School of Humans. Helen Got Murder Line actively investigates cold case murders in an effort to raise public awareness invite witnesses to come forward and present evidence that could potentially be further investigated by law enforcement. While we value insights from family and community members, their statements should not be considered evidence and point to the challenges of verifying facts
inherent in cold cases. We remind listeners that everyone has presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing in the podcast is intended to state or imply that anyone who has not been convicted of a crime is guilty of any wrongdoing. Thanks for listening.
Sometime between seven and eight am on Saturday, January fifteenth, nineteen ninety four, in Hot Springs, Arkansas, thirty one year old David Ferrell knocked on his roommate Paul's door.
Six year old Paul Lloyd was in bed.
With a woman named Glenna Jones, who he had been hanging out with and dating. Paul and Glenna had partied pretty hard the night before and had not gotten home until late then they crashed. David's knocking woke them up. David told Paul that his mom was on the phone and that she wanted to know why Paul wasn't at work. Paul tried to get David to talk to his mom for him, but David told him he needed to talk to her directly, so Paul got up and spoke to his mom on the phone.
Paul told his mother that he would call her back later.
Shortly after that phone call from Paul's mother, at least according to one version of this story, David left for work.
David worked at Stroop Tires.
His shift started at seven thirty am, and he later told police he spent that day working on an Arkansas State Police vehicle. David claims that after he left work that day, he went to babysit his two sons, who lived with his ex Mona Harris. Mona worked nights, so David claimed he slept in the living room at her place, and when he eventually got back to his house, Paul and Glenna were gone. A few months later, on June first, nineteen ninety four, a couple was walking through the woods
in Hot Springs County. They were kind of lost near an area called Jack Mountain, and they saw a piece of tape attached to a tree written on that tape where the words pack all rats together, they walked a little bit further into the woods and saw a human skeleton. I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the past eight years of 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. If you have a case, she'd like me and my team to look in two. You can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five, or you can send us a message on Instagram at Helen gonepod.
This is Helen Gone Murder Line. After the couple found the body in the woods on June first, police recovered the remains, but they didn't have a lot of other forensic evidence. The body was dressed in cowboy boots, but the remains were scattered over a range of about thirty yards, so far that they could not even determine how the victim had died. Police found four empty shell casings near
the body and bullets in the soil. Based on that and on the fact that the shirt and jacket near the skeleton each had three holes in them, police believed that the victim had been shot. Eventually, they were able to use dental records to identify the remains.
As Paul Lloyd.
Let's back up to January fifteenth, nineteen ninety four. It was a Saturday. Paul Lloyd's mom called the house where he lived with David.
They talked on the phone and Paul said he would call.
Back, But after that call, Paul Lloyd didn't show up at work that day. Paul's brother Kenny, reported him missing a few days later, on January twenty first, nineteen ninety four, after he failed to show up and pick up his paychecks. Paul's brother Kenny talked to police. He told them that David, Paul's roommate, had introduced Paul to a man named Wayne Hortman, who dealt and took methamphetamines. David had been selling drugs
for Wayne. Kenny also told police he had kind of started doing his own investigation, which included stopping by Paul's house to talk to David Ferrell. He told police that David was very unhelpful when he asked about Paul. According to police documents, Kenny said the last time he saw Paul, Paul was on his way to meet with David and Wayne Hortman because he was planning to trade his motorcycle to them in exchange for drugs.
But David later claimed.
He wasn't even there that day, that he merely introduced Paul and Wayne, and that they were planning on doing the motorcycle for drug trade themselves. So the Hot Springs Police Department started looking into Paul Lloyd's case, but they weren't making a ton of progress at first because since they hadn't found Paul's body, it was still being investigated
as a missing person's case. But then in March of nineteen ninety four, they were questioning Wayne Hortman about something else when he said he had information about what had really happened to Paul Lloyd. Wayne said that about two weeks after Paul went missing, David told Wayne that he had a gun, an SKS rifle that he was nervous about. Wayne claimed David had handed him this SKS rifle and told him to do something with it, so Waine said he took David's gun back to his place he was
living with his mother at the time. But then Wayne said David was at his house a few weeks later and saw the gun there. He noticed that Wayne had not gotten rid of the gun, so at that point Wayne claimed that David got very angry and first tried to destroy worry the weapon by slamming it against a tree, and then when that didn't work, David told Wayne to drive him to the Highway to seventy Bridge over Lake Hamilton.
So Wayne said he did, and he claimed that when they got there, David got out of the vehicle and threw the gun into the lake. Wayne wasn't the only one under investigation. The Bureau of Tobacco, Alcohol and Firearms was investigating David Ferrell on a matter unconnected with Paul's disappearance, so an ATF agent named Glenn Cook did some checking and found out that the year before, in March of
nineteen ninety three, David had purchased an SKS rifle. So divers from Garland County went into the area near where Wayne claimed that gun was, and on May twentieth, nineteen ninety four, an investigator went into the water on the side of two seventy West Bridge and found a piece of an SKS the barrel receiver assembly, basically the core
component of the gun. Investigators from the ATF matched the serial number of the pieces of the rifle they pulled from the lake to an SKS rifle that David got from Monny's Pawnshop in Hot.
Springs, Arkansas.
Investigator Cook also matched the document signatures of David to the pawnshop receipts. They confirmed this was David Ferrell's gun and they believed this could be their murder weapon, but they still were suspicious of Wayne Hortman. Police arrested Wayne Hortman, and on June second, they charged him with Paul Lloyd's murder.
Then Wayne Hortman told him something else. He claimed he had not only seen the possible murder weapon thrown into the lake, but he had witnessed Paul Lloyd's murder himself. Wayne Hortman admitted to police that David killed Paul, not him. He said he had been at David's home on South Patterson Street on January fifteenth, and that David shot Paul there. Wayne said that David's girlfriend at the time, Regina, was also present, so police searched the house on South Patterson Street.
They cut out three sections of carpet that were stained with blood and they sent them to the crime lab for testing. The results came back and found that the blood was not human blood, and yet they continued to build a case against David Ferrell. David claimed that on the day of Paul's murder, he wasn't at home at all. He said he was at work all day at Stroop Tire in Hot Springs, and after that he was babysitting.
His two boys.
But David was charged with capital murder. If convicted, he faced the death penalty. David told police that Wayne killed Paul Lloyd. He said Wayne was dealing drugs and also worked undercover with the police, and that meant Wayne could cut deals with the police and with the prosecutor to stay out of jail. Wayne did tell the police that he in an associate of his name, Freddie McCaslin, had been involved in major methamphetamine trafficking in Arkansas for eight years.
Wayne explained every two weeks he would fly to Bell Gardens in California, which was near Los Angeles, to buy meth.
Waine would then strap.
Pounds of this methamphetamine to his belt line and fly back to Hot Springs to meet with Freddy, his contact. Meanwhile, Wayne was also talking to the police and he kept changing his story. First he said Paul Lloyd had been killed at David's house. Later he said Paul was killed at Crystal Springs Lake, then at a gravel pit, then along a highway between Hot Springs and Malvern. Finally, Wayne said Paul had been murdered on Jack Mountain, near where
his remains were found on June third. After Wayne confessed about the shooting at Jack Mountain, Wayne Hortman cut a deal so the state dropped the capital murder charges against him, and in the end, he was only charged with hindering prosecution. In return, he promised to testify against David at trial. David was arrested in charge with capital murder and transferred to the Hot Springs.
County Jail to await trial.
As David's attorneys prepared for this trial, in July of nineteen ninety four, they filed motions for discovery. A lot of the discovery involved the physical evidence that had been taken to the state crime lab and they waited, but nothing ever came. The Arkansas State Crime Lab had long delays, and those delays actually almost derailed the trial entirely. In February of nineteen ninety five, Judge Sheeran threatened to dismiss the charges against David entirely due to the State Crime
Laboratory's delays in evidence testing. He said the delays could potentially stop David's defense attorneys from having adequate time to prepare his case. The right to a speedy trial is required by Arkansas state law, which means most of these cases had to go to trial within a year. The judge set a timeline of February ninth for this evidence to be produced, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms produced the tests in time to hit that deadline.
The trial started and the state produced nine witnesses. Now, all of them said they heard David Bragg about shooting Paul. The prosecutor, Dan Harmon, said that his theory was that David killed Paul because David believed that Paul was a drug informant for the police. Again, these stakes were high for David. If convicted, he faced the death penalty. This was a capital murder charge when David's trial finally started in nineteen ninety five, and this is something I've never
heard of happening. One of the other weird twists in this case was that the trial took place not in a courtroom, but in an industrial complex in Hot Springs. The reasons for the weird location were because there were supposedly renovations happening at the Hot Springs court It ended up being just another strange set of circumstances in an already very odd case. The state's case against David's seemed weak. They had no fingerprints or physical evidence tying David to
the crime scene at all. They didn't even have a definite cause of death. But they had the bullets and the shell casings. A firearms expert, Joseph Mason, testified in court that he could conclusively match three of the four shell casings two David's SKS weapon, and although he said he was unable to make a definitive match between David's SKS and the bullet fragments found, he said that the bullets came from the same type of weapon as the SKS.
Doctor Charles Kocus, the medical examiner, did not perform the autopsy, but he testified due to the decomposition of Paul's body, he could not conclusively determine.
The cause of death.
However, he did observe Paul's wounds were consistent with death by gunshot. The jacket and shirt that Paul Lloyd had been wearing each had three small holes in the back, which doctor Koca said were consistent with bullet entry, and an expert from the state crime Lab found traces of lead around the holes in the jacket and shirt, which
he believed indicated bullet entry. Later in David's appeal, David made another incredible claim that the body found at Jack Mountain wasn't Paul Lloyd's at all, but that the prosecutor, Dan Harmon had substituted another John Doe body for Paul Lloyd's. Dan Harmon had a lot of issues of his own. He ended up resigning as a prosecutor a year after David Ferrell's trial after Dan Harmon was arrested on assault charges and Dan Harmon's illegal activities ultimately impacted David's overall case.
But David couldn't.
Prove Dan Harmon had planted a body and the skeleton in addition to having pieces of clothing nearby with whole in them that a firearms expert and testified could be bullet holes, was also wearing a belt with Paul written on the back. David also claimed that the people who said they had heard him confess to Paul's murder had been coerced or even threatened by Dan Harmon even after
hearing those witnesses. Though the bulk of the state's case rested on one person, the alleged eye witness, Wayne Hortman, and as we said before, Wayne Hortman changed his story several times. In David's petition, he pointed out that quote, depending on which statement you read, Paul Lloyd was killed either at David's house, at Crystal Springs Lake, at a gravel pit along a highway between Hot Springs and Malvern, or actually on Jack Mountain, near where his remains were
found end quote. The jury found David guilty of Paul's murder, but they did return with the recommendation of a lighter sentence than death, life without the possibility of parole, and Judge Sheeran agreed with the record commendation. In twenty ten, David's attorneys filed a writ of habeas corpus. David stated in his appeal that he believed that he was entitled to DNA and blood type testing. He claimed that he
was convicted with false evidence. David stated both the State Crime Lab and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms failed to get a positive match on the bullets, shell casings, and fragments.
Introduced him to evidence.
Among other things, David claimed the verdict should be overturned because if the jury had known about the prosecutors behind
the scenes activities, he would never have been convicted. David claimed that Dan Harmon, who along with the Prosecuting Attorney's Office of the seventh Judicial District of Arkansas ran the Seventh Judicial District Drug Task Force, coerced witnesses into saying David confessed to Paul's murder and this wasn't the first time Dan Harmon was charged with this kind of thing. In nineteen ninety seven, Dan Harmon and went to trial
in federal court. He was convicted of federal racketeering, extortion, and drug conspiracy. The government charged that Harmon and his colleagues actually distributed marijuana themselves and also extorted people. Dan Harmon would blackmail them by promising not to prosecute.
Them in exchange for money.
One of the men who Dan Harmon allegedly blackmailed was Freddie McCaslin Wayne Hortman's meth dealing partner, and the behavior described in this federal case is truly shocking.
In my opinion.
In one instance, Dan told the wife of a man charge with possession of marijuana that if she spent the night with him at a hotel, they could work things out.
She declined to take that.
Offer, and Dan Harmon said he would drop the charges against her husband for ten thousand dollars. So the couple paid Dan Harmon and the charges were dropped. And not only did Dan Harmon make deals to extort money, he dealt drugs himself. The court alleged that Dan Harmon conspired to possess marijuana with intent to distribute, so he was involved in bringing marijuana into the house, repackaging it into one pound bags, and helping sell the marijuana. He also
oversaw the collection of funds. So you have a situation where the prosecutor, the person in charge of punishing drug dealers, was not only dealing drugs himself, but was taking payments from other drug dealers in exchange for dropping charges against them. Dan Harmon was convicted of those charges plus some additional drug charges. In the end, he was behind bars for eight years. Dan Harmon was disbarred in nineteen ninety nine. He was also accused of using his office to facilitate
sexual misconduct. This is important because this is the person who prosecuted David Ferrell. In the end, hundreds of cases were dismissed due to Dan Harmon's corruption, but David Ferrell's would not be one of them. Dan Harmon was released from prison in two thousand and six. Then four years later, in twenty ten, Dan Harmon was arrested again after allegedly selling drugs to an undercover officer near a school in Sheridan, Arkansas.
He was acquitted of those drug charges. Dan Harmon stayed in Seline County after that and for the rest of his life. He died on September twenty second, twenty twenty three.
At the age of seventy eight.
In twenty eleven, Judge Philip Shearan announced his retirement. When the Sheridan Highlight asked him about his most unusual case, he said it was the capital murder trial of David Ferrell, which he told the newspaper was of considerable interest to a motorcycle gang. He said the trial had been moved to a quote makeshift courtroom in the Hot Springs County Industrial.
Complex end quote.
David Ferrell argued in his position for appeal that the jury never heard the complete story. He claimed there were major inconsistencies that were never fully disclosed. This included Wayne's connections to local drug dealers, who, in turn, David claimed were connected to Dan Harmon. This is called a Brady violation when the prosecution doesn't turn over exculpatory evidence that could have helped David's case. David claimed law enforcement knew
of evidence that was not disclosed to the defense. If you're interested in the legal precedent, the actual case is Brady versus Maryland. It means that suppressing evidence, even if it's unintentional, can overturn a conviction if that evidence is material. David and his attorney's claimed the state's case depended on witnesses whose testimony had been compromised, either by promised undisclosed
benefits or pressure by Dan Harmon. David claimed this case was tied to a bigger network, a network involving drug actimvity informants and a prosecutor who was also connected to the Drug Task Force, and David even claimed that federal agencies, the FBI, the ATF, and the DEA were aware of what was going on. In twenty fourteen, the case went to the Arkansas Supreme Court. David was asking to have some of the evidence presented at his trial retested. In
May of twenty fourteen, David lost. The court ruled David had failed to show that the trial judge in Hot Springs County was wrong to have denied his request for a new review of the evidence. So David stayed in prison, where he remains to this day. David Ferrell has always maintained his innocence, and over the years he's filed several petitions. Multiple conflicting accounts have emerged. Some were given at trial,
others years later in sworn affidavits. Some of these affidavits back up David's claims that he was not there when Paul was killed. One of them was from David's ex Mona Harris, swore in an affidavit that Dan Harmon had told her if she didn't give him the answers that he wanted, she would not be allowed to go home to see her two kids. David also as an affidavit from someone else, Paul Lloyd's girlfriend, Glenna. Now Glenna told
a completely different story than Wayne Hortman did. In an Aphidavid, Glenna stated that the conviction of David had been a grave injustice, and she explained some background about what had brought her and Paul to David's house. Glenna said she originally contacted David around September of nineteen ninety three because David was an old friend of hers At the time. She said she was dating someone else, a boyfriend who
was not Paul Lloyd. David said Glenna and her boyfriend could come to Arkansas to get back on their feet.
She agreed.
David picked Glenna and her boyfriend up at the bus station in Hot Springs. She and her boyfriend went to stay with David, David's girlfriend, Regina, who was living there at the time, and Paul Lloyd. At the time, David was making and selling meth for Wayne Hortman. After a few weeks had gone by, Paul and Glenna made a plan. Paul would drive her and her boyfriend back to Houston, Texas.
But then there was some drama because Glenna said, on the night they were planning to leave, David found out that Regina was cheating on him and they got into a huge fight.
Now this is where the gun comes.
In because Glenna claim during that fight, Wayne Hortman asked her to take David's SKS rifle out of the house and give it to him. So she said that's what she did. She took David's gun and gave it to Wayne. Afterwards, she said, she Paul, and her boyfriend took off and left for Houston. When they got to Houston, Glenna said she and Paul dropped her boyfriend off and went to get some meth in a motel room and partied all night.
Glenna said during that time, Paul was talking to her about a meth deal that he was planning to make with someone. Paul let those people take his truck. Then the people Paul made the deal with never came back with his vehicle. So then Paul called David back in Arkansas and asked for help. Then David somehow arranged for Paul to come home. Paul went back to Arkansas. Glenna stayed in touch with him. They were dating at that point.
Glenna called Paul on New Year's Eve in nineteen ninety four and they made plans for her to come stay with him for a few days in Arkansas. So then Thursday, January thirteenth rolled around, Glenna borrowed a car from a friend of hers. She drove to Hot Springs and met up with Paul on January fourteenth, Friday morning, David was at work when Glenna got to their house, so she said she didn't see him, but she and Paul party
that night and got back late. She said she never saw David on Friday, so this brings us back to that fateful next morning, January fifteenth, Glenna said David opened the door between seven and eight am and told Paul his mom was on the phone wondering why Paul wasn't at work. We've heard that story before, but this is where the story diverges because as Glenna said that, a short while later, after David left for work, Wayne Hortman came over to the house. Glenna said she knew who
Wayne was. She said Wayne and Paul had been in business together dealing methamphetamines and on that morning, they had unfinished business involving drugs, money, and a motorcycle. According to what Glenna told police, Paul was planning to trade his Suzuki Intruder motorcycle to Wayne in exchange for an unspecified
quantity of meth. Wayne wanted the bike, but Paul hadn't received full payment yet, so on that morning, Wayne told Paul he had the rest of what he owed him meeting the drugs and that the meth was out near a mountain somewhere. Wayne told Paul they should take a ride out there. Paul agreed, and at first Wayne told Glenna she should stay home, but Paul said no, that he and Glenna would ride together in her car and
follow Wayne in his red truck. After that, Glenna and Paul planned to ride to Malvern to pick up Paul's paycheck, so Glenna said that's what they did. They left Hot Springs together. Wayne drove in his red truck, Paul and Glenna followed. When they got a few miles out of town, the road started getting smaller, and then they turned onto a dirt road, and, according to what Glenna told police, across a low wooden bridge, approximately three miles down a
dirt path. She said the bridge was quote just long boards crossing a creek. It was quite scary end quote. Wayne stopped, she pulled up behind him. Paul got out of her car and walked up to Wayne's truck. The two of them sat in Wayne's truck for a few minutes, and then they got out and Paul and Wayne started walking up the side of a steep hill about fifty
yards away on the right side of the road. Glenna saw that Wayne had a rifle that looked like the one he asked her to take from David's house several months earlier. She said they were gone for a few minutes and then she saw Wayne hold the rifle up and fire the first shot, but she said.
She didn't see what he hit.
Then she said she heard more guns, maybe three or four, and then another final single shot. Glenna said in the affidavit quote, I don't like guns, and I was already scared of being out in the woods, and I was afraid someone would call the police to report the gunshots that someone was out in the woods acting stupid. So I started my car and drove off really fast. I said, to hell with this, I'm not gonna end up in
jail because they want to play with guns. While in the middle of the woods doing a dope deal end quote, she said she got back into her car and drove away. If Glenna's account is accurate, it directly contradicts the version of events presented at trial. So why didn't Glenna come forward sooner? She said in her affidavit that she was unaware that David had been convicted of Paul's murder. She said if she knew what was going on at the time,
that she would have gone to the police. In addition to Glenna's accounts of what happened that morning, David produced other affidavits from his two young sons. David's son Carl, stated in the affidavit that David could not have killed Paul because on the night that Paul disappeared, David was with Carl and his brother Cody all night. He remembers David falling asleep in the recliner holding Cody and not waking up and leaving until his.
Mom came in from her late night shift.
Carl said he remembered that day well because it was the last night they spent with their father in ten years. Carl said that the prosecutor did not allow him to testify, but he said if he had, Carl would have sworn in court that his father was with him and his brother. Carl's brother Cody made a similar sworn affidavit. So if those statements are true, why was David charged with Paul's murder.
David testified during his trial that Wayne had told him he had the police in his pocket and that if he, meaning David, knew what was good for him, he would keep quiet about Paul Lloyd. David said Wayne told him he had at least fifty instances where he had cut deals with the police to get off of pending charges. Wayne has completely denied that version of events and stated he was not involved in Paul Lloyd's death.
It's important to remember all charges against.
Wayne Hortman were dropped, and neither he nor anyone else connected to him has ever been arrested or charged in connection with Paul Lloyd's murder. David was convicted of Paul's murder. However, the inconsistencies in this case and the irregularities in the prosecutor's behavior afterwards, have led a lot of people to wonder what really happened on January fifteenth, nineteen ninety four out in those woods? Was David Ferrell there at all? And as we continue to look into this case, we
have been communicating with David Ferrell. We would also like to talk to anyone who was involved in Dan Harmon's prosecutions. Did David Ferrell really kill Paul Lloyd? And if it wasn't David Ferrell, could Paul's killer still be out there? I'm Katherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line is a production of School of Humans
and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by Etily's Perez Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her research assistance and James Wheaton for legal review. Noah Camera mixed and scored this episode. Our theme song is by Ben Sale, Executive producers of Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and LC Crowley. Listen to Helen Gone adfree by subscribing to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel on Apple Podcasts.
If you were interested in seeing documents and materials from the case, you can follow the show on Instagram at Helen gonpod. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into. You can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four six' one four.
Five school Of humans