Welcome back to part two of our series on the
attempted murder of Nancy Drake. Let's jump right in. So one of the other pieces of evidence at trial is that they got testimony from the church's associate pastor, who's Joseph Boston, who claimed that after Nancy was taken away in an ambulance, he called Thomas at home at around one ten to inform him that Nancy had been attacked, and from his perspective, he said that Thomas sounded like he was out of breath on the phone when he spoke to him, which, if he was guilty, would make
sense because he would have been at the church like maybe a half hour earlier and committed this brutal crime and then had to run home in order to answer the phone call. But still is pretty weak, because how can you be one hundred percent certain when you're not actually looking at someone that they sound so out of breath on the phone that that means that they must have just come off of committing an attempted murder.
Yeah, I mean, you could run to the phone, because back in those days, you're gonna have a corded phone probably on the wall, and you might have to run to get it. Like I remember when I was a little kid having to run to get the phone. It wasn't like nowadays where our phones are, you know, completely attached to us exactly.
Yeah, So I mean it almost feels like he's running home to like fabricate an alibi, saying that, oh, if they phone me about Nancy's thing, I have to answer it so that I can prove that I was home when she was being attacked. But it just seems like if he's out of breath, how do you know he wasn't working out or doing exercise or something exerting like that. Unless it's like, unless you don't see him sweating or you see blood on him or something, that doesn't really
prove that he committed the crime. Additional testimony was provided by one of the other parishioners who was at the
church that morning, Althea Toth. She claimed that after she spoke to Thomas a short time after Nancy was taken to the hospital and said that completely out of the blue, Thomas said that there's a possibility that my fingerprints might be on the hammer because earlier that morning, when I visited the church to bring Nancy some lunch, she had asked me to hang up some pictures inside the office, and that's when I used the hammer, but I ultimately
did not use it because I couldnt find any nails. Obviously, this didn't matter because there were no fingerprints found in the hammer at all. But the pastor at the church, Charles Kirby, he expressed some skepticism about Thomas's story, as he said that it was a rule that Nancy could not hang up any pictures unless she asked for the pastor's permission to do so, so it really didn't make much sense that she would be asking Thomas to hang
up these pictures on her behalf. So it almost appeared that Thomas was paranoid that his fingerprints were going to be found on the hammer, so he preemptively came up with this story about the pictures in order to come up with a potential explanation for it.
I don't like that. It feels like he maybe did wipe it down, but he was, just, like you said, paranoid and decided like, oh, against my better judgment, I'm going to bring up this hammer because it's top of mind, and I'm worried that maybe when I wiped it down,
I didn't get all my fingerprints off of it. But I guess, to play devil's advocate, you could say that if he was the one that wiped it down, if he did commit this crime, then he would know that there's no fingerprints on it, So why would he be bringing this up? So I guess there's multiple ways of looking at it.
It's true you can interpret it in different ways. The thing that concerned alfvia Top is that she said that Thomas brought it up completely out of the blue, like there wasn't any like segue to it at all. It's almost like it popped into his mind at that moment, saying, oh, my fingerprints might be on there. I should share this story.
But in Thomas's defense, he had used the hammer the previous day because he did work in the church's equipment room, because of course, he would sometimes go in there and record the concerts, And he claimed that after he did that work, he left the hammer on top of the safe. So theoretically, if it was an outside party and who came into the church that day, they could have noticed the hammer on top of the safe and then decided to use it as a weapon to bludge in Nancy it.
Seems as though multiple parishioners' fingerprints could have been on that hammer, depending on how many people do work throughout the church, and churches are often places where there can be several people, Like whether they have a handyman there all the time, I have no idea, but oftentimes they'll just get parishioners to help with stuff like that because
it's very much a community where everybody's pitching in. So it seems likely that you're not just going to have the killer's prints on the hammer exactly.
Yeah, So it is possible this is all a red herring that it really doesn't matter at just because they wiped off all the fingerprints, but also the fact that this hammer was around in the church a lot also shows that. Say, if another person like Raymond Starr spent a lot of time there, he may have noticed the hammer and knew it was there, and that could have been why they decided to go in there and use it as a weapon.
And I don't like how he just brought up the hammer like that is really odd. But again, if you had been hanging things throughout the church and you thought your fingerprints are going to be on there, legitimately you could be really paranoid that everybody's going to point at you. So this case just has so many different ways to interpret all of the evidence that it's like mind boggling.
It is, Yeah, because technically, if Thomas is innocent, he wouldn't have known that the perpetrator wiped away the fingerprints. So he's just thinking of that my prince could be on there, so I should explain beforehand and provide them with a logical explanation.
Exactly. It reminds me of Darley Routier with that knife, Like my prince could be on the knife.
Oh yeah, exactly. Yeah. So she's obviously I think she's guilty personally, but I can see her like mentioning that just as a way to explain her prince possibly being found.
I agree with you, Like first I thought there might be a possibility that she was innocent, But the more time it's gone on, and the more that I've heard and read about that case, I to believe that she's guilty.
So now let's talk about the timeline, which causes some additional confusion here. As you recall, Nancy called Thomas and asked her to bring the lunch to the church, and this story was verified by the associate pastor, so we have more than Thomas's word on this. And Thomas claimed that he arrived at twelve fifteen and left at around twelve thirty. But the problem is that this seems to be contradicted by the other witness, Alfia top That's a tongue twister, if there was one.
That is a tongue twister.
Yeah. She claimed that she stopped by the church from twelve to twenty five to twelve thirty in order to purchase a concert ticket and said that Thomas was not there at that time, even though oh Thomas said that when he left that he had seen althea talk leaving, So this would imply that Thomas did not arrive until
after twelve thirty, after Toth was gone. But the problem is that the witness, Shirley Whitehead, said that she found Nancy's body at twelve forty, which means that if Thomas did this, he would have had to commit this crime in a window of only ten minutes and then fled
the scene and been completely gone before Whitehead arrived. But the complication for this is you might recall the radio DJ Pat Morgan, who claimed that he called the church sometime between twelve fifteen and twelve thirty and had a nine minute conversation with Nancy and Thomas, which he recorded,
so this conversation could be verified. So technically, if if Althea Toth is telling the truth and Thomas arrived at twelve thirty, that means that Morgan would have had to make the phone call immediately and recorded this nine minute conversation, and Thomas would have only had one minute to commit the crime and flee before Shirley White had arrived at
twelve forty and discovered Nancy's body. So that makes me think that toss account that she is mistaken about the time, and that Thomas's count of arriving between twelve fifteen and twelve thirty has to be accurate because Pat Morgan backs it up and he has a tape recording to back it up.
Yeah, I'd agree. I'm going to go with what Pat Morgan is saying Althea TOAs I'm sure that she absolutely believes that she's correct, But we know how often eyewitnesses are mistaken. But we've got actual evidence here that they were there at that time, or that he was there at that time. Because of the tape recordings, so I don't really think that's disputable exactly.
Yeah, So, regardless of how you look at it, it seems very likely that the crime had to have taken place between twelve thirty and twelve forty. And that's the thing is that that doesn't give Thomas a lot of
time to commit the crime. But on the other hand, that really doesn't give an out side party a lot of time to commit the crime either, because if Thomas is telling the truth and left at twelve thirty, that means that someone else had to arrive there attack Nancy with the hammer, and she also would have had to open the safe, either under duress or maybe she was doing it willingly to get change or something. And then they also stole all the checks and cash inside and
fled the scene before Shirley Whitehead arrived. But on the other hand, if you believe that the unidentified white haired man sitting outside the church in the car was responsible, then he already would have been there by the time Thomas left, so he would have not had to travel far to attack Nancy and then drive away from the scene.
Yeah, that makes sense too.
And also Raymond Starr that we have no other witnesses placing him there during that window of time. But of course he has a shaky alibi and no one can verify his whereabouts between twelve thirty and twelve forty because he claimed he was with his mother and sister, but then his sister said, no, I did not see Raymond at all during this time period.
And like You've got to wonder, is he just somebody who just like constructed an alibi because he was nervous about being questioned, and so he just wanted to not place himself there because he knows what Like, he knows what happened, and he doesn't want to be blamed, so he just comes up with a lie and just fabricates this.
I mean, I have no idea. This case is really confounding because I want to say that like, oh, it's usually the husband, but the evidence against Thomas here is pretty weak, and the evidence against everybody is pretty weak. I don't like those scratches on the face of star. I feel like there could have been more questions asked by the police and the investigators to his mother and sister, Like does he often cut himself on his face when he shaves? Is this a typical occurrence type of a situation.
But who knows if they ask those questions.
Yeah, I mean it sounds like they questioned him once and then once they found out about Thomas, they put all their focus on him. Because You're right, because he was a forty year old man living with his mother who had once spent time in a mental institution, so he could have some disorders which caused him to scratch himself. And because Nancy has no memory of the attack, she
is unable to say if she scratched her attacker. But I'm not entirely sure if they checked under her fingernails to find any skin or blood to indicate that she had put up a fight and scratched anyone. So we have no idea if those scratches were even significant. So, even though the case against Thomas was pretty weak, I have a feeling that the jury probably looked at him very unfavorably because of the whole thing with the mistress.
Because they only had to deliberate for five hours before they found him guilty of attempted first degree murder and aggravated robbery, so before sensings took place, Nancy, in spite of the guilty verdict, she was still standing by her husband, so she wrote a letter to the trial judge and said that she still did not believe he attacked her, so she asked the judge to show him mercy during sentencing, but he completely ignored this because because he wound up
giving Thomas consecutive sentences of life imprisonment plus thirty years, so he looked like he was going to prison and he was not going to get out.
I mean, he's just not a very likable guy, so I can see why the jury looked at him and was like, Oh, what kind of insensitive man is going to move his mistress and their child into the home while their wife is recovering. It has to be a guilty person, and I think that it's pretty easy to jump to that conclusion. But being a philandering ahole who has just no regard for his wife and no empathy to what she's going through doesn't necessarily mean that he's guilty.
It means that he's Maybe you could argue he's not a good person, but I think that there just isn't enough evidence to convict him. Whether or not he's innocent, I don't know, but given what they actually had, I am so surprised that a jury convicted him because it just is such a weak case.
I agree it is surprising that they only deliberated for five hours. You would think that with such a weak, circumstantial case, they would have to debate about it for a much longer amount of time. But I think they probably just all disliked Thomas as a person and automatically
believed he must be guilty. And I think Nancy was thinking, because it was such an unusual situation for a guilty person to have their victim advocate for them at trial, that she thought that sending this letter to the judge would get Thomas aliader sentence. But it's said the opposite happened, and he completely threw the book at him.
Yeah, I would think that potentially it would help. But if the judge believes that Nancy is just completely out of left field, like none of this information that she's saying is factually accurate, and she's just kind of grasping itst draws of like trying to hold on to whatever her old life was with him as the husband and her as the wife, and try to go back to that.
I don't think that the judge is believing what she's saying, not that she's lying, but just that she doesn't remember accurately, and so they've made up their mind just like the jury, and clearly throwing the book at Thomas was what they.
Were going to do exactly. I mean, maybe the judge felt that, well, if I let Thomas go or I give him a lighte sentence, then he's going to move back into Nancy and Harmer again. So I'm doing this
for her own good. But this is when the story gets even crazier because in January of nineteen eighty four, only a few weeks after the guilty verdict, Nancy suddenly contacts Thomas's defense attorney and reveals that, oh my god, the memories of my attack have suddenly returned, and I can now say with one hundred percent certainty that the man who attacked me was not Thomas, but was actually
a slender, white haired man with thick glasses. So the story she provided is that this man had shown up to the church to purchase tickets for the concert and tried to pay with a one hundred dollars bill, but since she did not have enough change on or, this man convinced Nancy to go get some from the safe, so when she bent down and opened it, he proceeded
to attack her with a hammer. So they had an evidentiary hearing where Nancy testified under oath and shared this story and said that her attack or was not her husband. And even though I think the judge was skeptical, he said, well, upon hearing this new evidence, I have no choice but to overturn Thomas's conviction and award him a new trial.
And I think that's fair. I mean, it's impossible for any of us to know where Nancy was coming from, if she was truly just trying to save Thomas with a hail Mary, or if she actually got her memory back and she really did recount the things that had happened to her and that it was this white haired man that was potentially hanging out in the parking lot that Althea and Thomas had both seen. Or maybe she was just given that information and she somehow integrated that
into her memories and it somehow became her truth. I don't know, it's just so different, dificult to know it is.
I mean, some people were skeptical of Nancy's story because she was still standing behind her husband and she knew that during the early stages of the investigation, Thomas had mentioned a white haired man and he was being looked
at as the first potential suspect. Even if she wasn't entirely sure this was the attacker, she may have decided to fabricate a story and say I will provide a description of a man who matches the description of this guy seen outside the church to hopefully increase the believability and make people believe this is what really happened.
It's very the fugitive one armed man coded it is.
Yeah, I never thought about that, but yeah, it reminds me of the one armed man. So once again Thomas was offered a plead deal from the state where he could plead guilty to lesser charges only have to do a few years in prison, but once again he rejected it, saying that I will not go to prison for something I didn't do. So we're going to trial again and I'm going to be found not guilty and get my
name cleared. So the prosecution to destroy the credibility of Nancy's story, as they got a neurosurgeon who examined her to testify that this sort of thing is very uncommon, Like I've worked with other people who have suffered serious brain injuries, and I have never seen a case where one of them suddenly regains their memories of the attack
they suffered. So there was some suspicion that Nancy may have fabricated this story to help her husband, and one psychiatrists who examined her wrote a report in which they stated, quote, I do believe that missus Drake is susceptible to undue influence by her husband, and I believe that her love for Thomas approaches the neurotic or obsessional level end quote.
And that was kind of the vibe that I was getting based on all the information that she had about him and what he'd done with the mistress and the child, moving them in and still choosing to support him. I'm not going to judge her because she's been through such a trauma, and I can't imagine what that would be like.
Your whole world comes crop down. And I don't know what her friend group was like, if she had a lot of other connections outside of the church, or she had a lot of support, what her family relationships were like, or if Thomas was like the main source of support and that person that she really felt like, even though he wasn't a good husband in a lot of respects, it might have felt like he was all that she had and she wanted to cling onto that. So it's it's really difficult.
It is, yeah, I mean, you don't want to like accuse like a victim of such a horrible crime of intentionally lying, But it could be a thing where she felt that Thomas was her only support system, so she had to stick by him no matter what, even if
she wasn't completely sure that he was innocent. But there was another whole poke in her story because the church's pastor and associate pastor would testify that they had visited the church on the morning of the attack, only a few hours before Nancy was hey with the hammer and asked her how the concert tickets sales were going, and she said she had collected about six hundred dollars and proceeded to open her death drawer, which showed that she had a bunch of cash and checks in there, and
this seemed to contradict her claims because she said that the reason she had to open the safe is because she didn't have enough change for a one hundred dollars bill from the white haired man, So why would she need to do that if she had six hundred dollars inside the death drawer. But in fairness, it's possible that she could have put that money in the safe at a later time after the pastor's left, and so she didn't have any change by the time the white haired man arrived.
And it's also possible too that she's not intentionally fabricating the story, that maybe Thomas has just given her information over and over again, and like the way that she's integrating that information, she's kind of like conflating that with what actually happened, or maybe what little memory she might have had about that day, and it somehow becomes her
reality because he's drilling it into her. If she's susceptible to his, you know, undue influence and is romantically obsessed with him in the way that the psychiatrist is describing, I think it's possible that she can almost be brainwashed into believing that this is what she remembers. If Thomas does have that Svengali like hold over her.
I mean that is possible because we do know that she was frequently visiting him in the County Jail while he was awaiting in trial. So, for all we know, maybe he was saying, I'm not sure if this is exactly what happened, but it might be helpful if you tell the jury that you were attacked by a white haired man, and this is the explanation you're going to give when you ask why you open the safe and stuff.
I mean, we can't prove that, but I could totally believe that Thomas was influencing in what Nancy should say in order to get him out of prison.
It just feels so convenient if he wasn't influencing her.
So of course, if Nancy had gotten on the stand and testified, I'm sure this would have made a lot of influence on the would have had a lot of influence on the jury because the actual victim of the crime is saying that the man on trial is innocent and not actually attack. But lo and behold. They finally got to the day where Nancy was supposed to take the stand and testify, but at the last moment, she approached Thomas's defense attorney and said that her memory had
failed and completely gone away. And her excuse was is that the previous day her doctor had changed her medication, so now she was at the point where she could no longer tell the difference between what she actually remembered and what she had been told, So she was no longer sure that this story about the white haired man was what actually happened, and as a result, the defense was forced to rest without calling Nancy as a witness, and she never did testify in front of the jury.
That makes it look like she's starting to potentially believe that maybe he did manipulate her into thinking that this is what happened, and she can't tell truth from fiction. But it's not a good look for Thomas that she's stepping back and saying, I can't tell what I actually remember anymore, because it seems less likely that you're going to have this crystal clear picture of exactly what happened after even when they're saying that this isn't the typical
path to healing in the traumatic brain injury. When somebody's got amnesia and they can't remember a very specific event, they don't typically get back a full recollection the way that Nancy did, according to those experts, So to then take it back, it feels like we're you just doing this to help your husband. And now at this point you're going, maybe I don't want to for a variety of reasons. I'm not sure, but it just doesn't look good for Thomas.
It doesn't know, and I'm not an expert on brain injuries, but I do know neurosurgeons will say that it's extremely unlikely that someone could lose their memories, regain them again for a couple months, and then have them completely go away again. This doesn't sound like typical behavior from someone who has suffered a brain injury to have their memories just keep disappearing and reappearing and disappearing again.
No, that's not the way that it goes if you're recovering your memory, unless you have another brain injury, concussion, something that could account for the loss of memory. And of course there are lots of different medications that can cause memory loss. But it seems like this is a rather specific memory. You're saying, I don't remember what I don't remember. It just seems like you remember, but you just don't want to talk about it for some reason, or it's a fabricated memory exactly.
And I think she is genuine when she said that she did not remember who attacked her, But I don't really believe her too much when she came up with the story about the white haired man. And of course this whole thing would put the defense in a major bind because at the outset they had two potential alternate suspects, the white haired man and Raymond Star. And Raymond Star seems more promising because his fingerprint is found at the scene, and he had the scratches on his face, and he
had a shaky alibi. But the problem is is that now that Nancy mentioned being attacked by a white haired man, that became the crux of their entire case, Like, we can't put all our focus on Raymond Stars alternate suspect now that our so called witness has named this other person. So as a result, they really could present Star as an alternate suspect at the trial because they were putting
all their focus on the white haired man. But now that Nancy was no longer testifying, it feeling like, well, we don't have a lot to work with here because other than the sightings of this guy outside sitting in the car, we don't have any evidence that this white haired man ever actually entered the church and attack Nancy.
Yeah, that kind of puts them in a unique position where they just don't have a lot of options because they were throwing everything at Nancy. She was going to be their star witness, and she was going to get up there and say like, no, it was this white haired man. And then when you've got a great suspect, an alternate suspect in Star, like to raise him, that will be easy reasonable doubt, I think, because the evidence
against him is nearly equal to that against Thomas. So if you bring up Star and you talk about his alibi that he fabricated, and then you talk about the scratches on his face, you talk about his fingerprints on the glass and him denying being there, I think you could have a pretty compelling alternate there, and I think
you could easily sway a jury. But then when you're in the position where your white haired man has essentially been taken away, well, you don't have anything, so your defense is just going to be garbage exactly.
So, when Nancy did not take the stand to testify, that did a major blow to the defense's case. But to be fair, the prosecution did not add any additional evidence, so their case was still pretty weak as well. And at the very least, when this case went to the jury, they deliberated a lot longer. Instead of five hours, they
deliberated for two days. Well, once again they found tom As guilty, though they lowered the charges a little bit because instead of first degree attempted murder, they decided to convict him on the charge of second degree attempted murder as well as aggravated robbery. But in spite of this difference, the judge still decided to throw the book to Thomas again, I think, for wasting their time for another trial. So he once again got consecutive sentences of life imprisonment plus
thirty years. So following Thomas's incarceration, it seemed like Nancy's attitude towards him seemed to change, because even though she had stood by him throughout the entire trial, now that he was behind bars, she finally decided to file from divorce from Thomas. At the end of nineteen eighty four, she tried to resume her life because she wanted to return to work at the First Church of the Nazarene
because that had been her big passion. She used to work sixty hours a week there, but because of her brain injury. She was very overwhelmed by the stress of the situation and had trouble functioning, so she went there for one shift and only lasted two hours before she decided to go home, and it was eventually determined that the severe nature of her injuries left her unable to hold down a job, so she would require daily nursing care.
Poor Nancy to think that this one thing that you were so passionate about that she absolutely loved. She probably loved all the people at the church and really felt like she was making a difference in helping people to have that be the place that your life was nearly ended, and then to go back and to relive that trauma and to realize that, like, this isn't a safe space for me anymore. I can't come here without feeling triggered and just knowing that the life that she had prior
is never going to be the same. And that's evidenced by the fact that you said that she needed care all of the time, and so her independence and her ability to be able to just do things day to day would have been changed.
Drastically exactly like, even though she's aur vived this attack, even though it was pretty much a miracle since they figured she was either going to die or be in a permittive be in a permittive vegetative state. She had a really hard time holding down a functional life because the brain trauma was so severe. But the good news is that she moved back to original home state of Indiana, and she did get remarried, so it sounds like she was able to find some happiness after all this.
Oh that's at least a bright spot in a very dark story.
And as far as I know, her second husband did not move his mistress into their house, so it sounds like he was an improvement over Thomas.
Anything is an improvement over Thomas exactly.
So, like I said, this was supposed to be featured on the Unsaw Mysteries spinoff show Final Appeal from the Files of Unsaw Mysteries in October of nineteen ninety two, but the episode wound up being preempted and the segment wound up sitting in a vault for seventeen years and did not see the light of day until it was featured on the Unsaw Mysteries reboot in two thousand and nine, and the interviewed Nancy during the segment and she still continued to maintain that she had no memory of the
attack and couldn't say for certain whether Thomas was the one who killed her, but it was the one who attacked her. But she did a complete one to eighty on standing behind her husband, and she made this statement which did rub people the wrong way. She said, quote, I don't know whether he's guilty or not. I don't rightfully give a darn either. He deserves to be where he is, not for trying to kill because I honestly don't know whether he did it or not, but just
for everything he had done previously end quote. And well, you gotta understand why Nancy would be so outraged. Some people thought that rubbed them the wrong way because it's like, well, Thomas, you don't go to prison for adultery. Thomas may be a jerk, but you can't say he deserves to be in prison for the rest of your life just for cheating on you when you don't know for certain if he's actually guilty of attempted murderer.
I could see how it could rub people the wrong way. And it's maybe not in like the best taste, but Nancy's been through a lot and She's had a lot of brain trauma, and so I can only imagine what she's gone through. I don't want to be judgmental about the things that she chooses to put out there, even if it maybe isn't word of the best. And I do agree that adultery isn't a reason that somebody should
end up in prison. I think she was put through a lot with that attack, and then put through a lot in the aftermath in finding out all that about Thomas. So I'm going to hold back and not judge her for that.
Yeah, I can definitely see it that way. I think she just had like eight years worth of retrospective because at the beginning, she's totally standing by her husband, thinking that I know he did a bad thing, but I think we can still work this out, and I don't want him to go to prison. But maybe now that she had moved on with her life and had married a good man who treated her well, she's now thinking, man, this guy that I used to be married to is
a major douchebag. So now that I'm going to be a national TV I'm going to take the opportunity to sound off on him. So I mentioned earlier that Thomas had a daughter from a previous marriage before he met Nancy. I think the divorce, well, she was just a baby, so they didn't really have much of a relationship. But I went to the Unsaw Mysteries message board at the
sitcoms online for him. They have a lengthy thread about this case and it contained a number of posts there from a poster under the username Iowa Angel, who claimed she was Thomas's daughter and that once she became an adult, she finally decided to reconnect with them and visit him in prison, and that he never stopped maintaining his innocence
and saying that he did not harm Nancy. And she also claimed that she spoke to Nancy, and this was Nancy's statement, quote, I don't know if your father tried to kill me or not. The man I married could never have done that to me, But the man that was cheating on me, who knows. I don't know that man end quote.
Yeah.
And I'm sure that like Lacy Peterson, never thought that Scott Peterson would do what he did to her. And so it's just so complex. I'm about sixty percent and that Thomas is probably where he should be, and that he's guilty, but the other forty percent kind of remains. It might even be fifty to fifty. It's just I'm not one hundred percent sure. The other suspects are tantalizing the white haired man. There's really nothing there except for that he was in the parking lot and like Althea
saw him, Thomas saw him. But Star having the scratches on his face, fabricating that, Alibi having the fingerprints, it's enough that creates reasonable doubt for me that if I was on the jury, I probably if given the information about Star, I probably wouldn't convict. But given that this case was so weak, it's interesting to see how Nancy's perspective has shifted over time. But I think that's what
time does, right, It does give us that perspective. And although immediately in the aftermath of what happened, she might have been grasping for any support, for any sense of normalcy, and then as more time went on and she gained more independence and just more understanding, and there was more growth happening, and probably just seeing her husband in a different light, she started to feel a different kind of a way. And I think even over the course of
our relationship. Over many years, we can start to feel a different way. But the context of him being charged with the attempted murder and then being in prison and the affair and all of that, I think that she could build up a healthy resentment.
I think so. Yeah, Like, even if she isn't certain that he attacked her, I'm sure she realized this guy is not a good guy. He did some bad things to me, he mistreated me. But now I'm kind of at peace now and have moved on with my life. I found out that Nancy passed away in twenty seventeen at the age of eighty two. This case really faded from the spotlight. It seemed like after it was filmed for Unsolved Mysteries, it really didn't get any other publicity.
I know that Thomas filed a number of appeals and was unsuccessful, and he could not get his conviction overturned, and I was curious to find out if he was still alive after all these years. But I went to the inmate locator for the state of Florida, and Thomas is still listed. He is still incarcerated today at the age of eighty six, so he is never getting out of prison and if you think he's guilty, then karma ultimately got him at the end because he's been incarcerated
for forty years now. But of course, if Thomas was innocent, and even though he might be a douchebag in real life, nobody deserves to serve forty years in prison for a crime they did not commit.
Definitely not if he's innocent, he deserves to be free. I mean, just being a somebody that is a cheater and is deceptive in general doesn't mean that he's guilty. But uugh, this case is super frustrating. I can see why you woul draw them parallels with the Tommy's Egler case.
Oh yeah, the Tommy's Egler case is a lot more messy than this, but it still has the same problems with like you have to focus on specific timelines, you have witnesses who contradict each other, and there's still a lot of reasonable doubt. I mean, you mentioned feeling about sixty forty that Thomas is guilty. When I recorded this episode for The Trail with Cold several years ago, I
pretty much held the fifty to fifty belief. I think this is the ultimate example of a fifty to fifty case where my gut tells me that Thomas did it, but I can't rule out the alternate suspect, and I certainly believe there's reasonable doubt and if that, if I had been on the jury, I would not have been able to convict him, because even though the whole thing about the life insurance policy and the affair and moving his mistress into his home looks pretty bad, that's not
really conclusive evidence of murder. And there really isn't. They never found the stolen money on Thomas. There really wasn't any physical evidence looking him to the scenes. So I could say that my gut tells me that Thomas is guilty, but he never should have been convicted.
Yeah, I feel the exact same way. My gut's telling me he's guilty. I'm taking this course on statement analysis right now, just because I'm super interested in it. I had years ago on riddle me that Mark McLish he's an expert in like one of the grandfathers in statement analysis, and he trained the Marshall Service for like tons of years and trains a lot of different law enforcement agencies. And him and I were talking and he's like, well,
I'll give you the course for free. So just in those short little statements, it just sounded like a deflecting admission when he said, I mean I would have to like look at the full statements to really break it down. But it made me really think, okay, like he could be guilty talking about just the way that you'd worded
things and the way that you'd said things. And I of course didn't get a chance to really look at them, but that made me, It put me over the edge of that extra ten percent that I was then sixty forty.
Yeah, that makes sense to me, But I'd be curious to hear your thoughts if you think Thomas is guilty, whether it was premeditated murder or it was an unplanned crime of passion. I mean, I could see the case for premeditated murder because he may have been wanting to get rid of Nancy and move his mistress and her son into her house, and he figured that if I do this in a public place at the church, if I've removed money from the safe, I can make it look like it was a robbery and that she was
killed by a random attacker. But my main issue with that is that it does not appear like Thomas originally had any plans to visit the church that day, because, as you recall, she was planning to come home for lunch. But then she called Thomas at home and said, I'm
too busy, can you bring me my lunch? And it just seems weird that he would just show up there and then suddenly decide I'm going to hit her with a hammer, even though she's selling concert tickets and people are coming in and out and there's a huge risk that someone might see me. And also the fact that he engaged in a recorded interview with the disc jockey, and it just seems weird that he would just suddenly, just a very short time later, just decide to pick
up this hammer and attack his wife. So it does make me wonder did he plan this, or did maybe they get into an argument or something and he just lost his temper, found the first convenient weapon and then attacked Nancy with it.
How would they have even had time to have gotten into an argument after that call with the radio dj. It just seems like there wasn't a lot of time available there for them to even have a conversation before she was murdered. I mean, I think it's possible that he could have had the idea, this premeditation that he wanted to murder her, and then this was just a good opportunity. And so it wasn't like he was planning
on doing it that day. Maybe he was just kind of brainstorming it and then this opportunity presented itself and he decided to do it, knowing he'd done this phone call with her and that there was no red flags for him and that if, like you said, if the safe was cleaned out, they would just assume robbery. So it was like premeditated but opportunistic in that exact day, Do you know what I mean.
I'm thinking, yeah, Like maybe he was planning to do it eventually, and then once he arrives, he realizes we're alone here, I have a hammer, and it could be a thing where like he wasn't even planning the robbery at first, like maybe Nancy opened the safe to get some change or something, and he's thinking, Hey, if I hit her now and I take the money, I can
make this look like a robbery. So it could have been an opportunistic thing where he didn't plan on doing it that day but said this is the perfect time for me to get away with it, and he was just lucky to do it and take the money and then get out of there before anyone else showed up. But the problem for him was that Nancy survived. So yeah, it is the ultimate example of like a fifty to fifty case. And I still hold the belief that even though I kind of leaned towards Thomas being guilty, he
should not have been convicted because of reasonable doubt. I think the thing that really makes me lean towards him is the fact that it was such a limited timeframe that it had to happen between twelve thirty and twelve forty,
and we know Thomas was there. He would have been able to do that and escape without anyone seeing him, Whereas the odds of a completely random person going in there after Thomas left and hitting her and stealing all the money within ten minutes and escaping before they were seen just seemed very slim, and by the law of averages, I think it's more probable that Thomas did it.
He's either the most unlucky guy in the entire universe based on that timeline, or he's guilty. And I leaned towards the ladder I think so.
Yeah, But yeah, if this one is a very interesting case that I'm sure is going to be debated until the end of time, even after tom this has passed away. So any final thoughts on this case.
No, this was a really interesting one because in the beginning, the way you were presenting the evidence or lack thereof, I was like, well, this doesn't seem like it could have been the husband, because like, how stupid would you have to be to go in and murder your wife in a place you were literally just seen, people know you were there, and you use a hammer that's at the scene. It just didn't line up for me. But then the more that we talked it through, it was like, yeah, I think he's guilty.
Yeah. We always say, like, who would be so stupid to do something like this? But this guy was stupid enough to move his mistress into his home while his wife was recovering in the hospital. So maybe his mistakes are the fact that he's just not that bright. So that brings an end to our series about the tempted murder of Nancy Drake. Thanks so much for joining us.
We don't know when Ashley, we'll be back yet, so you may be hearing just Jewels and myself on the next few episodes, but if so, we'll just follow the same mula me sharing the details about a case and then getting Jewels reaction from it. So once again, thanks for joining us, and we'll see you again next week.
Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit about the Trail Went Cold Patreon?
Yes, the Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up with us on Patreon. If you join our five dollars tier tier two, we also offer monthly bonus episodes in which I talk about cases which are not featured on the Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon, and if you join our highest tier tier three, the
ten dollars tier. One of the features we offer is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsolved Mysteries, where you can download an audio file and then boot up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very first episode that I did a commentary track over was
the episode featuring this case. So if you want to download a commentary track in which I make more smart ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join Tier three.
So I want to let you know a little bit about the Jeweles and Nashy patreons. So there's early ad free episodes of The Path Went Chili. We've got our Pathwent Chili mini's, which are always over an hour, so they're not very mini, but they're just too short to turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing those, so we hope you'll check out those patreons.
We'll link them in the show notes.
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Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold callers, comedy,