Speaker 1: This podcast is intended for mature audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: A bizarre case is murder, sexual abuse and alleged law
Speaker 2: enforcement misconduct is unfolding here, and it's questioned the innocence
Speaker 2: of children, a police officer, and a legal system. Few
Speaker 2: people question the Kerr children's claims of sexual abuse, but
Speaker 2: it's the stories of devil worshiping and Satanic sacrifice that
Speaker 2: have some wondering if the children may have been led
Speaker 2: or prompted into saying those things by adults. You don't
Speaker 2: believe there's in satanic rituals.
Speaker 3: Nobody nobody found any kind of evidence to show that
Speaker 3: they would.
Speaker 4: If they have, they're not making it public.
Speaker 2: For the past few years, Sergeant James Brown has been
Speaker 2: the only investigator on the Wilson Kate. It was a
Speaker 2: job he volunteered for. Now he's a suspect in her disappearance.
Speaker 1: So our last episode was all about Raymond Smith, the
Speaker 1: little boy who falsely accused his mom and stepdad of
Speaker 1: being in a satanic cult of murdering Kelly Wilson, the
Speaker 1: teenager who vanished on January fifth, nineteen ninety two, from
Speaker 1: the town square in Gilmour two years after Kelly disappeared,
Speaker 1: just to quickly recap, Special Prosecutor Scott Leefford and his
Speaker 1: pair of investigators, Steve Baggs and Brooks Flagg convinced a
Speaker 1: grand jury to indict eight people for the kidnapping, rape,
Speaker 1: and murder of Kelly. The suspects included Gilmert police sergeant
Speaker 1: James York Brown, and Raymond's parents Don and Tammy. They
Speaker 1: were facing death penalty offenses. But there were big problems
Speaker 1: with Leefford's case. Here's Kelly's mom, Kathy on the local news.
Speaker 5: I feel like you'll have to prove it in order
Speaker 5: for us the family to believe, to believe that he's
Speaker 5: going to have to prove it. Beyond shadow of dot,
Speaker 5: this is all happened, and it's the people are involved
Speaker 5: with Kelly's disappearance, and artist got to maintain objectivity and
Speaker 5: they're going to have to have lord and circumstance argents
Speaker 5: and they haven't shown missed anything.
Speaker 1: Special Prosecutor Scott Lyfford's case against Sergeant Brown and its
Speaker 1: co defendants. Most of the members of the Kerr family
Speaker 1: hinged on the witness statements of Raymond and Connie Martin
Speaker 1: the common law wife of one of the Kerr brothers,
Speaker 1: with a little help from Connie's sister in law Wanda,
Speaker 1: if Scott Lyfford had the goods, though he was keeping
Speaker 1: the details to himself.
Speaker 6: I really am not comfortable talking about the evidence at
Speaker 6: this point, and Connie Martin's not being charged because she's
Speaker 6: cooperating with it.
Speaker 1: Another star witness for the Lifer team had already recanted
Speaker 1: Wanda's brother, Lucas.
Speaker 2: A new set back to Lyford's case is Lucas Gear,
Speaker 2: a Kerr family uncle. Gear is currently serving time in
Speaker 2: prison on child molestation charges. In the Search War, Gear
Speaker 2: is listed as a coroborating witness to the children's accounts
Speaker 2: of Satanic rituals and human sacris. He passed a polygraph test,
Speaker 2: but Nawgere says he lied.
Speaker 6: Thank him, kept nay.
Speaker 7: They wanted something.
Speaker 8: They wounded me to go along with them.
Speaker 2: Oh, they'd lead me home, so I had to lead
Speaker 2: them on to enter.
Speaker 1: Shane Phelps, Assistant Attorney General for the State of Texas.
Speaker 9: Now the Texas Attorney General's Office has stepped in. Assistant
Speaker 9: Attorney's General Shane Phelps and Lisa Turner are conducting the
Speaker 9: investigation and working with the grand jury.
Speaker 1: Reviewing the case files, Shane Phelps and his assistant prosecutor,
Speaker 1: Lisa Tanner knew what they had to do. Shane had
Speaker 1: to drop the charges and clear Sergeant Brown's name. By
Speaker 1: this time, Sergeant Brown had already been released after spending
Speaker 1: six days in the county jail. To cover his bond,
Speaker 1: Sergeant Brown's dad put up the family farm as surety,
Speaker 1: but the city council had already voted to suspend Sergeant
Speaker 1: Brown from the police department. No pay, no job. Sergeant
Speaker 1: Brown was so broke he put his own mobile home
Speaker 1: and pickup truck on the market. As for the curs
Speaker 1: and Raymond's parents, his mom Tammy and stepdad Dawn, they
Speaker 1: had it even worse. They were still behind bars.
Speaker 10: I'll never forget being in jail and going into the
Speaker 10: courtroom to be arrain.
Speaker 1: That's Tammy turned myself in.
Speaker 10: I mean, I'll just never forget how shocked I was, like,
Speaker 10: what in the hell is going on? You know, I
Speaker 10: mean it was just crazy. And that was the first
Speaker 10: time you see us coming out in the orange suits.
Speaker 11: That was what was on my.
Speaker 10: Mind as I'd be like, I cannot believe that that
Speaker 10: just happened. You just feel like you're in a movie,
Speaker 10: you know what I mean. It's just feel like it's real.
Speaker 10: You just can't believe. And all I kept thinking is
Speaker 10: these are smart, intelligent people, you know, because like I said,
Speaker 10: I had all trust in our government, I had all
Speaker 10: trust in our system, police officers, and do the right thing,
Speaker 10: do what they say. They're gonna figure this all out.
Speaker 10: They're smart, educated people. Come on, it just kept getting
Speaker 10: stupider worse. I mean, they had like when they would
Speaker 10: interrogate me, they would have pictures of skulls on the table,
Speaker 10: you know, trying to convince me that I had had
Speaker 10: these babies and sacrificed them to the devil.
Speaker 1: And I was just like, what in the.
Speaker 6: Heck is going on here?
Speaker 10: My lawyer's sitting there going now, Tammy, They're gonna give
Speaker 10: you a deal and give you your kids back in
Speaker 10: six months if you just tell them what happened. And
Speaker 10: I said, Mike, I don't even know what all the
Speaker 10: other girls are saying.
Speaker 6: If I did want to take the deal.
Speaker 10: And he sat there and told me he's up there
Speaker 10: and told me what the other girls were and I'm like,
Speaker 10: I am praying and asking God out of this crap.
Speaker 10: I ain't lying on the one person, and so don't
Speaker 10: ask me again to do that. And because my ownlawyer
Speaker 10: tried to get me to lie and say stuff, this
Speaker 10: is bull crap. When your own lawyer is telling you
Speaker 10: to confess, confess on dawn and lie on dawn. And
Speaker 10: since I'm so much younger, you know, I'm going to
Speaker 10: get off and then we'll fly around and do a
Speaker 10: book deal.
Speaker 6: And this is my lawyer.
Speaker 10: Telling me this crap. I'm like, jeez, I can't trust
Speaker 10: anybody literally.
Speaker 12: Any of this that they alleged actually happened.
Speaker 10: Absolutely none. Absolutely. I have not ever met Kelly Wilson,
Speaker 10: not once. I've never molested my children.
Speaker 1: When she was first locked up, Tammy didn't believe her
Speaker 1: son Raymond would ever accuse her of such horrible crimes.
Speaker 10: After he got in foster care. My lawyer at the time,
Speaker 10: the good one. I can't even think away, he said Tammy. Unfortunately,
Speaker 10: he said, Raymon is a smart kid and he will
Speaker 10: be their star witness. And I went, no, Raman is
Speaker 10: a kurch young boy.
Speaker 13: He will not.
Speaker 10: Lie, Timmy, Yes he will.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 10: That was my lawyer telling me.
Speaker 13: He was, you know, he's being awestome with Timmy.
Speaker 10: They're gonna convert him or whatever because he's smart, and
Speaker 10: they're gonna make him their star witness. And I be
Speaker 10: darned if he wasn't right. I remember one time being
Speaker 10: in jail and one of the guys has books Brooks flag.
Speaker 10: They let him come in. Myself, my one man self, myself,
Speaker 10: and he touches my hand and he goes, how does
Speaker 10: it feel to know you're never gonna know the touch
Speaker 10: of a man? And I just thought, And then he
Speaker 10: looks up at my wall, and you know, in jail,
Speaker 10: you take toothpaste and you stick your pictures on the wall.
Speaker 10: And he goes, I see you're getting used to your
Speaker 10: new home. You're going to have a good married Christmas
Speaker 10: hunchin and he walks out. I mean, I just couldn't
Speaker 10: believe that people were really like that. That's how innocent
Speaker 10: and naive I was. One time I was brought into
Speaker 10: this room and I don't never forget all these big men,
Speaker 10: big men, and there was probably like seven or eight
Speaker 10: of them, and they set me down. They're all looking
Speaker 10: at me like me, mugging me. And they turned on
Speaker 10: this TV and they go, we want you to watch this,
Speaker 10: and I sit down and there's my little Raymond. His
Speaker 10: head's all shaved completely. He's sitting in a chair and
Speaker 10: Anne Gore is on her knees in front of him,
Speaker 10: asking him questions did your mama? And he's putting his
Speaker 10: hands in his mouth and he's mumbling, and she says,
Speaker 10: did your mama do that? And you can tell she's
Speaker 10: like suggests of questioning him over and over and over,
Speaker 10: and them guys are just looking at me like you
Speaker 10: are sick. You ought to be it, you know. I'm
Speaker 10: just sitting there crying and thinking, what is this? What
Speaker 10: what are they doing to my baby? You know, that's
Speaker 10: when I realized my kids are not safe where they're at.
Speaker 10: You know, this isn't what I thought.
Speaker 9: It was anymore.
Speaker 10: For some reason, I always had faith in God that
Speaker 10: it was just gonna get better.
Speaker 14: I always had that faith that it was going to
Speaker 14: get better. I just couldn't believe though that all the lies,
Speaker 14: you know, how these people had.
Speaker 6: So much control.
Speaker 10: And they lie are so bad, and then everybody else
Speaker 10: just lets them. I mean judges. I remember being at
Speaker 10: court and Barbara Best and they're talking about how they
Speaker 10: kept getting these threats and everything. And I'm thinking, we're
Speaker 10: in jail, how can we threaten you? Oh you know
Speaker 10: they were Cannis. We can't call you unless you accept
Speaker 10: the phone called. I mean, there would be records of
Speaker 10: all this stuff.
Speaker 14: And they're saying all these lies in court, and I'm thinking, why.
Speaker 10: Isn't anybody doing anything? Why is this judge sitting here
Speaker 10: allowing these lies when he freaking knows better. I mean,
Speaker 10: I just couldn't. I couldn't grasp it, and I still
Speaker 10: can't grasp it.
Speaker 1: The lurid details and sensational indictments swept East Texas. It
Speaker 1: was all anybody could talk about.
Speaker 5: This case still has many people in Gilma riveted to
Speaker 5: the goings on at the courthouse and wondering if there
Speaker 5: will ever be a resolution to the mystery.
Speaker 10: Every day on the news, we were on the news
Speaker 10: every day for two years.
Speaker 11: On the news.
Speaker 6: Top story.
Speaker 10: It was either Kanya Harding or.
Speaker 5: For us.
Speaker 1: Tanya Harding had nothing on this From Imperative Entertainment, I'm
Speaker 1: wes Ferguson. This is Deviltown. This is chapter six courtroom drama.
Speaker 1: Here's Raymonds stepdad Don Holman.
Speaker 6: I went to a church for about three and a
Speaker 6: half years that you couldn't go the amboree.
Speaker 1: The Yamboree is the fall festival in Gilmer. It's a
Speaker 1: lot like any county fair, parade, Queen's Court, livestock show
Speaker 1: if you throw in a lot of yams. Don is
Speaker 1: a self described Bible thumper. His church back then was
Speaker 1: so strict he couldn't even have fun at the Yamboree.
Speaker 6: You can't watch showbiz pizza, you can't go on a
Speaker 6: trip without asking to get permission from the preacher. And
Speaker 6: I'm not that I was a sergeant in the army.
Speaker 6: I mean I told people what to do in a
Speaker 6: nice way, but they come and ask me, hey home
Speaker 6: and listen my wife. I think my wife's running around
Speaker 6: on me. Would you help me out? You know yeah,
Speaker 6: send her a dozen roses and apologize, you cheat, bastard.
Speaker 6: You know I've been around. I've been a cop before
Speaker 6: in Big Sandy, back when Texas largest man hunt. I
Speaker 6: was a good guy and then all of a sudden
Speaker 6: I'm in jail, going killing, killing eight a seventeen year
Speaker 6: old girl and sacrificed ten babies to the devil. And
Speaker 6: I mean just hateful things to me and put me
Speaker 6: in a dorm with a bunch of idiots. I'm not
Speaker 6: saying idiots. They was all right after I threatened to
Speaker 6: kill them, you know, but one had I kept up
Speaker 6: with him and he got seventy five years from murder,
Speaker 6: nineteen year old black guy. Another one he had tattoos,
Speaker 6: had his head shaved on each sign. Me and him
Speaker 6: used to get a water iglue and work out with it.
Speaker 10: We got along.
Speaker 6: I got along with everybody. Oh and one boy was
Speaker 6: in there in that hole and cell guy. I said,
Speaker 6: what's that all about? Who's that guy? And he goes, oh,
Speaker 6: that's one of them old charm listening curves. And when
Speaker 6: he said that, I walked over to him. I said,
Speaker 6: I said, come here. I said, you see a name
Speaker 6: right there. I said, my name is Don Holman, not Curve.
Speaker 6: Don't call me a curve. He goes, okay. I wasn't
Speaker 6: gonna hurt the guy. But from then on, when he
Speaker 6: woke my my jail, cell, he put his head down.
Speaker 6: You don't, I mean, you don't call me no charm listener.
Speaker 6: When he said you lost a bunch of weight, was
Speaker 6: that fasting? I fasted not to show off. I fasted
Speaker 6: to God. And when they asked me, I'll go get
Speaker 6: you a cheeseburger or whatever want you want to eat,
Speaker 6: I said, ma'am, listen please. I said, I'm not doing
Speaker 6: this to be stubborn headed. I appreciate anything you do.
Speaker 6: And I said, I can't. This is something I got
Speaker 6: to deal with. And I asked one of them, I said,
Speaker 6: you know what I'm in here and she said not really.
Speaker 6: I said, they're saying I'm a rapist and a murderer
Speaker 6: and a child lester. And they said want and I
Speaker 6: said yeah. And I said, and I've got to get
Speaker 6: in touch with God. Humbled. I mean, if David said
Speaker 6: I humbled, my soul was fasting, so fasten and he
Speaker 6: doesn't turn away.
Speaker 1: The Humble Down had a long history with the Kirklan
Speaker 1: local family, who's incest and child abuse got tangled up
Speaker 1: with the search for Kelly Wilson. Don says he was
Speaker 1: not particularly close to Wendell, the Kerr brother who was
Speaker 1: first convicted of abusing his own kids, which is how
Speaker 1: the case against the entire family got started, but Don
Speaker 1: says he and Wendell talked in lock up after they
Speaker 1: were both arrested So when.
Speaker 12: Wendell was telling you about some stuff about his own dad,
Speaker 12: was that when.
Speaker 15: Y'all were in jail.
Speaker 1: What did he say?
Speaker 6: Well, I hate to say this, I really do because
Speaker 6: it relates to Wendell, and I don't like to tell
Speaker 6: on him for what he was already done. Roman He said,
Speaker 6: his daddy used to soldomize him. I said, well, Wendell,
Speaker 6: does he do it anymore? He said, well, what I
Speaker 6: would do, I'd go out work, and he said, I
Speaker 6: just take the money home and give it to him.
Speaker 6: He said, after why, he said, I said no more,
Speaker 6: You're not doing this no more? He said. I got mad,
Speaker 6: and he didn't do it no more. I said, when
Speaker 6: let me tell you something, you're not to hold that
Speaker 6: against you. It's whether you go do somebody else like that.
Speaker 6: I said, you couldn't help that.
Speaker 1: Did Wendall say how old he was when he.
Speaker 8: Was getting abused?
Speaker 6: Young? Young, probably liking grad school.
Speaker 1: Wendell, the abused became the abuser. He was also a
Speaker 1: truck driver, the one who had shipping receipts which proved
Speaker 1: he'd been hauling freight on the East Coast when Kelly disappeared.
Speaker 1: The receipts even had Wendell's own signature on them. Although
Speaker 1: members of Scott Lyffort's team were convinced that Wendell was
Speaker 1: a master Satanist who'd forged the receipts, it should have
Speaker 1: been obvious to anyone else that Wendell had done no
Speaker 1: such thing, whatever his other crime. Wendell, who died in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, was innocent in the murder of Kelly Wilson.
Speaker 8: No grand jury's indict based on probable cause. But there
Speaker 8: wasn't probable cause, and they acknowledged that. Liferd acknowledged that.
Speaker 1: To me that Shane Phelps again.
Speaker 8: Credible witness statements could be enough, but this was outlandish stuff.
Speaker 8: I don't think there's a prosecutor in the state of
Speaker 8: Texas who has any sense of what prosecution is about.
Speaker 8: Whoever would have been dieted that case if for nothing
Speaker 8: else for the fear of I would get my ass
Speaker 8: handed to me in court. Because it didn't take long
Speaker 8: for their case just to.
Speaker 1: Fall apart, Shane says the Lifeer team had lost sight
Speaker 1: of what should have been their first priority.
Speaker 8: Prosecutors are sworn to do justice, not to seek convictions,
Speaker 8: and to my mind, and this is a case that
Speaker 8: I've often pointed to as illustrative of this idea. To
Speaker 8: my mind, it is every bit is important, if not
Speaker 8: more so, for a prosecutor to protect the innocence than
Speaker 8: convict the guilty. And I truly believe that it is
Speaker 8: more important to make sure that the criminal justicism doesn't
Speaker 8: victimize in this person than it is ultimately to convict
Speaker 8: a guilty person. It's that old adage about you know,
Speaker 8: ten guilty people go free rather than one innocent person
Speaker 8: going to prison or the death end. There's no oversight
Speaker 8: to prosecutors in Texas. They have the power to basically
Speaker 8: affect the lives of citizens in pretty detrimental ways. Put
Speaker 8: people in prison, put people on death row, you know,
Speaker 8: and if you're not motivated properly ethically, you will damage people.
Speaker 8: You will end up doing more harm than good. When
Speaker 8: I told them that their rationalization was nobody was talking
Speaker 8: to us, they were again in their mind, we know
Speaker 8: this happened, So when somebody won't talk to us about it,
Speaker 8: they must either be lying part of it, or afraid
Speaker 8: of Scott or Little Life or team afraid of law
Speaker 8: enforcement in Upshire County. Don't know who's involved and this
Speaker 8: is how they put it. We had to show them
Speaker 8: who had the power. In fact, there's an exchange with
Speaker 8: Kannie or Wanda in one of their interviews subsequent to
Speaker 8: the indictments where they say the response from Connie or
Speaker 8: Wander was, we didn't know you had that kind of power.
Speaker 8: So in their minds, it would let whoever they're talking to,
Speaker 8: who had information that they wanted, know, we're more powerful
Speaker 8: than what you're afraid of, so you can talk to us.
Speaker 8: That's why they indicted it.
Speaker 12: So they were using indictment as a tool for their investigation.
Speaker 8: Yes, I think that's right. You know there was a
Speaker 8: great deal of ignorance involved in that approach.
Speaker 1: On March fourteenth, Shane was back in Gilmer his first
Speaker 1: pre trial hearing as the lead prosecutor after taking over
Speaker 1: for Scott Leiford. Nearly everyone in the courtroom was expecting
Speaker 1: routine stuff.
Speaker 8: We went to Gilmer for the first setting. Basically what
Speaker 8: was an arrangement on all of the defendants. So they
Speaker 8: were all in the court. I'll never forget this one,
Speaker 8: all in the courtroom, all their lawyers are in the courtroom,
Speaker 8: and the judge called the case and I said, well,
Speaker 8: judge the timber We're going to dismiss everything, which took
Speaker 8: a lot of people by surprise.
Speaker 1: They did not expect that kidnapping, rape, murder. Just like that,
Speaker 1: all the charges involving Kelly Wilson, they were gone.
Speaker 16: Sort of, it is back to square one in the
Speaker 16: Kelly Wilson case. Could happen in everyone. Charges against eight
Speaker 16: people in the Kelly Wilson case have been dropped. The
Speaker 16: Attorney General's office moved were dismissal of the chargers deal
Speaker 16: with a lack of evidence. Judge James Zimmerman granted the
Speaker 16: motion this morning, and now eight people, including Sergeant James Brown,
Speaker 16: Don Holman, Danny Kerr, Eugene Kerr, Geneva Kerr, Wendel Kerr,
Speaker 16: Tammy Smith, and Wanda Kerr, are no longer suspects in
Speaker 16: the Kelly Wilson case. The state says the Wilson case
Speaker 16: remains open.
Speaker 11: This preliminary hearing originally was scheduled to go over motions
Speaker 11: by attorneys and to also look at the pre trial order.
Speaker 11: But after this development, many people are now just scratching
Speaker 11: their heads in disbelief.
Speaker 8: I think the judge was actually quoted at some point
Speaker 8: saying I just had no idea that was coming. I
Speaker 8: didn't give anybody any warning, and there was no reason to.
Speaker 1: Raymond's mom, Tammy was just as clueless.
Speaker 10: I didn't know it was going to happen. I was
Speaker 10: sitting in jail and it was lunchtime, and I was
Speaker 10: sitting right in.
Speaker 13: Front of the TV fixing to eat lunch in jail,
Speaker 13: and all of a sudden, this kicker came on on
Speaker 13: the bottom of the screen and it said all charges
Speaker 13: in the Gilmer Killy Wilson case.
Speaker 10: Had been and I remember just thinking, holy shit, we're
Speaker 10: gonna get out of here.
Speaker 1: That was on a Monday, when Shane dismissed the charges.
Speaker 1: By Friday, Don and Tammy were out of jail unreduced bond.
Speaker 1: As for the parents of Kelly Wilson, they were split
Speaker 1: when the case imploded. On one side Kelly's mom and Stepdadlene.
Speaker 5: What about reaction tonight from Kelly's parents.
Speaker 11: We talked with the Carlsons this afternoon and they said
Speaker 11: that they were basically stunned.
Speaker 1: On the other side was Kelly's dad.
Speaker 9: Robbie worked with James pretty close for the last two years. Firstly,
Speaker 9: my gut thinking the names. He has no involvement in it.
Speaker 9: And secondly, we were presented with no evidence.
Speaker 1: Towards James Brown was a free man, believe it or not.
Speaker 1: Though James wasn't thrilled, but what has happened to me
Speaker 1: to date is a travesty.
Speaker 9: I have always maintained my innocence and still do.
Speaker 15: We would haveferred.
Speaker 7: To have been able to have a speak trial in
Speaker 7: this guy. We would haveferred to be able to take
Speaker 7: Connie Martin's deposition so we can see whether or not.
Speaker 17: You know she's telling me the truth.
Speaker 1: James Brown and his attorney David Moore actually wanted to
Speaker 1: take the case to trial. Sergeant Brown's reputation had already
Speaker 1: been so tarnished in gilmer He wanted a chance to
Speaker 1: prove without a shadow of a doubt that he was innocent,
Speaker 1: not just in the court of law, in the court
Speaker 1: of public opinion too.
Speaker 16: I would ask if he would move back to Gilmour.
Speaker 16: Brown seemed unsure.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of herd, there's.
Speaker 17: Been a lot of stress.
Speaker 16: Well, Brown is out of jail. The knife it seven
Speaker 16: others charged in the will and case remained behind bars.
Speaker 16: Several members of the Kerr family and others are still
Speaker 16: being held charged with several accounts of child molestation. But
Speaker 16: despite that, Danny Kerry today from his jail cell in
Speaker 16: Upsu County, said he was happy to hear charges in
Speaker 16: the Wilson case were dropped.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm more relieved than anything else. It's just like
Speaker 3: I said, all these murder charges were bound. I didn't
Speaker 3: want to get back to my normal life like it's
Speaker 3: supposed to be.
Speaker 1: The molestation trial against Raymond's stepdad, Dawn, was actually scheduled
Speaker 1: to begin in just a week's time, but the Attorney
Speaker 1: General's office decided to postpone Dawn's and all the other
Speaker 1: molestation cases. Assistant Attorney General Shane Phelps had to regroup.
Speaker 1: He just made a bunch of enemies in Gilmer.
Speaker 8: There really was quite a bit of a fure about
Speaker 8: the dismissals because by this time the life Or team
Speaker 8: had really gathered kind of a following. It's almost like
Speaker 8: a cult of people who just believed this happened so
Speaker 8: again in their in their minds. If I step in
Speaker 8: and dismiss them all, then I'm corrupt. Not this guy's
Speaker 8: been doing this for a long time. He knows what
Speaker 8: he's doing and so on. It was I'm corrupt, I
Speaker 8: must be protecting powerful people in Upshire County from this
Speaker 8: information getting out. But I also, you know, made it
Speaker 8: clear that we were going to devote the full resources
Speaker 8: of my division in the Attorney Dental's office to investigating
Speaker 8: this whole thing, and we would be back before the
Speaker 8: grand jury.
Speaker 1: Shane was going to reinvestigate the kidnapping and death of
Speaker 1: Kelly Wilson, and then he'd take the case back in
Speaker 1: front of the grand jury, the same grand jury that
Speaker 1: indicted Sergeant Brown, the curs and Don and Tammy in
Speaker 1: the first place. But he couldn't hold the grand jury forever.
Speaker 1: He had three months.
Speaker 8: I guess. I dismissed the charges in the March, and
Speaker 8: I was back in.
Speaker 1: June Shane Phelps again.
Speaker 8: So maybe three months that's all we did. And we
Speaker 8: devoted thousands of man hours to that case. We worked
Speaker 8: with the FBI, we worked with the Sheriff's department, the
Speaker 8: police department. A big part of that focus was on
Speaker 8: changed around really involved, and we got things like his
Speaker 8: lawyer provided to us his personal diary that that was
Speaker 8: clearly his personal diary that recorded you know, a lot
Speaker 8: of his investigation into into Kelly's disappearance. You know, we
Speaker 8: talked to FBI agents who who were involved at that
Speaker 8: early stages, and we're saying this guy was doing everything
Speaker 8: he could to find this girl. Of police officers he
Speaker 8: worked with, We're talking about the fact that he was
Speaker 8: working around the clock when all this is supposed to happen, Right,
Speaker 8: He's working with people trying to find this girl while
Speaker 8: he's allegedly part of this cult that is were theoretically
Speaker 8: she was still alive, and so he would work to
Speaker 8: find her and then go get involved in It was
Speaker 8: just absurd. I have no doubt we were able to
Speaker 8: alibi him. He just had nothing to do with this.
Speaker 8: Only we had his his journal, We had his He
Speaker 8: was alibied by I think at the time, his girlfriend.
Speaker 8: The FBI. Actually, he just didn't have anything to do
Speaker 8: with that. That's and that made me angry because you know,
Speaker 8: we're talking about a death penalty case, but we're also
Speaker 8: talking about them destroying the career of a guy. And
Speaker 8: in law enforcement. I mean, I don't know that James Brown.
Speaker 8: I mean he was a chargeant in the Gilbert Police Department.
Speaker 8: I did not know who he was. I just knew
Speaker 8: he was a police officer who had been in charge
Speaker 8: of these crimes. And it became absolutely clear to me
Speaker 8: over the next ninety days getting the thing ready to
Speaker 8: go back to the grand jury, that he didn't have
Speaker 8: anything to do with it at all, that he was
Speaker 8: a victim, and as were all these other people, because
Speaker 8: there was no evidence to support like window Kerr. I mean,
Speaker 8: I got those original bills of lading and hotel receipts
Speaker 8: and gas receipts and sent those to the Department of
Speaker 8: Public Safety crime Lab, which Scott Leiford could have done,
Speaker 8: and they confirmed one percent these are original signatures by
Speaker 8: window Kerr. And I knew when I saw the bills
Speaker 8: of lading and his exemplar that it was the same guy.
Speaker 8: It was clear to me, But we sent it to
Speaker 8: the Department of Public Safety anyway for their forensic handwriting
Speaker 8: group to take a look at it, and they confirmed
Speaker 8: this was Wendell Kerr. He was out of the state
Speaker 8: the entire time.
Speaker 1: In June of nineteen ninety four, Shane Phelps took his
Speaker 1: findings back to the Grand Jury in Gilmer. By this time,
Speaker 1: Shane was so convinced of the suspect's innocence. He did
Speaker 1: something kind of unusual. He didn't even give the grand
Speaker 1: jury a chance to reindict Sergeant Brown and the others.
Speaker 8: The fact is, I wasn't going to present an indictment
Speaker 8: against people I knew to be innocent of these charges.
Speaker 8: So I made a decision. I did some things that
Speaker 8: were somewhat irregular in this whole thing. When the grand
Speaker 8: jury basically agreed with me, I had prepared a statement
Speaker 8: that I showed a grand jury, and they said yes.
Speaker 8: So I had a press conference as soon as we
Speaker 8: were done. We were in the courthouse, had been going
Speaker 8: in and out of the grand jury. I remember the
Speaker 8: press was just it was crazy. There was press everywhere.
Speaker 8: They were following me to the bathroom.
Speaker 1: It was wild.
Speaker 8: To the coke machine. I mean, I couldn't say anything.
Speaker 8: You know, I'm not going to make a comment about
Speaker 8: an ongoing investigation. I'm not going to tell you what
Speaker 8: happened in the grand jury because it's secret. The reason
Speaker 8: it's secret. So it was it was a bit of
Speaker 8: pandemonium attached on this and a lot of a lot
Speaker 8: of tension, a lot of high tension just across the board.
Speaker 8: It was. It was a bit of a circus. But
Speaker 8: I understood that people were interested in this case for
Speaker 8: obvious reasons.
Speaker 7: I think he did did what he said he was
Speaker 7: going to do, and that was look at it, look
Speaker 7: at it objectively, and when he did, he dismissed the case.
Speaker 1: That's Sergeant Brown's attorney, David Moore again fact.
Speaker 7: Not only did they just dismiss it, he made a
Speaker 7: statement to the media that it won a matter of
Speaker 7: not having enough evidence, but he said James Yort Brown
Speaker 7: is in fact an innocent man, which was a stout
Speaker 7: comment for a prosecutor to make, andppreciating him doing that.
Speaker 8: Oh, I remember it quite well. I think I said
Speaker 8: James Brown had nothing to do with this, he is innocent,
Speaker 8: because I guess that's kind of a personal thing. I
Speaker 8: think James Brown deserved having somebody in a position of
Speaker 8: authority tell the rest of the world he didn't have
Speaker 8: anything to do with it. I know the insidious power
Speaker 8: of an accusation. That is, even if it's disproved, people
Speaker 8: will still there are some people out there stood believe it.
Speaker 8: And I kind of slammed the life or team. People
Speaker 8: needed to hear that this was such a disruptive event
Speaker 8: in the lives of so many people. But James Brown
Speaker 8: had been accused of brutally raping, torturing, and abducting and
Speaker 8: murdering a seventeen year old girl. If I had just
Speaker 8: gotten in a plane and flown back to Austin, how
Speaker 8: would he have ever lived that down? Well, that he
Speaker 8: needed somebody to say.
Speaker 12: That, I mean, one of there's so many tragedies in
Speaker 12: this story, but one of the big ones is that
Speaker 12: so many people in Gilmer still think that James Brown
Speaker 12: had something to do with this.
Speaker 8: That's what I say. That's the insidious power of an accusation,
Speaker 8: particularly a wrongful accusation, And those people, you know, felt
Speaker 8: great of the same nonsense that I think Scott Leiffer did,
Speaker 8: because I think this Scott Leifert wasn't experienced, He didn't
Speaker 8: know how to conduct a criminal investigation, and he was
Speaker 8: swayed by this nonsense he was hearing from bags and flag.
Speaker 12: Even the victim's mom cappy at first, he said this
Speaker 12: is this can't be true, but at some points she
Speaker 12: was persuaded.
Speaker 8: Otherwise, his dad never did. I mean, he was relieved
Speaker 8: when when James was exonerated and these and these indictments
Speaker 8: were dismissed. It was you know, you asked the question,
Speaker 8: you know, why did I do that? Because, as I say,
Speaker 8: it was a fairly irregular thing from my perspective, from
Speaker 8: my moral framework, from my ethical foundation of being a prosecutor,
Speaker 8: I didn't think I had any of the choice. You
Speaker 8: can't just point to figure at somebody and say horrible
Speaker 8: things about them and then when you know you're wrong,
Speaker 8: not corrected, and that's that's what we did. I to
Speaker 8: this day have absolutely no regrets about doing that. I
Speaker 8: think it was the right thing to do.
Speaker 1: Shane's decision angered a lot of people in Gilmer. Remember
Speaker 1: Melvin Dodd, the Gilmer school teacher and co founder of
Speaker 1: the Justice for Kelly Wilson Committee. When Melvin read Shane's
Speaker 1: statement in the newspaper, he immediately called his friend Harvey,
Speaker 1: who'd sat on the grand jury.
Speaker 17: And then the charge has been dropped. They were dropped
Speaker 17: by the Texas Attorney General's Office, and there was a
Speaker 17: statement in there they said that they were acting on
Speaker 17: behalf of the grand jury. I'm trying to think of
Speaker 17: the name of the man from the Attorney General's Office who,
Speaker 17: in my opinion's totals.
Speaker 1: Come back Shane Phelps.
Speaker 17: Shane, Yeah, Shane Phelps. So I read Harvey Rason this
Speaker 17: statement where Shane Phelps said that the grand jury requested
Speaker 17: that they dropped the charges. This is the way Harvey
Speaker 17: Rason spoke to.
Speaker 4: Me, Melvin. The grand jury took no action, So every
Speaker 4: raceing was saying that that was a lie. The grand
Speaker 4: jury absolutely did not ask Shane Phepps and Lisa Tanner
Speaker 4: and the Attorney General's office to drop the charges.
Speaker 1: But our rations dead now, so he he was not
Speaker 1: convinced then to drop the charges. He would have.
Speaker 17: Oh, he was upset that the charges were dropped.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 17: We had on the south side of the court House
Speaker 17: in Gilmer a rally called Justice for Kelly Wilson. And
Speaker 17: I think I didn't go around county, but I think
Speaker 17: we probably had over five hundred people there.
Speaker 8: You know, a little bit of knowledge about the criminal
Speaker 8: justice system can be dangerous. So everybody assumed that because
Speaker 8: the grand jury didn't no. Billet said, that means that
Speaker 8: there must have been something going on that I fooled
Speaker 8: the grand jury in which is nonsense.
Speaker 1: The Justice for Kelly Wilson committee would go on to
Speaker 1: hold a bunch of rallies. They even protested outside the
Speaker 1: Attorney General's office in Austin, but their protests went nowhere.
Speaker 1: To this day, many Gilmer residents believe Shane was part
Speaker 1: of a conspiracy to protect evildoers, and Gore, the CPS
Speaker 1: caseworker who uncovered the abuse in the curR home, is
Speaker 1: among them.
Speaker 12: And I talked to Anne Gore.
Speaker 15: She wouldn't talk for the recorders, but she still professes
Speaker 15: to believe that, you know, she thinks she was in
Speaker 15: the right. You know, she thinks that she was like
Speaker 15: following this holy crusade or something.
Speaker 8: You know. I suppose, you know, I can't speak for
Speaker 8: Anne Gore. I suppose when you get so invested in
Speaker 8: something being true that cause was so much damage that
Speaker 8: I guess from a psychological perspective, you just can't admit
Speaker 8: you were wrong. I feel sorry for her, you know,
Speaker 8: laboring under a you know, an apprehension that is just
Speaker 8: not true. We know it not to be true, and
Speaker 8: yet in her mind, for the rest of her life,
Speaker 8: she's going to think it was. And some horrible things happened.
Speaker 8: And in terms of you know, killers getting away with it,
Speaker 8: people in power protecting other people in power, I mean,
Speaker 8: it is a fantasy world that she lives in that
Speaker 8: I guess she just can't disabuse herself, which is which
Speaker 8: is tragedy.
Speaker 7: And then the injustice of.
Speaker 12: You know, there was actual abuse that was kind of
Speaker 12: paper over, you know, because it morphed.
Speaker 8: Into this story as he did. And a Gore and
Speaker 8: Debbie Minshew and Brooks slag and Scott or Steve Baggs
Speaker 8: and Scott Lafford are responsible for the people who abuse
Speaker 8: those kids never being held responsible. It's their fault because
Speaker 8: they contaminated those children to the extent that those children
Speaker 8: could never be credible in the court of law. I mean,
Speaker 8: you can imagine the cross examination when we start talking about,
Speaker 8: well you also saw those penis shaped elevators, didn't you. Yeah,
Speaker 8: and nobody would believe. I mean, these children were horribly
Speaker 8: manipulated and they were destroyed in terms of their credibility
Speaker 8: and frankly, how much damage did it do to these kids?
Speaker 8: It did a ton of damage.
Speaker 1: To evaluate Raymond and the Kirk kids, the state of
Speaker 1: Texas hired a noted psychiatrist named Bruce Perry. His research
Speaker 1: focuses on the long term effects of trauma and children,
Speaker 1: and he's been an expert witness and a number of
Speaker 1: high profile incidents, including the Oklahoma bombing and the Columbine massacre.
Speaker 8: You know, one of the reasons that Bruce Perry came
Speaker 8: into the picture was to try and deal with these children,
Speaker 8: to try and sort this out. Can can these cases
Speaker 8: be salvaged? And the bottom line was non. I could
Speaker 8: not be salvaged. And that was hard, you know, but again,
Speaker 8: you walk away as a good prosecutor from a case,
Speaker 8: even though you may believe that the person is guilty,
Speaker 8: but if it has been so compromised because of misconduct
Speaker 8: and the credibility of the children has been so destroyed,
Speaker 8: you may not like it. You have no choice. You
Speaker 8: have to walk away. And that's what happened in that case.
Speaker 8: We had to dismiss and I had already left the
Speaker 8: AG's office. Wouldn't happen, but we all knew it was
Speaker 8: going to happen. That was one of our biggest concerns
Speaker 8: was is there any way to salvage these cases against
Speaker 8: these people who may or may not have I mean,
Speaker 8: I can't tell you at this point. I believe something happened.
Speaker 8: I believe there was some validity in those original cases
Speaker 8: but it was all just lost in all of the subnunsense.
Speaker 1: So not only was the search for Kelly Wilson lost
Speaker 1: in the hysteria, there was very little doubt that at
Speaker 1: least some members of the Kerr family had abused their
Speaker 1: own kids. In those cases, they were ruined too. But
Speaker 1: there was a bright side. Don and Tammy hadn't done
Speaker 1: anything wrong. Their son Raymond had been pressured into making
Speaker 1: up abuse claims against them. For all this time, Don
Speaker 1: and Tammy had been waiting for justice too. Folks and
Speaker 1: Gilmer were split on their guilt or innocence.
Speaker 10: Somebody took a spray paint and spray painted a big
Speaker 10: IM on my car for molester. He had a big Cadillac,
Speaker 10: Maroon Cadillac, and I mean this huge m spray painting
Speaker 10: all over my Cadillac.
Speaker 6: So much stuff that want and people were so hateful,
Speaker 6: big old go limb written across tobacco it and people
Speaker 6: told me how to get it off. I said, I
Speaker 6: ain't getting it off. I drove around town with it
Speaker 6: on there. I mean, like you want to call me
Speaker 6: a name? I said, Now it's gone. Now it finally
Speaker 6: wore all.
Speaker 1: Don was also fielding anonymous phone calls.
Speaker 6: Like, hey, yeah, ho's this. Well I just saw you
Speaker 6: on TV and I thought she's good looking and I'd
Speaker 6: like to get to know you. And I said, well,
Speaker 6: I got me a woman and I'm faithful to her.
Speaker 6: Well okay, and one of us said, hey, you you
Speaker 6: that guy like to eat women, you know, and well
Speaker 6: killed then eat them.
Speaker 1: Don tries to make light of things now, but the
Speaker 1: legal limbo was clearly taking a toll.
Speaker 10: We got to coordinate and then they cancel it court
Speaker 10: they knew they cancel it, and I mean, my nerves
Speaker 10: were just shot. And I remember one day I broke
Speaker 10: down crimes so hard, right in the middle of work,
Speaker 10: and I was a cashier at a convenience store and
Speaker 10: there was it was full, and I remember this guy
Speaker 10: walked up to me, goes, baby, we've been watching you
Speaker 10: for years. He goes, You've been so strong, he said,
Speaker 10: don't give up now, and I just I was like,
Speaker 10: you don't know, you just don't know.
Speaker 1: He goes, no, we know you.
Speaker 6: We're so proud of you.
Speaker 10: And it was just like a lift me up, you know.
Speaker 10: I mean, this stranger guy knew who I was. I
Speaker 10: didn't even know if they knew because that was the
Speaker 10: embarrassing part. You don't know who knows who you are.
Speaker 10: You know, and I always feel I had an obligation
Speaker 10: when I'd meet you people, I needed to tell them
Speaker 10: right off who I was.
Speaker 1: Now, thanks to the bungling of Scott Lyfford's team and
Speaker 1: the CPS caseworkers, the molestation charges were gone. Don and
Speaker 1: Tammy were free and clear, But Raymond he was still
Speaker 1: trapped in foster care and Kelly was still missing. Deviltown
Speaker 1: is a production of Imperative Entertainment. It was written and
Speaker 1: created by me Wes Ferguson. Executive producer is Jason Hoak.
Speaker 1: Audio engineering and editing by Shane Freeman and Jason Hoak.
Speaker 1: Original score is by Robert Ellis. Recording by Austin Sissler
Speaker 1: at Eastside Studios. If you like the show, leave a
Speaker 1: review and don't forget to tell your friends thanks for listening.