Previously on Paper Ghosts. One person in Brookly said, I've never seen some guns out the one time, you know. And they come in and started firing Addie and he started pouring back at him and he killed her and them too, and said that a bullet had went through the wall and hit the little boy. So you sit down with them, and how are you feeling when you sit down? It was a white out from my shoulders to know that I could get top to them and let them know what happened. My name is m William Phelps.
I'm an investigative journalist and author of true crime books. This is season two of Paper Ghosts. Burned saying good to a loved one taken away too soon and stills how permanent and indefinite murder is, how indelibly ubiquitous losing someone in this manner becomes, even after so much time has passed thinking about this case. The one promise I can fulfill is to keep digging, to keep trying to find that resolution I know is there. And it's important
not to confuse resolution with justice. There is no justice when your family has been slaughtered, only legal recourse and judicial consequences, of which you really have zero control over. Instead, I strive to find anything I can that will bring comfort, no matter how small, so these people can sleep a little better at night. As Carol Thompson tells me, the aftermath of what happened as she began to accept that her family had been taken from her was chaotic and confusing.
This is a huge case around here, right, Oh my god, it's horribly, horribly huge. It was so terrible that I went, I'll never forget it. I want to pick my sister up from the airport. And we went immediately to Frisious for breakfast. And you know, I'm devastated. You know, I can't think. She can't think. We're mess. We're both crying and stuff, but we're trying to keep it together. And we sat down and we order our food and I hear everybody around me. God, everybody's talking. Yelp him, yelp him.
They all died, everyone on them, ex seven that daughter, now there's the EXCEPN daughter. Everyone of them died. How does that make you feel? I agreed with him. I didn't want to be there. I didn't want to be alive. I regrettedly with Hols. You did, Oh yeah, absolutely, How do you walk away and let your family die? You don't, dude, at so, yeah, I regretted it. Did you think you could do something? Who knows one of the person might
have changed things? I don't know. You know, chances are, no, chances are you know, me and Shannon both would have been killed that night too, because I'm sure that wouldn't stopped me and her, A little three and a half year old me. I was, you know, a little tiny thing at the time, you know, nineteen years old, you know, yeah, yeah, you see, part of uncovering answers in any case is sifting through all the bullshit town heresaying, self serving, gossip
rooted and nothing more, and speculation and judgment. So you're hearing people whisper and town about. They weren't even whispered, and they were loud. It was happening everywhere, I mean everywhere. I couldn't go anywhere without hearing it. I couldn't go anywhere. And everybody's talking about and they're and they're all talking wrong, you know, or most of all they're talking wrong. And I want to hear stupid stuff driving me crazy, and I just want to hurt him and be like, good God,
please what are people saying that happened? Oh you know, it's probably uh drug deal gone wrong, or it's probably um, it's probably we're a nice crime. It's probably a momb Oh I bet it's this. So I bet it's that. Oh yeah, I'll hear all the stupid crap that broke my heart. You know, But how did you know it wasn't any of that? Well, because I know my parents didn't really do any I mean, okay, I know they bought that one bunch of jewelry that was probably stole
one from Ron Thomas. I knew that, But in general, they didn't deal drugs. It blie me. I worked in that business. I was there seven days a week, twelve hours a day. How much do you think they did in that business that I didn't know about. I knew what was going on in that house or in that business, and I knew what was one on that house. I knew that none of that stuff was real. I knew it. And even one of the rumors was horrifying. It was something about little Bill and how they even let him
do stuff drugs, like drugs and stuff. He was five years old, for God's ache, And remember, I got really angry. I actually said something to that person, but you know, yeah, I mean, I would hear all kinds of crazy things. I wondered what Carol was thinking about family friend Ron Thomas at this point. Was she as suspicious as law enforcement? Did she actually think Ron had played a role in the murders and fire? I remember one of the policemen asked me about Ron and I said, no, no, no,
it wouldn't be wrong. And he said, Carol, it's wrong. And I said what, I can't be wrong Thomas and the officers said, Carol, we know more than you know, and we we are looking at Ron. And I was dumbfounded. I was totally dumbound, totally called off guard. No way, I stood and looked at that man that night. I stood and looked at this mass murder talk to him. Did you believe it when they told to do that?
Not yet, not right that second. But but it was because I didn't know why they were looking at him. You know, I'm still thinking, no, it can't be, it can't be. With help from Detective Tom Cooper persuading her, once, Carol began to stitch her thoughts together about Ron Thomas and that night a clearer picture emerged. Well, now I'm now I'm definitely now I'm definitely suspect Herron. Now, I mean,
come on, something's up. The Sheriff's department, with the help of the FBI, went to Carol and asked her to do something. They said, um, we want you to call Ron. I said okay, And they said we want you to call him and just be normal, just be as normal as possible. So I called him and he said, Carol, how are you? You should come here? You should come and day with me and Marty. We'll take good care
of you. Just don't tell nobody you're coming, you know, because he knew the you know, newspapers were camped down on my you know, pretty much outside, and and he was pretending like he was trying to meet well, I guess he was trying to be nice. Right, We're gonna
take care of you, just don't tell anybody. Now. My head's one ding ding ding ding ding, really crazy because you know, I'm thinking, okay, now they tell me the purse is found there, and they're telling me they suspect him, And now all of a sudden, he wants me to come and not tell anybody. I'm going there. What did you say to him when he said that, Yeah, it sounds like a great idea, Ron, Let me think about it. That's what I said, That sounds like a good idea.
I could use them. I could use a vacation, I could use the break. But when you hung up the phone, I said, oh my god, he wants to kill me. He wants me gone. He knows I saw him. He wants me gone. Carol was the only surviving person who could place Ron Thomas and the other man, Dick Weston, at her family's house on the night of the murders. Killing.
Carol fell in line with that old school criminal code, no witness, no crime, so immediately called the police back and said, hey, I called him like you told me to, and I talked to him and he wants me to go visit him. And they were like, oh my god, I'm like yeah. As it turns out, in the days following the murders, the FBI gave Carol a photo lineup of potential suspects to look at. She pointed to one guy and said, quote, I think this is probably him,
but I'm not sure. So at that point is when they told me that the man I had picked out in the picture was Ron's bodyguard. You're kidding me, You are kidding me. Yeah, nope, man, you picked out as Richard Weston and he just got out of prison and he's been staying in the burn Vale area. So yeah, now it was all starting to come together. As a pressure was cranked up on Dick Weston. Ron Thomas had somehow gotten word that the Feds were coming after him.
Nobody would admit it to me, but after a few sources gave me the old eye wink, I developed a suspicion that Ron had a contact in local law enforcement who had tipped him off. At the next time he was called in, he wasn't going to be given the benefit of the doubt. So, as Detective Cooper explains to me, Ron did something he hadn't done whenever he left town that summer. Shortly thereafter, Ron Thomas moved, Yeah, packed up as houseman. On two days he was gone. And what
did you guys think of that? Hey, that was a little suspicious. Then again, you had really zero evidence. We had. We had nothing on Ron Thomas. The only thing we had, and sore it worked out is the FBI started investigating me and they got him a war for in charge, and I don't even think he served any time on that. By late July, a cellmate who had been doing time in the same prison block as Dick Weston reached out to the FBI. I here strain some statements Dick questern
made to you. Why do you was serving time with him? Character? Here's the thing. You lie to local cops, that's something you can likely talk your way out of plead ignorance and walk away pretty much unscathed. But you lie to the FBI, and your ass is going directly to federal prison for obstruction. While talking to the FEDS, Dick's former cell mate revealed details that had not been released publicly, which gave the information a hell of a lot more credibility.
Well't basically tell me what you told down. He said that people had a lot of money. This karate guy that you know, this got a black belt karate showed him greet pays for money. There's no question to Selly was referring to Lynda Stevenson's brother Eddie Dowell, who was frequently called the karate guy. He said he was involved in a hell of a shootout there. He said that, uh, we had a bullet pleased his arm. He got loose,
it's right arms. You say how he got into the house for him, He said that the house was like and after hours place an you could go there and drink and stuff shoot pool. And you mentioned something about Bill and the dope. And I heard him say something about there was ten pounds of cocaine, but that might Detroit.
Through what he learned from Dick Weston, the cellmate told FBI agents Billy Stevenson's house was party central and Eddie Dowell was distributing enormous amounts of cocaine from a connection he had in Detroit. Ten pounds is worth a lot of money. At that time, a kilo of coke roughly two pounds worth, went for between thirty and sixty thousand dollars, depending on purity. And look, people who deal in such
large amounts, those types do not play the way. He talked about this one guy showing him a grief case full of money in he said, and he took it that the guy thought that nobody could take the money because he was a private expert. I figure you mentioned it, or stay there would over a tuner a thou Art disagreement. Yeah, he did say something like that. This cellmate was making
a bold claim. And yet, in many of the mass murder cases I have looked at throughout my career, drugs are a common motivating factor, if not the main reason behind murder. If you invite that amount of cocaine into your life, you better expect violence. If death's accumulated, dealers belief you were trying to screw them. Did he go there special before that? These people had brewery and stuff in the half and money in the firewoods, and I guess they ran across the cocaine and when they got inside.
I've asked Detective Cooper along with other law enforcement sources about the alleged cocaine, and they all believed Dick Weston lied about this and it was likely trying to minimize his role, once again hoping to ascribe a drug deal gone bad scenario as the motive behind the murders. I found no evidence that Eddie Dowell or anybody in that
house was dealing cocaine. He said a little kid getting me kill was an accident, but I think he was just more or less covering up for him give me kill and h He also said that there was some cool tables stuff on the second floor and that they just fell through to the bottom and stuff. All that being said, listen to the next exchange between the FBI and the selling a point during the interview at which
things become quite interesting and the investigation shifts. This right, He said, this friend and his run that the FBI was looking for him. He said that Ron had a pawn shop and he gets uh gold and stuff and mounts it down, and you know, he sells it and he deals in it. And for the way I gathered he had something to do with it. He said, well he's out. I mean the interesting family gun interviews. Yeah, I would. He said he had a thirty eight that
he didn't worried about FBI getting hold of that. He said, we mentioned something about forty or four and twet. I guess that's what was used in the shootout for Boar. I guess he had a thirty eight. Somebody's firing forty fours and him corroborating facts Billy Stevenson's missing forty four caliber gun and the thirty eight pistol that law enforcement knew had been used in the murders. I mentioned that lawn was involvement in the shoot have to what western? Oldim? Yeah,
did you see what's to have a gun? Long him? No, No, he didn't. Did you ever said where the bodies were in the house? Right? Okay? W Parlort house was good plays in rom He said that he was on the outside, and I guess they were on the first floor. And when they started having a shootout. Wait, I figured if he was involved in a shootout, I guess he was, and you know I had something to do with him
and that run Thomas. Not long after that interview, the FBI put together an indictment, a formal charge ready to be present and by U S attorneys to a federal grand jury. If the grand jury indicted Dick and he was found guilty later at trial, the potential was there for him to be sentenced to the death penalty. They
summoned Dick from his self. If there was ever a time to pin everything on Ron Thomas, for Dick Weston, it was now or never, Richard, before doing anything the cage right for the simple times, you are suspect the constitution. The qualities bad Dick can barely be heard in these tapes, but official transcripts indicate, He mutters, a low I do. After his Miranda rights were read to him. He also had a right, attorney, you had a right, so it
wasn't much of a conversation. After that, Dick Weston invoked his right to remain silent and demanded to speak to his attorney. As Dick Weston remained locked up, his girlfriend Drusilla Merita, and Drusilla's friend Knath the Barger. We're out driving around mile in Indiana one afternoon towards the end of summer. As Tanatha explains to me, Drusilla was anxious and concerned. Something was definitely up. To Tanitha, she felt
Drusilla could sense an end of some sort coming. We went to the filling station to get guys, and I didn't know what was going to happen. Just all at once were surrounded by ever f behind cop that was slung our doors open, snatched her m Drusilla was facing a serious charge. She was being accused of aiding and abetting in the interstate transportation of stolen property from a home where four people had been murdered. If convicted, it could get Drusilla up to five years in prison. But
to the dismay of law enforcement. The federal judge set her bond at sixty dollars. Federal prosecutors were incensed by this, arguing for a five hundred thousand dollar bond based on the fact that Drusilla had quote threatened witnesses in the case, namely Tonathan Barging. Tanatha is the closest source I have connected to Dick and Drusilla, and there was during those days after the murders, nobody closer to them than Tanatha.
Why do you think Dick protected Rod? Many do you think Ron Ronde as sure as gonna sit in here? He paid Dick. You think, well, yeah, you get paid too. If you had two grocery bags slept full of money, that was your pa to do? What cover up his set of the deal? Two grocery bags full of money, That's what Dick did. Tanitha held up her hands to show me the size about two ft cash and he had him in his car in the house. In the car,
now what what didn't want that in the house? I didn't want to look at that was he bragging about the money? He said he had enough to hold him over for a while. I asked Tanatha about Drusilla's involvement. She knew what her boyfriend had done. Yeah, she had to. I ain't no doubt, my man. She knew what he had done, but she weren't how to talk to her. Several different times it told her, but she said, I'm not telling him nothing. They ain't getting nothing out of me.
Why do you think she was so loyal to him? I don't know. Did she love him. I don't know where she loved where. It's just he had promised her so much, and then when she's seen that money and all that Jules and stuff at her age, he had brain marsh turn enough to know that she was going to have anything everything she wanted. Around the time of Drusilla's arrest, Detective Tom Cooper received word that during her recent prison visit with Dick, Drusilla had dug an even
deeper hole for herself. That same Sully of Dicks overheard them talking about getting married. It was that whole A spouse cannot be forced to testify against her significant other plan that was in the works. Now, she didn't say we're didn't say exactly when or hell they was going to do it, but she had it in her head
that he was getting out of there. He weren't staying because a couple of times I told her if when they did lock him up, out said June need to come clean before you end up in jail wapam, And she said, well, I won't have to when I'm married to him. She just noted her man that if she married him, she would never have to say anything. But because he was going to take her of her the rest of her life, Dick and Drusilla's dreams of wedded
bliss would not come to fruition. Ten days after their request for permission to marry, a judge denied the petition, stating marriages are made in heaven and not in jail. Cooper knew this walking into his interview with Drusilla after her arrest, but also that a deal had been offered to her. Talk to us and we'll take care of you. Don't talk, and you are royally screwed. In the cash of law enforcement tapes I've obtained, tape number four reveals
Detective Cooper reading Drusilla her Miranda rights. The detective implores the young woman to stop playing games and come clean because the bottom line for Drusilla maridden now was she had no other choice. I mean, let's be realistic. M M yeah. I know at the beginning of this thing, you saw we didn't have case. Canst you for rating
an event right a wrong? Well you got, I would say, on the outside of dirty days, to make up your mind after that, like told before, Yeah, they're on this side of the fens or last time you chose to stay on that side of the fens. So for the most part, Drusilla sat in stunned silence, barely speaking, listening to Cooper spell out her future. I suggest to give us her thoughts. I don't know where you loved there or not that between him. I am talking to Dick to day, and I don't tend to talk to Dick's
himself and half for trouble. She wanted go now with him. That's your pride. I think you're gonna frange, make up your mind which what you want to get. Cooper knew Drusilla had been coached by Dick Weston regarding what to say to law enforcement. She was not going to crack easily, so he persisted under the guise of making her believe they had Dick's best interests in mine. I'm you know, I'm trying to keep your body Alix Lammer for the
rest of your life. If you want to keep the mashoup and go down to to what you knew what we're going on a year it was me. I wouldn't do it, and I'm not to hear. The interview was cut short after Cooper realized Drusilla was not going to cave. Before ending the interview, the detective gave her a dire warning and a window of opportunity. So, yeah, you give it some thought. You got about two weeks left. For
three weeks four things start popping over there. When they do, it's gonna be too late then, So you can here, Okay, you know, I just want to see Eastman, risk of your life and joint bouncing back between federal prisoners high state prisons, so you can think about her. You know where to get a hold of me. You need to Drusilla Merritta had become one of the most elusive people
in this case for me. I need to find out if she's in prison, dead, are still living in the area, because if Drusilla is still alive, I need to find her and hear her side of the story. Hello in the next episode of Paper Ghosts, and I remember this man came to the door one day and I opened the door and he said that he had gotten something in his eye and could what I let him in to go rinse his eye out. Me being this naive eight year old, you know, I let this man into
my home. She's telling Ron that she doesn't have any money, and he suggests to her that if money is an issue, that he could arrange to have her house burned down for ten tho dollars and she can just collect the insurance money on it. Ron Thomas loved a scum bay I do or something dirty? He has hands in it. Paper Ghosts is written and executive produced by Me and William Phelps and I Heart executive producer Christina Everett, with
script consultant Matthew Riddle. Audio editing and mixing by a Booze Afar thanks to Will Pearson at I Heart Radio. Series theme number four four two is written and performed by Thomas Phelps and Tom Mooney. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.