Speaker 1: This podcast is intended for mature audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: And all the rest of them walked back in there.
Speaker 2: They never didn't say no more about her. That was
Speaker 2: just mad. You could see the anger on her face.
Speaker 2: Did you ever see her again? Not after that? I
Speaker 2: don't know what they do.
Speaker 3: Do you see her the next day?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 2: I don't know what they don't for a body. They
Speaker 2: just told me I wanted if we opened up saying
Speaker 2: thing about what we say that they would kill us.
Speaker 2: I do the same thing those and we we're scared.
Speaker 2: And I still I'm scared.
Speaker 5: Where you don't need to you're saying.
Speaker 1: Around the time Kelly Wilson disappeared from the piney woods
Speaker 1: of East Texas, some country folks in Gilmer got in
Speaker 1: trouble with the law. The Curs, often referred to as
Speaker 1: the Kerr Clan. There were a bunch of them, a
Speaker 1: big incestuous family living in shacks and trailers and a
Speaker 1: kind of run down compound on Cherokee Trace, the same
Speaker 1: winding road where search parties would eventually comb the woods
Speaker 1: for any sign of Kelly Wilson. The problems for the
Speaker 1: Curs started in the fall of nineteen ninety when one
Speaker 1: of the brothers, this guy Wendell, left his wife Loretta
Speaker 1: for a younger woman. Loretta reported Wendell to the authorities,
Speaker 1: said he'd been abusing their four kids. The new woman
Speaker 1: in Wendell's life, her name was Wanda. She brought her
Speaker 1: own baggage. Wanda's brother, Lucas, was a molester too. He'd
Speaker 1: abused Wanda's kid from her previous relationship with a guy
Speaker 1: named Bad Jimmy. It was a tangled web. A caseworker
Speaker 1: from Child Protective Services stepped in.
Speaker 6: Yes, sir, Hey, my.
Speaker 1: Name is Wes Ferguson. I'm a journalist. I'm working on
Speaker 1: a project about the Kelly Wilson case and looking.
Speaker 4: For Ann Gore.
Speaker 7: Is that you?
Speaker 1: That was Anne when I knocked. You'll hear about her
Speaker 1: throughout the series. Anne Gore, the caseworker, was a deeply
Speaker 1: religious woman from Gilmer. The abuse she uncovered was more
Speaker 1: than alarming. Thanks in part to Anne's efforts, Wendell and
Speaker 1: Lucas were arrested and they both got ten years probation.
Speaker 1: Less than a year after that slap on the wrist,
Speaker 1: Wendell and his new flame, Wanda got married. Their wedding
Speaker 1: took place on the Kerr family compound on Cherokee Trace.
Speaker 1: Just days later, CPS filed to remove the kids from
Speaker 1: the home of the convicted sex offender. In court, Wanda
Speaker 1: also admitted that she had abused her own sons from infancy.
Speaker 1: It was all horrifying. By now, the investigation into the
Speaker 1: Curs had sprawled throughout the family. Allegations went up to
Speaker 1: the grandparents, Eugene and Geneva Kerr, a multi generational legacy
Speaker 1: of incest and abuse. Some things about the case weren't
Speaker 1: just appalling, they were bizarre. One night, Anne took some
Speaker 1: of the Kirk kids to dinner. They had been singing
Speaker 1: and playing games. On the drive back to Gilmer, one
Speaker 1: of the young girls became very quiet.
Speaker 8: All of a sudden, she got real serious. I want
Speaker 8: to know how Anne fields about Jesus. Then she said,
Speaker 8: do you like Jesus?
Speaker 1: This is recreated from an interview and gave in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety five with contact an alternative newspaper and declined to
Speaker 1: speak with me on them. So you're hearing from my
Speaker 1: friend Beverly reading the voice of Ann.
Speaker 8: I said, yes, I like Jesus. And she told me
Speaker 8: she didn't like him, and I asked her why and
Speaker 8: she said because he sexually abuses the angels.
Speaker 1: Anne was shocked. She asked, who in the world told
Speaker 1: you something like that?
Speaker 8: And she said, nobody told me that. I saw him
Speaker 8: do it. I was an angel.
Speaker 1: By now there were more than a dozen Kirk kids
Speaker 1: and stepkids and foster care. One day, they all went
Speaker 1: to a birthday party. The children strangely began to chant
Speaker 1: around the candles on the cake.
Speaker 8: The youngest one said, the Devil's coming and he got
Speaker 8: his fingers all perched up in a claw like form
Speaker 8: and said he scratched me and he get blood.
Speaker 1: Hearing this, now, sure, it's kind of dark, but mostly
Speaker 1: it just sounds like silly kids who might have watched
Speaker 1: a scary movie or two. This child was only three
Speaker 1: years old, though by now Anne was highly attuned to
Speaker 1: other disturbing things the kids were talking about. As the
Speaker 1: children kept opening up to Anne and their foster parents,
Speaker 1: the stories became more gruesome, more explicit.
Speaker 8: Eating body parts, drinking blood.
Speaker 1: Child trafficking, demonic rituals, killing babies in the woods. The
Speaker 1: worst crimes were rumored to be happening at the Kerr
Speaker 1: place off the dark trail of Cherokee. Trace Anne and
Speaker 1: her caseworker colleague, Debbie Minshew, knew how to handle child
Speaker 1: abuse claims. Sadly, those were all too common. The Satan stuff, though,
Speaker 1: that was beyond their scope. That's when CPS brought in
Speaker 1: a state cop, Steve Baggs, to take over the kr case.
Speaker 1: Bags had been involved in some recent investigations of murderous
Speaker 1: cults and he was about to retire from the Texas
Speaker 1: Department of Public Safety. Needing backup, Bags turned to a
Speaker 1: police chaplain from Louisiana named Brooks Flag, who fashioned himself
Speaker 1: an expert on Satanic rituals. Bags and Flag the dynamic duo.
Speaker 1: They interrogate Wanda's brother, Lucas, who admits to being part
Speaker 1: of a group that sacrificed children and babies. To prove
Speaker 1: he's telling the truth, Lucas even takes a light detector test.
Speaker 9: He told several girls that they had kidnapped, tortured, and
Speaker 9: raped and eventually killed, and he passed the polygraph examined
Speaker 9: with flying covers.
Speaker 1: That's Melvin Dodd, a Gilmer school teacher at the time.
Speaker 1: Melvin would become a key player in the Kelly Wilson saga.
Speaker 1: You'll hear plenty from Melvin in this episode. During a
Speaker 1: search of the Kerk Place, cadaver dogs alerted on a
Speaker 1: particular shed in the backyard.
Speaker 9: And it had shackles in there where you could, you know,
Speaker 9: like handcuff somebody to the wall, and there were cat
Speaker 9: and nine tail whips in there and all kinds of
Speaker 9: satanic stuff.
Speaker 1: The shed made the local news at.
Speaker 10: A storage shed belonging to the Kerr families in the
Speaker 10: hands of investigators to night. Police are keeping mom about
Speaker 10: where the shed is and what they'll do with it,
Speaker 10: but forensic experts believe the shed will undergo a battery
Speaker 10: of extensive tests for evidence.
Speaker 11: Partial listing of what they found inside and are labeling
Speaker 11: as evidence. Inside the shed a pickup truck toolbox also
Speaker 11: found on the floor and walls of the shed were hair.
Speaker 11: Hair was also found in a wood rail and rope,
Speaker 11: and there was a cat of nine tails made of metal.
Speaker 1: The investigators were closing in building their case. From Imperative Entertainment,
Speaker 1: I'm west Ferguson. This is Deviltown. This is chapter three
Speaker 1: in the woods. Talking to folks in Gilmer, I keep
Speaker 1: hearing whispers about the Kerr family, about Sergeant Brown. Other
Speaker 1: prominent names that come up repeatedly, and I'm trying to
Speaker 1: check out all of them. Hardly anybody wants to talk
Speaker 1: on the record, and I can't say I blame them.
Speaker 1: But there's an exception, John Melvin Dodd, the retired school teacher.
Speaker 1: Several Gilmer residents who wouldn't put their own names out
Speaker 1: there said I should try him instead, seeing as Melvin
Speaker 1: is a charter member of the Justice for Kelly Wilson Committee,
Speaker 1: which we'll get to soon enough. So I called Melvin.
Speaker 1: Here's a man who speaks his mind.
Speaker 9: I'll tell you what you're taking on project. I hope
Speaker 9: he makes some money. We were taking on a monstrous project.
Speaker 9: I thought about writing a book about myself, but gosh,
Speaker 9: I'm never dead, and I'm eighty years old. I'm not
Speaker 9: going too now, but I guarantee I'll be very happy
Speaker 9: to help you, really and truly. We're just kind of
Speaker 9: scratching the surface.
Speaker 1: Back to that shed in the curves backyard. Shackles and whips.
Speaker 1: From what I've read, it was more like straps and ropes,
Speaker 1: some rubber tie downs and insulated electrical wire and that
Speaker 1: cat of nine tails, which is a little weird at
Speaker 1: any rate. The investigators also discovered a long trail looping
Speaker 1: through the woods behind the house, which they saw as
Speaker 1: some kind of ritualistic footpath, and they thought it might
Speaker 1: be home to shallow graves. By now the case had
Speaker 1: expanded beyond the Kerr family. Wanda's sons claimed that one
Speaker 1: of the neighbor kids had also been involved in the abuse.
Speaker 1: This seven year old kid named Raymond. Normally I wouldn't
Speaker 1: name a minor victim like this, but Raymond gave the okay.
Speaker 1: CPS took Raymond and his little brother, who was just
Speaker 1: a toddler at the time, and placed them in foster care.
Speaker 1: Their foster mom was named Barbara Bass. She had a
Speaker 1: ton of kids in her care.
Speaker 9: She had been the East Texas Foster Parent of the
Speaker 9: Year I think the year before, and she had been
Speaker 9: given custody of Raymond Smith during this and so she
Speaker 9: and Anne Gore and Debbie Minsh took Raymond to the
Speaker 9: Dairy Queen And while Raymond is there eating, he casually says,
Speaker 9: I don't know what happened to Kelly Wilson.
Speaker 1: Seven year old Raymond claimed the curs had abducted Kelly Wilson,
Speaker 1: the local girl that hadn't been seen at this point
Speaker 1: in a year and a half. And not only that,
Speaker 1: he said the curs they'd killed her.
Speaker 9: That's how all of this started. Raymond Smith told about
Speaker 9: how they would go out there and the beat Kelly
Speaker 9: and a raped her and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 9: And there were other kids, mostly girls, who were brought
Speaker 9: in by the truck drivers in the family, and they
Speaker 9: would do this to them and kill them.
Speaker 1: And Gore and her fellow caseworker, Debbie Minshew shared Raymond's
Speaker 1: claims with Gilmer police Sergeant James York Brown, who'd been
Speaker 1: leading the unrelated so far search for Kelly.
Speaker 9: James Brown is the policeman who was assigned to investigate.
Speaker 9: So they took it to James Brown. Well, two or
Speaker 9: three days later, they hadn't even heard from James Brown,
Speaker 9: so they go see James Brown and he told them
Speaker 9: you stay out in my case, if you don't, I
Speaker 9: will destroy you and I'll destroy the kid.
Speaker 1: To be honest, it's hard for me to comprehend that
Speaker 1: James Brown ever said this, but it's pretty much exactly
Speaker 1: how En Gore has described their exchange in that interview
Speaker 1: she gave for contact newspaper Brown it seems wanted no
Speaker 1: one coming close to his investigation. By now, the investigation
Speaker 1: into the Curs was really heating up. It was August
Speaker 1: ninety three going into September. The Curves were heading toward
Speaker 1: a criminal trial on dozens of sex abuse charges.
Speaker 3: Now I got a phone call from I believe it
Speaker 3: was Anne Gore, who was with the Job Protective Services.
Speaker 3: She told me that they had a bunch of molestation
Speaker 3: cases involving an extended family in Gilmer, the Curves, as
Speaker 3: well as some other folks who were associated with them.
Speaker 1: This is Shane Phelps. At the time, he was an
Speaker 1: Assistant Attorney General for the state of Texas. Shane had
Speaker 1: just been named the chief of a brand new division
Speaker 1: in the AG's office, set up to assist local prosecutors,
Speaker 1: and they need extra help.
Speaker 3: So I asked her, you know, what kind of cases
Speaker 3: are we talking about? What are they going to trial?
Speaker 3: Because this is the kind of thing we did. I mean,
Speaker 3: the attorney, the district attorney of that jurisdiction, Upshire County,
Speaker 3: apparently discovered that he had a conflict and so he
Speaker 3: almost at the last minute said I can't handle these cases.
Speaker 3: As it turned out, there were some forty five indictments
Speaker 3: involving about six or seven people, which is a ton
Speaker 3: of cases. I mean, that's an extraordinarily complex and difficult
Speaker 3: case to prepare and get the trial or trials. So
Speaker 3: when I asked her, well, when is this thing except
Speaker 3: for trial? As I recall, it is very quickly. It
Speaker 3: wasn't the next week, but it was very It was
Speaker 3: on the trial dock and already it may have been
Speaker 3: a month out, and I just said, look, I've got
Speaker 3: a capital murder case I'm handling right now, I'm staffing
Speaker 3: this office. I'm just taking over. We just can't take
Speaker 3: that case of that magnitude on at this time. Was
Speaker 3: there anything about the Satanics at that point, No, No,
Speaker 3: it was just a molestation, sexual assault, indecency with a
Speaker 3: child involving these children. She didn't give me any details
Speaker 3: since she certainly didn't mention anything at all about the
Speaker 3: Satanic stuff. She did mention that they had made contact
Speaker 3: with a lawyer named Scott Leiford. I think he was
Speaker 3: out of Galveston. It was a civil lawyer.
Speaker 1: Scott Lefford was indeed a civil lawyer, but he'd worked
Speaker 1: on child abuse cases earlier in his career. With Shane
Speaker 1: Phelps unable to help, Lyford was appointed special prosecutor. The
Speaker 1: first thing he did was appoint Bags and Flag as
Speaker 1: special prosecutors. Next, Bags and Flag got named special investigators
Speaker 1: for the Sheriff's office too, and just like that the
Speaker 1: team had real power power to unravel the story.
Speaker 5: It is about five minutes until six on Thursday, December
Speaker 5: the ninth, nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 6: We're with Connie Martin.
Speaker 5: Also here is Debbie Minshew, Steve Baggs, Brookes Flagg, and myself,
Speaker 5: Scott Leifert. We've been talking to Connie Martin on and
Speaker 5: off most of the afternoon. Her lawyers here in the
Speaker 5: jail and insisted with her on several occasions. And we're
Speaker 5: going to go over again some things now that she
Speaker 5: just told us and gotten off her chest.
Speaker 12: And Steve, I'll that you y'all pick up where you are, Okay, Connie,
Speaker 12: where are you gonna start? You wanna start at the
Speaker 12: trace or at NTV where she was picked up.
Speaker 1: Connie Martin, she was the common law wife of Danny Kerr.
Speaker 1: When a bunch of the curs were getting rounded up
Speaker 1: Connie was arrested too. You heard Connie at the top
Speaker 1: of this episode. Here she is again talking with Steve
Speaker 1: Baggs about the abduction of Kelly.
Speaker 2: Kelly got in a van, a white van with the MTV.
Speaker 2: It was right beside the video clubs.
Speaker 13: We went from there out to Geneva's house on Cherokee Trace.
Speaker 13: Danny and all of them was We was all sitting
Speaker 13: in the kitchen. I was sitting beside Kelly. They asked
Speaker 13: Kelly if Danny and Wanda had asked Kelly if she
Speaker 13: wanted to go outside, and she said yes, so they
Speaker 13: followed her out the door.
Speaker 1: According to Connie, Kelly had been friends with Danny Kerr,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't strange for her to get into Danny's
Speaker 1: van or for her to visit the Kerrs house in
Speaker 1: the woods. Connie said they were coerced into group sex
Speaker 1: after they.
Speaker 13: Made up that they made a man wanted to put
Speaker 13: her clothes back on, made us take the children back.
Speaker 2: To the finals.
Speaker 12: Did you ever see her again?
Speaker 3: Not after that?
Speaker 2: I don't know what. They didn't move. Do you see
Speaker 2: her the next day?
Speaker 4: No, I don't know what.
Speaker 2: The don't tell m They just told men Wanda. If
Speaker 2: we opened up say anything about what we say that
Speaker 2: say kill os. They are very violent.
Speaker 13: No, if they had threatened to kill money, if I
Speaker 13: open my mouth, they have threatened to kill Wanda. I
Speaker 13: had to sing marks on Wanda's throw, and I asked
Speaker 13: Wanda what happened to her throw, and she would tell me,
Speaker 13: I don't know.
Speaker 1: She was scared to tell me or what we heard
Speaker 1: about Wanda earlier. She's the wife of Wendell Kerr, and
Speaker 1: she'd already confessed to abusing her own sons. The Lifer
Speaker 1: team grilled Wanda for hours. Eventually she cracked. The team
Speaker 1: even escorted her out of jail so she could show
Speaker 1: them around the Kerr place where their heinous crimes supposedly
Speaker 1: went down. Wanda said Kelly was a birthday present for Geneva,
Speaker 1: the matriarch of the Kerr clan. She said, Danny and
Speaker 1: a few of the other Kerr family members pulled up
Speaker 1: beside the movie store, and Kelly came over to their van.
Speaker 1: Here's Wanda with investigator Steve Baggs. The story she tells
Speaker 1: is kind of similar to her sister in law Connie's.
Speaker 6: Did she lean in the window now, she just stood there. Okay,
Speaker 6: what did Danny say?
Speaker 4: Danny ask her, which do you would you like to
Speaker 4: go out and meet my mother, Geneva Man?
Speaker 6: Then what did Kelly say?
Speaker 2: Kelly did okay?
Speaker 1: Sure, Wanda said. The van took Kelly to the Kerr
Speaker 1: compound on Cherokee Trace. Everybody gathered around Geneva's kitchen.
Speaker 6: How long were you there for? The conversation got the
Speaker 6: van a few minutes.
Speaker 4: Danny told Kelly that his mom wants to talk to her.
Speaker 4: Kelly went over there as mom asked if she would
Speaker 4: take her clothes off, she said no, and that's where
Speaker 4: the arguments though.
Speaker 2: She was stunned.
Speaker 4: She was stunned. Yeah, I didn't know what was going on.
Speaker 4: Somebody spoke up said it was just a joke. It
Speaker 4: was just picking on you, and asked would you like
Speaker 4: to go outside and walk around to her? Cut off
Speaker 4: a little bit?
Speaker 6: Went out the door first I did, and you went
Speaker 6: out the door and then came out behind.
Speaker 4: You, Kelly, she was right there behind the story.
Speaker 2: Did you go out the back door?
Speaker 6: Back door?
Speaker 4: Always the back door stood outside right there at the
Speaker 4: back backsteps till everybody got out there. Then it was
Speaker 4: just like walking around it started out towards stuff.
Speaker 2: The peach trees.
Speaker 4: It's out there, uh, past the clothesline a little bit.
Speaker 4: Jenny would wanting to show her her peach trees, the
Speaker 4: one you playing, right, Wanda, to show our page. Jason
Speaker 4: to me at Saint Laco's Sun. Your mind occupied, That's
Speaker 4: what it seemed like to me.
Speaker 1: Kelly and the Currs ended up deeper in the woods.
Speaker 1: At this point in the interview, Steve Baggs asks Wanda
Speaker 1: about the names of other people who are over there
Speaker 1: that night. Then the recording ends. So while Bags and
Speaker 1: Flag are doing their thing, you got to remember that
Speaker 1: Sergeant James York Brown is still heading up the original
Speaker 1: search for Kelly Wilson. Although Sergeant Brown was initially dismissive
Speaker 1: of the curR connection, he went ahead and interviewed Wanda's
Speaker 1: brother Lucas. Remember, Lucas had told Bags and Flag that
Speaker 1: he'd been part of the cult that sacrificed babies and children.
Speaker 1: He'd even passed a polygraph. Now, though Lucas had a
Speaker 1: different story, He told Sergeant Brown that he made all
Speaker 1: that up. Brown also talked to Wendell Kerr. According to
Speaker 1: the Special Prosecutors, Star witnesses. Wendell had been on the
Speaker 1: scene when the Curs kidnapped Kelly. The way they told it,
Speaker 1: he was practically the ringleader of the Devil cult. But
Speaker 1: Wendell was a truck driver. He'd been hauling freight on
Speaker 1: the East Coast on the night Kelly Wilson disappeared from
Speaker 1: the video store in Gilmert, Texas, and Wendell had the
Speaker 1: receipts to prove it. Brown took his findings to Scott Lefford.
Speaker 1: Now it was Lifford's turn to be dismissive. If the
Speaker 1: Currs were capable of demonic sacrifices, they were capable of anything,
Speaker 1: and that includes the relatively simple task of forging a
Speaker 1: bunch of receipts. Sergeant James Brown wasn't buying it. He
Speaker 1: wouldn't back down.
Speaker 14: I mean, I knew they hit false fied information and
Speaker 14: falseified evidences stiff in those channel cases.
Speaker 2: That they were in on that at the time.
Speaker 1: That's Sergeant Brown just to be He's accusing the life
Speaker 1: or team of falsifying evidence here. I'm not aware of
Speaker 1: them doing that. Lots of different interpretations though, and I
Speaker 1: told him that when.
Speaker 14: They went to court, I don't justify an instant And
Speaker 14: as it built up, he turned around and fretted me
Speaker 14: that he would ruin me and destroying the whole livelihood
Speaker 14: everything else politically and all.
Speaker 3: Of course I.
Speaker 6: Didn't think he could do it.
Speaker 14: And when they lied about those things, and then they
Speaker 14: lied about the evidence, you know, so we're gonna said
Speaker 14: when you falsify evidence, you make up evidence, and you
Speaker 14: present it to somebody like a grand jury.
Speaker 2: They don't know what they did do and didn't do.
Speaker 6: And that's the sad part of that. They lied completely.
Speaker 14: And then that's how they and some guy says Menian
Speaker 14: to him because they said, well, if we didn't get
Speaker 14: him killed, is why I looked at them.
Speaker 6: They walk away as white knights.
Speaker 1: Wait, was the Lifer team trying to kill Sergeant Brown?
Speaker 1: I think he means they were trying to kill his case.
Speaker 1: Rival investigations were heading straight toward a collision. On the
Speaker 1: one hand, there was Scott Lefford with investigators Bags and Flag,
Speaker 1: joined by caseworkers An Gore and Debbie Minshew, and on
Speaker 1: the other Sergeant James Brown keeping his version of the
Speaker 1: case to himself. Meanwhile, CPS had to do something with
Speaker 1: all those Kerr kids. Some of the kids went with
Speaker 1: Barbara Bass, the foster parent of the year who I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier in the episode. Others ended up with an
Speaker 1: older couple named James and Marie Lappie. James and Marie
Speaker 1: were actually so afraid of the Kerr family they fled
Speaker 1: with their ten foster kids to the West Texas town
Speaker 1: of Colorado City, trying to put a ton of distance
Speaker 1: between themselves and the supposed devil cult In Gilmer. James
Speaker 1: and Marie built a tall fence to keep the kids in.
Speaker 1: They homeschooled the kids and even brought in this guy,
Speaker 1: Dan Sullivan, to teach Sunday school.
Speaker 7: And it became clear to Dan Sullivan that the children
Speaker 7: had been deprived.
Speaker 3: She said that.
Speaker 15: They had been through so much and she wanted to
Speaker 15: give them a treat with moving and all the stress
Speaker 15: and everything, and she was going to take them all
Speaker 15: to the grocery store and let them get whatever they
Speaker 15: wanted as a treat to eat.
Speaker 3: And they went to the dog food section.
Speaker 15: That was there a treat to them. Was she afraid
Speaker 15: of having the children interact with other children when they
Speaker 15: first came to Colorado City, Yes, absolutely, because the children
Speaker 15: were taught to abuse other children and hurt and name
Speaker 15: of their children. She told us that they knew the
Speaker 15: older boys knew how to kill and field as a
Speaker 15: baby a baby, a baby Yesterdir.
Speaker 1: Of the dozen or more Kirk kids placed in foster care,
Speaker 1: one was a seven year old boy named Danny Kerr Junior.
Speaker 1: In November nineteen ninety three, his foster dad, James Lappie,
Speaker 1: slapped Danny in the face and repeatedly slammed his head
Speaker 1: against the wooden floor of their home. Other foster kids
Speaker 1: who witnessed the assault described the back of Danny's head
Speaker 1: in gruesome detail. Here's Shane Phelps again describing the injury.
Speaker 3: I understanding was that there was a blow to his
Speaker 3: head or series of blows to his head. It basically
Speaker 3: reduced his head to mush and it was a horrible injury.
Speaker 1: The same day he injured Danny Junior, James Lappie wrote
Speaker 1: a note claiming that he had merely fallen on the child,
Speaker 1: while admitting quote if that boy dies, it will be
Speaker 1: my fault. James Lappie then shot himself to death in
Speaker 1: his own backyard. James's wife, Marie was next to die.
Speaker 13: Two days later.
Speaker 7: In his office at the Colorado City Record, reporter Wade
Speaker 7: Warren was listening to his police scanner.
Speaker 16: There's a nine to one one call at Saint Mandris.
Speaker 1: So I went up there and.
Speaker 16: Found the I got there right after the police department did,
Speaker 16: and in the JPE and found, you know, found that
Speaker 16: he had committees apparently committed suicide with the woes of
Speaker 16: Peel prescription drugs awful.
Speaker 1: As for poor Danny Junior, he was left severely impaired.
Speaker 1: From what I understand, he never recovered, spending the rest
Speaker 1: of his days and assisted living. Danny Junior died in
Speaker 1: twenty eleven at the age of twenty four. Okay, I
Speaker 1: know I've thrown a lot of names at you. Here's
Speaker 1: another Tammy manis Tammy was a bus driver for the
Speaker 1: Kirk kids when they were in foster care.
Speaker 17: I was driving a school bus in nineteen ninety two
Speaker 17: for Gilmour Independent School District and I had some children
Speaker 17: on my bus, small children, and mentioned something to the
Speaker 17: effect of knowing what had happened to Kelly Wilson. And
Speaker 17: I called and reported that to Sergeant Brown that evening.
Speaker 17: I never heard anything back. Sergeant Brown didn't seem that
Speaker 17: concerned as to where the children lived at that time,
Speaker 17: and as the case progressed, you know, there was really
Speaker 17: nothing until January of this year, whenever he was indicted.
Speaker 1: So Tammy was already suspicious of Sergeant Brown. When she
Speaker 1: got her hands on some secret documents provided to the
Speaker 1: grand jury, she saw a cover up. So Tammy got
Speaker 1: together with our friend Melvin, the Gilmer school teacher, and
Speaker 1: yet another investigative team was born.
Speaker 9: I barely knew Tammy. She had driven the school bus
Speaker 9: that my kids wrote on. We called it the Justice
Speaker 9: for Kelly Wilson Committee, and the oldest and the youngest
Speaker 9: Curs were members of our committee.
Speaker 1: Daughters, two of the Kerr sisters, were both adults when
Speaker 1: all this was going down. They declined to speak with me,
Speaker 1: but I did read a couple of interviews they gave
Speaker 1: back in the nineties where they claimed to have been
Speaker 1: abused by their family members. Marie Kerr even talked at
Speaker 1: a couple of news conferences.
Speaker 8: My parents and my brothers put me through the same
Speaker 8: thing as these kids are saying, and I don't I
Speaker 8: want to check my nieces and nephews. This is why
Speaker 8: I'm fighting so hard.
Speaker 16: I get quote my parents, my.
Speaker 9: Brothers, and you know, the both said, well, well, all
Speaker 9: this child molestation was going on, we underwent it, their
Speaker 9: satanic worship, every bit of this. So and yes, they
Speaker 9: did kidnap and murder Kelly Wilson. So we wound up
Speaker 9: meeting interviewing the people. And you know, when you're doing this,
Speaker 9: most of the people were involved in drugs themselves. That's
Speaker 9: why they knew about all of this. Nobody was ever
Speaker 9: interested in what we were told. They were totally uninterested
Speaker 9: in what we were looking for because they were trying
Speaker 9: to cover up what was going on and trying to
Speaker 9: blame Chris din for her murder.
Speaker 1: Chris Denton, you may remember, was a boyfriend of Kelly's.
Speaker 1: We'll take a closer look at him later. James Brown
Speaker 1: saw Chris as a prime suspect and that was going
Speaker 1: to be the focus of the investigation he was running.
Speaker 1: At first, it seems like Kelly's mom, Kathy, was inclined
Speaker 1: go along.
Speaker 9: With that hunch James Brown. Kathy totally trusted because James
Speaker 9: Brown was coming by her house every day two three
Speaker 9: telling her leads that he had how he was investigating
Speaker 9: these and she just had total confidence in James Brown.
Speaker 1: Kathy changed her mind though, when details from the interrogation
Speaker 1: of Connie Martin began to come out.
Speaker 9: Connie Martin just sang like a bird and she started
Speaker 9: giving details. Connie really noticed things and was mentioned things
Speaker 9: that the average person probably wouldn't.
Speaker 1: For example, Connie was said to have noticed a particular
Speaker 1: detail about the Rugby shirt that Kelly was wearing on
Speaker 1: the night she disappeared.
Speaker 9: She described the shirt she was wearing, and she said
Speaker 9: it had rubber buttons on. Kathy knew then Connie Martin's
Speaker 9: down truth because she was wearing a Rugby shirt and
Speaker 9: Rugby shirts have rubber buttons on. Kathy knew that there
Speaker 9: was no way in the world Knnie Marten would come
Speaker 9: up with that detail unless Knnie Marten was there, So
Speaker 9: she knew right the end James Brown had been lying
Speaker 9: all this time. So that's when Kathy Carlson joined with
Speaker 9: Tammy and Glenn Leech.
Speaker 3: Then Lee.
Speaker 1: Kathy was now a member of the Justice for Kelly
Speaker 1: Wilson group. Glenn was another member who was really good
Speaker 1: at research. Melvin says the group kept hearing whispers about
Speaker 1: James Brown. I wasn't able to confirm them but the
Speaker 1: rumors were certainly flying around Gilmer. At one point, the
Speaker 1: Justice for Kelly Wilson group got their hands on the
Speaker 1: security camera footage from the bank where someone had made
Speaker 1: the deposit after Kelly's shift at the video store.
Speaker 9: Now, I've got a double first cousin whose son was
Speaker 9: an Apple computer freak at this time. He was into
Speaker 9: all kinds of graphics, crazy looking pictures and everything like that.
Speaker 9: The boy, he was a guru when it came to
Speaker 9: using an Apple computer.
Speaker 1: A double cousin is when two siblings from one family
Speaker 1: married two siblings from another family, and both couples have kids.
Speaker 1: The son of Melvin's double cousin was able to enhance
Speaker 1: the video quality, revealing more detail.
Speaker 9: A van pulled in there, and a man got out
Speaker 9: and made a deposit. And this man, I guarantee you
Speaker 9: was James Brown in a Gilmer police uniform. Now, James
Speaker 9: Brown always wore real dark sunglasses day and night. There's
Speaker 9: no question it was James Brown. Well, now, this was
Speaker 9: an old enough fan that the side windows were just
Speaker 9: clear glass. You know, nowadays even the side winners are
Speaker 9: so dark it's hard to see anybody in there. But
Speaker 9: there was an old woman sitting right behind James Brown,
Speaker 9: and she put her face up to the clear glass
Speaker 9: of the window, and that was Janeva Kerr, the old lady.
Speaker 1: I'm still trying to get my hands on the security
Speaker 1: footage so I can make up my own mind on
Speaker 1: this one. But Cathy also found it suspicious that James
Speaker 1: Brown had refused to take part in a citizen search
Speaker 1: she'd organized on the Cherokee Trace the month after her
Speaker 1: daughter went missing. Was the proximity to the curR home
Speaker 1: just too close for comfort?
Speaker 7: My husband and I had conducted a citizen search in
Speaker 7: February ninety two short left Kelly disappeared, with many, many,
Speaker 7: many of the townspeople going with us and participating, which
Speaker 7: was outside the city limits.
Speaker 2: And we asked Sergeant Brown, why can't.
Speaker 7: You help us on this, and he said, it's outside
Speaker 7: my jurisdiction.
Speaker 17: He wouldn't on that particular search, which was the closest
Speaker 17: to the guitar residents where they found where Life Its
Speaker 17: team found some evidence human hair.
Speaker 2: Human blood.
Speaker 1: Melvin also deduced the Kurz motives for their alleged crimes
Speaker 1: based on something he believes Connie Martin said when being
Speaker 1: grilled by Bags and Flag.
Speaker 9: Connie Martin talked about watchers in the woods. Out in
Speaker 9: the woods where they had this. It was greatly worn down,
Speaker 9: and they had people who were allowed to come there,
Speaker 9: but there were others who had just watched from the woods.
Speaker 9: And we interviewed several people who were watchers in the
Speaker 9: woods and seeing all these satanic rituals take place. And
Speaker 9: of course it's just like, you know, I used to
Speaker 9: just be amazed at the children of Israel in the
Speaker 9: Old Testament. Now why did they so easily, so quickly
Speaker 9: referred back to paganistic worship. Well, flip about the major draw,
Speaker 9: It was all of the sex they had. And that's
Speaker 9: the draw of the satanic rituals, is all the sex
Speaker 9: they have.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, the Lifer team was also making headway in its
Speaker 1: parallel investigation of the curs which now included Sergeant Brown.
Speaker 1: Bags and Flag took several statements from Gilmer residents who
Speaker 1: claimed to have seen James Brown or a police officer
Speaker 1: who looked like him with various members of the Kerr family.
Speaker 1: While excavating another clearing where the ritual sacrifices supposedly took place,
Speaker 1: they found a piece of bone in the dirt lab
Speaker 1: testing suggested it was from the leg of a subadult human,
Speaker 1: as in maybe Kelly. The deeper they dug into the case,
Speaker 1: the more the Lifer team was getting spooked. One night,
Speaker 1: they were having dinner when the phone rang. The only
Speaker 1: sound on the other end of the line was of
Speaker 1: a baby crying, which they found really disturbing. The Lifer
Speaker 1: team ended up going into hiding, setting up headquarters at
Speaker 1: an undisclosed location in the country way outside of town. Remember,
Speaker 1: the Lifer team is just five people, a couple of
Speaker 1: social workers, a retired state cop and police chaplain, and
Speaker 1: a civil lawyer. They desperately needed back up.
Speaker 3: At some point, Scott called me Scott Leifer, and I
Speaker 3: had a long conversation with him and told him, here's
Speaker 3: my home number in my office numbers.
Speaker 1: This is Shane Phelps again with the Attorney General's office.
Speaker 3: Call me if there's anything you need at all. I'd
Speaker 3: be glad to help you, because it was pretty clear
Speaker 3: to me that he had limited experience in prosecution at
Speaker 3: the time. Just based on our conversation, it sounded to
Speaker 3: be like he needed him, which is why I offered
Speaker 3: it and assistance here offer. So he called me at
Speaker 3: one point, and I've talked him through some of the
Speaker 3: complexities had on those kind of cases, and particularly on
Speaker 3: the criminal side. It offered our assistance. You need anything
Speaker 3: at all, call any time, We'll make ourselves available to you.
Speaker 1: That was in the fall of ninety three. One morning
Speaker 1: in January, Shane was flipping through the day's news clippings
Speaker 1: when a story caught in by surprise, k.
Speaker 11: LTV, how do we seven, This is East Texas News
Speaker 11: at six.
Speaker 10: Arraignments today in the case of a missing gilmertine, good evening,
Speaker 10: thanks for joining us.
Speaker 3: My next recollection of becoming involved in the Gilmer case
Speaker 3: was I think it was in January of that next year,
Speaker 3: which would have been ninety four. I saw this article
Speaker 3: about an indictment of all of these people the kurs.
Speaker 3: I noticed Scott Leffer's name. I said, well, that's peculiar
Speaker 3: because it was talking about indicting all these people for
Speaker 3: death penalty offenses. I think it was murder, aggravated sexual assault,
Speaker 3: aggravated kidnapping, and mentioned Kelly Wilson. I had no hint
Speaker 3: of I didn't even know who Kelly Wilson was at
Speaker 3: this time, so I kind of raised my eyebrows. Was
Speaker 3: I wonder what's going on in Gilbert.
Speaker 1: Within days, a state politician from Gilmer named Bob Glaze
Speaker 1: was reaching out to the AG's office asking for help.
Speaker 1: Team Lyford wasn't just coming after Sergeant Brown anymore. Lyford
Speaker 1: and crew were setting their sights on anyone who stood
Speaker 1: in their way, including the town's big wigs. Gilmer's civic
Speaker 1: leaders were embarrassed and they wanted this case to go away. Shane,
Speaker 1: Phelps's immediate supervisor, asked him to take another look.
Speaker 3: The nature of the request was, you know, we need
Speaker 3: somebody to come in here and stop what's going on,
Speaker 3: because their perception was that Upshire County and Gilbert particularly
Speaker 3: were being made a laughing stock across the country. That
Speaker 3: was the first time I got the hint that there
Speaker 3: was anything about, you know, satanic covens and things like that.
Speaker 3: And obviously that was so far afield of the original
Speaker 3: conversation I had with Anne Gore.
Speaker 1: On the flight from Austin to Gilmer, Shane read a
Speaker 1: report about the case. The report didn't say who it
Speaker 1: was written by, but Shane has always assumed the author
Speaker 1: was Scott Lefford, the special prosecutor, and it.
Speaker 3: Was pretty wild. It told this tale of the Satanic
Speaker 3: coven that was operating in Upshur County, and they were
Speaker 3: kidnapping teenage hitchhiker girls, they were sacrificing babies, they were
Speaker 3: they were in cannibalism. I mean, it was just wild,
Speaker 3: and there was just enough in there that I thought,
Speaker 3: oh God, if any of this is true, Oh this
Speaker 3: is insane.
Speaker 1: If reading about the case was insane, just wait till
Speaker 1: he landed in Gilmer. That's next time on Deviltown. Deviltown
Speaker 1: is a production of Imperative Entertainment. It was written and
Speaker 1: 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 Sisler
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.