Hell and Gone Murder Line: Clea Hall

to everyone as Clea, was living in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Actually, Clia grew up very near where I grew up. We lived just a couple of miles from each other. Clia was a senior at Watson Chapel High School. She had big dreams and she was making them happen. May of nineteen ninety four was a super busy month for Clea. She was getting ready for a big speech at graduation. She was valedictorian of her class. After graduation, Clia was

leaving town. She was supposed to start a summer internship that she had all lined up at a doctor's office in Boston, and then in the fall she would start college at Tennessee State University, where she had been accepted to the pre med program. Clia dreamed of a career in medicine. She wanted to be a pediatrician. But on May ninth, just a few weeks before leaving town to start her new life, the one she had worked so

hard for, Clia Hall disappeared without a trace. Over the past five years making my true crime podcast, Helen Gone, I've learned that there is no such thing as a small town where murder never happens. I have received hundreds of messages from people all around the country asking for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities. And now they have a new way to reach out. I'm Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone

Murder Line. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at six seven eight seven four four six one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five. Kleschendra Denise Hall was born on March thirtieth, nineteen seventy six, in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Her dad, Willie and her mom, Laurel Hall, had four children. They had three sons and Clia with their only daughter. They were a very close family and Clia was a serious student.

And although she went out just like all teens do and enjoyed social activities, she was extremely responsible. She even had an after school job to help pay for college. She worked for doctor Larry Amos, PhD. And not a medical doctor. What he did was that he ran a nonprofit organization out of his home office at fifty three oh nine Fawcett Road, just a few blocks from Clia's house. Larry owned two houses that were right next to each other. Over the years, he did a lot of construction work

on that property. The house where Clia worked was a big English tutor home and had a separate area that was a home office with its own dedicated landline. Clia's job was to help with bookkeeping. She got Larry to

sign checks and help keep things organized. Now, it's been reported that Larry wrote grants where he would allocate resources for childcare facilities, But I've discovered that, like in so many cold cases, there are a lot of basic facts about this case, even though it has been reported on many times over the years, that are just flat out wrong.

Because the truth was that Larry Amos was involved in some very shady financial dealings, which we will come back to, but first let's go back to Clia and that day in nineteen ninety four. I don't really like phrases like troubled team, because to me, everyone deserves justice and to have their case investigated. But just for clarity, because we are looking at someone's pattern of life. Clia came from a loving home. She had no issues with mental health.

She had a steady job. She was very organized. She was planning for her future. She had no disputes with her parents or anyone else, and she was not known to party or to disappear for days. Clia's schedule had been set for several weeks. She had just gone to her senior prom. Then on Saturday night, she went to a sorority ball. Sunday was Mother's Day, which Clia celebrated

with her family. On Monday, May night, nineteen ninety four, Clia woke up, had breakfast with her brothers and her mom, Laurel, and then went to school. Laurel picked her up at around two thirty that afternoon. Clea was allowed to leave school a little early because of her after school job. They went straight to Larry's house, but there was no one home. Later, Larry's wife, Patricia, apologized to Laurel for this. Apparently, Patricia,

Larry's wife, had a job. She worked for the school, and when Clia arrived for work that day, she hadn't gotten home yet. After realizing no one was home, Laurel and Clea drove back to their house. Cla was tired, so she kind of crashed out on the couch they waited to hear from Larry Amos or his wife. Laurel said that Larry called their house at four forty five pm. He said he was home and he was ready for

Clea to come into work. So Clia basically jumped up off the couch and got into the car and Laurel drove her back to Larry Amos's house. Laurel watched as Clia walked up to that house. She was wearing a blue and white Polkadot printed shirt and short set white tennis shoes and white socks. Clea had short hair, but she had gotten hair extensions for the prom, so she had her hair up in a ponytail with a pink ribbon. Laurel watched her daughter walk across the lawn and into

that house. That was the last time she ever saw Clia alive. Of course, as we know with all these cases, everything becomes much more clear only in hindsight, and that's when these tiny details become so crucial. Laurel, when she was recalling what happened that afternoon, told reporters that Cleia had been a little bit dazed after she got the call from Larry Amos because she was asleep on the couch. They jumped straight into the car and drove over to

the Amos house. And because of that, because they were kind of rushed, Clia forgot to grab her purse, which had her ID in it. So Cleah went to work that day with no purse and no ID. Now normally this would not have been a big deal since she was only supposed to be gone for a couple of hours, but later this would become very significant. Just to clarify, Clia did have a driver's license, but she didn't have her own car. And remember this was the pre cell

phone era. There were cell phones out there. We had gone from the big brick cell phones you see in eighties movies to the plastic flip phones. But they were super expensive, and back then teens did not really have cell phones, so Clia and her mom had a routine. Clea would always call her mother from Larry Amos's landline when she was ready to be picked up from work. They did this every day. Normally, Clea would finish work at around eight thirty. Clia would look out the window

and wait for her mom. Laurel would pull the car up, but generally would not honk the horn because she didn't want to wake people up. So then to get out of the garage, Clia would push the button. The automatic door would open, and then Clia would push it again. She knew exactly how to duck under that closing garage door without causing it to open back up. That night, the phone rang at the Hall house at eight pm.

Laurel picked up the phone and it was Clea. Clia's brother also picked up the phone in the other room. Clia asked if anyone had called for her at home. Laurel said no, there were no messages. Clia said she wasn't quite finished at work, but she would be done soon. She said she would call back in around thirty minutes to get picked up. Laurel was reading on the couch. She drifted off to sleep with her book resting on her chest. Laurel was right next to the phone, but

that phone never rang. Later police confirmed that because Clia's brothers were home too, no one heard the phone ring, so it's not like Laurella just slept through it. There were no other calls that night. Just before one am, Clia's dad, Willie, came into the house. He found his wife on the sofa and he woke her up. He asked where Clia was, and that's when Laurel realized she'd never gotten that call from Clia, she would later tell reporters.

Immediately she felt sick. Laurel called Larry Amos's house and he picked up on the first ring. She told him Clelia hadn't come home that night and asked what time she left. Larry told Laurel he thought Clia left the house at around eight thirty, just like she normally did. He told her, hang on, I'll go check the time sheet. Then he said he had checked it and confirmed that yes, Clia had signed out at eight thirty. He said that he assumed Clia had gotten into a car, but that

he had not actually seen Clia leave the house. Larry said he heard the garage door open and close and just assumed that Clia left as usual, Lolarel had picked her up. Larry told Laurel that Clia didn't tell him or his wife that she was leaving that night, which he did say was unlike her. Laurel Hall did not sleep that night. One part of her brain was probably trying to tell herself. Maybe Clia did meet a friend, maybe she made a plan and didn't want to tell

her mom about it. But in her heart, she knew something was very wrong, and because Clia was eighteen years old back then, police told her she had to wait twenty four hours to report her daughter missing. The next morning, Laurel told Clia's little brother to look for her at the high school they had band together, and her brother didn't see her there, but he told his mom later that the seniors had gone to the elementary school that day for some kind of school trip, so he held

out hope that maybe she was there. But by that afternoon, Clia's brother realized she was not in school, and he called his mother and told her she had never shown up. At that point, Laurel knew something bad had happened again. This was totally out of character for Clia. She and her husband Willie reported Clia missing that afternoon at the Pine Bluff Police Department. As we have seen in so many of these cases, at first, it seemed like the

police were just not taking Clea's disappearance very seriously. According to the Hall family, the police seemed to treat Clea as a runaway. In fact, Laurel later told reporters that police suggested Clia could have run away, possibly due to her hiding a secret from her parents. Maybe even they suggested the fact that Clia was pregnant. Laurel told police bluntly that Clea was on birth control. She actually was on an implanable contraceptive that was in her arm, and

this kind of birth control has a very low failure rate. Plus, Cleia didn't have a boyfriend, and even if she was dating, Clea was a young woman who was looking to the future. This girl was not trying to get tied down in her hometown. Literally everything in her life suggested the opposite. She had everything to look forward to, graduation, her summer job, her full scholarship in Tennessee. Clea was happy. She was in a great mood in the days before her disappearance.

If we're looking at victimology, there was literally nothing in her background or her profile that would suggest that she would run away for any reason. And finally, there were the circumstances surrounding her disappearance. Let's say that she was inexplicably going to run away from home. Why would she choose that day? Why would she leave the one day she forgot her purse that had her money and her

ID in it. Detectives looked through Clea's diary. They saw nothing about boyfriends, or problems, or plans to leave town suddenly. In fact, the main thing Cleia had in that diary was her work schedule. It was filled out months in advance. They were finally understanding Clia was not the type of person to skip worker school, and they began to believe that there had been foul play. Even early on in the investigation, Laurel and Willie started to feel suspicious about

Clia's boss, Larry Amos. First of all, it struck Laurel as odd that on that first night when Clea was missing, when Laurel called the Amos house, she thought it was weird that Larry Amos answered on the first ring. Now, he later told her that he was up in the next room watching TV. But if that was true, Number one, why would he be up that late? And number two, why would he immediately pick up the phone on the work line? Why would he be sitting right next to

the phone like that? And later she started to pick up what she believed were discrepancies in Larry Amos's description of what happened when Clea left the house. She thought it was a little off the fact that Larry said that he hadn't seen Clea leave, because she said Larry Amos always knew exactly who was coming and going at that property. Larry Amos was the last person to see Cleo live, but he wasn't being super cooperative with police.

Police asked Larry if they could drop by so they could get a statement, but he said he was going out of town on a business trip to Dallas. He said he would be gone for three days so police would have to take his statement when he got back in town. He emphasized that he wanted to be there

in person when police came to his house. Larry claimed he was buying tanning beds for a business idea he had, but it was later reported that he never bought those beds and he never opened any kind of tanning bed business, so a lot of people wondered did he have a different reason for going to Texas Police asked Larry Amos to take a lot of detector test, Laurel said, Larry claimed he was busy, and then later said police would have to talk to his attorneys if they wanted him

to take a lot of detector test. By the way, I completely get this after what I've experienced with cases in Arkansas and elsewhere. I know that light detectors are completely dependent on the skill of the person giving the examination, And to be honest, I've seen several cases where people have taken light detector tests and the results have come back inconclusive or that they failed it, and later that person was proven to be completely innocent. So I get

Larry Amos's reluctance to take a light detector test. What I don't get is that Larry Amos seemed totally unconcerned about Clia being missing and about being one of the last people to see her, and there were some other odd things that were happening that Larel said did not seem to add up. For example, before Larry Amos left town, police did very briefly stop by his house, and when they did, apparently detectives went into that home office. They picked up the phone and hit redial on the phone.

They wrote down the last number dialed on a scrap of paper and said it was someone named Smith. The police asked Larry Amos about that phone number if he recognized it, because they were thinking maybe Clia had made a call from that home office landline and that might help explain who saw her last. Larry said he had no idea who that person was, but later it turned out that Smith this phone number was the phone number

for Larry Amos's kids babysitter. So then Laurel started wondering why would he claim not to know the phone number of someone that he and or his wife presumably called often. And also, if the babysitter was the last person called and he was sitting up late in that office, why would Larry or anyone else need to call up a babysitter after midnight. Laurel and Willie did not wait for

the detectives to start searching for their daughter. They called Clia's friends and posted flowers everywhere around town, which they printed up themselves. Across the street from the Amos house, there are some woods. The volunteers searched there and also in the wooded area behind the house, and they did what police should have done in the first place. They knocked on doors and pounded pavement. Finally, several days after

Clia went missing, detectives started so too very quickly. It seemed like there were a few possibilities being talked about here. The first possibility was that Clia left with someone in a car. This seemed extremely unlikely because Cleah had a plan for her mom to pick her up, and she had a regular routine. This was a Monday night, it was a school night, and even if she was going to leave with someone else, she would have called her mom.

She knew her mom would be waiting for her. Remember, Clia had already called her mom to tell her she would be done at work soon, so it would make no sense that she wouldn't call back and let her know that she was going to do something else. The second possibility was that Cleah walked home alone. In a documentary that later aired about the case on Oxygen, the journalist interviewed a friend of Clia's, another young woman who used to work for Larry Amos. The friend said that

she was there the night when Clia went missing. She said she had offered Cla a ride home, and Clia said, no, don't worry about it, that she was going to walk home. Now,

this was a strange piece of information. I would love to find this young woman, this second person who said that they were there that night, because Laurel claims that she later clarified this girl was not in the house that night, that in fact, that young woman had not been working in the office for several months by the time Cleo went missing, and she thinks that after this many years, the young woman just got confused in her memory.

She thinks she was thinking about a different night. Laurel insists that the only people that she knows of who were in the house that night were doctor Larry Amos, his wife, and their small children. I just want to talk for a minute about the theory that Clea would have walked home alone. This would have been shortly after eight thirty at night, so it would have been dusk, not full dark, but getting dark. And I just want

to explain a little about Pine Bluff. As someone who grew up there, I can tell you it has a history of violent crime and it continues to be a dangerous place to live. Back in the nineties, it's really not an exaggeration to say that parts of Pine Bluff and other parts of South Arkansas were like war zones. There was an even a series back in the nineties called Banging in Little Rock about the crips and the Bloods and other gangs that were active in Little Rock

in South Arkansas. In the nineties, the population of Pine Bluff was around sixty thousand, but per capita, it regularly ranks in the five most dangerous small towns in the United States. Everyone knows, and everyone knew back then, you do not go out walking in Pine Bluff, Arkansas after dark, and Laurel was very protective of Clia. She insisted her

daughter would never walk home alone. She said she had only walked home alone once from Larry Amos's house, and on that instance, Clia's brother walked home with her, So Clia randomly deciding to walk home alone near dark is a remote possibility at best. Later from Laurel's interviews, it's clear that Laurel becomes more suspicious of Larry Amos as a person. She talks about discussing Larry Amos with Clia

and Clea would talk about Larry Amos's business. Laurel said Clia had made comments to her about the fact that when she would get Larry Amos to sign the checks, a lot of them did not seem to be related to the nonprofit, and Clia sort of remarked that was a little weird, maybe a little shady, And she would talk about how Larry Amos was cheap, but never said anything about him being dangerous or violent in any way.

Laurel started to become more suspicious as time went on, because when Larry Amos did talk to police after he got back from his Texas trip and gave them a formal statement, she said certain details of the story he told started to change from what he told her originally. In his third statement, he said that when Clia left, she had a can of peach pop meaning peach soda in her hand that his wife had given her. He

said he saw Clea looking out the garage window. Yet when he talked to Laurel that first time, Larry Amos said he was nowhere near the garage. He had said specifically that he'd just heard the door open and close. Now again, these details seemed to be tiny, but they could be hugely important. Two weeks after Clea disappeared, police finally went in to search the Amos house, and they made a major mistake here in my opinion, because they

didn't get a search warrant. So when Larry Amos told them after a little while they had to stop the search, they had no legal right to stay there. They had to leave the house. So afterwards, when police said they found no signs of foul play, Laurel remained suspicious because it was obvious to her that even if something was in the house, the police didn't stay long enough to do a thorough enough search to find it. And also, Larry Amos had had a lot of time. He had

a couple weeks at that point. He could have cleaned up anything with two whole weeks to do it. And then another bizarre thing started to happen. Several people, including Laurel's husband Willie, saw Larry Amos tearing down Clia's missing posters. Laurel and Willie did a little bit of their own detective work on Larry Ry Amos. They reached out to his ex wife, Christine, and this is a strange story.

They arranged to meet up with Christine in person. They noticed that Christine seemed to be very nervous, and there was a man across the street who was taking pictures of them while they're talking to her. Now, Christine told Laurel and Willie she knew she seemed kind of paranoid, but she said she was afraid of Larry Amos. She said he'd been physically and emotionally abusive to her in the marriage. She said they were in the middle of an ugly court battle. She said she was suing him

for child support. Things between them had gotten really bad, she said. When she left him, they got into a physical fight that ended when she threw boiling water over him. When Laurel and Willie reached out to her, Christine said she was actually worried this could have been orchestrated by Larry. He might have been planning to do something to her. So now Laurel and Willie are alarmed, and they told the police about this violent streak that Larry Amos reportedly had.

But they say the Pine Bluff Police Department basically blew them off. They said Christine was just basically a bitter ex wife. Then Laurel and Willie tried to reach out to Larry Amos's second wife, Patricia, the one who was home the night Clea disappeared, but they were never really able to talk to her or to Larry Amos again. In fact, Laurel has told people that Larry Amos has not been in contact with her family since the first

week after Clia disappeared. The only thing on the record that I can find from Larry Amos's wife, Patricia came from a transcript of an interview that was quoted in a Fox News report online. In that report, she said, quote it was odd that she left without telling either of us end quote, So in essence, she seemed to back up her husband's story. Now I should say now that Larry Amos has always completely denied any knowledge of or involvement with Clia's disappearance, and later Larry Amos kind

of seen to turn the attention back onto Klia's family. Obviously, when a teenager goes missing, police have to look at the family. Larry Amos said that he was being unfairly targeted by police in fact, he filed a complaint against one of the detectives who is investigating him. He is not really commented on this case at all over the years. When the Arkansas Democrat, because that newspaper, reached out to them, he said, quote Strangely, those that have been calling have

not wanted to read the report. Not only was a report filed, a complaint was filed against one of the detectives. There are very detailed questions that should have been answered about the family and other things. It's amazing that people who really want to find out wouldn't begin to read the report. End quote. Now, I will say I would be very happy to read that report. And normally, in my understanding of Arkansas freedom of information law, complaints filed

against officers are public information. I have made a freedom of information request for that report. But if an investigation is still technically open, normally any part of the case file, including a complaint, that would normally be public record, will be sealed. Larry Amos's statement was bizarre because in this case,

there's absolutely zero suggestion that Clia had any problems at home. Now, some people have suggested maybe Larry Amos just was tearing down these posters and behaving a little bit strangely because he didn't want people linking him with a young woman's disappearance. But in my opinion, Larry should have been way more concerned about Cleia in the fact she was missing, than about his reputation at that point. The fact that he seemed to try to impede the investigation and be uncooperative,

that to me is a huge red flag. Over the years, Like I said, the Halls have reached out to Larry Amos once they brought a canine dogged with the property, but Laurel said Larry refused to let them search there. According to Laurel, when Larry Amos came to the door, he made a strange statement when she asked to come

on his about not trusting psychics. Laurel later told a reporter that one of the women she was with had the letters ESP as part of her license plate number, and Larry's comment seemed to be a bizarre reference to that. Whether he genuinely thought he saw some kind of pattern there or whether he was just making up a reason to not let them search. Either way, the Hall started to get more and more suspicious that there was something

not right about doctor Larry Amos. After Clia had been missing for a few days, detectives talked to other potential people of interest. Of course, they had asked her family and her friends about potential boyfriends, and again Laurel told police Clia didn't have a steady boyfriend. But Laurel said Clia did have a male friend, a slightly older guy who she liked. This person was a twenty three year old Army reservist and he went to Clia's church. This

guy was cooperative. He talked to police and agreed to take a polygraph test, but the results were inconclusive. And again, I don't put a lot of faith in polygraph tests in my opinion. There's a reason why they aren't admissible in court, and there are a lot of reasons why tests can be ruled in conclusive. I'm mentioning this because this guy was completely cooperative. He gave police permission to search his vehicle. They didn't find anything connecting him to

Clia's disappearance. But when they talked to this guy, he did tell investigators he had had a strange encounter with Larry Amos himself. He said that he had given Clia a ride to work a couple of weeks before she disappeared. He said that when he dropped her off at Larry Amos's house, Larry said he needed to leave because courting was not allowed on his property, which is a strange

comment to make to a high school girl. Clea explained to Larry, this guy was nothing more than a friend, but two of them were not going out, which again, why would that matter? That was none of Larry's business. Laurel said that Clia's friend remained cooperative with law enforcement over the years. Eventually he left the area, married and a family of his own. Over the years, other theories have come up. Some people have mentioned that Clea could

have been kidnapped by a serial killer. A very infamous serial killer, Samuel Little, confess to killing a twenty six year old woman named Jelanda Jones and Pine Bluff just a few months before Clea disappeared. In my opinion, this does not seem to be a credible theory because, first of all, Jolanda's murder was considered to have been related to drugs. Clia's disappearance did not fit Samuel Little's mo MO

at all. Secondly, I have a hard time buying the idea that before dark someone would grab her off the street and have no one see a thing for me. In Clia's case, all roads lead back to the Amos house. I think something happened there that night, and a lot of online commenters seem to feel that way. I've talked to a lot of people in Pine Bluff and they all look at that house with a lot of suspicion.

One of the comments I read online reads quote growing up, it was common for to nonchalantly say that doctor Amos killed Leschendra and hid her in his concrete walls. His neighbors say they didn't see anyone come and pick her up. He was also seen sneaking around removing her missing flyers. The man is a creep, the kind of person you just feel uncomfortable being around. Laurel stopped relying on the Pine Bluff Police Department and over the years the case

went cold. Her family kept going to the media and every year they would do an awareness event on Clea's birthday. Over the years, they went through even more heartache because a DJ raised money for Clea's reward fund and then kept the money in left town and sadly the whole family was victimized again, their funds were gone, and the DJ eventually passed away. I just want to say, as a side note here, I've seen this happen so often

in cold cases. People will give money, they have good hearts, they want to help a family, and it will turn out that this money that was supposed to be for a scholarship or an event will get stolen. So please, when you are giving money to a victim or a family, please make sure you know exactly where it's going. Do not allow these families to be victimized again buscammers. In twenty twelve, after years of nothing happening, there seemed to

be a potentially huge break in this case. Oxygen had a TV series called Find Our Missing, and they ran Clia's story. Two witnesses came forward and they talked to the TV program. One was a construction worker and he said he'd worked on Larry Ames's house during the late nineteen nineties. After Clia went missing. This worker said he went to the police and he told them that he had been installing a fireplace in Larry Ames's house. He was taking out sheet rock and he saw what he

believed was blood splattered on some drywall. Another worker had a similar story. He said he was working in the backyard and he was filling a hole with some cement. The worker said he smelled something horrible. The documentary said, quote, when the wind would blow, he could smell an odor unlike anything he's ever smelled before. End quote. The worker also said there were flies buzzing all around that backyard. So in twenty twelve, after the series aired, police finally

got a search warrant. They went back to Larry Amos's English tutor house, the last place where Cleia was seen alive. The search warrant affidavit red quote. Sworn statements indicate the observance of a false wall inside the residence containing blood on the insulation. Also, statements indicate the body was buried on the property at fifty three oh nine Fawcet Road, in a hole where bricks and rocks and powdered concrete

was used to cover up something. End quote. They went back to Larry Amos's oversized English tutor house, the last place where Clia was seen alive. This aired on the news. You could see crime scene tape up everywhere. Police spent hours there. Larry was wearing a green work shirt and a tie, and he was on a cell phone outside watching these detectives go in and out of his house. Police used sniffer dogs and ground radar penetrating devices, but

they did not dig up anything in the backyard. They did go inside and police took out little pieces of that drywall insulation. In all, they filled several huge bags full of evidence. So Laurel and Willie waited. A month later, they talked to police and were told that the Arkansas State Crime Lab had not sent back the evidence yet. But they were horrified to learn that this wasn't true, that actually the evidence was still sitting at the police station.

It had not even been forwarded to the crime lab. After the delay, the evidence was sent to the crime lab, and several weeks after that the results came back. There were no traces of blood on any of the evidence they had tested. This was just another devastating blow for Clia's family, outraged first of all at the delay, and they really believed that the police department was hindering the investigation. Even after all this time, they still had waited so

long to send that evidence to the crime lab. A spokesperson for the pam Bluff Police Department eventually said that the state crime lab bound no blood evidence and said that delay did not affect the evidence, but the Halls were not buying it. They still have questions about whether that evidence was tested accurately. In fact, later Laurel said, the whole thing was so strange and there were so

many things that they believed were in competent mistakes. They started to suspect it could be a cover up, and it was about to get much worse because later Laurel Hall learned that when that evidence was taken out of the amo's house, one of the detectives put the bags of evidence into the trunk of his car and then drove it home and let it sit there all night before giving it to the crime scene text Later, the officer said they did that because there was a lot

of media there. They didn't want to have to drag all these bags of evidence past the cameras. But that made no sense because the media had been there all day. You could see this whole thing unfolding. Even if that were true, they just wanted to get the evidence out of there quickly. They still could have taken it straight to the crime lab but they didn't. This person went home and let that evidence sit there all night in

the trunk of that car. So the truth is, from my understanding, even if the evidence revealed anything crucial, the evidence could have been challenged in court, and that officer potentially ruined the chain of custody. A good defense attorney could tear that apart at trial. It was later reported that as a result of all this, a crime scene

lab technician ended up being suspended. No further action was taken by the Palm Bluff Police Department, and to this day, I am still trying to find out if after they supposedly tested evidence and found no blood, any additional DNA testing was or could be done. A few people have reached out to Larry Amos over the years. Record show he still lives in that same neighborhood, in that same English tutor house. It's still owned by him and his family.

And again I should say, obviously Larry Amos has always completely denied any involvement in Klea's disappearance. He said that the business trip was pre planned. He said people claiming that he was skipping town or running away were just spreading wild rumors. So what happened to Clea Hall. Again, for reasons we've discussed before, I don't think it's likely at all she got into a car with someone else.

Police have never been able to find any evidence that there was another car at the Amos residence that night. No neighbors saw her leave, no one saw her along the route, either walking or another vehicle they didn't recognize, And for this reason, I also think it's unlikely a stranger grabbed her in the very short distance between Larry

Amos's house and hers, with no one seeing her. So I keep coming back to that third possibility, a theory that I believe is far more likely that Clia never left the Amos house that night, and that something happened inside that house, some kind of altercation that we still don't know about. Obviously, the case file is still sealed, so there is very limited information out there available to the public. But I did do a deep dive into

the blueprints and construction history of the Amos house. Over the past eighteen years, that house has had nine major renovations. I'm always looking for patterns in these cases, and I do see quite a few similarities, at least on the surface, between Clia's case and the case of Kristen Smarts. Kristen's case was finally solved after over twenty years. Kristin was nineteen years old when she vanished in nineteen ninety six, and over the years there was a person of interest,

a guy named Paul Flores. A lot of people believe that he had assaulted Kristin and killed her, and that her remains may be in his father's house, but no one could prove it. But over the years a lot of people looked at that house as a place of interest, and like in Clia's case, police did go in in the year two thousand. They executed a search warrant, and just like in Clia's case, they used ground penetrating radar, but they didn't dig up the backyard and they didn't

find anything. Then years later, in twenty twenty one, detectives went back to the house again and this time they did dig up the backyard. They found evidence linked to Kristen Smart buried under the deck. I only mention this because a lot of people over the years have said, well, they've searched there, They've used ground penetrating radar, they didn't find anything. So we can't rule out the possibility that there could be secrets buried in that backyard or somewhere

else in that house. So if something did happen to Cleia in the house that night, why would Larry Amos or someone in his family want a heart her. Well, one potential motive could be something related to money, because, as some of you may know, in my other podcast, Red Collar, I talk a lot about financial fraud and how financial fraud can lead to murder, and there are a lot of red flags in Larry Amos's background related

to fraud. He has filed for multiple bankruptcies and in two thousand and eight, he was running another organization called

Progressive Southeast Arkansas. It was supposed to be a housing development corporation where he would build houses with this federal grant money he got, but actually what he did was just scam the government because the only houses that he sold he ended up selling a house to his own daughter at a huge discount, And according to these court papers, a lot of the other homes that he built were

badly constructed or never built at all. And these court papers alleged that he took the money and just kind of ran and left people without homes. So if Clea was a person handling the books, could she have seen something she wasn't supposed to see? Could she have seen

some shady stuff she didn't like. Could they have gotten into an argument, or could Cliah have gotten into conflict with someone else inside the house that night, someone who was never mentioned in the original police documents, because remember we don't have access to the case fall, we don't have a confirmed list of who was there, and Larry

Amos over the years has not been forthcoming. One person who has been mentioned over the years, though he was never officially a person of interest, was Larry Amos's older son, Omar. Omar Amos was in his twenties at the time when Clea went missing. He didn't live with Larry and his wife Patricia, but he did live in a house close by, so he was over there a lot. Omar has his own dark past. He later was arrested for assaulting a

female victim. So I do wonder could Larry Amos or his son, or someone else, maybe someone hanging out with his son or with another family member, have made some kind of a move on Clia and she refused their sexual advances, or did one of Larry's relatives do something to Clia, something that their father may have helped them clean up. Sadly, we can't ask Omar. In July of twenty twenty, Omar was beaten to death in his own home in Pine Bluff, just five miles away from his

dad's house on Fawcett Road. Over the years, Laurel has told people that she has a recurring dream about Clia. In that dream, Clia is sitting in Larry Amos's bathtub, her hands are tied. She's screaming for her mom to help her. Laurel knows it's just a dream, but it seems like her subconscious is screaming that there is something bothering her about Larry Amos and about that house. Laurel

has confessed that she feels guilty. She of course asked herself why that night, Why did she fall asleep, even though there was no way she could have known what was going on? And to me, the fact that Clia did not call her mother back means that whatever happened to her probably happened between eight and around eight thirty pm. So we have to answer the question what happened inside that house? I believe this case is solvable. I believe

someone knows something. Every year, Laurel, Willie and the rest of the family released balloons in pink, Clia's favorite color on her birthday, March thirtieth. They do the same thing on May ninth, the day she went missing. Laurel said, quote, she was just somebody that had a light that meant something. She had goals, and she had dreams just like everybody else. And our family had dreams and goals for her too, And so somewhere we're missing out on seeing what our

life could have been. End quote. I'm Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone. Murder line. Hell and Gone is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts. Music is by Ben so Lee, and this episode was scored by Miranda Hawkins. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr,

and Elsie Crowley. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at six seven eight seven four four six one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four sixty one four five. School of humans,