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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 VTK 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.
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South Dakota's Mathis family murders brought death and deception to the heartland. It was perhaps the most infamous murder case in state history. The Donna Mathis was shot twice in the head at point blank range inside the family's metal shed serving as their makeshift home. Two of her three children, ages two and four, were also shot in the head. The brutality of the killing shocked the state and set
off a frenzy of law enforcement activity. Despite its intensity, the investigation never found the murderer or the murder weapon. Though charged with the crime, the husband was acquitted, leaving the door open for endless speculation about what really occurred on that late summer morning of September eighth, nineteen eighty one. With renewed insight from those involved, veterans. South Dakota journalist Noel Hamil explores this cold case of murder and mystery
that still haunts the Mount Rushmore State. The book they were featuring this evening is South Dakota's Mathist Murders Horror in the Heartland, with my special guest, journalist and author Noel Hamil. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for this interview.
Noel Hamil, thank you for having me.
Dan, thank you so much. First off, tell our audience your connection to this area and to this story.
I practiced journalism in South Dakota most of my career. I was born and raised here, and although the crime happened forty years ago, it just haunted me all those years for two reasons. Primarily, one was never solved. As you mentioned, the husband has acquitted, there were no other suspects who were detained or arrested. And to the painous nature of the crime, two young children and a farm wife both shot in their sleep point bank in the range.
And I just decided on retirement that I would take the time and research it and see if I could pull something together.
Now, tell us about this little community, Mount Vernon, and also about the Mathis family itself and the circumstances they find themselves in that they're living. As we talked about in the introduction, in a makeshift home, what are the reasons for that, and just tell us a little bit about the family itself and its makeup.
Well. The Mathis Farm is about eight miles north of Mount Vernon, which is a small farming community in South Dakota. Many many small farming communities. But in July of that year, their house separate an electrical fire. It had started in the basement. It was deemed suspicious, but no charges were ever brought. Two weeks later, the house again caught fire,
this time maybe because of a lightning strike. The house was uninhabitable and so they decided the family decided to move into a metal machine shed actually a multipurpose shed just close to the home, and they moved their beds in there, and they decided to live there until a new house could be built. It was somewhat primitive. They didn't have plumbing or innure bathrooms, but they decided that they could live there until the new house was completed.
So that's why they were in this makeshift home at the time of the murders.
And you say that it was a typical farm family. They were church going and seemingly no enemies. But take us to September eighth, nineteen eighty one, and the deputy sheriff is a man named Doug Kirkus, and he gets a call at home at three fifty four am from somebody that he knows that he went to school with John Mathis. What does John Mathis essentially say to him and then tell us about what Sheriff Kirkus encounters when he arrives at the farm.
Well, as you mentioned, they were actually classmates at Mount Vernon High School small school twenty seven. In the class they knew each other. Deputy Kurkus lived in Mount Vernon, and when the call came in from John Mathis, John Mathis said something to the effect Doug, come quick, somebody's shot my family. So Kirkus immediately addresses himself, goes out the door and drives at high speed to the Mathis place. What he finds there is, you know, a matthis farm.
He's a little bit concerned because he doesn't know if if the murderer is still on site or is lurking behind the building. Maybe he is still in the machine. Shit. He doesn't know any of this, so he's very cautious,
but he quickly discovers that he's not alone. He sees headlights approaching and it's actually John Mathis's father, who is also arriving at the place, and when he gets out of his vehicle, he sees that the elder Mathis is carrying a long gun, and so Debbie Kirkis gets out of his car and they approach the building together.
Now what do they find the conditions of the Mathis family.
Well, they open the door carefully again for the reasons that I've mentioned, and what they see is John Mathis kneeling at the bed of one of his children. They approach him and see that he's wounded. Kirkus sees that he has sustained a wound to his left arm, and
they don't see anything else in the building. But Kirkus then looks at the beds containing Leadonna Mathis and Brian Mathis and Patrick Mathis, and he sees immediately that they've been that they've been shot, and he tries to engage John Mathis, but Mathis himself is injured and seems to be in some kind of shock. Kirkus administers a bandage to his wound, and by that time, of course, the other help is on the way.
So what is the story that John Mathis relates to authorities.
John Mathis tells Deputy Kirkus that he was awakened at some point during the by his youngest son, Patrick, who's two years old, and his son told his dad that he needed to go potty. And as I said, they don't have a bathroom, but they have a bucket over by the door, and so John Matthis helps his son relieve himself in this bucket, puts him back to bed, but decides since he's up, he'll go out and check
his livestock. Is he raises hogs, and he wanted to check on some livestock, so he did that, and on his return to the metal building, he told Deputy Kirkus that the door burst open and this man rushes him
rushes out of the building, wilding a gun. John Matthis says that he struggled with the man, tried to grab the gun, did not succeed, the gun goes off, shoots him in the arm, and he at some point passes out for twenty or thirty minutes or longer, and he relates this to the deputy and he said, when he woke up up, he went into the building and called Kurtains and the mask man was I don't I think it was a hood as I recall that may describe people's work.
Now from that account, he's taken to the hospital for his wounds, yes, But from that account, you say, authorities began a extensive search of the property while people are also going to the hospital. Authorities are going to the hospital to question mathis so tell us about this search.
Well, one of Kirkus's jobs, or one of the things that he did when he was alerted, is that he called dispatch, who in turn alerted Sheriff Lyle Swinson and also the Department of Criminal Investigation, which is based in Pier. But they they had other agents and so investigators from
the DCI arrived on the scene that morning. Sheriff Swainson arrived and the investigat at the scene begins trying to find any clues they can who committed the murder and possibly a murder weapon, anything that investigators could do to try to shed some light on this case. So that happened right away that morning after John Mathis was taken to the Methodist Hospital in Mitchell so that his arm could be treated.
Tell us about what is found at that crime scene in terms of in terms of bullets or spent cartridges, and also tell us what is written on the shed in gold spray paint. And by the way, the name a part of them what's written is misspelled.
Tell us about this.
Yeah, an oddity on the large doors to the machine shed which allows heavy equipment to be moved in and out, someone had spray painted in gold paint. Mathis sucks shit. I hate to say that to yourdience, but that's what it said. But they misspelled the Mathless name. They spelled it in a phus and so that was spray painted
on the door and investigators saw that. They also found five spent twenty two caliber cartridges inside the building adjacent to the crime to where the murders occurred, between the beds near the beds, and then they not right away, but later on found a sixth cartridge outside the door. So in all they found six twenty two caliber cartridges at the seat.
So they don't find anything in the first day of an investigation of searching the property. Despite this extensive search. So they decide to search further on this property, don't they.
They expanded their search outside the building. This is a pretty typical farmstead. It had a number of outbuildings, nine I believe, and so they began to search each building and around each building for other clues. What they really want to find, of course, is a murder weapon. They conduct that search in coming days. One of the things that they had to do, since this was a hog operation, they had holding tanks for hog waste. They had to
pump those out. They even had a large we call it a waste pit underneath the hog building that John Mathis had visited earlier that morning. They had to pump it out down to four feet and then they sent to personnel in wetsuits to try to see if there was a gun that had been thrown into this pit under this building. The search was extensive. They didn't find anything on the farmstead. They started looking at the road, ditches and land that immediately surrounded the farm.
They walked.
They had a lot of people involved. They rode horseback in the ditches out as thorough as they thought that they could be, but they found nothing.
You talk about the two people the two detectives at the hospital questioning Mathis, and his story, as you write, seems to add detail and somewhat change. Tell us what he does say to Kirkus and Greeling at the hospital regarding again hearing a car and other details that he added to his story.
Well, he did say that when he went outside after he had helped his son, he did say that he thought he heard an engine running, but he couldn't determine where it was. And he also said that his dog was barking, and so he wanted to put his dog away as well, but he wasn't. I guess those are
the two things that he mentioned. I guess because he he, you know, again to support the narrative that there was this this hooded man that committed these murders, but they be The revelation from a law enforcement perspective at the hospital was that they found a unspent bullet in John Matthis's pocket and he told investigators that, yeah, his son had found that lying in the ground and he brought it to his dad, and so that's where that bullet
had come from. And so yet another you know, bullet added the mystery of bullets and cartridges at the murdercy.
Now, how do police proceed with this investigation regarding this mass man? How serious do investigators take this assertion that this mass man? And do they look at any other potential suspects.
Well, initially they didn't have any reason to be skeptical of John Mathis's story. After all, I mean, here's a man. Those were his family in the metal building. He's the one that reported the crime. He said, get out of here quick. Somebody shot in my family. And so they do.
I guess the first inkling that the law enforcement had suspicions was that when they investigated the area in front of the building where this struggle took place between John Mathis and the hooded man, and where John Mathis said he was shot, investigators were not able to find any evidence of a struggle. They didn't find any tracks there, they didn't find any blood there. And if he was shot and lying there on the ground for twenty or thirty or more minutes, they thought, well there ought to
be some evidence of that. There ought to be some bloodstains on the ground. They were not able to find any and so, and that was very early on. And so with that in mind, they became suspicious yes of John Mathis.
Can you tell me that Svenson believes that he takes a call from a psychic door the Allison tell us about this strange part of the story.
Dorothy Allison was a psychic from New Jersey who claimed to have helped law enforcement solved a number of crimes. Perhaps the most famous one was the Patty Hirst crime. So the psychic said that she would be glad to help, and Swinson was interested. This came a little bit later on, after they were unable to turn up anything on the
place she offered to help. She had enough information about the crime that Swinson thought that maybe she would be valuable, but the state didn't want to have any part of that. The state figured that if a psychic was brought in on the prosecution side that they would be laughed out of town. They just didn't want any thing to do with the psychic, and Swinson never pushed that. But it was an interesting sidelight to the cakes because they were
having no success in solving the case. They couldn't find any suspects other than the husband, They couldn't find the murder weapon, and so they were I don't want to stay desperate, but they were looking for help wherever they could find it.
You talk about the attorney General, Mark meyer Henry, Yes, he believed at this point a few weeks in that despite distalled investigation, somewhat that he had enough evidence to impanel a grand jury. And so he would hear a testimony from witnesses connected to the case. Who did he get to assist him and how do they proceed?
They had a team five or six people involved in the state prosecution. Meyer Henry was the state's attorney general at that time, highly regarded experienced. He looked at the investigation that had been conducted by the DCI and the Sheriff's office and determined that they did have enough evidence to ask for a grand jury being paneled, which it was. They presented their evidence to the grand jury, and very
short of the grand jury indicted John Mathis. So you know, they the I would say that meyer Henry, in consultation with the investigators, determined that they're just there. Weren't any other suspects. John Mathis was the only suspect that made any sense, and so they were going to They asked for an indictment and they got it.
Now there's a new judge Thomas and Hurst, and then but Mathis is given bond. But a couple of the conditions are very interesting. As we were reading the story that he was to not contact a neighbor named Kim Tatum, which happened to be the family babysitter, and also the donna's parents, the girl ACKs, who were taking care of their infant son Matthiss infant son Dwayne during the time of these murders and during that home renovation. So tell us about Kim Tatum and what she has to say.
Kim Tatum was the neighbor girl who from age thirteen or fourteen had been coming over. They lived directly across the road from the Matthis place, within walking distance, and she had been retained by John Matthis to help with chores on the farm since she was thirteen years old. The reason that he was ordered not to have any contact with her or her family was because he had an interest in Kim Tatum that went beyond just an
employer employee relationship. He was kind of smitten by Kim Tatum even though she was young, and so he was One of the conditions was that he couldn't have any contact with her or her family, the girlocks Lodonna's parents who were taken care of the month old Dwayne. He was also forbidden to talk to them during this during this time as well. So those were two conditions that the court imposed, by the way you mentioned and Hurst he was the second judge. Judge bog was the judge
who ordered the grand jury. And after that indictment, why John Mathis asked that he recuse himself, which he can do because he didn't think that he could. Mathis didn't think that he could get a fair trial in Mitchell and wanted a new judge, which was granted.
We talk about this grand jury that's impaneled. They learn a lot of information and of course as a reader, we learned a lot of information about John Mathis, his father Vern and his mother Pearl. He was born in nineteen fifty one, and he had two siblings, Verne Junior and Norma, Gena's sister. And they talk about how LaDonna Gerlak and John Mathis met. So tell us a little bit about what's found out about how they met and when they were soon married.
Well, it's pretty common in small rural communities, you know, to have dances or other public events and John matthis this met Madonna, who was out of high school working at a bank. Smart girl, attractive. He met her, and the courtship ensued, and the families were fine with it. The girl ocks thought that he was an up and coming young man. He was. The family was successful, and so there was no reason to not endorse that marriage. From the Mathis standpoint, he was looking for a mate,
somebody could help him with the farming operation. Somebody was smart, and LaDonna Mathis build a bill. So yeah, they met and were married.
In terms of anything particular about his personality, you talked about that, from all accounts, he was just a hard worker. They had his best friend talk about how they were both very, very interested in farming.
Only he didn't play any.
Extra extracurricular activities in school whatsoever. He joined a National Guard after he graduated, and he was considered by everybody as quiet, not a fighter, and didn't use drugs or alcohol.
Yeah, he was some people might even call him introverted. His father, by all accounts, Vern wasn't authoritarian type of dad, and John Mathis grew up in a household where hard work was expected, actually insisted upon. If John Mathis went to a dancer or some other activity and got home light. His dad would make sure that he was up all the earlier the next day. Hard work, by all accounts, was what John Mathis was about. He didn't have he
didn't have hobbies. He would worked till one two o'clock in the morning, his neighbors said, and his family said. So that's the profile that emerged of John Mathis Madonna. It was a good partnership because Madonna was the business at the operation. She worked in a bank. She was good with figures. She tried to if John wanted to buy a piece of expensive equipment or something of land nature, she would make sure that they looked hard on it
and maybe didn't make that purchase. And so she was sort of the business end of the operation and John Mathis was the worker. But he was also fairly creative and he could fix things, he could renovate things. He ran a good operation.
Now with this grand jury, there's enough information to inform the prosecutor and that they have enough information enough evidence pardon me to go to trial. And so that trial is delayed a couple of times, but it's set for April nineteen eighty two. So tell us who the adversarial team is. You talked about the prosecutor meyer Henry. Who is the defense team set for this historic South Dakota trial.
The more interesting aspects of this case is that Mark meyer Henry, who'd been elected Attorney General in South Dakota, was from Gregory, South Dakota, another small community, farming community. The lead defense attorney, Rick Johnson, was also from Gregory, and he and Mark meyer Henry were in the same high school. They played football together. Johnson was a couple of years ahead of Mark meyer Henry, but they were clatt They were in the same school, and they were
actually grew to be good friends. They were both attorneys. They went to the same law school, the University of South Dakota, and they were good friends. So when Mathis needed defense help, he called the Johnson offer, and Rick Johnson and his associate Wally Ecklund, another branch boy from that area, took on the Mathis defense And so, yeah, one of the and they were and their wives were good friends. It was one of those little quirks of
eight that happens. You have a high profile murder case which had been moved from Mitchell Davison County to Yate and not a change of venue because Johnson and Exlin contended that the pre trial publicity was such that he that Mathis couldn't get a fair trial in Davison County, and Judge Anherst granted that change of venue. But the case involved I would say at that time that the Johnson Law firm was one of the top two or
three defense firms in the entire state. So it did pit the best defense attorneys against someone who was perceived as an excellent attorney general.
And this was a death penalty case if they tried, if they dared to do that. And what was the press reaction to this case.
Well, it was the press state wide was all over this case. It's a very high profile case because of the nature of the case. Farm wife and two children murdered in their sleep. The accused was the husband. The nature of the case was one thing. You had the principals in the case being the Attorney General's office versus one of the leading defense law firms in the case. That was another part of it. But I think just
the singular nature of the crime itself. You know, South Dakota has had a fair number of high profile murder cases going back to eighteen seventy seven, while Bill Hiccock and Yanketon, but now Yanketon was the site of easily the most famous murder case since then.
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this trial. The earliest argument, what basically the prosecution the center of their case, and what the defense says is the center of their case, and how this trial proceeds.
The prosecution had determined that John Mathis committed the murder. They looked around at the evidence. They couldn't find any reason to believe that there was a mass man. They couldn't find any evidence of a struggle. They decided that the wound of John Mathis must have been self inflicted. They brought in experts in the trial that blood sample experts, ballistic test Berks, and they decided that really mainly by
the process of elimination. I know Mark meyer Hener said, sometimes the case is, you know, you you look at what's not there, and that controls the charges that you bring. And they decided that there just there wasn't any other suspects and that John Mathis had had made up this story. Their case was and I can get to that later, but there was it was circumstantial case, which doesn't mean that it isn't a good case. It just means that
didn't have the evidence maybe that they wanted. The defense, on the other hand, said that no, John Mathis was was a loving father. It happened as he said it. And by the way, the prosecution did a slip shot investigation. They didn't consider other suspects. There's other possible is that they didn't investigate and they brought in their own battery of experts to try to counter with the prosecution. It was unusual, I guess, to have John Mathis testify, and
he did testify. The defense thought it was important that he tell his story. He told the same story at trial as he did during the investigation. Although the prosecution was quick to point out that there were some differences in the testimony that he gave during the r injury compared to what he gave a trial, but basically he told the same story at trial, and despite prosecutor meyer Henry's best efforts, they weren't able to break him down a trial and his testimony pretty much stood under a
withering attack by meyer Henry. There was one case where meyer Henry point blank, you know, asked him about his relationship with Kim Tatum, because that was the primary moment that they had settled on, and that was one of the areas where his story did very a little bit. You know. Initially he said during grand jury that he only touched her once, and by the time the testimonia trial occurred, he had to acknowledge that there was more
to it than that. Although it was described as a quasi sexual relationship, there was never any sexual intercourse.
What I found most interesting, despite what you said there, is that Kim Tatum said some very interesting things that she attributed to John regarding his regret over being married before he met her.
Tell us what she claimed he had said.
Well, Kim Tatum acknowledged that they had had this ongoing I'll just call it a touchy feely relationship, and she always said that she didn't get anything out of it, but he must have because he kept doing it and he would she would tell him to stop, and he would stop. But at some point he said to her that he had wished that he had met her Kim before his current wife LDN And the prosecution seized on that, of course, as a key motivational factor. Meyer Henry was
heard to say that, yeah, he flipped out. He wanted to start his life over, and Kim Tatum was it. But there was never any testimony, either prior to trial or at trial, that Kim Tatum fell toward him as he did toward her.
You talk about a trial, the defense made the claim they talked about the Shody investigation. They also, again has seemed routine now I've heard it many times before where they say, well, you didn't pursue any other we think are tangible.
To other suspects.
So but the thing is that they did say was that the police did not check any engine a vehicle at the farm that night to see that anybody had left, meaning Mathis had left, and it must have been connecting to the disposal of that gun of that murder weapon. So tell us what they contend that trial regarding this.
Well, at trial, one of the charges that they made against the prosecution was that it was a slipshot investigation. For example, they didn't check the engine in John Mathis's pickup to see if he'd driven it. Now, this came later and the investigators acknowledged that they didn't check it because if they had, and say that they were able to discover that he had driven, if the engine was warm, that would be an indicator that he had left the place, maybe to dispose of the murder web. But they did
not check his engine. It was later, not the first day of investigation, that a neighbor came by and said, you know, it's kind of strange. John Mathis always backs his pickup into that garage, and I noticed that it was driven in this time. And of course the investigators wondered about that. But when asked about it, Lyles Swinson and other investigators said, look, the morning the investigation, we had no reason to think John Mathis was a suspect.
He's the dad, he's the husband. We didn't think that he had driven someplace because he had called in the crime. So that was the prosecution's explanation for not checking the engine that morning. The defense also accused the state of not pursuing other suspects. They said that it might have been drug related, might have been a drug drug related killing,
a crime. They said that the blood sample testing, the ballistic tests were not properly conducted, and they supported that because they had their own witnesses that contradicted the blood sample outcomes that were conducted by the prosecution's labs. So all these things were used by the defense to paint a picture that the prosecution's case was sloply conducted.
When John Mathis was asked on the stand, I think this is very profound. When he was asked questions like why would this masks man who was capable of shooting your wife in the head twice, your son in the head twice and your other son, why they did not kill you? Why did they leave you as a witness. How did he answer tough questions like that?
You know, John Mathis was described by the defense as a person of low intelligence. They brought in psychiatrists, they brought an experts and said, you know, his IQ was somewhere in the eighties. He's not a smart guy. And yet his answers to the prosecution's questions what he was on the stand were striking to answer your question about what he said. When meyer Henry asked him, you know about aren't you worried about the murder of coming back? Why would he leave you alive and kill your family?
And Matthis said, I wished he would have I wished he would have shot me. That was his answer, and meyer Henry said, well, why is that? And Mathis said, so I could be with my family.
Now.
That pretty much stopped the prosecution questioner. I think in his tracks, at least momentarily.
There were other instances where he again said the right thing, and his very talented attorney elicited those kinds of responses from him. So he he obviously because its acquittal, he really did do a good performance that the jurors seemed to believe. But you say that one of the main things that was a hurdle or an obstacle was the notion. Again, it's hard to believe that in nineteen eighty two people had a hard time believing that a father would kill his kids, didn't he.
Mark meyer Henry said very end that the reason that the state lost that case was because the jurors could not come to grips with the idea that a man could shoot his sons much less while they were sleeping. It wasn't a case where he was in anger. It wasn't, you know, if the kids had done something awful, they were misbehaved children. The jurors just couldn't believe that a dad could shoot his kids that way. Mark Meyer, Henry, who I interviewed four months before he died, said that
after trial. He said it during the anniversary updates of the trial, and he said it four months before he passed. He thought he knew the jury in yankedon. He thought that he could get a conviction, but he said I misjudged the jury. He said, they just they couldn't sign on to that sort of a crime.
Let's use this Noel as an opportunity to stop.
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Details for a second for these messages. Now we get to the we talked about it, but the trial, the conclusion, the verdict, with all these juror jurors, and you talk about and you write, you identify these jurors, and there is follow up interviews, especially with the jury foreman, and what he had to say was very, very interesting, So we can talk about that. But suffice to say is that he is acquitted. What is the press reaction and what is the community reaction to this not guilty verdict.
The community reaction, I think was one of skepticism, maybe even disbelief. I think the community at large, and I'm not just talking about it was most now from Mount
Vernon and the region around Mitchell. But the next day wide people assumed that John Mathis would be convicted, and even his attorney said after the trial at different times that it was just so unfair for the people of South Dakota to continue to harbor the belief that John Mathis was was was Guildy, he was acquitted, and Rick Johnsin said more than once he said, you know, it's just not right now. John Mathis himself, I think one of the titles was not not guilty, but not free.
And the media had done some retrospective stories about how he was coping with with the with life afterward, and and by most accounts he he was in many cases shown he he never was, you know, extroverted or part of the community. But this pushed him even further into the background. So I think that he lived a lonely life following that, by all accounts, and I got that from interviews that I read. You mentioned the jury foreman Hantomichael.
He was one of the last holdouts of a guilty and he and another juror finally came to the conclusion that the evidence just wasn't compelling, It wasn't enough to convict.
What about the bullet found by jurors on the first day of deliberation.
Oh yes, well, one of the defense's positions was that twenty two caliber rifles were everywhere, and bullet cartridges and bullets can be found everywhere because every farm and every branch has one to shoot garments with. The defense used that as a way of explanation for the bullet found in his pocket at the hospital and other cartridges. The cartridges that were found by jurors was on the first day of liberation. They had gone out to eat dinner. They were coming back to the jury room and they
spotted two spent twenty two cartridges on the sidewalk. It was reported that one was found, and it was reported that two were found. But the fact is that the jurors spotted these two cartridges and they were just shocked, and as Hana Michael and a couple of the other jurors said later, my gosh, I guess the defense was correct. I mean, these cartridges are everywhere. They're even on the sidewalk on our way back to the deliberation room. And keep in mind this was after the trial was over.
I mean, this is after all the summations were concluded. This was during the deliberation process. And they did say in interviews following that those cartridges were something that they considered before they came in with the ecquittal. The cartridges, I'll just say this, by all, by most everybody's accounts were planned. Somebody planted those to be seen by the jurors, and Rick Johnson was incensed that anybody would imply or accuse the defense team of doing it. He said, we
didn't have anything to do with it. I don't know how it happened, but most observers, including the state person who later became a judge, said yeah, they were plants because the bullets had been removed from the cartridges. They were never fired. The bullets had been removed, and then the casings were planted alongside one.
You write that this story didn't go away, This most notorious South Dakota murder trial and case didn't go away, and you write about times that it came back up and there was interesting interviews with former players. Can you tell us a little bit about some of those developments that you found.
Well, one of the things that came up, or continued to come up with regard to this case was what possible scenario would there be for the murder of these people? And one of the stories that kept coming up was drug related and this is what the defense tried to plan in the minds of the jurors during the trial, was that the Mathis family was killed because there was one story out there that there'd been a drug party
and Mathis had reported it. Law enforcement broke it up, and people that were in the drug business in the Mitchell area were incensed, and so they ordered the hit. Gary Hanemichael years later contended that he knew what really happened and the real cause of the Mathis murders, and he was quoted as saying, it's much bigger than just the trial and what happened. But when he was asked to elaborate, he would not do it. And he didn't talk to you know, law enforcement about his theory either,
which remains a huge mystery in my mind. In fact, even though he had passed by the time I wrote the book, I did call his wife and asked her if she had ever discussed this theory with him, or if he discussed it with her, and she said no, he'd never discussed it with her. He just didn't think that John Mathis was smart enough to pull off the crime. So, you know, the jury foreman had this theory or speculations, and we'll never know what they were.
You include the infant that was kept at the girlas the Mathis infant was named Dwayne. Thirty years later, a story services and finally he comes forward to defend his father, tell us what he had to say.
Dwayne Mathis was eight months old. He was staying with Adonna's parents at the time of the murders. He was raised by John Mathis at the farm. One of the newspapers, I believe in this case it was the Mental Daily Republic had done an anniversary story and John and Dwayne Mathis had read the story and he took it upon himself to call the newspaper and say, look, my dad isn't being fairly treated by the coverage. And the newspaper said, well, come on and we'll talk about it, and so he did.
He went to the newspaper office. He provided identification and he said, you know, most of the carriage is very one sided. If my dad was this monster that the press makes him out to be, I wouldn't be here today. My dad raised me and he never you know, he was not a severe taskmaster. He never beat me down or anything you might discipline me, but he raised me. And Dwayne said that I wouldn't be here today if he was the person that he's been made out to
be in the press. I interviewed Dwayne Mathis for the book, and he said essentially the same thing. He still lives in the new farmhouse that was built following those fires, and he told me that when he goes into the metal building, he doesn't think about what occurred there. He says, I was only I don't remember any of that. None of that has anything to do with me. And he lives, he lives where the murders took place.
Very very interesting. Near the end of your book, you talk about the fire style nursing home where Verne matthis senior resides, and a nurse's aide one day, as a conversation with him, what does she claim he had to say? And as a result of what she claimed he had to say, what do police do?
A nurse's aid in fire steel nursing home decides to check on Verne Mathis senior before her Shif's hands, he'd not been well and so I think her shift ended, maybe at eleven o'clock, and she goes down to check on him, and while she checks on him, he says something to the effect that he has done something terrible, and she doesn't know what he's talking about, but he says he's done something terrible and he you know, is having trouble dealing with it. So she reports this to
her dad when she gets home from her shift. Now her dad remembers the Mathis trial. This young aide I think she's maybe nineteen or twenty at the time. She doesn't know anything about it, but she reports to her dad. Her dad immediately contacts law enforcement. Now keep in mind Burne Matthews Senior by this time is quite elderly and has had health issues. But law enforcement goes over there to interview him twice. The first time is you know, I mean nothing really is Bllian that they think is
too informational. Then two other law enforcement people interview him and they asked him about the weapon, which is of course one of the big mysteries of the crime, and he you know where the weapon is, mister Mathis, and he says something to the effect, well wherever you find And he's asked if he had anything to do with the planning of the murders and he said absolutely not.
The episode is interesting because it suggests that the elder Mathis perhaps knew more than came out during the trial, but when he's interviewed by law enforcement, there isn't anything forthcoming that law enforcement would decide to say reactivit case. But it was it was an interesting episode. And of course he's passed on by now. And it was absolutely shocked this nurse's aid and she was really affected by You.
Also include right at the end here when we talk about Dorothy Allison and the Spenson was interested in enough to call her and take her information very serious. She had helped out, she had claimed in fourteen cases, she had been provided crucial information. You provide right at the very end. The conversation that Swinson had with this Dorothy Allison and just her perceptions, her psychic perceptions were very very interesting.
Tell us about that.
Well, Dorothy Allison did claim to have been instrumental in solving a number of cases, including the Patty Hirst case. And Swinson was intrigued by her because keep in mind the law enforcement that look, they couldn't find the murder weapon. The motive that they had described to Kim Tatum was not the strongest motive. There was no insurance motive because I believed the insurance was sixty thousand dollars and the prosecution decided that wasn't enough to be a real motive.
So Swinson was thinking that this psychic might be of help, and she told him by telephone. She said she smelled smoke, and he knew that the house had burned. She gave him some numbers that he determined where the license plate numbers off of John Mathis's pickup. Now could she had believe that information other places? This case got widespread coverage. I don't know the answer to that, but he was,
he was intrigued by it. But he also knew that Meyer Henry and the state were not They wanted to distance themselves from a psyche, they said, and believed that if they if there was even a hint of the state relying upon a psychic, that the press would be all over it. And so that never transpired. But I think Swinson was tempted. He liked you know, he was. He was grasping his straws in some respects, and he placed some credence in what the psychic said.
Yes, absolutely, an incredible case.
You talk about just in the end as well, that about the fate of John Mathis in that community.
Well, you know, it's kind of a I mean, in many ways, I said, any John math this farm for years thereafter and then his son said that they lost the farm in the nineteen eighties. John Mathis continued to work for I believe, a neighbor in their farming operation. He never remarried. He retired. To my knowledge, to this day, he still lives in mitchell As I said earlier, his son lives on the farm. The case, while unsolved, is
definitely inactive. Many years after that case, Mark maher Henry was contacted and asked if the case ought to be reopened, and reinvestigator says no, He said that'd be a waste of taxpayer's money. We thought we had the right person, the right case, and it didn't happen. So again, nobody was ever punished for that, for those murders, and that's one of the intriguing aspects of the case.
Absolutely al, thank you so much, Noel Hamill for coming on and talking about South Dakota's mathis murders, horror in the heartland. I know this is a History Press release and I want to thank you so much. This was just recently released. Can you tell us just when was released and about History Press?
Okay, so it was released April twenty fifth this year, so it's a little over a month it's as I'm told by History Press, which is part of Arcadia Publishing. They focus on histories and regional stories. I'm told that it's available online through Arcadia Press, but also through Amazon and your major bookstore outlets, or in local bookstores here in Rampid City. So that's what I can tell you about the book.
I want to thank you so much, Noel Hammil. South Dakota's mathis murders or in the Heartland. It's been fascinating. Thank you so much. You have a great evening. Noel Hamil, good night.
Thank you for having me.
Good Night.