And continuing my rant from earlier. It’s been 30 years since I first got on the internet and read Muneer Deeb had been released from prison and found not guilty in the Lake Waco Murders, sparking my interest in the case. I couldn’t believe it at the time and I still find it difficult to fathom today. How could the greatest justice system in the world get it wrong. This guy, that went on tours with Amnesty International as a keynote speaker and treated like some kind of hero, did anyone care to look into the details of his life in America. He was in violation of his Student Visa status at the time of the murders, which could have him deported. He continually stalked and threatened young girls with violence. And once he left Waco he continued his criminal behavior; he supplied false information to obtain a driver’s license in Dallas and he was also arrested for possession of stolen property while he lived in Dallas. And in relation to the Lake Waco Murders he continually lied when questioned by law enforcement. Not guilty is not a phrase I would associate with Muneer Muhammed Deeb. And it’s so sad so many people have applied this application to this deceitful monster and his coconspirators. And in all these years and decades has it gotten anywhere, other than more confusion and more grief and suffering for the living victims. When I think about the best way to describe how this case has devolved, even to the present status of the case today, I think there is one sentence the best describes the whole fiasco that has become of the Lake Waco Murders Case. It was quipped by one of the judges hearing one of David Spence’s appeals. I can’t remember his name but I see or hear this sentence from time to time. In response to the defense’s claim of proving David Wayne Spence’s innocence, the judge replied. ” The only thing you have proved is there is a serious problem with the Waco Police Department, you haven’t proved David Spence is innocent”. That is so true, as it was back when it was first said back in the mid 90’s it is still true today. Just look at all the people that have come and gone that said they could prove David Spence and the Melendez brothers were innocent and only left us with more questions. But with all the articles written about the case or podcast about the case or websites dedicated to the case, how many have ever dug deep into the flaws committed by the Waco PD during the original investigation and that effected how things turned out. That’s the article I want to read or the podcast I want to listen to. I remember when I first saw the article and heard the audio clips of an interview done with Dennis Baier a few years ago. I was so excited, I thought we would finally get some answers, I thought Dennis Baier was probably the most level headed detective or Sergeant in the Waco PD that worked on the Lake Waco Murders case, surely he was going to shine some light on the case. I contacted the people that conducted the interview and found there were a series of interviews and they were planning to release them at some point. Time passed and still nothing more had been released and I continued to contact these people. Finally after 2 or 3 years i was told they had been waiting for Dennis Baier to give them permission to release the interviews and they had reached out to him and he hadn’t replied and enough time had passed they felt comfortable in releasing the transcripts of the interviews to me, again I was so excited. Then I got the transcripts and was so disappointed, out of the three interviews only one really dealt with the Lake Waco Murders. There was some interesting information about some of the officers before they work the Lake Waco Murders case but for any new insights into that case the interviews were severely lacking. So again I contacted the people that released the transcripts to me and asked were they going to interview Dennis Baier again and if so I had some questions I would like him to answer. They replied they couldn’t do that but they told me I could contact the person that conducted the interview and they gave me his contact information, and I sent him an inquiry and of coarse I got no reply. And that’s the thing I’m seeing or hearing in these podcast, the podcasters are just repeating articles they have read, they are not doing any true research, they haven’t read the police reports or trial testimony and without doing so their knowledge of the case is very limited and with that their questioning can only be so narrow. If I had the chance to interview Dennis Baier, I would have so many questions for him, I could spend at least one hour on just one report he dictated. I have reached out to a number of people including Vic Feazell and Ramon Salinas to no avail, they won’t answer my questions. I believe Salinas has passed on now, I know he was having some health issues a number of years ago. And that’s a serious problem as time goes by, we lose the people that can provide answers but we should know some of the questions that need to be asked.
Like the judge said, the only thing that has been proven is there was a serious problem in the Waco PD. One can go through the police reports and easily discover this on any number of occasions. The failure to follow up the tip Lisa Kader gave them on July 19th was clearly a critical mistake. And this mistake probably allowed other violent crimes to occur as the guys responsible for the murders continued their summer of terror with sexual assaults on Lisa Kader, Cindy Quick and Darvin Pack, the threats against Kebana Reed and Dana Diamond, all these horrible acts could have been avoided if Waco PD had acted on the information Lisa Kader provided. These victims wouldn’t have suffered these incidents from the hands of the same killers of Jill Montgomery, Raylene Rice and Kenneth Franks. That’s the chilling effect of the mistakes Waco PD made during the investigation and it never gets mentioned or questioned. And that’s just one of the consequential blunders and if the mistakes weren’t bad enough, it’s even worse how some in the Waco PD have tried to spin things in the aftermath, in many regards it almost as bad as the mistakes. And why? And why haven’t those responsible for this miscarriage questioned or held accountable. The mistake of not following up the Lisa Kader tip was bad enough but that none of the officers that had worked on the case before Simons and Baier followed up that lead admitted to the mistake and jumped on board to help Simons and Baier just shows the disfunction within that police department and things just got worse from there until it finally came to a head during the Juanita White murder case. And that the has somewhere got twisted over time that that Simons was from the “old boy school” and went after Deeb because he was a foreigner is appalling. Again the police reports prove otherwise. Simons and Baier were properly following a lead, they could have just went grabbed up Deeb and dragged him into the station for questioning. They didn’t do that, Simons knew Deeb and didn’t think he was a good suspect at first. Simons didn’t even want to harass Deeb at his place of business. He knew Deeb sometimes Deeb went to the Skaggs grocery store and Deeb closed his store because Deeb was infatuated with a girl who’s sister worked there. Simons had seen and talked to Deeb a number of times at Skaggs. So he and Baier decided to wait and go see Deeb at Skaggs. They went the first night they were on the case, Friday September 10, 1982. Deeb didn’t go to the store that night but while they were there they heard some disturbing stories about Deeb from people that worked at Skaggs, including the story that Deeb had asked cashier Patty Pick to steal the keys of Patty’s co-worker, the sister of Kebana Reed, the girl he had the crush on, so he could make copies of the keys so he could get into the girls’ apartment. With stories like this Simons and Baier decided they needed to look further into Deeb. The next day, Saturday September 11, 1982 they went back to Skaggs and talked to the Reed sisters and Kebana told them that she afraid and couldn’t even go out on dates because of Deeb. She went on a lunch date one time and Deeb showed up, And Deeb had threatened to kill her if she went out on dates, he threatened to kill her and her date. It was stories like this that made Deeb a viable suspect and the next day Gayle Kelly informed them that Deeb had confessed to the murders and after he was arrested Dana Diamond told Simons and Baier the same thing Kebana Reed had told them, that Deeb had threatened to kill her and her boyfriend if she didn’t break up with her boyfriend. So Simons and Baier had plenty just cause to go after Muneer Deeb, it was just a monumental blunder that the Waco PD didn’t follow up that lead. And there’s plenty of blame to go around. First there is Lt. Horton, he was in charge of the investigation. He’s gravest error is usually seen as being the Officer that signed off on suspending the case and even checking to see if the investigators that were under his command followed up all the leads and tips before they suspended the case, which was his responsibility. He never did get along with Truman Simons and when Simons went over Horton’s head to get permission to take over the case, Horton didn’t like it. But another of his biggest mistakes was the lack of reporting or acting on his interview with Clifford Oliver. If Clifford Oliver reported that Anthony Melendez was at the Lake the night of the murders, there is question as to what exactly Oliver told Horton because Horton didn’t put it in his report. But, if Clifford told him Tony was at the lake that night, remind you Anthony Melendez was a fugitive from the law for a robbery and sexual assault of a teenage girl in which a knife was used, and Horton didn’t act on this information, he needed to change his profession because he had no use being a police officer. Other than Horton the other officer that deserves a fair amount of scrutiny is Detective Ramon Salinas, he was the lead detective so it would figure there is more to question. But with Salinas it’s not so much the mistakes as it is how he responded to things about the case in the pursuing years. Again I tried to contact Salinas and ask him a few questioned and again no reply. There are two main issues I have with Detective Ramon Salinas. First; in later years Salinas stated many times that he believed the murders occurred at Speegleville Park where they were discovered but that is not what he wrote in his initial report on the case less than 24 hours after being at the scene where the bodies were discovered. This is what he wrote in that report, “It appears these bodies were laid in this location after they were dead. It appeared that they might have been killed elsewhere and then laid in this location”. This was the general consensus of the officers that were at the scene, I haven’t seen one report that opposes this view. Now people can change their mind but wouldn’t you like to know what made them change their mind and this is exactly what I asked Salinas, what made him change his mind. Never got a reply and never will because I believe he’s passed on. So we are left with this question, why and when did Salinas change his mind, the first I heard of it was during the whole Juanita White fiasco when many in the Waco PD were jumping on the anti Truman Simons band wagon and saying anything against him they could, including many officers that originally worked the Lake Waco Murders; Horton, Salinas, Robert Fortune. The second and maybe even more disturbing issue I have with Salinas his is often repeated statement that David Spence’s never came up during his investigation. Either Ramon Salinas has a terrible memory or he is just a straight out liar. He have Eugene Deal, David, Spence’s parole officer, saying he called Waco PD and talking to Detective Salinas. Deal informed Salinas that he should talk to Spence because he(Deal) believed Spence had information about the murders because Spence had vaguely mentioned he knew something. This was before Deal believed Spence was involved un the murders, at this point he just thought Spence might have some information. Over the next month Deal came into further information that made he start to believe not only did Spence have information about the case but was directly involved and Deal called Salinas a couple more times but he never got a gold of Salinas and Salinas never returned his messages. There are at least two other people that mention David Spence, now this information didn’t come in until after the case was suspended but the Waco PD were suppose to check out any new information if it came in. The case was suspended on Friday September 3, 1982, the start of the labor day weekend, right around labor day the crime stoppers got a call from Doris Tucker, she reported that she was in the Rainbow Drive-In and overheard Muneer Deeb and Christine Juhl getting to an argument over money Deeb owed David Spence and Christine threatened Deeb that she could go to the police and tell them what she knows and have Deeb put away for life. Then in December Josie Scionti calls the Waco PD and informs them that Clifford Oliver that taken her, her sister and brother in-law to the place where the three teens had been killed. Clifford had told her it was David Spence that had told him this is where they had been killed. So that’s at least three people that mentioned David Spence and that’s not counting Lisa Kader, who when interviewed by Simons and Baier on Saturday September 11, 1982 and asked who could have helped Deeb carry out these murders, she gave then David Spence. All answers Ramon Salinas could have gotten if he would have followed up the lead they got 6 days after the murders.
These are just a few of the innumerable questionable issues in the Lake Waco Murders case. But where are the articles and podcast that mention these issues. Why does what podcasters call deep diving into the case only consist of the same stories I’ve heard for decades? Doesn’t sound like a deep dive to me. Change the trajectory of the narrative, you change perspective, you change perspective you change the conversation, you change the conversation you find new answers.
Careless Whispers or Contrived Convictions 
And continuing my rant from earlier. It’s been 30 years since I first got on the internet and read Muneer Deeb had been released from prison and found not guilty in the Lake Waco Murders, sparking my interest in the case. I couldn’t believe it at the time and I still find it difficult to fathom today. How could the greatest justice system in the world get it wrong. This guy, that went on tours with Amnesty International as a keynote speaker and treated like some kind of hero, did anyone care to look into the details of his life in America. He was in violation of his Student Visa status at the time of the murders, which could have him deported. He continually stalked and threatened young girls with violence. And once he left Waco he continued his criminal behavior; he supplied false information to obtain a driver’s license in Dallas and he was also arrested for possession of stolen property while he lived in Dallas. And in relation to the Lake Waco Murders he continually lied when questioned by law enforcement. Not guilty is not a phrase I would associate with Muneer Muhammed Deeb. And it’s so sad so many people have applied this application to this deceitful monster and his coconspirators. And in all these years and decades has it gotten anywhere, other than more confusion and more grief and suffering for the living victims. When I think about the best way to describe how this case has devolved, even to the present status of the case today, I think there is one sentence the best describes the whole fiasco that has become of the Lake Waco Murders Case. It was quipped by one of the judges hearing one of David Spence’s appeals. I can’t remember his name but I see or hear this sentence from time to time. In response to the defense’s claim of proving David Wayne Spence’s innocence, the judge replied. ” The only thing you have proved is there is a serious problem with the Waco Police Department, you haven’t proved David Spence is innocent”. That is so true, as it was back when it was first said back in the mid 90’s it is still true today. Just look at all the people that have come and gone that said they could prove David Spence and the Melendez brothers were innocent and only left us with more questions. But with all the articles written about the case or podcast about the case or websites dedicated to the case, how many have ever dug deep into the flaws committed by the Waco PD during the original investigation and that effected how things turned out. That’s the article I want to read or the podcast I want to listen to. I remember when I first saw the article and heard the audio clips of an interview done with Dennis Baier a few years ago. I was so excited, I thought we would finally get some answers, I thought Dennis Baier was probably the most level headed detective or Sergeant in the Waco PD that worked on the Lake Waco Murders case, surely he was going to shine some light on the case. I contacted the people that conducted the interview and found there were a series of interviews and they were planning to release them at some point. Time passed and still nothing more had been released and I continued to contact these people. Finally after 2 or 3 years i was told they had been waiting for Dennis Baier to give them permission to release the interviews and they had reached out to him and he hadn’t replied and enough time had passed they felt comfortable in releasing the transcripts of the interviews to me, again I was so excited. Then I got the transcripts and was so disappointed, out of the three interviews only one really dealt with the Lake Waco Murders. There was some interesting information about some of the officers before they work the Lake Waco Murders case but for any new insights into that case the interviews were severely lacking. So again I contacted the people that released the transcripts to me and asked were they going to interview Dennis Baier again and if so I had some questions I would like him to answer. They replied they couldn’t do that but they told me I could contact the person that conducted the interview and they gave me his contact information, and I sent him an inquiry and of coarse I got no reply. And that’s the thing I’m seeing or hearing in these podcast, the podcasters are just repeating articles they have read, they are not doing any true research, they haven’t read the police reports or trial testimony and without doing so their knowledge of the case is very limited and with that their questioning can only be so narrow. If I had the chance to interview Dennis Baier, I would have so many questions for him, I could spend at least one hour on just one report he dictated. I have reached out to a number of people including Vic Feazell and Ramon Salinas to no avail, they won’t answer my questions. I believe Salinas has passed on now, I know he was having some health issues a number of years ago. And that’s a serious problem as time goes by, we lose the people that can provide answers but we should know some of the questions that need to be asked.
Like the judge said, the only thing that has been proven is there was a serious problem in the Waco PD. One can go through the police reports and easily discover this on any number of occasions. The failure to follow up the tip Lisa Kader gave them on July 19th was clearly a critical mistake. And this mistake probably allowed other violent crimes to occur as the guys responsible for the murders continued their summer of terror with sexual assaults on Lisa Kader, Cindy Quick and Darvin Pack, the threats against Kebana Reed and Dana Diamond, all these horrible acts could have been avoided if Waco PD had acted on the information Lisa Kader provided. These victims wouldn’t have suffered these incidents from the hands of the same killers of Jill Montgomery, Raylene Rice and Kenneth Franks. That’s the chilling effect of the mistakes Waco PD made during the investigation and it never gets mentioned or questioned. And that’s just one of the consequential blunders and if the mistakes weren’t bad enough, it’s even worse how some in the Waco PD have tried to spin things in the aftermath, in many regards it almost as bad as the mistakes. And why? And why haven’t those responsible for this miscarriage questioned or held accountable. The mistake of not following up the Lisa Kader tip was bad enough but that none of the officers that had worked on the case before Simons and Baier followed up that lead admitted to the mistake and jumped on board to help Simons and Baier just shows the disfunction within that police department and things just got worse from there until it finally came to a head during the Juanita White murder case. And that the has somewhere got twisted over time that that Simons was from the “old boy school” and went after Deeb because he was a foreigner is appalling. Again the police reports prove otherwise. Simons and Baier were properly following a lead, they could have just went grabbed up Deeb and dragged him into the station for questioning. They didn’t do that, Simons knew Deeb and didn’t think he was a good suspect at first. Simons didn’t even want to harass Deeb at his place of business. He knew Deeb sometimes Deeb went to the Skaggs grocery store and Deeb closed his store because Deeb was infatuated with a girl who’s sister worked there. Simons had seen and talked to Deeb a number of times at Skaggs. So he and Baier decided to wait and go see Deeb at Skaggs. They went the first night they were on the case, Friday September 10, 1982. Deeb didn’t go to the store that night but while they were there they heard some disturbing stories about Deeb from people that worked at Skaggs, including the story that Deeb had asked cashier Patty Pick to steal the keys of Patty’s co-worker, the sister of Kebana Reed, the girl he had the crush on, so he could make copies of the keys so he could get into the girls’ apartment. With stories like this Simons and Baier decided they needed to look further into Deeb. The next day, Saturday September 11, 1982 they went back to Skaggs and talked to the Reed sisters and Kebana told them that she afraid and couldn’t even go out on dates because of Deeb. She went on a lunch date one time and Deeb showed up, And Deeb had threatened to kill her if she went out on dates, he threatened to kill her and her date. It was stories like this that made Deeb a viable suspect and the next day Gayle Kelly informed them that Deeb had confessed to the murders and after he was arrested Dana Diamond told Simons and Baier the same thing Kebana Reed had told them, that Deeb had threatened to kill her and her boyfriend if she didn’t break up with her boyfriend. So Simons and Baier had plenty just cause to go after Muneer Deeb, it was just a monumental blunder that the Waco PD didn’t follow up that lead. And there’s plenty of blame to go around. First there is Lt. Horton, he was in charge of the investigation. He’s gravest error is usually seen as being the Officer that signed off on suspending the case and even checking to see if the investigators that were under his command followed up all the leads and tips before they suspended the case, which was his responsibility. He never did get along with Truman Simons and when Simons went over Horton’s head to get permission to take over the case, Horton didn’t like it. But another of his biggest mistakes was the lack of reporting or acting on his interview with Clifford Oliver. If Clifford Oliver reported that Anthony Melendez was at the Lake the night of the murders, there is question as to what exactly Oliver told Horton because Horton didn’t put it in his report. But, if Clifford told him Tony was at the lake that night, remind you Anthony Melendez was a fugitive from the law for a robbery and sexual assault of a teenage girl in which a knife was used, and Horton didn’t act on this information, he needed to change his profession because he had no use being a police officer. Other than Horton the other officer that deserves a fair amount of scrutiny is Detective Ramon Salinas, he was the lead detective so it would figure there is more to question. But with Salinas it’s not so much the mistakes as it is how he responded to things about the case in the pursuing years. Again I tried to contact Salinas and ask him a few questioned and again no reply. There are two main issues I have with Detective Ramon Salinas. First; in later years Salinas stated many times that he believed the murders occurred at Speegleville Park where they were discovered but that is not what he wrote in his initial report on the case less than 24 hours after being at the scene where the bodies were discovered. This is what he wrote in that report, “It appears these bodies were laid in this location after they were dead. It appeared that they might have been killed elsewhere and then laid in this location”. This was the general consensus of the officers that were at the scene, I haven’t seen one report that opposes this view. Now people can change their mind but wouldn’t you like to know what made them change their mind and this is exactly what I asked Salinas, what made him change his mind. Never got a reply and never will because I believe he’s passed on. So we are left with this question, why and when did Salinas change his mind, the first I heard of it was during the whole Juanita White fiasco when many in the Waco PD were jumping on the anti Truman Simons band wagon and saying anything against him they could, including many officers that originally worked the Lake Waco Murders; Horton, Salinas, Robert Fortune. The second and maybe even more disturbing issue I have with Salinas his is often repeated statement that David Spence’s never came up during his investigation. Either Ramon Salinas has a terrible memory or he is just a straight out liar. He have Eugene Deal, David, Spence’s parole officer, saying he called Waco PD and talking to Detective Salinas. Deal informed Salinas that he should talk to Spence because he(Deal) believed Spence had information about the murders because Spence had vaguely mentioned he knew something. This was before Deal believed Spence was involved un the murders, at this point he just thought Spence might have some information. Over the next month Deal came into further information that made he start to believe not only did Spence have information about the case but was directly involved and Deal called Salinas a couple more times but he never got a gold of Salinas and Salinas never returned his messages. There are at least two other people that mention David Spence, now this information didn’t come in until after the case was suspended but the Waco PD were suppose to check out any new information if it came in. The case was suspended on Friday September 3, 1982, the start of the labor day weekend, right around labor day the crime stoppers got a call from Doris Tucker, she reported that she was in the Rainbow Drive-In and overheard Muneer Deeb and Christine Juhl getting to an argument over money Deeb owed David Spence and Christine threatened Deeb that she could go to the police and tell them what she knows and have Deeb put away for life. Then in December Josie Scionti calls the Waco PD and informs them that Clifford Oliver that taken her, her sister and brother in-law to the place where the three teens had been killed. Clifford had told her it was David Spence that had told him this is where they had been killed. So that’s at least three people that mentioned David Spence and that’s not counting Lisa Kader, who when interviewed by Simons and Baier on Saturday September 11, 1982 and asked who could have helped Deeb carry out these murders, she gave then David Spence. All answers Ramon Salinas could have gotten if he would have followed up the lead they got 6 days after the murders.
These are just a few of the innumerable questionable issues in the Lake Waco Murders case. But where are the articles and podcast that mention these issues. Why does what podcasters call deep diving into the case only consist of the same stories I’ve heard for decades? Doesn’t sound like a deep dive to me. Change the trajectory of the narrative, you change perspective, you change perspective you change the conversation, you change the conversation you find new answers.
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