Hello, everyone, Welcome to a special edition of The Pathway. Chili. Ashley is not with us this week because she is off celebrating Thanksgiving, and since Jewels and I are Canadian and don't celebrate Thanksgiving, this week, we were still free, so we decided to do an episode with just the two of us where I will be sharing the details about a case with Jewels that
she's not familiar with and she will offer her comments. And this week I'm going to be doing the nineteen eighty five murders of Harold and Thelma Swain, which is an interesting one because it was on the early days of Unsownes. It wound up getting solved, but then it turned out to be wrongful conviction and the man put in prison for the crime was set free a few years ago, so this is technically unsolved again. And Jules, have you ever
heard of this case before? I've never heard of this case. When you tell me about it with regards to the Unsolved Mysteries episode, it might ring a bell. But when you told me about this initially, I was like, Okay, I'm not going to google it, I'm not going to look into it. And I think you told me Undisclosed did an entire season on this case, or at least a couple episodes. I was really excited because
I'm like, there must be something really good here. And I love a wrongful conviction case because at the end there's somebody who actually gets their freedom back. But it's equal parts inspirational and infuriating. So I can't wait to hear
all about the story. And since you mentioned Undisclosed, one of the reasons I wanted to revisit this is because I originally covered on the Trail went cold in early July of two thousand eighteen, and by sheer coincidence, a few weeks later, I discovered that Undisclosed was devoting an entire season to it because they had done a deep dive investigation, so of course they released a lot
more information than my episode had. But to my shock, I actually got invited to be a guest on one of their after shows with Colin Miller and Susan Simpson, where we discussed the case. And of course it was intimidating because they're brilliant legal experts and I'm not, so I had to try to sound smart next to them. But the good news is is that their hard work on this case did pay off since the conviction was overturned, and there
have been a lot of new developments in the case in recent years. I don't think you had to pretend to be smart or to sound smart, okay, because Ashley and I both have PhDs, and I think you're smarter than both of us, So I don't think necessarily an education level is going to be indicative of just how intelligent an individual is, and I think you are one of the most intelligent people that I have ever met. Oh, thank you very much. I appreciate that, and yes, Colin and Simpson told
me I did a good job as well. But oh, before we start, one final detail, I wanted to mention a funny story is that when we were recording the Undisclosed episode, right at the very end, as I was talking about my podcast, the fire alarm went off in my apartment buildings for a fire drill, so we had to cut the recording short. And
thankfully it happened at the end of the recording and not the beginning. Because I know that when we record the path went Chili will sometimes have to stop because jewels will have like sirens or a motorcycle or a protest outside her window, and then we have to pause before until the noise goes away. Yeah, it's super frustrating when it starts at the beginning, but at least it was at the tail end. But I guess that's just part of modern condo
living. Things like that happen within the building and they're completely outside your control and nobody knows that you're recording a podcast, and it's a big inconvenience. Exactly. Yes, So when people listen to our final episodes, they have no idea how many times we have to stop and start again because of little
glitches like that. So this particular case takes place in nineteen eighty five in the small town of Waverley, Georgia, which is located in Camden County, and it's a predominantly African American community, so our two victims were also African American. It was a sixty six year old Harold Swain and his sixty three year old wife, Thelma Swayin, who had been married for forty three years
at this point. Harold as a retired pulpwood worker and at this particular point he is the deacon at the Rising Daughters Baptist church and is known for being a very well liked and well respected community leader. On the evening of March the eleventh, the Swains were holding their weekly Bible study with nine female parishioners at their church, and at around eight fifty pm, one of the women there, Vanzola Williams, had to excuse herself because she had to leave early
because of a previous engagement. But when Vanzola walked out into the vestibule, she encountered a white man whom she described as being in his twenties and having light colored, shoulder length hair, and the man told Vanzola, can you tell this guy that I want to speak to him? Before he pointed at Harold. So Vanzoli went back told Harold that there was a man who wanted to see him in the vestibule, and then she escorted him back there before
leaving the church. But it was only a few seconds later when everyone in the church heard a bunch of gunshots, and when Thelma heard that, she started a panic. She ran into the vestibule herself and she wound up being shot. So the other parishioners were just terrified and ran back into Harold's office to hide and they tried calling the police, but it turned out that the phone lines had actually at the church had actually previously been cut, meaning that
the killer likely did this and it was a premeditated murder. So one of the parishioners had to sneak out the window go to a nearby convenience store to call the police, and when they arrived, they found Harold and Thelma both shot to death in the vestibule. Wow, I can't imagine the trauma that would inflict on all the parishioners. Regardless of what your feelings are on religion, the church should be a sacred place. This is a place where you're
doing a Bible study. He's a deacon of the church and his wife goes to help him and she gets shot as well. I mean, was this just indiscriminate, like we must eliminate all witnesses type of a thing with regards to Thelma in your opinion, I don't think so, because Vanzola Williams was allowed to leave right after she brought Harold to the vestibule. Like this was a direct witness who communicated with the killer, but he didn't seem concerned about
her. He only cared about Harold and then and for for all I know, he probably never intended on killing Thelma and only shot her because she happened to run into the vestibule to help her husband. But he just wasn't concerned about any of the other witnesses. And then he just fled the scene, which gave off the impression that Harold was intentionally targeted. So did Venzola get
good look at his face? Oh? Yes, And this is going to be one of the most controversial elements of this whole case, because she will provide a description, but that as the years go by, she'll change her story a little bit when identifying this man. Did the other parishioners get a good look at him when Thelma went out to go see what was going on with Harold in the vestibule or was the area that they were in like pretty
far away kind of like sequestered from the vestibule. Well, obviously van Zola was the one who got the best look, but a lot of the other parishioners would report having seen him through the doorway and the vestibule and provide a
description. But we've talked numerous times over the course of this podcast, how eyewitness descriptions in cold cases can sometimes be very unreliable, and this turned out to be a case study in that because as I was doing my research, I found a original police report which put a list of all the eyewitness descriptions provided by each of the eye witnesses who are there, and it's pretty shocking just how much they differ, Like they'll provide different hair colors, different heights,
different clothing descriptions. And what's also shocking is that Vanzola like they would find a pair of glasses in the vestibule and that they assume belong to the killer. But Vanzola Williams claimed that the killer was not wearing glasses. Yet some of these other witnesses who are a farther distance away, if you look at that report, they described the killer as wearing glasses. So if you can't even get a consistent account of a detail like that, then you know
that eyewitness testimony is very unreliable. The one thing that they have going for them in this case is the fact that there are multiple eyewitnesses, So I suppose what you could look for would be commonalities. It's kind of like the jelly bean jar when you have one person guess how many jelly beans are in a jar, and they're going to get it wrong. But you take the average over like one hundred people and they get it within a few jelly beans.
So maybe if you have like ten people or five people saying he was wearing glasses, then maybe there is a good chance that Vanzola Williams, although she had a close up look, maybe she was the one who was wrong. That is true because Vanzola would later change her story and then say that yes, the killer was wearing glasses. But it could just be one of those things where it was such a traumatic experience that her memory right afterwards,
she just wasn't thinking about something like that and gave an inaccurate description. But when you find out that like multiple witnesses cannot even agree if the killer was wearing glasses, then you know that you should never rely on eyewitness testimony as your primary evidence, and certainly not when they change their eyewitness testimony, which is typically never for nefarious purposes. It's because they would conflate the information that
other people have been giving them, especially like law enforcement. I'm sure in this case when they're like, well, other witnesses eyewitnesses had seen eyeglasses, and when you've heard that over and over and over again, you can then your memory becomes malleable and you conflate those details, thinking, well, maybe I do remember him wearing glasses, when that just isn't the case. So
it's just a big old mess, exactly. And that's probably what I think happened with Maanzola, where she was convinced at first he didn't have glasses, but as the years went on and police and other eyewitnesses said that the man did, that's what compelled her to change her story, but it wasn't for nefarious reasons. Now, talking more about the glasses, they were pretty unique because they had very thick lenses, which meant that it was probably they had
a prescription for a far sided person. And the frame of the glasses appeared to have been poked with a welding torch, and the ear pieces did not
match, as one of the ear pieces was wrapped in tape. So these were pretty much makeshift glasses that had been pieced together from pieces of multiple glasses, which seemed to suggest that whoever this person was, they were not something with a someone with a lot of money who could afford its prescription for a decent pair, and of course they likely left him behind the scene an obvious panic, because it's been speculated that the killer got into a struggle with Harold
before he shot him, and it's possible that his glasses fell off and he forgot to pick them up back up before he fled the church. I know that when the man first showed up, nobody thought that there was anything unusual about him, because the church was located next to Highway seventeen and it was very common for transience to stop by who would ask for handouts or a free
meal. So I think Benzola figured that, well, this guy needed some money and he's just wanted to ask Harold if he could get a meal or some cash or something like that. But then when they checked Harold's pocket, they discovered that he still had three hundred dollars in cash in there, So it seemed obvious that robbery was not the motive for the crime, and that
he was probably specifically targeted. And of course, since he was such a predominant leader in the African American community, they start of wondering if this might have been a hate crime. Did van Zola independent of the kind of put together glasses, or from somebody who would likely be of lower socioeconomic status or just maybe extremely frugal. Did she say that the clothing that the individual that she encountered that was going to see Harold, that that would have been somebody
who was transient. Did she mention the clothing, did they have a particular smell? Did they seem unwashed? Did she give any details like that? Because she was up close and personal, she didn't really say anything about the clothing. I assumed it was just nothing distinct about it. The only thing she really described was some scuffed snakeskin boots that he was wearing That would become a big part of the investigation later on. Snake skin boots. Doesn't that
seem like an odd textile for shoes for someone who's transient. Yes, Like, as the case goes on, it becomes very unlikely that the killer was a transient, Like it was probably not a person with like a lot of money to their name, but they probably did have a home and a job
and led a regular life. But I think they examined the transient angle later on and then later discounted it. So the next major development would occur in July, about four months after the crime took place, when a man named Donnie Barantine, who originally hailed from Florida, was pulled over by the police in Telfair County, Georgia, and he had a total of two accomplices with him, and they found a whole bunch of unregistered weapons inside the trunk,
including a submachine gun. It turned out that Barentine and these men originally hailed from Marianna, Florida, and one of the men who he was arrested with, named Jeff Kettrell, said that I think he was probably sharing the story because he was hoping to use it to get out of his own legal troubles
for being with the guns. But he claimed that a couple months earlier, Barentine had showed up at a party in Florida with an unidentified accomplice and supposedly started drunkingly waving a pistol around while bragging that he had murdered a black preacher and his wife in at a Georgia church. And in retrospect, Kittrell believed that these two men might have been that they might have been hair, these
two victims might have been harold and fell with Swain. It turned out when they questioned Barentine, he initially denied ever doing that, but then they found like three other witnesses for the party who corroborated that, yes, Barentine had bragged while he was drunk about murdering a preacher and his wife. So Barentine then changed his story and says, oh, yeah, I did say that, but I was just kidding. I had read about the murders in the
papers and just felt like bragging about it. Weird joke, pal, I mean, even if he did say it, it's also a weird flex to be bragging openly about murdering a preacher and his wife. I found it interesting that he also out that that they were black. So was Barentine white? He was, yes, Yeah. Did he seem like he was racist in any way or him or his accomplice were. Was there like a point that they were drawing to the fact that they were black, like this was a
motivating factor. Uh, It's never kind of been clarified if he was racist. But he was a career criminal, so he was obviously not a good guy. And I guess it is possible that he just because he was drunk and he was on drugs. He just read about this murder in the papers and then just decided to brag about it for fun. But we talked about
this a lot of the time. In other cases we cover when we hear about people like supposedly confessing to committing murders and then when their question by police, they just said, oh, yeah, I said that, but I was just kidding. And it's like, how many of us normal people will just jokingly admit that we killed somebody so weird and no one is impressed, I promise you exactly, he murdered a preacher and his wife, Like, no one's like, oh, wow, you're the man. Nobody said that.
I just don't understand, Well, whatever motivate someone who say that, unless they're just so proud of what they've done. It just seems like an odd crime to attach yourself to just to be braggadocious, exactly. But it doesn't sound like this was a very high, high brow club and stuff, so it does not surprise me that maybe they just were the type of people who like to brag about killing people just for fun at parties. But the
guy that was his accompliced when he was arrested. Jeff Kittrell. He claimed that when they were pulled over with all the weapons in their vehicle, that they had actually been on their way to make in Georgia to perform a hit on a drug dealer, and that they'd been given instructions to cut the phone lines at the dealer's house, which, as you recall, is what happened
at the church right before Harold and Thelma were killed. And Kitrell would also say that he believed that Barentine may have murdered Harold Swain because Harold's son in law was supposedly involved in drug dealing and had a drug debt to Barentine, and Kittrell suspected that Barentine wanted to kill Harold in order to lure his son
in law out of hiding. But I don't really believe this story. I've looked into the background of Harold's son in law and there's nothing to indicate that he was involved in drugs, and Jeff Kittrell is not a reliable witness, so I have a feeling he completely made that story up. And that sounds like an expensive endeavor. So you hire a hit man to go after the father in law and the mother in law and hopes to draw him out, But then you've got to pay the hit man for murdering those two people.
How big of a drug debt would he have had, So let's just say that it was ten thousand dollars a person to kill somebody. Did he have a drug debt greater than twenty grand? I freaking doubt it? Oh yeah, seriously. And it just seems like if you want the drug debt so badly go after the son in law. It just seems like way too much trouble to kill his father in law and his wife and his mother in law and pretty much get all this publicity for a murder over the collection of a
drug debt. And do you really think it would draw him out if he was in hiding and he was worried about being killed because he had this drug debt. Do you really think he's going to show up for their funerals if he knows that they were killed because of his drug debt? Exactly? Yes, Like he's probably going to contact the authorities and want to be put into witness protection and hiding, and that's only going to increase your problems, and
you're not going to get the drug debt exactly. So despite this questionable story, the police looked into Barentine as a suspect because when he was questioned about the same the Swayin murders, he failed a polygraph test and he did seem
to match the description of the man seen in the vestibule. They checked his alibi time cards showed that he was at work in Marianna, Florida, until three twenty nine that day, and since the murders took place at eight point fifty, he still would have had enough time to make it there in time to commit the murders. So they brought in van Zola Williams, who was asked to look at a police lineup of Barentine, but even though she thought
he resembled the shooter, she could not positively identify him. Both, like we mentioned the scuff snake skin boots, apparently Barentine was wearing them during the police lineup and she thought they looked like the boots that the killer was wearing.
But it was also worth mentioning that she had originally described the killer as having long hair, shoulder length hair, and by this point Barentine had short hair, so it's possible that this kind of threw her off, but because she was unable to make a positive identification, the local district attorney was reluctant to file charges against Barentine because really the only evidence they had were the testimony from the witnesses at the party who said that he had bragged about killing the
Swains. But because they were kind of like criminals who had a history of alcohol and drug issues, they were not reliable witnesses. So that's why the local authorities thought that the evidence wasn't strong enough to file charges. But Baron Tyne still did go to prison and wound up serving five years on the weapons charges because of all the guns he was carrying when he was pulled over.
He sounds like a really bad guy who's out there, you know, with submachine guns, and he's apparently was on his way to commit a hit. So I don't really think that anybody is upset that he went to prison. But whether or not the change in haircut had something to do with Vanzola not being able to identify him, I don't know how popular scuff snakeskin boots would have been, but I do think in Florida in the nineteen eighties they probably
would have been more popular than they are now. Exactly. Yeah, it sounds like they were probably more common back then, so that wasn't used as conclusive evidence that Barentine was the shooter. So, like I said, the case was shown on Unsolved Mysteries, I believe in late nineteen eighty eight. This was one of the earliest episodes of the show, and this would be
the source of controversy. This is one of the rare times when the Unsawd Mysteries episode would actually play a big role in the investigation because when they had Robert Stack introduce it, he actually appeared on screen holding up the glasses that the killer had left behind at the crime scene. And if you watch this episode today, you're almost cringing because he is not actually wearing any gloves and here he is handling like evidence from a murder scene right here on national television.
When the case was originally investigated by the Camden County Sheriff's Office, they
had to get because they weren't used to dealing with homicides. They had to get assistance from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and the lead investigator was an agent named Joe Gregory, and he would later say that any when he watched Unsolved Mysteries, his jaw was wide open because the Camden County Sheriff's Office had not asked the GBI for permission to showcase the glasses on television, and there was apparently no chain of custody to make sure that certain people were like handling
the glasses and signing them over when they were appeared on television. And many years later it would turn out that the glasses wound up going missing, and the Candy County shriffs Office would say, well, the last time we remember seeing it was when we gave them to the producers of Unsolved Mysteries, and the producers would say, no, we're pretty certain that we gave the glasses back to you after the episode air and after we were done filming it.
So these glasses just vanished without a trace, and no one knows what happened to them. And it was all because the Sheriff's office did not establish a proper chain of custody and these glasses mysteriously went missing after they were shown on TV. Okay, so I don't think I knew much about this case, but I have heard this specific detail because it was just so preposterous that somehow
Robert Stack would end up with these glasses. They could be the linch pin in the case, they could have DNA evidence, and now there's no chain of custody and the glasses are missing. It is just mind boggling that this would happen. But I guess when we're looking back from twenty twenty three, rules with evidence and the way that investigations are approached is very very different.
I mean not to give them a pass, but I think that some police departments played it a little more loose and if there was the opportunity to get a case exposure on unsolved mysteries, then maybe they would kind of breach a boundary or two in order to make it happen. But you'd think that unsolved mysteries would also just go and get permission before they put those glasses on television or that you know, Robert Stack would have been instructed to wear latex gloves
or some kind of gloves. Well, they technically did get permission, they got it from the Camden County Sheriff's office, but like they were working with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and I know the GBI said that, yeah, if they had asked us, we would not have given them permission. We would have just maybe shown a photograph of the glasses. Like I can understand displaying the glasses because they were unique. They were packed together from among
number of different pieces, so I can understand putting them on television. But you need to establish better chain of custody before you do that. And I know they were not thinking of DNA evidence back in nineteen eighty eight, but on the Undisclosed podcast Susan Simpson even made a joke that if they found the glasses today and tested them for DNA, they would probably just identify that the
killer was Robert Stack because he held them. That's true. And I guess when you've got two different law enforcement agencies who are basically investigating this and you ask one of them, it's like when you ask mom or dad and you get like a yes from mom, because you know Dad's going to say no. So it's like, better asked the Comney County Sheriff's Department. Maybe we've got a better chance of getting a yes than the GBI. It's just really
unfortunate because they could have had that evidence on there. It's a pretty good chance if they would have preserved them properly. Because your glasses have a lot of skin cells and sweat, they're rubbing up against you. Sometimes you get a hair caught in there. I mean, it could have been a gold mine for DNA with today's technology, but unfortunately they're basically a moot point now
exactly. And I have a feeling that the person who's about to go to prison may not have been wrongfully convicted if they had still had the glasses as evidenced by the time he went on trial. So the unsolved mystery segment did not lead to any new developments in the case, and it would continue to
remain unsolved for another decade. And it was not until nineteen ninety eight when the Camden's County Sheriff's Office, after they had made a bunch of high profile drug busts, they suddenly had a whole bunch of new drug money in their possessions, so they decided to use it to hire a cold case investigator named
Dale Bundy, who decided to take a fresh look at the case. He started reinterviewing witnesses and one of the people he talked to was a woman named Cora Fisher, who had been a witness at the church on the night the murders took place, and even though she wasn't as close to the killer as van Zola Williams, she said that she still got a decent look at him through the vestibule doorway from behind a pew, and when Bundy interviewed her,
she made a surprising statement saying that she had recently been shown a photograph of a man whom she believed was the killer. And of course this was complete news to Bundy. He didn't know of anyone who was going around showing photographs to eyewitnesses, and it turned out that the photograph had been shown to Kora by a woman with a great name, Jane Beaver, who had come like an amateur sleuth in this whole affair and pretty much cause a lot of issues
with the investigation. It would later turn out that Jane Biaver the photograph she shown was a man named Dennis Perry, who had been her daughter Carol Ann's ex boyfriend, though they had broken up I think a couple months before the Swain murders took place. But for some reason, Jane got it into her head that Dennis was the killer, and for some reason, she really really
did not like him. I don't know the details of how his relationship with Carol Ane ended, but I think that Jane must have had an obsessive hatred for him, that she not only was convinced that he was the killer, but she was going around of her own volition talking to eyewitnesses from this crime and showing his photograph and apparently during a private meeting Cora Fisher looked at a photograph of Perry and said, oh my god, I think that's the man
that I saw at the church that night. Ugh, this is all kinds of problematic. So we've got the Beeve out here going behind investigators backs, talking to these eyewitnesses, and she's going to be poisoning the well because she's going to be giving them information that would support that he is a really bad guy and that he's capable of doing this, and that she herself believes that
he did this. So then you've got a situation where it could be confirmation biased, where it's like, deep down, these people really want to help and they're thinking and yeah, well, this is the guy you're presenting the suspect. You're telling me that he's done ab and C and D, and these sound like they could be things that could lead to what he's done here with Harold and Thelma. So yeah, maybe he is the guy. Yeah.
This is just really kind of upsetting when somebody's got this personal vendetta and they decided to exercise it by inserting themselves into an investigation without the investigator's knowledge. Oh exactly. Like, I don't think Dennis Perry would have ever been on the radar as a suspect if it wasn't for Jane Beaver. And the ironic thing is that when Dale Bundy started looking through the files, he found
out that Perry had already been investigated back in the late nineteen eighties. He did used to live in Camden County, like a short distance away from the church, but he had moved to Jonesboro, Georgia, I think three months before the murders and was currently working at a construction company in Atlanta. And the lead investigator for the GBI at that time, Joe Gregory. Apparently Jane Beaver had approached him during the late nineteen eighties and said that I believe he
might be the killer. So Gregory decided to look into Perry's alibi and found out that on the day of the murders, he had been working at the construction company in Atlanta till five pm, and because he did not own a vehicle, he always hitched a ride with a coworker named Charlie Williamson, who confirmed that, Yes, after we were done work, I drove Dennis home
and I dropped him off at five thirty pm. And of course you look at the timeline the murders took place at eight point fifty as apparently like a four hour drive nearly from Jonesborough all the way down to Camden County where the murders took place. So Joe Gregory looks at this and he realizes, well, I guess he could have made it, but it would be very, very tight. You also have to factor in stuff like rush hour traffic in Atlanta, and it also turned out that Perry did not own his own vehicles.
So Gregory pretty much said, yeah, I'm ruling this guy out as a suspen. There's no way he could have done this. And you thought that would have been it. But apparently Jane Beaver was so convinced that he was the guy that she kept doing her own independent investigation and when she told this new investigator, Dale Bundy, about Perry, he decided to take it more seriously and decided to approach him as a suspect again, even though he
had already been cleared over a decade earlier. I'm just curious what he did to Jane Beaver's daughter for her to hate him so deeply and to pursue this vendetta, like, you know, letting things go. I mean, it would be one thing if if he had, like you know, killed somebody in her family or you know, taken away a child from her daughter.
But there's no indication of exactly what he did to inspire this hatred. Robin uh No, because ironically, her daughter, Carol Anne, would provide testimonies, would speak to investigators, and it does not sound like she hated Dennis at all. She just said it was kind of an amicable breakup, and
she would actually contradict things that her own mother said. One of the reasons that Dennis started being investigated as a suspect again is because Jane told investigators that on the day before the murders took place, Dennis had apparently phoned her daughter to say that he had returned to Camden County after hitching a ride on the back of his brother's motorcycle, and that he had broken into his grandparents' home to steal something. And of course, like Dale Bundy heard this and he
thought, oh, well, that explains it. He traveled all the way down to Hear from Atlanta by riding a motorcycle. But then later on Carol Ann would be interviewed in and says that, yes, I did have a phone call from him back then saying that he was taking a trip down here on a motorcycle. But I'm pretty sure it was not before the murders took place. I'm pretty sure it was a different time period. And they even checked with Dennis's grandparents and they say, I have no right collection of our
whole being broken into during this time period. What are they talking about. But apparently like Bundy developed tunnel vision and he was so sure that Jane was telling this truth about this motorcycle story that she formulated his own theory about him
using it his transportation to drive down there to commit the murders. It sounds like Jane was potentially suffering from some mental health issues because from what it sounds like, Caroline is saying this amicable breakup with Dennis Perry doesn't really go along with what Jane Beaver is saying to law enforcement. She then sounds delusional and
obsessive. Oh yeah, like they did a more deep dive investigation into her on the undisclosed season and apparently, yeah, she was suffering from mental health problems during like the nineteen nineties and had become delusional. And what was crazy is that she had claimed that, oh, when this case was featured on Unsolved Mysteries, I phoned them multiple times and I left this tip about Dennis
Perry, but no one ever got back to me. But Susan Simpson said that she actually got access to the original case file where all the tips that were phoned into Unsolved Mysteries were actually included there, and she didn't find anything from Jane Beaver, like no notes about tips about Dennis Perry. And after further investigation, Susan thinks that the Swain murders were actually featured on another very
obscure true crime series in the early nineteen nineties. I can't even remember what it's called, but I think the big clue was is that Jane had said that she called the Unsolved Mysteries tip line because they had been offering a reward and she wanted to collect on the reward. But if you watch the segment,
there's no mention of any reward whatsoever. So Susan has speculated that perhaps that Jane called the tip line for this other TV show which was an Unsolved Mysteries, that perhaps they offered a reward on that show and then just got the two shows mixed up. But because this is a very obscure show, they were never able to find any old copies of the episode or any of
their old tips. But right away, that just shows issues with the credibility of Jane Beaver when she can't even remember the correct TV show that she called into. It's too bad that investigators were so hell bent on pursuing Dennis Perry as a suspect without really giving the weight that they should have to the alibi with the coworker who drove him and the testimony that he didn't have a vehicle, and even if he did, it would have been a real tight timeline.
He would have had to have jumped into that vehicle like a waiting vehicle right away and then driven there pretty fast in order to murder Felman and Harold, it just doesn't seem likely. And then when they talked to Carol Anne and they say that actually what Jane Biaver is saying about him isn't accurate, then you have to question is all the other information that she's giving about the potential that he did this accurate or is she somehow misremembering? Is she delusional?
But they gave far too much weight to her testimony and to her opinions about Dennis Perry, and that led them down the wrong path, oh exactly. And talking about like the whole vehicle thing, you're wondering, even if Perry was able to make this lengthy drive, there's also a question of motive, like why would he drive all the way back to his hometown just to
kill this couple, this preacher. And this is another story provided by Jane Bieber, saying that a few weeks before the murders, he had told her that he had visited the home of one of his grandparents neighbors to borrow money, but this guy laughed at him and ridiculed for him for it. So it made Dennis very mad. And he apparently stood about the incident. And while he never specifically referred to Harold Swain by name. He used racial slurs
to describe this man. So this gives off the impression that the murder was a hate crime. Wouldn't it be kind of weird given that Jane Biaber hates him so much that Dennis Perry would spend this time confiding in her exactly like they He had already broken up with Carol Anne at this point, so I have no idea why he's going up to hang out with her and give his plans for murder in expressing hatred for someone he wants to kill, So this
conversation doesn't make any sense. And it was later confirmed that the Swains were neighbors of Perry's grandparents, but he claimed that even though he knew who they were, he had never met them before and had no reason to hate them or anything like that. And another questionable thing is that they would later determine that Dennis Perry had perfect twenty twenty vision and never wore glasses in his life, which kind of goes against the evidence of the glasses being left behind at
the murder scene. But here's Jane Biaber saying that, oh yeah, I saw him wearing glasses during our conversation, and he told me that he used them for reading, And for whatever reason, investigators just took everything she said
out her word. Do you think that somehow Jane Beaver heard about the murder of Harold and Thelma because of Dennis Perry's grandparents living next door, Like maybe he told Caroline and then Caroline told Jane Beaver, and Jane Beaver was like, oh, well, he must have been involved type of a thing,
That's what I'm thinking. Yeah, that maybe she just because they were like such close neighbors, she just put it into her head like she had this bias towards this guy and figured that even though he's no longer even living in the area, he had to have made a special trip down here in order to commit the murders. I mean, obviously, he wasn't known as a saint. Like he did have a drinking problem back then, he had a
drug problem. He was once arrested for duy, but he had no known history of violence, and everyone who knew him said he was not the type of guy who would just throw around racial slurs to describe black people. So
this incident where he's saying that he's calling like Harold. All these like racial slurs did not fit with his character, and also the fact that he supposedly said that he asked Harold to borrow money, but Harold just laughed at him and ridiculed for him, when by all accounts, Harold was a very kind, generous man who would always help people out and give them money. So it did not sound logical that he would laugh at someone for asking for a
loan. No, it just sounds like we really can't rely on anything that Jane Beaver says. So. But despite of this, they decided to investigate him as a suspect again, and they brought in Perry for questioning. Dale Bundy did and even though he could, he supposedly denied that he killed the Swains, and he continued to maintain that he had never even met them before.
During this lengthy interrogation session, he supposedly acknowledged that, well, I was doing a lot of drugs at that time, so it is possible that I could have made a trip back to Camden County and committed the murderers without remembering it. And of course, following Perry's arrest, they would say that he had made a so called confession in this interrogation session, but Dennis denied this, and of course nobody recorded this session even though it was something like
three hours long. There were no investigator's notes, and there was only really like a one or two page summary of what he had supposedly said, So there was no actual record of this so called confession or him saying that, oh I could have committed the murders and just not remembered it. So it sounds like Bundy just made that up and that never actually happened. Yikes. Yeah, you can't trust a confession where there's no recording and no investigator's notes.
You've got nothing to substantiate that. You've got a potential perpetrator who's just saying, yeah, I was so messed up or like blacked out that I basically could have done anything, you know what I mean. Like, it's not like, oh, yeah, I committed the murders. It's I was so effed up that I don't remember. You know, you could tell me that I did ABC or D and sure I could have done any of those things, because I literally have no memory of that timeframe, so anything is
possible. That is not the same thing as saying I committed the murders exactly. And it's one thing to do something bad when you're so high on drugs and can't remember it. But could you really make a four hour drive from Jonesborrow to Campden County while you're in a drug fueled haze and not remember it. No, I don't think so. I think that you probably would have got into an accident or been pulled over at some point. It sounds far
too precise and on a very specific timeline. And also for him to get that messed up on drugs, what so he got off his job at the construction site, just did a bunch of drugs I got so high he can't remember anything, and then drove there with the car that he doesn't have. It just doesn't make any sense exactly. And I didn't hear anything about him missing any shifts at work, like the day after or anything, so he
presumably had to make the four hour drive back. So did he just commit this murder and then drive another four hours back to Jonesborough and then wake up for work tomorrow as if everything was normal. I don't think so. I don't think so either, And I think they're using the fact that he obviously had drinking, you know, alcohol and drug issues at the time, as
just a door way into he could have done it. He did it, but it just doesn't match the facts of the case exactly because this crime had gone unsolved for nearly fifteen years at this point, and I think they were just desperate and wanted to pit it on somebody. And of course they used all this confiscated drug money to hire this new cold case investigator named Dale Bundy, and they were probably thinking, well, I hope this money doesn't go
to waste. He'd better closed one of our cases soon, and that's pretty much what happened here. It's so unfortunate when we look back at these wrongful conviction cases because you can see all of the missteps, and there's so many other avenues that they could have gone down. And if they would have actually looked at Jane Beaver for what she was, an unfortunate woman who was suffering from mental health issues and was clearly delusional, then they would have known to
pursue other avenues. But it's like they already had their minds made up and they really wanted that conviction, and unfortunately we've seen that in so many cases exactly. It'sretty much the same thing here. And while we're on the subject of Jane Bieb, you heard me mention earlier that she had been going around showcasing a photograph of Dennis Perry to one of the other witnesses from the church,
Cora Fisher. It turned out that she also did the same thing to van Zola Williams, the one witness who was actually face to face with the killer. When Joe Gregory was investigating Dennis Perry back in the late nineteen eighties, he actually showed Vanzola a photo lineup with Perry's pitcher and she failed to pick him out. So in Gregory's eyes, this was just one more piece
of evidence that Perry was not the killer. But lo and behold, Jane Bieber, while doing her own independent investigation, showed van Zola Williams a photograph of Dennis and then she suddenly started changing her mind and started thinking, oh, maybe this was the guy I actually saw in the vestibule. And then lo and behold, when Venzola Williams and Cora Fisher were later questioned by Dale Bundy, they both positively identified Perry as the man they had seen at the
church. But the problem is that Bundy did not actually use the proper procedure, because usually when you want someone to pick out a photo of a suspect, you'll use a photo lineup and include the suspects picture in there and just hope they pick out the right one to avoid any confirmation bias. But that's not what happened here, as Bundy just showed van Zola and Cora Dennis's photograph and said, is this the guy you saw? And both times they said
yes. And what makes it even more ridiculous is that when he went to visit Cora Fisher on her home, she had actually suffered an accident where she fell down and was a waiting for the ambulance to arrive to pick her up. And while she was waiting on the floor, that's when he showed her Dennis's picture, and that's when she picked him out and paid a positive identification.
And You're like, she's already in a stressed out situation because she suffered a medical accident, she's waiting for an ambulance, So are you really going to trust like the memory and the judgment of someone in that situation to identify a killer that they saw from maybe like twenty feet away. The lack of empathy there. He's clearly very gold driven. But this woman's had an accident.
The first portocol should be getting her the help that she needs. You shouldn't be hovering over her with one photograph, being like, is this the guy? She's in a compromised state. She's an incredible amount of pain, and that's what you're concerned about. Bundy's just really not looking good in this investigation. Definitely not like this is the only time I've ever seen this in a cold case investigation. Like I've seen so much that I often failed to
be shocked anymore. But when I heard that story, I was shocked that he's using this as evidence to charge a guy with murder, the identification of a poor woman who's in pain, lying on the floor waiting for an ambulance. So this seems like a good place to end part one, But join us next week when we return to discuss part two of the murders of Harold and Thelma Swayin. Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
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