Latest / Hell and Gone: Murder Line / Incident Report
Transcript
- 0:08Speaker 1: School of Humans. Okay, let me show you something. Sure.
- 0:16Speaker 1: This is Debbie, Ebbie's grandmother on her dad's side. We're
- 0:20Speaker 1: at her home in Little Rock and she's about to
- 0:23Speaker 1: show me something she doesn't show a lot of people.
- 0:27Speaker 1: When Ebbie disappeared, law enforcement asked Debbie not to talk
- 0:30Speaker 1: to the media. The police said, please be quiet, let
- 0:36Speaker 1: us be the folks people, I mean, let us handle this.
- 0:39Speaker 1: I usually was the fixer in our family, and so
- 0:43Speaker 1: normally I would have been the one down with the police.
- 0:45Speaker 1: I would have been the one making statements. I would
- 0:47Speaker 1: have been the one judging what goes out, and I
- 0:49Speaker 1: couldn't do that, so I sat back. Debbie says that
- 0:53Speaker 1: for several years she's been silent, but now she's convinced
- 0:57Speaker 1: that the only way to get justice for Ebbie is
- 1:00Speaker 1: to make the story as public as possible. I don't
- 1:03Speaker 1: show this to everybody, but this is what I did.
- 1:07Speaker 1: That's amazing. Yeah, you're one of the few people that
- 1:10Speaker 1: have seen it. Debbie has built her own very detailed
- 1:14Speaker 1: murder board with lots of photos of people who were
- 1:17Speaker 1: in Ebbie's life. Her murder board, like ours, has a
- 1:21Speaker 1: big question mark around Saturday night October twenty fourth, when
- 1:26Speaker 1: Tommy took over the case, she went to talk to him.
- 1:30Speaker 1: When I sat with Tommy that day, of course, he
- 1:32Speaker 1: took pictures and things. He went, well, I can't tell
- 1:35Speaker 1: you much, but you don't know where she was here.
- 1:37Speaker 1: I know exactly where she was here. You don't know
- 1:39Speaker 1: where she was there. I know exactly where she was there.
- 1:41Speaker 1: You can forget him. You can forget him. You can this,
- 1:44Speaker 1: you can that. Like Laurie and so many other people
- 1:49Speaker 1: close to Ebbie, Debbie has been investigating Ebbie's death for years,
- 1:53Speaker 1: collecting information that could potentially get us closer to the truth.
- 1:58Speaker 1: And Debbie has connections that could get us closer to
- 2:02Speaker 1: understanding the inconsistencies in the secure guard stories. I'm Catherine Townsend.
- 2:08Speaker 1: This is hell and Gone. No one I talked to
- 2:43Speaker 1: seems to know much about the security guard Guy Hooper.
- 2:47Speaker 1: What we do know is that he used to run
- 2:49Speaker 1: his own security company called ASSI. He now appears to
- 2:54Speaker 1: be retired, and during the time that he worked at
- 2:57Speaker 1: Chelmont Park, he was also working security at other places,
- 3:01Speaker 1: including a women's health center. We know that the pool
- 3:05Speaker 1: didn't immediately speak with Guy after Ebbie disappeared. Because Monny
- 3:10Speaker 1: was shocked when he found guy five months after Ebbie
- 3:13Speaker 1: went missing, and according to Grandma Debbie, Monny was not
- 3:17Speaker 1: the first person to find the security guard a few
- 3:20Speaker 1: months in. It was very it was very frustrating because
- 3:24Speaker 1: you know, so many mistakes were made in the beginning.
- 3:27Speaker 1: And my husband even at one point Collins said, have
- 3:29Speaker 1: you talked to that guard? Because my husband owns a
- 3:32Speaker 1: landscaping company and one of the neighborhoods he had their
- 3:36Speaker 1: security guard. They've done that neighborhood for years, a big
- 3:39Speaker 1: housing condition, and he said something to one of the
- 3:43Speaker 1: on the board that he says, you know, I was
- 3:44Speaker 1: over there and I saw her in Chalamote Park and
- 3:48Speaker 1: he said I ran her off a couple of times,
- 3:50Speaker 1: and my husband called during that time. I said, I
- 3:53Speaker 1: think that if you would do nothing. Ebbie's step dad, Michael,
- 3:58Speaker 1: has also talked a guy a few times. He used
- 4:01Speaker 1: to patrol up in this neighborhood and I knew who
- 4:05Speaker 1: he was. I don't know if he knew who I was,
- 4:07Speaker 1: but I'd seen him drive through and he's an odd individual,
- 4:10Speaker 1: and so I've talked to him. After a while, I
- 4:14Speaker 1: think he figured out who I was. And so I've
- 4:16Speaker 1: talked to him out here when he's patrolling through a
- 4:19Speaker 1: couple of times. I've seen him up at the park
- 4:22Speaker 1: a couple of times. Trevor and I ran into him
- 4:25Speaker 1: up there. But I can tell you that, you know,
- 4:27Speaker 1: it's I just never have been I don't know if
- 4:29Speaker 1: he did anything wrong or not. He may be just
- 4:31Speaker 1: a weird guy. Grandma Debbie puts me in touch with
- 4:36Speaker 1: an old friend of hers, someone he worked with the
- 4:39Speaker 1: homeowners association in Saint Charles, the neighborhood that is very
- 4:42Speaker 1: near Chalmont Park. This source tells me that Guy Hooper
- 4:47Speaker 1: was the security guard for that area for several years
- 4:50Speaker 1: until twenty eighteen when the Little Rock Police Department officers
- 4:53Speaker 1: began patrolling there. He tells me that Chalmont Park was
- 4:57Speaker 1: a safe neighborhood, so the main things that the residents
- 5:00Speaker 1: were worried about were things like copper wire theft or
- 5:03Speaker 1: people swiping stuff from one of the min construction sites around.
- 5:07Speaker 1: So the security guard was really there to deter thieves
- 5:11Speaker 1: or to clear kids out of the park who may
- 5:13Speaker 1: have been drinking or hooking up. Most of the things
- 5:17Speaker 1: that Guy reported were things that were not high priorities.
- 5:21Speaker 1: For the police, but things that might concern residents in
- 5:24Speaker 1: the neighborhood. When we talked to Eric, he said he
- 5:29Speaker 1: doesn't remember there ever being security at Shalamant Park. All
- 5:33Speaker 1: the times that we've been today, I've never seen the security,
- 5:36Speaker 1: not even like in a truck or that's why the
- 5:39Speaker 1: neighbors haying the security guys out time. Like what I've
- 5:43Speaker 1: talked to Monty several times about Guy Hooper, But what
- 5:47Speaker 1: Monty's telling us that guy told him and what Guys
- 5:50Speaker 1: told other people, these stories just aren't matching up. First,
- 5:57Speaker 1: there's the incident report. Guy said to Monny that Ebbie's
- 6:02Speaker 1: car was at the park on Sunday night, Monday night,
- 6:05Speaker 1: and Tuesday, so he called the police multiple times to
- 6:08Speaker 1: report that it had been abandoned there. He said that
- 6:11Speaker 1: he checked the car and found the ignition running in
- 6:14Speaker 1: Ebbie's purse and personal items inside the car, but he
- 6:18Speaker 1: said that even though he waited several hours, the police
- 6:22Speaker 1: never showed up. Guys said that he was there at
- 6:25Speaker 1: the park on Wednesday night and Thursday night and the
- 6:28Speaker 1: car was there, But he said that when he came
- 6:31Speaker 1: back on Friday night, which would have been October thirtieth,
- 6:34Speaker 1: the car was gone. If he did call the police
- 6:38Speaker 1: multiple times, why isn't he anywhere on the incident report.
- 6:45Speaker 1: Guy appeared on an episode about Ebbie on a show
- 6:47Speaker 1: called Crime Watch Daily. The name has now been changed
- 6:50Speaker 1: to True Crime Daily. That True Crime Daily story came
- 6:54Speaker 1: out before Ebbie's body was found in that drain. That's
- 6:59Speaker 1: back when they were investigating every possibility, including the possibility
- 7:03Speaker 1: that Ebbie could have been kidnapped and sex trafficked. In
- 7:07Speaker 1: the interview, Guy clearly said he had seen Ebbie in
- 7:11Speaker 1: the park on at least three different occasions, and he
- 7:15Speaker 1: said she was not alone. In the interview, he said,
- 7:19Speaker 1: it was late evening. I advised them all everybody to
- 7:23Speaker 1: leave the park, which they did. Then a few days
- 7:25Speaker 1: later I run into her again with another young black gentleman.
- 7:29Speaker 1: This time they were in the backseat of the car,
- 7:31Speaker 1: and the third time she was back with another couple
- 7:33Speaker 1: of gentlemen. He said that all three times he saw
- 7:38Speaker 1: her there she was with a black mail medium hike
- 7:41Speaker 1: about five foot six to five foot seven, with long dreadlocks.
- 7:46Speaker 1: The anchor of the show then showed Guy mugshots of
- 7:49Speaker 1: two men who were arrested as part of a sex
- 7:51Speaker 1: trafficking ring, and Guy said that two of the people
- 7:54Speaker 1: in the pictures looked like the young men he had
- 7:57Speaker 1: seen with Ebbie. Now, those same men were arrested and
- 8:01Speaker 1: they were charged with sex trafficking, but police were able
- 8:05Speaker 1: to determine that they were out of state at the time,
- 8:07Speaker 1: and I had nothing to do with Ebbie's case. And
- 8:11Speaker 1: then there's Guy's dash cam footage. Remember Monty told us this.
- 8:16Speaker 1: He had seen her there before in this vehicle with
- 8:20Speaker 1: a black male. And he told us that he had
- 8:25Speaker 1: he had a dash cam in his car and he
- 8:28Speaker 1: had recorded this, and I said, oh great. He said, well, no,
- 8:33Speaker 1: it's not great. He said, one day, I come in
- 8:36Speaker 1: to download video from that night's work and the computer
- 8:43Speaker 1: said it would not read this device. Sometime in the
- 8:48Speaker 1: months after Ebbie disappeared and before Monty got on the case,
- 8:53Speaker 1: guy's computer broke. Well aster was a computer away in
- 8:57Speaker 1: the trash. They took his computer into Warrior's wife works
- 9:02Speaker 1: to their it. Guy and a guy told him Bash,
- 9:06Speaker 1: the computer was tried. It was no good. The best
- 9:09Speaker 1: saying you could do is get another computer. Inst When
- 9:13Speaker 1: we talked about this incident earlier, we kind of skated
- 9:17Speaker 1: by it, But the fact that he threw his computer
- 9:20Speaker 1: away really bothered Mike and me. If you knew that
- 9:24Speaker 1: crucial footage was on there, surely like what else was
- 9:27Speaker 1: on the dash cam footage? Did he like, at what
- 9:31Speaker 1: point did he throw the computer away? I guess Monty
- 9:33Speaker 1: was saying that at the time that he he the
- 9:37Speaker 1: computer was already thrown away. But it's like, yeah, because
- 9:39Speaker 1: otherwise the police could have even if they didn't think
- 9:41Speaker 1: there was anything on it, they still could have taken
- 9:43Speaker 1: it and forensically processed it. As our week and Little
- 9:46Speaker 1: Rock progressed, I got more and more frustrated. You don't
- 9:50Speaker 1: throw data away like that. You don't throw a computer
- 9:52Speaker 1: away with stuff that can be used in a murder investigation,
- 9:55Speaker 1: Like even if even if you don't think it's it's usable,
- 9:58Speaker 1: surely you give it to law enforcement and go, hey,
- 10:00Speaker 1: I've got a computer here that has dash camera footage
- 10:03Speaker 1: on it. Can somebody pull it? Yeah? Absolutely, If you
- 10:08Speaker 1: were as trying to be as helpful as you say
- 10:10Speaker 1: you are, you would have turned over that information right
- 10:13Speaker 1: away or at least kept it, you know, like not,
- 10:16Speaker 1: you don't throw especially I mean, I just don't believe
- 10:19Speaker 1: that at all, and even as we were driving over
- 10:22Speaker 1: to See's house, right before we talked to his mom,
- 10:25Speaker 1: the security guard was still the main thing on my mind.
- 10:29Speaker 1: The questions about the security guard that I have right
- 10:32Speaker 1: now that just need to be clarified are what was
- 10:36Speaker 1: the exact order of events regarding who reported that car missing?
- 10:41Speaker 1: What does the security guard tell people about Ebby and
- 10:44Speaker 1: the guys he said he saw with. What were the
- 10:46Speaker 1: exact details of that interaction. I'd like to know that also.
- 10:51Speaker 1: I would like him to tell us the story about
- 10:53Speaker 1: what happened to that data. We'll be right back while
- 11:05Speaker 1: we're unraveling all this. I talked to ebbie stepdad, Michael again,
- 11:11Speaker 1: Remember when I was down in the manhole and you
- 11:13Speaker 1: said something about ask her if the security guard, Ask
- 11:17Speaker 1: the security guard if he like ran kids off from
- 11:20Speaker 1: down there? Do you remember where you heard that I'd
- 11:24Speaker 1: had a conversation. I'm trying to remember if that came
- 11:27Speaker 1: Torectley from Guy or if it came through Monty Monty Vickers.
- 11:34Speaker 1: It'd either be from Guy or Money Vickers. And I
- 11:38Speaker 1: hadn't had to be honest, I didn't raise a bunch
- 11:40Speaker 1: of red flags about that early on in the deal
- 11:43Speaker 1: of the investigation. This seems very strange to me. There
- 11:47Speaker 1: are woods everywhere. If kids want to go somewhere for privacy,
- 11:52Speaker 1: or they could just hang out in their cars, why
- 11:55Speaker 1: would they crawl down into a dirty, slimy manhole. And also,
- 12:00Speaker 1: when we talked to Eric, we specifically asked about this,
- 12:04Speaker 1: and he said that no one goes down into that manhole.
- 12:07Speaker 1: You said that when y'all were hanging out, I mean,
- 12:09Speaker 1: people would like hang out and drink and things like that,
- 12:11Speaker 1: but you never saw anyone like in the manhole doing
- 12:14Speaker 1: stuff like who was disgusting. Is not something that you
- 12:19Speaker 1: know people want to do. It strikes me as odd
- 12:25Speaker 1: that this entire time we've been warned about bad people
- 12:29Speaker 1: from across town, when more and more the evidence is
- 12:33Speaker 1: pointing to someone who was very familiar with Shalmant Park,
- 12:36Speaker 1: who was either from there or who went there regularly.
- 12:40Speaker 1: I've been doing a deep dive into crime scene staging
- 12:43Speaker 1: into investigating the crime scene and seeing what it can
- 12:47Speaker 1: tell us about the perpetrator of the crime and their motives,
- 12:50Speaker 1: since I believe that it played a crucial role in
- 12:52Speaker 1: this case. Whoever hid Ebbie's body in that pipe had
- 12:56Speaker 1: a reason for doing it. If it had been a
- 12:58Speaker 1: friend who was there when she accidentally overdosed, I believe
- 13:03Speaker 1: that they would have run away at to Mike about this.
- 13:07Speaker 1: Usually if somebody overdoses and somebody else overdoses, people just leave,
- 13:11Speaker 1: you know, at least they run away, you know, unless
- 13:14Speaker 1: unless you've done something to someone where you don't want
- 13:17Speaker 1: to get caught. Yeah. And I mean, well, if it
- 13:21Speaker 1: was a person she'd been doing drugs with two things,
- 13:23Speaker 1: One they wouldn't have known where that pipe was in
- 13:25Speaker 1: that park and being able to like drag her down
- 13:27Speaker 1: there like that, and it was someone on drugs, I
- 13:30Speaker 1: feel like they would have stolen her money and the
- 13:32Speaker 1: rest of her drugs. Yeah, I agree. There is a
- 13:37Speaker 1: massive amount of risk involved in getting rid of a
- 13:39Speaker 1: body to take the time to remove her body from
- 13:43Speaker 1: her car and then either open the manhole cover or
- 13:47Speaker 1: push her body down into the storm drain, because either way,
- 13:51Speaker 1: the perpetrator would then have to crawl down into the
- 13:53Speaker 1: dark and shove her body into the thirteen inch wide
- 13:57Speaker 1: concrete drain pipe. There are two factors to consider when
- 14:01Speaker 1: an offender decides to hide a body or stage a
- 14:03Speaker 1: crime scene. Familiarity and risk level. Moving the body to
- 14:08Speaker 1: the pipe would have to benefit the person who did it,
- 14:11Speaker 1: And we need to understand why I keep thinking about
- 14:16Speaker 1: Ebbie's car again. We don't know what work was done
- 14:21Speaker 1: on the car with the police. We've heard that the
- 14:23Speaker 1: trunk was left open, that it rained, and that evidence
- 14:26Speaker 1: was lost, but that's not confirmed. That was ninety percent
- 14:31Speaker 1: of their connection to the perpetrator was was the car? Yeah,
- 14:38Speaker 1: it was the car. We could have pulled hair from
- 14:41Speaker 1: the car. You could have pulled Prince from the car.
- 14:45Speaker 1: You could have at least been able to identify what
- 14:47Speaker 1: people based on Prince had been in the car exactly,
- 14:53Speaker 1: and especially if she had been, you know, in that
- 14:56Speaker 1: car with guys meeting here, that would be crucial. Yeah,
- 15:00Speaker 1: even if more than one person you know you, then
- 15:02Speaker 1: that's when you start finding out when was the last
- 15:05Speaker 1: time you s her and blah blah blah blah blah,
- 15:07Speaker 1: and the questioning happens, and then you know, methodically build
- 15:10Speaker 1: your list of suspects based off of time. But also
- 15:15Speaker 1: we need a better understanding of why the car was
- 15:18Speaker 1: parked in the place it was. We've heard that it
- 15:21Speaker 1: was backed into a space in the back of Shawmont Park,
- 15:26Speaker 1: we're there with Laurie and Mike's going to use Gabby's
- 15:29Speaker 1: car to recreate the car's position. Ebby step dad. Michael
- 15:34Speaker 1: is on the phone, and he explains where the car
- 15:37Speaker 1: was based on what he knows from the neighbor who
- 15:40Speaker 1: called the abandoned car into the police. Think or the
- 15:43Speaker 1: edge of the opening edge. Lee told me it was
- 15:48Speaker 1: backed in that the back right tier was there. He
- 15:52Speaker 1: needs to come over a spot. The car was not
- 15:55Speaker 1: parked in front of the drainage thing. If you're looking
- 15:58Speaker 1: at the drainage opening, it was to the right of it,
- 16:01Speaker 1: so he needs to move it over a full parking space. Mike,
- 16:05Speaker 1: the car in a little bit closer to it, and
- 16:09Speaker 1: it was backed all the way up against the curb.
- 16:12Speaker 1: So the car is backed in all the way with
- 16:15Speaker 1: the tire close to the curb. There's a spot right
- 16:18Speaker 1: in front of the drain We're in the spot just
- 16:21Speaker 1: to the right of that. While we're at the park,
- 16:26Speaker 1: we get a few more details about the state of
- 16:28Speaker 1: the car. We've heard that the car was kind of
- 16:31Speaker 1: a wreck inside with all of Ebie's belongings strown out everywhere.
- 16:35Speaker 1: Michael tells us something else. When Lee saw the car,
- 16:39Speaker 1: there was a towel and the towel was behind the car.
- 16:44Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know if the cow was
- 16:45Speaker 1: on the ground. I think the cow was on the
- 16:47Speaker 1: ground right by the wheels and I understanding behind the car. No,
- 16:52Speaker 1: behind the side of the wheel, on the concrete, on
- 16:56Speaker 1: the asphalt. Okay, why was this towel outside the car?
- 17:02Speaker 1: We need to get more information about how it was positioned.
- 17:06Speaker 1: Laurie says that the driver's seat was pushed back. We
- 17:10Speaker 1: can't confirm this with the police, and again, we don't
- 17:13Speaker 1: know how the car was processed. But if that is true,
- 17:17Speaker 1: it points to someone moving the car to that spot.
- 17:20Speaker 1: Because Ebby was tiny, Eric told us that she never
- 17:25Speaker 1: drove with a seat pushback. She used to say, also,
- 17:32Speaker 1: what were the odds of someone in Ebby's impaired condition
- 17:35Speaker 1: being able to back perfectly into a parking spot like that?
- 17:41Speaker 1: After we backed the car in, Mike and I walked
- 17:44Speaker 1: to the entrance to the park. Shalmant Park is small,
- 17:47Speaker 1: but once we reached the street, you can barely see
- 17:51Speaker 1: the top of Gabby's car, especially as it's getting dark.
- 17:55Speaker 1: It's getting dark. If all you can see is barely
- 18:02Speaker 1: the top of this from over there. You know, if
- 18:06Speaker 1: I'm if I'm down here doing stuff, you're not going
- 18:11Speaker 1: to see anything to me. Also, as you just did that,
- 18:13Speaker 1: I'm thinking, like, okay, the car being backed right there,
- 18:16Speaker 1: you're very close to the entrance. You're also concealed by
- 18:20Speaker 1: the car because this is about the same side, like
- 18:23Speaker 1: close to the sides of her car. Even though you're
- 18:24Speaker 1: a big guy, like you're still totally concealed. Yeah, So
- 18:27Speaker 1: it's like it's just you know, it makes a lot
- 18:29Speaker 1: of sense. Yeah. I almost bet you if you rode
- 18:33Speaker 1: with Laurie and just you know, if you did a
- 18:35Speaker 1: circle around a loop and you just kind of drove
- 18:37Speaker 1: drove by, you probably either would just see the top
- 18:40Speaker 1: or you wouldn't even see the top of this car. Yeah.
- 18:45Speaker 1: Whoever parked this car was familiar with the area and
- 18:49Speaker 1: they knew this parking spot gave them cover from the street.
- 18:54Speaker 1: Mike and I decide to talk to Monty again. This
- 18:57Speaker 1: time we asked him specifically about any information he got
- 19:01Speaker 1: from guy about the position of the car, and what
- 19:04Speaker 1: he says next shocks us. What about do you remember
- 19:08Speaker 1: what he told you about the car, like where it
- 19:11Speaker 1: was it was backed? In. As you pull in there,
- 19:15Speaker 1: there's a kind of a ferry there, and the car
- 19:18Speaker 1: was sitting right here. If you go in there, it
- 19:21Speaker 1: would have been on your right. That's the way gud
- 19:23Speaker 1: described it to us. As Monty is showing us where
- 19:28Speaker 1: the car was parked, I look at Mike, and even
- 19:31Speaker 1: though we both keep our expressions neutral, I'm positive that
- 19:34Speaker 1: he's thinking the same thing that I am. What because
- 19:38Speaker 1: Monty is showing us that the car was parked at
- 19:41Speaker 1: the front of the parking lot. Now, we've always heard
- 19:44Speaker 1: that the car was found in the back of the
- 19:45Speaker 1: parking lot, So why would guy tell Monny that it
- 19:49Speaker 1: was parked in the front. Maybe Monty isn't remembering correctly.
- 19:55Speaker 1: Mike asked him to draw him out. He's very clearing.
- 20:01Speaker 1: Where's the parking area. That's the parking area, okay, yeah,
- 20:04Speaker 1: and then there's the manhole cover. Okay, right there, right
- 20:09Speaker 1: right there where that car he is there I drain pipes.
- 20:14Speaker 1: It's right on the yes tree, right down there. Again,
- 20:18Speaker 1: he's saying that Ebby's car was in the front part
- 20:20Speaker 1: of the lot, in an area where it would have
- 20:22Speaker 1: been visible from the street. Okay, thank you, Yeah, of
- 20:26Speaker 1: course we were parked right here because I was waiting
- 20:30Speaker 1: on him when he came in and I did interview
- 20:33Speaker 1: on the hood of my vehicle right here. So what
- 20:39Speaker 1: happened to the car? Did guys see it before Ebbie
- 20:42Speaker 1: moved it while she was still there and still alive?
- 20:45Speaker 1: And if not, why was this discrepancy never mentioned before? Again,
- 20:51Speaker 1: this is money talking about this from memory. We need
- 20:54Speaker 1: the original diagram he had from twenty sixteen. Fine, do
- 20:58Speaker 1: you have do you remember? I mean, I know in
- 21:00Speaker 1: your boxes of stuff. Do you know if you still
- 21:02Speaker 1: have that diagram? It's all my file. I've kind of
- 21:06Speaker 1: cleaned my office out and my files upstairs and show
- 21:10Speaker 1: I thought her file were Sarah. Could we need to
- 21:14Speaker 1: get our hands on Monty's files to confirm all this?
- 21:17Speaker 1: But at this point, I feel like I have enough
- 21:20Speaker 1: information and a lot of questions that need answering. It's
- 21:24Speaker 1: time to talk to Guy Hooper. I give him a
- 21:27Speaker 1: call and he picks up. We'll be right back. Hi.
- 21:36Speaker 1: Is this guy Guy Hooper just picked up my phone call? Hi?
- 21:40Speaker 1: This is Catherine Townsend. I am actually reaching out to
- 21:44Speaker 1: you because I've been talking to Laurie Journe again and
- 21:47Speaker 1: I've been working. After I explained to him what we're doing.
- 21:50Speaker 1: The first thing that guy says to me is that
- 21:52Speaker 1: he's retired. Now, I said, I know, but we really
- 21:55Speaker 1: want to talk to you. He then tells me he
- 21:58Speaker 1: just got out of surgery, but he asked when would
- 22:02Speaker 1: be a good time to talk. Well, I mean we could.
- 22:04Speaker 1: We could come to you if that would work for you,
- 22:06Speaker 1: and I mean you tell us. Guy says he can
- 22:09Speaker 1: meet on Saturday. We're supposed to head out of Little
- 22:12Speaker 1: Rock by then, but I know how important this interview is.
- 22:16Speaker 1: This might be our only chance to talk face to face. Yeah,
- 22:19Speaker 1: that could work for me. I could do it on Saturday.
- 22:22Speaker 1: We could meet really pretty much anywhere in Little Rock,
- 22:25Speaker 1: West Little Rock. Where are you? He's located in North
- 22:29Speaker 1: Little Rock, but he doesn't want to meet at his home.
- 22:32Speaker 1: He suggests the Eyehop near McCain Mall. We confirm to
- 22:36Speaker 1: meet at two pm on Saturday. All right, thank you.
- 22:40Speaker 1: The call with guy was short, only three minutes long. Yeah,
- 22:44Speaker 1: I'm probably just going to come back and do that myself.
- 22:48Speaker 1: I gotta talk to that guy. Yeah, it could be
- 22:52Speaker 1: totally I mean, look, I can't like, no, we should
- 22:57Speaker 1: we should talk to him. The next day, I reach
- 23:02Speaker 1: back out to Guy to confirm our meeting. I'll leave
- 23:04Speaker 1: a message and then another one, and he doesn't get
- 23:07Speaker 1: back to me. I then reach out to Monty to
- 23:10Speaker 1: see if he can get in contact with Guy. No luck.
- 23:15Speaker 1: The next day, I call Guy again. Nothing. It's Wednesday,
- 23:20Speaker 1: the day before our flights go out. We have a
- 23:23Speaker 1: meeting with Monty and at the end he shows us
- 23:26Speaker 1: a text that he just got from Guy. In that text,
- 23:31Speaker 1: Guy says he's planning to cancel the meeting with us.
- 23:36Speaker 1: I immediately call him, but he doesn't respond, and ever
- 23:40Speaker 1: since then, he has never picked up any of my
- 23:43Speaker 1: calls or responded to any of my texts. All this
- 23:51Speaker 1: happened in December, and since then he seems to have
- 23:54Speaker 1: completely ghosted this investigation. But then in March, Laurie called me.
- 24:00Speaker 1: She told me she had spoken to produce her she
- 24:03Speaker 1: knows on the Doctor Phil show. Laurie and Michael had
- 24:07Speaker 1: been on Doctor Phil twice, once in twenty seventeen when
- 24:11Speaker 1: Ebbie was still missing, and once in twenty eighteen after
- 24:15Speaker 1: her body was found. Laurie can't make another trip to
- 24:18Speaker 1: la right now, so she asked me if I would
- 24:21Speaker 1: go to Los Angeles and do the show. I immediately
- 24:23Speaker 1: said yes, and I started working with the Doctor Phil producers.
- 24:27Speaker 1: I told the producers everything I knew and said that
- 24:29Speaker 1: I would do anything to help this investigation, so included
- 24:33Speaker 1: in that, of course, with my questions about Guy Hooper.
- 24:37Speaker 1: I gave the producers his phone number, so I gave
- 24:41Speaker 1: the producer the security guards information. They called him, and
- 24:44Speaker 1: it was very similar to what happened with us. Actually,
- 24:48Speaker 1: at first, according to the producer, he was cooperative. It
- 24:51Speaker 1: seemed like he was going to help, maybe participate, perhaps
- 24:54Speaker 1: give them a statement. But then he just stopped returning
- 24:58Speaker 1: their calls and the last I heard, he had blocked
- 25:02Speaker 1: the phone number. So yeah, I mean, very interesting, very
- 25:09Speaker 1: very interesting. We should have just went by his house
- 25:13Speaker 1: that day, rolled up on him. We should have just
- 25:15Speaker 1: rolled up on him to move this investigation forward. I
- 25:20Speaker 1: feel like we have to talk to Guy Hooper, but
- 25:23Speaker 1: we're still figuring out the best way to do it.
- 25:26Speaker 1: Even if he has absolutely nothing to do with Ebbie's
- 25:28Speaker 1: disappearance and death, He's provided so much conflicting information to
- 25:33Speaker 1: different people and we just need to get the fact straight.
- 25:36Speaker 1: I mean, not calling it in bad enough if you're
- 25:37Speaker 1: the security garbage to lie, to tell people that you
- 25:40Speaker 1: have called it in, to tell the neighbor when she
- 25:42Speaker 1: keeps bringing it up, Oh yeah, I've called the cops
- 25:44Speaker 1: about it, and then turns out you haven't. I mean,
- 25:48Speaker 1: there's a reason for that, and we need to figure
- 25:49Speaker 1: out what it is. And as we were talking about
- 25:53Speaker 1: the security guard, something else came up. There were two
- 25:57Speaker 1: other people working for Guy. I talked to Ebbie's stepdad,
- 26:00Speaker 1: Michael again calm and I went out there were we
- 26:03Speaker 1: were at the park talking about our stuff. These two guys,
- 26:06Speaker 1: these two guys in the little security car came through
- 26:10Speaker 1: and he sort of stopped, came up at sort of
- 26:12Speaker 1: asking us who we were, what we were doing, and
- 26:15Speaker 1: don't I want to say one of the guys name
- 26:16Speaker 1: was last name was brown, but two young black guys
- 26:19Speaker 1: that were patrolling together and they worked for him. They
- 26:23Speaker 1: worked for Guy, and they were doing patrolling when they
- 26:26Speaker 1: patrol when he doesn't. And they seemed to indicate that
- 26:29Speaker 1: they they acted like they knew who he was. But
- 26:33Speaker 1: it could be just from me. It had been on
- 26:34Speaker 1: the news. They want to say they do or whatever.
- 26:37Speaker 1: I don't have any proof, but it's something that I
- 26:39Speaker 1: think's critical of that week is did guy patrol every
- 26:44Speaker 1: night that Saturday night, Sunday night, all the way through
- 26:49Speaker 1: to when her car was found on Friday? Was he
- 26:52Speaker 1: did he patrol every night? Did these somebody else patrol
- 26:56Speaker 1: for him? If they did, who were they? Did he
- 27:00Speaker 1: even patrol that Sunday? No one seems to know anything
- 27:06Speaker 1: about these guys. So I go back to Grandma Debbie.
- 27:09Speaker 1: She's been doing her own detective work. Her sources tell
- 27:13Speaker 1: her the same thing that Michael told me. There were
- 27:16Speaker 1: two guys who would regularly take over from Guy Hooper.
- 27:20Speaker 1: According to this source, they tended to work the night shifts,
- 27:22Speaker 1: which would have been around ten pm to two am.
- 27:26Speaker 1: I go back to my source with the homeowners Association,
- 27:29Speaker 1: who confirms that there were a couple of guys who
- 27:32Speaker 1: patrolled for the security guard. Basically, the source said that
- 27:37Speaker 1: guy Whoper had free reign, he could pretty much set
- 27:40Speaker 1: his own hours. But the source said that he would
- 27:42Speaker 1: often patrol starting at dusk, which is right around the
- 27:45Speaker 1: time when Ebbie hung up with Trevor right before she disappeared.
- 27:51Speaker 1: But incredibly, he says that the housing association has no
- 27:55Speaker 1: information about these guys. The Homeowners Association dealt with ASSI
- 28:00Speaker 1: security Guy Hooper's company directly, so there were no background checks.
- 28:06Speaker 1: They don't even know these guys names. Whoever they are,
- 28:10Speaker 1: they could be crucial to getting the answers that we need.
- 28:14Speaker 1: We have to find them. I'm Katherine Townsend. This is
- 28:18Speaker 1: Helen Gone. Helen Gone is a production of School of
- 28:23Speaker 1: Humans and iHeartRadio. It's written and hosted by me Katherine
- 28:27Speaker 1: Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts and Mike Doubt. Our
- 28:31Speaker 1: executive producers are Brandon Barr, Elsie Crowley, and Virginia Prescott.
- 28:36Speaker 1: Mix and Master is by Ryan Peoples and our music
- 28:40Speaker 1: is by Ben Sale. If you have any information regarding
- 28:46Speaker 1: the disappearance of Ebie Stepic, you can call our tip
- 28:49Speaker 1: one at six seven eight six three two six one
- 28:53Speaker 1: five nine. School of Humans. School of Humans