Latest / When Killers Get Caught with Brittany Ransom / Dr. Kelli Martin's True Crime Past Inspired an Upcoming Novel

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Dr. Kelli Martin's True Crime Past Inspired an Upcoming Novel · When Killers Get Caught with Brittany Ransom

• 0:41
  Hey, everybody in Serial killer country.
• 0:43
  My name is Brittany Ransom, and this is When Killers Get Caught,
• 0:47
  a podcast devoted to deep dives into the killers we love to
• 0:50
  learn about. In season three, we're going to
• 0:52
  be talking one-on-one with people who've experienced crime
• 0:54
  or been deeply affected by the justice system in the United
• 0:57
  States. But don't fret.
• 0:59
  You'll still get your deep dives into who killers were, how they
• 1:01
  grew up, how they killed, and how they got caught.
• 1:05
  But today we're talking to Kelly Martin.
• 1:07
  She was reading her first book about the cases in Granbury, TX
• 1:10
  that have followed her through her childhood, her career in law
• 1:12
  enforcement over the last 28 years.
• 1:15
  Her book is set to come out in the fall of 2023.
• 1:18
  It is going to be called Homicide in the Hood as it
• 1:21
  contains cases from Hood County, Texas.
• 1:23
  Thanks so much for coming to the podcast, Kelly.
• 1:26
  Thank you for having me, Brittany.
• 1:28
  Now, as I mentioned, you told me that you have a pretty extensive
• 1:31
  career working in law enforcement.
• 1:35
  Specifically, we talked before about you worked as a probation
• 1:40
  officer for a long time. Yes, that's correct.
• 1:43
  I started my career in 1995, about two weeks after I
• 1:48
  graduated from college. I had my first real job and I
• 1:53
  was very nervous, scared. I had applied for a job in the
• 1:58
  newspaper. Yes, this was before the
• 2:00
  Internet, so we had to look up jobs in the newspaper and there
• 2:03
  was an ad in there for an adult probation officer.
• 2:07
  I really didn't think I would get hired, but I gave it a shot
• 2:10
  anyway. My bachelor's degree is in
• 2:12
  psychology, so I wanted to try it out because I was always
• 2:17
  interested in crime. So I started out in actually
• 2:22
  Hood County in my hometown, which was kind of strange.
• 2:25
  Seeing people coming to the probation office that I had sold
• 2:28
  beer to at the grocery store when I was a teenager.
• 2:32
  Yeah, DWI much. So.
• 2:37
  Anyway, here I am 28 years later.
• 2:39
  I, you know, I've changed jobs. I've got a little bit of
• 2:43
  experience here in my hometown and then went to a neighboring
• 2:46
  county where they had a tuition reimbursement program.
• 2:50
  So I was working on my master's degree too, as well as working
• 2:53
  full time. And.
• 2:56
  Yeah. And during my time as an adult
• 2:59
  probation officer, I supervised all kinds of, you know,
• 3:02
  criminals or offenders per se, people that you know, from
• 3:06
  misdemeanors all the way up to very dangerous felons, you know,
• 3:10
  aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, child sexual
• 3:13
  molestation, aggravated sexual assault.
• 3:17
  And later on in my career when I was working in Tarrant County,
• 3:21
  which is nearby. In Fort Worth, TX, the Fort
• 3:25
  Worth, Dallas Metroplex area, I supervised sex offenders, and
• 3:31
  that was pretty interesting. I did that for a while, but all
• 3:35
  throughout my career in smaller counties, I had sex offenders on
• 3:40
  my caseload. We didn't have very many
• 3:43
  specialized caseloads back then, but we also had to go do home
• 3:47
  visits. You know, we'd have to drive out
• 3:49
  to these people's houses and like.
• 3:52
  Right. Somebody who's a convicted sex
• 3:54
  offender on probation and you're going out to his house?
• 3:58
  Yeah. Alone.
• 4:00
  Yes, and. Oh my goodness.
• 4:04
  And you're not a cop before this.
• 4:06
  Like some people who get into being probation officers or
• 4:09
  former military retired police officers.
• 4:12
  You're just fresh phrase 20 something blonde girl.
• 4:17
  Well, I wasn't blonde back then. I'll just that little secret,
• 4:21
  yeah. I'm sorry, I only knew what you
• 4:24
  look like on Instagram. No, that's OK.
• 4:27
  Yeah. When you get older, you try and
• 4:28
  kind of cover that up with blonde, you know, if it starts
• 4:32
  turning Gray. But that's another story.
• 4:35
  They send you off to do home. I don't even know if we do that
• 4:38
  anymore. Is that something we do in the
• 4:39
  twenty 20s? Yes.
• 4:42
  We still do home visits. Wow.
• 4:44
  Yes, we have to assess a client's, you know, environment,
• 4:50
  especially if they're a child sex offender.
• 4:54
  They there's certain stipulations they cannot live
• 4:57
  near a child safety zone, which could include a school or a
• 5:01
  daycare or this that a park, so on.
• 5:06
  Through some of my work that I don't often talk about online,
• 5:09
  but my real life job. We've come across situations
• 5:14
  where people can't have computers and that's the thing
• 5:18
  that somebody who went to my church got put back in prison
• 5:21
  for because he was accessing Facebook and that was one of the
• 5:26
  rules of his probation, that while he was on probation he was
• 5:29
  not allowed to have social media.
• 5:31
  That's correct. So yeah, I get it.
• 5:35
  Sex offenders have quite a few conditions of probation compared
• 5:39
  to. The standard case, such as DWI
• 5:42
  or, you know, theft or something of that nature.
• 5:44
  They have pages of restrictions including polygraph
• 5:49
  examinations. At least here in Texas now and
• 5:51
  other states, I can't speak to that.
• 5:53
  I'm sure that in some situations they do utilize A polygraph to
• 5:57
  monitor their ongoing behavior while under supervision.
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  In many cases they may be allowed to have contact with
• 6:06
  minors, but only in the presence of a chaperone.
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  And I know here in Texas, the probation department conducts,
• 6:13
  you know, investigation into the person that's applying to be a
• 6:18
  chaperone. And they have, they have, yes,
• 6:22
  they have to attend classes to learn about the conditions of
• 6:26
  supervision, the and the and the offender has to sit right there
• 6:30
  in front of his loved one who he wants to be a chaperone and tell
• 6:33
  them exactly what he or she did. Wow.
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  So we're looking at the offense report as we're conducting the
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  chaperone vetting process, and he has to sit right in front of
• 6:45
  them. He cannot deny it or she cannot
• 6:47
  deny it because one of the conditions we have here in Texas
• 6:50
  is you admit to your offense or you go to jail because you're
• 6:56
  not going to waste 10 years on probation denying that you
• 6:59
  committed the offense and deny yourself the opportunity.
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  To have sex offender treatment and improve and learn to control
• 7:08
  these behaviors. That's so interesting.
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  It's one of the things that I well, on one hand you want to
• 7:14
  know more about it, but on the other hand you're like, maybe I
• 7:17
  don't want to know anything about this process, but it's
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  such a, I mean, one of the things that I, since I currently
• 7:25
  work with children, it's child sexual assault training is part
• 7:29
  of our job now. And it's in my state.
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  After what happened with Jerry Sandusky.
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  I don't know if you remember that right?
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  So I live in Pennsylvania. After the situation with Jerry
• 7:41
  Sandusky happened, they completely overhauled
• 7:43
  everything. And now if you work with a child
• 7:46
  in any capacity at all, even volunteering, you have to go
• 7:52
  through the same trainings I go through.
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  You have to have all the same background checks, the national
• 7:58
  sex offender registry, the NSOR. Which side note, we didn't have
• 8:02
  until 20/19, which wildly we should have had a national
• 8:07
  registry much earlier than we do now, but that's beside the
• 8:13
  point. We have our national registry
• 8:14
  now and that's to check because I'm sure as you know people hop
• 8:18
  states to try and get away from this charge.
• 8:22
  And I mean with the, I think right now the rate for child
• 8:25
  sexual assault is like one in four, which is the lowest it's
• 8:29
  been since we started looking at the numbers roughly 70 years
• 8:33
  ago. So it's not great, but it's.
• 8:37
  Better 5% of children being molested.
• 8:39
  Before 18, Yep. Right.
• 8:41
  Yeah, that is true and accurate statistic, Yeah.
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  But you know, anyway, I, I went and did a lot of other things
• 8:50
  too, you know? I've taught at universities.
• 8:54
  I taught at Texas Christian University for two years full
• 8:58
  time and then most of that time is an adjunct professor and then
• 9:02
  the local Community College. So I've always had one foot in
• 9:06
  academia and 1 foot in the practitioner side which I think
• 9:10
  provides me a unique opportunity and and set of you know
• 9:15
  knowledge and information and so the last 10 to 13 years I've.
• 9:20
  Worked as a researcher for adult probation departments and but
• 9:24
  before I was a court officer, I mean, I've done everything you
• 9:27
  can do in probation. I've written pre sentence
• 9:29
  investigation reports for the judges conducted, you know.
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  And you did some work in creating guidelines and things,
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  didn't you? Or I think it was like.
• 9:43
  For policies. Yes.
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  Yes, that's that's part of my current job as a research and
• 9:50
  policy planner. But I think maybe you might be
• 9:53
  referring to back in 2005 or 2006 when a lot of the sex
• 10:01
  offender residency restrictions were coming out and sort of you
• 10:06
  know, from some of the different pieces of federal legislation
• 10:09
  that have been passed. The Jacob Wetterling Act, the
• 10:14
  Megan's Law and things of that nature really kind of got going.
• 10:17
  It took a while for for some counties to catch on, but I have
• 10:22
  the city of Arlington, TX, where we have the Texas Rangers
• 10:26
  baseball team and the Dallas Cowboys.
• 10:29
  Don't Boo people, I know. I'm saying nothing.
• 10:35
  As a resident Eagles fan, I'm saying nothing.
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  But I helped the City of Arlington provide them some
• 10:43
  research to help them draft their sex offender residency
• 10:47
  restriction ordinance. City ordinance.
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  So. That's incredible.
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  It was very I. Mean you're a part of something
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  that's going to go on much further than you.
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  I mean kind of like a book, but I mean this has, I mean books
• 11:01
  are recreation, you know what I mean?
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  But like this is also like something that's going to affect
• 11:06
  potentially people's safety. For decades to come.
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  I think that's amazing. You know, I've never really
• 11:13
  thought about that, but yeah. Because, I mean, those lists are
• 11:17
  things that the schools that I work at keep an eye on, right
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  where people are living, where these people frequent, you know,
• 11:27
  so we know who gets released just in case we see them walking
• 11:31
  through the area. Right.
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  And you know, I would like to say just one thing about that I
• 11:37
  don't want people to misunderstand.
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  I think the media has kind of given us some type of false
• 11:45
  perception about kids being snatched in the park, you know,
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  all the time. And I'm not saying that doesn't
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  happen, but. You know, that was definitely
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  how I was raised in the nineties, 80% stranger danger,
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  but. Right.
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  That's not true. Right. 80% of 8 or higher of
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  victims know their perpetrator in some fashion, whether it's a
• 12:05
  family member, a neighbor and so on.
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  You know that, so. It's actually one of the things
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  that's the most terrifying about it.
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  Now we've got your work history which shows that you are
• 12:18
  obviously very distinguished. I mean you got multiple degrees,
• 12:24
  you've worked in this field. You told me in our pre interview
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  that your family also worked in law enforcement.
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  And So what brings you to the place now it's 2023 where you're
• 12:36
  like I need to write a book. Well, my daughter has moved out
• 12:42
  of the house and gone to college.
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  That's, and that's my only child.
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  So I'm like, what am I supposed to do with my life now?
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  I'm, you know, I'm working. I'm still working full time.
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  And I'm not retiring anytime soon.
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  I've always wanted to write a book, you know, And this year is
• 12:59
  a 35th anniversary of the murder of a young lady here in my
• 13:05
  hometown, Holly Palmer. And it really affected a lot of
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  people. And you know, there there's been
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  a lot of murders in this town that affected me, especially
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  growing up from like say 1980 forward, especially the 1988
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  when Holly was murdered and those.
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  Let's talk a little. Impact on me so you know I need.
• 13:29
  To know I just. Want to write a book to honor
• 13:31
  the victims and their families? So I guess let's talk about
• 13:36
  Holly Palmer then. I, like you said this was
• 13:40
  something that affected you pretty greatly when Holly died.
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  How old would you have been? I was a junior in high school.
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  And she was. So she was only a couple years
• 13:49
  older than you at 23, right? Well, let's tell the listeners
• 13:54
  what actually happened to Holly. OK, so on November 27th and the
• 14:01
  wee hours of the morning around 1:32 AM somewhere around there.
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  Holly was working at the Greyhound Trailways bus station.
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  She had actually just purchased that franchise, so she was very
• 14:16
  excited and she was spending a lot of her free time up at the
• 14:18
  bus station late at night working.
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  She also was planning on opening a tshirt shop inside of the bus
• 14:26
  station. And it's a small bus station.
• 14:28
  It's inside of a. A house, it doesn't look like a
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  normal bus station you would see in a large city.
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  You know, it's just it's in a little wood frame house on the
• 14:39
  main Pearl Street that runs through town and it's about two
• 14:43
  doors down from our drivein movie theater.
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  We have the oldest operating drivein.
• 14:51
  It's been continually in operation since 1952.
• 14:55
  That's awesome. Little little factoid there,
• 14:58
  historical factoid. But so she was up there working
• 15:04
  and this is, you know, close to Thanksgiving.
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  And her sister had talked to her that day and said everybody's
• 15:10
  excited or maybe it was the day after, but she no, it wasn't.
• 15:17
  I'm getting the timeline mixed up just a tad.
• 15:19
  But her sister had talked to her maybe earlier that morning
• 15:23
  before the murder happened. Yes, that's right.
• 15:25
  And so she said, everybody's so excited.
• 15:27
  We're waiting on you to get here.
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  We want to play Monopoly. And Holly just kind of giggled,
• 15:32
  You know, they played board games when they got together as
• 15:34
  a family. And she told her sister that she
• 15:38
  had to go take care of something.
• 15:40
  And her sister asked her, well, are you breaking up with your
• 15:42
  boyfriend? And she said, yeah, I need to
• 15:44
  take care of that. He's, you know, there were some
• 15:50
  issues going on there. And so she did that and later
• 15:57
  on, I mean her sister would never see her at Thanksgiving.
• 16:02
  So at 13140, we, you know, the, the police have been
• 16:06
  investigating this and checking leads and they did back then
• 16:10
  they ran, chased down a lot of leads, talked to witnesses.
• 16:14
  Over the years they've gotten more.
• 16:16
  They've gotten witnesses to come forward with just a little bit
• 16:19
  more information, but people were afraid of, you know, the
• 16:23
  the primary suspect. But he beat her in the head with
• 16:29
  a hammer so severely and then that if that wasn't enough, drug
• 16:37
  her by her ankles to another part of the bus station and
• 16:41
  bludgeoned her. Continue to bludgeon her.
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  With a huge concrete cinder block.
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  And I mean as you can imagine there was blood spatter all over
• 16:52
  the walls. It was everywhere.
• 16:53
  I mean, you know it was horrible.
• 16:55
  And the police and this is 2 doors down from the Sheriff's
• 17:00
  Department. Gosh, right next door.
• 17:03
  Ozzy. Yeah.
• 17:04
  So you know, when people were scared to death, if this, if
• 17:08
  this can happen right next door to the Sheriff's Department,
• 17:11
  nobody's safe. I mean, my gosh, right.
• 17:14
  Of course this was back before there were video surveillance
• 17:17
  and cameras everywhere and and you know, that sort of thing and
• 17:20
  you know, the guy just snuck in there.
• 17:23
  In the middle of the night cuz he knew she would, she was
• 17:26
  actually going to live there. She was making some living
• 17:28
  quarters for herself and oh. Okay.
• 17:30
  I was thinking about that. I was like, was this a robbery
• 17:32
  gone wrong or this was specifically somebody went after
• 17:36
  her. Yeah, this was personal.
• 17:39
  I mean, there, there might have been 50 bucks missing, but you
• 17:44
  know, there were other things in there that weren't disturbed.
• 17:46
  They weren't taken. And so this, this was this.
• 17:50
  Had to be somebody that knew Hollywood, be in there that
• 17:53
  late, you know? I knew where she was and now
• 17:58
  here's the thing, they did interviews and things and like
• 18:00
  you said, people were afraid of the person who we're not
• 18:03
  mentioning because it's alleged so.
• 18:06
  Right, but the police? Do they think he knew?
• 18:10
  Her. Yeah, they know you.
• 18:15
  How? Just based on the job or did he
• 18:20
  have some other connection? Well, they interviewed witnesses
• 18:25
  and statements and confirm some things, some of their theories
• 18:30
  and suspicions. But you know, like I said this,
• 18:37
  there were reports that this was the most brutal thing that the
• 18:40
  police had ever seen in our little Granberry, Texas.
• 18:44
  That that one of the police officers just vomited outside.
• 18:47
  You know it it was terrible. And they made one of the rookie
• 18:53
  cops spend the night in the bus station just in case the killer
• 18:57
  returned to the crime scene. Because that happens sometimes.
• 19:01
  It sure does. So what an eerie thing for this
• 19:04
  guy. Right.
• 19:05
  Yeah, that's got to be a creepy aspect of your job.
• 19:08
  Right. So.
• 19:10
  Staying at a crime scene overnight.
• 19:12
  And that, you know, he was a rookie that stayed with him
• 19:15
  forever and he's 62 years old now.
• 19:18
  And you interviewed you. You've been interviewing
• 19:21
  everybody. I've been talking to lots of
• 19:23
  people around town. If they'll talk to me, they get
• 19:26
  all, you know, paranoid. But I'm like, it's Kelly Okay.
• 19:29
  You've known me my my whole life.
• 19:31
  You knew my dad. You knew my Mama.
• 19:33
  You went to church with some of my family members, you know?
• 19:37
  So I'm just trying and I, you know, I think the hesitation is
• 19:41
  with the being, I guess labeled as a journalist, but I'm like
• 19:45
  it's just Kelly Okay we're talking.
• 19:46
  I'm not going to put anything in the book that you do not want in
• 19:50
  there, but I'm just trying to get a a clearer picture of
• 19:54
  what's going on. But the interesting thing is
• 19:56
  I've been contacted by the granddaughter of one of another
• 20:02
  victim in the book. She found out through Facebook
• 20:06
  that I was writing this book, and she sent me a message and
• 20:09
  asked if her grandmother would be covered.
• 20:13
  She said, I'm her granddaughter and I was just taken aback, you
• 20:17
  know, And she was, she seemed happy that her grandmother's
• 20:20
  story would be in there. So that was great.
• 20:23
  And I've since talked to her. She sent me some photos of her
• 20:26
  grandmother and she's given me some stories, you know, about.
• 20:31
  She was 12 years old when she found out her grandmother had
• 20:34
  been murdered and her parents were out on a little trip out of
• 20:38
  town for their anniversary and. What a horrible thing to come
• 20:42
  back to. No, right.
• 20:44
  It was awful. I cannot imagine what they were
• 20:46
  going through. But yeah, it's it's been very
• 20:50
  interesting. I've also been able to hang out
• 20:52
  with the cold case squad in a neighboring jurisdiction.
• 20:56
  That was interesting. I got to ask questions and.
• 20:59
  There were a couple of retired former Texas Ranger law
• 21:02
  enforcement agents, a retired game warden, two retired IRS
• 21:08
  investigators. So you know, they bring
• 21:11
  different perspectives. But there were, there was
• 21:13
  literally over 300, three, 150 years worth of law enforcement
• 21:18
  experience in that room. So they.
• 21:20
  Were so that's interesting. I didn't think about that
• 21:23
  before. So the Colt case unit is
• 21:26
  comprised of a lot of people who are retired.
• 21:29
  In our area, because a lot of smaller counties do not have the
• 21:33
  funding and and we just don't have, you know, this isn't
• 21:37
  Dallas, Houston, New York City. You know, we we don't really
• 21:43
  have the need for a fulltime cold case squad 24/7, you know?
• 21:47
  Right. And plus, we don't have the
• 21:49
  funding. You know, the officers are
• 21:52
  working active cases, so. You know, we've gotten retired
• 21:57
  guys that have years and years of experience and they, you
• 22:02
  know, work with younger, younger guys, younger law enforcement
• 22:06
  officers to have a fresh set of eyes to look at things too.
• 22:09
  And and maybe some of them are up on technology a little bit
• 22:12
  more as well. But yeah, it's very interesting
• 22:16
  that they're just still continuing.
• 22:18
  They can't let it go. I was just about.
• 22:20
  I was thinking that too. 75 or whatever, and they're still
• 22:24
  working. They want.
• 22:25
  I mean, they just, they won't let it go.
• 22:26
  They have to keep doing it. For the I've come across that
• 22:30
  and a lot of my research too that people it it's not just you
• 22:34
  a lot of people who they get close to these cases actually
• 22:38
  right before we were talking we were talking about I've of
• 22:42
  course I forget her name but the woman who was a part of the.
• 22:48
  Team that helped with the Golden State killer cases.
• 22:53
  I was a part of that documentary recently.
• 22:55
  And her, I mean, she was following that case for decades.
• 23:02
  She never let that go. So I after talking to dozens of
• 23:07
  victims and collecting all that evidence, that's got to eat at
• 23:10
  you somehow. Yeah, it really does it.
• 23:14
  It's. Because if we don't think about
• 23:17
  this, but officers and law enforcement and you know, first
• 23:21
  responders and people of that nature, they suffer PTSD.
• 23:25
  They suffer from, you know, secondary trauma from dealing
• 23:29
  with these types of even if they'll, you know, even though
• 23:32
  they may not admit it or recognize it initially, I think
• 23:36
  more so nowadays we understand about post traumatic stress.
• 23:41
  You know but. We definitely didn't 30-40 years
• 23:44
  ago. We weren't even as well versus
• 23:46
  we are now. Right.
• 23:48
  So, you know, yeah, it affects them.
• 23:50
  They carry it with them. They, they wake up talking about
• 23:53
  it, thinking about it, going to sleep, thinking about it, you
• 23:56
  know, And they have to keep that separated from their family.
• 24:00
  You can't go home and tell your wife every horrible thing that
• 24:04
  you saw all day out at work or have your children over here,
• 24:08
  that kind of stuff. But.
• 24:09
  Yeah, I mean, like some of the officers that I've talked to, I
• 24:13
  asked them about a case. Yep.
• 24:14
  Remember that one? They just, wow.
• 24:17
  It's etched in their mind. So we definitely have Dolly's
• 24:21
  case and how many total cases? Palmer.
• 24:25
  Yeah, Holly. Wanna call her Dolly?
• 24:27
  Holly is her sister. Holly is the victim, right.
• 24:31
  So we have Holly's case, but how many total cases are you
• 24:34
  researching for the book? Well, I'm researching really six
• 24:38
  cases. There's a chapter for each of
• 24:41
  these six cases, and they're not through my research.
• 24:46
  At first I was thinking, OK, these are all unsolved cases.
• 24:50
  But then I'll lo and behold, not too long ago, and I thought I
• 24:53
  was done writing a particular chapter.
• 24:55
  I kept digging and digging and well, it's been solved.
• 24:59
  It was solved in 2010, a 1987 case, all these years later, and
• 25:07
  they never, ever would have known about it unless they got,
• 25:13
  I mean, the guy confessed. He just, he got caught for doing
• 25:16
  something else. And was in jail.
• 25:19
  And thought he could leverage. He he Well, that didn't work.
• 25:23
  He got two life sentences. They sometimes think because
• 25:27
  it's happened in the past, but I think you just have to have an
• 25:30
  incredible lawyer because people, sometimes, I mean Bundy,
• 25:34
  tried. I didn't have a lawyer.
• 25:36
  He just, he just told the people.
• 25:38
  He just told the Texas Ranger that he murdered somebody.
• 25:42
  And you know what? He said people are like why did
• 25:44
  this guy confess? He never would have gotten
• 25:46
  caught for this murder. It's because of the rapport that
• 25:49
  the officer built with him the way and I talked to that
• 25:53
  officer, I talked to that Texas Ranger and he said I just treat
• 25:56
  people the way I would want to be treated.
• 25:58
  I was raised a certain way. You treat people with empathy,
• 26:02
  with kindness, even though it's a killer, you have to try and
• 26:06
  show this. And he was talking to him, you
• 26:08
  know, about spirituality and so forth.
• 26:11
  And the guy just felt guilty. He couldn't he.
• 26:14
  Had a guilty conscience. Yes, he did.
• 26:18
  But he had tried to kidnap a lady in the Walmart parking lot
• 26:22
  here in Granbury. Jesus.
• 26:25
  Yeah, and she. But see, he had already sexually
• 26:28
  assaulted. He had, he had been out of
• 26:30
  prison three months and three months later the guy's already
• 26:35
  trying to kidnap somebody and rape him.
• 26:37
  He was in prison for he got a 20 year sentence for rape.
• 26:41
  So he three months when he got out of prison, he tried to
• 26:43
  kidnap somebody else. So he was out on bail for
• 26:46
  kidnapping in our county. Then he skipped bail and while
• 26:51
  he was not under the, you know, watchful eyes of the authority,
• 26:55
  he murdered somebody in another county up by the Texas, Arkansas
• 27:00
  border then. I wish I could say that's not
• 27:04
  common, but I've come across a bunch of cases.
• 27:08
  Where somebody's out on parole or waiting for a trial and boom,
• 27:14
  they get they do something else even worse.
• 27:17
  Yeah, yeah. So yeah, so he we didn't even
• 27:22
  know that he had murdered the lady in the other county.
• 27:24
  We just got in for bail jumping, right?
• 27:27
  So they go in to talk to him. He confesses to two murders, the
• 27:31
  coach case murder in in Hood County from 1987.
• 27:36
  And then the murder that he had just committed in Cass County,
• 27:39
  Texas, which is close to the Texas, Arkansas border, yeah.
• 27:44
  Now I want your, I guess, opinion on this because right
• 27:48
  now I'm actually researching Otis tool and the the
• 27:55
  ridiculousness that went on with that case with the of course
• 28:02
  they admitted to hundreds. Of murders which we later on
• 28:06
  learned they couldn't have possibly committed all of those.
• 28:11
  But you know, with Henry Lee Lucas and Otis Tool, I mean, how
• 28:16
  do you feel about that when you have someone who shows up and
• 28:18
  just says, hey, I did this? I mean, are we believing these
• 28:21
  people? What's the process of trying to
• 28:23
  figure out if they're just attention grabbing, feel genuine
• 28:30
  remorse or trying to get attention?
• 28:33
  Like how do how do we avoid Henry Lee Lucas a notice now.
• 28:39
  Well, this guy gave details that only the killer would know.
• 28:45
  Gotcha. The killer would know.
• 28:47
  Yeah. He he took this lady.
• 28:49
  He kidnapped her from a convenience store gas station,
• 28:53
  took her to and robbed the. You know, he only got $57.
• 28:58
  But this was in 1987, and he took her.
• 29:02
  To a abandoned mobile home in the subdivision here raped her
• 29:10
  and then took her to the boat ramp and drowned her.
• 29:14
  Wow. Yeah, and you don't see a lot
• 29:17
  of, you don't see as many, you know, homicides by drowning.
• 29:22
  I was just thinking that I was like, usually people want to,
• 29:25
  they want to feel it. He did.
• 29:29
  They want to. Hit under the water, yeah.
• 29:32
  As horrible as that is to say they they want to feel the life
• 29:35
  drain out of the person. Is this like a drowning by
• 29:39
  homicide? More of like a just getting rid
• 29:41
  of her because you can't let the victim live after you did all
• 29:46
  that? Right, that's exactly what it
• 29:49
  was. He he stuck her head under the
• 29:51
  water and held her down there until she was deceased and.
• 29:56
  It just so happens there was a fishing tournament that morning
• 29:58
  on our lake and he had just left her there floating in the water.
• 30:02
  And a fisherman who came who had launched his boat from that boat
• 30:07
  ramp about 5:00 AM, five twenty that morning.
• 30:10
  He didn't see anything then but when he gets back around 7,
• 30:15
  she's there. So yeah, he called authorities
• 30:19
  and of course they they came and and investigated, but.
• 30:24
  It went cold. I mean, they they had several
• 30:27
  suspects in the beginning and they polygraphed quite a few
• 30:30
  people. They, you know, interviewed
• 30:32
  people from different counties. They had one at one point, the
• 30:36
  sheriff, who at that time was my cousin, Edwin Tomlinson.
• 30:41
  He was elected in 1980. He thought maybe this person, a
• 30:47
  mental patient that had just been recently released from
• 30:50
  psychiatric facility in a neighboring county.
• 30:53
  Had been in the store that morning and so they chased that
• 30:56
  lead down, but you know, everything just kind of went
• 30:59
  cold because they didn't have the right person and they never
• 31:02
  would have caught this guy unless he had just spontaneously
• 31:05
  confessed. So you said before that all of
• 31:09
  these cases really meant something to you?
• 31:13
  Yes, I they they really had a tremendous impact on me and in
• 31:16
  1980 I was in 4th grade, so I was probably about 9 or 10 years
• 31:20
  old. And that was the first time I
• 31:23
  really learned what murder was. It.
• 31:29
  Granbury was such a small town back then we only had 2500
• 31:32
  people within the city limits and six, maybe 6000 people in
• 31:38
  the entire county, which is 437 square miles.
• 31:43
  So everybody knew everyone, you know.
• 31:46
  And when something like this happened, it was very traumatic
• 31:49
  and scary. So my mom started locking our
• 31:53
  doors and you know, was just scared to death of something
• 31:57
  happening to us. And there were, and then a
• 32:02
  murder occurred 3 weeks later. Oh, wow.
• 32:06
  A young 21 year old girl was stabbed and she had only worked
• 32:10
  at this laundromat for three days and was stabbed and I don't
• 32:13
  want to give away too much of it because the book has some that
• 32:18
  chapter. In the chapter before there is a
• 32:22
  link to serial some serial killers, so we'll leave that as
• 32:27
  a kind of a. Teaser for the future for people
• 32:31
  who wanna buy it to learn about what serial killer is linked to
• 32:35
  Granberry. All right, granberry.
• 32:38
  Nobody knows where that is. To be fair, you're right.
• 32:42
  I couldn't point it out, but I think most people couldn't point
• 32:46
  out small towns in any state. Right.
• 32:49
  There's small towns all over the country and I'm sure most of
• 32:52
  your listeners have had some kind of experience with that or
• 32:56
  known somebody or you know, heard of in a neighboring small
• 32:59
  town. It it affects everyone all over,
• 33:02
  all over. Well, it's so weird because I'm
• 33:08
  not sure about this because you're a bit older, you're a
• 33:10
  little older than I am, but I feel like throughout all of my
• 33:13
  childhood. Just nonstop crime, crime, bad
• 33:18
  things happening in the new like every day, just inundated with
• 33:21
  it. So it becomes like part of the
• 33:23
  background noise. Especially because I grew up in
• 33:28
  a town like 30 minutes outside of Philadelphia.
• 33:30
  And if you don't know this for a brief bit, during the 80s they
• 33:35
  called Philadelphia Philadelphia, so things were a
• 33:40
  little. In 10th, in the city back then.
• 33:45
  So I don't, I don't know if it affected me like it would have
• 33:51
  affected you because these are people you saw, I mean.
• 33:55
  I went into that gas station where a lady was kidnapped and
• 33:58
  drowned. I, my dentist's office and my
• 34:02
  daycare was on the same St. as this laundromat where this girl
• 34:05
  was stabbed. You know there was a lady that
• 34:08
  was stabbed 110 times in her and my best friend growing up.
• 34:15
  Her house was right around the corner in that same neighborhood
• 34:18
  and in the bus station 2 doors down from the Sheriff's
• 34:21
  Department. But guess what?
• 34:23
  2 doors on the opposite side was my grandmother's house.
• 34:28
  And you had family who worked in that very same?
• 34:31
  Yeah, my cousin was the sheriff when this happened.
• 34:35
  Now this happened actually inside the city limits, so it
• 34:37
  was the under the jurisdiction of the Police Department.
• 34:40
  But in little Granbury, every cop in the county, it didn't
• 34:43
  matter if they were Sheriff's Department or city cops, They
• 34:46
  showed up at Holly's crime scene.
• 34:49
  It was it was horrible. And get this, Holly's stepsister
• 34:53
  was a police dispatcher and she's the one that had to
• 34:57
  dispatch the call. Oh, that's awful, because she
• 35:00
  had to have known who it was when they listed the location.
• 35:04
  Yes, exactly. Because nobody else would be
• 35:06
  there at 1:00 o'clock in the morning.
• 35:08
  Yeah, So Holly's step sister's husband was actually a sheriff's
• 35:13
  deputy at the time, so he actually came to the scene as
• 35:16
  well, so. Yeah.
• 35:18
  So now, because we're talking about these are cases from 20-30
• 35:23
  years ago, right? What's it like interviewing the
• 35:27
  people who lost family members and things now?
• 35:32
  It's very. Gosh, I'm trying to think of the
• 35:36
  right word. Well, I personally know, you
• 35:39
  know, Dolly's Dolly Palmer, which is Holly's one of Holly's
• 35:44
  sisters. And another sister was just a
• 35:47
  grader 2 above me in school. So I knew of her.
• 35:52
  But I was kind of wary about, you know, would the family
• 35:57
  members be upset? You know, maybe they didn't want
• 36:00
  to have the. Scab ripped off, you know of
• 36:03
  this wound so to speak. But Holly's sister there and her
• 36:08
  family are very appreciative because Holly's case is still
• 36:11
  unsolved and or not prosecuted when there's been somebody that
• 36:16
  the police has suspected all along but you know you never
• 36:18
  know. You never know how family
• 36:22
  members are going to react. So, so far it's been I'm trying
• 36:27
  to be very careful about. And how I asked questions, you
• 36:33
  know, especially if one of the like the lady that reached out
• 36:35
  to me via Facebook Messenger, I don't know her that well.
• 36:38
  So she was very appreciative that her grandmother's story
• 36:43
  would be included in the book, you know.
• 36:46
  And so I think people realize that I'm doing this because I
• 36:49
  don't want these women to be forgotten.
• 36:52
  No. And I want to honor the victims
• 36:55
  and their families and I want to educate people about what
• 36:58
  families go through. Really hear from them.
• 37:02
  So in one of my chapters, I have had these family members write
• 37:08
  up a little story about when they first got the call, how
• 37:12
  they reacted, what they were thinking, what they were
• 37:15
  feeling. And because I've been friends
• 37:17
  with Dolly for about four years now, we've had long, deep
• 37:24
  conversations about it and it, you know.
• 37:29
  Try not to cry here. She is a true inspiration to me
• 37:35
  because she is like a bulldog, a pit bull.
• 37:38
  She's going to dig in and not let go.
• 37:40
  She will not stop fighting for her sister to get justice for
• 37:44
  Holly, no matter how painful it is.
• 37:48
  She has pushed through the tears.
• 37:51
  She has pushed through the anxiety that, you know, this is
• 37:54
  causing me, you know? But she said to keep doing it.
• 37:57
  We're going to keep going. I'm.
• 37:58
  I'm. I'm faithful.
• 38:00
  I'm hopeful that God is in control here, that this is
• 38:02
  really when something is going to happen.
• 38:04
  With my sister's case, she has pushed through all of that pain
• 38:08
  to do this for her sister to speak to me almost daily about
• 38:12
  the book and the people I'm talking to and the progress
• 38:15
  we're trying to make and reinvigorating interest in our
• 38:18
  community about these cases that have not been solved.
• 38:22
  It's so tough. There's a lot.
• 38:24
  There's a big lens on the true crime community right now,
• 38:26
  especially as it. Relates to at home sleuths as
• 38:33
  they refer to people who want to help cases.
• 38:36
  And it's an interesting thing because in some regard those at
• 38:40
  home sleuths end up being responsible for reopening cases,
• 38:46
  opening things like that. But of course, bad things happen
• 38:49
  too. It's tough.
• 38:52
  I don't know these, I mean just doing what I do, which is
• 38:55
  recounting cases that have been solved.
• 38:58
  It's. Very emotional.
• 39:03
  It's I started writing this book at the end of March, maybe 1st
• 39:10
  of April, and I've almost written this entire book.
• 39:15
  I have not been sleeping. I have not been eating.
• 39:18
  I haven't been exercising. I haven't been taking care of
• 39:20
  myself. As a matter of fact, I stayed up
• 39:24
  till 5:00 o'clock this morning. I mean, I was up for.
• 39:28
  Well over 24 hours and got a few hours sleep before I was to do
• 39:33
  the podcast this morning. I couldn't stop and so.
• 39:36
  Now I totally understand what you're saying.
• 39:38
  I used to work my 8 hour job, come home and just research and
• 39:45
  write and select one or two in the morning.
• 39:48
  Actually, that's why the podcast hasn't come out so regularly
• 39:51
  recently because I'm trying to find a healthy workflow.
• 39:55
  And it's very difficult cuz like sometimes you read something or
• 40:01
  about someone that something happened to and you feel
• 40:04
  compelled to get it out of you, and in a way.
• 40:11
  That's what's happening. And you just have to.
• 40:14
  Yeah, and but I'm not. I don't know.
• 40:20
  I just keep thinking I need to do this because.
• 40:25
  I need people in my community and everywhere.
• 40:27
  I mean this book that homicide in the hood, murders that haunt
• 40:32
  a small town girl. I mean, anybody can relate.
• 40:35
  There's, you know, anybody that lives in a small town across the
• 40:38
  globe, not just here in the United States.
• 40:40
  They can relate to murders like that affecting a small community
• 40:46
  and. Just by me starting to write
• 40:49
  this book, it is kind of stirring things up around here
• 40:52
  and think things are happening, which is great.
• 40:54
  I mean, it's exactly what I intended to do in in addition to
• 41:00
  honoring the victims and their families.
• 41:02
  So being a researcher too and being a professor and teaching
• 41:08
  some of the book is, you know, the book is written from a first
• 41:10
  person point of view from my perspective growing up as a kid
• 41:13
  and I had kind of an interesting childhood.
• 41:17
  So they're funny. Stories are weird things.
• 41:20
  My connections to being a victim, you know, are woven
• 41:24
  throughout the book. But also being an educator, you
• 41:28
  know, I want this to be an educational experience because
• 41:32
  I've worked in the criminal justice system for nearly 30
• 41:35
  years. And the TV programs and all of
• 41:39
  the, you know, law and order, SVU and all these different
• 41:42
  kinds of programs, CSI and everything.
• 41:45
  People get a erroneous and erroneous perception of how the
• 41:49
  criminal justice system actually operates and how it actually
• 41:53
  works. You know, all the and all of
• 41:55
  that. And so I I want to kind of have
• 41:59
  a little educational piece in my book too about the different
• 42:03
  types of forensic techniques and technologies, how they work and
• 42:08
  and interestingly enough, the former Granbury Chief of Police.
• 42:14
  From years ago sent reached out to me cuz he you know saw me
• 42:19
  posting online and social media about the upcoming book and he
• 42:23
  said Kelly do you remember this case well?
• 42:27
  Granberry little old Granberry Texas Police Department made
• 42:31
  Texas history. At least we were the 1st Police
• 42:35
  Department to connect. A suspect using CODIS when CODIS
• 42:42
  was fully online and operational in 1998.
• 42:47
  Oh awesome. Yes.
• 42:48
  So it's. For people who don't know CODIS
• 42:52
  is. The Combined DNA Indexing
• 42:56
  System, which is operated by the FBI.
• 43:00
  So people submit, you know when there when there's a sample.
• 43:06
  Found of some kind of biological material at a crime scene.
• 43:10
  They collect that, submit it to the system and compare it to
• 43:13
  other samples, and those other samples can come from other
• 43:17
  crime scenes. They can be in there because the
• 43:19
  state law requires an arrestee felony arrestee to submit a
• 43:24
  sample or. I think in California they
• 43:28
  require that now. Yes, all 50 states have some
• 43:31
  type of legislation requiring. DNA submission from certain
• 43:37
  types of felons. In Texas, it's all felons, you
• 43:40
  know, every single felon and anybody that's placed on
• 43:44
  supervision that was convicted of a felony, they submit a
• 43:48
  sample to you and of course, all sex offenders.
• 43:51
  I mean that was invaluable up in I think it was Michigan where
• 43:56
  there was a I don't want to be wrong issues to the police
• 44:00
  officer or somehow related to the Justice Department and.
• 44:04
  She realized there were like 4000 rape kits that had never
• 44:09
  been properly tested or submitted, and when they
• 44:12
  finally, I think she raised the money for it.
• 44:14
  It took years, but they were able to link so many felons that
• 44:20
  were already in the system to these crimes.
• 44:24
  Well, the the federal government has, you know, they provide
• 44:28
  grants through the Office of Justice Programs and the Bureau
• 44:31
  of Justice Assistance. So there are actually federal
• 44:34
  grants available right now to law enforcement agencies to test
• 44:39
  the backlog of rape kits and sexual assault kits.
• 44:42
  So that's. So good to know cuz when that
• 44:44
  first came out like 10 years ago, it was pretty alarming
• 44:49
  right, that we had thousands upon thousands of rape kits and
• 44:53
  all these potential rapists just out there.
• 44:56
  Right running around doing what they do, unfortunately and.
• 45:00
  There's still a backlog. I mean, even with the federal
• 45:03
  funding, it's just, but you know, it's really interesting
• 45:06
  that the cops of that law enforcement, even back before
• 45:09
  they even knew anything, like they could never have imagined
• 45:14
  that we'd be using genetic genealogy right now to solve
• 45:17
  cases. They collected, they collected
• 45:20
  biological material somehow. They knew okay, this is
• 45:23
  evidence, this is important. And if it was preserved
• 45:25
  properly, you know, and not mishandled over the years.
• 45:30
  My gosh, look at all the cases it's solving now, twenty, 30-40
• 45:33
  years later. I mean, that's the one I
• 45:35
  referenced earlier, Joseph James D'Angelo.
• 45:38
  Golden State killer? 30 years later we get a match
• 45:42
  based on somebody in the family doing a DNA test.
• 45:46
  Right. Incredible.
• 45:48
  Isn't that amazing? And this is happening all over
• 45:51
  the place. I get alerts on my phone cuz I
• 45:54
  set up Google alerts for cases this cold case.
• 45:58
  Handled based on genealogy. I mean, it's awesome, but also
• 46:05
  it just all these people who got away with stuff because we just
• 46:11
  didn't have the tools to get them.
• 46:13
  Right. And so that's why I wanted to
• 46:16
  put there's 10 chapters in the book on site in the hood.
• 46:20
  Chapter 9 is about forensic techniques and technologies and.
• 46:25
  And you know, like I said, being a professor and an educator,
• 46:30
  I'm, I'm not going through a complete timeline of forensics
• 46:33
  because that goes back to you know 5070 AD, you know, I mean
• 46:39
  way or even BC, you know, I mean there's there's.
• 46:42
  And we were always trying stuff wasn't always right, but we were
• 46:47
  trying things. I mean, I know for a while they
• 46:49
  were very stuff like set on your blood type.
• 46:55
  That was a way to eliminate people very quickly.
• 46:58
  Yes, yes. So nowadays it's just there's so
• 47:02
  many amazing things. The MVAC technology which has
• 47:07
  been recently used to solve the 40 year old cold case, The MVAC
• 47:12
  is a wet vac system that squirts like a sterile solution onto an
• 47:18
  object and creates like this mini hurricane and it loosens up
• 47:22
  all the biological material. And it's really good for
• 47:26
  obtaining DNA from very porous rough surfaces that maybe is not
• 47:32
  traditionally you know like the swabbing technique is kind of
• 47:36
  you know but but you can use this for a large surface to make
• 47:39
  sure you get everything but yes and it and it puts that into a
• 47:44
  special filter and then you can take it out and test it and that
• 47:47
  sort of thing. But it's you can test rocks.
• 47:50
  And bricks and different kinds of surface.
• 47:52
  And you know what? This technology was first
• 47:54
  designed to be used in the food industry to remove pathogens
• 47:58
  from, you know, work surfaces. And you know, hey, let's get all
• 48:02
  the damage out of this place where we're cooking food.
• 48:04
  Y'all. Right.
• 48:05
  No, it makes total sense. Right.
• 48:07
  So yeah, that's been around for a while, but it's, you know,
• 48:11
  they've solved a 40 year old cold case by using that
• 48:13
  technology on a really, really old piece of evidence.
• 48:17
  Oh, that's cool. So I'm, I'm learning a lot, you
• 48:21
  know, I am learning quite a bit and I love that.
• 48:25
  Writing this book and doing all of the research and getting on
• 48:28
  ancestry, you know, and digging around and trying to find people
• 48:32
  and looking at people's criminal histories and you know, writing
• 48:36
  the the chapter about technology and then it's been a very
• 48:41
  interesting learning experience. But it also has kind of been a
• 48:45
  step back in time. Going through all the old
• 48:48
  newspaper archives, I grew up in this town.
• 48:51
  I remembered when these things happen and these murders
• 48:55
  affected me. They really did.
• 48:57
  And I. These are your ghosts too?
• 48:59
  They, you know, they are. And I don't want to take any
• 49:03
  kind of, you know, empathy or anything away from the victim's
• 49:07
  families, but they they did, you know, it did affect them,
• 49:11
  obviously, but it affects the community when something like
• 49:14
  this happens, especially in a small town.
• 49:17
  It robs people of their safety, you know, It really changes
• 49:21
  people's behavior. I mean, we didn't lock our
• 49:23
  doors. Kids rode our bikes all around.
• 49:25
  We we'd leave the house at 8:00 or 9:00, o'clock in the morning
• 49:29
  during the summer and we wouldn't come back until it's
• 49:31
  dark. You know, you can't do that
• 49:34
  nowadays, so. It's so interesting that we we
• 49:39
  brought this up about how this made you feel.
• 49:42
  Because my first episode this season was speaking to another
• 49:46
  author and she wrote a book about she actually wrote a
• 49:53
  fictional book about a crime that didn't.
• 49:58
  It was her. Her who would go out, who would
• 50:01
  have been her motherinlaw. But she's talked to this man
• 50:04
  named Howard Morton, and he reminded her that she had a
• 50:07
  right to care, even though the woman who died wasn't her mom.
• 50:12
  Even though she divorced out of the family, like, she still had
• 50:18
  a right to care about the things that happen.
• 50:21
  And it's okay that we care on some.
• 50:25
  In some ways, true crime is entertainment, but it's okay
• 50:28
  that we care about, the people that we write about and talk
• 50:32
  about, and it's even more so right that you care because you
• 50:35
  lived there. There is.
• 50:41
  You know, another murder that happened, and I'm not going to
• 50:43
  cover in the book because the family member just asked me not
• 50:48
  to. They're not ready at this time.
• 50:51
  But I spent the night at their house.
• 50:54
  I had a close personal connection to them.
• 50:56
  I worked at a grocery store with them as teenagers.
• 50:59
  And, you know, I was 20 years old when this girl was murdered.
• 51:04
  And, I mean, that was the first time I'd ever actually had a
• 51:07
  very close. Close personal connection to
• 51:09
  someone that had died in that manner, and it was devastating.
• 51:14
  And when I was in college at that time I was majoring in
• 51:17
  English. Hey.
• 51:19
  That's what I wanted. Yeah, I went to school for.
• 51:24
  I switched. But that's what I started out
• 51:26
  with me. Too, I switched.
• 51:27
  I switched to college me and I think just having a lot of.
• 51:33
  Family members myself and law enforcement and them be and
• 51:37
  seeing that they're good people and that they want to help
• 51:40
  people and and then me having a helping nature as well.
• 51:43
  And I don't know. I just I changed my major.
• 51:47
  I wanted to you know study psychology but I know that these
• 51:52
  murders have have had an impact on me and I just.
• 51:57
  I've always wanted to write a book.
• 51:58
  It's kind of like the last professional or goal that I have
• 52:02
  in my life to complete. I've published other articles
• 52:05
  and published in scholarly criminal justice articles.
• 52:08
  I mean journals. You know which?
• 52:10
  I will link listeners to If you wanna see Kelly's other writing,
• 52:14
  I have it saved. It's gonna go in.
• 52:18
  You know, remember having to write papers for school and look
• 52:20
  up resources and cite your sources?
• 52:22
  Well, that's the kind of writing that I've done mostly.
• 52:25
  I mean, I did do something for the US Department of Justice
• 52:28
  back in 2008. I was a field researcher
• 52:33
  examining domestic minor sex trafficking, oddly enough, with
• 52:37
  one of my old Graduate School professors, Doctor Ray Eve.
• 52:42
  So that was, that was pretty interesting to team up with the.
• 52:45
  One of my former professors to do that research.
• 52:48
  But you know, but this writing, this writing is the most
• 52:52
  meaningful to me because it's about my community.
• 52:55
  It's about people that I knew. It's about connections to places
• 52:59
  that I had been. And it was frightening.
• 53:01
  I mean, my mother has literally been waiting for the other shoe
• 53:06
  to drop her entire life. She is, she has been so afraid.
• 53:10
  Have somebody breaking in our house, which they did try, and
• 53:13
  that there's a little recap, a story about that in the book.
• 53:16
  It's pretty entertaining because in Texas everybody has guns.
• 53:20
  That's all I'm going to say. So you'll just have to read the
• 53:24
  book to find out what happened. But.
• 53:27
  I'm interested. Why is your mom afraid if
• 53:30
  everyone has guns? Are they?
• 53:32
  Supposed to make it better? You know what?
• 53:36
  Well, my mom has suffered her own trauma in her life, so.
• 53:40
  That's caused some anxiety for her.
• 53:42
  And so she was always very protective of us and very
• 53:44
  afraid. And she literally has been
• 53:46
  waiting for the other shoe to drop, you know, something bad to
• 53:49
  happen. It's just sad, you know, my poor
• 53:52
  mom. But yeah, we had guns.
• 53:56
  But sometimes, you know, that's not enough.
• 54:01
  Well, I mean, the statistics about those are so up and down.
• 54:05
  I mean, what's the statement that women are more likely to
• 54:08
  die by the gun in their home when they have one That's not a
• 54:12
  good feeling to have because you got it to protect yourself.
• 54:16
  It's it's rough. That's why in Texas, we keep
• 54:19
  them blocked and loaded on our night stand.
• 54:22
  There's no sense in digging around in your drawer somewhere
• 54:24
  trying to load the gun. It's right there.
• 54:29
  Gosh. I know we talked about so much
• 54:31
  fun stuff before, but I think we'll leave your your funnier
• 54:35
  stories for your book for people to read.
• 54:40
  Yeah. I mean, because it's such as a
• 54:41
  serious it's serious. It's.
• 54:44
  Yeah. As you're you're talking, I'm
• 54:47
  thinking about a situation. A little boy I knew who was
• 54:52
  killed. We semi grew up together.
• 54:57
  I sort of. I worked at like his summer
• 54:59
  camp. His mom knew my parents.
• 55:05
  And that what I'm thinking about is, is how that crime affected
• 55:09
  his mom to this day. I mean, he would be almost 30
• 55:13
  years old now, and I think he died when he was like 13, and
• 55:18
  she's written and talked about it extensively and it was just
• 55:22
  so senseless. Yeah, they all are.
• 55:26
  And and I write about the last chapter in the book is about the
• 55:29
  families and how they deserve justice.
• 55:32
  And I talk a little bit about what justice is.
• 55:35
  But I also have had some of the family members of the victims
• 55:42
  write an excerpt of something for me to use in that chapter.
• 55:47
  And I'll also talk a little bit about empathy.
• 55:50
  And I throw in a little bit of research, scholarly research,
• 55:53
  because that's what I did. I'm sorry, I can't help it,
• 55:54
  people. I'm a nerd, too.
• 55:57
  So I throw in research like real, legitimate scientific
• 56:00
  research about how homicide affects the family members,
• 56:05
  which by the way, which you may already know this Britney.
• 56:08
  But for the listeners who do not, they're called Co victims
• 56:12
  of homicide. They are left behind to pick up
• 56:15
  the pieces of their lives because someone they loved has
• 56:18
  been taken away from them. I didn't know about that but
• 56:23
  where I work. Offers therapy for not just the
• 56:29
  victims of sexual assault, but also the family members too, for
• 56:33
  free in our community. And they were the first people I
• 56:39
  heard that use that terminology. Some of the people who work
• 56:44
  there have been connected to our department because we work with
• 56:48
  kids. And of course, sexual assault.
• 56:51
  This happens to children too. But I that was the first time I
• 56:55
  heard that phrasing used was this year was that the rest of
• 56:58
  the family technically are considered victims too.
• 57:01
  Right. And it's it's in the scholarly
• 57:03
  research it has been. So that's great that you heard
• 57:06
  that from folks at your employment.
• 57:08
  That means that they are staying abreast of scientific research
• 57:12
  for their field, you know, which is important for all any, any
• 57:16
  job. I mean, unfortunately the
• 57:18
  Predators are up on the information too, so everybody
• 57:22
  else has got to be. That's right.
• 57:24
  We're we're always, it seems like we're always one step
• 57:26
  behind them. But, you know, yeah, it's funny
• 57:29
  you mentioned that about, you know, anybody that knows me.
• 57:32
  I just have kind of a crazy personality.
• 57:35
  I I always am trying to make people laugh and I kind of
• 57:38
  always wanted to be a standup comedian, you know?
• 57:41
  And then I have my serious side where I'm doing this research
• 57:44
  and, you know, publishing articles and all of these
• 57:46
  things. And I don't.
• 57:48
  You know I'm just myself I'm just a small town girl from
• 57:51
  Granbury. No matter what I've accomplished
• 57:53
  in my career that still how I see myself you know but I I, you
• 57:57
  know like you said it's a serious subject but in the book
• 57:59
  there's kind of some funny stories of about me and
• 58:02
  different things growing up and and I the first chapter in
• 58:06
  homicide in the Hood sets the stage for the reader to kind of
• 58:10
  immerse themselves in little Hood County Texas.
• 58:13
  You know and it's interesting that it's.
• 58:16
  You know, we call it homicide in the hood.
• 58:17
  That could be any hood. It could be anybody's
• 58:19
  neighborhood, you know, any small town in in the country.
• 58:22
  But I just kind of set the stage for the reader and then I have
• 58:25
  to go into this. The bulk of the book is about
• 58:28
  the the cases. And then the kind of the last
• 58:31
  part, you know, kind of section three of the book is called
• 58:35
  Justice and demand and it's about it's about some murderers
• 58:39
  who got caught and really, really punished around here.
• 58:43
  Some some very significant cases that affected a lot of people in
• 58:48
  in a really old cold case from 1979 that was solved in 2014 so
• 58:56
  and that that that occurred under very interesting
• 58:59
  circumstances. So, so I'll throw in a little
• 59:02
  bit of that about cases that were solved and some weird
• 59:04
  stories from like you know the newspapers I found from back in
• 59:08
  the early 80s. But then go on to talk about how
• 59:13
  forensic technology has so advanced and it can how it can
• 59:16
  be used to solve certain cases and types of cases and types of
• 59:20
  evidence. And then the last chapter to
• 59:22
  round it all out is about the victims and their families.
• 59:27
  And I'm a very I know you are too.
• 59:30
  I'm a very empathetic person. I.
• 59:33
  Which? Is different from sympathy.
• 59:35
  Sympathy is kind of feeling bad for a person.
• 59:38
  You you see what they're going through and.
• 59:40
  But empathy is putting yourself in another person's shoes and
• 59:44
  trying to imagine what their feelings are.
• 59:47
  It helps us as part of a it's part of our emotional
• 59:50
  intelligence to connect with other people and to have
• 59:53
  relationships, you know? So I want people to feel that,
• 1:00:00
  and I want people to get motivated, get active, to do
• 1:00:04
  something. Not just in in my town, but in
• 1:00:09
  your town, wherever that may be. If there are cold cases that
• 1:00:12
  haven't been solved, what's going to help is pressure from
• 1:00:16
  the community. That's right.
• 1:00:18
  Pressure to political elected officials, you know, keeping
• 1:00:23
  that information fresh in the minds of the community.
• 1:00:26
  And we've all seen stories. And I know you have, Brittany.
• 1:00:29
  You've covered lots of cases where?
• 1:00:31
  The community has just everybody came out searching for the
• 1:00:34
  missing girl, right? People came out in droves.
• 1:00:37
  It just really impacted a community.
• 1:00:40
  Everybody was involved. That's sometimes what it's going
• 1:00:43
  to take cuz right now in our day and age, you know, we need to be
• 1:00:48
  connected. You know COVID, it's.
• 1:00:51
  Weird. Yeah.
• 1:00:52
  It's weird how social media has made us less connected, yeah.
• 1:00:59
  It it. It's a different thing, you
• 1:01:02
  know, sitting in front of a murder victim's family member
• 1:01:06
  and watching the pain in their face while they talk about their
• 1:01:10
  loved one and getting angry. They have every right to be
• 1:01:13
  frustrated and angry that their loved one's case has not been
• 1:01:17
  solved and they feel like nobody cares anymore.
• 1:01:21
  They see people going on with their lives.
• 1:01:23
  How can they go on? They're thinking, well, how can
• 1:01:25
  I go on and live? How can they go on and live
• 1:01:27
  their lives when my sister or my mother is still dead and we
• 1:01:31
  don't know who did it? Do you remember the Heart family
• 1:01:35
  murders? There was a lesbian couple with
• 1:01:39
  six adopted children. They the the mothers were
• 1:01:43
  implicated in child abuse and they drove their car.
• 1:01:47
  Off of a Cliff in California. Oh my.
• 1:01:49
  Gosh, no, I don't think I've heard of that.
• 1:01:50
  One, it happened in 2018, and actually shortly after I kind of
• 1:01:54
  blew up on TikTok, the mother, the biological mother of three
• 1:01:59
  of the children who had died. And they were taken away from
• 1:02:03
  her because she had a mental illness, which is so unfair.
• 1:02:08
  And on top of that, she, she reached out to me and she was
• 1:02:11
  just like, can you cover the story of my children's death and
• 1:02:16
  that? Is one of the hardest ones I've
• 1:02:18
  ever done. Right.
• 1:02:21
  Because, I mean six babies between the angels of, well, I
• 1:02:26
  guess they're not all babies, but 12 and 19.
• 1:02:28
  Oh my gosh, that's. Horrific.
• 1:02:32
  And and what's worse is that three of them shouldn't have
• 1:02:34
  even been there because I could go on for hours about how
• 1:02:39
  unfair. The the the Child Protective
• 1:02:42
  Services is to certain people in our culture and they let other
• 1:02:47
  people get passes and that's exactly what happened in that
• 1:02:50
  case the the two. Yes, girl.
• 1:02:54
  The Listen working in childcare and making the amount of reports
• 1:02:59
  that I do it is insanely frustrating the number of cases
• 1:03:03
  that get dropped for lack of evidence because the victims are
• 1:03:07
  three or four years old. And a three and four.
• 1:03:09
  They don't have the language to explain what's happened to them.
• 1:03:13
  And it's extra traumatic to force a child to now go through
• 1:03:18
  this conversation again. And so we just let it go.
• 1:03:23
  Oh, it just boils my blood. Well, there a lot of states have
• 1:03:31
  child advocacy centers. I'm not sure if you're familiar
• 1:03:34
  with that concept, but it's a colocation of services where
• 1:03:37
  it's the. Police, the district attorney's
• 1:03:42
  office, people that can provide, you know, orders, legal advice,
• 1:03:46
  and they they, they put every agency in one building that a
• 1:03:51
  victim would need to speak with. And they only tell their story
• 1:03:55
  once. So that's what they over and
• 1:03:58
  over and over. But they have forensic child
• 1:04:01
  interviewers, people that do play therapy with some of the
• 1:04:04
  younger children you're talking about that may not be able to.
• 1:04:07
  Verbalize it as well. We finally caught on to that.
• 1:04:09
  I guess what that's after research, you know research has
• 1:04:13
  contributed to we learning to us learning about these types of
• 1:04:17
  issues. And so yeah, then they have the
• 1:04:20
  there's a similar contact concept, pardon me, for the
• 1:04:24
  family Justice Center for victims of domestic violence.
• 1:04:28
  They've got everything collocated in one service
• 1:04:31
  District Attorney. Or a prosecutor that can write
• 1:04:34
  an order of protection or police there, there's social workers
• 1:04:40
  and and there's a family Justice Center in a close in a
• 1:04:44
  neighboring county here that I was involved in the strategic
• 1:04:47
  planning for. It is an amazing place, amazing
• 1:04:50
  concept. So I want folks to, right.
• 1:04:56
  So yeah, it's it's been very interesting.
• 1:05:01
  I'm hoping. That maybe one of these cases is
• 1:05:07
  solved in this book, you know, especially I mean.
• 1:05:10
  Even if they just open them back up, I mean that's.
• 1:05:13
  They're all open. I did.
• 1:05:15
  Oh, that's great. I did confirm they have never
• 1:05:18
  been closed, but of course we're a really small county, Hood
• 1:05:22
  counties very small and we just don't have enough resources.
• 1:05:26
  I'm I'm wanting to work with it. Police Department and the
• 1:05:30
  Sheriff's Department. I haven't spoken to the sheriff
• 1:05:32
  yet. I used to live behind his
• 1:05:34
  daughter. We were next door neighbors and
• 1:05:36
  hung out. But I would offer my services to
• 1:05:40
  write grants for the Police Department for free.
• 1:05:43
  Not even charge them to do it. Just give back to my community
• 1:05:46
  to help them with whatever, you know, training grants, grants
• 1:05:51
  for equipment. A lot of times small agencies
• 1:05:54
  don't, you know, get a lot because the money is sent to the
• 1:05:57
  larger. Especially in our city.
• 1:06:00
  Yeah, Houston, you know. Same thing in my state.
• 1:06:03
  Philadelphia is going to get all the money.
• 1:06:05
  Right. So I want to do that to help my
• 1:06:09
  community too. But this has been a very
• 1:06:14
  interesting journey for me. I just could not have imagined
• 1:06:18
  all the doors that would have opened up, the people that I've
• 1:06:20
  talked to, people from Granbury, and it doesn't matter what class
• 1:06:25
  they graduated from Granbury Pirates.
• 1:06:28
  Class in 19, you know, 67. I've talked to all people from
• 1:06:33
  all ages, from all, you know that our classmates are
• 1:06:37
  concerned about Holly's case. They it has devastated so many
• 1:06:41
  people. They still remember it.
• 1:06:44
  You know, there's a lot of people that want this thing
• 1:06:46
  solved. And so the Police Department has
• 1:06:49
  worked really hard. They've done a lot of things
• 1:06:52
  over the years. They have not let it go.
• 1:06:55
  It's one of those cases that sticks with that detective.
• 1:06:58
  You know, they think about it all the time.
• 1:07:00
  They think of different. Mortality of that.
• 1:07:02
  Yes, yes. We just need our district
• 1:07:05
  attorneys in this town to do something about it.
• 1:07:10
  Well, I've said this to you off air, but I'm going to say it to
• 1:07:13
  you publicly to Kelly. I think you're an exceptional
• 1:07:17
  woman and just just this is what you're doing is incredible and
• 1:07:23
  and I hope that you get the response.
• 1:07:25
  That you want from your community and from the true
• 1:07:28
  crime community in terms of wanting to give justice to these
• 1:07:31
  families and giving voices to families is something that we
• 1:07:34
  definitely need to do more of within the true crime community.
• 1:07:39
  And anybody who does that is great by me.
• 1:07:44
  Now I know your Instagram is Kelly.
• 1:07:47
  That's Kelli Tomlinson, Martin. And you told me you made a
• 1:07:51
  TikTok. I did, and I made a goofy video
• 1:07:55
  on there of me singing to a really rock'n'roll song.
• 1:07:58
  Cuz I'm. I mean, I don't sound like it.
• 1:08:00
  I know I probably sound like a country bunking on this podcast,
• 1:08:03
  but but I'm a rock and roller, so I had Dorothy in the
• 1:08:09
  background. More we talk, the more we we
• 1:08:14
  have a little similarity. Same thing with the personality,
• 1:08:17
  very bright and bubbly. You know, you and I, we chatted
• 1:08:20
  for like hours the first time we talked and and then you feel
• 1:08:24
  this connection to, to wanting to to remind people of things
• 1:08:28
  that have happened to to to shine lights on things to you
• 1:08:33
  know one of the things I've been focusing on I think last season
• 1:08:37
  was the the the throwaway people as as I feel like they call the
• 1:08:42
  people of our society. Whose cases?
• 1:08:44
  Aren't getting solved because. Maybe they're a drug addict or,
• 1:08:49
  or maybe you live in a bad neighborhood.
• 1:08:51
  And so those are cases that I've been talking more about.
• 1:08:53
  You know, this is all stuff that needs to be, you know, a light
• 1:08:58
  shone on as often as possible. And so I think it's amazing that
• 1:09:02
  you're doing it. Is Kelly, your Facebook page is
• 1:09:06
  called Homicide in the Hood, the same name as the book.
• 1:09:09
  Is there any other way that people can contact you on social
• 1:09:12
  media if they want to follow you as you're covering this case and
• 1:09:16
  posting about things? Those, those are the cases.
• 1:09:19
  I mean, I'm sorry, those are the platforms.
• 1:09:21
  The Homicide in the Foot Hood Facebook page, that Instagram,
• 1:09:25
  Kelly, Tomlinson Martin and the TikTok with that same name.
• 1:09:29
  Kelly Tomlinson Martin, right? No.
• 1:09:33
  No. Cousins in there because my
• 1:09:35
  cousin was a sheriff here and everybody knew who Edmund
• 1:09:37
  Tomlinson was. But.
• 1:09:39
  So yeah, I'm going to link all of those in the liner notes for
• 1:09:43
  the episode. I was going to say thank you so
• 1:09:46
  much for speaking with us and I can't wait to see the book when
• 1:09:50
  it comes out. Get a copy post about it myself.
• 1:09:54
  Well, I appreciate that. Thank you so much and thank you
• 1:09:56
  to all the listeners. And and I just want to say, you
• 1:09:59
  know, say a prayer for the victims.
• 1:10:03
  You know, we, we tend to sensationalize the killers all
• 1:10:06
  the time. But in my book, I want to talk
• 1:10:08
  about the victims and who they were too, you know.
• 1:10:11
  So thank you very much all. Right.
• 1:10:15
  And for everybody listening, you have a good weekend.