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postpaid unlimited talk text and data plan offered by T-Mobile Verizon May 2023 this is true crime
00:01:08
garage and this is The Killing Fields [Music] trilogy [Music] oh Interstate 45 or
00:02:08
I45 is a Highway located entirely in the state of Texas the interstate is just over 280 mi in length and connects two
00:02:17
major US Cities Dallas and Houston from Houston the highway continues Southeast down to
00:02:25
galvaston there is a portion of I45 that is known to Houston resident as the Golf
00:02:31
Freeway a short elevated section of I45 in southern downtown Houston is known as
00:02:37
Pierce elevated and a 50-m stretch of desolate land between Houston and Galviston is
00:02:44
called the highway of Hell a mile from I45 lies a 25 acre patch of land that borders the CER oil
00:02:52
field this is known to all as the Texas Killing Field it is is just rugged Wasteland but
00:03:01
it is here that for decades the dead have appeared starting in the early 1970s and
00:03:08
to this day many bodies of murder victims have been found within this area and the killing
00:03:14
field many girls and young women have gone missing several have never been found there are some similarities in
00:03:22
these cases all of the victims are pretty young girls and women between the ages of 12 and 23 and most of the
00:03:29
located victims were found in or around water the Texas Killing Fields murders will involve three different counties
00:03:38
and 12 different law enforcement agencies have worked these cases including the FBI despite exhaustive efforts very few
00:03:46
of these murders have been solved many officers say that the 50-m stretch is the perfect Dumping Ground
00:03:52
for serial killers and the killing field has been described as a place that even
00:03:57
if you yelled no one would hear you and if you ran there wouldn't be anywhere to
00:04:02
go this is the perfect place for killing someone and getting away with it the disappearances abductions and murders
00:04:10
span over 30 years Welcome to The Killing Fields [Music] trilogy [Music] part one the
00:04:49
1970s by the 1970s America knew all about crime she had experienced so much of it in her young history the 1960s was
00:04:57
the decade of the assassination we lost so many great leaders of men and women during that decade Texas was home
00:05:04
to one of the worst when John F Kennedy was shot dead in front of a crowd of people in Dallas on November 22nd
00:05:12
1963 in the 1970s America would become aware of monsters that had been around since the beginning but were lurking
00:05:19
quietly in the shadows the serial killers this was to be the decade when America and the world would learn about
00:05:29
Ted Bundy John gasy and David burkowitz and again Texas would be home to one of the worst some called him the Galviston
00:05:38
killer or the purple passion killer many said he didn't have a name or that he had several whoever he was he traveled
00:05:47
the I45 Highway and he played in The Killing Fields June 1971 13-year-old Colette Wilson vanished
00:05:59
after being being dropped off at a bus stop after her school ban practice before her mother could pick
00:06:05
her up someone else did a couple weeks after Colette's Disappearance in July Brenda Jones just 14 disappeared while
00:06:14
on her way to visit a sick relative at Galveston General Hospital which is right off of Interstate
00:06:21
45 October 1971 Gloria Gonzalez 19 a grocery store bookkeeper left on on vacation and that
00:06:30
was the last time she was seen alive in November Debbie Akerman and Maria Johnson best friends were last
00:06:38
seen together outside of an ice cream store January of 1973 Kimberly Pitchford 16 years old
00:06:47
walked out of a driver's education class she was going to call her mother for a ride home but she never did she was
00:06:55
never heard from again Brooks Bryce well and Georgia gear from Dickinson Texas were last seen at a convenience store in
00:07:02
September of the following year 12-year-old Suzanne Bowers was abducted as she walked home in May of
00:07:10
1977 11 victims in total at the time authorities believed the killings were all the work of a
00:07:17
single killer most of the victims were similar in appearance and most were found near or in bodies of water several
00:07:25
of these cases would be a nightmare to investigate as the area only had scattered small towns and the police did
00:07:32
not share information freely or compare notes sure a nightmare to investigate but more so a nightmare for
00:07:40
the communities to endure the loss fear had set in for Galviston in the surrounding area murder had come to town
00:07:49
and this was only the beginning Welcome to The Killing Fields [Music] trilogy [Music]
00:08:12
1971 Colette Wilson was one of 10 children they lived in Alvin Texas Colette's father Thomas was a dentist
00:08:20
Colette had just finished the seventh grade and that summer she was attending band camp at a local high school on
00:08:27
Thursday June 17th at 12:30 p.m. in the afternoon her band director dropped her off at Highway 6 and County Road 99 her
00:08:37
mother arrived at 12:36 p.m. but Colette was nowhere to be found when she accompanied her mother Claire to the bus
00:08:45
stop to pick up her older sister Colette Alice said in an interview we thought maybe she had gotten a ride with someone
00:08:51
else so we called all of her friends that lived nearby they were unable to find any sign of Colette and the family
00:08:58
knew something something must be terribly wrong they reported the girl missing but unfortunately the
00:09:03
authorities labeled her a runaway Colette was just 13 years old at this time which seems a little young to be
00:09:10
labeled someone who might run away just in my opinion well it's very irresponsible so regardless of what the
00:09:17
authorities thought that didn't stop the Wilson family from taking out an Alvin Texas map and organizing volunteer
00:09:24
volunteers who would search the area for the next 3 weeks Colette's little sister
00:09:29
calls the agony she said the best thing that they could do was kneel around Colette's bed and pray every day and
00:09:35
night saying it held them together during the long months as they searched for Colette a couple weeks after
00:09:42
Colette's disappearance on July 1st Brenda Jones who was just 14 years old she left her house now Brenda's family
00:09:49
didn't have much money they didn't have a car Brenda's mother and her sisters relied on public transportation to make
00:09:56
their way about Brenda disappeared after a visit to a sick relative at galvaston
00:10:02
General Hospital which is right off of Interstate 45 now the bus driver would later confirm to police and
00:10:09
investigators that Brenda had made it to the bus stop the bus had dropped her off
00:10:14
there so this is on her way back home she arrived at the bus stop this means she disappeared just blocks from her
00:10:21
house Brenda's mother reported her as missing that night however police told her that they would not file the report
00:10:29
because it was too soon she had not been missing long enough and she would probably turn up sooner rather than
00:10:35
later right and this is in the 7s these laws would be changed later yeah and this is something we will see and have
00:10:42
seen throughout the course of the 70s you know often when a kid goes missing especially a teenager the authorities
00:10:49
immediately believe that they've run away or they've just taken off with some friends because I'm sure that's what
00:10:53
happens 90% of the time regardless you got to take these reports seriously so now we have Colette which is 13 years
00:11:01
old her family's looking for and now we have 14-year-old Brenda that her family's looking for her as well yeah
00:11:09
and Brenda's family did not have to look too long her body was found the next day
00:11:14
the day after she had gone missing uh she was found floating in galvaston Bay close to the Sea Wolf Parkway and near
00:11:22
I45 her body was nude and she had died from manual strangulation now there are a lot of
00:11:29
websites out there a lot of hacks out there that have reported that Brenda died from a head wound but this is just
00:11:35
simply not true if you go and do the research in this case you will find that her cause of death uh to be head wound
00:11:42
don't email that to us later email the the creator of that website cuz that information is wrong right but how many
00:11:49
autopsies have we seen that were wrong right and I'm just reporting what's been seen on several websites that have
00:11:55
covered this case the information that we have is from from a very credible Source uh who has reviewed the actual
00:12:02
autopsy so that's why I'm going to go with well I'm just you know stating oh I mean if you know FY Malik is doing these
00:12:09
autopsies I mean we're all screwed mhm well the night that Brenda had gone missing she was wearing sandles the kind
00:12:15
with the long laces that you can wrap up around your ankles and shins like the Caesar mhm well someone had ripped the
00:12:23
laces from those sandals and used them to bind branda's feet and wrist the medical examiner made a strange
00:12:30
Discovery someone had forcibly stuffed the girl's underwear into her throat and they determined that this was after she
00:12:37
was killed the medical examiner also was able to narrow down the time of death um
00:12:43
whoever had abducted her kept her alive most of that night uh she was killed sometime near Sunrise it was the medical
00:12:52
examiner's opinion that Brenda had been thrown in the water from either a pier or a boat and was not simply just tossed
00:13:00
in from the shore you'd think if they threw her in from a boat that's a little more discreet than off of a pier yeah
00:13:07
and I think they're able to judge this by the amount of cuts and bruising that would have gone on on the body after the
00:13:15
time of death um they didn't find a lot of these and that's why they believed that it was somebody that had kind of
00:13:21
cleanly tossed her into the water from a a point that might be already out a considerable distance in the water
00:13:29
now of course all of these cases are very sad but this next one is particularly sad and it's because you
00:13:36
know sometimes when we go looking for new cases to cover or cases that are suggested to us it's this is rare but it
00:13:42
does happen sometimes there is nothing out there on a Case especially for some of the cases early 1980s and prior to
00:13:51
that there is simply no digital footprint or very little or very few uh bits of information regarding some of
00:13:57
these cases you know like when we covered Tony Muny that Cold Case right uh he had a very small digital footprint
00:14:04
other than a Cold Case database basically there was nothing on Tony monzy that's why investigative databases
00:14:11
blogs forums and web sluther are so important to what we are trying to do as we move further from Paper Trails and
00:14:19
deeper into the digital age the digital footprint of victims becomes more and more important uh you know we get asked
00:14:26
a lot how can I get involved in this True Crime community and be more than just a spectator uh how can I do more
00:14:33
than just listen to podcast or watch documentaries look I would not suggest someone going out and hitting the
00:14:40
pavement and going out and investigating crimes um you know that's what the paid
00:14:44
professionals are for uh but the thing is what you can do is find a couple of cold cases from your area from back in
00:14:51
the 80s the 70s maybe even the 60s Google them see what comes up if nothing comes up then get creative you know find
00:14:58
the old old newspaper articles this will most likely require you to get out from
00:15:02
behind your computer and go out and do some work but gather some information write up a short well and when you say
00:15:08
creative that doesn't mean make up the story exactly right yes get the facts right cuz somebody out there is hearing
00:15:15
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
00:15:21
some credible information gather the information write up a short but extremely accurate report post it
00:15:27
somewhere use you know the victim's name right and that leads us to this next possible victim which is uh Gloria an
00:15:35
Gonzalez now she was reported missing now her body was never found mhm yeah and really the only digital footprint
00:15:43
that she has is she's simply a name on some list that are out there and that's about it um of course she was probably
00:15:50
once a lovely young person and now she's just a name on a list if it weren't for
00:15:55
Katherine Casey's wonderful book titled Deliver Us um I don't think we would know anything of value about her case uh
00:16:03
but what we gained from the book Deliver Us is that uh Glorianne Gonzalez was 19
00:16:09
years old she worked at a Houston grocery store now she did disappear on October 28th
00:16:15
1971 and it's believed that she would have disappeared somewhere near her home in Houston uh because you know she was
00:16:23
last seen by her roommate at their apartment on Jacqueline Street uh her roommate would be the one to to report
00:16:31
Gloria as missing that brings us to Debbie acur and Maria Johnson who were both from
00:16:38
galeston Texas and both 15 years old but in their minds they were kind of going on 20 uh they were best friends uh their
00:16:46
friends and loved ones say that they were unseparable they loved the water and spent much of their time on the
00:16:53
beaches of galvaston MH they were regulars at the local surf shops and the Wix ski school at 9:00 a.m. on November
00:17:02
11th 1971 the two left Maria Johnson's house where they had they had stayed there the night before they went to a
00:17:10
galston mall now around noon they were last seen together outside of an ice cream store and they were hitchhiking uh
00:17:19
two girls working at the ice cream store saw Debbie and Maria get into a white van the van had curtains in the back
00:17:26
windows and had a piece symbol sticker on it right and he's in love man the driver was reported to be white and much
00:17:35
older than the girls the girls could not tell if there was anyone else in the van
00:17:40
or not other than the driver it's very odd to me that hitchhiking was a lot more popular in the in the 70s MH well
00:17:48
in some cases uh as with was the case with Debbie and Maria um they almost preferred hitchhiking it seemed to be
00:17:57
somewhat of a hobby not just just a means of getting to where they needed to go but rather than taking any form of
00:18:02
public transportation they would usually hitchhike my father talked about this before he used to pick up hitchhikers a
00:18:09
lot I I don't know why I think it was just like a common thing but he'd pick them up and uh he he recently got like a
00:18:15
brand new car or a newer car in the 70s picked up a hitchhiker and the guy had like some stuff sticking out of his bag
00:18:23
and it poked the the seat and ripped his seat so getting in his car rips the guy's seat he drives him you know a
00:18:32
couple miles tells him get out of my damn car but never picked up a hitchhiker after that well and the funny
00:18:39
thing that you see in when you watch movies that are based in like the 70s yes hitchhiking was such a common thing
00:18:45
that they almost always throw it in a movie in the 70s somewhere where you'll see that cheesy part where there's a
00:18:51
girl on the side of the road or a guy thumb out in the air car pulls up car goes driver goes where are you heading
00:18:57
to going to the beach driver goes far out and then the guy guy or girl gets in the car and then they drive far out man
00:19:04
they drive to the beach most of the time nothing happens but we know from covering these cases that uh there's a
00:19:09
reason why hitchhiking is no longer a popular thing to do yeah you can blame Bundy for that well Debbie and Maria
00:19:16
they weren't heard from for a few hours so one of the parents reached out to the
00:19:20
other set of parents and it was quickly determined that neither of the parents had seen either girl in quite some time
00:19:27
they were reported missing because the girls were together it was believed by police that the two had run away and
00:19:34
they were quote probably on drugs uh 2 days later just about 36 hours after the two were last seen the body of the two
00:19:44
young girls were found this is just 10 Mi north of where they were last seen they were in Turner's Bayou in Texas
00:19:52
City a fisherman found the two floating in water both girls had been shot they were nuded from the waist down both
00:20:00
girls had their wrists bound with long black um what what may have been cords or Sho strings mhm so so the hands and
00:20:08
the the feet were bound correct similar to the the the other victim and I believe in this case that it was
00:20:15
specifically noted that these two girls were bound with their wrists in front of
00:20:19
them right but either way they're bound right and and then the the other difference here is the other victim was
00:20:26
died by strangulation these girls died by gunshot correct now just two days later a man at addict's Reservoir in
00:20:34
West Houston he was out walking with a metal detector looking for you know lost items of value maybe some precious
00:20:40
metals he's looking for his manhood when he he ended up coming across a decomposing headless
00:20:47
corpse the man had to get in his car and drive to a nearby house to phone in what
00:20:54
he had found to the police now there would be several weird findings with this here first the decapitated body
00:21:02
okay so they found the head but for some reason the head had no Flesh on it it was just skull and bone okay uh this was
00:21:11
not the case with the body though the the body had Flesh on it and was decomposing at a normal rate MH later
00:21:19
the medical examiner would determine that the body uh was that of missing 19-year-old Gloria Gonzalez who we we
00:21:26
had talked about earlier they determined that the decapitation was not something
00:21:31
done by her killer but it had been done by the work of animals in the area Gloria had been there laying face down
00:21:39
for quite some time I don't know if they ever figured out why the skull had no skin on it uh and the body still did I
00:21:46
couldn't find that anywhere um I could find that the medical examiner didn't think that the the flesh removed from
00:21:54
the skull was due to animals anyway the weirdest part okay so repeat that cuz that's not very clear so
00:22:02
the the decapitation was done by animals the medical examiner uh in in their opinion the decapitation was due to
00:22:11
animals removing the skull from the corps right so if animals are removing the skull then they're removing the skin
00:22:18
around the skull but it was of the medical examiner's opinion that the flesh was not removed um by animal that
00:22:25
has no logical there's no logical sense there unless the skull would have been in a place where it would have
00:22:32
decomposed at a at a much faster rate due to any you know there's different it could be any number of reasons of of of
00:22:40
the environment but I'm with you I think that if if you if you can make the leap
00:22:44
and believe that animals removed the skull they most likely chewed up the the soft bits of tissue off of the face well
00:22:51
that's gross um but we have turtles in this area right and turtles are known for you know the fleshy Parts like the
00:22:59
nose and the ears were normally attacked first by like turtles well if that wasn't strange enough for you in this
00:23:06
situation Captain here's another strange situation so maybe the weirdest part of
00:23:11
everything that was found that day they ended up finding several teeth with the skull these were loose teeth um but
00:23:19
later the medical examiner determined that one of the teeth did not belong to the victim that they had found to Gloria
00:23:26
Gonzalez now Gloria they obviously ruled her death a homicide but because of this tooth they
00:23:34
were going to need to go back and search the area when they did just about 50 yard from where they had found the body
00:23:41
of Gloria Gonzalez they located another body M uh not so much a body but rather a pile of bones without the skull but
00:23:50
they they found the Jawbone so there were going to be they're going to have to go to dental records here to try to
00:23:55
identify this body right but all aren't they capable of doing a DNA test on that
00:24:00
tooth and matching it with that skeleton um that I don't know but what I what I do know that they did was they
00:24:08
they took this Jawbone uh and I what they can do is take the one loose tooth and see if it would fit in the Jawbone
00:24:16
right um now remember when the story started we started talking about 13-year-old Colette Wilson who had gone
00:24:23
missing from the bus stop after a band camp practice and remember said that her father was a dentist well he was also
00:24:31
her dentist he would later be the one that had to identify the remains based on dental records uh as the remains of
00:24:39
of his daughter kette that seems like it makes a bunch of sense hey don't you think that they could have another
00:24:45
dentist come in and look at the records and look at they they could do that they
00:24:49
wouldn't have to have the father do that that seems very insensitive unless the father wanted to do it he he may I bet
00:24:56
you he he offered offered his services in this situation you think that's a little bit of conflict of interest it it
00:25:02
was all of his work so he would be considered the dental expert when it came to this particular person still I
00:25:10
think a conflict of interest some of her belongings were found with her remains but her instrument her musical
00:25:16
instrument was never located so at this point in the timeline we have five missing but four bodies have been found
00:25:23
mhm and we have no arrest and the newspapers are starting to make the connection you know we have several
00:25:29
murders of girls and young women uh could they be connected and you know should police be looking for a killer or
00:25:37
maybe even worse Killers well they're going to start digging hard and looking for suspects in this case and we have
00:25:46
some suspects that kind of present themselves now I'll go through this by way of using in a newspaper article that
00:25:53
took place this is from a u Houston newspaper and was printed in 1989 but it's in regards to some activities
00:26:01
during the 70s um a convicted murderer who has vowed to seek revenge and kill Law Officers in the Houston area is out
00:26:10
of jail as of 1989 and he may be heading back to Houston authorities say Anthony
00:26:16
Michael nopa he's 41 years old at the time of his release he was released from prison after serving 15 years of his
00:26:24
50-year sentence for killing a Brazoria County woman uh authorities think nopa will return to Houston where his family
00:26:32
and friends are and said they are worried about the threats he has made in the past we have Jimmy Jones of the Bora
00:26:39
County Sheriff's Office said he is concerned about nopa since the murder has threatened to kill several Law Men
00:26:46
and recently turned down offers for parole uh until he was ultimately let go in 1989 now after his murder conviction
00:26:55
in 1972 nopa threatened to kill kill Jones and a guy named James Evans who is an investigator with the Harris County
00:27:02
Sheriff's office now investigator Jones says that he took these threats seriously and still did at the time of
00:27:10
his release back in 1971 noo was investigated in connection with the deaths of Six Women in Montgomery Harris
00:27:19
and Bora counties but he was only convicted in one of the deaths nopo was sentenced to 50 years in prison in 197 2
00:27:28
in the death of Linda Fay Sutherland who was 22 years old from bizor County southernland was found dead with 72
00:27:36
bullet wounds in her back shoulders and legs now we have another guy here Harry Andrew lanam he was sentenced to 25
00:27:45
years in prison for the same killing and he also he was also investigated in the
00:27:51
other five incidences as an accomplice but the five cases other than the five cases against nopa crumbled in 1972
00:28:01
because Lam he attempted to escape from jail he he lunged at an officer tried to
00:28:07
grab his gun and the officer shot Lam and killed him unfortunately we have two guys that are convicted of one murder of
00:28:16
a young woman they're being invest investiga some of the deaths that we just talked about but their main witness
00:28:23
their only witness that they had in these investigations was that was Lam who was killed when he tried to escape
00:28:31
from prison right so noo was uh he has a bit of a background here he was convicted of rape before uh he did the
00:28:41
bizor county killing a testimony in that trial indicated that he took a young woman to an auto salvage yard and raped
00:28:49
her repeatedly noo pleaded guilty to a lesser offense in the case because the woman was too terrified to testify
00:28:56
against him so obviously the police had two suspects that they liked a lot in some of these
00:29:03
if not all of these murders just not able to piece it together you know it it wouldn't surprise me in the least if
00:29:09
these guys committed one or more of these outstanding cases one thing that has that was said in the investigation
00:29:16
regarding Linda Fay's death uh and and I believe it was Harry Lam that said this
00:29:22
he said the two men didn't talk to each other after they had picked up Linda M but the whole time that they were
00:29:28
driving around they both knew that they were going to kill her like it's like wow you know that that rings of maybe
00:29:36
these two have done this sort of thing before all right we'll get back into the Killing Fields Trilogy after this quick
00:29:41
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at angie.com that's ngi or download the app [Music] today [Music] all right we're back cheers mates so we
00:32:05
have the bodies of several young girls and women showing up popping up all over the I45 and Galviston area and then we
00:32:13
have those two suspects but that investigation quickly went nowhere so continuing on this takes us to January
00:32:20
3rd 1972 when two boys fishing on Taylor Bayou near Webster Texas they found a human skull floating in the lake the
00:32:31
skull ended up belonging to a young girl uh 6 weeks later authorities searching a
00:32:36
nearby Field find the rest of her remains and along with it they find the remains of another girl dental records
00:32:44
identified the girls as Ronda Johnson and Sharon Shaw now they had gone missing the previous summer they went
00:32:51
missing in August of 1971 Unfortunately they were too decomposed in their cause of death uh
00:32:58
would not be determined well CU this is in Texas and bodies decomposed way faster in Texas I believe due to the sun
00:33:07
and the elements MH now uh this is a bit of a a crazy story here so about 5 months after the girls bodies were found
00:33:17
23-year-old gas station attendant Michael Lloyd self was arrested and he was charged with the murders apparently
00:33:25
self was being investigated for some other crime at the time uh this was something Petty like like theft or
00:33:31
something like that something that had nothing to do with the murders of these two girls he ends up being convicted of
00:33:38
the crimes and he was sentenced to life in prison however he has always claimed that he is innocent of these two murders
00:33:46
well how did this whole thing go down let's let's go through this Captain so we have Ronda Johnson and Sharon Shaw
00:33:52
they were last seen on August 4th 1971 they were heading towards the Jericho Surf and Sea shop in Galveston Texas an
00:34:01
investigation that's what they told family members or friends correct so an investigation was soon launched uh
00:34:09
pressure was placed on the officers investigating these murders because ronda's grandfather was a prominent city
00:34:16
council member in late May 1972 the Webster City Council hired a new police chief this is Don moris and an assistant
00:34:25
chief Tommy deal uh they you can question if they were qualified for these positions they came from the
00:34:34
traffic division of the Texas Department of Public Safety a few weeks after the two were hired Morris received a tip
00:34:42
from city councilman Glenn price about Michael Lloyd self now at the Time Michael Lloyd self was a known sex
00:34:49
offender because he had been arrested in previous uh cases for peeping Tom incidents mhm and we know where that
00:34:57
normally leads to M on June 9th 1972 at 5:00 a.m. Tommy deal and officer Herman Morgan visited the gas station where
00:35:07
self worked the night shift deal mentioned that he believed self was thinking about the two girls referring
00:35:14
to Ronda and Sharon when they were talking to self but now self would say that he was confused about the
00:35:21
conversation they were having he believed that he was talking about his estranged wife and his and new
00:35:27
girlfriend uh and wasn't talking about murder at all later that morning s I'm I'm confused by all this so he
00:35:36
confesses but he thinks he's talking about somebody else no he's he's being interviewed by these two officers right
00:35:45
okay and so they're asking him about two girls they never mention them by name and they're not talking about girls
00:35:52
being murdered they're just talking to him about two girls that he was talking to that he well and they claimed that he
00:35:58
knew these two girls and they knew who he was talking about so he assumed that they were talking about his aranged wife
00:36:05
that he had not seen in a while and his new girlfriend M um later that morning Michael Lloyd self did he voluntarily
00:36:14
went to the police station for further questioning the officers asked self if he had recognized pictures of Ronda and
00:36:21
Sharon he said that he had recognized them but he did not know them uh maybe seen them around maybe they were
00:36:27
somebody that had come into the gas station at some point but immediately afterwards well and you know this cuz
00:36:33
you worked out a gas station for a while you you start seeing regulars MH and you
00:36:38
kind of know them by fa same with with the bank you might not know their name but you've seen them coming into the
00:36:43
bank multiple times or the gas station multiple times and with the gas station for me Captain a lot of times I didn't
00:36:49
know the person by name but I knew him by oh this is the coffee maror a lights guy you know that's the thing he gets
00:36:56
every other morning and this could be the case here um but immediately after he says that he recognized the girls but
00:37:04
did not know them well self was arrested and he was charged for their murders so
00:37:10
investigators no evidence well yeah and and other than I yeah I think I kind of know him oh arrest him mhm um Michael
00:37:19
Lloyd self was not he's described as not the sharpest tool in the shed let's say
00:37:25
um the officer interrogated him after they arrested him and during this interrogation they
00:37:31
claimed that they had evidence connecting him to the murders again self- denies any involvement what what's
00:37:39
this evidence uh I don't think that that's ever clear to anybody right right CU there was none M well another officer
00:37:46
Jerry Mitchell he stopped in during the interrogation and he was observing the interrogation and he noticed that he
00:37:54
thought that Michael Lloyd self was quite relaxed reled and he did not appear to be nervous at all um Mitchell
00:38:01
left the room and chief Morris remember we talked about him he then took charge of the in
00:38:08
interrogation according to Michael Lloyd self Morris started asking him about why
00:38:14
he killed the victims moris said that he wanted a confession and he would not leave until he got one Morris allegedly
00:38:22
held self against a wall and poked him multiple times with his night stick Morris also allegedly took out bullets
00:38:30
from his gun and placed them on the table Michael Lloyd selfelf would later say that he really feared that Morris
00:38:37
was going to kill him okay so he's being held against the wall being poke with the night stick and these are the back
00:38:45
in the 70s I mean this is one long stick it's not the kind that um you know retracts right right so these thingses
00:38:54
are tough yeah it's like being poked with a small baseball bat yeah but maybe even harder mhm and then he's taken
00:39:02
bullets out of his gun yeah and he's placing him on the table yeah uh well you might you might as well just
00:39:09
waterboard him at this point right Morris allegedly told Michael Lloyd self that he would shoot him if he didn't
00:39:17
sign a confession um So eventually Michael Lloyd self agreed to write and sign a
00:39:24
confession uh the thing here is he would have to sign multiple confessions because he didn't get a lot
00:39:31
of the information right in the earlier confessions um eventually it's alleged that Morris told him what he had to
00:39:39
write down and less than an hour we've seen this time and time again haven't we yeah it's it's pathetic is what it is
00:39:48
yeah less than an hour after Jerry Mitchell left he then returned and at this point he's seeing Michael Lloyd
00:39:54
self in a much different situation no longer is he relaxed and calm he now describes Michael Lloyd self to be
00:40:02
extremely upset and visibly shaken um Mitchell noticed that Morris had self rewrite his confession several times
00:40:10
self self's confession did not completely match with the known facts of the case uh in his confession self
00:40:16
claimed that he had dumped the bodies at Largo which was 20 M from the Taylor Bayou where the bodies were actually
00:40:24
found and and we've talked about this before one of a detective friend that we know uh talks about how he would go in
00:40:32
get a ritten confession come back out not even look at it and just put it on his desk and then go back in and go hey
00:40:40
look that this story is not all lining up now he wouldn't tell them this part isn't lining up or this part isn't
00:40:48
lining up he would just tell them this isn't really lining up so write it again and he' do that sometimes several times
00:40:56
and by taking all three confessions you get a better picture of what was actually happening but in this case this
00:41:02
person is going oh by the way this isn't correct and this isn't correct and this
00:41:07
isn't correct I mean we you see this you know like we talked about before with like Jesse Miss Kelly I mean leading the
00:41:13
the witness I mean what Justice is this yeah yeah it's it's like a teacher grading a paper that keeps returning the
00:41:21
paper to you with the wrong answer circled or with a big red X on them and wants you to correct what you got wrong
00:41:27
right uh you know the confession stated that self choked one of the girls but there was no evidence of that injury on
00:41:37
their remains so first he gets the location of the bodies Wrong by 20 miles then he gets the cause of death in one
00:41:44
of the girls as wrong as well the confession also stated that self went to Sharon's house to pick up the girls but
00:41:52
her family contradicts that and that they because they left on their own yeah they weren't last seen at at her house I
00:41:59
get yeah so it's ridiculous uh the other thing about the confession while we're on the the wrong
00:42:06
ANW get me heated up get me get me started his confession also stated that the girls were yelling waving and
00:42:13
hanging out of his car but there were no witnesses that could be found to confirm
00:42:18
this all right in fact Witnesses placed the girls in Galviston at around 900 p.m. even though in self confession they
00:42:26
were already with him in Webster by that time it's ridiculous so 3 days after self's arrest and confession he took a
00:42:35
polygraph test where he again confessed to the murders uh he also claimed that he had knowledge on other murders that
00:42:42
had taken place in Texas in 1971 and 1972 uh in his second confession self claimed that he hit the girls with a
00:42:50
coke bottle and then dumped them in the bayou these statements again conflict with his first confession and so but he
00:42:58
took this polygraph test what what were the findings of that test he failed the test the test where he confess to the
00:43:04
murders right he fails that test in his second confession self also claimed that
00:43:10
he stripped the girls clothing and threw it into the side onto the side of the highway however the girl's clothing was
00:43:17
found with them along with uh an unidentified pair of keys all right I don't know how you get
00:43:26
a confession more wrong than this I mean it's well here's the problem though is you have this system where people get
00:43:32
ahead people make more money you know uh private Pro uh public prosecutors don't
00:43:37
make a lot of money the more convictions they get the more then they can move up
00:43:42
the ranks right and and this is ridiculous because it's all about just getting the win who cares how you get it
00:43:49
maybe you deflate the football a little bit who cares you got to get the win and
00:43:53
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
00:43:59
conviction who cares it's about getting the truth well and it sounds to me like one of these guys got a significant
00:44:06
promotion both these guys received significant promotions from Traffic Division all the way up to chief of
00:44:11
police and assistant chief one of these guys had a relative that was a high ranking public official and these guys
00:44:18
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 all
00:44:23
these cases right and this new sheriff Town's a real turd bag well listen to this two weeks after Michael Lloyd self
00:44:31
was arrested two sheriff's deputies checked him out of the jail this is on the pretext of buying him dinner
00:44:39
afterwards the deputies wa sometimes you talk too fast so they're going to check
00:44:45
him out of jail mhm to buy him dinner correct a guy that confessed to killing two teenagers mhm right okay so
00:44:55
afterwards I'm guessing this is after their nice sitdown dinner together the deputies drove him around to places
00:45:01
mentioned in the confession and took pictures of him at these places this was presented in court as a third confession
00:45:10
by Michael Lloyd self all right self's attorney claimed that this was not a confession and was actually illegal you
00:45:17
know they're they're taking pictures of him at these different sites of him like
00:45:21
standing and pointing to things and you know so it looks very in of course it does but we take you out we
00:45:30
get we get you a sberry steak and then we're going to drop you off at these locations and take your picture while
00:45:35
you're there this is horrible police work well during while he was awaiting trial uh
00:45:43
there was an investigator this is Dave uh coborn he met with Michael Lloyd self in jail and self told him that Morris
00:45:50
and deal had attacked him and beat a confession out of him he also mentioned how Morris removed several bullets from
00:45:57
a handgun and placed them in front of him and now cobor he remembered that that he had witnessed Morris doing the
00:46:06
same thing uh to another prisoner before now coborn wanted to testify at Michael
00:46:12
Lloyd self's trial however he was they they never called him and would not let him testify during this trial on May
00:46:20
15th 1973 Michael Lloyd self was convicted of murder and sentenced to life and Prison
00:46:27
3 years later remember the sheriffs that we were talking about these these wonderful Guys Don Morris and Tommy deal
00:46:34
uh these police guys they were arrested and charged with bank robbery oh really mhm oh really they were part of a
00:46:42
robbery group that had robbed banks in 1972 and 1973 in 1976 deal Tommy deal Tommy [ __ ] stain
00:46:54
Morris was sentenced to 5 5 years in prison and deal was sentenced to 30 years in prison well there is karma for
00:47:01
you you know and I believe in that so they got what they deserved they finally got caught for their ridiculous uh
00:47:08
illegal actions you know uh why they were wearing the badge and when they weren't wearing the badge they got
00:47:14
caught yeah they were not deserving of being public officials or Public Service uh people at all um now despite the
00:47:22
arrest of nopa and Lam who we talked about earlier who had killed the one girl and you know whether you agree or
00:47:30
disagree with the arrest and conviction of Michael Lloyd sth mhm you know no one's arguing that nopa and Lam didn't
00:47:36
kill Linda Fay Southerland but of course you have to wonder how many more murders
00:47:40
did those two do um but if if they did all of them U or you also have to wonder why would the murders continue after
00:47:51
these arrest and these convictions and that's exactly what happened right yeah so now we have uh January 3rd
00:47:59
1973 we have Kimberly Pitchford who is age 16 she took the school bus to attend all of her classes that day now after
00:48:08
school she went to detention she had detention for being late to a class after detention she went to her driver's
00:48:16
education class this class started at 5:00 p.m. and it was over at 6:00 p.m. she was supposed to call home for a ride
00:48:23
her her mom waited for the call but the call never came then Kimberly's parents started calling all of her friends
00:48:30
asking where they could find their daughter later that night Kimberly's parents filed a missing person's Report
00:48:36
with the police MH 2 Days Later two boys traveling on a rural stretch of road uh
00:48:43
this is County Road 65 uh the two boys spotted a black coat near a guard rail they got out of their
00:48:51
vehicle to check it out before they could return to their vehicle they spotted what appear appeared to be a
00:48:56
body floating upside down in a nearby ditch that was this ditch is full of water due to recent heavy rainfall the
00:49:05
this frightened the boys and they weren't really sure what they were looking at so they went and got one of
00:49:10
the boys's fathers who returned to the area with the boys and after nudging the body with a stick um he believed that
00:49:19
they were looking at a real dead body they notified police of what they had found and Kimberly Pitchford had been
00:49:27
located she had been strangled and her body was found about 25 miles south of where she was last scene that was the
00:49:35
driving school in Pasadena Texas which we should knowe is near the Interstate 45 right so legs arms bound um I I don't
00:49:46
have any of that information I don't think that that was the case with her body they probably would have reported
00:49:51
it if if it was such yeah and the the black thing that they spotted near the guard rail turned out to be some of her
00:49:58
clothing I believe it was a jacket that she would would have been wearing at the
00:50:01
time of her disappearance uh Georgia gear uh age 14 and Brooks bracewell age 12 uh they had apparently skipped school
00:50:12
on September 6th 1974 shortly afterward they were reported missing now several tips came in uh one tip saying that they
00:50:21
were seen at a motel near Alvin Texas playing football with a group of guys several other tips said that the two
00:50:29
girls were seen hitchhiking uh but the tip that may have the most credibility as this is the most
00:50:35
widely reported to this day is that they were last seen together in a convenience
00:50:40
store in Dickinson Texas this is again close to the infamous Texas Interstate I45 the two girls wouldn't be found for
00:50:49
quite some time it wasn't until April 18th 1981 that the bodies were found a man working near an oil field found two
00:50:58
skulls this area is basically swamp land near Alvin Texas the dental records identified the skulls as belonging to
00:51:06
the two missing girls Georgia gear and Brooks bracewell injuries to the skull pointed to obvious cause of death the
00:51:13
two teenage girls had been beaten to death uh to me it's it's strange that the the tip that seems to have stood the
00:51:21
test of time better than the others is the convenience store tip and not the playing football tip you know I only
00:51:27
question this because the bodies were found closer to the area of the football tip rather than that of the store which
00:51:35
was in Dickinson uh which is not terribly far from still you know right well but what's interesting here is you
00:51:42
know we have victims that that have died from strangulation we've had victims die
00:51:46
from gunshots and now we have uh two victims that have died from um being beat in the in the head mhm yeah the the
00:51:54
cause of death here is all over all over the shop now um we have 12-year-old Suzanne Bowers she was abducted while
00:52:03
she was walking home in May of 1977 uh around 10:00 a.m. on May 21st uh she left her grandparents home she was
00:52:13
going to head back to her own house uh her plan was to go home and get a bathing suit and then a bicycle and head
00:52:19
to the beach uh Suzanne had rode her bike to the beach often so this wasn't something out of the norm for her
00:52:27
Suzanne had a friend waiting for her at the beach but unfortunately Suzanne never arrived and when the grandparents
00:52:33
started looking for Suzanne they quickly learned that she never even she never even arrived at her own parents home to
00:52:39
retrieve the bicycle and the bathing suit right two years later two boys out riding dirt bikes found the skeleton of
00:52:46
Suzanne Bowers you find it a little odd that you know you'll have one individual
00:52:51
one individual female go missing or two individual female males go missing and and they're always found by it it seems
00:52:58
like a group of two boys mhm well I I think that plays to the areas where these bodies are found uh these These
00:53:07
are areas that are kind of out of the way you know you often hear that they're being found by fishermen or two guys on
00:53:14
two dudes on dirt bikes right uh two boys playing in the woods um so I think it just lends to where they're being
00:53:21
found um here's the weird thing though the Bowers case is is not considered to be solved um but I'm sure at one point
00:53:30
many investigators considered the case to be closed this was one of many many murders that remember uh a guy by the
00:53:38
name of Henry Lee Lucas yeah we talked about him when we discuss discussed ois tul in the uh Adam Walsh case now uh
00:53:46
Henry Lee Lucas was a man that claimed to have killed anywhere from about 40 to 150 people well this was one of the
00:53:54
murders that he said said he gave a vague confession uh that that he had killed Suzanne Bowers yeah but he also
00:54:02
lied about tons of stuff mhm I mean he I mean one he claims he killed way more people than he actually did Kill and
00:54:12
then half the confessions that he was confessing to like there was little to no evidence connecting him well and his
00:54:18
confession regarding Suzanne Bowers kind of went like this the detectives were like hey this you remember this little
00:54:25
girl 12 years old that was picked up in this area and then she was found later found dead in this area and he's like
00:54:33
sure I I was I could have been in that area I I probably killed somebody a little girl I don't remember her name
00:54:41
and then anything else that he gave to them it was really nothing of any value regarding the girl's case or or her
00:54:48
murder at all right again I think this you know sometimes they they don't do their due diligence to have the case
00:54:54
closed that is closing on their own because they don't want to deal with it later Henry Lee Lucas would recant many
00:55:00
of his confessions but this was one that he specifically named you know he specifically said by name he didn't kill
00:55:08
Suzanne Bowers stating what little he knew about the case was fed to him by police officers and he confessed to this
00:55:17
murder in trade for favors and privileges um it's been noted that in a lot of these confessions and in a lot of
00:55:23
these cases that he received small privileges you know like cigarettes and access outside of the prison where they
00:55:30
would take him on these field trips to identify places where he supposedly killed somebody and also allowing him
00:55:36
access to a a personal TV uh in his cell for his help on all these you know many
00:55:42
cases across the southern states and also I think more phone privileges as well yeah you know when you're riding
00:55:49
away in prison I would assume that that would be like you know a Golden Ticket yeah he was he was you know if if what
00:55:57
my gut tells me about Lucas is he's just really a big loser that probably killed
00:56:01
one or two people or was involved in in one or two incidences and he was you know he he took advantage of of the
00:56:10
situation and was able to manipulate some of these officers into getting what he wanted and at the same time these
00:56:16
officers you know they're not trying to do anything wrong but they need to clear
00:56:20
these cases and they see this guy who acts like a monster and talks about things that only a monster would do and
00:56:27
they think oh well he's capable and he says he did it so there you go they are doing something wrong because they you
00:56:34
have to ask the questions to get the answers to find the truth and if he isn't able to supply you with those
00:56:40
answers without you force feeding those answers then he he didn't do the crime the crime needs to stay open the case
00:56:48
needs to stay open there needs to be real Justice for these families real Justice for the victims and that's what
00:56:53
they're doing wrong right you're exactly right Captain because then what you're ultimately left with years later when
00:56:59
the when the dust clears When the Smoke Clears and you figure out that these confessions are wrong you're left with
00:57:04
no answers and you're also left with the situation where people stop investigating these these cases and and
00:57:10
they they go cold because you think that they're closed yeah or think about how many times uh there are cases solved
00:57:17
years later because um this guy got drunk and he was telling me about this time you know and these drunk
00:57:24
confessions or whatever drunk confessions deathbed confessions right but you get some weird conf confession
00:57:29
and they go well look it doesn't matter doesn't matter about these confessions because this guy is the guy that he's in
00:57:36
jail MH and and so this guy might must just be drunk and they dis missed certain evidence and there's a big time
00:57:44
period that goes by when they say this crime was committed uh by by Lucas well there's time that goes by that you're
00:57:52
you're missing out on evidence idence and and and footwork that you could have done so yeah they did something really
00:57:59
wrong and they and they do it wrong constantly a couple of items in closing before we finish up with the
00:58:06
1970s um first Colette Wilson the first girl that we discussed uh many consider her to be the first of many victims she
00:58:14
was the girl that was was found in her father Thomas uh a dentist identified the remains as Colette due to her dental
00:58:22
work that he had performed now Colette's father Thomas he only lived for about 4
00:58:28
years after her death the family said that he became obsessed with solving the case uh and he sadly died of a heart
00:58:36
attack at the young age of 42 now regarding Michael Lloyd self and the bad cops that sent him to prison for life
00:58:44
Don Morris and Tommy deal both were both of these bad cops were eventually paroled uh but deal was later arrested
00:58:52
again for another robbery um yeah he's just just a bad seed man yeah um now Michael Lloyd self's attorney
00:59:00
pushed for a new trial for many many years for him but that ended with no luck at all then in April 2nd of uh 1980
00:59:10
a man walked into a police station in Taylor Lake Texas and confessed to the murders of Ronda Johnson and Sharon Shaw
00:59:17
the man's confession was vague uh but he did mention that he used a cord to tie the girl's bodies down uh this fact was
00:59:25
never mentioned by Michael Lloyd self however the police did know about the court and had purpose purposefully
00:59:32
withheld the fact in order to determine uh possible truth of of the confession that they would receive the man although
00:59:40
suffering from psychosis did know the girls and actually lived in the same apartment complex as one of them uh the
00:59:46
name of this man was withheld from newspaper articles uh despite the confession and criminal activities of
00:59:53
the bad cops Morrison deal Michael Lloyd self's conviction was upheld and in 1992 Michael Lloyd self
01:00:00
was denied parole on March 30th 1993 uh US Supreme Court refused to consider his request for a new trial
01:00:10
self uh and his attorney and even investigator coborn uh however are certain that someone else is responsible
01:00:18
for the murders of Ronda Johnson and Sharon Shaw Michael Lloyd self passed away in prison in
01:00:25
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