School of Humans. I'm Catherine Townsend.
Over the past five years making my true crime podcast Helen Gone, I've learned there's no such thing as a small town where murder never happens. I've 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. 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 or five. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. As you know, we're launching a new series, but I can't start something new without returning to the case that started at all on Hele Gone and the case that changed
my life forever, the murder of Rebecca Gould. The case file was finally released in full a few months back, and since then I have spent countless hours, many of them very late at night, reviewing it. As most of you know, in October of twenty twenty two, William Billy Miller was convicted of Rebecca's murder. He was sentenced to forty years in prison, which means that he will almost
certainly spend the rest of his life behind bars. I am very happy that a violent killer and sexual predator has been taken off the streets, and I absolutely believe that Billy Miller was responsible for Rebecca's murder, at least partially. Side note here. When I did my last update episode, I mentioned that I was upset that the prosecutor hadn't kept his word to release the case file to doctor
Larry Gould, Rebecca's father before it became public. So back in December, I was put in this very surreal situation of having filed a freedom of information request and then being one of the first people in the state to have the entire case file, and then of having to call Larry and break the news to him that his daughter's autopsy photos were now public. But shortly after that, I got a call from Mike McNeil of the Arkansas State Police. Mike asked that I set the record straight.
He said the prosecutor was a friend of his and had done excellent work, and that the case file being made public was an o recite by his office. And not by the prosecutor's office. I do appreciate the hard work that the prosecutor's office did and the fact that they put Billy Miller behind bars where he belongs. And I've always said this podcast is not meant to be anti law enforcement. They have a hard job to do.
I've always believed that Mike McNeil did an amazing job on this investigation, especially what he had to work with after his predecessors finished with the case. So I did want to make sure to get that message across. So the case file is out, Billy Miller's been convicted, But as I said before, reading through this massive case file has not changed my opinion. I still feel like Billy Miller's conviction is not the end of the story. While I was waiting for the case file to come out,
there was a lot going on behind the scenes. Myself and a lot of other people, including private investigator Jennifer Buckoltz who started the Facebook group Unsolved Murder, Rebecca Gould, and the journalist and author George Jarrett, and a lot of other people have been following up on leads. So once again I went back to the very beginning, back to one of the very first conversations I had with Taylor, who was my producer in season one. This was back
in twenty eighteen. I was just starting out on this case. I was living alone in my grandmother's cabin in the woods, and after going on local public radio, I was getting a lot of random tips. People were calling and texting. Hundreds of tips flooded in, so to keep track of them, we would talk about these pieces of information that we'd
gotten and decide which one seemed credible. We did our best to run down every single tip we got until we either got to a dead end or a point where we decided we need to investigate further.
Okay, so let me go back to these tips.
All right, just heard you on KWOZ with Gary, and I just wanted to let you know that on that Saturday, on the weekend Rebecca was killed, my family and I lived right beside them, and we all set out at my brother in law's house all day and not sure what time it was, but it was in the afternoon. There was a little dark blue car with a guy and a woman that came by and went up to
the barn, right past the trailer. The guy got out and I thought he was going to use the bathroom, but he went to the back of the car, put on like jogging pants and got a weeded her out and weeded it a little bit. Rebecca came out on the porch when they drove back by and stopped, and she went to the end of the porch and said, did you get it done? And he said yes, and they drove off. They had Texas tags on the car.
Then a little while later, Rebecca came out to her car, opened the door and got something out and went back inside the trailer. She was wearing a gray tank top and a pair of gray sweatpants. We did tell the Arkansas State Police, and not sure it has anything to do with anything. It was just really strange because he only weeded for maybe about fifteen minutes or so, not long at all, and it was where the old barn is. Just thought it was strange and never seen the guy before.
He had black hair and was young looking. Couldn't really see the woman.
So there it is.
Billy Miller and his family were there the whole time, lurking in the background. Linda Miller told police that she and Jeremy were at Casey's trailer that weekend that was them, that little blue car with the Texas plates, and the young man with the black hair was Jeremy Miller. Now, Billy Miller has claimed that he acted alone. He said no one in his family or anyone else had any idea what he did.
He said that he was a monster.
But I made a promise to Rebecca way back when I started this investigation that I was going to keep digging until I'm satisfied that I have answered the question of what really happened to Rebecca Gould in September two thousand and four in that tiny trailer in the backwoods of Guyan I want to focus on facts. I'm really not here to focus on again. What are the well documented and factual what I believe to be catastrophic mistakes made by the previous investigator on the case, Dennis Simon's.
But I do want to take a second to talk about the Dateline episode, the one that aired covering Rebecca Gould's case, because a lot of people have asked me about it. While the episode was pretty factual, there's no
easy way to say this. Dennis Simon's blatantly lied in that episode, and it made me sick to watch the b roll of him typing his computer, acting like he was really busy, and then staring out at a body of water as if he was pondering the case as HELLNGNG listeners know this is the exact opposite of what happened as usual. There was a story behind the story about the dateline episode. For the past three years, I've been talking to a producer at forty eight hours, a
rival program. A few months ago, she called me with some disturbing information. She let me know that when she called the Arkansas State Police to say that forty eight hours wanted to run an episode about Rebecca's case, the Arkansas State Police told forty eight hours that if they talked to me or George Jared or Jennifer Bucklet, and they mentioned all three of us, unprompted by name, that they would not participate in the program.
The producer refused.
She said that that type of request was a violation of First Amendment rights. I also want to make it clear that the one exception to this was Mike McNeil, because the producer told me when she talked to Mike that he did agree to do an interview even if they talked to us. He was fine with the producer speaking to me, George and Jennifer as long as we were asked the tough questions, which obviously is fine with me. I talked to the Dateline producer at length. I shared
information with them, just like I do with everyone. And I do wonder why, if there were no condition, why they wouldn't have had not just me, but other people on for interviews, why they would have aired pieces from the podcast without giving me the courtesy of allowing me
to comment. I was very disappointed that someone like Dennis Simon's was given airtime and that the Arkansas State Police was allowed to paint this narrative of him working diligently on the case for years, because everyone who listens to this podcast should know that's just not what happened. I
called him in several lives on the show. First, he said that after I brought in the witness statement from the person who told me that Casey had confessed to Rebecca's murder, and he read details that no one else knew, Dennis said that he immediately understood how serious this was. He left out the part about how he refused to take evidence, and you can see this in the case file.
When he did go to reinterview some people who were involved in Casey's ALBI, rather than any in depth interviews, he literally sent them their own statements that they had made back in two thousand and four, asked them if anything had changed, and when they said no, he moved on. His so called interviews were all done in around five minutes. What really happened over and over was me and other people going in to try and give Dennis evidence and
him refusing to take it. He didn't want to see anything that didn't incriminate Chris Cantrell, who we now know had nothing to do with Rebecca's death. Dennis told me over and over he was making sure that Chris Cantrell did life on the installment plan by putting him in prison as often as possible. I urge everyone out there to do a Foyer request for yourself and read the entire case file, because you don't need to take my
word for it. The work or lack of work he did over a fifteen year period will speak for itself. I really loved Dateline, but in this case, I think the producer users made a bad call by allowing Dennis Simons to have a platform. We have fought so hard to tell the truth about what was going on during his time as lead investigator in this case. I really feel that making it seem like he's working diligently behind the scenes does a massive disservice to everyone out there
trying to deal with potentially incompetent or corrupt investigators. Let's get back to Rebecca's case. Once Mike McNeil took over, he testified at the pre trial hearings that after looking at the case file, he came to the same conclusion that we did in the podcast. The cleanup scene at Casey's home indicated that Casey McCulla or someone connected to
him and to that trailer killed rebeccah Gould. So Mike went back to the beginning to see if there was something or someone that law enforcement had missed, and soon he saw what the neighbors told us on the podcast, that Billy Miller, Casey's cousin, came to town right before
Rebecca was murdered, and that he left right afterward. I'm sure he also noticed that Casey mentioned Billy coming to the house in his first interview with police and then never mentioned him again, even once investigators specifically asked Casey for a list of people who had been inside the house and outside it. Billy did not make Casey's list.
Going to conduct an interview with Casey McCullough.
Mike interviewed Casey in twenty twenty.
It is September the eighteenth, twenty twenty, approximately ten am. We're in Melbourne, Arkansas.
Mike started out by asking Casey to drive him over to the area of Wolf Farm, where Casey's grandparents used to live. This was also the place where Linda, Jeremy and Billy Miller's stayed when they were in town. He was friendly and approachable and kept Casey talking.
Little Bill William his birth name is William Alma Miller, that he goes by little Bill Bill. Okay, he came up to help Linda and Jeremy move back to Texas.
Okay, now I'm starting to yeah, Okay, ring a bell.
Okay.
So in his statement, he said that the first thing he did when he got up here to Melbourne, to Izard County was that he visited family and spent time with his mom. So my thinking is is that he was at the grandparents' house visiting like he said he was. Whenever you showed up to give Claude your truck. Okay, how else it doesn't make sense to me. How else would you know that that was little Bill out on the dirt road just by looking out the window, unless
you had seen him just hours before. This is so long ago, Yeah, I know, but I mean, just try to try to have that what I'm saying, I think makes makes sense. I don't know how because by your statement, you said, Rebecca looked out the window and saw somebody on the road, and then you looked out the window and noticed that it was little Bill. How would you have known that that was little Bill unless you had
seen Little Bill earlier? And little Bill says he was visiting family, so it makes sense to me that he was probably at the grandparents' house whenever you dropped your truck off. Right, that makes sense.
I feel like, I mean, it was so long ago, but yeah, I mean I feel like I recognized him. I knew it was him. But yeah, like as far as what he was driving then I can't tell you or anything like that, but I knew what he looked like and wright and all that, and only has to do winded down.
Well because I want to say it well.
I'm gonna be honest with you. I mean, you're you're telling me all this stuff and it's it's hard to remember. Yeah, you're telling stuff that I know that is he telling me?
The truth is that you're actually telling me yeah I said this, or I'm not.
I'm not trying to get you, uh hemmed up and put words in your mouth. I'm just I'm just going to got a job to do. Well, I know, I know, mm hmm.
One of the first things that I ever said on Hell Gone was that Monday morning is a weird time for a murder. Mike challenges Casey about this, about the fact that whoever killed Rebecca would presumably have had to know that Casey wasn't there, that there was no forced entry, and that this person hung around and cleaned up the scene.
Well, you know what we talked about before is whoever did this knew that you were at work without a vehicle, and they knew Claude was out of state on a run. They knew and they knew Rebecca was there. That those are the three things that this person knew.
Who is that?
Okay, that's that's That's not very many people. And I'm I'm just going through theories and I'm going through I'm processing the information that I have. Billy is one of those people, Jeremy is one of those people with without a without a doubt in my mind. So you know, I just have to I need to process anybody that. And another thing, you know, there wasn't forced entry to
the trailer. You said on multiple times that when Rebecca told you, the last thing she told you was that she was going back to the trailer to go to bed and that she was going to sleep all day until she had to come pick you up. And you also said that any time Rebecca was there by herself, especially if she was sleeping, she's dead bolt that front door, because you, on multiple occasions showed up and had to knock and knock and knock to get her to come
unlock that dead bolt. That's a statement you made just in one of your first, first or second interviews. You made that known. Well, without there being forced entry into the home, who has access to to that who has that key to that dead bolt? You made it known in your interviews that there are only two people that had access to that key, Claude and your grandpa. Okay, okay, well again it could. It is a possibility that Jeremy or Billy took that key from your grandpa, unbeknownst to
your grandpa, without your grandpa's knowledge. Jeremy and Billy were both into marijuana back then, into drugs. Both of them were a mess, were heathens back then.
It's a little hard to hear, but Casey once again suggests to Mike that it could be JB. Chris Cantrell, or Jennifer Turner, all names we've heard before, and he blames the podcast. He says during this interview that the podcast reported that there was a man and a woman at his house over the weekend. Mike kind of shuts him down there. He says, no, that pulled LEAs had talked to the neighbors and that it was in the case file.
The neighbors saw.
A man and woman there over the weekend. It wasn't just erroneous reporting by the podcast.
Is there's nothing else that I can help you with?
I don't know.
Is there I feel like there is, but I know you don't want to tell me anything.
What are you talking about?
I don't know.
I just I was the one that was that was hanging out with her. You know real close to her. So if somebody's saying something that I know is false in their line, you know other suspects. I know you, you gotta be careful, but you know I mean JB, Chris Control, Jennifer Turner. I'm I'm still on a different place than I know your I know y'r. But what what I had the most motive was Jennifer. Unless you want to watch the podcast, then it's me.
Remember, Rebecca went missing on September twentieth, two thousand and four, after dropping Casey off at work early that morning, And as you all know, one of the big questions we've had this entire time was about Casey stopping at home on Tuesday morning before work. Casey has always said he never went home on Monday night. He went out with his friends and stayed over at Laryn's house. But one of the big questions we've always had was about Casey
stopping at home on Tuesday morning before work. We wondered how he could have stopped at the house and walked through that trailer with blood on the floors and all of Rebecca's stuff there and not know something was wrong. And the case file does not clear this up. In fact, it makes this story even stranger because when Mark Colling's Worth, one of the original Arkansas State Police investigators on the case, talked to Casey on September twenty second, two thousand and four,
Casey told Mark that he went home twice on Tuesday morning. Now, this doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. Casey said he went to work early, before eight am. He said he called Rebecca's mom and she said she hadn't seen Rebecca. He said at that point he told his boss, Bruce Shipman, that he wanted to go home to grab a fresh shirt. He said this was kind of an excuse,
just to check on things at home. Bruce said he was gone for forty five minutes to an hour and then came back to work, but he didn't stay at work long. Just a few minutes later, he told his boss he was going to need the day off. He was worried about Rebecca. He wanted to see what was going on at home, so he left and on the way home, he was pulled over by Charlie Melton, the officer who had been sent to the trailer to do the welfare check by Rebecca's mother. Now, when they got
to the trailer. Charlie Melton's report, which we can finally read after all these years, said that Casey went with him into the back bedroom where he and Rebecca had been sleeping. When they went in there, they saw that the bed had been stripped, and Casey made a comment about how he was surprised by that. Then Charlie asked him if he could look in the washing machine, which they did. That's when Charlie saw the bloody bedding in there.
But in a separate interview that Casey did the day before, this time with special Agent David Lafferty, Casey said that on that first trip home, when he went to get a shirt, that he did look inside the washing machine before coming back with Charlie Melton. So if that was true, why did Casey act surprised about the sheets being off the bed and how could he have missed the blood in that washing machine if he did look in it. Remember these are not interviews taking place years later. This
was literally two days after Rebecca went missing. In my opinion, those crime scene photos make it very hard to belie that anyone could have walked into that trailer and not known something was horribly wrong. There was blood everywhere all over the carpet smeared around the trailer. There were obvious signs that someone had tried to clean up. Casey also said, by the way that the back door was padlocked when he left for work. Now that door had been kicked out.
Billy Miller later told investigators that's how he dragged Rebecca's body out of the house. He kicked the back door out and threw her body over the fence. So we're supposed to believe not only did Casey not notice any of the blood, but that he didn't notice his back door had been kicked out. I also studied the early interviews with the neighbors, because they, in my opinion, were the key to this case. They told police something else
that was very interesting. They said that over the weekend they saw several people out there on the porch, not just Casey and Rebecca with a revisit from Billy, as Casey claimed. They said on Saturday night, there were four or maybe five guys on the porch, all young men and Rebecca. So who were these guys? When I started this case, One of the first things that Laryn McClure, who was a huge help to me, by the way in this case told me was that in Casey's friend group,
not many people went to that trailer. Mainly it was just family there. So let's take a closer look at Casey's family. Casey McCullough has several brothers, Chris, Corey, and a half brother named Randy. Randy was away in the military at the time. Chris was working a job and had a young baby at home, but Corey, Casey's youngest brother, is more of an enigma. He was under eighteen at the time in high school. He told police he was living with his mother and that he was in Sarcy,
Arkansas at the time Rebecca was murdered. But later my found out that this wasn't true because Casey's father, Claude McCullough, told police that Corey was there that weekend. Claude said that he saw Corey at their grandparents' house near Wolf Farm, the same home where Billy Miller, his mom, Linda, and Jeremy Miller were staying. It was a couple of miles from Casey's trailer. Back in twenty eighteen, I was contacted
by someone close to Casey mccully's younger brother, Corey. This person told me that Corey and Casey had told them multiple times over the years that both of them Corey and Casey were in the trailer when Rebecca was murdered. Yet Corey had never been interviewed by the Arkansas State Police, not once in sixteen years.
Been Your Day of Birth nine one eighty seven.
Finally, in twenty twenty, Mike McNeil sat down with Corey for an interview.
Here we go, so, uh, polygraph, Let's get a few things clear.
Uh. First off, Corey said he'd only met Rebecca a few times. He described her as always happy, always smiling. Mike asked Corey about that weekend before Rebecca went missing. Corey said he didn't remember where he was. Mike sounds skeptical. He told him that he had spoken to Claude he knew Corey had been in Melbourne on Sunday. Mike asked Corey who he thought could have killed Rebecca. Corey said Casey had told him over the years that he knew
who did it, but declined to mention names. Corey voluntarily took a lot of detector test. It came back inconclusive. He didn't pass, but he didn't fail either.
Well, Corey, how was that stressful?
Stressful?
I've never been so stressed in alive. Mike had another piece of physical evidence that had been sitting in storage for years, a purple washcloth that had been wadded up under the bed where Rebecca slept and where some of the bloody bedding was dashed. Now nothing in the case while indicates that there was any usable DNA on this rag, but Corey didn't know that. Mike decided it was time to take a chance. Corey completely denied having anything to
do with Rebecca's death or knowing who did. Basically, in the end, Corey called Mike's bluff. He said he needed to either arrest him or let him go, and Corey walked out of there. Mike was also tracking other family members. He was tracking Billy Miller's movements and investigating Billy's brother, Jeremy. At the time of Rebecca's murder, Billy was about twenty
seven years old and Jeremy was fifteen. The story that the family told was that Linda had moved to the Melbourne area with Jeremy a few months before Rebecca's murder, but that Jeremy started having trouble in school. Linda decided she wanted to move, so Billy drove from Texas, where he was living at the time.
To help them.
Back then, Billy was married his first wife, Amanda, and they had two daughters. Eventually, after Rebecca's murder, he moved to the Philippines to work on oil rigs. He married a local woman and they had two children. Billy told investigators that he sometimes earned twenty five thousand dollars a month, which allowed him to live like a king overseas. They bought a pineapple plantation. Jeremy Miller stayed closer to home
over the years. Even after he got married and Jeremy and his wife had a son, he continued to live with Linda. When they moved to Colorado, Linda moved with them. Eventually, Jeremy got divorced, but his mother never really left him. Jeremy and Linda moved to Oregon. Linda told police that Jeremy has always lived with her and that that's the way she likes it.
Billy.
Billy was planning to move back to America when his wife and kids after COVID. He bought a home in Cottage Grove, Oregon, so once again, Billy, Linda, and Jeremy Miller would be one big, happy family. In twenty twenty, Mike also reached out to Linda Miller.
Hello.
Hello, this is Linda Miller and I'm returning your car.
Hey, Linda, how are you doing?
Doing pretty good?
She told him that Billy was out of the country and she wasn't sure when he'd be back. Listen to how sincere and helpful Linda sounds when she's talking to Mike.
I just wanted to reach out to you guys and see what of course I get. You know, Billy's in the Philippines. I probably won't be able to talk to him for I don't know if he's planning on coming back anytime soon or do you know.
I don't know.
Oh, now you don't know.
Things have been crazy with.
The okay, right right?
But Linda Miller was lying, and she had no idea that Mike McNeil was tracking her calls, because immediately after she hung up with Mike, Linda called her son Billy, and she sounded totally different to the person who was chatting happily to Mike in this voicemail. In my opinion, Linda sounds pretty cold and calculating.
Hey, Billy. I made that call to the Arkansas State Police, and what he wants is to make an appointment to see us all. And I told him that I'll have to get with Jeremy and I never I said, you know, he wanted to know the last time you came in. I said, I don't recall that you usually come about ten days for your physical and stuff and then you go back. And I did not tell him that you were in the US right now. But I think it would be better if we all three saw him together.
He's willing to fly in and meet with us in person, do his interview. Maybe that'll put a stop to this, all right, Love be back.
Mike was building a profile on Billy Miller. He talked to several people who knew him. Some of them told disturbing stories about Billy Miller being a violent sexual predator and about it being what they called an open secret in his family.
Hello Mike.
A cousin of Billy's told Mike how back in the early two thousands, Billy inappropriately touched a young woman who was four years old at the time. This cousin described Billy as a sexual deviant. He told another disturbing story about hanging out in Corpus Christi, Texas with Billy back in the day and Billy wanting to solicit sex workers. This person said that Billy made a comment that he
never forgot. They said Billy told them that it would be fun to kill a hooker and that no one would ever know about it, which even back then, this person said he knew was a huge red flag. And shortly after that he said he cut off all contact with Billy.
His family on his mother's side are not their art.
Can be being us evil.
Then Mike talked to another one of Billy's former victims, and though this interview is part of the case file and her name is in it, we're not going to release her name publicly. I'm including this because I believe her story is super important because a lot of people commented on the fact that this young woman had had problems in her life over the years, and after hearing her story, it's clear that she is traumatized by what she says Billy did to her. She got very emotional
during this interview. She said when she was young, she was hanging out with Billy and some other friends. She said he acted like he was being protective after a night of drinking, making sure that she got into bed. Okay, but she said he had far more sinister intentions. She said that Billy raped her that night, but it.
Had gone out. I'm drinking and there was a friend of his that was actually my age that went to school with us, that went with us to Robbie Parker and I went and lay down. He said I could have his room because Robbie had the couch or whatever. And and that's when you know, I was, I was, I had too much for drink and I didn't feel like I mean, I was sick. And yeah, he and I kept push him away from me.
That's than I could.
But yeah, I just felt like I didn't.
Have a strength to So I'm so sorry to bring this up.
And I know it's it's an awful it's an awful thing to think about.
And would you consider what Billy did to you, that he raped you?
Yeah, there was a.
Yeah, And this victim said when she heard about the allegations against Billy in Rebecca's case, she thought that Rebecca's murder must have been a date rape gone wrong. Finally, Mike was able to sit down with Billy Miller in Oregon. He asked him about these dark events from his past. Billy said that the allegations weren't true. He said the woman who accused him of molesting her four year old daughter was just a psycho x and he said the
little girl's story kept changing. He also denied assaulting anyone else. Then Mike circled back to Rebecca's case and once again took us back to that crucial weekend. Billy downplayed any connection to Rebecca. He said he didn't know her at all, that he didn't even know what she looked like until he saw some information related to our podcast.
After seeing the podcast and that stuff. You know, look, I could belond here, okay on Blue Eyed Girl in all the podcasts and the pictures you know I've seen.
Mike asked Billy about Casey's version of events.
So in Casey's interview, he said that Rebecca looked out the window and saw a car in the driveway on the road, and then Casey looked out and saw that it was you, and then he went out there and you guys talked for about fifteen minutes. So his mom was with us and all that stuff. No, not at
this time. This was He said that whenever you got out, you said that you weren't going to stop because you didn't see Casey's truck, but you saw Rebecca there, so you know that's Casey had already given his truck to Claud in town and you were just you know, it was dark whenever this happened, whenever you stopped buying, you and Casey were talking.
In the driveway.
So Mike is calling out the fact here that it was dark outside. So looking from inside a trailer out into the darkness, how would you recognize someone you hadn't seen in years. And we're not talking about a big city where there are street lights.
Here.
It is pitch black out there in the wilderness. When the lights are out, you can't even see your hands in front of your face. Mike believed Billy had seen Rebecca and Casey together earlier that day. We know that on Saturday, Rebecca and Casey went together out to Wolf Farm, where Billy and his family were staying. They dropped off Casey's truck so that his father Claude could use it. Rebecca followed Casey to Woolf Farm. She was his ride home.
So Mike believed that when Casey and Rebecca were at the house together, that Billy saw Rebecca there and that maybe that's when he decided to drive back to the house and look for her. Mike asked Billy to take a light detector test and to give a DNA sample. When Mike asked Billy if Billy's DNA would be in the house if there was any reason for that, Billy's answer is interesting.
Would you be willing to provide your DNA? It would be a cheek swab. I don't want to take blood or flit away hands as if I've been in the house and all that stuff, my DNA would be in the well and point and that is on record.
And we know that now.
Remember both Billy and Casey claimed that on Sunday night, when Billy said he stopped by the house, he never went in. He only stayed on the porch. Something else came out of the case file, and that was the contact between Casey McCullough and Billy Miller because they were out of contact for a long time. But after the podcast came out, Billy started texting Casey. He interacted with Jennifer and he called me at the cabin where I was staying he was trying to insert himself into the
investigation and basically to mislead people. Some of those text messages that he sent Casey are now part of the case file. He wrote, I want to make the Catherine lady look like shit. He actually called me a dumb shit several times, which actually doesn't bother me. In fact, knowing what happened, I weirdly take that as some kind of a compliment. Eventually, we all know Billy confessed to Rebecca's murder, but as we've said before, their aspects of
his confession that just don't seem to make sense. Something else that jumped out to me while I was reading through the case file was that on the morning of Monday, September twentieth, Billy was up early. He said he drove to the area behind Casey's trailer to hunt deer, saw Rebecca's car in the driveway and didn't see Casey's truck. Now, Billy said this led him to conclude that Casey wasn't home, and that's when he knocked on the door, told Rebecca he had to use the phone, and made up that
pretext for going inside the house. But if Billy stopped by on Sunday night and talked to Casey. Well, remember Casey had already dropped off his truck with his dad, so Casey's truck wasn't there then either. So what I'm getting at is that Casey's truck not being parked at that trailer did not mean that Casey wasn't home, and Billy knew that. So why would Billy assume that Rebecca was alone on Monday morning? Billy claimed that after Rebecca led him in the house, she went back to the
bedroom to lie down. Then he felt a rage building. While he was pacing, he saw that there was a piano leg loose. He grabbed it, went into the bedroom and hit her with it. Then, he said, he wrapped her body in a blanket, did a quick cleanup, presumably with the cleaning products that had conveniently been dropped there by his mother, put the body in the bed of his truck, and then dumped her remains off Highway nine,
where they were found a week later. Now, I will say there are definitely things that Billy has given police that indicate he was involved in this murder. We know that he was the one who led investigators to the suitcase. The black suitcase that had been missing since two thousand and four. Investigators found it. It was full of bloody bedding. So that suitcase was a smoking gun and it was the nail in Billy Miller's coffin. But if Billy did kill Rebecca, and if he acted alone, why has his
story changed so many times? First he said he strangled Rebecca. Later, after he found out that our hyoid bone was not broken and that there was no evidence of a fracture, he never mentioned strangulation.
Again.
Many of the things that Billy mentioned investigators about the actual killing seemed to have been pulled straight off of social media, off of Facebook groups or things he's heard in a podcast are read in the papers, and it's clear that he's been following social media. You can see that in the case file, in the chats he had. He joined the Unsolved Murder of Rebecca Guld group. Throughout this entire investigation, Billy was trying to get information from people.
He admitted this to investigators.
So if you're asking about you know, yeah, I followed the podcast following every day. Then I had there and told my cousins Randy. I reached out to my cousin Randy and said, hey, if you need money for a lawyer, you know, I'll hit me up. And that was my way in and to keep an eye on what was going on though, okay, and then saying, hey, keep an eye on the slander and all that stuff on the podcast. So I would send him a home of just about you know that.
And after he confessed to Rebecca's murder, Billy kept lying. He said that he had murdered several other women, all sex workers, all the same size and physical type as Rebecca. He said he strangled them and then dumped their bodies. Mike asked him, would you consider yourself a serial killer? Billy said that he was a sick individual. Then he referred to a demon he said he had living inside him. I was hoping the case file would provide some clarity,
and in a way it really has. It showed me the utter incompetence of Dennis Simon's investigation and how this case stalled for years, and in my opinion, due to the laser focus on Chris Cantrell and JB.
Yates.
Mike McNeil did a great job in his investigation. He was able to secure a confession through what was in my opinion, a masterful interview technique, and he did everything by the book. Billy Miller has been caught in so many lives so far, and we hear him literally laughing about it. So even though I hope he does come clean, to be honest, I don't have high hopes that he will.
And in less and until he comes forward with information that could be helpful to the case and that can be verified, I'm not going to give him any more publicity. So once again we come back to the question what
really happened to Rebecca. Jennifer and others have made it clear they think she could have been killed on Sunday night, and I think that that is a possibility, but I think it's more likely that Rebecca did wake up on Monday morning, get out of bed, put her fuzzy pink slippers on, and, as Danielle, her sister, always believed, take Casey to work while she was still kind of half asleep. Then that she stopped by the Possum Trot and bought
that breakfast sandwich and coffee. She went back home, probably dead bowl to the door the way she usually did when she was planning to take a nap, put her breakfast aside while she watched Regis and Kelly, and then planned to take a nap before she went back to school. I believe that someone knocked on the door and that Rebecca went to answer it, and I believe that Billy Miller was there that morning. I just don't think the evidence supports the murder happening the way he said it did.
I think there could have been someone else there, or maybe more than one person. I believe my witness who said Casey confessed to him. He has no reason to lie and has actually lost a lot as a result of this case. I believe the facts indicate that at a minimum, Casey knew more than he let on. Dennis Simons and others have always insisted that when this case file came out, we would all see that Casey had
an airtight alibi. But honestly, the release of the file just confirmed what we began to discover back in twenty eighteen. Not only was Casey's alibi not airtight, but there were multiple holes in it, not only on Sunday, but also on Monday morning. If anything, the interview with Bruce Shipman, the manager of Sonic at the time, who was on duty on Tuesday, and who was a very good friend of Casey's.
Proves this because Bruce.
Said that time cards could be altered, and now we know Casey went home not just once, but twice that morning. Everyone has a dark side, and in this case, one of the things that I learned was that sometimes the scariest people are not serial killers. They're the people living in our communities, people we trust, people who in other settings might be amazing partners or bothers or friends, but who have the capacity to turn on a young woman who was just starting out in life and beat her
to death. I would encourage everyone out there to use the Freedom of Information Act make a Foyer request look at this case file. I am so proud of the work that we and that every single person listening to this has done. I stand by our work one thousand percent, and again I'm going to let the facts speak for themselves. I said way back when I started this that murder investigations are the closest we get to time travel, And years later, I can confirm once again that this is true,
because we have come full circle. We end where we started back on that fateful day in twenty eighteen when I did a local radio program in Batesville. I remember sitting in that studio with Gary Bee, who I love, by the way, and I want to think again. Back then, I wasn't sure that anyone was listening, but they did and together we started a movement. So once again I'm ending this podcast on a call to action. Police have said if any new evidence comes to light, they will
look at it and take it seriously. And this time I believe them because we have a competent investigator on the case. Hell and Gone accomplished its goal. The investigator, who in my opinion, was ignoring evidence is out of there and a competent investigator is in charge. So if you have any information that police should know, please call
Mike McNeil at the Arkansas State Police. And if you have any information you want to share with me or my team, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four, six one four or five. I'm Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen 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. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott,
Brandon Barr, and else Crowley. 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 or five. This is Helen Gone Murder Line.
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