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.
taylorelane, waiting to see the connection you have found between Jill Montgomery and James Russell Bishop I thought I would share somethings I have on that subject, hopefully we’re on the same track in regards to this. Either way it’s good to see someone is trying to find connections. As far as I have seen the roots for any connection between Jill Montgomery and James Russell Bishop start with something I call “The Mysterious Mr. R.”, it is still one of the biggest unknowns of this case. I believe I know the name of this person but I could be wrong, I will get to that later. To begin we need to understand how the question of the Mysterious Mr. R. came about. On July 15, 1982, two days after the murders one day after the bodies were discovered, the Waco P.D. sent Detective Porterfield to the Methodist Home to get information on Jill Montgomery. Detective Porterfield talked to Mary Belheimer, who was the counselor for both Jill Montgomery and Kenneth Franks. Ms. Belheimer gave what information she could but she couldn’t remember everything but she told the detective they had a file on Jill that could provide more information and she offered it to the detective. Unbelievably Detective Porterfield declined the offer and said if they needed the file he would come back and get it, this was just the start of how this investigation was going to go. As the Waco P.D. was conducting their investigation the Waxahachie P.D. was conducting their own investigation and in doing so also contacted the Methodist Home and were given the same offer as Detective Porterfield, access to Jill’s file. Using better judgement they accepted the offer and got Jill Montgomery’s file, understanding the wealth of information this file could provide. So, the Waxahachie P.D. knew more about what was going on in Jill’s life when she was in Waco and the Methodist Home than the Waco P.D. did. They did pass information on to Waco P.D., so Waco P.D. could follow up some of this information but Waco P.D. usually did a less than stellar and thorough job of this. Definitely not the ideal or proper way to run an investigation.
About a week after the murders, Waxahachie had obtained some interesting information. They had a subject tell them she had heard three men of Hispanic descent talking about the murders at a flea market in Fort Worth and gave the name of a Robert, also of Hispanic descent, as the killer. And gave the important detail that Robert worked at El Chino in Waco. In relationship to this information, at least in the minds of Waxahachie P.D., were other things they had come across during their investigation; Raylene’s younger sister, Renelle, telling them Jill was seeing a Mexican boy, Renelle believed was from the Methodist Home, she also shared that Jill was taking black Mollies, speed, 6 to 8 pills a day for weight control and Jill had lost weight before she was killed. Then there was a photo of Jill with a Mexican no one in Waxahachie knew, so they believed he was from Waco and/or the Methodist Home, there was information that Jill had a new drug connection in Waco. And then finally there was a letter Jill had written to Raylene, only days maybe a week before the murders, stating they needed to stop by and see Mr. R. while the were in Waco. To the Waxahachie P.D. all these loose pieces of information were referring to one person and they passed this on to Waco P.D. to follow up this lead. We will have to break down each individual piece of information and that is going to create a long series of post but really it’s the only way to go about it and even then it might get confusing.
I guess the first piece of information we should tackle is the reported discussion of the three men at the flea market but there will be so many questions once we delve into that. Probably the easiest and also getting to how this connects Jill to JRB is getting into the photo. Waxahachie P.D. thought the man/boy could have been the Robert the three men at the flea market were talking about and this Robert could have been Jill’s new drug connection in Waco and the Mr. R. mentioned in the letter Jill had written to Raylene. They passed this information to Waco P.D., at this time the detectives working the case on Waco’s end believed the murders were drug related, so the information the received from Waxahachie was in line with their thinking and at first they jumped on it. Keep in mind it is very important “WHEN” law enforcement obtain information. Specifically in regards to this case, Waco P.D. received this information in late July 1982, they didn’t hear James Russell Bishop’s name until San Diego P.D. called to get information on him in February 1983, so they definitely couldn’t make a connection. And by the time they did get his name the information they had received earlier was forgotten or had become irrelevant.
The first thing Waco P.D. did when they first got the information was take the photo of Jill and the Mexican guy to the Methodist Home to find out the identity of this guy. It turns out the guy’s name wasn’t Robert but Richard Lopez. There is still questions as to the relationship between Jill Montgomery and Richard Lopez but by all accounts he was a good guy, no trouble at all, not some one you would look at for murder or even drugs. The one interesting thing of note, especially for people looking at James Russell Bishop, was that Richard Lopez worked with James Russell Bishop at MCC. So logic would dictate that if James and Richard knew each other there is at least a possibility that Jill and James met somewhere along the line through Richard.
Although Richard was the guy in the picture, Waco P.D. was still interested in any Roberts of Mexican descent that Jill may have came into contact with during her stay at the Methodist Home. They were given a couple Roberts mentioned to the police. I will only get into one at the moment for the purpose this could be a second connection between Jill and JRB. A name that was given to the police that the Methodist Home had trouble with was one Robert Menchaca. This Robert’s sins; he harbored runaways from the Methodist Home. When Waco P.D. talked to Mary Belheimer at this time, in late July, she stated she had not heard anything about this Robert in sometime and didn’t know if he was still participating in these activities. Waco P.D. would follow up on this in November 1982, at that time Ms. Belheimer still didn’t have any further information on these Robert’s but she thought maybe the house parent would and directed them to talk to a Mrs. Lyles. Mrs. Lyles knew of two Hispanic Robert’s the Home had trouble with; Robert Torres who had gotten one of the girls at the Home pregnant and then Robert Menchaca for harboring the runaways. But Mrs. Lyles did add that it had been a year maybe even two the last time she could recall Menchaca harboring runaways from the Home. And this brings into light the importance of having the file of Jill Montgomery. When Detective Porterfield talked to Mary Belheimer on July 15, 1982, Ms. Belheimer only remembered Jill had runaway in January 1982, which is the only incident she mentioned and gave details on. But Jill had runaway before that and the information on that incident was in the file, something Waco P.D. never saw nor knew about until Waxahachie mentioned it to them at some later time. The importance of this little piece of information, again especially for those trying to make a connection with James Russell Bishop, is the earlier incident would put Jill running away about a year prior to when Waco P.D. talked to Mrs. Lyles and the possibility that Robert Menchaca was still active in harboring runaways at that time, which leads to the possibility that Jill could have ben one of the runaways that stayed at Robert’s. Where did Robert live at the time Proctor Ave. And who else lived on Proctor Ave, I believe only a couple blocks away??? The man James Russell Bishop thought was his father until about a week before he left Waco and took off to California at the end of July.
There is one more Robert mentioned at the time that I want to get into but it involves Gayle Kelly. Anything involving Gayle Kelly takes some degree of explaining, so that will have to be another post on it’s own. Hopefully a short post.
So at this point I believe it’s safe to say Richard Lopez, the guy in the photo with Jill, is not the Hispanic Robert in Waco that law enforcement thought was the guy mentioned at the flea market nor had anything to do with the murders of Jill, Raylene and Kenneth. If anything he could be the conduit for a connection between Jill and James Russell Bishop. But law enforcement was still looking for a Hispanic Robert and it was Gayle Kelly that would provide one, kinda!!! The problem with Gayle Kelly is she is not the most credible person, I’ve talked to her and honestly I get the impression she is hiding something, she definitely knows more than she is willing to say and as harsh as it might sound I feel at times she is more interested in protecting secrets and probably unsavory behavior she knew about or maybe even took part in than divulging the truth. The first time I talked to her, one of the first thing she said to me was that Waco P.D. thought she was lying to them, I had to point out from the first moment she walked into the police station on July 20, 1982 she did lie to them. During the trials a couple girls from the Methodist Home testified for the defense and they stated Gayle couldn’t be trusted and was a liar. The only problem with this is those same girls had their own credibility issues. When I first talked to Rhonda Evans, she shared those same sentiments, “You can’t believe anything Gayle says”. On the other hand Gayle says the same thing about Rhonda. In my own opinion there is one glaring issue in regards to Gayle Kelly I just can’t reconcile and I’ve tried to talk to her about it but she just gets mad and then refuses to talk to me. It has to do with her turning in Deeb only hours after Truman Simons and Dennis Baier told her they were looking at him in connection with the murders and asked her not to say anything to him. Yes it’s true that Deeb said he killed the kids, joking or not, but why did it trigger Gayle to contact Truman then? Deeb had given her details of the murders before and she never said anything, never mentioned this to the police at the time, nor did she ever tell them about the animosity that existed between Kenneth and Deeb, something she surely knew about. Why? Deeb had told Gayle Gayle Kenneth was made to suffer before he was killed more than a month before he made the comment that caused her to contact Truman, she never wondered how he had these details, can someone really be that naive or stupid? I don’t believe so I believe there’s something more behind her actions or reactions. Along those lines we also have to consider the true level of the relationship between Jill and Gayle. One of the girls that testified for the defense said Gayle had made statements that she was happy Jill was dead or had been killed. We hear, mostly in the book Careless Whispers how close Jill and Gayle were, they were like sister’s. In all the police reports only once do we hear anything close to this. And that came from the girls’ supervisor at Fort Fisher; Lou Booker. And actually what she said was sometimes they acted like sisters, other times it was like they couldn’t stand each other and hated each other. Then there is the little fact that most people are not aware of but speaks volumes. When Jill wa at the Methodist Home she wrote home, talking about the friends she had met and made, sent pictures home of these no friends. In all the letters and pictures she never mentioned Gayle Kelly, no pictures of Gayle Kelly, absolutely nothing about Gayle Kelly. Jill’s family never heard the name Gayle Kelly until after the murders, probably after Truman took over the case in September 1982. The original detectives didn’t share as much with the families, Truman was more open with the families. Now I don’t write this to bash Gayle Kelly, she had a rough life but I do have to questions some of her actions, behaviors and motivations. And the only reason I mention this now is for all the questions I have about her credibility I do believe she had the proper answer as to whom the Mysterious Mr. R. was and she gave it to Waco P.D. but of coarse not the full truth. When Waco P.D. took the photo of Jill and the Hispanic guy, that turned out to be Richard Lopez, they went to Gayle, although she had left the Methodist Home at that point and show her the picture. Gayle really couldn’t give them any information on Richard Lopez than they already had but they were still interested in finding a Hispanic Robert that might have been connected to Jill. And Gayle actually gave it up, to a point. She gave them the name of Robert DeLaRosa and add details like Jill was seeing him on the sly because he was older than the girls at the Home were allowed to date and apparently he was the source for Jill to score some drugs. This was everything the police were looking for, they asked for more info but Gayle she she really didn’t know anything more and there’s the rub. She did know more, probably a lot more. Robert DeLaRosa was Gayle’s boyfriend’s uncle. I believe Robert DeLaRosa is the Mr. R. Jill writes about in the letter to Raylene where she says they need to go see him when they are in Waco. Now, did this Robert have anything to do with the murders, at least to this point we can’t say, as usual it was another lead Waco P.D. failed to follow up. But the letter itself raises some questions.
Jill Montgomery’s first attempted to pick up her final paycheck from Fort Fisher on the Saturday before she was killed. Her brother took her to Waco that day. When she went to Waco that Saturday to pick up her check she was told she had to come back during the week when City Hall was open to get that check. Jill asked her brother if he could bring her back later in the week, he couldn’t come back during the week because he had to work. Jill had to find another way to get back to Waco during the week. Sunday evening Kenneth Franks calls Jill Montgomery and it’s at this point she starts making plans to get back to Waco on Tuesday. She turns to her closest friend Raylene Rice and they make their plans. This is the story as we know it and for all we know and everything out there points to this being how things went or came together. It is an accurate description of how the chain of events unfolded in the days leading up to the murders, simply put it’s the truth. But is it the whole truth?
Whatever information can be gleaned from the letter Jill wrote Raylene within a week of their murders will always be over shadowed by the questions it has left us. Beyond trying to figure out who Mr. R. is, we are left with the question were the girls already planning to go to Waco for another reason before the way things played out over the weekend? The letter surely points in that direction but whom were they going to see and what were they planning to do? Those questions can only leave us with a haunting chill. The what ifs!!! Some may try to find comfort in the idea it was only one letter and didn’t mean that much, just two teenage girls scheming some under the radar road trip. That might gel if the letter stood alone but with the help of the phone bill it tells us a different story.
Jill’s mother’s telephone billing cycle ended on the 10th, July 10th. So calls made from June 11th up until July 10th were one one bill, the would have calls Jill made to Waco, which was a long distant call. Waco P.D. would obtain this bill sometime in July and they would track down the calls Jill made to Waco. Two of these calls were made to Ginger Yoby, a girl that was one of Jill’s closest friends at the Methodist Home. This was a name Jill’s family were familiar with, Jill had mentioned her in letters, had sent home pictures with this girl and expressed how Ginger was one of her closest friends. So seeing that Jill had called her a couple times wasn’t surprising. One of the calls took place about 5 or 6 days before the murders the second a day or two before the murders. Waco P.D. questioned Ginger about these calls and her answers left them a world of doubt. In the first call Ginger says Jill told her that she and Raylene were coming to Waco on Saturday, remind you this call took place Wednesday or Thursday, well before the weekend. Jill’s brother ended up taking Jill to Waco for whatever reason. Ginger stated she didn’t see Jill that Saturday and the second call was to let Ginger know Jill and Raylene were still coming to Waco but now it would be Tuesday, which would be the day they would end up getting killed. Ginger did not see Jill that day either.. The Waco Detectives were in disbelief, the information they had was that Jill and Raylene hadn’t made plans to come to Waco until the Sunday or Monday before the murders. The detectives were concerned about it enough that they drove to Waxahachie to question Jill’s mother about when Jill and Raylene had made their plans to go to Waco. Jill’s mother was still sure the girls made the plans Sunday night or the next day. Waco P.D. did not have the letter Jill had written to Raylene the days before at the time, Waxahachie P.D. still had it and apparently didn’t know of the letter’s contents but the letter and Ginger’s recollections of the phone calls match, Jill and Raylene had been planning to go to Waco for whatever reason prior to the development that Jill needed a ride to go get her check. That truth might be hard to accept but it might help us find the truth as to where the girls went the day they were murdered. He have a number of hours that the girls were in town we can’t account for. And the question of Mr. R. still remains.
Loose threads, as so much as this case is, you try to tie up one loose thread and you end up with 12 more loose threads. It’s like planting a Morning Glory, you plant a Morning Glory and you get a nice pretty little blue flower then the next thing you know they are all over the place. So it is with the genesis of the mysterious Mr. R., you start in one direction, one clear thought, one final destination and end up all over the place, having no idea where you’re going. The beginning of this simple thread was three hispanic men at a flea market talking about the murders and giving us intriguing information, enough so that makes us feel it’s worth while jumping into that rabbit hole. And what information did these guys provide? They gave us a name; Robert; that he is of Hispanic descent; that he killed Jill and her friends because Jill broke up with him and left Waco to return home and that Robert worked at El Chico’s. Then we have both Raylene’s sister and Gayle Kelly verifying the Jill was seeing someone of Mexican descent, Gayle even goes as far as saying his name was Robert. Both girls tells us this boyfriend was Jill’s source for drugs, something the men at the flea market never mention. The letter Jill wrote to Raylene implies that the person they were going to see in Waco was a drug source. So this all has to add up to something, right. The first thing we should question is how much of this information was general public knowledge at the time. I believe it was commonly known that Jill had been a resident at the Methodist Home and had returned home recently. I’m not sure if the information the the girls went to El Chico’s the night they were murdered. And the mention of El Chico’s was the thing that first stood out to me. Yes El Chico’s was the place Richard Franks said Jill had called from. I’ve long wondered if Mr. Franks was mistaken on this. Jill had a favorite restaurant and it was a Mexican restaurant as was El Chico’s. We know this about this restaurant, it is mentioned as Jill’s favorite restaurant a couple times. I think the most important one coming from Jill’s father. When Jill ran away in January 1982, she called her family and told them she wanted to come home. Jill’s father drove to Waco, picked up Jill and they went to Jill’s favorite restaurant. Made sense, he was trying to lessen the blow for he would have to tell Jill they, are parents didn’t think Jill was ready to come home, running away didn’t exhibit that she was willing to abide by the rules. Jill would return the Methodist Home. Jill’s favorite restaurant in Waco was El Conquistador. El Conquistador and El Chico’s were only a few miles apart, the girls could have gone to either one. I would think with Jill bringing her best friend to town she would want to take her to the place she thought was best, her favorite. Ok, that might be trying to pry into things too much but when Waco P.D. tried to verify that’s where the girls had gone, they couldn’t not one staff member remembered seeing the girls and Waco P.D went to El Chico’s more than once to make sure they talked to everyone that worked that night. Also management told Waco P.D. that they hadn’t had any Robert working there in a long time. So I would have to question did the girls go to El Chico’s that night? To me it makes more sense they went to Jill’s favorite restaurant; El Conquistador, a place Waco P.D. didn’t check out. Is it possible that Mr. Franks just misspoke when he said El Chico’s when he meant to say El Conquistador or maybe just had it all mixed up, which you couldn’t blame him at the time. If this is the case then what does this do to the value of the information from the men at the flea Market? And if we have to question that there are surely other things we should question. Maybe the Robert they were talking about wasn’t Mexican or Hispanic maybe he was just some white boy Robert, that alone opens the flood gates. Just think of the Roberts we could come up with; Robert Freuh, definitely knew Kenneth and sold drugs; Robert Coleman was a friend of David Spence’s was with Spence both the night David sexually assaulted Lisa Kader and the night David and Gilbert attacked the Pack boy and we know Robert Coleman dated at least one girl from the Methodist Home. Robert Watts, a strange character to say the least, hitchhikes to Waco and stays at Fort Fisher around the same time as the murders, then hitchhikes to Axtell to be present at the party where Beth Bramlett disappeared less than a moth later, this guy could have been the inspiration for the cult classic from the 80’s “The Hitcher”.
Maybe the R. in the letter Jill wrote was reference to an initial of a last name and not a first name. The first two people that come to mind would be Charles Ramsey and Ronald Robinson, two guys there were definitely in Koehne Park the night of the murders. You could go in many different directions on this one question. The one correct answer solves a lot of different issues.
Jill Montgomery ran away from the Methodist Home in January 1982. Waco P.D. got a decent about of details on this incident from Mary Belheimer, Jill and Kenneth Franks counselor at the Home. We know Jill ran away with another girl from the Home named Rhonda Evans, that the two girls spent a couple nights at the home of Bobby Brem, a close friend of Kenneth’s and a guy that really liked Jill. Jill called her parents from the pay phone at the Rainbow Drive-In. Jill wanted to come home but with her running away her parents didn’t think she was ready to come home, so Jill returned to the Methodist Home. But there was another time Jill ran away, we don’t have as much detail on this incident, Mary Belheimer didn’t mention it to Detective Porterfield when they talked on July 15th, but it was in Jill’s file, something Detective Porterfield decided not to take. Waxahachie P.D. got the file and knew about this incident and at least let Waco P.D. know the incident had occurred. This is why don’t see much about this incident in the Waco reports. Made little details we get is it occurred in November 1981 and at this time Jill ran away with two other girls but we don’t get their names, they are probably in the file. I believe Rhonda Evans was one of the girls and I have talked to Rhonda, she said she and Jill did in fact run away with another girl but this happened in January 1982. I pointed out that’s not what the records so, she might have the two incidents mixed up. Well you can guess how that went over. She really doesn’t want to be that helpful, she would never give me the name of the third girl and I still can’t find the name of that girl. Does anyone out there know the identity of the girl that ran away with Jill Montgomery and Rhonda Evans??? I would really like to find her and talk to her. She would have information that only her and Rhonda would have now!!!
I found new information which of course means new to me. Kenneth and Jill’s autopsies show that their drug tests were negative. I’d love to see everyone’s thoughts on this.
Taylor, I’ve been wanting to reply to your comment, sorry it has taken so long. That the testing for drugs in the victims came back negative should not be too shocking, there could be a couple reasons for this. First, simply the type of pills we know about the kids using would run through anyone’s system with in a day, so not finding any of those substances in their bodies probably only tells us that they hadn’t taken any pills in the last 24 hours prior to their deaths. Now with marijuana , which usually takes about 30 days to go through your system, there are many masking agents that would shield from detection. Gold Seal was a popular choice back then but there are others and even some natural ones. So if any of the kids were using any of these type of products it would have masked whatever they were using and with many of these products during a autopsy you have have to look for those exact masking agents, not sure if that is common in a routine autopsy, I believe someone has to ask for those exact type of test to be done. Don’t know if it was done in these autopsy, from what little I get from the autopsy and I’m definitely not the right person to ask, it doesn’t look like that kind of screening was done.
On the other hand, let’s take the findings of the autopsy at face value, that being the kids didn’t have any traces of drugs in their systems, what would that tell us. Obviously, they hadn’t smoked any weed in about a month, which seems highly unlikely with the stories we hear, especially with Kenneth Franks. But what it also could tell us is the kids had very limited sources to get these drugs and weed. Maybe a single source. And if they only had a single source and ran into a problem with that source the kids could have been left high and dry. This also looks like a very good possibility, again especially with Kenneth Franks, see many stories in the police reports about Kenneth owing someone money over some drug deal. Even in one of Jill’s letters she says she has found a new source for speed in Waco. That the kids were desperate to make a deal again looks like a good possibility and that no drugs were found in their systems after they were killed only adds to a likely probability this is what happened, they hadn’t been able to score any drugs for sometime when a possibility presented itself they jumped at it. Why did the kids get in whatever vehicle, with whomever and leave the park, at a time when the girls should have started heading back to Waxahachie??? There had to be a reason.
Like it or not we know Muneer Deeb was the drug source for Gayle Kelly and many of the girls at the Methodist Home for a couple months prior to the murders. If we look approximately 30 days before the murders, roughly June 13th, can we find anything that would show us there was a problem with this very unstable arrangement??? I believe there is. I would ask this, we know Deeb got an insurance policy on Gayle on June 22nd, the day she had agreed to come work for him. It’s all a nice little story, Deeb cares about his employees and gets them insurance. Well it’s a load of crap!!! Deeb had been think of getting the insurance weeks before. We know this from the insurance salesman. I posted his testimony today. Would people please stop saying the policy did not pay if Gayle got killed, the insurance agent clearly states it does. Anyway why was Deeb thinking about getting an insurance policy on Gayle back then, it wasn’t in lieu of worker’s comp, she wasn’t a worker!!! The rift between Gayle, Kenneth and possibly Jill and Deeb had already started, weeks before the June 22nd insurance policy, Gayle moving into the apartment the same day and the fall out of that arrangement a couple nights later. From about June 24th until the day of the murders, July 13th, the only contact we really hear about between these parties is Deeb saying Jill and Raylene stopped in the store that day. That’s three weeks there add another week or so to that and you have 30 days before the murders and the kids at odds with their known drug source. Deeb came from the old world, and in the old world they have many old sayings like “keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer”. Getting an apartment to share with the girl that is draining you dry doesn’t get much closer!!!
I direct this post to Mr. Raymond Rice. I was shocked to see your name appear on one of my sites today, you have stayed away and been silent for so long. People like me say we understand your pain, suffering and the anguish you have lived with for all these years but we cannot truly understand to full depth and scope of this dark world. Although we trudge through all the graphic details and can recite facts and records, our journey never takes us to the darkest abyss that the living victims have lived in for so long. I don’t know why you finally decided to take a look, I can’t fathom it was just pure curiosity, your connection to this heartbreaking tragedy would paralyze any such notions. I would have to think there might have been some regrets along the way. Mr. Rice, all I can say is; if one of those regrets is there was never any justice for your daughter. No one was ever prosecuted for the vicious rape and murder of your daughter, justice can still be obtained, there is no statue of limitations on murder. The state held back the charges of the murder of your daughter against the Melendez brothers in case they later recanted, well they tried. David Wayne Spence was only convicted for the two murders of Jill Montgomery and Kenneth Franks. Whom has been held responsible for Raylene’s murder??? NOBODY!!! If you would like to change that, your family would be Raylene’s strongest advocates. You would get plenty of support from a wide range of interested parties. Justice for Raylene would benefit so many more victims. In finding Raylene’s killer, you would correct mistakes of previous proceedings, provide answers to so many unresolved questions and you would have the benefit of using the DNA evidence that wasn’t available during the earlier trials. They have the fingernail clippings from Jill Montgomery. They have found male DNA in those clippings, that would give the identity of a least one of the girls attackers. To be able to finally prove this beyond any reasonable doubt would be a blessing to many that have suffered as long as you have. Finding Justice for Raylene would find relief for others. Mr. Rice if this is on your mind and you think you could weather the storm of the terrible ordeal this would certainly become and you want to talk, you can contact me privately. You could provide the blessing that so many have been seeking for nearly 42 years!!!
When the heat of the truth radiates like the sun, icy cold lies melt away.
The truth is more important than justice. The exchange is never equal, any justice dispensed can never repay nor replace the loss suffered. The truth is priceless.
I can confirm that he liked young boys. I used to hang out with him when I was in my late teens and early 20s. He was a great manipulator. I didn’t meet him until after the lake Waco murders. He still had the burgundy Lincoln and his dog Sammy. I never saw him get violent, but I do remember being at his house one night and someone rammed his garage door.
I never understood why there was never an arrest for his murder. I know he was a creepy weird preacher, but I have never heard of someone confessing to killing someone and never get charged for it.
i apologize if I am rambling. I just spent the past 2 hours reading all of this, and I felt compelled to contact you. I don’t really talk about that period in my life because I was addicted to drugs and a lost soul.
ptee. I don’t believe the killer wasn’t charged, I believe he got some of deal, he would have been the perfect canidate , young and involved in trnasporting drugs from the bigger cities in Texas and whatever else Robert Frueh might have been he was a drug dealer. I can see a deal for information. Now, the problem most people, including myself, in trying to findactually what legal coarse was taken, all relevant information that could give us an idea of the legal coarse taken had been redacted and expunged. We can’t track anything if we don’t have that information. Maybe it was just because of the killers age but I would doubt that, just because he was at least 16 and driving, at 16 most homicides aren’t that easily swept under the rug, so I would say something happened behind the scenes. Ptee, you mentioned you knew the killer, would you feel comfortable sharing he identity; age name? And don’t worry about rambling, we love it!!!
i don’t feel comfortable just putting his information out here like that, but I don’t mind telling you in private if you won’t put it out there either. He has a life now and I don’t think it would be right to ruin it.
i had to go to an attorney’s office after this happened and tell them what I knew about Reverend Bob and the other guy. Bill Vanatta. I think it was. Bob was working at ATDS truck driving school out in elm mott/Lacy Lakeview he would also pick up his Amway from elm mott. At this time he was driving a maroon convertible Cadillac at this time. Bob had a yellow gallon Tupperware pitcher he would keep in the trunk, a long with red solo cup and an ice chest. He would make screwdrivers with cheap vodka and frozen minute maid orange juice. He was always drinking these and offering them to people.
i.never saw any large amount of drugs at Bob’s house I do know he smoked marijuana but I had never done any other drugs with him.
He also liked to watch but there were times where he tried to touch the guy and it would ruin the mood. He also would try to get these guys he would bring back to his place to spank him with his belt. Just crazy things that are coming back to me as I am typing. I remember that he had a second German Shepherd while I knew him, Luke. His dogs were very well taken care of, not that it makes Bob any less creepy. Looking back at this part of my life as a mother makes me see it from a completely different perspective.
A interesting little tidbit from one of our contributors, she can identify herself if she wishes to. Thank you!!!
I wish I could recall exactly what bill vanatta asked me. I remember him telling me that bobs family didn’t want to pursue the case and I always thought that was weird because I didn’t think you could just murder someone and not have the legal system prosecute you
Today is another sad anniversary, 42 and counting and still so many questions!!! We are still awaiting the results on the DNA found in Jill Montgomery’s fingernail clippings, when will they be released??? Come on it’s been 42 years, it’s getting a little ridiculous!!! In the meantime we can amuse ourselves with opinions, theories, rumors and podcast. And I guess for this awful anniversary I will share my own version of a proposed timeline.
Here is an outline of my time line. It starts with David Wayne Spence first returning to Waco. Unfortunately we don’t have an exact date on that and the only reasonable thing we have to go on is his parole officer’s word, but he probably had a file to go by. He says he first saw David either late October or Early November. Taking into consideration that David was just recently released from prison and had his parole transferred to Waco, one would think David had to check in with his new parole officer within 30 days of making that move. So that would place his return to either late September or early October. From Christine’s interview with Baier and Salinas we know she met David on October the 16th and moved in the next day. The Melendez Brothers were both already staying with David at this time. I would guess it would be about this time that David first meets the kids from the Methodist Home out at the lake. In November David and the Melendez brothers have their falling out and the brothers move out. This is the time when Jill Montgomery and Rhonda Evans run away together for the first time, they are accompanied with another girl but I have been unable to get the name of that girl.. In January 1982 Jill and Rhonda run away from the Home again, Rhonda never returns to the Home and gets put in foster care. Jill’s father picks up Jill on 15th Street a few blocks from the Rainbow Drive-In or what will become the Rainbow Drive-In, that is the general neighborhood of where David Spence’s house is, where David and Christine were living at the time. Jill had told her family she had stayed at a ladies house that allowed runaways to crash. While David lived there, without his mother being present, he let people crash there. Christine says there were never any girls that stayed there. Not too sure if I believe her on that one and there were times when Christine left David, so she wouldn’t have known what was going on there.. Karim and Deeb open the Rainbow Drive-In in February 1982. Christine starts working there in May 1982. David starts hanging out at the store once Christine starts working there. Kids from the Home are allowed to go to the store to get snacks but once David is there and David and kids know each other from partying David and the Rainbow Drive-In become a convenient place to score party supplies. Deeb sees this and sees it as a way to get one of the girls to marry him so he can obtain his green card. Hell if all these teenage girls are friendly with David, some one that doesn’t have a job or money just think what Deeb can do with a business and money. He starts offering the girls $500 if they will marry him and he starts giving out the alcohol and drugs. It doesn’t take long before some one is going to take advantage of this seriously unstable situation. That person would be Gayle Kelly, she got money, weed, drugs, alcohol anything she wanted from Deeb and of coarse she shared with her friends. The girls stated, including Gayle, that they started getting weed and the like from Deeb in late Spring, that coincides with Christine getting the job and David starting to hang out at the store. Jill and Gayle were working at Fort Fisher at this time and we know from the girls’ supervisor Deeb would come visit the girls at work on numerous occasions and Ms. Booker, the supervisor, also stated whenever Kenneth’s Franks’ name came up there was a very noticeable reaction from Deeb. This tells us a couple things; first Deeb knew Jill Montgomery and secondly that the problem between Kenneth and Deeb existed by that time. Whatever it was it was enough to cause Deeb to go to the girls’ place of work and cause enough of a scene to keep it in the mind of the supervisor for 4 or 5 months until she told Baier. Again we don’t have exact dates but I’m putting it in early June. So in the few weeks in May Gayle has started to take full advantage of the situation. Gayle says she never agreed to any arrangement with Deeb. Christine says otherwise saying Gayle led Deeb on, Was it to the point where she took the $500 to marry Deeb and then some??? I believe this could case been the case. If we look at what Deeb first did when Gayle finally did agree to move into the apartment later in the month. What did Deeb do? He gave Gayle money to get stuff for the apartment. I think he probably did the same thing when he first got the apartment for Gayle. He signed the lease on June first. On a side note Patti Deis signed for her apartment in the same complex the next day; June 2. I believe Deeb gave Gayle a nice sum of money to move into that apartment around June the 1st but Gayle doesn’t move into the apartment or use the money to get stuff for the apartment but finds other uses for it, maybe like financing a drug deal for her close friend Kenneth Franks., either way she doesn’t move into the apartment. Somewhere along the line Deeb learns he’s been duped, how he finds out is questionable but I believe it was David Spence that probably told him. David was still somewhat friends with the kids and they could still come to him to get beer and probably drugs, so he was still partying with them out at the lake and the kids out there partying and joking around probably spilled the beans about what they had done, not thinking David would go back and tell Deeb. Now Deeb is on the warpath, he starts going out to Fort Fisher to confront Gayle and I guess Jill about what they and Kenneth had done to him. This gets back to Kenneth and he starts taunting Deeb at his store. So things are starting to get a little tense at this point and first Gayle wants to get away from it all and decides she’s going to run away and stay with friends in the Fort Worth area. She tells Jill her plan and tells Jill not to say anything to anybody, apparently this would be the last time Jill and Gayle would talk. Again we don’t have exact dates, if we could ever see Gayle’s file from the Methodist Home, if it still exists we could get the exact date she didn’t return from work. What we do know is she was gone for a week and returned on the 20th or 21st of June. In a strange occurrence in the complex web of events, Deeb is keeping tabs on Gayle, he doesn’t want her to get too far out of his reach, I think he’s already thinking about getting revenge on Gayle and Kenneth, he just hasn’t been able to pull together any plan. That changes once he hears about the insurance policy Karim is getting and then Deeb becomes interested in getting insurance. Even though Christine and David state that Deeb asked David about finding some one to kill Gayle on July 4th, Karim testified that Deeb and David were talking about it all the time. Anyway Deeb knows Gayle is getting out of town and again to keep tabs on her, he tells Gayle he will take her to Fort Worth, at first Gayle declines, getting away from Deeb is probably the main reason she’s getting out of Waco. But he ends up being her only option and he does give her the ride to Fort Worth, now he knows where she will be in Fort Worth. Deeb tells her to call him when she wants to come back and he will pick her up. That call comes a week later and Deeb does go pick Gayle up and brings her back to Waco. On the trip back Deeb tells Gayle she still can move into the apartment and can come work for him. She declines and Gayle goes to stay at Patty’s apartment. While at Patty’s, Gayle tells Patty about the proposal Deeb has offered her, a job and an apartment and Patty convinces her to take Deeb up on it. Patty has joined the Army and will be leaving at the end of summer and what will Gayle do then. The next day Gayle goes to the store and tells Deeb she is accepting his offer, Deeb is pleased with this and hands her money to go get stuff for the apartment, she can start work the next day. If this is the correct story as it has been told, Gayle returned on June 20th, accepted Deeb’s offer on the 21st and we know what they did on the 22nd. They signed the insurance policy. Everybody states that Gayle only stayed at the apartment two or three nights. Gayle says on the first night, being the 21st, she slept on the couch, I believe the second night Deeb didn’t come to the apartment and then the third night is when Gayle had the party at the apartment and Deeb walked in and seeing Gayle kissing Henry Reyes, which ended everything and Gayle moved back to Patty’s. That would have been June 23rd. On June 24th Jill Montgomery goes home to Waxahachie for the weekend, she is suppose to return to the Methodist Home on Sunday June 26th but Jill tells her mother she doesn’t want to go back, Jill’s mother senses something is wrong but Jill won’t tell her what it is and with this she allows Jill to stay home and not return to Waco on a probationary basis. So now it’s late June, Jill is back in Waxahachie, Gayle is hiding out at Patty’s, it’s a little harder to detail exactly where Kenneth was staying and doing. Of coarse it stayed at is home some nights and he stayed at Patty’s some night but apparently stayed at another apartment in the complex a few nights in June when he couldn’t go home and couldn’t stay at Patty’s for some unknown reason. So during this time Deeb knew where Gayle was staying but couldn’t see her, he would go to Patty’s apartment but Patty or Kenneth wouldn’t allow Deeb to see her. This went on for a couple weeks until Kenneth convinces her it would be better for her to return to the Methodist Home, which she does on July 4th. And she is put on restriction and isn’t allowed to leave the Home for two weeks, which saves her life. When Kenneth calls her on July 13th to come with them, she can’t because she is still on restriction. But the dye has already been cast. Deeb realizes he can’t get to Gayle and Kenneth, he needs to draw them out, he needs to find a way to draw them out and he knows what he needs to do, probably with the help of some one. They need to put out there what the kids will see as a very lucrative drug deal, that will definitely get the kids attention and interest. Remember when Gayle is first interviewed by police on July 20th, she tells them Kenneth was planning on making some decent money on a drug seal. She didn’t know the name of the person Kenneth was going to make the deal with for her own safety. But it was someone she knew but wouldn’t expect Kenneth to deal with, it was also someone that had been recently released from prison and had returned to Waco with in the last year. Now that sounds like someone anybody that knows anything about this case would be familiar with. It is strange and troubling when the police asked Gayle if she could give them anybody that fit the description, she didn’t mention David Wayne Spence, although she definitely knew him by that point. And maybe more troubling and seeing how his case was handled from the beginning, why didn’t Waco just run a check and see what inmates had been released from prison and returned to Waco with in the last year. The list wouldn’t have been to long. And if they would have put that together with the information they had gotten from Lisa Kader, the day before they interviewed Gayle Kelly, that Deeb had killed Kenneth because of Gayle, this case would have turned out a lot differently, at least as to the questions that remain. So now Kenneth has this drug deal lined up but he has a problem he doesn’t have any money. Where can he get the funds, Gayle definitely can’t rip off Deeb again, that ship has sailed straight on a collision coarse with fatal fate. He turns to the one person he thinks he can turn to; Jill Montgomery. So Sunday night July 11th, Kenneth calls her and asks her for money and unfortunately she begrudgingly agrees to help him even though she feels serious doubts about what she’s doing. Two nights later, Tuesday July 13, 1982, Jill Montgomery, Raylene Rice and Kenneth Franks were facing their final sunset over Lake Waco, not knowing their end was only a short car ride away.
Recently I had the opportunity to waste some time listening to another crappy podcast. I actually had to leave a comment asking if they had actually read the police reports. Which obviously they hadn’t. Which makes we wonder how do any of these podcasters really think they are going to understand or have any real insight to the cases they are reviewing, if they don’t take the time to read the records??? Doesn’t make any sense!!! Without any further ado the latest in a long line of sub par podcast; Crime Junkies Lake Waco Murders Part 1. I will get into all the inaccuracies later!!!
Well I guess it’s time for me to begin to start my critiqueof the Crime Junkies podcast Lake Waco Murders part 1. Just think, it’s been 10 years since the first season of the true crime podcast Serial, the podcast that started the true crime podcast frenzie. In the 10 years since I’ve listened to dozens of podcast dedicated to the Lake Waco Murders. And also in those 10 years it seems we are getting further and further away from the truth with each new podcast. What’s the purpose??? I guess for us so called true crime buffs or true crime junkies it’s just about the entertainment value but we have to keep in mind there are a number of people out there that this case is nothing entertaining about it to them, it’s totally the opposite, it’s a living nightmare, a living nightmare that never ends. Of coarse I’m talking about the friends and families of all parties involved, the living victims of this spellbinding tragedy. For those people this case has never been entertaining and for those of us that have followed along for decades, the same ole stale falsehoods told repeatedly, don’t hold any intrinsic value. in the end they are just regurgitated lies. Again what’s the point, why??? You don’t add anything to the conversation, don’t help provide clarity nor help find answers or the truth. As I have repeated many times you can’t find the truth by repeating the same rumors and lies that got us to this point in the first place.
When the Serial podcast came out 10 years ago it had a clear purpose; to shine a light and get publicity for the case of the murder of Hae Min Lee and question the justice system that had convicted Adnan Syed. Agree or not with the outcome that Serial was instrumental in providing, the podcast had achieved it’s purpose in spades. It reminds me when Brian Pardo first became David Wayne Spence’s champion in the mid 90’s. He had a bunch of corporate lawyers and when he went to them telling them he wanted to help David Spence, they told him we don’t handle capital cases, we’re not that kind of lawyers, which led Pardo, in a round about way, to get connected to a lawyerfrom New York that better fitted his needs. One of the first things that lawyer told Pardo they needed to do was get publicity for the case, keep it in the public eye. That’s how it came about that the articles about the case were written in the New York Post and unfortunately brought the sleazy Fred Dannen into the case. The Lake Waco Murders case has suffered the harvest of that bitter seed ever since and again unfortunately it seems in the past decade podcast are addicted to that feast of lies and can never get away from it. As with all the podcast about this case before it, this is the failure of the Crime Junkies podcast.
Details, details, details, it’s all about the information you provide. Listening to the Crime Junkies podcast, you hear this underlying theme; how Truman Simons liked to work his hunches. Which, to be honest, is very true to some degree but a lot of police work without rock solid physical evidence is done on hunches. It ‘s how a law enforcement officer perceives things; suspects, people of interest, witnesses, leads and information. But not only did Truman Simons work according to his hunches, so did the officers originally working the case and if one takes the time to read the reports, you will see the original officers were wrong with those hunches, along with many other mistakes they made. Not to say Truman Simons was perfect and without fault, he was far from it, but in the end his hunches hit the mark far more than the original investigators ever did and in most cases he just did better police work. So this is my biggest problem with the crime junkies podcast, if they just took the time to read the police reports, which it seems none of these podcasters do for whatever reason, I guess they think it’s better to just keep repeating the same lies. But crime junkies takes it a step further, they attribute Truman’s hunches to aspects of the case that were grounded in something more solid. This is the area of concern I would like to address, although there were plenty in the podcast to pick from. Before I get into all this, there is one thing that i have heard repeatedly over the years, I didn’t hear it in the Crime Junkies podcast but it made me think about it when talking about Truman’s hunches and it’s a prime example of how the narrative has been told over the decades. Anyone familiar at all with the case knows Muneer Deeb was giving a polygraph test(lie detector) and he past. And it also been reported, again not in the Crime Junkies podcast, many times that Truman Simon questioned the results because Deeb was a foreinger. Again this has been repeatedly reported has some kind of Truman’s misguided thinking. Well actually Truman is correct. If one would read an operators manuel to any polygraph machine, the manual list conditions that would provide inaccurate results. In that list it says the test should be adminstered in the first language of the subject being given the test, failure to do so will result in an inaccurate reading. In this case Muneer Deeb’s first language was arabic, if he wasn’t questioned in arabic the results of the test would be inaccurate. Deeb was questioned in english, not his first language. Truman was write, it just wasn’t some of his crazy thinking, it is in the operating manual!!! And unfortunately Truman Simons gets a lot of this unfairly. Again not to say his was 100% correct, he was totally off on the whole case of mistaken identity theory but that was more of the eye of the beholder thing. If he believed Jill and Gayle looked alike no one can say e is wrong for seeing things like that, that’s how he sees it, even though he is the only one!!!
Now getting back to the Crime Junkies podcast. As I said before the podcast had an underlying theme of how Truman worked his own hunchies, to the point he alienated his fellow officers, again true to some degree but to get the whole story you have to read the reports. There are many inaccuracies in this podcast, some just small details that in the overall picture don’t mean much but why provide those inaccurate details. One such detail which they present within the first few minutes, again doesn’t mean much but it set the tone for the bigger inaccurcies that would come later. A couple minutes into the podcast they say Truman Simons and Ramon Salinas arrived at the crime scene at the same time. This is incorrect. Truman Simons and Officer Brian Reynolds were the first two officers from the Waco PD that arrived on the scene, others from the Sheriff’s office had arrived before them. When the body was first discovered by the 2 fisherman, they went to the constable that had a trailer near the gate. They told him they had found a dead man. The constable wasn’t sure what they had found. When he made his first call, he called the sheriff’soffice to report a suspicious death, he made his call before he left his trialer. This was the call Truman and Reynolds responded to, the sheriff’s office passed that first call on to Waco dispatch and Truman and Reynolds got it on their radios in their cars.. Now when they arrived people from the Sheriff’s office were already there. It’s rarely mentioned but when Truman and Reynolds arrive on the scene there is a question about jurisdiction. It’s not like you see on tv or movies where officers are arguing or are like this is my case get out of my way. It seems things were a little confusing and no one was sure who had jurisdiction but it doesn’t seem like anyone cared. That’s when Truman took control and started giving orders, it doesn’t seem anyone there had a problem with it and they tried to clear out the crime scene from all the people that had gathered by that time. Salinas arrives after this has happened. Salinas arrived after the constable made the second call to report it wasn’t a suspicious death it was a homicide. Ramon Salinas was at the Waco PD station at the time when the second call came in. He takes the call and on his way out he is stopped by Detective Trantham, who had just recently gotten pictures of the missing kids from the parents when they came to retrieve Raylene’s car. Trantham tells Salinas these kids had been reported earlier in the day and he should take the pictures just in case. Salinas takes the pictures and when he first arrives he finds Truman already inspecting the body that was found. Salinas hands him the photo of Kenneth Franks and they see the photo matches the body they are looking at, actually he is wearing the same shirt that is in the picture. Salinas goes on to tell Truman he was more bad news, this boy went missing with two girls that are still missing. And that leads to the discovery of their bodies. Again just small details, doesn’t really matter who from Waco PD arrived first but the records are very clear on it. Post is getting a little long, have to continue on another post.
After that small inaccuracy the podcast follows this up with a much bigger inaccuracy. Now they do provided the source for this information, some newspaper article, all I can say is this is why it’s better to get your information from police reports than news article. In any on going investigation police departments will be tight lipped about giving out information, so when a news article comes out with information one has to wonder how they came about it and whom or what was their source. The podcast says it was a loose consensus that the belief that the murders occurred where the bodies were found other than Truman Simons. Well I don’t know whom was part of this loose concensus, all I know it wasn’t the officers that wereat the crime scene. In their reports they all say they think the bodies were placed where they were found after being killed elsewhere. This includes Ramon Salinas, the reason I point out Ramon Salinas is because he is the only one of the officers that was present at the crime scene that wrote a report that later changed his story saying he believed they murders occurred where the bodies were discovered, that’s not what he said in his report he filed the day after the bodies were discovered. There were many reasons the officers gave for their belief the murders took place elsewhere, really no sign of a struggle, zero blood spray nor blood splatter, which you would certainly have present with all the stabbing and slicing that obviously took place on the bodies. Yes, they did mention some of the grass had been pressed down but they attributed that to the bodies being dragged to where they were found. I believein the podcast one of the host does mention this about the grass or that it could be a possibility, well she was correct that is what the responding officers wrote in their reports.
I would like to mention something I have brought up in the past but everytime I hear this argument about were the kids where they were found, this always comes to mind. Back in the 90’s when Vic Feazell was having his legal problems and there were questions about some of the things he did while he was the D.A., the defense for David Spence was granted an evidentiary hearing or evidentiary review. In reality it was like an extra appeal for David Spence. Now many people have heard at least a part of these proceedings. This is where the defense was allowed to question the evidence provided by the state durning David’s trial. It included questioning the dental findings, which most people know about, the jail bird testimony and also the defense argued against the murders taking place at Koehne Park and they put their own blood splatter expert on the stand. Most people aren’t familiar with how that turned out, again most people are familiar with Bernadette Feazelland Fred Dannen’s false claim that their expert proved the kids were killed where they were found. That is not not the court found and it was a simple but brillant question that proved the value of law enforcement recollections, police reports, over just about any other evidence. So the defense had this expert on the stand and he was explaining all the reasons in his expert opinion why the crime scene photos showed to him the murders happened right where the bodies were found. The defense was feeling good, then the state got to question the defense’s expert. I can’t remember the attorney’s name but he was brillant and he pretty much just had one question. He asked the expert to tell them what he saw 6 inches outside the picture. At first it’s like the expert is confused about the question, then he gets it and he realizes he has to admit he doesn’t know what things looked outside the photos he was provided, he was never present at the crime scene, so he doesn’t know what it looked like. The State went on to present what the police that were present at the crime scene which, which explained how there wasn’t any blood splatter or blood spray, for most part the whole area in general looked like it hadn’t been disturbed in anyway other than where the grass had been pressed downthat looked liked the bodies were probably dragged into the positions they were found. Well the court decided with the State on this issue, a little fact Bernadette Feazell and Fred Dannen never liked to share with the public along with their other shoddy info they always put out. But unfortunately 30 years later we still hear podcast trying to make this same argument but now they are doing so without reading the reports or trying to obtain the facts. I don’t know about you but something seems wrong about that!!! To be continued…..
On to the next inaccuracy, and I have to say this one is very disappointing, this lie had nearly disappeared with the disappearnce of Bernadette Feazell and Fred Dannen, the leading sources for disseminating this misinformation but I guess some people just can’t find their ticket to get on the reality tran. Of coarse I’m talking about Terry “Tab” Harper, well I guess we haven’t beaten that dead horse enough. But this podcast added new details I have no idea where they got them. But this does give me a chance to get into other hunches others officers had other than Truman and how thier hunches effected the case in a extremely negative way. I guess first we need to understand what a hunch is. Hunch is one word we can use but it’s a feeling, a gut feeling an officer has in determining how he should proceed with any aspect of a case. Usually it deals directly with people, how an officer feels about any subject they have contact with. What is their gut feeling about that person, do they think they are being honest or do they feeling they are being lied to or the subject is hiding. That gut feeling can have drastic effect on a case as it did in this case. This is a large part of investigating a case, which none of us reviewing later wiill get to experience. And alot of that gut feeling comes from experience, officers learn how to read body language, know how certain things show red flags and again we see this multiple times in this case and sometimes it leads us to wonder what were the officers thinking. I usually criticize Detective Ramon Salinas and he deserves it he was the lead investigator but his gut feelings on many things were just plain wrong. And Marvin Horton, being the ranking officer should get alot of the blame. But when we start with the whole Tab Harper fiasco it starts with Mike Nicoletti but we probably should cut him some slack. It doesn’t look like Nicoletti was an experienced detective. In the early reports other detectives working the case refer to him as officer Nicoletti, not Detective Nicoletti which you will see in later reports. I don’t know exactly when he was promoted to detective but it looks like it was recent if not during the investigation, it makes one wonder why he was choosen as one of people kept on such a complex case, why not put some one on the case with more experience. Not saying Nicoletti did a bad job. Overall he did a good job, I would say a very good job. The one misstep and it was a major one was his failure to bring in Rusty Escott, the first person that called in to point the finger at Tab Harper. But this was probably a bigger failure on the part of Horton who should have advised Nicoletti to bring Escottin for an interview. And to some degree Salinas but in the end Salinas finally told Nicoletti to bring Escott to the station so he could question him but by that time they had wasted weeks on what they finally cone to find was a rumor based on a lie and the case never recovered after that.
When we talk about Tab Harper we have to look how it all started. The first calls that came in to the Waco PD came in the morning of Friday July 16th. There were 3 calls two were anonymous, one which they would find that same day was from Escott, the other anonymous call told them they needed to talk to Escott. The third call came from a C.I., his nephew had heard some stories circulating around the summer school he was attending.. Now the essence of the stories Waco PD was getting at that time was Rusty Escott had had a conversation with a girl that had witnessed Tab Harper kill the kids and this girl was missing. When Rusty was contacted by Nicoletti, Rusty told Nicoletti this conversation took place between him and this girl Wednesday before noon, that would have been long before the bodies were discovered later that evening. The podcast mentions that 7 officers were assigned to the case, which is correct but they don’t put it into proper context. When the bodies were first discovered it was all hands on board every available body was working the case. But by the weekend all the calls and leads had dried up. So by Monday the 19th Waco Pd had a meeting with it’s officers to pull everybody off the case other than the 7 that are usually mentioned. During this meeting it was pressed on all the officers to make sure they were sharing info and leads, especially the officers that were no longer going to be working on the case. This should stand out because two maor developements, or whatr should have been major developements , happened later that day. Lisa Kader came to the police station to report Muneer Deeb had killed Kenneth Franks because of Gayle Kelly. A lead Waco PD did absolutely nothing with. And the second major event was Waco PD had found the missing girl that was suppose to be the eye witness that saw Tab Harper kill the kids. Of coarse finding a possible eye witness took precedence over everything else that day, including that other lead they had received that day and got totally forgotten about. I guess you really can’t blame anyone for that. But talking about hunches or gut feelings, this is where you start to see how this doomed their investigation. When Salinas first interviewed the missing girl; Rebecca DeMarias, she had a totally different story than Rusty Escott. She hadn’t witnessed Tab Harper killing anyboby, she hadn’t seen Tab until Wednesday evening at Midway Park and he had mentioned something about the murders, he had seen police cars speeding down the road in the direction. She also said she hadn’t talked to Rusty until Thursday morning. Well Ramon Salinas’ hunch or gut feeling was Rebecca was lying and Rusty was telling the truth. In the coming days he kept drilling Rebecca, telling her he knows she lying. He’s interviewing other kids that were at Midway Park that Wednesday night and their stories match what Rebecca has told Salinas but his gut feeling at that point is she is still lying. This went on for a couple weeks as he was finding out that the other kids that had heard the story about Harper and gotten the information from Rusty Escott. It finally got to the point where one of the kids tolsd Salinas, Rusty likes telling stories and he doesn’t listen or believe anything Rusty says. Salinas finally realizes this case against Harper is fallen apart and he finally tells Nicoletti to bring Rusty to the station so Salinas could interview him. And with that interview Salinas finds Rusty had been lying and his hunch or gut feeling that Rebecca DeMarias was lying, even when all the other kids were matching what she said, Salinas stuck to his gut feeling and he was wrong and it was very detrimental to the case in many ways. They had spend tracking down a rumor they found to be a lie and in the process failed to follow up other leads,even when all the information Salinas was obtaining was telling him Rusty’s story wasn’t true for some unexplainable reason he stuck to his guns. And unfortunately this would not be the only time when Salinas would stick with his hunch or gut feeling when it clearly didn’t make sense.
One final, I hope, comment on Terry “Tab” Harper. The Crime Junkies podcast states some kids had told the police that Kenneth owed Tab $3,000 for drugs, again I have no idea where they got this info. It isn’t in the police reports. What is in the police reports is Kenneth owed someone money for drugs, this is repeated many times but none of the kids give a name to the person Kenneth owed the mone to, they didn’t know the name and the police the police could never find a name. Actually the only time Kenneth and Tab are mentioned with any drug dealings in all the police reports is when Nicoletti interviews Gayle Kelly On Tuesday July 20th. And Gayle Kelly’s statement should have raised some questions into Harper looking like a good suspect. Gayle says Kenneth liked dealing with Tab because Harper always gave Kenneth good stuff. Gayle also stated Kenneth was making a deal with some one, some one she apparently knew but Kenneth wouldn’t give Gayle the name for her own safety but it was some one she wouldn’t expect Kenneth to be dealing with and someone the kids were apparently leery of. Well that would discount Harper because Gayle knew Kenneth was dealing with Tab.
And one final thought on Ramon Salinas. I’m not sure if this would be considered a hunch or a gut feeling but one does have to wonder what Ramon Salinas was thinking. From the beginning of the investigation one name kept coming up, all of the friends of Kenneth Franks mentioned this name as did the other kids the police interviewed in the first few days after the murders. That name was Gayle Kelly and obviously she was someone Waco PD wanted to talk to or at least should have wanted to talk to but it doesn’t look like made any effort to. They finally did get to interview her, for the first time, when she and Patti Deis walked into the police station on Tuesdays July20th, after Patti’s apartment had been broken into. Now Patti’s name had come up a couple times, mainly in connection with Gayle staying at Patti’s apartment when Gayle would run away from the Methodist Home. Patti had stayed at the Methodist Home and she was close friends with Gayle. But Waco PD had gotten very little information on her, she was somewhat unknown. I guess the best way to explain this is to share how Patrick Torres described her to police. Patrick was a very close, if not Kenneth Franks’ best friend. When he was giving names to the police of people Kenneth associated with or hung out with, he mentions Patti, he didn’t know her last name, he knew she was from the Methodist Home and Kenneth would go over to her apartment to spend the night with Gayle Kelly. He didn’t know the number of the apartment but it knew how to get there. So he clearly didn’t know this Patti very well. And this was generally how the couple other kids that mentioned her to the police, they really didn’t know her, the only way they knew her was though her relationship to Gayle Kelly. Now, one would have to think with the information provided to the police, they would put their focus on Gayle Kelly, but that’s not want Salinas does, he puts his focus on Patti Deis. He doesn’t try to track down Gayle Kelly, it tracks down Patti, goes to her place of employment, tries to obtain as much information as he can on her. When the two girls finally come into the station, he interviews Patti, Nicoletti interviews Gayle. Salinas repeatedly tells Patti he believes she knows something about the murders. When she denies any knowledge, he tells her he thinks she’s lying. He repeatedly returns to Patti’s apartment to push the issue, actually he gives both girls a hard time. After the apartment gets broken into a second time Salinas is on the phone with Patti and he asks her doesn’t she want to come to the station to report the break in. Patti declines she doesn’t want to go back to the station, she’s reporting it to him over the phone. I just can’t understand Salinas’ thinking on this at all. And then maybe the strangest part of all this is Ramon Salinas was the first, well at least the first one to put it in a report, that thought the break ins of Patti’s apartment had something to do with the murders. What makes it so strange is his actions and statements later, mostly after the whole fiasco with David’s mother’s murder, when Ramon started changing his story, like he thought the murders happened at Speegleville Park. Or his straight out lies that David Spence’s name never came up during his investigation. There were at least 4 people that mentioned Spence’s name in connection to the murders. Three of them were after Salinas suspended the case. In his September 3rd report, where he states in his report the case is being suspended, he adds they will follow up any new in coming information. Well they received some new in coming information after the third and a lot of it had to do with David Wayne Spence and Ramon Salinas nor any other Waco PD officer followed this up!!! Whatever he or any of the likes of Marvin Horton or Robert Fortune were thinking is totally unfathomable.
And now we get to Truman Simons and his hunches or gut feelings or what is perceived as such. The podcast mentions tat from the beginning Truman had a hunch that Jill Montgomery was the intended target, which to some degree is true but there is a little more to it than that. Part of Truman’s reasoning was that it looked like Jill had suffered more wounds, which was true and she was the only one that had any defensive wounds. Both of these things would point toward the killer or killers spending more time focused on Jill. So it might have been a hunch but it was grounded in reason and logic, it didn’t come out of total crazyville!!!
There are a couple things usually forgotten or unmentioned about when Truman Takes over the case on September 10th, he called the chief the evening Of September 9th, which was the same day David was picked up and arrested for the sexual assault. There were a couple conditions Larry Scott put on Truman before Scott allowed Truman to take over the case. The first was Truman wasn’t allowed to work alone, this of coarse widely reported, Scott assigned Dennis Baier to work with Truman. And part of the reason Baier was assigned to the case, which is rarely reported, as it isn’t mentioned in the Crime Junkies podcast, was to keep Truman on track because the other condition Truman had to agree to was he could only follow up the leads in the original police reports, Truman could not come up with any of his own new leads. This is rarely mentioned but it is very important. When Truman called the Chief he told him that he knew there were leads the original investigators failed to follow up on, he just wanted the chance to follow up those leads and that is what Scott agreed to. Truman had read the reports, that was one of the problems some of the detectives working the case originally had with Truman, he would read over their shoulders or take their files or reports off their desk and take them and read them. So again what might be seen as Truman having one of his hunches really had more to do with what he had read in the reports.
We know of at least two pieces of information or leads that both Truman and Dennis Baier thought worthy of checking out. The first one was Bobby Brem. Bobby Brem was a close friend of Kenneth Franks and On July 15th, the day after the bodies were discovered, Waco PD interviewed a few of Kenneth’s friends including Bobby. What stuck out in the report about Bobby’s interview was a red flag was raised and it looked like the original investigators realized this and were planning to interview him again but never got back around to it. Now this red flag is one of those things seasoned officers would pick up on immediately, as it looks like the officers that interviewed Bobby did right away as did Truman and Dennis when they first saw it. This red flag is a common tell in investigations. If you are investigating a subject and that subject acts like he does know a victim or reframes from saying that victims name it sends up a red flag. At the same time Bobby Brem is being interviewed at the police station, Detective Porterfield is at the Methodist Home getting information on Jill Montgomery. He talks to Mary Bellheimer, who happens not only to have been Jill’s counselor while Jill was there but also Kenneth Franks’ and what name does Ms. Bellheimer bring up??? None other than Bobby Brem. She states Bobby Brem liked Jill Montgomery and had wanted to date her. Jill at stayed at Bobby’s house a couple nights one time when she had run away from the Home. With this information Porterfield returns to the police station and shares this with the other detectives. He is told this is strange they had just finished interviewing Bobby Brem and he didn’t mention any of this, actually he acted like he didn’t know the girls. When Bobby mentions that Kenneth had called him to ask Bobby if he wanted to go to the park to hang out with a couple girls, he acts like he doesn’t know the girls, he doesn’t mention Jill by name, the red flag is up. And as the original detectives knew this, so did Simons and Baier when they first read it, the only difference was Simons and Baier decided to follow up and in doing so connected them to their second lead. The second lead they noticed the original investigators failed to follow up was the July 19th interview of Lisa Kader, where she states Muneer Deeb had Killed Kenneth Franks because of Gayle Kelly. Truman knew Deeb and at first didn’t see Deeb as a likely suspect. Deeb was small, somewhat frail, not someone you would think of committing a brutal triple homicide. Truman doubted Deeb’s possible link to the murders that he didn’t want to harass at his business. Truman knew where Deeb did his grocery shopping, actually Truman had talked to Deeb there a number of times. So it was decided not to go until later, Simons and Baier would go interview Bobby Brem first.
So Bobby Brem is the first person Simons and Baier interview. Most of the interview is nothing ground breaking. Bobby says yes he knew Jill and the information he had about Jill staying at his house when she ran away and that he liked her and wanted to date her was all true. So the interview is wrapping up when out of the blue or one of his hunches Truman decides to ask Bobby if he knew Muneer Deeb. Bobby replies yes he knew Muneer Deeb and he goes on to explain that there was bad blood between Kenneth and Deeb. In Bobby’s view, the reason for the bad blood had more to do with how Kenneth acted toward Deeb than anything else. At the end of the interview Truman asked Bobby why he never mentioned any of this before when he was interviewed. Bobby simply replies, I was never asked before. The simple single reply is very telling. Truman asked the questions, for whatever reason, hunch, gut feeling or maybe just better police work. Some thing you fail to see with the original investigators. Time and time in the reports you ask yourself why didn’t they ask this person or that person this question or that question but that’s not what you get and what you end up with is loose ends that still remain 40 years on. I would ask what officer would you rather have working a case???
Later that night is when Simons and Baier go to the Skaggs Market to try and talk to Muneer Deeb but Deeb never shows up. But Truman knows people there. The security guard is a former Waco Police officer and Truman decides to ask him about Deeb. They also question the cashier, Patty Pick, about Deeb. And the stories they here are very disturbing to say the least. There is a girl that works at the store and Deeb is infatuated with this girl’s sister, actually Deeb has been stalking her and has made threats towards this girl if she sees other guys. One time Deeb asked Patty Pick to steal the girls key to her apartment and give it to Deeb so he could make a copy so he could get into the apartment. Deeb would sit out in the parking lot of the apartment where the sisters lived and stay there all night. With this information Truman and Baier decided they indeed needed to look further into Muneer Deeb, he was looking like a more likely suspect. So Simons and Baier had a plan for the next day, which was Saturday September 11th. They wanted to return to the store to interview the two sisters and see what they had to say. And they also decided they should. re-interview Lisa Kader to see if she had anymore to say about Deeb.
So Saturday Simons and Baier interview the Reed sisters and their statements are even more disturbing than the statements Simons and Baier had heard the night before and the sisters provided Simons and Baier with troubling things Deeb had said about the murders. Hunches or whatever you want to call it , Simons and Baier were definitely on the right track. And this brings ne to something that was stated on the podcast. During the podcast one of the host says Baier doubted Deebs involvement. Again I wonder where they got this from. Yes, Baier has stated his doubts as to David Spence’s guilt but I’ve never seen him say anything about Deeb. Now there is a simple reason for Baier’s doubt as to Spence’s guilt, he never really investigated Spence, I’ll get more into this later. But you never hear Baier talk about his thoughts on Deeb and this is something I have been trying to dig into. Some of you might remember a couple or few years ago Baylor University interviewed Dennis Baier for part of their oral history collection and they shared a couple clips from that interview. I contacted the lady that had posted the clips and she told me there were more and I asked about getting to hear the rest. It took a couple years but finally they agreed to release the transcripts to all the Dennis Baier interviews and I was so excited. I’m am very grateful for that but in the end very little of the interviews had to do with the Lake Waco Murders. Dennis Baier what a couple interesting statements, such as he thought the original investigators should have looked into the Methodist Home and the connection with Deeb’s store. And Baier also stated was wasn’t sure about David’s guilt, he wasn’t saying David was innocent he just wasn’t sure. Outside of those couple things he really didn’t say much else. So I was a little disappointed, so I sent a message to the working doing this oral history and asked if they were planning to interview Dennis Baier and if so I had some questions I would like them to ask him. They replied they couldn’t forward my questions but they did tell me I could ask the person that actually did the interviews with Dennis and they gave me his contact info. So I sent the same questions to him. I have never gotten a reply. Why questions were geared toward Baier’s investigation into Muneer Deeb, especially after Truman Simons left the Waco Pd. As I’ve stated countless time, Baier’s November 1982 report I find the most compelling of all the police reports, the facts are a little hazy but you get the sense Baier knows there ids something there but he just can’t put all the facts together to get it all to add up. And again that how the case still stands today.
I’m going to end this over long rambling rant with my biggest beef with Crime Junkies Lake Waco Murders Part 1 podcast. In discussing how Truman Simon came about David Spence, they say it was out of the blue, again attributing it to one of his hunches. Seriously are you smoking crack??? If you don’t know know how Truman Simons came across David Wayne Spence’s name, you have missed the whole case. I don’t know what rock you were smoking or sleeping under when you were researching this case but you totally missed it. So how did Truman Simons and Dennis Baier come across David’s name. Remember on Saturday September 11th, they re-interviewed Lisa Kader. She really couldn’t provide any more information than she gave when she was first interviewed back on July 19th. So Truman tells her ok if Deeb had in fact committed these murders he surely couldn’t have done it alone, then he asks her does she have any idea of whom Deeb would get to help him commit these murders. Lisa replies there is this guy that hangs out at Deeb’s store and he and Deeb are good friends. She only knew him as Chili. Truman askes her why would this Chili help Deeb kill anyone, Lisa replies because this Chili person is a bad guy. Truman continues why is he a bad guy, Lisa says because he raped me. The case has just taken a new direction. Lisa id asked did she report this rape to the police, she hadn’t she just wanted to forget about it. Truman asks her did she report it to anybody. Lisa says she had, she told the girl that was with her that night. Truman asked for details. When getting into details Lisa mentions Chili had bit her really hard during the ordeal and that the bite was very painful and the real kicker, even though this apparent rape had taken place a month before, the bite mark that Cili had left on her body was still there. Truman asked if she would show them the bite mark. Which Lisa agrees to do and when Truman sees the mark of Lisa’s body it reminds him of marks he had seen on Jill Montgomery’s body when saw her laid out dead in Speegleville Park. And with that David Spence became a suspect. After their interview with Lisa, Truman And Dennis are informed this Chili is actually one David Wayne Spence and he has been arrested for another sexual assault in which a knife was used. Simons and Baier went to visit David while he was in jail, this would be the full extent of Dennis Baier’s investigation into David Wayne Spence. And Truman would take his investigation to the jail house and we know for most part where it went to there.
So what did this podcast give us??? Nothing new, the same ole , same ole. When there are so much more meaningful things that need a spotlight put on them and addressed. Like where are all the files to this case. 60 boxes pf information can’t just go missing and no one is held accountable. What about the DNA evidence, mainly Jill’s fingernail clippings that apparently contain male DNA. What is the status of that case, it’s been tied up in the court system for four years. That DNA would give people some answers, it would at least identify one of Jill Montgomery’s attackers. There are people that have been living this nightmare and waiting for answers over 40 years!!! How much longer do they have to wait??? Why don’t any podcast try to tackle these glaring issues or even try to find answers??? That would be a podcast worth listening to!!!
Ok, time to give my thoughts on the Crime Junkies podcast part 2. I’ll try to keep it shorter than my critique of part 1, but part 2 is just as bad if not worse in some ways. Most of the things I will be complaining about are small potatoes but there are a couple that are doozies. Which in the end left me shocked at their lack of general knowledge about this case. I guess that is journalism today, let’s do a two part podcast on something we know very little about and do nothing more than read a few newspaper articles to gain any knowledge on the subject and then pat ourselves on the back and say what a great job we did. And we wonder why most Americans don’t trust journalist these days. Let me digress before I even get started. Let’s just jump right into it.
The ladies of Crime Junkies are apparently unfamiliar with how Brian Pardo first got involved in the case in the mid 90’s. Let me give them a little history lesson. They state, some one brought it to his attention, what they obviously didn’t know was Brian Pardo is the person that brought it on himself. Back then he ran a prison ministry. One day, back in the mid 90’s, while he was visiting death row, Pardo went to the warden and told him(the warden) that he(Pardo) wanted to meet his hometown’s, which was Waco, most infamous criminal, which of coarse was David Wayne Spence. The warden granted the request giving Pardo a warning, be careful don’t believe a word Spence says, he is a pure is a pyschopath, he is the most evil person he has seen on death row, he doesn’t have a soul. Well, Pardo didn’t heed the warning and was taking in by David’s, polite, friendly, easy going manner. Pardo walked away believing there was no way this guy was responsible for a triple homicide of three teenagers. I have to add, Truman Simons and Dennis Baier went to visit David in jail one time before Truman left the Waco PD and they walked away with similar feelings and doubts as Pardo when he first met David Wayne Spence. So that is how Pardo first got involved, he exited the scene a few years later not as sure as to David Wayne Spence’s innocent. The final word I remember him saying on the case, again back in the 90’s were; he was no longer sure of David’s innocence but there were enough questions that David shouldn’t have been put to death. I agree with that assessment, The problem or I should say one of the problems with the death penalty is you never get a second chance to get it right.
Moving on to the next issue and it is one I have heard many times over the years, so it’s just another one of the many items that remain on the repeat cycle, we just hear them over and over. Does anyone remember the educational TV show “The Electric Company”, we watched it in elementary school??? Well they use to have a word of the day, I feel to better explain this I need a word of the day as well. My word of the day is going to be “exculpatory” as in exculpatory evidence. The podcast brings up the all to often accusation that the State withheld evidence, which the defense did claim and brought up on appeal. But what did the appellate court find??? The funny thing about this podcast is they did quote some of the appellate courts findings but apparently they missed this one, so let me help them out. Now I don’t want to get too much into this and I’m far from a law professor and me trying to explain it in detail would make this critique longer than the one I did for part one which I am trying to avoid. So, all I am going to say is the appellate found in the State’s favor was the information the defense did not receive from the State was not “exculpatory” which it has to be to fall under the rules of discovery, Remember our word of the day, “exculpatory”. If anybody wants to get into more detail about this just let me know, we can discuss it in another post at a later time. There is more but I will have to continue at a later time, hopefully before the end of the week.
And now to finish the Crime Junkies podcast part 2 review. What I always find most disappointing with all these podcast is the lies that just keep getting repeated over and over like they are facts and crime junkies was no different. I have a suggestion, why not try doing some real research other than reading newspapers before you gives us mind numbing regurgitated crap. Hey when things got a little dicey for Muneer Deeb, he had two fall back defenses. He would either say he was just joking or kidding around or he would just lie. A great example, which the ladies of the crime junkie podcast mention but with their lack of research failed to see and what they reported as fact was actually a lie. They aren’t the first and many have followed the same path, when will it end???
And which of Deeb’s lies, and there were many that podcasts usually forget to mention, did the crime junkies, with their lack of research and knowledge, take hook line and sinker. Let’s try to set the record straight on Deeb and the insurance policies. Yes, Muneer Deeb said he bought insurance for all employees but a little digging into this claim and it was discovered that this was not true. Gayle Kelly was the only person he actually paid insurance on. There were a couple guys that worked around the store, cleaning up around the place and stuff like that, there was no policy for them in any way shape or form. now what gets a little confusing to some is the insurance policy on employee Christine Juhl, David Spence’s girlfriend. The day Deeb got the policy on Gayle, Jube 22, yes he paid the initial premium on a policy for Christine. The big difference, he took it out of Christine’s next check. So no he wasn’t paying for Christine’s insurance. Again, the only person Deeb was straight out paying for their insurance was Gayle Kelly. When he said he was giving insurance to all his employees ne was lying. Just like when he was first interrogated by Truman Simons and Dennis Baier Deeb tried to tell them he didn’t know Kenneth Franks. It took Simons and Baier hours to het Deeb to realize they caught him in the lie and he had to admit to the truth, imagine that. To keep repeating his lies as fact is getting to the point it should be criminal.
But to me, the biggest disappointment, is not so much about facts and lies but the ladies mentioned they tracked down Fred Dannen, that the family, Jill Montgomery’s, didn’t know where he was. Now, they didn’t mention what family members didn’t know where Fred was but the way they they made it sound was the whole family. Well, this isn’t totally true, I know at least one family member knew Dannen was in Mexico. And they actually had a phone number and address where he could be reached. I know this because I gave them this info myself!!! But the real shocker was when the podcast said the family was happy to be able to get back in contact with Dannen. I was really taken aback, again the podcast didn’t say which family members were happy about this. From my own personal contact with the family, one in particular, I would really be astounded if this was true of the whole family. In my usual bull in a china shop kind of way I expressed my disbelief, which caused a little drama that definitely unneeded and undeserved. So let me put it this way. Crime junkies said Fred Dannen has a renewed interest in the case. The only connection to this case I want to see Fred Dannen involved in, is him being arrested for contaminating DNA evidence. Charge him with whatever offense you can, tampering with evidence, obstruction of justice, whatever, just lock him up and keep him as far away as possible from this case. It’s probably best for every one if he’s says in Mexico. Another thing the ladies forgot to mention was Fred Dannen went to Mexico shortly after his driver made a statement informing the State that somehow the DNA evidence that was in the custody of Fred Dannen inexplicably fell out of sealed envelopes into the back seat and floor of Dannen’s car, and shortly after that Fred Dannen disappeared to Mexico. Coincident, I don’t think so, especially considering after this mishap came to light the Texas Attorney General stated they would question the findings of any of the evidence that was in the possession of Fred Dannen. So Dannen has added another obstacle to getting the results from the DNA evidence. And this is the guy you really want to get back involved??? Are you insane??? Just another case of journalist being totally blind to reality in support of other journalist. But here is my biggest fear, which I have stated many times in the past, haven’t seen the need to repeat it in recent years with the disappearance of Fred Dannen and Bernadette Feazell, the tidal wave of lies had subsided, only to live on and be repeated by podcasters. But what I have said many times in the past is has time goes on and we lose more and more people connected to the case the and all that is left are the lies, those lies will been seen as the truth, in actuality will would be getting further away from the truth. Fred Dannen’s connection to this case was he was suppose to write a book proving Texas had executed an innocent man, David Wayne Spence of coarse. Fred Dannen never came close to proving this, what he was able to achieve was to spread lies and get enough people to believe them today. Fred Dannen still has some lies in this pocket and he still needs to write a book. I’m afraid, again as I have said in the past, that he is just playing a waiting game, wait until anyone that can challenge his lies pass away, then he can write whatever he wants, there would be no one to stand up to his lies. So I am going to put this out there, I knwo one of Fred Dannen’s lies was he said he just about had Terry “Tab” Harper’s sister ready to turn on her brother and give him up. This is not true, she supposted her brother and believed in his innocent. She did grant Dannen permission to obtain some of her brother’s DNA, again she believed in Tab’s innocence, so why not let them test his DNA, what better way to prove he was innocent!!! Well that sister has passed away, so if Fred Dannen ever does write a book, and it surely will be a bundle of lies cover to cover, remember what I tell you today, when you read that Tab’s sister gave him up to Fred Dannen, it is all a lie. And to me this is the greatest of all the errors the Crime Junkies Podcast made, trying to bring sleezy Fred Dannen back into the case and trying to make it sound like a good thing, totally disgraceful!!!
When I first started delving into this case so many years ago, the first thing that stuck out to me was all the questions that remained, hence my choice for the heading of this page. You would think somewhere along the decades some one would have come up with at least some of the answers but then you realize no one is really asking the questions. Most people will comment on the unorthodox and suspect conduct of Truman Simons with his interactions with David Wayne Spence while at McLennan county jail but other than than that and the time Simons and Baier went to see David in jail after his name first came up, did any other person from Waco PD sit down and interview David Wayne Spence??? Even if they did not believe he was a good suspect, wouldn’t or shouldn’t that have encouraged the doubters to see what David Wayne Spence had to say about all this; where he was, the insurance policies, the offer Deeb made him to kill Gayle Kelly and other parts of the story that developed later. But we get nothing other than Ramon Salinas saying David’s name never came up in their investigation which is just another straight out lie and other Waco PD personnel saying David was never a good suspect, well how do you know if you never took the time to interview and question him??? But this has set the pattern that still exist today. I guess it’s like the old saying don’t ask the question if you won’t like the answer. Well I do want the answers no matter what they are!!! And I find it very disturbing so many other people don’t, they would rather just keep repeated the same bogus narrative and say this is so messed up. Well, no shit Sherlock, you can’t find the truth with lies, that is elementary. And the questions are so numerous. Just to give you and idea, and I know I do this from time to time, I’ll just give you like a top 10 list of questions that still need to be answered satisfactorily. This are not questions you heard asked from the likes of Bernadette Feazell and Fred Dannen and you still don’t hear them from any podcasters today. It would be a step in the right direction if you would!!!
1 – When Jill Montgomery ran away with Rhonda Evans in January 1982, they spent the first couple nights at Bobby Brem’s house, where did they go and stay after that??? All we know for sure is Jill called her father from the phone at the rainbow drive-in, she wanted to return home, to Waxahachie. Her father came to Waco to pick her up. He said he picked her up on 15th Street a few blocks from the store(Rainbow Drive-In) The house where he picked her up was on a corner lot and from the outside the house didn’t look well kept. But had Jill been staying???
2 – Who vandalized Clifford Oliver’s car and what were the circumstances and whatever happened to the prints lifted off Clifford’s car???
3 – Whatever happened to the prints lifted off Raylene Rice’s Orange Pinto???
3 – Who broke into Patti Deis’ apartment the nights of July 19/20 and July 21/22 and whatever happened to the blood samples collected that were left at the scene after the first break in???
4 – Who supplied Muneer Deeb with the drugs he gave or sold to the girls from the Methodist Home?
5 – Deeb’s business partner, Karem Qasim stated that on the night of the murders after he and Deeb closed the store about 11p.m., they went looking for a guy that owed Deeb some money. Who was this guy and why did he owe Deeb this money???
6 – Qasim also stated they got back to his place around 1a.m., he was expecting a call from his wife, she was in Mexico. Police were able to track the call, but Karem also says he doesn’t know what Deeb did or even if he stayed there. So if Deeb wasn’t there where was he???
7 – Did Kenneth really owe some one money and if so who and for what???
8 – When Gayle Kelly was first interviewed by Waco PD on July 20th, she stated Kenneth was planning on making a drug deal with some one but Kenneth wouldn’t give a name, only that it was some one she knew but wouldn’t expect Kenneth to be making drug deals with, apparently the kids were leery of this guy. So who was this guy???
9 – There is at least a two hour gap as to Jill Montgomery’s and Raylene Rice’s whereabouts after they arrived in Waco. Jill’s father and brother saw them getting gas in Waxahachie about 12:45pm. The manager at a grocery store, I believe a Safeway, in Waxahachie said Jill came in and cashed a $200 check. Lou Booker Jill’s supervisor at Fort Fisher in Waco, she the girls stopped by, getting there about 2pm. She said the girls said they were going to get Jill’s check from city hall and that they were hungry and were going to get something to eat. Ms. Booker said the girls weren’t there long. Mrs. Oliver, the manager at the Ivy Square Apartments reported the girls stopped by the apartments a little after 2pm and asked about renting an apartment. While there they were outside talking to 3 boys that were runaways from the Methodist Home. Mrs. Oliver knew the boys were runaways from the Home because one of her tenants worked at the Methodist Home and told her this, so apparently this tenant saw the girls and boys talking as well.. After that we know at some point the girls picked up Jill’s check and then about 5pm both girls cashed checks at the Piggly Wiggly. Shortly after that they went to Jill’s favorite restaurant. From there Jill called Kenneth, twice, and then the they picked up Kenneth around 7pm and headed to Koehne Park. So where did the girls go roughly between 2:30pm and 5pm??? Other than picking up Jill’s check we are at a lost. Muneer Deeb said they stopped by the store, he told others that Gayle was suppose to be with them that night and this was because the girls told him this when they went to his store that day. Gayle Kelly has said Kenneth did call her and asked her to join them but she couldn’t leave the Home that day, she was still on restriction for running away earlier. So where were Jill and Raylene between 2:30pm and 5pm??? Whom did they see or talk to??? What was said between them and the 3 runaway boys outside the Ivy Square Apartments???
10 – Muneer Deeb had intimate details of the murders, he told a number of people that Kenneth was made to suffer and die slowly and that he was cut around the heart. How did Deeb have this kind of detail???
I believe you find the answers to any number of these questions and you start to get a different picture from the story you’ve been told and that is one step closer to getting to the truth.
What is justice without truth???? There could be any number of answers to this question. But here now on another sad anniversary, the 43rd, of this horrendous tragedy, we can’t deny all the lack of truth has done has left us confused and in despair. For Christ sakes, they have DNA evidence, male DNA evidence, recovered from under Jill Montgomery’s finger nails!!! I know it is hung up in court somewhere but it has been five frustrating years since we’ve heard anything about this. What is the status of this legal argument??? Nearly on a daily basis you hear other cases being resolved with DNA evidence but just total silence on the Lake Waco Murders!!! Why??? Does anyone know or care??? Is there anything the people that do care can do??? Do we just need to start a Go fund me campaign, to get the DNA evidence released and turned over to an expert, to get the results.??? That definitely would not provide all the answers but it would be nearly impossible to dispute the identity of at least one of the attackers of Jill Montgomery. Shouldn’t truth and justice be that simple??? But if the truth is only important if it has a hefty price tag and that is the case and state of things, how disappointing!!! Hey, 43 years ago, this July 13th, three teenagers were brutally raped and murdered and laid out in a secluded park and we still don’t know the truth. Is this really the justice we want??? If there is anyone that would like to help and speak up, we are here to listen and have been eagerly waiting for 43 years!!!
Something I run across every once in awhile; Waco attorney Rod Goble, who represented Gilbert Melendez in the case, said he has no doubt that Gilbert Melendez was involved in the deaths and that the grisly details he related in his testimony “came from him.” However, he said he thinks there was another person involved who was never charged.
“I don’t know who it was or the circumstances, but I never believed we got the complete picture,” Goble said.
AS TIME GOES BY THE FURTHER WE GET FROM THE TRUTH…
A few months ago I saw a lady question that Richard Franks was gay. And just earlier today I came across an article that incorrectly stated David Spence was found guilty of committing all three murders and that Gilbert Melendez was granted parole, both are untrue. I remember back in the late 90’s there were certain parties intentionally spreading lies and untruths for their own personal agendas. And I found it so appalling how much traction these false narratives were gaining with the general public, whom were taking falsehoods as indisputable facts. Back then I wondered and dreaded how much damage this would do to the search for the truth. Nearly 44 years after the horrendous tragedy that unfolded in Waco in 1982, the answer to my timeless pondering continues to present it’s ugly reality. If people were going to believe lies and untruths a decade and a half after that tragic event, how could they come any closer to the truth four and a half decades later? It’s impossible!!! Even the little, what seems to be little inconsequential detail will become lost. What does it matter if Mr. Franks was gay? What is lost when we can’t follow facts?
On the surface of things, it doesn’t look like Mr. Franks sexual orientation would matter one way or another and I would agree it probably did not play a direct part in the murders. But one of those small facts that usually gets overlooked, Mr. Franks wasn’t very cooperative with investigators from the beginning. Now, we can only speculate as to the reason why. Could it just be he didn’t want his personal life put under the microscope of a triple homicide investigation? Did he have secrets and if so what were they and did they obscure other truths? When I say Mr. Franks was not very cooperative we have to look at his words and actions. Shortly after the murders the investigators wanted to search Kenneth Franks bedroom to try to find information or clues as to whom might have killed him. Mr. Franks would not allow them into his residence. Through his friend and neighbor Judge Walter Smith it was arranged Mr. Franks would bring whatever the investigators were interested in seeing to the police station at his convenience. Well, that took a couple weeks and it was then at that time he had been at Midway Park the night of the murders from between 9pm and midnight, something he had failed to tell Waco PD up to that time. It was just another example of Mr. Franks not so direct way of revealing facts and truth.
From the beginning Mr. Franks told law enforcement there were no problems between him and his son Kenneth and it wasn’t like Kenneth to stay out all night and not come home. When the investigators started interviewing some of Kenneth’s friends it became apparent there were problems and Kenneth had a history of not coming home for whatever reason. A couple friends, including Gayle Kelly, stated some of the problems were due to Mr. Franks being gay. Again, it’s not so much he was gay, the issue becomes what other truths and facts are being hidden behind that secret and what could be the consequences.
Probably the most critical question we are left with in regards to what Mr. Franks might have been hiding is what connections were not made because the lack of information the truth could have provided. Early in the investigation Waco PD was told by an employee of Pinocchio’s, a popular hang out for many subjects mentioned in connection to this case, that Kenneth Franks had a problem with the Gutierrez twins; James and Terry. According to the employee Kenneth had agreed to buy a car from the twins and then backed out of the deal, which the twins weren’t happy about. There still remains questions as to the exact where abouts of the twins the night of the murders. Waco PD decided to go ask Mr. Franks if he knew anything about Kenneth Franks buying this car. Mr. Franks told them he didn’t know anything about Kenneth buying the car but the boys had parked the car in his drive way and Mr. Franks had had made a video of the car. With that no further investigation into that lead was conducted. But should it have been. What do the facts and little overlooked details tell us?
At the time Mr. Franks told Waco PD he was at Midway Park the night of the murders, two weeks after the murders, was the same time another group of guys would have been at Midway Park. This group would include Clifford Oliver and the Melendez brothers’ younger step/half brother John Arnett Jr.. This same group would get up with David Spence sometime that night. Spence’s girlfriend from that time, Christine Juhl, would later claim she saw David with Clifford, in Clifford’s car, between 6pm and dark the night of the murders. It was Clifford’s car that Mr. Franks found vandalized at Midway Park when he went looking for the missing kids in the early hours of July 14th. When the officer asked Mr. Franks if he had ever seen this car before, Mr. Franks stated he hadn’t but again he did not mention he was at Midway Park the night before around the same time that group of guys stated they were there. A couple weeks after the murders Clifford Oliver tried to get rid of his car and asked his friends, the Gutierrez twins, to get rid of it. He planned to report it as stolen to get insurance money. The twins took the car and Clifford reported it stolen. The twins took the car to another friend’s house to hide it until they could get rid of it. Well, the mother of the friend where they hid the car asked her son why that car was in their yard and that friend gave up the scam. The mother called the police. When the officer arrived he remembered the Gutierrez twin lead they had received earlier and asked James Gutierrez were was the car that Kenneth Franks was suppose to buy. James claimed the car had been totaled in an accident and they had gotten rid of it. The officer would write he could never find any report of an accident involving that car nor could he locate it anywhere. When the officer asked James where his brother Terry was, James told him Terry had gone to California with Clifford Oliver. WOW, the connections and questions!!! But no further investigation into this. Not until December, when Josie Scionti called law enforcement to share Clifford Oliver had told her whom killed the kids and where. But as with so many leads and information, they were left open, no conclusion, just questions. And this is what becomes of a case when we fail to follow the facts and find the truth. So, was it important that Mr. Franks was gay? Can we critically treat some facts differently than other facts? Nearly 44 years of the consequences gives us the obvious answer. And unfortunately it just wasn’t with the issue of Mr. Franks honesty nor Clifford Oliver nor the Gutierrez twins, there were just so many issues never satisfactorily resolved, no answers just questions. There is another lead that comes to mind, which I plan to touch on shortly. It is a issue I have rarely touched on in the past, mainly because I’m really not too sure how to even start to tackle this issue. But again as time goes by we have to shine light upon every dark unknown.
One of the many unique aspects of the Lake Waco Murders case is there were four separate and distinct investigations. First there was the investigation conducted by the Waco Police Department, which began when the victims bodies were discovered on July 14th and concluded when the investigators suspended their investigation on September 3rd. Then on September 9th, Sergeant Truman Simons called Chief Scott, going over Lieutenant Marvin Horton’s head, which would have dire reverberations for years and cases to come. Simons informed Chief Scott that the investigation had been suspended and requested he be given the case. Chief Scott had been unaware the investigation had been suspended and wasn’t happy about it, so he allowed Truman Simons to take over the case but did so with two caveats, Simons could only follow up leads the original investigators had failed to follow up and he couldn’t work alone. Chief Scott appointed Sergeant Dennis Baier to work with Simons and make sure he stayed within the purview Chief Scott had demanded when he granted Simons’ request to take over the case. Simons and Baier started their investigation the following day; Saturday September 10th and on Monday September 13th, exactly two months after the murders, made the first arrest for the murders; Muneer Deeb. The following weekend Deeb passed an over three hour polygraph examination and was released. With that both Simons and Baier took some vacation time and then Simons resigned from the Waco PD and that ended their investigation. Truman Simons went to work for the McLennan County Sheriff’s Office as a jailer at the count jail. This would be the start of the highly unorthodox and questionable third investigation. Truman Simons conducted this semi solo with some degree of assistance from the Sheriff’s Office. This investigation would continue and converge into the forth investigation. This forth investigation was initiated by the recently elected District Attorney Vic Feazell. He decided to create a special investigation unit or task force to investigate the case. This group would include members from the D.A.’s office, Sergeant Baier and one of the original investigators from Waco PD; Ramon Salinas, Truman Simons and former Waco PD officer and Deeb business associate Willie Tompkins. This investigation had a few phases. When Feazell was first elected in November 1982, he told Waco PS to go back over their files to make sure they had not missed anything and followed up all leads. It was apparent Feazell had talked to Truman Simons but Feazell was suspicious of Truman’s methods and theory. Truman had received most of his information from jailbirds. Feazell felt he couldn’t go into court with that and didn’t know if it would even be allowed. When Feazell took office in January 1983 he put together his special investigation unit and hired capital case specialist Ned Butler to work in the D.A.’s office, this would change the whole direction of the investigation which would finally lead to the arrest and convictions for the Lake Waco Murders.
Each of these four separate investigations would end up having widely different focuses. The first investigation conducted by Waco PD, repeatedly received information that victim Kenneth Franks was involved in drug dealing and owed some one some money for drugs. The investigators tried to track down the connection but never came up with a name. One name that did continually come up was Terry “Tab” Harper and it was reported he had dealings with Kenneth Franks. In the police reports Harper’s name is mentioned often in the early reports and the investigators spent a considerable amount of time on following up this lead. But in the end it came to nothing and then they suspended their investigation. When Simons and Baier conducted their investigation Tab Harper’s name nor any drug deals are never mentioned. The reasoning, the original investigators had tracked down that lead, gone down that path and gotten nowhere and they had cleared Tab Harper. They focused on the leads the original investigators had failed to follow up, as Chief Scott had instructed them to do. On the second day of their investigation, Saturday September 11th, they decided to check out a tip the original investigators got on Monday July 19th, one week after the murders, and did absolutely nothing with it. Simons and Baier did a follow up interview with Lisa Kader, which led the way to arrest Muneer Deeb two days later. But Kader was able to give them another name, David Wayne Spence or as Lisa knew him “Chili”. Although Detective Ramon Salinas would later for years deny David Spence’s name never came up during his original investigation , the records would prove otherwise. Simons and Baier asked Lisa if Deeb was responsible for the murders with his physical limitations he couldn’t have committed two rapes and three murders alone. That’s when she gave them Spence and shared her own unfortunate encounter with “Chili” and the bite marks he had left on her body. But Simons’ and Baier’s investigation came to an end before they could close the case. Simons moved on to work at the jail and who was there but David “Chili” Spence. Simons started his own investigation, the third into Lake Waco Murders. Truman Simons was aware that Muneer Deeb and David Spence through Deeb’s store, the Rainbow Drive-In, now Simons needed to find a more nefarious connection and this became the focus of his investigation. Simons was still conducting his own investigation when Vic Feazell took office and created his own investigation unit which included Truman and recently hired Ned Butler. Like Feazell, Butler had doubts about Truman Simons and trying to put an end to Truman’s theory, told Truman he knew someone that could determine if Truman was right or wrong and that was Odontologist Dr. Homer Campbell. Butler had worked with Dr, Campbell in the past and trusted him. When Dr, Campbell reported his findings to Butler and stated Truman Simons was right the marks left on victim Jill Montgomery’s body were bite marks and they were put there by David Wayne Spence, it changed the whole investigation. They felt they could connect Deeb and Spence to the murders but they still had a problem. If Deeb hired Spence to commit the murders and wasn’t there, the same problem with Deeb committing the crime alone still remained with David Spence, he couldn’t commit two rapes and three murders all alone. Truman Simons had come up with another name during his time working at the jail. It was none other than Spence’s friend and codefendant in the crime that had pit Spence in jail at that time, this was Gilbert Melendez. And when Gilbert agreed to testify against Spence in his trial for the earlier offense in March 1983, it gave Simons a chance to get to Gilbert Melendez and inform him his name had come up in talk around the jail in connection to the Lake Waco Murders. Gilbert agreed to cooperate and admitted his involvement but then he changed his mind and decided he didn’t want to cooperate. With Gilbert’s earlier admissions he was firmly connected to the murders. A new name was introduced to the case early that same March, James Russell Bishop but knowing came of it. The focus of this forth and final investigation became tying Gikbert and maybe others to the murders and in the coarse of this investigation of Gilbert, his younger brother was dragged into the investigation and the rest is history.
So, one can clearly see the evolution of the case over time and the different investigations. Reading the police reports can be a little difficult and confusing but with some effort one can decipher and follow the narrative played out in the trial transcripts. Since 1997, when I first obtained copies of the police reports and trial transcripts I have read them over a hundred times if not hundreds. I guess seeing how different leads and subjects came and went with each investigation shouldn’t be surprising, what I do find surprising are the leads and subjects that did come up in more than one of these investigations but were left without any conclusions and plenty of questions. For anyone that has followed along for any amount of time would be more than a little familiar with one of these such subjects and leads. Of coarse I talking about Clifford Oliver. His name and car come up again and again from investigation to investigation and even in the trial transcripts. I have shared the details ad nauseam, so I will spare you that, but so many questions remain. There was another lead and subject that came up over the different investigations and actually in the early part of the investigation came up as much of not more than the more familiar subject Tab Harper. And then during the trials it just disappeared, even when it had been mentioned earlier, when ot came to the trial a different narrative was told. Not only is that very questionable it’s a little troubling. Who was responsible for these changes and why were they made? This is a subject I really haven’t delved into, after all this time I still don’t know really what to think or make of it. I am referring to bikers, a possible motorcycle gang and a wannabe biker that was executed for the murders. What do the police reports and files tell us about all of this?
Seems to have been a lot of mistakes being made by the Waco Authorities during this time period. I don’t know if David Wayne Spence committed these crimes. But I do know that there was a serial rapist with a bite mark signature in Waco in the early to late 80’s. If I can recall, the man who murdered Spence’s mom had a bite mark signature but no one put it together until the two men convicted of that crime were exonerated.
Yes, the Waco PD investigation into the Lake Waco Murders was far less than stellar police work. People mistakes and this was a complex and difficult case but most multiple victim homicides are more challenging just because of all the possible variables. But one thing there is just no excuse for, suspending the case before they followed up all the leads they had gotten, there is no way to explain that away. And what makes it worst is Detective Ramon Salinas continually lied about this years later. It’s one thing to make a mistake it’s a whole different thing when you don’t own up to it. When I think about the deficiencies in the work of the Waco PD at the time, it reminds of what a judge that was presiding over one of David Spence’s appeals said. In his findings he wrote, all Spence or his defense attorneys had done was make allegations and accusations that hadn’t proved anyone was innocent, all it had proven was there was a serious problem with the police department. Truer words have never been stated.
Benny Carroll, was the guy responsible for the murder of David Spence’s mother and I believe he had a history of sexually assaulting elder women. I haven’t heard about a serial rapist running around Texas at the time, so you will have to educate me on that. I know there were a number of serial killers running around Texas in the 1980’s. But to be honest I haven’t spent much time looking at any of them in connection with the Lake Waco Murders. There are a few reasons for this. First, with most homicides, well over 80%, the killer knows the victim, in this case the killer would probably would have known at least one of the victims. Second, that one of the three victims was a male, that would be extremely rare behavior for a serial killer, they usually go for easy targets, maybe two girls alone, but two girls with a guy would be highly unlikely. Part of serial killers thought process is to exhibit complete dominance and control, the mere presence of another male would challenge that in the minds of most serial killers and they would avoid that. Nothing is 100% but I see this possibility highly unlikely. Third, there were no bruises found on any of the victims bodies that would suggest they were not forced to go any where against their will. How ever they left the park, they did so under their own will. Why would they leave with a stranger? And you have to keep in mind both girls had to be home by dark, actually they probably should have been on their way when they disappeared, again why would they take off with a stranger or strangers at that time. The more plausible scenario is the kids got into a vehicle of some one they knew, expecting to return shortly. And that begs the question why did they do this and what were they expecting to do? You don’t leave a public park filled with people and get into a car if you are expecting danger.
The kids from the Methodist Home mostly went to Old Waco High School. Guess who else went to Old Waco High from 79-82? Whatever happened to the Kelly sisters? Gayle and Laura. There was a theory that Gayle was a intended victim
demarqiskelly, My guess on who else went to Old Waco High from 79-82, which I guess was just called Waco High back then, maybe it was you? If so of coarse some questions. Gayle is still in Texas, I communicated with her a few years ago, in the end she wasn’t very helpful, she didn’t want to answer a lot of my questions and would get angry with me and refuse to talk. And I know she lied to me about at least one thing and I have to say I had been told by a couple people that I couldn’t believe anything she says. The only thing I found of any value I got from her was she told me she knew David Spence much more than she testified to in court and the kids knew him from partying out at the lake and this was even before the store opened, She stated Spence and the Melendez brothers were always trying to befriend them. When I asked her for more specific details I didn’t get an answer. She also stated Vic Feazell knew this but wasn’t interested in the truth. Now, you have to take anything Gayle says with a grain of salt but I have been told by others, mainly Christine Juhl, David’s girlfriend at the time of the murders and Rhonda Evans, another girl from the Home who ran away with Jill and also became very good friends with David Spence, she was one of the few people that visited David Spence on death row. Both girls, well women now, told me Feazell wasn’t interested in the truth. But Rhonda also told me the same thing that Gayle told me about David Spence, that the girls from the Home knew David from partying out at the lake before Deeb and the Store came into the picture. So, we have Gayle Kelly who still believes Spence and company are guilty and then we have Rhonda Evans that believes he is innocent and the their views on most things differ greatly but on this one issue about knowing David Spence they both agree. To me, in trying to separate fact and truth from fiction and rumor, having these two widely opposing views agree on this one issue makes it likely to be true. The problem has been trying to finds others to help verify this and maybe provide more details and I’ve been trying for years, I’ve had this site for a decade now. And to me this information makes total sense. The girls knew Spence from partying at the lake and then when Deeb opened the store across the street and David started hanging out at the store, when the girls started going to the store they knew David and knew he would help them get party supplies the teenage girls couldn’t get own their own. Deeb trying to impress these girls and trying to get one of them to marry him took notice of how David interacted with the girls and figured he should emulate what David was doing to better his chances with the girls. Hell he owned the store where the girls were getting their party supplies and Deeb had something David didn’t; MONEY. When you look at it like that the whole picture changes from the narrative we’ve been told. That Gayle was the intended target was the State’s whole case. Deeb paid or was going to pay David to kill Gayle but David not knowing Gayle nor Jill nor Kenneth, mistakenly took Jill to be Gayle and killed her Raylene and Kenneth instead. This all hinges on David Spence not knowing Gayle, Jill or Kenneth and now we know that just isn’t the truth. The bigger question now becomes how well did they know each other. The key to finding the whole truth in this case is to find and understand these connections and relationships. And you will find it just wasn’t some unfortunate fateful encounter at a park one night.
I moved to Waco in the summer of 79 and started school thereafter at Old Waco High. However, so did Benny Carroll. He went to school with all of them and at North Jr
I was unaware Benny Carroll was the same age, I thought he was older, I thought he had just got out of prison shortly before Juanita White’s murder in March 1986. So you went to school at the same time; the obvious question is did you know the victims or any other of the kids from the Home? And how well did you know Benny Carroll?
I knew him well and, as most people discovered, I didn’t know him at at all. He went to prison in 83 and got out in 86. At that time, before he went to prison, we were all street kids living in a alternative reality. It took me to some dark places that ruled my life for over 25: years. You know, the crack cocaine epidemic. But, back to him now. I learned about him through women who questioned me about him. I found out that he flashed a lot of women and had a craving for men as well. I moved out of Waco in 87 and after I found out he’d been killed ( the suicide claim is bs) I told my mom. She said good and I was shocked. I knew she never liked him but that was kind of extreme. At that time she confessed to me that he raped her and threatened to kill me if I ever told. However, her fear was that I’d do the same to him. If I knew where he was buried I’d go spit on his grave. He knew all those kids from the Methodist Home and I put nothing past him. I have no doubt that he knew Spence’s mom and knew she was alone. I mean I have zero doubt. Through my dealings with him I learned several things. Some people are pure sinister and live in a Shadow world. And some people cannot be reformed. I knew Laura Kelly well. She came to my home with some of the other kids and I had a lot of love for them. They were kids displaced and it affected me. I can’t remember their names but it haunts me that one or maybe two of those girls could have been victims.
demarqiskelly, Thank you for sharing all this information. Again. I have so many questions, please don’t be offending, I believe it is of the upmost important to try to get things straight and accurate as possible. how I ended up getting here in the first place was ranting and raving against people that were bending facts and telling lies, like Bernadette Feazell and Fred Dannen. Then I got tired of people deleting my comments when I questioned their false narratives, so I started my own page where people could share information, their own opinions and thoughts and now I have to hold myself to the same standards I expected from others trying to find a reasonable resolution to this case. So, some questions.
The first question that is inevitably going to come up is going to be a question about your identity. And seeing the name your using here as “kelly” as in Gayle and her sister, so one could and you know I will ask if there is a connection. I guest I really can’t ask you to reveal yourself but if I could, maybe a little detail. Are you a male or female? You stated you attended Waco High from 79-82, so I take it I can find you in those high school yearbooks?
Ok, I knew Benny Carroll had gone to prison and gotten out shortly before Juanita White’s murder in 1986. I though he was arrested for sexually assaulting an elder woman. Do you know why he was arrested and sent to prison in 1983? You said you found out about him through women questioning you about him. Could you explain that a little? You went to school with him and knew him from there. Are you saying women came to you at some point and questioned you about his behavior, I guess later? When would this have been, before he went to prison, after he went to prison or even later like after he passed away? And talking about his passing, you stated it wasn’t a suicide, could you provide any further insight? Truly sorry to hear about your mother, seems there were way too many assaults without adjudication happening around Waco during this time. But I have to ask when did your mother inform you of this attack and when did attack take place? I don’t know how far you live from Waco but you can find his grave at find a grave.
Now moving on to the kids from the Methodist Homes. First I was aware Gayle had a younger sister, couldn’t remember her name but I have to admit Laura doesn’t sound familiar but you would know better. But I also thought she was quite a bit younger than Gayle, like maybe not even in her teens or maybe early teens when the murders occurred, could you clear that up for me please? And by what you write it sounds like you were closer to Laura than Gayle but you did know Gayle, how well? And what about Jill and Kenneth? And can you recall if they had any interactions with Benny? Do you know if Benny was involved in the drug scene, using and/or dealing? I have a handful of names of kids that were at the Home at the time and would have gone to the high school at the time. I don’t know if going name by name is the best way to go but are there any of the other kids from the Home that you remember or stick out and why? Did you hang out at the lake and if so which park? Do you know if Benny hung out at the lake and again if so do you know which park? Did you know David Spence or the Melendez brothers or have any contact with them? Sorry I have so many questions, I hope you feel comfortable enough to answer as many as possible, I will probably have more. Thank you again and hope to hear from you again shortly!!!
On July 21st Detective Ramon Salinas and Texas Ranger Joe Wiley went to Waxahachie to return Raylene Rice’s car and conduct a few interviews. One of these interviews was with Captain Charles Sullins of the Waxahachie Police Department. During this interview Sullins shared with Salinas and Wiley that he had received a call around midnight on the 20th and the caller informed him that a motorcycle gang called the Scorpions was claiming responsibility for the murders. Captain Sullins didn’t know anything about this gang but the caller had told him this gang was from Troy, which is in Bell County which is just south of McLennan County and they had started moving into Waco. Sullins also stated that another officer from his department had gotten the same information from another informant. Hearing about bikers wasn’t new to Salinas, actually over the last few days bikers had been mentioned to him quite frequently. Now that he had the name of a possible gang to run with, Salinas knew exactly where to start. But first we should look at what’s in the police reports about bikers before got the name Scorpions.
By Friday July 16th, two days after the victims bodies were discovered, Waco PD was getting calls and tips at a pretty rapid rate. This would they would get their first calls on subject Terry “Tab” Harper and the more calls and information they got the more the story grew. At first it was Harper had talked about the murders to a girl Wednesday before noon, which would have been before the police had discovered the bodies. Then by the afternoon not only had this girl talked to Tab about the murders Wednesday morning but now the information Waco PD was getting was this girl was actually a witness to the murders and Tab had threatened to kill her if she said anything and this girl was now missing. By the end of that Friday all Waco PD had to go on to find this girl and possible witness was her first name Becky. The next morning, Saturday July 17th, Salinas received another call from another teenage girl about Tab Harper and the missing Becky. The teenage caller was able to provide Salinas with Becky’s full name which was Rebecca Demarias and the caller added Becky was a run away and no one could find her and the called stated she had been told Becky was afraid to come forward for fear of retaliation if she talked. Salinas asked the caller if she knew any of the people that Becky hung out with and one of the people she mentioned was a biker named “Armadillo” that was older, like 25. This would be the first time Waco PD would hear about a biker but one appeared in the same report before Armadillo is mentioned, although the information about this biker came later on the same day.
Later in the evening on the 17th, Salinas contacted Chief Copeland of McGregor, the Chief had contacted Waco PD earlier. Copeland told Salinas that a biker by the name of Benny Poston had contacted him about a subject that lived in Waco. Apparently Poston’s wife , Donna, worked with this subject and Poston informed Copeland about some of this subjects strange behavior and thought law enforcement might want to look into this subject in possible connection to the murders. The subject’s name was Reverend Robert Frueh. That wasn’t a new name to Salinas, actually he had gotten that name from another witness earlier that day. For those new or unfamiliar with the case, Reverend Robert Frueh, was a gay drug dealing preacher that lived a couple doors down from Richard and Kenneth Franks and apparently well acquainted with them. Frueh was at Koehne Park the night of the murders at some point. One witness reported Frueh was looking for some blonde hair girl and trying to unload some hash, another reported she saw Kenneth Franks in Frueh’s car leaving the park with Frueh. Frueh would be stabbed to death a few years later by a young man Frueh had failed to pay for a drug run the young man had made for Frueh. Salinas wrote in his report that he was going to get Nicoletti to do a follow up with Benny Poston. I don’t know if this was ever done, I have never seen anything that it was. All of this came to nothing but it remains another thing many question if Waco PD looked into thoroughly.
Over the next couple days Salinas went back to witnesses he had talked with to confirm Rebecca Demarias was the missing girl and witness he had been told about. On Monday morning, July 19th, Salinas told Nicoletti to check with the witnesses he had talked to for the same reason, after again getting confirmation, Salinas and Sergeant Robert Fortune tracked down Rebecca’s father, Walter Demarias. Mr. Demarias told them he was in the process of calling them and that his daughter, Becky, was hanging around some shady characters that might have something to do with the murders. He also told them that Becky was staying with a biker named “Wolf” and that Wolf had a green good time van and lived on Bishop Drive behind the Hilltop store, which is just down the road from Koehne Park. Salinas and Fortune headed in that direction and found the van parked on Bishop Drive. There they made contact with a Robert Wulf, 32 and asked him if he had a teenage girl named Becky in his apartment. Wulf replied he did and they asked him to bring the girl out and Wulf complied. Salinas and Fortune had found Rebecca Demarias and took her to the police station for questioning. But things didn’t go as expected and that was the start of the crumbling of the case against Terry “Tab” Harper.
Not getting anywhere or where and what they wanted from Rebecca Demarias and no new leads or tips coming in, the following morning, Tuesday July 20th, Detective Mike Nicoletti and Texas Ranger Joe Wiley decided, finally, to track down some people whose names had been brought to the attention of the Waco PD, mainly Gayle Kelly and Patty Deis. Both girls names had come up repeatedly since day one of the investigation Nicoletti and Wiley first went to Patty’s place of employment, the U.S. Army recruitment office, only to find Patty had called out, the second time since the murders. Getting her address Nicoletti headed there, which was at the Northwood Apartments, the same complex where Muneer Deeb had rented an apartment for Gayle Kelly but Gayle had moved out and was now staying with Patty, the two girls had become good friends at the Methodist Home. Deeb allowed David Spence and his girlfriend to move into the apartment a few days before the murders. When Nicoletti and Wiley arrived at the apartment they noticed the apartment had been broken into. A window close to the door had been busted and there was a red substance dripping down to the first floor they believed was blood. The property manager let the officers into the apartment. Nicoletti and Wiley did not find anyone nor any damage in the apartment but they did find something strange in the kitchen, Knives laid out in a row and a hand written note, “We will see you next time”. Nicoletti called the Waco PD station to report the break-in and to ask for some one to come to the scene and take photos and collect evidence. When he called he was told that the two girls, Gayle and Patty, were at the police station reporting the break -in, Nicoletti asked for the girls to be held until he could get there. When Nicoletti got to the Station, he interviewed Gayle Kelly. Although Nicoletti had obtained information the day before that Muneer Deeb had killed Kenneth Franks because of Gayle Kelly, he doesn’t ask her anything about this, he doesn’t even mention Deeb at all but the subject of bikers does come up. Gayle Kelly told Nicoletti that Kenneth Franks did not get along with the bikers and had gotten in trouble with the bikers on several occasions and the only time Kenneth had any drug dealings with the bikers was through Rebecca Demarias. Nicoletti didn’t press the issue any further and things were left like that.
And that’s where things stood when Salinas and Wiley talked to Captain Sullins in Waxahachie the following day, when Sullins gave them the name Scorpions. Salinas knew exactly where to go and who to question about this; Rebecca Demarias. It took a few days to locate her again, on July 27th Salinas and Fortune found her on Bishop Drive, she had returned to Robert Wulf’s. They took her back to the station for questioning. When Rebecca was asked if the people from the motorcycle shop on North 18th Street could be Scorpions, she replied she did not know but she had a friend, Carren Ritchie that was going with one of the bikers named Angel who was a member of the group and worked at the shop. Salinas, with Nicoletti, went to Carren Ritchie’s apartment and asked her about Angel and the group at the shop. She told them she Angel just as Angel, she didn’t know his real name or full name and that the group at the shop didn’t have a name or fly colors or things of that nature. While Salinas and Nicoletti were interviewing Carren Ritchie another girl came came to the apartment named Kathy Prochnow. Prochnow stated she knew Becky as well as knowing Jill from the Home and that she had met Raylene with Jill a few months before. Then she added her and Carren been at Koehne Park the night of the murders between 7:30pm and 9pm with Angel and another biker named “fingers” and had seen Kenneth and the park in the Orange Pinto. Then she stated she didn’t talk to any of the victims, that they, the bikes had just rode through and didn’t stay long. fter this Salinas went to the shop and talked to Angel. Angel told Salinas he was at the park anytime the girls said they were. Asked about Tab Harper, Angel replied he had seen Harper messing around the kids. When asked about the car Harper was in Angel stated he didn’t know. Although we hear a lot about all these witnesses that reported to the police they saw Harper at the park there are actually two reported sightings of Harper in Koehne Park the night of the murders in the police reports, all the others were told by some one that Harper was there and then it was discovered they all came from the same source, a very unreliable source that had a history of telling stories at that. But the biker Angel is one of the two apparent eye witnesses to see Tab Harper at the park that night. But it is very telling that Salinas didn’t get any personal information from Angel, not his real or full name, not and address nor phone number. Angel had replied to Salinas’ first question he agrees with whatever the girls had told Salinas, it’s probably that Angel thought the girls told Salinas they had seen Harper, which they never did, and Angel just thought he was agreeing with them, he couldn’t provide any further information when Salinas asked. And that Salinas did not obtain any further personal information from Angel points toward Salinas realizing Angel wasn’t some one that could be used as a reliable witness and there was no need to contact him in the future and no need for his personal information. The only possible useful information Salinas got from Angel was the name of the owner of the shop; Harold Mitchell, who went by the nickname “Sundance”. This would be the last we see and hear about the bikers in the Waco Pd reports of their original investigation. They got bogged down chasing down the Tab Harper rumor and then when they finally realized it was a rumor they decided to suspend their investigation. But it would not be the last we would hear about bikers and a gang. To be continued…..
Do any of our readers live in Waco and get the Waco Tribune? I just saw they recently ran some articles about the DNA evidence. For years I’ve been trying to get updates on that evidence with zero luck. So getting my hands or at least my eyes on any updates would be helpful, hopefully someone could be nice and share. Thank you
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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taylorelane, waiting to see the connection you have found between Jill Montgomery and James Russell Bishop I thought I would share somethings I have on that subject, hopefully we’re on the same track in regards to this. Either way it’s good to see someone is trying to find connections. As far as I have seen the roots for any connection between Jill Montgomery and James Russell Bishop start with something I call “The Mysterious Mr. R.”, it is still one of the biggest unknowns of this case. I believe I know the name of this person but I could be wrong, I will get to that later. To begin we need to understand how the question of the Mysterious Mr. R. came about. On July 15, 1982, two days after the murders one day after the bodies were discovered, the Waco P.D. sent Detective Porterfield to the Methodist Home to get information on Jill Montgomery. Detective Porterfield talked to Mary Belheimer, who was the counselor for both Jill Montgomery and Kenneth Franks. Ms. Belheimer gave what information she could but she couldn’t remember everything but she told the detective they had a file on Jill that could provide more information and she offered it to the detective. Unbelievably Detective Porterfield declined the offer and said if they needed the file he would come back and get it, this was just the start of how this investigation was going to go. As the Waco P.D. was conducting their investigation the Waxahachie P.D. was conducting their own investigation and in doing so also contacted the Methodist Home and were given the same offer as Detective Porterfield, access to Jill’s file. Using better judgement they accepted the offer and got Jill Montgomery’s file, understanding the wealth of information this file could provide. So, the Waxahachie P.D. knew more about what was going on in Jill’s life when she was in Waco and the Methodist Home than the Waco P.D. did. They did pass information on to Waco P.D., so Waco P.D. could follow up some of this information but Waco P.D. usually did a less than stellar and thorough job of this. Definitely not the ideal or proper way to run an investigation.
About a week after the murders, Waxahachie had obtained some interesting information. They had a subject tell them she had heard three men of Hispanic descent talking about the murders at a flea market in Fort Worth and gave the name of a Robert, also of Hispanic descent, as the killer. And gave the important detail that Robert worked at El Chino in Waco. In relationship to this information, at least in the minds of Waxahachie P.D., were other things they had come across during their investigation; Raylene’s younger sister, Renelle, telling them Jill was seeing a Mexican boy, Renelle believed was from the Methodist Home, she also shared that Jill was taking black Mollies, speed, 6 to 8 pills a day for weight control and Jill had lost weight before she was killed. Then there was a photo of Jill with a Mexican no one in Waxahachie knew, so they believed he was from Waco and/or the Methodist Home, there was information that Jill had a new drug connection in Waco. And then finally there was a letter Jill had written to Raylene, only days maybe a week before the murders, stating they needed to stop by and see Mr. R. while the were in Waco. To the Waxahachie P.D. all these loose pieces of information were referring to one person and they passed this on to Waco P.D. to follow up this lead. We will have to break down each individual piece of information and that is going to create a long series of post but really it’s the only way to go about it and even then it might get confusing.
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I guess the first piece of information we should tackle is the reported discussion of the three men at the flea market but there will be so many questions once we delve into that. Probably the easiest and also getting to how this connects Jill to JRB is getting into the photo. Waxahachie P.D. thought the man/boy could have been the Robert the three men at the flea market were talking about and this Robert could have been Jill’s new drug connection in Waco and the Mr. R. mentioned in the letter Jill had written to Raylene. They passed this information to Waco P.D., at this time the detectives working the case on Waco’s end believed the murders were drug related, so the information the received from Waxahachie was in line with their thinking and at first they jumped on it. Keep in mind it is very important “WHEN” law enforcement obtain information. Specifically in regards to this case, Waco P.D. received this information in late July 1982, they didn’t hear James Russell Bishop’s name until San Diego P.D. called to get information on him in February 1983, so they definitely couldn’t make a connection. And by the time they did get his name the information they had received earlier was forgotten or had become irrelevant.
The first thing Waco P.D. did when they first got the information was take the photo of Jill and the Mexican guy to the Methodist Home to find out the identity of this guy. It turns out the guy’s name wasn’t Robert but Richard Lopez. There is still questions as to the relationship between Jill Montgomery and Richard Lopez but by all accounts he was a good guy, no trouble at all, not some one you would look at for murder or even drugs. The one interesting thing of note, especially for people looking at James Russell Bishop, was that Richard Lopez worked with James Russell Bishop at MCC. So logic would dictate that if James and Richard knew each other there is at least a possibility that Jill and James met somewhere along the line through Richard.
Although Richard was the guy in the picture, Waco P.D. was still interested in any Roberts of Mexican descent that Jill may have came into contact with during her stay at the Methodist Home. They were given a couple Roberts mentioned to the police. I will only get into one at the moment for the purpose this could be a second connection between Jill and JRB. A name that was given to the police that the Methodist Home had trouble with was one Robert Menchaca. This Robert’s sins; he harbored runaways from the Methodist Home. When Waco P.D. talked to Mary Belheimer at this time, in late July, she stated she had not heard anything about this Robert in sometime and didn’t know if he was still participating in these activities. Waco P.D. would follow up on this in November 1982, at that time Ms. Belheimer still didn’t have any further information on these Robert’s but she thought maybe the house parent would and directed them to talk to a Mrs. Lyles. Mrs. Lyles knew of two Hispanic Robert’s the Home had trouble with; Robert Torres who had gotten one of the girls at the Home pregnant and then Robert Menchaca for harboring the runaways. But Mrs. Lyles did add that it had been a year maybe even two the last time she could recall Menchaca harboring runaways from the Home. And this brings into light the importance of having the file of Jill Montgomery. When Detective Porterfield talked to Mary Belheimer on July 15, 1982, Ms. Belheimer only remembered Jill had runaway in January 1982, which is the only incident she mentioned and gave details on. But Jill had runaway before that and the information on that incident was in the file, something Waco P.D. never saw nor knew about until Waxahachie mentioned it to them at some later time. The importance of this little piece of information, again especially for those trying to make a connection with James Russell Bishop, is the earlier incident would put Jill running away about a year prior to when Waco P.D. talked to Mrs. Lyles and the possibility that Robert Menchaca was still active in harboring runaways at that time, which leads to the possibility that Jill could have ben one of the runaways that stayed at Robert’s. Where did Robert live at the time Proctor Ave. And who else lived on Proctor Ave, I believe only a couple blocks away??? The man James Russell Bishop thought was his father until about a week before he left Waco and took off to California at the end of July.
There is one more Robert mentioned at the time that I want to get into but it involves Gayle Kelly. Anything involving Gayle Kelly takes some degree of explaining, so that will have to be another post on it’s own. Hopefully a short post.
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So at this point I believe it’s safe to say Richard Lopez, the guy in the photo with Jill, is not the Hispanic Robert in Waco that law enforcement thought was the guy mentioned at the flea market nor had anything to do with the murders of Jill, Raylene and Kenneth. If anything he could be the conduit for a connection between Jill and James Russell Bishop. But law enforcement was still looking for a Hispanic Robert and it was Gayle Kelly that would provide one, kinda!!! The problem with Gayle Kelly is she is not the most credible person, I’ve talked to her and honestly I get the impression she is hiding something, she definitely knows more than she is willing to say and as harsh as it might sound I feel at times she is more interested in protecting secrets and probably unsavory behavior she knew about or maybe even took part in than divulging the truth. The first time I talked to her, one of the first thing she said to me was that Waco P.D. thought she was lying to them, I had to point out from the first moment she walked into the police station on July 20, 1982 she did lie to them. During the trials a couple girls from the Methodist Home testified for the defense and they stated Gayle couldn’t be trusted and was a liar. The only problem with this is those same girls had their own credibility issues. When I first talked to Rhonda Evans, she shared those same sentiments, “You can’t believe anything Gayle says”. On the other hand Gayle says the same thing about Rhonda. In my own opinion there is one glaring issue in regards to Gayle Kelly I just can’t reconcile and I’ve tried to talk to her about it but she just gets mad and then refuses to talk to me. It has to do with her turning in Deeb only hours after Truman Simons and Dennis Baier told her they were looking at him in connection with the murders and asked her not to say anything to him. Yes it’s true that Deeb said he killed the kids, joking or not, but why did it trigger Gayle to contact Truman then? Deeb had given her details of the murders before and she never said anything, never mentioned this to the police at the time, nor did she ever tell them about the animosity that existed between Kenneth and Deeb, something she surely knew about. Why? Deeb had told Gayle Gayle Kenneth was made to suffer before he was killed more than a month before he made the comment that caused her to contact Truman, she never wondered how he had these details, can someone really be that naive or stupid? I don’t believe so I believe there’s something more behind her actions or reactions. Along those lines we also have to consider the true level of the relationship between Jill and Gayle. One of the girls that testified for the defense said Gayle had made statements that she was happy Jill was dead or had been killed. We hear, mostly in the book Careless Whispers how close Jill and Gayle were, they were like sister’s. In all the police reports only once do we hear anything close to this. And that came from the girls’ supervisor at Fort Fisher; Lou Booker. And actually what she said was sometimes they acted like sisters, other times it was like they couldn’t stand each other and hated each other. Then there is the little fact that most people are not aware of but speaks volumes. When Jill wa at the Methodist Home she wrote home, talking about the friends she had met and made, sent pictures home of these no friends. In all the letters and pictures she never mentioned Gayle Kelly, no pictures of Gayle Kelly, absolutely nothing about Gayle Kelly. Jill’s family never heard the name Gayle Kelly until after the murders, probably after Truman took over the case in September 1982. The original detectives didn’t share as much with the families, Truman was more open with the families. Now I don’t write this to bash Gayle Kelly, she had a rough life but I do have to questions some of her actions, behaviors and motivations. And the only reason I mention this now is for all the questions I have about her credibility I do believe she had the proper answer as to whom the Mysterious Mr. R. was and she gave it to Waco P.D. but of coarse not the full truth. When Waco P.D. took the photo of Jill and the Hispanic guy, that turned out to be Richard Lopez, they went to Gayle, although she had left the Methodist Home at that point and show her the picture. Gayle really couldn’t give them any information on Richard Lopez than they already had but they were still interested in finding a Hispanic Robert that might have been connected to Jill. And Gayle actually gave it up, to a point. She gave them the name of Robert DeLaRosa and add details like Jill was seeing him on the sly because he was older than the girls at the Home were allowed to date and apparently he was the source for Jill to score some drugs. This was everything the police were looking for, they asked for more info but Gayle she she really didn’t know anything more and there’s the rub. She did know more, probably a lot more. Robert DeLaRosa was Gayle’s boyfriend’s uncle. I believe Robert DeLaRosa is the Mr. R. Jill writes about in the letter to Raylene where she says they need to go see him when they are in Waco. Now, did this Robert have anything to do with the murders, at least to this point we can’t say, as usual it was another lead Waco P.D. failed to follow up. But the letter itself raises some questions.
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Jill Montgomery’s first attempted to pick up her final paycheck from Fort Fisher on the Saturday before she was killed. Her brother took her to Waco that day. When she went to Waco that Saturday to pick up her check she was told she had to come back during the week when City Hall was open to get that check. Jill asked her brother if he could bring her back later in the week, he couldn’t come back during the week because he had to work. Jill had to find another way to get back to Waco during the week. Sunday evening Kenneth Franks calls Jill Montgomery and it’s at this point she starts making plans to get back to Waco on Tuesday. She turns to her closest friend Raylene Rice and they make their plans. This is the story as we know it and for all we know and everything out there points to this being how things went or came together. It is an accurate description of how the chain of events unfolded in the days leading up to the murders, simply put it’s the truth. But is it the whole truth?
Whatever information can be gleaned from the letter Jill wrote Raylene within a week of their murders will always be over shadowed by the questions it has left us. Beyond trying to figure out who Mr. R. is, we are left with the question were the girls already planning to go to Waco for another reason before the way things played out over the weekend? The letter surely points in that direction but whom were they going to see and what were they planning to do? Those questions can only leave us with a haunting chill. The what ifs!!! Some may try to find comfort in the idea it was only one letter and didn’t mean that much, just two teenage girls scheming some under the radar road trip. That might gel if the letter stood alone but with the help of the phone bill it tells us a different story.
Jill’s mother’s telephone billing cycle ended on the 10th, July 10th. So calls made from June 11th up until July 10th were one one bill, the would have calls Jill made to Waco, which was a long distant call. Waco P.D. would obtain this bill sometime in July and they would track down the calls Jill made to Waco. Two of these calls were made to Ginger Yoby, a girl that was one of Jill’s closest friends at the Methodist Home. This was a name Jill’s family were familiar with, Jill had mentioned her in letters, had sent home pictures with this girl and expressed how Ginger was one of her closest friends. So seeing that Jill had called her a couple times wasn’t surprising. One of the calls took place about 5 or 6 days before the murders the second a day or two before the murders. Waco P.D. questioned Ginger about these calls and her answers left them a world of doubt. In the first call Ginger says Jill told her that she and Raylene were coming to Waco on Saturday, remind you this call took place Wednesday or Thursday, well before the weekend. Jill’s brother ended up taking Jill to Waco for whatever reason. Ginger stated she didn’t see Jill that Saturday and the second call was to let Ginger know Jill and Raylene were still coming to Waco but now it would be Tuesday, which would be the day they would end up getting killed. Ginger did not see Jill that day either.. The Waco Detectives were in disbelief, the information they had was that Jill and Raylene hadn’t made plans to come to Waco until the Sunday or Monday before the murders. The detectives were concerned about it enough that they drove to Waxahachie to question Jill’s mother about when Jill and Raylene had made their plans to go to Waco. Jill’s mother was still sure the girls made the plans Sunday night or the next day. Waco P.D. did not have the letter Jill had written to Raylene the days before at the time, Waxahachie P.D. still had it and apparently didn’t know of the letter’s contents but the letter and Ginger’s recollections of the phone calls match, Jill and Raylene had been planning to go to Waco for whatever reason prior to the development that Jill needed a ride to go get her check. That truth might be hard to accept but it might help us find the truth as to where the girls went the day they were murdered. He have a number of hours that the girls were in town we can’t account for. And the question of Mr. R. still remains.
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Loose threads, as so much as this case is, you try to tie up one loose thread and you end up with 12 more loose threads. It’s like planting a Morning Glory, you plant a Morning Glory and you get a nice pretty little blue flower then the next thing you know they are all over the place. So it is with the genesis of the mysterious Mr. R., you start in one direction, one clear thought, one final destination and end up all over the place, having no idea where you’re going. The beginning of this simple thread was three hispanic men at a flea market talking about the murders and giving us intriguing information, enough so that makes us feel it’s worth while jumping into that rabbit hole. And what information did these guys provide? They gave us a name; Robert; that he is of Hispanic descent; that he killed Jill and her friends because Jill broke up with him and left Waco to return home and that Robert worked at El Chico’s. Then we have both Raylene’s sister and Gayle Kelly verifying the Jill was seeing someone of Mexican descent, Gayle even goes as far as saying his name was Robert. Both girls tells us this boyfriend was Jill’s source for drugs, something the men at the flea market never mention. The letter Jill wrote to Raylene implies that the person they were going to see in Waco was a drug source. So this all has to add up to something, right. The first thing we should question is how much of this information was general public knowledge at the time. I believe it was commonly known that Jill had been a resident at the Methodist Home and had returned home recently. I’m not sure if the information the the girls went to El Chico’s the night they were murdered. And the mention of El Chico’s was the thing that first stood out to me. Yes El Chico’s was the place Richard Franks said Jill had called from. I’ve long wondered if Mr. Franks was mistaken on this. Jill had a favorite restaurant and it was a Mexican restaurant as was El Chico’s. We know this about this restaurant, it is mentioned as Jill’s favorite restaurant a couple times. I think the most important one coming from Jill’s father. When Jill ran away in January 1982, she called her family and told them she wanted to come home. Jill’s father drove to Waco, picked up Jill and they went to Jill’s favorite restaurant. Made sense, he was trying to lessen the blow for he would have to tell Jill they, are parents didn’t think Jill was ready to come home, running away didn’t exhibit that she was willing to abide by the rules. Jill would return the Methodist Home. Jill’s favorite restaurant in Waco was El Conquistador. El Conquistador and El Chico’s were only a few miles apart, the girls could have gone to either one. I would think with Jill bringing her best friend to town she would want to take her to the place she thought was best, her favorite. Ok, that might be trying to pry into things too much but when Waco P.D. tried to verify that’s where the girls had gone, they couldn’t not one staff member remembered seeing the girls and Waco P.D went to El Chico’s more than once to make sure they talked to everyone that worked that night. Also management told Waco P.D. that they hadn’t had any Robert working there in a long time. So I would have to question did the girls go to El Chico’s that night? To me it makes more sense they went to Jill’s favorite restaurant; El Conquistador, a place Waco P.D. didn’t check out. Is it possible that Mr. Franks just misspoke when he said El Chico’s when he meant to say El Conquistador or maybe just had it all mixed up, which you couldn’t blame him at the time. If this is the case then what does this do to the value of the information from the men at the flea Market? And if we have to question that there are surely other things we should question. Maybe the Robert they were talking about wasn’t Mexican or Hispanic maybe he was just some white boy Robert, that alone opens the flood gates. Just think of the Roberts we could come up with; Robert Freuh, definitely knew Kenneth and sold drugs; Robert Coleman was a friend of David Spence’s was with Spence both the night David sexually assaulted Lisa Kader and the night David and Gilbert attacked the Pack boy and we know Robert Coleman dated at least one girl from the Methodist Home. Robert Watts, a strange character to say the least, hitchhikes to Waco and stays at Fort Fisher around the same time as the murders, then hitchhikes to Axtell to be present at the party where Beth Bramlett disappeared less than a moth later, this guy could have been the inspiration for the cult classic from the 80’s “The Hitcher”.
Maybe the R. in the letter Jill wrote was reference to an initial of a last name and not a first name. The first two people that come to mind would be Charles Ramsey and Ronald Robinson, two guys there were definitely in Koehne Park the night of the murders. You could go in many different directions on this one question. The one correct answer solves a lot of different issues.
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QUESTION 11,759
Jill Montgomery ran away from the Methodist Home in January 1982. Waco P.D. got a decent about of details on this incident from Mary Belheimer, Jill and Kenneth Franks counselor at the Home. We know Jill ran away with another girl from the Home named Rhonda Evans, that the two girls spent a couple nights at the home of Bobby Brem, a close friend of Kenneth’s and a guy that really liked Jill. Jill called her parents from the pay phone at the Rainbow Drive-In. Jill wanted to come home but with her running away her parents didn’t think she was ready to come home, so Jill returned to the Methodist Home. But there was another time Jill ran away, we don’t have as much detail on this incident, Mary Belheimer didn’t mention it to Detective Porterfield when they talked on July 15th, but it was in Jill’s file, something Detective Porterfield decided not to take. Waxahachie P.D. got the file and knew about this incident and at least let Waco P.D. know the incident had occurred. This is why don’t see much about this incident in the Waco reports. Made little details we get is it occurred in November 1981 and at this time Jill ran away with two other girls but we don’t get their names, they are probably in the file. I believe Rhonda Evans was one of the girls and I have talked to Rhonda, she said she and Jill did in fact run away with another girl but this happened in January 1982. I pointed out that’s not what the records so, she might have the two incidents mixed up. Well you can guess how that went over. She really doesn’t want to be that helpful, she would never give me the name of the third girl and I still can’t find the name of that girl. Does anyone out there know the identity of the girl that ran away with Jill Montgomery and Rhonda Evans??? I would really like to find her and talk to her. She would have information that only her and Rhonda would have now!!!
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I found new information which of course means new to me. Kenneth and Jill’s autopsies show that their drug tests were negative. I’d love to see everyone’s thoughts on this.
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Taylor, I’ve been wanting to reply to your comment, sorry it has taken so long. That the testing for drugs in the victims came back negative should not be too shocking, there could be a couple reasons for this. First, simply the type of pills we know about the kids using would run through anyone’s system with in a day, so not finding any of those substances in their bodies probably only tells us that they hadn’t taken any pills in the last 24 hours prior to their deaths. Now with marijuana , which usually takes about 30 days to go through your system, there are many masking agents that would shield from detection. Gold Seal was a popular choice back then but there are others and even some natural ones. So if any of the kids were using any of these type of products it would have masked whatever they were using and with many of these products during a autopsy you have have to look for those exact masking agents, not sure if that is common in a routine autopsy, I believe someone has to ask for those exact type of test to be done. Don’t know if it was done in these autopsy, from what little I get from the autopsy and I’m definitely not the right person to ask, it doesn’t look like that kind of screening was done.
On the other hand, let’s take the findings of the autopsy at face value, that being the kids didn’t have any traces of drugs in their systems, what would that tell us. Obviously, they hadn’t smoked any weed in about a month, which seems highly unlikely with the stories we hear, especially with Kenneth Franks. But what it also could tell us is the kids had very limited sources to get these drugs and weed. Maybe a single source. And if they only had a single source and ran into a problem with that source the kids could have been left high and dry. This also looks like a very good possibility, again especially with Kenneth Franks, see many stories in the police reports about Kenneth owing someone money over some drug deal. Even in one of Jill’s letters she says she has found a new source for speed in Waco. That the kids were desperate to make a deal again looks like a good possibility and that no drugs were found in their systems after they were killed only adds to a likely probability this is what happened, they hadn’t been able to score any drugs for sometime when a possibility presented itself they jumped at it. Why did the kids get in whatever vehicle, with whomever and leave the park, at a time when the girls should have started heading back to Waxahachie??? There had to be a reason.
Like it or not we know Muneer Deeb was the drug source for Gayle Kelly and many of the girls at the Methodist Home for a couple months prior to the murders. If we look approximately 30 days before the murders, roughly June 13th, can we find anything that would show us there was a problem with this very unstable arrangement??? I believe there is. I would ask this, we know Deeb got an insurance policy on Gayle on June 22nd, the day she had agreed to come work for him. It’s all a nice little story, Deeb cares about his employees and gets them insurance. Well it’s a load of crap!!! Deeb had been think of getting the insurance weeks before. We know this from the insurance salesman. I posted his testimony today. Would people please stop saying the policy did not pay if Gayle got killed, the insurance agent clearly states it does. Anyway why was Deeb thinking about getting an insurance policy on Gayle back then, it wasn’t in lieu of worker’s comp, she wasn’t a worker!!! The rift between Gayle, Kenneth and possibly Jill and Deeb had already started, weeks before the June 22nd insurance policy, Gayle moving into the apartment the same day and the fall out of that arrangement a couple nights later. From about June 24th until the day of the murders, July 13th, the only contact we really hear about between these parties is Deeb saying Jill and Raylene stopped in the store that day. That’s three weeks there add another week or so to that and you have 30 days before the murders and the kids at odds with their known drug source. Deeb came from the old world, and in the old world they have many old sayings like “keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer”. Getting an apartment to share with the girl that is draining you dry doesn’t get much closer!!!
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I direct this post to Mr. Raymond Rice. I was shocked to see your name appear on one of my sites today, you have stayed away and been silent for so long. People like me say we understand your pain, suffering and the anguish you have lived with for all these years but we cannot truly understand to full depth and scope of this dark world. Although we trudge through all the graphic details and can recite facts and records, our journey never takes us to the darkest abyss that the living victims have lived in for so long. I don’t know why you finally decided to take a look, I can’t fathom it was just pure curiosity, your connection to this heartbreaking tragedy would paralyze any such notions. I would have to think there might have been some regrets along the way. Mr. Rice, all I can say is; if one of those regrets is there was never any justice for your daughter. No one was ever prosecuted for the vicious rape and murder of your daughter, justice can still be obtained, there is no statue of limitations on murder. The state held back the charges of the murder of your daughter against the Melendez brothers in case they later recanted, well they tried. David Wayne Spence was only convicted for the two murders of Jill Montgomery and Kenneth Franks. Whom has been held responsible for Raylene’s murder??? NOBODY!!! If you would like to change that, your family would be Raylene’s strongest advocates. You would get plenty of support from a wide range of interested parties. Justice for Raylene would benefit so many more victims. In finding Raylene’s killer, you would correct mistakes of previous proceedings, provide answers to so many unresolved questions and you would have the benefit of using the DNA evidence that wasn’t available during the earlier trials. They have the fingernail clippings from Jill Montgomery. They have found male DNA in those clippings, that would give the identity of a least one of the girls attackers. To be able to finally prove this beyond any reasonable doubt would be a blessing to many that have suffered as long as you have. Finding Justice for Raylene would find relief for others. Mr. Rice if this is on your mind and you think you could weather the storm of the terrible ordeal this would certainly become and you want to talk, you can contact me privately. You could provide the blessing that so many have been seeking for nearly 42 years!!!
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When the heat of the truth radiates like the sun, icy cold lies melt away.
The truth is more important than justice. The exchange is never equal, any justice dispensed can never repay nor replace the loss suffered. The truth is priceless.
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i knew Robert Frueh. I also knew the person that murdered him. I had just decorated his Christmas tree a few days earlier.
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ptee, do you have any insights or thoughts you could share?
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I can confirm that he liked young boys. I used to hang out with him when I was in my late teens and early 20s. He was a great manipulator. I didn’t meet him until after the lake Waco murders. He still had the burgundy Lincoln and his dog Sammy. I never saw him get violent, but I do remember being at his house one night and someone rammed his garage door.
I never understood why there was never an arrest for his murder. I know he was a creepy weird preacher, but I have never heard of someone confessing to killing someone and never get charged for it.
i apologize if I am rambling. I just spent the past 2 hours reading all of this, and I felt compelled to contact you. I don’t really talk about that period in my life because I was addicted to drugs and a lost soul.
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I knew Robert as well. Before he moved to Waco. He was not in the least violent. He was the victim of violence several times.
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ptee. I don’t believe the killer wasn’t charged, I believe he got some of deal, he would have been the perfect canidate , young and involved in trnasporting drugs from the bigger cities in Texas and whatever else Robert Frueh might have been he was a drug dealer. I can see a deal for information. Now, the problem most people, including myself, in trying to findactually what legal coarse was taken, all relevant information that could give us an idea of the legal coarse taken had been redacted and expunged. We can’t track anything if we don’t have that information. Maybe it was just because of the killers age but I would doubt that, just because he was at least 16 and driving, at 16 most homicides aren’t that easily swept under the rug, so I would say something happened behind the scenes. Ptee, you mentioned you knew the killer, would you feel comfortable sharing he identity; age name? And don’t worry about rambling, we love it!!!
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i don’t feel comfortable just putting his information out here like that, but I don’t mind telling you in private if you won’t put it out there either. He has a life now and I don’t think it would be right to ruin it.
i had to go to an attorney’s office after this happened and tell them what I knew about Reverend Bob and the other guy. Bill Vanatta. I think it was. Bob was working at ATDS truck driving school out in elm mott/Lacy Lakeview he would also pick up his Amway from elm mott. At this time he was driving a maroon convertible Cadillac at this time. Bob had a yellow gallon Tupperware pitcher he would keep in the trunk, a long with red solo cup and an ice chest. He would make screwdrivers with cheap vodka and frozen minute maid orange juice. He was always drinking these and offering them to people.
i.never saw any large amount of drugs at Bob’s house I do know he smoked marijuana but I had never done any other drugs with him.
He also liked to watch but there were times where he tried to touch the guy and it would ruin the mood. He also would try to get these guys he would bring back to his place to spank him with his belt. Just crazy things that are coming back to me as I am typing. I remember that he had a second German Shepherd while I knew him, Luke. His dogs were very well taken care of, not that it makes Bob any less creepy. Looking back at this part of my life as a mother makes me see it from a completely different perspective.
my email is tf91066@gmail.com if you have any questions
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A interesting little tidbit from one of our contributors, she can identify herself if she wishes to. Thank you!!!
I wish I could recall exactly what bill vanatta asked me. I remember him telling me that bobs family didn’t want to pursue the case and I always thought that was weird because I didn’t think you could just murder someone and not have the legal system prosecute you
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https://www.itsfoulplay.com/lakewaco
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https://murderinthemountains.buzzsprout.com/1811808/14629075-unraveling-the-lake-waco-murders-a-texas-tragedy?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR0dCvlVgg7uUGKAQLouQ82DKMlB7aMFltszInTA_9qBH7J1fzyGUAe_PXc_aem_2Z5ynSz0cSN_L6N_3fORJQ
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Today is another sad anniversary, 42 and counting and still so many questions!!! We are still awaiting the results on the DNA found in Jill Montgomery’s fingernail clippings, when will they be released??? Come on it’s been 42 years, it’s getting a little ridiculous!!! In the meantime we can amuse ourselves with opinions, theories, rumors and podcast. And I guess for this awful anniversary I will share my own version of a proposed timeline.
Here is an outline of my time line. It starts with David Wayne Spence first returning to Waco. Unfortunately we don’t have an exact date on that and the only reasonable thing we have to go on is his parole officer’s word, but he probably had a file to go by. He says he first saw David either late October or Early November. Taking into consideration that David was just recently released from prison and had his parole transferred to Waco, one would think David had to check in with his new parole officer within 30 days of making that move. So that would place his return to either late September or early October. From Christine’s interview with Baier and Salinas we know she met David on October the 16th and moved in the next day. The Melendez Brothers were both already staying with David at this time. I would guess it would be about this time that David first meets the kids from the Methodist Home out at the lake. In November David and the Melendez brothers have their falling out and the brothers move out. This is the time when Jill Montgomery and Rhonda Evans run away together for the first time, they are accompanied with another girl but I have been unable to get the name of that girl.. In January 1982 Jill and Rhonda run away from the Home again, Rhonda never returns to the Home and gets put in foster care. Jill’s father picks up Jill on 15th Street a few blocks from the Rainbow Drive-In or what will become the Rainbow Drive-In, that is the general neighborhood of where David Spence’s house is, where David and Christine were living at the time. Jill had told her family she had stayed at a ladies house that allowed runaways to crash. While David lived there, without his mother being present, he let people crash there. Christine says there were never any girls that stayed there. Not too sure if I believe her on that one and there were times when Christine left David, so she wouldn’t have known what was going on there.. Karim and Deeb open the Rainbow Drive-In in February 1982. Christine starts working there in May 1982. David starts hanging out at the store once Christine starts working there. Kids from the Home are allowed to go to the store to get snacks but once David is there and David and kids know each other from partying David and the Rainbow Drive-In become a convenient place to score party supplies. Deeb sees this and sees it as a way to get one of the girls to marry him so he can obtain his green card. Hell if all these teenage girls are friendly with David, some one that doesn’t have a job or money just think what Deeb can do with a business and money. He starts offering the girls $500 if they will marry him and he starts giving out the alcohol and drugs. It doesn’t take long before some one is going to take advantage of this seriously unstable situation. That person would be Gayle Kelly, she got money, weed, drugs, alcohol anything she wanted from Deeb and of coarse she shared with her friends. The girls stated, including Gayle, that they started getting weed and the like from Deeb in late Spring, that coincides with Christine getting the job and David starting to hang out at the store. Jill and Gayle were working at Fort Fisher at this time and we know from the girls’ supervisor Deeb would come visit the girls at work on numerous occasions and Ms. Booker, the supervisor, also stated whenever Kenneth’s Franks’ name came up there was a very noticeable reaction from Deeb. This tells us a couple things; first Deeb knew Jill Montgomery and secondly that the problem between Kenneth and Deeb existed by that time. Whatever it was it was enough to cause Deeb to go to the girls’ place of work and cause enough of a scene to keep it in the mind of the supervisor for 4 or 5 months until she told Baier. Again we don’t have exact dates but I’m putting it in early June. So in the few weeks in May Gayle has started to take full advantage of the situation. Gayle says she never agreed to any arrangement with Deeb. Christine says otherwise saying Gayle led Deeb on, Was it to the point where she took the $500 to marry Deeb and then some??? I believe this could case been the case. If we look at what Deeb first did when Gayle finally did agree to move into the apartment later in the month. What did Deeb do? He gave Gayle money to get stuff for the apartment. I think he probably did the same thing when he first got the apartment for Gayle. He signed the lease on June first. On a side note Patti Deis signed for her apartment in the same complex the next day; June 2. I believe Deeb gave Gayle a nice sum of money to move into that apartment around June the 1st but Gayle doesn’t move into the apartment or use the money to get stuff for the apartment but finds other uses for it, maybe like financing a drug deal for her close friend Kenneth Franks., either way she doesn’t move into the apartment. Somewhere along the line Deeb learns he’s been duped, how he finds out is questionable but I believe it was David Spence that probably told him. David was still somewhat friends with the kids and they could still come to him to get beer and probably drugs, so he was still partying with them out at the lake and the kids out there partying and joking around probably spilled the beans about what they had done, not thinking David would go back and tell Deeb. Now Deeb is on the warpath, he starts going out to Fort Fisher to confront Gayle and I guess Jill about what they and Kenneth had done to him. This gets back to Kenneth and he starts taunting Deeb at his store. So things are starting to get a little tense at this point and first Gayle wants to get away from it all and decides she’s going to run away and stay with friends in the Fort Worth area. She tells Jill her plan and tells Jill not to say anything to anybody, apparently this would be the last time Jill and Gayle would talk. Again we don’t have exact dates, if we could ever see Gayle’s file from the Methodist Home, if it still exists we could get the exact date she didn’t return from work. What we do know is she was gone for a week and returned on the 20th or 21st of June. In a strange occurrence in the complex web of events, Deeb is keeping tabs on Gayle, he doesn’t want her to get too far out of his reach, I think he’s already thinking about getting revenge on Gayle and Kenneth, he just hasn’t been able to pull together any plan. That changes once he hears about the insurance policy Karim is getting and then Deeb becomes interested in getting insurance. Even though Christine and David state that Deeb asked David about finding some one to kill Gayle on July 4th, Karim testified that Deeb and David were talking about it all the time. Anyway Deeb knows Gayle is getting out of town and again to keep tabs on her, he tells Gayle he will take her to Fort Worth, at first Gayle declines, getting away from Deeb is probably the main reason she’s getting out of Waco. But he ends up being her only option and he does give her the ride to Fort Worth, now he knows where she will be in Fort Worth. Deeb tells her to call him when she wants to come back and he will pick her up. That call comes a week later and Deeb does go pick Gayle up and brings her back to Waco. On the trip back Deeb tells Gayle she still can move into the apartment and can come work for him. She declines and Gayle goes to stay at Patty’s apartment. While at Patty’s, Gayle tells Patty about the proposal Deeb has offered her, a job and an apartment and Patty convinces her to take Deeb up on it. Patty has joined the Army and will be leaving at the end of summer and what will Gayle do then. The next day Gayle goes to the store and tells Deeb she is accepting his offer, Deeb is pleased with this and hands her money to go get stuff for the apartment, she can start work the next day. If this is the correct story as it has been told, Gayle returned on June 20th, accepted Deeb’s offer on the 21st and we know what they did on the 22nd. They signed the insurance policy. Everybody states that Gayle only stayed at the apartment two or three nights. Gayle says on the first night, being the 21st, she slept on the couch, I believe the second night Deeb didn’t come to the apartment and then the third night is when Gayle had the party at the apartment and Deeb walked in and seeing Gayle kissing Henry Reyes, which ended everything and Gayle moved back to Patty’s. That would have been June 23rd. On June 24th Jill Montgomery goes home to Waxahachie for the weekend, she is suppose to return to the Methodist Home on Sunday June 26th but Jill tells her mother she doesn’t want to go back, Jill’s mother senses something is wrong but Jill won’t tell her what it is and with this she allows Jill to stay home and not return to Waco on a probationary basis. So now it’s late June, Jill is back in Waxahachie, Gayle is hiding out at Patty’s, it’s a little harder to detail exactly where Kenneth was staying and doing. Of coarse it stayed at is home some nights and he stayed at Patty’s some night but apparently stayed at another apartment in the complex a few nights in June when he couldn’t go home and couldn’t stay at Patty’s for some unknown reason. So during this time Deeb knew where Gayle was staying but couldn’t see her, he would go to Patty’s apartment but Patty or Kenneth wouldn’t allow Deeb to see her. This went on for a couple weeks until Kenneth convinces her it would be better for her to return to the Methodist Home, which she does on July 4th. And she is put on restriction and isn’t allowed to leave the Home for two weeks, which saves her life. When Kenneth calls her on July 13th to come with them, she can’t because she is still on restriction. But the dye has already been cast. Deeb realizes he can’t get to Gayle and Kenneth, he needs to draw them out, he needs to find a way to draw them out and he knows what he needs to do, probably with the help of some one. They need to put out there what the kids will see as a very lucrative drug deal, that will definitely get the kids attention and interest. Remember when Gayle is first interviewed by police on July 20th, she tells them Kenneth was planning on making some decent money on a drug seal. She didn’t know the name of the person Kenneth was going to make the deal with for her own safety. But it was someone she knew but wouldn’t expect Kenneth to deal with, it was also someone that had been recently released from prison and had returned to Waco with in the last year. Now that sounds like someone anybody that knows anything about this case would be familiar with. It is strange and troubling when the police asked Gayle if she could give them anybody that fit the description, she didn’t mention David Wayne Spence, although she definitely knew him by that point. And maybe more troubling and seeing how his case was handled from the beginning, why didn’t Waco just run a check and see what inmates had been released from prison and returned to Waco with in the last year. The list wouldn’t have been to long. And if they would have put that together with the information they had gotten from Lisa Kader, the day before they interviewed Gayle Kelly, that Deeb had killed Kenneth because of Gayle, this case would have turned out a lot differently, at least as to the questions that remain. So now Kenneth has this drug deal lined up but he has a problem he doesn’t have any money. Where can he get the funds, Gayle definitely can’t rip off Deeb again, that ship has sailed straight on a collision coarse with fatal fate. He turns to the one person he thinks he can turn to; Jill Montgomery. So Sunday night July 11th, Kenneth calls her and asks her for money and unfortunately she begrudgingly agrees to help him even though she feels serious doubts about what she’s doing. Two nights later, Tuesday July 13, 1982, Jill Montgomery, Raylene Rice and Kenneth Franks were facing their final sunset over Lake Waco, not knowing their end was only a short car ride away.
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Recently I had the opportunity to waste some time listening to another crappy podcast. I actually had to leave a comment asking if they had actually read the police reports. Which obviously they hadn’t. Which makes we wonder how do any of these podcasters really think they are going to understand or have any real insight to the cases they are reviewing, if they don’t take the time to read the records??? Doesn’t make any sense!!! Without any further ado the latest in a long line of sub par podcast; Crime Junkies Lake Waco Murders Part 1. I will get into all the inaccuracies later!!!
https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/infamous-the-lake-waco-murders-part-1/
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Well I guess it’s time for me to begin to start my critiqueof the Crime Junkies podcast Lake Waco Murders part 1. Just think, it’s been 10 years since the first season of the true crime podcast Serial, the podcast that started the true crime podcast frenzie. In the 10 years since I’ve listened to dozens of podcast dedicated to the Lake Waco Murders. And also in those 10 years it seems we are getting further and further away from the truth with each new podcast. What’s the purpose??? I guess for us so called true crime buffs or true crime junkies it’s just about the entertainment value but we have to keep in mind there are a number of people out there that this case is nothing entertaining about it to them, it’s totally the opposite, it’s a living nightmare, a living nightmare that never ends. Of coarse I’m talking about the friends and families of all parties involved, the living victims of this spellbinding tragedy. For those people this case has never been entertaining and for those of us that have followed along for decades, the same ole stale falsehoods told repeatedly, don’t hold any intrinsic value. in the end they are just regurgitated lies. Again what’s the point, why??? You don’t add anything to the conversation, don’t help provide clarity nor help find answers or the truth. As I have repeated many times you can’t find the truth by repeating the same rumors and lies that got us to this point in the first place.
When the Serial podcast came out 10 years ago it had a clear purpose; to shine a light and get publicity for the case of the murder of Hae Min Lee and question the justice system that had convicted Adnan Syed. Agree or not with the outcome that Serial was instrumental in providing, the podcast had achieved it’s purpose in spades. It reminds me when Brian Pardo first became David Wayne Spence’s champion in the mid 90’s. He had a bunch of corporate lawyers and when he went to them telling them he wanted to help David Spence, they told him we don’t handle capital cases, we’re not that kind of lawyers, which led Pardo, in a round about way, to get connected to a lawyerfrom New York that better fitted his needs. One of the first things that lawyer told Pardo they needed to do was get publicity for the case, keep it in the public eye. That’s how it came about that the articles about the case were written in the New York Post and unfortunately brought the sleazy Fred Dannen into the case. The Lake Waco Murders case has suffered the harvest of that bitter seed ever since and again unfortunately it seems in the past decade podcast are addicted to that feast of lies and can never get away from it. As with all the podcast about this case before it, this is the failure of the Crime Junkies podcast.
Details, details, details, it’s all about the information you provide. Listening to the Crime Junkies podcast, you hear this underlying theme; how Truman Simons liked to work his hunches. Which, to be honest, is very true to some degree but a lot of police work without rock solid physical evidence is done on hunches. It ‘s how a law enforcement officer perceives things; suspects, people of interest, witnesses, leads and information. But not only did Truman Simons work according to his hunches, so did the officers originally working the case and if one takes the time to read the reports, you will see the original officers were wrong with those hunches, along with many other mistakes they made. Not to say Truman Simons was perfect and without fault, he was far from it, but in the end his hunches hit the mark far more than the original investigators ever did and in most cases he just did better police work. So this is my biggest problem with the crime junkies podcast, if they just took the time to read the police reports, which it seems none of these podcasters do for whatever reason, I guess they think it’s better to just keep repeating the same lies. But crime junkies takes it a step further, they attribute Truman’s hunches to aspects of the case that were grounded in something more solid. This is the area of concern I would like to address, although there were plenty in the podcast to pick from. Before I get into all this, there is one thing that i have heard repeatedly over the years, I didn’t hear it in the Crime Junkies podcast but it made me think about it when talking about Truman’s hunches and it’s a prime example of how the narrative has been told over the decades. Anyone familiar at all with the case knows Muneer Deeb was giving a polygraph test(lie detector) and he past. And it also been reported, again not in the Crime Junkies podcast, many times that Truman Simon questioned the results because Deeb was a foreinger. Again this has been repeatedly reported has some kind of Truman’s misguided thinking. Well actually Truman is correct. If one would read an operators manuel to any polygraph machine, the manual list conditions that would provide inaccurate results. In that list it says the test should be adminstered in the first language of the subject being given the test, failure to do so will result in an inaccurate reading. In this case Muneer Deeb’s first language was arabic, if he wasn’t questioned in arabic the results of the test would be inaccurate. Deeb was questioned in english, not his first language. Truman was write, it just wasn’t some of his crazy thinking, it is in the operating manual!!! And unfortunately Truman Simons gets a lot of this unfairly. Again not to say his was 100% correct, he was totally off on the whole case of mistaken identity theory but that was more of the eye of the beholder thing. If he believed Jill and Gayle looked alike no one can say e is wrong for seeing things like that, that’s how he sees it, even though he is the only one!!!
Now getting back to the Crime Junkies podcast. As I said before the podcast had an underlying theme of how Truman worked his own hunchies, to the point he alienated his fellow officers, again true to some degree but to get the whole story you have to read the reports. There are many inaccuracies in this podcast, some just small details that in the overall picture don’t mean much but why provide those inaccurate details. One such detail which they present within the first few minutes, again doesn’t mean much but it set the tone for the bigger inaccurcies that would come later. A couple minutes into the podcast they say Truman Simons and Ramon Salinas arrived at the crime scene at the same time. This is incorrect. Truman Simons and Officer Brian Reynolds were the first two officers from the Waco PD that arrived on the scene, others from the Sheriff’s office had arrived before them. When the body was first discovered by the 2 fisherman, they went to the constable that had a trailer near the gate. They told him they had found a dead man. The constable wasn’t sure what they had found. When he made his first call, he called the sheriff’soffice to report a suspicious death, he made his call before he left his trialer. This was the call Truman and Reynolds responded to, the sheriff’s office passed that first call on to Waco dispatch and Truman and Reynolds got it on their radios in their cars.. Now when they arrived people from the Sheriff’s office were already there. It’s rarely mentioned but when Truman and Reynolds arrive on the scene there is a question about jurisdiction. It’s not like you see on tv or movies where officers are arguing or are like this is my case get out of my way. It seems things were a little confusing and no one was sure who had jurisdiction but it doesn’t seem like anyone cared. That’s when Truman took control and started giving orders, it doesn’t seem anyone there had a problem with it and they tried to clear out the crime scene from all the people that had gathered by that time. Salinas arrives after this has happened. Salinas arrived after the constable made the second call to report it wasn’t a suspicious death it was a homicide. Ramon Salinas was at the Waco PD station at the time when the second call came in. He takes the call and on his way out he is stopped by Detective Trantham, who had just recently gotten pictures of the missing kids from the parents when they came to retrieve Raylene’s car. Trantham tells Salinas these kids had been reported earlier in the day and he should take the pictures just in case. Salinas takes the pictures and when he first arrives he finds Truman already inspecting the body that was found. Salinas hands him the photo of Kenneth Franks and they see the photo matches the body they are looking at, actually he is wearing the same shirt that is in the picture. Salinas goes on to tell Truman he was more bad news, this boy went missing with two girls that are still missing. And that leads to the discovery of their bodies. Again just small details, doesn’t really matter who from Waco PD arrived first but the records are very clear on it. Post is getting a little long, have to continue on another post.
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After that small inaccuracy the podcast follows this up with a much bigger inaccuracy. Now they do provided the source for this information, some newspaper article, all I can say is this is why it’s better to get your information from police reports than news article. In any on going investigation police departments will be tight lipped about giving out information, so when a news article comes out with information one has to wonder how they came about it and whom or what was their source. The podcast says it was a loose consensus that the belief that the murders occurred where the bodies were found other than Truman Simons. Well I don’t know whom was part of this loose concensus, all I know it wasn’t the officers that wereat the crime scene. In their reports they all say they think the bodies were placed where they were found after being killed elsewhere. This includes Ramon Salinas, the reason I point out Ramon Salinas is because he is the only one of the officers that was present at the crime scene that wrote a report that later changed his story saying he believed they murders occurred where the bodies were discovered, that’s not what he said in his report he filed the day after the bodies were discovered. There were many reasons the officers gave for their belief the murders took place elsewhere, really no sign of a struggle, zero blood spray nor blood splatter, which you would certainly have present with all the stabbing and slicing that obviously took place on the bodies. Yes, they did mention some of the grass had been pressed down but they attributed that to the bodies being dragged to where they were found. I believein the podcast one of the host does mention this about the grass or that it could be a possibility, well she was correct that is what the responding officers wrote in their reports.
I would like to mention something I have brought up in the past but everytime I hear this argument about were the kids where they were found, this always comes to mind. Back in the 90’s when Vic Feazell was having his legal problems and there were questions about some of the things he did while he was the D.A., the defense for David Spence was granted an evidentiary hearing or evidentiary review. In reality it was like an extra appeal for David Spence. Now many people have heard at least a part of these proceedings. This is where the defense was allowed to question the evidence provided by the state durning David’s trial. It included questioning the dental findings, which most people know about, the jail bird testimony and also the defense argued against the murders taking place at Koehne Park and they put their own blood splatter expert on the stand. Most people aren’t familiar with how that turned out, again most people are familiar with Bernadette Feazelland Fred Dannen’s false claim that their expert proved the kids were killed where they were found. That is not not the court found and it was a simple but brillant question that proved the value of law enforcement recollections, police reports, over just about any other evidence. So the defense had this expert on the stand and he was explaining all the reasons in his expert opinion why the crime scene photos showed to him the murders happened right where the bodies were found. The defense was feeling good, then the state got to question the defense’s expert. I can’t remember the attorney’s name but he was brillant and he pretty much just had one question. He asked the expert to tell them what he saw 6 inches outside the picture. At first it’s like the expert is confused about the question, then he gets it and he realizes he has to admit he doesn’t know what things looked outside the photos he was provided, he was never present at the crime scene, so he doesn’t know what it looked like. The State went on to present what the police that were present at the crime scene which, which explained how there wasn’t any blood splatter or blood spray, for most part the whole area in general looked like it hadn’t been disturbed in anyway other than where the grass had been pressed downthat looked liked the bodies were probably dragged into the positions they were found. Well the court decided with the State on this issue, a little fact Bernadette Feazell and Fred Dannen never liked to share with the public along with their other shoddy info they always put out. But unfortunately 30 years later we still hear podcast trying to make this same argument but now they are doing so without reading the reports or trying to obtain the facts. I don’t know about you but something seems wrong about that!!! To be continued…..
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On to the next inaccuracy, and I have to say this one is very disappointing, this lie had nearly disappeared with the disappearnce of Bernadette Feazell and Fred Dannen, the leading sources for disseminating this misinformation but I guess some people just can’t find their ticket to get on the reality tran. Of coarse I’m talking about Terry “Tab” Harper, well I guess we haven’t beaten that dead horse enough. But this podcast added new details I have no idea where they got them. But this does give me a chance to get into other hunches others officers had other than Truman and how thier hunches effected the case in a extremely negative way. I guess first we need to understand what a hunch is. Hunch is one word we can use but it’s a feeling, a gut feeling an officer has in determining how he should proceed with any aspect of a case. Usually it deals directly with people, how an officer feels about any subject they have contact with. What is their gut feeling about that person, do they think they are being honest or do they feeling they are being lied to or the subject is hiding. That gut feeling can have drastic effect on a case as it did in this case. This is a large part of investigating a case, which none of us reviewing later wiill get to experience. And alot of that gut feeling comes from experience, officers learn how to read body language, know how certain things show red flags and again we see this multiple times in this case and sometimes it leads us to wonder what were the officers thinking. I usually criticize Detective Ramon Salinas and he deserves it he was the lead investigator but his gut feelings on many things were just plain wrong. And Marvin Horton, being the ranking officer should get alot of the blame. But when we start with the whole Tab Harper fiasco it starts with Mike Nicoletti but we probably should cut him some slack. It doesn’t look like Nicoletti was an experienced detective. In the early reports other detectives working the case refer to him as officer Nicoletti, not Detective Nicoletti which you will see in later reports. I don’t know exactly when he was promoted to detective but it looks like it was recent if not during the investigation, it makes one wonder why he was choosen as one of people kept on such a complex case, why not put some one on the case with more experience. Not saying Nicoletti did a bad job. Overall he did a good job, I would say a very good job. The one misstep and it was a major one was his failure to bring in Rusty Escott, the first person that called in to point the finger at Tab Harper. But this was probably a bigger failure on the part of Horton who should have advised Nicoletti to bring Escottin for an interview. And to some degree Salinas but in the end Salinas finally told Nicoletti to bring Escott to the station so he could question him but by that time they had wasted weeks on what they finally cone to find was a rumor based on a lie and the case never recovered after that.
When we talk about Tab Harper we have to look how it all started. The first calls that came in to the Waco PD came in the morning of Friday July 16th. There were 3 calls two were anonymous, one which they would find that same day was from Escott, the other anonymous call told them they needed to talk to Escott. The third call came from a C.I., his nephew had heard some stories circulating around the summer school he was attending.. Now the essence of the stories Waco PD was getting at that time was Rusty Escott had had a conversation with a girl that had witnessed Tab Harper kill the kids and this girl was missing. When Rusty was contacted by Nicoletti, Rusty told Nicoletti this conversation took place between him and this girl Wednesday before noon, that would have been long before the bodies were discovered later that evening. The podcast mentions that 7 officers were assigned to the case, which is correct but they don’t put it into proper context. When the bodies were first discovered it was all hands on board every available body was working the case. But by the weekend all the calls and leads had dried up. So by Monday the 19th Waco Pd had a meeting with it’s officers to pull everybody off the case other than the 7 that are usually mentioned. During this meeting it was pressed on all the officers to make sure they were sharing info and leads, especially the officers that were no longer going to be working on the case. This should stand out because two maor developements, or whatr should have been major developements , happened later that day. Lisa Kader came to the police station to report Muneer Deeb had killed Kenneth Franks because of Gayle Kelly. A lead Waco PD did absolutely nothing with. And the second major event was Waco PD had found the missing girl that was suppose to be the eye witness that saw Tab Harper kill the kids. Of coarse finding a possible eye witness took precedence over everything else that day, including that other lead they had received that day and got totally forgotten about. I guess you really can’t blame anyone for that. But talking about hunches or gut feelings, this is where you start to see how this doomed their investigation. When Salinas first interviewed the missing girl; Rebecca DeMarias, she had a totally different story than Rusty Escott. She hadn’t witnessed Tab Harper killing anyboby, she hadn’t seen Tab until Wednesday evening at Midway Park and he had mentioned something about the murders, he had seen police cars speeding down the road in the direction. She also said she hadn’t talked to Rusty until Thursday morning. Well Ramon Salinas’ hunch or gut feeling was Rebecca was lying and Rusty was telling the truth. In the coming days he kept drilling Rebecca, telling her he knows she lying. He’s interviewing other kids that were at Midway Park that Wednesday night and their stories match what Rebecca has told Salinas but his gut feeling at that point is she is still lying. This went on for a couple weeks as he was finding out that the other kids that had heard the story about Harper and gotten the information from Rusty Escott. It finally got to the point where one of the kids tolsd Salinas, Rusty likes telling stories and he doesn’t listen or believe anything Rusty says. Salinas finally realizes this case against Harper is fallen apart and he finally tells Nicoletti to bring Rusty to the station so Salinas could interview him. And with that interview Salinas finds Rusty had been lying and his hunch or gut feeling that Rebecca DeMarias was lying, even when all the other kids were matching what she said, Salinas stuck to his gut feeling and he was wrong and it was very detrimental to the case in many ways. They had spend tracking down a rumor they found to be a lie and in the process failed to follow up other leads,even when all the information Salinas was obtaining was telling him Rusty’s story wasn’t true for some unexplainable reason he stuck to his guns. And unfortunately this would not be the only time when Salinas would stick with his hunch or gut feeling when it clearly didn’t make sense.
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One final, I hope, comment on Terry “Tab” Harper. The Crime Junkies podcast states some kids had told the police that Kenneth owed Tab $3,000 for drugs, again I have no idea where they got this info. It isn’t in the police reports. What is in the police reports is Kenneth owed someone money for drugs, this is repeated many times but none of the kids give a name to the person Kenneth owed the mone to, they didn’t know the name and the police the police could never find a name. Actually the only time Kenneth and Tab are mentioned with any drug dealings in all the police reports is when Nicoletti interviews Gayle Kelly On Tuesday July 20th. And Gayle Kelly’s statement should have raised some questions into Harper looking like a good suspect. Gayle says Kenneth liked dealing with Tab because Harper always gave Kenneth good stuff. Gayle also stated Kenneth was making a deal with some one, some one she apparently knew but Kenneth wouldn’t give Gayle the name for her own safety but it was some one she wouldn’t expect Kenneth to be dealing with and someone the kids were apparently leery of. Well that would discount Harper because Gayle knew Kenneth was dealing with Tab.
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And one final thought on Ramon Salinas. I’m not sure if this would be considered a hunch or a gut feeling but one does have to wonder what Ramon Salinas was thinking. From the beginning of the investigation one name kept coming up, all of the friends of Kenneth Franks mentioned this name as did the other kids the police interviewed in the first few days after the murders. That name was Gayle Kelly and obviously she was someone Waco PD wanted to talk to or at least should have wanted to talk to but it doesn’t look like made any effort to. They finally did get to interview her, for the first time, when she and Patti Deis walked into the police station on Tuesdays July20th, after Patti’s apartment had been broken into. Now Patti’s name had come up a couple times, mainly in connection with Gayle staying at Patti’s apartment when Gayle would run away from the Methodist Home. Patti had stayed at the Methodist Home and she was close friends with Gayle. But Waco PD had gotten very little information on her, she was somewhat unknown. I guess the best way to explain this is to share how Patrick Torres described her to police. Patrick was a very close, if not Kenneth Franks’ best friend. When he was giving names to the police of people Kenneth associated with or hung out with, he mentions Patti, he didn’t know her last name, he knew she was from the Methodist Home and Kenneth would go over to her apartment to spend the night with Gayle Kelly. He didn’t know the number of the apartment but it knew how to get there. So he clearly didn’t know this Patti very well. And this was generally how the couple other kids that mentioned her to the police, they really didn’t know her, the only way they knew her was though her relationship to Gayle Kelly. Now, one would have to think with the information provided to the police, they would put their focus on Gayle Kelly, but that’s not want Salinas does, he puts his focus on Patti Deis. He doesn’t try to track down Gayle Kelly, it tracks down Patti, goes to her place of employment, tries to obtain as much information as he can on her. When the two girls finally come into the station, he interviews Patti, Nicoletti interviews Gayle. Salinas repeatedly tells Patti he believes she knows something about the murders. When she denies any knowledge, he tells her he thinks she’s lying. He repeatedly returns to Patti’s apartment to push the issue, actually he gives both girls a hard time. After the apartment gets broken into a second time Salinas is on the phone with Patti and he asks her doesn’t she want to come to the station to report the break in. Patti declines she doesn’t want to go back to the station, she’s reporting it to him over the phone. I just can’t understand Salinas’ thinking on this at all. And then maybe the strangest part of all this is Ramon Salinas was the first, well at least the first one to put it in a report, that thought the break ins of Patti’s apartment had something to do with the murders. What makes it so strange is his actions and statements later, mostly after the whole fiasco with David’s mother’s murder, when Ramon started changing his story, like he thought the murders happened at Speegleville Park. Or his straight out lies that David Spence’s name never came up during his investigation. There were at least 4 people that mentioned Spence’s name in connection to the murders. Three of them were after Salinas suspended the case. In his September 3rd report, where he states in his report the case is being suspended, he adds they will follow up any new in coming information. Well they received some new in coming information after the third and a lot of it had to do with David Wayne Spence and Ramon Salinas nor any other Waco PD officer followed this up!!! Whatever he or any of the likes of Marvin Horton or Robert Fortune were thinking is totally unfathomable.
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And now we get to Truman Simons and his hunches or gut feelings or what is perceived as such. The podcast mentions tat from the beginning Truman had a hunch that Jill Montgomery was the intended target, which to some degree is true but there is a little more to it than that. Part of Truman’s reasoning was that it looked like Jill had suffered more wounds, which was true and she was the only one that had any defensive wounds. Both of these things would point toward the killer or killers spending more time focused on Jill. So it might have been a hunch but it was grounded in reason and logic, it didn’t come out of total crazyville!!!
There are a couple things usually forgotten or unmentioned about when Truman Takes over the case on September 10th, he called the chief the evening Of September 9th, which was the same day David was picked up and arrested for the sexual assault. There were a couple conditions Larry Scott put on Truman before Scott allowed Truman to take over the case. The first was Truman wasn’t allowed to work alone, this of coarse widely reported, Scott assigned Dennis Baier to work with Truman. And part of the reason Baier was assigned to the case, which is rarely reported, as it isn’t mentioned in the Crime Junkies podcast, was to keep Truman on track because the other condition Truman had to agree to was he could only follow up the leads in the original police reports, Truman could not come up with any of his own new leads. This is rarely mentioned but it is very important. When Truman called the Chief he told him that he knew there were leads the original investigators failed to follow up on, he just wanted the chance to follow up those leads and that is what Scott agreed to. Truman had read the reports, that was one of the problems some of the detectives working the case originally had with Truman, he would read over their shoulders or take their files or reports off their desk and take them and read them. So again what might be seen as Truman having one of his hunches really had more to do with what he had read in the reports.
We know of at least two pieces of information or leads that both Truman and Dennis Baier thought worthy of checking out. The first one was Bobby Brem. Bobby Brem was a close friend of Kenneth Franks and On July 15th, the day after the bodies were discovered, Waco PD interviewed a few of Kenneth’s friends including Bobby. What stuck out in the report about Bobby’s interview was a red flag was raised and it looked like the original investigators realized this and were planning to interview him again but never got back around to it. Now this red flag is one of those things seasoned officers would pick up on immediately, as it looks like the officers that interviewed Bobby did right away as did Truman and Dennis when they first saw it. This red flag is a common tell in investigations. If you are investigating a subject and that subject acts like he does know a victim or reframes from saying that victims name it sends up a red flag. At the same time Bobby Brem is being interviewed at the police station, Detective Porterfield is at the Methodist Home getting information on Jill Montgomery. He talks to Mary Bellheimer, who happens not only to have been Jill’s counselor while Jill was there but also Kenneth Franks’ and what name does Ms. Bellheimer bring up??? None other than Bobby Brem. She states Bobby Brem liked Jill Montgomery and had wanted to date her. Jill at stayed at Bobby’s house a couple nights one time when she had run away from the Home. With this information Porterfield returns to the police station and shares this with the other detectives. He is told this is strange they had just finished interviewing Bobby Brem and he didn’t mention any of this, actually he acted like he didn’t know the girls. When Bobby mentions that Kenneth had called him to ask Bobby if he wanted to go to the park to hang out with a couple girls, he acts like he doesn’t know the girls, he doesn’t mention Jill by name, the red flag is up. And as the original detectives knew this, so did Simons and Baier when they first read it, the only difference was Simons and Baier decided to follow up and in doing so connected them to their second lead. The second lead they noticed the original investigators failed to follow up was the July 19th interview of Lisa Kader, where she states Muneer Deeb had Killed Kenneth Franks because of Gayle Kelly. Truman knew Deeb and at first didn’t see Deeb as a likely suspect. Deeb was small, somewhat frail, not someone you would think of committing a brutal triple homicide. Truman doubted Deeb’s possible link to the murders that he didn’t want to harass at his business. Truman knew where Deeb did his grocery shopping, actually Truman had talked to Deeb there a number of times. So it was decided not to go until later, Simons and Baier would go interview Bobby Brem first.
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So Bobby Brem is the first person Simons and Baier interview. Most of the interview is nothing ground breaking. Bobby says yes he knew Jill and the information he had about Jill staying at his house when she ran away and that he liked her and wanted to date her was all true. So the interview is wrapping up when out of the blue or one of his hunches Truman decides to ask Bobby if he knew Muneer Deeb. Bobby replies yes he knew Muneer Deeb and he goes on to explain that there was bad blood between Kenneth and Deeb. In Bobby’s view, the reason for the bad blood had more to do with how Kenneth acted toward Deeb than anything else. At the end of the interview Truman asked Bobby why he never mentioned any of this before when he was interviewed. Bobby simply replies, I was never asked before. The simple single reply is very telling. Truman asked the questions, for whatever reason, hunch, gut feeling or maybe just better police work. Some thing you fail to see with the original investigators. Time and time in the reports you ask yourself why didn’t they ask this person or that person this question or that question but that’s not what you get and what you end up with is loose ends that still remain 40 years on. I would ask what officer would you rather have working a case???
Later that night is when Simons and Baier go to the Skaggs Market to try and talk to Muneer Deeb but Deeb never shows up. But Truman knows people there. The security guard is a former Waco Police officer and Truman decides to ask him about Deeb. They also question the cashier, Patty Pick, about Deeb. And the stories they here are very disturbing to say the least. There is a girl that works at the store and Deeb is infatuated with this girl’s sister, actually Deeb has been stalking her and has made threats towards this girl if she sees other guys. One time Deeb asked Patty Pick to steal the girls key to her apartment and give it to Deeb so he could make a copy so he could get into the apartment. Deeb would sit out in the parking lot of the apartment where the sisters lived and stay there all night. With this information Truman and Baier decided they indeed needed to look further into Muneer Deeb, he was looking like a more likely suspect. So Simons and Baier had a plan for the next day, which was Saturday September 11th. They wanted to return to the store to interview the two sisters and see what they had to say. And they also decided they should. re-interview Lisa Kader to see if she had anymore to say about Deeb.
So Saturday Simons and Baier interview the Reed sisters and their statements are even more disturbing than the statements Simons and Baier had heard the night before and the sisters provided Simons and Baier with troubling things Deeb had said about the murders. Hunches or whatever you want to call it , Simons and Baier were definitely on the right track. And this brings ne to something that was stated on the podcast. During the podcast one of the host says Baier doubted Deebs involvement. Again I wonder where they got this from. Yes, Baier has stated his doubts as to David Spence’s guilt but I’ve never seen him say anything about Deeb. Now there is a simple reason for Baier’s doubt as to Spence’s guilt, he never really investigated Spence, I’ll get more into this later. But you never hear Baier talk about his thoughts on Deeb and this is something I have been trying to dig into. Some of you might remember a couple or few years ago Baylor University interviewed Dennis Baier for part of their oral history collection and they shared a couple clips from that interview. I contacted the lady that had posted the clips and she told me there were more and I asked about getting to hear the rest. It took a couple years but finally they agreed to release the transcripts to all the Dennis Baier interviews and I was so excited. I’m am very grateful for that but in the end very little of the interviews had to do with the Lake Waco Murders. Dennis Baier what a couple interesting statements, such as he thought the original investigators should have looked into the Methodist Home and the connection with Deeb’s store. And Baier also stated was wasn’t sure about David’s guilt, he wasn’t saying David was innocent he just wasn’t sure. Outside of those couple things he really didn’t say much else. So I was a little disappointed, so I sent a message to the working doing this oral history and asked if they were planning to interview Dennis Baier and if so I had some questions I would like them to ask him. They replied they couldn’t forward my questions but they did tell me I could ask the person that actually did the interviews with Dennis and they gave me his contact info. So I sent the same questions to him. I have never gotten a reply. Why questions were geared toward Baier’s investigation into Muneer Deeb, especially after Truman Simons left the Waco Pd. As I’ve stated countless time, Baier’s November 1982 report I find the most compelling of all the police reports, the facts are a little hazy but you get the sense Baier knows there ids something there but he just can’t put all the facts together to get it all to add up. And again that how the case still stands today.
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I’m going to end this over long rambling rant with my biggest beef with Crime Junkies Lake Waco Murders Part 1 podcast. In discussing how Truman Simon came about David Spence, they say it was out of the blue, again attributing it to one of his hunches. Seriously are you smoking crack??? If you don’t know know how Truman Simons came across David Wayne Spence’s name, you have missed the whole case. I don’t know what rock you were smoking or sleeping under when you were researching this case but you totally missed it. So how did Truman Simons and Dennis Baier come across David’s name. Remember on Saturday September 11th, they re-interviewed Lisa Kader. She really couldn’t provide any more information than she gave when she was first interviewed back on July 19th. So Truman tells her ok if Deeb had in fact committed these murders he surely couldn’t have done it alone, then he asks her does she have any idea of whom Deeb would get to help him commit these murders. Lisa replies there is this guy that hangs out at Deeb’s store and he and Deeb are good friends. She only knew him as Chili. Truman askes her why would this Chili help Deeb kill anyone, Lisa replies because this Chili person is a bad guy. Truman continues why is he a bad guy, Lisa says because he raped me. The case has just taken a new direction. Lisa id asked did she report this rape to the police, she hadn’t she just wanted to forget about it. Truman asks her did she report it to anybody. Lisa says she had, she told the girl that was with her that night. Truman asked for details. When getting into details Lisa mentions Chili had bit her really hard during the ordeal and that the bite was very painful and the real kicker, even though this apparent rape had taken place a month before, the bite mark that Cili had left on her body was still there. Truman asked if she would show them the bite mark. Which Lisa agrees to do and when Truman sees the mark of Lisa’s body it reminds him of marks he had seen on Jill Montgomery’s body when saw her laid out dead in Speegleville Park. And with that David Spence became a suspect. After their interview with Lisa, Truman And Dennis are informed this Chili is actually one David Wayne Spence and he has been arrested for another sexual assault in which a knife was used. Simons and Baier went to visit David while he was in jail, this would be the full extent of Dennis Baier’s investigation into David Wayne Spence. And Truman would take his investigation to the jail house and we know for most part where it went to there.
So what did this podcast give us??? Nothing new, the same ole , same ole. When there are so much more meaningful things that need a spotlight put on them and addressed. Like where are all the files to this case. 60 boxes pf information can’t just go missing and no one is held accountable. What about the DNA evidence, mainly Jill’s fingernail clippings that apparently contain male DNA. What is the status of that case, it’s been tied up in the court system for four years. That DNA would give people some answers, it would at least identify one of Jill Montgomery’s attackers. There are people that have been living this nightmare and waiting for answers over 40 years!!! How much longer do they have to wait??? Why don’t any podcast try to tackle these glaring issues or even try to find answers??? That would be a podcast worth listening to!!!
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I just finished listening to Part 2 of the Crime Junkies podcast, my thoughts later!!!
https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/infamous-the-lake-waco-murders-part-2/
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Ok, time to give my thoughts on the Crime Junkies podcast part 2. I’ll try to keep it shorter than my critique of part 1, but part 2 is just as bad if not worse in some ways. Most of the things I will be complaining about are small potatoes but there are a couple that are doozies. Which in the end left me shocked at their lack of general knowledge about this case. I guess that is journalism today, let’s do a two part podcast on something we know very little about and do nothing more than read a few newspaper articles to gain any knowledge on the subject and then pat ourselves on the back and say what a great job we did. And we wonder why most Americans don’t trust journalist these days. Let me digress before I even get started. Let’s just jump right into it.
The ladies of Crime Junkies are apparently unfamiliar with how Brian Pardo first got involved in the case in the mid 90’s. Let me give them a little history lesson. They state, some one brought it to his attention, what they obviously didn’t know was Brian Pardo is the person that brought it on himself. Back then he ran a prison ministry. One day, back in the mid 90’s, while he was visiting death row, Pardo went to the warden and told him(the warden) that he(Pardo) wanted to meet his hometown’s, which was Waco, most infamous criminal, which of coarse was David Wayne Spence. The warden granted the request giving Pardo a warning, be careful don’t believe a word Spence says, he is a pure is a pyschopath, he is the most evil person he has seen on death row, he doesn’t have a soul. Well, Pardo didn’t heed the warning and was taking in by David’s, polite, friendly, easy going manner. Pardo walked away believing there was no way this guy was responsible for a triple homicide of three teenagers. I have to add, Truman Simons and Dennis Baier went to visit David in jail one time before Truman left the Waco PD and they walked away with similar feelings and doubts as Pardo when he first met David Wayne Spence. So that is how Pardo first got involved, he exited the scene a few years later not as sure as to David Wayne Spence’s innocent. The final word I remember him saying on the case, again back in the 90’s were; he was no longer sure of David’s innocence but there were enough questions that David shouldn’t have been put to death. I agree with that assessment, The problem or I should say one of the problems with the death penalty is you never get a second chance to get it right.
Moving on to the next issue and it is one I have heard many times over the years, so it’s just another one of the many items that remain on the repeat cycle, we just hear them over and over. Does anyone remember the educational TV show “The Electric Company”, we watched it in elementary school??? Well they use to have a word of the day, I feel to better explain this I need a word of the day as well. My word of the day is going to be “exculpatory” as in exculpatory evidence. The podcast brings up the all to often accusation that the State withheld evidence, which the defense did claim and brought up on appeal. But what did the appellate court find??? The funny thing about this podcast is they did quote some of the appellate courts findings but apparently they missed this one, so let me help them out. Now I don’t want to get too much into this and I’m far from a law professor and me trying to explain it in detail would make this critique longer than the one I did for part one which I am trying to avoid. So, all I am going to say is the appellate found in the State’s favor was the information the defense did not receive from the State was not “exculpatory” which it has to be to fall under the rules of discovery, Remember our word of the day, “exculpatory”. If anybody wants to get into more detail about this just let me know, we can discuss it in another post at a later time. There is more but I will have to continue at a later time, hopefully before the end of the week.
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And now to finish the Crime Junkies podcast part 2 review. What I always find most disappointing with all these podcast is the lies that just keep getting repeated over and over like they are facts and crime junkies was no different. I have a suggestion, why not try doing some real research other than reading newspapers before you gives us mind numbing regurgitated crap. Hey when things got a little dicey for Muneer Deeb, he had two fall back defenses. He would either say he was just joking or kidding around or he would just lie. A great example, which the ladies of the crime junkie podcast mention but with their lack of research failed to see and what they reported as fact was actually a lie. They aren’t the first and many have followed the same path, when will it end???
And which of Deeb’s lies, and there were many that podcasts usually forget to mention, did the crime junkies, with their lack of research and knowledge, take hook line and sinker. Let’s try to set the record straight on Deeb and the insurance policies. Yes, Muneer Deeb said he bought insurance for all employees but a little digging into this claim and it was discovered that this was not true. Gayle Kelly was the only person he actually paid insurance on. There were a couple guys that worked around the store, cleaning up around the place and stuff like that, there was no policy for them in any way shape or form. now what gets a little confusing to some is the insurance policy on employee Christine Juhl, David Spence’s girlfriend. The day Deeb got the policy on Gayle, Jube 22, yes he paid the initial premium on a policy for Christine. The big difference, he took it out of Christine’s next check. So no he wasn’t paying for Christine’s insurance. Again, the only person Deeb was straight out paying for their insurance was Gayle Kelly. When he said he was giving insurance to all his employees ne was lying. Just like when he was first interrogated by Truman Simons and Dennis Baier Deeb tried to tell them he didn’t know Kenneth Franks. It took Simons and Baier hours to het Deeb to realize they caught him in the lie and he had to admit to the truth, imagine that. To keep repeating his lies as fact is getting to the point it should be criminal.
But to me, the biggest disappointment, is not so much about facts and lies but the ladies mentioned they tracked down Fred Dannen, that the family, Jill Montgomery’s, didn’t know where he was. Now, they didn’t mention what family members didn’t know where Fred was but the way they they made it sound was the whole family. Well, this isn’t totally true, I know at least one family member knew Dannen was in Mexico. And they actually had a phone number and address where he could be reached. I know this because I gave them this info myself!!! But the real shocker was when the podcast said the family was happy to be able to get back in contact with Dannen. I was really taken aback, again the podcast didn’t say which family members were happy about this. From my own personal contact with the family, one in particular, I would really be astounded if this was true of the whole family. In my usual bull in a china shop kind of way I expressed my disbelief, which caused a little drama that definitely unneeded and undeserved. So let me put it this way. Crime junkies said Fred Dannen has a renewed interest in the case. The only connection to this case I want to see Fred Dannen involved in, is him being arrested for contaminating DNA evidence. Charge him with whatever offense you can, tampering with evidence, obstruction of justice, whatever, just lock him up and keep him as far away as possible from this case. It’s probably best for every one if he’s says in Mexico. Another thing the ladies forgot to mention was Fred Dannen went to Mexico shortly after his driver made a statement informing the State that somehow the DNA evidence that was in the custody of Fred Dannen inexplicably fell out of sealed envelopes into the back seat and floor of Dannen’s car, and shortly after that Fred Dannen disappeared to Mexico. Coincident, I don’t think so, especially considering after this mishap came to light the Texas Attorney General stated they would question the findings of any of the evidence that was in the possession of Fred Dannen. So Dannen has added another obstacle to getting the results from the DNA evidence. And this is the guy you really want to get back involved??? Are you insane??? Just another case of journalist being totally blind to reality in support of other journalist. But here is my biggest fear, which I have stated many times in the past, haven’t seen the need to repeat it in recent years with the disappearance of Fred Dannen and Bernadette Feazell, the tidal wave of lies had subsided, only to live on and be repeated by podcasters. But what I have said many times in the past is has time goes on and we lose more and more people connected to the case the and all that is left are the lies, those lies will been seen as the truth, in actuality will would be getting further away from the truth. Fred Dannen’s connection to this case was he was suppose to write a book proving Texas had executed an innocent man, David Wayne Spence of coarse. Fred Dannen never came close to proving this, what he was able to achieve was to spread lies and get enough people to believe them today. Fred Dannen still has some lies in this pocket and he still needs to write a book. I’m afraid, again as I have said in the past, that he is just playing a waiting game, wait until anyone that can challenge his lies pass away, then he can write whatever he wants, there would be no one to stand up to his lies. So I am going to put this out there, I knwo one of Fred Dannen’s lies was he said he just about had Terry “Tab” Harper’s sister ready to turn on her brother and give him up. This is not true, she supposted her brother and believed in his innocent. She did grant Dannen permission to obtain some of her brother’s DNA, again she believed in Tab’s innocence, so why not let them test his DNA, what better way to prove he was innocent!!! Well that sister has passed away, so if Fred Dannen ever does write a book, and it surely will be a bundle of lies cover to cover, remember what I tell you today, when you read that Tab’s sister gave him up to Fred Dannen, it is all a lie. And to me this is the greatest of all the errors the Crime Junkies Podcast made, trying to bring sleezy Fred Dannen back into the case and trying to make it sound like a good thing, totally disgraceful!!!
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When I first started delving into this case so many years ago, the first thing that stuck out to me was all the questions that remained, hence my choice for the heading of this page. You would think somewhere along the decades some one would have come up with at least some of the answers but then you realize no one is really asking the questions. Most people will comment on the unorthodox and suspect conduct of Truman Simons with his interactions with David Wayne Spence while at McLennan county jail but other than than that and the time Simons and Baier went to see David in jail after his name first came up, did any other person from Waco PD sit down and interview David Wayne Spence??? Even if they did not believe he was a good suspect, wouldn’t or shouldn’t that have encouraged the doubters to see what David Wayne Spence had to say about all this; where he was, the insurance policies, the offer Deeb made him to kill Gayle Kelly and other parts of the story that developed later. But we get nothing other than Ramon Salinas saying David’s name never came up in their investigation which is just another straight out lie and other Waco PD personnel saying David was never a good suspect, well how do you know if you never took the time to interview and question him??? But this has set the pattern that still exist today. I guess it’s like the old saying don’t ask the question if you won’t like the answer. Well I do want the answers no matter what they are!!! And I find it very disturbing so many other people don’t, they would rather just keep repeated the same bogus narrative and say this is so messed up. Well, no shit Sherlock, you can’t find the truth with lies, that is elementary. And the questions are so numerous. Just to give you and idea, and I know I do this from time to time, I’ll just give you like a top 10 list of questions that still need to be answered satisfactorily. This are not questions you heard asked from the likes of Bernadette Feazell and Fred Dannen and you still don’t hear them from any podcasters today. It would be a step in the right direction if you would!!!
1 – When Jill Montgomery ran away with Rhonda Evans in January 1982, they spent the first couple nights at Bobby Brem’s house, where did they go and stay after that??? All we know for sure is Jill called her father from the phone at the rainbow drive-in, she wanted to return home, to Waxahachie. Her father came to Waco to pick her up. He said he picked her up on 15th Street a few blocks from the store(Rainbow Drive-In) The house where he picked her up was on a corner lot and from the outside the house didn’t look well kept. But had Jill been staying???
2 – Who vandalized Clifford Oliver’s car and what were the circumstances and whatever happened to the prints lifted off Clifford’s car???
3 – Whatever happened to the prints lifted off Raylene Rice’s Orange Pinto???
3 – Who broke into Patti Deis’ apartment the nights of July 19/20 and July 21/22 and whatever happened to the blood samples collected that were left at the scene after the first break in???
4 – Who supplied Muneer Deeb with the drugs he gave or sold to the girls from the Methodist Home?
5 – Deeb’s business partner, Karem Qasim stated that on the night of the murders after he and Deeb closed the store about 11p.m., they went looking for a guy that owed Deeb some money. Who was this guy and why did he owe Deeb this money???
6 – Qasim also stated they got back to his place around 1a.m., he was expecting a call from his wife, she was in Mexico. Police were able to track the call, but Karem also says he doesn’t know what Deeb did or even if he stayed there. So if Deeb wasn’t there where was he???
7 – Did Kenneth really owe some one money and if so who and for what???
8 – When Gayle Kelly was first interviewed by Waco PD on July 20th, she stated Kenneth was planning on making a drug deal with some one but Kenneth wouldn’t give a name, only that it was some one she knew but wouldn’t expect Kenneth to be making drug deals with, apparently the kids were leery of this guy. So who was this guy???
9 – There is at least a two hour gap as to Jill Montgomery’s and Raylene Rice’s whereabouts after they arrived in Waco. Jill’s father and brother saw them getting gas in Waxahachie about 12:45pm. The manager at a grocery store, I believe a Safeway, in Waxahachie said Jill came in and cashed a $200 check. Lou Booker Jill’s supervisor at Fort Fisher in Waco, she the girls stopped by, getting there about 2pm. She said the girls said they were going to get Jill’s check from city hall and that they were hungry and were going to get something to eat. Ms. Booker said the girls weren’t there long. Mrs. Oliver, the manager at the Ivy Square Apartments reported the girls stopped by the apartments a little after 2pm and asked about renting an apartment. While there they were outside talking to 3 boys that were runaways from the Methodist Home. Mrs. Oliver knew the boys were runaways from the Home because one of her tenants worked at the Methodist Home and told her this, so apparently this tenant saw the girls and boys talking as well.. After that we know at some point the girls picked up Jill’s check and then about 5pm both girls cashed checks at the Piggly Wiggly. Shortly after that they went to Jill’s favorite restaurant. From there Jill called Kenneth, twice, and then the they picked up Kenneth around 7pm and headed to Koehne Park. So where did the girls go roughly between 2:30pm and 5pm??? Other than picking up Jill’s check we are at a lost. Muneer Deeb said they stopped by the store, he told others that Gayle was suppose to be with them that night and this was because the girls told him this when they went to his store that day. Gayle Kelly has said Kenneth did call her and asked her to join them but she couldn’t leave the Home that day, she was still on restriction for running away earlier. So where were Jill and Raylene between 2:30pm and 5pm??? Whom did they see or talk to??? What was said between them and the 3 runaway boys outside the Ivy Square Apartments???
10 – Muneer Deeb had intimate details of the murders, he told a number of people that Kenneth was made to suffer and die slowly and that he was cut around the heart. How did Deeb have this kind of detail???
I believe you find the answers to any number of these questions and you start to get a different picture from the story you’ve been told and that is one step closer to getting to the truth.
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What is justice without truth???? There could be any number of answers to this question. But here now on another sad anniversary, the 43rd, of this horrendous tragedy, we can’t deny all the lack of truth has done has left us confused and in despair. For Christ sakes, they have DNA evidence, male DNA evidence, recovered from under Jill Montgomery’s finger nails!!! I know it is hung up in court somewhere but it has been five frustrating years since we’ve heard anything about this. What is the status of this legal argument??? Nearly on a daily basis you hear other cases being resolved with DNA evidence but just total silence on the Lake Waco Murders!!! Why??? Does anyone know or care??? Is there anything the people that do care can do??? Do we just need to start a Go fund me campaign, to get the DNA evidence released and turned over to an expert, to get the results.??? That definitely would not provide all the answers but it would be nearly impossible to dispute the identity of at least one of the attackers of Jill Montgomery. Shouldn’t truth and justice be that simple??? But if the truth is only important if it has a hefty price tag and that is the case and state of things, how disappointing!!! Hey, 43 years ago, this July 13th, three teenagers were brutally raped and murdered and laid out in a secluded park and we still don’t know the truth. Is this really the justice we want??? If there is anyone that would like to help and speak up, we are here to listen and have been eagerly waiting for 43 years!!!
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Something I run across every once in awhile;
Waco attorney Rod Goble, who represented Gilbert Melendez in the case, said he has no doubt that Gilbert Melendez was involved in the deaths and that the grisly details he related in his testimony “came from him.” However, he said he thinks there was another person involved who was never charged.
“I don’t know who it was or the circumstances, but I never believed we got the complete picture,” Goble said.
Any thoughts???
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AS TIME GOES BY THE FURTHER WE GET FROM THE TRUTH…
A few months ago I saw a lady question that Richard Franks was gay. And just earlier today I came across an article that incorrectly stated David Spence was found guilty of committing all three murders and that Gilbert Melendez was granted parole, both are untrue. I remember back in the late 90’s there were certain parties intentionally spreading lies and untruths for their own personal agendas. And I found it so appalling how much traction these false narratives were gaining with the general public, whom were taking falsehoods as indisputable facts. Back then I wondered and dreaded how much damage this would do to the search for the truth. Nearly 44 years after the horrendous tragedy that unfolded in Waco in 1982, the answer to my timeless pondering continues to present it’s ugly reality. If people were going to believe lies and untruths a decade and a half after that tragic event, how could they come any closer to the truth four and a half decades later? It’s impossible!!! Even the little, what seems to be little inconsequential detail will become lost. What does it matter if Mr. Franks was gay? What is lost when we can’t follow facts?
On the surface of things, it doesn’t look like Mr. Franks sexual orientation would matter one way or another and I would agree it probably did not play a direct part in the murders. But one of those small facts that usually gets overlooked, Mr. Franks wasn’t very cooperative with investigators from the beginning. Now, we can only speculate as to the reason why. Could it just be he didn’t want his personal life put under the microscope of a triple homicide investigation? Did he have secrets and if so what were they and did they obscure other truths? When I say Mr. Franks was not very cooperative we have to look at his words and actions. Shortly after the murders the investigators wanted to search Kenneth Franks bedroom to try to find information or clues as to whom might have killed him. Mr. Franks would not allow them into his residence. Through his friend and neighbor Judge Walter Smith it was arranged Mr. Franks would bring whatever the investigators were interested in seeing to the police station at his convenience. Well, that took a couple weeks and it was then at that time he had been at Midway Park the night of the murders from between 9pm and midnight, something he had failed to tell Waco PD up to that time. It was just another example of Mr. Franks not so direct way of revealing facts and truth.
From the beginning Mr. Franks told law enforcement there were no problems between him and his son Kenneth and it wasn’t like Kenneth to stay out all night and not come home. When the investigators started interviewing some of Kenneth’s friends it became apparent there were problems and Kenneth had a history of not coming home for whatever reason. A couple friends, including Gayle Kelly, stated some of the problems were due to Mr. Franks being gay. Again, it’s not so much he was gay, the issue becomes what other truths and facts are being hidden behind that secret and what could be the consequences.
Probably the most critical question we are left with in regards to what Mr. Franks might have been hiding is what connections were not made because the lack of information the truth could have provided. Early in the investigation Waco PD was told by an employee of Pinocchio’s, a popular hang out for many subjects mentioned in connection to this case, that Kenneth Franks had a problem with the Gutierrez twins; James and Terry. According to the employee Kenneth had agreed to buy a car from the twins and then backed out of the deal, which the twins weren’t happy about. There still remains questions as to the exact where abouts of the twins the night of the murders. Waco PD decided to go ask Mr. Franks if he knew anything about Kenneth Franks buying this car. Mr. Franks told them he didn’t know anything about Kenneth buying the car but the boys had parked the car in his drive way and Mr. Franks had had made a video of the car. With that no further investigation into that lead was conducted. But should it have been. What do the facts and little overlooked details tell us?
At the time Mr. Franks told Waco PD he was at Midway Park the night of the murders, two weeks after the murders, was the same time another group of guys would have been at Midway Park. This group would include Clifford Oliver and the Melendez brothers’ younger step/half brother John Arnett Jr.. This same group would get up with David Spence sometime that night. Spence’s girlfriend from that time, Christine Juhl, would later claim she saw David with Clifford, in Clifford’s car, between 6pm and dark the night of the murders. It was Clifford’s car that Mr. Franks found vandalized at Midway Park when he went looking for the missing kids in the early hours of July 14th. When the officer asked Mr. Franks if he had ever seen this car before, Mr. Franks stated he hadn’t but again he did not mention he was at Midway Park the night before around the same time that group of guys stated they were there. A couple weeks after the murders Clifford Oliver tried to get rid of his car and asked his friends, the Gutierrez twins, to get rid of it. He planned to report it as stolen to get insurance money. The twins took the car and Clifford reported it stolen. The twins took the car to another friend’s house to hide it until they could get rid of it. Well, the mother of the friend where they hid the car asked her son why that car was in their yard and that friend gave up the scam. The mother called the police. When the officer arrived he remembered the Gutierrez twin lead they had received earlier and asked James Gutierrez were was the car that Kenneth Franks was suppose to buy. James claimed the car had been totaled in an accident and they had gotten rid of it. The officer would write he could never find any report of an accident involving that car nor could he locate it anywhere. When the officer asked James where his brother Terry was, James told him Terry had gone to California with Clifford Oliver. WOW, the connections and questions!!! But no further investigation into this. Not until December, when Josie Scionti called law enforcement to share Clifford Oliver had told her whom killed the kids and where. But as with so many leads and information, they were left open, no conclusion, just questions. And this is what becomes of a case when we fail to follow the facts and find the truth. So, was it important that Mr. Franks was gay? Can we critically treat some facts differently than other facts? Nearly 44 years of the consequences gives us the obvious answer. And unfortunately it just wasn’t with the issue of Mr. Franks honesty nor Clifford Oliver nor the Gutierrez twins, there were just so many issues never satisfactorily resolved, no answers just questions. There is another lead that comes to mind, which I plan to touch on shortly. It is a issue I have rarely touched on in the past, mainly because I’m really not too sure how to even start to tackle this issue. But again as time goes by we have to shine light upon every dark unknown.
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One of the many unique aspects of the Lake Waco Murders case is there were four separate and distinct investigations. First there was the investigation conducted by the Waco Police Department, which began when the victims bodies were discovered on July 14th and concluded when the investigators suspended their investigation on September 3rd. Then on September 9th, Sergeant Truman Simons called Chief Scott, going over Lieutenant Marvin Horton’s head, which would have dire reverberations for years and cases to come. Simons informed Chief Scott that the investigation had been suspended and requested he be given the case. Chief Scott had been unaware the investigation had been suspended and wasn’t happy about it, so he allowed Truman Simons to take over the case but did so with two caveats, Simons could only follow up leads the original investigators had failed to follow up and he couldn’t work alone. Chief Scott appointed Sergeant Dennis Baier to work with Simons and make sure he stayed within the purview Chief Scott had demanded when he granted Simons’ request to take over the case. Simons and Baier started their investigation the following day; Saturday September 10th and on Monday September 13th, exactly two months after the murders, made the first arrest for the murders; Muneer Deeb. The following weekend Deeb passed an over three hour polygraph examination and was released. With that both Simons and Baier took some vacation time and then Simons resigned from the Waco PD and that ended their investigation. Truman Simons went to work for the McLennan County Sheriff’s Office as a jailer at the count jail. This would be the start of the highly unorthodox and questionable third investigation. Truman Simons conducted this semi solo with some degree of assistance from the Sheriff’s Office. This investigation would continue and converge into the forth investigation. This forth investigation was initiated by the recently elected District Attorney Vic Feazell. He decided to create a special investigation unit or task force to investigate the case. This group would include members from the D.A.’s office, Sergeant Baier and one of the original investigators from Waco PD; Ramon Salinas, Truman Simons and former Waco PD officer and Deeb business associate Willie Tompkins. This investigation had a few phases. When Feazell was first elected in November 1982, he told Waco PS to go back over their files to make sure they had not missed anything and followed up all leads. It was apparent Feazell had talked to Truman Simons but Feazell was suspicious of Truman’s methods and theory. Truman had received most of his information from jailbirds. Feazell felt he couldn’t go into court with that and didn’t know if it would even be allowed. When Feazell took office in January 1983 he put together his special investigation unit and hired capital case specialist Ned Butler to work in the D.A.’s office, this would change the whole direction of the investigation which would finally lead to the arrest and convictions for the Lake Waco Murders.
Each of these four separate investigations would end up having widely different focuses. The first investigation conducted by Waco PD, repeatedly received information that victim Kenneth Franks was involved in drug dealing and owed some one some money for drugs. The investigators tried to track down the connection but never came up with a name. One name that did continually come up was Terry “Tab” Harper and it was reported he had dealings with Kenneth Franks. In the police reports Harper’s name is mentioned often in the early reports and the investigators spent a considerable amount of time on following up this lead. But in the end it came to nothing and then they suspended their investigation. When Simons and Baier conducted their investigation Tab Harper’s name nor any drug deals are never mentioned. The reasoning, the original investigators had tracked down that lead, gone down that path and gotten nowhere and they had cleared Tab Harper. They focused on the leads the original investigators had failed to follow up, as Chief Scott had instructed them to do. On the second day of their investigation, Saturday September 11th, they decided to check out a tip the original investigators got on Monday July 19th, one week after the murders, and did absolutely nothing with it. Simons and Baier did a follow up interview with Lisa Kader, which led the way to arrest Muneer Deeb two days later. But Kader was able to give them another name, David Wayne Spence or as Lisa knew him “Chili”. Although Detective Ramon Salinas would later for years deny David Spence’s name never came up during his original investigation , the records would prove otherwise. Simons and Baier asked Lisa if Deeb was responsible for the murders with his physical limitations he couldn’t have committed two rapes and three murders alone. That’s when she gave them Spence and shared her own unfortunate encounter with “Chili” and the bite marks he had left on her body. But Simons’ and Baier’s investigation came to an end before they could close the case. Simons moved on to work at the jail and who was there but David “Chili” Spence. Simons started his own investigation, the third into Lake Waco Murders. Truman Simons was aware that Muneer Deeb and David Spence through Deeb’s store, the Rainbow Drive-In, now Simons needed to find a more nefarious connection and this became the focus of his investigation. Simons was still conducting his own investigation when Vic Feazell took office and created his own investigation unit which included Truman and recently hired Ned Butler. Like Feazell, Butler had doubts about Truman Simons and trying to put an end to Truman’s theory, told Truman he knew someone that could determine if Truman was right or wrong and that was Odontologist Dr. Homer Campbell. Butler had worked with Dr, Campbell in the past and trusted him. When Dr, Campbell reported his findings to Butler and stated Truman Simons was right the marks left on victim Jill Montgomery’s body were bite marks and they were put there by David Wayne Spence, it changed the whole investigation. They felt they could connect Deeb and Spence to the murders but they still had a problem. If Deeb hired Spence to commit the murders and wasn’t there, the same problem with Deeb committing the crime alone still remained with David Spence, he couldn’t commit two rapes and three murders all alone. Truman Simons had come up with another name during his time working at the jail. It was none other than Spence’s friend and codefendant in the crime that had pit Spence in jail at that time, this was Gilbert Melendez. And when Gilbert agreed to testify against Spence in his trial for the earlier offense in March 1983, it gave Simons a chance to get to Gilbert Melendez and inform him his name had come up in talk around the jail in connection to the Lake Waco Murders. Gilbert agreed to cooperate and admitted his involvement but then he changed his mind and decided he didn’t want to cooperate. With Gilbert’s earlier admissions he was firmly connected to the murders. A new name was introduced to the case early that same March, James Russell Bishop but knowing came of it. The focus of this forth and final investigation became tying Gikbert and maybe others to the murders and in the coarse of this investigation of Gilbert, his younger brother was dragged into the investigation and the rest is history.
So, one can clearly see the evolution of the case over time and the different investigations. Reading the police reports can be a little difficult and confusing but with some effort one can decipher and follow the narrative played out in the trial transcripts. Since 1997, when I first obtained copies of the police reports and trial transcripts I have read them over a hundred times if not hundreds. I guess seeing how different leads and subjects came and went with each investigation shouldn’t be surprising, what I do find surprising are the leads and subjects that did come up in more than one of these investigations but were left without any conclusions and plenty of questions. For anyone that has followed along for any amount of time would be more than a little familiar with one of these such subjects and leads. Of coarse I talking about Clifford Oliver. His name and car come up again and again from investigation to investigation and even in the trial transcripts. I have shared the details ad nauseam, so I will spare you that, but so many questions remain. There was another lead and subject that came up over the different investigations and actually in the early part of the investigation came up as much of not more than the more familiar subject Tab Harper. And then during the trials it just disappeared, even when it had been mentioned earlier, when ot came to the trial a different narrative was told. Not only is that very questionable it’s a little troubling. Who was responsible for these changes and why were they made? This is a subject I really haven’t delved into, after all this time I still don’t know really what to think or make of it. I am referring to bikers, a possible motorcycle gang and a wannabe biker that was executed for the murders. What do the police reports and files tell us about all of this?
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Seems to have been a lot of mistakes being made by the Waco Authorities during this time period. I don’t know if David Wayne Spence committed these crimes. But I do know that there was a serial rapist with a bite mark signature in Waco in the early to late 80’s. If I can recall, the man who murdered Spence’s mom had a bite mark signature but no one put it together until the two men convicted of that crime were exonerated.
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Yes, the Waco PD investigation into the Lake Waco Murders was far less than stellar police work. People mistakes and this was a complex and difficult case but most multiple victim homicides are more challenging just because of all the possible variables. But one thing there is just no excuse for, suspending the case before they followed up all the leads they had gotten, there is no way to explain that away. And what makes it worst is Detective Ramon Salinas continually lied about this years later. It’s one thing to make a mistake it’s a whole different thing when you don’t own up to it. When I think about the deficiencies in the work of the Waco PD at the time, it reminds of what a judge that was presiding over one of David Spence’s appeals said. In his findings he wrote, all Spence or his defense attorneys had done was make allegations and accusations that hadn’t proved anyone was innocent, all it had proven was there was a serious problem with the police department. Truer words have never been stated.
Benny Carroll, was the guy responsible for the murder of David Spence’s mother and I believe he had a history of sexually assaulting elder women. I haven’t heard about a serial rapist running around Texas at the time, so you will have to educate me on that. I know there were a number of serial killers running around Texas in the 1980’s. But to be honest I haven’t spent much time looking at any of them in connection with the Lake Waco Murders. There are a few reasons for this. First, with most homicides, well over 80%, the killer knows the victim, in this case the killer would probably would have known at least one of the victims. Second, that one of the three victims was a male, that would be extremely rare behavior for a serial killer, they usually go for easy targets, maybe two girls alone, but two girls with a guy would be highly unlikely. Part of serial killers thought process is to exhibit complete dominance and control, the mere presence of another male would challenge that in the minds of most serial killers and they would avoid that. Nothing is 100% but I see this possibility highly unlikely. Third, there were no bruises found on any of the victims bodies that would suggest they were not forced to go any where against their will. How ever they left the park, they did so under their own will. Why would they leave with a stranger? And you have to keep in mind both girls had to be home by dark, actually they probably should have been on their way when they disappeared, again why would they take off with a stranger or strangers at that time. The more plausible scenario is the kids got into a vehicle of some one they knew, expecting to return shortly. And that begs the question why did they do this and what were they expecting to do? You don’t leave a public park filled with people and get into a car if you are expecting danger.
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The kids from the Methodist Home mostly went to Old Waco High School. Guess who else went to Old Waco High from 79-82? Whatever happened to the Kelly sisters? Gayle and Laura. There was a theory that Gayle was a intended victim
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demarqiskelly, My guess on who else went to Old Waco High from 79-82, which I guess was just called Waco High back then, maybe it was you? If so of coarse some questions. Gayle is still in Texas, I communicated with her a few years ago, in the end she wasn’t very helpful, she didn’t want to answer a lot of my questions and would get angry with me and refuse to talk. And I know she lied to me about at least one thing and I have to say I had been told by a couple people that I couldn’t believe anything she says. The only thing I found of any value I got from her was she told me she knew David Spence much more than she testified to in court and the kids knew him from partying out at the lake and this was even before the store opened, She stated Spence and the Melendez brothers were always trying to befriend them. When I asked her for more specific details I didn’t get an answer. She also stated Vic Feazell knew this but wasn’t interested in the truth. Now, you have to take anything Gayle says with a grain of salt but I have been told by others, mainly Christine Juhl, David’s girlfriend at the time of the murders and Rhonda Evans, another girl from the Home who ran away with Jill and also became very good friends with David Spence, she was one of the few people that visited David Spence on death row. Both girls, well women now, told me Feazell wasn’t interested in the truth. But Rhonda also told me the same thing that Gayle told me about David Spence, that the girls from the Home knew David from partying out at the lake before Deeb and the Store came into the picture. So, we have Gayle Kelly who still believes Spence and company are guilty and then we have Rhonda Evans that believes he is innocent and the their views on most things differ greatly but on this one issue about knowing David Spence they both agree. To me, in trying to separate fact and truth from fiction and rumor, having these two widely opposing views agree on this one issue makes it likely to be true. The problem has been trying to finds others to help verify this and maybe provide more details and I’ve been trying for years, I’ve had this site for a decade now. And to me this information makes total sense. The girls knew Spence from partying at the lake and then when Deeb opened the store across the street and David started hanging out at the store, when the girls started going to the store they knew David and knew he would help them get party supplies the teenage girls couldn’t get own their own. Deeb trying to impress these girls and trying to get one of them to marry him took notice of how David interacted with the girls and figured he should emulate what David was doing to better his chances with the girls. Hell he owned the store where the girls were getting their party supplies and Deeb had something David didn’t; MONEY. When you look at it like that the whole picture changes from the narrative we’ve been told. That Gayle was the intended target was the State’s whole case. Deeb paid or was going to pay David to kill Gayle but David not knowing Gayle nor Jill nor Kenneth, mistakenly took Jill to be Gayle and killed her Raylene and Kenneth instead. This all hinges on David Spence not knowing Gayle, Jill or Kenneth and now we know that just isn’t the truth. The bigger question now becomes how well did they know each other. The key to finding the whole truth in this case is to find and understand these connections and relationships. And you will find it just wasn’t some unfortunate fateful encounter at a park one night.
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I moved to Waco in the summer of 79 and started school thereafter at Old Waco High. However, so did Benny Carroll. He went to school with all of them and at North Jr
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I was unaware Benny Carroll was the same age, I thought he was older, I thought he had just got out of prison shortly before Juanita White’s murder in March 1986. So you went to school at the same time; the obvious question is did you know the victims or any other of the kids from the Home? And how well did you know Benny Carroll?
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I knew him well and, as most people discovered, I didn’t know him at at all. He went to prison in 83 and got out in 86. At that time, before he went to prison, we were all street kids living in a alternative reality. It took me to some dark places that ruled my life for over 25: years. You know, the crack cocaine epidemic. But, back to him now. I learned about him through women who questioned me about him. I found out that he flashed a lot of women and had a craving for men as well. I moved out of Waco in 87 and after I found out he’d been killed ( the suicide claim is bs) I told my mom. She said good and I was shocked. I knew she never liked him but that was kind of extreme. At that time she confessed to me that he raped her and threatened to kill me if I ever told. However, her fear was that I’d do the same to him. If I knew where he was buried I’d go spit on his grave. He knew all those kids from the Methodist Home and I put nothing past him. I have no doubt that he knew Spence’s mom and knew she was alone. I mean I have zero doubt. Through my dealings with him I learned several things. Some people are pure sinister and live in a Shadow world. And some people cannot be reformed. I knew Laura Kelly well. She came to my home with some of the other kids and I had a lot of love for them. They were kids displaced and it affected me. I can’t remember their names but it haunts me that one or maybe two of those girls could have been victims.
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demarqiskelly, Thank you for sharing all this information. Again. I have so many questions, please don’t be offending, I believe it is of the upmost important to try to get things straight and accurate as possible. how I ended up getting here in the first place was ranting and raving against people that were bending facts and telling lies, like Bernadette Feazell and Fred Dannen. Then I got tired of people deleting my comments when I questioned their false narratives, so I started my own page where people could share information, their own opinions and thoughts and now I have to hold myself to the same standards I expected from others trying to find a reasonable resolution to this case. So, some questions.
The first question that is inevitably going to come up is going to be a question about your identity. And seeing the name your using here as “kelly” as in Gayle and her sister, so one could and you know I will ask if there is a connection. I guest I really can’t ask you to reveal yourself but if I could, maybe a little detail. Are you a male or female? You stated you attended Waco High from 79-82, so I take it I can find you in those high school yearbooks?
Ok, I knew Benny Carroll had gone to prison and gotten out shortly before Juanita White’s murder in 1986. I though he was arrested for sexually assaulting an elder woman. Do you know why he was arrested and sent to prison in 1983? You said you found out about him through women questioning you about him. Could you explain that a little? You went to school with him and knew him from there. Are you saying women came to you at some point and questioned you about his behavior, I guess later? When would this have been, before he went to prison, after he went to prison or even later like after he passed away? And talking about his passing, you stated it wasn’t a suicide, could you provide any further insight? Truly sorry to hear about your mother, seems there were way too many assaults without adjudication happening around Waco during this time. But I have to ask when did your mother inform you of this attack and when did attack take place? I don’t know how far you live from Waco but you can find his grave at find a grave.
Now moving on to the kids from the Methodist Homes. First I was aware Gayle had a younger sister, couldn’t remember her name but I have to admit Laura doesn’t sound familiar but you would know better. But I also thought she was quite a bit younger than Gayle, like maybe not even in her teens or maybe early teens when the murders occurred, could you clear that up for me please? And by what you write it sounds like you were closer to Laura than Gayle but you did know Gayle, how well? And what about Jill and Kenneth? And can you recall if they had any interactions with Benny? Do you know if Benny was involved in the drug scene, using and/or dealing? I have a handful of names of kids that were at the Home at the time and would have gone to the high school at the time. I don’t know if going name by name is the best way to go but are there any of the other kids from the Home that you remember or stick out and why? Did you hang out at the lake and if so which park? Do you know if Benny hung out at the lake and again if so do you know which park? Did you know David Spence or the Melendez brothers or have any contact with them? Sorry I have so many questions, I hope you feel comfortable enough to answer as many as possible, I will probably have more. Thank you again and hope to hear from you again shortly!!!
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WHO WERE THE SCORPIONS?
On July 21st Detective Ramon Salinas and Texas Ranger Joe Wiley went to Waxahachie to return Raylene Rice’s car and conduct a few interviews. One of these interviews was with Captain Charles Sullins of the Waxahachie Police Department. During this interview Sullins shared with Salinas and Wiley that he had received a call around midnight on the 20th and the caller informed him that a motorcycle gang called the Scorpions was claiming responsibility for the murders. Captain Sullins didn’t know anything about this gang but the caller had told him this gang was from Troy, which is in Bell County which is just south of McLennan County and they had started moving into Waco. Sullins also stated that another officer from his department had gotten the same information from another informant. Hearing about bikers wasn’t new to Salinas, actually over the last few days bikers had been mentioned to him quite frequently. Now that he had the name of a possible gang to run with, Salinas knew exactly where to start. But first we should look at what’s in the police reports about bikers before got the name Scorpions.
By Friday July 16th, two days after the victims bodies were discovered, Waco PD was getting calls and tips at a pretty rapid rate. This would they would get their first calls on subject Terry “Tab” Harper and the more calls and information they got the more the story grew. At first it was Harper had talked about the murders to a girl Wednesday before noon, which would have been before the police had discovered the bodies. Then by the afternoon not only had this girl talked to Tab about the murders Wednesday morning but now the information Waco PD was getting was this girl was actually a witness to the murders and Tab had threatened to kill her if she said anything and this girl was now missing. By the end of that Friday all Waco PD had to go on to find this girl and possible witness was her first name Becky. The next morning, Saturday July 17th, Salinas received another call from another teenage girl about Tab Harper and the missing Becky. The teenage caller was able to provide Salinas with Becky’s full name which was Rebecca Demarias and the caller added Becky was a run away and no one could find her and the called stated she had been told Becky was afraid to come forward for fear of retaliation if she talked. Salinas asked the caller if she knew any of the people that Becky hung out with and one of the people she mentioned was a biker named “Armadillo” that was older, like 25. This would be the first time Waco PD would hear about a biker but one appeared in the same report before Armadillo is mentioned, although the information about this biker came later on the same day.
Later in the evening on the 17th, Salinas contacted Chief Copeland of McGregor, the Chief had contacted Waco PD earlier. Copeland told Salinas that a biker by the name of Benny Poston had contacted him about a subject that lived in Waco. Apparently Poston’s wife , Donna, worked with this subject and Poston informed Copeland about some of this subjects strange behavior and thought law enforcement might want to look into this subject in possible connection to the murders. The subject’s name was Reverend Robert Frueh. That wasn’t a new name to Salinas, actually he had gotten that name from another witness earlier that day. For those new or unfamiliar with the case, Reverend Robert Frueh, was a gay drug dealing preacher that lived a couple doors down from Richard and Kenneth Franks and apparently well acquainted with them. Frueh was at Koehne Park the night of the murders at some point. One witness reported Frueh was looking for some blonde hair girl and trying to unload some hash, another reported she saw Kenneth Franks in Frueh’s car leaving the park with Frueh. Frueh would be stabbed to death a few years later by a young man Frueh had failed to pay for a drug run the young man had made for Frueh. Salinas wrote in his report that he was going to get Nicoletti to do a follow up with Benny Poston. I don’t know if this was ever done, I have never seen anything that it was. All of this came to nothing but it remains another thing many question if Waco PD looked into thoroughly.
Over the next couple days Salinas went back to witnesses he had talked with to confirm Rebecca Demarias was the missing girl and witness he had been told about. On Monday morning, July 19th, Salinas told Nicoletti to check with the witnesses he had talked to for the same reason, after again getting confirmation, Salinas and Sergeant Robert Fortune tracked down Rebecca’s father, Walter Demarias. Mr. Demarias told them he was in the process of calling them and that his daughter, Becky, was hanging around some shady characters that might have something to do with the murders. He also told them that Becky was staying with a biker named “Wolf” and that Wolf had a green good time van and lived on Bishop Drive behind the Hilltop store, which is just down the road from Koehne Park. Salinas and Fortune headed in that direction and found the van parked on Bishop Drive. There they made contact with a Robert Wulf, 32 and asked him if he had a teenage girl named Becky in his apartment. Wulf replied he did and they asked him to bring the girl out and Wulf complied. Salinas and Fortune had found Rebecca Demarias and took her to the police station for questioning. But things didn’t go as expected and that was the start of the crumbling of the case against Terry “Tab” Harper.
Not getting anywhere or where and what they wanted from Rebecca Demarias and no new leads or tips coming in, the following morning, Tuesday July 20th, Detective Mike Nicoletti and Texas Ranger Joe Wiley decided, finally, to track down some people whose names had been brought to the attention of the Waco PD, mainly Gayle Kelly and Patty Deis. Both girls names had come up repeatedly since day one of the investigation Nicoletti and Wiley first went to Patty’s place of employment, the U.S. Army recruitment office, only to find Patty had called out, the second time since the murders. Getting her address Nicoletti headed there, which was at the Northwood Apartments, the same complex where Muneer Deeb had rented an apartment for Gayle Kelly but Gayle had moved out and was now staying with Patty, the two girls had become good friends at the Methodist Home. Deeb allowed David Spence and his girlfriend to move into the apartment a few days before the murders. When Nicoletti and Wiley arrived at the apartment they noticed the apartment had been broken into. A window close to the door had been busted and there was a red substance dripping down to the first floor they believed was blood. The property manager let the officers into the apartment. Nicoletti and Wiley did not find anyone nor any damage in the apartment but they did find something strange in the kitchen, Knives laid out in a row and a hand written note, “We will see you next time”. Nicoletti called the Waco PD station to report the break-in and to ask for some one to come to the scene and take photos and collect evidence. When he called he was told that the two girls, Gayle and Patty, were at the police station reporting the break -in, Nicoletti asked for the girls to be held until he could get there. When Nicoletti got to the Station, he interviewed Gayle Kelly. Although Nicoletti had obtained information the day before that Muneer Deeb had killed Kenneth Franks because of Gayle Kelly, he doesn’t ask her anything about this, he doesn’t even mention Deeb at all but the subject of bikers does come up. Gayle Kelly told Nicoletti that Kenneth Franks did not get along with the bikers and had gotten in trouble with the bikers on several occasions and the only time Kenneth had any drug dealings with the bikers was through Rebecca Demarias. Nicoletti didn’t press the issue any further and things were left like that.
And that’s where things stood when Salinas and Wiley talked to Captain Sullins in Waxahachie the following day, when Sullins gave them the name Scorpions. Salinas knew exactly where to go and who to question about this; Rebecca Demarias. It took a few days to locate her again, on July 27th Salinas and Fortune found her on Bishop Drive, she had returned to Robert Wulf’s. They took her back to the station for questioning. When Rebecca was asked if the people from the motorcycle shop on North 18th Street could be Scorpions, she replied she did not know but she had a friend, Carren Ritchie that was going with one of the bikers named Angel who was a member of the group and worked at the shop. Salinas, with Nicoletti, went to Carren Ritchie’s apartment and asked her about Angel and the group at the shop. She told them she Angel just as Angel, she didn’t know his real name or full name and that the group at the shop didn’t have a name or fly colors or things of that nature. While Salinas and Nicoletti were interviewing Carren Ritchie another girl came came to the apartment named Kathy Prochnow. Prochnow stated she knew Becky as well as knowing Jill from the Home and that she had met Raylene with Jill a few months before. Then she added her and Carren been at Koehne Park the night of the murders between 7:30pm and 9pm with Angel and another biker named “fingers” and had seen Kenneth and the park in the Orange Pinto. Then she stated she didn’t talk to any of the victims, that they, the bikes had just rode through and didn’t stay long. fter this Salinas went to the shop and talked to Angel. Angel told Salinas he was at the park anytime the girls said they were. Asked about Tab Harper, Angel replied he had seen Harper messing around the kids. When asked about the car Harper was in Angel stated he didn’t know. Although we hear a lot about all these witnesses that reported to the police they saw Harper at the park there are actually two reported sightings of Harper in Koehne Park the night of the murders in the police reports, all the others were told by some one that Harper was there and then it was discovered they all came from the same source, a very unreliable source that had a history of telling stories at that. But the biker Angel is one of the two apparent eye witnesses to see Tab Harper at the park that night. But it is very telling that Salinas didn’t get any personal information from Angel, not his real or full name, not and address nor phone number. Angel had replied to Salinas’ first question he agrees with whatever the girls had told Salinas, it’s probably that Angel thought the girls told Salinas they had seen Harper, which they never did, and Angel just thought he was agreeing with them, he couldn’t provide any further information when Salinas asked. And that Salinas did not obtain any further personal information from Angel points toward Salinas realizing Angel wasn’t some one that could be used as a reliable witness and there was no need to contact him in the future and no need for his personal information. The only possible useful information Salinas got from Angel was the name of the owner of the shop; Harold Mitchell, who went by the nickname “Sundance”. This would be the last we see and hear about the bikers in the Waco Pd reports of their original investigation. They got bogged down chasing down the Tab Harper rumor and then when they finally realized it was a rumor they decided to suspend their investigation. But it would not be the last we would hear about bikers and a gang. To be continued…..
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Do any of our readers live in Waco and get the Waco Tribune? I just saw they recently ran some articles about the DNA evidence. For years I’ve been trying to get updates on that evidence with zero luck. So getting my hands or at least my eyes on any updates would be helpful, hopefully someone could be nice and share. Thank you
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AND THEY KEEP GETTING WORSE…
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