Latest / Devil Town / Raymond | Chapter 5
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: This podcast is intended for mature audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
- 0:16Speaker 2: You know, ever since I moved to Gilmer. I remember
- 0:20Speaker 2: that I was pregnant when I moved to Gilmer with Raymond,
- 0:24Speaker 2: and they always talked about Satan. Gilmer talked about Satan
- 0:29Speaker 2: worshippers all the time. They were the weirdest. I mean,
- 0:33Speaker 2: I always thought that was so weird. I'll never forget
- 0:37Speaker 2: one time everybody was picking up their daughters and stuff
- 0:41Speaker 2: from the Junior High because they was supposed to sacrifice
- 0:44Speaker 2: the blonde virgin.
- 0:46Speaker 1: This is Tammy Joe Smith. It was the mid eighties
- 0:48Speaker 1: when Tammy moved to Gilmer, about seven years before the
- 0:52Speaker 1: disappearance of Kelly Day Wilson, before the investigation into Satanic rituals,
- 0:57Speaker 1: cannibalism and murder that shocked the small East Texas town.
- 1:02Speaker 1: At the time, Tammy had no idea that Gilmer's fear
- 1:05Speaker 1: of the devil would forever change her life and all
- 1:08Speaker 1: but tear apart her family.
- 1:10Speaker 2: The Satan worshipers were trying to grab a girl, you know,
- 1:14Speaker 2: the blonde virgin, to sacrifice to the devil. And that
- 1:18Speaker 2: was the first rumors I heard in Gilmer and I'm like,
- 1:22Speaker 2: they got a freaking church on every corner in this
- 1:25Speaker 2: camp town. Literally, I mean literally, there's fifty freaking I mean,
- 1:30Speaker 2: I mean there's a church everywhere. But all I ever
- 1:33Speaker 2: heard people talk about was Satan worshipers. I never met
- 1:37Speaker 2: one Satan worshiper. The whole fifteen years, I never met one,
- 1:47Speaker 2: And still this day, I don't know if I've ever
- 1:48Speaker 2: met one. And the funny thing too, is my girlfriend
- 1:51Speaker 2: lived out in the country and preach it. And she'd say,
- 1:54Speaker 2: I hear channing, and I hear you know, and she goes,
- 1:59Speaker 2: there's zacrifice. I'm like, it's probably the freaking ku Klux
- 2:03Speaker 2: Klan because they're so prejudiced. They're meeting out in the
- 2:06Speaker 2: middle of nowhere do the thing. I've always thought that.
- 2:09Speaker 2: I always thought their Kuklux planning was the big Satanic
- 2:13Speaker 2: thing they were talking about.
- 2:15Speaker 1: Tammy was just seventeen when she settled in Gilmert and
- 2:18Speaker 1: had her oldest son, Raymond. Not long after, Tammy met
- 2:21Speaker 1: a man named Down.
- 2:23Speaker 2: I was very into the church community, the Pentecostal church.
- 2:29Speaker 2: I met Don at church. He was a good looking
- 2:34Speaker 2: older man and I thought that he was coming over
- 2:37Speaker 2: to my house actually to see my mom. Because he's
- 2:40Speaker 2: older than I am, and so I never looked at
- 2:44Speaker 2: him really as a boyfriend type, you know, until later,
- 2:48Speaker 2: I mean like a month later. But he was a
- 2:51Speaker 2: friendly I thought he was smart and good looking and
- 2:54Speaker 2: funny and all the good things. Now he's not as
- 2:57Speaker 2: funny as he used to be, but thinks he's funny.
- 3:00Speaker 1: Now here's Don whoo Man with that picture of her.
- 3:06Speaker 3: The sweeter you got to Tammy, the sweeter she was bad.
- 3:12Speaker 3: My name is Don Holman. I've got two honorable discharges
- 3:16Speaker 3: in an army, four years in Hell on wheels, two
- 3:20Speaker 3: six month tours in Germany, and now I'm noted for
- 3:23Speaker 3: being a bible hauling. I mean I'm a bible thumper.
- 3:28Speaker 1: Don was in his mid thirties, divorced. Even when he
- 3:32Speaker 1: was just getting to know Tammy, Don already started helping
- 3:35Speaker 1: out with her son, Raymond, who was born with a
- 3:38Speaker 1: cleft palate. The condition had left baby Raymond with an
- 3:41Speaker 1: opening in his lip and roof of his mouth, requiring
- 3:45Speaker 1: corrective surgeries.
- 3:48Speaker 3: After a while, I noticed that Tammy had this little
- 3:53Speaker 3: deformed baby. He got a buying ladder cleft palette, and
- 3:57Speaker 3: this baby is squirt milk about his nose. There ain't
- 4:01Speaker 3: nothing there the inside of his liop, The top part
- 4:05Speaker 3: was on the outside, and I'd get in there and
- 4:08Speaker 3: she'd be just white. I mean, she'd be wiped out
- 4:11Speaker 3: of sleep. I couldn't stand to get her up and
- 4:13Speaker 3: say go without her feed, So I fed him, change diaper,
- 4:17Speaker 3: put him back.
- 4:18Speaker 2: Raymond was a baby. Raymond was like three months old
- 4:21Speaker 2: when I met one two three months old, and Raymond
- 4:27Speaker 2: was born with a hairlip. Dawn was very good at
- 4:31Speaker 2: taking me to all my doctor's appointments and making sure that,
- 4:34Speaker 2: you know, like during surgeries and stuff. So it was
- 4:39Speaker 2: very supportive of Raymond and took on the father role
- 4:43Speaker 2: right away. Raymon's daddy never had anything to do with us.
- 4:47Speaker 1: Dawn and Tammy fell in love.
- 4:50Speaker 4: After a while.
- 4:51Speaker 3: I got the respecting her and she respected me, And
- 4:57Speaker 3: I don't know how everybody else feels.
- 5:02Speaker 4: Just because there.
- 5:03Speaker 3: Was an age different and we get along with each
- 5:06Speaker 3: other does not mean that I'm out of line or
- 5:09Speaker 3: she's out of line. She's a grown woman had a baby.
- 5:13Speaker 4: I don't think you know I'm.
- 5:15Speaker 3: Doing the wrong as long as I do her right.
- 5:18Speaker 3: And after while we got to lacking each other. One day,
- 5:21Speaker 3: I said, me and you. She said yep, nobody else yep.
- 5:27Speaker 3: I said, okay, And after like four years she said done.
- 5:33Speaker 3: If you die, I don't have nothing to remember. You
- 5:36Speaker 3: buy She said, I'd like to have a baby with you.
- 5:38Speaker 3: And I said, how about it if I just buy
- 5:41Speaker 3: you a car. She'd always says, stop acting stupid. I said,
- 5:48Speaker 3: I ain't acting, I said, and right off she got pregnant.
- 5:54Speaker 3: I said, Timmy, I don't have the money to pay
- 5:57Speaker 3: for a baby. She said done. Everybody else who people
- 6:02Speaker 3: all over the world's having kids, having on the welfare.
- 6:06Speaker 3: And we had a kid.
- 6:09Speaker 1: When Raymond was five years old. Don and Tammy had
- 6:12Speaker 1: their son.
- 6:12Speaker 2: Luther, beautiful baby that loved his mom and daddy. It
- 6:17Speaker 2: was really just a simple life. I mean, you know,
- 6:21Speaker 2: he'd go to work every day. I was a stay
- 6:23Speaker 2: at home mom, and we went to church three four
- 6:26Speaker 2: times a week.
- 6:27Speaker 1: Don had a bunch of different jobs at times. He'd
- 6:30Speaker 1: even worked as a reserve police officer, so he actually
- 6:33Speaker 1: knew James York Brown, the Gilmer police sergeant who eventually
- 6:37Speaker 1: would be accused of kidnapping and murdering Kelly Wilson.
- 6:40Speaker 3: I didn't like James Brown. He was the cop you
- 6:43Speaker 3: probably know about him. He was all right, but I
- 6:46Speaker 3: thought he was a bad guy. Well, he's always smart
- 6:50Speaker 3: enough to me, and you think you're badass or something.
- 6:53Speaker 3: He said, I'm a boxer. He said, you every want
- 6:56Speaker 3: to stop the car, get after it? He said we
- 7:00Speaker 3: I said, well, I know how to box and I
- 7:02Speaker 3: use my feet too. He said, you're in the martial arts.
- 7:05Speaker 3: I said, I can kick you enough. You can't get
- 7:08Speaker 3: close to me, and I said why, I said, We're
- 7:11Speaker 3: gonna look real funny on side row. Two cops fighting.
- 7:15Speaker 4: But he would do.
- 7:16Speaker 3: Some people take it that they don't know them easy going.
- 7:20Speaker 3: I'm not as smart ass or anything. So he'd take
- 7:25Speaker 3: me to his house and his wife fixed chicken, and
- 7:31Speaker 3: he treated him as good as gold.
- 7:33Speaker 1: Don and Sergeant James York Brown patched things up. Years
- 7:37Speaker 1: before Kelly's disappearance, Don and Tammy, Raymond and Luther lived
- 7:41Speaker 1: in government housing in Gilmer. Their neighbor was a young
- 7:44Speaker 1: woman named Wanda Hicks. She had two sons, the Hicks Kids,
- 7:49Speaker 1: from a guy named Bad Jimmy.
- 7:51Speaker 2: From what I understood is that those kids and Wanda
- 7:54Speaker 2: were put in the project apartment right there. They were
- 7:58Speaker 2: being filtered from her egg because her ex was abusive.
- 8:02Speaker 2: From what I understand, the kids had mental problems from
- 8:05Speaker 2: all that craft. I don't know why they went and
- 8:07Speaker 2: said hey, you know, because they're the ones that actually
- 8:11Speaker 2: started the accusations against me, and from what I understand,
- 8:14Speaker 2: that's how we got into this.
- 8:16Speaker 1: The name Wanda might sound familiar, open my mouth.
- 8:20Speaker 3: They have threatened to kill Wanda.
- 8:22Speaker 2: I had to say, Mark some Wanda's throw and I
- 8:25Speaker 2: asked Wanda what happened to her throw?
- 8:27Speaker 5: And she wouldn't tell me. I don't know she was
- 8:30Speaker 5: scared to tell Mayor Wan.
- 8:33Speaker 1: That's from the interrogation of Connie Martin, a suspect turned
- 8:36Speaker 1: witness in the criminal investigation against the family accused of
- 8:40Speaker 1: kidnapping and murdering Kelly Wilson. At first. Tammy says she
- 8:44Speaker 1: has no inkling about the abuse allegations leveled against Wanda
- 8:48Speaker 1: and the curs She.
- 8:50Speaker 2: Was real strict with her kids, and that's why I
- 8:52Speaker 2: thought she was a good mother, you know. I mean,
- 8:53Speaker 2: I was, like, never seen her whip on. Her kids
- 8:55Speaker 2: are knitting, you know, but she kept her kids in line.
- 8:58Speaker 2: You know, they were pretty decent. I know the oldest
- 9:01Speaker 2: one acted out a lot and got sent home from
- 9:04Speaker 2: school a lot, like stabbing kids with orks and shit
- 9:07Speaker 2: like that. But other than that, I mean, I don't
- 9:10Speaker 2: know anything else about her. I know that when she married.
- 9:13Speaker 2: When I met her, she wouldn't Maccurr. Her name was Hicks.
- 9:16Speaker 2: And then she started dating Wendell. And Don knew Wendell through.
- 9:22Speaker 2: You know, gilm were small town, all them guys, they
- 9:25Speaker 2: were all raised together.
- 9:27Speaker 1: Later investigators would claim that Wendell was the ringleader of
- 9:30Speaker 1: the Kerr satanic cult in Gilmer.
- 9:33Speaker 3: We had went to school together. I never had sex
- 9:37Speaker 3: with none of the none of the Curve women, and
- 9:41Speaker 3: uh never cared too.
- 9:46Speaker 2: You know, they don't hang out together, but they all know.
- 9:48Speaker 2: We all know each other because it's such a small town.
- 9:51Speaker 2: Don's oh, I know him. That's that's Wendell Kerr, you know.
- 9:54Speaker 2: And sometimes Don would say, hey, you know whatever. And
- 9:58Speaker 2: then she was like, I'm gonna get I'm going to
- 10:00Speaker 2: marry Wendell, and I was like, oh.
- 10:02Speaker 1: That's sweet.
- 10:03Speaker 2: I helped her get ready for her wedding to him,
- 10:06Speaker 2: and I went out to the curR house, the old man,
- 10:09Speaker 2: old woman Curve the mam and daddy. I was at
- 10:12Speaker 2: their house one time for the wedding and we were there,
- 10:17Speaker 2: saw me an hour, an hour and a half.
- 10:20Speaker 3: Maybe I went out to wedding one time. They was
- 10:24Speaker 3: a preacher window wing his wife got married. That kind
- 10:30Speaker 3: of I did, just went to wedding the first thing,
- 10:32Speaker 3: you know, I'm a cannibal to eating people in the
- 10:34Speaker 3: bag that had a witch and circle.
- 10:37Speaker 2: That was the only time I've ever really actually hung
- 10:40Speaker 2: out with the Curves, you know. I mean other than that,
- 10:43Speaker 2: I don't know anything else about them. I've never been
- 10:46Speaker 2: around them except for hey, at the bus stop or whatever,
- 10:49Speaker 2: you know, with our kids. Them kids were good kids.
- 10:52Speaker 2: I thought.
- 10:53Speaker 1: You know, Timmy's son Raymond wasn't really friends with the
- 10:56Speaker 1: Hicks kids for a reason.
- 10:58Speaker 4: Yeah. They lived across the sidewalk from us up here
- 11:01Speaker 4: at the government housing. One of them was older than me,
- 11:05Speaker 4: and I think one of them was younger than me.
- 11:07Speaker 4: We would play every now and again. We didn't always
- 11:10Speaker 4: get along because at one point Don had bought their bicycle.
- 11:14Speaker 4: But I remember I came home from school one day
- 11:17Speaker 4: I've been wanting a bicycle, and I went to my
- 11:20Speaker 4: room and I had two bicycles, and I remember like
- 11:22Speaker 4: being really excited, like those are both mine, and they're like, yeah,
- 11:25Speaker 4: you got two bikes. But when I would go outside,
- 11:29Speaker 4: they bought it from the neighbor. So the neighbor kids,
- 11:32Speaker 4: they still looked at it as that was their bikes.
- 11:36Speaker 4: You know. We would argue over those bicycles. But I
- 11:39Speaker 4: was like, I said, I was the only child I
- 11:42Speaker 4: won't used to sharing, And I was like, hold up,
- 11:45Speaker 4: I got two bikes, the brand new, and I gotta
- 11:47Speaker 4: let them ride one of them, like, you know, so
- 11:50Speaker 4: we really like argue and fight over those bikes.
- 11:53Speaker 1: One day, the Hicks kids were gone. Wendell Kerr and
- 11:56Speaker 1: Wanda Hicks had just gotten married in a ceremony outside
- 12:00Speaker 1: the curR home on Cherokee Trace. Days later, child Protective
- 12:03Speaker 1: Services removed the cur and Hicks kids from the home.
- 12:07Speaker 1: The Curves have been described as quote marginal characters in Gilmer,
- 12:11Speaker 1: so most people around town probably didn't even notice that
- 12:14Speaker 1: some country folks lost their kids.
- 12:17Speaker 3: Ley Tope Wendell's kids a way because he had been
- 12:20Speaker 3: accused of lessening his kids.
- 12:23Speaker 2: The first time they came to the door, me and
- 12:25Speaker 2: Don were asleep and they were wanting us to go
- 12:29Speaker 2: down to the police station top and we agreed and
- 12:33Speaker 2: we went and that's when they just started asking questions
- 12:36Speaker 2: about the curves, and basically it was just, you know,
- 12:41Speaker 2: have you ever seen Wanda Kerr hit her kids? And
- 12:43Speaker 2: have you ever seen any kind of abuse? And I
- 12:47Speaker 2: was like, no, you know, yeah, she's just a young girl.
- 12:50Speaker 2: It's got all these little babies, and you know, I
- 12:53Speaker 2: thought she was a pretty decent mom.
- 12:55Speaker 1: The two Hicks boys were placed with foster mom Barbara
- 12:58Speaker 1: Bass and her husband Karls. If the name Barbara Bass
- 13:02Speaker 1: sounds familiar, she was mentioned in episode three. The Basses
- 13:06Speaker 1: were in their early forties and lived in a big
- 13:08Speaker 1: country home a little more than half an hour from
- 13:10Speaker 1: gilmert They would have been empty nesters if they hadn't
- 13:13Speaker 1: filled the house with foster children. Barbara described herself as
- 13:17Speaker 1: very down to earth, very basic and trying to help people.
- 13:22Speaker 3: She had been the East Texas Foster Parents of the Year.
- 13:27Speaker 2: I think the year before.
- 13:30Speaker 1: That was Melvin Dodd, the founding member of the Justice
- 13:33Speaker 1: for Kelly Wilson Committee. Back then, there was this amusement
- 13:37Speaker 1: park in Shreveport, Louisiana, just across the state line from Texas.
- 13:41Speaker 1: I remember the commercials when I was a kid and
- 13:43Speaker 1: always wanted to go. Never got to. Raymond did though.
- 13:48Speaker 4: Our church went out to an amusement park called Hamil Park,
- 13:53Speaker 4: and while we were there, the Hicks kids were in
- 13:57Speaker 4: Foster Hume and we saw it with their foster parents
- 14:01Speaker 4: our church group, and they'd waved or something and they
- 14:05Speaker 4: wouldn't let us talk to them. Like the foster parents
- 14:08Speaker 4: that they were with were kind of like, hey, y'all
- 14:10Speaker 4: need to keep those distance type thing. And I was
- 14:12Speaker 4: a kid who were just kind of like waved at
- 14:14Speaker 4: each other. When they asked one of those Hicks boys,
- 14:18Speaker 4: like how do you know that kid? They were like
- 14:21Speaker 4: he was our neighbor. And then they were like, well,
- 14:24Speaker 4: did y'all's parents abuse him too? And one of them
- 14:27Speaker 4: were like yeah, so one of them kids and lied
- 14:31Speaker 4: to her or whatever falster parents they were with, saying
- 14:35Speaker 4: that I had been molested with them, like all like
- 14:40Speaker 4: in some big group or something like some kid orgy
- 14:42Speaker 4: or something. I don't know, like that's how we got
- 14:46Speaker 4: drawled into the.
- 14:47Speaker 1: Whole myth Raymond never should have waved to those Hicks kids.
- 14:52Speaker 1: What he describes as a typical childhood.
- 14:55Speaker 4: It was school, church, family, school, church, family, like those
- 15:00Speaker 4: my life for the first seven years.
- 15:02Speaker 1: That life as he knew it was over from imperative entertainment.
- 15:12Speaker 1: I'm Wes Ferguson. This is Deviltown. This is Chapter five.
- 15:33Speaker 1: Raymond Raymond Smith is thirty six years old now. He's skinny,
- 15:38Speaker 1: dark hair, dark eyes. After bouncing around some he recently
- 15:43Speaker 1: moved back to Gilmour and lives with his stepdad, Don Holman.
- 15:46Speaker 1: In the early nineties, during the Kerr and Kelly Wilson investigations,
- 15:50Speaker 1: Raymond was said to be a smart and inquisitive little boy.
- 15:54Speaker 4: I can remember my mom had set me down on
- 15:56Speaker 4: a back porch one day up there, and she said
- 15:59Speaker 4: something along the line like somebody wants to come speak
- 16:03Speaker 4: with you or something like that. Whoever it is comes
- 16:07Speaker 4: to talk to us, be honest with them, telling them
- 16:10Speaker 4: the truth. And when I asked questions.
- 16:13Speaker 2: In the very, very very beginning, they kept the cops
- 16:15Speaker 2: kept saying. He said, Okay, if we let somebody talk
- 16:19Speaker 2: to Raymond at school, I said, go go talk to him.
- 16:22Speaker 2: They questioned Raymond five times. I mean, how many damn
- 16:25Speaker 2: times were they gonna go questioning until he said something?
- 16:29Speaker 2: I mean basically is what it was. You know, they
- 16:32Speaker 2: weren't gonna quit going up there.
- 16:34Speaker 4: Probably about like a week or so after that, I
- 16:37Speaker 4: was playing in the front yard one day and sheriff's
- 16:40Speaker 4: apartment pulled up.
- 16:42Speaker 2: That's when I get a knock at the door and
- 16:45Speaker 2: they're coming to take my kids away.
- 16:47Speaker 4: They had a mixed stack of papers they told my mom.
- 16:52Speaker 4: They were like, uh, we're here to take the kids.
- 16:58Speaker 4: I wasn't frightened at the time because none was a patrolman,
- 17:02Speaker 4: you know, like so I wasn't scared of pouense.
- 17:05Speaker 1: Don happened to be out of town that day. Raymond's
- 17:08Speaker 1: little brother, Luther, only two years old, was absolutely terrified.
- 17:13Speaker 2: I will never forget them taken him from us and
- 17:16Speaker 2: him screaming at the top as once, I.
- 17:20Speaker 4: Want my daddy, I want my daddy. They told us,
- 17:26Speaker 4: they said, you know, uh, you can get something for you,
- 17:30Speaker 4: you know, go grab you a toy. You can get
- 17:31Speaker 4: your brother a toy. And uh, I grabbed a Bible
- 17:36Speaker 4: that the church told give me. It was it was
- 17:39Speaker 4: blue and silver, had my name Raymond Smith printed on it,
- 17:43Speaker 4: like real nice professional like printed into it, and uh,
- 17:48Speaker 4: I grabbed Luther's pillow and then they hauled us down
- 17:58Speaker 4: to rain and it took us to a Falster family.
- 18:06Speaker 4: That first family. They were real nice. We were out
- 18:09Speaker 4: of our element, but it was a normal, you know situation.
- 18:13Speaker 4: They bring me, h I think they did bring me
- 18:16Speaker 4: for a visit with my mom and them, my mom
- 18:19Speaker 4: and Don, and then usually it was to go see
- 18:23Speaker 4: Ang goere. She was ahead of the case at time.
- 18:26Speaker 1: We've talked about a Gore throughout the series. She was
- 18:29Speaker 1: the first CPS worker to discover abuse in the Kerr family.
- 18:33Speaker 1: Now a gore was protecting Raymond also.
- 18:36Speaker 4: Then there was a day that they brought me up
- 18:38Speaker 4: there and Gore was like, I want to introduce you
- 18:42Speaker 4: to a friend of mine and she wants to ask
- 18:44Speaker 4: you some questions. And then next thing I know, we're
- 18:47Speaker 4: like going to get in the van. There ain't no
- 18:49Speaker 4: seats in the van, and they're like, I want you
- 18:51Speaker 4: to lay down. They had me laid down in the
- 18:54Speaker 4: back and Barbara Vass was laid down there beside me.
- 18:59Speaker 1: Yes, that Barbara Bass, the foster parent. She had come
- 19:03Speaker 1: to the CPS office in her forge van to help
- 19:06Speaker 1: angre coax some information out of Raymond.
- 19:10Speaker 4: And she said, well, you know, you don't be scared.
- 19:13Speaker 4: We're just gonna ask you some questions this and that,
- 19:16Speaker 4: and A Gore was driving and Debbie Mianto was in
- 19:23Speaker 4: the passenger seat. I believe we rode out of the
- 19:29Speaker 4: CPS office and at that time what they were asking
- 19:32Speaker 4: us about was all about being molested or touched or
- 19:36Speaker 4: something along the lines of that, you know, And I
- 19:38Speaker 4: tell them no. They say, well, did they touch he?
- 19:40Speaker 4: I say no, I ain't never been touched or nothing
- 19:43Speaker 4: like that, Like, you know, where's this? You know, like
- 19:46Speaker 4: when you're a kid, you don't realize what the hell's
- 19:48Speaker 4: going on. But that ended up turning into Barbara basketting
- 19:53Speaker 4: behind me and wrapping her arms around me, and then
- 19:58Speaker 4: she took her legs, hold my legs down, and she
- 20:02Speaker 4: take her thumb and sticking in my rib cane chair
- 20:06Speaker 4: and rub up and down on my ribs.
- 20:09Speaker 1: Barbara Bass, who died in twenty seventeen, was using the
- 20:13Speaker 1: holding technique, a controversial therapy of restraining kids like in
- 20:17Speaker 1: a bear hug that was supposed to help them form
- 20:20Speaker 1: a bond with their foster parents. But Barbara Bass had
- 20:23Speaker 1: adapted the holding technique for her own purposes.
- 20:27Speaker 5: Apparently there was some kind of radical theory about getting
- 20:31Speaker 5: kits to disclose things they wouldn't normally disclose through this
- 20:35Speaker 5: holding technique.
- 20:36Speaker 1: This is former Assistant Attorney General Shane Phelps.
- 20:39Speaker 5: Which in what I came to understand about this holding
- 20:43Speaker 5: technique was that it was just torture.
- 20:46Speaker 1: What is the holding technique?
- 20:48Speaker 5: The theory behind it, I guess is that the children
- 20:51Speaker 5: have to be I guess, forced to disclose. They hold
- 20:56Speaker 5: them tightly, like I mean, it's a crime. Actually it's on.
- 21:00Speaker 5: They're holding these children tightly and they will not let
- 21:04Speaker 5: go of them until they disclose what they think this
- 21:06Speaker 5: child has to disclose.
- 21:08Speaker 4: I remember I was saying no, no, you know, and
- 21:11Speaker 4: I'm squirming. I'm fighting with her, and then she would
- 21:14Speaker 4: ask me questions repetitively, you know, did your parents do this?
- 21:21Speaker 4: Did they touch you? Did they touch you?
- 21:22Speaker 1: At some point, Raymond says, A Gore climbed into the
- 21:26Speaker 1: back of the van with him and Barbara Bass and.
- 21:29Speaker 4: Gore was in the back there and she was holding
- 21:31Speaker 4: my legs down because I was fighting and swirming and everything.
- 21:35Speaker 4: Barbara couldn't hold me down or whatnot. At that time,
- 21:39Speaker 4: they had a big billboard sign right there where the
- 21:41Speaker 4: subway is now here in Gimmer there was a big
- 21:43Speaker 4: billboard sign and it said Kelly Wilson, you know, And
- 21:48Speaker 4: I remember seeing that when we were leaving the CPS office.
- 21:51Speaker 4: I was laid down in that van and I can see,
- 21:53Speaker 4: you know, the Gary Queen sign. Now I've seen that
- 21:57Speaker 4: Kelly Wilson sign. And the next thing I know, all
- 21:59Speaker 4: I can see is tree. You know, we're on some
- 22:01Speaker 4: old top Roadbacker.
- 22:02Speaker 1: Barbara Bass and the caseworkers and Gore and Debbie Minshew
- 22:06Speaker 1: had driven Raymond out of town into the woods.
- 22:09Speaker 4: Well what the hell are these people doing? You know?
- 22:12Speaker 4: And so they kept rubbing my ribs and asking me questions,
- 22:17Speaker 4: you know, did did your mom? And Donald less few
- 22:20Speaker 4: and uh I was, you know, no, no, no, no.
- 22:25Speaker 4: Finally I said yes. And when I would tell her yes,
- 22:29Speaker 4: she would stop rubbing my ribs, you know, and then
- 22:32Speaker 4: like kind of pan for me, like oh, it's okay,
- 22:36Speaker 4: you know, nobody's gonna hurt you no more. We're here now.
- 22:40Speaker 4: And then and then she'd start right back again, you know,
- 22:43Speaker 4: asking more stuff. And I remember feeling like I remember
- 22:49Speaker 4: feeling like they were gonna kill me or something like
- 22:52Speaker 4: because I didn't know what's going on, and so I
- 22:57Speaker 4: said something like along the lines where I said Kelly
- 23:00Speaker 4: Wilson's name, I've seen that sign.
- 23:04Speaker 1: Okay, did you hear that right there? That was the
- 23:07Speaker 1: first time Kelly Wilson, the missing teenager, was ever connected
- 23:11Speaker 1: to the Kirk case. Raymond was confessing to anything and
- 23:15Speaker 1: everything to stop the women from hurting him when he
- 23:18Speaker 1: blurted out Kelly's name. Raymond would eventually tell Barbara Bass
- 23:23Speaker 1: that he also took part in something much bigger.
- 23:27Speaker 5: It was for more than an hour, just not letting
- 23:29Speaker 5: this kid go with I guess steps struggling, and then
- 23:32Speaker 5: they would take their knuckles and they would rub it
- 23:35Speaker 5: painfully up and down his ribs until, according to them,
- 23:42Speaker 5: disclosed this satanic coven and in the process, soiled himself.
- 23:49Speaker 5: So I mean basically they, from my perspective, they tortured him,
- 23:53Speaker 5: he soiled himself. And for them, again, this is part
- 23:56Speaker 5: of that dynamic where they think, if something happens, it
- 24:01Speaker 5: just the only thing that registers in their brain is, oh,
- 24:04Speaker 5: this must have been such an important disclosure for this
- 24:07Speaker 5: child that he actually soiled himself. So in their mind,
- 24:11Speaker 5: that proved that it was true, and I mean that
- 24:14Speaker 5: is from my perspective, perverted thinking. It is, you have
- 24:18Speaker 5: your mindset on something, and all you are going to
- 24:21Speaker 5: perceive are things that tangentially prove what you think is
- 24:27Speaker 5: going on. It's a cognitive bias where you form an
- 24:33Speaker 5: opinion and all you're going to perceive are things that
- 24:38Speaker 5: inform and prove that opinion and ignore anything that doesn't.
- 24:43Speaker 1: Raymond insists he didn't soil himself. He says, one of
- 24:47Speaker 1: the women soiled herself and let Raymond take the blame.
- 24:50Speaker 4: I don't know how much like time passed from that
- 24:53Speaker 4: first time I met Marba Bath, but one day they
- 24:57Speaker 4: told me, they said, you and your brother getting ready
- 25:00Speaker 4: to go to a new home. I didn't know it,
- 25:02Speaker 4: but I was going to Barbara Basson's home. She realized
- 25:07Speaker 4: that I could spot landmarks and was familiar with the area.
- 25:13Speaker 4: From that day forward, when they would drive me to
- 25:16Speaker 4: Gilmour back and forth from their house, I was always
- 25:19Speaker 4: blindfold got to their house and there was a bunch
- 25:24Speaker 4: of kids at her house, a whole bunch.
- 25:26Speaker 1: Of kids that would be the Kirk kids.
- 25:29Speaker 4: I knew two of them from the school bus, and
- 25:32Speaker 4: so that was kind of like a relief, like seeing somebody,
- 25:35Speaker 4: you know, after being taken away from everything that you know,
- 25:39Speaker 4: still not realizing that it was connected, that we were
- 25:42Speaker 4: involved in the same thing. They set all us kids
- 25:45Speaker 4: down there and they told us the house rules, no masturbating.
- 25:49Speaker 4: I was seven years old. I didn't know what masturbation was, Like,
- 25:54Speaker 4: what's what's masturbating? You know, And all the other kids
- 25:59Speaker 4: are sitting there and they're looking at me and they're laughing.
- 26:01Speaker 4: They're like, you know what it is.
- 26:05Speaker 1: As Raymond settled into his new home, there were some
- 26:08Speaker 1: nice things about living with Barbara.
- 26:09Speaker 4: Bass, like this mixed emotion of like how even like
- 26:13Speaker 4: how I still remember it, like because there's a part
- 26:15Speaker 4: of my mind I remember it as like you know,
- 26:18Speaker 4: like man, we had all them toys and lived in
- 26:21Speaker 4: a real big home, and you know, like it's different
- 26:25Speaker 4: when you come from a project, you know, going into
- 26:28Speaker 4: an environment like that. You know, we had a pet tiger,
- 26:31Speaker 4: Like yeah, at the Bass home they had a tiger
- 26:36Speaker 4: tiger and it was a Bengal tiger and it was
- 26:41Speaker 4: only like a year old, over six foot tall. When
- 26:44Speaker 4: it would stand up on the tiny legs like spread out,
- 26:47Speaker 4: So that was pretty cool. They feed the tiger frozen chickens,
- 26:51Speaker 4: and about once a month they'd take a live chicken
- 26:54Speaker 4: and they'd throw it in there with a tiger and
- 26:57Speaker 4: it pounces around like like a regular high cat plays
- 27:00Speaker 4: with something. You know. They'd play with that chicken. Then
- 27:03Speaker 4: they'd kill it and it'd swim around pluck its feathers out.
- 27:08Speaker 4: So we'd sit there and watch it eat and stuff.
- 27:11Speaker 4: One day, Uh, we woke up and we all go
- 27:14Speaker 4: downstairs to breakfast. We'd all have breakfast in the dining area,
- 27:19Speaker 4: and we had chores to do and be on them,
- 27:22Speaker 4: you know, on the refrigerator door. You know, this day,
- 27:25Speaker 4: you feed the chickens, you do rabbit. They had animals,
- 27:28Speaker 4: and so you know, well she had marked on that
- 27:32Speaker 4: calendar holding day.
- 27:34Speaker 1: Holding day was not a happy day.
- 27:37Speaker 4: And I noticed, like all the other kids in the
- 27:39Speaker 4: in the house like they got like, you know, sketchy
- 27:43Speaker 4: and like depressed. One of the kids was telling me,
- 27:45Speaker 4: he's like, oh man, this whole day and everybody's like
- 27:49Speaker 4: in a real bad mood. There's like fifteen of us kids,
- 27:53Speaker 4: and we'd all line up on the right side of
- 27:55Speaker 4: the stairwell. And what she would do is she'd have us,
- 28:00Speaker 4: run up the right side of the steps, all the
- 28:03Speaker 4: way up the landings, all the way to the top floor,
- 28:07Speaker 4: all the way up, all the way down, all the
- 28:08Speaker 4: way up, all the way down. And I mean this
- 28:11Speaker 4: this went on for like, you know, an hour, two hours.
- 28:14Speaker 4: This was not like a run up there for like
- 28:16Speaker 4: ten minutes. And we're done with this thing. This was
- 28:18Speaker 4: an all day event. And I get tired. I kind
- 28:22Speaker 4: of like sit down, and the kids are telling me.
- 28:24Speaker 4: They're like no, like like you know, they were terrified
- 28:26Speaker 4: because they've been through this. They're like, no, don't don't
- 28:29Speaker 4: do that, like, don't make her mad. Like everybody's getting
- 28:34Speaker 4: read in the face. Kids are starting to cry, and uh,
- 28:38Speaker 4: she would she would stand there on the on the
- 28:43Speaker 4: uh in the hallway, they're on the landing, and she'd like,
- 28:48Speaker 4: ridicule us. You know, that's why your parents don't love you,
- 28:53Speaker 4: and that's why your mom you and that's why your
- 28:57Speaker 4: daddy don't love you. And and so she's just yelling
- 29:00Speaker 4: all this vulgar shit the whole time we're running. And
- 29:03Speaker 4: so kids at different point in time are starting to
- 29:06Speaker 4: break down, crying. That's what she called it. Breakdown. The
- 29:10Speaker 4: first floor you had the kitchen. Second floor was like
- 29:12Speaker 4: a big living area with a bedroom. Then the third
- 29:16Speaker 4: floor you had bedrooms, and then that fourth floor was
- 29:18Speaker 4: like an attic. That was where me and two other boys stayed.
- 29:22Speaker 4: So there was like two or three girls that shared
- 29:24Speaker 4: a room on that third floor. Right at the top
- 29:27Speaker 4: of that stairwell, that was their room. Well, that's where
- 29:30Speaker 4: she would do the holdings.
- 29:32Speaker 1: It sounds like Barbara was trying to get the kids
- 29:34Speaker 1: tired so they wouldn't fight back when she deployed the
- 29:37Speaker 1: holding technique.
- 29:39Speaker 4: I still didn't realize what was going on that I'd
- 29:41Speaker 4: already experienced the rib reven and all that. Well, what
- 29:45Speaker 4: she knew is she pull them in there and she
- 29:46Speaker 4: get them on. She put us on that bed, and
- 29:49Speaker 4: you could hear you could hear the kids through the
- 29:52Speaker 4: door screaming. She'd go one at a time. She just
- 29:54Speaker 4: picked one all of a sudden. You know, she'd picked
- 29:56Speaker 4: you out while you're running, all right, you come on,
- 29:59Speaker 4: and then she take them in there and she rub
- 30:01Speaker 4: the ribs and hold them down. You hear them screaming
- 30:04Speaker 4: and hollering and fighting and everything, and uh, you know,
- 30:08Speaker 4: you can hear her cussing and them cussing, and next thing,
- 30:11Speaker 4: you know, they come out and they're just worn out,
- 30:13Speaker 4: like you know, after that whole process, you're just tired.
- 30:16Speaker 4: You're like like, you know, draining, emotionally draining and uh.
- 30:21Speaker 4: And then they get to go outside, you know, and
- 30:24Speaker 4: go mess with you know, out in the yard, go
- 30:26Speaker 4: play games whatever. I was thinking they were just bad kids.
- 30:30Speaker 4: I was like, you know, dang, what the heck is
- 30:32Speaker 4: going on? Like, you know, they're in there cussing her
- 30:34Speaker 4: and you know, fighting and screaming and yelling like, man,
- 30:37Speaker 4: this is bad, Like you know, all we gotta do
- 30:39Speaker 4: is mind or something like and uh. Then she took
- 30:44Speaker 4: me in there and did the same things. Then she
- 30:48Speaker 4: started asking more questions, you know, and I'm like, I
- 30:51Speaker 4: don't know what to say. So I'm sitting there coming
- 30:53Speaker 4: up with these lies. And I used to get in
- 30:56Speaker 4: trouble for lying. You don't lie to your adults. So
- 30:59Speaker 4: once I lie to her, I was really I was
- 31:01Speaker 4: more afraid of her, you know, like, man, what is
- 31:03Speaker 4: she going to do now? You know, she's already treating
- 31:06Speaker 4: me like this, What's she going to do now? If
- 31:08Speaker 4: I'm you know, try to tell her like, look, lady,
- 31:10Speaker 4: I'm lying to you, like you know, And so eventually
- 31:14Speaker 4: I ended up saying something about James.
- 31:16Speaker 1: Brown, as in James York Brown, the Gilbert police sergeant
- 31:20Speaker 1: leading the search for Kelly Wilson. Raymond knew several police
- 31:23Speaker 1: officers through his stepdad down so when making false claims
- 31:28Speaker 1: in a desperate attempt to end the holding and rib rubbing,
- 31:31Speaker 1: it was only natural that he'd bring up Sergeant Brown.
- 31:34Speaker 4: Already lied on my mom. I lied on Don Now
- 31:37Speaker 4: I'm lied on James Brown. In my mind at seven,
- 31:41Speaker 4: I was thinking, all right, like James Brown, he's like,
- 31:44Speaker 4: you know, he's like a big time cop. You know,
- 31:47Speaker 4: if I say his name, he's probably gonna like show up,
- 31:50Speaker 4: you know, and he knows Don and know my mom,
- 31:52Speaker 4: and I'll be able to go home and you know,
- 31:54Speaker 4: like you know, then I can tell him like, hey,
- 31:57Speaker 4: she's hurting me, Like no. But it didn't work out.
- 32:01Speaker 1: Like that, No, it didn't.
- 32:14Speaker 4: Barbara could be really really nice, you know some days,
- 32:17Speaker 4: and then other times she'd just she'd be real brutal
- 32:21Speaker 4: and just you know, your little mother, you know, just
- 32:25Speaker 4: real trash talk. So I think all the kids were
- 32:29Speaker 4: scared of her. But and they walked on pins and
- 32:32Speaker 4: needles around her now. Her husband, Charlie Bass, was real quiet, easygoing.
- 32:38Speaker 4: You'd never hear him cuss or say something rude to you.
- 32:41Speaker 4: He never punished us. He would leave and then you know,
- 32:45Speaker 4: he'd leave for days at a time and then come back,
- 32:47Speaker 4: and he was never home when we'd have that holding process.
- 32:51Speaker 4: He was always gone. That was something I noticed, Like
- 32:54Speaker 4: I could always tell like because she would do it
- 32:57Speaker 4: on a spur of a moment. She wouldn't be like, hey,
- 32:59Speaker 4: tomorrow's holding day. You'd wake up and come downstairs and
- 33:03Speaker 4: you'd see it posted on the refrigerator, you know, like
- 33:06Speaker 4: today's holding day. Then it got to where when she'd
- 33:11Speaker 4: ask me questions, it won't like she just asked a
- 33:15Speaker 4: question and wait for an answer. She'd ask a question
- 33:18Speaker 4: along the lines of, you know, uh, so, did y'all
- 33:26Speaker 4: were y'all in a dungeon or something like that, and
- 33:29Speaker 4: I'm going, no, you know, and then it's no, well
- 33:32Speaker 4: tell me where the dungeon is? You know? No, did
- 33:36Speaker 4: y'all dress up like devils? No? You know, she's rubbing
- 33:41Speaker 4: your ribs the whole time you're screaming and hollering. So
- 33:44Speaker 4: finally it got to where I realized, like what whatever
- 33:46Speaker 4: she was asking me, I knew she wanted a yes
- 33:48Speaker 4: answer to you, you know what I mean, Like I
- 33:50Speaker 4: figured that out real quick, like all right, if I
- 33:52Speaker 4: say yes, she quits rubbing my ribs. And then she's, oh,
- 33:56Speaker 4: you're well, you a baby, you know, And she said, there,
- 34:00Speaker 4: try to like coddle us. So it gave you like
- 34:02Speaker 4: a mixed emotion of you know, the abuser is now
- 34:06Speaker 4: the you know, everything's all right, you know, And that's
- 34:10Speaker 4: what she was doing to us.
- 34:12Speaker 1: From the moment Raymond had arrived at the baths house,
- 34:15Speaker 1: he says his mentality changed. He retreated inward, went into
- 34:19Speaker 1: survival mode.
- 34:21Speaker 4: From that day forward, I was real guarded with all
- 34:26Speaker 4: the adults. I mean any adults, didn't matter who they were.
- 34:30Speaker 4: They take me to a church thing, anywhere we went.
- 34:33Speaker 4: I avoided adults. All adults in my mind were out
- 34:37Speaker 4: to get me. I was like, you can't trust any
- 34:40Speaker 4: of these people, Like they're all gonna try to hurt us.
- 34:43Speaker 4: They're lying, they're all like something's wrong with them. They're
- 34:46Speaker 4: they're talking about killing people and eating them and devils
- 34:49Speaker 4: and just like everything that I was scared of because
- 34:52Speaker 4: like when you're seven, you go to church, you know,
- 34:54Speaker 4: they're telling you, like, hey, you'd be good so you
- 34:56Speaker 4: don't go to hell. The Kirk kids had told her
- 34:59Speaker 4: so about a devil truck and being involved in these seances,
- 35:05Speaker 4: and you know, they're burning stuff at night and killing
- 35:08Speaker 4: babies and stuff. And so when one of them kids
- 35:12Speaker 4: would say something to her like that, that was the
- 35:15Speaker 4: new thing that was on my plate. When she was
- 35:17Speaker 4: asking me questions, you know so, and then I'm just
- 35:20Speaker 4: going along. I'm trying to keep up with these kids,
- 35:23Speaker 4: you know, whatever they're saying. And the whole time I
- 35:26Speaker 4: didn't realize that my mom and Don were in jail.
- 35:32Speaker 4: One day, I was acting up, probably just doing like
- 35:34Speaker 4: some regular kids stuff, and she punished me and she
- 35:37Speaker 4: sat me down. She gave me a cheese sandwich, you know,
- 35:41Speaker 4: like two pieces of bread, cheese in the middle and
- 35:44Speaker 4: like a glass of water. All the other kids are eating,
- 35:46Speaker 4: you know whatever. And when she put it down in
- 35:51Speaker 4: front of me, she's like, yeah, well you can eat
- 35:53Speaker 4: what your parents are eating in jail today, since you
- 35:57Speaker 4: want to be acting up. That was the first time
- 36:00Speaker 4: that I realized, like, all right, these things I'm saying
- 36:03Speaker 4: and all this is like, you know, they're not at home,
- 36:06Speaker 4: just ignore me. Like at that point, I thought like
- 36:09Speaker 4: my mom and Donn had just like left us there
- 36:11Speaker 4: and was like, you know, like gave up on us
- 36:14Speaker 4: or something. Yeah, I didn't know like how serious everything was.
- 36:19Speaker 1: In fact, Raymond's mom Tammy and stepdad Dawn were among
- 36:23Speaker 1: the Gilmer residents indicted for kidnapping, raping, and murdering Kelly Wilson,
- 36:28Speaker 1: along with the Kerr family and Sergeant Brown. They were
- 36:31Speaker 1: in jail because of Raymond's coerce claims, plus the statements
- 36:35Speaker 1: that Wanda Kerr and Connie Martin made to Special Prosecutor
- 36:38Speaker 1: Scott Leeford and his investigators Steve Baggs and Brooks Flag.
- 36:44Speaker 1: Remember those other foster parents who fled to West Texas
- 36:47Speaker 1: trying to escape from the Curs, only to grievously injure
- 36:51Speaker 1: one curboy and then commit suicide. Well, Barbara Bass was
- 36:55Speaker 1: afraid the curs would come after her too, or she
- 36:59Speaker 1: won the kids to think that.
- 37:02Speaker 4: They always had us feeling like somebody was out to
- 37:04Speaker 4: get us. Like I remember one time they were saying, yeah,
- 37:07Speaker 4: they're gonna try and come kill y'all, you know, like
- 37:11Speaker 4: you know, like Don and my mom had hired a
- 37:14Speaker 4: bunch of people to come kill us or something like.
- 37:16Speaker 4: And so I can remember all us kids sometimes at
- 37:19Speaker 4: the house, it would be like, you know, like red
- 37:21Speaker 4: alert or something like there was a stranger spotted down
- 37:24Speaker 4: the road or something like. Neighbors would call like it
- 37:27Speaker 4: was a network where we lived out there at that
- 37:29Speaker 4: Bass home. You know, I'd ask them, like, you know,
- 37:32Speaker 4: am I when do I get to go home? And
- 37:34Speaker 4: you don't get to go home. You know, your parents
- 37:36Speaker 4: soldier toys and you know they don't want you, like you.
- 37:40Speaker 1: Know, Chasing leads on the Satanic cult and Gilmer. Members
- 37:44Speaker 1: of the Lifer team took the children to sits where
- 37:47Speaker 1: the ritual abuse and murder of Kelly Wilson were supposed
- 37:50Speaker 1: to have occurred.
- 37:52Speaker 4: And I can remember I remember being with the Hicks
- 37:58Speaker 4: kids and the Kirk kids, and they had us all
- 38:01Speaker 4: as a group and they wanted to know about some dungeon.
- 38:04Speaker 4: Those kids kept saying that they were sexually abused in
- 38:07Speaker 4: a dungeon.
- 38:08Speaker 1: Here's Shane Phelps.
- 38:10Speaker 5: And they got the wildest stories out of these kids
- 38:14Speaker 5: that there was a dungeon. When they were taken.
- 38:17Speaker 4: Well where the kids that took them. It is right
- 38:20Speaker 4: down the road here headed out of Gilmburg towards Gladewater.
- 38:24Speaker 4: There's a road that shoots back over it's like a
- 38:27Speaker 4: little old top road. We all went as a group
- 38:30Speaker 4: and they're going, well, do you all remember how to
- 38:32Speaker 4: get there? And you know, the kids were kind of
- 38:34Speaker 4: arguing with each other, No, it's over here in this
- 38:37Speaker 4: part of the woods. And the one boy he was like, no,
- 38:40Speaker 4: I don't know where they got it from, but they
- 38:41Speaker 4: didn't know that location, you know, them kids lee It
- 38:45Speaker 4: took bibbly like fifteen twenty minutes. And so the foster
- 38:48Speaker 4: parents and them, there might have been some caseworkers, maybe
- 38:51Speaker 4: even the law enforcement were there that day and we
- 38:55Speaker 4: all went down and into the woods and walked through
- 38:58Speaker 4: the woods and they were like yeah, and they had
- 39:00Speaker 4: names for everything. They were like, this is the Devil's
- 39:03Speaker 4: would you know? Everything was like devil cult, Like everything
- 39:07Speaker 4: had a name or some kind of like title. And
- 39:11Speaker 4: they were like, yeah, this is the dungeon. And what
- 39:14Speaker 4: it actually was it was just a tornado shelter in
- 39:17Speaker 4: the woods, like there might have been a house at
- 39:19Speaker 4: one point there. Who knows that was the dungeon. I
- 39:23Speaker 4: ain't never seen tornado shelter. I'm like, what the hell
- 39:25Speaker 4: this is? Like, you know, I'm so curious about stuff,
- 39:28Speaker 4: and you know, they were like, y'all want to come
- 39:31Speaker 4: down here, and the kids were acting all scared, you
- 39:34Speaker 4: know they were. And I remember just being like, Yeah,
- 39:37Speaker 4: I want to go down and see what's in there,
- 39:39Speaker 4: like you know, you go down the steps. It was
- 39:40Speaker 4: just a little small tornado shelter. I remember they took
- 39:44Speaker 4: me to the airport here in Gilbert one day where
- 39:47Speaker 4: they had they picked up a shed and the Kirk
- 39:52Speaker 4: kids had said that that their grandma had Kelly Wilson
- 39:57Speaker 4: tied up in the shed and had tortured her and
- 40:00Speaker 4: raped her and murdered her. Inside the shed, it was
- 40:03Speaker 4: red with white trim on it. I went in there,
- 40:07Speaker 4: literally went in there with the Texas Rangers and helped
- 40:10Speaker 4: them gather pieces of hair and stuff. And then there
- 40:14Speaker 4: were like little drawers and stuff with like screws and
- 40:17Speaker 4: you know stuff you find somebody's shed, screwdrivers, things like that,
- 40:22Speaker 4: and they were collecting hairs and putting it in big
- 40:24Speaker 4: plastic bags. I remember being there that day with them
- 40:29Speaker 4: and doing that whole thing, and then them asking me, like,
- 40:32Speaker 4: you know, is this the shed that Kelly Wilson was in?
- 40:35Speaker 4: And I can remember telling them, yes, you know, lying
- 40:38Speaker 4: to them. I was scared of sticking to my story
- 40:41Speaker 4: like that I lied about and yeah, yeah, yeah, you know,
- 40:46Speaker 4: you know, I'd never seen that shed before my life.
- 40:49Speaker 4: Come and find out the hairs that they had collected
- 40:51Speaker 4: out of that shed and came from like dogs and
- 40:55Speaker 4: you know, cows or something like, you know, it was
- 40:57Speaker 4: like animal hairs or something. But I remember at the
- 41:00Speaker 4: like when I was a kid, being like really scared,
- 41:02Speaker 4: like like wow, I'm in the ship where somebody was
- 41:07Speaker 4: killed and tortured, and like, you know, like they're pulling
- 41:10Speaker 4: this hair out of you know, and I'm like, man,
- 41:14Speaker 4: that's a dead person's hair, Like you know, like when
- 41:16Speaker 4: you're seven, that kind of stuff's scary.
- 41:18Speaker 1: Raymond had already been through so much, almost unbelievably for him,
- 41:23Speaker 1: the worst was yet to come.
- 41:24Speaker 4: Every every kid that I was in Foster Home with
- 41:27Speaker 4: was on some kind of drug they had. Every kid
- 41:30Speaker 4: was drugged out of their minds. You know. I was
- 41:31Speaker 4: taking like six seven pills a day at eight years old,
- 41:36Speaker 4: and wasn't nothing wrong with me. I remember one time
- 41:39Speaker 4: They took me to a hospital. They made me get
- 41:41Speaker 4: on a table, and when I walk in, I got
- 41:44Speaker 4: Brooks Flags is there and Steven Baggs or something like that.
- 41:49Speaker 1: Steve Bags and Brooks Flag were the special investigators.
- 41:52Speaker 4: They wear a pistol, you know, cowboy hats, their badges
- 41:56Speaker 4: and everything. And they had never done nothing and abusive
- 42:00Speaker 4: to me. They were always kind of like, you know,
- 42:02Speaker 4: my buddies. I'd ride around with them. They might ask
- 42:04Speaker 4: me a question or two, and you know, I just
- 42:06Speaker 4: go along with what I'd already told Barbara, and you know,
- 42:10Speaker 4: they go get me hot dogs and ice cream cones
- 42:12Speaker 4: or something. You know. They were just kind of like
- 42:14Speaker 4: somebody cool to hang out with. But I remember they
- 42:18Speaker 4: took me in this room and there's like three or
- 42:21Speaker 4: four doctors there, and Barbara Bass is there, and Steve
- 42:25Speaker 4: Bags and Brooks Flags were there, and they wanted me
- 42:29Speaker 4: to strip down naked in front of all of them. Well,
- 42:32Speaker 4: I got real nervous and scared because everything that Barbara
- 42:36Speaker 4: Bass talked about was abusive and devils and death, and
- 42:40Speaker 4: you know, there's a lot of heavy stuff for the kid,
- 42:42Speaker 4: and so I was sitting there, I'm scared, and she
- 42:47Speaker 4: had me get up on the table. They wanted me to,
- 42:53Speaker 4: you know, I started crying and Brooks flags was like,
- 42:56Speaker 4: are you scared somebody's gonna hurt you here? And I
- 43:00Speaker 4: was like yeah, and he like, you want me to
- 43:03Speaker 4: pulled out my pistol, like you know, like it may
- 43:08Speaker 4: I'm not gonna let nobody heard shit here.
- 43:11Speaker 1: Raymond describes how one of the doctors performed an invasive
- 43:14Speaker 1: search for signs of molestation while the other adults watched.
- 43:18Speaker 1: It's so upsetting we decided to cut it.
- 43:21Speaker 4: And that alone, that right there messages you up. Like
- 43:25Speaker 4: when you got somebody sitting there. They're wearing badgers. They're
- 43:29Speaker 4: supposed to protect you and they're not. They're the ones
- 43:33Speaker 4: that are doing it. You're raised up to believe in
- 43:37Speaker 4: God lo then you go through something like that, they're
- 43:43Speaker 4: the ones that are hurt us.
- 43:45Speaker 1: Ultimately, Raymond would spend two years in foster care. He'd
- 43:49Speaker 1: been taken from his mom and stepdad, Dawn, who were
- 43:51Speaker 1: falsely accused of murdering Kelly Wilson based on Raymond's own
- 43:55Speaker 1: coerced claims. Raymond had been through hell. He needed someone,
- 44:00Speaker 1: anyone to save him, to bring him back to Gilmer
- 44:03Speaker 1: where he belonged, and his parents Tammy and down. They
- 44:07Speaker 1: needed rescuing too, That's next time on Deviltown. Deviltown is
- 44:16Speaker 1: a production of Imperative Entertainment. It was written and created
- 44:19Speaker 1: by me Wes Ferguson. Executive producer is Jason Hoak. Audio
- 44:23Speaker 1: engineering and editing by Shane Freeman and Jason Hoak. Original
- 44:27Speaker 1: score is by Robert Ellis, recording by Austin Sisler at
- 44:30Speaker 1: east Side Studios. If you like the show, leave a
- 44:33Speaker 1: review and don't forget to tell your friends thanks for listening.