THE CREEK SIDE BONES-George Jared

Award winning journalist and best selling author George Jared takes readers on a gripping and chilling journey with his latest true crime book, The Creek Side Bones, Realities more horrifying than fiction. The book details how the Elliott family in Dalton, Arkansas, lived in constant fear in the summer nineteen ninety eight, how they met their fates as ghastly. Jarrett covered two murder trials in connection with the case, and provides his own theories as to how and why the Elliott family

was murdered. Four other murder cases are also detailed in the book. Sidney Nicole Randall was a beauty pageant queen about to enter high school when a monster stole her away in the dark. Bridget's Sellars was a mother of three who vanished without a trace while on a walk down Peace Valley Road. Her fate is incomprehensible. Bob Castleman was a respected attorney in Vietnam War vet until the drugs murder, a live copperhead snake Native American artifact fraud

consumed his life. The book also includes an update on the unsolved Rebecca Gould case. Twenty two year old college student was murdered September twentieth, two thousand and four in Melbourne, Arkansas. There are suspects in the case, but to this day, no one has been jailed for her brutal death. The book that we're featuring this evening is The Creek Side Bones. Reality is more Horrifying than Fiction. With my special guest journalist and author George Jared, Welcome to the program and

thank you very much. For agreeing to this interview, George Jared, thank you for having me. Thank you very much again. Another series of cases I had no idea about and yes, much much worse than fiction. Horrifying. Let's jump right into this this especially. You start off with this incredible story as we mentioned of the Elliots, Lisa and Carl. Carl Elliott's thirty years old. And you talk about the two kids.

Felicia is eight and Gregory is seven years old, and the father and stepmom live very close and this is in Dalton, Arkansas, and you talk about Hardy, Arkansas too. So set the stage for you talk about them living very close to her parents in a trailer. So set that stage. What was the living accommodations, and tell us a little bit about Lisa and Carl, what was going on at that time and what as you described the area and what it's known for, tell us a little

bit about this. Set to stage July twenty ninth, nineteen ninety eight.

of dollars restoring these two structures. So it's a very historic and beautiful place. And but there's also another part of it, you know, it is there's that there's a sparse population there and it's just the kind of place that's really convenient if you're in the drug trade. It's a it's a good place to live. As a heart, it's hard for law enforcement to get in there. Everybody knows everybody out in a place like Dalton. Carl and

Lisa they lived in a house. It was a family house, and Lisa's dad and stepmother lived in a trailer adjacent to their house. And the father, of believe, he had some I think he had some hearing problems and he had some mental issues, as did the stepmother. So they were not when this whole thing went down. They really weren't like reliable witnesses. I guess it's the best way to put it. You know, they were elderly and incapable of giving the police any really good information. Carl was

a carpenter and a mechanic. Like you said before. They had two kids. They had Felicia who was eight and Gregory who was six. What happened in the summer of nineteen ninety eight is they were Carl was involved in some like minor drug stuff with the Green family. The Greens were really just a violent group of people who lived up in Randolph County. Their patriarch, Billy Green, he

was a big time drug trafficker. Just the drug stuff alone would have kept him in prison for the rest of his life once he was finally charged the conviction on those uh. In those cases, Billy had his oldest son, Chad, and they were just about inseparable. He was really he was really brutal to his son. But they were in the drug trade together and Carl was friends with Chad, and something happened in the summer of nineteen ninety eight

with the dynamics between the Greens and Carl. There were rumors that he stole a number of marijuana plants from them. There are other rumors that he took cash a couple of weeks before the murders, Lisa was she asked the guy if he would loan them ten thousand dollars to pay out the debt. So there was all this stuff was swirling other family members who came to visit the Elliots. They would sleep at night with baseball bats in their beds for fear that somebuddy would show up at their door.

And this all culminated on July twenty ninth, nineteen ninety eight. Carl's family, they were getting ready to go to bed, and it was an arches the door. Chad Green he had a truck and it had broken down about a mile from their house along the Eleven Point River. So Carl gets up, puts his shoes on, gets into his Thunderbird, and ruts Chad back to his truck, pouring down the rain.

And no one knows what happened at that sandbar. All they know I was within a few minutes, Carl has shot twice and his body has been slung into the Eleven Point River. The Thunderbird returns, the door opens, the little boy comes running up to the door, and I just you know, from seeing the crime stain photo that were more than likely happened. The kids saw the thunderbird pull thought it was his dad, so we just ran

the door and greeted his head. But when the door opened, the killer came inside, crushed the kid's head like an eggshell with a tire school, and then jammed the pointed end of it through the kid's throat and he bled out all over the floor. And then the mother came in to try to save her son, and the killer hit her twenty seven times with this tire tool, and

there was blood everywhere. I talked to one detective about this case, and he said, and he was a veteran, he had covered many murder cases or investigated many murder cases. He said he had never seen a crime scene like this his entire lifecause they had nightmares about it for years. And so, once the killer is done with the mother, the killer goes into Felicia's room and there's a picture of the tire till dropped amongst all of her stepped animals that were in the pot she's hiding under her bed.

Killer takes her, wraps her in a blanket and puts her in the trunk of the thunderbird. Well as a killer or killers are getting ready to leave, they noticed something in the yard, something moving, and what it was. It was Lisa. She had woken up. They thought she was dead. She woke up. She climbed out the window of the of the kitchen and she was crawling across the yard to get to her parents' house. And when she gets there, she literally gets to the door. Her

hand is on the door. There's actually a bloody handprint that you can see. The killer or killers run up behind her, slash her throat all the way across, and she bleeds out on their porch. They didn't know she was there till the next morning, and because they couldn't open the door, and they didn't know it was jamming the door. And so a little girl's taken. There's a lot they don't They don't know definitively what happened to her.

There's a lots of stories, but they do know that her bones were found in a creek a couple of years later, about a half a mile from the Green clan's house, Billy Green's house, and it was out in the middle of nowhere. And that's why I titled the book The Creek Sidebones, because that's where they found Felicia.

committed this crime. And the Greens were identified as semi suspects kind of early on the first couple months of the investigation, and they were interviewed a couple of times. Chad was and the problem was that there was very little forensic or DNA evidence of the crime scene. They just had nothing to go with. But as time went on, you know, like I said, in a little place like Dalton,

everybody knows everybody and stories start to get out. And so the police within a year or two were starting to hear some pretty strong mathinations that the Greens were involved in the murders and they and they knew that Carl and the Greens had been involved in some drug trafficking together. So they were for several years they would bring them in an interview them, but they never could pin anything to them. What changed, And ironically enough, it

was five years to the day. It was July twenty nine, two thousand and three. Mary Green, Billy's former wife, She finally confessed the crime to the police. She told them exactly what happened, what she was told by her son, and some things that Billy had said. And so so five years to the day they arrested two. Immediately they tried to get Chad to turn on Billy, so they wanted to turn him into a witness. That gave him

a sweetheart deal. They said, hey, if you will testify against your father, we'll give you thirty seven years in prison for all four capital murders, and he also had an unrelated sexual assault of the child crime that had been was that he was having to deal with as well. So they just packaged it all together and they said, thirty seven years testify against your dad. He agreed to it. So then in two thousand and four, Billy goes to trial, he's convicted, He's sat on Arkansas's death row, and the

case was basically it was over. You know, everybody was happy and as far as well, let me back up a little bit. So during the trial, a woman got on the stand and said that she was scared of Billy and that she thought that he might have had something to do with the murder of her nephew. Well, and you know this, Dan, You know, when you're testifying in a capital murder case or any case, you have to kind of stick. You have to stick to the fact of that case. You can't, you know, bring up

things like that. So the judge should have declared a mistrial right there. He didn't, so on appeal the conviction was thrown out. Now prosecutors were in for a surprise

because obviously they were going to immediately retry him. Well, they got a surprise when Chad said, I'm not going to testify gus by Dad's second time, and so they had that had a quandary and actually was about to go to the US Supreme Court because his lawyers were claiming double jeopardy because prosecutor said, okay, fine, we're not

going to testify you. We're going to do We're just going to recharge you with all four counts capital murder and the sexual assault, and his lawyers argued that no, no, you can't do that. It's double that would violate his double jeopardy rights. So eventually it did work its way through the court system, and basically the finding was was that if he didn't agree to the plea deal, then it didn't exist, so they couldn't violate his double jeopardy laws.

So Chad was charged with war counts, capital murder, the sex assault charge. On the sex assault charge alone, he got think fifty years and then of course they go to trial in Uh I believe it was September twenty eleven, and basically chad prosecutors were able to prove that Chad was a lot more culpable in the murders than what was initially thought. Initially, the police had made the had the theory that Billy, that Billy was the mastermind, and that Chad was just the unwilling duke who went along

with his dad and did what he was told. Well, I always had a there was always a problem with that for me studying the case. For one simple reason. Billy was a very sophisticated criminal. He had like radios at his house, he was monitoring police traffic all the time, had informants everywhere that he paid off to keep information for him and get information for him. And the one thing that surprised him about the whole incident was the

little girl was taken. And Billy, for all of his horrible deeds in life, I never came across any any any time that he'd been charged with like pedophilia, and Chad, you know that sex assault charge that he had previously was for molesting an eight year old girl. And so just in my mind, I was sitting there going, Okay, whoever did this? The motivation was the little girl because she was taken, And I'll never forget it. During Chad's trial.

Number one and another thing that would have probably caused this case to go back to court anyway was defensor prosecutors didn't divulge back in two thousand and four that Chad actually confessed to the murders, that he said he did them all by himself and his dad wasn't even involved, and he did this with a like an attorney in

a private investigator. He consessed it. Well, they never divulged that to Billy's defense team at that time, so right there, I mean, it was almost it was almost bad enough that the judge in the case had to even consider if Billy was going to go to trial a second time once this was found out in twenty eleven, but then he finally decided to go ahead and let it

move forward. So in my mind, I just don't think if Billy had been there at the crime scene, I don't think he would have allowed Chad to take the girl because the girl would have led the police right to them and back at his trial, and it was a really surreal moment, I had an innate who testified that Chad bragged about the killing and he said that he talked about the little girl, and I want to

just a heartbreaking, crushing moment. The guy gets on the stand and said that, you know, he wanted to enjoy her because she was going to die anyway. And I remember just looking at the juror c and of course the family members are all in there, their crying. I mean, I have a lump in my throat, and you know I've covered many murder cases. So anyway, Chad was convicted and so was Billy. Later he was his trials in

twenty twelve. They were both given life without parole. And the reason they weren't given death sentences in the cases is because the case is circumstantial. Mary Green, Chad's mother and Billy's former wife, had to testify. She was the most crucial witness, and prosecutors were afraid that if the death penalty was on the table, especially with her son, that she might not be as forthcoming in her testimony.

So they had to take that off the table. And so both these guys are in prison for the rest of their lives now. And I tell people, when you read this story, when you research this case, it is about You've never watched a horror movie or read a horror novel any worse than what happened to that family. I mean, the Crimking photos are just brutal. I mean it was literally you hear the term bloodbath, and it's a lot. Literally, that house was a wash in blood.

The autopsic phetos of Lisa Elliott. I seen many many autopsy phellows, and hers would the absolute most heartbreaking.

try to mount some kind of defense. So you talk about the evidence that was there that there was two killers, and there was evidence from Mary about the phone call and from Chad's ex girlfriend. So they put this thing together that there certainly was a call, that there certainly was a lot of evidence to say that they were both involved. So it seemed irresponsible to me in that first trial to be able to convict Billy completely and

no culpability on Chad's part. It seemed talk more about the dilemma that Mary had Billy's wife and Chad's mother in this and what it seemed, at least in your regards, your respect that it seemed what she was trying to do at trial for her son and against her husband.

on a jury. A lot of the people who testify in these capital murder cases, they don't have the totality of what was of the what happened in the courtroom because they can't be in there when other people are testifying. And so as a reporter, you kind of you get to sit there and you get to listen to every single person testify.

you know, and obviously when you gave the intro. You know, one of the stories about the little girl is that she was kept she was tied up and kept in a garage in a barrel. And they they asked Mary, they said, did you ever ask Chad about where the girl was kept and how what happened to her? And she just cried and said, no, I never asked, and they said why, and she said, because I didn't want to know, so so she tried. But and again she was obviously very traumatized during Billy's trial. I mean she

was walking a court soon she saw him. I mean you could you could see in her face. I mean, the man had traumatized her a lot. So she but she was a pretty she was credible, I thought she and as any mother would do, she tried to protect her son to some degree, but at the end of the day, she still gave the critical facts that they needed. You know, there was a phone call the night of

the murders Billy left. He said he had to help Chad clean up a mess and so and I always took that, you know, like the prosecutors always took that comment from that night to me that he was going

to help Chad kill the family. And again, Billy being a sophisticated criminal, I don't know why if they were gonna kill him that night, I don't know why wouldn't have been better planned out, I guess the best way to put it, you know, And why would they kill the whole family when they could just kill Carl and you know, and they would probably there would be less you know, when you when you kill a family of four like that, I mean that that makes national news,

you know. But if you just kill another another guy involved in the drug trade with you, you know, there's a good chance they won't even solve that crime. I mean, that's just just a hard fact, but it's true. And so that's it was in my opinion, that Carl had some superficial wounds to his neck, like somebody maybe scraped him with a knife. They weren't, they weren't like thrust, you know from a knife and you know, been killing the people with a tire tool in the house. I mean,

that's just you just grab whatever. That's just kind of one of those things where you just grab whatever's handy to try to hit somebody with it. So anyway, I just think that that Billy, I've said this before, I don't think anything to do with with Carl or Lisa or Gregory's death. I think it's possible he might have killed Felicia though that maybe he found out that Chad had.

There was one story that was that several people testified to in court that Chad had fallen in love with Felicia after keeping her for a couple of days, and they couldn't kill her, and that his dad had to do it because he knew as soon as he found out that Chad had kept her, he knew that the police, she would lead the police directly to them. So he took her up to the creak and flit her throat and she drowned in this wet creek. So I think

that's possible. I talked to Billy right after the convictions. I mean, as soon as the gavel went down the judge called the recess. I went up to him. His defense attorneys they would freely let him talk to me. So and he looked sincere when he said, I didn't do this, But like I said, there's part feel sorry for a guy. You know, his his rap sheet is very,

very long. He's committed many, many other brutal crimes. So he and like I said, he would be in jail for the rest of his life anyway, on all the drug charges he'd convicted the previous to all of this.

ever been around? And I would tell him, without a doubt, it's Chad Green And right behind him is his dad, Billy.

people because he thought it was funny. And I think what happened in this case is they either got into an argument or Chad was doing the stupid thing that he always did when he got high. He pulled the gun out, and I think he accidentally shot Karl, and when he did, he freaked out. He shot him again. He got his pocket knife out and he was gonna slit his throat, and then he thought, no, I'm not gonna do that. He did anyway, so he threw him

in the river. And he knew that Lisa had just made him a glass of tea before he left the house with Carl. So he went back up to the house, and he knew that all the family members knew that he had left with Carl, and if they found Carl's body in the river. Chad would be the primary suspect. He knew that he would go to prison, so he went up there and slaughtered that family to protect himself.

He was a pedophile. The little girl. There's actually been some remembers that he had already started to molest her before the murders, and so I think he took her then, and that's what I think happened. But then I think Billy tried to help him cover it up after the fact.

pot plants. Well, I again, Billy's a sophisticated criminal. He might go and beat Carl up over some pot plants. But I really don't think he would kill him over it because just just for the simple fact that again, that's gonna lead the police right to you, and it's gonna shut your drug operation down. So again it's is it possible. Yes, I mean, we'll probably never really know what happened, but I think just from the circumstances, the clumsiness of it, that's the main thing. I mean, they

left the tire tool at the house. There is no way Billy Green is leaving that entire tool at that house, so, you know, and just the fact that they weren't it was ill prepared. I mean, like I said before, if you if you want to deal with Carl and him not paying a debt or stealing drugs from you, you're not gonna kill his whole family. I mean, even it comes to the point where you decide you're gonna kill him, you're gonna you're gonna find some other way to do it.

walnut Ridge. What's going on March twenty thirteen.

Delta region. So when you come to walnut Ridge, you're coming into the first you know, bigger Delta town coming out of the Ozark Foothills. Lots of soybeans, peanuts, corn, just a lot, just an agricultural area. And what happened was Sydney was in the eighth grade. She was a beauty pageant queen. She was on the flagline team for the band. I knew her. She my daughter plays softball. She would come to She was friends with several girls and my daughter plays softball with and so she'd come

and watch them play. I would go on my wife's classroom occasionally and I would see Sydney in there. You know. She h she was a pretty and respectful girl. She everybody loved her. I mean, she was a great kid. And so what happened is on March tenth, twenty thirteen, her her and her stepfather vanished. And what happened was Denise was a fell asleep that night. She had had I believe she had back surgery, and she had taken a xanax or something like that that it kind of

knocked her out. And so when she woke up, it was like three o'clock in the morning, she noticed John wasn't in bed with her, and she went around the house checking on her three kids, and she noticed that Sydney was missing, and so she started calling around and none of her friends knew where she was at. You know, at first, she thought maybe she just snuck out. You know, she's an eighth grader, I mean kids do stuff like that, and maybe John went out to look for you know,

that was kind of what she was thinking. Well, none of her friends had any idea, so she called to the hospital to see if maybe there was some accident or something happened, and then she called the police because John's wallace and his cell phone all that was still at the house. So right around the time she was waiting outside, this is like three thirty four o'clock in the morning. And there's always been a little confusion about this, about the date just for or the time just because

of the simple fact that time changed that night. So it was just kind of a weird thing. So she's waiting, Well, John's truck pulls into the driveway and she said, sit me with you and he said no, and she said, well, she's missing and he said that's that's BS and he said he's going to the police to follow a report. So he leaves. Well, the police officer rise a few minutes later and Denise is like, did my husband come

and follow the police report me? The police officer says no. And so anyway, so all the next day she's out looking for I had heard something I caught like the tail end of a missing girl and Walnut Ridge story on when I was watching news, I didn't catch the name. But and you know this, it's not a very It's not uncommon for a stepfather to you know, be blessing his a step child and then you know, they take off together and they're found in some other state. I mean,

it's not a it's unfortunate, but it's not an uncommon tale. So, uh, my wife calls me. That was on a Sunday on Monday morning, my wife called me at my office and she's panics. She said, Sydney's missing. And I was like, I said, well, they'll find her, you know, don't worry about it, you know. But then at three o'clock that afternoon, they found John's body on a gravel road just outside of wal A Ridge and he had shot himself. And

so at that point we knew it was bad. And it's a really weird thing, like and you know, I've been a journalists for a long time. It's a really weird thing writing about someone you knew, and it was it was heartbreaking. I had a lot of like inside access to the family just because they knew my wife. She was their kids teacher. I knew all my kids knew, I mean, everybody knew her. So I was able to get, like a lot of times when the family wouldn't talk to anybody, it's still talk to me. And so I

was able to write stories about it. But you know, the days and weeks went on, they never found that hadn't found her. And of course, as springtime comes along, you know, foliage starts to grow, the landscape starts to change, and so there was kind of an assumption that they didn't find her, you know, before spring started, that they may never find her. So but that all changed. On May eighteenth, twenty thirteen, a guy was out fishing with

his family. They were they were checking some drop lines on the Black River and they looked over and there was some there's trees that grew up through the river bed, and they looked over and they noticed what looked like a mannequin at first, and they went over there. Of course, the father immediately knew that it was a body as

soon as he would have got a little closer. So that he got the rest of the younger kids and the rest of the pantam Hoover's downriver, and then him and his oldest son went back, they called the police. I was actually at the park playing basketball with my kids, and when the word came, it's amazing. I remember when I first started as a reporter, you know, you go down on the police station, you know, you got to you gotta try to find some way to get them

to give you information. Nowadays with Facebook, you know, I think I knew within seventh great minutes of the of the call going into the nine on one center that they found her. And it was simply because people share that stuff on social media now, you know. And so anyway, they confirmed it was her a day or two later, and it was just a really it's a heartbreaking case. It's it's just it's just her her soul to know

that that little girl. And and I'll say this, I got her autopsy reports and they found her DNA on his tenis. So they know that he raped and killed her before that she was raped before she was killed, and they uh and I and I again in the book, I talk about this. I think probably what happened was is he he was having violent sex with her, and I think he hurt her and then he didn't know what to do. He freaked out he hit her, hit her over the head. She got from a blunt forced

trauma to the head and she drowned. So he hit her in the head and he threw her threw in the river and she drowned. And so anyway, and you know, a case like this is it's really tough because I actually had to deal with some of his family members and you know, they don't want to believe that he's this horrible rapist, murder monster. But the problem is is that he was. He did these things. And you know, in my reporting, I didn't say anything about where they

found her DNA. I just said they found her on him. And then I had to tell one of his family members that you know, hey, they actually found it on a team. That's there's no doubt that her DNA should not be there. And if he had gotten back into that house, and I've always I've contemplated this, if he had gotten back in the house at night, let's just say Denise doesn't wake up, he slips back into bed, and then there's no proof at all that he had anything to do with her murder.

boys around her. And you know, and beneath you know, she in the police report she talks about, you know, their sex life changing pretty dramatically because of the sergers she had had, and and she began to suspect that, you know, that he might be molesting her. You know, they lived in a pretty small house. It wasn't like I mean, I imagine they all they all knew what was going on.

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mother named Bridget Sellers and it made an impression. And now you talk about a year later, you're working your first serious newspaper reporting job at an area wide media in Salem, Arkansas. Tell us about how this very impressive missing poster has made a very big impression on you. What happened with bridget Sellers and this story.

just it just never left me. I wasn't working at a newspaper at that time. About a year year and a half later, I started working at a newspaper. And you know, as a reporter, you keep lists of stories that you want to work on, you know, and when there's no breaking news or not covering a meeting or whatnot, you just have a list of things you want to work on. One day, I was working on my list and I thought, I wonder if they ever did any

stories about this missing woman. So I go into my editor's office a guy named David Cox, who is one of the best editors I've ever had. I walked in, I said, David, did you guys ever do any stories about a missing mother? And he had no idea what I was talking about. So I started doing some dinger and that I found out that this mother of three had gone for a walk on a road called Peace Valley Road, ironically enough, and it connects two towns. Horseshoe

Bend is the retirement community in ash Flat. It's just a rural thoroughfare, you know, people, it's not heavily traveled. There's you know, sporadic houses and farms along this place. There's a cemetery in church, you know, all this kind of thing. Well, I got the name of the ant who put the posters up, but and there had been a number, a phone number that was associated with her, and I called the number. It was disconnected. I think

I got an address. Maybe I tried to go. I'm literally the kind of reporter I will go to someone's house. I've done it before. So I went to the house they were They didn't live there, no more, nobody knew where they were at. So I kind of just gave up on it. Well, my sister was at the same store a couple of years later buying a sprinkler for my kids to play with, and she brought it home. The sprinkler just totally sucks. So we decided we were going to go to horshe Then there's a lake there

and we thought we'd just go swimming at the lake. Well, we're driving down Peace Valley Road and my sister's telling me a story about how she met a woman in line at the store. And the woman was a dog breeder and she had that Saint Bernard puppy that my sister's friend might be interested in. So the woman gave her a card. Well, of course it was me and and so I immediately called her right there on the road. I called it in and I'm like, hey, I want

to do a story about your missing niece. And she said great, She goes she was mad the police weren't looking for you know, nobody was doing anything to try to find this girl. So I go, when I do the story, she actually lived on Peace Valley Road, And the dynamic is that she lived on Peace Valley Road, and so did an uncle on Bridget's dad side. He also lived on Peace Valley Road, and I asked her she had any idea who might have done this, who

could have taken her. She didn't give me any names, but it was pretty obvious to me that she was pretty scared of the other uncle on Bridget's dad's side. So the police finally there was a jurisdiction issue. There's two counties that meet right there, Sharp and Izard Counties, and so the police had some There was jurisdiction issues. They didn't know if it was their case because she was walking on the road, you know which agency should

take care of this. So finally they searched his property and they don't find anything, but he was pretty clearly the suspect, and just the backup a little bit. When I went to the Ants house, I mean it was unbelievably sealthy. I mean I've literally gone on drug range where I saw some I saw an officer lose half his hand one time. I felt safer there than I was at this house. I mean, there were tip bulls everywhere rott Wiler's. They were breeding I think timber wolves.

It was really it was a crazy scene. And of course bridges Son was living with them a little. It was a little guys about two or three, and I took a picture of him on a swing set. And so anyway, the police searched the property, they don't find anything. Well, a few months ago by I actually took a different newspaper job well, and I get a tip that they're going to go they're going to go check this guy's house again, and this time they're going to clean out

his sewer tank. And they do that and they find some of her She had a she had kind of a bone deformity that affected her fingers, and they found some finger bones in there and they were tested for and they had this bone before me that she had, so they knew that her body had been in there. What was really bizarre is that none of her bigger bones were found out and like her skull or torso.

And what they think happened is he actually after the first search, uh the Jerry Stevens, they think that he They think that he went back into that septic tank and actually fished her big bones out. Nobody knows what he did with them. So and that the day after they find these bones that they were gonna charge them with capital murder. He actually ended up dying from cancer. So he never got convicted in that.

She had been an irresponsible mother. I mean, I think he could probably safely say that, and so that at least two of the kids were living with that end at the time, and they got she got mad and that's why she went for a walk and when her

killer came upon her. I don't know if he killed her because of the minor the minor sexual misconduct charge that he had leveled against him years before, or there's other you know, other rumors that he she he made it involved in some drug stuff and she was involved with him. But for whatever reason, he came upon her that day and he killed her. I mean he chopped her up and he stuffed her and sept.

took them out. But these cadaver dogs tell us why they couldn't detect anything even though they had this incredible search for Brigitte.

will say this. You know, I've been doing this for a long time. I read a lot about different murder cases. I've never heard of anybody stuffing a body in a septic tank like that. So you know, maybe that's just a place you can hide, you know, one, and it just makes it that much harder for the dogs to hit.

think she wanted to speculate. But you know, if your niece goes missing, you know there's a guy who possibly has a motive that lives literally as a crowth live, you know, just a few hundred yards from you. Like I said, it's a rural area. If she went for a walk. You know, the chances of him coming upon her pretty good. So I think she probably had some suspicion, but you know, she was pretty If she suspected he killed her, she was definitely keeping it to herself with me anyway.

camp fuel is caused for suspicion. Tell us this story that you start off with.

certain earmarks for making methan, petamine and those products. You know, and you kind of when you see people who are addicted to Matthew, you immediately know who they are. I walk into a courtroom, you know, during a a court day, and you know, you can you can see out in the crowd, you can look you know who's addicted the mess and who's not me. It's it's obvious. And so he saw he saw Bob Cassleman, He saw him try

to buy some components. He knew that he was trying to buy these to make math and and so he calls the police and sure enough they find a bunch of this stuff. Well, Bob, it's an interesting story. He he was a a he spent some time he was he was an attorney. He had spent some time as a judge. He had graduated, you know, from law school. He was a Vietnam Vet. In fact, his brother was one of the prosecutors on the Billy and Chad Green

murder trials. So he came from a family of lawyers and he just devolved into this this criminal and all started. No one, I mean, I'm sure someone knows, but he had, you know, he he had a pretty highly successful law practice there in a town called Pocahontas, which is the county seat in Randolph County. And you know, he made a lot of money. He was connected to a lot of people and very well liked, by the way, a

lot of people liked Bob Castleman. And he had a son, and the son had gotten into a dispute with one of their neighbors and he the dispute escalated to the point where the sun actually went over to the neighbor's house and had destroyed part of their yard, Like he drove his suv into their yard and he did donuts

or whatever you would do, destroyed the yard. Well. When he was coming back home later that night, as he was passing by the neighbor's house, the neighbor was outside with a gun and actually shot into his suv a number of times and almost killed him. You know, one bullet landed just a just literally inches from his head. And so Bob, you know, obviously wanted the neighbor to be charged with you know, aggravated assault, you know, and go to prison. Well at the police finally after about

a year told him. They said, hey, this was back in two thousand and one, told him that he's only getting get charged with like a misdemeanor assault charge because they credibly thought that the guy was fearing for his life when when the sun was coming back down there. And so Bob decides to mail a live copperhead to this family and the woman they drop it in the post office there in town, this cylindrical tube with this live copperhead in it. Well, they checked her mail one

day and this tube is in there. They opened. The woman opens the tube. They're sitting in a truck, her husband's driving. She's sitting in the middle, and they've got a friend who's sitting on the other side of her, and in the back seat they've got another person and two kids. I think one of them was going to like a babe like a carve seat. And she opens the tube and the snake pops out right at her face. She said that the snake guy within a couple of

inches of her head. Well, she throws the box, the whole thing onto the guy that's sitting next to her, that he tosses it out the window. The box landed in a way that did it trapped the snake, and so the police were able to come and they they shot the snake. It didn't take him very long to figure out who sent it and why, and so he's charged. Of course, here's the thing. When you mail something like that, it becomes a federal crime. And of course the story

made international news. I mean, it's just so bizarre, you know, somebody mainly a live snake to an temper. And so he got charged in federal court. He lost his law license, you know. Uh, he went to prison for several years, so did the Sun. And when he got back out, he had fund something to do, and he did. He got mixed stuff into drugs, making mess. His family owned a large far out in a rural part of Randolph County, and so they would go there and they would make

their mess, you know. And so he he he got he got busted a couple of times for you know, some other drug stuff. And then finally this whole incident that we were talking about, the armed service store went down not too long after that. They busted a major drug ring and it and it was like eight or nine people involved. One of them was the police chief in Pocahontas's wife. There were some other pretty prominent people. Yeah, it was. It was a big time. It was a

big deal, and and it was a federal drug probe. Well, and you know this, Dan, it's when you get eight or nine people in a conspiracy, the first thing you do is you try to get some of the you get, you get, you get the littler fish to try to to to uh go after the big fish. So you give them plea dealer and they testify, and it was pretty obvious that, you know, federal, the US Attorney's working this case, they were going to go after Bob. He was the one they wanted and his son. So they

start cutting deals with all these people. You know, hey, you're gonna and so it got to a point where they were getting closer and closer to Bob. There was a guy named Travis Perkins who he was the main the main guy as far as making mass. He was friends with the son, he he knew the ins and out of the operation, and he was the one person who could tie this all together for police, well or

for prosecutors, excuse me. Well, three days before he was going to testify in in federal courts, he's found dead in his apartments and of course, as you can imagine, the primary suspect was Bob and a primary suspects. Well, eventually they don't have any evidence of he was shot a single time.

really hard. And Bob was always really worried that about the son being in prisoned obviously, so finally Jared they cut the deal where Jared's actually gonna testify against this that and see, here's the thing. Bob had never, never, was never charged with Travis's murder, but the drug if you can prove that a homicide was connected to a federal drug case, the enhancements would basically put him in

jail for the rest of his life. So, through kind of a quirk in the law, they got Jared on the stand and he testified that his father killed Travis to keep him quiet. And so because they because they were able to successfully prove that a that a homicide was attached to this this drugg ring. Then everything was in hand. So he's you know, he's gonna be in jail for forty five or fifty years now, you know, and he's already sixty, so I mean, he's essentially got

a live sentence. So and and then Jared got a much lesser sentence the son, you know, for his involvement in all this. So it's just a really I always say this. And by the way, going back just a little bit before he actually got arrested the drug robe, he he loved to collect Native American artifacts and and obviously there's a there's a deep and rich Native American

history up in that part of Arkansas. The town is named Pocahontas, I mean, so you know, there's a lot of Native Americans who lived there for seven, eight, nine thousand years ago. I mean, it's they used to hunt and fish along the Black River there. And so he collected all this stuff. Well, he needed money for his defense, you know, expenses, so he had insurance on this elaborate

Native American Indian collection, and he claimed that they got stolen. Well, the FBI went to a friend's house about twenty five miles away and found all this stuff in the living room. So he got charged with that you know, mail fraud basically because he had you know, sent the communication to the insurance company. I'm saying, falsifying that he had lost

this stuff had been stolen. So I tell peoples all this time, his story is one of the most interesting criminal cases that you will find, just because of the family history, his position in life, and how it just all just went off the rails for him.

try to see what's going on. Well, this girl, this twenty erial college student, she vanished from a friend's house on September twentieth, two thousand and four, in Melbourne, Arkansas. And it was just it was kind of a weird case. She had dropped her friend off at work. She was supposed to go pick up a sister and head back to Northwest Arkansas where she was a college student. And she was in She was in Melbourne's visiting friends over

the weekend. And so she goes back to the friend's house to collect her stuff and I think to probably take a nap just by the just because she she put like a breakfast sandwich in a microwave and so and literally was still sitting in there when the police finally, you know, went through the house. Well, something happened to her. She vanished. Her car keys were there, her purse was there,

everything was left, but she was gone. And so I, you know, I catch wind of this, of her disappearance, and I got to during that week, I kind of got to know her family a little bit. Her dad is a real prominent dentist and a nice guy. And and then she's got a bunch of sisters, and you know, they were all seem like really real nice ladies and they were out looking for her. And so that a week later passed forward to a week later. I'm in

Melbourne at the courthouse. I hear some ladies talking about searchers out out in a particular area off the road, and I ask them where it's at. They tell me, I go out there and they found her and I saw her. I'll never forget it, just again, gut wrenching. And so I go back to the Sheriff's office. Well, a rumor started to circulate that they found the body, and her dad came up to me and said, Hey, did they find my daughter? And I said, I said, Larry,

his name is Larry Gould. I said, Larry, you really need to talk to the sheriff. And he kind of grabbed hold of me and he said it again, and I was like, yes, they did. And in my first book that I wrote, which is in West Memphis, I was a little reticent to describe her body because I didn't even tell her family that I was writing a chapter about this, and so I kind of just I

didn't describe it. I just couldn't because I didn't know if they knew or if they didn't want people knowing those kinds of details because it was personal, you know, I met him. So on the second book, The Creekside Bones, you know, I actually this is kind of an interesting side story. So her case has never been solved. It's basically a cold case. Now. She was hitting the head, possibly with a piano leg of all things. And so

I that was the last time I saw her. Dad was during this whole that day that her body was found. So I'm doing a book signing at a library in April twenty sixteen, and my first book was about the

West Memphis three case. I you know, I've written like a hundred stories about that case and news stories and so, but I included the chapter about Rebecca because I in hope so and you know this, all it takes is for one person to crack this case wide of them as in many cases, you know, like when Mary Green walked in the police station and told them the truth

that day that broke that case open. So I always think, Okay, if we just get enough stories out there, if we generate enough buzz about it, eventually somebody go to crack. In this case, will get solved. So at every book signing, when I would pitch the book to anybody, I would always at the end go back to that, to this story. And so I'm at this book signing and I asked this guy, sod, so, do you want want to buy a book? And he says no, he says, I want to buy ten of them, and I'm like, okay. So

I grabbed ten books. And there was a photographer there from a magazine doing a spread on my book, and I told the photographer I whispered to her, I said whatever I told him, I need to tell everybody, you know. And so this guy, I flip over the first book and I go, who do I need to sign this to? And he reaches in his pocket and he pulls out a ribbon with a faith on it and it's Rebecca's face and he sets it on the book. And as soon as he did it, I knew who he was.

When when I had seen Larry, you know, years before, he was obviously uncapped, wearing a hat, not shaving, you know, he just looked disheveled, unobviously for obviously just couldn't find his daughter. And so he of course I got up. I gave a hugbull start crying. You know how that goes. And so to this day it's that was about a year and a half ago. I see him, I go

seeing periodically. I've written stories about it and giving them away for free to newspapers and other publications, just so they will so that word will still heard, the memory of what happened to her doesn't die, and hopefully somebody will come forward with incredible information that can solve the case.

If you don't believe the confession, then you think they're answer and so in that it's a really interesting case. So Jessica Williams, there was almost the West mempistery were released from prison on August nineteenth, twenty eleven, well almost two years to the day. This little eleven year old girl, Jessica Williams was playing in her yard in a little town called Gosnells, not far from the Mississippi River, and

her dad. She was out with her bike and she had a puppy named Ryback that she kept in a you know, like she had a little basket on the front of the bike, so she put the puppy in there, and she's riding around, you know, just like little girls do. And her dad's south the second time she's gone, and they live out in a rural area. They live down a gravel road, and so he goes out to look for her, and within a few minutes he finds her bike on the side of the road, and then he

calls the police. They spend all night searching. Gosnell's actually maybe an hour's drive from West Memphis, and it's in the it's actually in the same judicial district as West Memphis, meaning the prosecutor in the West Memphis three cases also is also that's his territory as well. He prosecutes cases in that area too. So the next morning, a couple of girls on ATV they find the dog walking about eleven miles down a gravel road, eleven miles from her house.

So searchers take the dog back to the spot where the dog was found, and of course the dog leads them right to her body. She was found in a like a drainage ditch, just off of a bridge. And so within twenty four hours, her seventeen year old mentally indigent neighbor who rode the school bus with her, a guy named Christopher Saddle, He confesses to her murder, and he even gets a couple of details right well, so

they give him a two million dollar bond. They throw away the key, you know, they throw him in jail, throw away the key and everybody. The judge put the gag order, so there's no information coming out. Of Course, I know the prosecutor really well over there, and so I talked to him and I kept asking him the same question. One thing that just bothered me about it was he didn't have a car, and he was out helping her dad look for her within thirty minutes of

her disappearance. This Christopher sal and so in my mind, I was there going how did how did he get her out there? And then how did he get back in time to help her dad look for And they say, well, there's gaggler. We can't talk about it, you know, blah blah blah blah blah. Well, they found one sperm cell on her body during her autops seat and then only found one and they DNA tested it and it didn't

belong to Christopher Soalth. It belonged to another neighbor who'd come home early from work that day, who had little kids that played with her. So he got charged with raping the girl. And then eventually, after seven eight months, I can't remember exactly how much time he spent in jail, but they finally had to release him, and then they finally had to say that he had falsely confessed to the girl's murder. And I included it because a lot

of people don't think that false confession happened. And I will get that all the time, people say, I just don't believe in false confessions. I will go and speak to high school groups, I will go and speak to college groups, and one of the questions I will ask them, would you ever confess to a murder you didn't commit? And Dan, I'm telling you right now everything. Well, time I do it, a couple of kids will raise their hands and I'll ask them to come up and I'll

say why would you do it? And a lot of times I'll say, well, if the police are asking me this question, they must think I know something so I'm trying to help them. Or they say they would do it to try to help a loved one or a friend. And it's a very consistent pattern. They all say very similar things, and they all say every group I've ever talked to, at least one or two hands a child, and sometimes more than that.

the three documentaries about the case. And Bruce told me he said, oh, he said for sure, because when they would come to town, when they especially when they were filming Paradise Lost three Purgatory, you know, I would hang out with them. I would do interviews with them and we would go around, and so I knew them really well. They're good, good guys. Of course, Bruce obviously passed away a few years ago, but actually ran into Joe. Let's see,

he was he was in Little Rock in April. The state of Arkansas in April was going to execute eight inmates because they're the chemicals they used to you know, to the lethal injection chemicals they used were about to run out of date. So they catched a kind of a crazy plan to try to you know, kill eight death row guys, and I ended up killing four, and I was I was there for three of the four executions.

But anyway, Joe was in Little Rock. Damian Eckles came back to Arkansas to try to protest against the executions, and then Johnny Depp was with him, and it was kind of a weird scheme. I was standing there at the Capitol steps, you know, this big protest rally going on. You know, there's media from all over the country, so

it was pretty widely covered. I looked over beside the Capitol steps and I see Johnny Death and Danny Neckles and Damian Neckle's wife, Laurie's standing there with a couple of bodyguards, and so I just walked over and started talking to him. Of course, you know, I had interviewed Eckles several times, including while he was on death rows. So but yeah, I from the research i've I don't even think it's close as far as how many stories

I was. I worked at a newspaper in Jone Burrow where all the RULD thirty seven hearings were held for and those were just post conviction hearings to try to get new trials, and they had I mean, we're talking hundreds of hours of them being in court trying to get new trials. And I thought it was interesting. You know, in your intro, you were talking about Ted Bundy, the forensic old oncologist who I d. Ted Bundy actually testified

in West Memphis three case, and I interviewed him. I gottened doctor Richard Suban, and of course and obviously we'll go into that all that and all the other forensic experts who testified in the case. And so basically it was just my happenstance that I've actually written more stories about that case than the body, just because I simply happened to be My office was, you know, just a few blocks away from the courtroom, so I was there

every day for you know, over several year period. You know, they would have a whole week every day you know, nine to five. I've testimony, and so I was the associated Press. I wouldn't do stories for them and for our local newspapers.

get them, and I am more than happy. You know, like some of these cases are controversial, especially West Side is three. I have debated many times with people who are on different sides of the issue, and I have no problem doing that, you know, I you know, there's no way to definitively know what happened to those three kids, but there it's there's a lot of evidence at points in certain directions.

you very much, George Jarrett. You have a great evening than you too, Thank you very much, Thank you, good night.