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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 Geese, 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 Zupanski.
Good Evening. On August thirty first, nineteen seventy two, Helen Hanks, a pretty thirty four year old mother of three, disappeared from her place of employment at Willcox Advertising in Valdosta, Georgia. After a brief investigation by local and state authorities, the case went In the fall of nineteen eighty, a farmer clearing a field south of town discovered a buried object, a box containing the dismembered remains of the missing woman.
After several months of investigation, police arrested Foxy Wilcox, his son, Keller Wilcox, and two long term African American employees of Wilcox Advertising. Keller was charged with Hank's murder and the others with concealing a death. The Wilcoxes were members of a prominent and wealthy Valdosta family. To defend their case,
they hired famed defense attorney Bobby Lee Cook. Keller Wilcox's murder trial in January nineteen eighty two pitted Cook against a local prosecution team led by District Attorney Lamar Cole. The case against Wilcox was entirely circumstantial, making the outcome uncertain. After a trial marked by controversy and conflicting testimony, Wilcox was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, all the
while proclaiming his innocence. In nineteen eighty five, he was freed by a federal judge based primarily on his the harsh interrogation of the black witnesses. The true story of this horrific murder has all the elements of a work of suspense fiction. Money, power, sex, race, and the haves versus the have nots. Multiple lives were forever changed. The outcome would have been totally different if the box had
been buried only six inches deeper. The book that we're featuring this evening is six inches deeper, The Disappearance of Helen Hanks with my special guest author William Rowlings. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for this interview.
William Rowlings, it's my pleasure to be here. Thank you for asking me.
Thank you so much, and congratulations on this book.
I've just discovered it.
As I mentioned speaking to you beforehand, this book was released in twenty twenty, but I've just discovered your work. And congratulations on this incredible Booklet's let's get right to Valdosta, Georgia. Maybe you can just tell us where this is. You say it's about fifteen miles to the south of the Florida state line. But tell us a little bit about Valdosta and the one person and a person named Ernest Keller will Cox, Sr. And how he came to be in the area and his background.
Valdosta, Georgia is a town of perhaps forty thousand or so people in the extreme south of the site of Georgia. It's a part of the state that historically was nothing but great pine forest and later on became famous turpentine production. And in fact, most of this area is probably where they're on the vine because there's not a lot of industry.
There's not a lot of agriculture there now. But Valdosta is different in the fact that the interstate in ninety five was put through in the nineteen sixties and it sort of became a regional center, sort of an island of urbanity in the middle of rurality to you, if I can use that term, and a lot of it's sort of the dominant town in the area. The Wilcoxes were there since the early part of the night of
the twentieth century. Of the grandfather of Keller Wilcox, who was the prime person in this saga, was an attorney, as was his father, Foxy. They did well business wise and married well over the years, and so by the time this tale took place, they were a very well respected family because of their tenures. Things in the South have less to do with money than they do with family and social connections. But also they made a good
bit of money and were fairly wealthy. They were, as I say in the book, I think the Krim dela Krim of the South Ast society.
You talk about Foxy Wilcox being having a background with his grandfather being an attorney and his father, but you say that he soon lost interest in the law. Tell us about what his new interest was.
To get this straight. The person eventually indicted most prominent with this murder was Keller Wilcox, who was born in nineteen fifty. His father, Foxy Wilcox, was an attorney who liked many attorneys over the years, may turn to something else, and he became very successful in the outdoor advertising business, and that's where much of the income came from. Keller, on the other hand, was at the time of this story began, was just in the midst of college, He
had just gotten married, was a younger, younger man. He was the only child of his two parents, and certainly he was he had before him a bright future if he simply maintained that which he would inherit. So that sort of sets the background for what happened in August nineteen seventy two.
You say there were prominent people in this community, but tell us a little bit more about this advertising company and its employees and what they actually did and some of the challenges or the real challenge that faced them in nineteen eighty to back.
Up, outdoor advertising means basically billboards, and as you are probably aware, billboards are everywhere. Prior to the administration of London Johnson in the late nineteen sixties, they were unregulated more or less in federal highways, and the company, in fact, the entire industry, a billboard industry, faced a lot of challenges about getting their billboards up, but they did well. They did well, and both Foxy, the father and Keller and the son they've actually had, both had the same name,
which is Ernest Keller Wilcox. They did quite well in the business and had markets all across South Georgia and North Florida. Things were really doing well. Their employees consisted of the father and son in the office and they would have a secretary perhaps plus a few salesman, but the main flute of their employees were persons who put up and took down the billboards. So these were all African American and that fact came into play later in the story.
Now you talk about this business that they had, and they had a secretary that joined in nineteen seventy two, the same time that the same year that Keller joined his father in this company as a salesman and marketing. So tell us a little bit about Helen Griffin.
Helen Griffin Hanks. She was married to a man named James Nykes, who was thirty four years old in nineteen seventy seventy two. She was the mother of three children. She had worked a very apparently very intelligent lady. From all that I had been able to find out, she had previously worked for another timber company there in Valdosta, but had come to work early in nineteen seventy two boy twenty percent rais, giving her a weekly salary of
one hundred and twenty dollars per week. Her husband, James Hanks, was a prison guard making a modest salary, and between the two of them they were raising three children and probably struggling a bit. But she was saying to be very intelligent, very hard working, and very honest, assault of the earth kind of person who was in a position of secretary for this company.
Tell us about the situation with Keller in terms of his marital status.
Keller had been going to college at Valdosta College at the time it's now Valdosta State University. But he started off college and early on had wanted to go to medical students supposedly, but that didn't pad out, and actually after about in his third year of college, he actually dropped out and went to work for his fall. The full time, he had been going out with a girl named Jean King as Ja and King, and they were
married in around the first of August nineteen seventy two. Incidentally, Jean's father, Willard King, at that time was working part time for Wilcox out in No Advertising Is doing various mechanic type of jobs and other related He would later become a full time employee of the company, but at the time he was working part time. So in August nineteen seventy two, Kerol Wilcox was a uly wit and things were apparently going f until one day.
You want to talk about the Neil Johannson and merit, the switch up that happened in the marital life of these two couples, Well, I.
Can that happens later on, sort of happens a bit later on in the story. He and Jean were a member of a social group and there was another fellow named Neil Johansson, who all reports was very handsome. Believe Joehansson was a very handsome police officer. He was married, as was Keller, and they ran in a social group together. A few years later, it turned out that both Jean Keller's wife and Neil Johansson's wife file for divorce within a few days of one another, and their divorces were
granted within a few days of one another. A few weeks later later Onwned Jean married Neil Johansson and Keller was single. As things would go on, a few years later, Neil Johansson died under what I was there suspicious circumstances and was said to have died from autoerotic self expiciation. At least that was the consensus of the caroner and
others who examined the situation at the time. Keller later went on to marry another lady and named Sonia, and he got married around the first of November nineteen eighty, so it had been his marriage to Jane was fairly short lived, and by nineteen eighty, which is a critical year in the story, he was he'd remarried for a second time. He'd remarried for a second he'd married for a second sex.
I'm sorry, let's go back, and so let's go back to Lamar Advertising, and we talked about the situation where things were changing with the Beautification Act, but also that Lamar Advertising was offering accounting services to small companies like Wilcox Advertising. So on August twenty ninth, tell us about this plan and the plan from the for the company to meet in Atlanta with Foxy and Keller.
It's kind of hard to imagine today, but back in the dark ages before computers, I guess we've all lived through those books were being kept by hand. But the nineteen nineties and the years that following were certainly transitioned when everyone moved from handwritten bookkeeping to a computerized bookkeeping. Wilcox Advertising recognized that it needed to move up in the world, so they had an affailiation agreement with Lamar Outdoor Advertising, which is still well known company in that field.
Own.
I believe it was August twenty ninth, nineteen seventy two. Keller and his father went to Atlanta, and you have to understand that's to the northern part of the state of Georgia. They drove to Atlanta and met with others, including the executives of the Lamar Advertising company. They stayed there for a couple of days and return back to Valdosta on the thirty first of office, arriving sometime that afternoon, and that the time of their arrival became a cryptical figure later.
Now this is according to Foxy and Keller about their time arriving back from this trip back to the office. What do they observe, what do they report? How does the police find out about what happens? Tell us what happened soon as they get back to this office according to them.
Well, according to them, they got back to the office, and the time actually varying, as they were several times that they sent that guy back to the office. But when they got there, it was apparently around four point thirty by the in between four and four thirty by the initial report. I want to make it clear. They came up and Helen Hanks, the secretary of her car was in the parking lot. The keys were in the ignition.
They opened the office door, which was unlocked. The radio was playing, the lights were on, and they called for their secretary, Helen. She was not there. They said, oh, she must be in the restroom. That waited a few minutes and knocked on the door. She wasn't there. They searched the place according to the history that was given, and low and old she was gone. There was no indications to where she went and what happened. So they called the police. The police arrived perhaps around five point
thirty or thereabouts. Again, there's some slight controversy. They made a fairly perfunctory investigation of the scene and they left thereafter the time that they left was a police left was an issue of controversy. The police said about six thirty. Others said perhaps his latest eight o'clock. That those numbers
become important later on the story. As I noted, Keller had been married to Gene King for only about three weeks, and that night there was a party being given to the newlyweds at an elegant little country resort named Ocean Pond, right, and they would do there at seven o'clock. Well, for whatever reason they could did not arrive at that time. They called us and they'd be late, and didn't arrive until nine o'clock. They were apparently checking on the missing secretary.
Now you talk about calling his wife, calling his wife Jean and telling her that he got in at a certain time, but that was around five o'clock. What did he say, and this is important later, what time did he say that he came in and what did he tell her at five o'clock regarding this Ocean Pond thing that he was supposed to attend on their behalf.
Well, he told his wife initially that he got in at three point fifteen three point thirty in the afternoon. Later, as things would sort out, there was the authorities could establish a fairly good timeline as to when they left Atlanta and so forth, and so so that that seems like it would have been correct later when there were conversations with authorities. That time became later, perhaps four thirty. There's a difference of an hour hour and a half
there as to when they actually arrived. Apparently they were in one car. They went to I believe the Elder will Cox's house. Fox's house, dropped him off, went back to the office, and then supposedly he the Elder will Cox Foxy came down to check on the situation. The party, which they knew the Worged were due to attend, they should have, of course gone together. This was a big deal, and as I said, these were these were prominent members of the community, and the party was sponsored by some
other prominent members of the community. It was a social event and one that you would not dare be late to. And yet neither Foxy nor his were their own time. They both showed up together about nine o'clock in the evening. He told his wife that she should go ahead because he would be late. He had to work about how to see what was going on with the mission secretary.
Now we didn't talk about that. Keller calls Helen Hanks, her husband, right, and then he comes to the office. What does he observe? What does he say he saw?
Well, he was, as noted, a prism guard and he had gotten off work as our call, around four point thirty and by the time he got home it was around five. And it's about that time our little laughter when Keller called him and said Helen is missing. We don't know where she is. He lived in a city of Morgan, which would have taken him perhaps twenty twenty five minutes to get to her place of employment. And when he arrived, Keller was there and two policemen or
three policemen eventually were there. He searched about, didn't find his wife. The interesting thing is that when he walked into the door, he observed are going through Helen's pocketbook
looking for some keys. You have to understand that she was the secretary or I guess the words today would be the executive assistant, and she held the keys to such things as the gas tank when they used to gas up the trucks, and he handed the pocketbook to Helen's husband, James Hanks, and he fished around and found us out of keys and handed them back to Keller.
These were apparently the keys to the lock on the gas pump, right, and Keller made the unusual statement which Hanks remembers in that Keller said, quote, she won't be needing these anymore. Quote at least that's what James Hanks, her husband said. He his words were wow.
Now there is a assistant police chief, Lois Arnold, and he also serves as the department's investigative officer. He went to the will Cox advertising office a little bit later tell us what he observes and some of the things that right away or said to the media by police.
Well, he went and looked around the office and did some I can use the word light interviewing, in my opinion, didn't really take didn't seem to take the case that seriously, and remarked fairly privately that she had probably run off with another man or something like this, which if you once you got to know the lady, it would have been totally foreign. Right, And so the case was pretty pretty much dismissed the case and the importance to the case. Oh,
she's just gone, she'll come back. She got tired of living with her husband and ran off with someone else, and there's no evidence west.
Of There were a couple of will Cox employees interviewed, though, and one was Jerry Davis and another one was John Goodman. Jerry Davis being one of the last people supposedly to have seen Helen Hanks. So what does he have to say in terms of what he saw.
Well, he said that there had been interaction between Keller and Helen, and that is Keller had grabbed Helen by her rear end and she had turned around and slapped him and tried to slap him, and apparently he had been sexually harassing her. It was also said that Keller had referred to her using foul words and spoken badly
about her, and something Keller later denied. But these were sort of unbiased reports that came along early in the case, before anybody knew what the fate of Helen Heights would eventually be, and so there was no doubt that there was evidence of sexual harassment there with Keller approaching Helen, despite the fact you'd only been married three weeks.
Now, you say that was confirmed by a second employee, John Goodman, but also that there was confirmation of something else in terms of her dissatisfaction. What else was that?
Yes, there was there were other It would come out later that she had spoken to at least two other female saying that she was being sexually harassed. Number one, number two in her pocketbook, which was still there in abandoned. There were applications for employment saying that she would be available to go to work on October first, which basically was one month for her disappearance. She intended to quit
her job. She had expressed concern about several things, and this seemed to be quite well documented and at least up It came up later in the investigation, but there was no doubt that something had been going on there that had driven this woman to quit a job that she'd only had about eight or nine months. And see other employment.
Now, there was a person named Willard King, and this is Keller's new father in law of just a few weeks, and he's a full time employee of Pepsicola Biling Company in Cordel. And we hadn't mentioned, but part of that trip that they had gone on. There was a stop in Cordel, tell us about Willard King and the Discovery remix.
Well, and you know down here at South we pronounced things different. It's actually cordial, thank you. But he was working in Cordel, and on their way back from Atlanta, they stopped and met him, and he gave a timeline as approximate time as to when they left that city and headed to south of Valdosta. There was its I seventy five is Expressway, and that became critical later on in establishing the timeline as to when they actually got there.
It's pretty it's a pretty much straight road without any any deviations, and so you could accurately calculate the rate of speed, which in those days was pretty fast, and that was important. The other thing was that he would come in on the weekends working part time at Wilcox's Advertising and do various repair work. And when he came in a few days after Helen's disappearance, he noticed that one of the boxes that he normally sent his chest
was missing. When I say boxes, this advertising company had large boxes that measured perhaps four feet long, two feet wide two feet high that were covered with galvanized metal that were designed to withstand heavy use, and those were where the folded pieces of paper that would eventually put up a buildable, which were stored and carried. He noticed
that a box was missing. In fact, he duly reported this to Keller, and Keller, who was sort of in charge of things at this point, sort of went back and forth and he said, well, I guess we should report that to the police. So he called up the police investigator that we discussed a moment ago. He came to investigator, came around, looked at it and said, yeah, well whatever, and didn't even make a note of it. This would turn out to be a important clue much later. Now.
He basically is, you're right. He kind of dismisses this box and its importance. But someone else, within days of Governor Carter, there's a perceived crime wave. You as you're right, So they send Ronald Angel, the state's top criminal investigator and agent in charge of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, to come into this investigation. Tell us a little bit about that.
Well, it should be appreciated. This was one case, and the disappearance of Helen Hights was one case among several there had been some violent crimes that had been some rights that had been murders, and the perception was that crime was getting out of hand, and so the GBI, under the urging of the site's governor, moved came in and did investigated, and one of the prominent things they investigated was the disappearance of Helen hins Keller was interviewed
at that time and really did not give a particularly different story from what he'd said earlier. He denied, and he and his father went Atlanta. He had an excuses to when he arrived and so forth and so on, and really it didn't anything. Although I will give the GBI credit for asking, they were not there at the outset, so they sort of came in after the fact and reviewed what had been done and said with gee, we don't know what else to do. It's a code case.
Yeah, you say so. There was some investigation for three or four weeks, but basically no clear leads had been established, and the trail went cold.
That's correct, trail went cold.
You write very interestingly and plainantly that James Hank says, listen, she might have wanted to leave me, but there's no way she would have left these children.
That's exactly right, and very, very almost pitiful situation. Over the fall, they having to explained to his three children that their mother's not coming back. He apparently they had a happy relationship and apparently everything was. It was difficult, perhaps financially, but they were a hard working family and the loss of his wife and his health was a devastating one, not only to him but also to his family.
Yeah, you're right, that gets worse for the family while things get real rosy for the Wilcox Advertising Company and Keller and Foxy and Company, but for the family, taunts at school for the children, and then one day, to their horror, there's another woman in the home. And things are different completely, aren't they.
There are At some point later James brought home another woman. His wife was gone, you know, no one knew where she was, no one had said that she was dead, and he started seeing another woman. And when they brought her home, and that of course made matters worse. The older daughter, Lucy, they were three children. The older daughter moved out at that point, horrified by this, and the younger two children didn't have much choice. David and Penny
stay there and finished there. Both of them did quite well at life. I saw all the children did well at life, but they stayed there and say, I didn't have another choice. And so it brought the family up, obviously, and in a way that was even equally tragic. Not only would their mother having abandoned their father bringing in a new woman, which I thought was something that was horrific to the children's psychological wellbeing.
You're right that the Keller joins the Chamber of Commerce and various other groups and is active in the community. And we just we had talked about the marriage switch. So let's do that again because that's important to what happens soon after. What was that again, we'll talk about the marriage happening, the one marriage is all the other one and the switch of partners and Neil Johansson.
Well, in October, I think of the same year that Johansen died, Keller married another lady, Sonia the last year I believe her last name was, and that was in October, and actually it was several years later I have my knights from It was in October of nineteen aged that
they married. And that was that day with significance because something happened later in the month of October nineteen eighty, if you'd like to talk about that, or if you want to review some other stuff before the findings of October nineteen eighty I November nineteen eighty.
Forgive me, well, let's talk about what happens in that interim before the discovery by the Blanton brothers in nineteen eighty. But you say three thousand and seven days missing. What happens in that interim period of time in terms of the investigation, if anything?
Nothing. Basically it was a go okase there were reports quote unquote of sightings of Helen Hunks. There's one particular episode I talk about a book from Penny the daughter who saw a woman who looked like she thought this was her missing mother, and she followed her up and turned around, and when she saw she realized it was not her mother. The children certainly held out hope if
her husband did. The Willcoxes continued to do well. Keller became an active member community that joining the Rotary Club and so forth, became active in the state organization of outdoor Advertising and so forth, and so own. And when he remarried it looked like things were going very well. And the Helen Hinks family had sort of declined and fallen apart, but the Wilcoxes were doing fine until the Blattens came along.
Yes, and he was a volunteer auxiliary policeman as well from the mid seventies.
He was, and I should address that too. One thing about this was you always wondered why someone would volunteer to be a volunteer auxiliary policeman, because, well, what happens when you were a member of the police auxiliary. You get to wear some sort of a uniform and kind of hang out with the police, and also you know what's going on. So if anything, had any news had broken on the missing person's case of Helen Heights, he
would have been the first to know about it. And there were several episodes during that period of time when supposedly the missing Helen Hainks had called or sent word that she was alive and well and not to worry about me as if she'd run off, and retrospectively, there was always question as to who was behind those strange messages that were received, as it turned out that they were obviously not the case. No one ever knew.
Let's talk about the discovery on November twenty fourth, nineteen eighty.
November twenty fourth, nineteen eighty two, farmers were clearing what it's known in the rural South as new ground. There was the Blanton brothers had purchased a several hundred acre tract of land which formerly had been in timber. They were in the timber business, but they decided that this property would be more valuable if it were cleared and
used for agriculture, so they cut the timber. And in order to prepare the land for agriculture, you've got to remove the stumps and the roots in the ground so that it can be plowed, and it has the land has to be shaped. We're doing this and using what's call as a chisel plow, or more coloquially called a root rate, which is a type of plow that you pull behind a tractor that has big times that dig into the soil perhaps eight or ten to twelve inches deep,
depending on what kind of flower you're using. These grabbed the roots under the ground and actually pull them out of the ground, almost rake them out of the ground. So you've cleared the stumps. You're going through and getting up the smaller roots so you can plant it and
lo and behold. They're driving along one afternoon and the plow hangs up on something underground and brother, one of the brothers was driving the tractor and stopped and looked back there, and he called his other brother who came over and looked in the ground, and it looked like they'd hit an underground box of some sort. You know, what is this doing here? You know, in the middle
of nowhere. I should comment that this was south of Valdosta, perhaps a ten or fifteen minute drive from Wilcox Outdoor Advertising, not that far, but it was in a rural area. Again, I want to stress at Valdosta is not is an island of urbanity and a sea of royality. You don't have to go very far before you're in the country, right, And this was on a dirt road not that far away.
And so he looked down there and said, well, let's just see if we can't jerk it out of the ground with the rout right by catching one of the times on the box and just pulling it up. And when he did, he noticed there were bones in the box. And it's like, oh, like this is a problem. And
so the police were called. They came to the site immediately there was an investigation and site that crime seeing people were called as well and Keler being notified, and I remember the police auxiliary was also there to see the box being dug up, and it was he who identified this as being similar to the missing box that had been noted by his father in law right after Helen Hikes went missing. So that was the first sort of serious clue that something was going on the box
was there was obviously an investigation. It didn't take very long to develop to discover that the skeleton. There was a skeleton inside this box, along with a number of other findings which I'll get to in a moment. The skull was taken to a dentist too rapidly identify this as being the remainders of Helen Heinz based on some dental work that he had done earlier.
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop for these messages.
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You talked about the discovery of this box, and but other than Helen Hayes soon to be identified Skelton, in this box, there are some contentious things in regards to rigor mortis and dismemberment. As we mentioned in the opening, we talked about dismemberment.
Right what the situation is there, there were some other very important things discovered under the box. Under the box and that's the key. It was apparently thrown into the grave before the box of the ersat's grave. Before the box was were address and underclothing fra Patty's girdle, that kind of thing, and a set of at least one set of keys there. Those were important. They were under
the box and so those are important things. And the dismember months the dismemberment was not initially known or noted despite the small size of the box, you have to understand that the box was kind of torn up a bit as they tried to get it out of the ground. And it's hard to realize how a person who measures five feet nine inches it could be in that box,
but apparently she was. And later on when there was when we get to that part, someone noted that she had been dismembered, and later they re examined the bones and saw signs of that.
Now, how do police proceed with this very new development? These same people were there were like Lois Arnold, the assistant police chief that was dismissing this case. How does this proceed? And who comes into this case as well?
Well, you have to understand that this was a complicated and uncertain case. With the discovery of the body, everybody everyone said, oh gosh, and the police started investigating. Well, it didn't take them very long to realize that here is a woman who was at her place of employment who goes missing and her remains are found inside of a box that came from her place of employment. So obviously the prime suspects were people who worked there. So
there was killer and his fallen and the remainder. Of the employees were a number of African American males who did the who did the sign work. They were brought in and interviewed in some detail, and one of them said remarked that her legs appeared to have been severed, and the police said, oh gosh, we didn't see that.
And the examination initially so between, but they would in the months that followed re exhume her remains compared, but re exum her body having examined, and there were certain cut marks on the bones that appeared strongly to suggest that the legs had back been severed from the body in order to put this her body inside this box.
The investigation dragged on. By April nineteen eighty one, the prime suspects appeared to be Keller the son and Foxy the father, plus two African American males, one of whom was quite elderly and was beginning to sound a little
bit as if he were having memory parls. Once the police thought they had a good case, in early July nineteen eighty one, which was approximately seven months a little bit more than seven months after discovery of the body, they arrested Keller on a charge of murder and arrested at the same time, he's falled in two black males as conceding a death.
Right, and that's Ed Rentz. He was a seventy seven year old man, you say, and Lorenzo Marshall sixty nine, So they're both and both longtime employees. That's correct, and also the right away Keller calls will B. Coleman, local attorney who he was related to by marriage.
Yes, once Keller. Once the police showed up at Keller's house in the middle of night. He came to the door and according to his account, was surprised that they showed up, but they told him that he needed to come downtown so we can talk about things, and he kept saying why. The police asked politely, do you want to get a lawyer? And he said, why should I
need a lawyer? And they told his wife at that point as quite as he needed one, and they said we're arresting him for murder, at which point he asked for a lawyer and called his wilber Coman. Cohan was a very good lawyer and was one of the integral members of Keller's defense team. Thereafter, he was taken to jail and In the meantime, his father and ed Rintz and Lorenzo Marshall, the two other black males, were arrested and while taken to jail the next day they were
bonded out and everybody went home. But that started again along legal saga you talk about.
What was brought in was famed attorney Bobby Lee Cook, highly respected high profile cases, and Lamar Cole was the chosen as the district attorney. And then they had to have a committal hearing to make sure there was enough evidence to take before the grand jury. What is what was it the state reveal at that time, Well.
The statement basically reviewed the review of the testimony of the black employees that they had in fact been contacted on that night of August thirty first, nineteen seventy two by their employer who and again the testimony was a little inconsistent from one to the other, but basically they were picked up, they were told to load a box in the back of the pickup truck, they were told to drive that they rode went in the pickup truck with Keller and his father to a place away from
town which is where the box was found, and they were told to dig a hole. Keller and his father watched while they died and dug a hole about waste deep, at which time the rain started, so they had to quit and go back. As a separate bit of testimony, they asked what was in the box. One of the two ed Rint said that it was the body of Ms. Hanks, who at the time was nude, whose legs had been cut off and were put in in a separate package
inside that box. And this the order of the bones had been jumbled up when when it was being excavated off. It was not anything that My perception was that it wasn't anything that police did in error, but trying to jerk it out of the ground with a plow sort
of jumble things up inside the box. That was testimony that came up, came in so they felt like they had sufficient of it, sufficient of it to hold Keller and his fall and buying them over at that time, I should say that it concealing of death was a misdemeanor in Georgia and is now felling, and so Keller was charged. Obviously they were felling a homicide. No others were charged with Mister Menu.
Neeless to say by September fourth, there's a grand jury indictment, and so how does it go for there? What's house the proceedings?
Well, first of all, they had hired Bobby Lee Cook, and of course I'm sure many listeners are familiar with Bobby Lee Cook, who passed away, I believe last year, one of one of the America's premier criminal defense attorneys. Probably had participated in the Wayne Williams Murna trial right also in the Midnight The Garden of Good and Evil. What did one of the trials there? He was said to be the role model for Matlock, something that he was kind of halfway, but he was extremely well done.
I live in this part of the world down here, and I never one going out of the courthouse square one day and seeing this fancy Rolls Royce park there and I said, I said, who is that? I said, Oh, that's Bobby Lee Cook. He always comes in the show with Earl's Royce and so he had a certain style about it, and he was known to be a wizard in the courtroom. At least he had a reputation that he carefully burnished to make sure that everyone knew he
was a wizard in the courtroom. So he was also very, very expensive, according to everything I could find out, and the Wilcox just could afford him. So they are You asked what happened between the time of the indictment and the time of the eventual trial, which was scheduled for early nineteen eighty two, There was a series of liminary hearings, motions and so forth that precede most trials. Nothing of drum, nothing dramatic, happened in that time period.
What I thought was interesting. I don't know how typical it is from state to state, but the Hanks family hired a special prosecutor to assist Lamar Cole in the prosecution.
That is correct, and that's no longer the practice in the state, but it has been a traditionally along practice in Georgia that the family can hire their own special prosecutor to assist. There obviously changes in the forty odd years since the trial, and that was one. Also, there are other such things as the number of strikes when interviewing the potential jurors. It used to be that one side got meant the defense got twice as many strikes
as the prosecution, and so forth. Those evolved changed That interesting.
Interesting. Let's talk about this trial and the fundamentals, the prosecution's fundamentals, what they are trying to focus on and emphasize before we talk about Bobby Lee Cook and WILLB. Coleman and their approach.
The prosecution's case was made difficult by the fact that it was a case of circumstantial circumstantial evidence. And you say, oh gee, well, you have to think about it. Many, if not most, violent crimes are frequently not witnessed by anyone except the victim and the perpetrate right rave and murder and things like that, so these cases are often circumstantial cases. The motivation here was felt to be a sexual one. Keller had been known to be harassing his
as secretary, and that seemed to be well documented. He denied it, where there were others who who seemed to give good testimony. The other thing was the discrepancy in the timelines that were given by the indicted, that is, the Willcoxes versus what the investigators could come up with.
It appears, based on the investigators of evidence, that the Wilcoxes could have arrived home as early as perhaps three point fifteen or three point thirty, and that the police left and they didn't show up at the party until nine o'clock. So it looks like there's a period minimum of three hours an hour and a half in the afternoon and an hour and a half in the evening after the police leave of the Wilcox advertising that are
unaccounted for. And it was the prosecution's contention that this serioit of was when the body was hidden initially and later they made an attempt to bury it. In testimony from the from the Rents and Lorenzo Marshall, the two employees, it was said that they were unable to complete to burial that night so came back at a later time. It may have been later that evening or it may have been another day. You have to understand that work
eight years. By that time, it had been actually about ten years since the event, and their memories seemed faded. But it was clear that they hidn't bury of the body initially, but came back either later that night or within a day too and buried the body. Those that was the main things, and there were other things to some other part of us, which I'll discuss if you'd.
Like, sure, but let's talk about the Bobby Lee Cook and what he he how he approaches the cross examination, and where he focuses in terms of testimony. He believes that police have been misconduct in their behavior.
It's interesting to read transcripts. Transcripts are like the script for play, and you almost have to read them out loud to really understand them, and it's fascinating. Cook was nothing else of real showman in the courtroom, and there's reference made to him raising his voice and whispering at times and just being very dramatic in the way he spoke.
He was given very much to hyperbole, saying this is the worst case of anything that I've ever seen in my three or four decades of practicing law, and so for what's happening to that effect, and he basically sought to focus on the fact that there was well, I say Cook and COVID as well, there was no hard
evidence to tie Caler Wilcox to the case. I want to make it clear in case it's not at this point we're only talking about the trial of Caler Wilcox because he was the only one who came to trial, and I don't want to make that right, Okay, there was no hard evidence to tie tie Keller to the murder. No, this was in the days, of course before DNA, but there was nothing else that specifically tied him to the murder.
The fact that the the witnesses, all of whom were African American, were interrogated harshly to say the least was not anything that police should be proud of, and was contended to be something that was may have tested some doubt as to the veracity of their testimony. And basically they just attacked the case left and right. Any any bit of any bit of evidence or any conclusion that that prosecution drew the defense whild say, oh, that's just crazy.
Let's talk about the crucial evidence that was possibly inadvertently thrown into that grave and provided evidence at this trial. Talk about those keys.
There was several things one have to give Lamar Cole credit. One was the this was this was said to be a sex crime. And one of the things they noted was that the deceased Helen Hanks apparently had been strangled with a rope. There was evidence presented by experts that
this rope made probably was looped around her neck. There was evidence that her clothing, that is, her dress, she had on a blue dress brad underclosed had been cut off her body and presumably presumably were when she was tied up and everything, and these these were all and similar things. The main thing that seemed to be important was the keys. If you recall earlier, I said that when James Hanks came up there, I came to the
place to the office. There he saw kel Wilcox digging through Helen's pocketbook and the comment was about she won't be needing these anymore. Well, two things. When they got back to the office later it was quote unquote discovered that the key and the lot to the gas pump was missing. Kenn Hinks would have been in charge of that. Those keys were apparently in her pocketbook and were apparently
given to Keller. Whether or not they got accidentally caught up into stuff that was thrown into the grave, that was a major consideration. So it may have been that this was accidentally leaving evidence. The second thing was that Keller there was a pickup truck it was very described as tan or something like that that Keller drove. There
were only two keys to that pickup truck. They obviously drove it there and then obviously drove it back it was Keller's truck, so he had to have one key to crank it up with, and the other key to that truck was found in the bottom of the grave, so that was considered very strong evidence in terms and physical evidence that supported the prosecution's contention that Keller was in in fact, the murderer.
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Now despite Bobby Lee Cook and will By Coleman and their best efforts to cast out uh Keller. When he testifies at that trial, you say, doesn't do himself any good, not what he had wanted. He has to stick to his father's timeline and basic story. What is the verdict? The jury deliberates for a short period of time.
Tell us about that verdict was that Keller was found guilty of murder and was sentenced to life in prison for the murder and additional twelve years for concealing and death, which was the misbemanum that he was all convicted of. The jury was polled later and they were There was a long period of several appeals over the years, and
one of they were initially reluctant to speak. One of them, said that he was a little uncertain until Foxy Willcox, the fall that took the stan and testified definitively about the timeline, and then Keller had to back him up, and he said he realized that the Willcoxes were simply lying, and he said everything else fell into place at that point. It was Keller ended up going to prison for initially for a while.
Yes, you talk about it. He goes to prison, and obviously will be Coleman as you say, he's outraged at this verdict and continues to want to appeal this sentence and conviction. So there are numerous appeals, and there are state appeals, and when those are exhausted, it goes to federal appeals.
Tell us what.
Happens in the case of a Judge Owens.
Judge Wilber Owen was he's recently been a station within the last few years. It was a federal judge from Macon, Georgia, which was the area of federal court. He was prevailed upon the defense to look at this case. Thought he was involved fairly early, but said that he could not get involved as a judge until they had run the state appeals. The appeals basically for a new trial or an overturned verdict, who ran the entire gament of the state judicial system to the Georgia Supreme Court, in which
case it went to the federal system. Wilber Owen was outraged, he stated because of the way the African American witnesses were interviewed, and stated that he believed that the evidence when their testimony was excluded, that the evidence was insufficient to convict Keller, and so basically in early nineteen eighty late nineteen eighty five, he let him out of jail.
He let him, freed him from the state prison system and said that unless new evidence was found that Keller was completely off the hook Q under the he could not be retried because the double jeffty cause that I'm just not allowed to repeat charges for the same offense. And it looked like Keller was going to rejoin his second wife and get on with his life.
But the state chose to appeal this system to the in the federal court system, and Owens Owens ruling was overturned and Keller was sent back to jail.
After a brief a period of I recall about four and a half months of freedom there for a while the case eventually went to the U. S. Supreme Court.
The U.
Supreme Court did not did not think that it needed to be reviewed, and they confirmed the opinion of the Eleventh Circuit Court, which is the federal district that we're in.
It's interesting they affirmed the overturned pardon me, Jude Jowens' decision.
Right, I'm sorry if I didn't say that correctly. They did overturn Jude Joryns' decision, forgive me, And it was the federal system that said, well back to prison.
Right, and then that over that overturning was affirmed, and regardlesse of the language. But you said, what was very interesting was the amount of reversals when you looked, and when they looked, or when authorities looked, that Owen had the most reversals of any federal judge.
Well, you know this is if I can inject a little personal note in here when I write. When I write something like this, I don't think that I should be editorializing. I don't think I should be, you know, giving my opinion as an author. I wanted I want to do the Joe Roddy, just the facts, man. I want to present present the store as it happened and let the reader make his or her own decision. But in this case it was it was a controversial decision,
to say the very least overturned conviction. Owen's decision decision was very controversial to to free color. And at that time I just happened to notice in the American Bar Journal ABA Journal, American Bar Association Journal that someone had looked at the which federal judges had their rulings overturned, and Wilbo wins at the time it was the winner.
He'd had more rulings overturned than any other judge. He got very enraged at this, but that was the case, and this was sent another ruling of which he was overturned. It was It wasn't my research. It was a new quote in an article from the American ABA Journal.
Right, you talk about Keller trying for parole and being denied. Of course, the Hanks family is obviously in opposition, and he states that he claims his innocence throughout this parole process. How does that change? When does that change tell us about him finally getting parole.
He changed lawyers after he'd been in prison for a while, and in after he'd served nearly twenty five years. He hired a different law firm to represent him. The law firm and one of the attorneys in that law was actually the former Attorney general who had put him back in jail, put him back in prison by peeling his ruling to the collaborate circuit. Now the same individual is now in private practice, so he agrees to take up Keller's case and get him out of the prison. Yeah,
they tried to. They tried to get him released on the merits, that is to say that the same arguments that had been rejected by multiple course, and when that didn't work, they tried simthing to say, well, he's just served too long in prison. It was twenty five years, and so eventually that worked and he was freed in two thousand and eight. I believe has been has been pre since.
And what I found was very very interesting, and as you right as well, is that he denied that he had committed the crime for so long. Then this he brings in a brings in a firm, a law firm to help him. And basically one of the criteria for parole always is that this recognition that you committed the responsibility for tip or the crime itself and some kind of genuine or a show of remorse.
Well, that's that's true, and I should address that he was represented by Mike Mike Bowers and Tom Morgan who was the attorneys for his appeal, and in he had he had sometime during this time frame written a letter to the parole board where he quote unquote confessed and in this letter, it's handwritten letter and I have a copy of it. It was in the files. It says that he regretted I'm quoted. I want to acknowledge and accept responsibility for the death of Helen Hinks on August
thirty one, nineteen seventy two. Quote we got into an argument and I lost my temper. I did not mean to hurt her. End quote. He denied sexual assault, stated he was not present, and Miss Hinks's body was buried. And the headline on the local paper when this was made public said was, quote will Cox confesses. Question mark this confession where it was one where he took response stability and admitted his culpability to admitted his culpability and
expressed his sorrow. But it didn't really match the fact, and so it was considered by many to be a somewhat cynical document to get him paroled, but he was paroled and has been out since that period of time.
Yes, very very interesting. You talk about karma and you call it karma in your epilogue only six inches deeper, and that it's importance.
Let me let me get personal here, and and you know, people say, you know why you shot, why'd you choose to write this book, or why why this? And that you know followed this case. I'm in nineteen eighty two. I was absolutely fascinated by this case. And back in the day, I used to read the newspaper in the morning when I come into my office and sit there, and if it was something fascinating, I tear it out,
put it in a drawer. About once a year I look at it and I realized at the end of the year I had just a whole huge stack of clippings about this. This was in the day for computers. I had a whole stack of clippings about the Wilcox murder case. And I don't know what fascinated me, but in writing this story, one thing that struck me is this all of us, in some way, shape or form, lesser or greater have a fear of something that we have done, or something we're afraid that someone might find
out about. It may be something minor. Perhaps when you were five years old you stole a candy bar from the local convenience store and your mother said, don't you ever do that. What may be that you're an adult and you cheated on your spouse but managed to get away with a group from your employer. But everybody has something,
something somewhere that there just don't want made puppet. Can you imagine what it's like to be hand some wealthy married have everything you want, and at night, when you turn out the lights and you're all alone by yourself in the bed, you sit there and say, there's a buried body out there, and if it ever is found, my whole life will blowed and everything I have will go bad. The situation here, everyone's life was taking one direction,
one trajectory, good, bad, and different whatever. And then when this box was dug up, everything changed. And if the box had only been very six inches deeper, none of this would happen and we would be having this conversation. That's the fascinating thing about this book, and that's why I'm label the last little one paragraph epilogue Carmel Krma.
Yeah. I think it's also interesting and similar to many stories that the victim inadvertently helps solve this case very much by that dress catching up into that padlock. And I'm sure that some of that evidence was inadvertently thrown into that gravesite. I want to thank you so much, William Rowlings for six inches Deeper The Disappearance of Helen Hanks. Do you have a website that people might want to take a look at more.
Fur you do, and if you can remember my name, you can get it. It's simply www dot William Rawlings w l l I A r A w l I n gs William Rawlings dot com. And it has my speaking engagements. It has a review of my books, both fiction and nonfiction. This book, by the way, was I think my tenth book. My twelfth book has just been released, and my thirteenth book is coming out next year. So I continue to ride.
Thank you so much. Six inches Deeper the Disappearance of Helen Hanks. Thank you so much, William Rawlings. You have a great evening and good night.
Thank you