Episode 336

Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence, and is not intended for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.

Listen, man, you know I'm telling you. You know I'm condescent to you.

I'm telling you that I did it.

Would you rast me?

Welcome to Season thirteen, episode three hundred and thirty six of Sword and Scale, A show that reveals that the worst monsters are real. You know, the show gets a lot better when you stop complaining and just enjoy it. I'm not going to start talking like you do. When I don't know northern Michigan or West Appalaysia or god forsake in Ohio, You're not gonna be able to get me to talk exactly how you talk in your little, specific local town.

So just stop.

You can't control everything.

Just stop trying to control everything. You're probably saying that wrong anyway. It's usually a word that comes from a different language, and shit y'all saying it in Ohio and in a small newsroom in Batesville, Arkansas, George Jared was a brand new, twenty something year old journalist. It was September of two thousand and four. He was still learning the rhythm of leads stories and deadlines. Most reporters expect stories to come and go. That's the nature of the job.

I'd been there maybe seven months.

I was just out of college, and you know, most of the stuff I'm covering, like school board meetings and you know, city council stuff, and you know, i'd go to do features at local schools and whatnot.

And then one I remember very vividly.

It was a Wednesday morning, phone rings at my pick it up and a woman was on the phone and.

She said, my niece is missing and we can't find her.

And I said, really, George jumped in his car and drove straight to where the woman said she was calling from the Izard County Sheriff's office.

And then I walked over to some family members and Rebecca's mother handed me a missing poster that I still have to this day at sitting in the other room.

The missing girl was twenty two year old Rebecca Gould.

And so immediately I started talking to Rebecca's mother and one of her sisters, and I just flipped the missing poster over on its other side, and I put it up against the building, and I just started taking notes on the back, and those notes are still there. And then I walked over to her father, doctor Larry Gould, and he was standing with another one of.

His daughters, and that's how I first met.

Him, and I just I was out with them the whole week that she was missing.

That's how it started.

Apparently, Rebecca had arrived in the small town of Melbourne, Arkansas, on Saturday, September eighteenth, to visit her boyfriend, Casey McCullough. She was on break from college, but it wasn't unusual for her to take a few days off to see friends. Rebecca's mother told George she'd talked with her daughter on the phone just the day before, but during their call, Rebecca realized she was about to run out of minutes, so she told her mom she'd call back. That call

And you know, Monday morning came one week later, on September twenty seven, two thousand and four. I was at the office, probably five or six o'clock in the morning. I got there really early, and I just decided, for some reason, I felt like I needed to go back to Melbourne, because my office was about twenty five or so miles away, and so I.

Drove down there.

There were some ladies walking around in the courthouse, you know, kind of a southern thing.

To walk around, you know, the courthouse in the morning.

And I overheard as I was walking past them, I was going to go talk to the county judge and I was gonna see it. They were coordinating their search efforts that day, because the county's big, and it's very rule and it's very mountainous and so it's hard. And I overheard, let me say, hey, they're out searching over by or my property or my house something like that.

And I said, where do you live?

And she said that she lived down Highway nine, which is a thoroughfare that connects Melbourne to Mountain View, which is Rebecca's hometown.

It's very treacherous.

Twenty years ago, George still had that restless new reporter energy. This case had already begun to dig its claws into him. He knew he had to go help with the.

Search efforts, and so I drove down there.

I saw a line of cars on the side of the road, just pulled in behind him, got out. It was very steep, you know, lots of trees and bushes. I saw a searcher and I asked him, I said, do you guys out here looking for Rebecca, and he says, she's right there, and he pointed at her and she was just laying there.

Volunteers had already been searching for days, but on this particular day, at this spot, about five miles outside of Melbourne, they noticed vultures circling overhead, never a good sign. Searchers located Rebecca's severely decomposed body about thirty five feet down the embankment. She was wearing only a T shirt and underwear.

You could see her her hair was like over her head, like her face. I mean when I didn't realize at the time it literally it had decomposed off of her scalp and had just moved down. It almost looked like, you know, like if you flip if you have long hair, and its flipped it over like that. I was in an absolute chock, like it was like being in a tunnel. That's the only way I could describe it. Like all of a sudden, I couldn't hear anything, I couldn't see anything.

You know. At the time, I had.

Two very small kids, and so I'm sitting here thinking I've just talked to this mom and his dad and they're hoping on hope that this is what happened. A few minutes later, I drive back to the Sheriff's department, which, as the crow flies, is only four or five miles from this place where she was dumped, and her father, doctor Larry Gould, came running up to me and he grabbed me and he said, did they fight my daughter? And I said, Larry, you need to go talk to

In my stomach. And this is a man I hadn't either. I'd known him for five days.

Rebecca was gone forever, and for a few days time stopped, at least for the people who had hoped she'd come home alive.

I can honestly say that I was never the same person after that. I remember, I wrote when I wrote the story.

I wrote it.

I went back to the office that night and I stayed till four o'clock in the morning writing it. And it was the newspaper office was his old creaky building is a huge building, and if the wind blew, you know, you hear all these creaking sounds. And I was just sitting there with her missing poster sitting on my desk. And I've written about this before. I have never every single resume that I've ever submitted after this attached to that resume was a story I wrote about her case.

And she never left me. It was in my soul.

After that, everyone's focus shifted to finding Rebecca's killer, well, the medical examiner did, the autopsy. Investigators turned their attention to the trailer where she had last been seen.

She was on it.

She had an on again, off again boyfriend named Casey McCullough, and she would come back. You know, she was living up in northwest Arkansas at this point. She'd come back and see him on the weekend. She'd stay at his house. They were just kind of on again, off again, you know how it is when you're that age, you know, twenty two, and you know you're dating someone and you know, and he obviously was not a long term thing for her. There's she was quite a catch for him, I guess,

And tell me, how do you come to know Rebecca?

We worked at Sonic together, and very first day that she worked.

At Sonic, I thought she must beautiful creature I ever seen, So, you know, that's when we started talking.

How long did you live with Rebecca?

For? About two two?

Much?

And after that just a relationship? Did y'all split up or what took place?

Well, we did split up.

We decided that, you know, it'd be better for just stay friends, and that's what we did. We still spend awful lot of time.

She would live with certain people at certain times, you know, and she kind of bounced around a little bit. But then she finally decided that she wanted to go into pharmaceutical sales. And so she had a sister that was already going to school up in Fayetteville, which.

Is about three hours or so for Melbourne.

So she moved up there and she moved in with her sister in an apartment, and she started attending a local community college and she started taking classes, and so she was twenty two and she was just trying to get her life together.

The previous spring, Rebecca and Casey's relationship had been pretty serious. Casey was head over heels for her, which brought out the controlling side of them that didn't work well with Rebecca's fiery personality. By the end of the summer, things had become a little messy. On her drive from northwest Arkansas to Melbourne, Rebecca told her sister that this would be her final trip.

She told her sister She's like, I'm done, this is it, and then they stop off at their dad's house. He gives the meech one hundred dollars bill on their way to Melbourne, and she tells her father. She says, I'm done with Casey.

It's over. We're done.

Detectives often use an investigative strategy called Canter and Larkin's circle theory. It's a fancy way of saying that most offenders don't stray far from home when they commit a crime. They stick to what they know, neighborhoods, they've been in, routes. They're comfortable with places that feel familiar, So investigators start

The main suspects for years and years and years and years was Chris Cantrell.

And he was just this.

Guy who was involved in a local, you know, kind of drug scene. You know, he I don't think he sold a lot of drugs that he consumednewim he'd get in trouble for it. And this guy, I mean, you're not talking about somebody who has the sophistication probably to you know, wipe their own DNA from a crime scene or get rid of all their fingerprints and all this

They don't do anything else, and they walk away.

Rebecca's autopsy report remained unreleased for years. Even today, only a few people have a copy of it. The report suggests that she was likely bludgeoned. It's hard to tell if there were any defensive wounds. She'd been exposed to the elements for a week, and her body was very badly decomposed. Rebecca had two clear blunt force injuries, one to the left side of her head and one that was a direct hit on the center of her face.

This story that this guy shows up at this house out of the middle of nowhere that the he's never been before, doesn't bring a weapon. He's like huge, I wonder if, oh, I wonder if the piano leg will come off with this piano over here?

Okay, whoa, here we go. Yeah, I mean, it was just this ridiculous, stupid, like are you kidding me? Story? Like come on.

A guy named Dennis was the Arkansas State Police detective working the case. This man was hell bent on pushing the Chris Cantrell story and he wouldn't give up you goo as a hell of a drug.

Well, Dennis was an narcotics officer.

They had a working theory that drugs were somehow involved in this, even though no drugs were found in their system that they could find, and he had hit. He had dealt with Chris in the past. And I've always said this about Dennis, It's one of my favorite sayings.

You know, if you're born a hammer. Every problem in the world has to be a nail. There's no other. It can't be a screw, it can't be a attack. It's got to be a nail. So that's what he turned his case into.

Dennis gets the case I think in November December, and then he starts to focus in on Chris Cantrell. And it was pretty widely known by like June July two thousand and five, that they were focusing on Chris. I mean, that was that was out in the public. People talked about it.

There were other suspects along the way, and people in town gossiped about the possibility that Rebecca's boyfriend, Casey was the real killer. But this detective wouldn't hear any of it. He refused to look into any tips or reanalyze any of the existing evidence. But a lot of it pointed straight to Casey McCullough.

I mean, I spent, you know, years just befuddled by the detective because, you know, you automatically assume that they know more than you know, because they've got the case file, and there must be I had there had to be something in there that was really pointing them away from him.

George didn't get his hands on the case file until years later, but by the time he'd read it, this detective decided to pay him a surprise visit, armed with all the original evidence. This turned out to be a perfect opportunity for George to ask Dennis why he was so focused on the wrong suspect.

And I'm not kidding you.

This guy, this detective snuck into a book signing of mine one time and these cut off daisy duke looking shorts, cut off flannel shirt. I mean, like, I'm not going to notice this dude coming in here. I pitch him the book because I didn't recognize him at this point. And then as I said, do you want to buy a book, He's like, He's like, no, I'm specially Agententis Simon was with the argisal State Relieves.

He pulls out his badge and I looked at him.

I'm like, okay, Dennis, I haven't seen you in years, but you know, come on, and he.

Tells me I can't. I told him, I said, I don't understand something here. Why would he clean up the mess? Why wouldn't he just take a match in torch the place?

And he said, George, if you had a case file, you know exactly why this person did this thing. And I'm like, okay, well we have the case file now and it's even more incomprehensible.

This Dennis character sure does remind me of Lieutenant Jim Dangle from Reno nine one one. Can you picture it? Life imitates art, I guess Rebecca's case whirled around in George's mind for years, and all the while it had become a closed loop. He wrote articles about the case and about various theories, but law enforcement was holding all the information under lock and key. They held no press conferences and gave no updates. Fourteen years with no progress.

I first heard about a podcast called Hellngon in late twenty eighteen.

This is Jen Bucholtz. She's a former US Army counterintelligence agent who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. She now teaches forensic science at American Military University and works as a cold case investigator for Colorado's El Paso County Sheriff's Office.

And it was my content editor at the university who we would go back and forth sometimes about new podcasts and cases, and sometimes I'd write about different cases and she's like, you really should listen to Helen. I think you're going to find that case really interesting. Maybe you want to write about it. And so, of course she was correct, and I binged it and George was featured in several of the episodes. So I thought, well, I'll

I think, I don't know.

We had very similar mindset was the behaviors that this killer took and the importance of understanding those behaviors and what they meant about the relationship between the killer and victim. Very clear that the detective at the time had no idea about criminal profiling or behavioral analysis and it was really being overlooked. And that was like one of my key points in reaching out to George, and as you'll hear, he had the same thoughts through the years.

Jen Bucholtz spent years working as a private investigator before stepping into her current role in cold case investigations. Now embedded within a police department, she sees a sharp divide, maybe even a distrust, between law enforcement and civilian investigators. In many cases, police simply won't accept outside help. Again, Ego is a hell of a drug. Rebecca's father, doctor

The law enforcement officers that to me are truly the real professionals are the ones that reach out to the public and they ask for help. The ones that reach out and say that.

They don't use their ego.

They say, I'm the officer, I'm in charge of this case.

Help me.

Now, there's somebody I respect, and there's no reason to not be that way, especially nowadays, there's a lot of unsolved murders.

That the public can get involved with.

There's a lot of the public that loves to get involved with these types of cases because they feel sincerely like they can help and that they can offer something.

And this is where the Internet proves it's worth to some degree. Perhaps I can't believe I just said that. In case after case, it's not a detective who breathes new life into a forgotten file. It's a podcast, it's a subreddit. It's a web form or a Facebook group, or even a TikTok channel where some web sleuth, usually a middle aged woman, I might add, that has so much time on their hands and so much empathy in their heart that they have to do something with it,

It's a lesson learned by us that can be passed on to other not just private investigators or citizens, but law enforcement agencies too, Like keep an eye on social media sites for your victim, see if any of your suspects are.

In there, Like I do it at work, because sometimes the killer does come back to the scene of the crime. Only in Rebecca's case, the scene was now virtual. By the fall of twenty eighteen, Rebecca Gould's case sat unsolved for nearly fourteen years. The crime scene had been cleaned, the man she was last seen with had quietly receded into the shadows, and the Arkansas State Police special agent was borderline obsessed with pinning the whole crime on the

Well, me and George were the admins, and we set the group setting so.

That it's a public group. Anybody can find it, but.

You have to request to join because we always want to keep track of who's joining.

So, you know, one of our.

Goals, and I guess subconsciously one of our goals in the week in the group was to lure the killer in there or somebody who knew something.

The Facebook group grew quickly. At this point. Neither the police's case file nor Rebecca's autopsy had been made available to the public. Yet this meant that the host of the Hell and Gone podcast had to piece the story together using rumors and gossip from people in town. By the time Catherine Townsend aired the final episode of season one, the narrative had shifted away from small town gossip and toward a deeper, darker truth. This was never about random

So here's the thing about this case.

We don't have a definitive time of death for Rebecca. This is the working theory of the prosecutorial theory about what happened is on that Monday morning, Rebecca takes Casey to work because his father had borrowed Casey's truck the night before, Casey needed to ride, so she drops.

Him off at the Sonic that morning.

Then she goes back to his house to collect up all her things. She had a little Pomeranian dog, and she had her clothes, and she had brought two big suitcases because she had told her father and her sister Danielle, that this was going to be the last time that she came to Casey's house, and so she brought an extra suitcase because she had some personal items over there at the house. And so it's during this timeframe that morning, when she's collecting of all this stuff, that's when the

There's none.

And for years we were led to believe that there was a video at a convenience store that she stopped off and got a coffee and a breakfast sandwich, and so we thought there was all this evidence, you know, that she was there. The problem is is that none of that stuff was true, so there's no proof of life Monday morning, but that's the official story.

Just to fill in some gaps. The day Rebecca went missing, Casey's father had borrowed as truck, so he was carloss and needed transportation to and from work. He worked at Sonic. By the way, we know, Rebecca's plan was to quietly packer things and dump his ass that day, but Casey was clueless about this or was he did he find out? Was there a subsequent altercation. This is where things get really suspicious and a little messy.

So he asked a group of four friends, people that he was friends with. They were going to go to the movies that night, and they we're going to go see the movie Resident Evil too, and so he asked them if he could ride with them, and they were all kind of surprised by it because he was kind of a recluse. He didn't like to hang out with anybody, And so he went down to Batesville that night. They

By the way, he didn't use his own phone. After he hangs up, he tells all four of these friends that Rebecca is missing.

He used his friend's phone to call his own voicemail, so he didn't actually talk to anybody. He listened to his messages, whatever they were, and then got off the phone and told his friends that Rebecca's missing.

Now here's the problem.

She wasn't reported missing until the next morning, at eight thirty in the morning by her mother. The second part of it is all four friends, and all four of their statements to police said that he was obsessed with her, and I'm paraphrasing this, that he was obsessed with her, and they were all shocked that he wasn't.

Running out the door to go and find her. And so what he did instead is he went to his friend's house, smoked some marijuana, played some video games, and fell asleep on the couch.

Are you suspicious yet, fellow websleuth.

She dropped you work and.

Get a little past eight, a little past eight, and I just remember saying bye and flying to each other and wait, Ane.

That's the last time I saw that. Okay?

Did you have any contact with her by telephone?

No?

Sorry, I tried.

Have you talked with her since Monday morning at eight o'clock? About the last time I talked to her? And you haven't seen her since?

I haven't seen her?

So did you play on the center before she went back?

Yes?

She was supposed to come back and pick me up from work to go pick up my truck from Matsville.

And did she show up?

No, sir?

What time she was she supposed to pick you up for? And then you came back to Oxford at anytime?

Uh?

Since you left there?

Did you go back to.

Your house at any time that night?

No, sir.

Did you ever go back there to get some clothing out of the sure Harris hands or anything like that?

No, sir, I never went back to the house that night. What time did you leave Oxford? That house and come to work next morning? About seven thirty? You get to work at eight? And how long did you stay at work? I stayed there for about ten to fifteen minutes. I called Rebecca's mom to see if she had heard from Rebecca, because you know, I haven't yet, and she said she sounded really worried and freaking out, And so I asked my.

Manager Daniel, if I could go down.

To the house and see if she was there. Send me what you find when you get to your house.

I drive up and.

I see your car, so I'm thinking she's there and she's safe inside. And I walk in and I see her dog, which which gives me a little bit more.

What's the way I'm looking for insurance?

What's significant about the dogs being here?

That if she's there, then she's Rebecca's got to be there, because Rebecca goes no way.

To got that dog. I walked in and checked our room and then I call it our room because it is.

And wow, did you catch it? Tell me you caught that we walked into r room. I call it our room because it is. That's what he said, don't need to be so defensive there, buddy, you weren't questioning your relationship status.

No sheets on the bed and nobody's in there.

And I thought it was very odd.

No sheets on the bed because she just washed them the week earlier, and I would't say he washed them again. I looked to the whole house again, double backed in every room, and I didn't see anything, and I was.

Well appeared to me.

I thought I was on the clock.

Because I posted in. That thing doesn't work all the time. And so I took off back towards signing cable.

Her car there, my car was there. Did you see anything like her slipper or anything like that at the house.

Yes, I saw her pink slippers.

These are all clips from Casey's first interview with police. He tells them that he never went back to the house that day, the day Rebecca went missing. It was the next morning that he said he'd back home by himself to search the trailer for clues.

One day, I was driving through Melbourne and I saw him outside smoking a cigarette in the parking lot. And this is probably eight or nine months after the murder, and so I just pulled my truck in, got out, and I just confronted him. I said, so tell me what happened. And he told me that he never went to the back to his house before he went with the police, and so he lied. When we get the case file. Not only did he not notice that his room and I'm not I think I'm exaggerating, it looked

Did you subsequently go back after your house with the deafity.

I asked him, I said, do you just want to follow me? And thought I was, And he just.

Followed me all the way there.

And when you get here the police, I take it looked in your house.

Yeah.

See, I let him freely walk to the house. I showed him that her belongings were still there, and how it's very odd she really never ever.

Lives without it and he walked into the back room, checked under the mattress and found some blood and uh, I really didn't know where it came from.

That's when I started getting really scared. Didn't know what to think.

Then, after we checked the mattress, he turned around and checked the washer. When we checked the washer, we saw just a little bit of film.

On something red. We didn't know if it was.

Blood or not, but we noticed, and we tried to put two and two together that you know, she's around the bed this.

Case, and what do you think has happened to Rebecca. I think she was killed.

I don't know who did it.

So Monday night is when he tells his friend she's missing and whatever. So Tuesday morning, he had spent the night at his friend's house, he hadn't gone home. Tuesday morning, goes to work for a shift at Sonic. Well, for some reason, he didn't have his Sonic shirt even though he worked the day prior. So his boss is like, you got to go home and get a Sonic shirt. You got to be in uniform. So he was forced to go home Tuesday morning to his residence and he

You know, if the lies, the changing timeline, and Casey's strange behavior weren't bad enough, just wait, it gets worse.

Well, it's even more suspicious because he confessed to hurting her. He in let's see April of twy ten or twenty eleven, they're not quite sure what year. And so he was working on like these towers, he was climbing towers and he was one night he and two other people were in a hotel room. One of them is Tad Hickerson, and he signed us one affidavit to this. But they're

Mess by when exactly was the evidence cleaned from the teler? According to police, Rebecca was killed sometime on Monday, September eighteenth, after she dropped Casey off at work, and Casey had an alibi for that time period. He was working at Sonic all day then was seen on camera hanging out with friends in the evening.

So because of that, Casey was cleared because they assumed she was alive Monday morning and he was accounted for at work during the hours that they thought she was killed. So he, I mean, Dennis Simon's the detective who was on it for fourteen years, had watched it. He did publicly clear him, which is always a mistake. You don't clear anybody, but he did publicly clear Casey. So Casey fell off the radar for most people. I think from that point forward.

It was open and shut. Sherlock and Daisy Dukes had nailed the timeline, or did he? Jenn and George certainly didn't think so. They think Rebecca may have been killed much earlier, perhaps that morning, giving someone plenty of time to erase what couldn't be explained, and that changed everything. If the murder didn't happen when police thought it did,

He was one of the first people to join our Facebook page when we created in October of twenty nineteen. And there's a girl on our crowdsourcing team who's really good at like genealogy, you know, like she's good at

He's a very world traveler.

And he made a lot of money too, and then I this may be a coincidence, but I just can't believe that it's a coincidence. Casey's birthday is January sixteenth, So on January sixteenth of twenty twenty, right before the pandemic starts, William Miller starts sending private dms to Jen. Now, he had sent me one or two, but I never responded because I mean, he was Casey's first cousin, so

At first, William Miller seemed like any other dedicated member of the group, curious, passionate, maybe a little too invested. But as Jen talked to him, the tone shifted. The conversations were often law back and forth dialogues. Sometimes William rambled and didn't make much sense. In one message, she claimed he was being targeted by other group members trying to stir up drama. I am being attacked by a

But behind the.

Scenes, Jen was already putting the pieces together. William wasn't just engageing with the case. He was circling it, fixating on details like gloves, DNA and forensics. No fingerprints, no DNA. First thing pops in my head is did he have gloves? John's goal was to find out why William was so interested in this case, or at least to see what kind of answer he would give. They knew he was Casey's cousin, and they knew he was being evasive about it.

But why and he was why he wouldn't He wouldn't tell her, like what was the relationship or to the case, like why was he interested in it? And he just said podcasts And then she asked him what states he'd been to, and he said fifty of them or something like that, and her and I would talk about him some early on, and then the pandemic hits, and then in September we found out something very interesting. We did not know that he was in town the weekend of

Even more suspicious, they didn't know that William's mother, Linda and his brother Jeremy had actually been living in the area at the time of the murder.

Like the family kept that way under wraps, which is so telling. Even Casey and his family never divulged that publicly. So I'm like, why are you hiding that?

Jen and George both saw the signs William Miller was quickly moving up their list of suspects.

Me and Jenn are talking one day and were just like, this guy could be involved, Like as soon as we found out that he was there, because our analysis had always pointed towards a male member of the McCullough family. His name is William Miller, but he's as much McCullough as the mcculloughs are. He fit the profile, and it was even more interesting with him because he immediately left. It's like your cousin's girlfriend vanishes and you don't stick around for a day or two to try to help

A new detective had been handling the investigation, and it took him only eight months to get his site set on William Miller. This detective wanted to get William in an interview room, but knowing that William lived overseas, he called his mother Linda, just so you know they're going to be referring to William as Billy by the way.

Hello, Hello, hey Linda, how are you doing.

Hanging in there? I didn't know you still worked?

You still working?

Yeah?

I take care of a little lady that.

Has alzheimer, Okay, and that difficult Oh yeah, I can imagine. I can imagine I wanted to reach out to you. You know, I'm going through this case file, and the I guess the opinion of the Arkansas State Police is that they're basically.

Wanting everybody reinterviewed. So I'm going.

Back and I'm going through, you know, all of the documents and trying to trying to accomplish that.

And I know that you and Jeremy and Billy.

Were all interviewed back back in two thousand and four, and you know, I just wanted to reach out to you guys and see what of course I get. You know, Billy's in the Philippine means 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, you don't know.

Things have been crazy with the COVID.

Right and you have no idea when Billy might be returning to the States.

Not right now, not when it's all the COVID stuff.

So the last the last time Billy made it home was sometime last year.

I don't know.

I mean, I know he does that, for I know he does that.

I think you every year.

Yeah, okay, well if you would, Linda, get with Jeremy and see if there's one day the same time. Yeah, awesome, Well thanks Linda, Yeah right, no problem, we have a good day to go back. That was Linda Miller, October twenty first, twenty twenty.

Should be noted that Billy Miller is currently in Oregon. He returned from the Philippines approximately a little over a week ago.

It's entirely possible that William or Bill or Billy was sitting right next to his mother listening to her lie to the detective about his whereabouts during this call. Just a little bit later, probably after having a team meeting with her sons, Linda called the detective back.

Hello Miller, Hey, Linda, how are you pretty good?

I think we got everybody coortinated?

Where you being it?

All?

Three?

Other that?

Whe Oh really?

Yeah?

Well, when's when's Billy coming back in?

He'll be here November seventh.

That's when we.

Want to have our meeting on you, okay, November the seventh.

Linda Miller and her two sons believed they were heading into just another round of questioning. What they didn't realize was that every word they spoke would be used to dismantle the lie they'd been upholding for sixteen long years. By the fall of twenty twenty, almost exactly sixteen years after her murder, there was a Facebook group rife with theories on Rebecca Gould's case. One of the people offering

First, let me tell you this is called a non custodial interview.

Okay, you probably never heard.

Of such a thing, but what that means is you came.

Up here voluntarily. You're not being detained. You're free to go at any time. That door is not locked.

You know.

I want to tell you when I told the police went down into.

Texas when they came and stuff, and I mean to be honest with you and truthful with you.

Call everything. You know, maybe I saw something that maybe a key factor in something there and all of stuff. Right, right, So you're an oil field worker.

I've been been working in an oil field for twenty eight three years. I remember moving mom up there and then she was moved into that little house.

I was a couple of miles down the road from grandfather's property.

Yeah, I mean yeah, so you're right that was about your mom's house was about two three miles from the the trailer where this happened.

Okay, So so I've been.

In that home and all that stuff, and prior to the homicide.

Yes, how many times had you been in that trailer?

Do you think? Maybe two?

Three times?

Maybe two or three times? Two or three times and stuff?

So she was Rebecca was killed in September of before. When was the last time you were in that trailer?

You think it was the way before that? Months?

Yeah, William goes on to explain that back in September of two thousand and four, his mother asked him to help her move to Texas with William's younger brother, so he drove up to Arkansas and arrived on Sunday, the same day Rebecca had gotten into town.

So in the.

Information that was provided to Texas, you know four, you said that whenever you showed up in Melbourne, that you went and visited family in the small town.

So that made it sound.

Like that you were with your mom and that you visited family in the small town.

So do you remember.

Going to the grandparents' house on Sunday, because that's what you told investigators in O.

Four.

I don't, I can't remember and all that stuff.

Yeah, do you think that probably if you if you said it No.

Four, that that would probably be more accurate.

There probably be more angry because it was set in went and then and then.

Because I know that when I came up, I remember going and asking Casey if you can give me a hand helping me.

Move, Help help me mom moved, help mom moved the stuff into the house.

And he was like, Hey, I'm too busy.

Is that whenever you showed up to Casey's trailer on Sunday.

No, okay, Well when did you have that conversation when mom moved under?

Three or four months before? Okay?

William claimed that this interact shoudn't happened months before. But now that we have Casey's original interview from September of two thousand and four, we can look back and see that Casey told police something different.

Your cousin, what's his name?

His name is Billy Little.

We call him a little Billy and it's Billy Miller.

What were to Billy live it?

He lives in Texas, and I'm not for sure where.

What was he doing up here?

He was coming up.

Here to move his mom and his brother back to Texas.

So has he already gone back?

You know, Yes, he's already gone.

I'm pretty sure, okay.

And so I guess he came up and spoke with you gets a short period of time that night.

Yes, that would be Sunday evening. Okay, So how long did he say that?

Ten fifteen min tops?

We just really talked about all the times and stuff.

Did you come into your house?

No, sir, he stayed outside.

I was outside.

He never came in the house. But BacT I was on the front porch. He saw her back on the.

Did he know that you and Rebecca dated and past?

Yes?

Did you know Joe were living together?

He knew that she visited on the weekends.

He say, remember, Rebecca arrived at mccullus trailer on Saturday, September eighteenth. The police originally thought she was alive on Monday morning. Jen and George think she was actually killed before that, late Saturday night or maybe sometime on Sunday.

There's a problem though, with this part of the story too. Here's the problem.

So this was what Casey told people in you know, when he was interviewed the police, and then William kind of told a similar story that he just pulled.

Up into the driveway and you know that was it.

Well, a couple of weeks after their statements are taken, Casey's asked whose DNA could possibly be in the house, and he gives a list of people whose DNA could be in the house. He lists William and Jeremy, and besides of them, there's sua meeting Sunday night next to each of them. Well, if you never got out of his car, how could his DNA be in the house.

Obviously, I can't talk a lot about the evidence in the investigation, you know, it's an ongoing investigation investigation, but I can assure you that.

There are items of evidence that there should be no reason your DNA should be on it, you.

Know what I mean.

We believe investigators, with the people that had worked this, we believe that we have the suspects DNA on a piece of evidence that.

Is very specific and very unique, and nobody else's DNA should be on it. So that's why I'm asking. There's a number of people that have provided DNA. Volunteer, would you be willing to provide your DNA?

It would be a cheek swab.

I don't want to take blood or what it is. If I mean in that house and all.

That stuff, my DNA would be in there.

You know, if if you don't feel comfortable doing it, I'm not gonna.

I'm not gonna.

Push you or try to put any pressure on you. It's not ask for all that stuff.

But you know, yeah, if.

You're that's fine.

He's just to me, it's just you know, yeah, my he is going to be in.

There a lot of stuff, right, Okay, Since he was so willing to give up his DNA, A polygraph would be no problem.

Right, Like I was talking before about polygraphs, you know, almost all of them becaulors have been polygraphed.

A number of other people hadn't been. You know, that's one that's that's a tool that we like to use to you know, it kind of gives us.

A pretty good indication of somebody who's lying or telling the truth.

Yeah stuff, yeah, yeah, I mean, would you be okay with taking a polygraph?

I'll just ask you now, I don't know, have a problem, know that you don't have that finale?

You want to go to Arkansas and take one?

Now, I'll tell you what. Let me holler.

I'll call a I'll call the sergeant up here to see they may have a polygrapher in town.

You know, it's a shot in the dark, but.

Actually it was the furthest thing from a shot in the dark. This detective had his polygrapher locked and loaded.

Right, And so we're going to view a great do you tell all the questions?

We're going to be on the exam, We're going to administer the test. We're going to give you the test.

They'll be done in several phases that want to value eight the exam results.

So I'll tell you how you did before you leave today?

Okay, whether you want to lay.

Want to know if you cause the death of we're back at school, Well, how would you answer that question?

I would I answer that yes that you know, how can you do something when you're in another notation?

Okay? Perfect?

So if they were asking that on the example, would your.

Answer to you no, okay, not perfect? And are you half hundred percent positive?

Yes? Perfect?

You know you're not going to have a.

Problem passive test if you know, if you didn't do it, you didn't do it, and then it was supposed to the process and that's that's that's what you want to know, right.

William sat like a statue in his chair for the duration of the test, answering yes and no questions. Confidently when it was over he didn't have to wait very long to get his results.

Now, I think you did.

I don't know if you're many okay, okay. So the res also the example of deception indicated. Right, So those two the questions that did you you know what that cause you failed the test?

I have the test?

Yes, yes, and so my heart he felt like he was just beating out of my chest.

Yeah. You know, we talked about your DNA being at.

The crime scene, and you tried to give an explanation as to why you're doing it would be at the crime scene because your mom.

Gave claude furniture, furniture stuff and betting, and you even you even said that it would be reasonable for your DNA to be on the betting, which is absolutely sir.

No, I didn't say that, Okay.

I just said that mom gives furniture and all that stuff.

Okay, all right.

This is a wash cloth that was under the bed that the killer used to clean up. It was watered up in a ball. Okay, we've got we've got the killer's DNA on that wash cloth.

Okay, would there be any reason for your DNA?

It shouldn't be, shouldn't mail there?

Are you ready to have your mind blown? The detective is lying, as DNA was not on the washcloth. This is just one of the tools in a seasoned detective's tool helt that's used to get a reaction, possibly a confession, out of a suspect when there's little loss to go on. They were baiting him.

He got tricked and it was a gutsy move. I'll give Mike Neil credit. He got tricked.

He got tricked into thinking that his DNA was on a rag that they had found they were going to do some DNA testing, and then he also got tricked into thinking that Rebecca's DNA. What Mike did is he went and found the truck, the actual truck that William Miller owned in two thousand and four. It was somewhere in South Texas. He sent the Texas Rangers down there to take pictures of it. And so Mike has a folder. And this is after William has failed the polygraph test

That truck looks familiar.

Yeah, yeah, that's your truck.

YEA biological billy lasts for.

Decades, blood, skin cells, all kinds of stuff.

Okay, all right.

That was a really bloody crime scene.

What happened.

You got blood on the side of your shoe.

We got Rebecca's DNA next to the gas pedal in your truck, no question about it.

Her DNA's in your truck.

So What you have to do is you have to explain to me how that's possible.

If you didn't kill.

Her, you know who did, and if you know who did, if you're covered for casey. Dude, I'm telling you, you have got to come forward right now with what you know.

And William immediately knows it's his old truck, and he goes, we're going to get this test out and whoever killed her is on the track.

Neither one of those things was true.

But it was enough to scare William into confessing. Still want to be a detective.

We know what you did, we know how it went down.

We've got her blood in your in your floorboard.

You tried to clean up mess that you could.

Billy, don't drag your mom through this anymore.

Don't drag your brother through this anymore.

Give give the family some peace.

It was a freak deal man.

You did not mean to killer.

It happens.

It should have never happened, but it did. Okay, So tell me, Billy, just tell me, tell me what you did, how it happened.

Last to my mom. Outside you can look at the email. I've got to run off or any day.

Listen, let me do this.

Let me.

Let me bring your mom in here and let's talk to her together. If that's what you want to do.

I want to talk to her outside outside, and I promised to come back in here and sell you whatever you want.

William Miller had failed this polygraph test. Miserably, he realized the walls were closing in, and he asked for one last chance to talk with his mother. When he came back into the room, William told police exactly what they'd been waiting to hear. He had murdered Rebecca Gould all of those years ago. It was him, that had always been him.

Okay, I'll get Jeremy in a minute.

We need to have a conversation. I held up my end of the deal. Let's talk. What do you want me to tell you? I want you to tell me what you did, how it went down.

One thing about this is it's been real and in your head like a movie real since it happened.

There isn't anything about this. See you forgot I know that because.

I've been doing this a long time.

I did.

You gotta sorry. I'm sorry for what I did. You gotta tell me how it went down. I just sent it. I kind of blocked it.

Out of my mind and in a way to survive.

Everybody that I'm associated is a victim about to me, absolutely victim, absolutely, And I played everybody.

As a fool, everybody. I never told anybody but you right now. I remember going into the trailer and stuff, and then it just happened so quick and so fast, and then I freaked out.

And you can't go all so for what happened so fast and so quick?

What happened? Where did it happen?

You have to tell me these things, if you guys, isn't so, I mean, you.

Should know that I do I do?

Or should I just get a lawyer and all that stuff. Now, I'm just asking you that because you know, listen, man, you know I'm telling you. You know I'm confessed to you.

I'm telling you that I did it.

Once you arrest me.

Once you do arrest me, and that you said that I killed her by her blood and all that stuff is in.

There, and arrest me, I'm confessant. I did it.

Dude.

You're under arrest for the murder from Becca Gould.

Okay, okay, take me to Arkansas.

I mean, listen, know that that's all.

We will get there, right I know that, but you know it doesn't happen the way you want it to happen. It just doesn't take me to Arkansas, do this, do that. It doesn't happen that way.

Here's the thing.

You in the state of Arkansas, you can't and then this is Trinlana States.

You cannot just have a confession.

You have to have some other piece of evidence that ties the person of the crime.

The problem for William is is.

That there was a piece of evidence that did tie him to the crime, and that's the missing suitcase. When police arrived the day that Rebecca vantaged, there were three things missing. One of her suitcases, the piano, egg and her Okay.

But I need to know what you did with Rebecca. Where did you put her before you dumped her? I need to know all that stuff. And I know that's not easy to talk about, but we got to have that conversation.

Where did you put her before you dumped her? Where'd you keep her in the truck?

Where in the truck?

The back end of the truck?

Okay, what was she in?

She was in a shirt?

Not no?

Did you put her in a trash bag?

Were there?

No? Would you put her in there was a blanket and all that stuff.

Okay, what was used to cause her injuries? We'll go to Arkansas and I'm going to point out something to you and then you'll find some certain things that you're going to be looking for.

All right, So you're telling me.

Right now in November twenty twenty, there is still physical evidence probably that has not been found. Yeah, let's go to Arkansas. That will nail them in the coffin, would it.

Well no, I'm telling you, you know, unless somebody picked it up and thought it was trash.

But it should be where it's at.

It should be where it's at. Well, that's helpful, Isn't it weird how humans can do inhuman things but not talk about them afterwards. Words too violent for you, Billy. There are a strange species.

Indeed, for you know, sixteen years they were trying to find this suitcase. Well, William told them where to find the suitcase and it was in proximity to his mom's old house when she was living in Guying, and it took him about the search. We estimate was about three to four hours, but they found the suitcase. The suitcase is weird, though, and there's a reason why it's weird. William says he took it. And William's he's not tall, but he's a big, stocky guy.

He weighed over three hundred pounds.

There was only like five six and so he took this suitcase and he said he launched it from the highway and it landed like thirty forty yards away or something like that. And so when it's found, it's open and all of the betting, and there's some betting, and there's some clothes. They're all in a pile over here, and there were some CDs in there and all this other stuff. So Jenna's at my house one night after we get the pictures of this suitcase, and it was

They weren't faded. You could see the This is how we know it was came from Casey's houses because the plaid on the sheet matches that that was in his washer. And we've actually done our own suitcase experiment. One of the local residents in Melbourne went to Goodwill and got two black suitcases and her backyard has a very similar landscape to where this suitcase was found, with the same types of trees and leaves and obviously the same weather pattern.

What would just saying too were there as well, I'm true sorry.

I know that I can't bring her.

Back alone, and I yes, there was time to that.

I wanted to go to Doctricol's office.

It'm a guy and get him.

That did to change to do that, Like he gave this confession, gave really no reason as to why Rebecca would you know he killed her. But then at his sentencing he agrees to meet with doctor Gould afterwards and he tells a completely different story about how he gave her seat, that he hit her, but then he gave her CPR and if they find his DNA on her shirt, it was because he was crying. He keeps telling all

So and for listeners who want to waste eleven hours of their life, they can watch his entire interview, polygraph, confession, everything on YouTube.

William was arrested for Rebecca's murder and eventually took a plea deal that landed him forty years in the Arkansas Department of Corrections, and like George said, these days, William has changed his story yet again. As you might suspect, he and Jen have been in contact with him since his arrest, and he now says that Casey murdered Rebecca, he just helped clean up the scene.

And fun fact, the cleaning supplies that were used to clean up the crime scene were delivered by Linda, and that's verified.

She delivered those clean spies.

Now she claims that her brother that he asked her to pick up certain items for the house and they were all cleaning items that were used by the killer or killers to clean up the mess in the house.

No one knows for sure just how much Linda Miller knew about the situation, but it warnant some serious speculation. Rebecca's murder wasn't the only secret her son had been keeping, though, the same day he took the polygraph test, failed it and confessed to the murder. He also confessed to five others too. That's right, William could be a serial killer.

What happened was is he confessed to Rebecca's murderer, and of course then you know the detectives are trying to press him like, hey, we know this was your first rodeo. And so then he confesses to five other murders, but he doesn't give the names of the victims.

He didn't give specific details though.

About how he kidnapped one of these victims from which she was like at a payphone at a convenience store late night, you know, And he gave specific details about how he would, you know, trick them.

He said it was some of them were sex workers, you.

Know, they would think they were about getting ready to have a sexual encounter. And sometimes he would have a strap underneath his his somewhere in his truck that he could just grab it, wrap it around their neck and strangle them. I am almost one hundred percent confident that he's a serial killer, and he's done this many times.

I just believe it.

Jen still waivers on whether she agrees with George on this one. She is one hundred percent sure that William was somehow involved in the murder and disposal of Rebecca Gould.

I just and this is the the tragedy of it, in a way, is that if only the state police had shared a little bit with us, and we had known William had been in the state of Arkansas, the weekend and the murder. I mean, everything would have been so different from our side the whole time. And then him joining the group. I mean, that was a golden opportunity.

It's no wonder this case has held the attention of so many for nearly two decades. It's not just the brutality of what happened to Rebecca. It's the sheer scale of what we don't know, the conflicting timelines, the recycled alibis, the parade of rumors, false leads, and players who still

So I've been to visit him three times, and George actually got to interview him and take video of it. Because he's an official journalist or what is it, George media member. I guess that got you in, and so I'm just if he's willing to keep talking to us, I'm not going to give up because I feel compelled to not only try to get the truth about Rebecca's case, but also try to figure out if he has other victims.

And in the absence of official help, it's civilians like you and me who are stepping up and finding William's other potential victims, not ego driven cops in short charts, regular people like you and me with a moral compass, a strong sense of right and wrong, and a need for justice. People who will not stop asking questions even when officials have long forgotten the case and told you to shut up. Webslutes like this have already been calming

So we can't do it by ourselves. And so we started this project several months ago and I just called it Operation Rebecca, so I didn't know what else. I couldn't come up with anything better. But I have an official sign up form. I have a video on our YouTube channel explaining the process of what we're doing, and I just asked volunteers if to fill out the forum,

We'll post a link to gens info in the show notes at Swordinscale dot com, so you too can join the investigative fund. Now where did I put that magnifying glass again?

Anyway?

I think this case proves justice doesn't always wear a badge. Sometimes it looks like a true crime podcast enthusiast with a search tab open at three am and way eat too much coffee in their digestive system. Get twenty percent off at Strongcoffeecompany dot com. With promo code Sword by the way. But as I was saying, sometimes justice looks

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