Speaker 1: This podcast is intended for mature audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 1: Sitting right next to the main highway through Gilmer, Texas,
Speaker 1: is an old cinder block building nestled in a leafy
Speaker 1: stand of hardwood trees. The building used to be a cafe,
Speaker 1: but it shut down a long time ago, probably before
Speaker 1: most of us were even born. Now, Don Holman, a
Speaker 1: former suspect in the disappearance of Kelly Wilson, lives in
Speaker 1: that same old cafe with his step son Raymond. This summer,
Speaker 1: I pulled up there on a hot and sticky afternoon.
Speaker 1: Don was outside rifling through the trunk of his car.
Speaker 1: He lifted up a couple of grocery bags from Dollar General.
Speaker 1: In't a hand, Nah, I think I got a hill cuddy. Okay,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, I'll tink a.
Speaker 2: Cookie I get. Let me get in there and we'll have.
Speaker 3: A folk sir.
Speaker 1: You know I don't say I don't say no thanks
Speaker 1: to too many cookies.
Speaker 4: Well, there's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 1: Folks who knew Don pretty well say he's never been
Speaker 1: able to move on from the Kelly Wilson case. If
Speaker 1: you get him started, it's all he talks about. I mean,
Speaker 1: he was falsely accused of kidnapping and killing a girl
Speaker 1: in a Satanic ritual in the woods outside of town,
Speaker 1: which is the kind of stigma that's hard to shake.
Speaker 1: Gilmer residents who knew Don all their life, people who
Speaker 1: should have known better, really believed he was capable of
Speaker 1: killing Kelly, of killing and eating babies. That's got to
Speaker 1: take a toll. Don and I had been talking for
Speaker 1: a while.
Speaker 5: I want to show you something if you don't mind
Speaker 5: me showings, and I'm gonna show you this.
Speaker 6: I will come up here.
Speaker 7: He'll show you up.
Speaker 1: He led me down a hallway in his house to
Speaker 1: a bedroom filled with paper about to crack.
Speaker 5: Or I want to show you some of the stuff
Speaker 5: that I've done through the years.
Speaker 7: That's my stuff, all about the case?
Speaker 6: Yep, h well do you think that is files?
Speaker 7: Paperwork case?
Speaker 5: You see this right here, that's full of papers.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 5: Now, if I'd done something wrong, I'll be going.
Speaker 6: I'm getting this ship out of here.
Speaker 8: I'm burning everything.
Speaker 5: I go to Florida, but I ain't to why I
Speaker 5: feel I want. I don't want revenge. I want we
Speaker 5: call it justice.
Speaker 6: Justice.
Speaker 5: But uh, what old Doc Holliday said, you know he goes, No,
Speaker 5: let's get it right. He said he doesn't. He doesn't
Speaker 5: want justice, in wants reparation or something.
Speaker 7: Oh, well, there's retribution.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I want them to have to. I want them to say,
Speaker 5: if we guys said Don listen, I'm sorry.
Speaker 7: I ain't want to hurt him.
Speaker 5: But if you're sorry, didn't you tell him I thought
Speaker 5: he was guilty and and I'm.
Speaker 6: Sorry for it?
Speaker 5: Don't I need some justice after talking and writing all
Speaker 5: this stuff, I need some justice. But it don't mean
Speaker 5: I'm gonna get justice.
Speaker 1: Don's ex, remember her name is Tammy, was also wrongly
Speaker 1: accused of being in the Gilbert Devil cult. She says
Speaker 1: Don's obsession with justice or an apology at the very least,
Speaker 1: is ultimately what drove a wedge between them.
Speaker 4: Me and Don just kind of drew apart.
Speaker 9: And you know, Don dealt with all the stuff one way.
Speaker 4: Don didn't drink.
Speaker 9: Don didn't do any of that stuff ever, but he
Speaker 9: started drinking. And to me, out of everybody, it affected
Speaker 9: Don the worst. I mean, to me, it's made him crazy.
Speaker 9: He would not quit talking about it for at least
Speaker 9: ten y That's why quit hanging out and talking to them,
Speaker 9: Because it's all you want done.
Speaker 4: It's time to move on. It's not going to change.
Speaker 4: We're not going to get any money out.
Speaker 9: Of it, for sure, and you just got to start
Speaker 9: living life and dealing with what God gave us.
Speaker 4: To deal with, you know, and be happy that we're
Speaker 4: not in prison.
Speaker 9: I mean, that's I mean for real, you know, we
Speaker 9: could be dead right now or on death row. That's
Speaker 9: that's serious that I see all these innocent people going
Speaker 9: through that crap around the same era, and I'm like, wow,
Speaker 9: we got off by the skin.
Speaker 4: Of our teeth. It was more of a miracle than
Speaker 4: I even realized.
Speaker 1: Despite their differences, Donna Tammy have remained friends.
Speaker 4: We're still cordial. I've got three other kids since.
Speaker 9: You know, I got remarried and and I bring my
Speaker 9: kids over.
Speaker 4: He's met my kids and we talk and we get along. Okay,
Speaker 4: we're not enemies or anything. I know right now that
Speaker 4: if I needed something, Don would give it to me.
Speaker 4: I could ask him and he would help me. He's sick,
Speaker 4: or I try.
Speaker 9: To call him on his birthday, say hey, it don't
Speaker 9: take long for him get on my nerves and I'm like, okay.
Speaker 4: I'm out. I keep telling people. He wouldn't like this
Speaker 4: man was really was he? Please tell me who's got worse.
Speaker 1: Tammy has been more lucky, putting some emotional distance between
Speaker 1: herself and the Kelly Wilson ordeal. But just like don
Speaker 1: she can't move on. She'd like to. She wants to
Speaker 1: put it all behind her. That's not how the world works.
Speaker 4: After all that this happened, I got remarried and I
Speaker 4: just run.
Speaker 9: And made myself forget about all that crowd. And then
Speaker 9: the craziest thing is after I get a divorce, which
Speaker 9: was ten years.
Speaker 4: Ago, I didn't realize how.
Speaker 9: Hard it was going to be for me to even
Speaker 9: I can't even get a job, you know, a decent job.
Speaker 4: Time I get a decent job, they go do a
Speaker 4: background check. I mean, and I don't get it. I
Speaker 4: know for a fact it's because of this. I don't
Speaker 4: even have a car. I haven't had a car in
Speaker 4: ten years. I mean, I have to walk to work.
Speaker 4: I have to get a job close enough to my
Speaker 4: house just to walk to work and back. It's because
Speaker 4: I can't afford nothing. I can't go to a doctor
Speaker 4: because I don't have no money for a doctor.
Speaker 9: I've had nice job opportunities, and they'll say, well, we're
Speaker 9: going to go to a background check and never hear
Speaker 9: from them.
Speaker 4: This is crazy.
Speaker 9: This should not even be on my record because I'm
Speaker 9: struggling now just to barely make it.
Speaker 4: I had a.
Speaker 9: Great opportunity to go work in a cafeteria at the school.
Speaker 4: I mean, to me, that was a great job, you know.
Speaker 4: I mean, I would love to be at working a
Speaker 4: cafeteria at a school.
Speaker 9: There was one where they wanted me to take care
Speaker 9: of a bunch of elderly people at an old folks home.
Speaker 9: That was a great opportunity. Turned down on that anyway,
Speaker 9: I quit trying. I mean, I don't even The only
Speaker 9: jobs I can get are.
Speaker 4: Kid jobs, you know what I mean, Like McDonald's.
Speaker 9: I can get a job at any fast food restaurant,
Speaker 9: but I can't get a job anywhere else.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm a cook at a gas station right now.
Speaker 9: Yeah, And it's just miserable. I just you know, I
Speaker 9: want a decent job where I can live. I can't
Speaker 9: even take care of myself right now, and it's not.
Speaker 4: Right bas It's like I'm never going to get this
Speaker 4: off my back.
Speaker 1: But no one has had a tougher time than Raymond.
Speaker 1: He was a little boy when his foster parent coerced
Speaker 1: him into accusing his own mom and stepdad of sacrificing
Speaker 1: Kelly Wilson to the devil.
Speaker 9: Raymond's the one you want to talk to about all
Speaker 9: the I mean, he's got the story.
Speaker 4: Maybe I'll give Raymond your number and let me tell you.
Speaker 9: Raymond, that poor baby, I'm not saying he's crazy, but
Speaker 9: you can tell this is suspected him.
Speaker 1: One time was going down the old three hundred that's
Speaker 1: a highway in Gilmer.
Speaker 5: And he busted out crying. He said, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 5: He said, don I'm so sorry that I said somebody.
Speaker 5: But he said they were hurting me. I said, Raymond,
Speaker 5: I'm not mad you. I'm very proud of you. He said, well,
Speaker 5: they were hurting me. He said they told me that
Speaker 5: y'all was not in jail, y'all was with Luther, and
Speaker 5: that y'all didn't even care nothing about him. And I said, no,
Speaker 5: that's not true, Raymond, we was in jail. He said,
Speaker 5: I didn't know that.
Speaker 7: Though, I'd have been so traumatizing.
Speaker 10: It was.
Speaker 5: And man, if you want to get him r all up,
Speaker 5: if he gets talking about it, I had to quiet
Speaker 5: it down. He's gonna throw still and everything. But he
Speaker 5: said he'll he'll get mad, he said, son of a bitches.
Speaker 5: He said, yeah, what did they do to me over there?
Speaker 5: They left me over there and getting abused and everything
Speaker 5: that ain't righting, and they ain't gonna do nothing for
Speaker 5: nobody on and uh.
Speaker 7: Where is he?
Speaker 6: He went?
Speaker 5: Probably off with his brother, uh fishing. But if you
Speaker 5: get him to talking now, he's gonna be pretty radical.
Speaker 6: I'll try to.
Speaker 5: Tell him, said Raymond, Now, don't go ape shits.
Speaker 6: But just because.
Speaker 5: He's not a mean guy.
Speaker 2: I mean, look at this house.
Speaker 5: He painted this house from me, and he can put
Speaker 5: down flooring and everything. I mean, you look aware, look
Speaker 5: at that he painted and everything. But when he goes
Speaker 5: into one of them rages, he you think sometime he's
Speaker 5: really for everybody else and he's kind of mad that
Speaker 5: same people we.
Speaker 1: Are who wouldn't be mad. The next time I came
Speaker 1: by Don's place, Raymond was home. He seemed pretty guarded
Speaker 1: at first.
Speaker 2: Honestly, I'm honest with you, I didn't even want to
Speaker 2: talk with you, like I really didn't, uh, Non asked me.
Speaker 2: The other day, he kind of got upset because I
Speaker 2: told him. He said, hey, he wants to come and
Speaker 2: talk with you. I told him I don't have anything
Speaker 2: to say to him.
Speaker 1: Then Raymond started talking and he couldn't stop from imperative entertainment.
Speaker 1: I'm wes Ferguson. This is Deviltown. This is chapter seven
Speaker 1: the Wreckage. To understand what happened in Gilmer, you need
Speaker 1: to understand that all this was going on right in
Speaker 1: the middle of the Satanic Panic, a time when fear
Speaker 1: of devil cults was sweeping the United States. It was
Speaker 1: basically a national witch hunt in the eighties and nineties,
Speaker 1: thousands of lurid cases from coast to coast of so
Speaker 1: called satanic ritual abuse. And the crazy thing is there
Speaker 1: was almost no evidence for any of it. It took
Speaker 1: three factors coming together to create the perfect Satan storm.
Speaker 1: For one thing, people were finally taking child abuse seriously.
Speaker 1: Child abuse was a real problem that had been ignored
Speaker 1: far too long. Second was a revival in evangelical beliefs
Speaker 1: with a big emphasis on the devil. He wasn't just
Speaker 1: a metaphor for the dark side of human nature. Satan
Speaker 1: was real, and if you let your guard down, he
Speaker 1: was coming for you. I remember when I was a
Speaker 1: little kid, a traveling expert gave a talk at our
Speaker 1: Baptist church. The next thing I knew, my he Man
Speaker 1: toys were gone and I couldn't watch the care Bears anymore.
Speaker 1: Those were the devil's playthings. The factor fueling the Satanic
Speaker 1: panic was a controversial practice of psychotherapy called recovered memory therapy.
Speaker 1: The idea behind recovered memories was that you might have
Speaker 1: experienced something so traumatic your brain won't even let you
Speaker 1: think about it. You push it down, leave it buried,
Speaker 1: and the recesses of your subconscious To deal with these
Speaker 1: awful memories, you have to dredge them up. Back in
Speaker 1: ninety four, after all the charges in the Kelly Wilson
Speaker 1: case were dropped, the Texas Attorney General's Office brought in
Speaker 1: a child psychiatrist named Bruce D. Perry. His job sort
Speaker 1: through the mess and try to figure out which of
Speaker 1: the Kirk kids and Raymond had actually been abused and
Speaker 1: which hadn't. It wasn't so easy, and that leads us
Speaker 1: back to holding therapy and Raymond. Despite all the courtroom
Speaker 1: drama that had occurred with the release of the eight suspects,
Speaker 1: including James York Brown and Raymond's mom Tammy and his
Speaker 1: stepdad Dawn. Raymond was still with his foster Barbara Bass.
Speaker 1: She must have truly believed she was helping Raymond to
Speaker 1: recover traumatic memories. Every time she held him down and
Speaker 1: dug her knuckles into his ribs until he told her
Speaker 1: what she wanted to hear. The experience left Raymond so
Speaker 1: scarred he was afraid to go around grown ups at all.
Speaker 1: Then Barbara Bass drove him to Dallas to meet with
Speaker 1: doctor Perry, the child psychiatrist.
Speaker 2: I didn't trust Bruce Perry at first. All adults in
Speaker 2: my mind were out to get me. I was like,
Speaker 2: you can't trust any of these people, Like they're all
Speaker 2: gonna try to hurt us. They're lying, they're all like
Speaker 2: something's wrong with them. They're talking about killing people and
Speaker 2: eating them and devils and just like everything that I
Speaker 2: was scared of.
Speaker 1: Raymond didn't really have anything to say to doctor Perry,
Speaker 1: so they sat down and colored together. Days later, doctor
Speaker 1: Perry showed up at the Bass's place in East Texas.
Speaker 2: Bruce would come by the house he got to where
Speaker 2: he would and call me to his office to talk,
Speaker 2: and he would come out there to the Bass home
Speaker 2: and visit with me. Well, he would always be like,
Speaker 2: on a special occasion, he'd always bring me something like
Speaker 2: pair of boxing gloves or a basketball or baseball and
Speaker 2: a glove and a mint, you know, play catch. He
Speaker 2: would never ask me questions about my parents and stuff
Speaker 2: like that. It was just on a you know, hey man,
Speaker 2: I came back to see you. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2: So it took a while, but he told me, he said, Raymond,
Speaker 2: he said, when I met you, he said, I knew
Speaker 2: that you didn't trust He said, I knew that you
Speaker 2: were scared of adults and didn't trust adults. He said,
Speaker 2: I didn't know why, because he didn't know I was
Speaker 2: being amused by Barbara basket person. But he said, then
Speaker 2: I started seeing how Barbara acted when I was at
Speaker 2: the home, he said. I'd see her in my office.
Speaker 2: I seen how she presented herself with the kids. You
Speaker 2: know y'all, he said. But then when i'd pop up
Speaker 2: in on y'all at the high he said, I've seen
Speaker 2: how the other kids were reacted to her, how they
Speaker 2: reacted to me.
Speaker 1: Barbara had the Kirk kids and Raymond so trained up
Speaker 1: they would spout off the answers they thought adults wanted
Speaker 1: to hear. Doctor Perry came up with a clever way
Speaker 1: to get to the truth.
Speaker 2: And he basically tricked me. And what he did is
Speaker 2: he brought a device that it was a heart monitor.
Speaker 2: It was like a vest and it had a watch,
Speaker 2: and he would wear the watch and it would tell
Speaker 2: my heart rate. And he knew when I got nervous
Speaker 2: about things, that my heart rate going up and down.
Speaker 1: So with Raymond wearing a heart monitor, doctor Perry asked
Speaker 1: him questions about Kelly Wilson and the abuse allegations. As
Speaker 1: Raymond launched into the gruesome story he thought doctor Perry
Speaker 1: wanted to hear. His heart rate stayed the same, He
Speaker 1: wasn't traumatized at all. Then doctor Perry asked Raymond about
Speaker 1: Barbara Bass holding him down and rubbing his ribs. That's
Speaker 1: when Raymond's heart rate spiked. That's what had traumatized him,
Speaker 1: not a fanciful story about sacrificing babies.
Speaker 2: That was the day that I had told him that
Speaker 2: Barbara Bass, you know, about the holding technique and what
Speaker 2: she had been doing, because until then I hadn't told
Speaker 2: all these other doctors and you know, I'd only told
Speaker 2: those foster parents that my first foster parents and and Gore,
Speaker 2: they were the only people that I had told that
Speaker 2: Barbara Bass was doing this. So I won't like, like
Speaker 2: when they, you know, the Basses would take us out
Speaker 2: with somebody else, I wouldn't tell them, like, hey man,
Speaker 2: this lady's like all of us kids are getting like
Speaker 2: messed up by this lady. Like, you know, like because
Speaker 2: I didn't know who was with who, like and I was,
Speaker 2: I was terrified of Barbara Bass. Like I still don't
Speaker 2: like wearing seat belts, I don't like hogs, I don't
Speaker 2: like things around my rib cage like. But Bruce Perry, uh,
Speaker 2: he ended up being like somebody I hold high regards,
Speaker 2: like in my mind as far as respect because he uh,
Speaker 2: pretty much he's the reason that we got out of
Speaker 2: that home.
Speaker 1: Doctor Perry decided that Raymond needed a change of scenery.
Speaker 1: The whole time he'd been living in Barbara Bass's house,
Speaker 1: Raymond had been with his little brother Luther.
Speaker 2: That was one of the last things my mom has
Speaker 2: told me. She said, you know, you take care of
Speaker 2: your baby brother, right, And so when I was at
Speaker 2: the Bass home, I was real over protective over eat
Speaker 2: because he was still a baby. And so when the
Speaker 2: other kids would go to pick on him or went
Speaker 2: and you know, let him have his way, I was
Speaker 2: always you know, they're like real defensive over room. And
Speaker 2: then one day they ended up they separated us. They
Speaker 2: they took us to Tyler to go see my mom.
Speaker 2: Point I won't allowed to see don anymore. And then uh,
Speaker 2: they told Barbara Bass they were taking all us kids
Speaker 2: to like Burger King, and then uh, they took me
Speaker 2: and drove me out to Waco.
Speaker 1: Te Raymond was taken to a Methodist children's home in Waco.
Speaker 2: Met a kid there and he told me, he said, Raymond,
Speaker 2: he said, I don't know what all you've been through,
Speaker 2: you know, he said, but uh, once you get to
Speaker 2: this home, you don't get to go home, like you know,
Speaker 2: like everybody here, like we don't get to see our
Speaker 2: parents no more, like you know, we're here till we're eighteen,
Speaker 2: or we get adopted or something.
Speaker 1: Believing he had no chance of being reunited with his mom, stepdad,
Speaker 1: and baby brother, Raymond lost hope. He started getting in trouble.
Speaker 1: His caregivers sent him down the hill to a facility
Speaker 1: for the bad kids.
Speaker 2: And when I was down down that hill they had
Speaker 2: that was like for all the troublemakers in that home.
Speaker 2: And I was the youngest one down there. They were
Speaker 2: all like sixteen seventeen, most of them because they were
Speaker 2: the bad kids, you know. And uh so I picked
Speaker 2: up a lot of bad habits from those kids. They're
Speaker 2: huffing glue and all kinds of crazy stuff.
Speaker 1: Raymond was just eight years old, and probably he struck
Speaker 1: up a friendship with a boy of sixteen, and that
Speaker 1: kid had a plan to break out.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 2: He was like, look, he said, when we go to school,
Speaker 2: he said, uh, act up in school. And he said,
Speaker 2: they're gonna send us back here to our dorm rooms.
Speaker 2: He said, when they bring us to lunch, he said,
Speaker 2: we're gonna take our food and put it in bags.
Speaker 2: And he said, we're already gonna have our clothes packed up.
Speaker 2: And he said, I know how to get us out
Speaker 2: of here. He throw that fire exinger fro through the
Speaker 2: window and we ran out and hid from him. It
Speaker 2: was a big property and we ran into the night.
Speaker 2: You know, it got dark, and I think finally like
Speaker 2: a security guard spotlighted me. I was along the fence line,
Speaker 2: and I couldn't climb the chain link fence like I
Speaker 2: was eight years old, you know. And the kid I
Speaker 2: was with jumped the border fence and took off. They
Speaker 2: ended up catching him like an hour or two later.
Speaker 1: After Raymond's ill fated escape attempt, he was sent to
Speaker 1: another place, a boys ranch. Raymond had spent two years
Speaker 1: in foster care. One day, an associate of Raymond's old friend,
Speaker 1: doctor Bruce Perry, the child's psychiatrist, came to visit Raymond
Speaker 1: at the ranch.
Speaker 2: Bill Baker came to see me one day and he said, Raymond,
Speaker 2: you want to come take a walk with me? And
Speaker 2: I said yeah, And I started walking with him and
Speaker 2: we were talking be out there. They had ponds and stuff,
Speaker 2: and he stopped over there by the pond and he
Speaker 2: looked at him and said, Raymond, I want to ask
Speaker 2: you something. He said, I'm serious, and I said what
Speaker 2: He said, You want to go home to your mama.
Speaker 2: And I remember I started crying and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I want to go home. And it took him about
Speaker 2: a week or two later and they drove me here
Speaker 2: to the Yamborie grounds here in Gilmer and dropped me
Speaker 2: off with my mom. They were like, here you go,
Speaker 2: like and like all my aunts and uncles were there,
Speaker 2: and that was the first time I'd seen them in years,
Speaker 2: so I was like, it was just like real exciting.
Speaker 2: And then uh, and then later on that night I
Speaker 2: got to you know, we stopped by here and Luther
Speaker 2: and Don were here at the house, like Don's mother
Speaker 2: was here, So that was like, it was a good day.
Speaker 9: I got up Luther back first, and then Raymond was
Speaker 9: like six months later, I guess, and they bought him
Speaker 9: a bedroom suit apiece, and that was it.
Speaker 4: Sorry, we screwed up your kids. Our bad We screwed
Speaker 4: your kids up. Here you go figure it out.
Speaker 9: You won't be able to get a job anywhere, won't
Speaker 9: be able to do anything with your life, but.
Speaker 4: Here you go.
Speaker 1: Although Don was there to greet Raymond on the day
Speaker 1: he got out of foster care, Don and Tammy were
Speaker 1: no longer a couple. The family Raymond remembered was no more.
Speaker 2: After all this was over. It really wasn't over because
Speaker 2: when I came home, my mom and Don had already
Speaker 2: split up. Me and my mom bounced around. So just
Speaker 2: give me a different outlook on things. Put me on
Speaker 2: like a don't trust authority type thing when I was
Speaker 2: in school. I remember when I came home. The day
Speaker 2: I came home, I can remember like telling myself, I
Speaker 2: don't care whatever happens from this day forwards, because by
Speaker 2: the time I came home, I never thought I was
Speaker 2: going to see them again. So when they brought me home,
Speaker 2: that was like it was like the best day, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean. Like in my mind, I'm thinking,
Speaker 2: I don't care. What if I never achieve a goal
Speaker 2: in my life or graduate high school or you know
Speaker 2: the things that when you're a kid, like that's what
Speaker 2: in your mind, you're like, Oh, when I grow up,
Speaker 2: I wanted to be this. I felt like all my
Speaker 2: prayers had minute. I got to come home, but it
Speaker 2: really won't like come home and you think you're going
Speaker 2: right back to your home, and I didn't. You know,
Speaker 2: don took custody of Luther, my mom had custody of me.
Speaker 2: We were all together, but we won't together. And I
Speaker 2: remember like having to carry that guilt with me for
Speaker 2: a while, which I already had feeling like I broke
Speaker 2: my family apart and going through all.
Speaker 1: This despite their reassurances. Raymond couldn't shake the feeling that
Speaker 1: Donna and Tammy resented him for his role in their arrests.
Speaker 2: They were sitting there in jail. I'm sure they were
Speaker 2: probably sitting there at times and thinking, what in the
Speaker 2: hell is Raymond talking about? Why would he why would
Speaker 2: his little ass be out in there fucking lying on us? Like,
Speaker 2: because that's how I would feel. It gives you a
Speaker 2: different perspective of it.
Speaker 7: I guess.
Speaker 11: I just think that every kid in your shoes would
Speaker 11: have done the same thing. I think that's just I mean,
Speaker 11: it's happened again and again. You know what if you
Speaker 11: for worse torture, you know, a kid, the kids eventually,
Speaker 11: just every kid is going to tell the adult what
Speaker 11: they want to hear.
Speaker 7: You know, it's not it's not you.
Speaker 2: It's all children and adults too. Adults when they were
Speaker 2: waterboarding them guys over there at uh Anamo Bay, when
Speaker 2: they were over there waterboarding them Muslims. Not all that
Speaker 2: intel is a Bible like they know that. Like so
Speaker 2: like it gives you a different view on things. Like
Speaker 2: I said, it's just a bit trust issue thing. So
Speaker 2: from seven years old, my head's been full of double
Speaker 2: worshiping killers, cannibalism, sexual misconduct. I was submerged in that
Speaker 2: type of atmosphere. People they just want to go off
Speaker 2: and tell off what they hear. So trust is like
Speaker 2: a big issue with me because i had trust broken
Speaker 2: at a very early age, and I've seen how the
Speaker 2: system could be corrupt, and I think, you know, like
Speaker 2: sometimes I think about it and I'm like, what if
Speaker 2: Barbara Bass really did have good intentions even though I
Speaker 2: was their first hand and seeing the fucked up side
Speaker 2: of it. But like in the back of my mind,
Speaker 2: I'm like, well, maybe, you know, maybe it was just
Speaker 2: something that kind of like, you know, one thing led
Speaker 2: to another, led to another, lad to another.
Speaker 9: It was this chain of events, and when he first
Speaker 9: came home from foster care, he had a love for her.
Speaker 4: I don't know if they call it stockson.
Speaker 1: That's Raymond's mom, Tammy, talking about his conflicted feelings for
Speaker 1: Barbara Bass. Stockholm syndrome is where hostages form emotional bonds
Speaker 1: with their captors.
Speaker 9: You know, I'd get so angry, you know, but I
Speaker 9: knew it was his faults, and I just I don't
Speaker 9: know how long it took it took him to get
Speaker 9: over that, But you know, maybe a year or so
Speaker 9: he got you know, the hatred of them started coming
Speaker 9: out little by little, and.
Speaker 2: Then part of me goes, well, what if it was
Speaker 2: all like some kind of big scam. You think about
Speaker 2: every scenario. When there's a question mark and you don't
Speaker 2: know the answer, you start putting anything in there for
Speaker 2: an answer, to see what fits. Affects everything I'm uh,
Speaker 2: the way I interact with people, just everything I'm really
Speaker 2: It's affected my life a lot. I don't I don't
Speaker 2: care for strangers. I like I like being around big
Speaker 2: like crowds, but I didn't finish high school. Driving down
Speaker 2: the street going to work, somebody on the side of
Speaker 2: the street stranded, I don't want to stop. I don't
Speaker 2: want to be that person to involve myself. I want
Speaker 2: to stop. I want to pull over and get out
Speaker 2: and say, hey, man, are y'all all right? Y'all need
Speaker 2: to use a cell phone? You need some waters? I
Speaker 2: got back here in the truck. Can I give you
Speaker 2: a ride into town? But I never stopped for him
Speaker 2: because I don't want to be involved in anybody, you
Speaker 2: know that's outside of my circle.
Speaker 1: I left my conversation with Raymond feeling just so sad
Speaker 1: he's a broken man. When all the charges were dropped
Speaker 1: in the Kelly Wilson case, Folks and Gilmert were left
Speaker 1: to sort through the wreckage. Scott Leefford went back to
Speaker 1: private practice. Caseworkers A Gore and Debbie Minshew resigned from CPS.
Speaker 1: Connie Martin, the one time witness, moved down to Special
Speaker 1: Investigator Brooks Flags Christian Retreat in Louise. This place called
Speaker 1: the Shepherd's Rest. A local news reporter tracked down Connie
Speaker 1: at the Shepherd's Rest and East Texans were in for
Speaker 1: yet another shock.
Speaker 12: Martin asked to be interviewed without Flag present. She said
Speaker 12: she had something important to say.
Speaker 3: I'll just come out and tell you what it is.
Speaker 3: Because the Kelly Wilson thing is not true.
Speaker 12: Martin says she was coerced into confessing to taking part
Speaker 12: in Kelly Wilson's murder and tricked into leveling murder accusations
Speaker 12: against other family members and friends along with Gilmour police
Speaker 12: sergeant James Brown.
Speaker 3: They's practically tell me what was said, and I would
Speaker 3: say that it didn't happen. They'd say yes it did,
Speaker 3: and I would say no, it didn't. I keep pressure
Speaker 3: me and say, no, I know what did happen.
Speaker 1: Brooks Flag had a lot to worry about, as did
Speaker 1: the other members of the special prosecutors team. Shane Phelps,
Speaker 1: the Assistant Attorney General for the State of Texas, was
Speaker 1: threatening to turn the tables and file criminal charges against them.
Speaker 1: Here's Shane, And.
Speaker 6: Ultimately I subpeeded all of them to the grand jury
Speaker 6: and told them that they were targets of the grand
Speaker 6: jury because I was seriously contemplating and dining them for
Speaker 6: official oppression because it was so wrong what they did.
Speaker 7: So I didn't do that one.
Speaker 6: Because this had been this whole satanic nonsense, had been
Speaker 6: such a distraction that nobody was devoting any resources to
Speaker 6: finding Kelly Wilson. It was nobody. I knew that if
Speaker 6: I had indicted them, and I could have indited it,
Speaker 6: and I could have convicted it. There's no question in
Speaker 6: my mind that if I had done that, then that
Speaker 6: would have been the story. That's what people would have
Speaker 6: been talking about. That's where all of our resources would
Speaker 6: have been devoted. And I didn't want that. I wanted to
Speaker 6: see if we could find Kelly Wilson and get some
Speaker 6: answers for the parents. So I made the decision not to.
Speaker 6: I've gone back and forth over the years. I guess
Speaker 6: it was so outrageous. It would have been a good
Speaker 6: thing for I think everything to have been aired in
Speaker 6: court so the public could have seen what an operation
Speaker 6: this investigation was, and they would have been as angry
Speaker 6: as that was, because we could have put experts on
Speaker 6: the stand about interrogation techniques, and there's not a single
Speaker 6: person with any kind of expertise in police interrogation tactics
Speaker 6: who would not have said that was so far beyond acceptable.
Speaker 1: The Lifeer team had narrowly avoided criminal prosecution. James Brown
Speaker 1: tried a different tack. Just two months after the charges
Speaker 1: against Sergeant Brown were dropped, he filed a civil lawsuit
Speaker 1: against Special Prosecutor Scott Leifford and the members of the team,
Speaker 1: alleging malicious prosecution. James Brown told the news media that
Speaker 1: Gilmer residents were shunning him in the streets. His reputation
Speaker 1: was destroyed.
Speaker 8: I always thought Jians was sort of a black and
Speaker 8: white kind of guy, but not a whold on a
Speaker 8: gray Keith Fields betrayed by the justice system, not only
Speaker 8: with what happened with the accusation but then what happened
Speaker 8: when he tried to go redress what had happened in
Speaker 8: his civil lawsuit.
Speaker 1: This is James Brown's attorney, David Moore.
Speaker 8: When the charges were dismissed, we filed, along with Andy Tyndall,
Speaker 8: lawyer over in Tyler, a civil rights lawsuit against Lafford's
Speaker 8: law firm, Bag's Flag, Gore Minshew, and the court reached
Speaker 8: the decision that because the Flags and Bag were acting
Speaker 8: under the color of law enforcement, that they had qualified immunity,
Speaker 8: as did Goren Minshew and poured us out in federal
Speaker 8: court saying that we can get over the qualified immunity hump,
Speaker 8: I think we did. You know, I disagree with the
Speaker 8: judge's decision in that deal. But yeah, it's just it's
Speaker 8: just a shame, just a shame.
Speaker 1: Here's James Brown.
Speaker 10: That's what can be done to them.
Speaker 8: They're wrongdoings.
Speaker 10: Being held accountable, they slip through the cracks, you know.
Speaker 10: So it's like old opening Pandora's box on the justice
Speaker 10: system if they are held accountable, and they don't want
Speaker 10: to do that.
Speaker 7: And that's the sad part about it.
Speaker 13: And my feelings are, you know, like I said, they
Speaker 13: should have done something to those people. But the way
Speaker 13: the system is set up, they have immunity to certain things.
Speaker 13: You know, no matter if they lie.
Speaker 10: Or falsify stuff for hurt people, they don't care and
Speaker 10: they go on about their little lives. And I don't
Speaker 10: believe that that's the way the justice system was set up.
Speaker 8: The beach.
Speaker 10: I believe that you tail the truth, and the truth
Speaker 10: is the truth.
Speaker 7: And I've always believed that.
Speaker 14: How big of a problem is qualified immunity in protecting
Speaker 14: bad actors.
Speaker 8: I think it's a huge problem. And you know, you
Speaker 8: see a lot of discussions about on the federal level
Speaker 8: of removing that qualified immunity that cops have to lawsuits.
Speaker 14: One thing that really shocked me talking to the boy
Speaker 14: who was subjected to the holding technique, Raymond is long.
Speaker 7: Tammy said, So she.
Speaker 14: Thirty years later, still can't get a decent job, can't
Speaker 14: afford car.
Speaker 7: She walks from her apartment where she rents.
Speaker 14: A room, to the nearest gas station and just runs
Speaker 14: the deep fryer every day.
Speaker 7: And she, you know, every time she applies for a job,
Speaker 7: like even.
Speaker 14: To be a lunch lady at the school, is say like, oh,
Speaker 14: you're great, you know, like we can't wait to.
Speaker 7: Work with you. We just have to run a background check.
Speaker 14: And then they run the background checks, they find out
Speaker 14: that she has these hot molestation charges.
Speaker 7: She never hears another.
Speaker 14: Word from them, So it's really I mean, it's just
Speaker 14: ruined her life for decades.
Speaker 8: Right, it's a stigma that you can't get passed.
Speaker 14: I mean, is there anything that can be done for
Speaker 14: these people at this point?
Speaker 8: I'll tell you what. Next time you talk to her,
Speaker 8: have her call me. I'll be glad to talk to
Speaker 8: her and say there's something we can do to help her,
Speaker 8: because that ought not be a cloud still following her.
Speaker 1: Thirty years later, I passed along David's message to Tammy.
Speaker 1: When she called his law firm, she was told it
Speaker 1: would cost six thousand dollars to clear her record, So
Speaker 1: she'll keep walking to work at the gas station. Some
Speaker 1: folks are just too poor for justice. As for Kelly Wilson,
Speaker 1: missing since January fifth, nineteen ninety two, she's still out there.
Speaker 8: It bugs me, thirty years later what happened. It bugs
Speaker 8: me for James's sake and his family. It bugs me
Speaker 8: for Kelly's sake and her family because I think I
Speaker 8: think that they damaged what should have been a real
Speaker 8: investigation into her disappearance, and I think it got sidetracked
Speaker 8: for years as a result of these with these guys
Speaker 8: and gals did and it's just it's a shame. It's
Speaker 8: a shame.
Speaker 1: Sergeant Brown never returned to the Gilmer Police Force. His
Speaker 1: days as a cop were done. He eventually found work
Speaker 1: as a prison guard his life. Penny had stood by
Speaker 1: his side when he was accused of kidnapping and murdering
Speaker 1: Kelly Wilson, but the legal ordeal changed him. Here's Penny, Well.
Speaker 15: It's pretty much made him feel insecure, angry. He was
Speaker 15: a nervous wreck. I think he felt lost, you know,
Speaker 15: it's just terrible. He was on medication, an I depressant.
Speaker 15: He saw a psychiatrist and we both saw a counselor
Speaker 15: together to try to deal with all the emotions of
Speaker 15: what had happened and how it was affecting this. He
Speaker 15: was on a lot of medication and then he had
Speaker 15: that many stroke.
Speaker 1: Several years after the charges were dropped, James and Penny
Speaker 1: Brown got divorced, and as I learned from poking around Gilmer,
Speaker 1: a lot of these Texans still believe he's guilty.
Speaker 7: That's the bad part of it at all. You know,
Speaker 7: sometimes people.
Speaker 10: Want to believe alive and the truth because the truth
Speaker 10: isn't near as fantastic.
Speaker 11: I think it's still like that to this day.
Speaker 13: Yeah, they rather believe a lie.
Speaker 10: Than believe the truth. You know, that's treating I just
Speaker 10: get to the point of not won't even talk about
Speaker 10: it because it's not about me. It's about Robbie and
Speaker 10: his daughter finding hurt.
Speaker 1: Despite all he's been through and all the time that's
Speaker 1: gone by, James Brown still believes Kelly Wilson will be found.
Speaker 1: He believes that someday Kelly's parents will have closure.
Speaker 10: There's several suspects that are still open. Not everything lies
Speaker 10: at one door until you find the final key.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 10: That's that's more or less objective investigation. You don't draw
Speaker 10: a conclusion to one person in see you know for
Speaker 10: a fact that person is person.
Speaker 8: You know what they say.
Speaker 13: Nowadays, there's persons.
Speaker 10: Of the interests will in this case, there's Saberle.
Speaker 1: Them the case of a missing girl got lost. In
Speaker 1: all the hysteria, Kelly is still out there somewhere with
Speaker 1: the satanic panic a distant memory. I want to Know
Speaker 1: What Really Happened to Kelly Wilson. Deviltown is a production
Speaker 1: of Imperative Entertainment. It was written and created by me
Speaker 1: Wes Ferguson. Executive producer is Jason Hoak. Audio engineering and
Speaker 1: editing by Shane Freeman and Jason Hoak. Original score is
Speaker 1: by Robert Ellis, recording by Austin Sisler at east Side Studios.
Speaker 1: If you like the show, leave a review, and don't
Speaker 1: forget to tell your friends thanks for listening.