Speaker 1: This podcast is intended for mature audiences. Listener discretion is
Speaker 1: advised by now you've heard so many names, friends, family, neighbors, suspects.
Speaker 1: I've been managing it all with this big spreadsheet to
Speaker 1: help me navigate this complicated and just strange story. And
Speaker 1: yet as organized as I have tried to make this,
Speaker 1: it's still proven to be a challenge, especially as new
Speaker 1: people have come forward to share even more information we've
Speaker 1: never heard before. In fact, I've learned so much in
Speaker 1: the past few weeks that we are going to break
Speaker 1: our last episode into two parts, starting with this one.
Speaker 1: In the course of my reporting, what's clear is that
Speaker 1: local law enforcement has always zeroed in on one guy,
Speaker 1: Chris Didton, Kelly's boyfriend at the time.
Speaker 2: He was considered to be a prime suspect and even
Speaker 2: felt a polygraph test, but no charges ever brought.
Speaker 1: Chris Denton. He died of cancer when he was just
Speaker 1: thirty one years old. That was back in two thousand
Speaker 1: and four, twelve years after Kelly vanished from Gilmer. Chris
Speaker 1: and Kelly ran in the same circles. They had a
Speaker 1: lot of mutual friends. Here's one friend, Lee, who was
Speaker 1: also a senior at Gilmer. During the ninety one ninety
Speaker 1: two school year, Lee and Chris were especially close.
Speaker 3: It was funny, he was hilarious. We were really good
Speaker 3: friends because he was just fun to be around, always joking.
Speaker 1: Lee acknowledges that Chris had some growing up to do
Speaker 1: Back in high school.
Speaker 3: He was a hothead. Not in a lie. He was
Speaker 3: a hot heead you know, he would get in fights.
Speaker 3: He would tell people what he thought when he thought it.
Speaker 3: He drank, He definitely partied, but he kind of hung
Speaker 3: out in all the groups because he was so funny.
Speaker 3: He'd always break out into a you know, vanilla eyes,
Speaker 3: rap songs, shit.
Speaker 1: But Lee says Chris was also a generous friend.
Speaker 3: You know, he was the guy that didn't give you
Speaker 3: the shirt off the back to help you out for real.
Speaker 3: And he was a very loyal friend, you know, up
Speaker 3: until he died. He was a very loyal friend. Never
Speaker 3: understood why they just focused in so hard on him.
Speaker 1: In the eyes of Gilmer police Sergeant James York Brown,
Speaker 1: who led the search for Kelly, Chris didn't fit the
Speaker 1: mold of a young delinquent. Everybody knew Chris had a
Speaker 1: hot temper, and Sergeant Brown has alleged that Chris even
Speaker 1: punched a girlfriend one time. Chris had also been arrested
Speaker 1: more than once, most for relatively petty's stuff, misdemeanor, theft,
Speaker 1: and running from the cops. But there was this one time,
Speaker 1: less than a year after Kelly's disappearance. It was the
Speaker 1: night before Halloween in nineteen ninety two. The high school
Speaker 1: football team, the Buck Guys, were losing pretty bad to
Speaker 1: a rivals school. One of Chris's friends got in a
Speaker 1: scuffle at the game with a guy who is from
Speaker 1: out of town. As this out of town fella and
Speaker 1: his friends were walking back to their vehicle, a red
Speaker 1: car passed by. Someone in the red car leaned out
Speaker 1: the passenger window and stabbed one of them a knife
Speaker 1: in the back. The guy wielding the knife he was
Speaker 1: none other than Chris. Denton Police found Chris and his
Speaker 1: buddies on a country road just off Cherokee Trace, where
Speaker 1: teams were known to party in the woods, right outside
Speaker 1: of town. Under the passenger seat was a knife and
Speaker 1: a baseball bat. Chris admitted to the stabbing. He was
Speaker 1: sentenced to one hundred and twenty days in jail and
Speaker 1: ten years probation and get this. Sergeant James York Brown
Speaker 1: was one of the police officers on the scene the
Speaker 1: night of the stabbing, which isn't really that unusual given
Speaker 1: how small Gilmer is, especially in Texas where Friday night
Speaker 1: football is kind of an all hands on deck situation
Speaker 1: for local law enforcement. So what did Chris have to
Speaker 1: do with Kelly? The TV show Dateline actually interviewed him
Speaker 1: about that around two thousand and two.
Speaker 4: Kelly was a casual girlfriend to him.
Speaker 5: They'd only hooked up around Christmas, just a few weeks
Speaker 5: before she went missing.
Speaker 4: We went to two parties together, and went to cloud together,
Speaker 4: and you slept together, you had sex with her.
Speaker 1: Chris told the news reporter that he partied with Kelly
Speaker 1: the night before she disappeared. On Sunday evening, the last
Speaker 1: night Kelly was ever seen. Chris said he and his
Speaker 1: friend Marvin drove by the town square in Gilmer. The
Speaker 1: video store where Kelly worked was already closed for the night.
Speaker 4: Yeah, as we were driving by, Marvi, another shatire was
Speaker 4: flat and so lah okay tires flat. Probably got a
Speaker 4: ride home or whatever, and we went around on.
Speaker 1: A Chris's story didn't convince the police for a second
Speaker 1: According to Sargent Brown, Chris failed not one, but two
Speaker 1: light detector tests. Keep in mind, though light detector tests
Speaker 1: are notoriously unreliable. Earlier in the series, we heard about
Speaker 1: a guy who actually passed a light detector test when
Speaker 1: claiming falsely that he sacrificed babies and a devil cult.
Speaker 1: Joe Henry, the video store manager, the last person known
Speaker 1: to see Kelly, also failed his light detector test and
Speaker 1: was still cleared by the cops. So take all that
Speaker 1: with a grain of salt, and yet, investigators have said
Speaker 1: that Chris just couldn't keep his story straight and he
Speaker 1: struggled for answers when questioned before a grand jury. According
Speaker 1: to an Attorney General investigator's report, Chris was driving an
Speaker 1: eighty four Chevrolet Celebrity on the night of Kelly's disappearance.
Speaker 1: Chris's dad had bought the car just five months earlier,
Speaker 1: but he didn't keep it long. Just one month after
Speaker 1: Kelly was last seen, the car was sold to a
Speaker 1: dealer in Louisiana to be shipped to Mexico. The FBI
Speaker 1: tracked down the car. The floor mat in the trunk
Speaker 1: was said to be missing. The FBI even vacuumed up
Speaker 1: hair and other debris from the vehicle interior. When lab tested, however,
Speaker 1: none of the material traced back to Kelly. Did you
Speaker 1: kill Kelly Wilson?
Speaker 4: No, did not kill Kelly Wilson. I have no idea
Speaker 4: what happened to Kelly, whether where she's at, what happened
Speaker 4: to her. I don't know anything about it. Only thing
Speaker 4: I know of it I wish I'd never met her.
Speaker 1: Chris Denton had a cousin, Brent Ward. From what everyone says,
Speaker 1: Chris and Brent weren't just cousins, they were best friends.
Speaker 1: This is local news reporter Philip Williams.
Speaker 2: You may know that Denton's cousin, Brent Ward, was tried
Speaker 2: for perjury in that case two different times. Ward was
Speaker 2: the only guy that was ever tried in connection with him.
Speaker 1: Like his cousin, Brent is no longer with us, from
Speaker 1: what I've been told, He died of complications from diabetes
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen at the age of forty six. Case
Speaker 1: files showed that during the search for Kelly Wilson, Brent
Speaker 1: was questioned twice by the jury. Both times he testified
Speaker 1: that he didn't know anything about Kelly's disappearance. Brent also
Speaker 1: said under oath that he was working until about four
Speaker 1: pm at this gated golf course community called Holly Lake
Speaker 1: Ranch on the day of Kelly's disappearance. Brent said he
Speaker 1: picked up Chris after work that day. They went to
Speaker 1: eat some hamburgers, and then Brent dropped off his cousin
Speaker 1: before eight pm. The timing is critical because Kelly was
Speaker 1: last seen at the video store about thirty minutes later.
Speaker 1: In other words, Brent's testimony gave Chris a pretty good alibi.
Speaker 1: The authorities poked some holes in Brent's story. For one thing,
Speaker 1: his timesheet from Holly Lake didn't show that he'd actually
Speaker 1: worked that weekend. In his defense, several witnesses said the
Speaker 1: time sheets weren't very reliable, and yet Brent's own supervisor
Speaker 1: testified that Brent absolutely did not work on the day
Speaker 1: Kelly went missing. It gets worse. The supervisor also testified
Speaker 1: that Brent asked him to lie to tell police that
Speaker 1: he'd been at work that day even though he hadn't.
Speaker 1: According to a newspaper account from Brin's trials, Britt confided
Speaker 1: in his supervisor that he was worried because he and
Speaker 1: his two friends had been at the video store a
Speaker 1: mere fifteen minutes before closing time. Brent said he and
Speaker 1: his buddies had been quote messing with Kelly. The supervisor
Speaker 1: refused to lie for Brent. A coworker overheard their conversation,
Speaker 1: what if anything, did Brent know about the disappearance of
Speaker 1: Kelly Wilson.
Speaker 5: The State Attorney General's office believes this man, twenty two
Speaker 5: year old Britt Ward, may have some answers, yet they
Speaker 5: claim he's not the prime suspect. That accusation points toward
Speaker 5: his best friend and first cousin, twenty two year old
Speaker 5: Chris Denton. No charges have ever been filed against Denton
Speaker 5: in the missing Team's case, but Ward has been charged
Speaker 5: with aggregated perjury five times, charges alleging Ward lied about
Speaker 5: where he was the night Kelly Wilson disappeared. In the
Speaker 5: latest free trial hearing, former Gilmour police sergeant James Brown
Speaker 5: testifies he always believed Chris Denton to be the prime suspect,
Speaker 5: and he felt Brent Ward knew more than he'd admit.
Speaker 1: In Brent's first trial, a next girlfriend testified that she
Speaker 1: hadn't seen Brent since the Saturday before Kelly disappeared. When
Speaker 1: she called him that Wednesday or Thursday to ask where
Speaker 1: he'd been. Brent told her, if the police ask, you
Speaker 1: tell them you saw me, not that they will ask.
Speaker 1: Brent denied the girlfriend's allegation. It was her word against his,
Speaker 1: so a judge acquitted him. In the second trial, a
Speaker 1: jury convicted Brent on one of two charges. He was
Speaker 1: sentenced to three years in jail. But here's the deal.
Speaker 1: Lee Taylor, a close friend of Chris and Kelly, says
Speaker 1: there's no way Chris murdered Kelly, and she has Chris's alibi.
Speaker 3: And I never understood why the police weren't interested in that,
Speaker 3: and they were never interested, like they never talked to me.
Speaker 3: I went to the police station and told them, I
Speaker 3: know y'all are looking into Chris, but I was on
Speaker 3: the phone with him. The little secretary lady took my
Speaker 3: information and no one ever called me.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So like I never ever ever believed it was him.
Speaker 1: Ever, Lee is far from the only one who is
Speaker 1: convinced of Chris's innocence. Let's see what she and others
Speaker 1: have to say. From Imperative Entertainment. I'm wes Ferguson This
Speaker 1: is Deviltown. This is chapter ten, Part one. The boyfriend,
Speaker 1: if you can remember all the way back to the
Speaker 1: first episode, is the high school friend who was supposed
Speaker 1: to meet up with Kelly and go to that party
Speaker 1: outside of town. When Lee got off work at the
Speaker 1: local pharmacy, she drove over to the video store. Kelly
Speaker 1: was still inside the store vacuuming, so Lee went home
Speaker 1: to change clothes, and that's when her mom said, no way.
Speaker 3: And then like shortly after, my mom was like, no,
Speaker 3: you're not going. It's too late to go out now. No no, no, no, no, no no.
Speaker 3: And I was like, dam I should just never come home,
Speaker 3: you know, I should have gone straight to Kelly's. Right
Speaker 3: about that time, Chris didn't called me, and we're talking
Speaker 3: on the phone, and I was like, well, are you
Speaker 3: going to go with Are you gonna go with me
Speaker 3: meet up with Kelly and them tonight at that party?
Speaker 3: And he said something of the like nah, fuck that bitch,
Speaker 3: I ain't going or she's being a bitch, I ain't
Speaker 3: going or something, and I don't know, and I guess
Speaker 3: they've gone in some little Honestly, I think she was
Speaker 3: trying to break up with him or kind of stop
Speaker 3: hanging out with him so much and kind of blew
Speaker 3: him off. I don't really know the details of that,
Speaker 3: but it wasn't like we got in this huge fight
Speaker 3: da you know. It wasn't anything like that. And I
Speaker 3: knew it couldn't be because she had just been at
Speaker 3: the thing vacuuming fifteen minutes earlier. And so I just
Speaker 3: never could understand how if he was the one to
Speaker 3: get her from the video store, how kid he could
Speaker 3: have already have done something, hidden her body somewhere and
Speaker 3: called me and then totally normal.
Speaker 1: She says. The timing just didn't make sense.
Speaker 3: It was shortly before nine. It was like eight forty
Speaker 3: five ish. And the reason I remember this so vividly,
Speaker 3: and I don't remember very many things this vividly. I'm
Speaker 3: almost a little bit nutty. And I wasn't allowed to
Speaker 3: be on the phone after nine, and then she really
Speaker 3: didn't like Chris didn't. And I remember it was like
Speaker 3: nine oh five and I was on the phone with
Speaker 3: him and she like walked into my round. I was like,
Speaker 3: what are you doing. I was like, I'm on the
Speaker 3: phone with Chris, and she ripped my phone out of
Speaker 3: the wall. That's how I remember it so down thedly
Speaker 3: because I never got a phone again, never got that
Speaker 3: that thing put back on the wall where you could
Speaker 3: plug a phone in again.
Speaker 1: It sounds like Chris was none too happy with Kelly
Speaker 1: that night. It reminds me of a comment made by
Speaker 1: retired police officer Richard Sproule in the last episode The
Speaker 1: Law Enforcement Theory that Chris was mad at Kelly because
Speaker 1: she'd been spending time with another boyfriend instead of him
Speaker 1: over the Christmas holidays.
Speaker 3: And he was like, have you talked to Kelly? And
Speaker 3: I was like, no, I drove by, she was vacuuming,
Speaker 3: and I haven't called yet. And so I believe he
Speaker 3: was with Marvin Pritchett. They were at Chris's house. They're
Speaker 3: either at Chris's house or Marvin's house, and so it
Speaker 3: just doesn't make sense that he could have done something
Speaker 3: to her and he didn't have a car. I don't believe.
Speaker 3: I don't believe he had a car. I think he
Speaker 3: was probably with Marvin, but I just I don't see
Speaker 3: how they could have ever done something hidden her walked
Speaker 3: into Chris's house out, you know, any blood on them
Speaker 3: or anything, and then acted like it was normal. The
Speaker 3: only place they could have had her was like in
Speaker 3: the trunk of the car, and it just it just
Speaker 3: doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1: And then if someone was to say, well, maybe they
Speaker 1: went out later and met up with her, No.
Speaker 3: I just don't think that's even possible.
Speaker 1: I can't say one way or the other. But I
Speaker 1: really don't understand what's impossible about Kelly getting a ride
Speaker 1: from someone else, maybe another love interest, and crossing paths
Speaker 1: with Chris later that night. Chris didn't sister declined to
Speaker 1: speak with me, but in a text message, she said
Speaker 1: Chris was home with his family on the night Kelly
Speaker 1: went missing, and Chris also told the Dateline reporter that
Speaker 1: he went right home after he and his friend Marvin
Speaker 1: saw Kelly's car with the flat tire at around nine
Speaker 1: thirty pm. But it's certainly not unheard of for a
Speaker 1: teenager to sneak out after his parents are asleep. So
Speaker 1: Lee is on the phone with Chris right after Kelly
Speaker 1: gets off work. Several hours passed before the next morning,
Speaker 1: when Kelly's stepdad finds her Dodge Charger with the slash
Speaker 1: tire outside the video store. That's a pretty big window
Speaker 1: for anything to happen. Did Kelly say that she had
Speaker 1: to tell you.
Speaker 3: Something like something was going on? And I think, and
Speaker 3: that's when I think she was kind of like trying
Speaker 3: to get away from Chris, like they were kind of dating,
Speaker 3: and she's kind of trying to distance herself from Chris.
Speaker 3: But there wasn't like nothing happened between them. There wasn't
Speaker 3: a big sight. There wasn't, you know, nothing happened. If
Speaker 3: she did seem like she wanted to talk about somemer
Speaker 3: or was saying she wanted to talk about something, I
Speaker 3: thought it was about breaking up with Chris, because him
Speaker 3: and I were really good friends, and so I thought
Speaker 3: she really just wanted to bounce it off of me
Speaker 3: or you know whatever. But I didn't know any of
Speaker 3: that other stuff.
Speaker 1: How long have they been together?
Speaker 3: A few buds, I believe. I believe it had been
Speaker 3: a few months, like maybe rightund the football season was
Speaker 3: they had started dating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because when he talked to Dateline, he said that
Speaker 1: they had just hooked up a couple times in December
Speaker 1: and that was the extent of it.
Speaker 3: And I may and that may be it. I might
Speaker 3: just be thinking they but I know they'd hung out
Speaker 3: for a while, and there's no telling. I'm sure Chris
Speaker 3: was just scared to death.
Speaker 1: It's obvious that Lee cares a lot about Chris. Whether
Speaker 1: you think her phone call with Chris is an airtight
Speaker 1: alibi or not, it is strange that Gilbert police had
Speaker 1: no interest in hearing what she had to say.
Speaker 3: Well, I would love for it to come out that
Speaker 3: he talked to me, because I've always felt like people
Speaker 3: still to this day, you know, have this weird suspicion
Speaker 3: of him, And to this day, out of every single
Speaker 3: person that was ever suspected as the one person that
Speaker 3: I don't believe could have possibly done it, I just
Speaker 3: I mean, I remember we were joking around. I mean,
Speaker 3: wouldn't he have been out of breath or weird or
Speaker 3: something if you just killed somebody? Had I was his
Speaker 3: alibi and no one cared.
Speaker 1: What about Chris's alleged violet streak. His and Kelly's other friend,
Speaker 1: Michelle says this was also blown out of proportion.
Speaker 7: I don't remembering much in high school, but I was
Speaker 7: busy with my daughter, but he was honoring. He liked
Speaker 7: to get in fights, and he was extremely smart and
Speaker 7: ended up getting held back and graduating with us because
Speaker 7: he just went to do his work. But when he
Speaker 7: took his exit exams, he did better than any of us,
Speaker 7: Like he was smart. He was just honoring and gave
Speaker 7: his parents' fits. And there's nothing good about you know,
Speaker 7: what he went to jail for.
Speaker 8: But it's made out.
Speaker 7: To be a different picture than what it was. There
Speaker 7: was a common rivalry fight between two groups of kids,
Speaker 7: and something had broken out and they purposely went to
Speaker 7: get Chris because they knew he liked to fight, you know,
Speaker 7: his friends dead.
Speaker 8: So they went gauding and went back.
Speaker 7: To fight as a group, like one group against another group.
Speaker 7: And unfortunately Chris pulled out a knife.
Speaker 8: Now it's not like this long butcher knife.
Speaker 7: They make it sound like he's a serial killer and
Speaker 7: went to stab in somebody. Okay, what he did is
Speaker 7: not good. You can't pull out any kind of knife
Speaker 7: and stab somebody, right. The person did not die, the
Speaker 7: person did not have great injury. It's never fun to
Speaker 7: get stabbed by any kind of knife. But it wasn't
Speaker 7: this deadly transaction.
Speaker 8: I guess. I'm not trying to make excuses for it.
Speaker 3: I'm not.
Speaker 7: And he learned a valuable lesson for it, and he
Speaker 7: was very serious. When he was on probation, he did
Speaker 7: not break his probation. He didn't want to do anything
Speaker 7: he wasn't supposed to do because he wanted to be
Speaker 7: a good person. He went to jail, and after he
Speaker 7: got out he really wanted to He was like, I
Speaker 7: can't do I can't be the wild child anymore. And
Speaker 7: he really started turning everything around. And then that's when
Speaker 7: I got to know him. I've had a lot of
Speaker 7: long conversations with Chris, and there in my mind, there's
Speaker 7: absolutely no way he could have had anything to do
Speaker 7: with it. I've had conversations with him or he's in
Speaker 7: tears and wanted nothing more than to solve her case,
Speaker 7: and there's no way you could. Somebody could have those
Speaker 7: conversations if they were guilty. That's the conversations that I
Speaker 7: had with him. And he was one of the most
Speaker 7: loving souls. Once he grew up and was not, you know,
Speaker 7: acting out anymore. When he was an adult, he was
Speaker 7: a wonderful man. He knew he was going to die
Speaker 7: and he said, when I die, I need you to
Speaker 7: be open to listening to me, because I'm going to
Speaker 7: find I'm going to go to Kelly when I get
Speaker 7: to heaven and we're going to send you signals and
Speaker 7: you're going to have to help find her.
Speaker 8: I mean, and he's serious.
Speaker 7: I mean, this is one of his very last things
Speaker 7: that he's going to do, is that he wants to
Speaker 7: be able to find her and clear his name, clear
Speaker 7: Brent's name, and bring Kelly's mother closure.
Speaker 1: I asked Michelle about a rumor that's been going around
Speaker 1: for years that Chris made a deathbed confession involving Kelly's case.
Speaker 7: Well, no, none of that's accurate. None of that's accurate.
Speaker 7: Of course, there's no deathbed confession. His last days were
Speaker 7: spent at Baylor Hospital in Dallas, and.
Speaker 8: He was very coherent for most of that time.
Speaker 7: It was just a very short period of time that
Speaker 7: he was not able to talk and be coherent, and
Speaker 7: it was during that time that I was having those
Speaker 7: conversations with him, and nobody ever approached him to try
Speaker 7: to get a confession.
Speaker 8: So I was there the day he died.
Speaker 1: Although Lee remembers Chris and Kelly being an item for
Speaker 1: a few months, Michelle insists they were not in a
Speaker 1: serious relationship. That was just the narrative being driven to
Speaker 1: make Chris into the scapegoat for Kelly's disappearance.
Speaker 7: I think it was more the media, and I think
Speaker 7: the high ups in the community controlled the media and
Speaker 7: they wanted the spotlight off of them. And you know,
Speaker 7: the first person they were going to question is the
Speaker 7: person they considered the boyfriend.
Speaker 8: They weren't really truly boyfriend and girlfriend.
Speaker 7: I think they'd just been messing around and they were
Speaker 7: starting to have feelings or whatever was going on there.
Speaker 8: That's your first easy target.
Speaker 7: It's just like if there's a husband and wife and
Speaker 7: the wife gets murdered, the first person they're going to
Speaker 7: go towards this the husband.
Speaker 8: They're going to question them.
Speaker 1: To be sure. There are details about Kelly's case that
Speaker 1: point away from Chris and Brent. The fall before she vanished,
Speaker 1: Kelly had told her cousin in Louisiana that she was
Speaker 1: trying to get away from an ex boyfriend who dealt
Speaker 1: drugs and wouldn't leave her alone. We heard about that
Speaker 1: in the last episode. Well, Chris was not a drug dealer.
Speaker 1: There was also the night Kelly was dropped off by
Speaker 1: a black luxury car and she claimed to have not
Speaker 1: remembered what happened, not to mention the huge wad of
Speaker 1: cash her mom found in her bedroom after she disappeared. Well,
Speaker 1: Chris was from a family of meager means. I recently
Speaker 1: got my hands on some emails from Kelly's late stepmom Waverlin.
Speaker 1: The contents of the emails were apparently copied from police
Speaker 1: reports written by Sergeant James York Brown, the original investigating officer.
Speaker 1: From what I can tell, they've never been made public.
Speaker 1: In one of the emailed reports, a Gilmer resident named R. F.
Speaker 1: Dodson told police he was taking his wife to get
Speaker 1: gas at eight thirty or nine o'clock on January fifth
Speaker 1: when he saw a girl standing in front of the
Speaker 1: video store. She had sandy blonde hair and was wearing
Speaker 1: cutoff shorts and a large shirt, a match for Kelly.
Speaker 1: She was talking to a couple of guys in blue
Speaker 1: jeans and long sleeved shirts, clean cut kids with a
Speaker 1: mid sized car. Chris and Brent in a chevy celebrity
Speaker 1: I have no idea. The other report has even more detail,
Speaker 1: and that one a guy from Gilmer named Max Childress
Speaker 1: said he was walking down the street near the town
Speaker 1: square when he saw Kelly by the back door of
Speaker 1: the video store. Kelly was arguing with a man that
Speaker 1: Max didn't know, but he did recognize him as someone
Speaker 1: he'd seen around Gilmer. The man was about twenty five
Speaker 1: years old, white, clean cut, with black hair and sideburns.
Speaker 1: The man with Kelly had a fairly new sports car
Speaker 1: with dark blue paint. Kelly and the mystery man were
Speaker 1: arguing when Matt, the passerby, heard a slap. What are
Speaker 1: you looking at, the man asked, so Max left. Max
Speaker 1: said he later saw Kelly and the same man in
Speaker 1: the same car turning north on the main highway through town.
Speaker 1: In her email, Waverlin cautions that this guy Max has
Speaker 1: quite a lot of problems and he's not easy to
Speaker 1: talk to. His tip apparently went nowhere and he died
Speaker 1: in twenty thirteen. As we mentioned in the last episode,
Speaker 1: Michelle believes Kelly found out something she wasn't supposed to know,
Speaker 1: whether that involved a drug ring or something else, and
Speaker 1: Kelly was silenced the pursuit of Chris Denton, not to
Speaker 1: mention the wild unrelated allegations of demonic sacrifices. All that
Speaker 1: was a smoke screen.
Speaker 7: It's much bigger than anybody could anticipate, So you wonder
Speaker 7: why there's a cover up. Well, if one girl could
Speaker 7: expose what's going on and bring that many powerful people down,
Speaker 7: she's not going to survive.
Speaker 8: But you got to look at the big picture too.
Speaker 7: I mean, Kelly was snatched off the Gilmour Square.
Speaker 8: She was a sweet young girl. It wasn't a random act.
Speaker 7: We all know it wasn't random, So that means there
Speaker 7: had to be a reason behind it. That has to
Speaker 7: be a pretty big reason to snatch a teenage girl
Speaker 7: from her work in Gilmer, Texas.
Speaker 3: It's big.
Speaker 8: Somebody was in fear.
Speaker 7: It's not like it was this accident or this or
Speaker 7: that it was. I mean, when you look at the
Speaker 7: bigger picture and you think about it, it's like, oh
Speaker 7: my god.
Speaker 1: Michelle brought up Kelly's old boss, Joe Henry, who much
Speaker 1: later pleaded no contest possession of child pornography.
Speaker 7: Everybody knows that Joe Henry was the last one to
Speaker 7: see her, and to me, he should have been more
Speaker 7: of a suspect than what he was. Now you know
Speaker 7: that he's a sex offender listed as a child sex
Speaker 7: offender because he got vested with child pornography. There's something
Speaker 7: behind that. You can't dismiss that the last person that
Speaker 7: she was with likes videos of children having sex. I mean,
Speaker 7: you can't just dismiss that there's something there. There's something.
Speaker 7: Joe Henry knows what happened to Kelly. There's no doubt
Speaker 7: in my mind. I can't say he did it, but
Speaker 7: he knows what happened.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned in the last episode, Joe has admitted
Speaker 1: to engaging in some inappropriate behavior with Kelly, including propositioning
Speaker 1: her as a joke, but he insists he had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with Kelly's disappearance. Police dismissed him as a
Speaker 1: suspect long ago. There's something else I've been reluctant to
Speaker 1: bring up. I'm still not sure it's fair game or
Speaker 1: even relevant, but it keeps coming up, so let's get
Speaker 1: into it. Gilmer, Texas is kind of unique. It's home
Speaker 1: to one of the oldest surviving Mormon colonies in the
Speaker 1: American South. The families of Chris Denton and his cousin
Speaker 1: Brent are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Speaker 1: Latter day Saints and Gore, the CPS caseworker who investigated
Speaker 1: the allegations of Satanic ritual sacrifices as Mormon. So is
Speaker 1: John Melvin Dodd, the Gilmer School teacher and charter member
Speaker 1: of the Justice for Kelly Wilson Committee. Here's news reporter
Speaker 1: Philip Williams again.
Speaker 2: Well too interesting. Some interesting things came up here that
Speaker 2: involved the Mormon Church too. Anne Gower, who was one
Speaker 2: of the Child Protective Services or welfare department workers who
Speaker 2: was involved in this investigation. Denton. I don't know if
Speaker 2: he was a Mormon, but his parents are big members
Speaker 2: of the Mormon Church. And Brent Ward, his cousin who
Speaker 2: was convicted of perjury, went off on a mission from
Speaker 2: the Mormon Church, and it was said that that was
Speaker 2: rushed up, you know, about the time all this happened,
Speaker 2: and so you know, and then there's some people here
Speaker 2: named Dodd, a married couple. They're big Mormons still around here.
Speaker 2: They insisted that Brown was the one who did it.
Speaker 2: It's interesting that, you know, the suspects in this case
Speaker 2: had ties to the Mormon Church, and the Mormons were
Speaker 2: out defending Denton. I guess it leaked in directly by
Speaker 2: suggesting that Brown had something to do with it.
Speaker 9: They're kind of circle on the wagons.
Speaker 2: To protect That's what some people probably interpreted it to me.
Speaker 2: The Dodds are honorable people, you know, I don't think they.
Speaker 2: I don't think Anne Gore or the Dodgs would deliberately
Speaker 2: frame an innocent person. But it is interesting that, you know,
Speaker 2: Mormons were involved in this and taking up for people
Speaker 2: who had Mormon ties that were implicated in this case
Speaker 2: in some way. Genton and Ward.
Speaker 1: Melvin says his son John actually gave Christenton a haircut
Speaker 1: on January fifth, nineteen ninety two, the last day Kelly
Speaker 1: was seen in Gilmer.
Speaker 9: Chris Denton came over the Sunday that she disappeared, and
Speaker 9: my son John, who now is a federal law enforcement official,
Speaker 9: cut hair, cut hair for a lot of people, and
Speaker 9: he would usually do it in my mother's utility, which
Speaker 9: is her house is seventy five eight five ninety five
Speaker 9: yards or so from poor Is. They came over, I
Speaker 9: don't know it was I don't really remember the time,
Speaker 9: six pm or so, impossibly later, and it was christening
Speaker 9: and Marvin Pritchett and Brent Ward and John cut their
Speaker 9: hair and they said we're going to town once you
Speaker 9: go with John said okay. So after cutting all their hair,
Speaker 9: he got in the car. So the four of them,
Speaker 9: we're heading out to town. Well, Mama's got up moderately
Speaker 9: long driveway. Man, it's not one hundred yards, but it's
Speaker 9: a little bit long. And John said he just got
Speaker 9: a strong impression, don't go. See He told him chamber Line,
Speaker 9: I'm not going. So they stopped me got up and
Speaker 9: he's the only reason my son John was not up
Speaker 9: in Gilmer with them the night to Kelly Wilson disappeared.
Speaker 9: James Brown was trying to pin this on Chris Denton.
Speaker 9: Chris Denton had dated Kelly Wilson, and Chris Denton that
Speaker 9: his father is one of my absolute closest friends, and
Speaker 9: I liked Chris. But Chris at this time was a
Speaker 9: bad individual. Chris would take orders for goods from friends
Speaker 9: and then he would go to shopping malls and places,
Speaker 9: instell the stuff and then sell it to him at
Speaker 9: a rather reduced rate.
Speaker 4: So he was a thief.
Speaker 9: He was an organized thief. And Chris had a temper,
Speaker 9: and Chris had hip Kelly at least once, so Chris
Speaker 9: Denton was an incredibly good person to try to pin
Speaker 9: the death of Kelly Willison.
Speaker 1: All Melvin insists that Chris is innocent, So why did
Speaker 1: law enforcement come down so hard on the cousin Brent
Speaker 1: for lying about going to work that Sunday. Melvin says
Speaker 1: the cops were leaning on Brent, so he'd flip on Chris.
Speaker 9: He had to tell them about Chris Denton's involvement or
Speaker 9: there would be no amenity. He was going to have
Speaker 9: to lie to them and tell them that I know
Speaker 9: that Chris Denton killed Kelly Wilson. They were going to
Speaker 9: be able to prosecute him again then, or at least
Speaker 9: harassing like crazy. Brent Ward was accused of potury for
Speaker 9: claiming that he worked at Holly Lake, and as I said, victim,
Speaker 9: it was in the daytime. He never once claimed that
Speaker 9: he was working at Holly Lake at the time that
Speaker 9: Kelly disappeared when she got off work. He said that
Speaker 9: he was up there in town with Chris and Marvin Pritchett,
Speaker 9: but that he had asked them to take him home
Speaker 9: and they dropped He lived uptown and they dropped him
Speaker 9: off at his house. So if Chris Denton did kidnap
Speaker 9: her and killer, Brent Ward wasn't even with him. Now,
Speaker 9: Marvin Pritty would have been, but Brent was not well.
Speaker 9: Marvin was in the military by this time, and they
Speaker 9: brought Marvin here one time and questioned him for the
Speaker 9: grand jury, and then they dropped Marvin. Marvin was never
Speaker 9: bothered anymore about any of this, but Brent Ward and
Speaker 9: Chris Denton absolutely were.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of people in Gilmer. Melvin Dodd remains
Speaker 1: convinced that a devil cult murdered Kelly.
Speaker 9: I can guarantee you Chris Denton had nothing to do
Speaker 9: with the kidnapped, rape, and murder of Kelly Wilson.
Speaker 1: Okay, So what about this other name that keeps coming
Speaker 1: up up? The other guy who was with Chris Denton
Speaker 1: that night?
Speaker 3: I believe she was with Marvin Pritchett.
Speaker 1: I have not been able to find out much about
Speaker 1: Chris's friend Marvin. Kelly's friends say they don't remember him
Speaker 1: all that well. Like Chris and Brent, his family members
Speaker 1: were Latter Day Saints. He was a year ahead of
Speaker 1: Kelly AND's school and had already graduated when she was
Speaker 1: a senior. Marvin joined the United States Air Force in
Speaker 1: April nineteen ninety four. That's about a month after a
Speaker 1: judge dismissed the murder charges against Sergeant James York Brown
Speaker 1: and the other defendants. Records show Marvin's parents also moved
Speaker 1: away from East Texas three years after Kelly vanished. They
Speaker 1: settled in a rural area of the Pacific Northwest. Marvin
Speaker 1: has a sister named Cynthia. She goes by Cindy. She
Speaker 1: doesn't live in Gilmer anymore either. The other day someone
Speaker 1: gave me a tip. They told me to check out
Speaker 1: the comments on a YouTube video that came out back
Speaker 1: in the spring. The video is called The Devil's Cover
Speaker 1: Up Kelly Wilson. Marvin's sister, Cindy, was in the comments
Speaker 1: on a public forum for everyone with an Internet connection
Speaker 1: to read. I am from Gilmer. My little brother is
Speaker 1: Marvin Pritchett Junior. His best friend was Chris Denton, Kelly's boyfriend.
Speaker 1: At the time. My little brother and Chris flunked a
Speaker 1: light detector test. My little brother stuck to his story,
Speaker 1: but Chris told a different story on what time they
Speaker 1: got home. My little brother had to join the Air
Speaker 1: Force to keep the FBI off of him. My daddy
Speaker 1: told me that my little brother didn't get home from
Speaker 1: the party until the next day. At one My stepmother
Speaker 1: had to rinse little Marvin off outside with the house.
Speaker 1: My daddy had surgery and told me Chris and him
Speaker 1: seeing Kelly's boyfriend at the party and fought. Kelly was
Speaker 1: accidentally killed, and my little brother helped Chris bury her.
Speaker 1: The police at least never checked my Granny Pritchett's woods.
Speaker 1: I will talk and help, people, said Chris was giving
Speaker 1: a deathbed confession, but he would never tell on his
Speaker 1: church brother or church family that helped these boys get
Speaker 1: out of trouble for Kelly. Before we get any further,
Speaker 1: I just want to say that everyone is innocent until
Speaker 1: proven guilty. We've already had way too many unfounded allegations
Speaker 1: thrown around in the search for Kelly Wilson. But Cindy
Speaker 1: made these claims in a public forum on one of
Speaker 1: the Internet's most popular websites for the world to see.
Speaker 1: She said she was willing to talk and help. I
Speaker 1: had to get in touch with her. I tracked down
Speaker 1: a phone number that supposedly belonged to Cindy. I left
Speaker 1: a couple of voicemails, but never heard back. I sent
Speaker 1: her a Facebook message. She didn't respond to that either.
Speaker 1: I would have knocked on her door but she lives
Speaker 1: in another state and the timing just wasn't right for
Speaker 1: a long trip. I dropped a letter in the mail.
Speaker 1: I also sent a letter to Cindy's brother, Marvin. The
Speaker 1: next time I checked YouTube, most of Cindy's comments they
Speaker 1: were gone.
Speaker 3: At the tone. Please record your message. When you have
Speaker 3: finished recording, simply hang up.
Speaker 1: I finally got a phone number from Marvin. I briefly
Speaker 1: introduced myself and told him why I was calling. I
Speaker 1: recently read your sister's comments on YouTube, and I just
Speaker 1: wanted to reach out to you and say if you
Speaker 1: know anything that could help find Kelly and give her
Speaker 1: parents some answers. I really hope you'll consider doing so.
Speaker 1: And if your sister is just way off base, I
Speaker 1: really need to know that too. My number is five one,
Speaker 1: two seventy. I've given Marvin lots of opportunities to respond.
Speaker 1: As of right now, I still haven't heard back from
Speaker 1: him or his sister. Online. I did hear from a
Speaker 1: different Gilmer resident who said that Cindy's claims are lies
Speaker 1: and bs. This person declined to be interviewed, but she
Speaker 1: said she actually helped to search the Pritchett Woods on
Speaker 1: foot and horseback for Kelly. Later, when I got a
Speaker 1: call from Amanda Gamble, the private investigator who's searching for Kelly,
Speaker 1: I couldn't help but vent my frustration. I've actually still
Speaker 1: been trying to get in touch with Cindy Pritchett, and
Speaker 1: that's just so baffling to me that she would make
Speaker 1: all these crazy accusations on YouTube and then and she's like,
Speaker 1: I want to help, and then as soon as I
Speaker 1: reach out and I'm like, hey, here's your chance to help,
Speaker 1: then like she deletes most of the comments and does
Speaker 1: not respond.
Speaker 3: So I don't know. I'm sure her brother was like,
Speaker 3: you better take that shit off YouTube, but it.
Speaker 1: Had been it had been up there for like for
Speaker 1: seven seven months.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so I mean, this is all.
Speaker 3: Very very very weird.
Speaker 1: But Amanda she'd actually called to talk about something else.
Speaker 1: She was chasing a different lead.
Speaker 3: But I'm going to tell you right now that's got
Speaker 3: me thrown for a loop and kind of shook.
Speaker 1: Coming up on part two of the season finale of Deviltown.
Speaker 6: I remember because how dramatic it was. I stopped at
Speaker 6: the stop sighn. After I left her house, somebody started
Speaker 6: beating on my side glass. I rolled my window down,
Speaker 6: and she said, Kelly Wilson, Kelly Wilson. He was obsessed
Speaker 6: with Kelly Wilson.
Speaker 1: A gilmerman convicted of nearly three dozen sex crimes. And
Speaker 1: he's obsessed with Kelly Wilson.
Speaker 6: And I don't know about a shrine that his house.
Speaker 6: He clippings all over Saint Luck. It might have been
Speaker 6: in the kitchen, all over the wall.
Speaker 1: And an anonymous tip leads investigators to the very same
Speaker 1: sex offenders former home, a cute little house that, by
Speaker 1: some strange coincidence, is now owned by one of Kelly's
Speaker 1: best friends.
Speaker 8: He is telling him that he's received an anonymous.
Speaker 6: Letter and it is saying that possibly Kelly is buried
Speaker 6: under our current home.
Speaker 1: The FBI's here, they're digging up. I mean, are you thinking, like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, like Kelly is is here. Deviltown is
Speaker 1: a production of Imperative Entertainment. It was written and created
Speaker 1: by me Wes Ferguson. Executive producer is Jason Hoak. Audio
Speaker 1: engineering and editing by Shane Freeman and Jason Hoak. Original
Speaker 1: score is by Robert Ellis. Recording by Austin Sisler at
Speaker 1: Eastside Studios. If you like the show, leave a review,
Speaker 1: and don't forget to tell your friends thanks for listening.