a Slo Burn Podcast April 28, 2020 | Quote | Leave a comment March 3, 2016 About On July 13, 1982 Jill Montgomery and Raylene Rice left Waxahachie, Texas to go to Waco, Texas, which was approximately 90 minutes away, to pick up Jills last pay check from Fort Fisher. Wed work ten hours a day, and I didnt have a car, so Id stay a week at a time. Spence, who had two new attorneysWalter Reaves, whod represented him on the aggravated sexual abuse case, and Bill Vancegrew increasingly agitated, eventually trying to fire his lawyers. Melendez pleaded guilty to the savage 1982 murder of three teenagers in Waco; he also testified against another man, David Spence in 1985. He felt humiliated, remembered Salinas. She still had on a Waxahachie High School class ring. Critics, including Horton, the retired Waco police lieutenant, claimed Simons gave snitches special favors to coax their testimonies and fed them information. In his letter, Snelson wrote that he had made his testimony up. (When Deebs lawyer asked him if the store owner was still a suspect, Simons retorted, You bet your ass hes still a suspect.) He called the sheriffs office and asked if there were any openings as a jailer. The film aired on CBS in 1993. His hair is cut close to the scalp, and his close-set eyes are dark with worry. Spence was the first of the four defendants to stand trial. Going into a separate office, he sat on the floor, absently tracing his finger on the carpet as he and Scott discussed what to do next. After one of the women reported this comment to the police, Deeb was quickly arrested and submitted to a polygraph test, which he passed. But Thompson had never stopped wondering if theyd made a mistake. After Feazell was acquitted in the federal case, the feds didnt want anything more to do with him, Price remembered. The girls, friends from Waxahachie, had driven to Waco so Montgomery could collect her last paycheck from her job at the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum. But, she told them, she couldnt go to the governor for a pardon without DNA evidence. He had more or less abandoned his life back in New York and dedicated himself entirely to solving the Lake Waco murders. A couple of Bud Light cans found near Raylenes body yielded no fingerprints. Skip Hollandsworth specializes in long-form narratives. The officer was none other than Jan Price. Within a few days, the first arrest in the case was made. Like Spence, he was given the death penalty. Hes thought about his mother, who lives in Hewitt, just south of Waco, and who used to visit until he finally asked her to stop; the drive was too far and cost too much, and she was getting old. David Spences case came before the TRC that same summer. A knife, a sex crime, a violent man: Simons was sure he was on to something. WebStreet and now belongs to the children of one Truman Simons, Johnston's long time Continue reading SHERRE BURGLARIZES PAW PAW FATTYS HOUSE ON SOUTH He was sent to prison. The more people Price talked to, the more she doubted the case against Washington and Williamsand wondered about the case against Spence, Deeb, and the Melendez brothers in the lake murders. 8 The Lake Waco Murders. In 1991 Texas was carrying out more executions than any other state. Feazell, who had followed the trial from Austin, where he now worked as a private attorney, was also taken aback.

When youre working under an execution date, every minute not spent on the case feels wasted. He filed motions for stays of execution and successor habeas writs with the Texas courts. To uncover any facts that might help save their clientsthat prosecutors had concealed evidence, for example, or that an inmate had suffered an abusive childhood or was mentally disabledthe attorneys had to reinvestigate every case, searching through files and trial transcripts, visiting with inmates, and traveling far and wide to find old and new witnesses. No one had heard any screams. Simons felt uneasy. The two men could not have been more different. He was like a death-camp survivor.. She was David Spences mother. (Simons would later say that it was Price who believed the wounds on Whites body were bite marks and that they agreed to get the mold after looking at autopsy photos together; Price insists that the mold already existed when she and Simons joined forces.). Fourteen years is an eternity in DNA technology., He pinged excitedly from topic to topic, referencing everything from Shakespeare to the TV series Homeland. Simons knew Deeb: he was a 23-year-old Jordanian immigrant who ran the Rainbow Drive Inn, a convenience store across the street from the home. Though he was not officially assigned to the investigation, he spent hours at the lake, devoting much of his free time to searching the woods and talking to people. Leon Chaney, a private investigator who knew the case, remembered, [White] called Hunt and me all the time; she was going to give us all these leads. Jill Montgomery, Raylene Rice and Kenneth Franks were tortured and stabbed multiple times at Speegleville Park at Lake Waco on July 13, 1982. Deeb, who had continued to protest his innocence, was found guilty of instigating the murders, and on March 14, he was sentenced to death by lethal injection.

The first series will focus on serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. He was continually unnerved by Feazell, who seemed to enjoy provoking him: during jury selection, for example, as Spences lawyers questioned potential jurors, the DA passed him taunting notes (Youre drowning and your lifeguards dont swim! read one). WebLake Waco Murders By Allie Roberts On a muggy, Texas summer night in 1982, tragedy struck. Id say, David, if you did this, you deserve to die, she told me when we talked last May. Simons, whod relied on his gut so many times before in his career, was stunned. We have a better shot at freeing Tony now than ever before, he told me. But others had left even the most hardened officers in the Waco Police Department reeling. Hale, at least, seemed to reassure her that Simons was on the right track. ), In November Chief Scott decided to make Prices investigation official. A book comes out by a New York writer that says Tonys innocent and Texas may have executed an innocent manand Tonys going to get clemency? If they execute me on April 3, he told the camera, it will be a cold-blooded, calculated murder. Dateline would eventually follow with an hour-long show, in January 1998, that questioned Spences guilt. There they found a footprint on the front door, which had been kicked in, and some smudged fingerprints around the house. Franks had originally told a newspaper reporter that when his son didnt return home, he became anxious that Kenneth might be in trouble and went out looking for him at four-thirty in the morning. Keeping his whereabouts a secret, Dannen continued his investigation from Mexico, hiring a detective service to pursue leads. Simons investigative style and penchant for cultivating jailhouse snitches came under fire, even from his former Waco police colleagues. When the deputy drove Gilbert out to Koehne and Speegleville parks for the inmate to walk him through the crime, Gilbert said, he had taken his cues from Simons when identifying the spot where the teenagers were killed.

For Feazell in particular, the victory could not have come at a better time. In early January, the deputys patience paid off: an inmate named Kevin Mikel told him that Spence had bragged about killing the teenagers. There were so many witnesses they wanted to call that they first persuaded Judge Norman Black to let them collect depositions instead of having everyone testify in court. On the morning of April 3, Dannen could barely concentrate on his Hong Kong article. When Williams was nevertheless found guilty and given a life sentence, Price was so peeved that she stepped up her informal investigation.

This didnt surprise his fellow officers; it was this kind of dedication that had helped him solve difficult cases in the past. Though Melendez took two polygraphs that seemed to confirm his involvement, he also recanted his confession entirely.

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Schonemann was encouraged. Such was the animosity between the two men, said several witnesses, that when Deeb learned of the murders, he laughed, saying he was glad Kenneth was dead.

Now she hoped she could help free Washington and Williamsand cast some light on the DA and his investigator. His body was found stabbed, strangled and bitten. Spence, in fact, was about to become the face of a national debate over capital punishment in Texas. via The Lake Waco Murders Who Killed? His lawyers, Russ Hunt and Hayes Fuller, were convinced their client was being railroadedin their view, Spences long-running interrogation by Simons had been unorthodox, and the jailhouse testimony against him was suspect. An HBO documentary released two months later, The Execution Machine: Texas Death Row, featured Spence in his final week. Most of them ended up recanting later.. As the verdict was read, Spence stared solemnly and a collective gasp went up from the courtroom. Id interviewed mafiosi and hung with the triads in Hong Kong, he told me, but the first time in my career I felt Id put myself in harms way was being a Jewish boy from New York investigating Texas law enforcement.. Gilbert had initially brushed the incident off. Nonetheless, Spence was set to be executed in four days. Over the years he had made a name for himself as an investigative reporter with a penchant for penetrating dark and complicated worlds, such as those of the Mafia and the gangs of Chinatown. On the morning of April 3, Spence met with his loved ones, including June, one of his sons, and his brother. According to Dannen, Reaves, and Bernadette, after a nearly three-hour meeting, Wiley appeared convinced that Melendez was possibly innocentand that Spence might have been too. The nonprofit didnt get many wins in its fight against the death penalty, but Spences case was looking promising.

Like Price, Reaves was certain that Williams and Calvin Washington had been convicted with faulty evidence. I dont know if I want to see an innocent man get freed or if I just so deeply want to know who the guilty people are. Simons would allow him long phone calls to Juhl, sometimes until three or four in the morning, but she failed to turn up any new leads. The [murders] made me very angry, Ivy wrote in an affidavit, so hed talked about them with other inmates. Campbell identified four bite marks on Whites body and testified that the dentition of Mr. Williams [was] consistent with the injury on her hip.

Their decision would prove pivotal: after two weeks of testimony, in a ruling that sent shock waves through Waco, Deeb was found not guilty. Harper was no longer alive to talk; he had killed himself with a shotgun in 1994 when police tried to arrest him after hed attacked an elderly couple with a knife. (The charge was indeed dropped, but Simons has said repeatedly that only the DA had the power to drop charges. Opening it, he read that there were still no definitive leads. Spences lawyer in the abuse case, an earnest attorney just three years out of law school named Walter Reaves, had instructed his client not to speak to Simons, but Spence ignored him; when Spences father asked Simons if he should hire a lawyer for his son for the murder case, the deputy said Spence didnt need one because he hadnt been charged with murder. They kept us locked up. Until we made an arrest in that case, nobody knew who did it and they were afraid their child might be next..

You did it, we know you did ityoure going to die for it.