Speaker 1: This podcast is intended for mature audiences.
Speaker 2: Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 1: In the search for Kelly Wilson, who's been missing thirty years.
Speaker 1: We've talked about a lot of potential suspects, teenage boys,
Speaker 1: a former boss, some rich man, maybe even a hired hit.
Speaker 1: Well here's another one, a curveball.
Speaker 3: He has crossed my mind literally hundreds of times as
Speaker 3: whether or not he could be responsible, and I have
Speaker 3: maybe changed my mind a dozen.
Speaker 1: Town nearly fifteen years ago, February two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: on a lonely highway in East Texas, a state trooper
Speaker 1: pulled over a vehicle for an expired registration sticker. When
Speaker 1: the state trooper walked up to the car, he found
Speaker 1: three people inside, a twenty year old woman named Carol,
Speaker 1: her boyfriend who was eighteen, and the driver. His name
Speaker 1: was James Dixon Graves Dickie. The state trooper found booze
Speaker 1: in the car and a fully loaded twenty two caliber handgun.
Speaker 1: When he popped the trunk, there was weird stuff in there.
Speaker 1: Three fully loaded handguns, four digital cameras, a camcorder, a
Speaker 1: couple of tripods like for filming, an electrical sex toy,
Speaker 1: and porno DVDs. This was Dickie's car. Dickie Graves a
Speaker 1: Gilmer native living in the nearby town of Lone Star.
Speaker 1: Dicky was this schlubby, balding guy in his late forties
Speaker 1: with thick glasses and.
Speaker 2: A heavy beard.
Speaker 1: The young woman in the car with him, Carol, told
Speaker 1: the state trooper that she, Dickie, and her teenage boyfriend
Speaker 1: were driving to a motel across the state line and Shreveport, Louisiana,
Speaker 1: where Dickie was gone to film them having sex. The
Speaker 1: young woman riding with Dickie to Louisiana, Carol said that
Speaker 1: Dickie had been paying her to perform sex acts since
Speaker 1: she was fifteen. She'd seen him pay other women, including
Speaker 1: one with severe mental disabilities. Police got a warrant to
Speaker 1: search Dickie's house. They found all kinds of whips, masks, restraints,
Speaker 1: sex toys, costumes, and pornography involving very young children, all
Speaker 1: near children's toys and dolls, and a Cinderella bedspread. In
Speaker 1: one video, Dicky coax's the mentally disabled woman into sex
Speaker 1: by offering to go get Winnie the Pooh. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine, Dickie Graves was found guilty of nearly
Speaker 1: three dozen charges, including possession of child porn and aggravated
Speaker 1: sexual assault and indecency with a child. He was sentenced
Speaker 1: to a whopping one thousand, four hundred and forty years
Speaker 1: in prison. Dickie had an ex girlfriend and well, she.
Speaker 3: Was a little scared. She thought he was stalking her.
Speaker 3: He'd be out in the woods at now watching her house.
Speaker 1: This is Steve Cowan. He was the district attorney who
Speaker 1: prosecuted Dickie. Steve interviewed the ex girlfriend outside her house
Speaker 1: on a sweltering summer day.
Speaker 3: It was real hot, about one hundred degrees, and I'd
Speaker 3: sat out and talked her on the front porch. I
Speaker 3: had asked her the open ended question, was he ever
Speaker 3: obsessed with anything or anybody? And she said no. I
Speaker 3: left the house, I remember, as clear as a bell,
Speaker 3: and I went about one hundred yards down the road
Speaker 3: and stopped. And when I stopped at the stop sign,
Speaker 3: somebody started beating on my side glass. I rode my
Speaker 3: window down, and she said, Kelly Wilson, Kelly Wilson. He
Speaker 3: was obsessed with Kelly Wilson. I think she is the
Speaker 3: one that told me that he had clippings all over
Speaker 3: seemed like it might have been the kitchen, all over.
Speaker 1: The walls, newspaper clippings about Kelly Wilson all over the
Speaker 1: walls of a sex offender's house. I asked Steve about
Speaker 1: a rumor going around that Dicky Graves had a shrine
Speaker 1: to Kelly.
Speaker 3: I don't know about a shrine at his house. He
Speaker 3: did seem to have some sort of fascination with that case.
Speaker 3: I don't know if they ever linked him to the
Speaker 3: case of that just being a suspect. He did on
Speaker 3: a TV and appliant repair place just about two blocks
Speaker 3: from where the disappearance occurred.
Speaker 1: When Dicky's family members searched his repair shop near the
Speaker 1: movie store where Kelly was last seen, they found even
Speaker 1: more stuff about Kelly.
Speaker 3: Had apparently the key to the TV prepair shop building
Speaker 3: in Gilmer, and they went into that building and they
Speaker 3: told me that they found a box of clippings.
Speaker 4: There was a big box of articles about that Kelly
Speaker 4: Wilson case, So he apparently was very interested in it.
Speaker 1: But Steve also points out that Dicky was the kind
Speaker 1: of person who just got really fixated on certain topics
Speaker 1: mysteries from the Texas Battle for Independence, for example, and
Speaker 1: serial killers such as Ted Bundy and Beat k.
Speaker 3: He might have been the type of guy that would
Speaker 3: get obsessed about a historic fact or something. So I
Speaker 3: don't know whether they ever actually linked him directly to it,
Speaker 3: whether he was the person of interest. And I did
Speaker 3: occasional come across information and I thought might be useful
Speaker 3: to the Kelly Wilson investigator, and I passed whatever I
Speaker 3: had onto them. There were a lot of people trying
Speaker 3: to solve that case, and as you know, I'm sure
Speaker 3: there's dozens of people thought they had it right and
Speaker 3: they were wrong. I live in a fat world and
Speaker 3: not a speculative world, and trying to imagine ourselves into
Speaker 3: the scenario. You know, you're presuming to be innocent, and
Speaker 3: he's not here to defend himself. But I did find
Speaker 3: him to be smart and methodical, meticulosy, seemed to have
Speaker 3: a charming, winning personality, and a lot of people were
Speaker 3: taken in by that.
Speaker 1: Remember, by this time, Dicky was living in the nearby
Speaker 1: town of Lone Star, not his hometown Gilmer.
Speaker 3: When the search warrants were done in Lone Star at
Speaker 3: his house, some items were seized including a whole lot
Speaker 3: of old computer drives and things like that, because I
Speaker 3: thought it might track back to Kelly. Wilson say, I've
Speaker 3: probably spent a thousand hours on the case of my
Speaker 3: home time, because I thought the stakes were high. That
Speaker 3: there were five hundred thousand sexual images on his computer,
Speaker 3: and you know, we had pictures of people who had
Speaker 3: been in his house in some of them incompromising positions,
Speaker 3: and I was always curious about, you know, could he
Speaker 3: these be Kelly? And so I became familiar with what
Speaker 3: she looked like and pretty well eliminated her.
Speaker 1: Apparently there was no hard evidence linking Dicky Graves back
Speaker 1: to Kelly.
Speaker 3: And I wish you well on the investigation. I've always
Speaker 3: bill been real unsettled about unsolved murders.
Speaker 1: In earlier episodes, we talked about another guy who was
Speaker 1: convicted of child porn possession, Joe Henry, the video store
Speaker 1: manager who was last seen with Kelly. Joe and Dickie's
Speaker 1: businesses were just around the corner from each other. Dickie
Speaker 1: repaired TVs, Joe rented movies and repaired VCRs, and I
Speaker 1: recently confirmed the video store where Joe was the manager
Speaker 1: rented legal porn out of a space in the back.
Speaker 2: Did anything you found ever connect with Joe Henry, the
Speaker 2: Gilma resident.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 3: No, And that was a curious thing to me too.
Speaker 3: I thought maybe that might be a one off.
Speaker 1: Just to reiterate, nothing found during the search of Dickie's
Speaker 1: house linked back to Joe. I also asked Joe Henry
Speaker 1: about Dickie Graves.
Speaker 2: Did you know Dicky Graves back in the day?
Speaker 6: Dicky?
Speaker 2: Oh, that.
Speaker 7: Name is Dixon. His name is Dixon. Yes, Jackson was older.
Speaker 7: He just knew him when he came in. You ran
Speaker 7: a movie or something. He was kind of Uh. I'm
Speaker 7: not saying he's crazy, but just a little bit bizarre,
Speaker 7: a little bit different. That was rid of all I
Speaker 7: knew about him.
Speaker 2: So you didn't know about Dicky being involved in some
Speaker 2: of that shady stuff back in the day.
Speaker 7: No, that he was never brought up to me, you know,
Speaker 7: But I now let me tell you, I think James
Speaker 7: brought him up one time about I think he had
Speaker 7: mixed with James's wife or girlfriend or something. Is that,
Speaker 7: you know, I mean that kind of deal. But I
Speaker 7: don't know that had nothing to do with anything. Basically,
Speaker 7: he was just talking about that.
Speaker 1: Okay, this is just a weird little Gilmer thing. James
Speaker 1: is James York Brown, the local cop who was falsely
Speaker 1: accused of murdering Kelly Wilson and a satanic ritual in
Speaker 1: the woods outside of town. Dickie always resented James because well,
Speaker 1: James stole one of Dicky's girlfriends. And it turns out
Speaker 1: the girlfriend, her name is Debbie, was with James Brown
Speaker 1: on the night Kelly disappeared. She provided his alibi. Now
Speaker 1: that's small town romance. But here's another wrinkle. About a
Speaker 1: decade before Dicky's arrest and conviction for sex crimes, the
Speaker 1: police received an anonymous letter, a letter alleging that Kelly
Speaker 1: Wilson was buried under the house where Dicky lived back
Speaker 1: when Kelly vanished from Gilmour in nineteen ninety two. At
Speaker 1: the time, Dickie lived just minutes from Kelly's house. His
Speaker 1: family sold the house in nineteen ninety six, four years
Speaker 1: after Kelly's disappearance. Fast forward to the year two thousand
Speaker 1: and four. Jennifer Dean remember her, She was a high
Speaker 1: school friend of Kelly's. Out of the blue, Jennifer's husband
Speaker 1: gets a call from the Gilmer police chief.
Speaker 6: He is telling him that he's received an anonymous letter
Speaker 6: and it is saying that possibly Kelly is buried under
Speaker 6: our current home, which the home was owned by that
Speaker 6: van Dickie Graves at the time when she went missing.
Speaker 1: The anonymous letter sent to the police alleges that Kelly's
Speaker 1: body would be found underneath her own friend's house, a
Speaker 1: house owned by Dicky Graves at the time Kelly was
Speaker 1: last seen. Of course, Jennifer and her husband authorized the
Speaker 1: police to search for Kelly. It was time to start
Speaker 1: digging from imperative entertainment. I'm Wes Ferguson. This is Deviltown.
Speaker 1: This is chapter ten, Part two, real evidence. So Jennifer
Speaker 1: Dean hasn't seen her friend Kelly Wilson in like fifteen years.
Speaker 1: Now she's being told that Kelly might be buried underneath
Speaker 1: her property.
Speaker 6: I mean like they had abi jackets on, They had
Speaker 6: tables set up in my grandmother in law's driveway, which
Speaker 6: just it sits next to our house, and they put
Speaker 6: on these suits, I guess to keep from you know,
Speaker 6: contaminating some sort of scene. If they found anything, they
Speaker 6: had cadaver dogs. It was a whole deal. And I'm
Speaker 6: at home. You know, I've got a couple of little
Speaker 6: kids too, and I'm just like, wow, I can't believe
Speaker 6: this is actually happening. This is this is surreal. And
Speaker 6: they went everywhere, and at the end of the day,
Speaker 6: you know, Chief Grunning told my husband that, yeah, that
Speaker 6: they had the dogs had maybe hit on a couple
Speaker 6: of places under the house and then another place out
Speaker 6: because garage. It was a detached garage which she'd kind
Speaker 6: of turned into like a little workshop, and you know,
Speaker 6: they'd like to come back with I don't know what
Speaker 6: or who or if they bring more equipment or what
Speaker 6: to look a little further.
Speaker 8: I guess they dug a little under the house. They
Speaker 8: didn't find anything.
Speaker 6: They ended up taking up a big patch of concrete
Speaker 6: in the backyard and outside that little garage and there
Speaker 6: was nothing there.
Speaker 8: So it basically nothing turned up.
Speaker 2: The FBI's here, they're digging up. I mean, are you thinking, like,
Speaker 2: oh my gosh, like Kelly is is here.
Speaker 6: I just couldn't imagine that if that becomes a reality,
Speaker 6: that she's been buried under our house or on our
Speaker 6: property or something all this time, that I just I
Speaker 6: don't know.
Speaker 8: I couldn't even take myself there.
Speaker 5: It was.
Speaker 8: It was a sweet little home. We loved it.
Speaker 6: But that would have really kind of rocked the world
Speaker 6: if that's what had happened in it, you know, revealed
Speaker 6: some things about what happened to her that would that
Speaker 6: would definitely be something I want.
Speaker 5: But it's crazy.
Speaker 1: Not long ago, I got my hands on some letters
Speaker 1: that Dicky Graves sent from prison to an East Texas
Speaker 1: woman who was interested in Kelly's case. In the letters,
Speaker 1: Dicky denied ever knowing Kelly Wilson. Like so many potential
Speaker 1: suspects in this case, Dickie died in twenty fifteen, leading
Speaker 1: to yet another dead end. However, Jennifer says the cadaver
Speaker 1: dogs alerted on a couple of spots the police decided
Speaker 1: not to dig up. She has no idea why they
Speaker 1: avoided those spots, but she still owns the house. Jennifer
Speaker 1: can't help but wonder what the cops might have missed.
Speaker 1: She's even been in touch with private investigator Amanda Gamble
Speaker 1: to see about a new search of the property, anything
Speaker 1: to bring Kelly home. Like Kelly's other friends, Jennifer has
Speaker 1: spent countless hours sifting through the details of the case
Speaker 1: weighing the clues, looking for answers. We keep talking about
Speaker 1: a party, the party Kelly was supposed to go to
Speaker 1: after she got off work. If there was a party,
Speaker 1: Jennifer would have known about it, right, But Jennifer is skeptical.
Speaker 1: What teenagers throw a party on Sunday night.
Speaker 8: It wouldn't have.
Speaker 6: Been anything going on in Gilmour for the most part,
Speaker 6: and that was kind of weird.
Speaker 1: There are details from the night that Kelly disappeared that
Speaker 1: continue to stick with me that don't have answers. If
Speaker 1: the party happened at all, something tells me this wasn't
Speaker 1: a big blowout. I picture a handful of kids passing
Speaker 1: the time on some back road, a quiet, out of
Speaker 1: the way place they won't get caught drinking or passing
Speaker 1: around a joint. And Yet, if Kelly was going out
Speaker 1: at all that night, wouldn't she have brought along her
Speaker 1: purse and her bottle of vodka? Those were both found
Speaker 1: in her car the next morning. I guess someone could
Speaker 1: have returned the purse to her car later. Unfortunately, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned before, police didn't treat the car like a
Speaker 1: crime scene. They didn't even bother to collect fingerprints. You
Speaker 1: also have to remember it was kind of cold that
Speaker 1: January night, and Kelly was in cut off jeene shorts.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't she have wanted to change into something warmer before
Speaker 1: heading out? And if it also finds it a little
Speaker 1: strange that Kelly hadn't told her family where she was going.
Speaker 8: I didn't come home all night long.
Speaker 6: My mom would have known there'd been some major red flags.
Speaker 6: Compare that to a lot of other kids, and that
Speaker 6: wasn't necessarily normal. So what you know that might may
Speaker 6: point back to, yes, that she was she was doing
Speaker 6: some grown up stuff. I guess you could say, who knows,
Speaker 6: But for the rest of us, that would have kind of,
Speaker 6: you know, our parents would have been like, yeah, that's
Speaker 6: not this is not okay.
Speaker 1: That brings us back to another theory, that Kelly was
Speaker 1: mixed up with an older man or men, someone who
Speaker 1: maybe drove a dark luxury car, someone who'd given Kelly
Speaker 1: lots of cash.
Speaker 2: So you hadn't heard anything about her going to the
Speaker 2: parties with the.
Speaker 8: Older men, So that was.
Speaker 6: I don't know, I guess shocking to hear. Honestly, I
Speaker 6: don't know. So on one hand, I'm kind of like,
Speaker 6: wouldn't we know. I mean like we were partying with
Speaker 6: Kelly and we weren't like judging. I mean, we were
Speaker 6: all up to no good for the most part, just
Speaker 6: having fun.
Speaker 8: But why wouldn't she tell us?
Speaker 6: But then again, if that was actually happening and we
Speaker 6: didn't know, well, then there was there was this other
Speaker 6: side of things that was going on and we didn't
Speaker 6: know about it. I don't know what other girls, though,
Speaker 6: would have been participating in that if none of us
Speaker 6: were proposition to participate in I'm making myself sound terrible,
Speaker 6: and I really wasn't that bad, you know what I mean?
Speaker 8: Does that make sense?
Speaker 6: There were two or three or four girls that were
Speaker 6: getting paid to have sex with older men.
Speaker 8: Who who else would it be? I don't know.
Speaker 1: This too opens up more questions. What about a random stranger,
Speaker 1: some sketchy guy who just happens to drift through Gilmer
Speaker 1: that night, He sees Kelly, he wants her, he takes her.
Speaker 1: A lot of people have wondered about this possibility. Here's
Speaker 1: Sergeant Brown's son, Josh, who was a kid when Kelly disappeared.
Speaker 5: I've got a theory. I don't know if it holds water.
Speaker 5: What was a big serial killer that come through East Texas.
Speaker 1: Josh is referring to Samuel Little, who confessed to killing
Speaker 1: nearly one hundred women between nineteen seventy five and two
Speaker 1: thousand and five, a lot of confessions that turned out
Speaker 1: to be bogus. Little died a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: follow his tracks.
Speaker 5: He was there about the same time.
Speaker 1: I'm skeptical that it could have been Samuel Little or
Speaker 1: any other stranger. I mean, the killer had to have
Speaker 1: been someone who knew Kelly. Remember he or they even
Speaker 1: went to the trouble of returning Kelly's car key to
Speaker 1: her family, which means that he knew where she lived.
Speaker 1: And let's go beyond that, what cold blooded serial killer
Speaker 1: even takes the risk of returning the key. No, Kelly's
Speaker 1: abductor would have to be someone who, in a weird way,
Speaker 1: was still conscientious enough to give the keyback. As you
Speaker 1: can see everyone say for Lee, Harvey Oswald has had
Speaker 1: something whispered about them over the course of the thirty
Speaker 1: years since Kelly's disappearance. That's disturbing, but it also shows
Speaker 1: how this small town still has not let this story
Speaker 1: go so many years later. For me, still more questions,
Speaker 1: what about the bank deposit. A random criminal with no
Speaker 1: ties to Kelly or the video store would have surely
Speaker 1: kept the money for himself instead of dropping it off
Speaker 1: at the bank. Did Kelly get a ride to the
Speaker 1: bank from someone she trusted?
Speaker 6: I've always thought that it had to be somebody she knew.
Speaker 8: I just don't see Kelly.
Speaker 6: She was friendly, but she wouldn't stupid, you know, Like
Speaker 6: she wouldn't just get in the car with I mean,
Speaker 6: she'd have to be forced into a But eight o'clock
Speaker 6: Sunday night, right there on the square, that's a big gamble.
Speaker 8: That's a huge gamble. And I don't think it was
Speaker 8: coincidence their tire was slashed.
Speaker 6: I think that that was part of what happened.
Speaker 1: I don't know about the slash tire. What about her
Speaker 1: tire getting slashed two nights earlier? And remember a girl
Speaker 1: who worked with Kelly at the video store also got
Speaker 1: her tire slashed the previous night. Private investigator Amanda Gamble
Speaker 1: has been working a different angle, and Amanda has an announcement,
Speaker 1: where are we now with the search for Kelly compared
Speaker 1: to maybe like when you started this search almost a
Speaker 1: year ago.
Speaker 5: We have uncovered.
Speaker 9: New evidence that has never been released before by individuals
Speaker 9: that didn't talk in the past that are now feeling
Speaker 9: more comfortable to come forward and talk.
Speaker 5: Even since the podcast has started. We don't have just
Speaker 5: kind of a general location anymore.
Speaker 9: We actually have more of a specific area and a
Speaker 9: physical location of where she could possibly be buried.
Speaker 2: So you think you have this location, I mean, this
Speaker 2: is huge. This is something that you know you had
Speaker 2: mentioned to me early on, but I was trying to
Speaker 2: be really careful not giving away too much. What can
Speaker 2: you tell us about this location that you have.
Speaker 5: I won't release the exact area.
Speaker 2: And you still think there was a group of guys
Speaker 2: that took Kelly out to some like a pasture, and then.
Speaker 9: I think there's more than one person involved for sure.
Speaker 9: I don't know about necessarily the pasture. I think that
Speaker 9: it is going to be wooded area.
Speaker 2: And so you're you're still looking at like a few
Speaker 2: different locations then.
Speaker 10: Nope, just one.
Speaker 1: Here's more from my conversation with private investigator Amanda Gamble.
Speaker 1: I asked how she can be so sure of the
Speaker 1: location for Kelly's body. Do you know that because of
Speaker 1: like confidential informants? How do you know this is the place.
Speaker 5: Well, one would be a confidential informant.
Speaker 9: And when is since you had started the podcast, we
Speaker 9: actually had an individual come forward that was actually blatantly
Speaker 9: told where the location was, why the person that had
Speaker 9: buried Kelly, And so we've got to you know, really
Speaker 9: validate that information, and so far we've been able to
Speaker 9: validate it.
Speaker 6: Well.
Speaker 2: I mean, that would be so amazing for Kelly's friends
Speaker 2: and her parents to finally have closure and know at
Speaker 2: least know where their daughter is.
Speaker 5: Right, yes, definitely.
Speaker 9: When this happened, you know, I was a child just
Speaker 9: like you are. And over the years, you know, this
Speaker 9: has always been something that has I hate to use
Speaker 9: the word haunted, but it has, it's haunted everybody in
Speaker 9: Northeast Texas and beyond talking with her mother.
Speaker 5: Weekly, you know, sometimes daily.
Speaker 9: That is one thing that I know both of her
Speaker 9: parents want is to know what happened where she's at,
Speaker 9: to be able to have that closure and be able
Speaker 9: to have a place to like their daughter's risk.
Speaker 2: I've talked to you and I've talked to Kelly's friends
Speaker 2: about these kind of powerful men and Gilmer, older men
Speaker 2: that might have been involved in this. Do you still
Speaker 2: think I mean, is that the direction you're going still
Speaker 2: thinking that it involved these kind of older like maybe wealthier,
Speaker 2: more powerful men and Gilmer.
Speaker 9: At this time, would I be willing to put that
Speaker 9: on this stand, you know, in front of a jury.
Speaker 9: Not completely, But do I see that being a significant
Speaker 9: part in the fact that it has not been solved
Speaker 9: in thirty years?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 2: Is there anything more that you can reveal about that?
Speaker 9: Not at this time, but all of that information will
Speaker 9: soon be going to law enforcement.
Speaker 2: When do you think that you'll have enough information that
Speaker 2: you can come forward with it to long and give
Speaker 2: it to I think you said the FBI.
Speaker 9: Right, I am gonna give a lot of that to
Speaker 9: the FBI.
Speaker 5: I will.
Speaker 9: I do plan on talking to Gilmer police, probably within
Speaker 9: the next few weeks, and then I very well may
Speaker 9: also contact the Texas Rangers.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Amanda is asking for people to speak up. If
Speaker 1: they know anything about Kelly's disappearance.
Speaker 5: They should come forward.
Speaker 9: I mean, at this point in time, the way that
Speaker 9: I really what I want to get through to people
Speaker 9: is that Number one, you don't need to have that
Speaker 9: fear factor. I feel like there was so much fear
Speaker 9: instilled in then thirty years ago. Coming forward with the
Speaker 9: information that you have that is going to be able
Speaker 9: to give a family closure.
Speaker 5: Some of the people.
Speaker 9: That were, you know, higher up then, or people that
Speaker 9: were trying to conceal the truth, they're also dead. Don't
Speaker 9: be afraid to tell the truth. Don't be afraid to
Speaker 9: come forward with information that can give a family closure.
Speaker 9: Her mother and her father are both close to seventy,
Speaker 9: if not already in their seventies.
Speaker 5: They deserve justice for their daughter. Kelly deserves justice.
Speaker 9: And instead of everyone being so afraid to speak up,
Speaker 9: don't be afraid because you don't know how many more
Speaker 9: people have gone through what Kelly went through. You don't
Speaker 9: know how many more people are victims. To me, Kelly
Speaker 9: would want them to come forward. She'd want the truth
Speaker 9: to be told. What's done in the dark always comes
Speaker 9: to light. We don't get to say when the life
Speaker 9: gets turned down necessarily, but it will come out.
Speaker 2: It seems like we're right on the corner, right on
Speaker 2: the edge.
Speaker 9: That's right. The wheels of justice turned slow. That's something
Speaker 9: I'm sure a lot of people have hired in it,
Speaker 9: and it's the chories.
Speaker 5: I do believe there are some higher ups that.
Speaker 9: Probably did have involvement in it or the cover up
Speaker 9: of it.
Speaker 5: I mean, definitely the cover up of it.
Speaker 9: But why would they fill the need to cover it up?
Speaker 1: And where are the police in all this? Remember the
Speaker 1: theft of Kelly's case files from the police station. Was
Speaker 1: that an inside job? From the details we know, that's
Speaker 1: certainly plausible. And what about that random guy I met
Speaker 1: by the railroad tracks?
Speaker 2: Jared?
Speaker 1: He said, a man from Gilmer got the charges dropped
Speaker 1: against three guys he'd arrested in exchange for murdering Kelly.
Speaker 1: I asked my producer to bleep the man's name because
Speaker 1: Jared seems so unreliable. Also, I want to add that
Speaker 1: I don't believe his claims about Kelly being on hard drugs,
Speaker 1: but I'll just say it. Jared named a former cop.
Speaker 1: There is another story I heard from Amanda. Supposedly, Kelly
Speaker 1: and two of her friends were cruising around one night teenagers,
Speaker 1: drinking and driving when they got pulled over by a
Speaker 1: law enforcement officer. Kelly's two friends quickly tossed their drinks
Speaker 1: out the window. When the cop walked up to the
Speaker 1: girl's car, he didn't knock on the driver's window. He
Speaker 1: went to Kelly's door, She followed him back to the
Speaker 1: squad car and was gone for a while. Then she
Speaker 1: came back, her drink still in her hand, laughing because
Speaker 1: her friends had tossed out their drinks. It was very
Speaker 1: dark that night, and Amanda says Kelly's friends didn't see
Speaker 1: the officer who pulled them over, and Kelly never said
Speaker 1: what she was doing with the cop when he called
Speaker 1: her back to his squad car. Did the cops pursue
Speaker 1: these leads? Would they have led to information that solved
Speaker 1: the case.
Speaker 5: That's the thing to me.
Speaker 9: If they truly wanted to solve it, it had then
Speaker 9: been solved. There's no way in hell that we have
Speaker 9: found out all the information that we have found out
Speaker 9: in the short amount of time. I mean, if you
Speaker 9: look at it, it's a short amount of time compared
Speaker 9: to thirty years that we have found out that they haven't.
Speaker 9: But the reason is is because we constantly are working
Speaker 9: on it. We constantly are calling, We're trying to find out.
Speaker 5: They're not. They're sitting on it, going, well, let's see
Speaker 5: it now thirty years.
Speaker 1: To be fair, we really don't know what the cops
Speaker 1: are doing to find Kelly. If anything, because they never
Speaker 1: would talk to me. So Amanda and I have been
Speaker 1: picking apart the Kelly Wilson case for several months now.
Speaker 1: There are more details I wish I could share, but
Speaker 1: I just haven't been able to confirm them yet. I
Speaker 1: really feel like we could be close, but I also
Speaker 1: think I should tap the brakes just a little. In
Speaker 1: my many conversations with Amanda, I've marveled at her ability
Speaker 1: to dig up information to get people to open up
Speaker 1: and reveal secrets they've locked away for decades. But I've
Speaker 1: also found that Amanda tends to be far more certain
Speaker 1: than I am about the clues we uncover, and her
Speaker 1: certainty can pivot to a different scenario a totally different
Speaker 1: suspect in a flash. Was Kelly silenced because she uncovered
Speaker 1: a drug ring or a poorno cabal? Was she the
Speaker 1: victim of a botched abortion. Who was the older man
Speaker 1: in the black luxury car? Was there some kind of
Speaker 1: freak accident, an overdose?
Speaker 2: We just don't know.
Speaker 1: For what it's worth, Amanda is convinced that Gilmer police
Speaker 1: were pursuing the wrong suspects. She believes the guy Kelly
Speaker 1: had been dating, Chris Denton and his cousin Brent Ward
Speaker 1: are innocent in Kelly's disappearance. Also, for what it's worth,
Speaker 1: I have not seen or heard any concrete evidence linking
Speaker 1: Kelly's boss Joe Henry to the crime. Like his friend
Speaker 1: Philip Williams.
Speaker 7: Said, he had to be in wrong Blaze at the
Speaker 7: wrong death.
Speaker 1: Amanda doesn't tell me everything she hears. But even though
Speaker 1: we seem to be getting closer, so much still feels
Speaker 1: like conjecture. Remember, everyone is innocent until proven guilty. This
Speaker 1: is the last episode of Deviltown for now, although I'll
Speaker 1: continue to follow the case and I hope I'll be
Speaker 1: back soon with good news. I can't help but think
Speaker 1: about all the other interviews I've done, reading old news
Speaker 1: clips and case files, everything I've learned about Kelly. There
Speaker 1: are still little details that I'm not sure I'll ever
Speaker 1: really understand. I do know this, Kelly was coming of
Speaker 1: age in a world of men, men and boys who
Speaker 1: were not often held accountable for the harm they caused family, friends, neighbors.
Speaker 1: So many people would rather blame an imaginary cult or
Speaker 1: some other conspiracy for crimes that lay at the feet
Speaker 1: of our own sons or brothers. I named this series Doubletown,
Speaker 1: because I'd always been so interested in how Gilmer got
Speaker 1: swept up in the satanic panic, how the case of
Speaker 1: a missing girl was lost amid shocking allegations of cannibalism
Speaker 1: and sacrificed babies, How left to run wild conspiracies and
Speaker 1: falsehoods can ruin innocent lives. The real evil, as I
Speaker 1: see it, is that one or more of these men
Speaker 1: from Gilmer, maybe someone you've seen at church on the
Speaker 1: town square or even the yamboree in the fall, This
Speaker 1: man got away with Kelly's murder, and so many in
Speaker 1: town avert their eyes in her last photographs, Kelly Day
Speaker 1: Wilson is forever seventeen. She's a high school senior who
Speaker 1: works hard, loves to dance, has so many friends and
Speaker 1: loved ones. Five years after Kelly was last seen on
Speaker 1: the town square in Gilmer, Texas, her dad Robbie, had
Speaker 1: her declared legally dead. It was a messy step to
Speaker 1: collect a modest life insurance policy. Nobody bothered to tell
Speaker 1: Kelly's mom, Kathy until this year. In the eyes of
Speaker 1: the law, Kelly isn't just missing, She's dead. If she'd lived,
Speaker 1: she would have been forty eight years old. Remember Kelly's
Speaker 1: friend Michelle. She's the one who moved in with Kelly's
Speaker 1: family when she had a baby during their junior year
Speaker 1: in high school. These days, Michelle is left to wonder
Speaker 1: what life would have been like if Kelly was still here.
Speaker 11: Thought she would have been a great person. She was
Speaker 11: just so happy and full of life. You know, I
Speaker 11: just see her getting married and being extremely happy, extremely successful.
Speaker 11: She was very smart. I don't remember what she wanted
Speaker 11: to do for a living. I wish I did, but
Speaker 11: I don't. And I just feel like she would have
Speaker 11: been highly successful and probably had kids like me and
Speaker 11: I don't know kids, probably would have been friends if
Speaker 11: she still lived around here. I'm still close to a
Speaker 11: lot of my friends in high school, and our kids
Speaker 11: have been friends. My kids ended up babysitting their kids
Speaker 11: because you know, I've started my family so early.
Speaker 5: But I just feel like she'd be one of us.
Speaker 5: I guess.
Speaker 1: Deviltown is a production of Imperative Entertainment. It was written
Speaker 1: and created by me Wes Ferguson. Executive producer is Jason Hoak.
Speaker 1: Audio engineering and editing by Shane Freeman and Jason Hoak.
Speaker 1: Original score is by Robert Ellis recording by Austin Sissler
Speaker 1: at east Side Studios. If you like the show, leave
Speaker 1: a review, and don't forget to tell your friends thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.