Speaker 1: Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence, and is
not intended for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: Listen, man, you know I'm telling you. You know I'm
condescent to you.
Speaker 3: I'm telling you that I did it.
Speaker 2: Would you rast me?
Speaker 1: Welcome to Season thirteen, episode three hundred and thirty six
of Sword and Scale, A show that reveals that the
worst monsters are real. You know, the show gets a
lot better when you stop complaining and just enjoy it.
I'm not going to start talking like you do. When
I don't know northern Michigan or West Appalaysia or god
forsake in Ohio, You're not gonna be able to get
me to talk exactly how you talk in your little,
specific local town.
Speaker 4: So just stop.
Speaker 5: You can't control everything.
Speaker 1: Just stop trying to control everything. You're probably saying that
wrong anyway. It's usually a word that comes from a
different language, and shit y'all saying it in Ohio and
in a small newsroom in Batesville, Arkansas, George Jared was
a brand new, twenty something year old journalist. It was
September of two thousand and four. He was still learning
the rhythm of leads stories and deadlines. Most reporters expect
stories to come and go. That's the nature of the job.
Research it, write about it, and move on. Maybe go
get a peppermint latte from Starbucks before they take him
off the menu. But every so often a case doesn't
let go, or maybe there's just something about a certain
personality type that just can't let it go. For George,
that case arrived just as his career began.
Speaker 5: I'd been there maybe seven months.
Speaker 4: I was just out of college, and you know, most
of the stuff I'm covering, like school board meetings and
you know, city council stuff, and you know, i'd go
to do features at local schools and whatnot.
Speaker 5: And then one I remember very vividly.
Speaker 4: It was a Wednesday morning, phone rings at my pick
it up and a woman was on the phone and.
Speaker 5: She said, my niece is missing and we can't find her.
Speaker 1: And I said, really, George jumped in his car and
drove straight to where the woman said she was calling
from the Izard County Sheriff's office.
Speaker 5: And then I walked over to some family members and
Rebecca's mother handed me a missing poster that I still
have to this day at sitting in the other room.
Speaker 1: The missing girl was twenty two year old Rebecca Gould.
Speaker 4: And so immediately I started talking to Rebecca's mother and
one of her sisters, and I just flipped the missing
poster over on its other side, and I put it
up against the building, and I just started taking notes
on the back, and those notes are still there. And
then I walked over to her father, doctor Larry Gould,
and he was standing with another one of.
Speaker 5: His daughters, and that's how I first met.
Speaker 4: Him, and I just I was out with them the
whole week that she was missing.
Speaker 5: That's how it started.
Speaker 1: Apparently, Rebecca had arrived in the small town of Melbourne, Arkansas,
on Saturday, September eighteenth, to visit her boyfriend, Casey McCullough.
She was on break from college, but it wasn't unusual
for her to take a few days off to see friends.
Rebecca's mother told George she'd talked with her daughter on
the phone just the day before, but during their call,
Rebecca realized she was about to run out of minutes,
so she told her mom she'd call back. That call
never came. When police searched Casey's house, everything looked fairly
normal until they reached the back bedroom, the room Casey
and Rebecca would sleep in. Inside, they found a bloodsiak
mattress that had been stripped and propped up against the wall.
The box springs remained, and it too was stained red.
The bedclothes were spinning around in the washing machine, wet
fabric mixed with bleach and blood. Interestingly, any fingerprints on
the washing machine had been wiped away, probably with the
brand new cleaning supplies that sat on the kitchen counter.
Back in the bedroom, again, sections of carpeting had to
be cut up and taken in for evidence. The amount
of blood was so extreme and had seeped into the subfloor.
At this point, detectives knew they'd be searching for a
dead body, not an alive Rebecca.
Speaker 4: And you know, Monday morning came one week later, on
September twenty seven, two thousand and four. I was at
the office, probably five or six o'clock in the morning.
I got there really early, and I just decided, for
some reason, I felt like I needed to go back
to Melbourne, because my office was about twenty five or
so miles away, and so I.
Speaker 5: Drove down there.
Speaker 4: There were some ladies walking around in the courthouse, you know,
kind of a southern thing.
Speaker 5: To walk around, you know, the courthouse in the morning.
Speaker 4: And I overheard as I was walking past them, I
was going to go talk to the county judge and
I was gonna see it. They were coordinating their search
efforts that day, because the county's big, and it's very
rule and it's very mountainous and so it's hard. And
I overheard, let me say, hey, they're out searching over
by or my property or my house something like that.
Speaker 5: And I said, where do you live?
Speaker 4: And she said that she lived down Highway nine, which
is a thoroughfare that connects Melbourne to Mountain View, which
is Rebecca's hometown.
Speaker 5: It's very treacherous.
Speaker 1: Twenty years ago, George still had that restless new reporter energy.
This case had already begun to dig its claws into him.
He knew he had to go help with the.
Speaker 5: Search efforts, and so I drove down there.
Speaker 4: I saw a line of cars on the side of
the road, just pulled in behind him, got out. It
was very steep, you know, lots of trees and bushes.
I saw a searcher and I asked him, I said,
do you guys out here looking for Rebecca, and he says,
she's right there, and he pointed at her and she
was just laying there.
Speaker 1: Volunteers had already been searching for days, but on this
particular day, at this spot, about five miles outside of Melbourne,
they noticed vultures circling overhead, never a good sign. Searchers
located Rebecca's severely decomposed body about thirty five feet down
the embankment. She was wearing only a T shirt and underwear.
Speaker 4: You could see her her hair was like over her head,
like her face. I mean when I didn't realize at
the time it literally it had decomposed off of her
scalp and had just moved down. It almost looked like,
you know, like if you flip if you have long hair,
and its flipped it over like that. I was in
an absolute chock, like it was like being in a tunnel.
That's the only way I could describe it. Like all
of a sudden, I couldn't hear anything, I couldn't see anything.
My heart was racing, my head just was throbbing.
Speaker 5: You know. At the time, I had.
Speaker 4: Two very small kids, and so I'm sitting here thinking
I've just talked to this mom and his dad and
they're hoping on hope that this is what happened. A
few minutes later, I drive back to the Sheriff's department, which,
as the crow flies, is only four or five miles
from this place where she was dumped, and her father,
doctor Larry Gould, came running up to me and he
grabbed me and he said, did they fight my daughter?
And I said, Larry, you need to go talk to
the sheriff right now. And he grabbed me and he said,
did they fight my daughter? And I said yes, and
he just collapsed, went to his knees and started crying,
put his head.
Speaker 5: In my stomach. And this is a man I hadn't either.
I'd known him for five days.
Speaker 1: Rebecca was gone forever, and for a few days time stopped,
at least for the people who had hoped she'd come
home alive.
Speaker 4: I can honestly say that I was never the same
person after that. I remember, I wrote when I wrote
the story.
Speaker 2: I wrote it.
Speaker 4: I went back to the office that night and I
stayed till four o'clock in the morning writing it. And
it was the newspaper office was his old creaky building
is a huge building, and if the wind blew, you know,
you hear all these creaking sounds. And I was just
sitting there with her missing poster sitting on my desk.
And I've written about this before. I have never every
single resume that I've ever submitted after this attached to
that resume was a story I wrote about her case.
Speaker 5: And she never left me. It was in my soul.
Speaker 1: After that, everyone's focus shifted to finding Rebecca's killer, well,
the medical examiner did, the autopsy. Investigators turned their attention
to the trailer where she had last been seen.
Speaker 5: She was on it.
Speaker 4: She had an on again, off again boyfriend named Casey McCullough,
and she would come back. You know, she was living
up in northwest Arkansas at this point. She'd come back
and see him on the weekend. She'd stay at his house.
They were just kind of on again, off again, you
know how it is when you're that age, you know,
twenty two, and you know you're dating someone and you know,
and he obviously was not a long term thing for her.
There's she was quite a catch for him, I guess,
I'll just put it that way. And he was obsessed
with her. He was totally in love with her, but weirdly,
when she vanished, he didn't spend one second looking for her.
Speaker 6: And tell me, how do you come to know Rebecca?
Speaker 7: We worked at Sonic together, and very first day that
she worked.
Speaker 8: At Sonic, I thought she must beautiful creature I ever seen, So,
you know, that's when we started talking.
Speaker 2: How long did you live with Rebecca?
Speaker 7: For? About two two?
Speaker 2: Much?
Speaker 8: And after that just a relationship? Did y'all split up
or what took place?
Speaker 2: Well, we did split up.
Speaker 7: We decided that, you know, it'd be better for just
stay friends, and that's what we did. We still spend
awful lot of time.
Speaker 4: She would live with certain people at certain times, you know,
and she kind of bounced around a little bit. But
then she finally decided that she wanted to go into
pharmaceutical sales. And so she had a sister that was
already going to school up in Fayetteville, which.
Speaker 5: Is about three hours or so for Melbourne.
Speaker 4: So she moved up there and she moved in with
her sister in an apartment, and she started attending a
local community college and she started taking classes, and so
she was twenty two and she was just trying to
get her life together.
Speaker 1: The previous spring, Rebecca and Casey's relationship had been pretty serious.
Casey was head over heels for her, which brought out
the controlling side of them that didn't work well with
Rebecca's fiery personality. By the end of the summer, things
had become a little messy. On her drive from northwest
Arkansas to Melbourne, Rebecca told her sister that this would
be her final trip.
Speaker 4: She told her sister She's like, I'm done, this is it,
and then they stop off at their dad's house. He
gives the meech one hundred dollars bill on their way
to Melbourne, and she tells her father. She says, I'm
done with Casey.
Speaker 5: It's over. We're done.
Speaker 1: Detectives often use an investigative strategy called Canter and Larkin's
circle theory. It's a fancy way of saying that most
offenders don't stray far from home when they commit a crime.
They stick to what they know, neighborhoods, they've been in, routes.
They're comfortable with places that feel familiar, So investigators start
looking close to the victim, family, partners, roommates. Then they
widen the lens to include friends, co workers, casual acquaintances,
and if that still turns up nothing, Only then do
they start to consider strangers. With this in mind, you'd
think the first person in the hot seat would be
the boyfriend. It's always the boyfriend, right. Arkansas State Police
didn't think so. Instead, they zerode in on an old
friend of Rebecca's.
Speaker 4: The main suspects for years and years and years and
years was Chris Cantrell.
Speaker 5: And he was just this.
Speaker 4: Guy who was involved in a local, you know, kind
of drug scene. You know, he I don't think he
sold a lot of drugs that he consumednewim he'd get
in trouble for it. And this guy, I mean, you're
not talking about somebody who has the sophistication probably to
you know, wipe their own DNA from a crime scene
or get rid of all their fingerprints and all this
other stuff. Because the story was is that he he
killed her over like a very small drug debt, like
now I'm talking like forty dollars, which was really weird
because she had at least that much money in her
possession when she was killed. So if that was the motive,
why didn't he take some of her stuff or her
cash or And the second problem with it was was
that you know I've written about assassinations. You know where
somebody is. You know, you're you're you're involved in a
drug trade, and we're going to get rid of you.
And that involves something very simple. They come with a gun,
they shoot you in the head, and they leave.
Speaker 5: They don't do anything else, and they walk away.
Speaker 1: Rebecca's autopsy report remained unreleased for years. Even today, only
a few people have a copy of it. The report
suggests that she was likely bludgeoned. It's hard to tell
if there were any defensive wounds. She'd been exposed to
the elements for a week, and her body was very
badly decomposed. Rebecca had two clear blunt force injuries, one
to the left side of her head and one that
was a direct hit on the center of her face.
Experts and medical professionals who have read and analyzed the
report say that neither of those injuries would have killed
her immediately. In fact, it's very possible that Rebecca was
alive for hours after the killer hit her. Even worse,
she could have been alive when her body was dumped
down the embankment. As for the weapon, the autopsy pointed
to something long, thin and heavy, something like a tire
iron or a bat. And in the house where Rebecca disappeared,
police noticed something strange. The piano. Yeah, there was a piano.
The piano was missing one of its legs.
Speaker 4: This story that this guy shows up at this house
out of the middle of nowhere that the he's never
been before, doesn't bring a weapon. He's like huge, I
wonder if, oh, I wonder if the piano leg will
come off with this piano over here?
Speaker 5: Okay, whoa, here we go. Yeah, I mean, it was
just this ridiculous, stupid, like are you kidding me? Story?
Like come on.
Speaker 1: A guy named Dennis was the Arkansas State Police detective
working the case. This man was hell bent on pushing
the Chris Cantrell story and he wouldn't give up you
goo as a hell of a drug.
Speaker 5: Well, Dennis was an narcotics officer.
Speaker 4: They had a working theory that drugs were somehow involved
in this, even though no drugs were found in their
system that they could find, and he had hit. He
had dealt with Chris in the past. And I've always
said this about Dennis, It's one of my favorite sayings.
Speaker 5: You know, if you're born a hammer. Every problem in
the world has to be a nail. There's no other.
It can't be a screw, it can't be a attack.
It's got to be a nail. So that's what he
turned his case into.
Speaker 4: Dennis gets the case I think in November December, and
then he starts to focus in on Chris Cantrell. And
it was pretty widely known by like June July two
thousand and five, that they were focusing on Chris. I mean,
that was that was out in the public. People talked
about it.
Speaker 1: There were other suspects along the way, and people in
town gossiped about the possibility that Rebecca's boyfriend, Casey was
the real killer. But this detective wouldn't hear any of it.
He refused to look into any tips or reanalyze any
of the existing evidence. But a lot of it pointed
straight to Casey McCullough.
Speaker 4: I mean, I spent, you know, years just befuddled by
the detective because, you know, you automatically assume that they
know more than you know, because they've got the case file,
and there must be I had there had to be
something in there that was really pointing them away from him.
Speaker 1: George didn't get his hands on the case file until
years later, but by the time he'd read it, this
detective decided to pay him a surprise visit, armed with
all the original evidence. This turned out to be a
perfect opportunity for George to ask Dennis why he was
so focused on the wrong suspect.
Speaker 5: And I'm not kidding you.
Speaker 4: This guy, this detective snuck into a book signing of
mine one time and these cut off daisy duke looking shorts,
cut off flannel shirt. I mean, like, I'm not going
to notice this dude coming in here. I pitch him
the book because I didn't recognize him at this point.
And then as I said, do you want to buy
a book, He's like, He's like, no, I'm specially Agententis
Simon was with the argisal State Relieves.
Speaker 5: He pulls out his badge and I looked at him.
Speaker 4: I'm like, okay, Dennis, I haven't seen you in years,
but you know, come on, and he.
Speaker 5: Tells me I can't. I told him, I said, I
don't understand something here. Why would he clean up the mess?
Why wouldn't he just take a match in torch the place?
Speaker 4: And he said, George, if you had a case file,
you know exactly why this person did this thing. And
I'm like, okay, well we have the case file now
and it's even more incomprehensible.
Speaker 1: This Dennis character sure does remind me of Lieutenant Jim
Dangle from Reno nine one one. Can you picture it?
Life imitates art, I guess Rebecca's case whirled around in
George's mind for years, and all the while it had
become a closed loop. He wrote articles about the case
and about various theories, but law enforcement was holding all
the information under lock and key. They held no press
conferences and gave no updates. Fourteen years with no progress.
When Rebecca's father tried to request a copy of her
autopsy report, officials denied it, citing the case was still active.
George kept writing articles, Websleuth's discussed the case to death,
and by twenty eighteen, a woman named Catherine Townsend hoped
to put even more eyes on this mystery by doing
a podcast. Rebecca was murdered in this woman's hometown, so
she traveled back there, lived in the community for six months,
and did her own investigation.
Speaker 9: I first heard about a podcast called Hellngon in late
twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: This is Jen Bucholtz. She's a former US Army counterintelligence
agent who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. She now teaches
forensic science at American Military University and works as a
cold case investigator for Colorado's El Paso County Sheriff's Office.
Speaker 9: And it was my content editor at the university who
we would go back and forth sometimes about new podcasts
and cases, and sometimes I'd write about different cases and
she's like, you really should listen to Helen. I think
you're going to find that case really interesting. Maybe you
want to write about it. And so, of course she
was correct, and I binged it and George was featured
in several of the episodes. So I thought, well, I'll
reach out to this George guy. He clearly knows the
case really well, and so, like, I very carefully crafted
this email to him. Whatever I wrote, which I don't
totally remember now caught his attention because he called me
pretty much right away, and then we ended up on
the phone for three hours and twenty two minutes, I believe,
our first conversation, and so it was like, oh, yeah,
we're going to work on this case.
Speaker 5: I think, I don't know.
Speaker 9: We had very similar mindset was the behaviors that this
killer took and the importance of understanding those behaviors and
what they meant about the relationship between the killer and victim.
Very clear that the detective at the time had no
idea about criminal profiling or behavioral analysis and it was
really being overlooked. And that was like one of my
key points in reaching out to George, and as you'll hear,
he had the same thoughts through the years.
Speaker 1: Jen Bucholtz spent years working as a private investigator before
stepping into her current role in cold case investigations. Now
embedded within a police department, she sees a sharp divide,
maybe even a distrust, between law enforcement and civilian investigators.
In many cases, police simply won't accept outside help. Again,
Ego is a hell of a drug. Rebecca's father, doctor
Larry Gould, learned that the hard way. He spent thousands
on private investigators over the years, but law enforcement never
seemed interested in what they uncovered. Here's doctor Gould.
Speaker 10: The law enforcement officers that to me are truly the
real professionals are the ones that reach out to the
public and they ask for help. The ones that reach
out and say that.
Speaker 5: They don't use their ego.
Speaker 10: They say, I'm the officer, I'm in charge of this case.
Speaker 5: Help me.
Speaker 10: Now, there's somebody I respect, and there's no reason to
not be that way, especially nowadays, there's a lot of
unsolved murders.
Speaker 2: That the public can get involved with.
Speaker 10: There's a lot of the public that loves to get
involved with these types of cases because they feel sincerely
like they can help and that they can offer something.
Speaker 1: And this is where the Internet proves it's worth to
some degree. Perhaps I can't believe I just said that.
In case after case, it's not a detective who breathes
new life into a forgotten file. It's a podcast, it's
a subreddit. It's a web form or a Facebook group,
or even a TikTok channel where some web sleuth, usually
a middle aged woman, I might add, that has so
much time on their hands and so much empathy in
their heart that they have to do something with it,
so they focus on their favorite hobby. They dig into
parts of a cold case that no one ever seemed
to be able to uncover, not even Lieutenant Jim Dank
I mean, Dennis.
Speaker 9: It's a lesson learned by us that can be passed
on to other not just private investigators or citizens, but
law enforcement agencies too, Like keep an eye on social
media sites for your victim, see if any of your
suspects are.
Speaker 1: In there, Like I do it at work, because sometimes
the killer does come back to the scene of the crime.
Only in Rebecca's case, the scene was now virtual. By
the fall of twenty eighteen, Rebecca Gould's case sat unsolved
for nearly fourteen years. The crime scene had been cleaned,
the man she was last seen with had quietly receded
into the shadows, and the Arkansas State Police special agent
was borderline obsessed with pinning the whole crime on the
wrong guy. But then something shifted. A podcast called Hell
and Gone started digging into the case. The show gave
the public a voice, and it gave the story new
life online. One of the podcasts fans was a former
Army counter intelligence agent named Jen Bucholtz. Another was George Jared,
the very reporter who had watched Rebecca's body be pulled
from the embankment. When these two connected, they spent hours
on the phone. Soon after, they created a Facebook group.
The plan was not just to rehash the case, but
to solve it once and for all.
Speaker 9: Well, me and George were the admins, and we set
the group setting so.
Speaker 2: That it's a public group. Anybody can find it, but.
Speaker 9: You have to request to join because we always want
to keep track of who's joining.
Speaker 2: So, you know, one of our.
Speaker 9: Goals, and I guess subconsciously one of our goals in
the week in the group was to lure the killer
in there or somebody who knew something.
Speaker 1: The Facebook group grew quickly. At this point. Neither the
police's case file nor Rebecca's autopsy had been made available
to the public. Yet this meant that the host of
the Hell and Gone podcast had to piece the story
together using rumors and gossip from people in town. By
the time Catherine Townsend aired the final episode of season one,
the narrative had shifted away from small town gossip and
toward a deeper, darker truth. This was never about random
drifters or drug deals. This looked like a crime of
passion and a cleanup that took time and work.
Speaker 5: So here's the thing about this case.
Speaker 4: We don't have a definitive time of death for Rebecca.
This is the working theory of the prosecutorial theory about
what happened is on that Monday morning, Rebecca takes Casey
to work because his father had borrowed Casey's truck the
night before, Casey needed to ride, so she drops.
Speaker 5: Him off at the Sonic that morning.
Speaker 4: Then she goes back to his house to collect up
all her things. She had a little Pomeranian dog, and
she had her clothes, and she had brought two big
suitcases because she had told her father and her sister Danielle,
that this was going to be the last time that
she came to Casey's house, and so she brought an
extra suitcase because she had some personal items over there
at the house. And so it's during this timeframe that morning,
when she's collecting of all this stuff, that's when the
police and the prosecutors think that she was murdered. And
so I will say this, there is absolutely no proof
of life on Monday morning.
Speaker 5: There's none.
Speaker 4: And for years we were led to believe that there
was a video at a convenience store that she stopped
off and got a coffee and a breakfast sandwich, and
so we thought there was all this evidence, you know,
that she was there. The problem is is that none
of that stuff was true, so there's no proof of
life Monday morning, but that's the official story.
Speaker 1: Just to fill in some gaps. The day Rebecca went missing,
Casey's father had borrowed as truck, so he was carloss
and needed transportation to and from work. He worked at Sonic.
By the way, we know, Rebecca's plan was to quietly
packer things and dump his ass that day, but Casey
was clueless about this or was he did he find out?
Was there a subsequent altercation. This is where things get
really suspicious and a little messy.
Speaker 4: So he asked a group of four friends, people that
he was friends with. They were going to go to
the movies that night, and they we're going to go
see the movie Resident Evil too, and so he asked
them if he could ride with them, and they were
all kind of surprised by it because he was kind
of a recluse. He didn't like to hang out with anybody,
And so he went down to Batesville that night. They
watched the movie, They go into some stores. He was
clearly trying to make himself available to cameras that were in,
you know, like they went to a Walmart to look
at Halloween decorations. And they went to some other places,
and it was clear that he was trying to make
himself visible on these cameras. And then at one point
in the night, he gets a call, and during this call,
he used his friend's phone to make this call.
Speaker 5: By the way, he didn't use his own phone. After
he hangs up, he tells all four of these friends
that Rebecca is missing.
Speaker 9: He used his friend's phone to call his own voicemail,
so he didn't actually talk to anybody. He listened to
his messages, whatever they were, and then got off the
phone and told his friends that Rebecca's missing.
Speaker 5: Now here's the problem.
Speaker 4: She wasn't reported missing until the next morning, at eight
thirty in the morning by her mother. The second part
of it is all four friends, and all four of
their statements to police said that he was obsessed with her,
and I'm paraphrasing this, that he was obsessed with her,
and they were all shocked that he wasn't.
Speaker 5: Running out the door to go and find her. And
so what he did instead is he went to his
friend's house, smoked some marijuana, played some video games, and
fell asleep on the couch.
Speaker 1: Are you suspicious yet, fellow websleuth.
Speaker 2: She dropped you work and.
Speaker 8: Get a little past eight, a little past eight, and
I just remember saying bye and flying to each other
and wait, Ane.
Speaker 7: That's the last time I saw that. Okay?
Speaker 6: Did you have any contact with her by telephone?
Speaker 11: No?
Speaker 7: Sorry, I tried.
Speaker 8: Have you talked with her since Monday morning at eight o'clock?
About the last time I talked to her? And you
haven't seen her since?
Speaker 7: I haven't seen her?
Speaker 6: So did you play on the center before she went back?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 8: She was supposed to come back and pick me up
from work to go pick up my truck from Matsville.
Speaker 6: And did she show up?
Speaker 2: No, sir?
Speaker 6: What time she was she supposed to pick you up for?
And then you came back to Oxford at anytime?
Speaker 12: Uh?
Speaker 6: Since you left there?
Speaker 2: Did you go back to.
Speaker 6: Your house at any time that night?
Speaker 7: No, sir.
Speaker 6: Did you ever go back there to get some clothing
out of the sure Harris hands or anything like that?
Speaker 8: No, sir, I never went back to the house that night.
What time did you leave Oxford? That house and come
to work next morning? About seven thirty? You get to
work at eight? And how long did you stay at work?
I stayed there for about ten to fifteen minutes. I
called Rebecca's mom to see if she had heard from Rebecca,
because you know, I haven't yet, and she said she
sounded really worried and freaking out, And so I asked my.
Speaker 7: Manager Daniel, if I could go down.
Speaker 8: To the house and see if she was there. Send
me what you find when you get to your house.
Speaker 12: I drive up and.
Speaker 8: I see your car, so I'm thinking she's there and
she's safe inside. And I walk in and I see
her dog, which which gives me a little bit more.
Speaker 7: What's the way I'm looking for insurance?
Speaker 6: What's significant about the dogs being here?
Speaker 8: That if she's there, then she's Rebecca's got to be there,
because Rebecca goes no way.
Speaker 7: To got that dog. I walked in and checked our
room and then I call it our room because it is.
Speaker 1: And wow, did you catch it? Tell me you caught
that we walked into r room. I call it our
room because it is. That's what he said, don't need
to be so defensive there, buddy, you weren't questioning your
relationship status.
Speaker 7: No sheets on the bed and nobody's in there.
Speaker 2: And I thought it was very odd.
Speaker 8: No sheets on the bed because she just washed them
the week earlier, and I would't say he washed them again.
I looked to the whole house again, double backed in
every room, and I didn't see anything, and I was.
Speaker 4: Well appeared to me.
Speaker 2: I thought I was on the clock.
Speaker 7: Because I posted in. That thing doesn't work all the time.
And so I took off back towards signing cable.
Speaker 6: Her car there, my car was there. Did you see
anything like her slipper or anything like that at the house.
Speaker 7: Yes, I saw her pink slippers.
Speaker 1: These are all clips from Casey's first interview with police.
He tells them that he never went back to the
house that day, the day Rebecca went missing. It was
the next morning that he said he'd back home by
himself to search the trailer for clues.
Speaker 4: One day, I was driving through Melbourne and I saw
him outside smoking a cigarette in the parking lot. And
this is probably eight or nine months after the murder,
and so I just pulled my truck in, got out,
and I just confronted him. I said, so tell me
what happened. And he told me that he never went
to the back to his house before he went with
the police, and so he lied. When we get the
case file. Not only did he not notice that his
room and I'm not I think I'm exaggerating, it looked
like a tornado had gone through his room. I mean
there was stuff broken everywhere. I mean it was a
mirror off kilter, off the closet, there were bloody pillows
and plain sight. He admitted in his first interview with
the police that he did go to the washing machine,
open it up, and it's full of bedding with blood
all over it. The you know, like the what's that
thing the agitated There was bloody water in there, like
the bleach dispenser. Thing was completely caked, caked with blood.
And he just puts the lid down, gets in his
truck and drives back to work like nothing happened.
Speaker 6: Did you subsequently go back after your house with the deafity.
Speaker 7: I asked him, I said, do you just want to
follow me? And thought I was, And he just.
Speaker 2: Followed me all the way there.
Speaker 6: And when you get here the police, I take it
looked in your house.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: See, I let him freely walk to the house. I
showed him that her belongings were still there, and how
it's very odd she really never ever.
Speaker 8: Lives without it and he walked into the back room,
checked under the mattress and found some blood and uh,
I really didn't know where it came from.
Speaker 7: That's when I started getting really scared. Didn't know what
to think.
Speaker 8: Then, after we checked the mattress, he turned around and
checked the washer. When we checked the washer, we saw
just a little bit of film.
Speaker 2: On something red. We didn't know if it was.
Speaker 8: Blood or not, but we noticed, and we tried to
put two and two together that you know, she's around
the bed this.
Speaker 6: Case, and what do you think has happened to Rebecca.
I think she was killed.
Speaker 2: I don't know who did it.
Speaker 9: So Monday night is when he tells his friend she's
missing and whatever. So Tuesday morning, he had spent the
night at his friend's house, he hadn't gone home. Tuesday morning,
goes to work for a shift at Sonic. Well, for
some reason, he didn't have his Sonic shirt even though
he worked the day prior. So his boss is like,
you got to go home and get a Sonic shirt.
You got to be in uniform. So he was forced
to go home Tuesday morning to his residence and he
walks in. You know, her car's there, her purse, her dog,
the mattress is flipped, there's bloody sheets in the washer,
all this stuff, i mean, broken ash trays, broken mirrors,
and he grabs a shirt and just goes back to work,
and then later on said he didn't notice that anything,
you know, was a miss which is impossible. I mean,
you can't. After we've got the crime scene photos, you're like, yeah,
there's no way you could, Like, how would you go
in your room? And his bed was moved to cover
a big bloodstain on the carpet, Like, you can't tell
me you didn't noise your beds in a different position
in the room, and it's been stripped and all this stuff.
You already said the night prior she's missing, and you
go home to this mess. Why aren't you immediately calling police?
Speaker 1: You know, if the lies, the changing timeline, and Casey's
strange behavior weren't bad enough, just wait, it gets worse.
Speaker 4: Well, it's even more suspicious because he confessed to hurting her.
He in let's see April of twy ten or twenty eleven,
they're not quite sure what year. And so he was
working on like these towers, he was climbing towers and
he was one night he and two other people were
in a hotel room. One of them is Tad Hickerson,
and he signed us one affidavit to this. But they're
all in a hotel room, they're drinking. He starts crying
and tells them that he hurt Rebecca, that he had
hit her with some type of a wooden object, that
he had hurt her. And they were, of course, they
were thought he was just full of that. They're like, well,
the police have cleared you, you know, how could this
be possible? And he said that the reason that he
was getting away with it was because their timeline was off.
But they couldn't figure that out. So the next day
Tad still thinks, you know, he was just drunk and
crying and feeling guilty and all this other stuff. Well,
now they're sober, and so Tad asked Casey, he said,
so tell me what happened. And he said that she
said something to him, like said something like mockingly to him,
like laughed at him or scoffed at him, and he
just flew into a rage, hit her twice. He said,
he threw the wooden object, which you know, we believe
could be a piano leg. That's you know, obviously missing,
that he threw it into the White River, and that
he said, well, what mistake did you make? And he
said cleaning up the.
Speaker 1: Mess by when exactly was the evidence cleaned from the teler?
According to police, Rebecca was killed sometime on Monday, September eighteenth,
after she dropped Casey off at work, and Casey had
an alibi for that time period. He was working at
Sonic all day then was seen on camera hanging out
with friends in the evening.
Speaker 9: So because of that, Casey was cleared because they assumed
she was alive Monday morning and he was accounted for
at work during the hours that they thought she was killed.
So he, I mean, Dennis Simon's the detective who was
on it for fourteen years, had watched it. He did
publicly clear him, which is always a mistake. You don't
clear anybody, but he did publicly clear Casey. So Casey
fell off the radar for most people. I think from
that point forward.
Speaker 1: It was open and shut. Sherlock and Daisy Dukes had
nailed the timeline, or did he? Jenn and George certainly
didn't think so. They think Rebecca may have been killed
much earlier, perhaps that morning, giving someone plenty of time
to erase what couldn't be explained, and that changed everything.
If the murder didn't happen when police thought it did,
then Casey's alibi wasn't air tight. So fast forward to
the year twenty nineteen, when fans of the Hell and
Gone podcast are in a frenzy, obsessively discussing all these
suspicions day and night. Y'all are relentless. I'll tell you well,
all this chit chat attracts attention to anyone who's interested.
And also they're cats. Do I know my audience or
do I know my audience? The Facebook forum continues to
grow and grow, and all of a sudden, a new
name starts leaving comments in the forum. A guy by
the name of William Miller, and.
Speaker 4: He was one of the first people to join our
Facebook page when we created in October of twenty nineteen.
And there's a girl on our crowdsourcing team who's really
good at like genealogy, you know, like she's good at
putting family trees together. And as soon as he joined
our page, and her name is Miranda, and she immediately
told us, she said, Hey, this guy's a first cousin
of cases, and we're like, okay, we didn't think anything
of it because he lived in the Philippines, and I
think Jen had done a little research on him and
figured out pretty quickly that he lived in Ramsas Past Texas,
you know, so we didn't think anything of it. And
he was, you know, postulating theories on how she died,
and he was very active on the page, and we
just thought he was a mole for the family, you know,
because what happened previously, you know, when Helen Gon came out,
is these Facebook pages formed and a bunch of family
members got on there and people would get into these
huge fights and they would say all this stuff, and
so we just thought, okay, they don't want to join
and get into these you know, brew ha haas, and
so they're just going to send in this first cousin.
You know, he's kind of you know, kind of a
weirdo anyway. You can just tell that from his messages
and stuff like that. But he's living in the Philippines,
he's working on ol rigs all over the world, you know,
he flies all over the place.
Speaker 5: He's a very world traveler.
Speaker 4: And he made a lot of money too, and then
I this may be a coincidence, but I just can't
believe that it's a coincidence. Casey's birthday is January sixteenth,
So on January sixteenth of twenty twenty, right before the
pandemic starts, William Miller starts sending private dms to Jen. Now,
he had sent me one or two, but I never
responded because I mean, he was Casey's first cousin, so
I'm just like, no, you know who cares. Of course,
Jen is a much more thorough investigator than I am,
so she started responding to him and asking him questions.
Speaker 1: At first, William Miller seemed like any other dedicated member
of the group, curious, passionate, maybe a little too invested.
But as Jen talked to him, the tone shifted. The
conversations were often law back and forth dialogues. Sometimes William
rambled and didn't make much sense. In one message, she
claimed he was being targeted by other group members trying
to stir up drama. I am being attacked by a
few people. They took picks and sent them to Dennis,
and he was one of them to blow up on me.
He got more paranoid, even defensive, at one point, he wrote,
now he talks shit to me. I'm sorry to talk
like that, but about to block the guy if he
keep it up. He need to be a grammar Nazi here.
But anybody know English these days? Anyway, this guy William
seemed like he wanted to be helpful. He wanted to
be part of the team. He insisted, Sorry, if I
sound like I am on Casey's side, maybe I come
across that way, but am not.
Speaker 5: But behind the.
Speaker 1: Scenes, Jen was already putting the pieces together. William wasn't
just engageing with the case. He was circling it, fixating
on details like gloves, DNA and forensics. No fingerprints, no DNA.
First thing pops in my head is did he have gloves?
John's goal was to find out why William was so
interested in this case, or at least to see what
kind of answer he would give. They knew he was
Casey's cousin, and they knew he was being evasive about it.
Speaker 4: But why and he was why he wouldn't He wouldn't
tell her, like what was the relationship or to the case,
like why was he interested in it? And he just
said podcasts And then she asked him what states he'd
been to, and he said fifty of them or something
like that, and her and I would talk about him
some early on, and then the pandemic hits, and then
in September we found out something very interesting. We did
not know that he was in town the weekend of
the of this hell thing happening. We didn't We never
knew that.
Speaker 1: Even more suspicious, they didn't know that William's mother, Linda
and his brother Jeremy had actually been living in the
area at the time of the murder.
Speaker 9: Like the family kept that way under wraps, which is
so telling. Even Casey and his family never divulged that publicly.
So I'm like, why are you hiding that?
Speaker 1: Jen and George both saw the signs William Miller was
quickly moving up their list of suspects.
Speaker 4: Me and Jenn are talking one day and were just like,
this guy could be involved, Like as soon as we
found out that he was there, because our analysis had
always pointed towards a male member of the McCullough family.
His name is William Miller, but he's as much McCullough
as the mcculloughs are. He fit the profile, and it
was even more interesting with him because he immediately left.
It's like your cousin's girlfriend vanishes and you don't stick
around for a day or two to try to help
find her. Of course, at this point we knew Casey
hadn't been trying to find her. And then I'll never
forget this. We kept digging on him, and so we're
trying to put this together all through October of twenty twenty,
and little did we know that the police were on
the same track because we weren't. We weren't communicating to
them when we were doing at this point, and they
weren't communicating obviously with us.
Speaker 1: A new detective had been handling the investigation, and it
took him only eight months to get his site set
on William Miller. This detective wanted to get William in
an interview room, but knowing that William lived overseas, he
called his mother Linda, just so you know they're going
to be referring to William as Billy by the way.
Speaker 13: Hello, Hello, hey Linda, how are you doing.
Speaker 5: Hanging in there? I didn't know you still worked?
Speaker 2: You still working?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 7: I take care of a little lady that.
Speaker 13: Has alzheimer, Okay, and that difficult Oh yeah, I can imagine.
I can imagine I wanted to reach out to you.
You know, I'm going through this case file, and the
I guess the opinion of the Arkansas State Police is
that they're basically.
Speaker 5: Wanting everybody reinterviewed. So I'm going.
Speaker 13: Back and I'm going through, you know, all of the
documents and trying to trying to accomplish that.
Speaker 14: And I know that you and Jeremy and Billy.
Speaker 13: Were all interviewed back back in two thousand and four,
and you know, I just wanted to reach out to
you guys and see what of course I get. You know,
Billy's in the Philippine means I probably won't be able
to talk to him for I don't know if he's
planning on coming back anytime soon or do you know,
I don't know.
Speaker 7: Oh, you don't know.
Speaker 6: Things have been crazy with the COVID.
Speaker 14: Right and you have no idea when Billy might be
returning to the States.
Speaker 6: Not right now, not when it's all the COVID stuff.
Speaker 13: So the last the last time Billy made it home
was sometime last year.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 5: I mean, I know he does that, for I know
he does that.
Speaker 4: I think you every year.
Speaker 13: Yeah, okay, well if you would, Linda, get with Jeremy
and see if there's one day the same time. Yeah, awesome,
Well thanks Linda, Yeah right, no problem, we have a
good day to go back. That was Linda Miller, October
twenty first, twenty twenty.
Speaker 14: Should be noted that Billy Miller is currently in Oregon.
He returned from the Philippines approximately a little over a
week ago.
Speaker 1: It's entirely possible that William or Bill or Billy was
sitting right next to his mother listening to her lie
to the detective about his whereabouts during this call. Just
a little bit later, probably after having a team meeting
with her sons, Linda called the detective back.
Speaker 6: Hello Miller, Hey, Linda, how are you pretty good?
Speaker 3: I think we got everybody coortinated?
Speaker 5: Where you being it?
Speaker 8: All?
Speaker 6: Three?
Speaker 10: Other that?
Speaker 6: Whe Oh really?
Speaker 12: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Well, when's when's Billy coming back in?
Speaker 15: He'll be here November seventh.
Speaker 6: That's when we.
Speaker 13: Want to have our meeting on you, okay, November the seventh.
Speaker 1: Linda Miller and her two sons believed they were heading
into just another round of questioning. What they didn't realize
was that every word they spoke would be used to
dismantle the lie they'd been upholding for sixteen long years.
By the fall of twenty twenty, almost exactly sixteen years
after her murder, there was a Facebook group rife with
theories on Rebecca Gould's case. One of the people offering
up ideas was a man named William Miller. Jen Bucholtz
and George Jared, the two investigators who had taken a
personal interest in Rebecca's story, realized pretty quickly that William
was Casey mcculla's first cousin. At first, they thought that
McCullough family had sent him in as a spy, someone
who could figure out just how much the public knew.
But the more that William talked, the higher he moved
up their suspect list. Coincidentally, Arkansas State Police were coming
to the same conclusion in parallel. On November seventh, twenty twenty,
detectives finally got William into an interview room. His mother
and brother sat in the room next door.
Speaker 12: First, let me tell you this is called a non
custodial interview.
Speaker 2: Okay, you probably never heard.
Speaker 3: Of such a thing, but what that means is you came.
Speaker 2: Up here voluntarily. You're not being detained. You're free to
go at any time. That door is not locked.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 12: I want to tell you when I told the police
went down into.
Speaker 16: Texas when they came and stuff, and I mean to
be honest with you and truthful with you.
Speaker 2: Call everything. You know, maybe I saw something that maybe
a key factor in something there and all of stuff. Right, right,
So you're an oil field worker.
Speaker 15: I've been been working in an oil field for twenty
eight three years. I remember moving mom up there and
then she was moved into that little house.
Speaker 2: I was a couple of miles down the road from
grandfather's property.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I mean yeah, so you're right that was about
your mom's house was about two three miles from the
the trailer where this happened.
Speaker 2: Okay, So so I've been.
Speaker 12: In that home and all that stuff, and prior to
the homicide.
Speaker 3: Yes, how many times had you been in that trailer?
Speaker 2: Do you think? Maybe two?
Speaker 7: Three times?
Speaker 2: Maybe two or three times? Two or three times and stuff?
Speaker 3: So she was Rebecca was killed in September of before.
When was the last time you were in that trailer?
Speaker 2: You think it was the way before that? Months?
Speaker 1: Yeah, William goes on to explain that back in September
of two thousand and four, his mother asked him to
help her move to Texas with William's younger brother, so
he drove up to Arkansas and arrived on Sunday, the
same day Rebecca had gotten into town.
Speaker 2: So in the.
Speaker 16: Information that was provided to Texas, you know four, you
said that whenever you showed up in Melbourne, that you
went and visited family in the small town.
Speaker 2: So that made it sound.
Speaker 16: Like that you were with your mom and that you
visited family in the small town.
Speaker 2: So do you remember.
Speaker 16: Going to the grandparents' house on Sunday, because that's what
you told investigators in O.
Speaker 5: Four.
Speaker 2: I don't, I can't remember and all that stuff.
Speaker 12: Yeah, do you think that probably if you if you
said it No.
Speaker 2: Four, that that would probably be more accurate.
Speaker 15: There probably be more angry because it was set in
went and then and then.
Speaker 2: Because I know that when I came up, I remember
going and asking Casey if you can give me a
hand helping me.
Speaker 16: Move, Help help me mom moved, help mom moved the
stuff into the house.
Speaker 2: And he was like, Hey, I'm too busy.
Speaker 3: Is that whenever you showed up to Casey's trailer on Sunday.
Speaker 12: No, okay, Well when did you have that conversation when
mom moved under?
Speaker 2: Three or four months before? Okay?
Speaker 1: William claimed that this interact shoudn't happened months before. But
now that we have Casey's original interview from September of
two thousand and four, we can look back and see
that Casey told police something different.
Speaker 6: Your cousin, what's his name?
Speaker 2: His name is Billy Little.
Speaker 7: We call him a little Billy and it's Billy Miller.
Speaker 2: What were to Billy live it?
Speaker 7: He lives in Texas, and I'm not for sure where.
Speaker 2: What was he doing up here?
Speaker 6: He was coming up.
Speaker 7: Here to move his mom and his brother back to Texas.
Speaker 6: So has he already gone back?
Speaker 2: You know, Yes, he's already gone.
Speaker 7: I'm pretty sure, okay.
Speaker 8: And so I guess he came up and spoke with
you gets a short period of time that night.
Speaker 6: Yes, that would be Sunday evening. Okay, So how long
did he say that?
Speaker 2: Ten fifteen min tops?
Speaker 7: We just really talked about all the times and stuff.
Speaker 6: Did you come into your house?
Speaker 7: No, sir, he stayed outside.
Speaker 2: I was outside.
Speaker 7: He never came in the house. But BacT I was
on the front porch. He saw her back on the.
Speaker 6: Did he know that you and Rebecca dated and past?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 6: Did you know Joe were living together?
Speaker 7: He knew that she visited on the weekends.
Speaker 1: He say, remember, Rebecca arrived at mccullus trailer on Saturday,
September eighteenth. The police originally thought she was alive on
Monday morning. Jen and George think she was actually killed
before that, late Saturday night or maybe sometime on Sunday.
Speaker 5: There's a problem though, with this part of the story too.
Here's the problem.
Speaker 4: So this was what Casey told people in you know,
when he was interviewed the police, and then William kind
of told a similar story that he just pulled.
Speaker 5: Up into the driveway and you know that was it.
Speaker 4: Well, a couple of weeks after their statements are taken,
Casey's asked whose DNA could possibly be in the house,
and he gives a list of people whose DNA could
be in the house. He lists William and Jeremy, and
besides of them, there's sua meeting Sunday night next to
each of them. Well, if you never got out of
his car, how could his DNA be in the house.
Speaker 17: Obviously, I can't talk a lot about the evidence in
the investigation, you know, it's an ongoing investigation investigation, but
I can assure you that.
Speaker 18: There are items of evidence that there should be no
reason your DNA should be on it, you.
Speaker 6: Know what I mean.
Speaker 12: We believe investigators, with the people that had worked this,
we believe that we have the suspects DNA on a
piece of evidence that.
Speaker 16: Is very specific and very unique, and nobody else's DNA
should be on it. So that's why I'm asking. There's
a number of people that have provided DNA. Volunteer, would
you be willing to provide your DNA?
Speaker 3: It would be a cheek swab.
Speaker 2: I don't want to take blood or what it is.
If I mean in that house and all.
Speaker 3: That stuff, my DNA would be in there.
Speaker 12: You know, if if you don't feel comfortable doing it,
I'm not gonna.
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna.
Speaker 3: Push you or try to put any pressure on you.
It's not ask for all that stuff.
Speaker 2: But you know, yeah, if.
Speaker 3: You're that's fine.
Speaker 2: He's just to me, it's just you know, yeah, my
he is going to be in.
Speaker 1: There a lot of stuff, right, Okay, Since he was
so willing to give up his DNA, A polygraph would
be no problem.
Speaker 16: Right, Like I was talking before about polygraphs, you know,
almost all of them becaulors have been polygraphed.
Speaker 2: A number of other people hadn't been. You know, that's
one that's that's a tool that we like to use
to you know, it kind of gives us.
Speaker 3: A pretty good indication of somebody who's lying or telling
the truth.
Speaker 12: Yeah stuff, yeah, yeah, I mean, would you be okay
with taking a polygraph?
Speaker 2: I'll just ask you now, I don't know, have a problem,
know that you don't have that finale?
Speaker 3: You want to go to Arkansas and take one?
Speaker 2: Now, I'll tell you what. Let me holler.
Speaker 16: I'll call a I'll call the sergeant up here to
see they may have a polygrapher in town.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a shot in the dark, but.
Speaker 1: Actually it was the furthest thing from a shot in
the dark. This detective had his polygrapher locked and loaded.
Speaker 2: Right, And so we're going to view a great do
you tell all the questions?
Speaker 6: We're going to be on the exam, We're going to
administer the test. We're going to give you the test.
Speaker 19: They'll be done in several phases that want to value
eight the exam results.
Speaker 2: So I'll tell you how you did before you leave today?
Speaker 6: Okay, whether you want to lay.
Speaker 19: Want to know if you cause the death of we're
back at school, Well, how would you answer that question?
Speaker 12: I would I answer that yes that you know, how
can you do something when you're in another notation?
Speaker 2: Okay? Perfect?
Speaker 19: So if they were asking that on the example, would your.
Speaker 12: Answer to you no, okay, not perfect? And are you
half hundred percent positive?
Speaker 2: Yes? Perfect?
Speaker 5: You know you're not going to have a.
Speaker 19: Problem passive test if you know, if you didn't do it,
you didn't do it, and then it was supposed to
the process and that's that's that's what you want to know, right.
Speaker 1: William sat like a statue in his chair for the
duration of the test, answering yes and no questions. Confidently
when it was over he didn't have to wait very
long to get his results.
Speaker 2: Now, I think you did.
Speaker 19: I don't know if you're many okay, okay. So the
res also the example of deception indicated. Right, So those
two the questions that did you you know what that
cause you failed the test?
Speaker 2: I have the test?
Speaker 12: Yes, yes, and so my heart he felt like he
was just beating out of my chest.
Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, we talked about your DNA being at.
Speaker 18: The crime scene, and you tried to give an explanation
as to why you're doing it would be at the
crime scene because your mom.
Speaker 11: Gave claude furniture, furniture stuff and betting, and you even
you even said that it would be reasonable for your
DNA to be on the betting, which is absolutely sir.
Speaker 2: No, I didn't say that, Okay.
Speaker 3: I just said that mom gives furniture and all that stuff.
Speaker 6: Okay, all right.
Speaker 18: This is a wash cloth that was under the bed
that the killer used to clean up. It was watered
up in a ball. Okay, we've got we've got the
killer's DNA on that wash cloth.
Speaker 15: Okay, would there be any reason for your DNA?
Speaker 2: It shouldn't be, shouldn't mail there?
Speaker 1: Are you ready to have your mind blown? The detective
is lying, as DNA was not on the washcloth. This
is just one of the tools in a seasoned detective's
tool helt that's used to get a reaction, possibly a confession,
out of a suspect when there's little loss to go on.
They were baiting him.
Speaker 5: He got tricked and it was a gutsy move. I'll
give Mike Neil credit. He got tricked.
Speaker 4: He got tricked into thinking that his DNA was on
a rag that they had found they were going to
do some DNA testing, and then he also got tricked
into thinking that Rebecca's DNA. What Mike did is he
went and found the truck, the actual truck that William
Miller owned in two thousand and four. It was somewhere
in South Texas. He sent the Texas Rangers down there
to take pictures of it. And so Mike has a folder.
And this is after William has failed the polygraph test
during his interview, and he comes in. He says, well,
I've got to share something with you, and he pulls
out these pictures of this truck.
Speaker 3: That truck looks familiar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's your truck.
Speaker 3: YEA biological billy lasts for.
Speaker 16: Decades, blood, skin cells, all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right.
Speaker 3: That was a really bloody crime scene.
Speaker 2: What happened.
Speaker 12: You got blood on the side of your shoe.
Speaker 16: We got Rebecca's DNA next to the gas pedal in
your truck, no question about it.
Speaker 2: Her DNA's in your truck.
Speaker 3: So What you have to do is you have to
explain to me how that's possible.
Speaker 2: If you didn't kill.
Speaker 20: Her, you know who did, and if you know who did,
if you're covered for casey. Dude, I'm telling you, you
have got to come forward right now with what you know.
Speaker 4: And William immediately knows it's his old truck, and he goes,
we're going to get this test out and whoever killed
her is on the track.
Speaker 5: Neither one of those things was true.
Speaker 1: But it was enough to scare William into confessing. Still
want to be a detective.
Speaker 2: We know what you did, we know how it went down.
Speaker 12: We've got her blood in your in your floorboard.
Speaker 2: You tried to clean up mess that you could.
Speaker 18: Billy, don't drag your mom through this anymore.
Speaker 2: Don't drag your brother through this anymore.
Speaker 3: Give give the family some peace.
Speaker 2: It was a freak deal man.
Speaker 3: You did not mean to killer.
Speaker 2: It happens.
Speaker 18: It should have never happened, but it did. Okay, So
tell me, Billy, just tell me, tell me what you did,
how it happened.
Speaker 2: Last to my mom. Outside you can look at the email.
I've got to run off or any day.
Speaker 3: Listen, let me do this.
Speaker 2: Let me.
Speaker 18: Let me bring your mom in here and let's talk
to her together. If that's what you want to do.
Speaker 12: I want to talk to her outside outside, and I
promised to come back in here and sell you whatever
you want.
Speaker 1: William Miller had failed this polygraph test. Miserably, he realized
the walls were closing in, and he asked for one
last chance to talk with his mother. When he came
back into the room, William told police exactly what they'd
been waiting to hear. He had murdered Rebecca Gould all
of those years ago. It was him, that had always
been him.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'll get Jeremy in a minute.
Speaker 2: We need to have a conversation. I held up my
end of the deal. Let's talk. What do you want
me to tell you? I want you to tell me
what you did, how it went down.
Speaker 12: One thing about this is it's been real and in
your head like a movie real since it happened.
Speaker 2: There isn't anything about this. See you forgot I know
that because.
Speaker 3: I've been doing this a long time.
Speaker 5: I did.
Speaker 2: You gotta sorry. I'm sorry for what I did. You
gotta tell me how it went down. I just sent it.
I kind of blocked it.
Speaker 3: Out of my mind and in a way to survive.
Speaker 18: Everybody that I'm associated is a victim about to me,
absolutely victim, absolutely, And I played everybody.
Speaker 12: As a fool, everybody. I never told anybody but you
right now. I remember going into the trailer and stuff,
and then it just happened so quick and so fast,
and then I freaked out.
Speaker 3: And you can't go all so for what happened so
fast and so quick?
Speaker 2: What happened? Where did it happen?
Speaker 7: You have to tell me these things, if you guys,
isn't so, I mean, you.
Speaker 3: Should know that I do I do?
Speaker 2: Or should I just get a lawyer and all that stuff. Now,
I'm just asking you that because you know, listen, man,
you know I'm telling you. You know I'm confessed to you.
Speaker 3: I'm telling you that I did it.
Speaker 2: Once you arrest me.
Speaker 15: Once you do arrest me, and that you said that
I killed her by her blood and all that stuff
is in.
Speaker 2: There, and arrest me, I'm confessant. I did it.
Speaker 6: Dude.
Speaker 2: You're under arrest for the murder from Becca Gould.
Speaker 7: Okay, okay, take me to Arkansas.
Speaker 3: I mean, listen, know that that's all.
Speaker 16: We will get there, right I know that, but you
know it doesn't happen the way you want it to happen.
It just doesn't take me to Arkansas, do this, do that.
It doesn't happen that way.
Speaker 5: Here's the thing.
Speaker 4: You in the state of Arkansas, you can't and then
this is Trinlana States.
Speaker 5: You cannot just have a confession.
Speaker 4: You have to have some other piece of evidence that
ties the person of the crime.
Speaker 5: The problem for William is is.
Speaker 4: That there was a piece of evidence that did tie
him to the crime, and that's the missing suitcase. When
police arrived the day that Rebecca vantaged, there were three
things missing. One of her suitcases, the piano, egg and
her Okay.
Speaker 12: But I need to know what you did with Rebecca.
Where did you put her before you dumped her? I
need to know all that stuff. And I know that's
not easy to talk about, but we got to have
that conversation.
Speaker 2: Where did you put her before you dumped her? Where'd
you keep her in the truck?
Speaker 6: Where in the truck?
Speaker 2: The back end of the truck?
Speaker 7: Okay, what was she in?
Speaker 2: She was in a shirt?
Speaker 1: Not no?
Speaker 3: Did you put her in a trash bag?
Speaker 6: Were there?
Speaker 2: No? Would you put her in there was a blanket
and all that stuff.
Speaker 12: Okay, what was used to cause her injuries? We'll go
to Arkansas and I'm going to point out something to
you and then you'll find some certain things that you're
going to be looking for.
Speaker 3: All right, So you're telling me.
Speaker 12: Right now in November twenty twenty, there is still physical
evidence probably that has not been found. Yeah, let's go
to Arkansas. That will nail them in the coffin, would it.
Speaker 17: Well no, I'm telling you, you know, unless somebody picked
it up and thought it was trash.
Speaker 12: But it should be where it's at.
Speaker 1: It should be where it's at. Well, that's helpful, Isn't
it weird how humans can do inhuman things but not
talk about them afterwards. Words too violent for you, Billy.
There are a strange species.
Speaker 4: Indeed, for you know, sixteen years they were trying to
find this suitcase. Well, William told them where to find
the suitcase and it was in proximity to his mom's
old house when she was living in Guying, and it
took him about the search. We estimate was about three
to four hours, but they found the suitcase. The suitcase
is weird, though, and there's a reason why it's weird.
William says he took it. And William's he's not tall,
but he's a big, stocky guy.
Speaker 5: He weighed over three hundred pounds.
Speaker 4: There was only like five six and so he took
this suitcase and he said he launched it from the
highway and it landed like thirty forty yards away or
something like that. And so when it's found, it's open
and all of the betting, and there's some betting, and
there's some clothes. They're all in a pile over here,
and there were some CDs in there and all this
other stuff. So Jenna's at my house one night after
we get the pictures of this suitcase, and it was
confirmed to you was her suitcase, her stuff. There's only
one problem. Think about the physics of throwing a suitcase. Okay,
if it's all zipped up, you throw it, no problem.
But if it was open, then all that stuff would
have been scattered all over the place, and all of
the clothing type items would have long been gone, deteriorated
in nothing.
Speaker 9: They weren't faded. You could see the This is how
we know it was came from Casey's houses because the
plaid on the sheet matches that that was in his washer.
And we've actually done our own suitcase experiment. One of
the local residents in Melbourne went to Goodwill and got
two black suitcases and her backyard has a very similar
landscape to where this suitcase was found, with the same
types of trees and leaves and obviously the same weather pattern.
And so what we did is we had her put
sheets in one suitcase and zip it closed and just
put it out like that, and then the other one
we had her put the suitcase like Rebecca's was found
with unzipped open and the sheets they're not in any pile,
but they're very close to the suitcase and just laying
on top of the leaves, and so she put those
sheets out there. This started in December of twenty twenty three,
and within a few months those sheets were like unrecognizable,
deteriorated and now they're just basically gone. So that's how
we know, like Rebecca's suitcase could not have been laying
open like that for sixteen years, and the sheets looked
pretty new. So somebody opened that suitcase, but we haven't
figured out who yet.
Speaker 12: What would just saying too were there as well, I'm
true sorry.
Speaker 2: I know that I can't bring her.
Speaker 12: Back alone, and I yes, there was time to that.
Speaker 3: I wanted to go to Doctricol's office.
Speaker 2: It'm a guy and get him.
Speaker 4: That did to change to do that, Like he gave
this confession, gave really no reason as to why Rebecca
would you know he killed her. But then at his
sentencing he agrees to meet with doctor Gould afterwards and
he tells a completely different story about how he gave
her seat, that he hit her, but then he gave
her CPR and if they find his DNA on her shirt,
it was because he was crying. He keeps telling all
these crazy stories that don't make any sense. But like
with any anybody who's lying, there's grain, there's grains of
truth in there, and you've got to somehow try to
mind them out. Of course, now I claims he had
nothing to do with it, in case he did all
of it.
Speaker 9: So and for listeners who want to waste eleven hours
of their life, they can watch his entire interview, polygraph, confession,
everything on YouTube.
Speaker 1: William was arrested for Rebecca's murder and eventually took a
plea deal that landed him forty years in the Arkansas
Department of Corrections, and like George said, these days, William
has changed his story yet again. As you might suspect,
he and Jen have been in contact with him since
his arrest, and he now says that Casey murdered Rebecca,
he just helped clean up the scene.
Speaker 4: And fun fact, the cleaning supplies that were used to
clean up the crime scene were delivered by Linda, and
that's verified.
Speaker 5: She delivered those clean spies.
Speaker 4: Now she claims that her brother that he asked her
to pick up certain items for the house and they
were all cleaning items that were used by the killer
or killers to clean up the mess in the house.
Speaker 1: No one knows for sure just how much Linda Miller
knew about the situation, but it warnant some serious speculation.
Rebecca's murder wasn't the only secret her son had been keeping, though,
the same day he took the polygraph test, failed it
and confessed to the murder. He also confessed to five
others too. That's right, William could be a serial killer.
Speaker 4: What happened was is he confessed to Rebecca's murderer, and
of course then you know the detectives are trying to
press him like, hey, we know this was your first rodeo.
And so then he confesses to five other murders, but
he doesn't give the names of the victims.
Speaker 5: He didn't give specific details though.
Speaker 4: About how he kidnapped one of these victims from which
she was like at a payphone at a convenience store
late night, you know, And he gave specific details about
how he would, you know, trick them.
Speaker 5: He said it was some of them were sex workers, you.
Speaker 4: Know, they would think they were about getting ready to
have a sexual encounter. And sometimes he would have a
strap underneath his his somewhere in his truck that he
could just grab it, wrap it around their neck and
strangle them. I am almost one hundred percent confident that
he's a serial killer, and he's done this many times.
Speaker 5: I just believe it.
Speaker 1: Jen still waivers on whether she agrees with George on
this one. She is one hundred percent sure that William
was somehow involved in the murder and disposal of Rebecca Gould.
Speaker 9: I just and this is the the tragedy of it,
in a way, is that if only the state police
had shared a little bit with us, and we had
known William had been in the state of Arkansas, the
weekend and the murder. I mean, everything would have been
so different from our side the whole time. And then
him joining the group. I mean, that was a golden opportunity.
They're lucky that we're smart and like I'm used to
running sources and stuff and we know how to interview
or what to say and not to say, because we
could have totally screwed the whole thing up and scared
him off and he never would have gone to that
interview and confessed. But they also could have used us
to try to get information from him, if only they
would have communicated with us, you know. And this was
just what's so frustrating to me about this case. And
we're not here to defend William. I am one hundred
percent confident he was involved in this whole thing, and
maybe others, but there are just aspects of the investigation
and his confession that weren't vetted enough. For instance, his
timeline on this murder Monday morning, and they didn't challenge
him on any of those details. And just to clarify
for listeners, Williams, DNA, and Prince were never found in
that residence. I'm not saying they're not there. I'm sure
his DNA was there somewhere, but they did not have
anything else on him except his confession, which had parts
that cannot be true. And there's actually a lot of
das that would not approve an arrest warrant on this.
Speaker 1: It's no wonder this case has held the attention of
so many for nearly two decades. It's not just the
brutality of what happened to Rebecca. It's the sheer scale
of what we don't know, the conflicting timelines, the recycled alibis,
the parade of rumors, false leads, and players who still
haven't been entirely ruled out. William Miller is serving a
forty year sentence for murder he now insists he falsely
confessed to He continues to beg Jen and George to
uncover new evidence that will put Casey or someone else
in prison for this crime instead of him, But that
ship is sailed. He took a plea deal, he confessed,
he volunteered evidence, and in doing so, he gave up
almost any chance of appeal.
Speaker 9: So I've been to visit him three times, and George
actually got to interview him and take video of it.
Because he's an official journalist or what is it, George
media member. I guess that got you in, and so
I'm just if he's willing to keep talking to us,
I'm not going to give up because I feel compelled
to not only try to get the truth about Rebecca's case,
but also try to figure out if he has other victims.
And so I told him this last time. This is
just a couple months ago when I went with Jeremy.
I said, dude, we're about the same age, and barring
some major catastrophe or me getting cancer like, we're going
to be alive for about the same amount of time.
And I'm not going to stop talking to you.
Speaker 1: And in the absence of official help, it's civilians like
you and me who are stepping up and finding William's
other potential victims, not ego driven cops in short charts,
regular people like you and me with a moral compass,
a strong sense of right and wrong, and a need
for justice. People who will not stop asking questions even
when officials have long forgotten the case and told you
to shut up. Webslutes like this have already been calming
through other cold cases across every state. William ever set
foot in trying to make sense of what he vaguely
blurted out during his police interview.
Speaker 9: So we can't do it by ourselves. And so we
started this project several months ago and I just called
it Operation Rebecca, so I didn't know what else. I
couldn't come up with anything better. But I have an
official sign up form. I have a video on our
YouTube channel explaining the process of what we're doing, and
I just asked volunteers if to fill out the forum,
it's only four questions. Sign up for a state and
then watch the video, and then email me once you
watch a video, and I'll send you the links to
the Google Drive folder that has all the information you need.
Speaker 1: We'll post a link to gens info in the show
notes at Swordinscale dot com, so you too can join
the investigative fund. Now where did I put that magnifying
glass again?
Speaker 5: Anyway?
Speaker 1: I think this case proves justice doesn't always wear a badge.
Sometimes it looks like a true crime podcast enthusiast with
a search tab open at three am and way eat
too much coffee in their digestive system. Get twenty percent
off at Strongcoffeecompany dot com. With promo code Sword by
the way. But as I was saying, sometimes justice looks
just like you and just like me. Sometimes it requires
a hive of citizens to stand up for justice and
collectively uncover what a single mind cannot or will not.
It's kind of amazing to see it happen in real time.
And next time, maybe, just maybe, you'll be the reason
someone's story doesn't end in silence. YouTube dot com slash
Sword and Scale TVs, where you can find all three
seasons of Sword and Scale television. It's ongoing, new episodes
every month. That's gonna do it. Thank you for joining us.
Until next time, Stay safe.
Speaker 11: S