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This episode contains language that might not be suitable for everyone, as well as descriptions of violence and sexual assault. Please use discretion. When we started, I kind of thought they must have been involved. They must have been involved. Why else would they confess? Who's going to say, yes, I killed this woman or yes, I was there, if they weren't there? Catherine Huddled worked as an editor and reporter in Nebraska for almost 40 years.
She spent some time working for a small local paper in a town called Beatrice. While she was there, she edited stories about things like local government and the county fair. But then news broke about a murder that had happened in town more than two decades earlier. Catherine hadn't heard much about it before. Somehow it just was not really on my radar. A 68-year-old woman named Helen Wilson had been found dead in her apartment.
And I were very casually saying, well, I'll just swing by the courthouse and look at some records. And it realized there was literally a room full of boxes full of records, 5,000 pages of documents. The documents dated back to February 6, 1985. On February 5, Helen Wilson had just returned home to Beatrice after visiting family across the state. And she was ill. She had pneumonia. Lawyer, Jeffrey Patterson. Helen Wilson's un-daryl came over to visit her. His wife Katie was out bowling.
And after Katie finished bowling that evening, she came over to Helen's apartment and they chatted for a dead. While they were visiting a pharmacist, dropped off some prescription cough syrup for Helen, she took a dose at 7.45 pm. She was supposed to take her next dose at midnight. And so Katie said she was going to call and make sure her mother-in-law was awake and took her medicine at the appropriate time. So just before 12 came around, Katie made a call and nobody answered.
And then Katie waited about 10 minutes and called it midnight. And again, nobody answered. And then she called again about 10 minutes later. No one answered. And then apparently just figured that Helen didn't hear her phone. The next morning, Helen Wilson's sister went to her apartment to bring her breakfast. She lived in the apartment next door and had a key. And she walked into the bedroom and saw that the bedroom was in complete disarray.
And went back and got her husband Ivan and Ivan came over and found Helen on the floor of the living room. Helen Wilson had a blanket wrapped tightly around her face and her clothing had blood on it. Her sister and brother-in-law called the police, who arrived at Helen's apartment around 9.30 in the morning.
They noted that there was some overturned furniture and they really took note of the fact that there was, I think, two or three coffee cups, dirty coffee cups in the sink and coffee in a coffee maker. And Helen's family had told them that she was extremely tidy and she would not have gone to bed with dirty dishes in the sink. So that struck everybody is pretty odd. The police also noted that there was half of a ripped $5 bill on the floor.
They looked in Helen's bedroom and found blood on Helen's bed and on the wall. They collected hair and blood samples from the scene. Helen's body was taken to Lincoln for an autopsy. The autopsy found that she'd been raped and that her cause of death had been suffocation. The authority that was doing the investigation in 1985 was the Beatrice Police Department. Now there are two, essentially there are three investigative agencies that have some jurisdiction in that area.
One would be the Beatrice Police Department. Two would be the Gage County Sheriff, which is again located in Beatrice. And their duty is to patrol the outline areas of the county not so much in the city of Beatrice itself. And the third would be the Nebraska State Patrol, which of course has jurisdiction over the entire state. In a press conference, the Beatrice Chief of Police said someone had pried Helen Wilson's door open and unlatched the lock.
They'd found Helen Wilson's purse in her apartment and more than $1,000 cash. Nothing of value seemed to be missing from her home. The Beatrice Police also said that no one in the apartment building had heard or seen anything unusual on the night of Helen Wilson's murder. Helen Wilson's family wrote in her obituary that she was a member of the local Methodist Church's Women's Circle and the Gage County Historical Society. She had seven grandchildren and five great grandchildren.
Her funeral was held the weekend after her death and her family offered a $1,000 reward for information about her murder. The Beatrice Police put a tape recorder next to Helen Wilson's gravesite, hoping it would lead to some clues. And they started reaching out to other agencies for help. The Nebraska State Patrol offered to lend them a computer, something hard to come by in 1985.
The police in nearby Lincoln put their chief homicide detective on the case, who was known around the state as the greatest thing since Sherlock Holmes. They called the FBI brought in an FBI profiler to take a look at the evidence. The FBI profiler, working on Helen Wilson's case, created a possible description of the person they believed could have raped and murdered her.
They believed he was a man in his 20s, who was thought of by his friends as, quote, timid and raised by a mother or aunt that was, quote, domineering. The Beatrice Police Chief told reporters he may have something against older ladies. The FBI profiler wrote, we can stay with almost total certainty that this crime was committed by one individual, acting alone. While the Beatrice Police and the FBI were working together, there was another unofficial investigation happening in town.
It was led by a local farmer named Bert Searsie. Bert is a likable guy. He's a really fidgety guy. Bert at one time had been a police officer with the Beatrice Police, but he just didn't get along with the chief of police. And by 1982 he resigned. So in 1985, when Mrs. Wilson's murder is announced, Bert decides that he is going to solve the murder. He knew Helen's family, and so he offered as a private citizen to start looking into the case for the family.
Bert Searsie was not a licensed private investigator, but he started asking around town about the murder. He asked a friend at the Beatrice Police for access to the crime scene reports and photographs. They said no. He knocked on doors and interviewed people he thought might know something. Bert had been around Beatrice for a long time. It's a small town. He knew, I don't want to say Riff Raff, he knew an element of people in town that may not have been known as upstanding citizens.
One person who Bert Searsie spoke with was someone he referred to as a confidential informant, who later was revealed to be a 17 year old high school student. Bert said she told him about a conversation she had with a young woman named Joanne Taylor. She told them they'd spoken in a park around 730 on the morning that Helen Wilson's body was found. And supposedly Joanne said, you know why those cop cars are all around that building over there? It's because Lobo and I killed Mrs. Wilson.
Lobo was a 22 year old whose real name was Joseph White. He wasn't from Beatrice originally. He had moved there a year earlier from California. He had worked a construction job and then got laid off. And so there are all sorts of rumors that Lobo was the guy who could be responsible for Mrs. Wilson's death. Lobo or Joseph White had already been interviewed by the Beatrice police about the murder.
Police didn't have DNA evidence they could use at the time. DNA testing wasn't introduced as evidence in criminal courts in the US until the next year. But blood type testing had been around for a while. And a forensic scientist had identified two types of blood in Helen Wilson's apartment, typo and typi. Helen Wilson had typo blood. So the police were looking for a suspect with type B blood. And not just anyone with type B blood.
Specifically someone who was what's called a non-secretor. Which means their other bodily fluids like saliva don't contain their blood type marker. It's rare. Only 20% of the population falls into this category. And only 10% of the population has type B blood. And Joseph was blood type O. The Beatrice police let Joseph White go. Soon afterward he left town. The police interviewed more than 300 people about Helen Wilson's murder. But no arrests were made.
And then four years later in 1989, Bert Searsie got on a plane. He had a warrant to go and arrest Joseph White for the murder of Helen Wilson. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is criminal. We'll be right back. Prime day is here. With epic deals exclusively for prime members. You'll feel like you just won an award. I'd like to thank my family for always needing stuff. Also Sam, my delivery guy for bringing all my awesome deals so fast. You're the man Sam!
Shop deals on electronics, home and more this Prime Day July 16th and 17th. Prime Day is here. With epic deals exclusively for prime members. You'll feel like you just won an award. Wow, I didn't even prepare a speech. I'd like to thank my family for always needing stuff. Also Sam, my delivery guy for bringing all my awesome deals so fast. You're the man Sam! Shop deals on electronics, home and more this Prime Day July 16th and 17th.
Several years after Bert Searsie had left the Beatrice Police Department and started working on the Helen Wilson case on his own, he got hired by the Gage County Sheriff's Office as a deputy. He quickly requested the department's file on the Helen Wilson case. I think that Bert saw this case as the case that was going to make him. Bert Searsie began his formal investigation into the murder of Helen Wilson as a Gage County Sheriff's Deputy in early 1989.
He re-interviewed the former high school student he'd referred to as his confidential informant. She told him again that she talked with Joanne Taylor in a park at 7.30 on the morning after Helen Wilson was murdered and added that Joanne had scratch marks on her neck. She also told Bert Searsie that she'd seen Joseph White tear bills in half while telling jokes at parties.
And she mentioned that on the night that the murder took place, she'd seen Joseph White and Joanne Taylor driving around in a car belonging to a man named Tom Winslow. She had said that the evening before Mrs. Wilson's murder, she saw Tom Winslow pull into the alley just south of the old telephone building where Mrs. Wilson's apartment was. And out of Tom's car came Tom's girlfriend at the time and Joanne and Joseph White.
And Tom Winslow had been arrested for other things and had a pretty bad reputation in the actors. So if you were looking for a bad guy, Tom's one of the people you might want to talk to. Bert Searsie had spoken with Tom Winslow years before as part of his informal investigation. Tom had told him he was at work at a truck stop on the night of the murder. But when Bert asked Tom's supervisor about it, he found out that Tom had not been at work that night.
By the time Bert Searsie tracked down Tom Winslow for more questioning, Tom was in jail for beating up a motel clerk. Tom agreed to talk with investigators. He thought it might help him get out of jail. On March 14, 1989, Bert Searsie interviewed Tom Winslow. It was videotaped. Tom Winslow began by telling him that he had driven around town with Joanne Taylor and Joseph White, but that they had dropped him off at a friend's place.
But Bert Searsie said a witness had seen Tom at Helen Wilson's apartment building. Then Tom Winslow said he had gone to the apartment building but didn't go inside. Why don't you tell me everything you know? I have a little feeling that made you know of more yet than you're telling me. Am I right or wrong? Tom, everything that I know. Am I right or wrong? Have you left something out yet? Partly, but I have any hard time remembering everything. Have you any little time to think about that?
You want to shut your door off a minute? The videotape of the interrogation stops and starts again, 44 minutes later. This is that research that Gage County has been in the church department. Now, assuming the videotape statement, Tom Winslow? Now, Tom Winslow had a different story. We went into the apartment building and we went into Helen Wilson's apartment. How did you get to Helen Wilson's apartment? You recall that? No, I don't. Could have you had to go up some stairs?
Do you remember that or is that something you're letting me tell you? I don't remember that. He told the police that he did go into Helen Wilson's apartment with Joanne Taylor, Joseph White, and another woman. He said Joseph White argued with Helen Wilson and pushed her into the bedroom. He said Joanne followed and he heard Helen Wilson scream. Tom said he then left the apartment. After he told all of this to the police, he was released from jail.
Bert Searsy and other investigators went to arrest Joseph White. Joseph had moved back to his hometown of Coleman, Alabama. They arrested him for first degree murder. And they interrogated him that night at one point in time. We're going to get your blood and get your hair and saliva. And Joseph's response to him was, you can have it because it's going to prove I wasn't there.
Bert Searsy also implied that they had found Joseph's fingerprints on the $5 bill found in the apartment, which wasn't true. It is perfectly legal for the police to lie to assess when they're interrogating them. Joseph White asked for a lawyer, but deputies continued questioning him without one present. At one point, Bert Searsy said to him, you didn't push the little old lady over, to which Joseph White replied, how could I? I wasn't there.
While Bert Searsy and other deputies were interrogating Joseph White in Alabama, Joanne Taylor, the woman who'd been named as a accomplice, was also being questioned. She was living near Asheville, North Carolina at the time, and had been arrested by local police. They tell her that she committed a murder in Gage County and that there's this guy named Lobo, who is saying that she was there and they can prove that she was there. Joanne has no capacity to know whether that's real or not.
In 1981, four years before Helen Wilson's murder, Joanne Taylor had moved to Beatrice. She was 18 and pregnant at the time. She got in fights and often got in trouble with the police. She started seeing a psychologist named Dr. Wing Price. Dr. Price ran a local mental health center and also worked as a part-time sheriff's deputy. He would occasionally hypnotize potential witnesses for the police. Dr. Price diagnosed Joanne Taylor with borderline personality disorder.
She would be delusional at times and her delusions and delusions are fixed false beliefs, that are completely real to you, to the person who is having the delusion, even though they're not true at all. One of Joanne's delusions is that she had a twin sister. Of course, she didn't, but she had this sister that Joanne said was Jolene and they would have conversations. And it would be easy to get Joanne to believe something that's not true.
When the police arrested Joanne Taylor and Asheville, she said they told her she was present at the murder of Helen Wilson. And then they began to ask her about what happened. Joanne said that the murder occurred at 5.30 in the afternoon. Joanne said that the woman lived in a tan house on the edge of town and that Joseph and the other boy and she had gone there to do yard work. She talked about how Joseph stabbed Helen Wilson repeatedly. The local police in Asheville wrote all of this down.
And then the next day, Bert Searsy and the other officers from Nebraska arrived question Joanne Taylor. When they sat down to interrogate her, she started selling in the exact same story. It didn't mine up. The murder took place in the middle of the night, not 5.30 in the evening. Helen Wilson didn't live in a tan house. There wasn't any yard work to do in the middle of February. When the Nebraska police pushed back, Joanne said she was having trouble remembering what had happened.
You realize you're talking about a real serious offence, right? You also realize that you have claimed to have been there when this took place. I think that was told every day. It was told you that. It comes in taking up last night, telling me to hand through that was out. At one point, they took a break. And when the tape starts again, Joanne's story had changed. Now she said it was an apartment building, not a house. At night time, not 5.30 in the afternoon.
She said Joseph White did a trick where he ripped up dollar bills. She later said she had held a pillow over Helen Wilson's face, suffocating her. Bert Searsie asked her about her blood type. Do you know what your blood type is? A house. A house. A house. Joanne Taylor said that there was one other man with them that night, and that he and Joseph White had attacked Helen Wilson. But she said she couldn't remember the other man's name.
She eventually said it was someone who worked at the truck stop. And Bert Searsie seemed to try to remind her of the name Tom Winslow. At one point, he said to her, You know what a Winslow looks like? Yeah? The next day back in Nebraska, she was shown six photos, and she picked out Tom Winslow. Bert Searsie went to arrest Tom Winslow for first-degree murder. That night, after he was booked into the Gage County Jail, Tom Winslow asked to speak with Bert Searsie.
Now, apparently you have several things to say that are a little different to what you've said before. It's a correct time of the day. So why don't I just let you tell me what you want to tell me here? Tom Winslow had changed his story again. The part that I said I knew, that I was in that part of anything. That was not true, because... Well, I don't believe that right now. You're lying. Okay, I've got people arrested that are said and they're telling me exactly what happened.
And that's why they're arrested, they confess. I was an innocent. Bullshit, Tom. You were there. I got people telling me exactly what you did to that woman. He tells Bert that he was lying before that he wasn't there. He doesn't know anything about it. He has no idea. I'm not going to listen to this shit. You're going to have to go back. I'm going to go back. Because I know I'm not lying. Well, something's wrong. I wasn't there. How come my buddies say you were? I don't know.
That's why I can't figure it out either. But I'm not lying. And I'm not going to do time and maybe death or something. I need that to do. No, I wouldn't lie. Bert again tells him, well, Tom, you know, we're going to get your blood and your blood's going to prove you were there. And Tom said, that's fine. I've already given my blood and it cleared me. My blood type is A. And if you like any hair, you can take any hair you want because that was not bad.
Well, I'm just saying that that's what we're going to have to do this. That's fine. Go ahead. And I'm not scared because I'm not lying. Joseph White, Joanne Taylor and Tom Winslow stayed in custody for the murder. But none of them matched the type B blood that was found at Helen Wilson's apartment. They have three people arrested. None of whom can be the source of the crime scene blood. The Beatrice police tell the Gage County Sheriff and County Attorney you have the wrong people.
And the County Attorney and the Sheriff's reaction was, this is our case. Stay out of it. Don't muddy the waters of our investigation. So they just started talking to or questioning or harassing anyone who had a connection in any way to Tom or Joanne or Joseph back in the day. And more Joseph back in 1985. Over the next few weeks, they kept arresting more people. They arrested a woman named Deborah Sheldon. And Debbie suffers from the same disorder as Joanne, borderline personality disorder.
So she is very easy to persuade. Deborah had also been diagnosed with intellectual disabilities as a child. When questioned, she agreed that she was at Helen Wilson's apartment on the night of the murder, along with Tom Winslow, Joanne Taylor and Joseph White. She said they pushed their way into the apartment and tried to rob Helen Wilson. She said she was trying to help Helen Wilson when Joseph White pushed her out of the way. Deborah said she cut her head, but she didn't have type B blood.
The deputies asked if anyone else had been at the apartment that night. She said she was having trouble remembering. Psychologist Wayne Price, who also worked as a part-time deputy, visited her at the jail. He had met her years earlier for an evaluation and knew that she had been diagnosed with intellectual disabilities. And Wayne Price had told her, well, you've repressed your memory if you just go back to your jail cell and relax.
Memory of this may come back to you in bits and pieces in your dreams. Deborah Sheldon was interviewed by the police again. This time, she said another man. James Dean was with them at the scene of the murder. She told police that before, she was, quote, blocking it. They arrested James Dean. And for 22 days, James maintains, I wasn't there, I had nothing to do with it. You got the wrong guy. I have no idea what you're talking about. But then, James took a polygraph test.
When they tell James about it, the story is that he miserably failed his polygraph and that he knows something about this needs to come clean. So his attorney agrees to have James sit down for a session with, again, Dr. Wayne Price. And in this session, and his attorney is present for this, and so is the county attorney. And in this session, Wayne Price counsels him, James, the fact that he had failed his polygraph indicates that he has a subconscious knowledge of being at this murder.
And if he just goes back to his cell and lays down and relaxes, the memory of this murder may come back to him in bits and pieces. James Dean continued to meet with Dr. Wayne Price. He was shown pictures and videos of the crime scene and was taken to Helen Wilson's apartment. He also later said that he was told by deputies that he would get the death penalty if he didn't cooperate with the investigation. It wasn't long before James starts dreaming that he was present.
James Dean then gave police the statement. He said he had been at the murder. He said, quote, I feel that I remembered it in my sleep. I obviously had some kind of a subconscious block. When they tested his blood, it was oh negative. Five people had been arrested and none of them had typed be blood. We'll be right back. Hi, this is Cara Swisher, host of On with Cara Swisher from New York Magazine and Vox Media.
And wow, what a month we've had. There's so much going on right now to ongoing wars overseas, deepening political turmoil here in the US and a presidential election that might now be in flux. Well, we've had a great lineup of guests on the show to talk about it all. From the US ambassador to NATO, Julian Smith, the governor at Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, to my latest episode in interview with Rachel Maddo of MSNBC. Knock that off my bucket list. I'm so excited to talk to her. Have a listen.
If the Democrats replace Joe Biden with Kamala Harris or with any other candidate, will they have a better chance at beating Trump? I don't know another to you. We can't tell from this vantage point. But if Joe Biden were running against Donald Trump today, he would lose and likely lose badly if the polls are accurate. The full conversation is out now and you'll want to hear it.
Find it wherever you get your podcast and be sure to follow on with Cara Swisher for more kick-ass conversations like this one. Even before this past weekend, this election was bonkers. First of all, it's a straight-up rematch. The rematch from hell, the rematch no one wanted, former president versus current president, newly convicted felon, versus father of newly convicted felon, the two oldest major party candidates to ever run for the top job, record-breaking old men.
One guy facing more legal challenges than every other president in history combined. The other guy facing relentless calls to step down from just about every corner of his own party. But saying he's got to stick around because American democracy's on the line. We had never seen anything like it before, before this past weekend, before a kid in Pennsylvania tried to kill Donald Trump. America just dodged a bullet and maybe we can learn something from it. That's on today's point.
In late May, 1989, Deborah Sheldon had another dream in jail. She said she had a nightmare about someone else being there. And she told Bert Shersey that it was someone wearing like a white sweatshirt and with dishwater blonde hair. Bert Shersey showed Deborah Sheldon a photo of Helen Wilson's upstairs neighbor, a woman named Kathy Gonzalez. And what Debbie said is that, yeah, that's the person. Back in 1985, the police had found a bag in the dumpster outside Helen Wilson's apartment.
In the bag, were some papers and a brawl with some blood on it. The Beatrice police traced it to Kathy Gonzalez, but after questioning her, they dismissed her as a suspect. Bert Shersey also showed the photo of Kathy Gonzalez to James Dean, who said for the first time that she'd also been there that night. The deputies went to arrest Kathy Gonzalez, where she now lived.
She's working in a fish joint in Denver, and all of a sudden there's the cops at the door saying, you're under arrest for the murder of Helen Wilson in Beatrice. Kathy Gonzalez' blood was tested, and they learned that she had type B blood. But she said she wasn't there that night. They told her she was there, and she'd forgotten. Why would I block this out? She told Dr. Wayne Price when he visited her in jail. He told her that her memories would likely resurface.
Between March 15th and May 25th, 1989, a total of six people had been arrested for the murder of Helen Wilson. You know, like the movie Casablanca round up the usual suspects, I think that's what Bert did. They'd all told police different stories about what had happened on the night of the murder, stories that had shifted many times.
But the story that was eventually told in court was that on the night of the murder, Deborah Sheldon, Joanne Taylor and James Dean met up with Tom Winslow and Joseph White. They ended up at Helen Wilson's apartment building, where they met Kathy Gonzalez, who lived there, too.
What was believed happened is that Tom Winslow and Joseph White and Joanne Taylor and Debbie Sheldon and James Dean and Kathy Gonzalez all entered Helen Wilson's apartment and beat her on the floor of her bedroom and then drug her out to the living room and Joseph and Tom raped her and then according to Debbie Sheldon, the apartment was ransacked looking for money and they didn't find any money or they found maybe $20 or something like that. And then they left.
One of the six, Joseph White, insisted he was innocent. The other five accepted plea deals for going trials. They threatened them with strapping them into the electric chair and killing them if they didn't tell the truth. And so you better tell the truth or you're going to rot in prison or you're going to sit in the electric chair. The problem was the stories they told weren't true at all.
It would be almost 20 years until it was discovered that none of them had been involved in Helen Wilson's murder. That part of the story on the next episode. Criminal is created by Lauren Spore and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sigeco, Lily Clark, Lena Silicin and Megan Kanay. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Seminetti.
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We're on Facebook and Twitter at Criminal Show, an Instagram at Criminal underscore podcast. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com slash criminal podcast. Criminal is part of the Vox Media podcast network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge, this is Criminal. Prime day is here with Epic Deals exclusively for Prime members. You'll feel like you just won an award. Oh wow, I didn't even prepare a speech. Just to prevent childhood finns tienes מתraft.
Bro, look up to here by yourself at anywhere new to this website. And quote, Thanks. So Tom Herschel, please introduce the beginning meta in a Hasselwald reflections woman. The first time I do live direct movies on political terms is my bookτάps. Now my press will say I love you. Have fun, Tracy. Just one in a war. Oh my god. Wow, I didn't even prepare a speech. I'd like to thank my family for always needing stuff. Also Sam, my delivery guy for bringing all my awesome deals so fast.
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