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GameChanger [Music] [Music] n welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you're doing thanks for
00:01:43
listening I'm your host Nick and joining me as always in the garage a man that knows just as well as I do that you
00:01:49
fully intended that pun ladies and gentlemen the captain yeah it's good to be seen and it's good to see you thanks
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everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime [Music]
00:04:03
[Applause] [Music] [Music] the city of beatric is located in the southern portion of the great Corn
00:04:28
Husker state of Nebraska beatric was once featured on the popular show Unsolved Mysteries for a famous
00:04:37
story from the city's history that took place in 1950 when a natural gas explosion
00:04:43
destroyed a church during the church choir's regularly scheduled practice but miraculously all 15 choir
00:04:51
members survived because for a variety of different reasons each of the 15 were running late that day the True Crime
00:05:00
Story we are featuring today did not make it on Unsolved Mysteries and takes place 35 years later in
00:05:08
1985 today and back in ' 85 the population of beatric is practically the same right around 125,000 people lived
00:05:18
in beatric which is in Gage County Nebraska and we will reference both beatric City
00:05:25
police and Gage County Sheriff's Department during our garage exploration of this
00:05:32
case Helen Wilson was born in the nearby Village of picol which is also in Gage County she was born on July 13th
00:05:41
1916 and at the time of our story she was 68 years old and living alone Helen was retired and her husband passed away
00:05:51
years earlier she was very active in her local Methodist Church in fact she helped out quite a bit by watching some
00:05:58
of the children at the church while their parents attended she was also a member of the
00:06:04
Gage County Historical Society in the Eagles auxiliary in the days leading up to
00:06:11
February 1985 Helen was not feeling well Helen had pneumonia was relying on the help of others including her
00:06:19
daughter Jan Winters in Nebraska are cold and the February nights are even colder on the
00:06:27
night of February 5th 198 8 5 68-year-old Helen Wilson went to bed the next morning Helen's brother went to her
00:06:37
apartment on North 6th Street and sadly at approximately 9:30 a.m. on February 6th he found Hell and
00:06:46
dead she had been murdered sometime between when she went to bed the night before and that
00:06:53
morning this is true crime garage and this is a case of Helen Wilson in the beatric
00:07:01
[Music] [Music] [Applause] 6 68-year-old Helen Wilson lived alone in a small four room apartment located
00:07:20
near the downtown area of beatric across Route 77 from Charles Park in apartment
00:07:27
number four at 212 North 6th Street her lifeless body was found February 6th 1985 Helen had been raped and suffocated
00:07:37
to death Helen Wilson leaves behind three children seven grandchildren and six great grandchildren they held a
00:07:45
closed casket service in the days that followed and she was buried next to her husband Reay at Pleasant View Cemetery
00:07:52
let's take a look at the crime scene captain and go through some of the evidence in regards to this rape hom HDE
00:08:00
investigation first off there were very obvious signs of a Breakin and a violent
00:08:05
struggle at the scene the door had been Pride open Helen was found dead in the living room but there were things at the
00:08:12
scene to indicate that the attack started in her bedroom and then ended in the living room Helen's hands were bound
00:08:20
with the towel now the towel came from inside of her apartment her face was covered with a scarf that was tied
00:08:29
around her neck and or head covering her face this too was her scarf her night gown was lifted up there was a lot of
00:08:39
evidence a lot of physical evidence at the crime scene Sean was found on Helen's body and collected during her
00:08:47
autopsy it was also found on the carpet where her body was found on and portions
00:08:54
of her clothing as well and a cutting from her gown she was wearing contained blood stains they were also blood stains
00:09:02
on her bed they found three fingerprints at least three fingerprints found throughout the apartment that they did
00:09:09
not have a match for or any reasonable explanation why they would be there a knife was also left at the crime scene
00:09:16
and this contained fingerprints other than Helen's the knife came from Helen's kitchen so when you see a scene like
00:09:24
this Captain the first thoughts are someone broke into this home clearly in the middle of the night she
00:09:31
must have been sleeping in the bedroom he surprises her using a knife to probably try to control the victim and
00:09:40
the fight for whatever reason the scuffle ends in the living room where her body is eventually found the next
00:09:48
morning did they know if the unidentified fingerprints match the prince on the knife that's a good
00:09:54
question and I don't have a solid answer for you Captain because of the word in the information that we have it would
00:10:03
seem to me that this individual whoever committed this crime or individuals that
00:10:09
committed this crime at least one of them was not wearing any type of gloves to try to hide their fingerprints
00:10:15
because we found these on the knife itself right the other fingerprints that were found throughout the apartment I'm
00:10:22
guessing belong to the same individual but there is no definitive statement that I saw that says yes this is all
00:10:29
from the same individual there was a significant amount of cash and valuables that were found in her apartment meaning
00:10:39
that anybody that broke in that night during this attack could have loaded up on cash and other valuables before
00:10:46
leaving her apartment but for whatever reason did not and you could say maybe they didn't know that these things were
00:10:53
here or there but a quick search of her small apartment would have found it at least $1,300 in cash and other valuables
00:11:02
it's also a different time at that time period a lot of people kept cash on them
00:11:07
nowadays I just walk out of my house with my debit card I don't even carry cash on my person yeah and there was
00:11:14
$300 cash in the top drawer of her dresser in her bedroom that anybody could have found now blood type corology
00:11:22
at the time this is 1985 was considered to be the top scientific method to solve crimes when
00:11:29
the perpetrator left blood hair with follicles and or semen at the crime scene there are four main human blood
00:11:36
types A B ab and O I have that tiger blood people are either secretors or nonsecretors and about 85% of the
00:11:47
population are secretors Wilson's rapist and murderer left semen at the murder scene now test revealed that the killer
00:11:57
was type B blood which which is more rare than the other types and a nonsecretor so this is really going to
00:12:04
limit the population you know we're not using DNA technology back then to solve crimes but this is going to limit how
00:12:12
many people could have possibly committed this crime that is a big help for your investigation so in this case
00:12:19
captain we're looking for someone with type B blood and a nonsecretor and the information that I have seen says that
00:12:26
back in 1985 only about one in 10 people carried this rare blood type according to police reports and this wasn't a
00:12:35
single apartment this was a apartment building somebody actually messed with the fuse box and it turned all the
00:12:42
lights off in the hallways yeah so police immediately believe that this is connected to the murder itself that this
00:12:50
wasn't just something that was a coincidence and from my understanding Captain there's at least three floors in
00:12:57
this building and her apartment apartment number four was on the second floor what this indicates to me is that
00:13:05
whoever perpetrated this crime had some kind of knowledge of this building the other thing too is you have to wonder
00:13:14
would the perpetrator have known or known of no matter how Loosely the victim themselves yeah it seems like a
00:13:22
targeted victim to me also by cutting out the power so there's no light in the hallway it gives her no way of knowing
00:13:32
if somebody let's say knocked on the door mhm and then she went to the door to see who it was she would have no way
00:13:40
of seeing out of her people and we have a situation to here where we can really kind of narrow down the time frame of
00:13:49
when the murder occurred first off if you do believe that the cutting of the lights this also affected the furnace in
00:13:57
the building too remember this is February in Nebraska so some of the residents woke up to apartments that
00:14:04
were extremely cold because at some point the heat just stopped kicking on well the other reason that you cut the
00:14:10
lights off too is as you're exiting the crime that if a neighbor went to see you
00:14:16
they would have a harder time identifying you and the way that we can narrow down the time frame of the murder
00:14:22
in the attack itself is we have relatives remember we have Helen Wilson she's older She's suffering from
00:14:30
pneumonia at the time she's not been feeling well they were kind of taking care of her some of her relatives they
00:14:36
were there till I believe 9:45 p.m. the night before to which she said to them before they left that she
00:14:44
would be going to bed shortly afterward there were some phone calls that were made to her apartment that night that
00:14:50
went unanswered we also have the situation of her relatives finding her the next morning when they're trying to
00:14:56
call and again getting no answer answer so we really only have a time frame of about 12 hours where this could have
00:15:04
taken place pretty large time frame though again there was a significant amount of cash that was found inside of
00:15:10
the apartment easily available to anybody that was in there and from the attack itself and from the forensic
00:15:17
evidence that we just described it's easy to believe that the perpetrator probably spent a good deal of time
00:15:24
inside of the apartment now in regards to some of the autopsy information I mean this was a brutal
00:15:34
attack that not only involved rape but from the coroner's opinion involved necrofilia after the fact they found
00:15:45
blood under her fingernails right that belonged to the perpetrator but her body was in bad
00:15:52
shape as we said there was a towel wrapped around her hands and wrist and the scarf was wrapped around her neck
00:15:58
and head covering her face she suffered traumatic fractures to her sternum left fifth and sixth ribs and the left
00:16:07
humorous she also had suffered abrasions to the face thorax and right knee and she had clear defensive wounds on her
00:16:16
hands and wrist consistent with sharp instrument lacerations well the more that you fight the more chance that you
00:16:23
have to collect DNA evidence on your body as bad as this attack was bu and as brutal as it sounds Captain there is
00:16:32
belief by the experts that say that they do not think that the perpetrator intended to kill the victim and the way
00:16:42
that they explain this and it doesn't makes sense on the surface now does it but the way that they explain it is they
00:16:49
think that the attacker simply wanted to rape and incapacitate the victim and then flee at some point the combination
00:16:57
of using all of that force and uh the scarf on her face and around her neck combined with the pneumonia that she was
00:17:05
suffering from was enough to sadly do her in well like you said there was some sign of
00:17:13
necrophiliac you wonder if the murderer even knew that she was dead yes that's exactly right and we need to really
00:17:22
focus in on this Blood evidence that was found and the science that's involved in
00:17:28
that as we said according to the police reports in 1985 only about one in 10 people carried this rare blood type
00:17:36
police really worked this case good and what's going to sound weird by the time we get to the end of this case you're
00:17:42
going to go Colonel what are you talking about Buddy when this case first took place when they found Helen Wilson's
00:17:50
body the investigating agency at that time was the beatric police department we have beatric police chief luck and
00:17:58
Roth and detective Sergeant Stevens who will be up front and center in regards to this case lucken Roth will be the one
00:18:07
that will speak with media and will oversee the investigation but detective Sergeant Stevens will be the one leading
00:18:15
the actual investigation and they had some information early on that led them to several suspects because of the
00:18:23
fingerprints you start questioning is this one murderer or a group well one of the individuals that they were looking
00:18:30
at was a man by the name of Bruce Smith who was kind of a Drifter he was a one-time resident of beatric who had
00:18:39
moved away and was back in town briefly right Bruce Smith Captain was the early Prime Suspect and I'm talking about
00:18:48
March 1985 about a month after the murder the way that Bruce Smith gets onto the radar
00:18:57
of the beatric Police Department is an individual comes forward and says hey I'm friends with this guy he was in town
00:19:05
and we spent the night at a bar drinking and he wouldn't shut up about wanting to
00:19:10
get laid that night well we end up hanging out with some old friends of ours and going to an Afterparty that
00:19:17
just keeps getting later and later in the night and we end up crashing at these young ladies Place Bruce Smith and
00:19:24
his friend are in their early to mid 20s in 19 1985 but something happens in the
00:19:30
middle of that night and what happens is one of these young ladies says hey you know I'm sleeping and Bruce Smith
00:19:41
attacked me attempted to rape me or sexually assault me in the middle of the night so basically we know that he's
00:19:48
this local creep and that he's back into town so they start going through a list
00:19:54
of people that are capable of something like this yeah well his friend is the one that brings Bruce Smith to the
00:20:01
attention of police because he says well some friend that is the way that that works out is when he tries to assault
00:20:08
this young woman she gives him the business and basically kicks his ass good for her and his quote unquote
00:20:16
friend or you know sometimes you think you're friends with somebody and then you learn who they really are and decide
00:20:22
we're not really friends uh this friend also joined in on kicking brw Smith's ass so much so that he then escorted
00:20:31
Bruce Smith out of their residence and decided you know what Bruce where you want to go I'm going to take you
00:20:36
somewhere and drop you off you can't stay here so he drops Bruce Smith off and he just says look I want to tell you
00:20:44
police this is what was going on that night I know she never reported the attack but I'm not saying that they're
00:20:50
connected I'm just letting you know that this is the type of guy that was here in
00:20:55
beatric that night and this is what I know he did that night that he attacked this other woman police love this lead
00:21:05
right they end up tracking down Bruce Smith and he was out of town I believe in fact out of state and they track him
00:21:11
down and talk with him and he's pretty Cooperative he says yes I was in town that night some things happened it was a
00:21:18
misunderstanding and he was willing to cooperate with their investigation yeah I'm sure it was a misunderstanding they
00:21:25
have law enforcement has this Blood tip that they know is going to rule out most
00:21:30
of the suspects so they say plain and simple anytime they are interviewing anybody about this case they say just
00:21:37
give us your blood give us some your your blood and your fingerprints I want to suck your blood and we will check
00:21:42
into the information and it will either clear you or it will keep you on our list Bruce Smith submits blood and
00:21:49
fingerprints to the police dep department they run a check on it and it turns out that Bruce Smith who is now
00:21:57
their Prime Suspect ECT tested and the forensic showed that he was in fact type B blood but he was a secretor so this
00:22:05
cleared him and he was free to go police are going to have to move on with their
00:22:10
investigation I I just wonder if that if you have two blood types one a secretor
00:22:15
one a non secretor if that would mess up the testing well you can have a mixed sample like you'd have like the victim's
00:22:23
blood was a secretor so somehow that gets tampered with the other blood and that would confuse the test yes you can
00:22:31
have a mixed sample when it comes to the forensics on these cases in fact that's
00:22:35
what we had in the Barbara blatnik case that we discussed uh a couple years ago about 90 days into beatric police chief
00:22:43
Don luck and Roth's homicide of Helen Wilson investigation police announced that phone tips and police suspicions
00:22:52
led to checks into 62 men now around this time Helen's daughter Jan was interviewed Jan said that the citizens
00:23:02
of beatric and others from around the area were very sympathetic to her and her family saying quote this town is
00:23:10
fantastic I've lived here all my life and the people are just wonderful and she spoke highly of law enforcement
00:23:17
Personnel working the case as well saying quote they've been nothing but considerate of our feelings right from
00:23:24
the start shortly after the murder of Helen Wilson her family established a reward fund being offered for
00:23:31
information leading to the arrest of the killer when Helen's family set up the reward it was for $11,000 but after 90
00:23:40
days and with the help of other contributors from members of the public the reward as of June of 1985 was just
00:23:48
over $3500 now Jan urged members of the elderly Community to take security precautions and asked that if anyone may
00:23:57
have seen something out of the ordinary on February 3rd and February 4th or if they know someone acting strange after
00:24:06
the murder to please contact beatric Police Department well the FBI also was brought into this case pretty quickly
00:24:14
they sent out just a single agent but like we said this is a very small town just a little over 12,000 people and
00:24:21
with that blood sample you're able to eliminate so much of the population there will be a lot of blame to be
00:24:30
thrown around here captain in what will ultimately be a horrific investigation into this murder
00:24:39
case what I want to point out one more time is police chief luck and Roth and the detective Stevens look at the work
00:24:48
that they're doing it's 1985 they are making sure that they collect all of the proper forensic evidence at the crime
00:24:54
scene that it's stored properly that it's tested and that that information is kept and
00:25:00
used to steer their investigation they're also bringing in other agencies they recognize look we're the beatric
00:25:08
police department this might be above our bar so let's bring in an expert and have them assist us or at least tell us
00:25:17
where to go with our investigation because we need a little guidance usually these things are solved within
00:25:23
48 to 72 hours let's bring in the FBI so the FBI say special agent Peter Kismet to speak with and work with the beatric
00:25:34
police department and he's going to put together an FBI profile a perpetrator profile on Helen Wilson's homicide
00:25:43
investigation in my summarized version of his profile reads as follows it is not likely that Helen Wilson was a
00:25:51
victim of a crime of opportunity it is possible the victim was surveilled or possibly known to the offender robbery
00:26:00
was definitely listen to that robbery was definitely not the motive for the attack or murder the knife used came
00:26:08
from inside the home this was used by the perpetrator to gain control of the victim this attack is definitely
00:26:15
connected to the same individual that committed the failed attacks on single elderly women a year and a half to two
00:26:24
years ago all right so I want to talk about this and break in here for a minute here Captain so you want to break
00:26:29
into your own conversation in beatric yes in 1983 there were several attacks that
00:26:38
were undetermined to be related or not where someone broke into a single elderly woman's home or apartment and
00:26:48
attempted to either rape them or assault them but was unsuccessful for whatever reason may have gotten scared off maybe
00:26:55
she fought back got spooked whatever ended up leaving the scene fleeing the scene this information was given to the
00:27:04
FBI when they were reviewing Helen Wilson's murder investigation and this is our special agent saying this attack
00:27:12
in his opinion was definitely connected to those three failed attacks that took place a year and a half to two years ago
00:27:20
he goes on to add these attacks took place in the middle of the night within blocks within blocks of Helen Wilson's
00:27:26
apartment mhm the killer may live alone he might live close to the murder scene and the previous attacks he's probably
00:27:35
unemployed if he does work it's unskilled labor he has a terrible self-image and is confused about his own
00:27:42
sexual identity between the last known attack the attempted rape in August of 1983 that's the last of the three
00:27:51
attacks that took place previously yeah and the murder of Helen Wilson in February of 1985 5 the attacker may have
00:27:59
left town for a new job joined the military or been busted for prowling somewhere it goes on to say that there's
00:28:06
a strong possibility that the killer hated or resented older women and probably had a terrible relationship
00:28:13
with his mother oh not his mother he may have experienced emotional abuse or torment from his mother grandmother or
00:28:20
some other older female relative this attack rape and murder was most definitely committed by one single m
00:28:27
male perpetrator the man that you are looking for is most likely a white male short or of medium height in his early
00:28:35
20s thin a high school dropout considered a loner viewed as odd or wimpy in school and came from a broken
00:28:43
home he owns pornography and likely spent time in a juvenile facility or underwent counseling he has engaged in
00:28:51
fetish burglaries and or window peeping if he has not been arrested for these types of crimes he did it without being
00:28:58
caught he is sloppy he is dressed poorly he has bad hygiene he knew the area and
00:29:04
possibly the building he had a well planned Escape Route and did not feel that he would be
00:29:11
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00:31:18
cheers cheers to you people in the front the people in the back the people in the
00:31:23
bathroom cheers to you too wash your hands and that man wearing the red shirt you know somebody that's going to freak
00:31:30
him out how did the captain know was wearing a red shirt it's cuz we can see you I can see you Captain now's the
00:31:36
point in the story where we have to introduce Beret Cersei who is berett Cersei well he's an individual that was
00:31:45
a one-time beatric police officer and then goes on to become a private investigator and afterward he will then
00:31:52
become a deputy for the Gage County Sheriff's Office now I do not know this individual obviously but he comes off to
00:32:02
me as somebody who thinks of himself as one of these famous detectives that you see on TV you know fictional detectives
00:32:11
that you might see on HBO or on Netflix solving the unsolvable murder of the small town that he lives in Old Frank
00:32:20
dbon what happens in this situation is we have the beatric police department that's doing good work in their
00:32:28
investigation and they keep coming up with suspects and Persons of Interest and they're using the blood evidence
00:32:34
that they found at the scene to clear these individuals it's pretty simple right we have very unique evidence so
00:32:43
when we have that very unique evidence and we go okay well this guy is po this guy possibly could have done it or this
00:32:51
these people could have possibly done it and you go talk to them and you find out
00:32:56
hey they don't have a Alibi let's get them to test the evidence and so when they test against
00:33:03
the evidence they have to rule that individual out it's pretty simple just like what we saw with Bruce Smith the
00:33:08
police the beatric police department really liked him for this murder he gave his blood they test it it doesn't match
00:33:15
up 100% they move on to the next guy what ends up happening here though is because they keep clearing individuals
00:33:23
the case drags on for months and then for years in fact berdette Cersei does not become
00:33:30
a deputy at the sheriff's office until this case is a couple of years old mhm he is an obsessed officer obsessed with
00:33:41
the murder of Helen Wilson and obsessed with solving it he was considered by the
00:33:47
beatric police department to be an average cop it sounds to me like a lot of the other officers didn't care for
00:33:54
him much that he was hard to work with with and difficult to get along with that might be why he ended up being a
00:34:00
private investigator for a while and then he gets hired as a sheriff he did try to get back on at beatric but they I
00:34:08
don't know if they turned him down or if he was offered the deputy job before that was worked out so berett Cersei is
00:34:17
determined to solve the murder of Helen Wilson and look I love a good passionate
00:34:24
detective who is for the people and looking to right or wrong and bring Justice to uh any of our victims here so
00:34:32
I don't want to sound like I'm coming down on that side of it yeah but sometimes passion turns into stupidity
00:34:38
but what we're going to see here Captain is a situation where I think this man's
00:34:43
Obsession may have taken him over and I will cite just some of the portions of this investigation or his
00:34:50
investigation as it unfolds here so first he has information or claim claims that he has information from a young
00:34:59
woman named Lisa pendorf now this Lisa pendorf will go on to be labeled as informant number one
00:35:08
and I have a summarized version of the story that she told to Cersei Lisa stated that at approximately
00:35:16
7:30 or 8 a.m. on February 6th 1985 while she was standing in Charles Park located by the junior high school
00:35:26
in the city of the atress Nebraska that she was approached by Joanne Taylor who began to visit with her she stated that
00:35:35
during their conversation she noted that there were several police cars in and about the apartment building located
00:35:41
across the street from the high school building and that she had made a comment to Joanne Taylor that she wondered why
00:35:50
all of the police cars were at that location to which Joanne Taylor then replied oh haven't you heard there was
00:35:58
an older lady killed there last night Lisa asked Joanne Taylor what had happened and Joan Taylor stated to her
00:36:04
that an older lady was killed there and that she was killed by Suffocation Lisa asked how Joanne knew that information
00:36:14
Joanne stated that I know that because Joseph White and myself did it Lisa replied back to Joanne oh sure in
00:36:23
disbelief and Joanne Taylor said look I can tell you where the lady is lying and
00:36:30
what happened to her Joanne then advised her that the woman could be found lying
00:36:35
in her living room near a hallway on her back with her hands bound and that her face would be covered with an Afghan
00:36:44
Lisa made a comment to Joanne oh sure I'll bet you did it right Joanne Taylor then replied to Lisa hey look I can
00:36:51
prove it I can even tell you the color of the foot stol that's Lying by the body and Joanne Taylor proceeded to
00:36:59
state that there would be a foot stol Lying by the body turned upside down and that the foot stol was vinyl covered
00:37:06
green in color so there's a lot of information in that general statement that Lisa pendorf provided to brette
00:37:14
Cersei at his request some of that information is factual crime scene information and some
00:37:23
of it is incorrect yeah [ __ ] we do need to point out that this is information that Cersei says he received
00:37:32
shortly after the homicide but then received it again years later from this same Source one of the problems with
00:37:41
this Lisa's statement is right from Jump Street where she says at approximately 7:30 to 8:00 a.m. on February 6th she's
00:37:51
standing there she talks to Joan Taylor and they're discussing all of the police
00:37:54
cars across the street that that are in front of that apartment building well we
00:37:59
know that Helen Wilson's body was not discovered until 9:29 a.m. there were no police cars there during the time that
00:38:07
she say she was having this conversation and that police cars were there right the information about where the body was
00:38:14
located in the apartment was correct the banner of death was correct in fact the
00:38:19
stool kicked over lying on its side near the body was correct as well this is going to prompt deputy Cersei to
00:38:27
believing well by Jo I've got it I've finally solved the unsolvable murder of our small town well but every time you
00:38:36
know in his defense if you're if you hear this rumor years ago and now this rumor is creeping back up you start
00:38:44
thinking that maybe there's some weight there to it well and in a move that I don't love but I guess you know
00:38:50
sometimes if something's not getting solved you got to get other people involved the Sheriff's Office knowing
00:38:55
this information now they're determined to take over this case and I imagine they were probably assisting the beatric
00:39:02
police department along the way up to this point but basically what you have here
00:39:08
Captain is the beatric police department in particular detective Stevens and the police chief they are
00:39:15
now telling the sheriff and his Deputy Cersei like we understand that you have this information from this Lisa pendorf
00:39:26
we know who she is she's not a reliable honest person right this is not somebody
00:39:33
that we would take important information from you know this is stuff that you do
00:39:38
collect and you investigate it and you look into it and it's quickly it's usually quickly brushed aside because
00:39:46
there's no there's no weight there's no credit nothing backing it up and that was Steven's concern in regards to the
00:39:54
statements that were given to Cersei in fact he goes on to say another officer goes on to tell Cersei and warn Cersei
00:40:03
watch out what she's saying to you because this is a person who's not only unreliable but of very limited
00:40:09
intelligence right Cersei takes this her statement to be gospel that now we have
00:40:16
Joanne Taylor and her friend Joseph white who committed this crime so now this is going to lead Cersei to to
00:40:26
interviewing Joanne Taylor and this Joseph white so again they have this let's call
00:40:34
her eyewitness Alisa pendorf years earlier she's telling a story now she's kind of telling the same
00:40:41
story but everybody has dismissed the story because of her character and and she's just not a believable Source but
00:40:52
for some reason they're going to take her as a source now and run with this well not only that we have Cersei the
00:41:01
deputy Cersei who is now telling the sheriff's office that he works for look my confidential informants I have more
00:41:09
than one not just this Lisa person but they've given me information that has assisted in identifying several persons
00:41:17
who are known in the area where the Wilson homicide occurred so in addition to this Joseph
00:41:26
white and Joanne Taylor Cersei is now telling the sheriff's office that this investigation
00:41:32
has led him to consider Thomas Winslow Cliff Sheldon Mark Goodson Beth Johnson Debbie Brown and Charlotte mindenhall
00:41:43
also known as Charlotte Bishop as Persons of Interest in this case at this time at this time he's not necessarily
00:41:53
saying that all of these individuals did in fact commit the the murder right but
00:41:59
these are all Persons of Interest to him based off of information that he's been
00:42:04
told by you know these could be local gossip people they could be rumors that are going around town but whatever he's
00:42:13
hearing is leading him to believe that some of these individuals are involved in Helen Wilson's homicide well and
00:42:21
sometimes when you have a especially a local case and very small community you start hearing these rumors but you might
00:42:29
have okay one or two of these individuals or The Killers but we know that they were all at a party at some
00:42:37
point and this story was shared so all these individuals know about the crime the interesting thing here Captain is
00:42:44
now we have eight individuals that Cersei is concerned with as being possible Persons of Interest and he's
00:42:50
going to have to investigate each one of these individuals at the very least check into the their whereabouts see if
00:42:55
they have have aliis maybe obtain blood from each one of them in fingerprints interview them figure out who to leave
00:43:05
on his list of suspects or include on his list of suspects and who to eliminate so as he's investigating these
00:43:13
Persons of Interest he verified that on the night of the homicide one of his Persons of Interest Cliff Sheldon was at
00:43:21
a hospital and Beth Johnson was at her parents okay so they seem to have pretty good aliis Mark Goodson told Cersei that
00:43:31
he was out of town on the night of the homicide and it appears that Cersei believed Goodson's statement sounds like
00:43:38
Cersei is's willing to believe just about anything right Thomas winow claimed that he was working at a truck
00:43:44
stop on the night of the homicide but we have some information where Cersei does
00:43:50
some good work here he actually finds out later that this Thomas Winslow called in sick
00:43:56
that night so while Winslow may have thought that he was at work or at least was using that as a false Alibi Cersei
00:44:05
finds information to determine that that in fact is not correct and he does not have an alibi at this point in the
00:44:12
investigation they went from thinking that maybe eight people were involved or knew something about the crime to five
00:44:19
people that could be involved or know something about the crime and he's really going to hone in on three of
00:44:24
these characters in particular and that's going to be Joseph white Joanne Taylor who he's already been told by
00:44:32
Lisa were there and committed that murder and now he is interested in this Winslow guy because remember he does not
00:44:41
have an alibi for that night he does a little more digging into Winslow and figures out that he has a previous
00:44:49
arrest record it's all kind of Pretty Petty stuff but of interest on his arrest record is a situ ation where
00:44:57
someone kicked in a door to an elderly woman's home in the middle of the night she calls it in police show up on the
00:45:05
scene and they find a man walking in the area well this is that winow character so he's brought in and actually charged
00:45:14
with some kind of misdemeanor of menacing or vandalism vandalism something of that nature well he sees
00:45:21
that on Winslow's record and he says you know what this is a clear indicator that he was probably trying to break
00:45:28
into that woman's home so that he could rape and maybe even kill or Rob the woman that night yeah and his little PE
00:45:35
brain he's going got him got him to Winslow's credit he says he was simply just walking in the area when police
00:45:43
showed up he was the only one there so they believed that he in fact was the one that was guilty of kicking in This
00:45:49
Woman's door well and as they're doing more digging too they figure out that Joseph White and Joanne Taylor the ones
00:45:56
that he believes are responsible for these murders left town just a little bit after the murders took place that
00:46:04
information is true and that's certainly going to make them look guilty to Deputy
00:46:09
Cersei what we have here Captain is a situation where Winslow gets himself into some kind of trouble he ends up
00:46:16
being involved in a pretty brutal robbery that takes place and it sounds like Winslow was kind of the lookout man
00:46:24
and this robbery goes bad and his partner ends up severely assaulting the man that was robbed so Winslow is facing
00:46:34
now decades in prison for this violent robbery that he was involved in this is going to be cersei's in right he's going
00:46:43
to be able to go to the jail while this guy's waiting for his trial and he's going to be able to talk with him and he
00:46:48
says to him look I know that you have some kind of information in regards to the homicide of Helen Wilson tell me
00:46:56
what you know do you know a Joanne Taylor yes do you know a Joseph white yes you're friends with them I was
00:47:03
friends with them a long time ago I was friends with them four years ago just before they left town shortly after the
00:47:09
murder what ends up happening is after a long interview process Winslow is now saying and getting an opportunity to get
00:47:19
off of this long prison sentence for the violent robbery if he agrees to say that
00:47:26
Joseph White and Joanne Taylor told him that they committed the homicide and that is why they were leaving town right
00:47:33
because at this point we have Lisa that we can't believe even everybody in town saying we can't believe her but if we
00:47:40
have her saying it and another person saying it now we have two people going to be able to testify against Joseph and
00:47:48
Joanne today we will be recommending failure of Justice by John fck this book is fantastic on the case and it's a
00:47:58
really long process here Captain how they get from the FBI telling them one single male perpetrator committed this
00:48:07
crime to now we're up to three people right we're we're we're at two people were involved and one guy Winslow knows
00:48:16
about it and because he's facing a lengthy prison sentence he's all more than happy to throw his former friends
00:48:22
under the bus and say yeah they told me they were getting out of Dodge because they committed the murder right
00:48:28
interview after interview after interview he wants to know that they told him details they didn't just tell
00:48:36
you that they committed the crime and they're they're leaving town did they no they told you intimate details didn't
00:48:40
they tell you this that the other thing he's feeding Winslow information to help
00:48:47
fill in a lot of the blanks and give him details unknown to the public details about the homicide the rape and the
00:48:55
attack itself self showing him pictures of the crime scene well we see this all the time you know look at West Memphis 3
00:49:03
or whatever where it's like oh well they oh well they use this weapon and the the
00:49:08
cops go um you sure it was that weapon you sure it wasn't a knife you sure it wasn't this and they just kind of Point
00:49:15
them into the correct d Direction armed with this information they are going to go back to their original suspects
00:49:22
Joseph White and Joanne Taylor to which Joseph white he says look I'm innocent I do not know what you're
00:49:29
talking about I didn't kill any woman I didn't do it with Joanne Taylor I didn't
00:49:33
leave town because I killed a woman I I have no involvement in this at all and furthermore they don't have any evidence
00:49:40
that Joseph white did this other than this confession from this Winslow guy they just received and it's you know a
00:49:49
little bit of information that turns into a lot of information but then you have these fingerprints and you go how
00:49:54
about we test these finger fingerprints and this Blood evidence well that's the thing what happens is the blood evidence
00:50:00
doesn't match Joseph white the fingerprints don't match Joseph white well that's okay because we now know
00:50:06
that two people were there so does the blood match Joanne Taylor no did the fingerprints match Joanne Taylor no
00:50:16
wellow must be somebody else there Winslow knew about this crime he says that he knew about it maybe he knows
00:50:23
more than what he's telling us maybe he was there that night too and helped the two of them commit this crime maybe he
00:50:29
was actually even involved in the murder and rape itself now we're up to three people tied together being involved in
00:50:36
the murder and rape they test Thomas Winslow's blood it doesn't match the fingerprints do not match at some point
00:50:43
you'd start going hey all these uh NOS equal they're not involved but he doesn't stop there he
00:50:51
goes okay well now we got these three suspects but they don't match so while they knew about the crime possibly were
00:50:59
there so now I need to find another individual that actually matches the evidence through this they will get a
00:51:07
confession from Joanne Taylor and Thomas Winslow Thomas winow goes from just knowing about the crime
00:51:15
to now he's completely involved and he's confessing that he was in fact there and
00:51:19
was involved in the attack itself their stories are all a little you know they're not 100% lining up but they're
00:51:27
close Joan Taylor and Thomas Winslow's stories are close and what's interesting to me here Captain is that these are
00:51:33
fairly detailed actually not fairly they're very detailed accounts of what went down that night how much of that
00:51:41
information was fed to them is certainly to be called into question now note Joseph
00:51:47
white is still proclaiming innocence he never confesses to anything he never implicates anybody else in the homicide
00:51:55
and in fact he even says I believe you I was with Joanne Taylor that night so she
00:51:59
couldn't have committed the crime or committed it with anybody else through the statements that they get from Joanne
00:52:07
Taylor and the altered statements that they get from Thomas Winslow they will go on to implicate a Deborah Sheldon and
00:52:15
James Dean so now we have five individuals that committed this rape and homicide and what is cersei's theory the
00:52:24
theory is that Winslow white and Taylor had prior knowledge of the victim and prior
00:52:33
knowledge of her belongings and that she would have money and that they went there to Rob this elderly woman the
00:52:40
robbery then turned into a rape and a murder keep in mind right the FBI who originally assisted the beatric police
00:52:51
department who again was doing good work on the case before before the sheriff's
00:52:55
office took it over told the police department this is almost certainly a single male perpetrator and the motive
00:53:04
was definitely not robbery yeah single male now we're having females involved and there're we're up to five people
00:53:13
right well now and again the nose the amount of nose that they got the nose knows the nose NOS now with the addition
00:53:22
of Deborah Sheldon and James Dean we have two possible people that we can connect the fingerprints and blood
00:53:28
evidence to and again it's more nose no way it doesn't match the blood of Sheldon or James Dean come on if the
00:53:37
glove don't fit you must have quit we have a shirt that will tell you differently um the interesting thing
00:53:46
here though Captain is now we still need to find somebody that the blood evidence
00:53:50
will match right we're up to five perpetrators and no nobody's matched the blood well let's keep going why stop at
00:53:59
5 there's an interesting little tidbit to this whole story and part of that is that Thomas Winslow for about a week
00:54:07
maybe a few nights to a week stayed at the home of Kathy Gonzalez Kathy Gonzalez lived on the third floor of the
00:54:16
apartment building in fact directly above our victim Helen Wilson It is believed that Gonzalez and Winslow
00:54:26
because of this Arrangement he stayed there crashing on her couch for a few days she was trying to help him out
00:54:32
because he was basically homeless after his girlfriend dumped him and kicked him
00:54:36
out of her place get out you son of a [ __ ] so now Cersei believes that this provided knowledge about the victim and
00:54:44
her apartment and her belongings from Kathy Gonzalez and Thomas wio so they track down this Kathy Gonzalez she is
00:54:54
adamant I did not have anything to do with this I remember exactly what I was doing that night because the next
00:54:59
morning was very strange for me they found a murder victim a person that I knew that I lived near how could I
00:55:06
forget what I was doing she said that she had done laundry watched a movie went to bed and that winow was not
00:55:12
living at her residence at that time she had kicked him out too it goes from Kathy Gonzales doing laundry and
00:55:20
watching a movie that night to her confessing to being involved in the murder as well in implicating all of
00:55:27
these same people that have been implicated by the others six people will ultimately be charged with the murder of
00:55:34
Helen Wilson five of them confessed to being involved and confessed that the others were involved as well Kathy
00:55:42
Gonzalez her blood matched but not 100% And so we I thought the blood was from a male well the blood evidence is
00:55:53
not going to suggest if it's male or female they're not doing DNA evidence we're saying hey we got fingerprints and
00:56:00
we have blood evidence and we have seen so we know the semen's from a man so we're going to assume that the blood is
00:56:07
from a man as well that's what the FBI is stating and to be clear the forensics that were conducted the tests that were
00:56:16
conducted on the blood evidence found at the scene and the forensic evidence found at the scene they were conducted
00:56:23
in the state of Nebraska not by the FBI Kathy Gonzalez her blood matches but it's not a 100% match but it's close
00:56:32
enough for Cersei and the Sheriff's Office to continue with their charging these six individuals with homicide now
00:56:41
what their statement is going to be is that because we have so many perpetrators plus we have a victim that
00:56:47
they weren't going to be able to get a 100% match because it's probably a a mixture some kind of of blood mixture
00:56:56
yeah that makes sense the confessions the five confessions are what will ultimately win over these convictions of
00:57:04
all six of these individuals and in fact John fck says this in his book and I have to Echo this belief of his that if
00:57:12
the death penalty did not exist in Nebraska at the time I don't know that they would have gotten all these
00:57:18
confessions or any of them for that matter because the death penalty was what was the threat to these individuals
00:57:25
that took them from not being involved to confessing to being involved in a brutal homicide and I don't want to get
00:57:32
into opinions on death penalty for against that's not what we're here to discuss just know that that was used as
00:57:39
leverage against these individuals plus we also have a group that's really kind of a group of down andout people you
00:57:47
know some people that have had tough upbringings have had bad situations some that are not quite all there some that
00:57:53
are easily impressionable yeah but what they do is they use multiple people against each other not just one in one
00:58:01
if it's one in one you start thinking well it's he said she said once these law enforcement officers are saying look
00:58:08
we know you're involved and if you don't cooperate like the others are cooperating we're going to give you the
00:58:16
death penalty so then you're going to start contemplating in your head well I'm innocent of the crime I definitely
00:58:23
don't want to die because of it so if I go along with the others then at least I'm alive in prison and I have a
00:58:32
fighting chance to get out in 1989 the six that will go on to be known as the beatric six were arrested for the crime
00:58:41
of murder ultimately all six are charged and convicted and they will all serve pretty lengthy prison sentences now this
00:58:50
will be up until they are all all six of them exonerated in 2009 and the reason for this is that in
00:59:01
2008 DNA evidence implicated to a 100% certainty that Bruce Allen Smith the original prime suspect in the murder was
00:59:12
the sole perpetrator of this rape and homicide but I thought his blood didn't match but what we have here Captain is
00:59:18
that Bruce Allen Smith was eliminated by testing performed by later disgraced lab
00:59:25
analyst Joyce Gilchrist so she just did a shoddy job with her testing and her findings in her
00:59:33
test now unfortunately even though we've proven that Bruce Allen Smith committed
00:59:38
this homicide he could not be prosecuted because he died in Oklahoma back in 1992 so he's dead and gone while these
00:59:47
other individuals are sitting in prison for this murder charge now out of the six the way it works is some of them got
00:59:54
only 10 years and some of them got like 40 years and others got life in prison that's correct we have white who
01:00:02
received life in prison the two males were charged uh most heavily charged because they were the ones that were
01:00:10
implicated by the others as committing the rape and the murder itself right unfortunately in
01:00:18
201 Joseph white was killed in a construction accident at work and and the state agreed to pay compensation to
01:00:29
all of these individuals who served time in prison so there was a lawsuit that was filed against the Gage County uh
01:00:37
Gage County Nebraska it was actually dismissed a couple of times uh before it finally went through there was a trial
01:00:44
for the lawsuit and the jury awarded millions and millions of dollars to not only the five that remain but also to
01:00:53
Joseph White's heirs now this is not a extremely wealthy County right and so the county was forced to raise
01:01:04
taxes so that they could pay back the beatric 6 for the wrongful conviction well it's sad in this case too because
01:01:16
again law enforcement you have all these Force confessions at some point I mean how
01:01:21
many people do you have to have involved and this case I just don't understand how somebody in law enforcement could
01:01:30
it's almost like they had to make up the story as they went along and that's what
01:01:33
Cersei was doing and a little bit in his defense I'm not going to come to his defense too much but when you have these
01:01:40
suspicions and you have this completely bogus theory that he believed I I believe that he actually believed his
01:01:47
own Theory yeah why I believe that you believe that he believed his own Theory and the problem then becomes he starts
01:01:53
finding people that are going along with this Theory and filling in a lot of the blanks along
01:02:01
the way now they got to some of these fill in the blanks they got some of these blanks filled in by some
01:02:07
questionable Behavior you know you had a uh psychologist that was involved that was telling people you know well you
01:02:16
probably blocked it out you know you could have been there and completely blocked it out just because you don't
01:02:20
remember it doesn't mean you didn't do it that you weren't there and and they started relying on a lot of the
01:02:27
confessions a lot of the portions of the confessions that implicated themselves and the the others came from first the
01:02:34
notion of well the police tell me I was there so I must have been there and then
01:02:38
secondly it goes to they were taking information that some of the individuals said that they were they were having
01:02:45
dreams about the crime so they must have been there right and but I also want to
01:02:50
know how much force was used and that's that's something that law enforcement would know you see what I'm saying like
01:02:57
if if I'm going into the interview and I and within an hour or so I I start getting people to
01:03:05
confess yes we all know that innocent people will confess to crimes they didn't commit but I'm going to start
01:03:11
going well that was pretty easy so maybe I am on to something and what I'm saying
01:03:16
is we don't know those details of of how the interrogations went well if you want
01:03:22
to know the details check out John F's book because he details that in his book and what we do learn is that I don't
01:03:31
believe that there was any type of force or abuse that was used I mean I shouldn't say any type of abuse because
01:03:37
there was certainly some type of abuse but I would put that more on the mental and emotional aspect of really kind of
01:03:45
trying to Corral these individuals and convincing them that they did in fact do this and altering their own statements
01:03:53
and giving it back to them we're talking about a situation where we have multiple
01:03:57
individuals that were interviewed multiple times over series of days and weeks and and so on and so forth and a
01:04:06
lot of them started off with the story that they were innocent and had nothing to do with it and over time after being
01:04:11
interviewed over and over and over again and sitting with the police psychologist
01:04:16
and being hypnotized and this that and the other thing it morphs into this weird situation of they go from being in
01:04:24
to yeah I was guilty and they're guilty too but that's what drives me nuts about
01:04:29
some of the these law enforcement and some of these detectives it's the level of manipulation it's the level of
01:04:37
manipulations that you have to use on these individuals and multiple individuals to get any kind of
01:04:43
confession at some point you should understand that you're only getting that confession because of the manipulation
01:04:48
not because it's the truth [Music] [Applause] all right thanks for joining us here in
01:05:05
the garage and if you are freak nasty make sure you check out off the record our bonus show that comes out every
01:05:13
other week but only do so if you're nasty Colonel do we have any recommended reading for this week yes sir Captain
01:05:21
obviously this week we will be recommending failure of Justice a brutal murder and an obsessed cop and six
01:05:27
wrongful convictions by John fck you can find that wonderful title and many others on our website true Crim
01:05:34
garage.com click on the recommended page this book is incredible this is a very convoluted and difficult to understand
01:05:43
story because there's so many people involved there's so many different confessions John fck did an amazing job
01:05:50
of laying this case out in really detailing every portion of this case an investigation that ultimately took over
01:05:59
4 years so make sure you check out failure of Justice by John F it's also available on Audible so you can check it
01:06:08
out there I'm actually listening to it right now as we speak as we record make sure you join us back here in the garage
01:06:16
next week until then be good be kind and don't live [Music] Angie's List is now Angie and we've
01:06:57
heard a lot of theories about why I thought it was an Eco move for your worse less paper no it was so you could
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say it faster no it's to be more iconic must be a tech thing but those aren quite right it's because now you can
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compare upfront prices book a service instantly and even get your project handled from start to finish sounds easy
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it is and it makes us so much more than just a list get started at angie.com that's a GI or download the app today