Speaker 1: This episode maintain content of a graphic nature, including descriptions
Speaker 1: of physical and sexual violence against adults, children, and animals.
Speaker 1: Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: Hi, this is Tanya. Hi this is Shannon, and we are.
Speaker 1: Crimes and Consequences, a hardcore true crime podcast.
Speaker 2: Hi Shannon, Hey girl, how you doing. I'm doing good.
Speaker 2: How are you? Ah? Pretty good?
Speaker 3: Well, we're always gonna start off with the weather. We're
Speaker 3: not always gonna but you know when it's changing or
Speaker 3: it's cold, And today was a nice rainy day here
Speaker 3: I Metro Detroit.
Speaker 1: Huh yeah, it was cold and rainy.
Speaker 2: I wanted to just stay in bed all day.
Speaker 3: I have no hot coco in the house, so that's
Speaker 3: going on the grocery list.
Speaker 2: How about you, how was your day? It was busy
Speaker 2: in my new job, so it's just good. I'm enjoying it.
Speaker 2: I'm glad it was.
Speaker 1: It was a good move, so I enjoyed my new job.
Speaker 2: But it was good. It was a good Wednesday. Is
Speaker 2: that what today is? Is? Today? And Wednesday? Today is Thursday?
Speaker 2: Oh no, yeah, you're right, it is Thursday.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh. I wasn't even fucking around. I really
Speaker 3: thought it was Wednesday.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm like, is it Yeah, it's Thursday girl.
Speaker 3: All right, all right, I need some strike, So would
Speaker 3: you bring us today?
Speaker 2: Well, I have a really exciting episode.
Speaker 1: This was a case that was cold for a long time,
Speaker 1: so thanks to DNA evidence, it eventually helped.
Speaker 2: So spoiler alert.
Speaker 1: And before we start, I I'm going to remind everyone
Speaker 1: hit the subscribe or follow button on whatever you're listening to.
Speaker 1: And this case originated in the eighties. So it's Tuesday,
Speaker 1: June eighteenth, nineteen eighty five, and a man named Jerry
Speaker 1: Estes was woken up by pounding on the door to
Speaker 1: his office after a busy Monday. He'd stayed up late
Speaker 1: socializing and drinking beer after hours with some employees, and
Speaker 1: he fell asleep at the sale Barn, which was his
Speaker 1: cattle auction house and cafe in Nixa, Missouri. Now I
Speaker 1: think it's Nixa and Ixa, So people in Missouri will
Speaker 1: probably write and tell me that I said it wrong.
Speaker 1: It's probably like some fancy pronunciation, but that's what I'm going.
Speaker 2: Oh, come for me, please, Missura. Please.
Speaker 1: I am not from Missouri and I have no idea
Speaker 1: how it's pronounced. Well, and you know, people will be like, well,
Speaker 1: she could have looked it up, but okay I did.
Speaker 2: I did everyone, Okay I didn't. I didn't put it
Speaker 2: through Google translation. Sorry pronounced that's sorry.
Speaker 3: I remember when I was wearing at the police station,
Speaker 3: Georgia called and they're from Macon, Macon, Georgia, and so
Speaker 3: they had pronounced Macomb, may Comb.
Speaker 2: Macom, Yeah, Malcolm.
Speaker 3: Yeahcom was like, oh adorable.
Speaker 2: No it's Macomb.
Speaker 3: We say it boring, but go up exactly.
Speaker 1: So Jerry owns this cattle auction house in this cafe.
Speaker 1: So he opens the door to his office. He's half dressed.
Speaker 1: His cook, Alice, was standing in front of him and
Speaker 1: she was just talking excitedly, and behind her he could
Speaker 1: see one of his servers named Dana, and Dana was distraught.
Speaker 1: After Alice took a deep breath and slowed down, Jerry
Speaker 1: was able to understand what she was so excited about.
Speaker 1: Alice and Dana had spotted a black Camaro with the
Speaker 1: license plate that was Jackie Ja c KI dash one
Speaker 1: abandoned on the side of Highway one sixty with the
Speaker 1: driver's side door open, and they all knew exactly whose
Speaker 1: car this was. One of the other servers at the
Speaker 1: Sailbarn Cafe named Jackie Johns had purchased her dream car
Speaker 1: last year, which was the black hardtop Camaro with red
Speaker 1: leather interior and.
Speaker 3: Yeh sweet right Camaros in the eighties.
Speaker 2: Oh that was a status symbol. Yes or sure, yeah,
Speaker 2: I love this. It's her dream.
Speaker 1: So Jerry leaves to investigate, and he drives to the
Speaker 1: spot the women had described, and he saw the Camaro
Speaker 1: parked on the shoulder of the road and it was
Speaker 1: pointed as if the driver was.
Speaker 2: Headed away from the auction house.
Speaker 1: Jerry turned on the headlights of his truck like he
Speaker 1: pointed them at the Camaro, and he walked up to
Speaker 1: the car and he looked inside. He saw an open
Speaker 1: purse on the floor of the passenger side seat that
Speaker 1: belonged to Jackie. There was still money in it visible
Speaker 1: from where he was standing. The keys to the vehicle
Speaker 1: were still in the ignition. There were some scattered items
Speaker 1: like typical like a twenty year old girl and like
Speaker 1: for example, there were empty cans of Aquinet hairspray.
Speaker 2: Do you remember Aquinet? Yes? I do?
Speaker 3: And my time capt for night my graduating year of
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2: Eight, yes, loved aquinet right lived on it.
Speaker 1: Yes, But it was the blood. The blood was everywhere,
Speaker 1: mixed with strands of long, dark hair that made Jerry's
Speaker 1: stomach drop.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: The steering wheel was bent, the driver's side headrest was
Speaker 1: nearly snapped off, and Jerry figured there had been just
Speaker 1: quite the struggle inside this car. Wow.
Speaker 2: He investigates a little.
Speaker 1: Further, and he found blood mixed with dirt and dried
Speaker 1: leaves across the dark red leather of the back seat.
Speaker 1: On the floor, he saw what looked like a pair
Speaker 1: of jeans. The legs of the pants were rolled up,
Speaker 1: with a pair of women's underwear caught in one of them.
Speaker 1: There was also a blood smeared bra. He didn't see
Speaker 1: a body, but he feared that Jackie was dead. Jerry
Speaker 1: was seen enough at this point. He quickly drove the
Speaker 1: two miles back to the Sailbarn to call the Sheriff's office,
Speaker 1: where help was dispatched, and then he went back to
Speaker 1: the Camaro to wait for the police to arrive. The
Speaker 1: Missouri Highway Patrol officers and Christian County Sheriff Dwight McNeil
Speaker 1: pulled up and looked inside the vehicle. And they were
Speaker 1: shining their flashlights. They opened the trunk, a portion of
Speaker 1: which had been white down that they noticed, and there
Speaker 1: was no body inside, but they did find a spare tire,
Speaker 1: a tire iron, and various items of clothing. Looking further
Speaker 1: into the trunk, Sheriff McNeil leaning down and with a
Speaker 1: that he had picked up, he lifted the bumper jack
Speaker 1: from the tire and the rear wall of the trunk.
Speaker 1: Hair could be seen on the lip of the jack
Speaker 1: and blood. So after this, Jerry returned to his frantic
Speaker 1: employees and reported what they already knew. Something bad had
Speaker 1: happened to Jackie.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Jackie John's was twenty years old, working as a server
Speaker 1: at Jerry's Sale Barn cafe and part time at the
Speaker 1: kmart customer service counter like the local Kmart. Right, the
Speaker 1: former cheerleader and prom queen lived with her parents in
Speaker 1: a trailer in the small Missouri town of Nixa. Again,
Speaker 1: I'm probably saying it wrong. Anixa was a really small town.
Speaker 1: There was population there was less than two thousand people.
Speaker 2: Wow, that is tiny. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Socializing in the small town meant hanging out in the
Speaker 1: parking lot of local seven to eleven. That was the
Speaker 1: hot spot, right, and that seven eleven happened to carry
Speaker 1: that aquinet that Jackie had become obsessed with.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: She was a beautiful girl and she worked hard to
Speaker 1: look good and the summer before she'd even become the
Speaker 1: Sucker Day Queen at the Nexa Sucer Day Festival.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Well, small town girl Camaro's She's had in places, for sure.
Speaker 1: She was a good girl at heart, but she did
Speaker 1: have a bit of a wild side that she had
Speaker 1: a fake id. She occasionally used to buy you a
Speaker 1: six pack here and there. Another member of the community
Speaker 1: was a guy named Gerald Carnahan, and at this point
Speaker 1: in the story he's in his late twenties. The Carnahan
Speaker 1: family was rumored to be the wealthiest in town. Jerry's father, Garnet,
Speaker 1: founded the Springfield Aluminum Company, making fence parts, and eventually
Speaker 1: that company went on to supply aluminum casings to many
Speaker 1: industries throughout the United States.
Speaker 3: Wow, I think I do know that name Springfield. Actually, yeah,
Speaker 3: I think they are still a big name in fencing.
Speaker 3: How I'll have to You know, you just don't know
Speaker 3: what's seeping in or staying right when you notice stuff
Speaker 3: as you're driving right.
Speaker 2: Right, Okay.
Speaker 1: Jerry worked for his family's company and so hit Jackie
Speaker 1: for a short time, but it's not believed that their
Speaker 1: paths crossed until Jackie began waiting tables at the Sailbarn Cafe.
Speaker 2: Okay. Jerry would frequent.
Speaker 1: The restaurant often, and all the servers thought he was
Speaker 1: just weird. He would sit in their section, never speak,
Speaker 1: and just stare at them with what they said was
Speaker 1: a faint mocking smile. He would always try to sit
Speaker 1: in Jackie's section, but whenever he was placed in the
Speaker 1: area of another server, he would just be rude and.
Speaker 2: Misbehave to that server.
Speaker 1: At this time, Jerry was married to an older one
Speaker 1: whose name was Pat Collins, and he had a stepdaughter, Sarah,
Speaker 1: who was nineteen at the time, so pass a little
Speaker 1: bit older than Jerry. I'm figuring she's got to be
Speaker 1: like ten years older.
Speaker 2: I'm you know, right.
Speaker 1: The Carnahan home was only half a mile away from
Speaker 1: the trailer where Jackie lived with her parents, and they
Speaker 1: lived at the end of a long road called Carnahan Way.
Speaker 2: So just to give you an idea this fall, they
Speaker 2: named their own road.
Speaker 1: After the crime scene photos were taken. Sheriff McNeil had
Speaker 1: the Camaro toad to Ozark because this is near.
Speaker 2: Ozark, Okay.
Speaker 1: So following the tow truck out of Nixon, Sheriff McNeil
Speaker 1: radioed in to put together a search party. Newscasters took
Speaker 1: Jackie's disappearance, you know, to the TV. Hundreds of people
Speaker 1: showed up to search for the missing woman or a
Speaker 1: volunteer at the Sheriff's office, Jerry asked us to groups
Speaker 1: out on horseback, and helicopters and private planes flew over
Speaker 1: to see if they could find any clues from the sky.
Speaker 1: The morning of the fourth day, after Jakie's car had
Speaker 1: been found, some fishermen called into the Christian County Sheriff's
Speaker 1: office saying they had spotted a body of a naked
Speaker 1: woman floating in the weeds near the southern end of
Speaker 1: Lake Springfield, which and where they saw her was about
Speaker 1: seventy five yards from the shore in a few feet
Speaker 1: of water. Sergeant Tom Martin and Sheriff McNeil took a
Speaker 1: canoe out to a boat launch. Both men were weary
Speaker 1: of making the discovery in the view of the three
Speaker 1: teams of newscasters that had followed them. Yeah, seconds after
Speaker 1: launching the boat, they saw something floating on the surface.
Speaker 1: They paddled just a little further and they could clearly
Speaker 1: make out the body of a woman with dark hair,
Speaker 1: floating face down. After recovering the remains from the water,
Speaker 1: they were able to flip her over and they recognized
Speaker 1: the face of Jackie John's. The unusually cool water had
Speaker 1: a louder body to be well preserved, but they easily
Speaker 1: saw a gaping hole in her right temple. That was
Speaker 1: probably the injury that ended her life. Jackie's autopsy noted
Speaker 1: facial smelling lacerations to the vaginal area she had been raped.
Speaker 1: Her eyelids, lips, nos chin all had lacerations. There was
Speaker 1: bruising on both arms, legs, and her chest. There were
Speaker 1: four deep cuts near her right ear. But she clearly
Speaker 1: died from the skull fracture caused by a very heavy
Speaker 1: object which made a deep hole in her right temple.
Speaker 1: They determined that the killer had beat her unconscious, thrown
Speaker 1: her to the ground, and clubbed her with the bumperjack
Speaker 1: from her car, and the way that he swung it
Speaker 1: was like a side swing, like how you do a
Speaker 1: golf club.
Speaker 2: Right, Oh my gosh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The sheriff began a series of interviews with her family
Speaker 1: and friends, and that took weeks. The police had found
Speaker 1: a partial fingerprint on one of the Camaro's dome lights.
Speaker 1: Hair and blood samples were collected from the car's floor
Speaker 1: in seats from Jackie's body, They had collected blood, stomach contents,
Speaker 1: hair from her head, pubic hair, and semen from vaginal spobs.
Speaker 1: There were no suspects at this time, but on June
Speaker 1: twenty third, nineteen eighty five, a male caller had called
Speaker 1: the Christian County Crime Stoppers and from that log he said, quote,
Speaker 1: I don't want my name used, don't trace this. I
Speaker 1: got information it's not that girl from the lake. I
Speaker 1: saw someone I know on the same night the paper
Speaker 1: said she disappeared. It was at the seven eleven. Jerry Carnahan.
Speaker 1: He was in his old Chevy truck parked in their
Speaker 1: lot when that girl went its side. He just sat
Speaker 1: there with his lights out. The bastard was watching for
Speaker 1: that girl. That's a fact. You need to check it out.
Speaker 1: I don't want the reward end quote, Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: he's an angel. Yeah, right, whoever that was?
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 1: The following day, Monday, June twenty fourth, Jerry Carnahan arrived
Speaker 1: for questioning at the Sheriff's office. The anonymous phone call
Speaker 1: had been corroborated by another witness, and Jerry was turning
Speaker 1: out to look like the prime suspect. Even though Jerry
Speaker 1: was the son of the richest man in the town.
Speaker 1: He enjoyed driving a nineteen sixty one Chevrolet Apache pickup
Speaker 1: with a bad muffler. When the caller mentioned the old
Speaker 1: Chevy truck. Sheriff McNeil had run a search through vehicle
Speaker 1: registrations in the area and found only two vehicles of
Speaker 1: that same color, make and model registered in southwestern Missouri. Wow,
Speaker 1: so there wasn't a lot too. The sheriff also ran
Speaker 1: a background track and only found a few traffic tickets
Speaker 1: in one drunk driving charge in Jerry's past. When he
Speaker 1: pulled up for the interview, Jerry had that faint, amused
Speaker 1: smile that unnerved the servers at the Sailbarn on his face,
Speaker 1: and he seemed to know that his father's money and
Speaker 1: influence would get him out of any trouble that he
Speaker 1: possibly could be in. A quick once over showed Sheriff
Speaker 1: McNeil that Jerry's knuckles were skinned in red. Sheriff McNeil
Speaker 1: told Jerry that he'd received a tip about his truck
Speaker 1: being parked at the seven eleven. He also told Jerry
Speaker 1: that three people said they saw the truck backed up
Speaker 1: looking toward the seven eleven. Jerry calmly and steadily denied
Speaker 1: that his truck was there. When asked if someone may
Speaker 1: have borrowed his truck and taken it there, he said no.
Speaker 1: His alibi for that night was he'd spent most of
Speaker 1: Monday night with his stepdaughter Sarah. The two worked together
Speaker 1: at the aluminum factory and had gone out with mutual coworkers.
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, they went to the
Speaker 1: Repair Shop, which is a restaurant in Springfield. He had
Speaker 1: two beers, Sarah had a soda. They ate some tacos.
Speaker 1: After they ate, they drove home and Sarah went to
Speaker 1: kmart to buy a curling iron. He said Sarah and
Speaker 1: Jackie were friends and Sarah had hoped Jackie was working
Speaker 1: that night, but she wasn't scheduled that day like at
Speaker 1: the kmart. Right while Sarah was at the kmart, Jerry
Speaker 1: went to the Varra Warehouse, which was a storage business
Speaker 1: of his that was under renovation. Two of his friends
Speaker 1: were there building shelves. He brought beer and they chatted
Speaker 1: for about thirty minutes before he went home and watched
Speaker 1: the beginning of The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson with
Speaker 1: Sarah before they went to bed in their separate rooms.
Speaker 1: His wife, Pat was at Lake of the Ozarks for
Speaker 1: training for her job. During the interview, he innocently stayed,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think why somebody would think, you know
Speaker 1: that my truck was up there behind the seven eleven.
Speaker 1: Sheriff Miniald replied, quote, apparently this person knows you, he
Speaker 1: knows you and your truck and said it was you
Speaker 1: in your truck. We have other witnesses too, who didn't
Speaker 1: say it.
Speaker 2: Looked like you. They said it was you. Nice going on.
Speaker 1: Jerry said he knew Jackie from when she worked at
Speaker 1: the factory and from being a server at the sailbarn.
Speaker 1: He said he didn't know anything about her disappearance. When
Speaker 1: asked about the bloody knuckles, he said he'd played several
Speaker 1: volleyball games the day before. He was an avid volleyball player.
Speaker 2: By the way, mm hmm.
Speaker 1: They're like, okay, So they took fingerprints and he agreed
Speaker 1: that he'd take a polygraph before he walked back out
Speaker 1: to his truck and drove home. The polygraph was scheduled
Speaker 1: for the next day, but was canceled after Jerry's father, Garnet,
Speaker 1: investigated the reliability of the tests and didn't like what
Speaker 1: he found, So you canna investigate in nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: he didn't go on the internet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, right, nineteen eighty five. Yeah.
Speaker 3: His son came home and he was like, are you
Speaker 3: out of your fucking mind? Yeah, you're not going to
Speaker 3: take a lie detector test exactly, and just the cockiness
Speaker 3: of yeah, I'll take it.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: Right, there's no internet to.
Speaker 3: Look up how to beat a light detector test, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So stupid, stupid.
Speaker 1: The best the police could tell was that Jackie had
Speaker 1: gone to the seven eleven to buy hairspray and cigarettes
Speaker 1: around eleven pm, you know, plus or minus ten minutes.
Speaker 1: This has put Jerry's truck there around that time too.
Speaker 1: The officers decided they needed to wait to get more
Speaker 1: information before they interviewed Jerry's alibi witness, his stepdaughter Sarah,
Speaker 1: but they would go ahead with an interview with his wife, Pat.
Speaker 1: Pat was the offensive and clearly aligned herself with her husband, saying, quote,
Speaker 1: if he's saying it wasn't him, I believe him.
Speaker 2: End quote.
Speaker 1: When asked about the state of her marriage, she denied
Speaker 1: any problems. When asked about her daughter, she defended Sarah,
Speaker 1: reminding them that she was a college student with good grades.
Speaker 1: She said Jerry hadn't left until after ten pm. Then
Speaker 1: you know she believed her right. After only a few minutes,
Speaker 1: the interview was over and.
Speaker 2: Pat walked out.
Speaker 1: When the police did get a chance to interview Sarah,
Speaker 1: she corroborated most of her stepfather's story. However, she didn't
Speaker 1: state that he'd gone to the Vera warehouse after they
Speaker 1: got home for dinner, so this discrepancy was noted by
Speaker 1: the officers right By the fall of nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: more than one hundred and fifty interviews had taken place.
Speaker 1: Friends and former boyfriends were called in, Transcripts of interviews
Speaker 1: were studied and details were checked out. There was still
Speaker 1: no z one at the top of the list, except
Speaker 1: for Jerry Carnahan. In October nineteen eighty five, Sheriff McNeil
Speaker 1: received information through sources that Jerry was planning a trip
Speaker 1: to Taiwan. Sheriff McNeil knew that the family's aluminum company
Speaker 1: did business in Taiwan due to the cheap scrap aluminum
Speaker 1: they have. He also knew that Taiwan didn't have any
Speaker 1: extradition treaty with the US. OH he believed his main
Speaker 1: suspect was going to go on the run. Sure On
Speaker 1: October thirty, first sources told Sheriff McNeil that Jerry was
Speaker 1: on his way to Los Angeles to board a plane
Speaker 1: to Asia. Contacting the prosecutor, he inquired if there was
Speaker 1: anything that could be done that day to arrest him
Speaker 1: and keep him from that plane.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: They decided to use the three witnesses that swore Jerry
Speaker 1: and his pickup truck were behind the seven eleven that night,
Speaker 1: which meant that Jerry was lying when he claimed he wasn't.
Speaker 1: The prosecutor said, they would say it was technically tampering
Speaker 1: with evidence, like that's what they're going to bring it
Speaker 1: as bring him in under sync that he was tampering
Speaker 1: with evidence, Okay, even though it might get laughed out
Speaker 1: of court if a judge signed that order, their suspect
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to leave the country.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Once it was.
Speaker 1: Signed, Sheriff McNeil immediately called the LAPD to ask that
Speaker 1: Jerry Carnahan be arrested at the airport, and the warrant
Speaker 1: was faxed. Jerry Carnahan had already boarded a plane, which
Speaker 1: meant local cops couldn't go on the plane to remove him,
Speaker 1: so the FBI sent two agents racing to the airport
Speaker 1: to remove him from the plane. I didn't know this,
Speaker 1: I know, I didn't know it either. I guess maybe
Speaker 1: the airplane is federal jurisdiction now I know.
Speaker 2: Oh maybe because oh it's going out of the country.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because like when you see like terrible passengers being
Speaker 3: escorted off, I think they are low or.
Speaker 2: Their security or their maybe airport police.
Speaker 3: Maybe I didn't know it was that Feds that are
Speaker 3: coming to right to grab spitters and yellers off the plane.
Speaker 1: For agents, Like you know, they're like, really got some
Speaker 1: asshole on a plane.
Speaker 3: Yeah, fucker, God damn it. Everyone's got a d board.
Speaker 3: Come on, everybody, we can do better. Let's do fucking.
Speaker 1: Better exactly, So really throw a wrench in my trip
Speaker 1: to CanCon.
Speaker 3: Come on, don't we all want to be with our families. Yeah, gosh,
Speaker 3: Now I gotta punch you in the throat.
Speaker 2: So we can get out of here.
Speaker 1: So the FBI ends up getting him, and Jerry was
Speaker 1: held at the Men's Central Jail for Los Angeles County,
Speaker 1: which you know is one of the largest and toughest
Speaker 1: jails in the country, until Sheriff McNeil and his deputy
Speaker 1: were able to pick him up eight days later.
Speaker 2: Oh, he was there for a little while, Yeah, getting ready.
Speaker 1: Once he arrived back in Missouri, he was placed in
Speaker 1: the Green County Jail in Springfield, and his family quickly
Speaker 1: paid seventy five thousand dollars to get him out.
Speaker 3: Seventy five thousand dollars in the eighties, fash so just
Speaker 3: times that by what eight nine ten, Right.
Speaker 2: It was a lot of money. It's it was like
Speaker 2: three hundred thousand dollars to day, no kidding.
Speaker 1: In mid December nineteen eighty five, a grand jury convened
Speaker 1: and on January twenty third, nineteen eighty six, they returned
Speaker 1: an indictment against Jerry Carnahan for the evidence tampering charge,
Speaker 1: requiring another arrest arraignment and bail proceeding. In Missouri, the
Speaker 1: state law required after a formal indictment is done for
Speaker 1: him to be arrested again for the same charge and
Speaker 1: to be fingerprinted photographed, but the same seventy five thousand
Speaker 1: dollars bond could be used to cover his bail. It's
Speaker 1: just I don't know. That seems odd to me, but
Speaker 1: that's what their law is, right. This arrest was well
Speaker 1: documented and the local television station and radio stations took note.
Speaker 1: A search warrant authorized the police to take hair and
Speaker 1: blood samples. He was sat down for questioning when suddenly
Speaker 1: he flung himself on the floor of a small room,
Speaker 1: where he screamed, moaned, and sobbed. He was wheezing and
Speaker 1: behaved as if he were choking.
Speaker 2: The men in the room, throwing all of it at
Speaker 2: the fan. Motherfucker.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm gonna start having culsion and I start drooling
Speaker 3: at my mouth. I could pull some shit out of
Speaker 3: my hands, you know what. You know, he's desperate. He
Speaker 3: just about eight days. It's different to be a big
Speaker 3: fish in a small pond of Missouri than La County.
Speaker 2: Right, that's a bit humbling.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, so the authorities are like, look, we're going
Speaker 1: to get these blood and hair samples from you, whether
Speaker 1: you're going to cooperate or.
Speaker 2: Not with the theatrics. Yeah, with the theatrics exactly.
Speaker 1: Without acknowledging this morning, Jerry was lifted to his feet
Speaker 1: and stood against the wall while samples were taken. A
Speaker 1: male technician approached him with late text gloves on, and
Speaker 1: he told Jerry to take down his pants. Shocked, he
Speaker 1: hesitated for a second, but Jerry eventually pulled his pants
Speaker 1: down to his knees so the technician could get pubic
Speaker 1: hair samples.
Speaker 2: How how embarrassing? Yeah, imagine at your fucking job though,
Speaker 2: Oh right.
Speaker 3: Gosh imagine, Like so, yeah, I would be I think
Speaker 3: I'll try to make it funny.
Speaker 2: Take down your pants, kiss me first, looked deeply into
Speaker 2: my eyes. Ah, you tell me I'm pretty. That's then
Speaker 2: I think my pants off. But for him, I bet
Speaker 2: it's a shock, this whole thing, for sure, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I would be shocked. I mean, I'm scared.
Speaker 3: I'm scared and being like, damn it, I got to
Speaker 3: prove myself in the yard soon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So after this, Jerry was allowed at that point to
Speaker 1: go see his lawyer. In late December nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: Sarah Collins, remember his stepdaughter, arrived at the courthouse for
Speaker 1: her testimony on the evidence tampering charge. This was the
Speaker 1: first grand jury convened in Christian County in fifty years.
Speaker 1: Jackie's parents attended. They had not missed a hearing connected
Speaker 1: to their daughter's death at all. During every testimony that
Speaker 1: she gave, Sarah gave the same story she had been
Speaker 1: polygraphed and passed, and she never wavered. She and Jerry
Speaker 1: returned from the restaurant and then she left to go
Speaker 1: pick up a curling iron a kmart. However, this time
Speaker 1: she claim Jerry was leaving at the same time as her,
Speaker 1: and that he went to the Vara warehouse. This meetil
Speaker 1: you had been missing from her previous interview. And then
Speaker 1: she said that when she returned from kmart, Jerry was
Speaker 1: already home. After they both had ran their errands, They'd
Speaker 1: watched the first part of Johnny Carson, and then they
Speaker 1: both went to bed. Jerry couldn't have left, she said.
Speaker 1: If he had, she would have heard the loud muffler
Speaker 1: on his truck. She was certain he was home from
Speaker 1: nine thirty until the next morning. The prosecution called her
Speaker 1: a liar, accusing her of not being able to keep
Speaker 1: her story straight, and the grand jury didn't believe this
Speaker 1: story she gave, so Sarah was indicted for felony perjury.
Speaker 2: After all, I know you never hear that right right.
Speaker 1: The evening of January eighteenth, nineteen eighty six, Kenny Carnahan,
Speaker 1: who was Jerry's older brother, showed up at Sheriff McNeil's office.
Speaker 1: Kenny had been summoned for interrogation. Although he had testified
Speaker 1: to the grand jury that morning, the sheriff hadn't been present,
Speaker 1: so Kenny would be expected to tell his story again
Speaker 1: in person. Kenny had spent part of the night of
Speaker 1: June seventeenth with his parents and relatives at a country
Speaker 1: western comedy show forty five minutes away between eleven fifteen
Speaker 1: and eleven forty five like at that point is when
Speaker 1: they left the show. Kenny was driving his parents car
Speaker 1: and went to drop it back off at their house,
Speaker 1: where he picked up his truck and his wife and kids,
Speaker 1: who had stayed there while he was out. He had
Speaker 1: it back up a side road that intersected with Highway
Speaker 1: win sixty, which was near the seven eleven, just before
Speaker 1: the intersection and only about two hundred yards away from
Speaker 1: where the camaro would be found. Kenny said he saw
Speaker 1: his brother's pick up parked on the west side of
Speaker 1: the road and it was empty. Further, he admitted that
Speaker 1: he commented to his wife, is that Jerry's truck? The
Speaker 1: next day, Kenny ran into his brother at the plant.
Speaker 1: Jerry insisted that it couldn't have been his truck since
Speaker 1: he'd been home with Sarah. Weeks later, Jerry stopped Kenny
Speaker 1: at work to tell him that if anyone asked if
Speaker 1: he'd seen anything, he shouldn't mention seeing.
Speaker 2: His pickup on the road.
Speaker 1: That night, the officers were excited about Oh my gosh, yes,
Speaker 1: and Jerry was asked, you know, why did it take
Speaker 1: you so long to speak up? And Kenny didn't have
Speaker 1: an answer. He just shook his head in response. When
Speaker 1: asked if he believed the trip to Taiwan in October
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five was arranged for Jerry to flee arrest, he.
Speaker 2: Agreed that it probably was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, damn, his brother ritting him out, No kidding, he
Speaker 1: must know his brother. Yeah, No, his brother probably piece
Speaker 1: of shit right, yeah good. Thursday, January twenty third, nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six, breaking news flashed across the screen as Kenny
Speaker 1: watched the e television. It said the police have arrested
Speaker 1: Jerry Carnahan in connection with the murder of Jackie Jentes.
Speaker 1: The news flash the scene. It showed Jerry leaned over
Speaker 1: Sheriff McNeil's cruiser.
Speaker 2: On Highway one sixty.
Speaker 1: Flipping through the stations, it was the same story on
Speaker 1: every channel. On December ninth, nineteen eighty six, the flimsy
Speaker 1: evidence tampering charge finally made it to the courtroom. The
Speaker 1: defense attorney asked, how can this be tampering with evidence?
Speaker 1: Jackie's parents sat in the front row. Although this wasn't
Speaker 1: a murder trial, this was the only prosecution for their
Speaker 1: daughter's murder to date, so you know, they had to
Speaker 1: be there.
Speaker 2: They felt like they had to be there.
Speaker 1: Yes, The argument surrounding the claim that Jerry tampered with
Speaker 1: evidence by lying when he claimed he wasn't behind the
Speaker 1: seven eleven like that was super thin.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, it's very very thin.
Speaker 1: Prosecution introduced a micro cassett of the interview where Jerry
Speaker 1: had lied in order to beat the defense to the
Speaker 1: argument that there was nothing to be tampered with. However,
Speaker 1: during testimony, when witnesses were asked if Jerry had ever
Speaker 1: had access to the micro cassett, the prosecution realized that
Speaker 1: they had made a mistake. Jerry would have never had
Speaker 1: access to the item and so would not have been
Speaker 1: able to tamper with it. Jerry and his wife Pat
Speaker 1: waited until the defense attorney gave them a signal.
Speaker 2: When the judge.
Speaker 1: Moved to toss the charge, Jackie's parents and her three
Speaker 1: older sisters looked defeated, and the judge dismissed the case.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, the family, the people in the courtroom,
Speaker 1: and the entire town was disappointed in the outcome. So
Speaker 1: now flash forward to April twenty seventh, nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 1: which was the last day of Sarah Collins's perjury trial.
Speaker 1: After a change of venue, it was now fifty miles away.
Speaker 1: BJ Honeycut. Come on, now, this guy is not named
Speaker 1: BJ honeycut.
Speaker 2: Oh my god. Hello, yeah, Benjamin Franklin Pierce.
Speaker 1: Yeah right here, hop it, okay, right, BJ Honeycut, Which
Speaker 1: I just can't fucking believe this guy had the same
Speaker 1: had been reporting on the trial, but hadn't had the
Speaker 1: time to make the drive for the end of it.
Speaker 1: He made a short report based on information from sources,
Speaker 1: and got in his car, driving along the same stretch
Speaker 1: of Highway one sixty that Jacky's car had been found
Speaker 1: on two years ago. Looking up on the left of
Speaker 1: the shoulder of the oncoming lane, there was a Voltswagon.
Speaker 1: The driver's side door was open and the parking lights
Speaker 1: were on. Honeycut he believed someone had run into car trouble, maybe,
Speaker 1: so he slowed to check. Further down the road. He
Speaker 1: drove past a police officer in the parking lot of
Speaker 1: a supermarket in Willard, which was a nearby small town,
Speaker 1: and he stopped to tell him about the vehicle. Two
Speaker 1: days later, he got a call from the Green County
Speaker 1: Sheriff's department asking if he knew a woman named Debbie.
Speaker 2: Sue Lewis Wi.
Speaker 1: Sue was thirty one, five foot three and about one hundred.
Speaker 2: And five pounds.
Speaker 1: Honeycutt was told she had gone missing from the VW
Speaker 1: he'd driven by that night. The vehicle had been impounded,
Speaker 1: but she never returned home to her apartment. Her purse
Speaker 1: was lying on the passenger front seat with money visible.
Speaker 1: The keys of the vehicle were in the ignition, just
Speaker 1: like in the case of Jackie John's. Honeycott later found
Speaker 1: out that just minutes before he'd driven by w Seue's car,
Speaker 1: a deputy sheriff on his way home had seen a
Speaker 1: different car on the side of the road with the
Speaker 1: hood up. As he was about to stop and offer aid,
Speaker 1: he saw a light colored VW pull in behind. He
Speaker 1: figured the driver of the car that was in distress
Speaker 1: had already called for help in the VW. You know,
Speaker 1: they just arrived, so the sheriff he contigued to drive home. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the working theory would be that Debbie Sue had pulled
Speaker 1: up behind the car with the hood up to offer
Speaker 1: help and.
Speaker 2: She was abducted. You know, he could have still stopped. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's a lot of fucking assumption.
Speaker 3: Oh I thought that my professional opinion, I figured he
Speaker 3: had called someone.
Speaker 2: Were cell phones around in eighty seven, I don't think so. No,
Speaker 2: I don't think nothing. That didn't have an antenna you
Speaker 2: had to pull out. That's right. Mm hmmm, sough.
Speaker 1: Terrible Honeycot connected the dots between this disappearance and the
Speaker 1: murder of Jackie John's. He told his editor quote, I
Speaker 1: think I was just a few minutes behind the abduction,
Speaker 1: and it's the weirdest feeling, right, ah terrible. One night,
Speaker 1: Debbie SU's parents were talking and both remembered during the
Speaker 1: previous summer she had talked about a guy she and
Speaker 1: her friends had met at Table Rock Lake. He'd shown
Speaker 1: up with a speedboat and offered to take them water
Speaker 1: skiing after the boat they'd been using had broken down.
Speaker 1: The guy called himself Jerry. Wie Sue later saw the
Speaker 1: same man named Jerry on TV when there had been
Speaker 1: reports of a woman named Jackie Johns that went missing
Speaker 1: in Nixa. When Jerry Carnahan's picture flashed across the screen,
Speaker 1: Debbie Sioux's parents remembered she'd gotten excited when she told
Speaker 1: him that that was the Jerry from the lake. Debbie
Speaker 1: Sioux's father went to the library and did his research
Speaker 1: on Jerry Carnahan. He discovered that Jerry was a volleyball
Speaker 1: player in a league that played at the Ozark Mountain Stadium,
Speaker 1: where Debbie Sue worked pushing a cart that sold soda
Speaker 1: in hotdogs. The one main difference between the two murders
Speaker 1: was that there wasn't a grizzly scene in Debbie Sioux's voatswagon.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Eight months after Debbie Sue disappeared, a couple but went
Speaker 1: on a walk through their acreage in a remote area
Speaker 1: of Newton County, which was about a half an hour
Speaker 1: from Nixon, where they spotted something pink and white on
Speaker 1: the ground among fallen leaves. They then noticed a light
Speaker 1: blue colored pair of shorts and realized that they were
Speaker 1: still on what looked like to be a human pelvic bone.
Speaker 1: Minutes later, the man was on the phone to a
Speaker 1: dispatcher at Newton County as the county deputy was headed
Speaker 1: to the site. The officer received another call that a
Speaker 1: dog owned by another residence of the area had just
Speaker 1: arrived home with a human skull in his mouth.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, right, this is so close.
Speaker 3: So a dog comes home and then this couple discovers ye,
Speaker 3: oh my goodness, crazy crazy, crazy, crazy gray.
Speaker 1: The skeleton had been scattered, but police were able to
Speaker 1: get most of it within the barrier of the crime
Speaker 1: scene tape. The pink and white ton of shoes still hit.
Speaker 1: The laces tied inside the shoes were a pair of
Speaker 1: multicolored socks with the foot bones still within.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: The turquoise legwarmers were still on the lower leg bones,
Speaker 1: and the light blue shorts and black bikini underwear were visible.
Speaker 1: There was a red, blue and green striped jacket with
Speaker 1: armbones within the sleeves.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The officers saw that there was nylon rope wrapped
Speaker 1: around fingerbones, which led them to believe that the victim's hands.
Speaker 2: Had been tied behind her back.
Speaker 1: Right while the skull was gone, They did find a
Speaker 1: patch of brown hair with an elastic headband and a
Speaker 1: banana clip under some leaves. It was clear the remains
Speaker 1: had been lying there for months.
Speaker 2: The skeleton was.
Speaker 1: Nearly complete, but they were unable to determine a cause
Speaker 1: of death and were only able to say it was
Speaker 1: a homicide because they have no head right right, and
Speaker 1: it's all bones, and you know, if you're you know,
Speaker 1: if you're killed in some way.
Speaker 2: That drama head, yes, yeah, with no trauma.
Speaker 1: To your bon then it's really hard to say. The
Speaker 1: following day, the Sheriff's office in Green County had received
Speaker 1: notice of the remains with the list of the close
Speaker 1: with a list of the clothing, making a call. He
Speaker 1: said he was shirt was Debbie Siue. Lewis later confirmed
Speaker 1: by dental records. Around this time, the deputy heard the
Speaker 1: name Jerry Carnahan. He hadn't paid much attention to the
Speaker 1: homicide investigation in the neighboring county, but witnesses had put
Speaker 1: Jerry at a bar in Springfield nearby on the night
Speaker 1: that Debbie Sue disappeared, and he received information that the
Speaker 1: victim may have had an interaction with the man soon
Speaker 1: before she died. In March nineteen ninety three, eighteen year
Speaker 1: old high school senior Howther Starkey was a passenger in
Speaker 1: her boyfriend's car around two am. They had been arguing
Speaker 1: and he hit the brakes, leaving her to slap him
Speaker 1: in the face. Getting out of the car, she began walking,
Speaker 1: intending to make it to a friend's house about five
Speaker 1: minutes away to get a ride home. When she left
Speaker 1: the car, the area she was dropped in was a
Speaker 1: rural She was able to spot a well liit gas
Speaker 1: station close ahead, so she wasn't like scared.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: When she reached the edge of the convenience store's parking lot,
Speaker 1: a white Chrysler pulled up in front of her about
Speaker 1: fifty yards ahead and parked sharply as if to black
Speaker 1: her walking path.
Speaker 2: She stopped and.
Speaker 1: Considered running when a man in his mid thirties in
Speaker 1: an overcoat got out of the passenger side and began
Speaker 1: walking toward her at a threatening pace. He grabbed her
Speaker 1: arm and Heather screamed. She felt he was pushing her
Speaker 1: toward the woods, but in the early spring sleet, she
Speaker 1: slipped and they fell together to the ground. She tried
Speaker 1: to pull herself free, but he was too strong, so
Speaker 1: she screamed again and began to flail to get out
Speaker 1: of his grip. Finally, she was able to get free
Speaker 1: and sprinted to the convenience store, sobbing to call for help.
Speaker 1: Another happened to be driving that same route and saw
Speaker 1: the struggle. When the passenger saw the girl run towards
Speaker 1: the store, she looked back and saw the attacker get
Speaker 1: into the white Chrysler driven by another man. As they
Speaker 1: pulled away, the chrysler got close to their car behind them.
Speaker 1: The witnesses could see the driver, passenger, and the license
Speaker 1: plate number. The number was noted, and when they got
Speaker 1: home they called the Springfield police to report it. Nice
Speaker 1: Four days later, On Thursday, March eighteenth, nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 1: the Christian County Sheriff's Deputies, NIX, the Police, and a
Speaker 1: detective from Springfield Police Department arrived at the aluminum plant
Speaker 1: to arrest Jerry Carnahan. They had traced the plate number
Speaker 1: to a white Chrysler that Jerry had rented. Jerry's friend,
Speaker 1: Eric Turnage, had been driving the truck that night. He
Speaker 1: said he'd had no idea what his friend intended to
Speaker 1: do when he told him to pull over.
Speaker 2: Sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: When Jerry returned to the car after the struggle, Eric
Speaker 1: had asked, you know what happened, and Jerry claimed it
Speaker 1: was just a misunderstanding. Yeah, it was just a misunderstanding.
Speaker 3: Okay, doesn't sound like it looked like you were really
Speaker 3: gunning for her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And Eric apparently didn't ask any more questions after that.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 1: Jerry was charged with attempted kidnapping and released that afternoon
Speaker 1: on fifteen thousand dollars bail. Later, he was arraigned for
Speaker 1: attempted kidnapping. Realized that there was no way they would
Speaker 1: be able to find twelve impartial jurors in the area,
Speaker 1: the case was moved one hundred and fifty miles away
Speaker 1: to Boone County. On September seventeenth, nineteen ninety three, mere
Speaker 1: months before Jerry's trial for attempted kidnapping, an intruder used
Speaker 1: a steel pry bar to force open an unloading door
Speaker 1: of the custom aluminum foundry south of Nixa. There was
Speaker 1: no attempt to conceal their footprints and gloves were left
Speaker 1: at the scene the padlock on it. The door lock
Speaker 1: was cut with bolt cutters, which were left on the
Speaker 1: loading back. A mark was left in red spray paint
Speaker 1: below the window on the driver side of a Ford
Speaker 1: panel truck, and the window was smashed. The intruder tried
Speaker 1: to steal the vehicle by shoving a screwdriver into the ignition,
Speaker 1: but the battery was too weak. Instead, he broke into
Speaker 1: the warehouse, breaking the door handle off the door and
Speaker 1: throwing it into the bushes. Coming upon the production area,
Speaker 1: he found expensive sand molds for casting aluminum parts for
Speaker 1: fishing boats. They weighed about fifty pounds and were worth
Speaker 1: about two thousand dollars apiece. The intruder spent about an
Speaker 1: hour carrying dozens of the molds one by one into
Speaker 1: the van he'd brought to the foundry that night, the
Speaker 1: wood pailets that the molds had been sitting on were
Speaker 1: set on fire with gasoline.
Speaker 2: I don't know why. Yeah, I'm not sure either.
Speaker 1: By seven am, the Aurora Fire Department finished putting out
Speaker 1: the fire. Investigators determined that the fire had been set
Speaker 1: to destroy evidence of the theft, but it didn't do
Speaker 1: its job. Watched attempted little more than char a small
Speaker 1: area of the production floor.
Speaker 2: They hilarious. I think maybe they were trying to burn
Speaker 2: down the whole place.
Speaker 3: Maybe, Oh, absolutely, And they have no plan other than
Speaker 3: a couple of movies.
Speaker 2: They saw.
Speaker 3: This is super sloppy and no long game work, you know,
Speaker 3: because I mean you're just breaking stuff, you're leaving a trail,
Speaker 3: and because you really believe, yeah, that it's just gonna
Speaker 3: go up like backdraft or something.
Speaker 2: No it's not, I know, right, Yeah, it's gonna explode.
Speaker 2: But yeah, as you walk into the sunset with your molds.
Speaker 1: So the fire department is they are sure that this
Speaker 1: job was done by an amateur. The owners of the
Speaker 1: foundry were Wes and Dolores. They had opened the business
Speaker 1: about a year earlier, but had run into financial problems
Speaker 1: and reached out to Springfield Aluminum, the Carnahan's company, to
Speaker 1: make a deal that would let them keep their most
Speaker 1: important customers, which were several nationally known fishing boat manufacturers.
Speaker 1: The previous day, Wes had driven to Springfield to meet
Speaker 1: with Roger Moore, who was president of Springfield Aluminum, and
Speaker 1: Jerry Carnahan, the owner's son and an executive of the company.
Speaker 1: He wanted them to make the parts with the sand
Speaker 1: molds in his foundry in Aurora. Roger declined, but Wes
Speaker 1: found a taker for the deal in a foundry in Kansas,
Speaker 1: and they planned to truck the molds over to them
Speaker 1: the following day. When Roger arrived at the office at
Speaker 1: Springfield Aluminum the following morning at seven am, he was
Speaker 1: surprised to see Jerry had already arrived two hours earlier
Speaker 1: than normal in a Chrysler Mini van that looked very
Speaker 1: heavily loaded. Roger knew something was up and was apprehensive.
Speaker 1: In a later police interview, he said of Jerry Carnahan
Speaker 1: that he'd never met a man so dangerously out of control.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: When Roger walked into his office that morning, he'd seen
Speaker 1: Jerry sprawled across his sofa sound asleep. Roger inquired as
Speaker 1: to you know, what are you doing here? What's up
Speaker 1: with the van? Jerry said he'd picked up some tooling
Speaker 1: at Custom Foundries that night. When Roger asked how he
Speaker 1: did it, Jerry didn't mince word and simply said, well,
Speaker 1: I stole it.
Speaker 2: Well direct, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: Telling Jerry to go back to sleep, Roger walked out
Speaker 1: to the parking lot and called Jerry's father, Garnet, telling
Speaker 1: him to come handle this right now, then called the
Speaker 1: attorney for the owner of Custom Foundry, and then he
Speaker 1: called the cops. On September twentieth, nineteen ninety three, arrest
Speaker 1: warrants were issued charging Jerry Carnahan with felony, counsel of arson, burglary.
Speaker 2: And theft.
Speaker 1: The bail was set at forty thousand, which Jerry's family
Speaker 1: easily paid, so he was out in public once again.
Speaker 1: Right in late nineteen ninety three, the attempted kidnapping trial
Speaker 1: began for Heather oh Okay. Thirty five year old Jerry
Speaker 1: appeared in an expensive suit with in aloof smile on
Speaker 1: his face. Other Starkey had been asked to testify and
Speaker 1: reluctantly would pat and Sarah Collins attended the trial, as
Speaker 1: did Jackie's widowed father, Les John's. Her mother surely had
Speaker 1: passed away of lung cancer in nineteen eighty eight. On
Speaker 1: December first, nineteen ninety three, opening statements were made. They
Speaker 1: were brief, with prosecution saying eyewitnesses would tell the jury
Speaker 1: I horrifying tale, while the defense claimed his client was
Speaker 1: merely trying to help a young woman.
Speaker 2: Being helpful. Yeah, hullul gentleman.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like, come on now, fucking psychopath, I mean gentlemen.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: The following day, the jury was out for only three
Speaker 1: hours before they found Jerry guilty of the crime, and
Speaker 1: they recommended two years in prison. The maximum would have
Speaker 1: been seven years for charge. Les John's sat up and smiled.
Speaker 1: That was Jackie's dad.
Speaker 2: After all of the.
Speaker 1: Charges of nineteen ninety three were finalized, Jerry was sentenced
Speaker 1: to a year for felony tampering with a vehicle, plus
Speaker 1: for the charges of attempted kidnapping, arson and destroying a car.
Speaker 2: There were four.
Speaker 1: Convictions adding up to seven years, which the judge ran concurrently,
Speaker 1: meaning he was sentenced to four years total and he
Speaker 1: would probably end up serving just too. He was relief
Speaker 1: least on April seventh, nineteen ninety six, to the custody
Speaker 1: of detainees from Green County. They were going to hold
Speaker 1: him in the county jail for another fifteen months for
Speaker 1: unrelated charges of assaulting a police officer and brandishing a
Speaker 1: pistol while drunk. Okay, boy, this Jerry sounds like a piece.
Speaker 1: Yes he does, He really does. Pat Collins divorced Jerry
Speaker 1: while he was in prison, citing mental cruelty. After getting
Speaker 1: gout in prison, Springfield Aluminum sent Jerry to Taiwan on
Speaker 1: an extended business trip that was assumed to have been.
Speaker 2: Made up to keep him out of trouble. Sure Over the.
Speaker 1: Next handful of years, a few detectives tried to revive
Speaker 1: Jackie John's case. In two thousand and two, there had
Speaker 1: been an attempt to run a DNA analysis on the
Speaker 1: vaginal swabs from Jackie's case, but the SAMPA was too
Speaker 1: small at the time. It wouldn't be until October two
Speaker 1: thousand and six, when Dan Nash of the Springfield Police
Speaker 1: Department was assigned to the case that movement really began.
Speaker 1: By two thousand and seven, Missouri State Highway Patrol Crime
Speaker 1: lab had attained the latest equipment for DNA testing. The
Speaker 1: swab that had been too small in two thousand and
Speaker 1: two was now able to be tested.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was the sample that was turned in on
Speaker 1: January thirty first, two thousand and seven. It took the
Speaker 1: crime lab six weeks for them to come back with
Speaker 1: a sixteen point DNA profile, which is nearly the best possible.
Speaker 2: Wow, very nice.
Speaker 1: Would be unable to get a sample from Jerry Carnahan
Speaker 1: right away he was still in Taiwan, but patients paid
Speaker 1: off and when the officer got a phone call in
Speaker 1: August that Jerry had returned the police department, they didn't
Speaker 1: waste any time.
Speaker 3: I love it that he has no idea of all
Speaker 3: this DNA advancements, and he's all like I'm going to
Speaker 3: fly back to the state. Yeah, fright, web, come and
Speaker 3: go as that please, right, come on home. Jerry Nash
Speaker 3: had gotten a search warrant signed by a judge to
Speaker 3: compel Jerry to open his mouth and let that swab
Speaker 3: sample get from inside his cheek. That booking job.
Speaker 1: The officers arrived at Springfield Aluminum and walked into Jerry's office.
Speaker 1: He looks startled and asked, is this over that Jackie
Speaker 1: John's thing?
Speaker 3: Like, really, yes, because I know that's what you've been
Speaker 3: thinking about every day since you killed her. Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: His voice broke.
Speaker 1: The forty nine year old man had tears running down
Speaker 1: his cheek. Gone was the aloof grin replaced by a frown.
Speaker 1: He asked when the test would be done. Detective Nash,
Speaker 1: lying told him that they were backed up for at
Speaker 1: least a year, but he knew better, right, you would
Speaker 1: have this test run overnight. At six fifteen the following morning,
Speaker 1: Detective Nash received the word that the test results were in.
Speaker 1: Jerry Carnahan only had a few hours left as a freeman.
Speaker 1: At nine am, Yeah, finally, yes, the fucker evaded fucking decades.
Speaker 2: Yeah, decade.
Speaker 3: You know, he reminds me of just the one every
Speaker 3: time you said like a loop ors that smug ass face,
Speaker 3: I think of cal from Titanic. Oh yeah, you know
Speaker 3: that fucking smugg I'm looking at steerage, Yeah, steerage, yes, yes.
Speaker 2: Ugh.
Speaker 1: At nine am, Detective Nash pulled up to Springfield Aluminum
Speaker 1: to wait for Jerry to arrive. Arrest warrant in hand.
Speaker 1: A minivan pulled into the parking spot that was Jerry's
Speaker 1: just after ten am, and Detective Nash approached the vehicle,
Speaker 1: arresting Jerry on the spot. While he was putting the
Speaker 1: handcuffs on Jerry, he again spotted a tear rolling down
Speaker 1: his cheek.
Speaker 2: Oh what happened? Why was he crying?
Speaker 1: Because he's getting arrested.
Speaker 2: Girl, he got caught. That's all about Jerry, Poor Jerry.
Speaker 2: No one's silent, but except Jackie's parents exactly.
Speaker 1: Speaking of Jackie's parents at eighty years old, Les John's
Speaker 1: had fallen ill by this point, and he worried that
Speaker 1: he would never see the day that Jerry would pay
Speaker 1: for Jackie's death. However, in the state of Missouri, versus
Speaker 1: Jerry Carnahan, the DNA evidence was irrefutable. The trial began
Speaker 1: September fourteenth, twenty ten. Shortly after noon on September twenty second,
Speaker 1: twenty ten, the jury left the courtroom to discuss and
Speaker 1: decide the verdict. Just before three pm on the following day,
Speaker 1: the twenty third, there was news that the jury was ready.
Speaker 1: Gerald Leonard Carnahan was found guilty of the murder of
Speaker 1: Jackie John's twenty five years after all.
Speaker 2: My gosh, how bittersweet.
Speaker 1: I know, her sisters cheered. Her father waited by the
Speaker 1: phone until the call came in, so he finally got
Speaker 1: some closure.
Speaker 2: Gives me the chills there, you know, there's a stare
Speaker 2: at your daughter. I know.
Speaker 1: On October twenty fifth, twenty ten, Jerry was sentenced to
Speaker 1: life without parole, and as of October twenty twenty, a
Speaker 1: judge in Springfield, Missouri, upheld the conviction good. There was
Speaker 1: no arrest made for W. C. Lewis's murder, so that
Speaker 1: one is still technically probably unsolved.
Speaker 2: So unsolved on the technicality.
Speaker 1: But we know, yeah, it was very similar to Jackie's
Speaker 1: disappearance and murder.
Speaker 2: So oh same m a yeah, same emo.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know innocente'l proven guilty, Shannon, I know.
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm so jaded. My fifty four years here hasn't
Speaker 3: been all, hasn't been all sun flowers and sunshine.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, girl, I know, I'm like, oh, he fucking did
Speaker 1: it right?
Speaker 2: Oh this lion. They're fuck lion, motherfucker howard.
Speaker 3: Ass bitch you know, yeah, you know, don't even get
Speaker 3: me going. I'll tell you how I really feel about
Speaker 3: fuckers like this. I know so well thank you. I
Speaker 3: love this story. I thought how long it kept going.
Speaker 3: I thank God for DNA and I know.
Speaker 2: By ince and it just helps us become better people.
Speaker 1: And I know all these cold cases, you know a
Speaker 1: lot of cold cases get solved by DNA.
Speaker 2: So I love that they had the for the long
Speaker 2: sight of the long game.
Speaker 3: Of collecting when the technology wasn't there yet, you know,
Speaker 3: if it was, you know, of course we have our goals.
Speaker 2: Looks like we're going to be there soon, but you
Speaker 2: just don't know till you're.
Speaker 1: There, right, Like how in nineteen eighty five, do you
Speaker 1: know you know all these years later that they're going
Speaker 1: to be able to test this and you.
Speaker 2: Know wonderful things. Yeah, for sure. Oh very cool.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you Shannon for being my audience today, and
Speaker 1: thank you everyone for listening. Yes, use hit the subscribe
Speaker 1: or follow button on whatever app you're listening to if
Speaker 1: you haven't done so already. If I know, if you
Speaker 1: employ Crimes and Consequences and you enjoy our weekly episode,
Speaker 1: we also offer an additional episode for a very small fee,
Speaker 1: a very small monthly fee. Yes, we have a Patreon
Speaker 1: page and you can go there by going to Patreon
Speaker 1: dot com. Slash t NT, Crimes TNT like Dynamite, Yes,
Speaker 1: Crimes and you can also subscribe through the Apple podcast
Speaker 1: app and we will be releasing one extra episode a
Speaker 1: week so you can subscribe and get that. It also
Speaker 1: gives you access to all of the former Patreon members
Speaker 1: only episodes and yes, there's close to two under to those,
Speaker 1: so sign up and check them out.
Speaker 2: If you like it, you'll love them.
Speaker 1: Yes, we also have website, Crimes Andconsequences dot com. We
Speaker 1: have merchandise and she is working very hard to put
Speaker 1: some updated things out there.
Speaker 2: So yes, I'm loving it so exciting.
Speaker 1: Check it out y'all. And I think that's everything, So
Speaker 1: thank you again and until our next episode.
Speaker 3: Yeah, love you guys, stay say love you, Tanya, love
Speaker 3: you too, Shanny, I love you.
Speaker 2: Bye