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Speaker 7: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 7: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 7: written about them.
Speaker 5: Gacy Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK.
Speaker 7: Every week, another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 7: and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with
Speaker 7: your host journalist and author Dan Zufanski, Good Evening.
Speaker 5: Everyone felt the same way. Small town Nebraska widow Helen
Speaker 5: Wilson didn't have an ounce of meanness inside her body. Then,
Speaker 5: on February fifth, nineteen eighty five, on one of the
Speaker 5: coldest nights on record, the unthinkable happened. The sixty eight
Speaker 5: year old resident was murdered inside her second floor apartment.
Speaker 5: But why. Local residents were floored. What type of monster
Speaker 5: would target a vulnerable widow to fulfill his homicidal sexual fantasies.
Speaker 5: The crime scene was eerily ritualistic. The trail of evidence
Speaker 5: turned frustratingly cold, until an astonishing breakthrough occurred four years later.
Speaker 5: A torn scrap of money recovered at the crime scene
Speaker 5: became the presumed smoking gun that helped solve the hideous crime.
Speaker 5: The news of six arrests was absolutely stunning to the
Speaker 5: locals in this easy going, blue collar community of twelve
Speaker 5: thousand residents. But why were six loosely connected misfits who
Speaker 5: lived as far away as Alabama, Colorado, and North Carolina,
Speaker 5: being linked to the rape and murder of a beloved
Speaker 5: Nebrascal widow. As they sat in jail, the constant threatn
Speaker 5: of Nebraska's barbaric electric chair scared the daylights out of
Speaker 5: these troubled souls. Except for one of them, Joseph White,
Speaker 5: remained defiant in his fight to prove his innocence. It
Speaker 5: didn't matter. All six of the condemned were convicted of
Speaker 5: murder and sent away to prison for the ghastly crime.
Speaker 5: The town moved on, convinced that justice was served. For
Speaker 5: more than twenty five years, the Beatrice six rotted in
Speaker 5: prison until the unthinkable occurred in two thousand and eight. Now,
Speaker 5: the Red state in America's heartland faced a real quandary
Speaker 5: that could only mean one thing. Nebraska had a colossal
Speaker 5: failure of justice on its hands. The book that were
Speaker 5: featuring this evening is Failure of Justice, A brutal murder,
Speaker 5: an obsessed cop, and six Wrongful Convictions, with my special guest,
Speaker 5: journalist and author John Ferrick. Welcome back to the program,
Speaker 5: and thank you for a green to this interview. John Ferrick, thanks.
Speaker 3: So for the opportunity to be back on the show.
Speaker 5: Dan, thank you very much.
Speaker 3: This is.
Speaker 5: An incredible tale. I know I always say that, and
Speaker 5: I use that word, I overuse that word, but this
Speaker 5: is a wild tale. Anyway, John, congratulations on this. We're
Speaker 5: just gonna jump right into this because we've read a
Speaker 5: lot to cover and it's a fantastic, surprising, shocking, and
Speaker 5: an amazing story all the way around. Let's start with
Speaker 5: introducing the audience to where this takes place, and that
Speaker 5: is in southeastern Nebraska. In as we mentioned, Beatrice, Nebraska,
Speaker 5: population twelve thousand. Tell us a little bit about what
Speaker 5: it's known for a little bit about Beatrice, Kansas, population
Speaker 5: twelve thousand, where it's located. Tell us a little bit about.
Speaker 3: It, sure, Dan, And just this is one of those
Speaker 3: weird quirks I'll just point out only if you spent
Speaker 3: time or lived in Nebraska, and I lived out there
Speaker 3: for nine years. A handful of these communities have a
Speaker 3: funny sounding names. So the town has actually pronounced Beatrice.
Speaker 3: I would have thought that it was Beatrice. There's also
Speaker 3: another town that you would think it is Louisville, but
Speaker 3: it's really Lewisville. So it has these little oddities about it.
Speaker 3: But Beatrice, Nebraska, is a community. It's been about twelve
Speaker 3: thousand people for about the last fifty to sixty years.
Speaker 3: Population has remained stagnant, hasn't gone up or down at all.
Speaker 3: It's a Christian community. It's considered a suburb of Lincoln,
Speaker 3: but to its own degree, it also has its own identity.
Speaker 3: It's probably best known in Nebraska for being a state
Speaker 3: development home. It's uh it's been a state uh state
Speaker 3: facility for persons with severe and profound mental retardation mental illness,
Speaker 3: uh going back one hundred years and uh. And on
Speaker 3: the flip side, it has some strong industry manufacturing. It's
Speaker 3: really well known, really proud of the fact that it's
Speaker 3: known for for uh uh for its role in the
Speaker 3: lawnmower industry. It makes UH. There's a there's two or
Speaker 3: three big companies that have been around for a while
Speaker 3: that that make a lawn more equipment and law a
Speaker 3: lot more parts. So so it has it's a it's
Speaker 3: a robost community for a smaller community in Nebraska, whereas
Speaker 3: a lot of smaller towns in Nebraska outside of Lincoln
Speaker 3: and outside of Omaha have struggled the last thirty or
Speaker 3: four years as jobs to move toward the big two
Speaker 3: cities in Nebraska. But Beatrice has still been able to
Speaker 3: hang on to itself and still retain that small town
Speaker 3: charm and identity, and for the most part, it's been
Speaker 3: a pretty safe community to raise a family and also
Speaker 3: a safe place to retire if you're a senior citizen
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 5: Dan okay now, and thank you for correcting me on
Speaker 5: the pronunciation, and Beatrice, and so take us as you
Speaker 5: do in the book to nineteen eighty three and a
Speaker 5: string of very strange home invasions perpetrated against elderly women.
Speaker 5: Tell us about what happens in nineteen eighty three in Beatrice.
Speaker 3: The summer of eighty three was a terrifying time for
Speaker 3: this community. And again just for our listeners, this is
Speaker 3: the time before the internet, so really the only way
Speaker 3: you know, for news to get out in a small
Speaker 3: community like that was usually through the local newspaper, you know,
Speaker 3: or word of mouth. And during the summer of nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty three, there was a string of the late night
Speaker 3: home invasions, and these home invasions all involved attacks on
Speaker 3: elderly widows. These were women, they were all in their
Speaker 3: seventies in their eighties, that lived alone. And these attacks
Speaker 3: typically happened between ten or eleven at night and as
Speaker 3: early as I believe one or two in the morning.
Speaker 3: These were and these were these were scary events. All
Speaker 3: all these situations, either the women were asleep or they
Speaker 3: were in their room watcher in their living room, I
Speaker 3: should say, watching television and love and behold, all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, out of nowhere, a young man who was
Speaker 3: around in his early twenties was standing on top of them,
Speaker 3: trying to trying to attack and rape these women. And
Speaker 3: in all these situations, the women were brave and they
Speaker 3: fought back, and that seemed to do the trick as
Speaker 3: far as scaring this individual off. He seemed to be
Speaker 3: afraid of these women that would fight back. He figured
Speaker 3: he would get his way with them if they would,
Speaker 3: a coward to his advances. But to their credit, they
Speaker 3: all they all fought back or screamed or yelled, and
Speaker 3: that just scared him and he uh and he ran
Speaker 3: off and uh and uh. The police, to their credit,
Speaker 3: were tried really hard to get the word out, you know,
Speaker 3: let people know about this. These attacks figure out who
Speaker 3: the perpetrator was, but nobody really got a good look
Speaker 3: at him, and so there was just vague general descriptions
Speaker 3: of a young man that looked to be around age
Speaker 3: twenty or so, early twenties, very thin and yeah, not
Speaker 3: of a muscular build. But beyond that, there really wasn't
Speaker 3: much for the police and Beatrice to go on. And
Speaker 3: what really became odd then is that as the police
Speaker 3: were preparing, you know, for this individual's next attack, trying
Speaker 3: to figure out where they might strike again in this community,
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, the attacks stopped. So there have
Speaker 3: been three or four attacks in about a very short radius.
Speaker 3: I believe it's mentioned in the book, but I think
Speaker 3: somebody had a police officer to point out that if
Speaker 3: you drew a circle around the whole area, we're only
Speaker 3: talking to four or five block you know radius as
Speaker 3: far as where all these attacks occurred. But bottom line is,
Speaker 3: these attacks stopped after the summer of nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 3: fall comes, winter comes, nineteen eighty four comes and goes,
Speaker 3: and nothing ever happened again. And for the most part,
Speaker 3: the community forgot, you know, forgot about this perpetrator, this deviant,
Speaker 3: you know that that was preying upon elderly women by
Speaker 3: the time nineteen eighty five rolls around. Anne.
Speaker 5: Now, let's introduce the victim of this story, Helen Wilson.
Speaker 5: She's about five foot tall, and she's almost sixty nine
Speaker 5: years older. She's going to celebrate a birthday soon. And
Speaker 5: she's a very small, slight woman, longtime widow. Her husband
Speaker 5: had died quite a while ago in the close knit family.
Speaker 5: So tell us about her sister Florence and her son Darryl,
Speaker 5: and what Helen was like and what her life was like,
Speaker 5: and where Florence lived. Just tell us about that whole
Speaker 5: situation and what they were doing on February fifth that
Speaker 5: evening as a family.
Speaker 3: Yeah, correct, So Helen had Helen had been a widow
Speaker 3: for for many years. Her husband died unexpectedly. He had
Speaker 3: a heart attack in his early fifties. His name was
Speaker 3: Raymond and and Helen and Raymond had had three children
Speaker 3: and two sons and a daughter. And Uh and her
Speaker 3: daughter and one of her sons lived in Beatrice nearby
Speaker 3: her and Helen was Uh was a very likable figure.
Speaker 3: Really cared about her family deeply, especially her grandchildren and
Speaker 3: great grandchildren. Really loved the babysit children, and she also
Speaker 3: helped out at the Methodist Church in in Beatrice on
Speaker 3: Sunday mornings, she would help babysit children in the nursery
Speaker 3: and and she was also she also liked to go
Speaker 3: on bus trips uh and UH, and she would join
Speaker 3: these groups the AARP and I go on bus tours.
Speaker 3: And people really took a liking to Helen because she
Speaker 3: was very affectionate, very friendly, and outgoing. And she also
Speaker 3: liked to take a lot of pictures, so people would
Speaker 3: actually kind of joke and refer to her as little
Speaker 3: little miss Sunshine. And she also loved to take a
Speaker 3: lot of pictures of her own family members. And one
Speaker 3: of her famous sayings was look natural now when she
Speaker 3: would take a picture of somebody. So she just had
Speaker 3: the special persona and everybody liked her and loved her.
Speaker 3: And she lived in February of nineteen eighty five. She
Speaker 3: had lived for the last several years in a three
Speaker 3: story apartment building that used to be an old telephone
Speaker 3: company building. It's a three story sturdy brick buil bilding
Speaker 3: right at the edge of the downtown, so you just
Speaker 3: walk a block or two and you're you know, you're
Speaker 3: right in the middle of the heart of the business
Speaker 3: district in town. And and right next door to her
Speaker 3: lived her sister, Florence and Florence Florence's husband Ivan, who
Speaker 3: everybody in the family referred to as Read. So that
Speaker 3: was really nice just having Florence and Read right next
Speaker 3: door to her. Helen didn't drive, so so she was
Speaker 3: able to lean on her family members to help her
Speaker 3: out and and and she was also able to just
Speaker 3: enjoy meals together too, having her sister right next door
Speaker 3: and her brother in law as well, so it has
Speaker 3: a very close knit family. And again this apartment building
Speaker 3: was only had about ten total units in it. About
Speaker 3: half the people were senior citizens elderly, and there was
Speaker 3: also a few uh, twenty somethings, single women or women
Speaker 3: that lived with other friends that were, you know, just
Speaker 3: right out of college or just entering the workforce. If
Speaker 3: that helps kind of paint a picture as far as
Speaker 3: what Helen's life was like in Beatrice at that time.
Speaker 5: Now, the Daryl and his wife Katie, and Helen. Helen
Speaker 5: had a cold, maybe for a couple of days when
Speaker 5: she had gone out, but other than that her health
Speaker 5: was fine. But she was in in her home, in
Speaker 5: her apartment, and Florence was next from next door and
Speaker 5: read were over at Helen's and they were having again
Speaker 5: what you described as she's a close knit family. They
Speaker 5: were having just again get together for an excuse to
Speaker 5: get together and have a meal. And they departed earlier
Speaker 5: in the evening. So tell us just a little bit
Speaker 5: about that last the last thing that these people remember,
Speaker 5: and in what state was Helen in just before they.
Speaker 3: Left, So we're talking this is a I believe it
Speaker 3: was a Tuesday night, and and what's important about that too,
Speaker 3: was a Tuesday night was also when Helen's daughter in law,
Speaker 3: Katie would would would have her bowling, her weekly bowling night.
Speaker 3: So uh, so Katie was out bowling earlier in the
Speaker 3: evening and Helen's son, her local son, Darryl, stopped by
Speaker 3: and uh and just you know, came over. See Mom,
Speaker 3: cracked open a couple of beers. They sat in the
Speaker 3: living room. Helen's apartment was a small, small, small unit.
Speaker 3: It was I believe four rooms. It had an open
Speaker 3: living room, a very very tiny kitchen, a very small
Speaker 3: bedroom and in a bathroom. And that's really about it.
Speaker 3: But anyway, they spent some time together just sitting around,
Speaker 3: and Katie had stepped by, I believe sometime around nine
Speaker 3: o'clock or shortly thereafter after she finished her bowling that night,
Speaker 3: and I remember it was sometime shortly before the ten
Speaker 3: o'clock news came on, is when Darryl and Katie both left.
Speaker 3: And what's really important too about that particular night was
Speaker 3: that it was one of the coldest nights on record
Speaker 3: in southeastern Nebraska. It was very, very cold, howling winds
Speaker 3: temperature eventually that night is going to dip to about
Speaker 3: seven six or seven degrees below zero factor in windchill.
Speaker 3: It's even colder than that. But that's a key point
Speaker 3: because there's not going to be that many people out
Speaker 3: and about walking around Beatrice, Nebraska. On February fifth, slash
Speaker 3: February sixth, nineteen eighty five, Katie and Darryl leave around
Speaker 3: ten o'clock PM. Helen possibly stays up, remains awake for
Speaker 3: a little longer, eventually goes to bed. And she had
Speaker 3: been battling she didn't know it at the time, she
Speaker 3: was battling pneumonia. She just saw she had a bad
Speaker 3: nagging cough that she had picked up while she was
Speaker 3: out in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, which is about four hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty miles west. She had been out there just a
Speaker 3: couple of weeks earlier to visit one of her other children, Larry,
Speaker 3: and Larry's family out there, and it was while she
Speaker 3: was out there that she picked up this cold, this
Speaker 3: nagging cough, and didn't realize the severity of this cold.
Speaker 3: And again she goes to bed sometime late on February
Speaker 3: fifth of nineteen eighty five.
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Speaker 2: So what's every details?
Speaker 5: Now, what's happened is, as you're writing a book, there's
Speaker 5: a power shortage in the middle of the coldest night
Speaker 5: on record, and at six am, as later reported, there's
Speaker 5: a drifter or at least an unknown resident at the
Speaker 5: gas and shop. Corner store bought some potato chips, and
Speaker 5: the clerk just later recalled, all I think he had
Speaker 5: some blood on him, but didn't really remember anything about him. Now,
Speaker 5: Florence lives right next door. Her sister lives right next door,
Speaker 5: so nine am she wants to check on her sister.
Speaker 5: So tell us what happens in the morning with Florence
Speaker 5: and how things go that morning.
Speaker 3: So we're on It's Wednesday now and February sixth, still
Speaker 3: really cold outside, Florence goes next door, Yeah, just to
Speaker 3: figure out where you know, Helen had a bad check
Speaker 3: on her, just knowing that she had been very sick
Speaker 3: the last couple of days, just to check on her welfare.
Speaker 3: And she knocks on the door several times and doesn't
Speaker 3: get a response.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 3: She she had an extra key, She had a spare key.
Speaker 3: Uh the family members often do they have extra keys
Speaker 3: for for you know, for the you know, for different situations.
Speaker 3: So so Florence used her spare key to open up
Speaker 3: Helen's apartment unit, which was unit number four, and and
Speaker 3: Florence was battling her own health issues herself. She she
Speaker 3: had she was having very she was having a time
Speaker 3: remember was gauaucoma, but she had she was she had very,
Speaker 3: very poor eyesight. And so she walked into Helen's apartment
Speaker 3: and wandered through through the and it she wanted. She
Speaker 3: eventually goes to the bedroom, goes back to the living
Speaker 3: room and thinks that she sees Helen laying on the
Speaker 3: floor in the living room, possibly asleep. She goes back
Speaker 3: and tells her husband, read, uh, just notifies him, you know,
Speaker 3: about the situation, because obviously it wouldn't make sense for
Speaker 3: Helen to be sleeping on the floor in her living room.
Speaker 3: And Red goes in there next door, and and he's
Speaker 3: obviously had better eyesight and immediately picked up on, you know,
Speaker 3: what had happened here, and and he found Helen's nightgown
Speaker 3: had been pulled up pretty much over her head, exposing
Speaker 3: her and uh and and he went down and checked
Speaker 3: her and and realized that she, you know, that she
Speaker 3: was dead. And I should also point out too, there
Speaker 3: was a large scarf that had been woven wrapped around
Speaker 3: her head several times as well, so you could not
Speaker 3: see her face, you know, if you approach the body
Speaker 3: or you know, or it could come into this come
Speaker 3: into this room. So so so he runs back to
Speaker 3: the his unit. They immediately called the police, and within
Speaker 3: just a couple of minutes police officers and and also
Speaker 3: an ambulance unit to arrive primuch simultaneously. And this is
Speaker 3: around nine in the morning now, and and the two
Speaker 3: ambulance technicians or paramedics went up there and touched the
Speaker 3: body and checked checked for signs of a pulse and uh,
Speaker 3: and immediately determined that Helen was dead, and she had
Speaker 3: been dead for for quite some time and uh, and
Speaker 3: they eventually uh quickly notified the local police chief, Donald
Speaker 3: lukeroth Uh and uh there was immediate sense that this
Speaker 3: could be a homicide scene. So the local police acted
Speaker 3: very carefully to make sure that the unit was preserved
Speaker 3: and nobody touchsd anything that they shouldn't.
Speaker 5: Now, what you did mention, but you write in the
Speaker 5: book is that her hands were restrained and that scarf
Speaker 5: you talked about acted also like a gag. The sister
Speaker 5: with the poor eyesight had missed a lot of blood
Speaker 5: all over the place in terms of the walls. So
Speaker 5: tell us what the police found. You talked about they
Speaker 5: were very careful in collecting evidence, and that bears out
Speaker 5: in later in the book. But tell us what, again,
Speaker 5: this is before DNA or at least any development in DNA.
Speaker 5: So what did they find in terms of the crime
Speaker 5: scene besides this obvious rape? But tell us what they
Speaker 5: did find. What was the description of the place in
Speaker 5: terms of what did the police find?
Speaker 3: Uh? So when they get to the scene, one thing
Speaker 3: they noticed was that the scene was really not in
Speaker 3: any type of disarray. Helen's body is found on the
Speaker 3: carpet of her living room, her under her underwear, her
Speaker 3: her her her undergarments had been removed, and but there
Speaker 3: was no sign that they were torn or ripped or
Speaker 3: anything like that, but it it it was apparent that
Speaker 3: somebody had had taken them off gently and placed them
Speaker 3: nearby on the couch. The other things that are important
Speaker 3: to point out are her are what was left behind.
Speaker 3: Helen had she kept a lot of money in her apartment.
Speaker 3: She had over one thousand dollars in cash that she
Speaker 3: kept in her bedroom top drawer, and she also had
Speaker 3: several checks and money market accounts that another several hundred
Speaker 3: dollars as well that were out in Plane View and
Speaker 3: UH and UH, and the conventional wisdom was that if
Speaker 3: this was some type of robbery or somebody was breaking
Speaker 3: into steel, it didn't make any sense to the place
Speaker 3: why they would completely overlook taking any of this uh,
Speaker 3: any of this cash that was just out in Plaine View,
Speaker 3: especially considering the crime scene had originated in her bedroom.
Speaker 3: Her her her sheets and UH and the pillows were
Speaker 3: ripped off the bed. There was a there was a
Speaker 3: fair amount of blood, blood stains, blood spatter that was
Speaker 3: found on her bedroom sheets and also some of it
Speaker 3: got onto the walls police also found underneath her bed
Speaker 3: a knife, and there was a knife from her own kitchen,
Speaker 3: but it appeared that the knife wasn't really used to
Speaker 3: attack her, but it had been used more or less
Speaker 3: to control her by the by the rapist. The belief
Speaker 3: was that the rapist had had had managed to get
Speaker 3: inside of her apartment, probably went into her kitchen area,
Speaker 3: pulled out one of her stake knives and UH and
Speaker 3: then used that uh to UH to gain control by
Speaker 3: force of Helen in her bedroom. And eventually the attack
Speaker 3: moved uh and migrated into the living room, which is
Speaker 3: where UH, which is where this big scarf was wound
Speaker 3: around Helen's face. And also some towels from her bathroom
Speaker 3: presumably UH were were used to restrain her hands and UH.
Speaker 3: And so this was clearly a sexual assault that turned
Speaker 3: into a murder. And again the police didn't see any
Speaker 3: sign of robbery or stealing of of any items or
Speaker 3: or that kind of stuff, as as as being a
Speaker 3: parent at all. So I hope that kind of covered
Speaker 3: as far as just kind of give people an idea
Speaker 3: of what was there at the scene of the crime
Speaker 3: and UH. And in one of the next things the
Speaker 3: local police did was then they canvassed the rest of
Speaker 3: the building to find out if any of the other neighbors,
Speaker 3: the tenants above the tents below had seen or heard anything,
Speaker 3: and and and and and and the tenants were of
Speaker 3: no help at all as far as just absolutely nobody
Speaker 3: remembered hearing any loud noises, nobody heard any screams, nobody
Speaker 3: heard any shrieks or anything breaking or any commotion coming
Speaker 3: from Helen Wilson's apartment unit for.
Speaker 1: That that night.
Speaker 5: Now there was also we forgot to mention and then
Speaker 5: this will have significance later, but they didn't realize at
Speaker 5: the time was a ripped five dollars bill at the
Speaker 5: crime scene. And uh, and then so tell us as
Speaker 5: well as other than the canvas. They soon after have
Speaker 5: an autopsy, and as you write in the book, the
Speaker 5: autopsy is very revealing, So tell us what is revealed
Speaker 5: in that autopsy to police.
Speaker 3: The police determined that that there was a significant just
Speaker 3: signs of penetration as far as sexual assault. There was
Speaker 3: a significant amount of of sperm that was located in
Speaker 3: Helen Wilson's body, in her in her vaginal area and
Speaker 3: also in her rectum area. And it became obvious to
Speaker 3: the to the pathologist uh that that performed this autopsy,
Speaker 3: that Helen Wilson had had had apparently also been sexually assaulted.
Speaker 3: After she was dead. There was belief that the perpetrator
Speaker 3: had had spent considerable time inside of her apartment uh
Speaker 3: during the sexual assault and after the sexual assault. He
Speaker 3: may have been there for at least an hour, possibly
Speaker 3: two hours. But uh, but it was apparent that uh
Speaker 3: that that that scientific evidence this uh between the blood,
Speaker 3: some hairs that were found on Helen's on her nightgown
Speaker 3: and then also the sperm, that that scientific evidence would
Speaker 3: be crucial to helping to try to identify who the
Speaker 3: perpetrator was. And again, this is nineteen eighty five, so
Speaker 3: DNA evidence is still in its very very early stages
Speaker 3: of uh, you know, of uh of research. It certainly
Speaker 3: was not a common uh. It certainly wasn't a common
Speaker 3: in the courts at all yet. So back in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty five, police and crime labs primarily relied upon roology
Speaker 3: tests blood typing tests, and the police were able through
Speaker 3: the autopsy to determine that the perpetrator, the person that
Speaker 3: had harmed Helen Wilson, had B type blood and that
Speaker 3: he was also I believe non non secretor. This helped
Speaker 3: them determine that this was a bottom line, this was
Speaker 3: a very rare blood type that they were looking for.
Speaker 3: Less than ten percent of the population would have this
Speaker 3: type of blood type. So from that point forward, the
Speaker 3: police department in Beatrice twenty to twenty five member force
Speaker 3: made the sorology information kind of the focus of their investigation,
Speaker 3: and when they were interviewing suspects or had leads on
Speaker 3: potential suspects, they would they would kind of focus in
Speaker 3: on whether or not this person had this be this
Speaker 3: be B type blood that was an ansecretor, and that
Speaker 3: would help them guide their investigation. That kind of helps
Speaker 3: answer that Dan.
Speaker 5: Now, one other thing that's important later again for the
Speaker 5: audience to bear in mind, is that a woman named
Speaker 5: Kathy Gonzalez lives in the building. She's questioned. Nothing mounts
Speaker 5: to anything from that, but there is a search in
Speaker 5: the back of the building and a bag was found.
Speaker 5: So tell us what is found in the bag and
Speaker 5: what police do in terms of with that information on
Speaker 5: that information, with that.
Speaker 3: Material, just as part of doing their due diligence to
Speaker 3: Beatrice Plice Department obviously is mentioned before they they went
Speaker 3: out and interviewed everybody in the building. And and one
Speaker 3: of the questions I asked people too, was just did
Speaker 3: you see any strangers or any any weird, weird people
Speaker 3: lurking around or hanging around the building recently? And Kathy Gonzalez,
Speaker 3: who lived above Helen Wilson, was recently divorced, uh and
Speaker 3: had no children and uh, and she worked at that
Speaker 3: time at the country club she uh And so she
Speaker 3: she told the police, you know, she she remembered going
Speaker 3: to bed the night before she would watch the movie
Speaker 3: about the Corsican brothers and remembered going to bed around
Speaker 3: ten o'clock at night. And the police were satisfied with
Speaker 3: Kathy's interview. They thought that she was just like pretty
Speaker 3: much all the other tenants, try to be helpful, but
Speaker 3: didn't have a whole lot of information to to help
Speaker 3: the police out. When the police were doing the search,
Speaker 3: they went outside and just checked the dumpster to see,
Speaker 3: by chance of any evidence maybe the killer threw away,
Speaker 3: you know, some evidence, h a weapon, clothing, anything and uh.
Speaker 3: And just during their curse research, one of the many
Speaker 3: items that was fished out of the trash pin just
Speaker 3: happened to be a bag that had some had some
Speaker 3: old undergarments on there, including some bras and uh and
Speaker 3: and it was a package that Kathy Gonzalez had thrown
Speaker 3: away her her name and I think some letters that
Speaker 3: she had some mail was kind of all in the
Speaker 3: same bag as well. But these bras, these bras of hers,
Speaker 3: at least one of them in particular, had a little
Speaker 3: bit of blood on it and uh and at the time,
Speaker 3: the Mantriss Police Department, you know, just took this in
Speaker 3: evidence thinking, well, you know, it's blood, but this probably
Speaker 3: has nothing to do, you know, with this murder case,
Speaker 3: since the one and Helen Wilson, who lived below, you know,
Speaker 3: had been a victim of a sexual assault and a rape.
Speaker 3: So bottom line, yeah, the kathyns Alice braz get taken
Speaker 3: into evidence. They're put into storage at the Beatrice Police Department,
Speaker 3: but nothing really becomes of them. They just kind of
Speaker 3: sit around for the next several months and become an
Speaker 3: afterthought in the in the in the murder investigation.
Speaker 5: Dan, now, while police are stumped, as in the family
Speaker 5: is in incredible shock and mourning. You take us back
Speaker 5: that several hours before the murder. A gentleman named Michael
Speaker 5: Hyatt is at home shoveling snow. He's young guy, he's
Speaker 5: twenty two years old, and a friend he knows named
Speaker 5: Bruce Allen Smith had just come in February fifth to visit.
Speaker 5: So tell us about this visit and what these two
Speaker 5: got do that evening.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Hyatt's out there, chauvelin is snow. And Bruce Smith,
Speaker 3: who's just kind of a vagabond who bounce around from
Speaker 3: different towns to town. But he grew up in Beatrice,
Speaker 3: went to high school there for at least a year
Speaker 3: or so, but got into severe problems with the cops
Speaker 3: and ended up at a juvenile detention center in a
Speaker 3: different part of the state. But Smith still had some
Speaker 3: family in town. He would have been about twenty two
Speaker 3: years old in nineteen eighty five. So he comes in
Speaker 3: the town and hooks up with Michael Hyatt. They were
Speaker 3: friends growing up as teenagers, and so, long story short,
Speaker 3: Hyatt steps shaveling snow and they go bumming around town
Speaker 3: for a while. They go cruising around the countryside, kind
Speaker 3: of telling stories, getting caught up on their lives, and
Speaker 3: Smith pointed out that he was broke you know, penniless.
Speaker 3: Uh uh. He he had come in from Oklahoma City,
Speaker 3: which was where he was living at the time. And
Speaker 3: and so they agree to hook up later that evening
Speaker 3: at one of the local downtown bars and and Smith
Speaker 3: shows up around six or seven I believe Hyatt was
Speaker 3: already there with another gentleman and a couple a couple
Speaker 3: of girls. And Smith gets pretty wasted that night at
Speaker 3: the bar, and he even makes comments to hie It
Speaker 3: about how his uh uh, how he's having an erection
Speaker 3: at the bar and uh, you know and looking kind
Speaker 3: of scanning over the young women at the at the
Speaker 3: bar and stuff like that, and uh and even makes
Speaker 3: a comment to hie It, you know, over a drink,
Speaker 3: you know, how he wants to get a piece of
Speaker 3: ass some way, you know, no matter what that that evening,
Speaker 3: they stay at the bar, I believe, till after midnight,
Speaker 3: and and eventually they wind up, all the four of them,
Speaker 3: I should say, the five of them wind up going
Speaker 3: out to a real small community, Blue Springs, Blue Springs
Speaker 3: and win More kind of the same area. But one
Speaker 3: of the girls that they were with that night had
Speaker 3: a trailer park out there, so they were going out
Speaker 3: there just to have a small little after hours gathering,
Speaker 3: you know, have a few more drinks that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: While out there, Smith tries to force himself onto one
Speaker 3: of these young ladies and it really causes commotion. It
Speaker 3: causes the scene, and one of the other trailer park
Speaker 3: tenants that lived nearby he eventually intervenes, you know, and
Speaker 3: throws Bruce Smith out of the trailer. So it's a
Speaker 3: really humiliating scene for Bruce Smith, who's enraged and just
Speaker 3: pissed off as hell at the world, you know, and
Speaker 3: really mad that he couldn't get a piece of ass
Speaker 3: that night. It's kind of the peacemaker, the whole deal
Speaker 3: just kind of agrees that, you know, he's going to
Speaker 3: get Smith out of there and bring this other friend
Speaker 3: of their's home that night. So so Hyatt puts Smith
Speaker 3: and the other guy into his vehicle and it's about
Speaker 3: ten to fifteen minut drive back to be Entrance, and
Speaker 3: it's sometime between three thirty and four in the morning
Speaker 3: now too. And again, as I pointed out earlier, it's
Speaker 3: one of the coldest knights on the record. It's six
Speaker 3: or seven degrees below zero. Michael Hyatt drops off the
Speaker 3: other fella first at his house. I actually should say
Speaker 3: he drops the other fella off first and then pulls up.
Speaker 3: I believe it's Fifth Street in Court Street. It's a
Speaker 3: it's a popular intersection in town. But that's where Smith
Speaker 3: agrees to get out, and and so Hyatt pulls away
Speaker 3: and and and Smith gets dropped off about a block
Speaker 3: to a block and a half away from the apartment
Speaker 3: building where Helen Wilson, where Helen Wilson's murder and rape
Speaker 3: takes place. Uh that that same evening that you know,
Speaker 3: either the previous night or early that uh, that morning.
Speaker 3: And as far as with Bruce Smith, then a couple
Speaker 3: of days later, he's gonna eventually uh drift out of town.
Speaker 3: But uh but again uh he he had these issues
Speaker 3: involving women and uh and again as soon as this
Speaker 3: rape and murder had happened for Helen Wilson, h Hyatt
Speaker 3: even thought to himself that this was kind of suspicious,
Speaker 3: and he even went to the police and suggested that
Speaker 3: they look at Bruce Allen Smith as a potential suspect,
Speaker 3: just given the close proximity you know, of where the
Speaker 3: murder had happened, and just Bruce Smith's behavior that night before,
Speaker 3: when they were all drinking, you know, talking about women
Speaker 3: that night.
Speaker 5: Then how seriously could they have looked at that recommendation
Speaker 5: from his friend if, as you say in the book,
Speaker 5: he Smith was charged with rape in nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 5: Now he's never prosecuted, but he was also a suspect
Speaker 5: in a murder as well. So did they you believe
Speaker 5: that they actually took that Obviously didn't take that recommendation
Speaker 5: too seriously.
Speaker 3: And I think part of it is because those other
Speaker 3: crimes involving Bruce Smith had happened in Oklahoma and Oklahoma City.
Speaker 3: So the local police in Beatrice, you know, noticed that
Speaker 3: Smith at least was in close proximity to the crime scene.
Speaker 3: They also knew that he had or they had they
Speaker 3: had information that that he was involved in a potential
Speaker 3: sexual assault, you know, out at this trailer park on
Speaker 3: the night of the crime. I think the fact that
Speaker 3: distance was a factor probably caused them to devote less
Speaker 3: energy and less emphasis on Bruce Smith. And then one
Speaker 3: thing that's important to point out too, Dan, is that
Speaker 3: it seems that Smith is completely overlooked. They don't even
Speaker 3: really think about Bruce Smith, and in connection with those
Speaker 3: sexual assaults, those rapes that had happened in the summer
Speaker 3: of nineteen eighty three. In nineteen eighty five, when Helen
Speaker 3: Wilson's raped and murdered, it's a singular focus. They're only
Speaker 3: focused in on trying to figure out, you know, who
Speaker 3: is the culprit of this crime, even though in the
Speaker 3: back of their mind, you know, they remember and know
Speaker 3: that there were these three other three to four other
Speaker 3: sexual assault attempts that had happened a year and a
Speaker 3: half earlier. Even though Smith is on the raider now,
Speaker 3: they they really put forward, I would say, a lackluster effort,
Speaker 3: you know, to really dig into Bruce Smith's background, you know,
Speaker 3: and try to tie him at least to those other
Speaker 3: sexual assaults.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 3: They're eventually going to go out to Oklahoma City the
Speaker 3: following month, early part of March, and uh and that, uh,
Speaker 3: in my mind was another you know, failure as far
Speaker 3: as just that they they had an opportunity to interview
Speaker 3: Bruce Smith while they were out there. Uh, but they
Speaker 3: kind of let the local Oklahoma City Police department take
Speaker 3: over the investigation as far as handling Bruce Smith. Uh.
Speaker 3: And it's really weird, It's really odd. As other people
Speaker 3: point out to me, because as we as you mentioned,
Speaker 3: there was at least another murder out in Oklahoma City
Speaker 3: that the at least Oklahoma City authorities were you know,
Speaker 3: looking at Bruce Smith as a POS suspect on and
Speaker 3: you have this nineteen eighty one rape that Smith was
Speaker 3: arrested for that was never prosecuted out there. But what
Speaker 3: happens is when the when the two Nebraska investigators go
Speaker 3: out to interview Smith out in Oklahoma City, it's the
Speaker 3: Oklahoma City police that that that decides that they're going
Speaker 3: to handle you know, Bruce Smith, and so he's not
Speaker 3: questioned at all really in connection with this murder. He
Speaker 3: doesn't even know, you know, that these guys from Nebraska
Speaker 3: out there to interview him about this this widow's murder.
Speaker 3: They just are Oklahoma City just is able to get
Speaker 3: some samples of Bruce Smith just for elimination purposes on
Speaker 3: this Nebraska case. And that's really as far as it's
Speaker 3: going to go.
Speaker 5: Now, there was a the FBI is brought in Special
Speaker 5: Agent Pete claims it Junior. So what does he say,
Speaker 5: did they develop a profile, and in that profile, what
Speaker 5: do they determine? What is that profile.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Clismuth comes in and does a very thorough job,
Speaker 3: spends a lot of time in Beatrice and goes through
Speaker 3: the case file, visits with different people, and he puts
Speaker 3: together a profile that uh that's very detailed about who
Speaker 3: the potential suspect is in this type of crime. And
Speaker 3: Klinsman is convinced that it's a loner, a young sexually
Speaker 3: confused male who's between ages twenty to twenty five, skinny,
Speaker 3: probably uh lives either by himself or with or with
Speaker 3: a mother and and but just hates women, resents women,
Speaker 3: and probably has a bad relationship with either his own mother,
Speaker 3: a great mother, or an aunt. But just uh, this
Speaker 3: is somebody that that really that this was an anger
Speaker 3: you know, type of an anger retaliatory type of rape.
Speaker 3: So Helen Wilson was was more or less used by
Speaker 3: by the perpetrator, uh to take out his anger and
Speaker 3: revenge you know, on other women that that this individual
Speaker 3: had hated. So Klosem puts it together, and then he
Speaker 3: also analyzes the fact that all this money was left
Speaker 3: behind and how the how the how the rapist uh
Speaker 3: didn't took no money pretty much from the place the
Speaker 3: place is in in you know, it's it's immaculate. There's
Speaker 3: no sign of uh, you know of uh turned over
Speaker 3: chairs or you know, or you know, broken furniture, nothing
Speaker 3: like that at all. It's this you know, type of eerie, creepy,
Speaker 3: you know, ritualistic type of scene. You know, where where
Speaker 3: the scarf was bound around Helen's face, you were the
Speaker 3: towels that were used to restrain her hands. The fact
Speaker 3: that the autopsy showed that necrophilia had occurred, and so
Speaker 3: all the science pointed to that this was a rape.
Speaker 3: But the perpetrator didn't necessarily intend for Halan Wilson to
Speaker 3: die in this crime. But nonetheless that's what happened very tragically.
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Speaker 5: Apron a better way to cook. Now, as you're introducing
Speaker 5: your book, and I guess we'll get you to explain
Speaker 5: a little bit where this Gauge County and the Beatrice
Speaker 5: Police Department, there becomes a shift and you introduce this
Speaker 5: incredible character, a former detective with the Beatrice Police, Bert Circe,
Speaker 5: and he's in his mid thirties. So tell us in
Speaker 5: nineteen eighty five, what Bert Searcy's doing and why he's
Speaker 5: doing it, and his former stint as a police officer,
Speaker 5: and what had happened.
Speaker 3: So Bert Circe and nineteen eighty five is working as
Speaker 3: a hog farmer. He's living in ural Gage County, outside
Speaker 3: of a town of about seventy five people. And he
Speaker 3: had worked previously for about five or six years on
Speaker 3: the Beatrice Police force. Before that, he had worked at
Speaker 3: his family's grain elevator. He was a welder out there
Speaker 3: and just did a lot of different odd jobs on
Speaker 3: the farm. And he left the police department of Beatrice
Speaker 3: under under pray bad terms. He did not get along
Speaker 3: with some of the other detectives. Uh, they kind of
Speaker 3: viewed him as a as a flashy, egotistical, kind of
Speaker 3: know it all type of guy who really didn't work
Speaker 3: well with other people on the force, really didn't get
Speaker 3: along with the police chief who had been there pretty
Speaker 3: much his whole life. And it was a very likable,
Speaker 3: you know, figure in that department. So when Bird Seriously
Speaker 3: left the police department, police chief made comments to others
Speaker 3: so that that he wasn't said sorry to see him go.
Speaker 3: And Sercy then had the audacity to reapply for a
Speaker 3: job about two years later, and the long story short,
Speaker 3: the city of Beatrice did not rehire him for the job.
Speaker 3: This only further deepened the animosity that Seriously had toward
Speaker 3: the Beatrice Police Department. So when Helen Wilson's murder happens,
Speaker 3: Circe starts to think that this is the case in
Speaker 3: the crime that he had uh the ability, uh special
Speaker 3: skills to solve, and he didn't think very highly of
Speaker 3: his former colleagues at the police department. So seriously starts
Speaker 3: going around town knocking on doors, you know, and just
Speaker 3: kind of listening to the small town rumor mill and
Speaker 3: grapevine as far as kind of who, uh you know,
Speaker 3: who might be the culprit of this type of crime.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: He endears himself uh to the Helen Wilson's family. Uh.
Speaker 3: The family ran a dry cleaning business uh in town,
Speaker 3: and Circe knew uh knew one of Helen's daughters, Jan
Speaker 3: through this business because he often brought his old police
Speaker 3: uniforms there beforehand. So the family's grieving there in mourning,
Speaker 3: and they want action. They want somebody to solve this crime,
Speaker 3: and they want to see us solved quickly and and seriously.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: It was kind of a nine and shining armor for
Speaker 3: them as far as at least somebody that that that
Speaker 3: presented himself that he was willing, you know, to go
Speaker 3: to the uh you know, go to bat for them
Speaker 3: and do what it took to h to solve the crime.
Speaker 3: But again, trouble was Bert SEUs. He was a hog
Speaker 3: farmer in nineteen eighty five. So so he nonetheless starts
Speaker 3: knocking on doors. Uh and uh and uh and and
Speaker 3: he eventually gets a tip and develops this uh, this
Speaker 3: tip that somehow, uh, somehow a troubled young woman whose
Speaker 3: name was Joanne Taylor, who really wasn't from the interest,
Speaker 3: but it bounced in the town a couple of different
Speaker 3: times in her life. But but this tip that Bert
Speaker 3: seously gets is that supposedly Joanne Taylor and another fellow
Speaker 3: named Joseph White, supposedly these two had had had admitted
Speaker 3: to the crime that Joanna had confessed. Those two were
Speaker 3: the primary culprits of this crime under a theory that
Speaker 3: this was a robbery, a pre planned robbery you know
Speaker 3: that that turned into murder and uh and uh and
Speaker 3: and the thing is, the Beatrice Police Department they had
Speaker 3: heard these kinds of different stories. There was all kinds
Speaker 3: of goofy stories and rumors floating around town at the
Speaker 3: bars and stuff like that. So so the Beatrice Police
Speaker 3: Department knew Joanne Taylor, they knew Joseph White, they knew
Speaker 3: some of their other friends that they kind of hung
Speaker 3: around with, and uh and really didn't give them any
Speaker 3: any credibility. In fact, Joseph White left Beatrice just a
Speaker 3: matter of weeks after the murder. But before he did,
Speaker 3: he even stopped at the Beatrice Police department and talked
Speaker 3: with one of the detectives you know and uh and
Speaker 3: uh and showed him his uh military ID card that
Speaker 3: he used to have. Uh and uh and Joe White
Speaker 3: used to have a type well he had type of blood.
Speaker 3: So so, but White made it clear he was leaving town.
Speaker 3: He was going back to his home state available Amma,
Speaker 3: you know, which is where he grew up. Just to
Speaker 3: make it clear. He wasn't running or hiding or you know,
Speaker 3: going in the seclusion, but he was just leaving because
Speaker 3: he was homesick and you know, wanted to kind of
Speaker 3: move on. There was really nothing for him in Beatrice.
Speaker 3: But again, Bert seerusly, this hog farmer just comes up
Speaker 3: with this theory that that this this lead this tip,
Speaker 3: this gossip that this local high school girl named Lisa
Speaker 3: Brown was telling the different people that that seriously becomes
Speaker 3: convinced that this absolutely has to be true and that
Speaker 3: he somehow has got something, you know, that his former
Speaker 3: colleagues at the Beatrice Police Department just weren't smart enough
Speaker 3: or were too stupid to follow up on and treat seriously.
Speaker 3: So so nineteen eighty seven, about two years later, there
Speaker 3: have been new election and new sheriff elected a guy
Speaker 3: named Jerry DeWitt, former Nebraska state trooper who kind of
Speaker 3: worked the highways and did road patrol, really had no
Speaker 3: experience handling murder cases. But but Jerry was kind of
Speaker 3: a show ball. He liked he liked the attention and
Speaker 3: uh and uh, and really didn't have a good relationship
Speaker 3: with the Beatrice Police Department. But Dewake gets elected as
Speaker 3: the sheriff. One of his first things he does is
Speaker 3: hire Bert Seriously onto the police force at the Sheriff's office,
Speaker 3: and the sheriff is convinced that because Gage County also
Speaker 3: encompasses the county seat the city of Beatrice, that therefore
Speaker 3: that gave him the ability uh to investigate crimes in
Speaker 3: the city of Beatrice. So Seriously just kept keeps pestering him,
Speaker 3: keeps pestering him for a long period of time. Finally
Speaker 3: DeWitt says, okay, fine, you know, he he gives he
Speaker 3: gives in, and lets seriously take over the city's investigation.
Speaker 3: Unbeknown to the city police department. Is as crazy as
Speaker 3: it sounds, Dan, Yeah.
Speaker 5: Now, at the same time time, what he does is
Speaker 5: that he has connections with the Beatrice Police even though
Speaker 5: he's been drummed out of there. And what he does
Speaker 5: find is that the little bit of information because he
Speaker 5: doesn't find out very much information. He's not privy to
Speaker 5: anything really because he's not even a police officer. But
Speaker 5: what he does find out is that there was this
Speaker 5: ripped five dollars bill. And as a result of the
Speaker 5: five dollars bill, what does he theorize and what does
Speaker 5: he as he theorizes, what does he want to make
Speaker 5: work in terms of that theory?
Speaker 3: That's right. That so, at the crime scene near the kitchen,
Speaker 3: Helen's purse was on a table or a counter, and
Speaker 3: it appeared that the rapist had just kind of rifled
Speaker 3: through the purse just kind of as a diversionary tactic
Speaker 3: because Helen only had I think twenty dollars in her
Speaker 3: purse at the time, and on the floor on the carpet.
Speaker 3: You could see in one of the crime scene photos
Speaker 3: all one of her keys is on the floor. And
Speaker 3: there's also this this ripped half of a five dollar
Speaker 3: bill that's on the floor. So again the answers police department,
Speaker 3: they just thought this was a diversion, that there was
Speaker 3: no this. You know, this was the killer trying to
Speaker 3: throw them off, the perpetrator trying to throw them off.
Speaker 3: I didn't mean that much to them. But but seriously
Speaker 3: develops this theory that somehow this was a crude signature.
Speaker 3: It was kind of a uh, a clue that was
Speaker 3: left behind intentionally by Joseph White. So uh so so
Speaker 3: seriously spends a lot of time trying to prove his
Speaker 3: theory that somehow Joe White was was uh a regular
Speaker 3: at meeting up with people at parties and ripping up
Speaker 3: money as part of this uh as part of this
Speaker 3: trick that's supposedly White would do involving uh beer parties
Speaker 3: where he'd rip up a bill and tell people name
Speaker 3: front incident, name a dairy product, and then name a
Speaker 3: movie and eventually ends up gone with the wind. But uh,
Speaker 3: but this was very very sketchy and and most of
Speaker 3: his friends, you know, denied seeing White ever do this.
Speaker 3: But but serious, he's able to eventually get this, uh,
Speaker 3: this teenage informant that he knew. Uh, Lisa Brown to
Speaker 3: go along with this story, and she tells him that
Speaker 3: she's seen White do the sun on dozens of occasions,
Speaker 3: you know, a different beer drinking parties and stuff like that. Uh,
Speaker 3: that that that White was fine of doing this. So
Speaker 3: so seriously's convinced that this ripped five dollar bill was
Speaker 3: just part of Joe White's signature. So that Joe White, uh,
Speaker 3: after he committed the rape and uh and participated in
Speaker 3: the murder of Helen Wilson, that he somehow grabbed, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, some money out of her purse and ripped
Speaker 3: this five dollar bill in half, left half of it
Speaker 3: on the floor to taunt the police, and they investigated
Speaker 3: the crime.
Speaker 5: Now, how did they question Joanne Taylor? And what is
Speaker 5: Joanne Taylor's mental statuses? You have any mental issues or
Speaker 5: psychological or disabilities and mental disabilities I don't even know
Speaker 5: the term anymore, but yeah, what is her mental state
Speaker 5: at that time? And what how do how do police
Speaker 5: proceed with the questioning? I should say, seriously, how does
Speaker 5: he question her.
Speaker 3: He uh, well, eventually they fearce, he fearce. He gets
Speaker 3: his arrest warrants back in Nebraska in in the early
Speaker 3: part of March of nineteen eighty nine. So we're talking
Speaker 3: four years in one month after the crime. And rather
Speaker 3: than interview Joseph White or Joanne Taylor before, you know,
Speaker 3: before before the arrest, to even do any any any
Speaker 3: background or any questioning, he he just gets these warrants
Speaker 3: to move forward with with their arrests.
Speaker 5: So.
Speaker 3: Uh So, Joanne has taken into custody in in uh
Speaker 3: in Asheville, North Carolina, where she lived at this point
Speaker 3: in her life, and Joe White was living around the Coleman,
Speaker 3: Alabama area, which I believe is about an hour from Birmingham.
Speaker 3: But uh but they're both taken into custody separately. And
Speaker 3: Joanne Taylor had had numerous serious psych psychiatric problems. She
Speaker 3: had been in and out of different psychiatric facilities during
Speaker 3: her teens and early twenties. She had had at least
Speaker 3: two of her children at that point in time had
Speaker 3: been had been taken from her by the by the
Speaker 3: courts just because she was determined to be an unfit parent.
Speaker 3: She had had a lot of problems with with with drugs,
Speaker 3: like not just may want to but we're talking heavy
Speaker 3: stuff like PC p lsd uh that that type of
Speaker 3: stuff yellow jackets. She was she was really into a
Speaker 3: hallucinogenic type of drugs. Uh, in addition to having these
Speaker 3: severe psychiatric problems and delusional behavior. So uh, so Joanne
Speaker 3: when she's questioned, she's taken in the custody in North Carolina,
Speaker 3: and and she goes along with the theory that thought
Speaker 3: she might have participated in some crime with with her
Speaker 3: friend Joseph White, who whose nickname was Lobo. But the
Speaker 3: story she gives is about about going to a house,
Speaker 3: a small house uh and uh and going there with
Speaker 3: Joseph White to uh to trim the the somebody's trees
Speaker 3: and going into the house and asking for permission to
Speaker 3: get a glass of iced tea. And somehow this this
Speaker 3: turns into this uh robbery, you know, slash murder, and
Speaker 3: that Joe White pulled out a buck knife more or
Speaker 3: less and and just stabbed this lady uh knew numerous times,
Speaker 3: you know, up and down her body, which was clearly
Speaker 3: one actually inaccurate because again this is a three story
Speaker 3: apartment building, This crime happened in the middle of winter time,
Speaker 3: there were no trees to be trimmed in Nebraska, and uh,
Speaker 3: and there was no knife that was used to kill
Speaker 3: Helen Wilson. Sears is able to eventually finagle, you know,
Speaker 3: talk Joanne into change in her story and eventually getting
Speaker 3: her to to agree that she participated in this crime
Speaker 3: with Joseph White and that really happened in an apartment
Speaker 3: building and uh. And he's able to work her worker over,
Speaker 3: along with some help from a from a psychologist who
Speaker 3: who also moonlighted on the sheriff's department, a fellow by
Speaker 3: the name of Wayne Price. Meanwhile, I should point out
Speaker 3: Joe White gets taken into custody in Alabama. He's pulled
Speaker 3: from his house in the late at night, and he's
Speaker 3: just aghast, he can't believe, he doesn't know what the
Speaker 3: hell is going on, can't believe it, and just uh
Speaker 3: just as amazed and just pissed off as hell, you know,
Speaker 3: being told that he's being arrested for some murder you
Speaker 3: know of an elderly woman back in Nebraska from some
Speaker 3: uh firs from some four years ago. So he he
Speaker 3: he he he kind of uh uh uh, just remains
Speaker 3: very defiant, you know, and doesn't give a confession, unlike
Speaker 3: Joanne Taylor who caved under pressure.
Speaker 5: Now you you talk about the the tag team of
Speaker 5: this William Price psychologist who also happens to be a
Speaker 5: deputy sheriff, which is a direct conflict if there ever
Speaker 5: was one. And but there are these other people with
Speaker 5: this again tenuous is an understatement, tenuous connection to Joanne
Speaker 5: Taylor and White. So tell us about Tom Winslow and
Speaker 5: Debbie Sheldon and how all these other people come to
Speaker 5: be suspects in this murder and rape. But also what
Speaker 5: are their blood types? As they do become involved in
Speaker 5: this and they are checked, what is their blood types?
Speaker 3: So besides you you have Joanne and Joanne Taylor and
Speaker 3: Joseph Why are the first two individuals arrested? But Tom
Speaker 3: Winslow was the key for serious theory to come together
Speaker 3: because he needed somebody that had an automobile to prove
Speaker 3: his theory. And Tom Winslow was about the only person
Speaker 3: in this group of friends that actually had a car.
Speaker 3: He had a nineteen seventy three green Oldsmobile and and
Speaker 3: and Winslow had had his own problems in life. He
Speaker 3: had had battle a lot of depression and was was
Speaker 3: an easy person to manipulate, and and he got caught
Speaker 3: up in his own crime wave. A couple of years
Speaker 3: after this Allan Wilson murder, he teamed up with a
Speaker 3: with a scoundrel of a guy, a guy named Cliff Sheldon,
Speaker 3: involving a robbery at a motel that loved a clerk,
Speaker 3: a badly beaten hit over the head with a tire iron.
Speaker 3: But uh, but Winslow is in the jam since he's
Speaker 3: in jail for that crime, so uh he he eventually
Speaker 3: uh he he, I mean, he initially denied had any
Speaker 3: involvement whatsoever in this crime, this Helen Wilson attack. But
Speaker 3: knowing that he's in in in a jam for for
Speaker 3: going that he could be going to prison for many years,
Speaker 3: he he goes along with seriously theory that somehow he
Speaker 3: let his car get borrowed by Joanne Taylor in Joseph White,
Speaker 3: and then that's gonna snowball and change and uh and
Speaker 3: the story is eventually going to transform into Winslow also
Speaker 3: driving the vehicle, you know, and going up to Helen
Speaker 3: Wilson's apartment and going inside of her apartment, and and
Speaker 3: and where it kind of gets a little crazy. Is
Speaker 3: that again? Seriously wanted to find somebody that had some
Speaker 3: connection because I'm still trying to figure out how could
Speaker 3: this be a pre pre planned robbery if Joanne Taylor,
Speaker 3: Tom Winslow, and Joseph White really don't know this Helen
Speaker 3: Wilson at all, this elderly widow. And that's kind of
Speaker 3: where Debbie Shelde balls in the in the place for
Speaker 3: for seriously, Wie uh was a distant cousin. Helen Wilson
Speaker 3: was her her great aunt, and the family was a
Speaker 3: little suspicious of Debbie to begin with. She wasn't really
Speaker 3: all there. Uh she had uh she had uh. She
Speaker 3: had been special education uh throughout high school and just
Speaker 3: really struggled in life. She was what even her own
Speaker 3: lawyer would call a low functioning real please a very
Speaker 3: compliant individual, and somebody that will be easy to trick
Speaker 3: and manipulate. And uh so. Debbie initially denied any involvement
Speaker 3: in this crime as well, but when kind of push
Speaker 3: came to shove, when she was threatened with the possibility
Speaker 3: of having her child taken away from her, she she
Speaker 3: changed her story. Look at his split and went along
Speaker 3: with Serious's theory that the Debbie also went to this
Speaker 3: apartment of her great aunt and the Debbie was the
Speaker 3: one that knocked on the door and h you know,
Speaker 3: and her aunt answered the door and then was bull rushed.
Speaker 3: Helen Wilson was bull rushed by by Joe White, Joe
Speaker 3: Anne Taylor, Tom Winslow, and Wie went into the place
Speaker 3: as well. Where again it gets confusing is that none
Speaker 3: of these four individuals H had proper blood type that
Speaker 3: matches up with with with the perpetrator. The perpetrator had
Speaker 3: type B blood and was UH was a nonsecretor. All
Speaker 3: four of them did not have this UH this blood type.
Speaker 3: So there's gonna be a fifth person that's taken in
Speaker 3: the custody guy that just happens to have the name
Speaker 3: of H James Dean, and Dean's taken into custody UH
Speaker 3: just a couple of days after w G. Sheldon and UH,
Speaker 3: and the same same situation with James Dean. He doesn't
Speaker 3: have the right blood type either. So you got five
Speaker 3: people now sitting in custody and UH and a matter
Speaker 3: of weeks later, finally seriously found somebody that had type
Speaker 3: B blood and that somebody was at Katy Gonzalez, the
Speaker 3: woman that had lived in the apartment unit directly above
Speaker 3: Helen Wilson, and and she lived in Colorado at this
Speaker 3: point in time and was working at uh at at
Speaker 3: a fish market at a nice hotel in Denver and
Speaker 3: just gets pulled out of a pulled out of the
Speaker 3: kitchen by Seriously and the sheriff, and as told, she's
Speaker 3: being arrested in connection with this, with his murder. And
Speaker 3: that's kind of at that point in time is when
Speaker 3: the investigation ends. In Seriously's mind, he at least found
Speaker 3: somebody with the type B blood and that could at
Speaker 3: least put the rest that big fear, you know, that
Speaker 3: the prosecutor had would have to deal with as far
Speaker 3: as how do we explain this type B blood that
Speaker 3: was left at the crime scene. They were at least
Speaker 3: able to pin that on, you know, or blame blame
Speaker 3: it on Kathy Gonzalez, and really hope that the defense
Speaker 3: whoever the defense floyers were in this case, wouldn't really
Speaker 3: delve into this and kind of overlooked the scientific aspect
Speaker 3: of this case. Because the state crime Lab determined that
Speaker 3: Kathy Gonzalez's blood type. Although she had a B type blood,
Speaker 3: she did not have the same specific genetic markers as
Speaker 3: the bee type of blood that was actually found in
Speaker 3: Helen Wilson's bedroom. And obviously Kathy Gonzalz couldn't produce spurm either.
Speaker 3: So but that was again completely overlooked by Bird seriously
Speaker 3: and the prosecution team that was gonna embark on moving
Speaker 3: forward with six murder cases involving the death of Helen Wilson.
Speaker 5: Now you talked about the psychologist. It was instrumental, as
Speaker 5: you point out in this book all the way through,
Speaker 5: and you show the evidence for that, but also particularly
Speaker 5: put the blame on Dick Smith, the prosecutor. So tell
Speaker 5: us about Dick Smith and a little bit about his
Speaker 5: character and how he goes ahead with this prosecution.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Dick Smith was really I mean, everybody around Beatrice
Speaker 3: in southeastern Nebraska, in the legal community and political community,
Speaker 3: knew Dick Smith. He was a big, burly guy, very
Speaker 3: authoritative figure, very imposing figure, and he really belittled police
Speaker 3: officers and uh and really was a micromanager beyond words
Speaker 3: can even explain, but just really uh, it was an
Speaker 3: intimidating force and uh and a lot of cops were
Speaker 3: scared of him, they hated him, and and but but
Speaker 3: defense attorneys a lot of public defenders around town also
Speaker 3: kind of winced and uh and and really would bend
Speaker 3: over backwards or would cower to Dick Smith. So uh
Speaker 3: so in this case, here, Dick, the art of Dick
Speaker 3: Smith was really the plea bargain process. Dick really despised
Speaker 3: or or didn't like to take cases of the trial.
Speaker 3: He Uh, he would either charge what he felt was
Speaker 3: the right charge, or he would overcharge people and uh
Speaker 3: and eventually uh try to work out a deal with
Speaker 3: with the other or their public defender to avoid uh
Speaker 3: the protracted uh you know, time and energy and resources
Speaker 3: that are spent taking a case of trials. So uh,
Speaker 3: that was Dick Smith's strategy here with this with these
Speaker 3: beatrice six individuals, and and in in a an astonishing
Speaker 3: amount of time, uh, barely two weeks after Debbie Sheldon
Speaker 3: was charged as an aider and a better as an accessory,
Speaker 3: I should say, in this crime, Dick Smith was able
Speaker 3: to work out a plea bargain with her lawyer, Paul Koislan,
Speaker 3: her public defender, and so that made front page news.
Speaker 3: But more importantly, that was a domino that had domino effects.
Speaker 3: So you had now one key defendant now that had
Speaker 3: rolled over and was now working with the police or
Speaker 3: I shoots to the Sheriff's office and the prosecution two
Speaker 3: uh to help think the other individuals, and that after that,
Speaker 3: James Dean's attorney, a fellow who was later disparred for
Speaker 3: unrelated matters by a guy named Richard Smelling, who didn't
Speaker 3: believe in James Dean's innocence. And even though Dean was
Speaker 3: adamant absolutely no way he could have been involved in
Speaker 3: his crime, doesn't remember anything, Smelling eventually gets gets his
Speaker 3: client to start meeting with doctor Price, the psychologist, and
Speaker 3: Price convinces Dean, you know that he just repressed. He's
Speaker 3: repressing these memories because it was such a traumatic and
Speaker 3: horrible event, and initially convinces Dean that somehow he was there,
Speaker 3: he was president at the crime scene. And really he's
Speaker 3: in a jam. He's in a really big hole here,
Speaker 3: and the only way to get out of this is
Speaker 3: the plead guilty to a lesser included felony. You know,
Speaker 3: he's going to do some prison time, a few years,
Speaker 3: five years, but he's not going to get the electric chair,
Speaker 3: you know, which was what Dean was constantly told that
Speaker 3: the Sheriff's office was a very real possibility if he didn't,
Speaker 3: you know, cooperate in the greed to start fingering Winslow
Speaker 3: and Joe White as the ringleaders in this horrible, despicable
Speaker 3: crime that it happens. So you get two of these
Speaker 3: individuals to plead guilty really really quickly. Joan Taylor she
Speaker 3: pleads guilty not that long afterwards as well, even though
Speaker 3: she can't really remember being at this crime scene, she's
Speaker 3: willing to go along with the you know, with what
Speaker 3: the police are saying because you know, they're the one's
Speaker 3: saying that she did it, and she's hearing that other
Speaker 3: people are pleading guilty to the crimes. So these people
Speaker 3: are showing videos of the crime scene, they're showing photos
Speaker 3: of the crime scene. They're taken from the jail and
Speaker 3: actually taken to the apartment complex, you know, and walked
Speaker 3: around in it. So it's really like a horrible, bad
Speaker 3: movie that's playing out in their lives. But that's the
Speaker 3: way Dick Smith was operating because he wanted to get
Speaker 3: these other individuals convicted and to do that, he needed
Speaker 3: to have first first rate witnesses, uh, people that could
Speaker 3: testify against whoever would remain a holdout or be a
Speaker 3: defiant individual. And the defiant individual is gonna turn out
Speaker 3: to be Joseph White from Alabama, real tall, skinny stringbean,
Speaker 3: you know, who really had some minor skirmishes with the
Speaker 3: law in his life, but nothing absolutely nothing like a
Speaker 3: rape and a murder of an elderly woman at all.
Speaker 3: So Joe White's gonna be the loan holdout, and he's
Speaker 3: going to refuse to accept a plea barga and really
Speaker 3: get anger Dick Smith knowing that he's gonna have to
Speaker 3: go to the trial, you know, on this case, and
Speaker 3: you know, and and spend inordinate amount of time in preparing,
Speaker 3: you know, for for a trial in this in this crime.
Speaker 5: Now the sentences are tell us the sentencing.
Speaker 3: In Nebraska at that point in time, typically you would
Speaker 3: serve half of what you got. So for James Dean,
Speaker 3: Debbie Sheldon, and Kathy Gonzalez, those three individuals pleaded guilty
Speaker 3: to aiding in the betting of a second degree murder charge.
Speaker 3: They all received a ten year prison sentence, and that
Speaker 3: basically meant that they were going to serve about five
Speaker 3: to five and a half years at the state penitentiary
Speaker 3: for that crime. Joanne Taylor also pleaded guilty before Joe
Speaker 3: White's trial as well, and this was a really shrewd,
Speaker 3: typical Dick Smith move. He told her that he would
Speaker 3: argue at the sentencing for a fifteen year sentence for her,
Speaker 3: which in her mind was okay, I'll be out in
Speaker 3: seven years. But there was no way the judge was
Speaker 3: going to give earth a fifteen year prison sentence for
Speaker 3: this crime concerned this was a rape and a murder
Speaker 3: of an elderly woman that you know, this was a
Speaker 3: shocked the conscious of the town. So Joanne Taylor is
Speaker 3: going to get a forty year prison sentence, this whole
Speaker 3: deal and these are all these are all people though
Speaker 3: they didn't get their sentence until after they would testify
Speaker 3: at Joe White's trials. So in their mind, they were
Speaker 3: doing absolutely everything they could to appease and please to
Speaker 3: Smith the prosecutor, thinking that the more they helped, the
Speaker 3: less time they're going to serve for this crime. And
Speaker 3: and and as sad in the heart as this may
Speaker 3: be for listeners to understand, by this point in time,
Speaker 3: all these individuals had convinced themselves believed that they somehow
Speaker 3: were absolutely one hundred percent involved in this crime. They
Speaker 3: they went, they they they were they were manipulated by
Speaker 3: that psychologist, uh doctor Wayne Price, and uh and they
Speaker 3: started to come around and believe that they must have
Speaker 3: had a blackout. They repressed these memories. They they really
Speaker 3: felt bad and sorrowful for this crime. And it felt
Speaker 3: that they had had some culpability and uh and uh
Speaker 3: and and and and some remorse for participating this crime.
Speaker 3: So so they were more than willing to uh to
Speaker 3: go to bats and uh and show up in court
Speaker 3: and testify and implicate Joe White as the primary perpetrator
Speaker 3: in this god awful crime that happened in in apartment
Speaker 3: unit four.
Speaker 5: Now this uh, everybody just uh figures this cases concluded,
Speaker 5: White continues his battle and is saving his his pennies
Speaker 5: so that he can fight for his uh exoneration. But
Speaker 5: it doesn't look good. The other people have resigned themselves.
Speaker 5: And then a woman at the UH that was her
Speaker 5: and her husband had become friends with seriously after resigned
Speaker 5: after his demotion h at Gage County, and so Tina Vath.
Speaker 5: Tell us about what Tina Vath does and what happens
Speaker 5: after two thousand and five, after an attorney White got
Speaker 5: someone interested, and you also mentioned a again, a judicial
Speaker 5: crusader that fought for post conviction DNA tests in Nebraska.
Speaker 5: So tell us briefly about what happens.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Joe White ultimately gets convicted at the jury trial,
Speaker 3: he gets a life sentence after the murder, and and
Speaker 3: it's it's after DNA has started to become more more
Speaker 3: accepted in society that h that that White eventually finds
Speaker 3: a lawyer named Doug Stratton that's willing to at least
Speaker 3: explore the possibility to try to get some scientific tests
Speaker 3: that were that could be done to to determine once
Speaker 3: and for all whether Joe White and Tom Winslow were
Speaker 3: in fact the rapists uh and murderers of UH of
Speaker 3: of Helen Wilson. And just at that point in time,
Speaker 3: while this is going on, this Tina Vatts, who had
Speaker 3: originally come from Scott's Bluff, Nebraska, she had become friends
Speaker 3: in the nineteen nineties with Bert Sears and Circe's wife, Cindy.
Speaker 3: By then, Seiously had left the police department, I should say,
Speaker 3: the Sheriff's department, and owned a liquor store in in Beatrice,
Speaker 3: and and and and Tina had heard some of these
Speaker 3: stories from seriously about how he solved this crime, you know,
Speaker 3: and became a hero, local hero for this crime for
Speaker 3: solving it. And I really didn't know anything about the case, frankly,
Speaker 3: other than what she had heard se you know, from
Speaker 3: from Cirrus's version of events. And eventually what's gonna happen
Speaker 3: is Tina herself is going to be become a police officer.
Speaker 3: She starts as a radio dispatcher at the Beatrice Police
Speaker 3: Department and then, you know, because a patrol officer and
Speaker 3: is really good at it, and it's really well liked
Speaker 3: in the department, and she's going to become an investigatory
Speaker 3: detective herself. And it's going to be around this timeframe
Speaker 3: of two thousand and six, two thousand and seven when
Speaker 3: she's gonna get pulled into this case. And it's only
Speaker 3: along the lines of just trying to determine what evidence
Speaker 3: still exists, you know, to see whether or not these
Speaker 3: two convicted murders can get from the old evidence tested
Speaker 3: in the case. And she goes down the basement and
Speaker 3: and to her department's credit, they had saved all the
Speaker 3: original evidence from the crime scene and kept it really
Speaker 3: immaculate shape. It was saved in a cardboard boxes, was
Speaker 3: kept in the climate controlled room in the basement. And
Speaker 3: so she's gonna send out some of these, uh, these
Speaker 3: old articles and artifacts of evidence uh to to the
Speaker 3: University of Nebraska Medical Center for sophisticated in advanced to
Speaker 3: DNA testing, and this is gonna be done late two
Speaker 3: thousand and seven, during the early months of two thousand
Speaker 3: and eight, and to speed things up along. It's really
Speaker 3: going to come back as a as a shocker for
Speaker 3: her and the fellow that's the current the new prosecutor
Speaker 3: at that point in time, a guy named Randy Rittenauer.
Speaker 3: They're gonna they're gonna learn that that these DNA tests
Speaker 3: don't come back to Tom Winslow and Joseph White, and
Speaker 3: that's gonna be a real head scratcher for them. And
Speaker 3: it's eventually going to cause uh uh the Attornined General's
Speaker 3: Office of Nebraska to get involved in the case and
Speaker 3: basically reopen this investigation and kind of start this case
Speaker 3: from scratch from ground zero. With the intention of trying
Speaker 3: to prove that the Beatri six were all one hundred
Speaker 3: percent involved in this crime. And they're going to start
Speaker 3: this case from scratch and really pull out more of
Speaker 3: the old fiscal evidence, send that in for as well
Speaker 3: for additional testing. And and again, these other items there
Speaker 3: were left at the crime scene don't match up with
Speaker 3: Joseph White or Tom Winslow and or any of the
Speaker 3: other four individuals that were convicted long ago for this
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty five murder case.
Speaker 1: Dan.
Speaker 5: Now with this, you would think, again, there's these forces,
Speaker 5: and again you write about it so eloquently, these forces
Speaker 5: that Gage County versus Beatrice Police department, and Searcy has
Speaker 5: his supporters, and this conviction that we see many times,
Speaker 5: numerous times in other cases where they just don't want
Speaker 5: to admit any kind of wrongdoing, even if it's obvious.
Speaker 5: And even in the face of this in this investigation
Speaker 5: which ends up being police wrongdoing, so you would think
Speaker 5: that something would happen, that justice would be much swifter
Speaker 5: and these and again I'm skipping ahead a little bit,
Speaker 5: but these people all eventually get released. But there still
Speaker 5: is something about compensation, and there is still something about
Speaker 5: this total exoneration and the fight that against this, against
Speaker 5: these people and against their compensation. So tell us a
Speaker 5: little bit about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's gonna be in late two thousand and eight.
Speaker 3: Ultimately the sixth of them are going to be pardoned
Speaker 3: and the ones that were still in prison at the time,
Speaker 3: Joe White, Tom Winslow, and Joe and Taylor are gonna
Speaker 3: be set free. But that was a good thing, It
Speaker 3: was the right thing to happen. But the real battle
Speaker 3: just started from that point forward because the state Nebraska
Speaker 3: really dug in its heel at that point heels at
Speaker 3: that point in time, you know, and really just kind
Speaker 3: of dumped them out there. And so they really had
Speaker 3: no money, no type of art. There was no retribution
Speaker 3: for them in place at that point time. It's going
Speaker 3: to take them several years just to get to stay
Speaker 3: in Nebraska to cut them a check to make up
Speaker 3: for the many years of heartache and pain and you know,
Speaker 3: agony that they experienced in prison. Many states already had
Speaker 3: something on the books to offer compensation for prisoners that
Speaker 3: were wrongfully convicted, but Nebraska didn't at this point in time.
Speaker 3: So and then on top of that, then they move
Speaker 3: ahead with a federal civil rights lawsuit deprivation of rights
Speaker 3: case against Gage County and Bert Searcy and Wayne Price.
Speaker 3: A psychologist didn't shriff Jerry de Witt as well, and
Speaker 3: that's going to become a long protracted legal battle. The
Speaker 3: lawsuit gets filed in July of two thousand and nine,
Speaker 3: and the county hires several outside law firms that just
Speaker 3: really litigate this case to death, basically, just to string
Speaker 3: it out and drag it out. And the county's dying
Speaker 3: for themselves, but but to prolong any type of you know,
Speaker 3: payment to make amends with these poor, you know, tragic
Speaker 3: figures here the Beetra sixth uh and it's not really
Speaker 3: going to be until until June of twenty sixteen, So
Speaker 3: just just two months ago when the case finally goes
Speaker 3: to a trial. The first trial ended up in a
Speaker 3: hungury mistrial was declared Jerry couldn't come up with a
Speaker 3: conclusion and uh. But the second trial happens just this
Speaker 3: past June, and uh, and they just were able to
Speaker 3: win twenty eight point one million dollars verdict against Gage
Speaker 3: County and Bert Searcy and Wayne Price, and uh. And
Speaker 3: that's been appealed, and you know, and it may take
Speaker 3: another you know, number of weeks, if not years, before
Speaker 3: that ultimately gets rectified.
Speaker 5: Dan, I don't want to give too much away, and
Speaker 5: we're going to have to wrap up soon. And I
Speaker 5: implore people that this is amazing. There's so much more
Speaker 5: to this story as well. It's very very, very very surprising.
Speaker 5: One of the most profound things is the mentally disabled
Speaker 5: Debbie Sheldon. When the DNA testing is done exonerating her,
Speaker 5: what does.
Speaker 4: She have to say?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's very strange and add and and the thing
Speaker 3: is that the sheriff's officials, like Circe and Dick Smith,
Speaker 3: this was something they would love to hang their hat
Speaker 3: on and kind of help exploit, you know, the beatri
Speaker 3: six and kind of help you know, ease any type
Speaker 3: of public humiliation and disgrace. These guys with face back
Speaker 3: in the community for screwing up this case as bad
Speaker 3: as they did. But when Debbie Sheldon, you know, gets
Speaker 3: around for her pardon, you know, and to testify, you know,
Speaker 3: she still goes along with the story or the belief
Speaker 3: that somehow she was present, you know, that she witnessed
Speaker 3: her great aunt's rape and murder taking place, and that
Speaker 3: she somehow got you know, knocked out in the middle
Speaker 3: of the scuffle. But she's still you know, going along
Speaker 3: with the story that somehow she she must have been
Speaker 3: involved in the crime, you know, because she had spent
Speaker 3: the last you know, twenty years believing that or you know,
Speaker 3: or being manipulated into believing that, And so she struggled,
Speaker 3: you know, with the reality that she had been exaggerated
Speaker 3: and was being told by you know, lawyers, by the
Speaker 3: Nebraska Attorney General, who had no incentive in the world,
Speaker 3: you know, to get involved in this case. It was
Speaker 3: politically to his detriment as far as you know, he
Speaker 3: made more enemies and friends, you know, as a Republican
Speaker 3: conservative to open up this case and then and tell
Speaker 3: the you know, tell the town and tell the county
Speaker 3: you know, that they have been wrong all these years.
Speaker 3: So it was politically in you know, not to his
Speaker 3: advance to get involved. But again, as you said with
Speaker 3: Debbie Sheldon, she's just really struggled, you know, with with
Speaker 3: with the reality as far as what's real and what's
Speaker 3: not real, you know, and that you know, she still struggles,
Speaker 3: I think to this day, frankly, I think she's gone.
Speaker 3: Now she's convinced, you know, twenty sixteen that she wasn't
Speaker 3: involved in it. But uh, but there's been a long
Speaker 3: period of time, even when she was set free, you know,
Speaker 3: where she's still questioned whether or not she was present
Speaker 3: and participated, you know, in this in this awful crime,
Speaker 3: you know, this rape and murder of her of her
Speaker 3: great aunt.
Speaker 5: It's amazing the the condemnation that the judge and this
Speaker 5: trial and this lawsuit, I should say, has for Bert Cercy.
Speaker 5: And so it's very incredible. But you also talk and
Speaker 5: it almost looks like a happy ending here for Joseph White.
Speaker 5: He reunites with his high school sweetheart and despite these
Speaker 5: twenty years in prison, tries to rebuild his life and
Speaker 5: is looking forward to part of Some of these people
Speaker 5: hadn't agreed to settlement, so he had received twenty five
Speaker 5: thousand dollars and he was awaiting his four hundred and
Speaker 5: seventy five thousand dollars and was going to get married
Speaker 5: and had basically essentially grabbed hold of his life again
Speaker 5: and gotten it back. What We'll leave it at that,
Speaker 5: because I said, there's many things in this book that
Speaker 5: in the end of this book you talk about and
Speaker 5: so and again a still more fascinating information that we
Speaker 5: haven't covered than I'll leave for people to discover themselves
Speaker 5: in this book. I want to thank you very much
Speaker 5: John for coming on talking about this. If people are
Speaker 5: interested in is there any way through Wild Blood Press
Speaker 5: that there is UH sign copies available? UH, and tell
Speaker 5: us about your website or contact information if people are
Speaker 5: so interested yeah.
Speaker 3: To UH to buy a signed copy Dan, I would
Speaker 3: suggest for listeners to to go directly to my website
Speaker 3: which is John Ferriic dot com j O H N
Speaker 3: F E R A K dot com and UH and
Speaker 3: I have a Failure Justice available there, along with with
Speaker 3: three other true crime books that I've written as well
Speaker 3: on cases out of the Heartland. UH and UH and
Speaker 3: again UH for everyone else, certainly you could find UH.
Speaker 3: You can find Failure Justice UH on Amazon, you can
Speaker 3: find it through Barnes and Noble. It's available through through
Speaker 3: you know, most bookstores, but again kindle versions E book
Speaker 3: versions are very popular to stay and also the audiobook
Speaker 3: was produced by Kevin Pierce, who's a well known true
Speaker 3: crime narrator who's done numerous true crime books and does
Speaker 3: a fascinating job. So again. For audiobook listeners, I would
Speaker 3: suggest to give the Kevin Pierce version of Failure Justice
Speaker 3: a try.
Speaker 5: Well, that's great, John, thank you very much for this interview.
Speaker 5: A failure of justice, a brutal murder, an obsessed cop,
Speaker 5: and six wrongful convictions. What a story. Thank you very much. John.
Speaker 5: You have a great evening.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much. Dan you do as well.
Speaker 5: Thank you, thank you, good night.