‘The Lincoln Has Been Sold’

answers that have escaped that family for the past four decades. Uh. I'd rather not talk about that right now, thank you very much. At this point, I've done all I can to get Drusilla to talk, phone calls, messages, even a door knock, but you won't, Budge. I can understand why Drusilla doesn't want to talk. She wants to forget about all of this move on liver heal life. The problem I have with that sort of thinking is Stevenson family

members deserve answers, and Drusilla undoubtedly has plenty. Yet, because there is no statute of limitations on murder, I can also see why she wouldn't want to say the wrong thing and wind up with the FEDS standing at her front door. Previously on Paper Ghosts, this right, he said, this friend and his run at the FBI was looking for him. Wait, I figured, if he is involved in a shootout, I guess he was, and you know I had something to do with him. Him and that Ron Thomas.

Why do you think Dick protected Roy money he paid Dick? You think, well, yeah, you get paid too. If you had two grocery bags slept full of money, that was your tire to do. But cover up his set of the deal? I said, Oh my god, he wants to kill me. He wants me on. My name is m William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalist and author of forty four true crime books. This is season two of Paper Ghosts.

Burned cases like the Stevenson murders are generally not too difficult to unpack, the challenges, providing families with the resolution they have been searching for, realizing they may not be ready to accept what you find. Did Billy become entangled with the wrong people? Was his family collateral? Damn image? Was family friend Ron Thomas involved? And what's more, did Ron hired Dick Weston to help him settle a personal

and or monetary debt. These questions have plagued me throughout the years I have been involved in this case, and the hardest part. By asking these questions, you are, to some extent, blaming the victim. Yet it is an unavoidable facet of mass murder investigation, one you hope to come away from with an answer that won't hurt the family more than they have already been. So at times you

find yourself facing an uncomfortable dilemma. Does the family actually want to know what happened when it's clear there are disturbing details within that reality, because that truth can be a hell of a lot uglier than one could have ever imagined. I grew up here in my mom's story. I think she had this fear that they were going to be forgotten, and Ron's name was never tied to it. You might recall Shannon Group, Carol Thompson's daughter from a

previous episode. Shannon was just three and a half when her mom pulled her out of bed in the middle of the night after learning their family's house was on fire. I remember standing there and watching them bring the bodies out of the house. Of course, I was devastated. I

didn't know what was going on in there. There's fire trucks and there's people, and there's police, and you know, then I see the bodies coming out, and and it was It's pretty devastating for you know, that's my first you know, I have minor memories of a kid, you know, just seeing things, but that's my first real memory. That just always stuck with me, you know what. I had nightmares for years. I thought about it for years. Within

all of this, Shannon has remained her mother's rock. One might think she lives with some sort of secondary PTSD, having been there weathering the aftermath of watching family suffer for decades while dealing with the loss herself, But Shannon has remained steadfast and finding answers, taking on the all consuming task of digging in and over the course of twenty years, actually uncovering information so as you grow up, what's going through your mind about this case and what

is driving I was a strange kid. UM didn't have a lot of friends in school. I was very quietly reserved. I had a lot of anxiety, you know, when it came to people. Um, you know, my mom was kind of paranoid, and I was, you know, I think it just kind of rubbed off on me because you know, I saw firsthand what you know, a friend is capable of. So I think that kind of just screwed me up.

And as I was growing, you know, I thought a lot about this case and the fact that Ron got away, and it always broke my heart that, you know, my mom would watch over her shoulder for the longest time. Ron Thomas, that friend Shannon mentions became like a recurring

cant her on this family. Carol Thompson remains terrified to this day, even after forty years, because of a possible threat still existing in their world, and that fear she has passed down to her daughter Shannon is exacerbated by not knowing what happened and most importantly, who else is responsible. Fear feeds on itself. I remember this man came to the door one day knocking, 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 native eight year old, you know, I let this man into my home and now I'm home alone. I was all by myself, Mom Daoud, probably at work or something. So you know, Mom got home and I told her about it, and I just remember her reaction. She freaked out so bad, she was so scared because it could have been wrong. To this day,

we don't know who it was. It might have been wrong, and I don't know, just her reaction and just everything growing up, and it just ate it even more that this man is free. You know, who knows who else he heard after that? Who knows what he went on into it after that. As I have come to learn throughout my investigation, I can say with certainty that Ron Thomas wasn't a family friend as Carol had thought. He was a cunning sociopath who had masterminded the murder of

her entire family. Every single law enforcement source I have spoken to has confirmed this Ron was the man behind the curtain from the very beginning, telling Dick Weston what to do and when to do it. This became clear to Carol and Shannon as they tried to move on with their lives in the decades that followed. I wanted my mom to have peace. You know, yes, it would help me too, But me and my mom boys been very, very close. She was very close to her mom. Me

and her are very very close. We're like best friends. My mom. You know, she was so scared and it bothered her so bad. So it kind of turns you into an armchair investigator, if you will, as I love to investigate, love it. What do you first do? And so I contacted UM Records here and the Sheriff's office here, enquiring if the files were still around, if you know, because I knew that the files we do not destroy because they told me on the phone. And I'm like,

how can I get access to these? I know it's supposed to be public records. So you're beginning to look into this, and your main goal is to get ahold of the records so you can find out exactly what I wanted to torture on I did. I'm not gonna lie. My goal was to find her on get these records, and I wanted to send him crime scene photos, newspaper artists and stuff to make him think about it every day for the rest of his life. I want him to get these in the mail once a week, just constantly,

constant reminders I wanted to torture the man. Yeah, so far I've learned all I can about Ron Thomas's life before the Stevenson murders, but I need to dig into what happened to this so called family friend after. I've come to understand there is one man who knows more than most about Ron Thomas's life after he ran from Bethel, Ohio, A detective who has never spoken publicly about any of this,

and who has been hard to track down. In fact, once I found him, I sensed a bit of trepidation in his voice about sharing his story, and he chose to remain quiet. Yet, after some time and a bit of discussion, one day in early spring, he decided it was time to talk. Dave. How you doing? M William Phelps, Hey, how you doing? You're doing all right? I'm doing all right. I'm doing all right. I get I gotta say, I can't complain much. You know, wouldn't do any good if

it did. Anyway. That's so true, That's so true. How's the weather? David Bell is a former Columbia, South Carolina detective who began his law enforcement career in nineteen seventy two as a line deputy with the Richland County Sheriff's Office for I Love Beautiful Division because I loved the connection with the people, you know, because you know, I just like trying to help people if I could. And finally, uh, they said, come on, man, you know, we really need

your you know, your experience and uh, investigation division. So I went ahead and transferred to investigation division. And I didn't major crimes in a particular area that I patrolled as a uniform division, and I was you had a lot of actions and contacts of that area. You know, the people we come to me and give me information on certain crimes and so forth. Those connections in the community are priceless the cops who lead to become detectives.

The trust is established and for a detective there is no better information than what he or she can develop on the street. Ron Thomas's name did not cross David Bell's desk until the early two thousand's, after Bell had been assigned to a brand new cold case unit, and of course that opened up the big can of worms.

That's when we learned about the Stevenson murders, the gold buying business, nemafia connection, you know, Richard West and all these all these people you know, connected to all this crime, from robberies and murders and lower those wardels. Now what kind of guy did Ron Thomas strike you as when you began to look into this cold case and look at his background. Ron Thomas was a scum bay. If

there was something dirtie, he has hands in. It turns out Ron Thomas left behind his wife in Ohio and fled the South Carolina, where he owned and operated a gold, silver, and jewelry exchange. This was the main location where he'd been running off to each time he evaded the police looking into his involvement in the Stevenson case. And yet there was another reason for Ron's frequent visits to South Carolina.

Ron Thomas had a mistress there for what had amounted to the past fourteen years, a woman named Irene Floyd, who first met Ron when he was her foreman at a manufacturing company in nineteen sixty eight and continued to work for him at his store in South Carolina. To understand this case, we have to take a few steps back before the Stevenson murders, because to really know Ron Thomas,

you have to look at Irene Floyd. Irene was no common middle aged woman living the cozy life in a warm South She had quite the checkered past, starting with her first husband, her high school sweetheart who had died tragically in nineteen sixty six. They had a bad relationship from the get go, and uh they got a real bad domestic dispute one night, so she called the Clubia

police department on him. So they were looking for his car, and when she happened to see the car, and so she went to go find a police officer to tell him where he was at. And while she was talking to the police officer, he actually drove drove by and she goes there, he goes now, So the police went

to stop him and he took off running from the police. Well, he got just a couple of blocks and read there in the middle of Clubia, we have these trains that come to Clubia, and there was a train coming and he tried to beat the train and he lost in his train. His car got hit by the train. He was killed instantly at the accident. Actually, Irene made a lot of money on his insurance plus from the train company. Irene Floyd sued everyone involved after her first husband was

killed by that train. I've been told she was awarded life changing money, yet nobody could give me an exact figure. So she uh learned real quick how easy she could come about money with insurance policies and sue the person's you know, responsible for the death. So that day is the husband number two. Not long after, Irene married her second husband, a Kentucky born transplant named William Floyd. The

following year, Irene met and began working for Ron Thomas. Yeah, she was a secretary in the photo speak you and they started having an affair while she was married a Willyam Floyd. But William says, well, you know, I'd rather have you share you that lose you. I love you that much. Even though William Floyd knew his wife was having an affair with Ron Thomas, William decided against divorcing Irene, but at some point it became too much to bear

and William filed. The divorce was finalized in July. They divorce, and then what happens. What happened was we employed never removed Irene is being beneficiary on residenturance policy. And Irene found out about this. So Irene kind of let him along and implied that she wanted to remarry him. So I renehatched a plan. She convinced William that she had left Ron Thomas for good and wanted to make their relationship work, you know, give the marriage a second try.

After a few months, she set up a rendezvous at a Tennessee motel. William Floyd, still in love with Irene, agreed to meet and talk. When Irene got to the myths, you know, she got him drunk because she met him up there with the pretense of getting remarried. And uh so, when she got him set up in the motel, she was supposed to call there's other motel and h and asked for a gym, and she was supposed to identify herself as Linda and uh and that was to uh satan that she told them what room he was in

and that the door was unlocked. Ron Thomas was on the other end of that call. He had been waiting in a nearby motel, ready to receive word to set his next course of action in motion and get this Ron's so called bodyguard, Dick Weston. He and another man Ron had hired were not too far away waiting in

the wings for Ron's direction. And Richard Weston and a guy from Indiana across the state line within there with baseball bats and beat Bill Floyd's severely with baseball bats in the head and the pre torso and left him for dead. You know, I mean they beat him unmercifully. Here again was Ron Thomas ordering others to do for him what he did not have the guts to do himself,

and Irene Thomas at for an alibi. She drove herself as she made the boat goal to a hospital and says she was having a severe migraine headache to give herself an alibi. William Floyd did not die from that motel beating it. He was left severely deformed, with nearly all of the skin on his face beaten off and parts of his skull caved in. She called Ron Thomas and told Ron Thomas that Bill was still alive, and Ron Thomas as well, Uh, I doubt uh, don't worry,

He's not going to live. There's no way he could survive that assault. Ron was so certain William Floyd wouldn't make it, he instructed Irene to call him when that time came to pass and say this the Lincoln has been sold. According to police reports, several men posing as preachers even showed up at the hospital to inquire about William Floyd's condition. The hospital staff became immediately suspicious and

would not allow them into the room. So he was put in a facility that cared for people that were like vegetables. Bill Floyd's family would not allow her to see him, and so she could get to him. William Floyd was confined to a wheelchair, incapable of walking, talking, bending for himself. The guy was left blind in one eye, deaf in one ear, and would suffer multiple seizures every single day. All this man did, mind you with She forgiveness to his cheating wife by agreeing to talk about

moving on and getting back together. And this is how she repays him. William sat idly all day inside the rehab facility and staring into space, a shell of the caring and loving man I have heard he once was. I don't know how she did it. I could never did was able to figure it out. But she was able to sneak him out of this facility, and she drove him to a probate's office in South Carolina. And that even though that he was in that condition, that

judge married her and Bill remarried. How she finaggled the system to be able to remarry him, and his condition is beyond my imagination. So she immediately took him out of that facility and took him home to her house here in glub You to take care of me because that he still had that internce policy, Shannah. The day before I planned to leave Ohio, I got a call from Carol Thompson's daughter, Shannon Group, asking to meet up.

Shannon had a sore close to Ron Thomas, who she's been messaging with on Facebook, and over time she had collected close to fifty pages of information about the guy. A treasure trove if there ever was one. How's it going really good? Brought those documents you requested? She doesn't want to be in this at all. She doesn't want her name in it. Why do you think that beer? Maybe I don't know. I really don't know, you know, till many years of past. I don't know why anyone

would you know? And it could be hard on her to given her relation to the people involved. I know who this sources, and the information I've been given is highly credible. Like others who have been hesitant to speak or prefer to use an alias, I understand and respect the need to keep a distance. Shannon handed me a quarter inch thick stack of documents to go through all of it dealing with Thomas and his relationship to Irene Floyd.

Information no one would be able to find out through public records while I was looking into Juicilla Merita's whereabouts. I handed the material off to my producer, Christina Everett and asked her to find out what she could break down the social media conversations included in the documents and determine what we could learn from it. There's a lot to go through. This woman is really complicated and knows a lot more than we imagined. Yeah, I mean, you

read through everything and did some digging. What do you think what did you come up with? Well, what's interesting is the timing of everything, Right, So William Floyd is attacked in May, and Irene marries William for the second time in August, and you know what happened between those months, the Stevenson murders. Right, So she ends up talking to the FBI, and we know now that she was still

carrying on her affair with Ron during this time. So it's really interesting because we get to learn a little bit more about what Ron was going through during the

months that the murders happened. Um She says that she talked on the phone with Ron at one point on June and said that she wanted to come visit him, but he was adamant and said that under no circumstances was she to come to either Indiana or Ohio to visit him, because the next weekend he was carrying off some big deal that he needed to be there for. That next weekend would be the fourth of July, and that big deal turned out to be the Stevenson murders.

We look back and we see that she spoke to him on the phone about five weeks earlier and at the end of May, and she's telling Ron that she doesn't have any money and he doesn't have any i her, but suggests to her that if money is an issue, that he could arrange to have her house burned down for ten thousand dollars and she can just collect the insurance money on it. So Ron said that he didn't have any money to lend her, but he was going to be working on a deal that would really set

him up financially, but was complicated. He said that the deal would involve several people. He mentioned the name Steve and Linda in relation to this deal that he was going to be doing um And according to Irene, Ron said quote that s ob had more money than he could ever spend, but yet he wanted to steal everything that he could from everybody else. So there's a second call between Ron and Irene that happens July tenth, after the murders um and the tone of this one is

far different. Ron says the FBI had the goods on him, that his house was surrounded, the phone was tapped, and he was going to go prison for a long time. So Irenes and tears. She's crying. She's asking, are you in trouble? He says yes. She asks what did you do? And he says, you wouldn't believe it if I told you. Well, it sounds there to me like Ron's basically admitting his involvement in this. There was enough talk beforehand during their phone calls for Irene to figure out that this was

not a spontaneous attack. This was a planned thing. It was something that Ron had thought of for weeks at least before he carried it out. It was not in the heat at the moment. But Irene did say that Ron was waiting for somebody else to get out of prison to help him carry out this deal, and so Irene figured that that person he was talking about was Dick Weston, because she knows that Dick had just gotten out of prison a few months earlier in February for

bank robberies. Considering how long they worked together at this point, it's puzzling why Irene Floyd would suddenly flip on Ron Thomas and ran them out to the FEDS. Around the time when Irene married William Floyd, there was a bump in Irene's relationship with Ron, and it had to do with a bankruptcy issue on Ron's behalf um and it

was messy and it involved Irene and her assets. So it seems like they were on the rocks for some time and they weren't talking, and maybe Irene thought that was the end of it, because then she went to the FBI and ratted him out. That rough patch didn't last long, though, because Irene and Ron continued their affair in According to Detective David Bell, Ron continued his business affairs with Dick Weston all while Dick remained in prison on suspicion of the Stevenson murders. Do you think Ron

Thomas was involved in running guns and drugs? I don't know about the the gun, but now if I remember right, the FBI was looking and this came from Irene that they suspected Ron and Uh smuggling drugs into prison where Richard Dick he worked with Dick. I so him and Dick had a scam going where Ron would get the drugs into Dick and Dick would sell them. Yeah, that may not have been actually burned, but that was what he was suspected. Two years had gone by since Irene

married William Floyd the second time. With Ron Thomas lying low from the police and Dick Weston still in jail, Irene had to find someone else to do her dirty work. Yet again, we got a statement from her I who knew had connections Uh Irene Irene got to shoot Bill Floyd and the head was the shotgun and make it look like a suicide. The name of the person mentioned is bleeped because although Detective Bell is certain based on

his investigation, nobody was ever arrested for that murder. Now, Irene, she had convenually left the house that morning and went some place to give herself an alibi, and while she was gone, supposedly now her husband and wheelchair pulled down this attic stairwell under the body stairs, crawled up into the attic, got a twelve game shotgun, brought it back down the stairs, went into a bathroom, put the shotgun in his mouth, and pushed the trigger with the big

toe of his right foot that was paralyzed, and blew his head off. That's what they expected you to believe. That what that's what they ruled it. They will actually ruled it a suicide. And you go back and you look at the cold case, the autopsy reports, the crime scene reports, et cetera, and you find it it's not a suicide. Well, you know, here is here is our problem. Those records only kept so many years, and those records are destroyed. We did not have a file copy uh

Floud's suicide because it had been destroyed. The only information I could get on his suicide was from the Corners office and you reinterviewed everybody. Yeah, well wherever we those that we can find, Yeah, yeah, But so that's the only way that we were able to get the information on Floyd's led suicide. And it still blew my mind.

I couldn't believe because I knew the investigators that responded to the scene of Bill Floyd, and apparently they were lied to on the real condition of Floyd when they got there, or they would have never ever signed off on Oh yeah, that's okay, suicide, you know, I mean, if they knew he was confined to a wheelchair, they would never you know, I mean, that would just ludicrous anyway. So, so Bill Floyd was death and was ruled a suicide. She eventually was got his shed away a little bit longer.

She got the insurance me Ron Thomas happy. William Floyd's death conveniently paved the way for Irene and Ron Thomas to ride off into the sunset together with a fat insurance payout to celebrate with nine dollars to be act. The only problem was Ron still had a wife back in Indiana, and Irene, well, unless we forget she had two dead husbands in her past. In the next episode of paper Ghosts, let's try to at him. How's he done it? And I didn't What kind of look did

he give you back? It weren't nice? It was evil. If Lukes and guilty'd kill him so I decide that I am going to take a gun to court the next day, and I'm going to kill Ron on the courthouse steps. We were looking into Ron Thomas when we got familiar with Irene Compash. The Black Widow Paper Ghosts is written in exact, produced by me Am 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.