00:00:08
this is true crime garage and this is The Killing Fields trilogy [Music] thank you
00:00:44
[Music] Interstate 45 or I-45 is a Highway located entirely in the state of Texas
00:01:15
the interstate is just over 280 miles in length and connects two major U.S cities
00:01:22
Dallas and Houston from Houston the highway continues Southeast down to Galveston
00:01:29
there is a portion of I-45 that is known to Houston residents as the Gulf Freeway
00:01:35
a short elevated section of I-45 and Southern downtown Houston is known as Pierce elevated
00:01:42
and a 50-mile stretch of desolate land between Houston and Galveston is called the highway of hell
00:01:49
a mile from I-45 lies a 25-acre patch of land that borders the Calder oil field this is known to all as the Texas
00:01:58
Killing Field it is just rugged Wasteland but it is here that for decades the dead have
00:02:06
appeared starting in the early 1970s and to this day many bodies of murder victims have
00:02:13
been found within this area and the killing field many girls and young women have gone
00:02:19
missing several have never been found there are some similarities in these cases
00:02:26
all the victims are pretty young girls and women between the ages of 12 and 23. and most of the located victims were
00:02:33
found in or around water the Texas Killing Fields murders will involve three different counties and 12
00:02:41
different law enforcement agencies have worked these cases including the FBI despite exhaustive efforts very few of
00:02:49
these murders have been solved many officers say that the 50-mile stretch is the perfect Dumping Ground
00:02:55
for serial killers and the killing field has been described as a place that even
00:03:00
if you yelled no one would hear you and if you ran there wouldn't be anywhere to
00:03:04
go this is the perfect place for killing someone and getting away with it the disappearances abductions and
00:03:12
murders span over 30 years Welcome to The Killing Fields trilogy [Music] foreign
00:03:32
[Music] thank you part one the 1970s by the 1970s America knew all about crime she had experienced so much of it
00:03:57
in her young history the 1960s was the decade of the assassination we lost so many great leaders of men and
00:04:05
women during that decade Texas was home to one of the worst when John F Kennedy was shot dead in front of a crowd of
00:04:11
people in Dallas on November 22 1963. in the 1970s America would become aware of
00:04:19
monsters that had been around since the beginning but were lurking quietly in the shadows
00:04:24
the serial killers this was to be the decade when America and the world would learn about Ted
00:04:32
Bundy John Gacy and David Berkowitz and again Texas would be home to one of the worst
00:04:39
some called him the Galveston killer where the purple passion killer many said he didn't have a name or that he
00:04:47
had several whoever he was he traveled the I-45 Highway and he played in The Killing
00:04:53
Fields June 1971 thirteen-year-old Colette Wilson vanished after being dropped off
00:05:02
at a bus stop after her school band practice before her mother could pick her up
00:05:08
someone else did a couple weeks after Colette's Disappearance in July Brenda Jones just
00:05:15
14. disappeared while on her way to visit a sick relative at Galveston General Hospital which is right off of
00:05:22
Interstate 45. October 1971 Gloria Gonzalez 19. the grocery store bookkeeper left on
00:05:32
vacation and that was the last time she was seen alive in November Debbie Ackerman and Maria
00:05:39
Johnson best friends were last seen together outside of an ice cream store January of 1973
00:05:47
Kimberly Pitchford 16 years old walked out of a driver's education class she was going to call her mother for a
00:05:55
ride home but she never did she was never heard from again Brooks brycewell and Georgia gear from
00:06:02
Dickinson Texas were last seen at a convenience store in September of the following year
00:06:08
twelve-year-old Suzanne Bowers was abducted as she walked home in May of 1977. 11 victims in total
00:06:17
at the time authorities believed the killings were all the work of a single killer
00:06:21
most of the victims were similar in appearance and most were found near or in bodies of water
00:06:27
several of these cases would be a nightmare to investigate as the area only had scattered small towns and the
00:06:34
police did not share information freely or compare notes sure a nightmare to investigate
00:06:41
but more so a nightmare for the communities to endure the loss fear had set in for Galveston and the surrounding area
00:06:49
murder had come to town this was only the beginning Welcome to The Killing Fields trilogy
00:06:57
[Music] 1971 Colette Wilson was one of ten children they lived in Alvin Texas Colette's father Thomas was a dentist
00:07:23
Colette had just finished the seventh grade and that summer she was attending band camp at a local high school on
00:07:30
Thursday June 17th at 12 30 PM in the afternoon her band director dropped her off at Highway 6 and County Road 99 her
00:07:40
mother arrived at 12 36 PM but Colette was nowhere to be found when she accompanied her mother Claire to the bus
00:07:47
stop to pick up her older sister Colette Alice said in an interview we thought maybe she had gotten a ride with someone
00:07:54
else so we called all of her friends that lived nearby they were unable to find any sign of Colette and the family
00:08:01
knew something must be terribly wrong they reported the girl missing but unfortunately the authorities labeled
00:08:07
her a runaway Colette was just 13 years old at this time which seems a little young to be labeled someone who might
00:08:14
run away just in my opinion well it's very irresponsible so regardless of what the authorities thought that didn't stop
00:08:21
the Wilson family from taking out an Alvin Texas map and organizing volunteer volunteers who would search the area for
00:08:28
the next three weeks Colette's little sister recalls the agony she said the best thing that they could do was kneel
00:08:35
around Colette's bed and pray every day and night saying it held them together during the long months as they searched
00:08:42
for Colette a couple weeks after Colette's disappearance on July 1st Brenda Jones who's just 14 years old she
00:08:50
left her house now Brenda's family didn't have much money they didn't have a car Brenda's mother and her sisters
00:08:56
relied on public transportation to make their way about Brenda disappeared after a visit to a
00:09:03
sick relative at Galveston General Hospital which is right off of Interstate 45. now the bus driver would
00:09:10
later confirm to police and investigators that Brenda had made it to the bus stop the bus had dropped her off
00:09:17
there so this is on her way back home she arrived at the bus stop this means she disappeared just blocks from her
00:09:24
house Brenda's mother reported her as missing that night however police told her that they would not file the report
00:09:31
because it was too soon she had not been missing long enough and she would probably turn up sooner rather
00:09:37
than later right and this is in the 70s these laws would be changed later yeah and this is something we will see and
00:09:44
have seen throughout the course of the 70s you know often when a kid goes missing especially a teenager the
00:09:51
authorities immediately believe that they've run away or they've just taken off with some friends because I'm sure
00:09:56
that's what happens ninety percent of the time regardless you got to take these reports seriously so now we have
00:10:02
Colette which is 13 years old her family is looking for and now we have 14 year old Brenda that her family's looking for
00:10:10
her as well yeah and Brenda's family did not have to look too long her body was found the next day the day after she had
00:10:18
gone missing she was found floating in Galveston Bay close to the Sea Wolf Parkway and near I-45 her body was nude
00:10:27
and she had died from manual strangulation now there are a lot of websites out there a lot of hacks out there that have
00:10:34
reported that Brenda died from a head wound but this is just simply not true if you go and do the research in this
00:10:41
case you will find that her cause of death uh to be head wound don't email that to us later email the the creator
00:10:48
of that website because that information is wrong right by how many autopsies have we seen that were wrong right now
00:10:55
I'm just reporting what's been seen on several websites that have covered this case the information that we have is
00:11:01
from a very credible Source who has reviewed the actual autopsy so that's why I'm going to go with well I'm just
00:11:07
you know stating oh I mean if you know Fami Malik is doing these autopsies I mean we're all screwed well the night
00:11:15
that Brenda had gone missing she was wearing sandals the kind with the long laces that you can wrap up around your
00:11:21
ankles and shins like the Caesar well someone had ripped the laces from those sandals and used them to bind Brenda's
00:11:29
feet and wrist the medical examiner made a strange Discovery someone had forcibly
00:11:34
stuffed the girl's underwear into her throat and they determined that this was after she was killed the medical
00:11:41
examiner also was able to narrow down the time of death whoever had abducted her kept her alive most of that night
00:11:50
she was killed sometime near Sunrise it was the medical examiner's opinion that Brenda had been thrown in the water from
00:11:59
either a pier or a boat and was not simply just tossed in from the shore you'd think if they threw her in from a
00:12:06
boat that's a little more discreet than off of a pier yeah and I think they're able to judge this by the amount of cuts
00:12:13
and bruising that would have gone on on the body after the time of death they didn't find a lot of these and that's
00:12:21
why they believed that it was somebody that had kind of cleanly tossed her into the water from a point that might be
00:12:28
already out a considerable distance in the water now of course all of these cases are
00:12:34
very sad but this next one is particularly sad and it's because you know sometimes when we go looking for
00:12:40
new cases to cover or cases that are suggested to us it's this is rare but it does happen sometimes there is nothing
00:12:47
out there on a Case especially for some of the cases early 1980s and prior to that there are simply no digital
00:12:55
footprint or very little or very few uh bits of information regarding some of these cases you know like when we
00:13:02
covered Tony Muncie that Cold Case right uh he had a very small digital footprint
00:13:07
other than a Cold Case database basically there was nothing on Tony Monsey that's why investigative
00:13:13
databases blogs forums and web sleuthors are so important to what we are trying to do as we move further from Paper
00:13:21
Trails and deeper into the digital age the digital footprint of victims becomes more and more important uh you know we
00:13:28
get asked a lot how can I get involved in this true crime community and be more than just a spectator how can I do more
00:13:36
than just listen to podcasts or watch documentaries look I would not suggest someone going out and hitting the
00:13:43
pavement and going out and investigating crimes um you know that's what the paid
00:13:47
professionals are for but the thing is what you can do is find a couple of cold cases from your area from back in the
00:13:54
80s the 70s maybe even the 60s Google them see what comes up if nothing comes up then get creative you know find the
00:14:01
old newspaper articles this will most likely require you to get out from behind your computer and go out and do
00:14:07
some work but gather some information right up ashore and when you say creative that doesn't mean make up the
00:14:12
story exactly right yes get the facts right because somebody out there is hearing
00:14:18
you and they're thinking oh yeah I just make up the story I could spin a good yarn that's that's a good idea yeah get
00:14:24
some credible information gather the information write up a short but extremely accurate report post it
00:14:30
somewhere using you know the Vic victim's name right and that leads us to this next possible victim which is uh
00:14:37
Gloria Ann Gonzalez now she was reported missing now her body was never found yeah and really the only digital
00:14:45
footprint that she has is she's simply a name on some lists that are out there and that's about it
00:14:51
um of course she was probably once a lovely young person and now she's just a name on a list if it weren't for
00:14:58
Catherine Casey's wonderful book titled Deliver us um I don't think we would know anything
00:15:03
of value about her case but what we gained from the book Deliver Us is that Gloria and Gonzalez was 19 years old she
00:15:12
worked at a Houston grocery store now she did disappear on October 28 1971 and it's believed that she would have
00:15:21
disappeared somewhere near her home in Houston uh because you know she was last seen by her roommate at their apartment
00:15:28
on Jacqueline Street her roommate would be the one to to report Gloria as missing
00:15:36
that brings us to Debbie Ackerman and Maria Johnson who were both from Galveston Texas and both 15 years old
00:15:43
but in their minds they were kind of going on 20. they were best friends uh their friends and loved ones say that
00:15:51
they were inseparable they loved the water and spent much of their time on the beaches of Galveston they were
00:15:58
regulars at the local surf shops and the Wix ski school at 9 00 a.m on November 11 1971 the two left Maria Johnson's
00:16:08
house where they had they had stayed there the night before they went to a Galveston mall now around noon they were
00:16:16
last seen together outside of an ice cream store and they were hitchhiking two girls working at the ice cream store
00:16:23
saw Debbie and Maria get into a white van the van had curtains in the back windows and had a piece simple sticker
00:16:32
on it right and this is enough man the driver was reported to be white and much older than the girls the girls could not
00:16:40
tell if there was anyone else in the van or not other than the driver it's very odd to me that hitchhiking was a lot
00:16:48
more popular in this in the 70s well it in some cases uh as with was the case with Debbie and Maria they almost
00:16:57
preferred hitchhiking it seemed to be somewhat of a hobby of not just a means of getting to where they needed to go
00:17:03
but rather than taking any form of public transportation they would usually hitchhike my father talked about this
00:17:09
before he used to pick up hitchhikers a lot and I I don't know why I think it was just like a common thing but he'd
00:17:15
pick him up and uh he he recently got like a brand new car or a newer car in the 70s picked up a hitchhiker and the
00:17:23
guy had like some stuff sticking out of his bag and it poked the the seat and ripped his seat so the guy's getting in
00:17:32
his car rips the guy's seat he drives him you know a couple miles tells him get out of my damn car but never picked
00:17:39
up a hitchhiker after that well and the funny thing that you see in when you watch movies that are based in like the
00:17:45
70s yes hitchhiking was such a common thing that they almost always throw it in a movie in the 70s somewhere where
00:17:51
you'll see that cheesy part where there's a girl on the side of the road or a guy thumb out in the air car pulls
00:17:58
up car goes driver goes where are you heading to going to the beach driver goes far out and then the guy guy or
00:18:04
girl gets in the car and then they are out man they drive to the beach most of the time nothing happens but we know
00:18:09
from covering these cases that uh there's a reason why hitchhiking is no longer a popular thing to do yeah you
00:18:16
can play Bundy for that well Debbie and Maria they weren't heard from for a few hours so one of the parents reached out
00:18:23
to the other set of parents and it was quickly determined that neither of the parents had seen either girl in quite
00:18:29
some time they were reported missing because the girls were together it was believed by police that the two had run
00:18:36
away and they were quote probably on drugs two days later just about 36 hours after the two were last seen the body of
00:18:47
the two young girls were found this is just 10 miles north of where they were last seen
00:18:52
they were in Turner's Bayou in Texas City a fisherman found the two floating in water both girls had been shot they
00:19:01
were nude from the waist down both girls had their wrist bound with long black what what may have been cords or shoe
00:19:09
strings so so the hands and the the feet were bound correct similar to the the other victim and I believe in this case
00:19:17
that it was specifically noted that these two girls were bound with their wrists in front of them right but either
00:19:23
way they're bound right and and then the the other difference here is the other victim was died by strangulation these
00:19:31
girls died by gunshot correct now just two days later a man at attics Reservoir in West Houston he was out walking with
00:19:39
a metal detector looking for you know lost items of value maybe some precious metals he's looking for his manhood
00:19:45
when he he ended up coming across a decomposing headless corpse the man had to get get in his car and
00:19:54
drive to a nearby house to phone in what he had found to the police now there would be several weird findings with
00:20:02
this here first the decapitated body okay so they found the head but for some reason the head had no Flesh on it it
00:20:10
was just skull and bone okay this was not the case with the body though the the body had Flesh on it and was
00:20:19
decomposing at a normal rate later the medical examiner would determine that the body was that of
00:20:26
missing 19 year old Gloria Gonzalez who we we had talked about earlier they determined that the decapitation was not
00:20:33
something done by her killer but it had been done by the work of animals in the area Gloria had been there laying face
00:20:41
down for quite some time I don't know if they ever figured out why the skull had
00:20:46
no skin on it and the body still did I couldn't find that anywhere I could find that the medical examiner didn't think
00:20:54
that the the flesh removed from the skull was due to animals anyway the weirdest part okay so
00:21:02
repeat that because that's not very clear so the the decapitation was done by animals the medical examiner uh in in
00:21:10
their opinion the decapitation was due to animals removing the skull from the corpse right so if animals are removing
00:21:19
the skull then they're removing the skin around the skull but it was of the medical examiner's opinion that the
00:21:25
flesh was not removed um that has no logical that there's no logical sense there unless the skull
00:21:32
would have been in a place where it would have decomposed at a at a much faster rate due to any you know there's
00:21:40
different it could be any number of reasons of of the environment but I'm with you I think that if if you if you
00:21:46
can make the leap and believe that animals removed the skull they most likely chewed up the the soft bits of
00:21:52
tissue off of the face well that's gross um but we have turtles in this area right and turtles are known for you know
00:22:00
the fleshy parts like the nose and the ears are normally attacked first by like turtles well if that wasn't strange
00:22:07
enough for you in this situation Captain here's another strange situation so maybe the weirdest part of everything
00:22:14
that was found that day they ended up finding several teeth with the skull these were loose teeth but later the
00:22:23
medical examiner determined that one of the teeth did not belong to the victim that they had found to Gloria Gonzalez
00:22:29
now Gloria they obviously ruled her death a homicide but because of this tooth they were going to need to go back
00:22:38
and search the area when they did just about 50 yards from where they had found the body of Gloria Gonzalez they located
00:22:46
another body not so much a body but rather a pile of bones without the skull but they they
00:22:53
found the jaw bone so there were going to be they're going to have to go to dental records here to try to identify
00:22:59
this body right but aren't they capable of doing a DNA test on that tooth imagine it with that skeleton
00:23:06
um that I don't know but what I do know that they did was they they took this Jawbone uh and I what they can do is
00:23:14
take the one loose tooth and see if it would fit in the jaw bone right um now remember when the story started we
00:23:22
started talking about 13 year old Colette Wilson who had gone missing from the bus stop after a band camp practice
00:23:29
and remember we said that her father was a dentist well he was also her dentist he would later be the one that had to
00:23:37
identify the remains based on dental records uh as the remains of of his daughter Cola that seems like it makes a
00:23:45
bunch of sense hey don't you think that they could have another dentist come in and look at the records and look at they
00:23:51
they could do that they wouldn't have to have the father do that that seems very
00:23:55
insensitive unless the father wanted to do it he he may I bet you he he offered his services in this situation but like
00:24:03
I said that's a little bit of conflict of interest it was all of his work so he would be considered the dental expert
00:24:10
when it came to this particular person so I think a conflict of interest some of her belongings were found with her
00:24:17
remains but her instrument her musical instrument was never located so at this point in the timeline we have five
00:24:23
missing but four bodies have been found and we have no arrest and the newspapers
00:24:29
are starting to make the connection you know we have several murders of girls and young women uh could they be
00:24:35
connected and you know should police be looking for a killer or maybe even worse
00:24:40
Killers well they're going to start digging hard and looking for suspects in this case and we have some suspects that
00:24:50
kind of present themselves now I'll go through this by way of using in a newspaper article that took place this
00:24:57
is from a Houston newspaper and was printed in 1989 but but it's in regards to some activities during the 70s a
00:25:06
convicted murderer who has vowed to seek revenge and kill Law Officers in the Houston area is out of jail as of 1989
00:25:15
and he may be heading back to Houston authorities say Anthony Michael nopa he's 41 years old at the time of his
00:25:22
release he was released from prison after serving 15 years of his 50-year sentence for killing a Brazoria County
00:25:30
woman authorities think nopa will return to Houston where his family and friends
00:25:35
are and said they are worried about the threats he has made in the past we have Jimmy Jones of the brazora county
00:25:42
sheriff's office said he is concerned about nopa since the murderer has threatened to kill several lawmen and
00:25:49
recently turned down offers for parole until he was ultimately let go in 1989. now after his murder conviction in 1972
00:25:59
nopa threatened to kill Jones and a guy named James Evans who is an investigator
00:26:04
with the Harris County sheriff's office now investigator Jones says that he took
00:26:09
these threats seriously and still did at the time of his release back in 1971 Noble was investigated in
00:26:17
connection with the deaths of Six Women in Montgomery Harris and brazora counties but he was only convicted in
00:26:25
one of the deaths Noble was sentenced to 50 years in prison in 1972 in the death
00:26:31
of Linda Faye Sutherland who was 22 years old from Missouri County Sutherland was found dead with 72 bullet
00:26:39
wounds in her back shoulders and legs now we have another guy here Harry Andrew Lanham he was sentenced to 25
00:26:47
years in prison for the same killing and he also he was also investigated in the
00:26:54
other five incidences as an accomplice but the five cases other than the five cases against nopa crumbled in
00:27:02
1972 because Lanham he attempted to escape from jail he he lunged at an officer tried to grab his gun and the
00:27:11
officer shot Lanham and killed him unfortunately we have two guys that are convicted of one murder of a young woman
00:27:19
they're being invested investigated in some of the deaths that we just talked about
00:27:24
but their main witness their only witness that they had in these investigations was that was Lanham who
00:27:32
was killed when he tried to escape from prison right so nopo was uh he has a bit of a
00:27:39
background here he was convicted of rape before uh he did the bazora county killing uh testimony in that trial
00:27:48
indicated that he took a young woman to an auto salvage yard and raped her repeatedly nopo pleaded guilty to a
00:27:55
lesser offense in the case because the woman was too terrified to testify against him so obviously the police had
00:28:02
two suspects that they liked a lot in some of these if not all of these murders just not able to piece it
00:28:09
together you know it wouldn't surprise me in the least if these guys committed one or more of these outstanding cases
00:28:15
one thing that has that was said in the investigation regarding Linda Faye's death uh and I believe it was Harry
00:28:23
Lanham that said this he said the two men didn't talk to each other after they had picked up Linda but the whole time
00:28:30
that they were driving around they both knew that they were going to kill her like
00:28:35
that's like wow you know that that rings of maybe these two have done this sort of thing before all right we'll get back
00:28:42
into the Killing Fields Trilogy after this quick beer break [Music] thank you all right we're back cheers mates so we
00:29:09
have the bodies of several young girls and women showing up popping up all over the I-45 in Galveston area and then we
00:29:16
have those two suspects but that investigation quickly went nowhere so continuing on this takes us to January
00:29:24
3rd 1972 when two boys fishing on Taylor Bayou near Webster Texas they found a human skull floating in the lake
00:29:34
the skull ended up belonging to a young girl uh six weeks later authorities searching a nearby Field find the rest
00:29:42
of her remains and along with it they find the remains of another girl dental records identified the girls as Rhonda
00:29:49
Johnson and Sharon Shaw now they had gone missing the previous summer they went missing in August of 1971.
00:29:57
Unfortunately they were too decomposed and their cause of death would not be determined well because this is in Texas
00:30:04
and bodies decompose way faster in Texas I believe due to the sun and the elements now uh this is a bit of a crazy
00:30:15
story here so about five months after the girl's bodies were found 23 year old gas station attended Michael Lloyd's
00:30:24
self was arrested and he was charged with the murders apparently self was being investigated for some other crime
00:30:31
at the time this was something Petty like like theft or something like that something that had nothing to do with
00:30:38
the murders of these two girls he ends up being convicted of the crimes and he was sentenced to life in prison however
00:30:44
he has always claimed that he is innocent of these two murders well how did this whole thing go down let's let's
00:30:52
go through this Captain so we have Rhonda Johnson and Sharon Shaw they were last seen on August 4th 1971 they were
00:31:00
heading towards the Jericho Surf and Sea shop in Galveston Texas an investment that's what they told family members or
00:31:08
friends correct so an investigation was soon launched uh pressure was placed on the officers investigating these murders
00:31:15
because Rhonda's grandfather was a prominent city council member in late May 1972 the Webster City Council hired
00:31:25
a new police chief this is Don Morris and an assistant chief Tommy deal they you can question in if they were
00:31:35
qualified for these positions they came from the traffic division of the Texas Department of Public Safety a few weeks
00:31:42
after the two were hired Morris received a tip from A city councilman Glenn price
00:31:48
about Michael Lloyd's self now at the Time Michael Lloyd self was a known sex offender because he had been arrested in
00:31:55
previous uh cases for peeping Tom incidents and we know where that normally leads to
00:32:02
on June 9 1972 at 5 a.m Tommy deal and officer Herman Morgan visited the gas station where self worked the night
00:32:12
shift deal mentioned that he believed self was thinking about the two girls referring to Rhonda and Sharon when they
00:32:20
were talking to self but now self would say that he was confused about the conversation they were having he
00:32:26
believed that he was talking about his estranged wife and his and new girlfriend and wasn't talking about
00:32:33
murder at all later that morning self I'm confused by all this so he confesses but he thinks he's talking about
00:32:42
somebody else no he's he's being interviewed by these two officers right okay and so they're asking him about two
00:32:51
girls they never mention them by name and they're not talking about girls being murdered they're just talking to
00:32:57
him about two girls that he was talking to he well and they claim that he knew these two girls and they knew who he was
00:33:04
talking about so he assumed that they were talking about his estranged wife that he had not seen in a while and his
00:33:11
new girlfriend um later that morning Michael Lloyd self did he voluntarily went to the police
00:33:18
station for further questioning the officers asked self if he had recognized pictures of Rhonda and Sharon he said
00:33:25
that he had recognized them but he did not know them maybe he had seen them around maybe they were somebody that had
00:33:31
come into the gas station at some point but immediately afterwards why and you know this because he worked at a gas
00:33:38
station for a while you you start seeing Greg regulars and you kind of know them
00:33:42
by same with with the bank you might not know their name but you've seen them coming to the bank multiple times at a
00:33:48
gas station multiple times and with the gas station for me Captain a lot of times I didn't know the person by name
00:33:53
but I knew him by oh this is the coffee Marlboro Lights guy you know that's the thing he gets every other morning and
00:34:01
this could be the case here um but immediately after he says that he recognized the girls but did not know
00:34:08
them well self was arrested and he was charged for their murders so investigating no evidence well yeah and
00:34:16
and other than I yeah I think I kind of know him oh arrest him um Michael Lloyd's self was not he's
00:34:24
described as not the sharpest tool in the shed let's say um the officer's interrogated him after
00:34:32
they arrested him and during this interrogation they claimed that they had evidence connecting him to the murders
00:34:39
again self-denies any involvement what's this evidence uh I don't think that that's ever clear to anybody right
00:34:47
because there was none well another officer Jerry Mitchell he stopped in during the interrogation and he was
00:34:54
observing the interrogation and he noticed that he thought that Michael Lloyd's self was quite relaxed and he
00:35:00
did not appear to be nervous at all um Mitchell left the room and chief Morris remember we talked about him he
00:35:09
then took charge of the interrogation according to Michael Lloyd's self Morris started asking him about why he killed
00:35:18
the victims Moore said that he wanted a confession and he would not leave until he got one
00:35:24
Morris allegedly held self against a wall and poked him multiple times with his night stick Morris also allegedly
00:35:32
took out bullets from his gun and placed them on the table Michael Lloyd self would later say that he really feared
00:35:40
that Morris was going to kill him okay so he's being held against the wall being poked with the night stick and
00:35:48
these are the back in the 70s I mean this is one long stick it's not the kind that
00:35:54
um you know retracts right right so these things are tough yeah it's like being poked with a small baseball bat
00:36:01
yeah but maybe even harder and then he's taking bullets out of his gun yeah he's
00:36:07
placing them on the table yeah uh wow you might you might as well just waterboard him
00:36:14
well at this point right Morse allegedly told Michael Lloyd's self that he would
00:36:19
shoot him if he didn't sign a confession um So eventually Michael Lloyd's self agreed to write and sign a confession uh
00:36:29
the thing here is he would have to sign multiple confessions because he didn't get a lot of the information right in
00:36:36
the earlier confessions um eventually it's alleged that Morris told him what he had to write down and
00:36:44
less than an hour and we've seen this time and time again haven't we yeah it's it's pathetic it's what it is yeah less
00:36:52
than an hour after Jerry Mitchell left he then returned and at this point he's seeing Michael Lloyd self in a much
00:36:59
different situation no longer is he relaxed and calm he now describes Michael Lloyd's self to be extremely
00:37:06
upset and visibly shaken Mitchell noticed that Morris had self rewrite his confession several times self
00:37:14
self-confession did not completely match with the known facts of the case in his
00:37:19
confession self claimed that he had dumped the bodies at El Largo which was 20 miles from the Taylor Bayou where the
00:37:27
bodies were actually found and we've talked about this before one of a detective friend that we know uh talks
00:37:33
about how he would go in get a written confession come back out knife look at it it just put it on his desk and then
00:37:42
go back in and go hey look that this story is not all lining up now he wouldn't tell him this part isn't
00:37:50
lining up or this part isn't lining up he would just tell him this isn't really lining up so write it again and he'd do
00:37:58
that sometimes several times and by taking all three confessions you get a better picture of what was actually
00:38:03
happening but in this case this person is going oh by the way this isn't correct and this is incorrect and this
00:38:11
is incorrect I mean we you see this you know like we talked about before with like Jesse Miss Kelly I mean leading the
00:38:17
witness I mean what Justice is this yeah yeah it's it's like a teacher grading a
00:38:23
paper that keeps returning the paper to you with the wrong answer circled or with a big red X on them and wants you
00:38:29
to correct what you got wrong right uh you know the confession stated that self choked one of the girls but there was no
00:38:39
evidence of that injury on their remains so first he gets the location of the bodies Wrong by 20 miles then he gets
00:38:46
the cause of death in one of the girls as wrong as well the confession also stated that self went to Sharon's house
00:38:54
to pick up the girls but her family contradicts that and that they because they left on their own yeah they weren't
00:39:00
last seen at her house yeah so ridiculous uh the other thing about the confession
00:39:08
while we're on the the wrong answer get me heat it up give me get me started his
00:39:13
confession also stated that the girls were yelling waving and hanging out of his car but there were no witnesses that
00:39:20
could be found to confirm this all right in fact Witnesses placed the girls in Galveston at around 9pm even though in
00:39:28
self's confession they were already with him in Webster by that time it's ridiculous so three days after self's
00:39:37
arrest and confession he took a polygraph test where he again confessed to the murders he also claimed that he
00:39:43
had knowledge on other murders that had taken place in Texas in 1971 and 1972. in his second confession self claimed
00:39:52
that he hit the girls with a coke bottle and then dumped them in the bayou these
00:39:57
statements again conflict with his first confession and so but he took this polygraph test
00:40:03
what what were the findings of that test he failed the test the test where he confessed to the murders right he fails
00:40:10
that test in his second confession self also claimed that he stripped the girl's
00:40:15
clothing and threw it into the side onto the side of the highway however the girl's clothing was found with them
00:40:22
along with uh an unidentified pair of keys all right I don't know how you could get
00:40:29
a confession more wrong than this I mean it's well here's the problem though is you have this system where people get
00:40:35
ahead people make more money you know uh private Pro public prosecutors don't make a lot of money the more convictions
00:40:43
they get the more then they can move up the ranks right and and this is ridiculous because it's all about just
00:40:50
get in the win who cares how you get it maybe you deflate the football a little bit who cares you got to get the win and
00:40:56
and this is what's so ridiculous it should be based off of you need to get the truth and if you don't get a
00:41:02
conviction who cares it's about getting the truth well and it sounds to me like one of these guys got a significant
00:41:09
promotion both these guys receive significant promotions from Traffic Division all the way up to chief of
00:41:15
police and assistant chief one of these guys had a relative that was a high-ranking public official and these
00:41:21
guys get in here they don't know what they're doing and they there there's a new sheriff in town I'm going to solve
00:41:27
all these cases right and this new sheriff in Town's a real turd bag well listen to this two weeks after Michael
00:41:34
Lloyd's self was arrested two sheriff's deputies checked him out of the jail this is on the pretext of buying him
00:41:41
dinner afterwards the deputies sometimes you talk too fast so they're going to check him out of jail to buy
00:41:51
him dinner correct a guy that confessed to killing to teenagers right okay so afterwards I'm
00:41:59
guessing this is after their nice sit-down dinner together the deputies drove him around to places mentioned in
00:42:05
the confession and took pictures of him at these places this was presented in court as a third confession by Michael
00:42:13
Lloyd self's attorney claimed that this was not a confession and was actually illegal you know they're they're taking
00:42:21
pictures of him at these different sites of him like standing and pointing to things and you know so it looks very
00:42:29
incriminating right of course it does now but we take you out we get we get you a salisbury steak and then we're
00:42:36
gonna drop you off at these locations and take your picture while you're there ah this is a horrible police work well
00:42:43
during while he was awaiting trial uh there was an investigator this is Dave uh coborn he met with Michael Lloyd self
00:42:51
in jail and self told him that Morrison deal had attacked him and beat a confession out of him he also mentioned
00:42:59
how Morris removed several bullets from a handgun and placed them in front of him and now coborn he remembered that
00:43:06
that he had witnessed Morris doing the same thing uh to another prisoner before now coborn wanted to testify at Michael
00:43:15
Lloyd self's trial however he was they they never called him and would not let him testify during this trial on May 15
00:43:24
1973 Michael Lloyd's self was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison
00:43:30
three years later remember the sheriffs that we were talking about these these wonderful Guys Don Morris and Tommy deal
00:43:37
uh these police guys they were arrested and charged with bank robbery oh really oh really they were part of a robbery
00:43:46
group that had robbed banks in 1972 and 1973. in 1976 more Steele Tommy deal Tommy [ __ ] stain Morris was sentenced to
00:43:58
55 years in prison and deal was sentenced to 30 years in prison well there's karma for you you know and I
00:44:06
believe in that so they got what they deserved they finally got caught for their ridiculous uh illegal actions you
00:44:13
know uh why they were wearing the badge and when they weren't wearing the badge they got caught yeah they were not
00:44:19
deserving of being public officials or Public Service uh people at all now despite the arrest of nopa and Lanham
00:44:27
who we talked about earlier who had killed the one girl and you know whether you agree or disagree with the arrest
00:44:34
and conviction of Michael Lloyd South you know no one's arguing that nopa and Lanham didn't kill Linda Faye Sutherland
00:44:41
but of course you have to wonder how many more murders did those two do but if if they did all of them uh or you
00:44:50
also have to wonder why would the murders continue after these arrests and these convictions and that's exactly
00:44:57
what happened right yeah so now we have uh January 3rd 1973. we have Kimberly Pitchford who is age 16. she took the
00:45:07
school bus to attend all of her classes that day now after school she went to detention she had detention for being
00:45:15
late to a class after detention she went to her driver's education class this class started at 5 pm and it was over at
00:45:23
6 PM she was supposed to call home for a ride her her mom waited for the call but
00:45:29
the call never came then Kimberly's parents started calling all of her friends asking where they could find
00:45:34
their daughter later that night Kimberly's parents filed a missing persons report with the police two days
00:45:42
later two boys traveling on a rural stretch of road uh this is County Road 65. the two boys spotted a black coat
00:45:51
near a guard rail they got out of their vehicle to check it out before they could return to their vehicle they
00:45:58
spotted what appeared to be a body floating upside down in a nearby ditch that was this dish is full of water due
00:46:06
to recent heavy rainfall the this frightened the boys and they weren't really sure what they were looking at so
00:46:12
they went and got one of the boy's fathers who returned to the area with the boys and after nudging the body with
00:46:20
a stick he believed that they were looking at a real dead body they notified police of
00:46:27
what they had found and Kimberly Pitchford had been located she had been strangled and her body was found about
00:46:34
25 miles south of where she was last scene that was the driving school in Pasadena Texas which we should know is
00:46:42
near the interstate 45. right so legs arms bound I don't have any of that information I don't think that that was
00:46:51
the case with her body they probably would have reported it if it was such yeah and the the black thing that they
00:46:58
spotted near the guard rail turned out to be some of her clothing I believe it was a jacket that she would would have
00:47:04
been wearing at the time of her disappearance uh Georgia gear uh age 14 and Brooks bracewell age 12. they had
00:47:13
apparently skipped school on September 6 1974. shortly afterward they were reported missing now several tips came
00:47:22
in uh one tip saying that they were seen at a motel near Alvin Texas playing football with a group of guys several
00:47:31
other tips said that the two girls were seen hitchhiking uh but the tip that may
00:47:36
have the most credibility as this is the most widely reported to this day is that
00:47:41
they were last seen together in a convenience store in Dickinson Texas is this is again close to the infamous
00:47:48
Texas Interstate I-45 the two girls wouldn't be found for quite some time it wasn't until April 18 1981 that the
00:47:58
bodies were found a man working near an oil field found two skulls this area is basically swampland near Alvin Texas the
00:48:07
dental records identified the skulls as belonging to the two missing girls Georgia gear and Brooks bracewell
00:48:13
injuries to the skull pointed to obvious cause of death the two teenage girls had
00:48:18
been beaten to death uh to me it's it's strange that the the tip that seems to have stood the test of time better than
00:48:26
the others is the convenience store tip and not the playing football tip you know I only question this because the
00:48:33
bodies were found closer to the area of the football tip rather than that of the
00:48:38
store which was in Dickinson which is not terribly far from still you know right well but what's interesting here
00:48:45
is we you know we have victims that have died from strangulation we've had victims die from gunshots and now we
00:48:51
have uh two victims that have died from being beaten in the in the head yeah the
00:48:57
cause of death here is all over all over the shop now um we have 12 year old Suzanne Bowers
00:49:05
she was abducted while she was walking home in May of 1977 around 10 a.m on May 21st first she left her grandparents
00:49:15
home she was going to head back to her own house her plan was to go home and get a bathing suit and then a bicycle
00:49:22
and head to the beach Suzanne had rode her bike to the beach often so this wasn't something out of the norm for her
00:49:29
Suzanne had a friend waiting for her at the beach but unfortunately Suzanne never arrived and when the grandparents
00:49:37
started looking for Suzanne they quickly learned that she never even she never even arrived at her own parents home to
00:49:43
retrieve the bicycle in the bathing suit right two years later two boys out riding dirt bikes found the skeleton of
00:49:50
Suzanne Bowers you find it a little odd that you know we'll have one individual one individual female go missing or two
00:49:57
individual females go missing and and they're always found by it seems like a group of two boys well I think that
00:50:05
plays to the areas where these bodies are found these These are areas that are kind of out of the way a you know you
00:50:14
often hear that they're being found by fishermen or two guys on two dudes on dirt bikes right uh two boys playing in
00:50:21
the woods um so I think it just lends to where they're being found um here's the weird thing though the
00:50:27
Bowers case is is not considered to be solved but I'm sure at one point many investigators considered the case to be
00:50:36
closed this was one of many many murders that remember a guy by the name of Henry
00:50:42
Lee Lucas yeah we talked about him when we discussed discussed oddest tool in the Adam Walsh case now uh Henry Lee
00:50:50
Lucas was a man that claimed to have killed anywhere from about 40 to 150 people well this was one of the murders
00:50:57
that he said he gave a vague confession uh that he had killed Suzanne Bowers yeah but he also lied about tons of
00:51:08
stuff I mean he I mean one he claims he killed way more people than he actually did Kill and then half the confessions
00:51:16
that he was confessing to like there was little to no evidence connecting him well and his confession regarding
00:51:23
Suzanne Bowers kind of went like this the detectives were like hey this you you remember this little girl 12 years
00:51:29
old that was picked up in this area and then she was found later found dead in this area and he's like sure I I was I
00:51:38
could have been in that area I I probably killed somebody a little girl I don't remember her name and then
00:51:45
anything else that he gave to them it was really nothing of any value regarding the girl's case or her murder
00:51:51
at all right again I think this is you know sometimes they they don't do their due diligence to have the case closed
00:51:58
they're just closing on their own because they don't want to deal with it later Henry Lee Lucas would recant many
00:52:04
of his confessions but this was one that he specifically named you know he specifically said by name he didn't kill
00:52:11
Suzanne Bowers stating what little he knew about the case was fed to him by police officers and he confessed to this
00:52:20
murder in trade for favors and privileges it's been noted that in a lot of these confessions in a lot of these
00:52:27
cases that he received small privileges you know like cigarettes and access outside of the prison where they would
00:52:33
take him on these field trips to identify places where he supposedly killed somebody and also allowing him
00:52:39
access to a personal TV uh in his cell for his help on all these you know mental cases across the southern states
00:52:47
and also I think more phone privileges as well yeah yeah you know when you're riding away in prison I would assume
00:52:54
that that would be like you know a Golden Ticket yeah he was he was you know if what my gut tells me about
00:53:01
Lucas is he's just really a big loser that probably killed one or two people or was involved in in one or two
00:53:08
incidences and he was you know he he took advantage of of the situation and was able to manipulate
00:53:16
some of these officers into getting what he wanted and at the same time these officers you know they're not trying to
00:53:21
do anything wrong but they need to clear these cases and they see this guy who acts like a monster and talks about
00:53:28
things that only a monster would do and they think well he's capable and he says
00:53:33
he did it so there you go they are doing something wrong because they you have to
00:53:37
ask the questions to get the answers to find the truth and if he isn't able to supply you with those answers without
00:53:45
you force feeding those answers then he didn't do the crime the crime needs to stay open the case needs to stay open
00:53:52
there needs to be real Justice for these families real Justice for the victims and that's what they're doing wrong
00:53:57
right you're exactly right Captain because then what you're ultimately left with years later when the when the dust
00:54:03
clears When the Smoke Clears and you figure out that these confessions are wrong you're left with no answers and
00:54:09
you're also left with the situation where people's stop investigating these these cases and and they they go cold
00:54:15
because you think that they're closed yeah or think about how many times uh there are cases solved years later
00:54:21
because um this guy got drunk and he was telling me about this time you know and these
00:54:27
drunk confessions or whatever drunk confessions deathbed confessions right but you get some weird confession and
00:54:33
they go well look it doesn't matter it doesn't matter about these confessions because this guy is the guy that he's in
00:54:40
jail and and so this guy might must just be drunk and they dismiss certain evidence and there's a big time period
00:54:48
that goes by when they say this crime was committed uh by by Lucas well there's time that goes by that you're
00:54:56
you're missing out on evidence and and and footwork that you could have done so yeah they did something really wrong and
00:55:03
they and they do it wrong constantly a couple of items in closing before we finish up with the 1970s
00:55:11
um first Colette Wilson the first girl that we discussed many consider her to be the first of many victims she was the
00:55:18
girl that was was found in her father Thomas a dentist identified the remains as Colette due to her dental work that
00:55:26
he had performed now Colette's father Thomas he only lived for about four years after her death the family said
00:55:34
that he became obsessed with solving the case uh and he sadly died of a heart attack at the young age of 42. now
00:55:42
regarding Michael Lloyd's self and the bad cops that sent him to prison for life Don Morris and Tommy deal both were
00:55:50
both of these bad cops were eventually paroled uh but deal was later arrested again for another robbery
00:55:58
um yeah he's just a just a bad seed man yeah now Michael Lloyd self's attorney pushed for a new trial for many many
00:56:06
years for him but that ended with no luck at all then in April April 2nd of 1980 a man walked into a police station
00:56:15
in Taylor Lake Texas and confessed to the murders of Rhonda Johnson and Sharon Shaw the man's confession was vague but
00:56:23
he did mention that he used a core to tie the girl's bodies down this fact was never mentioned by Michael Lloyd self
00:56:30
however the police did know about the court and had purpose purposefully withheld the fact in order to determine
00:56:37
a possible truth of of the confession that they would receive the man although suffering from psychosis did know the
00:56:45
girls and actually lived in the same apartment complex as one of them the name of this man was withheld from
00:56:52
newspaper articles despite the confession and criminal activities of the bad cops Morrison deal Michael Lloyd
00:56:59
self's conviction was upheld and in 1992 Michael Lloyd self was denied parole on
00:57:06
March 30th 1993 U.S Supreme Court refused used to consider his request for a new trial self and his attorney and
00:57:16
even investigator coborn however are certain that someone else is responsible for the murders of Rhonda Johnson and
00:57:24
Sharon Shaw Michael Lloyd's self passed away in prison in 2000. [Music] for everything true crime go to
00:57:43
truecrimegarage.com be good be kind and don't live thank you [Music] [Applause]