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Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 4: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them Geesy Bundy Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 4: host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 5: Good Evening. Deborah Sue Williamson was a newly married young
Speaker 5: woman living in Lubbock, Texas. On August twenty fourth, nineteen
Speaker 5: seventy five, one night, while her husband was away at work,
Speaker 5: she was brutally stabbed seventeen times in the carport of
Speaker 5: their home. Many suspects were investigated, but no one was charged.
Speaker 5: The case went cold until the mid nineteen eighties when
Speaker 5: Henry Lee Lucas, a man notorious for admitting to murders
Speaker 5: he didn't commit, confessed to her murder. It was profiled
Speaker 5: in the Netflix dock series The Confession Killer. There was
Speaker 5: only one problem, he didn't kill her. Her mother and
Speaker 5: stepfather proved Lucas didn't end Debbie's life, and the case
Speaker 5: went cold once more. True crime author and investigative journalist
Speaker 5: George Jared teamed with his friend and former Army counterintelligence
Speaker 5: officer and university professor Jennifer Bouscholtz to study the case
Speaker 5: in depth. The two became acquainted while trying to solve
Speaker 5: the unsolved murder of Rebecca Gould. In that case, they
Speaker 5: were able to lure the man now charged with the
Speaker 5: twenty two year old woman slaying onto a Facebook page.
Speaker 5: Then her interactions with him prior to his arrest garnered
Speaker 5: national attention. Their goal was to do the same in
Speaker 5: this case. Follow Their year long journey, they took them
Speaker 5: from the mountains of Colorado to the deserts of West Texas.
Speaker 5: Their investigation led them through roe crop fields of the
Speaker 5: Mississippi Della and into the Rolling Ozark Kills in Missouri.
Speaker 5: The tandem was able to track down nearly every witness,
Speaker 5: person of interest, and suspect in the case. Along the way,
Speaker 5: they created a massive team of citizen detectives that have
Speaker 5: brought resources to bear on a case that is now
Speaker 5: forty seven years old. The team created an investigative file
Speaker 5: many times larger than the original police file. The goal
Speaker 5: was to create a web that the killer could not escape.
Speaker 5: Silent Silhouette is an in depth look into the work
Speaker 5: that was done, complete with full interviews of every key
Speaker 5: player in this real life tragedy. One thing became clear
Speaker 5: as the investigation unfolded, this case is solvable and it's
Speaker 5: only a matter of time before this killer is behind bars.
Speaker 5: The book that we're featuring this evening is Silent Silhouette
Speaker 5: Who Killed Deborah Sue, with my special guesting investigative journalist
Speaker 5: and author George Jared Welcome back to the program, and
Speaker 5: thank you so much for this interview.
Speaker 3: George Jared Dan thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much. Nice to have you back, and
Speaker 5: congratulations on Silent Silhouette. Let's start off immediately with what
Speaker 5: happens August twenty fourth, nineteen seventy five, and when you're
Speaker 5: explaining the Sunday night August twenty fourth, nineteen seventy five
Speaker 5: in Lubbock, Texas, introduced Bob Lemon, his wife Joyce Elizabeth
Speaker 5: Liz who's eight years old, and Deborah Sue Debbie Sue Williamson,
Speaker 5: and she had just married her fiance, Doug earlier that summer,
Speaker 5: so if you could, and they also had spent that
Speaker 5: summer in Buffalo Spring near Buffalo Springs Lake. So tell
Speaker 5: us about all these friends and the family connections and
Speaker 5: what they did the day before with some of those
Speaker 5: same people introduced some of those people.
Speaker 3: Sure, So, Debora Sue Williamson was eighteen years old. She
Speaker 3: was a newlywedged She had just married her husband, Doug
Speaker 3: in June of that year, and so they were married
Speaker 3: for roughly ten weeks. The day before the murder, they
Speaker 3: had gone out to Buffalo Springs Lake. It's this it's
Speaker 3: a recreational area just outside of Lubbock, Texas. Debbie was
Speaker 3: an avid water skier and so they went out. They
Speaker 3: had some friends that were with them, another couple Mike
Speaker 3: and Dorothy Coffin. They were recently married as well. They
Speaker 3: had a guy named Paul who Debbie had sort of
Speaker 3: dated before Doug, and Paul was also good friends with Doug.
Speaker 3: They had been friends for years. And there was another
Speaker 3: guy named Lex. He was just another friend. Debbie and
Speaker 3: he had actually gone to prom together, I think maybe
Speaker 3: when she was a junior. But they went his friends
Speaker 3: who is kind of a friend thing. And so there
Speaker 3: was a group of people out there, and there were
Speaker 3: more people out of the lake, but those are the
Speaker 3: primary people that we know of. They were all out
Speaker 3: there water skiing. So fast forward to the night of
Speaker 3: the murder, around seven o'clock that night, Debbie is picked
Speaker 3: up at her house by her stepdad, Bob Lemons, and
Speaker 3: her mother Joyce, and her sister Elizabeth Liz. They decided
Speaker 3: to go to the Pizza Inn where Doug is the
Speaker 3: manager and Paul, the friend actually had just been hired
Speaker 3: as a cook there. So they go around seven o'clock.
Speaker 3: At one point they get a little busy and they
Speaker 3: needed change for the registered so Debbie actually left and
Speaker 3: went and got changed from. We're not sure where she
Speaker 3: went to go get the change from, but she brought
Speaker 3: the change back and then around eight point fifteen ish
Speaker 3: she leaves with her family. They take her back to
Speaker 3: her house. Her and Doug lived in a house on
Speaker 3: the south end of town. It was kind of a
Speaker 3: rural area, but it was in the city limits. The
Speaker 3: house was actually the house that Doug grew up in.
Speaker 3: His parents had moved to another house, and when they
Speaker 3: got married, they gave his childhood home to them as
Speaker 3: a house to live in. And so they drop her
Speaker 3: off around probably eight thirty ish. They go back to
Speaker 3: their house. Around nine o'clock, Doug calls and says, hey,
Speaker 3: we're getting pretty busy, and she was supposed to return
Speaker 3: to the Pizza Inn that night anyway, because Doug had
Speaker 3: borrowed one hundred and forty dollars from the cash register
Speaker 3: earlier in the week by a Cebee radio. Now there,
Speaker 3: it was kind of like an IOU system there, and
Speaker 3: it was acceptable to do that, but the money had
Speaker 3: to be the register had to be reconciled before the
Speaker 3: end of the business week, which the business week would
Speaker 3: have ended that Sunday night, And so she had one
Speaker 3: hundred and forty dollars in her purse that she was
Speaker 3: supposed to take back up there, and it was also
Speaker 3: inventory night, so he left Paul, Doug and Debbie were
Speaker 3: supposed to do inventory that night, so she was gonna
Speaker 3: come back and help with that. So she told Doug
Speaker 3: when he called that she was going to finish watching
Speaker 3: her show, which we believe is the movie The Odd Couple.
Speaker 3: That's what the TV was turned to. It ended around
Speaker 3: nine thirty that night, But Danie'll remember, back in those days,
Speaker 3: you would have the feature movie of the week and
Speaker 3: then normally the movie would actually end around nine fifteen ish.
Speaker 3: Then they would have a very long commercial break and
Speaker 3: then they would preview the movie or whatever was going
Speaker 3: to be shown the next week, and so that's kind
Speaker 3: of how it was back in those times. So realistically,
Speaker 3: around not nine fifteen, she could have been walking out
Speaker 3: the door. Well, ten o'clock comes, no Debbie. Doug starts calling,
Speaker 3: calls his house, Mike. He calls Mike and Dorothy, the
Speaker 3: couple that they'd gone out with, the day before. He
Speaker 3: calls Bob and Joyce. No one knows where Debbie's at. Again,
Speaker 3: it's nineteen seventy five, there's no cell phones. Obviously, it's
Speaker 3: a different time. You know, people could be out of
Speaker 3: pocket and it wouldn't have been suspicious, you know. But
Speaker 3: then eleven o'clock comes, she doesn't show up. Midnight comes,
Speaker 3: they shut the store down, and then finally at one
Speaker 3: o'clock he tells Mary and the waitress who's been working
Speaker 3: with him all night, I'm going to go home and
Speaker 3: check on Debbie. I gotta see what's going on here.
Speaker 3: So he leaves. As he's leaving, Paul Head is coming
Speaker 3: back to the pizza in. Paul had asked to leave
Speaker 3: earlier to go on a date, so he left around
Speaker 3: eight forty five that night, and so as Doug leaves,
Speaker 3: Paul is coming back in and then their friend Lex
Speaker 3: had been there probably for about an hour and a half,
Speaker 3: just waiting, and Lex didn't work at the pizza in
Speaker 3: Lex would come and help them do things at the store,
Speaker 3: and they and then Doug would like give him a pizza.
Speaker 3: It's one of those kind of arrangements, so it's just
Speaker 3: kind of helping a friend out and then he would
Speaker 3: get a free pizza out of the deal. So Mary
Speaker 3: and the waitress, Paul and Lex a there. Doug drives
Speaker 3: to his home. He immediately notices something that is amiss.
Speaker 3: The back door is wide open, so he gets out
Speaker 3: of his pissed car. He starts to walk up to
Speaker 3: the backstep and he stumbles upon Debbie's body. She had
Speaker 3: been stabbed seventeen times, her pants had been pulled down,
Speaker 3: and her shirt had been pulled up to make it
Speaker 3: look like she'd been raped, but later her autopsy indicated
Speaker 3: that she had not been sexually assaulted. The kitchen window
Speaker 3: right above or right near the porch had been knocked
Speaker 3: out with a garden hoe. It was kind of strange
Speaker 3: because the back door was left wide open, and this
Speaker 3: window most like human, an average sized man, it'd be
Speaker 3: really hard for him to fit through there, and it's
Speaker 3: kind of high, so it'd be hard to get in there.
Speaker 3: And then if you do go through the window, you're
Speaker 3: gonna there's a kitchen sink right there, So that was
Speaker 3: obviously a ruise. It was just just trying to throw
Speaker 3: the investigators off, especially since there's also a sliding glass
Speaker 3: door right there. If you're going to shatter a door,
Speaker 3: you could shatter that and walk right through it. So
Speaker 3: Doug panics. He gets back into his car. He drives
Speaker 3: back to the pizza ind which the pizza end was
Speaker 3: only about probably four minutes away, so it wasn't that far.
Speaker 3: He comes back, he goes inside and he tells them Hi,
Speaker 3: he said Debbie's been raped, and so he gets on
Speaker 3: the phone and he tells the dispatcher that his wife
Speaker 3: has been raped and that he needs a police officer now.
Speaker 3: Lex and Paul jump into Lex's car. They drive out
Speaker 3: there and Lex actually checks Debbie for a polse and
Speaker 3: of course she's obviously dead, and then Doug arrives moments later,
Speaker 3: and then they wait for the police. A little bit
Speaker 3: later that night, not much later, Bob and Joyce show up.
Speaker 3: Interesting thing about Bob is Bob at this point in
Speaker 3: his life was legally blind. He couldn't even drive, and
Speaker 3: as soon as he finds out that something's happened to Debbie,
Speaker 3: they're trying to keep him away. He quite literally knocked
Speaker 3: two police officers to the ground and rushed to her.
Speaker 3: And then he said, he said for the rest of
Speaker 3: his life. He immediately regretted that decision because he saw her.
Speaker 3: And so that's how this odyssey started.
Speaker 5: Paul Neil, Let's go back to Doug who he was
Speaker 5: the assistant manager. Paul Neil, but he had only been
Speaker 5: working for a couple of weeks with Doug. He had
Speaker 5: spent the summer and missed the wedding between Debbie and Doug,
Speaker 5: and some question that he'd been working out of town.
Speaker 5: But it was odd some people thought that he had
Speaker 5: missed this wedding. At eight o'clock he had asked Doug
Speaker 5: if he could leave and go on a date. He
Speaker 5: had shown up for work, clocked in after five o'clock.
Speaker 5: Tell us about why he was asking to leave and
Speaker 5: the timeline of when he actually did leave.
Speaker 3: So, Paul Neil, he was he dated Debbie and then
Speaker 3: she split up with him to go out with Doug
Speaker 3: and it was pretty obvious that he was upset by this.
Speaker 3: It was it was in the contemporaneous police reports that
Speaker 3: we were able to get our hands on that they
Speaker 3: talked to him about this several times. Joyce the mom
Speaker 3: had said, you know that Paul that At one point
Speaker 3: Paul even asked, Joyce, you know, why doesn't Debbie love me?
Speaker 3: And so there was obviously some friction there when she
Speaker 3: decided to date one of his best friends, and so
Speaker 3: he was not invited to their wedding. I guess it
Speaker 3: had been contentious enough. Even Actually, since we wrote the book,
Speaker 3: we've actually had a couple more witnesses approaches that we
Speaker 3: didn't even know about, who could speak to it a
Speaker 3: little bit more. And so Paul was out of town
Speaker 3: all summer working I think, like in the ool fields
Speaker 3: or something like that in Texas well. A couple of
Speaker 3: weeks before the murder, he comes back to town and Doug
Speaker 3: hires him to be an assistant manager slash cook at
Speaker 3: the Pizza Inn, and so on the night of the
Speaker 3: murder he's there cooking. Well, at eight o'clock he asked Doug.
Speaker 3: He said, hey, can I leave early? I've got a
Speaker 3: date with a woman named Tina, and Doug says that's fine,
Speaker 3: And Doug didn't have a problem with it because the
Speaker 3: manager's bonus there. This way the system worked, he got
Speaker 3: a bigger bonus every month depending on how much money
Speaker 3: he saved on labor. So letting him go on a
Speaker 3: Sunday night was actually perfect because they're normally not busy.
Speaker 3: So when Paul's interviewed by police a couple of days later,
Speaker 3: they asked him, they say, so when did you leave?
Speaker 3: He said, I left at nine to ten, and then
Speaker 3: he arrived for his date with Tina at around ten o'clock.
Speaker 3: The problem is is that we got a copy of
Speaker 3: his time card, and his time card said he clocked
Speaker 3: out at eight forty three, and so there's that's a
Speaker 3: difference of almost thirty minutes. Another thing happened right around
Speaker 3: the time that he ended up leaving too. Remember I
Speaker 3: told you that Doug had called Debbie to tell her
Speaker 3: that they were busy and that he may need some
Speaker 3: help if she needed to maybe come early. Well, there
Speaker 3: was one other thing that Doug had to talk to
Speaker 3: her about. Paul asked Doug if he could take a
Speaker 3: shower at their house, and his reasoning was was that
Speaker 3: Debbie and Doug's house was much closer to Tina's house,
Speaker 3: the woman he was going on a date with, and
Speaker 3: so he wanted to know if he could go by
Speaker 3: there and take a shower. Well, Doug told Debbie this,
Speaker 3: and this is one thing we don't know for certain.
Speaker 3: We don't know if because Paul said at the time
Speaker 3: he said, well, if she's there by herself, I don't
Speaker 3: want to go there. He said that, But we don't
Speaker 3: know that Debbie knew that he wasn't coming, because we
Speaker 3: think Doug just told her, Hey, Paul's going to swing
Speaker 3: by and take a shower. And so this detail really
Speaker 3: jumped out to us because we thought it was very odd.
Speaker 3: I've asked a lot of people, and again not blaming anybody,
Speaker 3: not saying it that he had anything to do with it,
Speaker 3: but I haven't found anybody who who could plausibly come
Speaker 3: up with a reason why an ex boyfriend would be
Speaker 3: coming over to take a shower to married woman's house.
Speaker 5: You talked to Tina McBride the date that he went
Speaker 5: on that night, and it was a very enlightening conversation
Speaker 5: you had with her. Tell us what she noted and
Speaker 5: what was the timeline for her when he had called
Speaker 5: her about the date. Give us those details and the
Speaker 5: description of his appearance and his behavior by Tina Sure.
Speaker 3: So tracking her down was a challenge. She lives, I
Speaker 3: hate to say it. She lives in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 3: She lives out in the Texas desert. So we I mean,
Speaker 3: at one point when we went to Lewck in August
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty one, she was on not at the
Speaker 3: top of our list of people, but she was one
Speaker 3: of the people that we really wanted to talk to,
Speaker 3: right And so we finally found an address for her.
Speaker 3: And it was out in the middle of nowhere. Like
Speaker 3: I drove my car like eight miles down. It's not
Speaker 3: even gravel road, it was a trail, and there were
Speaker 3: oil jacks bobbing up and down. There was you know,
Speaker 3: I don't know what was the terms prop vista. You know,
Speaker 3: it was like it was like a desert, you know, pumbleweeds,
Speaker 3: one eyed, Susan's everywhere, cows everywhere. So we get to
Speaker 3: their house and her husband was outside playing with a
Speaker 3: dog in their front yard, beautiful ranch style house, and
Speaker 3: he looked at me kind of weird. He was looking
Speaker 3: at my car. I know he was thinking. He was thinking,
Speaker 3: how in the world did you get this card here?
Speaker 3: And so we said, can we talk to Tina? And
Speaker 3: he goes, well, yes, she's inside making lunch. And so
Speaker 3: we opened the door and as soon as she sees us,
Speaker 3: she says, you want to talk about Debora c. Williamson,
Speaker 3: don't you? And we said yes, and she goes and
Speaker 3: you want to know how Paul Neil acted that night?
Speaker 3: And we said yes, And so she invited us into
Speaker 3: her home and we sat and talked to her for
Speaker 3: a couple hours. She said she was very agitated that night.
Speaker 3: And Dan, the thing of it is is that told
Speaker 3: Jennifer this later, I said, you was watching her body language,
Speaker 3: and even all these years later, I could tell that
Speaker 3: she was aggravated that he was late picking her up
Speaker 3: because they were supposed to go on a date. It
Speaker 3: wasn't it. He was supposed to arrive before ten o'clock
Speaker 3: and he didn't. And when he did arrive, she said
Speaker 3: he was covered in water. It was so like he
Speaker 3: had just got out of the shower. And she said
Speaker 3: he didn't smell at pizza at all, like he had
Speaker 3: really scrubbed himself. Off, and so they get in this
Speaker 3: car and they're driving around and he did not want
Speaker 3: to go. Like, she worked part time at that pizza
Speaker 3: Inn and she was getting ready to go to college
Speaker 3: at Texas A, and m like, we're going to leave
Speaker 3: the next week. So she wanted to go by there.
Speaker 3: And you know, it was a thing to do in
Speaker 3: the seventies, you go hang out parking lots at you know,
Speaker 3: restaurants and stuff like that. And so she wanted to
Speaker 3: go to Pizza Inn because she knew people there and
Speaker 3: people who hung out around there at night. He wanted
Speaker 3: to go to the McDonald's down the street, and he
Speaker 3: would not go to the Pizza Inn. So that was
Speaker 3: aggravating her. And she also said that he was acting
Speaker 3: very very nervous.
Speaker 5: You talk about too, that the timeline that he told
Speaker 5: her or she said that he had called and said
Speaker 5: he was still at work, was nine thirty. So very
Speaker 5: very interesting development there.
Speaker 3: Yes, I forgot about that detailed Dan. So he called
Speaker 3: her at nine thirty and said that he was still
Speaker 3: at work. That's correct, and so and again this was
Speaker 3: in the contemporaneous police report. You know, one advantage that
Speaker 3: we had in this case was because of the Henry
Speaker 3: Lee Lucas fiasco that you noted at the beginning, the
Speaker 3: Lobboit Police Department or the DA, not the Loved police department,
Speaker 3: but the DA in the case got really aggravated with
Speaker 3: Bob Lemmons because they had fought so hard to prove
Speaker 3: that Henry le Lucas didn't kill the daughter.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: Well, there was a moment where Bob was sitting across
Speaker 3: a desk from the DA, and the DA had the
Speaker 3: entire case file sitting in front of him, and he
Speaker 3: pushed the entire thing to Bob and says and says
Speaker 3: something to the effect of, well, if you don't think
Speaker 3: we can solve it, maybe you can. And so Bob
Speaker 3: took the entire case file and so the family has
Speaker 3: had this case file since then. So this provided us
Speaker 3: access to the original reports.
Speaker 5: Now the Lubbock, Texas how police responded to this is
Speaker 5: obviously part of your investigation. Almost all the people that
Speaker 5: you were able to interview were interviewed by police, but
Speaker 5: as you write that, despite anything, they were never reinterviewed again.
Speaker 5: People like Tina was interviewed once, and some of these
Speaker 5: interviews were very brief, and so tell us about your investigation,
Speaker 5: and as you write, there was how you and Jennifer
Speaker 5: and your relationship plays into this. So explain your working
Speaker 5: relationship with Jennifer Bousholt and how it contributed to this
Speaker 5: investigation greatly.
Speaker 3: So Jennifer and I became friends back in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3: She was a counter intelligence agent in the US Army.
Speaker 3: Her job was basically to she worked in Afghanistan and South
Speaker 3: Koreas some places like that, and her job was to
Speaker 3: vet people who work on these bases to see if
Speaker 3: they're terrorists or not. And she was very good at
Speaker 3: what she did well. When she got out of the Army,
Speaker 3: she became a professor of criminology at AMU University in
Speaker 3: Colorado Springs, Colorado, and she had heard me on a
Speaker 3: podcast talking about the Rebecca Gould murder case, so she
Speaker 3: contacted me. Her and I became fast friends, and we
Speaker 3: noticed that like I'm an investigative journalist, I'm a true
Speaker 3: crime author. I have certain skills like she has, like
Speaker 3: her skill sets exactly the opposite of mind in a
Speaker 3: lot of ways. So we actually we're pretty good partners
Speaker 3: like that. So we formed a Facebook page in Rebecca's
Speaker 3: case to make a long story short, and we were
Speaker 3: able to lure a guy named William Miller onto this page.
Speaker 3: Rebecca was a twenty two year old college student who
Speaker 3: was murdered on September twentieth, two thousand and four, Melbourne, Arkansas.
Speaker 3: The case went unsolved for sixteen years. Well, we earned
Speaker 3: this guy onto the page and he started communicating with
Speaker 3: us and again, to make a long story short, and
Speaker 3: it turns out that this guy was the first cousin
Speaker 3: of her sort of ex boyfriend and she was actually
Speaker 3: murdered in the sort of ex boyfriend's home. She was
Speaker 3: kind of an on again, off on again, off again relationship.
Speaker 3: She had stayed the weekend at his house. Well, Monday morning,
Speaker 3: she took the boyfriend to work allegedly and then returned
Speaker 3: to his home to get her dog and her clothes
Speaker 3: and all this other stuff so she could make her
Speaker 3: return trip to college. And that's when she vanished. And
Speaker 3: so this guy was talking to us, and we pretty
Speaker 3: quickly knew there was something off with this guy. And
Speaker 3: this went on for probably about eight or nine ten months.
Speaker 3: We sent the messages to the police. Well, they started
Speaker 3: looking at him as a serious candidate, you know, like
Speaker 3: someone who might be involved in the murder. And then
Speaker 3: on November seventh, twenty twenty, a detective flew to Oregon
Speaker 3: and interviewed him. He was he was visiting his mom
Speaker 3: and brother there. William Miller actually lived on a plantation
Speaker 3: in the Philippines, get married a Filipino woman, and so
Speaker 3: he moved there. He worked on woling gas riggs around
Speaker 3: the world, and so he would rarely come back to
Speaker 3: the United States. But during this visit, this police officer
Speaker 3: interrogated him and he confessed to the murder. And so
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty one, we were asked to do a
Speaker 3: presentation at Crime con about our interactions with William Miller
Speaker 3: on our Facebook page. And at this point, you know,
Speaker 3: he's been charged with murder. He's in fact, we're getting
Speaker 3: ready for his trial. It starts on Halloween Day here
Speaker 3: in a couple of weeks. And so our idea was,
Speaker 3: you know, and Jennifer was like, well, Rebecca's case, it's
Speaker 3: kind of in limbo right now. Do you want to
Speaker 3: try to do this with some other case? And so
Speaker 3: we had him and I said yes, like we thought
Speaker 3: maybe we could lure this person out of hiding or
Speaker 3: lure somebody who knows something out of fighting. And so
Speaker 3: we were approached by Debbie's sister Liz, and she gave
Speaker 3: us all of the contemporaneous files and we decided, Okay,
Speaker 3: if we're going to do this, we're going to go
Speaker 3: all the way. We went to love it for a week,
Speaker 3: and we actually went on the week of the anniversary
Speaker 3: of the death. So we actually went to the house
Speaker 3: the night of the murder and we were there the
Speaker 3: actual moment when it happened. The homeowner was the homeowner
Speaker 3: was gracious let us in, let us do experiments. We know,
Speaker 3: we we took measurements because we're trying to figure out,
Speaker 3: you know, like could we possibly figure out how tall
Speaker 3: the perpetrator was based on the wound pattern on our body,
Speaker 3: you know, but hard to do that without And it
Speaker 3: was so ironic because when we went there, it was
Speaker 3: all the original stuff, Like the doorframe was the same
Speaker 3: on the back porch, nothing had changed. It was the
Speaker 3: same concrete, same flower bed. I will say this the
Speaker 3: homeowner before we actually talked to him, we were outside,
Speaker 3: like in the alley, and it was dark, and he
Speaker 3: did have a rifle pointed at us at one point
Speaker 3: for a while, so I had to. I took him
Speaker 3: a night give basket the next day to tell them
Speaker 3: thank you for not shooting any of us. So that's
Speaker 3: that's kind of how we got this start in. So
Speaker 3: we created a spreadsheet of every single person that the
Speaker 3: police had interviewed originally, And originally they had honed in
Speaker 3: on on Debbie's brother because he had some hands a
Speaker 3: drug a drug history, and apparently he had smacked her
Speaker 3: on the face the year before. But the problem with
Speaker 3: with it was, and Jennifer is an expert in behavioral analysis,
Speaker 3: and the first thing that she said, she goes, I
Speaker 3: don't think a brother is going to pull his sister's
Speaker 3: pants down and pull her shirt up. I just can't
Speaker 3: see him doing that. I said, I think you're right.
Speaker 3: And also, you know, he had a pretty solid alibi.
Speaker 3: He had three other alibi witnesses, and two of them
Speaker 3: were married women who had a lot I mean, they
Speaker 3: it seems as if they would have a lot of
Speaker 3: reason or reason to lie about where they were, you know,
Speaker 3: because they obviously were not hanging out with their husbands
Speaker 3: and so but they told they said that where they
Speaker 3: were at they were out bar hopping that night, and
Speaker 3: we we kind of feel like they just honed in
Speaker 3: on him just because he was a criminal and he
Speaker 3: was close to her, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 3: he did have a very troubled life, and he ended
Speaker 3: up taking his own life in nineteen ninety. He did
Speaker 3: have a lot of trouble with drugs. And unfortunately Debbie's
Speaker 3: own mother actually after that Netfolk series, The Confession Killer,
Speaker 3: right after it had aired, she took her life as well.
Speaker 3: So they have some of that in their family. And
Speaker 3: so we created a spreadsheet. We tracked down I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, we tragged down Dougs, the girl that Doug
Speaker 3: went out with right before he went out with Debbie,
Speaker 3: because she was very hurt that we're going to get married.
Speaker 3: And then Doug split up with her and they ended
Speaker 3: up getting with Debbie, and there was some consternation there,
Speaker 3: and we went to her house, her husband, We sat down,
Speaker 3: We sat down, talked to her and we said, look,
Speaker 3: you're an app you would be a natural suspect. And
Speaker 3: she goes, oh, I know, she goes, I talked to
Speaker 3: the police and she goes, she goes, I cared very
Speaker 3: deeply about Doug, but I could never do that to
Speaker 3: someone else and her story checked out. I mean, she
Speaker 3: had a pretty solid alibi as well, so we were
Speaker 3: satisfied with that. You know, one of the things that
Speaker 3: we noticed in our analysis is we got a knife
Speaker 3: expert and the wounds on our body. We're not saying
Speaker 3: that a female couldn't have done it, but it's very
Speaker 3: likely that it was a male who stabbed her, and
Speaker 3: so that kind of helped us narrow our focus a
Speaker 3: little bit. Are a knife expert also told as soon
Speaker 3: as he saw the wounds, we showed him the autopsy photos.
Speaker 3: Does he saw the wounds? He said, I know exactly
Speaker 3: what knife was used. And we're like, well, what was it?
Speaker 3: Because it's a military style dagger that was that was
Speaker 3: made by the US military from nineteen forty three to
Speaker 3: nineteen forty six, and a lot of guys who served
Speaker 3: at Normandy were issued this particular type of dagger. It
Speaker 3: has a very special kind of hilt, and just so
Speaker 3: people know what a hilt is, that's the stopper, like
Speaker 3: when you have a knife, it's the thing that stopped
Speaker 3: your hand from going down the blade when you're stabbing something.
Speaker 3: So we so we started looking at all the people
Speaker 3: who were interviewed as original suspects. Do they have any
Speaker 3: connections to the US military and did they serve in
Speaker 3: World War Two? Well, it turns out that several of
Speaker 3: these people, you know, including you know, guys like all
Speaker 3: and last and all those guys, they all had relatives,
Speaker 3: you know, dads and uncles and whatnot who served, some
Speaker 3: of them actually at Normandy. So these knives would have
Speaker 3: been you know, readily accessible to a lot of different
Speaker 3: people in this case. And you know, when one thing
Speaker 3: about like a military style dagger, when when you're getting stabbed,
Speaker 3: you know, a question that we would get often was
Speaker 3: did anybody show up with like wounds on their hands
Speaker 3: or arms, because that's very common when you're stabbing someone,
Speaker 3: blood gets on it, it starts getting slippery. Think about
Speaker 3: military style dagger though it's designed with that in mind.
Speaker 3: It's a killing weapon and so and it's designed to
Speaker 3: where it's more sturdy because and Dan, you know this,
Speaker 3: and a lot of stabbings, the blade will will break
Speaker 3: off in the victim, you know, as they're being stabbed.
Speaker 3: So and none of that was a fact in this case.
Speaker 3: So we tracked those people down. We tracked down the
Speaker 3: best man and his wife, you know, from the wedding,
Speaker 3: he had never been interviewed by police. To this day,
Speaker 3: they've never talked to him. And we couldn't believe it
Speaker 3: because he was friends with all the people that they
Speaker 3: were talking to, and he's also the best He's Doug's
Speaker 3: best friend at the time, and so we feel like,
Speaker 3: you know, if there was something going on, you know,
Speaker 3: that we would he might be someone that Doug might
Speaker 3: have confided something to, you know what I mean. So
Speaker 3: we tracked him down. He had never been interviewed by police.
Speaker 3: And it was interesting too because I was talking to
Speaker 3: him and he said that when they figured out now,
Speaker 3: when Debbie's purse got taken during the attack. Inside her
Speaker 3: purse was a little it's like a proof book of
Speaker 3: their wedding. And back in those days, you would you
Speaker 3: would have these little proof books and people would look
Speaker 3: through them and then they could order pictures. Right well,
Speaker 3: the day before the funeral, they decided that they needed
Speaker 3: to get some wedding photos from the house and so
Speaker 3: this best man and Lex and Paul they go back
Speaker 3: to the house because Doug can'ts he told me, said,
Speaker 3: I was too out of it because I don't want
Speaker 3: to go in there. It just bothered me so bad.
Speaker 3: So they go and that's when they figured out that
Speaker 3: this little like proof book was missing. And so during
Speaker 3: in and we found police report because they said they
Speaker 3: the best man said that they went and found a
Speaker 3: police officer because they were scared to go on the house.
Speaker 3: We found a police report where the police officer actually
Speaker 3: was at a donut shop, just like the best man said.
Speaker 3: So his recollection was spot on with what contemporaneous report
Speaker 3: from nineteen seventy five. Another person that we obviously wanted
Speaker 3: to track down was Doug, and so I got a
Speaker 3: cell phone number for him and I called him and
Speaker 3: I said, Doug, my name is George Jared. I'm an
Speaker 3: investigative journalist and true crime author, and my investigative partner
Speaker 3: and I Jennifer Bouscholtz. We're looking into your former wife's
Speaker 3: murder case. And he was very receptive to that. We
Speaker 3: started chatting, and ironically enough, he actually moved to after
Speaker 3: Debbie's murder. He moved to a town in the Mississippi
Speaker 3: Delta as a town called Jonesboro. When he went to
Speaker 3: Arkansas State University and got a teaching degree there, and
Speaker 3: he was on the bowling team with a guy named
Speaker 3: Bob Trout. Well, I worked at the Jonesborough Sons as
Speaker 3: a reporter for years, and the Trouts actually owned that
Speaker 3: newspaper for a very long time. And I asked, Doug,
Speaker 3: you know, when I was talking to him the first
Speaker 3: time I noticed his he had a Missouri number. And
Speaker 3: I said, Doug, dude with a Missouri and he goes, yeah,
Speaker 3: he goes, I live in a little town you've never
Speaker 3: heard of. It's called Donovan. Well, I've been. I've been
Speaker 3: to Donovan many times. I've been through there a lot.
Speaker 3: And I said, well, you're only about an hour and
Speaker 3: fifteen minutes for me right now. So I actually took
Speaker 3: my podcast producer night a week later, actually went to
Speaker 3: his house and interviewed him for several hours, and you know,
Speaker 3: we asked him about all of these people. And I'll
Speaker 3: say this, Dan, he acknowledged that he was the primary
Speaker 3: suspect from the like at the very beginning. And he goes,
Speaker 3: and I understand why, because I'm the husband. He goes,
Speaker 3: it makes total sense. He took a polygraph, he passed it.
Speaker 3: And then also his alibi, you know, was that he
Speaker 3: was at work all night. Well, that was supported by
Speaker 3: a couple of things. Number One, mary Anne actually tracked
Speaker 3: us down the waitress right and she told us she
Speaker 3: said he did not leave. He could not have left
Speaker 3: because it was only the two of us at that point.
Speaker 3: I could not have cooked, ran the register and waited
Speaker 3: on tables. There's no way I could have done it.
Speaker 3: He didn't leave. And I asked, Marian, you know some
Speaker 3: tough questions, you know, And one of them was, Okay,
Speaker 3: what was your relationship with Doug? Did you have some
Speaker 3: type of romantic relationship with him where you might have
Speaker 3: covered for him? And she said absolutely not. She said
Speaker 3: they only worked together for about a month. She said
Speaker 3: he was always very nice to her, that he always
Speaker 3: been at Debbie, would come up there periodically and sit
Speaker 3: and wait on him, and she said they were just
Speaker 3: a nice, nice little couple. And she said no. And
Speaker 3: also there was something else on the police reports that
Speaker 3: also supported the hypothesis that Doug didn't leave. There was
Speaker 3: no deposit made. They required in that company to do
Speaker 3: a nightly deposit around nine point thirty. Well, the deposit
Speaker 3: wasn't made, so at the very least if he left,
Speaker 3: he would have done a deposit, so he we're pretty
Speaker 3: confident that he did not leave that night.
Speaker 5: Right, Let's use this as an opportunity, George to stop
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Speaker 5: Now you talk to Doug, and again it seems plausible
Speaker 5: that he can't be involved because he didn't even leave,
Speaker 5: and then his reaction was very ordinary. They some people
Speaker 5: talked about that he as soon as he came back
Speaker 5: to that pizza in he said, Debra has been raped.
Speaker 5: But you explain that that's not so uncommon for people
Speaker 5: to underestimate the magnitude of what they have just witnessed.
Speaker 5: But let's talk about some serious suspects in this based
Speaker 5: on their behavior, based on discrepancies when you spoke to them,
Speaker 5: and this one being Paul Neil, And tell us about
Speaker 5: because you talk about that Bob Lemons was able to
Speaker 5: go inside that house and found a couple of wet
Speaker 5: towels in Debbie's home. And the other idea was that
Speaker 5: he said to police that he had showered at his
Speaker 5: parents' home, but they weren't there. But we're his parents question.
Speaker 5: And now when you mentioned about the knife and the
Speaker 5: military connection, would have it been interesting for the police
Speaker 5: to check if there was any connection with the knife
Speaker 5: and Neil's father in this case.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to our knowledge, his parents were never interviewed. And
Speaker 3: it's really a slip up in the original investigation because
Speaker 3: essentially he alibi himself for the time of the morning,
Speaker 3: and which is you know nowadays that could never happen.
Speaker 3: But as far as we know, they were never interviewed.
Speaker 3: So his story is that he didn't go to debian Dougs,
Speaker 3: that he went to his own home, his parents' house,
Speaker 3: that he showered there, nobody was home, and then he
Speaker 3: went from there on the day with Tina. Now, the
Speaker 3: problem is is that it took him He basically arrived
Speaker 3: at Tina's house at the same time as if he
Speaker 3: didn't take off early from work, and you know, because
Speaker 3: he gets there around ten, well, he was supposed to
Speaker 3: his ship ended at ten, so he didn't really save
Speaker 3: any time, even though he took off an hour and
Speaker 3: seventeen minutes early, So that's that's problematic. And again we're
Speaker 3: not accusing him of anything, but this is a discrepancy.
Speaker 3: And also he told the police one thing and a
Speaker 3: time card says something else, so that's a discrepancy. Another
Speaker 3: discrepancy with him is when he and Lex go back
Speaker 3: to them to check on Debbie after Doug arrives at
Speaker 3: the pizza end, he says that they go into the
Speaker 3: house to see if the killer or killers are still
Speaker 3: in there. Well, Lex and his police reports said they
Speaker 3: didn't go in the house, so automatically, within twenty four
Speaker 3: hours of the murder, you've got two witnesses at the
Speaker 3: scene who are telling two different stories, and going into
Speaker 3: the house or not going into the house is a
Speaker 3: pretty dramatic difference. And also another interesting little tidbit with
Speaker 3: Lex is that for some reason, when he was interviewed
Speaker 3: by police, Paul says he clocked out at nine to ten.
Speaker 3: They asked Doug. They said, Doug, when did he leave?
Speaker 3: And he Doug said, I think he left around nine. Well,
Speaker 3: then they asked Lex Brown, who doesn't work there by
Speaker 3: the way, They said, when did Paul leave? The pizza
Speaker 3: in and he said eight forty five. So of these
Speaker 3: three guys, two of the three worked there. One of
Speaker 3: them is the person Lex knew exactly when he left,
Speaker 3: and we couldn't still haven't quite figured out what happened,
Speaker 3: because there's only a couple of possibilities. Was he there
Speaker 3: when Paul left? Well that they according to the original
Speaker 3: police sports, Lex didn't arrive until around ten thirty or eleven.
Speaker 3: Did you look at his time card? You know, which
Speaker 3: would be just odd? I mean, why would you be
Speaker 3: looking at a time card for someone who works at
Speaker 3: a you know, a business that you don't even work at.
Speaker 3: Or maybe during their conversation, Paul had told him he
Speaker 3: left around eight forty five. So we don't know. So
Speaker 3: that was one of the mystery that we still haven't
Speaker 3: been able to unravel. And so the towels are interesting
Speaker 3: because we believe that they we believed they were collected
Speaker 3: in evidence. And I had a theory dan early from
Speaker 3: early on that because there was no reports of anybody
Speaker 3: with any blood, no bloody clothes, none of that stuff
Speaker 3: from anybody that night in Loving, Texas. And so I
Speaker 3: was sitting there thinking to myself, Okay, she stabbed on
Speaker 3: the back carboard. She the back doors open. Is it
Speaker 3: possible that the killer went into the house and took
Speaker 3: a shower because there were wet towels in the guest
Speaker 3: bathroom and those towels were collected, So is it possible
Speaker 3: that the killer's DNA is on those towels? You know,
Speaker 3: and I'm friends with Jared Bradley, who's the you know,
Speaker 3: the CEO of mt DNA testing and towels, you know,
Speaker 3: I've talked to him several times, and towels would be
Speaker 3: you know, a great place to collect you know, skin DNA.
Speaker 3: So it is possible if those towels are still in
Speaker 3: evidence that the killer's DNA if they went in the
Speaker 3: house and took a shower, which I think they did,
Speaker 3: that could explain a lot of that.
Speaker 5: You talk about all kinds of behavior and and odd
Speaker 5: statements to other people. But also when you interviewed Paul Neil,
Speaker 5: and that was in regards to whether he entered that
Speaker 5: house or not, tell us what he asked you in
Speaker 5: regards to whether the killer went into the house or not,
Speaker 5: and what you think that really represents in terms of
Speaker 5: why he is asking that question.
Speaker 3: So we interviewed him twice. Actually, the first time Jennifer
Speaker 3: called him at work out of the blue, and he answered,
Speaker 3: and one of the first things that he wanted to
Speaker 3: know was if the police were ever ever able to
Speaker 3: determine if the killer had actually gone in the house.
Speaker 3: And he asked us several cots and we didn't know
Speaker 3: why he was asking it, but he was. And then
Speaker 3: later on when he called me, he actually called me
Speaker 3: and asked me the same question he goes and he
Speaker 3: said something, well, they've obviously already DNA tested all that stuff,
Speaker 3: and I said, no, Paul, haven't tested anything yet. We're
Speaker 3: working on that right now to get everything tested. And
Speaker 3: so one thing that he didn't tell me, there was
Speaker 3: a couple of inconsistent things he said. Number one, he
Speaker 3: said that he didn't date Debbie. He said they might
Speaker 3: have went out for a drink or something like that.
Speaker 3: And I was like, well, no, that's not true. You
Speaker 3: guys were in high school. You know, she graduated high
Speaker 3: school in May of that year, and when you guys
Speaker 3: had sort of dated, you guys weren't legally you would
Speaker 3: of leeal aged to drink. So that did happen. When
Speaker 3: he tried to deny that he had a relationship with her.
Speaker 3: That was very odd to me because it was clearly
Speaker 3: obvious that they had a relationship. Another thing that he
Speaker 3: told me that I thought was odd was that I
Speaker 3: did a podcast episode where I talked about the touch
Speaker 3: DNA possibly being on the towels and all this other stuff. Well,
Speaker 3: shortly after I do that episode, he actually called me.
Speaker 3: I had tried to call him and text him several
Speaker 3: times and he would not respond to any of my messages.
Speaker 3: And then so after this podcast episode comes out, I
Speaker 3: get a call from him, and during this conversation he
Speaker 3: tries to I said, so, did you ask to go
Speaker 3: take a shower the night before? And he denied. He said,
Speaker 3: I can't remember. I don't you know, I don't know
Speaker 3: what you talk about, blah blah blah. Then he tells
Speaker 3: me a story about how he took a shower in
Speaker 3: that house the day before, on August twenty third, nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy five, and his direct quote to me was I'd
Speaker 3: been in that after many times through the years. I
Speaker 3: spent a lot of time in that bathroom And that
Speaker 3: was his direct quote. Yeah, And I was like, so,
Speaker 3: how did you remember taking a shower there the day before,
Speaker 3: but you didn't remember asking to take a shower there
Speaker 3: the night up. And the reason that it was odd
Speaker 3: to me was because the police asked Doug. They said, so,
Speaker 3: your friend wanted to take a shower at your house.
Speaker 3: Doug's response in the police reports was well, he had
Speaker 3: just taken one there yesterday. He's done this all the time.
Speaker 3: All Dug says, well, I'm not sure why he would
Speaker 3: want to take a shower there. He didn't say any
Speaker 3: of that other stuff, because you would think if he
Speaker 3: had just taken a shower there the day before, he'd said, well,
Speaker 3: he did it yesterday. And Dan, this is going to
Speaker 3: sound a little creepy, but I actually know where he
Speaker 3: took a shower. On August twenty third, nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 3: years before I was born, he actually took a shower
Speaker 3: at Debbie's parents house. They had a cabin on Buffalo Lake.
Speaker 3: And after they all got done waterskiing that they the
Speaker 3: whole group of them went back to that house and
Speaker 3: got cleaned up, and then Paul and Doug actually went
Speaker 3: to the pizza into work that Saturday night.
Speaker 5: Now you talk about lex and very interesting why either
Speaker 5: one of these people would want to go to the
Speaker 5: crime scene. After Doug said, listen, Deborah has been raped.
Speaker 5: And then one other thing that you mentioned in the
Speaker 5: book as well is that Lex was told something by Doug,
Speaker 5: and Paul asked Lex what Doug had said? What was
Speaker 5: that detail that was mentioned?
Speaker 3: When Doug came back into the pizza in and I
Speaker 3: asked Doug about this too, I said, Doug, you knew
Speaker 3: she was dead, right? He goes, oh, yeah, I knew,
Speaker 3: he said. There he said, I may have said that
Speaker 3: she was raped, but deep downside, I knew that she
Speaker 3: was gone. And I said, okay, And that's call and Dan,
Speaker 3: you know this, that's very common action when when a
Speaker 3: child is kidnapped, when the nine woman calls made, the
Speaker 3: parent doesn't go, my kid's been kidnapped, because kidnapped has
Speaker 3: a connotation of never seeing the kid again. It's my
Speaker 3: child is missing. I can't find much out, you know, well,
Speaker 3: other than John Binna Ramsey's case, I guess because her
Speaker 3: parents did say that she was kidnapped. But anyway, that's
Speaker 3: a whole nother story. So when he comes into the
Speaker 3: piece of inn, Doug says that she's been raved and
Speaker 3: then Paul askedlects, what did Doug just say, And so
Speaker 3: that's when the two of them jump in the car
Speaker 3: and then they head over to where her body is.
Speaker 3: And another interesting little tidbit that came out that we
Speaker 3: found in the original contemporaneous reports. About a week after
Speaker 3: the murder, Doug reports that a spare set of keys
Speaker 3: that belonged to Debbie had gone missing from Joyce's purse.
Speaker 3: Joyce kept his spare It was like her car, her
Speaker 3: spare car keys, house keys, all these keys and so on.
Speaker 3: I think it was September fourth, maybe this report is
Speaker 3: made that these keys are missing, we can't find them anywhere.
Speaker 3: And then on September tenth, Doug and Paul go back
Speaker 3: go to the Lemon's house. They go, they're sitting on
Speaker 3: the couch in the living room. They get up and leave.
Speaker 3: The next morning, Joyce finds that set of keys underneath
Speaker 3: a cushion where Paul was sitting, and they immediately go
Speaker 3: to the police with it. Immediately go down there and
Speaker 3: said that they found these keys. And I asked Paul
Speaker 3: about it, and he goes, yeah, I don't really remember that.
Speaker 3: I mean, he really didn't seem to remember anything you
Speaker 3: know that pertained to him. He didn't tell me that
Speaker 3: he he had taken a couple of polygraph tests. He
Speaker 3: knows he failed one. He's not sure how he did
Speaker 3: on the other one. You know, I'm going back to Tina.
Speaker 3: You know, she didn't see him for about a month
Speaker 3: after the murders because she went to college. Well, she
Speaker 3: came back for a football game and she ran into
Speaker 3: him and she said he looked like like he lost
Speaker 3: twenty five or thirty pounds. So he was always under
Speaker 3: a great deal of stress in September of nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: five because he was being questioned by the police, actually
Speaker 3: several times. Also, another interesting thing that Tina told us
Speaker 3: was that his dad would call her when she was
Speaker 3: in college and would record her telling the story of
Speaker 3: what happened that night over and over again. And it
Speaker 3: was just really odd, you know. And he told her
Speaker 3: and she said he was really nice. I said, had
Speaker 3: you ever met this guy? And she goes, no, I
Speaker 3: never met him in my life, did not know him,
Speaker 3: never met him. And I said, how many time do
Speaker 3: you think you called you? She goes, oh, at least
Speaker 3: half a dozen times. And he told her that he
Speaker 3: was recording it, and he told her that, you know
Speaker 3: the reason he was doing that was because she might
Speaker 3: bump her head sometime and forget you know what happened.
Speaker 3: So we thought that was very odd as well. What
Speaker 3: do police?
Speaker 5: What do you find police make of this discrepancies and
Speaker 5: polls In Paul Neil's timeline, he leaves at eight forty three.
Speaker 5: Officially he calls Tina, and he calls her and she
Speaker 5: says at nine point thirty. They're supposed to be the
Speaker 5: date she picks He picks her up at ten, He
Speaker 5: drops her off at twelve, but he shows up for
Speaker 5: the inventory. Curiously, Pizza in closes at twelve, but he
Speaker 5: shows up for inventory after Doug leaves almost immediately right
Speaker 5: at one am. So what do police make of Paul
Speaker 5: Neil's statements and as a result, what do they do?
Speaker 3: What did you as of right now? I mean, we
Speaker 3: have been in constant communication with the head of the
Speaker 3: CID division with the Lubbock Police Department. He's always been
Speaker 3: very responsive to our emails. We gave him a jump
Speaker 3: drive with every bit of our investigation, every interview we did,
Speaker 3: every person we tracked down, We even gave him. We've
Speaker 3: had people analyze like her autopsy report and the stabbing pictures.
Speaker 3: We actually made a second trip to Lubbock in March
Speaker 3: of this year, and we took a dummy that was
Speaker 3: proportional to like Debbie's height and size, you know, just
Speaker 3: to see if we could figure anything out. Because Dan,
Speaker 3: I'll tell you something interesting about the wound pattern on
Speaker 3: our body. Most of the wounds were cleaned, meaning there
Speaker 3: was no jagged edge to them, meaning she was either
Speaker 3: unconscious or subdued. Most of the knife wounds when she
Speaker 3: was stabbed. Interesting, So we couldn't figure that out, like
Speaker 3: why was she not fighting off her attacker? Well, when
Speaker 3: we did the dummy experiment, we figured out something pretty quickly.
Speaker 3: There's one wound to her body that could would be
Speaker 3: fatal in and of itself. Without actually examining her body,
Speaker 3: we couldn't know for certain, but she was stabbed underneath
Speaker 3: her armpit, on her left arm pit, and it is
Speaker 3: very possible that that knife got in between her the
Speaker 3: bones in her upper chest. It could It's very possible,
Speaker 3: and it could have pierced her heart. And so we
Speaker 3: started studying that a little bit because we're like, did
Speaker 3: the killer did he actually deliver the fatal blow with
Speaker 3: the first one. And what's interesting is is we know
Speaker 3: the attack started by the back porch and she ran
Speaker 3: about twenty five feet and then collapsed at the end
Speaker 3: of the car port at the end of her car
Speaker 3: because there's a large pool of blood there. Then the
Speaker 3: killer dragged her back through the through the back porch
Speaker 3: where he I guess the only way to say it
Speaker 3: is displayed her when we did the dummy experiment, we
Speaker 3: figured out what if she was confronted coming out the door,
Speaker 3: someone is confronting her, she sticks her left hand up
Speaker 3: say get away from me, don't talk to me. I
Speaker 3: don't want anything to do with you, and the killer
Speaker 3: has that knife along the alongest fore arm, and our
Speaker 3: knife expert showed us exactly how you could conceal a knife,
Speaker 3: and Dan it was actually I was almost scary how
Speaker 3: easy it was to conceal such a large knife. But
Speaker 3: he could have done it. And then that person stabs
Speaker 3: her through the armpit and delivers a fatal blow, and
Speaker 3: then she can And then of course we did some
Speaker 3: research on it. She could have gotten if that went
Speaker 3: down like that, and we found cases where that's happened,
Speaker 3: and usually the person can get twenty twenty five feet
Speaker 3: away and then they collapse. They just pass out.
Speaker 5: The other thing is the when you talked about her
Speaker 5: being posed and displayed with her genitals exposed, with their
Speaker 5: breast exposed. That's also a sort of a retribution of
Speaker 5: revenge towards someone as well. And you say likely the
Speaker 5: killer would know that Doug would find her, and Doug
Speaker 5: had made statements as well to say that the killer
Speaker 5: certainly must have known that he was at work the
Speaker 5: routine and familiar with the property itself, again pointing to
Speaker 5: Paul Neil. But in this regard as well, you had
Speaker 5: to speak to everybody, and Lex being a friend of everyone,
Speaker 5: including Paul and Doug and everyone else, you try to
Speaker 5: contact him. Very very interesting denials he made in terms
Speaker 5: of not being able to speak, but you did communicate
Speaker 5: somewhat through a text, through text messaging, very very interesting
Speaker 5: the statements that were made via that texture. Can you
Speaker 5: explain sure?
Speaker 3: So we tried to get a hold of Lex a lot.
Speaker 3: It's not just us because we understand if he doesn't
Speaker 3: want to talk to me, I'm an investigative journalist. You
Speaker 3: know that can be a turnoff for a lot of people.
Speaker 3: You know Jennifer, you know, she's a criminology professor. He
Speaker 3: doesn't know us. We get that. The problem is is
Speaker 3: that he refuses to return calls from family members. And
Speaker 3: so we were getting I don't want to say aggravated,
Speaker 3: but we was getting it was just weird and suspicious
Speaker 3: that he wouldn't talk to us. So this person who
Speaker 3: is related to him, when we refer to her in
Speaker 3: the book or him in the book as the texture,
Speaker 3: because we don't know if it was him texting or
Speaker 3: someone else, we just know that that phone legally belongs
Speaker 3: to him. We verified that, and so this person was
Speaker 3: texting us and saying, well, he told the police everything
Speaker 3: back in nineteen seventy five, and if they didn't do
Speaker 3: their job, that's not his fault, right, And so the
Speaker 3: implication is is if the police had done their job,
Speaker 3: then there would have been an arrest and it would
Speaker 3: be pertained to something at left said or you know,
Speaker 3: something to that effect. So he will not contact us.
Speaker 3: And what's interesting is that we actually talked to a
Speaker 3: person who knew him for years after the murder. And
Speaker 3: Debbie's murder is kind of a famous murder in that
Speaker 3: town unsolved, and this person contacted us and said, you know,
Speaker 3: I had a really weird conversation with him one time
Speaker 3: where you know, we were talking about the murder of
Speaker 3: Devas Williamson and he never once mentioned that he was
Speaker 3: friends with her and actually was the one that checked
Speaker 3: her for a pulse when she was found. And this
Speaker 3: person vividly remembered all the people that were involved in
Speaker 3: the conversation. And this person said he never said a
Speaker 3: word about it ever, and we were just like, really,
Speaker 3: that is so bizarre, and so I mean, Lefs and
Speaker 3: Paul were best friends at the time. And again we're
Speaker 3: not accusing him of anything. He may know nothing. It's
Speaker 3: very possible. It's just there's a behavior pattern here that
Speaker 3: we can't understand.
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Speaker 5: Explain about the keys as well, pointing to Paul Neil
Speaker 5: in terms of the stolen spare car key and house
Speaker 5: keys and where they were found and explain this.
Speaker 3: Sure, so there was the set. There was a set
Speaker 3: of car keys, spare set of keys that was reported missing.
Speaker 3: Joyce had an inner purse. It went missing. They looked everywhere.
Speaker 3: And Dan, you you you remember this. You know, back
Speaker 3: in the seventies, eighties, even nineties, if your car keys
Speaker 3: were missing, the first place you looked was the cap right,
Speaker 3: I mean sure, and that's where you say all your
Speaker 3: extra change and car keys. I mean, that's just the
Speaker 3: way it went back in those days. And so we
Speaker 3: know that they looked all over for these keys before
Speaker 3: they reported them missing to the police. So when Doug
Speaker 3: and Paul visit on September tenth, six days after the
Speaker 3: keys are reported missing to the police, and we have
Speaker 3: the police report, Doug and Paul sat on the couch.
Speaker 3: Well after they leave that night from the Lemon's home,
Speaker 3: Joyce finds the keys underneath the cushion that Paul was
Speaker 3: sitting on. And again we're not accusing anybody of anything,
Speaker 3: but it's just a weird detail. So they immediately go
Speaker 3: to police and say this was found under the cushion
Speaker 3: that he was sitting on, and Paul denied taking the keys.
Speaker 3: He said he had no idea why they would be
Speaker 3: under cushion where he was sitting. But it is a detail.
Speaker 3: I think that is important because, as like I said,
Speaker 3: you wouldn't report those keys missing if you hadn't to
Speaker 3: looked everywhere in the first place.
Speaker 5: Now, with all the information that you brought forward, did
Speaker 5: you talk about the meetings that you had with Lubbitt
Speaker 5: Police Department which included family members Liz and Paula and
Speaker 5: also Jennifer as well. Tell us about these meetings and
Speaker 5: how supportive were they in your endeavors and what did
Speaker 5: they state that they were or they would do in
Speaker 5: cooperation with the evidence that you were bringing towards them
Speaker 5: in terms of retesting.
Speaker 3: So they said that they would try to track down
Speaker 3: all the evidence or case. I don't think they have
Speaker 3: all of it now, they wouldn't tell us specifically what
Speaker 3: they had. I don't think they had it all in
Speaker 3: one location because this has been handled by multiple agencies, Okay,
Speaker 3: and so I think that you know, the Texas Rangers
Speaker 3: had it for a while, Levet PD had it for
Speaker 3: a while, the Texas I can Department of Public Safety,
Speaker 3: it's essentially another like you know, police agency there in Texas,
Speaker 3: they had it. So what they told us was that
Speaker 3: they would try to track down all the evidence and
Speaker 3: then they would try to get as much of a
Speaker 3: tested as its possibly good for DNA. Now, they did
Speaker 3: tell us, you know, from the beginning, hey, you know,
Speaker 3: we probably won't be able to really release the results
Speaker 3: to you guys, and we were fine with that. We said,
Speaker 3: just as long as you're doing it, we don't care.
Speaker 3: And to this point we haven't gotten anything back from them.
Speaker 3: I mean, we would assume they would at least tell
Speaker 3: us that the testing had happened, and that hasn't happened yet.
Speaker 3: I mean, we communicated with the head of the cide
Speaker 3: to the yesterday quite literally, send him an email yesterday
Speaker 3: about you know, we did form a Facebook page and
Speaker 3: there are people who comment on there, and Paul Neil
Speaker 3: admitted to me that he's on there under an alias,
Speaker 3: so he's on there. We know all the other you know,
Speaker 3: players and people who are connected. This is what we know.
Speaker 3: We send everything to the Loving PD and we just
Speaker 3: hope that they are working on it and do the
Speaker 3: right thing. As of right now, we know that they've
Speaker 3: on the periphery talked to a few people like they've
Speaker 3: done some they've called and done some interviews. We don't
Speaker 3: know how extensive that he is yet because for obvious reasons,
Speaker 3: a lot of these people won't talk to us anymore,
Speaker 3: and which is fine, probably wouldn't talk to us either
Speaker 3: after all this, So we don't know where the state
Speaker 3: of the investigation is. We're hopeful. And this is the thing, Dan,
Speaker 3: this case is probably going to be solved through good
Speaker 3: old fashioned police work. It's going to be a detective
Speaker 3: pounding the dirt, going out and figuring out whoever killed
Speaker 3: debor Sue Williamson has told someone else someone knows and
Speaker 3: what we have to do is we have to figure
Speaker 3: out a way to capture that person and get them
Speaker 3: to tell the story to police.
Speaker 5: How obvious though I'm reading this book, how right from
Speaker 5: the very beginning, Paul Neil seems to be my main suspect.
Speaker 5: And with this, with the interview that you had with
Speaker 5: him and then which is included in the book, he
Speaker 5: becomes more and more suspicious. When you spoke to many people,
Speaker 5: including Tina McBride. Also Joyce had something to say about
Speaker 5: a very odd conversation concerning Debbie and how she felt
Speaker 5: about him. Tell us just about a couple of these
Speaker 5: kinds of conversations that kind of reinforced my idea that
Speaker 5: he's a very very good suspect.
Speaker 3: Well, the interesting thing about Joyce's statements to police about
Speaker 3: him was that she said that he would bring Debbie
Speaker 3: like little gifts and that he was very he was
Speaker 3: very in love with her, and at one point, when
Speaker 3: Debbie split up with him, he asked Joyce, he said,
Speaker 3: why doesn't she love me? And Joyce said, I don't know,
Speaker 3: let me talk to her. So Joyce goes and talks
Speaker 3: a Debbie. And this is all on the police report.
Speaker 3: And Joyce says that when she asked Debbie about it,
Speaker 3: that you know, she considered, you know, Paul just a
Speaker 3: friend to go do things with, like go to the
Speaker 3: movies or just hang out with. She didn't take it.
Speaker 3: She said, there's nothing about my relationship with him that
Speaker 3: is serious at all. So she didn't consider him a serious,
Speaker 3: like a viable like boyfriend material, and he obviously viewed
Speaker 3: her much differently. Now, again, that doesn't prove anything in
Speaker 3: and of itself. Lots of people are, you know, attracted
Speaker 3: in to other people and they get rejected and it
Speaker 3: doesn't culminate with one of them being stabbed to death.
Speaker 3: But it is interesting that that even Joyce back in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy five was telling police and I mean and
Speaker 3: the thing about it is we're talking about like people
Speaker 3: that she dated. The police really were on him for
Speaker 3: a while, Like there's lots of police there's lots of
Speaker 3: reports of them interviewing him and what he said and
Speaker 3: all this other stuff. And the fact that he denied
Speaker 3: even dating her after being grilled by the police multiple times.
Speaker 3: See Dan, That's the thing is that ninety nine percent
Speaker 3: of people in this world are never going to be
Speaker 3: called into an interrogation room and grilled in a murder case.
Speaker 3: I've never known anybody who was who didn't remember every
Speaker 3: detail of it, I mean, like vividly. And for him
Speaker 3: to even deny that he dated her, I thought was
Speaker 3: just it was a little beyond the pale. And of course,
Speaker 3: and I was honest with him, you know, I told him,
Speaker 3: I said, look, we're looking at you. I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: it's you know, you were a love interest of hers.
Speaker 3: Plus I didn't tell him this, but I already he
Speaker 3: didn't know I had the police reports. So when he
Speaker 3: told us these you know, fabrications, he didn't know that
Speaker 3: I already knew the truth. And so the fact that
Speaker 3: he just kept lying about all this stuff was really concerning.
Speaker 3: And we have expressed this to the Love It PD.
Speaker 3: You know, we sent them everything, all the stuff that
Speaker 3: the texture, all the text message that the texture sent us,
Speaker 3: and all this the fact like Paul won't even take
Speaker 3: a call from anybody in Debbie's family, Like they've repeatedly
Speaker 3: tried to call him, and he won't returning to their calls.
Speaker 3: So all of this stuff taken together is very very suspicious.
Speaker 5: You talk also that when police asked why he might
Speaker 5: not want to have gone to take a shower while
Speaker 5: Debbie was there, despite them being friends, was that he said, well,
Speaker 5: we get along, but sometimes she ignores me. That was
Speaker 5: very very strange. And also you write, you know, as
Speaker 5: a psychological profile somewhat seventeen wounds, but she was posed
Speaker 5: face up. Many people wouldn't be able to handle that.
Speaker 5: So very very angry person evidently with this as well,
Speaker 5: so with Paul Neil, What else do you think? What
Speaker 5: is your idea about him as a suspect.
Speaker 3: This is whenever I get involved in one of these
Speaker 3: murder cases as an investigative journalist, what I try to
Speaker 3: do is we create a list of people and we
Speaker 3: don't ever even call them a suspect. We call them
Speaker 3: people of interest, people who could possibly have some connection,
Speaker 3: you know, to the murder victim, because nine times out
Speaker 3: of ten, someone gets murdered by someone that is relatively
Speaker 3: close to them. So you're looking at family, friends, people
Speaker 3: in that space. And this is what I noticed. In
Speaker 3: all cases, you start investigating and then somebody who like
Speaker 3: in this case, we'll just use an example, Duck. Okay.
Speaker 3: When we started this, we're like, okay, so what iful
Speaker 3: waitress says he was at work all night. We don't
Speaker 3: believe that he might not have been at work. He
Speaker 3: might have left and did this, and we went back
Speaker 3: to work. But then we start digging on Duck. And
Speaker 3: one question I asked Doug, I said, Doug, when you
Speaker 3: took the polygraph test, was there any question you failed?
Speaker 3: He goes, oh, yeah, he goes, I did fail one question?
Speaker 3: And I go on, question was that? And he goes, well,
Speaker 3: was when they asked me if I kill him? And
Speaker 3: he said, but they told me that if I But
Speaker 3: they said, I would have to have failed a lot
Speaker 3: of other questions for that to be relevant. And so
Speaker 3: he answered it exactly the way a truthful person would,
Speaker 3: because if he if he was trying to conceal that
Speaker 3: he just wouldn't tell us and we would have no
Speaker 3: way of knowing. So I felt Jennifer afterwards, I said,
Speaker 3: he's telling the truth, and so that so that so
Speaker 3: like that kind of leads us away from him because
Speaker 3: we know he's being truthful. Also, you know, as we
Speaker 3: dig was we dug in on him, like I said,
Speaker 3: we found other pieces of evidence that corroborated the fact
Speaker 3: that he stay at work. So it got to the
Speaker 3: point where, Okay, is it possible that Doug had it
Speaker 3: orchestrated or knew about it, Those things are all possible,
Speaker 3: but for him directly be involved, who is now in
Speaker 3: the category of probably not. And so that's kind of
Speaker 3: how it goes. And so we were able to do
Speaker 3: that because things lined up. You know, now you get
Speaker 3: to other people in other cases where things don't line up.
Speaker 3: In fact, as you drill down on them, things get
Speaker 3: more confusing and get the stories, get the lies, and
Speaker 3: the stories and everything else get crazier, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean, Like they don't add up. And so a
Speaker 3: lot of things with Paul obviously don't add up. And
Speaker 3: it's not because a lot of it is his own doing,
Speaker 3: because he just wouldn't tell the truth.
Speaker 5: So this investigation continues. As we said in the introduction,
Speaker 5: you believe this case is solvable and it's only just
Speaker 5: a matter of time. We didn't mention the podcast that
Speaker 5: you have, and Jennifer has a different podcast. Can you
Speaker 5: mention those podcasts and the Facebook page where the Unsolved
Speaker 5: Murder of Deborah Williamson tell us about ways that people
Speaker 5: might find out more about this case and about this book.
Speaker 3: So we do two separate podcasts. I do a podcast
Speaker 3: called Diamond State Murder Board and she does a podcast
Speaker 3: through AMU University called Break the Case. We do updates
Speaker 3: on both. The AMU podcast is a little bit more
Speaker 3: We're in the Diamondstate Murder Board podcast, we just have
Speaker 3: a conversation, you know, one on one conversation. We'll bring
Speaker 3: in experts like like the knife expert. We brought in
Speaker 3: things like that, and we just played the whole conversation.
Speaker 3: Am U is a little bit more produced, I guess
Speaker 3: is the best way to put it. So they're different.
Speaker 3: Basically found that there's some people like the format that
Speaker 3: I use in Diamond State and people like ball format,
Speaker 3: so we do both ways and then you can join
Speaker 3: our page the Unsolved murder of Debor Sue Williamson. Uh,
Speaker 3: you know, we we we post updates on that page.
Speaker 3: I don't want to say daily, but i'd say probably
Speaker 3: three to four times a week we post there, and
Speaker 3: we always have something new to talk about. We'll get
Speaker 3: a new witness. I talked to a lady that was
Speaker 3: friends with Paul and Debbie back in high school just
Speaker 3: a few weeks ago. She didn't know about us, we
Speaker 3: didn't know about her, and so she called me up
Speaker 3: and we had probably a two hour long conversation, and
Speaker 3: she had some very vivid memories of both of them.
Speaker 3: And so that's kind of the connectivity that we get
Speaker 3: out of this, and that's what we're after. We just
Speaker 3: got to find that one person, Dan, there's somebody out
Speaker 3: there who knows enough to get justice for this woman,
Speaker 3: even after nearly half a century. And I tell people
Speaker 3: all the time, I covered a case one time that
Speaker 3: was fifty four years old and a guy got arrested
Speaker 3: and he was in his late sixties, early seventies, and
Speaker 3: he went to prison for murdering this guy back in night.
Speaker 3: I think it was nineteen sixty four. So it can't happen.
Speaker 5: Absolutely. I want to Thank you very much, George Jared
Speaker 5: for coming on and talking about your new book, Silent
Speaker 5: Silhouette Who Killed Deborah Sue? Thank you so much, George Jared.
Speaker 5: Do you have a great evening and good night.
Speaker 3: Dan you do the same. Thank you, thank you,