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Speaker 7: You are now listening to True Murder The most shocking
Speaker 7: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 7: written about them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 7: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 7: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 7: journalist and author Dan Zufanski, Good Evening. Whispers in the
Speaker 7: Willows is an anthology style true crime book that chronicles
Speaker 7: three unsolved murders, a series of death row executions, and
Speaker 7: the harrowings stories of two hologaust survivors. A twenty two
Speaker 7: year old college student, Rebecca Gould, vanished from a friend's
Speaker 7: house September twentieth, two thousand and four, near the town
Speaker 7: of Melbourne, Arkansas. Her partially clothed, blood and body was
Speaker 7: found near a rural road not far from the house
Speaker 7: a week later. Her case has never been solved. It's
Speaker 7: been profiled on The Doctor Oz Show and was featured
Speaker 7: on the Hell and Gone podcast in twenty eighteen. Jareded
Speaker 7: has written about her case since the day she vanished.
Speaker 7: There's a glaring amount of evidence in the case that
Speaker 7: points in several directions, and he has dedicated another chapter
Speaker 7: about her in his newest work. Amanda Tusing, a twenty
Speaker 7: year old aspiring veterinarian, left her fiancees home on a
Speaker 7: rain soaked night. A few hours later, she would be dead,
Speaker 7: and her case has baffled law officers for almost twenty years.
Speaker 7: Karen Johnson Swift was a mother of four that vanished
Speaker 7: just before Halloween twenty eleven in Dyer's Tennessee. Her body
Speaker 7: was found in the cemetery a couple of months later.
Speaker 7: Her killer remains free. Four men who committed unspeakable acts
Speaker 7: of violence and torture were set to die on death
Speaker 7: row in April twenty seventeen. Jared was there for the
Speaker 7: planned execution and gives a detailed look into one of
Speaker 7: the darkest places on earth. The book also includes two
Speaker 7: Holocaust survivors and their tales of survival. The murders they
Speaker 7: witnessed cannot be imagined. Jared has also written two other
Speaker 7: two crime books, which Is in West Memphis and The
Speaker 7: Creek Side Bones. Those books included chapters about the internationally
Speaker 7: famous West Memphis three case. Jared wrote more stories about
Speaker 7: the West Memphis three case than any other journalists in
Speaker 7: the world, and includes death row interviews with Damian Eccles.
Speaker 7: The book they were featuring this evening is Whispers in
Speaker 7: the Willows? Who Killed Rebecca Gould? Who killed the Mandatuzing
Speaker 7: and Why? With my special guest journalist and author, George Jared.
Speaker 7: Welcome back to the program, and thank you very much
Speaker 7: for green this interview. George Jared, I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 6: Dan, thank you very much for joining us once again.
Speaker 6: Incredible book. Let's begin this with June fourteenth, two thousand
Speaker 6: in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and we're talking about Amanda Choosing, twenty
Speaker 6: year old and she was living in the town of Dell.
Speaker 6: Tell us a little bit about Amanda Tuosing and a
Speaker 6: little bit of her life before we just talk about
Speaker 6: what happened that faithful night.
Speaker 4: Well, Amanda was a college student. She grew up in
Speaker 4: the town of Dell. Like you mentioned, she had a
Speaker 4: twin brother. She was kind of small in stature. She
Speaker 4: was about five to one and her brother was nearly
Speaker 4: a foot taller than her. She was a captain of
Speaker 4: her basketball team, when she was in high school, she
Speaker 4: was an inspiring that she was going she was taking
Speaker 4: classes to kind of reach that goal. And recently to
Speaker 4: that time went around the time that she vanished, she
Speaker 4: had become engaged to her fiance, Matt, and the night
Speaker 4: that she disappeared, she was at his house and there
Speaker 4: was a terrible thunderstorm rolling through the area, and she
Speaker 4: had decided to go home that night to her parents'
Speaker 4: house because they lived closer to her college and the
Speaker 4: town of Dell at that time was about an hour's drive.
Speaker 6: Right now, you write that she had promised to call
Speaker 6: her boyfriend when she got back got to her parents' house,
Speaker 6: but no call came, and boyfriend fiance was alarmed, so
Speaker 6: he called her father ed choosing what did they do?
Speaker 6: After this conversation, well Ed.
Speaker 4: And the twin brother left from Dell the house in Dell,
Speaker 4: and they started back towards Jonesborough, and then Matt left
Speaker 4: from Jonesborough and as they're driving through the night, they
Speaker 4: meet up about midway, and Midway was a little town
Speaker 4: called Monette, And in Monette, underneath a street light, they
Speaker 4: saw her car underneath this light, and when they got
Speaker 4: to the car, the keys were in the ignition, the
Speaker 4: seat was moved all the way forward, which was her
Speaker 4: preferred sitting position in the car. There was a cold
Speaker 4: beverage in the console. The car was in perfect mechanical
Speaker 4: working order when shield wipers were in midslap when they
Speaker 4: turned it on. There was nothing in the car to
Speaker 4: indicate that anything violent had happened to her. Everything was
Speaker 4: in its place in that car except for her.
Speaker 6: Right. He said. There was an intensive search, and of
Speaker 6: course the car was examined by the Craigate County Sheriff's
Speaker 6: Department obviously determined to know was no mechanical issues with
Speaker 6: the car. Now the lead detectives is Gary Edter. What
Speaker 6: does he also determine from looking at this car and
Speaker 6: what are they determined in terms of very valuable information
Speaker 6: regarding moving forward?
Speaker 4: Well, the thing about it, the thing about is is
Speaker 4: they knew that it was in good mechanical working order.
Speaker 4: So she didn't stop her car because there was something
Speaker 4: wrong with it. It's kind of out in the middle
Speaker 4: of the rural area, so it's not kind of out
Speaker 4: in the middle of nowhere, so there was really no
Speaker 4: reason to stop in that spot. And so and there
Speaker 4: wasn't any indication of a violent struggle. So the thinking
Speaker 4: was was that it was possibly a like a guy
Speaker 4: who was pretending to be a police officer, or she was.
Speaker 4: She was she was compelled to stop her vehicle for
Speaker 4: some reason, and then you know, maybe somebody held a
Speaker 4: gun up to her or or did something that would
Speaker 4: scare her to the point where she would edit the
Speaker 4: vehicle without trying to fight back.
Speaker 6: Now, how many days after her disappearance does is she
Speaker 6: found and tell us about that discovery.
Speaker 4: So about three three to four days they led a
Speaker 4: very intensive search effort in eastern Crickett County and then
Speaker 4: into Mississippi County. And a lot of your listeners, if
Speaker 4: they're big John grishram fans he was born in Jonesboro
Speaker 4: and his family, their family farm. A lot of the
Speaker 4: things that he talks about in some of his books
Speaker 4: about Southern culture. It all came right from this very
Speaker 4: area where she was found. Her car where it was
Speaker 4: found was only a couple of miles from his family's farm.
Speaker 4: So they what happened was it was a Sunday after
Speaker 4: she disappeared, and a couple were out driving near some
Speaker 4: tributaries of the Saint Francis river and a woman thought
Speaker 4: she saw a pair of pants floating in the tributary.
Speaker 4: It turned out not to be a pair of uh,
Speaker 4: it did turn to be a pair of pants, but
Speaker 4: there was a body in those pants and it was
Speaker 4: a man. To test.
Speaker 6: Right now, what do they determine from that autopsy? Fingerprints, fingernails,
Speaker 6: part of me underneath, DNA toxology report, what do they
Speaker 6: what do they determine from all of those tests?
Speaker 4: They determined that she had died, that she had drowned,
Speaker 4: or she had suffered a condition that was like drowning.
Speaker 4: And the reason I word it that way is because
Speaker 4: there was I don't think there was a great deal
Speaker 4: of water found in her loans. But sometimes when you're
Speaker 4: plunged underwater, a mucus plug will form in your throat
Speaker 4: and so not a lot of water gets through. But
Speaker 4: if you don't, if you can't get rid of the
Speaker 4: mucus plug on your own you can, you will essentially
Speaker 4: have you will essentially die because you're in the water
Speaker 4: and you can't get the mucus plug out. So it's
Speaker 4: basically like drowning. And that's what the autopsy report said.
Speaker 4: There wasn't a lot of detailed information given out as
Speaker 4: far as the condition of her body when it was found.
Speaker 4: There was a definitive conclusion though that she wasn't raped
Speaker 4: or sexually assaulted, and she was still it was such
Speaker 4: a it's odd because she was still wearing the hat
Speaker 4: on her head when they found her body that she
Speaker 4: had put on her head when she left her fiance house.
Speaker 4: So it was just it's just odd.
Speaker 6: What did they determine in terms of whether this person
Speaker 6: may be a transient serial killer as a possibility, or
Speaker 6: was there some determination that he might be a local person.
Speaker 6: What was their decision there?
Speaker 4: They were able to rule out transient serial killer pretty
Speaker 4: early on for one simple reason. The place where her
Speaker 4: body was dumped was extremely remote and only known to
Speaker 4: a few locals. I mean, even people who live in
Speaker 4: that area very rarely are able to get into this
Speaker 4: area where they found that where they were able to
Speaker 4: determine that her body had actually been dumped in the
Speaker 4: into this tributary, So pretty early on they knew it
Speaker 4: was a local they or they suspected it was a local.
Speaker 4: And then so they started interviewing some people possible people
Speaker 4: of interest. Of course, you know, the fiance would be automatically.
Speaker 4: The first one interviewed, and he took multiple polygraphs, and
Speaker 4: you know, and as I talked to Detective Editor, he
Speaker 4: you know, he was pretty firm of the fact that
Speaker 4: that he was not never really considered a suspect ever,
Speaker 4: because he was he had no motive to do it.
Speaker 4: He was the first one to immediately notify the family.
Speaker 4: I mean, she left his house and within two hours
Speaker 4: they had found her car. And it takes about an
Speaker 4: hour to get there, so he only gave her an hour.
Speaker 4: And you know, then you're driving through a thunderstorm. You know,
Speaker 4: you've driven through storms before that, you know it could
Speaker 4: take you a long time to get somewhere. So he
Speaker 4: was immediately worried and notified her family. So she was eliminated.
Speaker 4: The aspect, there was some thought that maybe you know,
Speaker 4: there's drugs or trafficked in a pretty high rate through there,
Speaker 4: and so there was some thought that maybe it was
Speaker 4: a case of mistaken identity and that maybe you know
Speaker 4: that that some druggies had pulled her over. But the
Speaker 4: problem is that in a situation like that, you know,
Speaker 4: I've covered things like that before, typically that's just a gunshot.
Speaker 4: You know, they would just shoot someone, they wouldn't be
Speaker 4: going through all the trouble of you know, taking him
Speaker 4: out to the middle of nowhere and throwing him into
Speaker 4: the bayu.
Speaker 6: Right now, in this you very interesting, your incredible involvement
Speaker 6: with this case is that this lead detective editor a
Speaker 6: forty year, forty eight year law enforcement veteran. He was learning,
Speaker 6: He learned that you were trying to track down Mandy's family,
Speaker 6: and so hence he tracked you down. Now from what
Speaker 6: what are some of the things that you guys discussed
Speaker 6: and some of his conclusions regarding who might have done
Speaker 6: this and why.
Speaker 4: He was very involved in this case. I mean, you know,
Speaker 4: you hear a lot of circumstances where detectives are on
Speaker 4: a case for many, many years and unsolved painting. You know,
Speaker 4: they say they're working on it, but in all reality
Speaker 4: we know they're not, you know, And but that's not
Speaker 4: the case of Gary. Gary had been on this case.
Speaker 4: He constantly communicated with the testing family. He told me,
Speaker 4: I think like once a week he might even talk
Speaker 4: to the mom. And so he really worked this case hard.
Speaker 4: The thing that I think even now, in one other
Speaker 4: detail I might need to mention to your listeners that
Speaker 4: we haven't discussed yet. One other detail was found on
Speaker 4: her body, and that in her front pocket of her
Speaker 4: genes was her life right. And so I think you
Speaker 4: can logically deduce from everything that we know about what
Speaker 4: happened to Mandy that that there was some type there
Speaker 4: was either a police officer or someone impersonating a police
Speaker 4: officer who was responsible for stop here.
Speaker 6: Now, you do provide an example of why you say
Speaker 6: this too, and you talk about the blue light rapist
Speaker 6: in Arkansas for just two years before Mandy's death. Why
Speaker 6: do you include this? Tell us why you include this,
Speaker 6: and tell us a little bit about this blue light
Speaker 6: rapist to lend credibility to your theory.
Speaker 4: Well, the reason I included the blue light rapist is
Speaker 4: because it was a phenomenon that happened in the mid
Speaker 4: or in the late nineteen nineties. There was a guy
Speaker 4: who was convicted for, you know, stopping women and raping
Speaker 4: them using a blue light, and so that story was
Speaker 4: still just out there in the culture, I guess you
Speaker 4: could put it that way, and so there was a
Speaker 4: thought that maybe somebody was copycatting this blue light rapist.
Speaker 4: The problem is that she wasn't raped and this never
Speaker 4: happened again. So and the guy that the original blue
Speaker 4: light rapists had been in prisoned for a couple of years.
Speaker 4: But I think that there was a lot of people.
Speaker 4: There's a big reticence for people to say that an
Speaker 4: actual police officer did this for obvious reasons. You know,
Speaker 4: you don't want to make a call like that if
Speaker 4: it's not true, for sure. But the problem is is
Speaker 4: that all the motivations for a blue someone impersonating that
Speaker 4: blue light rapist, well he didn't do any of those things.
Speaker 4: So there had to be another motivation, certainly.
Speaker 6: Certainly, so in terms of speculation, what else did this
Speaker 6: investigation try to find and where did it go in
Speaker 6: in terms of trying to discover who this killer was, Well, where.
Speaker 4: It went was they started interviewing police officers who lived
Speaker 4: in that area and in that general area of those
Speaker 4: two counties, and so they brought multiple offers in. They
Speaker 4: interviewed him because he early on in the investigation, it
Speaker 4: was pretty obvious that it was it was a police officer.
Speaker 4: I think that they thought that, you know, edit literally
Speaker 4: directly quoted to me, he said there was no doubt
Speaker 4: in his mind that when Mandy stopped her car in
Speaker 4: her back windshield she saw you know, red and blue lights,
Speaker 4: so pretty early on, you know. But again we go
Speaker 4: back to even just the police reports from that time
Speaker 4: in that area, there was no no one was reporting,
Speaker 4: you know, anybody being stopped by somebody using lights like that.
Speaker 4: No one had seen anything like it. So I, you know,
Speaker 4: the most likely scenario is that she was stopped by
Speaker 4: a police officer.
Speaker 6: Now in this same county, Craighead County, there was a
Speaker 6: deputy from black Oak, which is a nearby community, small
Speaker 6: community where he lived in a few miles from where
Speaker 6: Mandy's car was found. Tell us a little bit about
Speaker 6: the investigation into Johnny Williams.
Speaker 4: He was interviewed multiple times, he lived only a couple
Speaker 4: of miles from where her car was found. And I
Speaker 4: note some of this stuff in my book. You know,
Speaker 4: I would try to get information, you know, I would
Speaker 4: get on social media Facebook and whatnot, and I would
Speaker 4: just ask the public for you know, do you have
Speaker 4: any information about this guy? Well, I started researching another
Speaker 4: murder case that he was might have been connected to,
Speaker 4: and almost immediately I started getting messages from just scores
Speaker 4: of people, women who say that they had been harassed
Speaker 4: by him at night along that same stretch of highway,
Speaker 4: and I mean, the number of messages was just it
Speaker 4: was unbelievable, I mean, and so it got to a point,
Speaker 4: and you know, and I tell people this. You know,
Speaker 4: obviously you can't trust a b lot of the things
Speaker 4: you read on social media posts, but just the sheer
Speaker 4: number of people who contacted me, you can still form
Speaker 4: a conclusion. At the very least, there was a thought
Speaker 4: in that part of the world that he was harassing
Speaker 4: to my motors at night. And he also had this
Speaker 4: connection to a murder twenty years previous where a woman
Speaker 4: had been taken out of her car and shot and
Speaker 4: left on the side of the road, and so there
Speaker 4: was a thought that maybe, you know, he might be involved.
Speaker 4: And eventually he was released from his duties as a
Speaker 4: deputy with the Craiger k Sheriff's Apartment.
Speaker 6: You right that you were told by law enforcement what
Speaker 6: regarding Williams and his potential guilt.
Speaker 4: They were very They didn't want to pin it on
Speaker 4: one of their own, for sure, but he was definitely
Speaker 4: a the primary suspect in the case. And there's no
Speaker 4: infans or buzzed about that He was their main focus,
Speaker 4: you know, and you know, and I know several people.
Speaker 4: I know several of his relatives, and it's something that
Speaker 4: was discussed, you know, in their family quite a bit.
Speaker 4: And literally there were you know, a couple of times
Speaker 4: before he died, were literally officers tried to go into
Speaker 4: his into the hospital room to try to get him
Speaker 4: to confess to it before he passed on, but he didn't.
Speaker 6: You write about another case here with again with Van
Speaker 6: Edter or a pardon me Editter involved, and you talk
Speaker 6: about a young girl disappearing in twenty and thirteen, Jessica
Speaker 6: Williams playing in new yard with her puppy. Yes, why
Speaker 6: do you include this story and tell us the gist
Speaker 6: of this story that you include.
Speaker 4: I included that story because, you know, Dan, I always
Speaker 4: try to be fair, you know, in that case, it
Speaker 4: was a slam dunk. This seventeen year old had to
Speaker 4: confessed to murdering this eleven year old girl who disappeared
Speaker 4: out of her yard playing one day. He was a neighbor,
Speaker 4: you know, he even helped her dad look for her
Speaker 4: that night, and then they found her body in a
Speaker 4: ditch the next day not far from the house. And
Speaker 4: then within a I don't know, probably twenty four hour period,
Speaker 4: he had confessed to her a murder, gave some details
Speaker 4: that actually were somewhat accurate to a degree. But I
Speaker 4: always explained to people, you know, if I tell you
Speaker 4: that they found somebody, you know in a river, you know, dead,
Speaker 4: you know, it's pretty could you could just guess some
Speaker 4: of the details, you know, just based on just regular experience.
Speaker 4: So this guy languished in jail for eight or nine months,
Speaker 4: and then they found one sperm cell on her body,
Speaker 4: and it didn't match him. It matched another neighbor who
Speaker 4: had come early from work. And this guy had kids
Speaker 4: that were her age and played with her, and he
Speaker 4: had obviously has no explanation as to why his sperm
Speaker 4: cell was on her. So eventually the murder charges were
Speaker 4: dropped against a seventeen year old, and eventually this other guy,
Speaker 4: pretty sharp the third was convicted. And I included it
Speaker 4: because up until the sperm cell is tested, everybody knew.
Speaker 4: Everybody thought it was this other guy. And so to
Speaker 4: be fair to mister Williams and his family, you know,
Speaker 4: he was never convicted in a court of law, so
Speaker 4: he deserves, you know, that much. But also he deserves
Speaker 4: that much respect to that degree. But also it's I
Speaker 4: also wanted to write about Amanda's case because no one's
Speaker 4: ever been named as a suspect or murdering. He's been
Speaker 4: early twenty years and she deserves she deserves justice too.
Speaker 6: Absolutely. Now, another part of your book very interesting, the
Speaker 6: scope of the range that you have in this book,
Speaker 6: very a little bit unusual. The death row tales. Why
Speaker 6: do you include those? And tell us a little bit
Speaker 6: about these death row tales and some of the people
Speaker 6: that you encountered and your encounters at death roll.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, death row is one of those places
Speaker 4: that very few people ever get to visit. It's kind
Speaker 4: of a unique experience. I've been there several times, you know,
Speaker 4: to interview people who were on death row. And then
Speaker 4: obviously I included a couple of chapters about these guys,
Speaker 4: these four that were you know, that were sinces to
Speaker 4: die in April of twenty seventeen. Originally, the state of
Speaker 4: Arkansas had planned on killing eight because their you know,
Speaker 4: cocktail of drugs was about to expire, and so but
Speaker 4: four of them were stayed. But then Liddell Lee, you know,
Speaker 4: who had been accused of killing several women, raping them.
Speaker 4: His crimes are pretty heinous, pretty brutal. He finally was
Speaker 4: set to die in April of twenty seventeen. He was
Speaker 4: going to be the first one. You know, I went down.
Speaker 4: I went down to cover it, you know. And of course,
Speaker 4: this whole thing made international news because you know, killing
Speaker 4: eight people in a span of about two weeks was
Speaker 4: just about unprecedented in US history. And you know, there
Speaker 4: was a lot of celebrities who you know, opposed it.
Speaker 4: Uh Damien Nichols from the West Memphis three, you know,
Speaker 4: and I write about that. He came back to Arkansas
Speaker 4: because he would have been one of the eighth He
Speaker 4: would have been one of those that would have been
Speaker 4: executed in that batch. And Johnny Depp came with him
Speaker 4: and spoke at a rally in Little Rock, just trying
Speaker 4: to stop this from happening. But so now Ladell Lee's
Speaker 4: execution did go forward. I tell people this, Neil Gorsich
Speaker 4: had just been appointed to the US Supreme Court. He
Speaker 4: cast a siding vote on the last stay to save
Speaker 4: Ladell Lee's life. So had Neil Gorsich been confirmed two
Speaker 4: weeks later, these guys might have several of them might
Speaker 4: have survived, so it's literally timing. So I mean, for
Speaker 4: the it's one of the I think it's one of
Speaker 4: the one or two first votes that Neil Gorssea Jeffer
Speaker 4: cass is Supreme Court Justice. So anyway, the execution went off,
Speaker 4: of course, there were you know, just rallies all around
Speaker 4: the prison and people just really upset, you know, her
Speaker 4: anti death penalty. And I tell people, it's hard for
Speaker 4: me sometimes because I you know, sometimes I think it's
Speaker 4: it's wrong for a government to be executing its own people.
Speaker 4: And then I go and I have to talk to
Speaker 4: family members of these horribly murdered people, and it's it's
Speaker 4: it's tough. I mean, you hear some of the some
Speaker 4: of these stories and then you hear you hear them
Speaker 4: or see them in the courtroom having to hear what
Speaker 4: happened to their loved one. I mean, I watched your
Speaker 4: grandmother one time, and she was a very very old woman,
Speaker 4: and I mean I never saw a lady run out
Speaker 4: of a courtroom as fast as she did when they
Speaker 4: started talking about what happened to her granddaughter. I mean,
Speaker 4: it was just brutal. So that's literally an issue I
Speaker 4: can before or against literally within two breaths.
Speaker 6: Yes, we can't go into all of them, but you
Speaker 6: do use a glaring example of why people are for
Speaker 6: the death penalty in terms of when they hear the
Speaker 6: description of the crime. But what I want to include
Speaker 6: this story is the heroic and intelligent thing that the
Speaker 6: neighbor did in response this. Lttle Lee and Deborah Rose,
Speaker 6: twenty six years old from Jacksonville, Arkansas, February ninth, nineteen
Speaker 6: ninety three tell us about this story, and again the
Speaker 6: heroic intelligent neighbor, Ladell Lee.
Speaker 4: He's and this is just one of the just heartbreaking story.
Speaker 4: And what happened was this woman was in her house
Speaker 4: talking to her mom and this guy knocks on her
Speaker 4: door and he wants to host tools, and it's Ladell Lee,
Speaker 4: and she says she didn't have any tools in her MoMA.
Speaker 4: We have like five houses down and this is kind
Speaker 4: of this is in a kind of an urban setting,
Speaker 4: so you feel a little safer, I guess. Well, she
Speaker 4: calls her mom says, this guy's really creeping me out.
Speaker 4: And she was like, okay, welly don't you just come
Speaker 4: over to my house? And she said, okay, I will
Speaker 4: hear in a little bit. Well, she didn't get the chance.
Speaker 4: She he broke into her house and he took I
Speaker 4: believe it was like a tire sumper. It's one of
Speaker 4: those tire checkers. And he literally beat this woman to
Speaker 4: death and he stole three hundred dollars from her so
Speaker 4: he could go pay his rent a center bill. And yeah,
Speaker 4: just unbelievable. And well, a neighbor watched him go into
Speaker 4: the house and then come back out, so the neighbor
Speaker 4: notified the police, and so they were able to catch
Speaker 4: him pretty early. And one thing about it is her
Speaker 4: DNA and some other stuff. He had also been involved
Speaker 4: in at least two other murders, one involving a prostitute
Speaker 4: and then another woman who was kidnapped out of her
Speaker 4: house in front of her young child and she was
Speaker 4: raped and murdered. They found her body in a like
Speaker 4: a trailer house somewhere. And those cases were years before that,
Speaker 4: and so you know, that was back in a time
Speaker 4: when you know, you don't have DNA and all the
Speaker 4: fancy forensics we have now to solve cases like that.
Speaker 4: So later on they were able to tie him to
Speaker 4: those other cases through forensics.
Speaker 6: Yeah, incredible. It's also incredible that through this beginning of
Speaker 6: this argument that ensued, her daughter Ashley was six years
Speaker 6: old and her son was two, but especially Ashley witnessed this.
Speaker 6: They saw their mother on the floor, six year old
Speaker 6: and two year old, but didn't respond to her, didn't
Speaker 6: know what to do till her sister in law came
Speaker 6: the next day and discovered the body, the horrific site,
Speaker 6: and then from there just again a very very heartbreaking story.
Speaker 6: And then he's linked to other murders. As you say,
Speaker 6: tell us about these stays of execution and just everyone's
Speaker 6: reaction when these happen. Of course, we know these protests
Speaker 6: are going on. There's two camps, completely diverse ideas. Tell
Speaker 6: us more about your experience on death row.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, it's a funny thing, you know, you
Speaker 4: get on the death row and everybody's kind of you know,
Speaker 4: I hate to use the term, but there is anticipation.
Speaker 4: You know, you're journalists, Dan, you understand you cover horrible
Speaker 4: and terrible things at times in your career, but it
Speaker 4: is I don't want to use the word exciting, but
Speaker 4: there is definitely a level of anticipation. And I wrote
Speaker 4: about this It's really strange being in that room because
Speaker 4: you've got all these journalists literally all over the world, NN, BBC,
Speaker 4: New York Times, everybody's there. And when it the appointed
Speaker 4: time comes, when the execution hour arrives, you know, they
Speaker 4: take the the witnesses who are going to witness the execution,
Speaker 4: the journalism witnesses, and they take you know, they take
Speaker 4: them out. So when they get taken out, you're like, Okay,
Speaker 4: it's getting closer. You know, we're within maybe a half
Speaker 4: an hour of the execution actually happening. And then a
Speaker 4: spokesman will come in and say, you know, you know,
Speaker 4: a circuit court somewhere has stayed the execution for another
Speaker 4: hour or two hours to consider some matters, and I
Speaker 4: just you know, I talked to journalist from CNN and
Speaker 4: I talked about her in my book, Jake Garcia, and
Speaker 4: she just said, this isn't just a really bad way
Speaker 4: to do this. I mean, how should even as horrible
Speaker 4: and heinous as Ladell Lee was in his life, he
Speaker 4: shouldn't be sitting there on every hour wondering if he's
Speaker 4: going to live or die in the next few minutes.
Speaker 4: I mean, but when they decide to perform one of
Speaker 4: these executions. All those other appeals need to have been
Speaker 4: it needs to be completely exhausted and then have the execution.
Speaker 4: I don't know how we can get to a point
Speaker 4: where the system can operate that way, because eventually, what
Speaker 4: you're doing is you're torturing him the whole time. And
Speaker 4: you're not just torturing him, you're torturing the victim's family
Speaker 4: because they, you know, a lot of them want to
Speaker 4: see justice done too. And then if you know, and
Speaker 4: then then they feel like he gets denied, if you know,
Speaker 4: if this guy somehow gets a stay. So I don't know.
Speaker 4: I just think that there's got to be a better
Speaker 4: way to do any.
Speaker 5: Okay Brown two, name something that's not boring.
Speaker 8: At a book club?
Speaker 5: Computer solitaire?
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Speaker 6: Yeah, let's get to the story of Karen Johnson in
Speaker 6: Swift October twenty ninth, twenty eleven. She slated to go
Speaker 6: to a Halloween party in Dyersburg, Tennessee, and Karen and
Speaker 6: her friend are going to attend. She has an oldest daughter.
Speaker 6: Tell us what those arrangements are and tell us also
Speaker 6: her marital status at that time to David Swift. Tell
Speaker 6: us about this.
Speaker 4: Well. Karen was a mother of four. She had two
Speaker 4: college aged sons and then she had two grade school
Speaker 4: aged daughters. All with her husband, David Swift. They had
Speaker 4: moved to Dyersburg a few years before, you know, that
Speaker 4: had some and I've talked to David Swift about this,
Speaker 4: that had some you know, marital strife at some point.
Speaker 4: And on October tenth of that year, she had filed
Speaker 4: for divorce, but they were still living in the same house.
Speaker 4: No reports of any type of domestic violence or anything
Speaker 4: that I'm aware of, and so, you know, it's kind
Speaker 4: of one of those situations where they still had the
Speaker 4: two girls. You know, they're obviously gonna have to sell
Speaker 4: her house and do all these other stuff, going to
Speaker 4: get divorced. Well, on October thirtieth of that year, she
Speaker 4: decided to go to a party with a friend and
Speaker 4: they go to this party where her oldest daughter had
Speaker 4: gone to stay the night at a friend's house. Well,
Speaker 4: she called and said she didn't want to stay, and
Speaker 4: she asked her mama she could come pick her up,
Speaker 4: and so she did and they went back to the
Speaker 4: house and the daughter reported, you know, she told the
Speaker 4: police that when she went to better mom is around
Speaker 4: two o'clock in the morning, her mom was laying right
Speaker 4: next to her. Well, the next morning, Karen's cars found
Speaker 4: about a mile or so from the house. And I
Speaker 4: believe I'm run about this look appears that maybe there
Speaker 4: was like a nail in one of the tires, one
Speaker 4: of the tires was flat or something like that. And
Speaker 4: again the car was in perfect mechanical working order, and
Speaker 4: she was gone, vanished.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: David Swift, from every indication, was cooperative with the police.
Speaker 4: He told them. You know, I actually don't know what
Speaker 4: he told him, because they've never released that and he's
Speaker 4: never spoken about it publicly though he was interviewed a
Speaker 4: few times. The daughter was interviewed a couple of times,
Speaker 4: and she was just gone. There were search parties looking
Speaker 4: for She was a very attractive woman. She was blonde headed,
Speaker 4: blue eyed. She matched kind of a description of several
Speaker 4: women who had died in Western Tennessee around that time.
Speaker 4: You'll probably remember the Holly Bobo case. That was pretty big,
Speaker 4: and so there was kind of a thought process that
Speaker 4: maybe there was a transient serial killer out, you know,
Speaker 4: targeting women with blonde hair and blue eyes who kind
Speaker 4: of fit this athletic build, you know, that type of description.
Speaker 4: So that was floating around for a while. Well then
Speaker 4: now two months, no less than two months, about a
Speaker 4: month and a half after she disappeared, they found her body.
Speaker 4: At a cemetery about eight miles away. Her body had
Speaker 4: been placed under some kudzu bushes, and when the bushes
Speaker 4: died off as the seasons changed, parts of her body
Speaker 4: were exposed, and so they knew officially she had been murdered.
Speaker 6: Now, what about Zachary Adams and his three cohorts, Jason Autrey.
Speaker 6: How do these people get involved? What's their story? Well?
Speaker 4: What I did is because the thing about this case,
Speaker 4: there was so little information, and there was this prevailing
Speaker 4: thought that there was a that there was a guy
Speaker 4: or someone targeting women that looked like this, and Holly
Speaker 4: Bobo's case was the most famous. And these and these
Speaker 4: guys that you just mentioned, they're the guys who were
Speaker 4: charged and convicted in her killing. Eventually, this is several
Speaker 4: years I think, I believe it's two thousand teenish or
Speaker 4: maybe no actually later than that, I think they may
Speaker 4: have just been charged them. But anyway, I included, you know,
Speaker 4: just the gruesome description about how they this story came
Speaker 4: out that they had kidnapped Holly Bobo from her house
Speaker 4: and they drugged her, and they grew and they killed her.
Speaker 4: But when they went to go down her body and
Speaker 4: they were going to gut her and she sort of
Speaker 4: woke up and had to shoot her day. And so
Speaker 4: the story isn't super clear. A couple of at least
Speaker 4: one guy that was convicted in it so that he
Speaker 4: didn't do it, he had no connection to it. But
Speaker 4: I included that story because the honest truth is, we
Speaker 4: don't really have any suspects in Karen's case, and so
Speaker 4: this was a prevailing sery or thought that there were
Speaker 4: other cases too of women disappearing in Western Tennessee that
Speaker 4: fit that description. So that's kind of why I included that.
Speaker 6: But there was statements made by these people, allegedly from
Speaker 6: people that were close to them, again not jailhouse informants,
Speaker 6: the kind of people that spoke out against him and
Speaker 6: called police, Like Adam's girlfriend said he he said he
Speaker 6: would do the same thing to her if she didn't
Speaker 6: obey him, and these people, despite the lack of DNA
Speaker 6: or evidence, Adams was convicted and sentenced to life. Isn't
Speaker 6: that true?
Speaker 4: Absolutely? Yeah, No, there were there There were several statements
Speaker 4: made by pay members related to those guys, and like
Speaker 4: you said, a girlfriend also made a statement that he
Speaker 4: he told her, you know that the same thing would
Speaker 4: happen to her, you know. So, yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 4: a it's a very compelling case. It's it's a strange case.
Speaker 4: There was even for a while. Even Holly's own brother
Speaker 4: was a suspect for a while because he woke up
Speaker 4: and noticed this guy. Because what the deal was is
Speaker 4: she was getting ready to go to nursing school that
Speaker 4: morning and he looked. The brother looks out the window
Speaker 4: around the time that she's leaving and notices that she's
Speaker 4: being confronted by a guy. And and then he they well,
Speaker 4: he thinks it's her boyfriend, and so he didn't think
Speaker 4: anything of it. Well, then she's she's led off into
Speaker 4: the woods and then gone, and he called his mother,
Speaker 4: or his mother called the house at that time, and
Speaker 4: he said, well, there's this guy with Holly, and the
Speaker 4: mother immediately told him you need to call the police
Speaker 4: right now and go get her, go get a gun
Speaker 4: and shooting and wherever this guy is. And yeah, and so,
Speaker 4: because the story was just kind of incoherent, you know,
Speaker 4: from his from the brother's standpoint, he was a suspect
Speaker 4: for a while. So is it the Hollybumbo case is
Speaker 4: a really strange case.
Speaker 6: You say though, though the case is definitely linked to
Speaker 6: the Karen Johnson Swift case, and you write also there
Speaker 6: was no sign of Karen until December tenth, twenty eleven.
Speaker 6: What happens then and what is determined from that, if anything?
Speaker 4: Well, after that, the police came to David Swift home
Speaker 4: a couple more times, they did another search, they did
Speaker 4: I believe they interviewed him at least one more time.
Speaker 4: Then he just shut it down. He hired an attorney
Speaker 4: and and pretty much that was the end of that.
Speaker 4: The biggest problem that I've had in the Karen Johnson
Speaker 4: Swift case is that the police have released nothing. I mean,
Speaker 4: they have not released any information out of their case file.
Speaker 4: It's hard to get them, you know, if you if
Speaker 4: you go over there, it's it's almost impossible to meet
Speaker 4: with anybody, you know, a prosecutor or the sheriff who
Speaker 4: is overseeing the case. And it's just it's been it's
Speaker 4: been frustrating. I'm not gonna lie because you know, the
Speaker 4: case is, you know, eight nine years old now, no
Speaker 4: one's been convicted. You know, she this woman did have
Speaker 4: four kids. I'm sure you know her her grade school daughters,
Speaker 4: are you know high school age now, and there's nothing
Speaker 4: been released. There's never been a suspect named nothing. You know,
Speaker 4: a lot of fingers have pointed at the you know,
Speaker 4: the the dad, you know, her husband, and you know
Speaker 4: David and you know, but there's no proof that he
Speaker 4: did it. So I mean, we're just there's an old,
Speaker 4: sudden term up against it. Right now.
Speaker 6: What does Karen's mother think about David Swift's involvement.
Speaker 4: She I've tried to talk to her a few times.
Speaker 4: She's been a little reticent to talk to me. That's understandable.
Speaker 4: I've come across that a lot through the years. You know,
Speaker 4: sometimes the victims, you know, families want to talk and
Speaker 4: sometimes they don't. And literally she has never spoken to me,
Speaker 4: but she has made public statements to several TV stations
Speaker 4: that she thinks that David, you know, at the very
Speaker 4: least knows what happened to her daughter. So you know,
Speaker 4: and that's our belief. And hopefully one of these days
Speaker 4: I'll get to be I'll get the chance to sit
Speaker 4: down and talk with her and we can go over
Speaker 4: that a little bit more.
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Speaker 6: part of your book and you felt an important and
Speaker 6: I agree with you to put a couple stories in
Speaker 6: a couple harrowing stories of survivors of the Holocaust. Tell
Speaker 6: us a little bit about tell us a little bit
Speaker 6: about Henry Greenbaum and his family page and all the children.
Speaker 6: Tell us as you do in the book about Henry Greenbaum.
Speaker 4: So, Dan, I do a lot of interviews I have
Speaker 4: in the past with hollow cost survivors. I always tell
Speaker 4: young journalists when I go to speak at universities or
Speaker 4: even high schools, there are some types of interviews that
Speaker 4: you're only going to get one. She had Dad, is
Speaker 4: that those people are going to be gone. And you
Speaker 4: know right now, it's a lot of world wars, you
Speaker 4: met Holocaust survivors, people who really experienced it. I've known
Speaker 4: a few Holocaust survivors. I've interviewed who were really young
Speaker 4: kids when it happened that they don't really remember. That
Speaker 4: was not Henry Greenbaum. He told probably the most tragic
Speaker 4: story I've ever heard out of a Holocaust survivor, which
Speaker 4: is saying a lot. Henry was a typical kid growing
Speaker 4: up in Poland. He had a a mom, dad, bunch
Speaker 4: of sisters, had some brothers, you know, played soccer, just
Speaker 4: a regular guy. And then of course he was probably
Speaker 4: I think he was tennish, maybe eleven when Germany invaded
Speaker 4: on September first, nineteen thirty nine, and so within a
Speaker 4: few months him and his family are living. Actually his
Speaker 4: father passed away right before the invasion suddenly, and then
Speaker 4: his uh. But he what he did is he got
Speaker 4: his kids jobs working at a munitions factory because they
Speaker 4: knew the invasion was coming and it was just a
Speaker 4: matter of time. So he thought that there was a
Speaker 4: belief in the Jewish community there that if he if
Speaker 4: you worked in the munitions factory, you would be spared
Speaker 4: because you'd be seen as a valuable worker. So the family,
Speaker 4: you know, worked in the munitions factory there inter near
Speaker 4: the ghetto in Warsaw. Well. Then slowly but surely you
Speaker 4: know these people as the years progressed, they were meted
Speaker 4: out to all these you know, concentration camps, and you know,
Speaker 4: Henry watched I believe it was at least murdered, basically murdered,
Speaker 4: you know. I kind of a couple of them died
Speaker 4: from disease that it was caused by the conditions in
Speaker 4: the camps. But his through Phage, is probably the most
Speaker 4: absolutely horrific. So at this point, you know, his mom
Speaker 4: and his sister, who had two children, He watched them
Speaker 4: be placed in a line which obviously they were headed
Speaker 4: to the crematoria, you know, within and within minutes they
Speaker 4: were going to die. And so he'd watched this happen
Speaker 4: and then him and his sister, Phage decided they were
Speaker 4: going to leave. And so Page had talked to a
Speaker 4: Jewish police officer in this camp that they were in,
Speaker 4: and they were going to make a run for it,
Speaker 4: and so there were some surgeons outside the camp who
Speaker 4: were supposed to turn the lights off so they could
Speaker 4: make it through. Well, the lights did go off, and
Speaker 4: so Phage and Henry and this police officer they went
Speaker 4: to this place in the fence where they had dug
Speaker 4: a hole. Well, then the lights suddenly came on. The
Speaker 4: reason the lights ro off wasn't because the power been cut.
Speaker 4: It was because there were Allied bombers in the area
Speaker 4: and so they were shutting them down so they wouldn't
Speaker 4: notice the target area. So the lights come on, the
Speaker 4: bullets start flying. Henry his shot in the head and
Speaker 4: he runs towards the female barracks. He's pretty sure his
Speaker 4: sister got shot at this point, wasn't completely sure. Well,
Speaker 4: he goes to female barracks. They don't want to let
Speaker 4: him in because they tell him if you come in,
Speaker 4: if we let you in here, we'll all die. They'll
Speaker 4: kill all of us right now. And so finally he
Speaker 4: got to one female barracks, so they were able to
Speaker 4: put some rags on his head to kind of cleaned
Speaker 4: up his wound, and so he was able to make
Speaker 4: it back to his barrack. And so the next morning
Speaker 4: during her roll call, he's out there and he's looking
Speaker 4: for a sister, and then he finally sponsored she had gone.
Speaker 4: She had made it across just across the fence line,
Speaker 4: and all he could see across the fence line was
Speaker 4: her blonde hair, and that was in and literally when
Speaker 4: he's telling me stories. He was eighty three when I
Speaker 4: interviewed him, and I mean, it's almost impossible. Like I
Speaker 4: read that chapter that I wrote about Henry. I taught
Speaker 4: a creative writing class for the teacher's co op this
Speaker 4: summer and I just read them that chapter to kind
Speaker 4: of break up the class time, and literally the tears
Speaker 4: in that room were everywhere. I mean, it was just
Speaker 4: it's awful. I mean, I've interviewed a lot of Holocaust survivors.
Speaker 4: Every one of the stories is bad. His was just
Speaker 4: the worst.
Speaker 6: It was incredible to just. One of the vivid images
Speaker 6: that comes out is that they stole some garbage. The
Speaker 6: two of them stole some garbage he and a friend
Speaker 6: to eat. And then the next time that friend dared
Speaker 6: to do that again and steal some more garbage, he
Speaker 6: was hung by his neck for stealing that garbage. It's
Speaker 6: a very vivid scene, yes, in that story.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that that that boy was murdered because he was
Speaker 4: eating trash.
Speaker 6: It is incredible though the Allies rescuing these people finally,
Speaker 6: and otherwise we would never have these stories. But these
Speaker 6: people had no idea. I mean, in the one story
Speaker 6: you have is that there was talk of after this
Speaker 6: person had seen their entire family killed basically, if not
Speaker 6: their whole family, then finally they heard that the Allies
Speaker 6: were coming, the war would end pretty soon, and that
Speaker 6: day did come, didn't it?
Speaker 4: It did. It's always an interesting this is It's one
Speaker 4: of these things in history, uh. And I write a
Speaker 4: lot of I write a lot of stories about history too,
Speaker 4: just a side note when I'm not writing about true
Speaker 4: crime and stuff like that. But one interesting thing that
Speaker 4: I've always wondered about is why the Allies didn't take
Speaker 4: out some of these concentration camps like the Crematorius. You know,
Speaker 4: they were bombing a lot of uh, these places, and
Speaker 4: a good for instance is Auschwitz itself, because Auschwitz there
Speaker 4: was a major there were major factories around Auschwitz that
Speaker 4: those concentration camp, the people in the concentration camp were
Speaker 4: working in, and several of those factories were bombed well,
Speaker 4: and a couple of them, you know, you know, they
Speaker 4: were very close to that concentrated it was only a
Speaker 4: few miles away. And I always wonder why they didn't
Speaker 4: just take up the crematorious. I mean, I know that
Speaker 4: some menaces and people would be killed, but then some
Speaker 4: people were being killed in the factories when they were
Speaker 4: getting bombed too, so that couldn't have been what stopped them.
Speaker 4: I almost want to think Dan that the reason that
Speaker 4: the the the Allies didn't go to the links to
Speaker 4: stop to I really think that they wanted the trop
Speaker 4: They wanted the full scope of the atrocity. I think
Speaker 4: they wanted it to come out like they wanted they
Speaker 4: wanted to, They wanted the images. They wanted people to
Speaker 4: see just how truly horrific this whole thing was.
Speaker 6: Could be right, It could be incredibly right. Let's talk
Speaker 6: about the curious cases. Did you title it the Curious
Speaker 6: Case of Rebecca Gould? And you spoke extensively with sisters,
Speaker 6: with her sister Danielle and doctor Larry, her father as well,
Speaker 6: tell us about this disappearance of Rebecca Gould.
Speaker 4: Rebecca Gould is the first murder case I ever wrote
Speaker 4: about as a journalist. She vanished September twentieth, two thousand
Speaker 4: and four. She had dropped a friend off at work,
Speaker 4: a guy named Casey McCullough, and she went back to
Speaker 4: his house to collect her things. She was a college
Speaker 4: student and she was headed back to north West Arkansas,
Speaker 4: which is about a four hour drive from Melbourne, the
Speaker 4: town that they were in. She goes back to the
Speaker 4: house and then she just liked several other women we've
Speaker 4: talked about today, she just vanishes and I find out
Speaker 4: about Okay, I find out that she's missing. On a Wednesday,
Speaker 4: I head down to the sheriff's apartment. When I get there,
Speaker 4: she's got several of her sisters out there, and her mother,
Speaker 4: Shirley's there, and then doctor Larry Gould her father's out there,
Speaker 4: and they hand me a missing poster and I just
Speaker 4: started jotting down notes and basically, you know, she was
Speaker 4: in college. Everything I just told you.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 4: Then later on that afternoon, I see the friend being
Speaker 4: hauled into the sheriff's apartment to be interrogated. Her boyfriend
Speaker 4: from high school. He was interviewed there. Longtime relationship. He
Speaker 4: was interviewed at length, and so we spend the next
Speaker 4: five days after this, we're out looking for Rebecca Gould Well.
Speaker 4: On Monday, September twenty seventh, I was at the courthouse
Speaker 4: early in the morning there in Melbourne, and a lady
Speaker 4: was talking about there being a smell near her home
Speaker 4: down this very rural road and there were buzzards in
Speaker 4: the air, and so I went out there, and of
Speaker 4: course Rebecca's body was found out there. She was in
Speaker 4: a T shirt and panties. She had been out there
Speaker 4: for about a week, and she'd been missing a week.
Speaker 4: So then, you know, then the focus turns to trying
Speaker 4: to find her killer. Well, I wrote about her case
Speaker 4: periodically through the years, and little the police would never
Speaker 4: release anything in her case. You are very tight lipped
Speaker 4: right about the investigation.
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Speaker 4: Then and the facts, But I, you know, on this case,
Speaker 4: I had some more. I had personal Like I personally
Speaker 4: knew some people who had connections to the case in
Speaker 4: law enforcement and other places, so I was able to
Speaker 4: mine out some details that to the day they've never
Speaker 4: publicly released. For instance, she uh was she she died
Speaker 4: from a blunt force trauma to the head, two blows.
Speaker 4: I got actually got a copy of her od Tossy report,
Speaker 4: And according to her autopsy report, she wasn't sexually assaulted.
Speaker 4: There was no stemens found, no pubic hairs her body.
Speaker 4: Her radiological reports came back they were totally there were
Speaker 4: no bone bruising on any part of her body. Her
Speaker 4: breasts weren't were totally normal. There was nothing there, So
Speaker 4: there was no proof of the sexual assault to this
Speaker 4: one and all and the other. You know, one detail
Speaker 4: is the fact that she was wearing her panties and
Speaker 4: a shirt when they found her. You know, they're not
Speaker 4: gonna killer's not going to go to the trouble of
Speaker 4: putting her clothes back on everything. So that kind of eliminated,
Speaker 4: you know, several potential possible suspects. They didn't find any
Speaker 4: drugs in her system, and interestingly, in the house when
Speaker 4: they went into the house the next day. See Casey
Speaker 4: the boyfriend. He didn't go home that day after work.
Speaker 4: He went over to a friend's house and then they
Speaker 4: went out to a nearby town to watch a movie
Speaker 4: and go eat dinner. And all this other stuff, and
Speaker 4: then he went back to that house and he stayed
Speaker 4: the night there, which was something he never did well.
Speaker 4: The next day, after the family has contacted the sheriff,
Speaker 4: they go to Casey's work, because he's gone straight back
Speaker 4: to work the next morning still hasn't gone by his
Speaker 4: own house. And when they get to the house, everything
Speaker 4: looked fairly normal. There were two little dogs in the house,
Speaker 4: a Pomeranian named Lady was and that was Rebecca's dog,
Speaker 4: and they were perfectly fine. They had messed on the floor,
Speaker 4: that was about it. Then they start. The officer starts
Speaker 4: looking around some more and he notices some bloody sheets
Speaker 4: and the washing machine. He notices the mattresses and flipped.
Speaker 4: He also notices that the pillows, the bloody pillows on
Speaker 4: the bed are stuffed underneath the bed. And there's one
Speaker 4: item missing out of the house strangely, and it is
Speaker 4: a loose piano leg. And there was only a few
Speaker 4: people who knew that the piano leg would come loose,
Speaker 4: and so but it was gone according to all reports,
Speaker 4: and so more than likely she died from one or
Speaker 4: two blows to the head from that piano legs Her
Speaker 4: closes are in the house, her keys were in the house,
Speaker 4: or her car was there, of course, And you know
Speaker 4: then I've got a couple of dogs, especially my little one.
Speaker 4: She if you, if you killed me and drugs dragged
Speaker 4: my body out the door, She's gonna follow me, and
Speaker 4: she's gonna be out. You're gonna find her outside, or
Speaker 4: she's gonna be dead because she'll bark. You know, she'll
Speaker 4: go nuts on you. So to me automatically had to
Speaker 4: assume that the person who killed Rebecca was familiar with
Speaker 4: her dog and she felt comfortable enough to be around
Speaker 4: them in her panties and are underwear. She wasn't raped,
Speaker 4: there were no drugs or alcohol found in her system.
Speaker 4: So obviously, from my vantage point, I thought it was
Speaker 4: a love interest of some kind. Well, I wrote about
Speaker 4: this case for years. They the police kept saying that
Speaker 4: her you know sort of ex boyfriend Casey, was not
Speaker 4: a suspect. He had an ironclad alibi. Well, in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 4: I wrote about her case in my first book, which
Speaker 4: is in West Memphis, which is mostly about the West
Speaker 4: Memphis three, but I included a chapter about her and
Speaker 4: I reconnected with her father, doctor Larry Gould, and so
Speaker 4: we started, you know, writing and trying. He had a
Speaker 4: couple of private investigators that he had dealt with. We
Speaker 4: haven't had a documentary filmmaker at one point who was
Speaker 4: really interested in maybe doing a documentary about her case. Well,
Speaker 4: we would get together at his house and all of
Speaker 4: us would be sitting there and we would have like
Speaker 4: a board of potential suspects, you know, up and we
Speaker 4: would go through all the facts in the case. And
Speaker 4: you know, he always kept coming back to Casey and
Speaker 4: I was like, no, doc, there's no way, you know,
Speaker 4: he's been cleared by the police, not him. We're gonna
Speaker 4: have to go in another direction. But he always kind
Speaker 4: of was in the back of his mind. Well, about
Speaker 4: two or three months after this whole thing started, we
Speaker 4: kind of hit a wall again. Someone had written anonymous
Speaker 4: letter detailing the murder. But the letter was very well written,
Speaker 4: but it didn't match the autopsy report at all. So
Speaker 4: I didn't take you know, I wrote about it, but
Speaker 4: it was just more of a let's just get this
Speaker 4: story out there to try to get the killer to
Speaker 4: do to change behavior or something like that. Well that
Speaker 4: didn't happen, so I thought, you know, I'm gonna reach
Speaker 4: out to Casey. I'd interviewed him a couple times before.
Speaker 4: You know, he always would take a call from me,
Speaker 4: was friendly, you know, never had any problems. Well, I
Speaker 4: called the Sonic where he used to work, to try
Speaker 4: to get contact information from him. Because it's a small town.
Speaker 4: I figured somebody there. I know he didn't work there anymore,
Speaker 4: but I knew somebody would have contact info for him. Well, unbelievably,
Speaker 4: his wife was there, his now wife, Yeah, And I
Speaker 4: talked to her, very nice, pleasant woman. We spent probably
Speaker 4: you know, five to ten minutes chatting on the phone.
Speaker 4: He had read the chapter I've written in my first
Speaker 4: book about the case, and I you know, I said,
Speaker 4: you know, my instinct is to think that, no, he
Speaker 4: didn't do this. The police obviously have some very powerful
Speaker 4: alibi evidence for him because Dan, as you can just
Speaker 4: tell from what I've told you, this is this, this
Speaker 4: unbelievably points towards a love interest doing this. So I call.
Speaker 4: She gave me a cell phone number and said contact
Speaker 4: him through Facebook sometimes when don't get a good signal
Speaker 4: at her house. Because they still live in the house
Speaker 4: where Rebecca was murdered, still sleep in the same bedroom
Speaker 4: and so I called him, called him, called him, called him,
Speaker 4: left messages, left Facebook messages, never would answer. So at
Speaker 4: that point, I'm starting to get a little suspicious about something,
Speaker 4: you know, because this is a change in behavior. So
Speaker 4: then I get a hold of the wife again. I'm like, hey,
Speaker 4: I've been trying to get ahold of Casey. He won't
Speaker 4: ever call me back. And she basically said, he doesn't
Speaker 4: want to talk you, We don't want to talk to you.
Speaker 4: Don't never contact us again, and she pretty much hung
Speaker 4: up the phone on me. And mind you, up until
Speaker 4: this point, I had never written a single single word
Speaker 4: negatively about Casey mcculluugh. I had never written a word
Speaker 4: about him, and so that really shocked me. And I
Speaker 4: was really that then I started getting suspicious about something.
Speaker 4: Didn't know what. But so then I in my second book,
Speaker 4: I wrote another chapter and I expressed some of those
Speaker 4: concerns in that chapter, you know, basically because of his
Speaker 4: change behavior. Well, then a few months after that book
Speaker 4: came out, I got an email from a woman named
Speaker 4: Catherine Townsend. She was a reporter for the Discovery Channel,
Speaker 4: and she wanted to do a story about one of
Speaker 4: the other murder cases I covered in the Creekside Bones.
Speaker 4: And then she said that she also wanted to do
Speaker 4: a podcast here Revegga's case, and so I agreed that
Speaker 4: she came to Arkansas. I interviewed with her three or
Speaker 4: four times, and so then and in the fall of
Speaker 4: twenty eighteen, the Hell and Gone podcast came out as
Speaker 4: an eight part series and it detailed Rebecca's case. Well,
Speaker 4: as this case is getting you know, retold, the Arkansas
Speaker 4: State Police start coming under you know, some heat for
Speaker 4: you know, not you know, not having garnered as a
Speaker 4: conviction in this case, or getting somebody arrested, and so
Speaker 4: all sorts of details start filtering to the surface that
Speaker 4: are just kind of hard to believe. For instance, he
Speaker 4: went out with this guy, went out with five of
Speaker 4: his friends that night, and two of the statements that
Speaker 4: were given by two of his friends, the police actually
Speaker 4: sent those statements back to them to review them so
Speaker 4: that they could interview them again, which I couldn't believe,
Speaker 4: I mean, and but the statements were damning because in
Speaker 4: the statements they both said that he was already using
Speaker 4: the terms missing to describe her, and they both said
Speaker 4: that he was in love with her, and they couldn't
Speaker 4: believe he wasn't running out the door to sign her.
Speaker 4: So right there, that's an alarm bell. Alarm bell is
Speaker 4: going off like crazy. So Danielle I mentioned her in
Speaker 4: the book. She's the sister her and I, you know,
Speaker 4: we've become friends. I'll message her, talk to her periodically. Well,
Speaker 4: Danielle calls the owner of the Sonic where or the
Speaker 4: former owner of the Sonic where Casey works, and asked
Speaker 4: him if there was video of him work today, because
Speaker 4: that was the whole thing, was that there was video
Speaker 4: evidence that Casey was at work. And the owner said no,
Speaker 4: they missed getting that footage by three days or by
Speaker 4: a day, because it was one of those systems that
Speaker 4: recorded over itself every seventy two hours. So there's no
Speaker 4: video of him at work. And so at that point
Speaker 4: there's no such thing as an iron cloud alibi. So
Speaker 4: at this point I'm getting real, this whole thing is
Speaker 4: just not looking right to me. And then I started
Speaker 4: hearing that the police had developed a theory early on
Speaker 4: that she was murdered that afternoon. Well, the only problem
Speaker 4: I have was that is is that inside the house
Speaker 4: they found a sandwich biscuit and coffee in the microwave.
Speaker 4: Rebecca was supposed to pick her sister up at noon,
Speaker 4: and she was in a T shirt and panties. A
Speaker 4: stack of folded clothes were next to the bed, or
Speaker 4: on the bed next to bed, somewhere around the bed,
Speaker 4: and it was her clothes. The only other thing missing
Speaker 4: out of the house that they've never been able to
Speaker 4: find her, they've never admitted to finding it's her suitcase.
Speaker 4: So it's pretty obvious just from these, you know, minor details.
Speaker 4: And her sister, by the way, told me that mid
Speaker 4: morning that it was very common for Rebecca to take
Speaker 4: a shower.
Speaker 6: Take a nap, and to be dressed that way.
Speaker 4: Or watched Regis and Kelly, a show that came on
Speaker 4: at nine o'clock in the morning on the ABC affiliate
Speaker 4: that's over in that area. So this obviously happened in
Speaker 4: the morning even later on. A good friend of mine
Speaker 4: named Jennifer Buckole who did a series of stories about this.
Speaker 4: She was a counterintelligence officer for the US Army and
Speaker 4: worked at the Pentagon. She's a very smart, a highly
Speaker 4: qualified person. Even she did an analysis of the maggot
Speaker 4: activity in the autopsy report, and she worked at the
Speaker 4: Medical Examiner's Office in New York City for several years,
Speaker 4: since she was very familiar with all this stuffs. She
Speaker 4: teaches forensics at the American Military Institute, and even she said, yeah,
Speaker 4: this happened. It's not an exact or precise science, but
Speaker 4: she said, more than likely this happened before noonday.
Speaker 6: It's interesting too when you talk to Danielle that originally
Speaker 6: you have this again a very vivid scene that they
Speaker 6: were driving in the car and she got a call.
Speaker 6: Rebecca got a call from Casey and she said to
Speaker 6: her sister, Oh, he wants to be exclusive, and she
Speaker 6: rolled her eyes. That's what Danielle remembered. She rolled her eyes,
Speaker 6: and then this event happened afterwards. The other thing I
Speaker 6: thought was very very interesting. I don't think we stressed
Speaker 6: it enough, but I think you do in the book
Speaker 6: is that these people that he spent the night with,
Speaker 6: that he didn't go home, which was again, he wasn't
Speaker 6: that type of person typically he stayed out at these
Speaker 6: people's homes. They were surprised that he was wanted to
Speaker 6: come over there. So as a surprising, untypical behavior in
Speaker 6: a couple different ways, just coincidental that he wouldn't go
Speaker 6: back to his house, where again his girlfriend had gone
Speaker 6: back to the house after she dropped him off. There
Speaker 6: was all that evidence that she had just gone to
Speaker 6: a corner store to get something biscuit, like you say,
Speaker 6: in a coffee and was in her panties. There's more
Speaker 6: than circumstantial evidence, it seems, especially if you say there
Speaker 6: isn't a solid alibi, then you were mistaken when you
Speaker 6: thought the reason why he was in charge is because
Speaker 6: he was cleared.
Speaker 4: Yes, and I would as a journalist and even a
Speaker 4: true crime writer. This was my first rodeo, and I
Speaker 4: I was naive. I actually believed that if the police
Speaker 4: were not if he wasn't being named a you know,
Speaker 4: a suspect in this case, if he was, if they
Speaker 4: weren't going after him harder, then he must They must
Speaker 4: have some overwhelming, powerful piece of evidence that he was
Speaker 4: at work and and not involved. And I was wrong,
Speaker 4: you know, because there is that evidence doesn't exist. And
Speaker 4: here's the thing, Dan, this is what you would have
Speaker 4: to believe if you're gonna this is this is the kill.
Speaker 4: This is Rebecca Gould's killer. The killer first of all,
Speaker 4: would have to know where this place is it's out
Speaker 4: in the middle of nowhere, and I'm talking the middle
Speaker 4: of nowhere. And where her body was found. It was
Speaker 4: found at the end of an ancient gravel road that
Speaker 4: was used as a timber road years before, and it
Speaker 4: connects up to Highway nine, which connects Melbourne to a
Speaker 4: town called Mountain View. And so literally, and my friend
Speaker 4: Jennifer Buckolts wrote about this, So the killer left Casey's house,
Speaker 4: gets on this gravel road, which is which starts about
Speaker 4: a mile from his house, and the killer literally is
Speaker 4: is going down these creek beds and all those other places.
Speaker 4: Her body's found at the very end of the road,
Speaker 4: just before you get back up onto the main highway.
Speaker 4: It's down an embankment. So what happened to the killer
Speaker 4: was he was looking for a good place to dump
Speaker 4: her and literally that was his last option before getting
Speaker 4: it back up onto the main highway with a body
Speaker 4: in the back of a truck or in a trunk.
Speaker 4: So psychologically the killer had to let the body go.
Speaker 4: And whoever the killer was, this was a route that
Speaker 4: was out of town, so it was a route that
Speaker 4: you know, you know, if it was somebody you know
Speaker 4: who worked in town, they wouldn't have to go past it.
Speaker 4: And she said that's another psychological queue too, because the
Speaker 4: killer doesn't want to have to relive the stress of
Speaker 4: driving by that body every day. So this was an
Speaker 4: out of the way place. You'd have to know this. Well,
Speaker 4: then the other elements come in. Okay, so the person
Speaker 4: who killed her more than likely killed her with this
Speaker 4: loose piano leg. So how did they know that piano
Speaker 4: leg was loose? Because I don't know about you. I've
Speaker 4: been in a lot of houses with pianos. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: I just thought, I mean, it's just it's bizarre. Yeah, right,
Speaker 4: I mean, you're not doing that. And then you go
Speaker 4: to the motivations of the killer. Well, if one of
Speaker 4: the detectives has told people that he thinks that there's
Speaker 4: another guy who's a suspect, and the reason he should
Speaker 4: be a suspect is because he was sexually obsessed with Rebecca,
Speaker 4: which there's no evidence of. There's no evidence that he
Speaker 4: ever even was to the house, and when he was interviewed,
Speaker 4: he said he didn't even know who Casey McCullough was
Speaker 4: or where he lived. So there's no evidence plenty towards him,
Speaker 4: and there's no evidence plenty towards the sex assault. Well,
Speaker 4: there was cash found in the house, so you know,
Speaker 4: there was some rumor going around that Rebecca owed money
Speaker 4: for drugs or whatever. Well, there were no drugs found
Speaker 4: in her system at all. There's cash in the house,
Speaker 4: so how can that be a motivation. Well, then there
Speaker 4: was another motivation that was talked about, which actually I
Speaker 4: subscribed to for a long time just because I thought
Speaker 4: Casey couldn't be a suspect, and that was that this
Speaker 4: was a rage killing by a female, you know that
Speaker 4: because who would clean up the mess? You know, So
Speaker 4: I thought I'd be a female. Well then, you know,
Speaker 4: but there were parts of it that didn't make any
Speaker 4: sense once I got a copy that I topched report,
Speaker 4: you know, because if if these if it was a
Speaker 4: female or females that killed her, she didn't have a
Speaker 4: lot more wounds to her body. You know, this ain't
Speaker 4: gonna be And Rebecca was feisty. Everybody, every single human
Speaker 4: being I've ever talked to about that woman said she
Speaker 4: was feisty, that she would fight you, she would she
Speaker 4: she wouldn't let somebody rape her. She she you'd have
Speaker 4: to take her out. And so now you've got the
Speaker 4: situation where there's no motive, no clear motive, now unless
Speaker 4: there was some emotional connection to her that was ending.
Speaker 4: And so you got to believe that you know, somebody,
Speaker 4: you know, drove to that house out of no nowhere,
Speaker 4: just happened to find that piano leg while while she's
Speaker 4: awake and looking right at him. By the way, this
Speaker 4: is a very small house. And then this person hits
Speaker 4: her in the head twice, cleans up, throws the sheets
Speaker 4: in the washing machine, cleans up the baseboards, wives blood
Speaker 4: off the back porch, drags her body off the back porch,
Speaker 4: which is surrounded by a fence with a gate, and
Speaker 4: then locks the doors behind them because the house was
Speaker 4: locked up the next day when the police arrived. And
Speaker 4: here's the other detail that's just simply unbelievable. He admits
Speaker 4: he went back to the house before he went to
Speaker 4: work the next morning, and so all of her stuff,
Speaker 4: everything in the house.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, it doesn't doesn't make sense at all. And
Speaker 6: also when you say forensically no prints and no DNA
Speaker 6: except from Casey and Rebecca, I can't declusion is but
Speaker 6: that's a strong conclusion.
Speaker 7: Is.
Speaker 4: Right if the other the one of the other suspects
Speaker 4: in the case of a guy named Chris. I have
Speaker 4: made this statement before, if his DNA was found at
Speaker 4: that house, if his fingerprints DNA, he says he's never
Speaker 4: been in that house ever. He has made that statement publicly.
Speaker 4: I've never been there. I don't know where it's at.
Speaker 4: So we can deduce just from the simple fact that
Speaker 4: he hasn't been arrested or the police haven't made a
Speaker 4: statement saying that he's a suspect, there's an automatic you
Speaker 4: can automatically assume that there's none of that. And there's
Speaker 4: also another woman who was a prime suspect in the
Speaker 4: case or not never named as a suspect, but she
Speaker 4: was interviewed multiple times. You can also deduce to her
Speaker 4: forensic no forensic evidence connecting her to the crime scene
Speaker 4: was found there either. And the lead detective in the
Speaker 4: case has told doctor Gould before that there's virtually no
Speaker 4: forensic evidence in this case at all. And he told
Speaker 4: him this on the day this lead detective he had,
Speaker 4: he snuck into a book signing of mine and he
Speaker 4: he said, his quote to me was he wanted to
Speaker 4: figure out what I knew about this case. When I
Speaker 4: told him, you know, next time, just you know, give
Speaker 4: me a call and I'll tell you.
Speaker 6: You know. Yeah, it's interesting too, how inextricably involved you've
Speaker 6: become in this case, this one, on these others, but
Speaker 6: especially this one with talking to Danielle her sister, but
Speaker 6: also doctor Larry Gould. And at this book signing you
Speaker 6: meet him. It's a very dramatic scene, very very interesting
Speaker 6: how it even unfolds. And again at the same book
Speaker 6: signing you have this other guy that wants and approaches
Speaker 6: Larry as well. So very very interesting, very vivid imagery
Speaker 6: of your involvement in this. I want to thank you
Speaker 6: very much for coming on and talking about Whispers in
Speaker 6: the Willows, who killed Rebecca Gould, who killed Amanda puzzling
Speaker 6: and why? Thank you very much, George. Is there a
Speaker 6: Facebook page or website for people that might want to
Speaker 6: take a look at your other books or these other
Speaker 6: cases and find out more information?
Speaker 4: Dan If people just want to contact me through Facebook,
Speaker 4: I'm usually on there quite a bit, and then there's
Speaker 4: links to my books on there. You can always go
Speaker 4: to Amazon and get them. Barnes and Noble carries them
Speaker 4: as well, so you can order through them. Sometimes they'll
Speaker 4: have them on the shelves in certain places. So or
Speaker 4: you know what, if you absolutely want one signed for me,
Speaker 4: you can contact me through Facebook and I can get
Speaker 4: to you a signed copymail to your house.
Speaker 6: Oh that's great, fantastic. Again, I want to thank you
Speaker 6: very much for coming on and talking about Whispers in
Speaker 6: the Willows, who killed Rebecca Gould, who killed the man,
Speaker 6: the puzzing and why? Thank you very much, George Starrett,
Speaker 6: you have a great evening.
Speaker 4: Dan, you do that yourself.
Speaker 6: Thank you. Good night,