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Speaker 7: Baby, You are now listening to True Murder, the most
Speaker 7: shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that
Speaker 7: have written about them Gasey, 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 Zupanski.
Speaker 8: Good Evening. First came the unsettling Ouiji Board prophecy that
Speaker 8: Robin Adams would die before her seventeenth birthday. When a
Speaker 8: minister was summoned to rid the house of frightening phenomena
Speaker 8: blamed on Luigi Board, he was taunted and denounced by
Speaker 8: a neighbor and suspected Satanist. Thus the die was cast
Speaker 8: for one of the most bizarre murder cases in Michigan
Speaker 8: history in nineteen seventy six, when Robin vanished without a
Speaker 8: trace from the village of Cairo. Police were left without
Speaker 8: a body, witnesses, or anything remotely resembling a crime scene.
Speaker 8: The case went cold for six years, then when a
Speaker 8: rookie State Police detective was assigned to reopen the investigation.
Speaker 8: What followed reads like chapters from a Stephen King novel,
Speaker 8: right down to the claim that the killer's grandmother was
Speaker 8: practicing black magic to avenge efforts to bring him to justice.
Speaker 8: The book that we're featuring this evening is Fruit of
Speaker 8: the Poisonous Tree, with my special guest, journalist and author
Speaker 8: Richard Carson. Welcome to the program, and thank you for
Speaker 8: agreeing to this interview. Richard Carson, thank you for having me.
Speaker 9: It's my pleasure.
Speaker 8: Thank you very much. I want to make sure that
Speaker 8: I'm pronouncing the name. Is it Caro or Cairo pronounced
Speaker 8: the cap?
Speaker 9: Yes, here we got it Carol.
Speaker 8: Okay. Now, one of the questions I typically asked him,
Speaker 8: what how did you come to write this book? What,
Speaker 8: without giving anything away, what was it about this story?
Speaker 8: Or how did you come to write this book? Frouit
Speaker 8: of the Poisonous Tree?
Speaker 10: Well, it I should mention. Fruit of the Poisonous Tree
Speaker 10: is the e book which derives from the published version
Speaker 10: which was called Murder and the Thumb. And the reason
Speaker 10: for the title change is we did some editing and
Speaker 10: tried to make the book a little more presentable to
Speaker 10: people outside the area of where the crime occurred. How
Speaker 10: I became interested in it. I had worked for the
Speaker 10: Small Daily in Heuring County, which is the northernmost county
Speaker 10: in the Thumb of Michigan. I had been there for
Speaker 10: fifteen years. During that time, I'd covered two murder trials.
Speaker 10: But I left the paper, the Small Daily in nineteen
Speaker 10: eighty one, and we settled in Columbus, Ohio, and I
Speaker 10: went to work for the Columbus Dispatch. During that time,
Speaker 10: I was receiving the newspaper that I had left in Michigan,
Speaker 10: and I became aware that the trial of Melvin Garza,
Speaker 10: the suspect and eventual accused in Robin's disappearance, was going
Speaker 10: to be in here In County. Moved from Carroll, which
Speaker 10: is in Tuscola County, to the immediate southwest. So now
Speaker 10: I'm aware of the trial. I read the coverage. I
Speaker 10: know that Lee McDowell, the post commander in Carol, who
Speaker 10: I knew was a high schooler in bad Ax, Michigan,
Speaker 10: where the paper was located, he had reopened the investigation.
Speaker 10: And further, I was a close friend of the circuit
Speaker 10: judge in here In County who would hear the case,
Speaker 10: so I had some connections to the story. The coverage
Speaker 10: of the trial really piqued my interest, but believe me,
Speaker 10: I had no idea what lay ahead.
Speaker 8: Certainly, now we talked about Caro, Michigan, and so let's
Speaker 8: describe this. You talk about it being a village, so
Speaker 8: let's describe where it is in proximity to say, a
Speaker 8: more notable, bigger city, and so describe where it is
Speaker 8: and what type of place really Caro, Michigan is, and
Speaker 8: it's in its size. So tell us a little bit
Speaker 8: more about Carow, Michigan before we talk about.
Speaker 10: Okay, Well, Caro is a town of under five thousand population.
Speaker 10: It's located. Don't hold me the specifics here, but I'd
Speaker 10: say it's about thirty five miles due east of Saginaw. Okay,
Speaker 10: Carro is an agricultural I mean Tuscola County is an
Speaker 10: agricultural county, and Caro obviously is a county seat. Caro,
Speaker 10: of course, is where Robin was working as a live
Speaker 10: in babysitter when she disappeared, and Carrow's stuck to the village.
Speaker 10: It could easily qualify as a city, but the locals
Speaker 10: wanted to keep it a village, and I think they
Speaker 10: wanted to keep the village, character of the community, and
Speaker 10: I think that is why that moved in that direction.
Speaker 8: Now, tell us about Robin and Danny Adams, and they
Speaker 8: moved from Bay City to this rural carrow with and
Speaker 8: their stepparents are Bill and Millie Timco. So tell us
Speaker 8: their unofficial foster parents. And so tell us about this arrangement.
Speaker 8: And a little bit more about Robin and her brother
Speaker 8: Danny Adams.
Speaker 10: Okay, let's they were born in in in Pennsylvania. Uh
Speaker 10: but eventually uh their mother moved the family to uh
Speaker 10: to Bay City. Uh the and I don't know if
Speaker 10: it gets kind of circuitous here uh uh Vera Adams
Speaker 10: uh uh claimed to be a widow uh and claimed
Speaker 10: that her husband, the father of Dan and Robin, had
Speaker 10: drowned in a swimming accident or something that's we're not
Speaker 10: certainly not sure about that.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 10: Uh Vera ran into Bill Timcoe in his travels while
Speaker 10: she was still in in Pennsylvania, and they kind of
Speaker 10: became an item. And the book traces how how they
Speaker 10: met and and the times that they traveled, traveled around
Speaker 10: the country, and they worked at county fairs and one
Speaker 10: thing and another usually during that time. Uh Robin and
Speaker 10: Danny were with relatives. Vera came from a large, large family,
Speaker 10: so eventually they moved to Bay City, and Vera was
Speaker 10: still very much interested in Bill Timpcoe and Bill Uh
Speaker 10: by this time had married and lived had settled in Carol,
Speaker 10: and so he would. Bill would visit Vera in Bay City,
Speaker 10: and he took a liking to Robin and Danny and
Speaker 10: took them fishing and camping and one thing and another,
Speaker 10: And Danny had a real attraction to Bill as a
Speaker 10: father figure.
Speaker 9: And UH.
Speaker 10: One of the painful situations that developed was when Bill
Speaker 10: assured Danny that he was not his father, even though
Speaker 10: he would have liked to think that he was.
Speaker 8: So UH.
Speaker 10: At that point, the kids are in Bay City, Robinson
Speaker 10: and Dan He are in high school.
Speaker 9: UH and UH.
Speaker 10: Danny starts pushing to uh live with Bill and Bill's
Speaker 10: wife Millie, and their children in Caro and Vera. Their
Speaker 10: mother resists this at first, but then eventually she gives
Speaker 10: in and that they moved to Carol and eventually that's
Speaker 10: where Robin met Melvin Guiza and eventually Danny, which is
Speaker 10: explained in vivid detail in the book. Danny kind of
Speaker 10: wore out his welcome with the Timcoes and he ended
Speaker 10: up they returned him to his mother and she shipped
Speaker 10: him back to his grandparents in Pennsylvania. So so so
Speaker 10: that's that's how that's how the kids got to Carol
Speaker 10: and h Robin met Melvin's sister Norah, who who eventually
Speaker 10: had a role in Robin's disappearance, and we can get
Speaker 10: into that later.
Speaker 9: Uh.
Speaker 10: At any rate, she introduced Robin to her brother, and
Speaker 10: that's when their relationship started.
Speaker 8: Now, you start this book and introduce some characters early
Speaker 8: on that are of course very very important to the
Speaker 8: entire story and to the end and to the trial
Speaker 8: and every aspect of the story. So let's talk about
Speaker 8: Dan Miller, because you introduced Dan Miller early on, and
Speaker 8: then of course he is a central figure in this
Speaker 8: story as well. And also you talk about the Robin
Speaker 8: and her brother and the other family members in the
Speaker 8: Timcos sitting around and fooling around and having an interest
Speaker 8: in the occult satanism witchcraft. But it starts off with
Speaker 8: the Wuigi board, So tell us a little bit about
Speaker 8: the Ouiji board experience, because I think it's very important
Speaker 8: to this story later on.
Speaker 10: Uh. Well, basically, Cheryl Cheryl Uh uh Tyson Uh was
Speaker 10: Millie's daughter by a previous marriage.
Speaker 9: UH.
Speaker 10: And she was just a little bit younger than Robin.
Speaker 10: And they became real like real sisters.
Speaker 9: UH.
Speaker 10: Once once the uh the Adams children moved in with
Speaker 10: the Timpcos and it was Cheryl who suggested that they
Speaker 10: experiment with Luigi Award uh and Uh. It started out
Speaker 10: innocently enough. And I don't want to get too much
Speaker 10: in into the to the paranormal in terms of do
Speaker 10: I believe these things or not believe them? I leave
Speaker 10: that up to the readers. But there there is no
Speaker 10: question that problems emanated from the Luigia Board experience, not
Speaker 10: the least of which was the fact that at one
Speaker 10: point a entity I guess is the best word I
Speaker 10: can use. She identified herself as Glenda, and she was
Speaker 10: someone that they could communicate with with Uisia Board. And
Speaker 10: in this, I mean, you have two teenage girls here,
Speaker 10: fifteen years old I think at the time Robin Manben sixteen,
Speaker 10: and it was just kind of a gleeful little adventure
Speaker 10: that they were involving themselves in.
Speaker 8: But it.
Speaker 10: Moved to a dark side and they began to have
Speaker 10: hear footsteps on the stairs when no one was there,
Speaker 10: and strange sounds in the attic that had joined their bedroom,
Speaker 10: and the lights fly she on and off, and it
Speaker 10: just got completely out of hand. And during during this
Speaker 10: extended experience with the Ouija board, the girls asked different
Speaker 10: things about their future, Cheryl about whether she'd marry and
Speaker 10: have children, and Robin for some reason, asked how long
Speaker 10: she would live. And at that point, the Ouija board
Speaker 10: predicted that she would die before her seventeenth birthday, which
Speaker 10: was ominous and not totally accurate because she disappeared six
Speaker 10: weeks before her eighteenth birthday. So once all these phenomena
Speaker 10: took place in the house, the girls no longer wanted
Speaker 10: to stay in their bedroom. They were frightened. So Millie
Speaker 10: called a local minister and he came to the house
Speaker 10: to perform I guess you'd call it an exorcism of
Speaker 10: whatever spirits were complicating everyone's life life in the house.
Speaker 10: And when when the minister arrived, the neighbor, and the
Speaker 10: neighbor was was a kind of a strange fellow. His
Speaker 10: name was Aubrey Vincent. He was an artist, a painter
Speaker 10: and sculptor, and he lived a spartan life in a
Speaker 10: one room cabin that was on property that was right
Speaker 10: next door to where the Tempicals lived, and he was
Speaker 10: friendly with the with the kids, and they would sit
Speaker 10: around the campfire and there was probably a little bit
Speaker 10: of pot smoking and beer drinking going on because he
Speaker 10: he kind of lived out of the way and he
Speaker 10: was off the road, so it was there was an
Speaker 10: element of privacy there for kids that kids, typically adolescents,
Speaker 10: really looked for that. So when when the minister showed up,
Speaker 10: Aubrey Uh noticed that he sees this man that he
Speaker 10: doesn't recognize, and he sees that he's holding a Bible,
Speaker 10: and so he launches a rant and denounces the minister
Speaker 10: and created a confrontation of sorts, but the Uh the
Speaker 10: minister shook it off, and Aubrey eventually stopped off and
Speaker 10: that was the end of that. But in my frame
Speaker 10: of reference, by the time you've gone through these various steps,
Speaker 10: this story is starting to sound really a little bit strange.
Speaker 10: And I had, as they said, I had seen nothing yet,
Speaker 10: because there was a lot more down the road that
Speaker 10: was going to complicate my research and hopefully make the
Speaker 10: book more compelling and interesting.
Speaker 8: Now you talked about Marvin Garza and Melvin pardon me,
Speaker 8: Melvin Garza, and you talked about a car accident, and
Speaker 8: you include this very early on in the book because
Speaker 8: you feel it's important. So and people at the time,
Speaker 8: like Heather Kate, said that it made a difference. So
Speaker 8: tell us about briefly about the car accident and Melboyn
Speaker 8: before the car accident, afterwards, and why it might have
Speaker 8: made a difference in his life.
Speaker 10: This accident, Okay, okay, Well, what happened. Melvin incidentally is
Speaker 10: a very intelligent and very a very skilled person. He
Speaker 10: had a builder's license when he was eighteen years old.
Speaker 10: The car accident occurred. What happened a group of boys,
Speaker 10: Melvin and his class three of his classmates were involved
Speaker 10: in a home construction project that was part of their
Speaker 10: high school experience. And this particular home was not building Carol,
Speaker 10: but in Mayville, which is to the south of Carol.
Speaker 10: I think it's about eight or nine miles. So they
Speaker 10: pretty much finished this house and there was going to
Speaker 10: be some of the boys volunteered to come and help
Speaker 10: their teacher clean up the refuse and things that are
Speaker 10: left after you complete a construction project. To kind of
Speaker 10: clean up this. And so the boys were through with
Speaker 10: classes and they arranged they arranged to go to Mayville
Speaker 10: and clean up this house and kind of a really
Speaker 10: pleased their teacher, and so they did that. Well, one
Speaker 10: of the boys, and I renamed him in the book
Speaker 10: for I think good reason, one of the boys drove
Speaker 10: the other three to Mayville and they did their little project.
Speaker 10: And they were on the way back and there was
Speaker 10: another group of students from cass City, which is well
Speaker 10: it would be let's see, to the northeast of Carol
Speaker 10: and they too had been involved in this construction project,
Speaker 10: and they were there and they of course they were
Speaker 10: in another car. Well, as it happened, the boys kind
Speaker 10: of the the Carroll boys left ahead of the Cassidy boys,
Speaker 10: but the Cassidy boys caught up with them and pulled
Speaker 10: alongside and kind of challenged him to a drag race,
Speaker 10: and that commenced and at a high rate of speed
Speaker 10: and uh eventually Mike Clark is the driver of the
Speaker 10: car with the Carroll boys. Uh, he sees an approaching
Speaker 10: car oncoming car and he tries to uh kind.
Speaker 9: Of uh uh.
Speaker 10: Break and get control of the car because he's going
Speaker 10: so fast, and it's and he skids into his shoulder
Speaker 10: and and uh the car then he loses control, it
Speaker 10: crosses the center and and uh it hits the oncoming car.
Speaker 10: It wasn't a total head on and it was more
Speaker 10: or less one side of one car hitting the side
Speaker 10: of the other. The woman in the car, the older woman,
Speaker 10: was injured. The driver, Mike Clark, was killed.
Speaker 9: He died.
Speaker 10: The boys were all thrown out of the car and
Speaker 10: he died right then and there. Melvin suffered a broken
Speaker 10: collar bone and some other injuries, and one of the
Speaker 10: other boys had a broken leg. Melvin and I talked
Speaker 10: to many many of his friends in forming this impression.
Speaker 10: They said that he took Mike's death really hard, and
Speaker 10: that he even went as far in some conversations as
Speaker 10: to say that he wished it had been him instead
Speaker 10: of Mike for whatever reason. And the people I talked
Speaker 10: to his classmates to each and everyone said that Melvin's
Speaker 10: personality seemed to change dramatically after that accident. And I
Speaker 10: did mention the Heather Kates again a pseudonym, and she
Speaker 10: injected a bizarre dimension into claiming that the young fellow
Speaker 10: who was killed in the accident was not whatever, not
Speaker 10: what he seemed to be, and this notion was rejected
Speaker 10: by anybody and everybody. So I wasn't sure where that
Speaker 10: was going. But inasmuch as Heather kates as a high
Speaker 10: school or practice witchcraft, here we go again. And Heather
Speaker 10: has an experience leader that we may get into. That
Speaker 10: really justifies their place in the story.
Speaker 8: Now, Melvin Garza comes from a big family and his
Speaker 8: sister you had already mentioned it. Nora had introduced Robin.
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Speaker 8: Melvin So tell us a little bit more about the
Speaker 8: guards of family mothers. Clara So, tell us a little
Speaker 8: bit more about the family and how close Nora and
Speaker 8: Melvin are in age.
Speaker 10: Yeah, she was. She had just turned She had just
Speaker 10: turned seventeen, and that's significant. And I don't know how
Speaker 10: much legal minutia you want to get into here, but
Speaker 10: Nora had just turned seventeen when Robin disappeared. And I
Speaker 10: guess the belief was Melvin broke into the house where
Speaker 10: Robin was. After Robin graduated from high school, she took
Speaker 10: a job as a living babysitter, and after she broke
Speaker 10: up with Melvin, a breakup that he violently h opposed U,
Speaker 10: he broke in and beat her up and from from
Speaker 10: that point on that was a little more I think
Speaker 10: than two weeks from the time.
Speaker 9: That she disappeared.
Speaker 10: Uh. The family, the guy's a family. There nine children.
Speaker 10: Melvin was the second eldest, his older brother Augustine. In fact,
Speaker 10: his older brother Augustine was in charge of the family
Speaker 10: while while the parents were in South Texas visiting relatives.
Speaker 10: At the time that Robin disappeared.
Speaker 9: Uh.
Speaker 10: No, as I said, she had just turned seventeen. And
Speaker 10: there was actually a possibility that Robin, that Robin's disappearance
Speaker 10: or the ultimately as we learned, her murder, could have
Speaker 10: occurred before Nora turned seventeen, and that would have been
Speaker 10: significant in terms of the juvenile court jurisdiction and the
Speaker 10: fact that she might not have been incarcerated, which again
Speaker 10: we'll get into that the family. Bill Garza was a
Speaker 10: self made man. He and Clara started a house I
Speaker 10: think it was back in the fifties, and one of
Speaker 10: these deals where they dug a basement and smith block
Speaker 10: construction and and resided in that and build up the
Speaker 10: house as they build up the family. And uh uh,
Speaker 10: it's a good family and and and Bill and Clara
Speaker 10: are are good people. And and Clara thought the world
Speaker 10: of of Robin and was completely crushed when the reality
Speaker 10: of her disappearance came to to the foe. Uh Bill
Speaker 10: and and uh Melvin. Uh, you know, we're kind of
Speaker 10: they had some characteristics in common. And I think that
Speaker 10: uh as as uh Melvin became an adolescent. Typically father
Speaker 10: and son didn't always see eyed ie uh and Uh
Speaker 10: but uh uh Bill was a typical uh Mexican American
Speaker 10: uh patriarch and ruled the roost and kept order. And
Speaker 10: with a family that large, you pretty much need a
Speaker 10: controlling figure you're going to be consigned to eternal chaos.
Speaker 10: They were good people. I got to meet them and
Speaker 10: spend time with them when we visited Melvin in Southern
Speaker 10: Michigan prison, which is a long, long drive, and so
Speaker 10: I was with them for many, many hours and got
Speaker 10: to learn a lot about their family and about them.
Speaker 8: Now you talk about Bill and Millie, let's go back
Speaker 8: just a little bit, because this is very important. Of course,
Speaker 8: Melvin Garza is a charming guy, about five foot ten,
Speaker 8: kind of well built, one hundred and sixty pounds for
Speaker 8: all accounts, you know, pretty sociable guy. Nothing so outwardly
Speaker 8: weird or creepy about this guy. At some point this
Speaker 8: relationship sours and Bill and Millie really wanted Robin to
Speaker 8: stop seeing Melvin. Yeah, so there was that dynamic going
Speaker 8: on there. So and so you also point to a
Speaker 8: couple instances like where there was a Cheryl and Robin
Speaker 8: shared a diary together and one day that diary is missing.
Speaker 8: So it just maybe you could tell us a little
Speaker 8: bit about that story, which probably indicates quite a bit
Speaker 8: about Melvin Garza.
Speaker 10: Yes, and I'm glad you've brought that up, because if
Speaker 10: if we were able to get into some of these
Speaker 10: other things, you'll see it patter. But Melvin was Melvin
Speaker 10: was very.
Speaker 9: I don't know.
Speaker 10: Exact perfect word to describe, but he he kept track
Speaker 10: of people that he knew, and he evesdropped, and he
Speaker 10: oftentimes he would be someplace where he could overhear conversations.
Speaker 10: Even tried once to rewire a phone so he could
Speaker 10: he could tap into that. And and I think that
Speaker 10: the adventure faltered. But Robin. When Robin and Cheryl, as
Speaker 10: I said, they became almost like real sisters. And ser
Speaker 10: Cheryl had a diary and she invited Robin to share it.
Speaker 10: So that they would both make entries in the diary,
Speaker 10: and among the entries would be their interest in boys
Speaker 10: and boys they dated in one thing and another things
Speaker 10: that you would not necessarily want a current boyfriend to
Speaker 10: be reading. And mel was was aggressive in the way
Speaker 10: that and it's it is characterized in the book where
Speaker 10: Cheryl and Robin came home from school one day and
Speaker 10: Cheryl's parents were working, and Melvin had invited himself into
Speaker 10: the house and was there waiting for them. So it
Speaker 10: was clear that he was willing to enter the house
Speaker 10: when no one was there, so he became the prime
Speaker 10: suspect when the diary disappeared UH, and ultimately the diary
Speaker 10: was returned. It was mailed UH mailed back in a
Speaker 10: package to the rural mailbox without explanation or return address,
Speaker 10: and he would not admit that it was him that
Speaker 10: that had the diary, but they pretty well believed that
Speaker 10: that was the case and this was Melvin's mo And
Speaker 10: later on there's an incident that might be instructive if
Speaker 10: we can get to it that dealt.
Speaker 9: With the.
Speaker 10: Key witness that really broke the murder case and how
Speaker 10: Melvin was keeping tabs on him. So go ahead, oh sorry.
Speaker 8: The other thing was that the show is controlling nature.
Speaker 8: In this diary, the girls had probably talked about other
Speaker 8: boys that they had met, but also about smoking and drinking.
Speaker 8: So I thought it was ironic that Melvin had a
Speaker 8: real issue with her smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol.
Speaker 9: Yes, and.
Speaker 10: I've always wondered if that was more just a vehicle
Speaker 10: for his control of I don't think that he He
Speaker 10: did not smoke, to my knowledge, although I know there
Speaker 10: was an occasion of marijuana use which I suspect was
Speaker 10: involved smoking and that I won't get into that now.
Speaker 10: But in his father, his father had probably it was
Speaker 10: a smoker, and then had a I think a lung disease,
Speaker 10: and my memory is not perfect on that. But Bill
Speaker 10: quit smoking and would not let anyone smoke in his
Speaker 10: in his if they were riding with him in his car.
Speaker 10: So I don't know if that kind that trait passed
Speaker 10: off to Melvin or not. I know that Melvin did drink,
Speaker 10: and I'm more inclined than anything to believe that that
Speaker 10: was just one of the areas where he wanted to
Speaker 10: exert control over her, and he made made a big
Speaker 10: deal out of that. As you realize when you read
Speaker 10: the conversation that he had with her mother.
Speaker 8: Now he has, their relationship deteriorates. They go back and
Speaker 8: forth like many young people, like many people and love.
Speaker 8: They go back and forth. I'm going to break up
Speaker 8: with you, but then they're back together again. But there
Speaker 8: is an incident where she is assaulted and this is
Speaker 8: very important to the story. So tell us about the
Speaker 8: assault and who witnessed it, and just tell us a
Speaker 8: little bit about that assault.
Speaker 10: Uh well, uh, this was of course, they had broken
Speaker 10: up and I think she had pretty well decided that
Speaker 10: it was going it was going to be over her.
Speaker 10: Her close friend Chris told me that she thought at
Speaker 10: least one of the times that Robin went back with
Speaker 10: Melbourne was more out of fear than really wanting to
Speaker 10: rekindle a relationship. What happened is she was alone with
Speaker 10: the with the little boy that she was caring for,
Speaker 10: two year old, and the boy's mother was at work,
Speaker 10: and so she was alone in the house. It was
Speaker 10: during the day. It was during the day, and he
Speaker 10: came to the house and wanted to talk to her.
Speaker 10: She didn't want to talk to him, she refused, so
Speaker 10: he removed the screen off the window an open window
Speaker 10: and climbed in the window and he beat her up.
Speaker 10: And we're talking fists and we're talking bruises and black
Speaker 10: and blue and something that you can't just explain away,
Speaker 10: but she did. She she was quite upset by it,
Speaker 10: and I think I think that I know that after that,
Speaker 10: she told her friend Chris that she she thought that
Speaker 10: he was that he was capable of killing her, and
Speaker 10: she was fearful that he would. So, Uh, what happened
Speaker 10: is she tried to keep the beating from her mother,
Speaker 10: but eventually her mother.
Speaker 9: Her mother.
Speaker 10: Pride it out of her, and they went to the
Speaker 10: police and reported the assault, and that gave rise to
Speaker 10: the phone call, the intercepted phone conversation. I don't know
Speaker 10: if you want to get into that, and we can,
Speaker 10: but sure, let.
Speaker 8: Let's get into that phone call.
Speaker 10: Yeah, So they had gone to the police, and I
Speaker 10: think it's significant here. A couple things are significant about this.
Speaker 10: The domestic violent the enforcement of laws against domestic violence
Speaker 10: have changed, and they've been strengthened in recent decades. But
Speaker 10: this was nineteen seventy six, and typically a prosecutor would say, well,
Speaker 10: they would they've become experienced with the kiss and makeup period,
Speaker 10: and a lot of women wives, girlfriends, initially when they
Speaker 10: were subject to domestic violence would want to prosecute. Then
Speaker 10: they changed their mind, and of course by now there's
Speaker 10: taxpayer money spent and time wasted, and so the practice
Speaker 10: at that time was to allow about a two week
Speaker 10: cooling off period or whatever or period to see if
Speaker 10: the heat of passion to prosecute was still there, so
Speaker 10: that they wouldn't waste the prosecutor's time. That's quite significant
Speaker 10: because Robin disappeared the night before she was to return
Speaker 10: to the prosecutor's office and go through with an assault
Speaker 10: and battery charge. Now the telephone call, the telephone call
Speaker 10: was damage control on Melvin's part. So now he's he's uh,
Speaker 10: he beat he's beaten Robin, and her mother's found out
Speaker 10: about it. She's seen the bruises and she's angry, and
Speaker 10: she prevails and Robin to uh prosecute. Then Melvin missus
Speaker 10: Adams comes to Carol with a fellow that she was
Speaker 10: working for his little girls, and and they take Robin
Speaker 10: to the county Fair and at that time Melvin approaches them.
Speaker 10: He's there somehow knew that they were there, figured it
Speaker 10: out and he approaches them and wants to kind of
Speaker 10: talk to Robin, and you know, I believe that he
Speaker 10: could see that he might be in trouble and that
Speaker 10: maybe he could talk his way out of it. Well,
Speaker 10: missus Adams would have no part of that, and Robin
Speaker 10: kind of ducked in behind her, and she denounced him
Speaker 10: and told him to, you know, leave them alone. So
Speaker 10: the next day Melvin called her. She was living in
Speaker 10: Bay City working with this for this gentleman and caring
Speaker 10: for his little girls, and she was taking sales calls.
Speaker 10: He was a traveling salesman, and she would take sales
Speaker 10: calls and she would tape record them to ensure absolute accuracy.
Speaker 10: And so she had a tape a tape recorder hooked
Speaker 10: up to the phone. And when Melvin called her and
Speaker 10: he was going to try to justify as having beaten
Speaker 10: her daughter, she taped the whole conversation unbeknownst to him,
Speaker 10: and there was some the co incidentally, if I throw
Speaker 10: a little plug in here, my my website Dick Carson
Speaker 10: dot net, uh, my website has a link to that
Speaker 10: entire conversation. And it's kind of kind of scary because
Speaker 10: he makes a lot of veiled threats during this lengthy
Speaker 10: phone conversation that he doesn't know what's going to happen
Speaker 10: to Robin, and he's afraid something will happen to her,
Speaker 10: and he's trying to encourage Missus Adams to take her
Speaker 10: back back to Bay City, so that that link is
Speaker 10: on there as well as a police interrogation of Melvin
Speaker 10: in the first The investigation was two phases, and this
Speaker 10: was the first phase. There's a recording of that, and
Speaker 10: also a recording of I mentioned a key witness, who
Speaker 10: is Tim Thomas, who was a friend of Nora's and
Speaker 10: someone she confessed to, confessed.
Speaker 9: Her role in the crime.
Speaker 10: Uh, and it's it's a recording of Tim Thomas's testimony
Speaker 10: of the preliminary hearing where Norah's attorney tries to throw
Speaker 10: him off but fails miserably. It's quite dramatic, at least
Speaker 10: in my view.
Speaker 9: So, uh, there.
Speaker 10: You have the phone call, a recorded phone call which
Speaker 10: I talked to jurors. Well, I'm getting ahead of the
Speaker 10: story anyway. The phone call was critical a piece of evidence.
Speaker 10: I'll leave it at that for now.
Speaker 8: Okay, let's let's not jump ahead here, and let's he's got.
Speaker 8: She's moving around a series of safe houses. That's how
Speaker 8: much she fears this guy, and her family fears this guy,
Speaker 8: and other people have intervened. Neighbors who have seen that
Speaker 8: are concerned for her. So, but there's a letter that
Speaker 8: she receives, Going to Canada letter, And we won't get
Speaker 8: into what happens later, but let's just talk about the
Speaker 8: letter itself. What is it contained, When does she receive it?
Speaker 8: Tell us about that.
Speaker 10: Okay, I think she received the letter. I think it
Speaker 10: was the friday before the Sunday night that she disappeared,
Speaker 10: and it was going to get it became labeled for
Speaker 10: investigative purposes, the going to Canada letter, because in the letter,
Speaker 10: Melvin said that he was going to go into a
Speaker 10: community and forgive me. But I'm remembering it's in Ontario.
Speaker 10: It's a small town that it escapes me at the moment.
Speaker 10: But at any rate, it was it was a long
Speaker 10: ways away. I mean it would be I think it
Speaker 10: was five hundred miles or something where it would be
Speaker 10: a really long drive and if you were going to
Speaker 10: go there on a weekend, you would it would take
Speaker 10: the whole weekend and then some and so the obviously
Speaker 10: he did not go and you know, there's different interpretations
Speaker 10: of that, but the essentially the letter was Melvin sounded
Speaker 10: like a web puppy. I mean, he was basically telling
Speaker 10: her how much he loved her and how broken hearted
Speaker 10: he was, and how there would never be anyone like
Speaker 10: her in his life, and that he would that he
Speaker 10: would go to this quaint little village in Ontario and
Speaker 10: spend some time there and try to work work through
Speaker 10: his his grief at having lost the love of his life.
Speaker 9: Uh. And it was.
Speaker 10: It was a very long letter, and it I think again,
Speaker 10: I'm I'm tending to jump ahead. If we get into
Speaker 10: the if we get into the police interrogation that I
Speaker 10: mentioned is available on the website, it's quite diametrically opposed
Speaker 10: to what the contents of that letter were.
Speaker 8: Okay, now, the letter makes her and her friends briefly
Speaker 8: and again we won't jump ahead. House she knows this,
Speaker 8: but what she does is while she's babysitting this two
Speaker 8: year old, is that she has this letter from Melvin Garza,
Speaker 8: who has been terrorizing her for quite a while now.
Speaker 8: So with that she believes that Okay, she believes the
Speaker 8: essence of the letter in that he is going to
Speaker 8: be gone for this weekend into crossing the Canadian border
Speaker 8: into Ontario, so she'll have the weekend to herself. That's
Speaker 8: what she thinks and what other people think.
Speaker 10: Yeah, her friends said that she dropped her guard, that
Speaker 10: she dropped her guard, and that she was a less
Speaker 10: a vigilant than not looking over her shoulder as much
Speaker 10: as she had been. So and of course again we're
Speaker 10: jumping ahead, but certain people who will be discussed and
Speaker 10: later in thought that that may have been a ploy.
Speaker 10: Melvin always said that that he between the time he
Speaker 10: wrote the letter and made the decision not to go
Speaker 10: to UH. Now this is him talking not to make
Speaker 10: the trip to Canada, that he found out he was
Speaker 10: going to have a job that would start on my
Speaker 10: early Monday morning, which would have made the trip impractical
Speaker 10: because it would have been hard to get back on
Speaker 10: time for the job. Now that's you can argue that
Speaker 10: different ways, but that was that was the story. But
Speaker 10: she did think initially, and then there was an observation
Speaker 10: that you're aware of, But she did think initially that
Speaker 10: he probably and to go to Canada would be gone
Speaker 10: and that she wouldn't have to be as concerned about
Speaker 10: something that he might be doing if Hetty remained in
Speaker 10: the area.
Speaker 8: Now, tell us about the incident itself. We were probably
Speaker 8: not going to be able to cover this entire book
Speaker 8: because we've covered this with a great amount of care
Speaker 8: here so far. But tell us how she has discovered
Speaker 8: Robin's disappearance is discovered, and who they find in the home,
Speaker 8: and what evidence, if any, they find at this what
Speaker 8: we would find later to be a crime scene. So
Speaker 8: tell us about the incident's self. Who discovers Robin first
Speaker 8: has disappeared?
Speaker 10: Okay, the first did not disappear. Some of the contents
Speaker 10: did Uh. Okay, she's she's babysitting and the young woman
Speaker 10: has worked a shift that ends around midnight. And uh
Speaker 10: so uh Marlene uh, Marlene Davis. It was was the
Speaker 10: it was the mother of the of the little boy,
Speaker 10: and she's working a shift that ends around midnight. So
Speaker 10: she comes home and she the house is locked, and
Speaker 10: she uh was surprised because typically when she would come
Speaker 10: home from the shift, Robin would be right there and
Speaker 10: she'd let her in. So this surprised her. So she
Speaker 10: came into the house and there there was laundry. Uh
Speaker 10: that Rob Robin had been folding the laundry when she
Speaker 10: left a worker shift. When Marlene thought and the laundry,
Speaker 10: the job was not completed, which immediately caused her to
Speaker 10: be concerned because that wasn't like Robin. Robin would finish
Speaker 10: the job and the laundry would be put away and
Speaker 10: it wouldn't be there, So what's going on here? And
Speaker 10: then the purse is laying there with part of the
Speaker 10: contents kind of spilling out of it. So Marlene panics
Speaker 10: initially because she thinks, well, Robin's not there, so Little
Speaker 10: Billy must not be there either, and so she calls
Speaker 10: her friend Joan, and kind of the family starts pulling
Speaker 10: together for where's Robin In the meantime, after Marlene talks
Speaker 10: to her, Joan Jones Sayers is the name, and then
Speaker 10: and there's a relationship there. Joan's husband is I believe
Speaker 10: a cousin of Marlene's at any rate, there's a relationship
Speaker 10: for me, a family relationship there. So then Marlene goes
Speaker 10: into the Little Billy's room and he in fact is there,
Speaker 10: but there are some things that don't jibe because he's
Speaker 10: he's in a diaper, the diapers dry, but his pillow
Speaker 10: is kind of wet as though he'd been crying, and
Speaker 10: he has no no T shirt Robin. But even in
Speaker 10: the heat, and they had no air conditioning and it
Speaker 10: was extremely hot in that August, Marlene recognized that something
Speaker 10: was a miss. I mean, the laundry's not finished, and
Speaker 10: Billie's crying himself to sleep apparently, and he doesn't have
Speaker 10: a T shirt that he normally does. Something's wrong here.
Speaker 10: And so of course they eventually commence a kind of
Speaker 10: a family group search, which turns up nothing, and eventually
Speaker 10: they have to contact Robin's mother, and the disappearance begins
Speaker 10: to play itself out with the police involved.
Speaker 8: Now the police aren't initially interested, but the family definitely
Speaker 8: knows that she's gone, that she wouldn't have just walked away,
Speaker 8: that she didn't run away to California. Marlene calls the
Speaker 8: Garza Hole home around uh midnight or so, looking for
Speaker 8: or tell us the time that she calls, and she
Speaker 8: speaks to Nora, And what does Nora say?
Speaker 10: Uh, as I recall and it's been a while since
Speaker 10: I looked at that, Uh the deal the specific timeframes.
Speaker 10: I think it was around midnight, uh, and uh, it
Speaker 10: might have been. I'm trying to think that. It seems
Speaker 10: to me there were two calls. Joan may have Joan
Speaker 10: Sayers may have made a call, and uh, and then
Speaker 10: I think maybe Marlen. I'm not exactly sure. I think
Speaker 10: there were two calls, and I think that Marlene made
Speaker 10: one made one of them. And Norah answered at least
Speaker 10: one of the calls and said that Melvin was I
Speaker 10: think she said he was sleeping. Uh, and we wouldn't
Speaker 10: want to come to the phone or something to that effect.
Speaker 10: But uh, of course, well again I don't want to
Speaker 10: get ahead of the story, but she said she said.
Speaker 8: She had.
Speaker 9: Go ahead.
Speaker 8: Nora had said that she that Melvin was sleeping, and
Speaker 8: what was what was odd and later in retrospect, was
Speaker 8: that she had said that that he had been sleeping
Speaker 8: since ten thirty right exactly.
Speaker 10: Yes, this, guys, I'm glad you mentioned that. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 10: because it's sound that sounded like a information not asked
Speaker 10: for sure. In other words, it sounded like the building
Speaker 10: of an alibi.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 10: And and that was Joan Joan, Joan, that was Joan
Speaker 10: Sayer's call, and she she found that odd right at
Speaker 10: the time. You know, why is she telling me you know,
Speaker 10: giving me times you know, he's either sleeping or he's not,
Speaker 10: or he's either there or he's not. But of what
Speaker 10: value is it to me to know that he's been
Speaker 10: home for an hour and a half or so? I
Speaker 10: didn't ask that. So that was a key point. And
Speaker 10: the time frames, of course, again jumping ahead, become very
Speaker 10: significant in this investigation and beyond.
Speaker 8: Yes, the other call that you mentioned was I think
Speaker 8: you talk about Karen Goodru called at four a m.
Speaker 8: And spoke personally with Melvin.
Speaker 10: Uh, yeah, and yes, that's right. He said that that
Speaker 10: Karen girl called me in the middle of the night
Speaker 10: and you know he was sleep and then he was
Speaker 10: going to have to get up early. And you know
Speaker 10: he kind of passed that off as annoying or something
Speaker 10: to that effect.
Speaker 8: But now the next day Melvin Melvin comes and speaks
Speaker 8: to Vera and Vera's boyfriend at that time, significant other
Speaker 8: Bob Cronkite, whose interesting character too because how involved he
Speaker 8: gets in this case almost right away as well. So
Speaker 8: tell us about that altercation and what Melvin did say
Speaker 8: and what Vera said, Well, tell us about that dynamic
Speaker 8: the next day.
Speaker 10: Yeah, well, well he can he came to the house.
Speaker 10: And in this again, you know, his behavior is always
Speaker 10: kind of patterned. Uh. You know, he went to the
Speaker 10: fair to try to damage control of the beating. Then
Speaker 10: he made the phone call for the same reason. Now
Speaker 10: he's heard that Robin's missing because that caring girl called
Speaker 10: at four o'clock in the morning. And now he's uh
Speaker 10: going to be the good guy, and he's going to
Speaker 10: come to the house and tell everybody, you know, you know,
Speaker 10: find out where Robin is and and just you know,
Speaker 10: he doesn't know anything about anything. And uh and of
Speaker 10: course he met with sharp opposition from from Vera and
Speaker 10: Bob and they weren't having any of him not knowing anything.
Speaker 10: And he was then the villy. They summoned the village officer,
Speaker 10: and I think that the village officer uh took Melvin
Speaker 10: maybe to the state police post and briefly and then
Speaker 10: brought him back because he was he was working then,
Speaker 10: he was on his lunch hour, so I mean, he
Speaker 10: knew that they were going to accuse him, and he
Speaker 10: had already started his defense that he knew nothing and
Speaker 10: was just earnest enough to show up and find out
Speaker 10: what was going on.
Speaker 8: What was his official story initially in terms of having
Speaker 8: seen Robin that night in question, which was the Sunday.
Speaker 10: Night, Well, he lied when the police talked to him. Initially,
Speaker 10: he lied and said that he had not seen her
Speaker 10: that night at all. And then during the interrogation, the
Speaker 10: one that's on the website, he corrects that and he
Speaker 10: says that he saw her around nine thirty or so.
Speaker 10: And of course he it's a kind of a bizarre
Speaker 10: explanation because he claims that he parked his car some
Speaker 10: blocks away and jogged over there so that his car
Speaker 10: wouldn't be there because he knew that he was persona
Speaker 10: non grat with the family after the beating and everything,
Speaker 10: and so he didn't want his car being seen there,
Speaker 10: which again my thought on that is that he was
Speaker 10: fearful that somebody might have seen something and that he
Speaker 10: thought he'd better not stick to the story that he
Speaker 10: hadn't been there at all.
Speaker 8: Right now, the what was his demean not his demeanor,
Speaker 8: but how cooperative was he with police in this investigation initially?
Speaker 8: And I want to asked this other question too, is
Speaker 8: that to explain and you do explain this in your
Speaker 8: book that even though a light detector test is inadmissible
Speaker 8: at trial, but it is still a valuable tool used
Speaker 8: by police. So again, tell us a little bit about
Speaker 8: how integral the light detector test was in this investigation
Speaker 8: into this case and story.
Speaker 10: Well, it was there were two that there were there
Speaker 10: were two two polygraph examinations, and the first one, Uh,
Speaker 10: the operator had a feeling that Melvin knew ways to
Speaker 10: make sure that the findings would be in consequential, Uh,
Speaker 10: you know, by bodily movements and breathing patterns and different things.
Speaker 10: So but but he was all in for have submitting
Speaker 10: to the polygraph, and in fact submitted to the second polygraph,
Speaker 10: and that was the one where they where the deception
Speaker 10: was shown. Then, and I will jump ahead here because
Speaker 10: it's so closely relevant. His sister tentatively agreed to a
Speaker 10: polygraph and then balked and would not submit to it
Speaker 10: because in here was a mistake on her part certainly
Speaker 10: that she didn't want to discuss events between the hours
Speaker 10: of like ten pm and midnight on the so called
Speaker 10: day in question. So in other words, well, if we're
Speaker 10: not going to talk about the time when we think
Speaker 10: the crime occurred, what good is this test. So anyhow, that.
Speaker 8: Was telling that was telling. Now tell us about in
Speaker 8: September again, there's about two weeks later, Melvin goes to
Speaker 8: state police with a letter. He says he purports us
Speaker 8: from Robin and postmarked Saint Joseph, Missouri. So tell us
Speaker 8: about this letter and the contents.
Speaker 10: Well, the letter, and of course the Saint Joseph, Missouri
Speaker 10: aspect of it remains a mystery, and it was a
Speaker 10: clever diversion. Whoever arranged it. I have some theories, but
Speaker 10: nothing I could really talk to. At any rate, the
Speaker 10: letter was that Robin ran away, and that she ran
Speaker 10: away because she was broken hearted over the failure of
Speaker 10: their relationship, which of course doesn't make a lot of
Speaker 10: sense because her friends and the letter that he wrote
Speaker 10: clearly point out that it was it wasn't her broken heartediness,
Speaker 10: and it wasn't her his decision to break up, it
Speaker 10: was hers. So none of this made any sense, but
Speaker 10: the fact that it was mailed from Saint Joseph. If
Speaker 10: if you were going to California, that might not be
Speaker 10: the most direct route, but at least it would comport
Speaker 10: with some sense of here to there, and it falls
Speaker 10: in between. So, and of course the letter, the letter
Speaker 10: gave the police and forensics people fits because it was
Speaker 10: hard to it was hard to tie the writing to
Speaker 10: him or anyone that might have been inclined to assist him.
Speaker 10: The letter is the letter is in the e book.
Speaker 10: The three page letter is in there, so it could
Speaker 10: be read by anyone who would be interested in that.
Speaker 8: So this case goes cold. Marvin hard me. Melvin seems
Speaker 8: to cooperate. They find nothing in his vehicle really substantial
Speaker 8: at that time, we're not talking about advanced DNA, talking
Speaker 8: about DNA really at all being a factor. But he
Speaker 8: seems cooperative, and the case goes cold. And then you
Speaker 8: introduce a central figure in here, a detective Dan Miller,
Speaker 8: who is impressed it's one day about seeing an officer
Speaker 8: do something, making arrest with a Thompson submachine gun, and
Speaker 8: he wants to become a detective despite his.
Speaker 10: Yeah he's a small boy. Yeah, he's a small boy.
Speaker 10: And his family takes a trip to h they lived
Speaker 10: in in Ubly, which is a small town in the
Speaker 10: Thumb area and here in County, the same county where
Speaker 10: the trial was, and his family takes a trip to
Speaker 10: Jackson that it happened that there was I believe either
Speaker 10: an escape or a riot or something that probably an escape,
Speaker 10: and so the the the police had roadblocks and courts.
Speaker 10: Dan's as a small boy and here's this officer with
Speaker 10: this submachine gun, and and it just kind of uh,
Speaker 10: he thought it was kind of neat in a small
Speaker 10: boy's perception, and that that is one of the things
Speaker 10: that he said later in life moved him in the
Speaker 10: direction of of pursuing a career in enforcement.
Speaker 8: Now he's this, he's a novice, and yet they give
Speaker 8: him this cold case and he, you know, attaches himself
Speaker 8: to this. And the first thing that he does is
Speaker 8: he reviews all of the Sergeant Wallner's investigation. But really
Speaker 8: what he has is not very much evidence at all
Speaker 8: except a couple of cassette tapes of the phone calls
Speaker 8: and the letters. So tell us about Dan Miller and
Speaker 8: why he this case gets a cry into you know,
Speaker 8: gets a cry into him, and he gets so dedicated
Speaker 8: and involved with this case.
Speaker 10: Well it was I mean, you have to know Dan,
Speaker 10: he's a very interesting guy. He's very focused. He collects
Speaker 10: Civil War memorabilia and is quite an authority on Civil
Speaker 10: War battles and and different divisions of of of the Union.
Speaker 10: Army and Confederate and so on and so forth. Uh
Speaker 10: uh he uh Dan is is smart uh and and
Speaker 10: he's cagey. He doesn't tell you uh more than he
Speaker 10: wants to. And he he the advantage he had over
Speaker 10: Milt Wilner, and Milt tried everything and and and at
Speaker 10: one point is it's in in the book, he almost
Speaker 10: it looked like he almost was going to succeed. But
Speaker 10: uh at any rate, uh Dan used some unconventional approaches
Speaker 10: and uh he uh uh he spread himself out and
Speaker 10: made himself known to people the younger that he was
Speaker 10: younger than Milt Wilner, so that he was able from
Speaker 10: a generational perspective to relate more to the to the
Speaker 10: young people that uh uh you know, were parties to
Speaker 10: this whole uh situation.
Speaker 9: Uh and he uh the fact that he.
Speaker 10: Uh made himself known and and made himself known to
Speaker 10: uh uh Sean Zimmerman, who had was a post robin
Speaker 10: girlfriend of Melvin's uh and she delivered his child, a daughter,
Speaker 10: uh and she she became a link to uh a
Speaker 10: person in Carol, another young couple actually in Carol who
Speaker 10: were friends with Tim Thomas who lived down near Flint.
Speaker 10: But visited Carol periodically and had a friendship with Nora.
Speaker 10: So so that's the fact that that Dan as aggressive
Speaker 10: as he was, and he left no stone unturned and
Speaker 10: all this time he's also looking for the body and
Speaker 10: to no avail.
Speaker 9: But so and that.
Speaker 10: Looking for the body and looking for a prosecutor. And
Speaker 10: I don't know if we'll have time to get into this,
Speaker 10: but it's interesting the the local prosecutor wouldn't touch the
Speaker 10: case and the reason why and how things played out
Speaker 10: subsequently made him look pretty smart. But a way, but
Speaker 10: Dan was an excellent investigator, and he was very careful
Speaker 10: and and uh uh low key uh uh. And and
Speaker 10: he once he once he got wind of Tim Thomas. Ultimately,
Speaker 10: and if you're aware, he was able to arrange a
Speaker 10: meeting with Tim and Nora. And of course I don't
Speaker 10: know if we've if we've covered that yet, but uh,
Speaker 10: Nora confessed her role in the crime to Tim because
Speaker 10: she to unburden herself, and uh that's kind of what
Speaker 10: broke the case ultimately.
Speaker 8: It was interesting. Let's let's fixate on that a little bit,
Speaker 8: because this is again the most crucial aspect of the
Speaker 8: story in the end is Tim Thomas and Nora and
Speaker 8: this first confession. Now you talk about the conversation that
Speaker 8: elicits this confession. She's mad at him, he laughs at her,
Speaker 8: and then she says some details. So tell us about
Speaker 8: that actual conversation, because it's interesting how this all comes about.
Speaker 10: Okay, Well, Nara was she was a in Mott Community
Speaker 10: College in Flint to become a dental assistant. And I
Speaker 10: think it would be typical going from Caro to Flint,
Speaker 10: that you I mean, it would be not out of
Speaker 10: the way at all to go through Davison, which is
Speaker 10: where Tim lived. And Nara really liked Tim. And I
Speaker 10: don't think that Tim ever had a strong romantic interest
Speaker 10: in her, but I think they dated and they had
Speaker 10: fun together. And as I recall, she called him and
Speaker 10: said that she'd be coming through Davison and she'd liked
Speaker 10: to have lunch with him. And so they met and
Speaker 10: they had lunch, and Narah uh normally is outgoing and fun,
Speaker 10: and she was subdued and just kind of in a
Speaker 10: troubled state of mind. That was immediately obvious to to Tim,
Speaker 10: and so you know, he was asking her what was wrong,
Speaker 10: and he was kind of kneedling her a little bit,
Speaker 10: and eventually, you know, she said something to the effect of,
Speaker 10: what would you say if I told you I was
Speaker 10: involved in a murder? And he didn't He didn't believe her.
Speaker 10: Uh Uh, he didn't believe her at the time. But
Speaker 10: then and I'm getting ahead a little bit, but uh,
Speaker 10: his friends and Carol, Uh, they got wind of this,
Speaker 10: and uh they wanted Uh. It was Kim Herganer right
Speaker 10: right right, Uh wanted Uh. She was married to one
Speaker 10: of Tim's real good buddies, and she wanted to get
Speaker 10: Tim to meet with Dan. Uh Dan Miller, and Tim
Speaker 10: wasn't really interested until.
Speaker 9: Uh uh she uh.
Speaker 10: Kim prevailed on him and said, hey, you know, this
Speaker 10: was not uh some rumored situation. This young woman disappeared
Speaker 10: and everyone believes that she was murdered. And so then
Speaker 10: reluctantly she arranged a meeting with Dan at her house
Speaker 10: with her and her husband there and and Tim there,
Speaker 10: and and they they got together that way. So that's
Speaker 10: that's the continuum of the luncheon, the lunch date in Davison,
Speaker 10: and and how that eventually played out and and kind
Speaker 10: of made things come together.
Speaker 8: It's very interesting how he uses and employees. Dan Miller
Speaker 8: employs the same kinds of techniques that Melvin Garza would use,
Speaker 8: manipulating using inside information against another person, taking one bit
Speaker 8: of information again and using it and revealing it to
Speaker 8: the other person to create a sort of chaos and
Speaker 8: see what comes of it. So he was he was
Speaker 8: great at manipulating these various eventually wanted.
Speaker 10: Dan always said he was sticking a pin and see
Speaker 10: who yells out.
Speaker 9: It was kind of one way that.
Speaker 10: And of course you're talking about the two uh uh.
Speaker 10: And I'm gonna try to try to remember the names.
Speaker 10: There's so many uh uh uh Tanya Gosh, I hope.
Speaker 10: I'm I just think because I did use the real names.
Speaker 9: Uh uh.
Speaker 8: Let's talk about Let's because we don't have much time, Richard,
Speaker 8: Let's talk about more about the unique aspect of with
Speaker 8: Dan Miller breathing down on these people's necks, with eventually
Speaker 8: him appealing to Tim Thomas's you know, better nature, his
Speaker 8: real nature to be able to cooperate, and in his focus,
Speaker 8: Dan Miller's focus on Nora being this weak link and
Speaker 8: the key to solving this case. But like you say,
Speaker 8: with no body, I mean, the rarity of having a
Speaker 8: prosecution for murder with no body is very very rare occurrence,
Speaker 8: and prosecutors are reluctant to go ahead and prosecutions like this.
Speaker 8: So tell us about the unique situation that was in
Speaker 8: Michigan at that time, unique to other states, that allowed
Speaker 8: for the prosecution, and how that prosecution came to be.
Speaker 8: It was again some manipulation, It was some influence in
Speaker 8: there to be able to get this done well.
Speaker 10: Well, and I can back up just for a second
Speaker 10: because I hate to be Tanja Fierros and Angi Tories
Speaker 10: were the two gals, and Dan Angie knew something about
Speaker 10: procedure that Nara had that was very personal and leave
Speaker 10: it at that. And uh Dan learned that from Angie
Speaker 10: and then used it to unsettle uh Tangia in an
Speaker 10: in an attempt to uh you know, create pressure and
Speaker 10: stress on Nara, uh because Tangent thought she was probably
Speaker 10: Nara's best friend and and maybe more so than Angie. Okay,
Speaker 10: now now you wanted me to uh you wanted me
Speaker 10: to get into how the prosecution developed, well.
Speaker 8: How how they were able. I mean it's to me
Speaker 8: it was a very unique situation. I saw that when
Speaker 8: you have a grand jury to have just one person
Speaker 8: be a grand juror. So that situation is unique.
Speaker 10: Okay, well it's close to unique. There may be one
Speaker 10: other state in the in the one other state that
Speaker 10: has a one man grand jury, and there was the
Speaker 10: one man grand jury was designed to target Nora and
Speaker 10: to get her to give up her brother, and it
Speaker 10: didn't work. And as it turned out, the prosecutor, who
Speaker 10: was an assistant attorney general, since as I earlier mentioned,
Speaker 10: the local prosecutor didn't want to didn't want to give
Speaker 10: her immunity, and they felt that was the only way
Speaker 10: they were ever going to get anywhere. So Mark Bloomer
Speaker 10: was a very good prosecutor and left the Attorney General
Speaker 10: and went to work in Jackson County as the chief
Speaker 10: assistant prosecutor. Very skilled and he but he couldn't get
Speaker 10: authorization to take the case until the one of the
Speaker 10: state police high arabs got to the attorney general and
Speaker 10: put pressure on them. So uh. Anyway, the result of
Speaker 10: the Tanga and uh Angie situation, Dan did get Nara
Speaker 10: before the county prosecutor, but he would not give her
Speaker 10: immunity unless she told him her role, and she wouldn't,
Speaker 10: so that ended that. So uh, the UH once once
Speaker 10: she went before the judge UH. And this is the
Speaker 10: this is part of the reason for the title of
Speaker 10: the book. Uh Nara was given UH transactional immunity to
Speaker 10: testify after she stonewalled, and and and UH exercised her
Speaker 10: Fifth Amendment rights to not testify. So at that point
Speaker 10: again she stonewalled. Even though she had immunity, she stonewalled,
Speaker 10: and the judge obviously knew she was lying. But the
Speaker 10: judge made an error, and that was that he was
Speaker 10: willing to issue a warrant for her arrest in spite
Speaker 10: of the fact that she had been given total immunity.
Speaker 9: And that.
Speaker 10: Was something that I discovered in my research that had
Speaker 10: never ever come out. And as a result, they were
Speaker 10: able to arrest her. Now, if her attorney had been
Speaker 10: on the ball, he was not the attorney that was
Speaker 10: representing her at the one man grand jury, but who
Speaker 10: represented her subsequently. If he'd been on the ball and
Speaker 10: read the transcript of the grand jury, he would have
Speaker 10: known that she was immunized and he could have got
Speaker 10: her out of jail. But I think he kind of
Speaker 10: took the shortcut version and he missed that, so they
Speaker 10: were able to keep her in jail, and of course
Speaker 10: that creates an enormous pressure over time, and that led
Speaker 10: her to the point where she took them to the
Speaker 10: area where the body had been buried. Right, So, am
Speaker 10: I getting too far off course? Or is that kind
Speaker 10: of where you wanted to head?
Speaker 8: Well, you know, that's where we were going, but we
Speaker 8: skipped over was the And again we only have about
Speaker 8: ten minutes. So what I wanted to talk about was
Speaker 8: one of the more dramatic things that happens at this trial.
Speaker 8: And what we've almost the audience almost forgets and almost
Speaker 8: as a reader, we forget about the young boy that
Speaker 8: Robin was babysitting that evening, that was traumatized now as
Speaker 8: a much older boy and he's at this grand jury.
Speaker 8: So I thought this was one of the most profound
Speaker 8: things of your book. Aspects of your book. Tell us
Speaker 8: about this Billy Junior, Billy Timco And.
Speaker 10: Okay, Billy, Now I understand Billy, Billy is not the
Speaker 10: little billy that was that Robin was babysitting.
Speaker 9: Uh.
Speaker 10: Billy was part of the Timco family and he was
Speaker 10: with her.
Speaker 9: Uh the night that.
Speaker 10: Uh Billy Timco was with Robin, Uh the week Uh
Speaker 10: the weekend that she disappeared. He was with her, I
Speaker 10: think it was the night before and he was in
Speaker 10: the house with her, and they and he testified that
Speaker 10: they saw Melvin's car driving by the house. Therefore he's
Speaker 10: not in Ontario.
Speaker 9: Uh.
Speaker 10: Bracebridge, by the way, it was the name of the
Speaker 10: young uh town into Ontario. Uh so uh and uh
Speaker 10: Billy uh gives the they not only did they see
Speaker 10: Melvin's car, but then they went outside the house they
Speaker 10: thought they saw a prowler and Robin thought that Robin
Speaker 10: actually said, uh, they were It was a little strange
Speaker 10: to describe this. There was a separate garage, uh. And
Speaker 10: the garage doors were open, and of all things, and
Speaker 10: it's kind of rare for garages in my experience, there
Speaker 10: was a window on the back wall. They're usually on
Speaker 10: the sides. And so Robin thought that she saw Melvin
Speaker 10: looking through the back window of the garage. And then
Speaker 10: and Billy Timcoe was not able to say that he
Speaker 10: saw that, but that he did know that someone had
Speaker 10: was back there and had run off. So and and
Speaker 10: in court that there was a concerted effort by the
Speaker 10: prosecutor to get Billy to testify that she had said
Speaker 10: it's Melvin, but anyway, so exactly what you wanted. But Billy, incidentally,
Speaker 10: and we haven't touched on near the weirdness in this story,
Speaker 10: but Keenny Garza Augustine, the older brother who was in
Speaker 10: charge of the family when the parents were away and
Speaker 10: Robin disappeared teeny, died on the twenty third of February
Speaker 10: in nineteen ninety three. Billy Timcoe Junior died on the
Speaker 10: twenty third of February in nineteen ninety four, a year apart.
Speaker 10: And the book is full of those bizarre coincidences that
Speaker 10: just seemed to me it's hard to judge. As skeptical
Speaker 10: as you may want to be, it's hard to pass
Speaker 10: those things off as just happening. Uh. Did I cover
Speaker 10: that well enough for you?
Speaker 8: Or I think so. The The other thing is is
Speaker 8: that through the dogged effort of Dan Miller, and which
Speaker 8: you again portray in such a heroic way in this
Speaker 8: in this book, and his dogged dedication to this case.
Speaker 8: And finally we have the conviction, uh many years later
Speaker 8: of Melvin Garza for this first degree murder? What was
Speaker 8: the sentence for? How How did did the courts dispose
Speaker 8: of with Nora Garza.
Speaker 10: Okay, well that was that was another complicated mess. But
Speaker 10: they the deal, the deal that caused her to be
Speaker 10: willing to take them to the area where and she
Speaker 10: did not, by the way, actually find the burial site.
Speaker 10: But as you know, and we all know, a wooded
Speaker 10: area will change its characteristics significantly over a period of
Speaker 10: eight years, so it's understandable that she might not be
Speaker 10: able to walk right to the spot where they had
Speaker 10: where they had buried the body. But that was the deal.
Speaker 10: The deal was to give her a break if she would,
Speaker 10: if she would take them to the area or take
Speaker 10: them to the body. But they let her off with
Speaker 10: at least getting them to the area, and ultimately, and
Speaker 10: I won't go into all the details, but ultimately they
Speaker 10: found the body. And so therefore she was entitled to
Speaker 10: some consideration. But again there was a judge, and rich Kenoblock,
Speaker 10: who was a known rich since he was thirteen rich
Speaker 10: you know, was bound by the by the uh the
Speaker 10: law to make certain demands of her in exchange for
Speaker 10: accepting her plea. So they they got into a little
Speaker 10: bit of a of a run around there, and she
Speaker 10: bulked for a while, but eventually she came around and
Speaker 10: and told the judge judge what he wanted to know
Speaker 10: my personal opinion and I is that she was not
Speaker 10: totally truthful, but that only she and her brother would
Speaker 10: really be the ones to know where she wasn't being
Speaker 10: truthful in terms of her participation in the actual disappearance
Speaker 10: and murder.
Speaker 8: What's again, one of the most profound moments in your book,
Speaker 8: and will use this as to wrap up in this
Speaker 8: next couple of minutes, is the that they push her
Speaker 8: on the staf and to say that when Melvin arrives,
Speaker 8: Robin is in the trunk, she helps him bury the body.
Speaker 8: But they ask her this question that she does not
Speaker 8: want to answer, and that is was the grave predug.
Speaker 9: Yes, and.
Speaker 10: Mark Bloomer had gone to extraordinary links. He had actually
Speaker 10: brought an archaeologist back to the area and had him
Speaker 10: reexcavate a like sized hole that would be the same
Speaker 10: dimensions as the one from which they recovered the body,
Speaker 10: so that he determined how long it would take to
Speaker 10: not only dig the hole, but to if it had
Speaker 10: been predug to bury the body and be visible in
Speaker 10: the carro area soon enough to kind of begin to
Speaker 10: form the basis of an alibi. And it proved. He
Speaker 10: was very gratified that she was willing to finally give
Speaker 10: that up because he had dragged this poor guy a
Speaker 10: hundred over one hundred miles and it put him to
Speaker 10: work digg in this hole. So, but bill ovis the archaeologist,
Speaker 10: a tremendous guy and a fabulous physical condition. It didn't
Speaker 10: really bother him that he had to dig another hole.
Speaker 10: If I could mention one thing Dan that I think
Speaker 10: readers would find very interesting. After Melvin was convicted, Tim
Speaker 10: Thomas had a series of accidents. They were uncharacteristic. I mean,
Speaker 10: Tim's a big husky guy, a hunter, fisherman, you know,
Speaker 10: he's a man's man. And it wasn't like him. He
Speaker 10: cut himself with a chainsaw and it fell through a
Speaker 10: glass garage window and they nearly bled to death. And
Speaker 10: so he was, you know what's happening here? I mean,
Speaker 10: all of a sudden, I'm having all these injuries. Tim
Speaker 10: was a superintendent of a parts plant in Flint. One
Speaker 10: of his workers was a Mexican and he was very
Speaker 10: close to this fellow. And the fellow said, I don't
Speaker 10: think this is just happening. I want you to meet
Speaker 10: someone and he took Tim to this medium, and the
Speaker 10: medium said that Tim Thomas was a victim of black
Speaker 10: magic that was perpetrated by the killer's paternal grandmother. And
Speaker 10: her name was Na Tivvy god Oli Veres and she
Speaker 10: died and I believe, oh, let me think. I think
Speaker 10: it was seven or eight, living in South Texas. She
Speaker 10: had lived for years in Carol and she was known
Speaker 10: to practice what is called brewer rhea, which is Spanish
Speaker 10: for black magic. She was a full blooded az Tech Indian.
Speaker 10: She was not Mexican, but her husband or her first husband,
Speaker 10: who would be Melvin's father's father, had died young and
Speaker 10: she'd remarried, so at any rate, there was that aspect.
Speaker 10: And I knew that Tim Thomas was kind of up
Speaker 10: right guy that would not be telling me these things
Speaker 10: fantasizing anything. These things really happened the way he described them.
Speaker 10: And whether or not the medium was dead on accurate,
Speaker 10: I'll never know, but that's what she said.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Well, I mean this book we just really touched on
Speaker 8: some of the drama and really didn't go into the
Speaker 8: really determined, incredibly determined effort by Dan Miller and other
Speaker 8: police to be able to and prosecutors to be able
Speaker 8: to finally get this Melvin Garza, which it seemed that
Speaker 8: everybody knew it was guilty from day one, to finally
Speaker 8: bring him to justice and also justice for Robin Adams,
Speaker 8: to find out really the truth of what actually happened
Speaker 8: that night in August nineteen seventy six. For those that
Speaker 8: might want to contact you, could you give your website
Speaker 8: one more time, please, Richard.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it's Dick Carson, d ICKCA RSO and lowercase dot
Speaker 10: net okay, and all pictures of Melvin, pictures of Robin,
Speaker 10: the links that where you can here Melvin's conversation with
Speaker 10: Robin's mother and also his police interrogation and you can
Speaker 10: hear Tim Thomas's very exceptional cross examination where the lawyer
Speaker 10: did everything in his power to confuse and trip him
Speaker 10: up and got nowhere.
Speaker 9: So yeah, so.
Speaker 10: Is there anything else? I don't know what our time
Speaker 10: frame is here, but I was going to enjoyed this.
Speaker 8: It's been very good and I want I want to
Speaker 8: thank you very much Richard for coming on and talking
Speaker 8: about Fruit of the Poisonous Tree. It's a fascinating story
Speaker 8: and we just touched on a little bit of the
Speaker 8: incredible aspects of this story. So again, Fruit of the
Speaker 8: Poisonous Tree, you want to thank you very much, Richard,
Speaker 8: and you have yourself a great afternoon.
Speaker 10: Okay, thank you so much. Dan, it's been my pleasure.
Speaker 8: Thank you, Bye, good night,