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You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Good Evening. A young pregnant mother is killed and a small town demands justice, a conviction, someone to blame. When an unlikely suspect is convict, it raises a question, is this the culprit, a scapegoat or a martyr? This question prompted a mother and daughter to go beyond the official version to search for the truth. As they delve deeper into the story of this murder and conviction, they found themselves asking how many victims came out of this tragedy
and how many perpetrators? Why did it feel like everyone involved had blood on their hands but the person convicted of this horrible crime. So crack a cole beer sleuths and follow along as we search for clues and question everything. The truth could be around any corner. In this Devil's Playground, No one is completely innocent. A great mystery awaits. Join us in our search for the killer. The book that
we're featuring this evening is Devil's Playground. God's Country has Blood on its hands with my special guest journalists and author Nova West. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for agreeing to this interview.
Nova West, Thanks Dan, thanks for having me.
Thank you so much. This is an incredible story. Devil's Playground. Take us back to August twelfth, twenty and sixteen, and Vonda Smith working at Laughlin Memorial Hospital. Where is this You've described us in the Appalachian area, appalach the God's Country. Tell us where this is and take us back to August twelfth, twenty sixteen.
This is in Green County, Tennessee. That's in East Tennessee, and more specifically, it was in Greenville, and Vonda was
at work that day. She'd worked at Laston Memorials for about twenty eight years, and incomes her grandson's mother, Jesse Morrison, to her place of work at the hospital, and she had her two young boys with her, one of whom had just had oral surgery that morning, and I suppose Jesse might have been overwhelmed with taking care of the boys, and she went into Lawsla Memorial and asked Vonda for help with the children. And that's kind of really how
the story started. Wonda ended up leaving work early to help Jessie, and then they went grocery shopping, and from there they took the groceries back to Jesse's house. The boys were still with them, Jesse's sons, and after they dropped the groceries off at Jesse's place, the women went on to Vonda's house and there Vonda stayed with her husband and the two boys. She gave Jesse one thousand dollars cash to go pay some bills, and she lent
her car to Jesse to do so. And so maybe at this point, it's about four thirty in the afternoon on August twelfth, twenty sixteen, and Jesse gets in Vonda's car, She's got the thousand dollars cash to go pay bills, and Vonda doesn't see her again after that, and fast forward to you know, two o'clock, I think the next morning, Vonda's got detectives and the Green County sheriff knocking on her door.
Let's go back just a second. You talked about that they were together around four thirty, and then she borrows the car. Vonda gives her one thousand dollars to pay some bills, supposedly, but at six o'clock, Wanda notices that the car that she lent Jesse is back at Vonda's home in front, but she doesn't see the person that drops it off tell us about that.
Yes, the car is returned. Vonda's cars returned to her home to her driveway. Wonda does not see who returned the car, and she just notices that the car has been returned. Presumably she maybe heard a car door or something like that to prompt her to look out her window, because she did ultimately look out the window see that her car was returned, and this is at six o'clock in the evening, and she says that she also saw a white van down in the road next to the car.
She did not see who was in the van. She didn't see the driver. She says, she didn't see anybody, but her car had been returned and that there was this white van, So the car has been returned. She can't say by whom, And about thirty minutes later, after the car has been returned, so we're now at about six thirty in the evening, Vonda takes one of Jesse's boys and drives approximately thirty minutes to a neighboring town to a friend's house to pick up a family friend's
little girl. And for all intensive purposes, we'll just call her a granddaughter. And this little girl's name is Jemma. And she picks up the little girl. The time is about seven pm now, and so she's got this other little girl with her, one of Jesse's sons. She gets the kids, she goes back home where her husband is still at with Jesse the other son. He had fallen asleep, and so she returns home maybe around eight a little
after and she doesn't leave the house after that. She's in for the night with the kids and her husband. And meanwhile, so let's say she was at a friend's house at seven pm. She arrived at seven pm. Well across town back near close to Vonna's home on jed Neill Loop, there's a man walking his dog and this is the time is about seven point thirty. He discovers a dead body slightly down an embankment on very rural road, Jed Neil Loop and he returns home and he calls nine to one one.
What is the go ahead?
Well, so he calls nine one one and he reports that you know, he's seen he's found a dead body and dud neiloup and so you know, the officers come out, the detectives come out, and they've determined it to be a homicide. And that's really and obviously quite unfortunately the victim was Jesse Morrison. And and that's really how how it all got started.
Now with this, you talked about Vonda Smith. The next day, round two am, she is contacted by the sheriff. You say, Buddy Randolph, tell us about this arrest and questioning and anything unusual about what you later found out about the circumstances of that.
Okay, Well, the like I said, the detectives and the sheriff, and eventually the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, which we call TBI, they arrived on the scene. So all this is going on, This is approximately two miles roughly from Vonda's house, and the family's unaware that Jesse's body has been found. And so this happened around you know, seven thirty eight o'clock,
and time goes by. Like I said, Vonda was at home with her husband and the kids and they're you know, tucked in for the night, and then around two o'clock in the morning the next morning, she gets to knock at the door and it's the Green County sheriff at the time, Pat Hankins, with two of his deputies, and one of the deputies just so happened to be recording audio at the time, and so they come to Vonda's house. They're asking her some questions. When was the last time
he saw Jesse. Vonda tells them, you know, I lent her my car at four point thirty. I haven't seen her since. So and then you know, they're pointing out to her, will your car has been returned? Obviously, she said yeah, but I didn't see.
Who who returned it.
And so inevitably they ask, you know, can we look in the car? Can we check your car? And she readily consents. She says absolutely sure, can you know? And she walks out with them to the vehicle, and I'm not sure what happened at that point. They did check the car for quote unquote stuff, and after that they felled it as evidence, and then it was towed a few hours later to TBI headquarters in Knoxville as evidence.
And the reason it was it was feeled as evidence was because supposedly there was Jesse's There was blood found in the car, and it was Jesse's. But the mystery here is number one, how did the blood get in the vehicle?
And number two.
Something that confuses me. If the blood was in the vehicle at that time that the sheriff and the and the deputies searched it, I would have assumed that Vonda would have been arrested at that point. I mean, you know, there's there's blood in her vehicle. I'm not a lawyer, I you know, I don't know. I don't understand how that works. So maybe that wasn't you know, the process. But that has been a huge I called a wrench in the case. Is is the blood in the vehicle.
Even the prosecutors could not explain how or when Jesse Morrison's blood came to be in Vonda's vehicle, So that remains a mystery to this day.
That's right, and in your investigation, we will find out what you did find regarding that blood. And witnesses to that blood as well. Let's talk about how and when you became involved, and you call it your team, maybe explain who your team is. Tell us at what point you become involved in this incredible story and why.
Well, it actually was quite a bit later. At the time this is happening on August twelfth, twenty sixteen, I was completely unaware of what was going on. I was actually incredibly pregnant and about to have a baby myself. So it wasn't until really the trial is when I got involved, and I had heard kind of snippets you could say, about what was going on, but I was still you know, I was a new mom. I wasn't really I was in my own little world. I wasn't
really involved or paying attention too much. And the only reason I heard any snippets of what was going on is because Anna Smith is my husband's aunt, so that's how.
I know her.
And so the day of the trial rolls around, which only lasted for about four days in May twenty seventeen, and or excuse me, eighteen and so we gets a verdict. We were actually on vacation, My family and I were on vacation, and we got the verdict and she was found guilty, and we were stunned. The whole family was stunned.
You know.
It was we thought there was no way she could be convicted. It was we.
Felt that it was obvious she didn't commit this crime, and so when she was sound guilty, it was just it was it was a blow. It was a really big blow, and the family was really upset, understandably, and everyone just we were just so caught off guard, but by the news that we just nobody knew what to do, you know, and and it was very emotional and confusing, and so I just thought to myself, you know, I've
got I've got to do something here. I know that she didn't commit this crime, and I didn't know what to do, but I knew I had to do something. And literally that same day, maybe an hour later, I had my mom with me and I had my husband was and we were actually visiting my grandma's and you know, we cracked some cold beers and we got to work.
We got on our phones, we started researching, calling family members, and at that point I took a huge interest in the case and I just started writing down everything I could get my hands on. All the details, all the rumors, like anything that had to do with this case. I wanted it, and it just kind of it grew from there. It was really like a grassroots, you know kind of investigation. I'm not a professional and just a normal person.
I'm a mom, you know.
I didn't know what I was doing, and I was just running in all kinds of directions. And fortunately I had my mom there with me, and she's she's I talk about her a lot in my book, and she's been with me from that very first day.
And we just we got to work.
We got to work.
And one of our main goals.
Early on, and I don't know if we knew it at the time, but certainly looking back, was to get attention on the case because I knew, even though I didn't know what I'm doing, I knew that if we got attention on this case, that was probably going to be Vonda Smith's best chance at you know, freedom someday
if in fact she has been wrongly convicted. And so I started reaching out, you know, emailing, calling all kinds of people, podcasters, retired FBI agent, you know, anybody, anybody and everybody who would listen to me, and quite Fortunately, I ended up getting in touch with director and producer Joe Berlinger, and that came about. I googled top five true crime producers and he came up in the top five.
At the time, I didn't know who he was, so I clicked on his little profile or what have you and read a little bit about him and his you know, his accomplishments and credentials, and I thought, okay, well, you know, he seems like a good guy to reach out to you, and he's got experience with true crime cases and things like that, and so I sent him an email, and sometime goes by and I get an email back from one of his producers, and that's how it really got
off the ground. They were gracious enough to feature Vonda's case on their show Wrong Man, which is on the Stars Network.
And so.
I worked with them.
For oh gosh, probably a year, not with Joe Berlinger directly, but with his team Radical Media, and I would email them everything I had, you know, whether it was facts, opinions, rumors I had heard about the case. I just gave them everything. And so they slowly, you know, formed a case and they were pretty interested in it. And yeah, so they came out and started filming and investigating. And now you know, fast forward to the day we did. We accomplished what we set out to do, and we
did get national coverage for her case. In fact, the first episode of Vondus Smith's case just aired this past Sunday on Wrong Man, and you can catch the second episode next Sunday. I think it's the sixteenth, and that'll come out at nine pm Eastern Center time.
I think now let's go back to this whole because in your investigation, like you say, you posted on your blog everything rumors, but also in your book you create all the explain all the connections between people, and you say that this is a smaller community, and a lot of the people that you have on your list for people to look at and consider, they're all connected. You say this is a small place. Let's first talk about Jesse,
who's twenty one years old at this time. She's a mother of two young boys, and she's sixteen weeks pregnant at that time. As we explained about Vonda Smith, if people were wondering, why would Vonda Smith, why would have Jesse gone to Vonda Smith rather than her own mother, who is named Susan, so let's start putting some of those people together. Jesse and John and Susan and Vonda
and Wyatt. Put some of those people together and tell us a little bit about each of them as you discover in this investigation.
Okay, So Jesse and Vonda have a relationship. Their relationship began after Vonda discovered that she has a grandson, and that grandson was Jesse Morrison's firstborn Manning, and Jesse had previously and briefly dated Vonda's son Wyatt.
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And together they had Manning. From what I understand why it didn't he wasn't aware, he wasn't made aware that Jesse was pregnant. I guess she waited until late in the pregnancy to tell him. And at that point, like I said, they dated briefly, so they were no longer together. So eventually Vonda finds out. I think she maybe saw a picture of the little boy Manning on Facebook, and that's kind of how that started. So Wonda reached out to Jesse, and that's how the relationship initially began. And
Wonda's a really caring person. She's really loving during motherly you know, and so she definitely wanted to be part of her grandson's life, regardless of whether his own father was Vonda's son Wyatt. And so that's how that started. And now Jesse's own mother, whom I've named Susan in my book, I tried to change a lot of the names in my book just for privacy purposes for these people, and so I've called her Susan. So Jesse's mom Susan.
From what I've heard, they didn't have the closest relationship, maybe not the best relationship. I'm not really sure on the details of that, but I can tell you that Jesse and Vonda were certainly close, you know. And Vonna really she took care of her, really, and she loved her like it was her own daughter. And she she did spend money on Jesse, and she did spend money on Jesse's children, regardless of them. You know, her her second son, Jesse's youngest son, wasn't even related blood related
to Vonda, but that didn't matter to her. She, you know, she loved them all the same, and she did spend money on him, like I said, and took took care of him, bought diapers and clothes and things like that, and she even she even had she got internet at her house.
Wonda did.
She was trying to help Jesse, you know, better her life, and she got internet so that Jesse could go to her home with her laptop and do her online courses for college and things like that. And on that day, on August twelfth, for for reasons unknown, Jesse took the boys over to the Laughlin Memorial and you know, she went to Vonda for help. She did not go to her own mother, Susan. Why, I'm not sure, maybe we'll never know, but so she did. She did go to Vonda, and Wonda ultimately left work early.
You know, and.
To help her, and she helped her throughout the day and she even was watching the boys at at night when Jesse was supposed to have gone to hay Bills. And so that's why the kids were in her care.
And it's interesting because during the trial and even now, you know, just people gossiping around town, they some believe that Vonda had become obsessed as a grandmother over her grandson Manning, and the whole motive rests on her obsession with him, basically, and they say that she just she snapped Vonda snapped, and that's why she killed Jessie is because she wanted to have control over Manning or maybe
see him more often. But that doesn't make sense to me in my brain because if you really look at Jesse and Vonna's relationship, I mean, honestly, Vonda had Jesse's children all the time, you know, or at least really frequently. Jesse didn't seem very shy about, hey can you watch my kids? Hey can you help me out? You know, and Bonda of course was always happy to do so. So it doesn't really I don't in my mind. The motives didn't really make too much sense because it was
Jesse that sought Vonda's help. She sought Vonda out that day. It wasn't the other way around, you know. And more to the point, she didn't go to her own mother, Susan for help.
You also talk about and providing this book too, because the theory that they put at trial, the prosecution put a trial that she was obsessed, like you just mentioned, but also that you had investigated the possible timeline in the window of opportun tunity for Vonda to do what the prosecution theorized that she did. Now as you do in the book, tell us about that timeline and that window of opportunity, what she must have been able to do in this short period of time.
Tell us, Well, the timeline itself is I've gone over it and over it and over again. It's it's almost impossible for Vonda to have committed this crime. In fact, she would have had been a time traveler. And I say that in my book. It's this is a dark subject, but it's almost laughable because and it gets a little confusing, So you have to bear with me. So jesse was at Vonda's at four point thirty.
Okay, she leaves in Vonda's.
Car, and that's the last time Vonda sees jesse Is at four thirty. Well, we know that jesse reappears sometime at her own home because she has a neighbor whom I've named Patrick in my book. She's got a neighbor, Patrick, who went over to her house. They were outside, he was asking her about something. He talked to her. Okay, at about five thirty. So jesse is at her own home around five thirty. She's got her neighbor talking to her, who was also, by the way, called as a witness
during the trial. To testify to this, and after speaking with Jesse, Patrick goes back across the street to his own home, and a while later he sees Jesse leaves in a white van with two males. The time is five point thirty, so Jesse was last seen alive at five point thirty at her own home, getting into this white van by her neighbor Patrick, and then the next time she's found at seven point thirty. Her body is found at seven point thirty on Judnil Loop by the
guy that's walking his dog. So there's a two hour window there of you know what happened. In the meantime, Vonda's car has been returned at six o'clock, so you have Jesse at her house. She gets in the white van and leaves around five thirty. Vonda's car is returned at six. Wonna leaves her house at six point thirty to go to the friend's house to get the little girl.
She gets to.
The friend's house at seven, and then Jesse's body is found at seven point thirty. So if I mean if the car returned at six, but Vonda didn't see who returned it, how was she supposed to kill Jesse? When was this going to happen.
You know it didn't.
So let's back up. Let's say four point thirty or four o'clock. They get to Jesse's with the groceries after they went grocery shopping. They're at Jesse's at four o'clock. Could Vonda have killed her then? Well no, because then we still have the neighbor Patrick that spoke to Jesse
at five thirty. So if she was last seen at five thirty, and Vonda's car comes back at six, and Vona says she saw a white van at her house at six, and then you have the neighbor Patrick that said Jesse got into a white van at five point thirty, it just doesn't It doesn't add up, Like when when was Vonda supposed to do this? How did Jesse's blood get.
In her car?
When Vonda went to her friend's house at seven o'clock, the friend went to the car. She was standing out there talking to Vonda. They're right at the car. The little girl, Gemma got into the front passenger seat. There was no blood. Gemma has said there's no blood. There was no blood in the car. The friend Lilian also said there was no blood in the car at that time. Well, that was seven o'clock and Jesse's body was found at seven point thirty.
How did the blood get in the car?
Now, when Vonda goes back home with Gemma and then she's you know, for the night, like I said, with her husband and the kids.
So let's say that was maybe.
She got home around eight, you know, eight ten. Perhaps they're in for the night.
That's it.
She didn't go anywhere. So out here out in the country, okay, none of us really lock our cars, and some of us even just leave our keys in our cars. It's a common thing to do. And so I'm assuming that her car was not locked when she got home. She got home, she stayed at home. Her car was parked down away from the house, at the bottom.
Of the driveway.
They have a very steep driveway, so everyone typically parks down at the bottom. So you know, she's home at eight o'clock, her car's parked eight o'clock at night. The sheriff and the deputies don't get to her house to look into the car until two o'clock the next morning.
So you have this.
Window, this really large window of time, time of opportunity for anybody, anybody had anybody in East Tennessee had access to her car. So that brings us to the next question. If the blood was planted in Vana's carr, who did it, when did they do it, and why.
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in this in Vonda's guilty conviction at trial. The other thing that we didn't mention and is very very important, And you have to tell me about the official status of this because you write that it's not as an incident report with the police. So tell us about this. When Vonda believes that she should investigate the white van that she saw, she goes out, leaves her husband Don,
goes out for a drive to the store. After her investigation, what does she find in her investigation and what happens in this incident in October twenty sixteen?
Okay, so yeah, so we're in October twenty sixteen. It's been in proxy only two months since Jesse's murder, and Vonda decides.
To play detective. Okay, she knows she saw the white van in.
Her driveway when her car was returned, and she just thinks, okay, this, you know, I saw this white van, you know. And then she finds out that Jesse's been murdered, and so she thinks to herself, this white van is the key to this, you know, I'm going to find out what's going on here.
This has something to do with Jesse's death. So she decides to go out.
One day in October twenty sixteen on her own to find the white van, I guess, or she's driving around trying to find it or asking questions. And at the end of the day of her searching, and I'm not really sure if she had any leads or discovered any information. I don't know if she talked to anybody, but she spent the day, you know, tooling around trying to find
this white van. And at the end of the day, she gets home to her husband and he asks, you know, hey, can you go to the store and get some snacks? He wanted snacks. Okay, So by this time it's dark, she goes back out. She goes to the store to get her husband some snacks, and she's on her way back and then she sees some lights flashing behind her, and she assumes it's the police.
She's being pulled over.
Maybe you know, she's got a tail light out or something, and so she pulls off to the side of the road and she proceeds to roll her window down, you know, in preparation for the officer to approach her, and she leans to the passenger seat to dig through her purse. She's gonna get her life since out and registration, you
know how you do, And she's got those articles. And then she turns back to the open window, expecting to hand these things over to the officer that's pulled her over, and she gets punched in the face and turns out that she hadn't been pulled over by a police officer at all.
She was.
Pulled over by two men and a woman that she couldn't identify.
The two men.
Dragged her out of her car, proceeded to punch her and kick her, and one of them threatened her saying that you know, you need to keep your nose out of this stop running around looking for white vans, and if you don't, I'm going to hurt your grandson Manning.
And at that point they.
Picked her up.
The two men put her in their truck or what have you, and she wakes up the next day in a ditch and there was when it happened. Her husband obviously was expecting her to return from the store with snacks and she never did, so he's calling the police. The police come out. They find her car easily enough. It was in park right where she left it when she had pulled off onto the side of the road, but still running. So they found the car, but they didn't find Vonda. So at this point, her husband is
calling family members. You know, we don't know what's going on. Vonda's missing. Family comes out. Everybody's looking for that night, to no avail. No one can find Vonda. And then it wasn't until the next morning a passerby, some woman on her way to work, saw a body down in a ditch near a bridge, probably might have been a mile, maybe less than a mile from where her car was parked. And so this woman calls the police and family's alerted and it is Vonda.
And she is alive.
She's injured pretty badly, but she's alive, and she gets taken to Laughlin Memorial Hospital where she was employed, and so she's in there recovering and of course, a detective shows up. You know, he's wanting a statement, Detective Randolph, who was the same detective that accompanied the Green County sheriff to her home that night after Jesse was murdered. And so Randolph shows up at the hospital. He's wanting a statement, you know, official statement from her, and she did not give him one.
She refused.
She never reported the incident because she had been threatened. You know, she was warned to keep her mouth shut, and she took that warning very seriously.
She is a mom.
She was in mama bear mode. You could say she was trying her grandson safety was threatened and she was going to do everything in her power to keep him safe. So if that meant keeping her mouth shut about that incident what happened to her, then she wasn't going to report it, and she didn't.
Could she identify, not officially, obviously she didn't make a statement, But in your book, does she identify any of the males? Did she recognize any of the males there that day? You say she couldn't recognize the female?
She did, she later told her daughter in law. I don't know how much later it might have been, weeks, might have been months. She eventually confided in her daughter in law, and she said that one of the men that assaulted her that night was Jesse's boyfriend, John. And what's interesting about that is that John actually a colorful character. He was also involved in another incident later on, another violent incident with a woman he was dating at the time.
This is, of course, after Jesse's death, and after the incident was Vonda, and the newspaper reported that he had been arrested because he fractured some woman's skull during an argument of sorts, but the charges were eventually dropped.
Let's go back to the DNA that was found. We missed this part in that Jesse was about five foot eight to five nine, about one hundred and fifty pounds. And this is interesting when you say that they say that Vonda again single handily killed Jesse. But Vonda was four foot eleven, overweight, out of shape, two hundred pounds plus, fifty two years old, and Jesse was a young woman one hundred and fifty years old, and she fought and
underneath her fingernails was DNA. Tell us how many DNA samples were found and if there were any other DNA samples found and on Jesse and.
Where Yeah, yeah, you know. Here's the interesting thing about that at the crime scene. Vonda's DNA was not found anywhere at the crime scene and not on.
The body either.
Yet there were three different male DNA found under Jesse's fingernails, all of which are unidentified, and there were two possibly three male DNA found.
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No necessary drovo wherever I lost the terms conditions eighteen plus.
Dinner panties and I think maybe unknown female DNA somewhere on her body, but it's all been male DNA, male DNA, and the male DNA found underneath her fingernails suggests that she did fight her attacker or attackers, and so someone Okay, she had defensive wounds, she fought back, obviously she's got DNA. She might have scratched, you know them. So whoever the attacker attackers were, they would have had at least scratches on them, marks, bruising, something. There would have been something,
and Vonda didn't have anything. There were no scrapes, scratches, bruises, not a thing, not a thing. And so it's very you know, something's gone wrong here, something's gone really really wrong with this case. Nothing makes sense. You know, You've got all this male DNA on the victim. Yet we've got a woman behind bars for life for this. And speaking of DNA, Jesse was, as you said, she was sixteen, approximately sixteen pregnant at the time of her death.
And.
For whatever reason, the DNA of the fetus was never tested, so it was never confirmed who the father was, which is in my mind a huge piece of the puzzle. You know, sure she we don't know, We have no idea who the father was.
You also have the investigative team that was assembled also with Joe Berlinger and the team from Wrong Man, and they had a person named Ian and you got to eventually speak to him, and that's a very interesting exchange. And you wondered why Ian was looking at Wyatt, and you had an opportunity to get close to Wyatt by
just by circumstance. Tell us a little bit about Whyat Vonda's son, the father of Manning, but also why I might have been looking at Wyatt and your conversation with this investigator Ian.
Okay, Well, Wyatt is Vonda's son, and he's the guy that briefly dated Jesse and they had Manning together. And I did you know, when I was in the throes of this investigation and researching and blogging on my blog and all this, I had one big piece of the puzzle missing. And that was Whyat. I needed Wyatt. I needed, you know, I had lots of questions for him. And you know, the guy was kind of like a ghost, and as luck would have it, he ended up living
not too far from me and we became friends. And he is my husband's cousin and we became friends and I got to know him. And even though my first instinct was too. When I met him, you know, ask him a million questions. I wanted to bring up the case immediately, and and because I was on the forefront of my mind, but I thought, you know, no, that's.
A little crazy, probably pretty rude.
And I should probably just you know, get to know this guy first. And and so that's what I did. And it turned out he was a really nice guy. He was he seemed to have a decent character. I realized that he had a past, you know, he had been involved with drugs in the past and and things like that, and I tried not to judge, and we just really we hit it off. We got along really well.
He became my friend, and so over time our relationship grew and eventually we did start talking about the case and his mom, Bonda, and he he told me a lot of interesting, interesting information and he was pretty he was kind of an open book about it, and which is great. And so by the time Radical Media got involved and they came to town to film and investigate for their show Wrong Man, they brought with them a really, really awesome guy. I named him Ian in my book.
No that's not his real name. He's an interrogator, and I have huge respect for him.
I watched him on.
The show, and I just think he's he's phenomenal at what he does. And so that was I never got to meet him personally, but it was exciting just to know that he was here and that he was working on it, working on the case.
Until he.
Got a hold of Wyatt. And Whyatt became why it became like Ian's guy. Ian became just he was kind of fixated on Whyatt as a potential suspect, and his
reasons are his own. I can't speak for Ian. I'm not sure why he was so houned in on him, but I just thought there's you know, I felt like Ian was going down a rabbit hole like this is this is you're chasing after red Herring, so to speak, like this is this is not your guy I can see on paper looking at Wyatt, you know, maybe he's seems a little sketchy or seems like a good suspect, or he doesn't look good on paper. I'll say that,
but he's he's a nice guy. He's a sensitive guy, and there's no way, just like with his mother, Vonda, there's no way.
And so.
Ian was he was going after Wyatt on this excuse me, And eventually I contacted Ian myself. I called him and we had a short exchange, a brief exchange over the phone, and I just wanted to call and tell him that, you know, I don't think I don't think Wyatt's your guy.
Didn't and at the time, sorry at the time.
That I had called Ian, like I said, we just spoke briefly, and basically I had called just to defend Wyatt to this interrogator.
At the time.
It was a brief phone call because this guy was at a restaurant. It was something and it was noisy in the background, you know, And so he said, I'd like to talk to you about this later. But of course later never came. We never ended up. He never he never ended up calling me back to to discuss any further.
Didn't be in to say though, claimed that Vonda went asked who returned the car that Vonda and claimed that Vanda said it was Wyatt.
Excuse me. Yes, So that was that was an interesting, an interesting.
Thing that happened.
And I think that's actually going to be on the second episode of Wrong Man, and I think they're going to go over that happened. And I'm I'm excited to watch that myself, to see, you know, what really happened. Ian goes to speak with Vonda at the at the print, she's in prison in Memphis, and during their conversation, Ian's trying to figure out who returned Vonda's car, who returned
the car. He's maybe convinced that she knows something she's not telling or she saw who returned it, and so he's asking her, you know, you have to tell me. You have to tell me who returned to the car. You have to tell me who returned the car.
Who did you see? Who was it?
Blah blah blah, And supposedly, Wonda basically cracks okay under pressure and says it was Wyatt, her son. She says her son was the one to return the car, which is, you know, Wonda dropped a bomb. If that's true, you know, that's like what you know, that's a huge that's a huge.
Bomb right there.
And so I'm hearing the second hand from family members who told me Ian came to their house with this recording of Wonda admitting that it was her son, Wyatt, that returned her car, and I didn't hear the recording for myself. So I'm unsure of this, and I've got a couple of different stories from family members who can't quite remember exactly what they heard, which is really important.
That's really the key here, Okay, because during an interrogation, and I'm no expert here, but you you can word things, you can phrase things certain ways just to get people's reaction. Maybe it's not the truth, but you'll get their physical reaction. And I think that's what Ian was asking. So with the conversation that Ian and Vonda had, him asking her who returned the car, it basically boils down to her
what actually came out of her mouth. Did she say, yes, it was Whyt that returned my car as a complete sentence, or did she just say did Ian say who returned your car and she says it was Wyatt? Because if she just says it was Wyat, well, then that could easily his audio recording could have easily been spliced and edited. She could have been saying it was Wyat, answering it was Wyatt to a completely different question, you see what
I'm saying. So if that was the case, if she didn't actually answer that it was Wyatt that returned her car, then it could have been Ian's intention to make it appear as though she was saying, whyatt returned my car? And the reason for doing that is a simple psychological trick. So he has this recording now that supposedly sounds as the So Wonda is saying, why ittt.
Return to my car?
He comes back, and he plays it for the whole family to hear why it included. And so even though maybe Ian knows that's not true, it's not what Vonda said, He's wanting to play it for the family to get their reaction, their physical reaction, because physical reactions sometimes can tell you more, give you a little bit more of the truth than you know what people are telling you.
It's inconsistent with Wanda's pledge not to She's attacked, she's left for dead in the ditch, she is framed for murder and person close to her, the mother of her grandson and a person close to her. And then when it comes time to Joe Berlinger and this wrong man a TV, nothing for her to gain from this whatsoever. And still, if she's protecting her family and she's made that statement, she's going to do what it takes to
protect her family. This I think is is consistent with protecting her family, since why it had nothing to it? She could say why it had something to do whyatt returned the car, because certainly there's more to this story than Wanda killing Jesse. And the motive is incredibly shaky. I mean, there is no foundation, there is no murder weapon there is and again the motive is definitely lacking.
The timeline, the window of opportunity, the ability for Vonda physically to be able to do this, her composure before the murder or before the death that entire day afterwards. It is totally inconsistent with anything to make any sense why she was arrested and convicted and the convicted so easily, and certainly the appeal was denied as well, so at least on certain grounds that appeal was denied. You provide
an interesting array of possibilities. But one was that and I have to ask you about this, is that JT. John's father, and please explain this. There was a partial DNA sample that was inconclusive because of explain this to us.
Oh yeah, okay, so I'll do my best with that. It is a little confusing. So Jesse was found and there were two DNA samples in her panties, and so there were semen samples, one registered as her boyfriend John's, and the other one registered as a partial. That means there wasn't enough of the sample to register one hundred percent as this person one of that person. You know, it wasn't definitive So because it was only a partial sample, they got partial DNA. Well, that DNA came back initially
as John's father's JT. Well, excuse me, I'm recovering from the flu. But they couldn't definitively say that it was his because it was again a partial and it was explained that.
You have John and JT.
And because their father and son, their DNA is so similar that they were basically saying, well, this second partial DNA, you know, maybe maybe it's not JT. It's you know, it's maybe it's more likely his son John's. So but I thought that was interesting nonetheless, that it would possibly register as his.
Father's as JT's.
So why, you know, why would why would the father's DNA register on Jesse at all in the first place.
So it's just a lot of a lot.
Of questions, a lot of questions, and that's something that my Mom and I have struggled with with this case. You have a question and you go searching for answers, and you come up with more questions. There are, certainly in this case, there are more questions than answers.
Certainly you talk to a person named Christy, You communicate with a person named Christy, which is girlfriend of John, and you're not shy about stating what you believed and she was again I thought quite reasonable in responding to your claims and your questions if John and JT had something to do with this, John being the you know, the father of the sixteen month, sixteen month a pardon me, sixteen week baby that Jesse was about to have, and
you do the background on his behavior and similar things where he's not taken responsibility. What is your idea about methamphetamines, drugs, Judd Neil Loop the place where she was found, and John and JT, and you mention Benjamin and Bradley owners of White Vans as well. We can't go anywhere into all of the like you describe rabbit holes and areas of investigation that you've gone into, but give us a little bit of the scenario that you could come up with.
Involving the people I just mentioned, and this murder.
Well, there's a lot of scenarios and there's a lot of theories, and you know, maybe there's some of the theories might be a little bit out there, but that's kind of what it takes for this case. And so one of the people initially that my mom and I were looking at was John. You know, he was the one that was dating Jesse at the time of her death.
She was supposedly sixteen weeks pregnant with his child at the time, which of course we can not confirm because the DNA testing had not been done on the fetus. And they were living together, and I guess John's father, JT was also living with them. So you've got Jesse and her two young boys, and you've got boyfriend John and John's father JT. And they're all living together, and this trailer i'm crossing her park. From what I know,
Jesse was not involved with the drug scene here. That's in East Tennessee, and it is a major drug scene. Mess there's mess pills, you know, opioids, and I've been told she wasn't she.
Didn't do drugs.
However, her circle of friends or people around her. Yeah, they were a or into drugs. And JT. John's father, he he definitely he definitely was. He definitely is and he has a criminal record and it does involve drugs and there are rumors that he deals drugs or adult drugs at least at the time. And so you have you have that going on. And then JT has another son who is John's younger brother. I call him Benjamin. Benjamin is or was at the time into the drug scene,
and he owned a white van. And then we have a guy called Bradley, and Bradley is JT's friend, and Bradley also owns a white van. So we have two white vans and they pretty much stick throughout my story. There's I talk a lot about the white vans and the blood and Wanda's car, and those are the two. They're kind of like wrenches in any theory that I can come up with, because if you're there's so many people that can be involved with this.
And I say that.
Because you have to look at Jesse's circle, her circle of friends, her family, people that she's she's dated, people that she was living with, you know, And so I have lots of I like to call them players. I don't call them suspects, but just people that might even know what happened to her or they know someone that might know what happened to her. So I have this, you know, array of people, these players that I talk about in my book, and I used them to you know,
I plugged them. I basically plugged them in to different theories about what could have happened to Jesse and you know the whole who done it? And we always come back to the white vans and the blood in the car. And all I know is that Bradley and Benjamin both owned white vans at the time.
Right, what about the You write about the one thousand dollars that Vonda gave Jesse to pay bills that day, but you write in the book that those bills were not paid, and you also write about one thousand dollars car title explain that.
Okay, so Vonda gave Jesse one thousand dollars cash that day to go pay bills. And a lot of skeptics wonder did Vonda even give her that money?
And the truth.
Is is that she did.
Because fast forward to after Vonda being arrested, she had a conversation with her husband, and he was asking her about the title to the car, which at that point was with tbi okay as evidence. So he was calling and asking about the title to the vehicle, and Vonda confessed basically to him, to her husband that she had sold the title to the vehicle for one thousand dollars and that was the cash that she had given Jesse on that day to go to pay bills. And my knowledge,
the bills hadn't been paid. But now I've learned otherwise watching the first episode about Wonda Smith's case, I'm wrong man. You know, obviously they're professional, professional detectives and and investigators, so they can talk to people that I can't. And so it's been discovered that the rent Jesse was going to pay with the thousand dollars that Vonda gave her. I guess it was back to rent, or so Vonda
believed at the time. It turns out, which was revealed on Wrong Man, that rent was already paid for August. It had already been paid, and it wasn't due again until September. So I thought that was pretty interesting even for me to find out, because you know, it's something that I hadn't known, and so now I'm wondering, you know, of course, well what really happened.
Did Jesse.
Tell Vonda, you know, oh, I need to pay my rent is late, and can I have this money to pay rent? Knowing full well that rent wasn't due yet. And if that's the case, why did Jessee lie to Vonda? And where did the money go? The money was when Jesse's body was found, the cash was long gone and there were no real records of where Jesse paid anything with the money. So obviously the money that becomes a
pretty strong motive, especially out here. Sure, you know, people out here have been murdered for much less because it is, unfortunately, it is a drug ridden area. And so one thousand dollars.
Yeah, it seemed for me just that and not to judge, and certainly I'm not I have less facts than you have or anyone has, but it just seemed like it looked like from the testimony of her jumping in that van at five point thirty while her kids read Wonda's that she goes to Vonda's at work and has her leave work again, she couldn't go to her mother that there's something was afoot that she didn't want to reveal with to tell the truth to some people, and Vonda
was the person that she could go to for the car, to take care of the kids, and for the money. But going into that van at five point thirty, which was not any plan that she expressed to Vonda whatsoever. With these guys in the white vans, and like you say, this community certainly pretty well caught up in crystal meth and other serious hard drugs. One thousand dollars, she may
have just began to do drugs. There certainly seems to be something about the thousand dollars and these guys that you would jump in a van when you have all these other obligations. It just seems to be consistent with not a drug deal gone bad. That's a horrible cliche, but something involved money and possibly people that are involved with serious drugs.
And that's kind of what I lean leaned toward myself.
You know.
It's, you know, left to your imagination, you can come up with all kinds of theories, and that's basically what I've done, and I've just laid them out for the readers, just offering, you know, different different theories and opinions on things.
And I think it does.
It probably does boil down to the money and drugs.
And I'm not.
Sure if she was involved in that scene or how she could have been involved in that scene. But what is interesting also is that her her boys were at Vonda's house. She left them there for Vonda and her husband to babysit. Well, she supposedly went to go pay these bills. But so she is at her home when this white band shows up, and she had been you know, talking to her neighbor Patrick, So someone knew that she
didn't have her boys with her that day. She didn't have the boys with her at that moment, and that perplexes me too. Who knew that she didn't have her children with her.
At the other there is the other interesting aspect which again goes against this what I said looks like at the outside or the just from Afar looks like. But again it's very you know, again because of drugs, because of hard drugs. Then we make a connection that must
be murder. There is also the idea that each one of these children that Jesse had with these men, and she was only twenty one, so she had this again, a third child from a third different person that she didn't want those men necessarily to be part of the children's life, which might have been okay for these people that were the fathers, but lots of times the family and in this particular case, family members that were cut off from access to these grandchildren as well, with John
anticipating that sort of thing from him, his lack of responsibility and in relationships. We still have to come around to JT connected to John and John witnessed by Wonda, and then after that she would not say anything towards those people that attacked her, and also just the DNA and the witness Wanda, and so there's a lot that makes it look like it may be just a much simpler, less complicated, more typical reason.
For murder, right exactly.
It's it's definitely it's difficult to basically to decide, you know, what happened here. Is it something simple because there's so many there's so many unknowns, and there's so many things that are just downright suspicious, you know, there's not another way to say it. It's just there's so many things that are suspicious about this case. So, you know, and I talked about, you know, an active imagination, you know, is it something simple or is it something more complex?
Is it something worse? Was it was it planned? Was this all planned? Was did someone plan to murder Jack see that day? Was it always the intention to have Vonda take the fall for this? And then if you start thinking about, well maybe the blood was planted in the car, it just makes it worse, you know, so you're it ranges from you know, this is a cover up somehow, some way, for some reason, or you know, to something more simpler like just well, she had a
thousand dollars cash. Someone saw it on her or she mentioned it. Maybe they were already high and decided they wanted that money, and then that's the.
End of Jesse.
So it's it is really difficult. It's been a challenge to figure out what happened, just because of just because of the details of the case, the lack of details, and basically everything seeming so suspicious, not to mention the people themselves, some of the people she was living with or friends with, or you know, it just branches out and it's you know, and to me, and I'm sorry to say, I hate to sound so judgmental, but they all seem suspicious to me in their own way, and
the majority of them do have criminal records. They are known drug users, and you know, so it's when you when you have a cast of characters like that, it's very difficult discerning who's an actual bad guy, you know what I mean?
Certainly, I know that you are continuing with your investigation. This is in the end for you. This book. You talked about, the Wrong Man movie, Wrong Man series. Tell us a little bit more about the Wrong Man series when it airs again. Tell us about where they might look for Devil's Playground. Tell us a little bit about how they could contact you and find you online.
Okay, well, Wrong Man has, like I said, that's on the Stars Network. They've already aired episode one of Vonda Smith's case. I think they titled it titled it the Case against Grandma, which is a little comical. So that that's already aired, so you can catch that now currently on Wrong Man Season two and episode two of Vonda Smith's Case will be airing this Sunday on the sixteenth, and I think that's going to air at nine pm
Eastern Standard time, and that's the second episode. It will be the final episode, so we're all looking forward to that. I know those guys put in a lot of hard work and we definitely appreciate everything that they've done. And my book about the case, Devil's Playground, my publisher, Stephen Booth and his wife Leah Booth, are awesome of genius book publishing. You can find that for on You can pre order it now actually on Amazon, and it will
be available officially released on Friday, Valentine's Day. So that's pretty cool. And if you want to get in touch with me, if I me on Twitter, my handles Nova West Underscore author pretty.
Easy to find.
And yeah, I just you know, I welcome everybody.
To to buy the book. Would be great.
You know, books say they are great, But more importantly, you know, we don't want to lose sight of what I'm doing here with the investigation, with the book, and that really is to get attention on Vona Smith's case. She I feel has been wrongly convicted. And that's one problem. The second problem is that if in fact she has been wrongly convicted and she is innocent of this crime, well then Jesse Morrison and her unborn baby don't have justice. The killer is still out there, or killers, and we
need to find them. And so I do invite everybody to join us, join the investigation. You know, watch wrong Man, watch the show, read the book.
We need help, We need your help.
We basically are asking I'm asking you to become a slut and help me figure this thing out.
Help me help my mom.
You know, the two of us have been working on this for almost two years now, and we definitely could use the help.
Absolutely, it's a very honorable endeavor. Certainly, thank you very much for coming on and talking about Devil's playground. God's country has blood on its hands. Nova West, Thank you very much, Nova West. You have a great evening. Hope to talk to you again soon.
Thank you, Dan, thank you very much, thank you.
Good night.