And while we are on the topic of podcast; I continually complain about the content or lack of facts shared in these podcast, and there are many too many to get into at one time, but there is one that comes up in just about all the podcast. It’s not like they are trying to mislead or not tell the truth, it’s more like they just don’t have a general understanding of the case and how it proceeded. The one major disappointing podcast on this point was the Bloody Happy Hour podcast where they interviewed Walter Reaves and actually they asked Reaves about this and he wasn’t completely honest with his answer. I guess it can be argued that he just didn’t remember this but I personally find that hard to believe, I would attribute it more to selective memory on the part of Mr. Reaves, he was very intstrumental in how things played out, he was David Wayne Spence’s attorney at the time. So I just can’t see him not remembering this and unfortunately you see this a lot with this case; the people that should be able to provide answers or clear things up just won’t for whatever reason and you see this again and again. Why???
In this instance I am talking about the sexual assault comitted by David Spence and Gilbert Melendez and how it came about that they ended up with such differing sentences. When Mr. Reaves was asked he answered Gilbert took a plea and David decided on a jury trial, which is true but he didn’t explain the chain of events that he had part in creating. The sexual assault David and Gilbert comitted occurred on Sunday September 5, 1982, it was Labor Day weekend and the 18 year old victim’s parents were away for the holiday. They returned the next day, Monday September 6, 1982, they come home to find their son beat up and need of medical attention. Taken to the hospital the victim gets stitches on the cut on his leg admistered by David Spence. At first the boy is hesitant to discuss the ordeal he had been through, I only add this due to the question of the date the criminal complaint was filed, either September 6th or September 7th, also the victim didn’t know David nor Gilbert, he had just met them that day. He knew the guy they were with and that’s how David and Gilbert came to be at the victim’s home. It was through this third guy; Robert Coleman, that David Spence and Gilbert Melendez were identitified as the culprits of this offense. Once law enforcement gets their names they run a check and find Spence is on parole, they call his parole officer and Spence is picked up on Friday September 9, 1982, the same day Truman Simons and Dennis Baier take over the Lake Waco Murders investigation, Gilbert is picked up about the same time, with in 24 hours of the Spence apprehension. Dating events, as would be in any case, is very important and in particular in this case to debunk some of the falsehooods and myths.
Now we all know government moves slow and the wheels of justice even slower. David and Gilbert had been sitting in the McLennan county jail for a couple weeks, which would be late September 1982, awaiting their fate on the aggravated sexual assault charge when the State offered both David and Gilbert plea deals, plead guilty get 7 years. The actual time they would have spent in prison would have been different, Gilbert could have gotten out on that charge in about three years. David on the other hand had violated his parole so he would have had to finish out that sentence, which was about 18 months and did not run concurrent with the aggravated sexual assault charge. At first David and Gilbert verbally agreed to this plea deal. It was also at the end of September Truman Simons decided to leave the Waco PD and go worth for the county as a jailer. Again the slow moving machinery of our justice system took it’s time to finalize this deal, a couple weeks. Middle of October, 15th or 16th, the assistant D.A. brings the paper work for this deal for David and Gilbert to sign. Gilbert readily signs and is sent off to prison, the same fate awaits David Spence but via his attorney Walter Reaves they request the language of the charge and agreement to be changed. Spence knowing how other inmates in some of Texas’ finer institutions feel and act towards fellow inmates that sexually assault teen ages boys would like his charge to be just aggravated assault not aggravated sexual assault. David’s attorney, again Walter Reaves just in case you forgot, argued that David hadn’t committed a sexual act on the victim, only Gilbert had and that being the case David had only committed aggravated assault. Isn’t it funny how Walter Reaves failed to mention any of this when questioned about this on the podcast. The assistant D.A. has to take this proposal back to the D.A. to get approval of the chnage in language on the deal. Of course this takes time again and about two weeks later a new D.A. gets elected, Vic Feazell. With the election of Vic Feazell, the assistant D.A. that had been working Spence’s aggravated sexual assault charge decides to leave the D.A.’s office, all his cases need to be reassigned to other attorney’s working in the D.A.’s office. Again another time consuming process, actually this case hadn’t been reassigned to anyone when Vic Feazell took office about 8 weeks later in January 1983 and when it came across his desk, being familiar with the status of the Lake Waco Murders investigation, decided Spence had declined the plea deal offered and no deal existed now and that’s how David ended up with a trial jury. David would go to trial in March 1983 and Gilbert would testify against him. Feazell went for an extremely harsh sentence, 90 years, to keep David Spence in prison until they could build their case on the Lake Waco Murders against him. And I would add it was the ease in which Gilbert was willing to cooperate with them in the sexual assault that opened the door to them approaching him with a deal of immunity in the Lake Waco Murders. It was while Gilbert came back to Waco to testify against David in the sexual assault case in March 1983 that he was first interviewed, cajoled or coerced, depending on how you look at it, by Truman Simons into talking about the Lake Waco Murders.
We often hear that Truman Simons went after David Spence,Truman had tunnel vision and once he got on a suspect he would do anything to prove he was right and his suspect was guilty. Many point to Truman going to go work for the jail to be close to David Wayne Spence as a prime example and I heard this on many of the podcast but if we take a look at the facts and chain of events this just isn’t true. Yes Truman Simons did go to work at the jail so he could keep investigating the Lake Waco Murders but not to get close to Spence. When Simons first decided to leave the Waco PD and go work at the jail, David Spence had verbally agreed to a plea deal and if he kept his word he would have been gone, sent to prison just like Gilbert before Truman started working at the jail. Truman didn’t know David was still going to be there when he decided to go to work at the jail and he couldn’t have known because no one knew how that was going to play out after David went back on his word. It’s a little thing I guess but it’s putting all the little things together to get to the whole truth.
It says that it’s been sent to you. Took screenshot but still can’t figure out how to put it in a comment. It copies but won’t paste 🤷♀️ Sent on 04/02/22
Oh btw… when looking for similar types of homicides (just to consider the type of perpetrator previously convicted for such crimes…. and the motive) I ended up falling down the OCCK rabbit hole.
Have you read (or listened to as I did to speed up the process/multitask) “The Kill Jar” by J Reuben Appelman? Impressive! Poops all over Careless Whispers IMHO. He was brought up at the same time and in the same area as the victims. And Tim King’s sister highly endorses it in the foreword. That’s a rabbit hole and a half of you need time out from Lake Waco….
No I have not read The Kill Jar. Honestly it’s really hard to get into reading more true crime novels in the last 6 to 8 years since I decided to put my focus on this case. As I said prior sometimes I look into other current cases just to take a break from the Lake Waco Murders but with those cases there haven’t been any novels published yet, I know a couple are in the works. Really I wish I could dedicate more time to this case, there are so many questions that still need to be answered, I should post a list sometime, if work is slow the next couple days I might start one.
Juts relistening to parts of Careless Whispers and have realised I’ve missed a name/friend of KF mentioned. Pat Torres. Ever come across about anything about him?
Actually I started re-reading Careless Whispers a couple days ago, first time in 8 years and will be the fifth time I have read it. Honestly I’m not a big fan of the book any longer, there are serious inaccuracies and discrepancies just about on every page and we are not talking about small things and tha’s just counting the ones I know about personally just going by the police reports and trial testimony but I have talked to a few people mentioned in the book or that were interviewed by Truman Simons and/or Carlton Stowers that have told me what was written in the book is not a true representation of what happened and/or what they had stated and this includes Gayle Kelly, Christine Juhl, Rhonda Evans, Clifford Oliver. Sure we can debate the credibility of these people but to hear it again and again from so many and knowing the other blatant falsehoods that permeate the book as a whole it’s value as a reliable source is greatly diminished. The only reason I am reading it now is because I have been listening to so many of the podcast and the book Careless Whispers and Michael Hall’s article in Texas Monthly are always the two major sources used and in many cases the only sources used and sometimes I hear things I honestly can’t remember reading in the book but once you read the police reports and trial testimony again the book pales in comparision. I rarely agree with anything Russ Hunt says but in one of these podcast, I believe it was the Bloody Happy Hour podcast he stated Careless Whispers is a fictional story of the Lake Waco Murders, at this point I would have to agree with him on that.
On Patrick Torres there really isn’t much on him, he was Kenneth Franks’ best friend, Kenneth had called him the night of the murders to ask him to give him a ride, Patrick couldn’t because he had to work that evening. It was also Patrick that picked up Kenneth from summer school and actually allowed Kenneth to use his motorcycle that day because Kenneth’s was in the shop getting repaired. And Kenneth riding that bike actually led to one of the more interesting sightings of him that day and gives us another glimpse on how things were going with this investigation. That will be next after a smoke break.
In the police reports, sorry I don’t have the report right in front of me at the moment but I can get it if necessary, there is a sighting of Kenneth Franks I can’t remember the street name, the witness knew Kenneth and he states he was pretty sure it was Kenneth but Kenneth wasn’t on his motorcycle he was on another bike. The boy described the bike he saw Kenneth on and it matched Patrick Torres’ bike, so this gives this witness’ story credence. The sreet the boy saw Kenneth on, again I can’t remember the name, was the street where the girl Kenneth was seeing at the time lived and the boy thought that’s where Kenneth was headed. This girl is mentioned several times in the reports, funny thing is in the reports she is referred to by two different last names and sometimes by both last names one name being put in parentheses and sometimes a question mark added at the end, clearly showing the police didn’t know and couldn’t figure out why this girl was being referred to by two last names. And although there are to last names we know the police are talking about the same girl because they are referring to her as Kenneth’s girlfriend. In the reports this girlis named Mchelle Shilling or Michelle Lewis or both Shilling and Lewis, strange and never could figure out why until a few years ago. I was talking to Rhonda Evans and I believe I brought up Kenneth’s girlfriend and mentioned both last names Shilling and Lewis and Rhonda got upset with me and was like what are you talking about Kenneth and Michelle Lewis weren’t seeing each other at the time of Kenneth’s murder. I share with her what’s in the police report and give the description that is in the report 13 years old, white female and gave her the address given. Rhonda responded Michelle Lewis was 17 not white and lived at the home. After upsetting Rhonda I decided to check into this, something the Waco PD should have done but didn’t. Michelle Shilling and Michelle Lewis were two different girls, so when people mentioned Michelle Lewis they were not talking about Kenneth’s girlfriend Michelle Shilling as the police put in their reports, they were talking about a completely different girl and the police did talk to Michelle Shilling but never talked to Michelle Lewis because they thought it was the same person. It was just one of those little things that makes you wonder about the investigative skills of the original detectives working the case, just as them not finding out who was Jill’s roommate until November two months after they suspended the case, you would think she would have been someone the police would have wanted to talk to in the beginning of the investigation.
Ponder this question. Well I guest first the facts; Muneer Deebhanded out beer, weed and pills like candy to the girls from the Methodist Home but only the girls not the boys. Not sure if he would sell these items to the boys, there is no evidence that he did and it has been stated many times by many people that Deeb was not a drug dealer, he gave freely to the girls. That being the case don’t you think some young punk wannabe drug dealer aware of the situation would have tried to take advantage of that situation and put Deeb in a jam, what could Deeb do about it???
Now, since it looks like some one else is willing to go down this rabbitt hole it would be a good time to delve into the forgotten drug angle. I would start with how the book Careless Whispers dealt with it or described it, since for most of us, well at least those of us that don’t live in Waco or Texas it was this book that first introduced us to the Lake Waco Murders. Most issues of this case that Truman Simons didn’t agree with get white washed over at best, maybe a line or two explaining Simons thoughts on the matter and this is how a possible drug related motived was handled in the book but as so many other things in the book Simons’ narrow view is misleading and inaccurate. In Careless Whispers it is stated that the original investigators working the case believed the murders were drug related and were looking in that direction, which is true. The book also says that this belief arose when the bodies were first discovered, that some of the officers and detectives on site thought that whoever did this had to be on drugs or it a drug burn gone bad, again this is true but in the book they make it look like this was the only reason the original detectives were looking at a drug angle and that’s where the problems begin because that is not true and Careless Whispers doesn’t mention the tips Waco PD were getting along those lines, all it says is they thought it could be drug related Truman didn’t he was right and they were wrong, but were they?
If there was anything close to information, tips, leads, rumoras or not that hinted towrd any kind of motive for the murders and repeatedly so it was Kenneth Franks owed someone money over a drug deal and a number of times through out the reports the mount he owed was given by multiple people, $500. So it wasn’t just how the bodies were butchered and sprawn out that led the original investigators consider to the murders to be drug related, it was the one plausible motive they kept hearing again and again. And then when Gayle Kelly was first interviewed on July 20th she told Nicoletti that Kenneth Franks had told her he was making a big drug deal. Kenneth wouldn’t tell Gayle who he was making the deal with but said it was somebody she knew but it was someone they didn’t trust and were wary of and he didn’t want to tell her for her own safety. So the investigators were getting plenty of information in this direction but they just couldn’t come up with any names, they did try.
And this has to make one wonder if they would have followed up the information Lisa Kader gave them on July 19th that Deeb had killed Kenneth Franks because of Gayle Kelly would it had led them to the drug connection they had been so desperately looking for. Or maybe more troubling; why when the staff of the Methodist Home found out what had been going on at the Rainbow Drive-In in regards to Deeb giving their female residents alcohol and drugs they didn’t inform the police? And finally in Careless Whispers it states when Truman Simons first took over the case he didn’t care who got the credit and if he came across anything he would turn it back over to the original investigators, well that is apparently a straight out lie. When he and Dennis Baier were first told about Deeb giving the girls beer and weed and pills why didn’t they go to the original detectives and go hey here is your drug connection. Again that is just another example of how hostile the environment was inside the Waco PD, there wasn’t any cooperation nor any will to work together to solve this case and the detrimental effects caused by that atmosphere still radiate today.
So I have 5 simple questions on the singular issue of a drug connection that have never been answered.
1) Who did Kenneth Franks burn or owe money to???
2) Who was Kenneth planning to make this drug deal with that Gayle Kelly informed Waco PD
about???
3) Deeb was handing out drugs like candy, who was supplying Deeb???
4) Apparently David Spence was using drugs on a regular basis but he had no job nor money,
how was he getting his drugs???
5) On the night of the murders both Deeb and his partner said after they closed the store they
went looking for someone that owed Deeb money, who was this person???
I believe that the answers to all 5 of these questions will be connected some how and you find the answers to these questions you find the true cause or motive behind the Lake Waco Murders.
Be warned though… it’s strictly for lateral thinkers only and those who lean more towards the Arthur Conan Doyle/Sherlock Holmes sleuthing approach than the (often misused – because how can all things be equal anyway?) Occam’s razor approach. In fact some would say that the very nature of (in this case arguably) unsolved cases means that the simplest/most obvious option has already been discounted. Having said that I doesn’t appear that family, surrogate family or school were thoroughly investigated. And aren’t you supposed to clear the ground under your feet first?
Yes I am on Facebook. And I am a advid believer in Occam’s Razor, that approach far surpasses any other deductive reasoning theories. And that’s what this case needs, Hey the crazy farcical narrative makes for an interesting and intriguing story but in the end that’s all it is; a nightmarish tale filled with boogie men that come creeping out of the dark night knives in hand ready to slaughter any victim to appease their blood thirsty fetishes. Yeah that’s going to sell a lot of books but it lends itself very little in the way of reality. For that you need the simple facts, the simple connections, put those together with simple deductive reasoning and you will come to the truth. Henry Reyes was Gayle Kelly’s boy friend by the time of the murders, as least by the end of June 1982 Muneer Deeb knew this. Deeb’s modus operandi when girls he was intersted in became involved with other guys Deeb became jealous of that couple and get upset, which he did the night he saw Gayle kissing her boyfriend, not Kenneth Franks as the fairy tale has been told, If he was mad at Gayle about her realationship it would have been directed towards her and Henry not Gayle and Kenneth. The logical reasoning then would be whatever the problem Deeb had with Gayle and Kenneth had to be something else.
lauraheaney3863 in response to your question about the families being invesigated, they were to differing degrees. Forget what you have read in Careless Whispers it is in this area where some of the biggest falsehoods in that story are found. We have to deal which each family separately. And keep in mind the Waxahachie PD ran their own investigation on thier end, two of the victims were from Waxahachie; Jill and Raylene. Detectives from Waco made a couple trips to Waxahachie to talk to the two families and to talk to the Waxahachie PD but the majority of the girls lives and families fell to the Waxahachie PD, most the information Waco PD got on the girls they received from the Waxahachie PD The girls families were looked into, there were a few issues that popped up but clearly neither family had anything to do with the murders. The one thing I would mention though is Raylene’s mother never did talk to the police nor anyone for that matter she was just so distruaght, so it was Mr. Rice that provided the information about his daughter’s life and of course there were things he didn’t know, that is understandable. Actually he didn’t know Raylene had taken Jill to Waco until Mr. Franks called the following morning.. With Jill’s family it was very similar, her mother was as equally devastated as well but she did talk to the police but as things went along Jill’s aunt, Jan Thompson, became of the focal contact point for the family and has been pretty much since. I don’t know where I would be without all the help and information Mrs. Thompson has provided and shared with me, words cannot adequately define my sincerest gratitude. And like the Rice family Jill’s family definitely had nothing to do with the murders. And that leaves us with Mr. Franks.
And this is where Careless Whispers is a huge fail, hey if you don’t want to tell the truth don’t say anything at all, don’t fill pages with crap that leds you to tell lie after lie to cover each proceeding lie and that is Careless Whispers when dealing with Richard Franks. As is well known now my Franks was gay, which the book never mentions The one factual thing in the book about Mr. Franks is early in the investigation he was considered a suspect in the murders but ecause the book did not divulge the truth about Mr. Franks lifestyle it couldn’t get into many of those details and justmade up stuff. Just becase I read this is the last couple days I know early in the book it states that Kenneth’s friends remarked that Kenneth’s father was neat or cool or whatever, that there was a limited amount of stress at home between Mr. Franks and Kenneth. Actually the police reports paint a ver different picture. Mr. Franks was extremely uncooperative with the police in the beginning and I guess to be fair that can be somewhat understandable and I guess there will always be the question did the police harbor some preconceived notions because of Mr. Franks lifestyle which could have come off as hostile or was it Mr. Franks who came off hostile because he didn’t like law enforcement prying into his lifestyle. Here is my personel view on the matter, ok I understand Mr. Franks was grieving and would have rather been left alone, much like the Rice family but Mr. Franks interfered with the progress of the investigation, so be it. But then Mr. Franks turned around and complained at the lack of progress of the investigation and that’s where he was definitely wrong, not that the investigation wasn’t progressing very fast it wasn’t but if you aren’t going to share information the police are asking from you don’t cry about the lack of results. There were a couple specific request Waco PD asked of Mr. Franks. Once, only a couple days after the murders detectives came to the house, they wanted to see Kenneth;s room see if they saw or could find anything that could give them a hint or clue into the murders, Mr. Franks refused to allow them in the house. Then they wanted Mr. Franks to come to the station to be interviewed, they just wanted some general information Mr. Franks didn’t want to. It should be added in the same complex where the Franks lived there was a judge, Walter Smith, and he knew and I guess was friends with Mr. Franks and he ended up becoming the go between Waco PD and Mr. Franks, another strange asspect of the case. It was Judge Smith that finally arranged for Mr. Franks to come in and talk to the police, it was about two weeks after the murders and it was at this time they agreed to bring whatever the detectives wanted from Kenneth’s room that the police thought might be helpful. What the detectives had wanted was names and phone numbers of people Kenneth knew and had contact with in the days leading up to the murders, that was a simple enough request but thanks to Mr. Franks that information was withheld from law enforcement for two weeks. When Mr. Franks did meet with the police one thing he did not have they asked for was his phone bill and I’m not sure if he ever did give it to them. In contrast Jill’s mother gave the police two phone bills to cover the time perid they were interested in. And it was at this meeting with police that Mr. Franks frst disclosed to law enforcement that on the night of the murders he was out at the lake from about 9p.m. until a little after midnight and you don’t think that shot up some red flags, why wait two weeks to tell them that? So the police had good reason to look at Mr. Franks as a suspect and then we have what other people stated in the reports. There were a couple of Kenneth’s friends that never wanted to go back to the Franks residence because Mr. Franks came on to them. Back in June stay with a couple frineds at the Northwood apartments, not Gayle and Patti, because there was trouble at home, his friends didn’t know what the triuble was all Kenneth told them was he couldn’t gpo back home. Even Gayle Kelly said there were problems, she stated Kenneth didn’t get along with Mr. Franks live in boyfriend Kenneth King, there was aslo some tension between Mr. Franks and Kenneth over Mr. Franks getting rid of their boat, details a little sketchy on tht one and I believe Gayle also stated that Kenneth did have problems with his father being gay, again Careless Whispers had to pass over all this because it wasn’t truthful about it from the beginning. And it just wasn’t the kids or Kenneth’s friends, Kenneth’s golf team coach called Waco PD and told them they should look into Kenneth’s father. Waco PD had plenty to go on to justify their inclusion of Mr. Franks as viable suspect. I don’t believe Mr. Franks had anything to do with the murders and I believe that was the general and final feeling among those investigating the case. But that does leave us the question why did Truman Simons and Carlton Stowers feel the need to lie about it so badly in the book???
Forty years ago today, on what would have been a rather typical hot summer night in Waco Texas, friends and family, both young and old, had journeyed out to any of the peaceful and picturesque parks that surround Lake Waco to enjoy the usual summer activities; boating, fishing, water skiing, maybe a few beers, even smoke a little weed, listen to some summer tunes and just in general hang out. Among the scores of park goers that evening were three teenagers; Jill Montgomery,17, Raylene Rice,17 and Kenneth Franks 18. Jill Montgomery had returned to Waco that day to pick up her final paycheck from the city offices for her recent employment at Fort Fisher during her stay at the Methodist Home in Waco. She had just recently moved back to live in her home town of Waxahachie a few weeks earlier. To make this trip and to wrap up things in Waco Jill asked her best friend from Waxahachie, Raylene Rice, if she could drive her to Waco. Raylene was more than happy to provide a ride for her friend, they had spent a lot of time together since Jill’s return and a little excursion down to Waco, about 75 miles away, would be a nice day trip for the two longtime friends. The two happy go lucky teen girls made a few stops; Fort Fisher just to say hi to familiar faces, city hall to pick up Jill’s check, Piggly Wiggly to cash said check and then to Jill’s favorite restaurant in Waco. It was about 6:00 p.m. when the girls arrived at at El Chico’s, prior to leaving Waxahachie the girls had planned and told their families they would be back in Waxahachie at 9:00p.m. to eat dinner with Raylene’s family, then Jill would be home after that, probably around 10:00p.m., so sitting there at El Chino’s the girls had some time to kill and Jill decided to call a boy she had met, dated and still had feelings for; Kenneth Franks.
Kenneth was not home when Jill made her initial call, Kenneth’s father, Richard Franks, informed her that Kenneth had gone out to grab some burgers for their dinner but would be back shortly and she could call back later. Mr. Franks was well aware of the feelings Jill still harbored towards Kenneth were more than mutual with his son. About a half hour passed when Jill called again; this time Kenneth was gone and he was ecstatic to hear from Jill. She was in town had a little time before she had to make the trip back to Waxahachie and asked Kenneth if he wanted to get together to see each other for a little while before she left Waco. Kenneth didn’t have to be asked twice, but the how, where, and when had to be ironed out. As soon as Kenneth got off the phone with Jill, he was calling his close friends in Waco asking if they wanted to get together, as he had a couple girls he wanted to get up with that were in town also. He needed a ride, and as tempting as it might have sounded to his friends, they declined for one reason or another. Although it is not well documented, a third call had to occur in which Kenneth had to inform Jill he wanted to see her but he didn’t have a ride after his friends had turned him down. Finally, the decision was made that Jill and Raylene would pick up Kenneth at his residence and go to Koehne Park. It was perfect; that park had been a favorite hang out for the kids and it was only a hop, skip, and jump from where Kenneth lived. They could all spend some time together, then take Kenneth home first and still make it back in time as planned to eat dinner with Raylene’s family at 9:00 p.m.. One very crucial detail usually over-looked, is Jill at the time, was allowed to stay at home on a probationary basis. Any return to past behavior’s, such as not coming home on time, would force Jill’s mother to send Jill away again to an environment probably worse than that of the Methodist Home which Jill was so happy to get away from. And Jill was happy to be home, happy to be attending her local high school for her senior year the coming fall. She was trying to get a job and save money so she could buy new clothes and such and everything was going in a positive direction in her life. Raylene, as well, seemed to be doing pretty good as a teen, at least as finances go, she had a job, was responsible, although had a habit of getting to work a little late, but she helped her parents the bills. Raylene had to be at work the next morning at 8:00 a.m. and these girls would not have totally blown off their well laid out plans and families that night for whatever reason just doesn’t make sense.
Sometime between 7:30 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. Jill, Raylene and Kenneth arrived at Koehne Park. Many of the other people in the park saw the three kids, some, local youths from Waco that knew Kenneth even exchanged salutations with Kenneth. There didn’t seem to be any problems; the trio seemed to be happy and just having a good time just like the few other dozen people that were at Koehne that evening. Unlike the other dozens of teens, friends and families that were there at the park that evening, Jill Montgomery, Raylene Rice and Kenneth Franks never made it home. If you are here you probably know some details or version or even the controversy that surround the horrendous end that befell those three kids, teens in their spring of life, that fateful night. And just as that tragedy still lingers four decades later, on the shores of Lake Waco, the forever scarred parks that will never be the same and in the conscience of the city itself, the state of Texas and the whole justice system as well, questions and doubts still linger as well. Can anyone say with 100% certainty what really happened, what vehicle or more likely vehicles were used that night or even whom was there? I have been researching and digging into this case for almost 30 years and I honestly have to say I believe and feel with what I have read, dug up and with the conversations I have had with people closely connected to this case the quartet of Muneer Deeb, David Spence, Anthony and Gilbert Melendez still look like the most likely culprits of this odious atrocity’ but can I prove it do any acceptable degree of certainty? NO!!! And now to male matters worse, all the records and files have disappeared and when I talk about files and records I’m talking about over 50 boxes of evidence, interviews, statements, reports, letters and other correspondences. How can that be and whom is responsible for this critical loss? All that remain are the highly redacted Waco Police reports and F.B.I. reports, which anyone can obtain through the freedom of information act but they are nearly useless with all the redactions. Luckily Fred Dannen posted the Waco Police reports on-line unredacted back in the late nineties, it was the only useful thing he ever did with this case but Vic Feazell took them down some years ago. There are those that will ask this happened 40 years ago, why does it matter now? All I can say to that is the truth always matters. Today keep in mind the living victims that have had to suffer for all these years not really knowing the truth but still living with all the unbearable, life changing loss and sorrow just wanting to know the truth. Our hearts should go out to them. And remember Jill Montgomery. Raylene Rice and Kenneth Franks and remember they never got the chance to live their lives to the fullest. Their stories only partially told or known, our memories of them are indelibly marked with the brutality and violence that took them away. The only way to honestly and completely tell their story is to find the truth. And as the years pass, and more of those close to the case leave us each year, remember there are still those out there that could still provide some of the answers to some of the questions that still remain and linger 40 years on.
It’s been one year since I have posted anything, as the years go by the flow of information dries up to nothing and now we are at the 41st anniversary of the fateful night that was the Lake Waco Murders. Not that the world has been totally devoid of new material on the Lake Waco Murders. In the past year I have had a few interesting communications. Mainly just other parties interested in finding the truth but you always encounter something out of the ordinary. The most interesting this past year was a gentleman contacting me and telling me he has a friend that believes they are the reincarnation of Jill Montgomery. This guy didn’t know if he believed his friend and wanted to know if there was anyway to determine if his friend was telling the truth, like if they could provide any information that would led one to believe their claim. My first response was. “ask her who killed her”? I kept an open mind, this person apparently had been having these flashbacks or memories she was unfamiliar with and started keeping journals and this had been going on for years. I was very interested in reading what she might have put in those journals in the end it came to nothing but it kept me intrigued for a few months.
And the murders are still a very popular subject in the podcast world, many have come out in the last 6 to 8 months, which I will share for I have nothing better to offer. but I don’t get too excited about the new podcast as I use to mainly because they are just retreads of the same information and stories we have been hearing for decades. In the indelible words of Pink Floyd; “Year after year. Running over the same old ground. What have we found? Well, that is one question I can answer; Nothing!!! I wonder why people just want to keep telling the same story we’ve been hearing for close to 40 years now. What does it add or what do we gain? I know I can ramble on about all the unanswered questions that remain and there are so many and I could go on and on, which I have ad nauseum. But can we please stop hearing about Terry “Tab” Harper and James Russell Bishop, there will never be anything that connects those two guys to the murders. One was dragged in purely by the teenage rumor mill and the other never had any connection other than the San Diego police called Waco police to get information on him and Waco PD decided to take a look at him. Can we delve into areas, aspects and subjects that have never received the scrutiny others have? Again there are many but for simplicity I’ll keep it to just one. the car!!! What car you say? Let’s talk about a Pontiac.
Much has been written and opined about Gilbert Melendez’s changing stories in the statements he gave in March 1983 in regards to the car they were in the night of July 13, 1982. What has not be question nearly enough are his initial responses he gave when asked that question when asked during both trials. In Both his initial response was he thought they were in a Pontiac. Yes, in one trial he does say it was a gold Pontiac and he did say it was David’s car. Actually he stated it was David’s car during both trials, So maybe he just thought David’s car was a Pontiac, just for the record David’s car was a Gold Chevy Malibu. So on the surface, maybe it is just a simple mistake but when you dig deep into the records and reports, which is another problem because they have disappeared, you will find the vehicle most mentioned is a Silver Pontiac. And for those that point to the fact that David nor his Gold Malibu were not seen at Koehne Park that night but a Silver Pontiac was seen, with two guys in it and it was parked right next to Raylene’s Orange Pinto. No one saw the kids in the vicinity but no one saw the kids leave the park either. Would these two unrelated references to a Pontiac be enough to to garner the interest of detectives? Maybe not, but remember the whole investigation started when Richard Franks found a Silver Pontiac sitting in Midway Park while he was looking for his son Kenneth, who hadn’t returned home. The car had been vandalized. in the front seat two hairbrushes and a screw driver were found and in the back seat was a towel. Common items to find in a car, I don’t think anyone would question that. But when you read Anthony Melendez’s first statement, he gave two, and he was questioned about it when he testified during the trial, he repeated the same story. Keep in mind much of Anthony’s testimony is self serving in this case he was afraid of David or what David was going to do and grabbed whatever he could from the car to defend himself. To be fair, the Melendez brothers had lived with David until they had a fallen out when David did exhibit violent behavior which included tying up his girlfriend and dragging her behind his truck and finally taking a hatchet to said truck and the Melendez brothers apparently didn’t have much contact with David after that until about the time of the murders. They did run in the same drug circles, so there would have been some contact. Again would the mention of a screw driver along with the other information be enough for investigators to take a harder look?
By now, well if you have been following this page, we all know who owned the Silver Pontiac Kenneth’s father found in the park, that would be one Clifford Oliver. The same Clifford Oliver that testified that he and his friends got together with David Spence at about 2a.m. that night. Clifford Oliver is actually mentioned a lot in both the police reports and trial transcripts and he did testify twice, first during the Grand Jury and then during David Spence’s first trial. There is plenty to question in regards to Clifford Oliver such as that same Silver Pontiac he tried to report as stolen for insurance money but got caught without being charged. But the biggest red flag of all, in December 1982 a girlfriend of Mr. Oliver’s called the crime stoppers hotline and reported that Clifford had told her, her sister and brother in-law that David Spence had committed the murders and Clifford took them to where the murders had occurred and even how they drove to the area the kids were killed. Waco PD did nothing with this information but it was passed on to Truman Simons and the Sherriff’s office. They set up an interview with Clifford, which he failed to attend. When he finally did come in the following day it was learned the reason Clifford didn’t make it for the original interview was because he wanted to get his story straight with one of his friends that were with him on the night of July 13th and then he took off, just as he had done when he got caught on the car insurance scam. Doesn’t this raise red flags in anyone’s minds??? Don’t you think this might get at least a mention in any of the dozens of podcast that have come out in the last couple decades? But again, nothing, total silence on this subject. True these are nothing more than allegations, accusations and innuendos but don’t they deserve a look. But people don’t look, even those that say they are digging for the truth, they just don’t dig deep enough. And you need to dig deep to find maybe the best reason to question what car was used that night,
Muneer Deeb spent his time wisely while he was in prison, he learned American law which was vastly different from his home country of Jordan. And he all know that it was this that led to him being granted a re-trial on appeal and eventually his release. What is not known as well are the points of error that Deeb and his lawyer did not win on. Actually it was a point the lawyer raised after he was assigned the case. From the beginning Deeb had been trying to prove that David Spence’s Malibu wasn’t in running order the night of the murders. He had requested David Spence’s girlfriend Christine Juhl to testify for the defense but she refused. Deeb even wanted the mechanic that worked on David’s care to testify but he had passed away before the trial. The mechanic had made a statement but presently it is lost with all the other records. The appellate court shot down Deeb on this point on the grounds that there was testimony presented during the trials that the car was running the night of the murders and taken to the mechanic the following morning. This gets over looked because Deeb won his appeal on other points. But whom testified David’s Malibu was running that night; Anthony Melendez, Gilbert Melendez after he had changed his story a couple times and still first said a Pontiac were asked during the trial, Clifford Oliver and Todd Childers; one of the guys that was with Clifford that night and was the owner of the truck they rode around in that night. During Deeb’s re-trial Christine Juhl would also testify they took David’s Malibu to the mechanic the morning after the murders, that is not her recollection now nor has it been for a number of years and I have questioned her about it many times over the past few years. Not only is she sure that the Malibu wasn’t operational the night of the murders, she says David was with Clifford Oliver in Clifford’s car that night. and that David and Clifford got together long before the 2a.m. time Clifford gives. Christine went to work at Deeb’s store that evening and went outside to smoke a cigarette and she saw David and Clifford in Clifford’s car. She doesn’t know the exact time but she knows it was in the evening but before dark, she thinks it was sometime after 6p.m., does any of this warrant a further or deeper look? Or shouldn’t we hear somebody questioning this on any of the podcast that have come out over the years?
Can u explain why the texmonth artcl says the probono lawyers said this looked like a drug deal gone bad and not a murder4hire. And how david spence could have mistook deebs wife for other girl. I dont know who did it but its sounds like a rando rong place at rong time drug deal.
Hello Marky, actually the drug deal gone bad scenario was widely believed to be the cause or motive for the murders, that was the angle the original detectives were looking into but it never came together. That is not to say that a drug deal gone bad or a drug burn were not the cause nor would it exclude Spence and company, known drug users lacking the means to afford their habits. And the murder for hire could have been precipitated by a drug burn, some one getting the money but not coming up with the goods. Again on the polices reports it is mentioned many times by different people that Kenneth Franks owed someone money for drugs and many of these same witnesses said the same amount he owed; $500.
When police first interviewed Gayle Kelly on July 29th, one week after the murders, she told the investigators that Kenneth had told her he was going to make some big money on a drug deal but he wouldn’t tell her whom he was dealing with for her own safety. Apparently it was someone they both knew but were leery of and Gayle wouldn’t have known he was dealing with. That takes Terry “Tab” Harper out of the picture because Gayle was well aware of Kenneth’s dealings with Harper as she states in the same interview. I’m going to bounce around a little bit, that’s why this case is so intriguing, t’s a complex web of unusual and tragic relationships. It wasn’t Deeb’s wife, althought he stated she was on the insurance policy, it was Gayle Kelly, a 16 year old girl that lived at the Methodist Home, across the street from Deeb’s store. And unlike what you read in the book Careless Whispers or even in the trial transcripts it definitely wasn’t a case of mistaken identity David Spence and the Melendez brothers knrw the girls from the Methodist Home and knew them months before the Rainbow Drive-In opened and Muneer Deeb came into the picture. Yes Gayle Kelly testified she had only run into David a couple times and never said as much as hello to each other, that was a lie. I have talked to Gayle Kelly and she freely admits she lied on the stand and that she knew Spence and the Melendez brothers very well from partying out at the lake. She says she told Vic Feazell this but he wasn’t interested in the truth and she went along with his story that they didn’y know each other. I have heard this from other girls from the home that they knew Spence from partying with him at the lake. Some, well at least one but there were a couple girls that testified for the defense that believe David is innocent solely because he was their friend and partied with them and wouldn’t have done that. The problem with this case as a whole is people get stuck on the mistaken identity, thry look at that and say that doesn’t make sense so everything is off. What they fail to see, and I know I repeat this often, is by creating the mistaken identity it shields the connections these people had with each other and the truth. If it was a case of mistaken identity then there is no connection the killers and victims didn’t know each other and then it was just a random case of extreme violence. But we know that’s not the truth, they did know each other and discovering the roots of the relationships of all involved will lead to the truth.
Since I first read the police reports back in the 90’s and then found that Rhonda Evans, a girl that had runaway with Jill Montgomery from the Methodist Home a couple times and then was one of the few and only one that wasn’t family or lawyers that visited Spence on death row, there are connections and relationships that aren’t in any books or records and we still don’t understand. For instance where did Deeb get the drugs to give freely to the girls from the Methodist Home? Deeb was socially awkward, didn’t have many friends, didn’t have any history of any drug connection until the spring of 1982 and spent most of his free time stalking his true obsession; Kebanna Reed. What changed in the spring of 1982 in Deeb’s life, David Spence started hanging out in Deeb’s store because David’s girlfriend started working for Deeb. And Spence knew the girls from across the street at the Methodist Home from partying out at the lake with them and if the girls ever needed party supplies, alcohol and/or drugs, if they had the money David would hook them up. In the love/hate relationship that existed Deeb didn’t like David hanging out at his store, David could be loud and rude but David seemed to be god friends with these girls, the same girls Deeb wastrying to pay to marry him but none of them would give him the time of day. He could do David one better he had money not only could he get girls alcohol and drugs, he could pay for it. You know someone was going to take advantage of that scenario and the worst offender was Gayle Kelly.
So, a final thought on a possible drug burn. Whom did Kenneth Franks owe $500 to and why did Jill Montgomery and Raylene Rice cash three checks for a little over $600 the day they were killed???
I wanted to follow up on Marky’s question on a possible drug burn and my response on how a possible drug burn was the focus of the original investigation and how it effected the case. When I say original investigation I am talking from the beginning of the investigation on July 14, 1982 until the case was suspended on September 3, 1982. Truman Simons and Dennis Baier took over the case on Friday September 10, 1982 Their first coarse of action was to read over the police reports the previous detectives had made. Simons had been doing this all along in an unofficial capacity since the beginning, taking reports off the desk of other detectives or reading over their shoulders, which created bad blood within the department, but it was Simons way to keep up on the case and when the case was suspended he knew there were things left undone.
There were two obvious treads that had been left dangling. We all know about Muneer Deeb and that he was arrested 3 days later on Monday September 13, exactly 2 months after the murders. The speed in which they arrested Deeb has led some to believe the investigation suffered from tunnel vision. The police reports bare out that wasn’t the case and in regards to Muneer Deeb, Simons and Baier took soft line towards him in the beginning. Truman Simons knew Deeb, they weren’t friends or associates, I guess acquaintances would be the correct description. Simons would go into Deeb’s store and get coffee and probably more important he knew that Deeb hung out at the Skaggs grocery store late at night after Deeb would close his store. Simons and Deeb would hang out and talk. Deeb would tell Simons about his dreams and aspirations, Simons wasn’t aware of the story. So Simons didn’t think Deeb fit the profile of someone that would commit a triple murder. But Deeb’s name had come up, on July 19th Lisa Kader came to the police department and reported Muneer Deeb had killed Kenneth Franks because of Gayle Kelly. That lead needed to be followed up, something the original investigators failed to do. That was one of the dangling threads that needed to be wrapped up. Simons and Baier could have rode over to Deeb’s store and questioned him right there. They decided not to do this, they didn’t want to hassle him at his place of business. They decided to wait until see him late at night after he closed his store, Simons and Baier would get up with Deeb at Skaggs and the could have a casual conversation there. Simons and Baier went to Skaggs that night but Deeb didn’t. But while they were there they did talk the employees that were working. Both Simons and Baier knew the security guard, he was a former Waco Police; Willie Thompkins. Thompkins and Simons were friends and that’s why Simons had started hanging out at Skaggs and became associated with Deeb in the first place. Thompkins and Deeb had gone into business together with some arcade games. The stories Thompkins and cashier Patti Pick told Simons and Baier that night made the officers change their view on Muneer Deeb. His behavior was a little unsettling, like asking Patti Pick to steal a co-worker’s keys so he could gain access to her apartment but it was a huge step from being a creepy stalker to the killer of three teens. Simons and Baier decided to look into Deeb further, he was definitely on their radar. They never got a chance to interview him until after they arrested him. But before they tracked down the Deeb lead, there was another little piece of information sitting out there that Simons and Baier decided to address. The original detectives had looked into this but did not go far enough and this to a degree shows how the original investigators focused on a possible drug connection.
Bobby Brem was a close friend of Kenneth Franks, the original investigators interviewed him a couple times. The first time was Thursday July 15th, two days after the murders. While detectives were interviewing Kenneth’s friend at the station another detective, Porterfield was at the Methodist Home gathering information on Jill Montgomery. Porterfield returns to the station and shares the information he has obtained from the Home. He gets into the information about Jill’s history of running away, how she had stayed at this friend’s house, a guy by the name of Bobby Brem. The other detectives stop him, Bobby Brem we were just interviewing him and he didn’t say anything about this. Porterfield continued yeah this Bobby Brem liked Jill and wanted to date her. Again the other detectives are flabbergasted, what during their interview with Bobby Brem he acted like he didn’t know Jill, when a subject acts like he doesn’t know the victim when they actually do raises red flags and it did so in this case. Waco PD interviewed a second time and were able to establish Bobby Brem knew Jill.
When Simons and Baier first took over the case, this is where they started, they thought Bobby Brem needed to be interviewed again and this is what they did first. Most of the interview went the same as it had with the original investigators; Bobby stated he was Kenneth’s best friend, Kenneth had called him and asked him to go out with Kenneth and the girls the night they were killed but couldn’t because he was grounded, which had been verified by the original detectives. Then Bobby was asked did he know Muneer Deeb and he replied he did and went on to explain the hostility that existed between Kenneth and Deeb. After Bobby had finished his story he was asked, “Why didn’t you tell the detectives this when they interviewed you back in July. Bobby simply replied they never asked.
After I first read this interview, I went back and read the interviews the original investigators conducted with Kenneth’s friends and peers and there is a glaring omission; not once did any detective ask any of the teens was there anyone that Kenneth had a problem or issue with. They did ask about Kenneth’s drug activity and whom he dealt with and hearing about Kenneth owing someone money over drugs they did try to get the name of that person, which they never did. They were so focused on the drug angle, they never asked the simple question; was there anybody that had a beef or problem with Kenneth outside any drug connection. But, again, not to say Deeb and Spence could have something to do with a drug connection. It was later when law enforcement first learned of Deeb’s drug activity or that he was giving girls from the Methodist Home. Although they interviewed many girls from the home, including Gayle Kelly and the girls stated Deeb would give them stuff from the store for free, none of the girls stated that he was giving them alcohol and drugs. In a strange twist of fate, like these case needs anymore strangest, the person that first put law enforcement onto Deeb’s drug activity was David Spence. Spence didn’t have a problem pointing the finger at Muneer Deeb while he was in lock up awaiting his trial for the Pack sexual assault. We see this in his written statement where he admits Deeb asked him to kill Gayle Kelly and David writes he didn’t think Deeb was joking, David was digging his own grave.
So when you look at the police reports you easily see the original detectives were chasing down a drug angle, maybe at the cost of looking in other directions or failing to follow up other leads, like the lead on Muneer Deeb. One could think if they had followed up the Deeb lead when they first got it in July they might have found their drug connection.
Finally after about two years I got the transcripts of the 2019 interview with Dennis Baier. I have to give a huge thank you to the people at the Baylor Institute for Oral History for all their time and assistance they gave responding to my request. Now, for people interested in the Lake Waco Murders, only a small portion of the second interview deals with that case. I am posting all 3 interviews.
Careless Whispers or Contrived Convictions 
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lake-waco-murders-33/id1532911784?i=1000526149395
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https://bloodandbarrels.buzzsprout.com/1793147/9798020-ep-28-lake-waco-murders-part-1
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https://bloodandbarrels.buzzsprout.com/1793147/9829454-ep-28-lake-waco-murders-part-2
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And while we are on the topic of podcast; I continually complain about the content or lack of facts shared in these podcast, and there are many too many to get into at one time, but there is one that comes up in just about all the podcast. It’s not like they are trying to mislead or not tell the truth, it’s more like they just don’t have a general understanding of the case and how it proceeded. The one major disappointing podcast on this point was the Bloody Happy Hour podcast where they interviewed Walter Reaves and actually they asked Reaves about this and he wasn’t completely honest with his answer. I guess it can be argued that he just didn’t remember this but I personally find that hard to believe, I would attribute it more to selective memory on the part of Mr. Reaves, he was very intstrumental in how things played out, he was David Wayne Spence’s attorney at the time. So I just can’t see him not remembering this and unfortunately you see this a lot with this case; the people that should be able to provide answers or clear things up just won’t for whatever reason and you see this again and again. Why???
In this instance I am talking about the sexual assault comitted by David Spence and Gilbert Melendez and how it came about that they ended up with such differing sentences. When Mr. Reaves was asked he answered Gilbert took a plea and David decided on a jury trial, which is true but he didn’t explain the chain of events that he had part in creating. The sexual assault David and Gilbert comitted occurred on Sunday September 5, 1982, it was Labor Day weekend and the 18 year old victim’s parents were away for the holiday. They returned the next day, Monday September 6, 1982, they come home to find their son beat up and need of medical attention. Taken to the hospital the victim gets stitches on the cut on his leg admistered by David Spence. At first the boy is hesitant to discuss the ordeal he had been through, I only add this due to the question of the date the criminal complaint was filed, either September 6th or September 7th, also the victim didn’t know David nor Gilbert, he had just met them that day. He knew the guy they were with and that’s how David and Gilbert came to be at the victim’s home. It was through this third guy; Robert Coleman, that David Spence and Gilbert Melendez were identitified as the culprits of this offense. Once law enforcement gets their names they run a check and find Spence is on parole, they call his parole officer and Spence is picked up on Friday September 9, 1982, the same day Truman Simons and Dennis Baier take over the Lake Waco Murders investigation, Gilbert is picked up about the same time, with in 24 hours of the Spence apprehension. Dating events, as would be in any case, is very important and in particular in this case to debunk some of the falsehooods and myths.
Now we all know government moves slow and the wheels of justice even slower. David and Gilbert had been sitting in the McLennan county jail for a couple weeks, which would be late September 1982, awaiting their fate on the aggravated sexual assault charge when the State offered both David and Gilbert plea deals, plead guilty get 7 years. The actual time they would have spent in prison would have been different, Gilbert could have gotten out on that charge in about three years. David on the other hand had violated his parole so he would have had to finish out that sentence, which was about 18 months and did not run concurrent with the aggravated sexual assault charge. At first David and Gilbert verbally agreed to this plea deal. It was also at the end of September Truman Simons decided to leave the Waco PD and go worth for the county as a jailer. Again the slow moving machinery of our justice system took it’s time to finalize this deal, a couple weeks. Middle of October, 15th or 16th, the assistant D.A. brings the paper work for this deal for David and Gilbert to sign. Gilbert readily signs and is sent off to prison, the same fate awaits David Spence but via his attorney Walter Reaves they request the language of the charge and agreement to be changed. Spence knowing how other inmates in some of Texas’ finer institutions feel and act towards fellow inmates that sexually assault teen ages boys would like his charge to be just aggravated assault not aggravated sexual assault. David’s attorney, again Walter Reaves just in case you forgot, argued that David hadn’t committed a sexual act on the victim, only Gilbert had and that being the case David had only committed aggravated assault. Isn’t it funny how Walter Reaves failed to mention any of this when questioned about this on the podcast. The assistant D.A. has to take this proposal back to the D.A. to get approval of the chnage in language on the deal. Of course this takes time again and about two weeks later a new D.A. gets elected, Vic Feazell. With the election of Vic Feazell, the assistant D.A. that had been working Spence’s aggravated sexual assault charge decides to leave the D.A.’s office, all his cases need to be reassigned to other attorney’s working in the D.A.’s office. Again another time consuming process, actually this case hadn’t been reassigned to anyone when Vic Feazell took office about 8 weeks later in January 1983 and when it came across his desk, being familiar with the status of the Lake Waco Murders investigation, decided Spence had declined the plea deal offered and no deal existed now and that’s how David ended up with a trial jury. David would go to trial in March 1983 and Gilbert would testify against him. Feazell went for an extremely harsh sentence, 90 years, to keep David Spence in prison until they could build their case on the Lake Waco Murders against him. And I would add it was the ease in which Gilbert was willing to cooperate with them in the sexual assault that opened the door to them approaching him with a deal of immunity in the Lake Waco Murders. It was while Gilbert came back to Waco to testify against David in the sexual assault case in March 1983 that he was first interviewed, cajoled or coerced, depending on how you look at it, by Truman Simons into talking about the Lake Waco Murders.
We often hear that Truman Simons went after David Spence,Truman had tunnel vision and once he got on a suspect he would do anything to prove he was right and his suspect was guilty. Many point to Truman going to go work for the jail to be close to David Wayne Spence as a prime example and I heard this on many of the podcast but if we take a look at the facts and chain of events this just isn’t true. Yes Truman Simons did go to work at the jail so he could keep investigating the Lake Waco Murders but not to get close to Spence. When Simons first decided to leave the Waco PD and go work at the jail, David Spence had verbally agreed to a plea deal and if he kept his word he would have been gone, sent to prison just like Gilbert before Truman started working at the jail. Truman didn’t know David was still going to be there when he decided to go to work at the jail and he couldn’t have known because no one knew how that was going to play out after David went back on his word. It’s a little thing I guess but it’s putting all the little things together to get to the whole truth.
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It says that it’s been sent to you. Took screenshot but still can’t figure out how to put it in a comment. It copies but won’t paste 🤷♀️ Sent on 04/02/22
Spam? Trash?
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Oh btw… when looking for similar types of homicides (just to consider the type of perpetrator previously convicted for such crimes…. and the motive) I ended up falling down the OCCK rabbit hole.
Have you read (or listened to as I did to speed up the process/multitask) “The Kill Jar” by J Reuben Appelman? Impressive! Poops all over Careless Whispers IMHO. He was brought up at the same time and in the same area as the victims. And Tim King’s sister highly endorses it in the foreword. That’s a rabbit hole and a half of you need time out from Lake Waco….
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No I have not read The Kill Jar. Honestly it’s really hard to get into reading more true crime novels in the last 6 to 8 years since I decided to put my focus on this case. As I said prior sometimes I look into other current cases just to take a break from the Lake Waco Murders but with those cases there haven’t been any novels published yet, I know a couple are in the works. Really I wish I could dedicate more time to this case, there are so many questions that still need to be answered, I should post a list sometime, if work is slow the next couple days I might start one.
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I lived in Waco from 79 to 83, and knew the victims, as well as the G brothers. Email me. Let’s correspond.
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Hello Sam, can you send me your email???
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Juts relistening to parts of Careless Whispers and have realised I’ve missed a name/friend of KF mentioned. Pat Torres. Ever come across about anything about him?
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Actually I started re-reading Careless Whispers a couple days ago, first time in 8 years and will be the fifth time I have read it. Honestly I’m not a big fan of the book any longer, there are serious inaccuracies and discrepancies just about on every page and we are not talking about small things and tha’s just counting the ones I know about personally just going by the police reports and trial testimony but I have talked to a few people mentioned in the book or that were interviewed by Truman Simons and/or Carlton Stowers that have told me what was written in the book is not a true representation of what happened and/or what they had stated and this includes Gayle Kelly, Christine Juhl, Rhonda Evans, Clifford Oliver. Sure we can debate the credibility of these people but to hear it again and again from so many and knowing the other blatant falsehoods that permeate the book as a whole it’s value as a reliable source is greatly diminished. The only reason I am reading it now is because I have been listening to so many of the podcast and the book Careless Whispers and Michael Hall’s article in Texas Monthly are always the two major sources used and in many cases the only sources used and sometimes I hear things I honestly can’t remember reading in the book but once you read the police reports and trial testimony again the book pales in comparision. I rarely agree with anything Russ Hunt says but in one of these podcast, I believe it was the Bloody Happy Hour podcast he stated Careless Whispers is a fictional story of the Lake Waco Murders, at this point I would have to agree with him on that.
On Patrick Torres there really isn’t much on him, he was Kenneth Franks’ best friend, Kenneth had called him the night of the murders to ask him to give him a ride, Patrick couldn’t because he had to work that evening. It was also Patrick that picked up Kenneth from summer school and actually allowed Kenneth to use his motorcycle that day because Kenneth’s was in the shop getting repaired. And Kenneth riding that bike actually led to one of the more interesting sightings of him that day and gives us another glimpse on how things were going with this investigation. That will be next after a smoke break.
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In the police reports, sorry I don’t have the report right in front of me at the moment but I can get it if necessary, there is a sighting of Kenneth Franks I can’t remember the street name, the witness knew Kenneth and he states he was pretty sure it was Kenneth but Kenneth wasn’t on his motorcycle he was on another bike. The boy described the bike he saw Kenneth on and it matched Patrick Torres’ bike, so this gives this witness’ story credence. The sreet the boy saw Kenneth on, again I can’t remember the name, was the street where the girl Kenneth was seeing at the time lived and the boy thought that’s where Kenneth was headed. This girl is mentioned several times in the reports, funny thing is in the reports she is referred to by two different last names and sometimes by both last names one name being put in parentheses and sometimes a question mark added at the end, clearly showing the police didn’t know and couldn’t figure out why this girl was being referred to by two last names. And although there are to last names we know the police are talking about the same girl because they are referring to her as Kenneth’s girlfriend. In the reports this girlis named Mchelle Shilling or Michelle Lewis or both Shilling and Lewis, strange and never could figure out why until a few years ago. I was talking to Rhonda Evans and I believe I brought up Kenneth’s girlfriend and mentioned both last names Shilling and Lewis and Rhonda got upset with me and was like what are you talking about Kenneth and Michelle Lewis weren’t seeing each other at the time of Kenneth’s murder. I share with her what’s in the police report and give the description that is in the report 13 years old, white female and gave her the address given. Rhonda responded Michelle Lewis was 17 not white and lived at the home. After upsetting Rhonda I decided to check into this, something the Waco PD should have done but didn’t. Michelle Shilling and Michelle Lewis were two different girls, so when people mentioned Michelle Lewis they were not talking about Kenneth’s girlfriend Michelle Shilling as the police put in their reports, they were talking about a completely different girl and the police did talk to Michelle Shilling but never talked to Michelle Lewis because they thought it was the same person. It was just one of those little things that makes you wonder about the investigative skills of the original detectives working the case, just as them not finding out who was Jill’s roommate until November two months after they suspended the case, you would think she would have been someone the police would have wanted to talk to in the beginning of the investigation.
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* just
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And Henry Reyes (Gayle Kelley’s boyfriend)
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Sister you just hit the million dollar issue!!!
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Ponder this question. Well I guest first the facts; Muneer Deebhanded out beer, weed and pills like candy to the girls from the Methodist Home but only the girls not the boys. Not sure if he would sell these items to the boys, there is no evidence that he did and it has been stated many times by many people that Deeb was not a drug dealer, he gave freely to the girls. That being the case don’t you think some young punk wannabe drug dealer aware of the situation would have tried to take advantage of that situation and put Deeb in a jam, what could Deeb do about it???
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Now, since it looks like some one else is willing to go down this rabbitt hole it would be a good time to delve into the forgotten drug angle. I would start with how the book Careless Whispers dealt with it or described it, since for most of us, well at least those of us that don’t live in Waco or Texas it was this book that first introduced us to the Lake Waco Murders. Most issues of this case that Truman Simons didn’t agree with get white washed over at best, maybe a line or two explaining Simons thoughts on the matter and this is how a possible drug related motived was handled in the book but as so many other things in the book Simons’ narrow view is misleading and inaccurate. In Careless Whispers it is stated that the original investigators working the case believed the murders were drug related and were looking in that direction, which is true. The book also says that this belief arose when the bodies were first discovered, that some of the officers and detectives on site thought that whoever did this had to be on drugs or it a drug burn gone bad, again this is true but in the book they make it look like this was the only reason the original detectives were looking at a drug angle and that’s where the problems begin because that is not true and Careless Whispers doesn’t mention the tips Waco PD were getting along those lines, all it says is they thought it could be drug related Truman didn’t he was right and they were wrong, but were they?
If there was anything close to information, tips, leads, rumoras or not that hinted towrd any kind of motive for the murders and repeatedly so it was Kenneth Franks owed someone money over a drug deal and a number of times through out the reports the mount he owed was given by multiple people, $500. So it wasn’t just how the bodies were butchered and sprawn out that led the original investigators consider to the murders to be drug related, it was the one plausible motive they kept hearing again and again. And then when Gayle Kelly was first interviewed on July 20th she told Nicoletti that Kenneth Franks had told her he was making a big drug deal. Kenneth wouldn’t tell Gayle who he was making the deal with but said it was somebody she knew but it was someone they didn’t trust and were wary of and he didn’t want to tell her for her own safety. So the investigators were getting plenty of information in this direction but they just couldn’t come up with any names, they did try.
And this has to make one wonder if they would have followed up the information Lisa Kader gave them on July 19th that Deeb had killed Kenneth Franks because of Gayle Kelly would it had led them to the drug connection they had been so desperately looking for. Or maybe more troubling; why when the staff of the Methodist Home found out what had been going on at the Rainbow Drive-In in regards to Deeb giving their female residents alcohol and drugs they didn’t inform the police? And finally in Careless Whispers it states when Truman Simons first took over the case he didn’t care who got the credit and if he came across anything he would turn it back over to the original investigators, well that is apparently a straight out lie. When he and Dennis Baier were first told about Deeb giving the girls beer and weed and pills why didn’t they go to the original detectives and go hey here is your drug connection. Again that is just another example of how hostile the environment was inside the Waco PD, there wasn’t any cooperation nor any will to work together to solve this case and the detrimental effects caused by that atmosphere still radiate today.
So I have 5 simple questions on the singular issue of a drug connection that have never been answered.
1) Who did Kenneth Franks burn or owe money to???
2) Who was Kenneth planning to make this drug deal with that Gayle Kelly informed Waco PD
about???
3) Deeb was handing out drugs like candy, who was supplying Deeb???
4) Apparently David Spence was using drugs on a regular basis but he had no job nor money,
how was he getting his drugs???
5) On the night of the murders both Deeb and his partner said after they closed the store they
went looking for someone that owed Deeb money, who was this person???
I believe that the answers to all 5 of these questions will be connected some how and you find the answers to these questions you find the true cause or motive behind the Lake Waco Murders.
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But why, if he didn’t even want to do much as tell GK the name of the dealer, would KF involve JM and RR in the drug deal?
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The sirmple and short answer, money. Kenneth needed it, didn’t have any and went to the one person he was sure would help him out, Jill.
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Be warned though… it’s strictly for lateral thinkers only and those who lean more towards the Arthur Conan Doyle/Sherlock Holmes sleuthing approach than the (often misused – because how can all things be equal anyway?) Occam’s razor approach. In fact some would say that the very nature of (in this case arguably) unsolved cases means that the simplest/most obvious option has already been discounted. Having said that I doesn’t appear that family, surrogate family or school were thoroughly investigated. And aren’t you supposed to clear the ground under your feet first?
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Yes I am on Facebook. And I am a advid believer in Occam’s Razor, that approach far surpasses any other deductive reasoning theories. And that’s what this case needs, Hey the crazy farcical narrative makes for an interesting and intriguing story but in the end that’s all it is; a nightmarish tale filled with boogie men that come creeping out of the dark night knives in hand ready to slaughter any victim to appease their blood thirsty fetishes. Yeah that’s going to sell a lot of books but it lends itself very little in the way of reality. For that you need the simple facts, the simple connections, put those together with simple deductive reasoning and you will come to the truth. Henry Reyes was Gayle Kelly’s boy friend by the time of the murders, as least by the end of June 1982 Muneer Deeb knew this. Deeb’s modus operandi when girls he was intersted in became involved with other guys Deeb became jealous of that couple and get upset, which he did the night he saw Gayle kissing her boyfriend, not Kenneth Franks as the fairy tale has been told, If he was mad at Gayle about her realationship it would have been directed towards her and Henry not Gayle and Kenneth. The logical reasoning then would be whatever the problem Deeb had with Gayle and Kenneth had to be something else.
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lauraheaney3863 in response to your question about the families being invesigated, they were to differing degrees. Forget what you have read in Careless Whispers it is in this area where some of the biggest falsehoods in that story are found. We have to deal which each family separately. And keep in mind the Waxahachie PD ran their own investigation on thier end, two of the victims were from Waxahachie; Jill and Raylene. Detectives from Waco made a couple trips to Waxahachie to talk to the two families and to talk to the Waxahachie PD but the majority of the girls lives and families fell to the Waxahachie PD, most the information Waco PD got on the girls they received from the Waxahachie PD The girls families were looked into, there were a few issues that popped up but clearly neither family had anything to do with the murders. The one thing I would mention though is Raylene’s mother never did talk to the police nor anyone for that matter she was just so distruaght, so it was Mr. Rice that provided the information about his daughter’s life and of course there were things he didn’t know, that is understandable. Actually he didn’t know Raylene had taken Jill to Waco until Mr. Franks called the following morning.. With Jill’s family it was very similar, her mother was as equally devastated as well but she did talk to the police but as things went along Jill’s aunt, Jan Thompson, became of the focal contact point for the family and has been pretty much since. I don’t know where I would be without all the help and information Mrs. Thompson has provided and shared with me, words cannot adequately define my sincerest gratitude. And like the Rice family Jill’s family definitely had nothing to do with the murders. And that leaves us with Mr. Franks.
And this is where Careless Whispers is a huge fail, hey if you don’t want to tell the truth don’t say anything at all, don’t fill pages with crap that leds you to tell lie after lie to cover each proceeding lie and that is Careless Whispers when dealing with Richard Franks. As is well known now my Franks was gay, which the book never mentions The one factual thing in the book about Mr. Franks is early in the investigation he was considered a suspect in the murders but ecause the book did not divulge the truth about Mr. Franks lifestyle it couldn’t get into many of those details and justmade up stuff. Just becase I read this is the last couple days I know early in the book it states that Kenneth’s friends remarked that Kenneth’s father was neat or cool or whatever, that there was a limited amount of stress at home between Mr. Franks and Kenneth. Actually the police reports paint a ver different picture. Mr. Franks was extremely uncooperative with the police in the beginning and I guess to be fair that can be somewhat understandable and I guess there will always be the question did the police harbor some preconceived notions because of Mr. Franks lifestyle which could have come off as hostile or was it Mr. Franks who came off hostile because he didn’t like law enforcement prying into his lifestyle. Here is my personel view on the matter, ok I understand Mr. Franks was grieving and would have rather been left alone, much like the Rice family but Mr. Franks interfered with the progress of the investigation, so be it. But then Mr. Franks turned around and complained at the lack of progress of the investigation and that’s where he was definitely wrong, not that the investigation wasn’t progressing very fast it wasn’t but if you aren’t going to share information the police are asking from you don’t cry about the lack of results. There were a couple specific request Waco PD asked of Mr. Franks. Once, only a couple days after the murders detectives came to the house, they wanted to see Kenneth;s room see if they saw or could find anything that could give them a hint or clue into the murders, Mr. Franks refused to allow them in the house. Then they wanted Mr. Franks to come to the station to be interviewed, they just wanted some general information Mr. Franks didn’t want to. It should be added in the same complex where the Franks lived there was a judge, Walter Smith, and he knew and I guess was friends with Mr. Franks and he ended up becoming the go between Waco PD and Mr. Franks, another strange asspect of the case. It was Judge Smith that finally arranged for Mr. Franks to come in and talk to the police, it was about two weeks after the murders and it was at this time they agreed to bring whatever the detectives wanted from Kenneth’s room that the police thought might be helpful. What the detectives had wanted was names and phone numbers of people Kenneth knew and had contact with in the days leading up to the murders, that was a simple enough request but thanks to Mr. Franks that information was withheld from law enforcement for two weeks. When Mr. Franks did meet with the police one thing he did not have they asked for was his phone bill and I’m not sure if he ever did give it to them. In contrast Jill’s mother gave the police two phone bills to cover the time perid they were interested in. And it was at this meeting with police that Mr. Franks frst disclosed to law enforcement that on the night of the murders he was out at the lake from about 9p.m. until a little after midnight and you don’t think that shot up some red flags, why wait two weeks to tell them that? So the police had good reason to look at Mr. Franks as a suspect and then we have what other people stated in the reports. There were a couple of Kenneth’s friends that never wanted to go back to the Franks residence because Mr. Franks came on to them. Back in June stay with a couple frineds at the Northwood apartments, not Gayle and Patti, because there was trouble at home, his friends didn’t know what the triuble was all Kenneth told them was he couldn’t gpo back home. Even Gayle Kelly said there were problems, she stated Kenneth didn’t get along with Mr. Franks live in boyfriend Kenneth King, there was aslo some tension between Mr. Franks and Kenneth over Mr. Franks getting rid of their boat, details a little sketchy on tht one and I believe Gayle also stated that Kenneth did have problems with his father being gay, again Careless Whispers had to pass over all this because it wasn’t truthful about it from the beginning. And it just wasn’t the kids or Kenneth’s friends, Kenneth’s golf team coach called Waco PD and told them they should look into Kenneth’s father. Waco PD had plenty to go on to justify their inclusion of Mr. Franks as viable suspect. I don’t believe Mr. Franks had anything to do with the murders and I believe that was the general and final feeling among those investigating the case. But that does leave us the question why did Truman Simons and Carlton Stowers feel the need to lie about it so badly in the book???
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Forty years ago today, on what would have been a rather typical hot summer night in Waco Texas, friends and family, both young and old, had journeyed out to any of the peaceful and picturesque parks that surround Lake Waco to enjoy the usual summer activities; boating, fishing, water skiing, maybe a few beers, even smoke a little weed, listen to some summer tunes and just in general hang out. Among the scores of park goers that evening were three teenagers; Jill Montgomery,17, Raylene Rice,17 and Kenneth Franks 18. Jill Montgomery had returned to Waco that day to pick up her final paycheck from the city offices for her recent employment at Fort Fisher during her stay at the Methodist Home in Waco. She had just recently moved back to live in her home town of Waxahachie a few weeks earlier. To make this trip and to wrap up things in Waco Jill asked her best friend from Waxahachie, Raylene Rice, if she could drive her to Waco. Raylene was more than happy to provide a ride for her friend, they had spent a lot of time together since Jill’s return and a little excursion down to Waco, about 75 miles away, would be a nice day trip for the two longtime friends. The two happy go lucky teen girls made a few stops; Fort Fisher just to say hi to familiar faces, city hall to pick up Jill’s check, Piggly Wiggly to cash said check and then to Jill’s favorite restaurant in Waco. It was about 6:00 p.m. when the girls arrived at at El Chico’s, prior to leaving Waxahachie the girls had planned and told their families they would be back in Waxahachie at 9:00p.m. to eat dinner with Raylene’s family, then Jill would be home after that, probably around 10:00p.m., so sitting there at El Chino’s the girls had some time to kill and Jill decided to call a boy she had met, dated and still had feelings for; Kenneth Franks.
Kenneth was not home when Jill made her initial call, Kenneth’s father, Richard Franks, informed her that Kenneth had gone out to grab some burgers for their dinner but would be back shortly and she could call back later. Mr. Franks was well aware of the feelings Jill still harbored towards Kenneth were more than mutual with his son. About a half hour passed when Jill called again; this time Kenneth was gone and he was ecstatic to hear from Jill. She was in town had a little time before she had to make the trip back to Waxahachie and asked Kenneth if he wanted to get together to see each other for a little while before she left Waco. Kenneth didn’t have to be asked twice, but the how, where, and when had to be ironed out. As soon as Kenneth got off the phone with Jill, he was calling his close friends in Waco asking if they wanted to get together, as he had a couple girls he wanted to get up with that were in town also. He needed a ride, and as tempting as it might have sounded to his friends, they declined for one reason or another. Although it is not well documented, a third call had to occur in which Kenneth had to inform Jill he wanted to see her but he didn’t have a ride after his friends had turned him down. Finally, the decision was made that Jill and Raylene would pick up Kenneth at his residence and go to Koehne Park. It was perfect; that park had been a favorite hang out for the kids and it was only a hop, skip, and jump from where Kenneth lived. They could all spend some time together, then take Kenneth home first and still make it back in time as planned to eat dinner with Raylene’s family at 9:00 p.m.. One very crucial detail usually over-looked, is Jill at the time, was allowed to stay at home on a probationary basis. Any return to past behavior’s, such as not coming home on time, would force Jill’s mother to send Jill away again to an environment probably worse than that of the Methodist Home which Jill was so happy to get away from. And Jill was happy to be home, happy to be attending her local high school for her senior year the coming fall. She was trying to get a job and save money so she could buy new clothes and such and everything was going in a positive direction in her life. Raylene, as well, seemed to be doing pretty good as a teen, at least as finances go, she had a job, was responsible, although had a habit of getting to work a little late, but she helped her parents the bills. Raylene had to be at work the next morning at 8:00 a.m. and these girls would not have totally blown off their well laid out plans and families that night for whatever reason just doesn’t make sense.
Sometime between 7:30 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. Jill, Raylene and Kenneth arrived at Koehne Park. Many of the other people in the park saw the three kids, some, local youths from Waco that knew Kenneth even exchanged salutations with Kenneth. There didn’t seem to be any problems; the trio seemed to be happy and just having a good time just like the few other dozen people that were at Koehne that evening. Unlike the other dozens of teens, friends and families that were there at the park that evening, Jill Montgomery, Raylene Rice and Kenneth Franks never made it home. If you are here you probably know some details or version or even the controversy that surround the horrendous end that befell those three kids, teens in their spring of life, that fateful night. And just as that tragedy still lingers four decades later, on the shores of Lake Waco, the forever scarred parks that will never be the same and in the conscience of the city itself, the state of Texas and the whole justice system as well, questions and doubts still linger as well. Can anyone say with 100% certainty what really happened, what vehicle or more likely vehicles were used that night or even whom was there? I have been researching and digging into this case for almost 30 years and I honestly have to say I believe and feel with what I have read, dug up and with the conversations I have had with people closely connected to this case the quartet of Muneer Deeb, David Spence, Anthony and Gilbert Melendez still look like the most likely culprits of this odious atrocity’ but can I prove it do any acceptable degree of certainty? NO!!! And now to male matters worse, all the records and files have disappeared and when I talk about files and records I’m talking about over 50 boxes of evidence, interviews, statements, reports, letters and other correspondences. How can that be and whom is responsible for this critical loss? All that remain are the highly redacted Waco Police reports and F.B.I. reports, which anyone can obtain through the freedom of information act but they are nearly useless with all the redactions. Luckily Fred Dannen posted the Waco Police reports on-line unredacted back in the late nineties, it was the only useful thing he ever did with this case but Vic Feazell took them down some years ago. There are those that will ask this happened 40 years ago, why does it matter now? All I can say to that is the truth always matters. Today keep in mind the living victims that have had to suffer for all these years not really knowing the truth but still living with all the unbearable, life changing loss and sorrow just wanting to know the truth. Our hearts should go out to them. And remember Jill Montgomery. Raylene Rice and Kenneth Franks and remember they never got the chance to live their lives to the fullest. Their stories only partially told or known, our memories of them are indelibly marked with the brutality and violence that took them away. The only way to honestly and completely tell their story is to find the truth. And as the years pass, and more of those close to the case leave us each year, remember there are still those out there that could still provide some of the answers to some of the questions that still remain and linger 40 years on.
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It’s been one year since I have posted anything, as the years go by the flow of information dries up to nothing and now we are at the 41st anniversary of the fateful night that was the Lake Waco Murders. Not that the world has been totally devoid of new material on the Lake Waco Murders. In the past year I have had a few interesting communications. Mainly just other parties interested in finding the truth but you always encounter something out of the ordinary. The most interesting this past year was a gentleman contacting me and telling me he has a friend that believes they are the reincarnation of Jill Montgomery. This guy didn’t know if he believed his friend and wanted to know if there was anyway to determine if his friend was telling the truth, like if they could provide any information that would led one to believe their claim. My first response was. “ask her who killed her”? I kept an open mind, this person apparently had been having these flashbacks or memories she was unfamiliar with and started keeping journals and this had been going on for years. I was very interested in reading what she might have put in those journals in the end it came to nothing but it kept me intrigued for a few months.
And the murders are still a very popular subject in the podcast world, many have come out in the last 6 to 8 months, which I will share for I have nothing better to offer. but I don’t get too excited about the new podcast as I use to mainly because they are just retreads of the same information and stories we have been hearing for decades. In the indelible words of Pink Floyd; “Year after year. Running over the same old ground. What have we found? Well, that is one question I can answer; Nothing!!! I wonder why people just want to keep telling the same story we’ve been hearing for close to 40 years now. What does it add or what do we gain? I know I can ramble on about all the unanswered questions that remain and there are so many and I could go on and on, which I have ad nauseum. But can we please stop hearing about Terry “Tab” Harper and James Russell Bishop, there will never be anything that connects those two guys to the murders. One was dragged in purely by the teenage rumor mill and the other never had any connection other than the San Diego police called Waco police to get information on him and Waco PD decided to take a look at him. Can we delve into areas, aspects and subjects that have never received the scrutiny others have? Again there are many but for simplicity I’ll keep it to just one. the car!!! What car you say? Let’s talk about a Pontiac.
Much has been written and opined about Gilbert Melendez’s changing stories in the statements he gave in March 1983 in regards to the car they were in the night of July 13, 1982. What has not be question nearly enough are his initial responses he gave when asked that question when asked during both trials. In Both his initial response was he thought they were in a Pontiac. Yes, in one trial he does say it was a gold Pontiac and he did say it was David’s car. Actually he stated it was David’s car during both trials, So maybe he just thought David’s car was a Pontiac, just for the record David’s car was a Gold Chevy Malibu. So on the surface, maybe it is just a simple mistake but when you dig deep into the records and reports, which is another problem because they have disappeared, you will find the vehicle most mentioned is a Silver Pontiac. And for those that point to the fact that David nor his Gold Malibu were not seen at Koehne Park that night but a Silver Pontiac was seen, with two guys in it and it was parked right next to Raylene’s Orange Pinto. No one saw the kids in the vicinity but no one saw the kids leave the park either. Would these two unrelated references to a Pontiac be enough to to garner the interest of detectives? Maybe not, but remember the whole investigation started when Richard Franks found a Silver Pontiac sitting in Midway Park while he was looking for his son Kenneth, who hadn’t returned home. The car had been vandalized. in the front seat two hairbrushes and a screw driver were found and in the back seat was a towel. Common items to find in a car, I don’t think anyone would question that. But when you read Anthony Melendez’s first statement, he gave two, and he was questioned about it when he testified during the trial, he repeated the same story. Keep in mind much of Anthony’s testimony is self serving in this case he was afraid of David or what David was going to do and grabbed whatever he could from the car to defend himself. To be fair, the Melendez brothers had lived with David until they had a fallen out when David did exhibit violent behavior which included tying up his girlfriend and dragging her behind his truck and finally taking a hatchet to said truck and the Melendez brothers apparently didn’t have much contact with David after that until about the time of the murders. They did run in the same drug circles, so there would have been some contact. Again would the mention of a screw driver along with the other information be enough for investigators to take a harder look?
By now, well if you have been following this page, we all know who owned the Silver Pontiac Kenneth’s father found in the park, that would be one Clifford Oliver. The same Clifford Oliver that testified that he and his friends got together with David Spence at about 2a.m. that night. Clifford Oliver is actually mentioned a lot in both the police reports and trial transcripts and he did testify twice, first during the Grand Jury and then during David Spence’s first trial. There is plenty to question in regards to Clifford Oliver such as that same Silver Pontiac he tried to report as stolen for insurance money but got caught without being charged. But the biggest red flag of all, in December 1982 a girlfriend of Mr. Oliver’s called the crime stoppers hotline and reported that Clifford had told her, her sister and brother in-law that David Spence had committed the murders and Clifford took them to where the murders had occurred and even how they drove to the area the kids were killed. Waco PD did nothing with this information but it was passed on to Truman Simons and the Sherriff’s office. They set up an interview with Clifford, which he failed to attend. When he finally did come in the following day it was learned the reason Clifford didn’t make it for the original interview was because he wanted to get his story straight with one of his friends that were with him on the night of July 13th and then he took off, just as he had done when he got caught on the car insurance scam. Doesn’t this raise red flags in anyone’s minds??? Don’t you think this might get at least a mention in any of the dozens of podcast that have come out in the last couple decades? But again, nothing, total silence on this subject. True these are nothing more than allegations, accusations and innuendos but don’t they deserve a look. But people don’t look, even those that say they are digging for the truth, they just don’t dig deep enough. And you need to dig deep to find maybe the best reason to question what car was used that night,
Muneer Deeb spent his time wisely while he was in prison, he learned American law which was vastly different from his home country of Jordan. And he all know that it was this that led to him being granted a re-trial on appeal and eventually his release. What is not known as well are the points of error that Deeb and his lawyer did not win on. Actually it was a point the lawyer raised after he was assigned the case. From the beginning Deeb had been trying to prove that David Spence’s Malibu wasn’t in running order the night of the murders. He had requested David Spence’s girlfriend Christine Juhl to testify for the defense but she refused. Deeb even wanted the mechanic that worked on David’s care to testify but he had passed away before the trial. The mechanic had made a statement but presently it is lost with all the other records. The appellate court shot down Deeb on this point on the grounds that there was testimony presented during the trials that the car was running the night of the murders and taken to the mechanic the following morning. This gets over looked because Deeb won his appeal on other points. But whom testified David’s Malibu was running that night; Anthony Melendez, Gilbert Melendez after he had changed his story a couple times and still first said a Pontiac were asked during the trial, Clifford Oliver and Todd Childers; one of the guys that was with Clifford that night and was the owner of the truck they rode around in that night. During Deeb’s re-trial Christine Juhl would also testify they took David’s Malibu to the mechanic the morning after the murders, that is not her recollection now nor has it been for a number of years and I have questioned her about it many times over the past few years. Not only is she sure that the Malibu wasn’t operational the night of the murders, she says David was with Clifford Oliver in Clifford’s car that night. and that David and Clifford got together long before the 2a.m. time Clifford gives. Christine went to work at Deeb’s store that evening and went outside to smoke a cigarette and she saw David and Clifford in Clifford’s car. She doesn’t know the exact time but she knows it was in the evening but before dark, she thinks it was sometime after 6p.m., does any of this warrant a further or deeper look? Or shouldn’t we hear somebody questioning this on any of the podcast that have come out over the years?
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Can u explain why the texmonth artcl says the probono lawyers said this looked like a drug deal gone bad and not a murder4hire. And how david spence could have mistook deebs wife for other girl. I dont know who did it but its sounds like a rando rong place at rong time drug deal.
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Hello Marky, actually the drug deal gone bad scenario was widely believed to be the cause or motive for the murders, that was the angle the original detectives were looking into but it never came together. That is not to say that a drug deal gone bad or a drug burn were not the cause nor would it exclude Spence and company, known drug users lacking the means to afford their habits. And the murder for hire could have been precipitated by a drug burn, some one getting the money but not coming up with the goods. Again on the polices reports it is mentioned many times by different people that Kenneth Franks owed someone money for drugs and many of these same witnesses said the same amount he owed; $500.
When police first interviewed Gayle Kelly on July 29th, one week after the murders, she told the investigators that Kenneth had told her he was going to make some big money on a drug deal but he wouldn’t tell her whom he was dealing with for her own safety. Apparently it was someone they both knew but were leery of and Gayle wouldn’t have known he was dealing with. That takes Terry “Tab” Harper out of the picture because Gayle was well aware of Kenneth’s dealings with Harper as she states in the same interview. I’m going to bounce around a little bit, that’s why this case is so intriguing, t’s a complex web of unusual and tragic relationships. It wasn’t Deeb’s wife, althought he stated she was on the insurance policy, it was Gayle Kelly, a 16 year old girl that lived at the Methodist Home, across the street from Deeb’s store. And unlike what you read in the book Careless Whispers or even in the trial transcripts it definitely wasn’t a case of mistaken identity David Spence and the Melendez brothers knrw the girls from the Methodist Home and knew them months before the Rainbow Drive-In opened and Muneer Deeb came into the picture. Yes Gayle Kelly testified she had only run into David a couple times and never said as much as hello to each other, that was a lie. I have talked to Gayle Kelly and she freely admits she lied on the stand and that she knew Spence and the Melendez brothers very well from partying out at the lake. She says she told Vic Feazell this but he wasn’t interested in the truth and she went along with his story that they didn’y know each other. I have heard this from other girls from the home that they knew Spence from partying with him at the lake. Some, well at least one but there were a couple girls that testified for the defense that believe David is innocent solely because he was their friend and partied with them and wouldn’t have done that. The problem with this case as a whole is people get stuck on the mistaken identity, thry look at that and say that doesn’t make sense so everything is off. What they fail to see, and I know I repeat this often, is by creating the mistaken identity it shields the connections these people had with each other and the truth. If it was a case of mistaken identity then there is no connection the killers and victims didn’t know each other and then it was just a random case of extreme violence. But we know that’s not the truth, they did know each other and discovering the roots of the relationships of all involved will lead to the truth.
Since I first read the police reports back in the 90’s and then found that Rhonda Evans, a girl that had runaway with Jill Montgomery from the Methodist Home a couple times and then was one of the few and only one that wasn’t family or lawyers that visited Spence on death row, there are connections and relationships that aren’t in any books or records and we still don’t understand. For instance where did Deeb get the drugs to give freely to the girls from the Methodist Home? Deeb was socially awkward, didn’t have many friends, didn’t have any history of any drug connection until the spring of 1982 and spent most of his free time stalking his true obsession; Kebanna Reed. What changed in the spring of 1982 in Deeb’s life, David Spence started hanging out in Deeb’s store because David’s girlfriend started working for Deeb. And Spence knew the girls from across the street at the Methodist Home from partying out at the lake with them and if the girls ever needed party supplies, alcohol and/or drugs, if they had the money David would hook them up. In the love/hate relationship that existed Deeb didn’t like David hanging out at his store, David could be loud and rude but David seemed to be god friends with these girls, the same girls Deeb wastrying to pay to marry him but none of them would give him the time of day. He could do David one better he had money not only could he get girls alcohol and drugs, he could pay for it. You know someone was going to take advantage of that scenario and the worst offender was Gayle Kelly.
So, a final thought on a possible drug burn. Whom did Kenneth Franks owe $500 to and why did Jill Montgomery and Raylene Rice cash three checks for a little over $600 the day they were killed???
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https://www.itsfoulplay.com/s20-ep1-murder-at-lake-wako/
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https://www.itsfoulplay.com/s20-ep2-murder-at-lake-waco/
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https://www.itsfoulplay.com/s20-ep3-murder-at-lake-waco/
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https://www.itsfoulplay.com/s20-ep4-murder-at-lake-waco/
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https://www.google.com/search?q=lake+waco+murders&oq=lake+wa&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqCQgCECMYJxiKBTIGCAAQRRg5MgkIARAjGCcYigUyCQgCECMYJxiKBTINCAMQLhiDARixAxiABDINCAQQLhiDARixAxiABDIGCAUQRRhBMgYIBhBFGDwyBggHEEUYPNIBCDg0ODNqMGo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:4cb7579f,vid:Pyzt6wAWCG4
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https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-lake-waco-murders-part-1/id1537715382?i=1000570657732
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https://gritswithasideofmurder.com/podcast/119-the-lake-waco-murders-part-1/
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I wanted to follow up on Marky’s question on a possible drug burn and my response on how a possible drug burn was the focus of the original investigation and how it effected the case. When I say original investigation I am talking from the beginning of the investigation on July 14, 1982 until the case was suspended on September 3, 1982. Truman Simons and Dennis Baier took over the case on Friday September 10, 1982 Their first coarse of action was to read over the police reports the previous detectives had made. Simons had been doing this all along in an unofficial capacity since the beginning, taking reports off the desk of other detectives or reading over their shoulders, which created bad blood within the department, but it was Simons way to keep up on the case and when the case was suspended he knew there were things left undone.
There were two obvious treads that had been left dangling. We all know about Muneer Deeb and that he was arrested 3 days later on Monday September 13, exactly 2 months after the murders. The speed in which they arrested Deeb has led some to believe the investigation suffered from tunnel vision. The police reports bare out that wasn’t the case and in regards to Muneer Deeb, Simons and Baier took soft line towards him in the beginning. Truman Simons knew Deeb, they weren’t friends or associates, I guess acquaintances would be the correct description. Simons would go into Deeb’s store and get coffee and probably more important he knew that Deeb hung out at the Skaggs grocery store late at night after Deeb would close his store. Simons and Deeb would hang out and talk. Deeb would tell Simons about his dreams and aspirations, Simons wasn’t aware of the story. So Simons didn’t think Deeb fit the profile of someone that would commit a triple murder. But Deeb’s name had come up, on July 19th Lisa Kader came to the police department and reported Muneer Deeb had killed Kenneth Franks because of Gayle Kelly. That lead needed to be followed up, something the original investigators failed to do. That was one of the dangling threads that needed to be wrapped up. Simons and Baier could have rode over to Deeb’s store and questioned him right there. They decided not to do this, they didn’t want to hassle him at his place of business. They decided to wait until see him late at night after he closed his store, Simons and Baier would get up with Deeb at Skaggs and the could have a casual conversation there. Simons and Baier went to Skaggs that night but Deeb didn’t. But while they were there they did talk the employees that were working. Both Simons and Baier knew the security guard, he was a former Waco Police; Willie Thompkins. Thompkins and Simons were friends and that’s why Simons had started hanging out at Skaggs and became associated with Deeb in the first place. Thompkins and Deeb had gone into business together with some arcade games. The stories Thompkins and cashier Patti Pick told Simons and Baier that night made the officers change their view on Muneer Deeb. His behavior was a little unsettling, like asking Patti Pick to steal a co-worker’s keys so he could gain access to her apartment but it was a huge step from being a creepy stalker to the killer of three teens. Simons and Baier decided to look into Deeb further, he was definitely on their radar. They never got a chance to interview him until after they arrested him. But before they tracked down the Deeb lead, there was another little piece of information sitting out there that Simons and Baier decided to address. The original detectives had looked into this but did not go far enough and this to a degree shows how the original investigators focused on a possible drug connection.
Bobby Brem was a close friend of Kenneth Franks, the original investigators interviewed him a couple times. The first time was Thursday July 15th, two days after the murders. While detectives were interviewing Kenneth’s friend at the station another detective, Porterfield was at the Methodist Home gathering information on Jill Montgomery. Porterfield returns to the station and shares the information he has obtained from the Home. He gets into the information about Jill’s history of running away, how she had stayed at this friend’s house, a guy by the name of Bobby Brem. The other detectives stop him, Bobby Brem we were just interviewing him and he didn’t say anything about this. Porterfield continued yeah this Bobby Brem liked Jill and wanted to date her. Again the other detectives are flabbergasted, what during their interview with Bobby Brem he acted like he didn’t know Jill, when a subject acts like he doesn’t know the victim when they actually do raises red flags and it did so in this case. Waco PD interviewed a second time and were able to establish Bobby Brem knew Jill.
When Simons and Baier first took over the case, this is where they started, they thought Bobby Brem needed to be interviewed again and this is what they did first. Most of the interview went the same as it had with the original investigators; Bobby stated he was Kenneth’s best friend, Kenneth had called him and asked him to go out with Kenneth and the girls the night they were killed but couldn’t because he was grounded, which had been verified by the original detectives. Then Bobby was asked did he know Muneer Deeb and he replied he did and went on to explain the hostility that existed between Kenneth and Deeb. After Bobby had finished his story he was asked, “Why didn’t you tell the detectives this when they interviewed you back in July. Bobby simply replied they never asked.
After I first read this interview, I went back and read the interviews the original investigators conducted with Kenneth’s friends and peers and there is a glaring omission; not once did any detective ask any of the teens was there anyone that Kenneth had a problem or issue with. They did ask about Kenneth’s drug activity and whom he dealt with and hearing about Kenneth owing someone money over drugs they did try to get the name of that person, which they never did. They were so focused on the drug angle, they never asked the simple question; was there anybody that had a beef or problem with Kenneth outside any drug connection. But, again, not to say Deeb and Spence could have something to do with a drug connection. It was later when law enforcement first learned of Deeb’s drug activity or that he was giving girls from the Methodist Home. Although they interviewed many girls from the home, including Gayle Kelly and the girls stated Deeb would give them stuff from the store for free, none of the girls stated that he was giving them alcohol and drugs. In a strange twist of fate, like these case needs anymore strangest, the person that first put law enforcement onto Deeb’s drug activity was David Spence. Spence didn’t have a problem pointing the finger at Muneer Deeb while he was in lock up awaiting his trial for the Pack sexual assault. We see this in his written statement where he admits Deeb asked him to kill Gayle Kelly and David writes he didn’t think Deeb was joking, David was digging his own grave.
So when you look at the police reports you easily see the original detectives were chasing down a drug angle, maybe at the cost of looking in other directions or failing to follow up other leads, like the lead on Muneer Deeb. One could think if they had followed up the Deeb lead when they first got it in July they might have found their drug connection.
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Finally after about two years I got the transcripts of the 2019 interview with Dennis Baier. I have to give a huge thank you to the people at the Baylor Institute for Oral History for all their time and assistance they gave responding to my request. Now, for people interested in the Lake Waco Murders, only a small portion of the second interview deals with that case. I am posting all 3 interviews.
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©Baylor University 1 Baylor University Institute for Oral History Dennis Baier Oral History Memoir Interview Number 1 Interviewed by Sean Sutcliffe September 13, 2019 Waco, Texas Project: Waco and McLennan County (General) SUTCLIFFE: This is Sean Sutcliffe from the Waco-McLennan County Library. Today is Friday the thirteenth, September 13, 2019, and I am interviewing, for the first time, Mr. Dennis Baier. Our interview is taking place at Waco-McLennan County Library and is sponsored by Baylor’s Institute for Oral History as part of its Waco and McLennan County project. So, with that having been said, let’s just find out a little bit about you. When and where were you born? BAIER: Born in Enid, Oklahoma, 1952. August of 1952. SUTCLIFFE: Tell me—this isn’t necessarily meant to be a genealogy lesson, but tell me a little bit about your family. |00:00:47| BAIER: Okay. My dad was raised on a farm in Missouri. He was born in 1919, raised on a farm in Missouri, left home when he was fourteen, moved into town with an uncle so he could finish his high school. Ultimately, he went to University of Missouri for a year or
©Baylor University 2 so before the war broke out, or there was rumor of the war, and then he enlisted in the army and got into the air corps and was a pilot for thirty years in the air force. And, of course, he was in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. I mean, he served all three theatres. Mother was a stay-at-home mom. She was born in ’21 and was raised with five—there were five kids in our family. I was the next to the youngest—three older sisters and a younger brother. And we moved about every three years. And then when Dad was assigned to go to Vietnam in ’64, I think it was, we bought—or he bought our first house here in Waco because there was some other retired military people that he knew that lived in Waco, so Mom would have somebody to know. |00:02:04| And then when—he spent a year—eighteen months in Vietnam. Then he was assigned to the Pentagon and was there for four or five years, and then when he retired, we moved back to Waco in my junior year—my junior and senior year at Waco High, and then went—then I went to Southwest Texas [State University], which is I think Texas State now. Tried to play football, and that didn’t last long. I found out there were real athletes. And tried to rodeo a little bit, hitchhiked all over the state of Texas—some neighboring states. Fell into policing by pure accident. |00:02:53| I was going to Fresno, California. A friend of mine up there, his dad owned a roofing company. And he said, “What are you doing?” I said, “Well, I’m working at 7-Eleven and going to school part time and working part time.” And he said, “Why don’t you come up here?” And I said okay. So, I loaded all my worldly belongings in Volkswagen bug
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©Baylor University 3 and was having lunch with a friend of mine, and he always wanted to be a cop. And he said, “Come on down and apply with me.” I go, “I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it.” And he says, “Well, would you rather be the chaser or the ‘chasee’?” Because there were several instances prior to that that I was the ‘chasee.’ And so, I went and applied, and they ended up hiring me and didn’t hire him. Do you want me to go on through? Or more about the family? SUTCLIFFE: Well, just to follow up. Is the reason y’all ended up in Waco in ’64—was solely because your dad knew of some other people? |00:03:56| BAIER: Yeah, there were other retired air force people that had retired in Waco, and that’s the reason he picked Waco. Now, he was assigned here in Waco in, like ’54, and my brother was born in Waco. But—and then after that, I think we moved. We went from there to Germany, and then to Harlingen, and I think Norfolk, Virginia—Stead Air Force Base in Reno, outside of Reno, and that’s when he went to Vietnam—that year. But that’s—and I had talked—I remember talking to him about it later on in life, and he said, “Well, I was going into a war zone. I didn’t know if I was going to come back, and I wanted to make certain that”—his wife, my mother, and kids, had a house. And that’s why we ended up in Waco in ’64. SUTCLIFFE: Where did you go to school when you—or where were you going to school when you graduated? BAIER: Waco High. Junior and senior year—’70, 1970.
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©Baylor University 4 SUTCLIFFE: Now, as I mentioned the other day when we first met, you know—for cops, it’s an investigation; for normal people, it’s snooping, and for librarians, it’s research. (Baier laughs) So, I was doing research, and I think I found where you may have been active in high school sports. |00:05:19| BAIER: Yes. SUTCLIFFE: What did you play? BAIER: I played, well, baseball, basketball, and football—played them all. SUTCLIFFE: And so, when you graduated from high school, what were your hopes, dreams, fantasies, plans, whatever? |00:05:43| BAIER: Well, as a—I was not a—I was not a goal setter. I was kind of a—I wouldn’t say a flower child of the sixties, but I was one that was truly, it’s just like my—I was going to pick everything up and go to Fresno, California. And I—I mean, that’s kind of the way that I looked at life at that time. And so—and the only thing I really knew or wanted when I graduated, I knew I wanted—you know, I wanted to play football. And that was— |00:06:25| I remember reading a book years ago. It was called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Have you read it?
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©Baylor University 5 SUTCLIFFE: I haven’t. We have it, but I haven’t read it. BAIER: Yeah, it has nothing to do with Zen, per se, nothing to do with motorcycle maintenance. But the key point that I found in it, that I read in there is that—the father was a professor at a college. He and his son and a group of people went on a motorcycle deal up—up around the Northwest, I think it was. Anyway, the dad was talking to his son about what his hopes and dreams were, and the dad said, “Most people should not go to college right out of high school, because they really don’t know what they’re doing. They have no goal in mind. They need to go and find out what the real world is like and work and experience things in life before they actually invest in a college education.” And when I read that, I go, That was me. |00:07:28| You know, I need to either go work, and I did work after a year, year and a half of college, in construction, but I had no business—I should have either gone into the military or gone into the workforce some place and—rather than go to college. Because I—like I say, when I found out that they didn’t check roll—I go, “I don’t have to be here?” And you know, I had a professor tell me, “No, you’ve already paid your money. I don’t care.” I go, “Wow, far out!” |00:08:11| So, I didn’t—the first year I did real well. The second year, I was really—I wasn’t struggling with my grades. I just wasn’t going to class. And my money ran out, and I had to go to work. And I worked construction for a while, then went back to school and
©Baylor University 6 worked construction, and then, like I say, came back to MCC [McLennan Community College] because it was a little cheaper college than Southwest Texas or anything else. Ultimately ended up, like I say, getting on the PD [police department] and getting my degree through Baylor. SUTCLIFFE: What kind of student were you in high school? |00:08:51| BAIER: I was the kind of student that—and this is really what got me through my freshman year in college—is I would pay attention in class, because the instructors are going to tell you what you need to know for the tests. I very seldom opened up a book at home. I took notes in class. So, I was probably a decent attendee for the class, but as far as studying or reading or anything like that, I never—I don’t think I ever read a book that wasn’t assigned to me until I was probably twenty-eight. I happened to pick up The Stand, by Stephen King and read it. And I said to myself, “Man, if that’s out there and I don’t know about it, what else is out there?” You know, and that’s when I started reading much, much more. SUTCLIFFE: I don’t want to make an assumption. Was it football that took you to Southwest Texas, or how did you decide to go there? |00:09:53| BAIER: It was football. It was football. I had a sister down there, and I had visited her before. And I loved the campus. It was a—at that time, I think the population was 10,000 students and 10,000 people—residents, so basically the whole city was geared for the
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©Baylor University 7 students, and I thought, Well, that ought to work out, you know. And it was semi-isolated then. Right now, it’s just on the path between San Antonio and Dallas. Everything has grown up so much there. Yeah, like I say I liked my first year there, but I just didn’t apply myself, and that’s—and looking back I had no business wasting that money or my time. SUTCLIFFE: Where did y’all live when y’all lived here in Waco—both times, I guess? |00:10:43| BAIER: Lived—Dad bought a house off of Robinwood [Drive], out off—right across from where MCC is now. It was the new Waco High School. Well, the new Waco High School wasn’t even there in ’64. I don’t think it was there until ’72 or so. SUTCLIFFE: So, that begs the question. Were you one of those who would race down—was it Mockingbird [Lane], that hill over there? |00:11:09| BAIER: No, no. No. Of course, at that time, I didn’t have a car. I hitchhiked everywhere I went. But yeah, Mockingbird Lane, yeah that was a—even after I started policing, we were always getting complaints, and they ended up putting up speedbumps, I think, on the street. And I remember talking to one of the traffic people there, but one of the first people that got a ticket was a resident there, and I go, “Oh. Oh, Mockingbird Lane.” SUTCLIFFE: What did your parents hope that you would do out of high school? |00:11:45|
©Baylor University 8 BAIER: You know, I think it was a—we were basically ingrained in us that we were going to college. My brother went to [Texas] A&M and got a degree in some kind of engineering. He was really focused. My oldest sister went to Tarleton [State University], was focused. My next oldest one, she was—shoot, I think she’s got a photographic memory. She just remembers everything she reads and very intelligent. She went to Southwest Texas, and then the other one, the next oldest sister—she went to North Texas, got a degree in teaching, but it was amazing because I think she graduated summa cum laude or something like that. But she was not as bright, but she was disciplined—where my sister that was really smart, she never studied. You know, and there I was stuck, wasn’t smart and didn’t study, so I had two strikes against me right away. SUTCLIFFE: Was there any history of law enforcement in your family? |00:12:53| BAIER: Unh-uh, other than in fact, my dad—I talked to my dad about going into the military out of high school, and of course, Vietnam War was going on, and he said, “Why do you want to go?” I said, “I don’t know.” And he says, “Well, if you’re going to make a career and learn a job skill, then go do it. You will not find a better place.” He said, “But if you’re going in just to prove yourself a man, they will chew you up and spit you out.” And at that time in my life, and even today, I was concerned about signing my name to a commitment. |00:13:30|
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©Baylor University 10 |00:15:33| BAIER: Well, I didn’t have a car, and the only way to get to and from one location to the next was to hitchhike, and generally it was an—I had some—I really didn’t have any harrowing experiences. In fact, I had some real interesting ones where—and again, I had the girlfriend I was dating in Waco, so a lot of weekends I’d hitchhike from San Marcos, back. And back then it wasn’t as bad. Austin was the only town that I had trouble getting through, because you know what I mean, once you get in Austin it’s—and people can’t stop even if they wanted to. |00:16:12| I did have one guy at a—it was a—he was like a food machine filler. I mean, you know like the sandwiches and stuff back then. They’d put them—anyway, he operated between, I guess, San Antonio and Dallas, and he picked me up one time and took me all the way to Waco. Second time—he saw me walking through Austin along the access road. He turned around and picked me up again. And you know, I thanked him because I was in South Austin at the time, and I knew I was going to have to walk all the way through Austin to get on the outskirts. |00:16:52| And then another time, I get picked up on the north side of Austin by a guy in a Lincoln. And he said, “Where you going?” I said, “To Waco.” He says, “Gosh, I wish you were going to Dallas. I’m just so tired.” And I found out he was a retired Dallas Cowboy football player that had moved his business from Dallas to San Antonio. About three
©Baylor University 11 weeks later or a month later, I was almost in the same spot. He pulls over and said, “Would you drive? I got to sleep.” So I got in this brand-new Lincoln. You know, I was twenty, nineteen years old, driving a Lincoln down Interstate 35. And yeah, that—like I say, I really had, other than—and then I’ve hitchhiked to Abilene and Corpus Christi, and mostly, it was to visit friends that were there, and really, really never had any major issues. Had to walk a lot, but I found it—back then I had short hair, and I had a sign that said, “Student, Southwest Texas State University,” and a lot of people would pick me up just based on that, you know? So, I don’t think they’d have picked me up how I look now, but— SUTCLIFFE: (laughs) Well, that was interesting. I hadn’t expected you to mention being a hitchhiker, so when I heard that I thought, Well, that’s curious. |00:18:23| BAIER: Yeah. Like I said, I never had—one of the first times I got picked up in a van. And there was—it looked like “The Mod Squad.” There was a longhaired white dude, a black dude, and a Hispanic female, and they’re in this panel van. And I get in, and they say, Where you going? I said, “Well, I’m going to San Marcos. Where you all headed?” They said, Well—Austin. I said, “Really? Austin, Texas? What are you doing there?” She says, “Well, we got caught with some drugs and we’re due in federal court.” And I go, “Oh no.” But they were cool. I mean, they didn’t offer me any, and of course, I wouldn’t have accepted it even at the time. But yeah, I met some interesting people hitchhiking. SUTCLIFFE: That’s even funnier now, given what you ended up doing in your career.
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©Baylor University 12 BAIER: Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean I just knew then. I got all paranoid that they were being followed by the police now and that they had all sorts of drugs in the car or in the van. But it was a typically sixties panel van with psychedelic colors all inside. Outside was pretty plain, but inside was—it was decked out. SUTCLIFFE: So, you packed up your bug, you were fixing to head to California, but a friend talked you into applying for the PD. BAIER: Um-hm. SUTCLIFFE: What was the process of that? |00:15:33|BAIER: Well, it was much more limited than today. If I were in the same position today, I don’t think they would’ve hired me. But back then, you basically took a physical test which was push-ups, sit-ups, run fifty yards or twenty-five yards. Then you took a civil service test, and if you passed it, then you got into an oral interview board with assistant chiefs and chiefs. And the only—I didn’t have a problem with any of it. The only question I had with them was—one of the assistant chiefs asked me, When we put you in patrol, are we going to have to repair vehicles every week with you? Because I’d had some minor accidents up to that point. And I said, “Well, I hope I’ve matured.” |00:21:01| In fact, they were—I got a—they were going to—I had to go before Judge Joe Johnson because they were going to suspend my license. And I told him I—and that was right before that, and I had—like I say, my hair was longer at the time, and I had a bad experience with a cop. I mean, it was a—I made my application, waiting for acceptance,
©Baylor University 13 and I’d already talked to Joe Johnson about it. He says, “One more ticket and your driver’s license is mine.” I said, “Yes sir, I understand.” So, I was going to—a friend was selling some cattle at the West Auction [West Auction Inc] barn. And it was about—it was in the evening time. And I was headed out there in my Volkswagen bug, and I got stopped there in Lacy Lakeview for running a red light or a stop sign. |00:21:56| And he made me go through all this field sobriety test, and I said, “I haven’t had anything to drink.” And he goes, “No, I need you to walk the line. I need you to touch your nose.” And he said, “Well, I don’t think you’re drunk, but I’m going to write you a ticket for speeding.” And I said, “What, I wasn’t speeding!” He goes, “You’re going to tell it to the judge.” And I go, “I’m applying for the Waco Police Department, and if I get another ticket, they’re going to suspend my license.” He goes, “You just pay my salary. We don’t even send our tickets to Austin.” And I was infuriated. And, of course, I paid the ticket, but that put a real poor taste in my mouth about policing. But that’s kind of the way, I guess, it was back then in some small towns, so— SUTCLIFFE: Prior to that what kind, if I may ask, what kind of experiences or encounters with the police had you had, if any? |00:22:57| BAIER: Yeah, most of them were bad. I mean, they truly were. One of them—I got a ticket for running a stop sign by a troop that was still there when I got hired, and it was the stop sign at Twenty-Fifth [Street] and Park Lake [Drive]. And I could see where he
©Baylor University 14 was sitting, and he pulled me over at the 7-Eleven right there at Nineteenth [Street] and Park Lake, and he said, “Come here, boy.” And right then I go, “Wow.” And he sat in the car, asked for my driver’s license, and I gave it to him. He wrote me a ticket for running that stop sign. I said, “Why would I run it when I saw you?” He goes, “Well, you failed to stop at a designated point.” And I go, “Man, this is not right.” And that was before I had ever—now one time, we went to the line(??) to buy some beer. |00:23:52| That’s where underage people could go to buy beer, which was out on the Dallas highway. And I parked a buddy of mine’s car, and I went up there and bought the beer. I had the—a case of beer sitting in the backseat, and I think I was nineteen at the time. We pulled into the 7-Eleven at Nineteenth and Park Lake. Police car was sitting there, and like a dummy, you know, I said, “Oh no.” So, I just backed out nice and easy and pulled off, and he got after me. And I said, “Throw the beer out, Tony!” So he throws the beer out and right under a streetlight, and then I pulled over. And of course, they jack us up, and the guy asks me who I am. He says, “What’s your dad’s name?” And I tell him. He goes, “I know him. So you tell him—because you ran that stop—I’m going to write you a ticket for the stop sign, and I don’t want to see you boys going back there and picking up that beer either.” And, of course, when he asked me, he says, “Where did you get that beer?” I said, “What beer?” He said, “Well, we saw you throw it out. We ran over a twelve-pack, you know, twelve of them, getting you.” |00:25:00|
©Baylor University 15 So, and giving me a ticket, I thought, was—and scaring me about him knowing Dad, because Dad was very much an authoritarian—being in the military and all of that. Everything to him was black and white, right and wrong, and I just didn’t have that view of the world at that time or now, even. But yeah, that was—I guess you could say, you know, I got a ticket—a good experience. But you know, most of them up to that point had been—had not been well-received. SUTCLIFFE: Did you—I understand you may or may not want to say his name, but that’s immaterial. Did you ever say anything to that officer when you joined the PD? |00:25:51| BAIER: No, I recognized the type of person that he was right away. He was extremely lazy, and he was there just getting a paycheck and was—I’d been on some calls with him, and he wasn’t just disrespectful to me. He was disrespectful to most people. And—but he didn’t last long. He—in fact, he had only been there, I think, four or five years when I got hired, and then he only lasted a year or two after I was hired. SUTCLIFFE: What was your family’s reaction to deciding to become an officer? |00:26:29| BAIER: You know, I don’t really remember talking to my dad about it a whole lot. He and I had had a falling out when I was about sixteen or seventeen, and up until the time I was probably twenty-five or twenty-six, the only thing I said to him was “hi” and “bye.” My mother, of course, embraced it because she says, “Maybe this wandering dude—this walking dude has finally found something that he can sink his teeth in.” But she also told
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©Baylor University 16 me, “You need to make certain you can control your temper,” because I do have a short fuse when it comes to a lot of things, and fortunately, I did. I recognized that that was an aspect of my personality that I couldn’t do. I couldn’t use that in uniform. SUTCLIFFE: What were your—you know, some people that go into law enforcement, they have a—I guess they have a specific plan that’s been planned all along, and they know what they’re going to do. You sound like I guess you were kind of—you accidentally got into it. What were your—or did you have any hopes, dreams, plans, goals for the career? |00:27:42| BAIER: No, I really didn’t. I spent the first two years in patrol, loving it. I mean, I just had—you know, I liked being outside. I liked kind of interacting with people. One of the problems with the young—a lot of young police, and they call it the John Wayne syndrome, and I can remember me. I worked East Waco a lot, and they told me, Troops, don’t ever stop anybody in the three hundred block of Clifton [Street]. And I said, “Why is that?” They said, You’ll start a riot. So, what did I do the first night I was on my own? |00:28:21| About eleven—we got on at eleven. About 11:15, I stopped the car, three hundred block of Clifton, just so that I could say I did it. You know, it’s—and I know for a period of time I had a—I was just having fun. I enjoyed roll call. I enjoyed—you know, and again, I enjoyed the interaction. Fortunately, through hitchhiking, I had been involved in a lot of
©Baylor University 17 different—I’d met a lot of different personalities and been involved in a lot of different races, and I didn’t have a problem. |00:29:03| At that time, most police officers were white, middle-class Americans. I think—through my academy of eighteen, we had no females, no African Americans, and two Hispanics, and the sixteen others were white. And there were some sixteen—most of the guys had never had their bell rung or been in a fight. And I thought that was kind of bizarre that they let such—even though I was white, middle-class America—being in the military we—Dad served amongst all races and creeds, and I didn’t—never did think of anything of playing or spending the night over at an African American’s or Hispanic’s house. And—but a lot of officers weren’t exposed to that, and I think that caused some issues in law enforcement in general coming out at the time. And I recognize it, because there were times when officers would get all upset because a guy was “MF-ing” this and “MF-ing” that. |00:30:10| And I remember, I was a rookie on one call in East Waco, and there was a family disturbance, and we go up there. And he arrests the guy off his front porch for using foul—it’s disorderly conduct. Foul—I forget exactly how it’s worded, but in a public place. The front porch is considered public. And he was loud, and he was “MF-ing” this and all of that, so he handcuffed him, put him in the car. And he went in, talked to the wife. So, I got to talking to him, and I said, “Boy, tell me what the deal is.” He said, “We’re just having an argument. I’m working two jobs trying to make ends meet, and we
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©Baylor University 18 were talking about her spending money and that we weren’t on the same page.” Or at least—that wasn’t his words, those were mine. And I say, “You got some place else to stay tonight?” He goes, “Yeah, I’ve got a brother that lives six blocks over.” I said, “Okay, if I let you go, you’re not coming back tonight because if you come back tonight you will go to jail.” Because I knew what was going to happen. As soon as he goes to jail for DOC [disorderly conduct or Department of Corrections?], she’s going to get money, take it out of their finances, and go bond him out. And so, all that’s going to do is exacerbate the whole cycle. So, I let him go, and when the other troop came out, I handed him the handcuffs, and he said, “What’d you do?” I said, “Well, I let the guy go,” and I explained to him why I did it. He got rather upset at me for doing that because that was his arrest, because I was just the back-up. But I just—I got in trouble a couple of times with older troops because of similar circumstances. In fact, one of them was a sergeant that got all upset at me. |00:32:05| But back to your question, I had no goals. I truly was not—I had no idea what to expect, you know? At that time, I probably—personal experiences, maybe something that you saw on television—was all the training I had. And then we had sixteen, eighteen weeks of firearm—I mean, of academy. But physically, it was a cakewalk, and mentally and emotionally, I mean, the tests were easy. I mean, there wasn’t anything to it, so I said, “I’ll go play this game for a while.” |00:32:42|
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©Baylor University 19 And after about two years, they—a guy came to me. He was in narcotics. And he said, “You wouldn’t want to go into narcotics?” Of course, I was married at the time, and my wife really didn’t want me to go to narcotics. But I told her I was putting in for CID [Criminal Investigation Department], which is detectives, which could have been a day job. But narcotics was under CID, so anyway, I went to narcotics. And they told me, Grow your hair long. Grow a beard. We’re going to give you money. We want you to go to bars to buy dope. And I’m thinking to myself, And you’re going to pay me on top of that? (Sutcliffe laughs) I said—and I’ve—you know, I’ve just been thrown into the briar. And I had a lot of fun during that. Again, it was more of a game to me than it was serious, and I was responding to different things on a daily basis. As my tenure went on, I learned that there was more to it than just going out and making arrests. SUTCLIFFE: I should back up and ask you, just to get it documented here—when did you apply, and when did you actually get out on the streets? |00:33:58| BAIER: I applied in the summer of ’73. Our academy started—I was hired September 1 of ’73, and the academy started October 1 and went through February of ’74, so I started in spring of ’74. SUTCLIFFE: You mentioned being interviewed by a panel. Who all interviewed you? BAIER: I don’t remember exactly. I know the chief of police was in there, probably three assistant chiefs, and maybe the head of internal affairs. There were like four or five of them in there.
©Baylor University 20 SUTCLIFFE: How long of an interview was it? |00:34:44| BAIER: Wasn’t long at all. I mean, it probably wasn’t more than—because I truly believe in retrospect, and in looking back, that they’d already made up their mind who they were going to hire unless something drastic happened. And I look back, too—I think if they did any background—what really got me hired was not me, but it was my dad’s service with the military. His stability as much as—because it sure wasn’t my stability at the time. And so—yeah, it was probably—didn’t last fifteen, twenty minutes at the most. Yeah, it was short. Now, of course, they do much more thorough backgrounds. You get a polygraph. You get a psych exam. What else do you—and I think those are the—and of course, physical and then the civil service test. SUTCLIFFE: Do you recall who all was in your class? |00:35:49| BAIER: Yeah, I was the last one that survived. Like I said, I think there were eighteen of us. One got canned right out of the academy, so there were seventeen of us. Yeah, most of them—most of them stayed for twenty-some odd years. Most of them stayed. In fact, the other sergeant in narcotics that was with me, he and I went to the same academy. In fact, he and I made sergeant at the same time, and he retired like two or three years before I did. And then, there are several others that were—I think most of them lasted anywhere from ten to fifteen, twenty years. And if they didn’t—one of them quit to go work on the
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©Baylor University 21 oil pipelines in Alaska. But most of them either stayed in Waco for a period of time or went to another law enforcement agency that was paying better, had better benefits. SUTCLIFFE: Had you ever shot a gun before you went to the academy? |00:37:03| BAIER: No, no. I really was not around weapons. I think—I may have shot a .410. My mother had a double-barrel .410. I think my dad had a twenty-gauge or something. But we’d never really had guns around the house, and that’s one of the things that kind of surprised me again in reflection, looking back. They handed me a .357 and said, Hit the target. And I go—and that was the extent of training. And fortunately, I did, and that was it. I mean, we did qualify. You had to qualify once or twice a year for a number of years, and then when I got into narcotics, we would shoot a whole lot more often, especially when we were shooting—when we were running our own search warrants. But we’d qualify once or twice a year, every year. SUTCLIFFE: Who was your—I’ve gone blank on the term here, your—I guess your training officer in the academy? BAIER: Right(??). SUTCLIFFE: Was there one person or multiple? |00:38:08| BAIER: Well, I guess I hit it pretty lucky, because Larry Scott, who ended up being the chief—he was the sergeant. The lieutenant in charge—which now, commander is the
©Baylor University 22 lieutenant—was Stieg, Harold Stieg. And the patrolman that was in charge of training was—gosh, I can’t remember his name, but I can see him. That’s what happens(??) when you get old. Anyway, he had an aneurysm during the academy, so he was in the hospital most of the time. Larry—or Stieg was teaching the new penal code, because they came out with a new penal code from ’74, at the academy out at MCC. And Larry Scott was in the FBI academy in Quantico, Virginia. So basically, we had it pretty easy. Whoever they could slot in, they would slot in, and so we didn’t have a difficult time in the academy as far as the physical aspect and how the training program was preset, of course, where they had guess speakers come in. But they even had different officers come in and talk to us about different aspects of the police department. So, I mean, it was easier than most others, I’ll put it that way. I mean, we skated right through it. |00:39:45| The only bad thing about it—we were the first—all classes prior to that, they were commissioned at the very first of the class. So, when they went out on—after a month and a half, two months, you can go out on rides with officers to see what it’s like on the street, and they would be in uniform and have a gun and badge and all of that. We didn’t. We went out in khakis, and the only thing we had was a flashlight. And I can remember we found an open door in a bar in East Waco about two o’clock in the morning, and of course, the troop grabbed a shotgun, and I grabbed my flashlight. And he goes in first, and then I go in second, and I’m shining my light around, and then I go into this hallway where the bathrooms are. And I’m walking down there with my flashlight, and he’s behind me with the shotgun. And I stop and I go, “Man, there’s something wrong with this picture.” I said, “You get in front.” He goes, “Okay, okay.” So he got in front. Of
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©Baylor University 23 course, it may have been burglarized, and it may have just been left open. I don’t really remember. But that was—it was odd being out there in khaki uniform, and it was also—I could tell the people did not look at us as the same they did the uniform troop. And it was the same way when I was in plain clothes and went out to a crime scene. The people would talk to me because they thought I was somebody, versus the patrolman who they thought was just a nobody. And I don’t know how many times I’d have to say, You have to talk that person. I’m just here observing. So—but yeah, that was kind of an oddity with the academy, and I’m not sure how they do it now. SUTCLIFFE: Did you ever have any doubt when you were in the academy about—yeah, this is what I want? |00:41:39| BAIER: No. Again, it was all an experiment for me. It wasn’t something that was in my blood. It wasn’t—now, after being in narcotics for about a year, I started looking out and seeing what else was out there like Dallas and Austin, other—that paid more, had better benefits. |00:42:03| And I also—in narcotics, when I was there, we did the first meth lab in Waco, and we worked it through DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration] out of Austin. At that time, there was not an agent stationed in Waco. My informant developed some information, and we were able to supply some ingredients to the crooks to let us in. They supplied 99 percent of it. But anyway, we did the meth lab, and I was intrigued by DEA and talked to
©Baylor University 24 one of them, and he and his wife were going to go to Thailand. And the DEA was sending them to a yearlong school for that—for language and customs. And I thought, Man that’s intriguing. And so anyway, I went back to MCC, got my degree there, and then went to Baylor, got a degree there, because I seriously was thinking about either Secret Service or DEA, and—but my wife at the time said, “I’m not leaving Waco.” In fact, DEA told me, “If we hire you, you’ll go work undercover in New York, Detroit, or Chicago right off the bat.” At that time, they didn’t allow them to come back where they originated from. They do that now, but at that time, you were moved to Siberia—as far away from your home as they could get you. So—and then by the time I got divorced, I mean, I was thirty-five, thirty-six, and I was too old because the cut-off date is—you’ve got to have it in by the time you’re thirty-three, I think, to make the thirty-five cut-off. SUTCLIFFE: You said something—oh, I remember what it was. I was going to ask—what were your degrees from Baylor—degree or degrees? |00:43:51| BAIER: In criminal justice. SUTCLIFFE: So, when you got out on the street, how did—I know, I don’t know if back then—I know now they have field training officers. How did that work when you got out on the streets after the academy? |00:44:10| BAIER: Yeah, basically it was—and again now it’s—everything was documented much more back then. It was kind of like—you were going to ride with this guy for a week or
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©Baylor University 25 two, and then this guy for a week or two, and then this guy for a week or two. And so, I did, and after, usually I think it’s a two-month or three-month deal that they had, after a month and a half, they said, Here are your keys. Get out there. So—and I don’t—of course, we were pretty shorthanded. I remember working the city of Waco, which had the population of 100,000, a little over 100,000 back in ’74, ’75, and there were only five of us in the whole city. And one worked all of East Waco; one worked all of north; one worked all of south; one worked west, and one worked, you know, north. And it was a—if something happened, all your resources were immediately exposed. Fortunately, we had no major, major occurrences during that period of time. And yeah, it was a mess when you think about it. SUTCLIFFE: Who were the especially helpful FTOs [field training officers] that you remember when you started out? |00:45:32| BAIER: I know Phil Thompson was one of them. I don’t know that he was exceptionally helpful. He was a card to be around, and he talked well. I think I—one of the things I took from him is—you can wear the badge and gun, but you’re not the ruler, the absolute dictator, and I guess one of the things that I saw in his action was he would listen to people. And god, I wish I could remember that guy’s name. He quit Waco PD and went to—back home to his dad’s milk—he had a dairy. And then he got on at—hired on at SO [the sheriff’s office], but I remember he was one of the few older troops. |00:46:23|
©Baylor University 26 Because when—a lot of the older troops felt like that you had to prove yourself. They would not accept you until you got into a fight or you backed them up and that you got involved. And if, you know if—the rule was kind of: if I hit him, you better hit him too. And if he hits one of us, he needs to go to the hospital. And I—you know, that’s not the way I was raised. And like I say, at the time, it was very close-knit, almost looking back—an inbred type of society. But I kind of wish I could remember his name, but he ended up moving to Washington state. But he came up to me and says, “Dennis, don’t pay any attention to all these older guys. If you need something, you can come talk to me.” And I told him I was very appreciative of that, because I felt like for a period of time, we were on the witness stand the whole time we were there. Everybody was looking at us and watching and hearing everything we said and did. |00:47:27| In fact, I had a sergeant one time make an arrest. And he said, “Book him.” And I said, “For what?” And he goes—he said, “Disorderly conduct. Loud and abusive language in a public place.” I said okay. So, I booked him, and at that time, the jail was in the city. And booked him, and I got out, and I got with him. I said, “Are you going to make the report?” And he goes, “You don’t have to make a report for a DOC [disorderly conduct].” I said, “Yeah. You impounded his car and you put him in jail.” He goes, “Well, you make it.” So, I said okay. I said, “What did he say?” So he told me. So I made a report and dictated what Sergeant So-and-So said. I said, “Sergeant told me this. Sergeant told me that. Sergeant told me—so I put him in jail.” And he screamed and hollered at me when he got that report.
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©Baylor University 27 |00:48:15| And I told him, I said, “Sergeant, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but if it gets to the point of time where you can’t arrest somebody for DOC, you need to go look for another job.” Because I wasn’t going to lie to him, because I didn’t hear anything. I didn’t hear at all. He was off in the distance. In fact, it was northwest Waco, and that may have been—a bunch of kids were meeting in a parking lot, and we had dispersed them all. No complaints that we got, and he went to talk to this one guy, and next thing I know, he’s handcuffing him. And that’s—I didn’t hear a word, so I wasn’t about to put my name on the dotted line if I didn’t hear it. Now, if I’d heard it, I wouldn’t have had a problem, but I didn’t hear it, so— SUTCLIFFE: How was the—how was the set-up for schedule? And you mentioned that y’all were shorthanded, but how was the set-up for the schedule and your patrol assignments? I don’t know if they were called beats [ed. note: territory and time that an officer patrols] back then. |00:49:18| BAIER: Yeah, they were called beats. We had ten beats in Waco, at that time, if I remember correctly. And you would go to roll call. They would assign you a beat. The sergeant would assign you a beat. Now, that may change by day or night, whatever. Generally, they tried to keep you moving around. There wasn’t as much stability in that I probably worked 60 or 70, 80 percent of my time in East Waco and the rest in probably north. Very limited in northwest Waco, or south Waco—didn’t work a lot of south Waco.
©Baylor University 28 |00:50:04| But you may—at that time, you had to take your vacation all at a month at a time. We got roughly a month—twenty-eight days or something like that. And of course, being a rookie, you got February or January off. And it wasn’t shortly thereafter, they said you could take it in two-week increments, so there was some adjustment. But when I first started, first two—two-and-a-half years I was in patrol, they—basically, you would work your seven to three shift, and normally, that dovetailed into a three to eleven shift, but there were times when I stayed on three to eleven shift because I was the rookie. Three or four months in a row—just because of shortage of personnel, and that’s the peak of activity, is usually six to midnight. And at that time, the bars closed at midnight, and plus your days off were always Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. There was never—I don’t remember having too many weekends off as a rookie. I mean, you get slotted at the positions nobody else wants. They’ve changed that all around. It’s much more balanced than it was back then. SUTCLIFFE: Were you—was it like I understand it is today, where it’s a sergeant and his squad, or how was it arranged? |00:51:36| BAIER: You know generally—and I really—usually there were two sergeants if I remember. There may have been three. I know when I had to go back during the millennium, there were three sergeants, and each of them had a district. But most of the time, if my memory serves me correctly, there weren’t any more than one or two sergeants on. Now, during the day shift, there was probably more because of the traffic
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©Baylor University 29 assignments. But in the afternoon shift—the evening shift, or midnight shift, there probably wasn’t more than one or two. And generally, you had a commander, so there were usually two supervisors amongst five to ten people. SUTCLIFFE: But—and I know that it’s changed, but did—y’all were rotating shifts, or— |00:52:31| BAIER: Yes. Yeah, everything month, we rotated shifts by design. Now, like I said, there were times when they would hold people over because of staffing issues, and if—especially—if you were on a day shift, and there were staffing issues, you wouldn’t be one, if you were a rookie, to be held over. Well, the older troops had seniority on you. Seniority played a major part of the—in fact, your—we had a—part of your—we had an evaluation every six months, I think. And it was—one being the lowest, thirty being the highest. Most patrol people got around twenty, twenty-one, somewhere. That was probably the average, twenty-two maybe. |00:53:25| But it was really a—most people thought it was just a farce because everybody was middle, because if you had to put one less than par or greater than, you had to write an explanation, and it was so much easier just to put three, three, three, three all the way through. But it was kind of—yeah. Well, let me go back to where I—part of the promotional was that efficiency score, your grade on the test, as well as number of years seniority, up to ten. You got up to ten, and I think they still have that ten years as far as
©Baylor University 30 your promotional exam, but they’ve done away with—what did I call it? The efficiency, the—your evaluation. |00:54:17| But when I went to narcotics, I suddenly was a twenty-eight or twenty-nine, and I thought to myself, that’s unfair to those folks. If I were to take the sergeant’s test, I’ve got x number of points above them already. And that wasn’t point for point. It was a percentage of the total hundred. But it was—I just thought that was totally unfair. It was, I mean—and all the detectives were getting twenty-eights, twenty-sevens, twenty-nines, you know. And that was again one of the issues with the system, as far as taking your promotional exams. SUTCLIFFE: When you say the shift in schedule was a rotation by design, what do you mean by that? |00:55:05| BAIER: Meaning—you did rotate every month. However, there were times when they would hold people over. So, by design, you were supposed to rotate every month. Not always did that occur. Sometimes you got stuck on a shift for a month or two more. SUTCLIFFE: Did you have a favorite? |00:55:25| BAIER: Oh, I liked the afternoon shift, three to eleven. Because I mean once you got on, and that radio started squawking, you were busy until eleven. Eleven to seven was my
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©Baylor University 31 next favorite because there were no chiefs out. There were all in bed dreaming. And it was pretty active from eleven to about one or two, and then after two, there wasn’t—I mean, they just—back then, they just rolled up the streets of Waco. And there wasn’t anybody moving, or there wasn’t—I mean, I remember as a—when I was in khakis riding in East Waco, we had nothing on our activity sheet the whole night. Nothing. I mean, it was blank. And of course, I—you know, I’m saying, Let’s go stop and talk to that person. Let’s—we just sat in the car for eight hours and drove around, and I go—and this is not what it appear—it shouldn’t be that way. At least you get out, and let’s go into the bars and talk to the people, you know? |00:56:32| And so, I—once I got out on my own, that’s pretty much what I did. You know, if a business was open, I was going to go in and introduce myself to them. And there was one occasion, and it ended up really being to my benefit because one of the bars on Elm Street [Elm Avenue], and I’d gone in there before and said hello to everybody, and when I first walked in, everybody was kind of standoffish. And I said, “Hey listen, I’m not here to hug and say hi. Y’all don’t drive drunk. If you need a ride home and it’s not busy, I’ll give you a ride home.” So I became friends with a couple of the patrons and the owner of the place. I wish I could remember his name. He was elderly at the time. |00:57:20| Anyway, they called on a drunk one time, so I go in there, and I knew them all, so I didn’t wait for my backup. And that guy commenced to whoop my ass. I mean, he was—he hit me first—I wasn’t expecting it. And then, it was just me trying to catch up. The
©Baylor University 32 next thing I know, the patrons had pulled out the handcuffs, handcuffed him, and got him up off the ground, and I was—by that time, backup arrived, and we took him to jail, and back then, it was just for simple assault. It wasn’t for assault on a peace officer. Besides that, he was drunk, and he really turned out not to be a bad guy. I met him afterwards. So, you know, that’s what I try to tell the troops. Get out there and talk with people, where they can be your best friends at times—because when you’re out there by yourself, you’re out there by yourself. SUTCLIFFE: When did you—or it may not be that you felt it, but maybe other, the older troops felt—when did you feel like you had proven yourself to them, or when did you sense that they felt that about you? |00:58:26| BAIER: I think probably it was—I think it was—you know, it was probably, I was probably there a year, maybe. Because I—I would stop and talk to anybody, and I really—it never bothered me. |00:58:46| I remember one night, I stopped a car at Eighteenth [Street] and Maple [Avenue], and I didn’t know who the guy was. He had a taillight out. It’s like two o’clock in the morning. So, I get his driver’s license. The first thing we do—go to the backchannel [ed. note: probably a special channel to run record checks] and run his name and all that. And I get up there, and I’m smelling weed. So, I said, “You need to get out of the car.” So, he gets out of the car, and I said, “You been smoking dope?” He goes, “Yep.” I said, “You got
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©Baylor University 33 any in the car?” He goes, “Nope.” I said, “I’m going to look.” He goes, “Go. Have at it.” So, he’s standing back and I’m by myself. Now, there’s five or six of us working, and there’s nobody close. And I’m looking—got my back to him and everything. Anyway, nothing happened. He gets back in the car, and I let him go. |00:59:32| We had a tactical squad that was formed shortly after I got there, and one of the sergeants, in fact, Bob Fortune, I think it was—called me over. And he said, “What the hell are you doing stopping that car by yourself?” I said, “What do you mean? I do it all the time.” He goes, “Yeah, I know. But you know who that is?” I go, “No.” And he goes, “That’s So-and-So,” and I don’t remember his name. But he was a touch hard(??) back then. And he goes, “You know, we heard you go out on traffic and we heard. We were in the area watching buildings, and we heard who it was, so we had people around.” And I said, “Well, I appreciate it.” And that was probably the first time that I really felt like that there was an essence of teamwork to some degree. And it wasn’t shortly thereafter—that’s when they asked me to go to narcotics, though. SUTCLIFFE: What was your favorite area to patrol when you started out in patrol? |01:00:35| BAIER: I truly believe it was East Waco. It was lower on the socioeconomic ladder than what I came from, and I think at that time, and even today, I think most people are—most of them are respectful to you and your job as long as you treat them with some respect. Now that was—you know, they had—I wasn’t here when they had the riots at Paul Quinn
©Baylor University 34 [College]—came shortly thereafter. When did that happen, you know? It was like in—it was the midsixties I think, or late sixties. But I—again and I’ve had people, stopped them in Northwest Waco—Do you know who I am? Well no, and I don’t care, you know? Where you never had that on the east side. On the east side, they would answer your questions, and you know, I stopped a lot of people. I didn’t write a lot of tickets. In fact, they got on me about it. |01:01:48| But I—I stopped a lot of people because I truly believe not always is a ticket the way to solve the issue. And now, if it was a gross violation, yeah, I didn’t have the problem scratching tickets. But if it was a—I remember one time, it was—I working north Waco and this lady comes zooming by me, just—and I had my radar, went off. So, I turned around, and by the time I stopped her up close to Reicher [Catholic High School], I got out and asked her what her hurry was. And she goes, “Well, I just, I saw you, and I knew I was going too fast, and I was just in a hurry to pick up my kid.” And I said, “That’s—” But I knew that I committed more violations than she did in trying to take her down, and I couldn’t write her a ticket without writing me one. |01:02:45| And there was another time, for some reason I was working northwest Waco, and at that time, we had—Sam Brown’s had clip-ons [ed. note: Sam Brown being the type of gun belt they used to wear]. They didn’t sew through them. And I stopped a lady, and it was like—fixing to get off, so it had to have been two o’clock in the afternoon at the corner of Lake Air [Drive] and Bosque [Avenue]. She ran a red light, and at that time, that was the
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©Baylor University 35 big mall. I pull on and pull her over, and she pulls into the parking spot. And I can see her looking through her outside mirror, and I look at her. And I tell them I’m out on this car at this location, and I get out of the car, shut the door. When I do, my gun falls off. My holster and the gun fall off. And I see her. I can see her—she’s going like this. (motions) So, I pick it up. I open up the car door, put it in there, shut it. I walk up to her, and I said, “Ma’am, can I see your driver’s license?” She’s trying to keep from smiling. She hands me her driver’s license. I said, “Ma’am, the reason I stopped you was for running that red light back there.” And she’s still kind of snickering. I said, “Tell you what I’m going to do. I’m not going to tell anybody you ran that red light if you don’t tell anybody that my holster fell off.” (laughs) And she laughed, and I’m so thankful we didn’t have video of that at that time. But like I say, I wrote a lot of—I didn’t write a lot of tickets, but I stopped a lot of people. SUTCLIFFE: How did East Waco residents accept you, do you think? |01:04:19| BAIER: Again, they were like most people. I think if you treat them with a little respect—I think initially, especially after going through the sixties and the turmoil and the riots in the sixties, and I think they looked at a white peace officer as an oppressor. But I also believe that I don’t—I believe given the opportunity—you know, it’s like I’ve always heard. You go to church to see a sermon, not to hear one. And I think if people see you and how you interact—like I was working part-time one time at the convention center. |01:05:10|
©Baylor University 36 And there was a Paul Quinn dance going on, and there was an art exhibit, and I was guarding the art exhibit—at midnight. And there was the guy that was—did it until midnight, was getting off. Anyway, they had a big fight downstairs, so we went down to break it up. It wasn’t part of our security detail. They had already left—the ones that were doing the dance, and I had a hold of one. And the partner had a hold of the other guy, and we said, Calm down, guys! Y’all take it home or whatever. You don’t need to be doing this here. So, I put my hands down. My partner put his hands down, and when I—he did—his guy hit me right in the head and kind of knocked me back. And I grabbed ahold of his shirt and pulled him down. As I did, his brother and another guy that everybody backed off kind of—and at that time, we were issued “rawhides.” That’s what we called them, rawhides. And I pulled it out of my back pocket and commenced to start hitting him. Blood was going everywhere because there was a cut in his forehead. And my partner didn’t, but a couple of the people that were there pulled me off of him and again handcuffed him for me. He says, “He did wrong. He needs to go to jail, but he’s—you don’t need to kill him.” And it was, like I say—I came to my senses, and we took him to the hospital. |01:06:31| And he got all stitched up, and I remember booking him in the county jail or in the city jail, and at that time, I was—it was summertime. I mean, it couldn’t have been summer. It had to have been in the fall because it was a dance. But I would have been working outside roofing a house, and I was pretty dark complected. And this guy was telling this to me—he says, “I’m going to get you when I get out.” I said, “Hey, I’ve heard that a bunch. Don’t—just calm down. Let’s get this over with, get you an attorney, and we’ll go
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©Baylor University 37 to court.” He goes, “No. You know who my godfather is?” And I go no. He said, “Well, he’s General So-and-So in the army.” I said okay. And the crusty sergeant in the jail said, “Well, you know who his godfather is?” And he goes no. He said, “He is the Godfather.” And I got to laughing so—anyway, the end of that story, that guy got killed in—about a month later arguing over a Dallas Cowboy football game. |01:07:33| And yeah, it was—but again, I think if you treat people with respect, you’ll get treated with respect. I never really had a big issue in East Waco at all. Really, really nowhere did I have—like I say, I got myself into trouble on a number of occasions, but I never really—I don’t think I ever actually was the initiator of the trouble where other people would respond. I mean, I did things that were wrong, and I got days off and suspended, but it was all because of my ignorance. SUTCLIFFE: So, in—around ’76, sounds like is when they asked you, or ’75. When did they ask you to go there? |01:08:35| BAIER: You know, I want to say it was the—they asked me to go in ’75, but I wasn’t transferred until the January or so of ’76, I think. I think it was. SUTCLIFFE: What did—what was your conception of what you were getting into? |01:09:01|
©Baylor University 38 BAIER: I really had no idea, other than the fact that—see, patrol is more of a reactionary force. I mean, we’re—every now and then—I mean, they do initiate a lot of things, but patrol basically is responding to the radio. Where narcotics, in my envision, and again, that’s one of the biggest problems they have—back then, is especially for smaller departments like Waco was, even though we had 200-something people—is when you went to detectives, or you went to narcotics, your training was—my training was basically: grow your hair, don’t shave, here’s money, go out and buy drugs. And I look back on that and say no wonder so many agencies are developing court cases because the people that they’re putting in that position—they’re not given the tools, properly trained to do it. And at that time, we had a sergeant that worked days, a troop that worked days, and then three, maybe four of us that worked evenings from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m., off Sunday and Monday. And generally, we’d go in at six o’clock, and we’d all go in different directions. And there was really no—I kind of envisioned trying to work up the ladder on a food chain type of structure, to bigger and—and that’s what we tried to do. |01:10:32| But it was more—almost by accident at that point in time, versus when I went back to narcotics. And the eighties is—we actually—I tried to get them to draw, connect the dots. You know, this guy can do us this guy, and this guy can do us this guy, if he or she will. Back then, it was just—again, it fit my personality at that time. It was like okay, what are we going to do today? Well, let me go to this bar, have a couple of beers, get a pool game, and see what’s happening there. And then the next day, it may be another place. There really wasn’t a lot of planning, per se. We would come in, and we’d get information. Okay, we’re going to run a search warrant tonight. Okay. None of us would
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©Baylor University 39 know where. I mean, there’s times when I’d run search warrants by myself, call the beat officer over, and I’d go knock on the door and try to get in. So now, or at least when I left, it was a twenty-four hour notification to SWAT [Special Weapons and Tactics], and we knew a week in advance that—where there was potential to run a search warrant, because we were reviewing the intel files as well as reading their affidavit for a search warrant. So, it was—we actually planned the move up the food chain, and—where back then it was just willy-nilly, helter-skelter. Truly was. SUTCLIFFE: Were you given any special training to prepare you, or was that part of the academy, or— |01:12:17| BAIER: No. The only training we really got back then was—we had marquis test kits. They had them for marijuana, but we really never used them because you could look at it, smell it, and texture it. And—but there were marquis test kits for cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine. And that was the extent of the training. They showed us how to use these little test kits that we dabbed, you know, the drugs in to see if it turns a certain color. If it turns the color, then our presumption of—we put them in jail without waiting for a lab return. But there was—and again, I look back and just by karma, divine intervention, I was able to get through that period of time and develop some sort of structure in the way we did things, and I most assuredly see why so many, again, so many of these departments end up making court cases based upon lack—the department providing them a lack of training and tools. |01:13:28|
©Baylor University 40 When we first started, we couldn’t seize any property as a city locally. The state could, and the federal government could. But we couldn’t. Shortly after it, they enacted the statute for state officers being, all state agencies to be able to seize property that were used in offenses. There were abuses all over the place by local agencies. In fact, there was a time when, and this was well into narcotics, when we had an officer go to—we were doing reversals where we would sell the drugs, but according to state statute—even at the time, you had to have those drugs quantitative and qualitatively analyzed prior to and then after—to show that it remained the same. |01:14:25| We had an officer go to Florida, some kind of school, and he comes back and wants to initiate us selling crack cocaine in twenty-dollar rocks to people on the street. And I said—and the chief was all for it, and he was going to do this—and I said, “You know, let’s put brakes on this. We have to have it qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed by DPS [Department of Public Safety], and they’re not going to do every rock. And besides that, what if we get it to them, and they swallow it, or they get away? Then we’ve delivered the drugs.” And I said, “We don’t have—” I mean, we have drugs around that we could have used because when we go make a buy—in developing probable cause, we put it in for destruction, so it’s there. But there was too much liability, I told them, for what we’re getting for—and they ultimately end up enacting a city ordinance with something to do with for the purpose of buying drugs, and it was a class C misdemeanor. We did stings that way, but all of the reversals we ever did, the dope came from DPS or DEA. We weren’t just going to do it on street-level.
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©Baylor University 41 SUTCLIFFE: So, when you went to narcotics, did you—did y’all kind of rotate shifts as well there, or— |01:15:49| BAIER: Yeah, they—because we had a jail at the city. The day job person was responsible for processing the paperwork on that person and transferring the case over to the DA’s office and transferring the guy from Waco City Jail to the McLennan County Jail. And to be honest with you, that’s where we would develop our sources of information, because if somebody was in jail for a misdemeanor amount of weed, we’d say, Well, if you tell us who it is and help us do him—somebody’s going to jail. We’re going to let you make the decision on who it is. It’s either you or your connection. And depending upon—there was never any hard and fast rules. It really depended upon if they, you know, number one, of course, if they would. |01:16:44| We looked at their background and their criminal—we wouldn’t let out a double-axe murderer for a little bit of weed or a little bit of speed. But it was pretty much—there weren’t any rules. And so—and there were like I think there were five of us in narcotics, maybe six troops. The sergeant worked days all the time. (yawns) Excuse me. And the four of us troops, I guess there were four of us that worked nights, but every month, a new one would go to days. And then that one off days—he would probably have the most work because the rest of us that had worked our days—normally, we would offer him not generally one deal for one deal. Generally, it was one for three. You know, you give us three different people—now, there’s also dependence upon what the quality and quantity
©Baylor University 42 is. Is it a quality crook? Is it a quantity of dope? Then we would give him two strikes for one deal, and so yeah, once every four months or so, we would work days. Once every five months, we’d work days. SUTCLIFFE: What was your—what was your wife’s reaction of you switching from patrol to narcotics? |01:18:10| BAIER: She didn’t like it. She—we married when I was a cop, so she knew I was a cop. It wasn’t like it was something—and that’s caused a lot of—on my other officers, I’ve seen some issues that arise when they weren’t—he or she wasn’t policing, and then they go into it. Yeah, no. She really didn’t like me being gone 6 p.m. to 2 a.m., Tuesday through Saturday, and then I was working—at one time I was working like, I think I had three different part-time jobs and going to Baylor. So, you know, Sundays and Mondays were part-time jobs, and then Baylor was during the days, and so it was—you know, we were like two ships passing in the night. |01:19:02| And that’s one of the problems, that we became more like roommates than a husband and wife, and we—it was a—we both agreed to the divorce. It wasn’t a big uproar. And I—and fortunately, no children, so—and I don’t remember exactly when we got a divorce. It was like a—we were married probably ten years. But she was adamant about not leaving Waco. And she really—and of course, I was not the most attentive husband, and she had two kids from a previous marriage, so I—and I was not the most attentive stepfather, and
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©Baylor University 43 I recognize that. I mean, I was—it was all about me at that time, and—because I was having a big party every night. Five nights a week, I was having a party. I was out there playing. And it was not conducive to a marriage or a family situation. It really wasn’t. |01:20:08| It could have been if I’d seen it, but I’d—and again, going back to my childhood, Mom was a stay-at-home mom. We went where Dad said we went, and there were no questions asked, and again, in retrospect, I looked that—that’s how I approached my marriage was—I’m the man of the family, even though she was working. But I’m the man of the family, and you’ve just got to let me do my job. And then everything else will take care of itself. And you know, I found out, and again in retrospect, a reflection of what—everything worked out good for both of us, but we never gave ourselves a chance, even, never. She was young. She was a year older than me and already had two kids. So, it was a—yeah, she wasn’t happy about narcotics. SUTCLIFFE: Well, what made me that question was just the curiosity of kind of the more set schedule where you’re not rotating between three schedules. That’s what made me wonder. |01:21:18| BAIER: Right. No, she—and I think in the back of her mind at the time, the booger bear was danger. That—most people don’t recognize the fact that the patrol issue is probably the most dangerous because they never know what they’re going to run into. They never know what’s going to come across that radio. Where—even in narcotics, back in the old
©Baylor University 44 days, you know—yeah, I went into bars and I went into people’s homes that I didn’t know. But it—I knew I was going there, and I knew what the environment was like. And I could prepare for escape routes or defense routes. Where a patrolman stops a person for a red light, he doesn’t—he or she doesn’t know what that person did two blocks ahead of time. |01:22:08| And that’s why they’re now—in narcotics now, the way we document everything and the way we work as a team, it’s really—we address our situations at our choosing, our time and place and location and environment. It’s a little different than it was before. It’s more fly by your seat of your britches. But it’s much safer now than patrol is, much safer, and I don’t think she realized it, even at that time. SUTCLIFFE: So you would get—if I’m understanding this right—you go to work—at least when you were doing six to two—go to work, get your money, go to the bar, see where you can round up some business, so to speak. Is that a fair statement? |01:22:59| BAIER: Yeah. Primarily what that was for was to hopefully develop resources or sources of information. You go out, and you buy dope. We always tried to buy at least two or three times off everybody, just because that kind of helps eliminate the entrapment, whereas if you buy once off of somebody—I mean some of the entrapment cases—court cases I’ve read, I mean, you could almost see it being entrapment. But you know, that’s why we buy generally multiple times off of somebody, and plus, it also helps when you
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©Baylor University 45 go to court. Okay, you’re going to plead to two, we’ll dismiss one. Okay, now that person has got two convictions. He may—he or she may get a third, and then it’s habitualized. So, I mean—there were more than one reason why we tried to make three cases on each one, each of the buys(??). That was one of the reasons. |01:24:03| The other, of course—sometimes we wouldn’t maybe go to a bar. Let’s say—one of the troops has an informant that he wants to run into at a location. Well, then we would pull together a team for surveillance to make certain that’s where he went, and we would search them, especially if we gave them money. And a sergeant would make sure they didn’t have the drugs on them before, and then when he goes in, buys the drugs, comes out. We would interview him—case agent would—generally with somebody else there. And then we may put the house under surveillance for a longer period of time to see other people coming and going, write down license numbers, run those license numbers, see if there is any other actors that we may know. So, it wasn’t just going into bars. |01:24:55| It was a multitude of surveillance, and in fact, that was probably the main thing. Shortly after I was there first, we got a canine assigned to the unit, and we would run the canine at the bus station—for the bus station, the airport every now and then, but mainly the bus station. I mean there were—plus we worked with TABC [Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission]. At that point in time, we did not work with DPS or DEA when I first went in. Or MSO—we didn’t work with the McLennan County Sheriff’s Office. We were pretty much an entity of our own, and that was based, pretty much, on what the
©Baylor University 46 supervisor wanted, and it wasn’t until after he left that we actually started to interact with DPS and then DEA and McLennan County Sheriff’s Office. SUTCLIFFE: When you went out, and I realize it wasn’t every night, maybe, but when you went out to these locations to drum up business, so to speak, obviously you wouldn’t have had a gun on your hip. Did y’all just go— |01:26:21| BAIER: Working undercover, I don’t know—and I, I did a contract killing once where I had a gun on me when I did the interview with the guy that was hiring me. But most of my drug deals—I felt like I could talk my way out of it, and I felt like—I didn’t have another gun anyway, and all I had was a city-issued .357, and to me that was a—you might as well put a badge on you. Because if you pull out, you know—“What kind of gun do you got?” “Well, I’ve got this .357 Magnum.” Well, every cop’s got a .357 Magnum, and so, I felt like I could talk my way out of it easier. |01:27:09| And I learned pretty quick that they want to sell you the drugs. You’ve just got to give them an opportunity to. They—I mean, that’s what they do, and anytime they can develop a new customer, especially when it comes to heroin or speed, that’s somebody else that’s going to be tied on the line to them. And well fortunately, that was pre-cell phone days, so you had to either know where they lived or know where they would meet, and most of the times, they were meeting at a bar. I mean, not too many of the dope dealers—some of them did—but not too many of them actually invited me into their
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