much George Jarrett for talking about the Greek site
Speaker 5: is Squeaksided Bones. Reality is more horrifying than fiction. Thank
Speaker 5: you very much, George Jarrett. You have a great evening
Speaker 5: than you too, Thank you very much, Thank you, good night.