Latest / The Path Went Chilly / Harold & Thelma Swain Pt. One

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Harold & Thelma Swain Pt. One · The Path Went Chilly

0:28
Hello, everyone, Welcome to a special edition of The Pathway. Chili.
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Ashley is not with us this week because she is off celebrating Thanksgiving, and
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since Jewels and I are Canadian and don't celebrate Thanksgiving, this week, we
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were still free, so we decided to do an episode with just the two
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of us where I will be sharing the details about a case with Jewels that
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she's not familiar with and she will offer her comments. And this week I'm
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going to be doing the nineteen eighty five murders of Harold and Thelma Swain,
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which is an interesting one because it was on the early days of Unsownes.
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It wound up getting solved, but then it turned out to be wrongful conviction
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and the man put in prison for the crime was set free a few years
1:07
ago, so this is technically unsolved again. And Jules, have you ever
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heard of this case before? I've never heard of this case. When you
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tell me about it with regards to the Unsolved Mysteries episode, it might ring
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a bell. But when you told me about this initially, I was like,
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Okay, I'm not going to google it, I'm not going to look
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into it. And I think you told me Undisclosed did an entire season on
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this case, or at least a couple episodes. I was really excited because
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I'm like, there must be something really good here. And I love a
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wrongful conviction case because at the end there's somebody who actually gets their freedom back.
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But it's equal parts inspirational and infuriating. So I can't wait to hear
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all about the story. And since you mentioned Undisclosed, one of the reasons
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I wanted to revisit this is because I originally covered on the Trail went cold
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in early July of two thousand eighteen, and by sheer coincidence, a few
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weeks later, I discovered that Undisclosed was devoting an entire season to it because
2:07
they had done a deep dive investigation, so of course they released a lot
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more information than my episode had. But to my shock, I actually got
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invited to be a guest on one of their after shows with Colin Miller and
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Susan Simpson, where we discussed the case. And of course it was intimidating
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because they're brilliant legal experts and I'm not, so I had to try to
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sound smart next to them. But the good news is is that their hard
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work on this case did pay off since the conviction was overturned, and there
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have been a lot of new developments in the case in recent years. I
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don't think you had to pretend to be smart or to sound smart, okay,
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because Ashley and I both have PhDs, and I think you're smarter than
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both of us, So I don't think necessarily an education level is going to
2:53
be indicative of just how intelligent an individual is, and I think you are
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one of the most intelligent people that I have ever met. Oh, thank
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you very much. I appreciate that, and yes, Colin and Simpson told
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me I did a good job as well. But oh, before we start,
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one final detail, I wanted to mention a funny story is that when
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we were recording the Undisclosed episode, right at the very end, as I
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was talking about my podcast, the fire alarm went off in my apartment buildings
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for a fire drill, so we had to cut the recording short. And
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thankfully it happened at the end of the recording and not the beginning. Because
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I know that when we record the path went Chili will sometimes have to stop
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because jewels will have like sirens or a motorcycle or a protest outside her window,
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and then we have to pause before until the noise goes away. Yeah,
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it's super frustrating when it starts at the beginning, but at least it
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was at the tail end. But I guess that's just part of modern condo
3:46
living. Things like that happen within the building and they're completely outside your control
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and nobody knows that you're recording a podcast, and it's a big inconvenience.
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Exactly. Yes, So when people listen to our final episodes, they have
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no idea how many times we have to stop and start again because of little
4:02
glitches like that. So this particular case takes place in nineteen eighty five in
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the small town of Waverley, Georgia, which is located in Camden County,
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and it's a predominantly African American community, so our two victims were also African
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American. It was a sixty six year old Harold Swain and his sixty three
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year old wife, Thelma Swayin, who had been married for forty three years
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at this point. Harold as a retired pulpwood worker and at this particular point
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he is the deacon at the Rising Daughters Baptist church and is known for being
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a very well liked and well respected community leader. On the evening of March
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the eleventh, the Swains were holding their weekly Bible study with nine female parishioners
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at their church, and at around eight fifty pm, one of the women
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there, Vanzola Williams, had to excuse herself because she had to leave early
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because of a previous engagement. But when Vanzola walked out into the vestibule,
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she encountered a white man whom she described as being in his twenties and having
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light colored, shoulder length hair, and the man told Vanzola, can you
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tell this guy that I want to speak to him? Before he pointed at
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Harold. So Vanzoli went back told Harold that there was a man who wanted
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to see him in the vestibule, and then she escorted him back there before
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leaving the church. But it was only a few seconds later when everyone in
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the church heard a bunch of gunshots, and when Thelma heard that, she
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started a panic. She ran into the vestibule herself and she wound up being
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shot. So the other parishioners were just terrified and ran back into Harold's office
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to hide and they tried calling the police, but it turned out that the
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phone lines had actually at the church had actually previously been cut, meaning that
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the killer likely did this and it was a premeditated murder. So one of
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the parishioners had to sneak out the window go to a nearby convenience store to
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call the police, and when they arrived, they found Harold and Thelma both
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shot to death in the vestibule. Wow, I can't imagine the trauma that
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would inflict on all the parishioners. Regardless of what your feelings are on religion,
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the church should be a sacred place. This is a place where you're
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doing a Bible study. He's a deacon of the church and his wife goes
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to help him and she gets shot as well. I mean, was this
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just indiscriminate, like we must eliminate all witnesses type of a thing with regards
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to Thelma in your opinion, I don't think so, because Vanzola Williams was
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allowed to leave right after she brought Harold to the vestibule. Like this was
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a direct witness who communicated with the killer, but he didn't seem concerned about
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her. He only cared about Harold and then and for for all I know,
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he probably never intended on killing Thelma and only shot her because she happened
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to run into the vestibule to help her husband. But he just wasn't concerned
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about any of the other witnesses. And then he just fled the scene,
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which gave off the impression that Harold was intentionally targeted. So did Venzola get
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good look at his face? Oh? Yes, And this is going to
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be one of the most controversial elements of this whole case, because she will
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provide a description, but that as the years go by, she'll change her
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story a little bit when identifying this man. Did the other parishioners get a
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good look at him when Thelma went out to go see what was going on
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with Harold in the vestibule or was the area that they were in like pretty
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far away kind of like sequestered from the vestibule. Well, obviously van Zola
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was the one who got the best look, but a lot of the other
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parishioners would report having seen him through the doorway and the vestibule and provide a
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description. But we've talked numerous times over the course of this podcast, how
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eyewitness descriptions in cold cases can sometimes be very unreliable, and this turned out
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to be a case study in that because as I was doing my research,
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I found a original police report which put a list of all the eyewitness descriptions
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provided by each of the eye witnesses who are there, and it's pretty shocking
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just how much they differ, Like they'll provide different hair colors, different heights,
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different clothing descriptions. And what's also shocking is that Vanzola like they would
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find a pair of glasses in the vestibule and that they assume belong to the
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killer. But Vanzola Williams claimed that the killer was not wearing glasses. Yet
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some of these other witnesses who are a farther distance away, if you look
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at that report, they described the killer as wearing glasses. So if you
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can't even get a consistent account of a detail like that, then you know
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that eyewitness testimony is very unreliable. The one thing that they have going for
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them in this case is the fact that there are multiple eyewitnesses, So I
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suppose what you could look for would be commonalities. It's kind of like the
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jelly bean jar when you have one person guess how many jelly beans are in
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a jar, and they're going to get it wrong. But you take the
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average over like one hundred people and they get it within a few jelly beans.
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So maybe if you have like ten people or five people saying he was
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wearing glasses, then maybe there is a good chance that Vanzola Williams, although
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she had a close up look, maybe she was the one who was wrong.
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That is true because Vanzola would later change her story and then say that
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yes, the killer was wearing glasses. But it could just be one of
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those things where it was such a traumatic experience that her memory right afterwards,
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she just wasn't thinking about something like that and gave an inaccurate description. But
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when you find out that like multiple witnesses cannot even agree if the killer was
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wearing glasses, then you know that you should never rely on eyewitness testimony as
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your primary evidence, and certainly not when they change their eyewitness testimony, which
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is typically never for nefarious purposes. It's because they would conflate the information that
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other people have been giving them, especially like law enforcement. I'm sure in
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this case when they're like, well, other witnesses eyewitnesses had seen eyeglasses,
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and when you've heard that over and over and over again, you can then
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your memory becomes malleable and you conflate those details, thinking, well, maybe
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I do remember him wearing glasses, when that just isn't the case. So
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it's just a big old mess, exactly. And that's probably what I think
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happened with Maanzola, where she was convinced at first he didn't have glasses,
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but as the years went on and police and other eyewitnesses said that the man
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did, that's what compelled her to change her story, but it wasn't for
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nefarious reasons. Now, talking more about the glasses, they were pretty unique
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because they had very thick lenses, which meant that it was probably they had
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a prescription for a far sided person. And the frame of the glasses appeared
10:43
to have been poked with a welding torch, and the ear pieces did not
10:46
match, as one of the ear pieces was wrapped in tape. So these
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were pretty much makeshift glasses that had been pieced together from pieces of multiple glasses,
10:56
which seemed to suggest that whoever this person was, they were not something
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with a someone with a lot of money who could afford its prescription for a
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decent pair, and of course they likely left him behind the scene an obvious
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panic, because it's been speculated that the killer got into a struggle with Harold
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before he shot him, and it's possible that his glasses fell off and he
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forgot to pick them up back up before he fled the church. I know
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that when the man first showed up, nobody thought that there was anything unusual
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about him, because the church was located next to Highway seventeen and it was
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very common for transience to stop by who would ask for handouts or a free
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meal. So I think Benzola figured that, well, this guy needed some
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money and he's just wanted to ask Harold if he could get a meal or
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some cash or something like that. But then when they checked Harold's pocket,
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they discovered that he still had three hundred dollars in cash in there, So
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it seemed obvious that robbery was not the motive for the crime, and that
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he was probably specifically targeted. And of course, since he was such a
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predominant leader in the African American community, they start of wondering if this might
12:01
have been a hate crime. Did van Zola independent of the kind of put
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together glasses, or from somebody who would likely be of lower socioeconomic status or
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just maybe extremely frugal. Did she say that the clothing that the individual that
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she encountered that was going to see Harold, that that would have been somebody
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who was transient. Did she mention the clothing, did they have a particular
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smell? Did they seem unwashed? Did she give any details like that?
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Because she was up close and personal, she didn't really say anything about the
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clothing. I assumed it was just nothing distinct about it. The only thing
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she really described was some scuffed snakeskin boots that he was wearing That would become
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a big part of the investigation later on. Snake skin boots. Doesn't that
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seem like an odd textile for shoes for someone who's transient. Yes, Like,
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as the case goes on, it becomes very unlikely that the killer was
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a transient, Like it was probably not a person with like a lot of
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money to their name, but they probably did have a home and a job
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and led a regular life. But I think they examined the transient angle later
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on and then later discounted it. So the next major development would occur in
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July, about four months after the crime took place, when a man named
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Donnie Barantine, who originally hailed from Florida, was pulled over by the police
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in Telfair County, Georgia, and he had a total of two accomplices with
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him, and they found a whole bunch of unregistered weapons inside the trunk,
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including a submachine gun. It turned out that Barentine and these men originally hailed
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from Marianna, Florida, and one of the men who he was arrested with,
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named Jeff Kettrell, said that I think he was probably sharing the story
13:56
because he was hoping to use it to get out of his own legal troubles
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for being with the guns. But he claimed that a couple months earlier,
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Barentine had showed up at a party in Florida with an unidentified accomplice and supposedly
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started drunkingly waving a pistol around while bragging that he had murdered a black preacher
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and his wife in at a Georgia church. And in retrospect, Kittrell believed
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that these two men might have been that they might have been hair, these
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two victims might have been harold and fell with Swain. It turned out when
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they questioned Barentine, he initially denied ever doing that, but then they found
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like three other witnesses for the party who corroborated that, yes, Barentine had
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bragged while he was drunk about murdering a preacher and his wife. So Barentine
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then changed his story and says, oh, yeah, I did say that,
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but I was just kidding. I had read about the murders in the
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papers and just felt like bragging about it. Weird joke, pal, I
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mean, even if he did say it, it's also a weird flex to
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be bragging openly about murdering a preacher and his wife. I found it interesting
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that he also out that that they were black. So was Barentine white?
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He was, yes, Yeah. Did he seem like he was racist in
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any way or him or his accomplice were. Was there like a point that
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they were drawing to the fact that they were black, like this was a
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motivating factor. Uh, It's never kind of been clarified if he was racist.
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But he was a career criminal, so he was obviously not a good
15:26
guy. And I guess it is possible that he just because he was drunk
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and he was on drugs. He just read about this murder in the papers
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and then just decided to brag about it for fun. But we talked about
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this a lot of the time. In other cases we cover when we hear
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about people like supposedly confessing to committing murders and then when their question by police,
15:46
they just said, oh, yeah, I said that, but I
15:46
was just kidding. And it's like, how many of us normal people will
15:50
just jokingly admit that we killed somebody so weird and no one is impressed,
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I promise you exactly, he murdered a preacher and his wife, Like,
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no one's like, oh, wow, you're the man. Nobody said that.
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I just don't understand, Well, whatever motivate someone who say that,
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unless they're just so proud of what they've done. It just seems like an
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odd crime to attach yourself to just to be braggadocious, exactly. But it
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doesn't sound like this was a very high, high brow club and stuff,
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so it does not surprise me that maybe they just were the type of people
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who like to brag about killing people just for fun at parties. But the
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guy that was his accompliced when he was arrested. Jeff Kittrell. He claimed
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that when they were pulled over with all the weapons in their vehicle, that
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they had actually been on their way to make in Georgia to perform a hit
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on a drug dealer, and that they'd been given instructions to cut the phone
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lines at the dealer's house, which, as you recall, is what happened
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at the church right before Harold and Thelma were killed. And Kitrell would also
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say that he believed that Barentine may have murdered Harold Swain because Harold's son in
17:00
law was supposedly involved in drug dealing and had a drug debt to Barentine,
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and Kittrell suspected that Barentine wanted to kill Harold in order to lure his son
17:10
in law out of hiding. But I don't really believe this story. I've
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looked into the background of Harold's son in law and there's nothing to indicate that
17:17
he was involved in drugs, and Jeff Kittrell is not a reliable witness,
17:21
so I have a feeling he completely made that story up. And that sounds
17:26
like an expensive endeavor. So you hire a hit man to go after the
17:32
father in law and the mother in law and hopes to draw him out,
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But then you've got to pay the hit man for murdering those two people.
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How big of a drug debt would he have had, So let's just say
17:45
that it was ten thousand dollars a person to kill somebody. Did he have
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a drug debt greater than twenty grand? I freaking doubt it? Oh yeah,
17:53
seriously. And it just seems like if you want the drug debt so
17:56
badly go after the son in law. It just seems like way too much
18:00
trouble to kill his father in law and his wife and his mother in law
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and pretty much get all this publicity for a murder over the collection of a
18:07
drug debt. And do you really think it would draw him out if he
18:11
was in hiding and he was worried about being killed because he had this drug
18:17
debt. Do you really think he's going to show up for their funerals if
18:18
he knows that they were killed because of his drug debt? Exactly? Yes,
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Like he's probably going to contact the authorities and want to be put into
18:26
witness protection and hiding, and that's only going to increase your problems, and
18:30
you're not going to get the drug debt exactly. So despite this questionable story,
18:37
the police looked into Barentine as a suspect because when he was questioned about
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the same the Swayin murders, he failed a polygraph test and he did seem
18:45
to match the description of the man seen in the vestibule. They checked his
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alibi time cards showed that he was at work in Marianna, Florida, until
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three twenty nine that day, and since the murders took place at eight point
18:56
fifty, he still would have had enough time to make it there in time
19:00
to commit the murders. So they brought in van Zola Williams, who was
19:04
asked to look at a police lineup of Barentine, but even though she thought
19:08
he resembled the shooter, she could not positively identify him. Both, like
19:14
we mentioned the scuff snake skin boots, apparently Barentine was wearing them during the
19:19
police lineup and she thought they looked like the boots that the killer was wearing.
19:23
But it was also worth mentioning that she had originally described the killer as
19:26
having long hair, shoulder length hair, and by this point Barentine had short
19:32
hair, so it's possible that this kind of threw her off, but because
19:34
she was unable to make a positive identification, the local district attorney was reluctant
19:41
to file charges against Barentine because really the only evidence they had were the testimony
19:45
from the witnesses at the party who said that he had bragged about killing the
19:49
Swains. But because they were kind of like criminals who had a history of
19:53
alcohol and drug issues, they were not reliable witnesses. So that's why the
19:57
local authorities thought that the evidence wasn't strong enough to file charges. But Baron
20:03
Tyne still did go to prison and wound up serving five years on the weapons
20:07
charges because of all the guns he was carrying when he was pulled over.
20:11
He sounds like a really bad guy who's out there, you know, with
20:15
submachine guns, and he's apparently was on his way to commit a hit.
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So I don't really think that anybody is upset that he went to prison.
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But whether or not the change in haircut had something to do with Vanzola not
20:29
being able to identify him, I don't know how popular scuff snakeskin boots would
20:34
have been, but I do think in Florida in the nineteen eighties they probably
20:38
would have been more popular than they are now. Exactly. Yeah, it
20:42
sounds like they were probably more common back then, so that wasn't used as
20:45
conclusive evidence that Barentine was the shooter. So, like I said, the
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case was shown on Unsolved Mysteries, I believe in late nineteen eighty eight.
20:55
This was one of the earliest episodes of the show, and this would be
21:00
the source of controversy. This is one of the rare times when the Unsawd
21:03
Mysteries episode would actually play a big role in the investigation because when they had
21:08
Robert Stack introduce it, he actually appeared on screen holding up the glasses that
21:15
the killer had left behind at the crime scene. And if you watch this
21:18
episode today, you're almost cringing because he is not actually wearing any gloves and
21:23
here he is handling like evidence from a murder scene right here on national television.
21:30
When the case was originally investigated by the Camden County Sheriff's Office, they
21:33
had to get because they weren't used to dealing with homicides. They had to
21:37
get assistance from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and the lead investigator was an
21:42
agent named Joe Gregory, and he would later say that any when he watched
21:47
Unsolved Mysteries, his jaw was wide open because the Camden County Sheriff's Office had
21:52
not asked the GBI for permission to showcase the glasses on television, and there
21:56
was apparently no chain of custody to make sure that certain people were like handling
22:03
the glasses and signing them over when they were appeared on television. And many
22:07
years later it would turn out that the glasses wound up going missing, and
22:11
the Candy County shriffs Office would say, well, the last time we remember
22:15
seeing it was when we gave them to the producers of Unsolved Mysteries, and
22:18
the producers would say, no, we're pretty certain that we gave the glasses
22:22
back to you after the episode air and after we were done filming it.
22:26
So these glasses just vanished without a trace, and no one knows what happened
22:30
to them. And it was all because the Sheriff's office did not establish a
22:33
proper chain of custody and these glasses mysteriously went missing after they were shown on
22:38
TV. Okay, so I don't think I knew much about this case,
22:42
but I have heard this specific detail because it was just so preposterous that somehow
22:48
Robert Stack would end up with these glasses. They could be the linch pin
22:52
in the case, they could have DNA evidence, and now there's no chain
22:56
of custody and the glasses are missing. It is just mind boggling that this
23:00
would happen. But I guess when we're looking back from twenty twenty three,
23:04
rules with evidence and the way that investigations are approached is very very different.
23:11
I mean not to give them a pass, but I think that some police
23:15
departments played it a little more loose and if there was the opportunity to get
23:21
a case exposure on unsolved mysteries, then maybe they would kind of breach a
23:26
boundary or two in order to make it happen. But you'd think that unsolved
23:30
mysteries would also just go and get permission before they put those glasses on television
23:36
or that you know, Robert Stack would have been instructed to wear latex gloves
23:40
or some kind of gloves. Well, they technically did get permission, they
23:44
got it from the Camden County Sheriff's office, but like they were working with
23:48
the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and I know the GBI said that, yeah,
23:52
if they had asked us, we would not have given them permission.
23:53
We would have just maybe shown a photograph of the glasses. Like I can
23:57
understand displaying the glasses because they were unique. They were packed together from among
24:03
number of different pieces, so I can understand putting them on television. But
24:07
you need to establish better chain of custody before you do that. And I
24:11
know they were not thinking of DNA evidence back in nineteen eighty eight, but
24:14
on the Undisclosed podcast Susan Simpson even made a joke that if they found the
24:18
glasses today and tested them for DNA, they would probably just identify that the
24:22
killer was Robert Stack because he held them. That's true. And I guess
24:26
when you've got two different law enforcement agencies who are basically investigating this and you
24:33
ask one of them, it's like when you ask mom or dad and you
24:37
get like a yes from mom, because you know Dad's going to say no.
24:40
So it's like, better asked the Comney County Sheriff's Department. Maybe we've
24:42
got a better chance of getting a yes than the GBI. It's just really
24:48
unfortunate because they could have had that evidence on there. It's a pretty good
24:52
chance if they would have preserved them properly. Because your glasses have a lot
24:56
of skin cells and sweat, they're rubbing up against you. Sometimes you get
25:00
a hair caught in there. I mean, it could have been a gold
25:03
mine for DNA with today's technology, but unfortunately they're basically a moot point now
25:10
exactly. And I have a feeling that the person who's about to go to
25:14
prison may not have been wrongfully convicted if they had still had the glasses as
25:18
evidenced by the time he went on trial. So the unsolved mystery segment did
25:22
not lead to any new developments in the case, and it would continue to
25:26
remain unsolved for another decade. And it was not until nineteen ninety eight when
25:30
the Camden's County Sheriff's Office, after they had made a bunch of high profile
25:34
drug busts, they suddenly had a whole bunch of new drug money in their
25:38
possessions, so they decided to use it to hire a cold case investigator named
25:44
Dale Bundy, who decided to take a fresh look at the case. He
25:48
started reinterviewing witnesses and one of the people he talked to was a woman named
25:52
Cora Fisher, who had been a witness at the church on the night the
25:56
murders took place, and even though she wasn't as close to the killer as
26:00
van Zola Williams, she said that she still got a decent look at him
26:04
through the vestibule doorway from behind a pew, and when Bundy interviewed her,
26:08
she made a surprising statement saying that she had recently been shown a photograph of
26:14
a man whom she believed was the killer. And of course this was complete
26:18
news to Bundy. He didn't know of anyone who was going around showing photographs
26:22
to eyewitnesses, and it turned out that the photograph had been shown to Kora
26:26
by a woman with a great name, Jane Beaver, who had come like
26:30
an amateur sleuth in this whole affair and pretty much cause a lot of issues
26:36
with the investigation. It would later turn out that Jane Biaver the photograph she
26:41
shown was a man named Dennis Perry, who had been her daughter Carol Ann's
26:47
ex boyfriend, though they had broken up I think a couple months before the
26:51
Swain murders took place. But for some reason, Jane got it into her
26:55
head that Dennis was the killer, and for some reason, she really really
27:00
did not like him. I don't know the details of how his relationship with
27:03
Carol Ane ended, but I think that Jane must have had an obsessive hatred
27:07
for him, that she not only was convinced that he was the killer,
27:11
but she was going around of her own volition talking to eyewitnesses from this crime
27:17
and showing his photograph and apparently during a private meeting Cora Fisher looked at a
27:21
photograph of Perry and said, oh my god, I think that's the man
27:25
that I saw at the church that night. Ugh, this is all kinds
27:29
of problematic. So we've got the Beeve out here going behind investigators backs,
27:36
talking to these eyewitnesses, and she's going to be poisoning the well because she's
27:41
going to be giving them information that would support that he is a really bad
27:45
guy and that he's capable of doing this, and that she herself believes that
27:49
he did this. So then you've got a situation where it could be confirmation
27:55
biased, where it's like, deep down, these people really want to help
27:59
and they're thinking and yeah, well, this is the guy you're presenting the
28:02
suspect. You're telling me that he's done ab and C and D, and
28:06
these sound like they could be things that could lead to what he's done here
28:11
with Harold and Thelma. So yeah, maybe he is the guy. Yeah.
28:15
This is just really kind of upsetting when somebody's got this personal vendetta and
28:21
they decided to exercise it by inserting themselves into an investigation without the investigator's knowledge.
28:26
Oh exactly. Like, I don't think Dennis Perry would have ever been
28:30
on the radar as a suspect if it wasn't for Jane Beaver. And the
28:34
ironic thing is that when Dale Bundy started looking through the files, he found
28:37
out that Perry had already been investigated back in the late nineteen eighties. He
28:44
did used to live in Camden County, like a short distance away from the
28:47
church, but he had moved to Jonesboro, Georgia, I think three months
28:51
before the murders and was currently working at a construction company in Atlanta. And
28:56
the lead investigator for the GBI at that time, Joe Gregory. Apparently Jane
29:00
Beaver had approached him during the late nineteen eighties and said that I believe he
29:06
might be the killer. So Gregory decided to look into Perry's alibi and found
29:11
out that on the day of the murders, he had been working at the
29:14
construction company in Atlanta till five pm, and because he did not own a
29:19
vehicle, he always hitched a ride with a coworker named Charlie Williamson, who
29:23
confirmed that, Yes, after we were done work, I drove Dennis home
29:26
and I dropped him off at five thirty pm. And of course you look
29:30
at the timeline the murders took place at eight point fifty as apparently like a
29:36
four hour drive nearly from Jonesborough all the way down to Camden County where the
29:41
murders took place. So Joe Gregory looks at this and he realizes, well,
29:45
I guess he could have made it, but it would be very,
29:48
very tight. You also have to factor in stuff like rush hour traffic in
29:52
Atlanta, and it also turned out that Perry did not own his own vehicles.
29:56
So Gregory pretty much said, yeah, I'm ruling this guy out as
29:59
a suspen. There's no way he could have done this. And you thought
30:02
that would have been it. But apparently Jane Beaver was so convinced that he
30:07
was the guy that she kept doing her own independent investigation and when she told
30:12
this new investigator, Dale Bundy, about Perry, he decided to take it
30:18
more seriously and decided to approach him as a suspect again, even though he
30:22
had already been cleared over a decade earlier. I'm just curious what he did
30:29
to Jane Beaver's daughter for her to hate him so deeply and to pursue this
30:36
vendetta, like, you know, letting things go. I mean, it
30:38
would be one thing if if he had, like you know, killed somebody
30:44
in her family or you know, taken away a child from her daughter.
30:48
But there's no indication of exactly what he did to inspire this hatred. Robin
30:53
uh No, because ironically, her daughter, Carol Anne, would provide testimonies,
31:00
would speak to investigators, and it does not sound like she hated Dennis
31:03
at all. She just said it was kind of an amicable breakup, and
31:06
she would actually contradict things that her own mother said. One of the reasons
31:11
that Dennis started being investigated as a suspect again is because Jane told investigators that
31:17
on the day before the murders took place, Dennis had apparently phoned her daughter
31:21
to say that he had returned to Camden County after hitching a ride on the
31:26
back of his brother's motorcycle, and that he had broken into his grandparents' home
31:30
to steal something. And of course, like Dale Bundy heard this and he
31:33
thought, oh, well, that explains it. He traveled all the way
31:36
down to Hear from Atlanta by riding a motorcycle. But then later on Carol
31:41
Ann would be interviewed in and says that, yes, I did have a
31:44
phone call from him back then saying that he was taking a trip down here
31:48
on a motorcycle. But I'm pretty sure it was not before the murders took
31:52
place. I'm pretty sure it was a different time period. And they even
31:55
checked with Dennis's grandparents and they say, I have no right collection of our
31:59
whole being broken into during this time period. What are they talking about.
32:02
But apparently like Bundy developed tunnel vision and he was so sure that Jane was
32:07
telling this truth about this motorcycle story that she formulated his own theory about him
32:12
using it his transportation to drive down there to commit the murders. It sounds
32:17
like Jane was potentially suffering from some mental health issues because from what it sounds
32:22
like, Caroline is saying this amicable breakup with Dennis Perry doesn't really go along
32:29
with what Jane Beaver is saying to law enforcement. She then sounds delusional and
32:35
obsessive. Oh yeah, like they did a more deep dive investigation into her
32:38
on the undisclosed season and apparently, yeah, she was suffering from mental health
32:42
problems during like the nineteen nineties and had become delusional. And what was crazy
32:46
is that she had claimed that, oh, when this case was featured on
32:51
Unsolved Mysteries, I phoned them multiple times and I left this tip about Dennis
32:54
Perry, but no one ever got back to me. But Susan Simpson said
32:59
that she actually got access to the original case file where all the tips that
33:02
were phoned into Unsolved Mysteries were actually included there, and she didn't find anything
33:08
from Jane Beaver, like no notes about tips about Dennis Perry. And after
33:13
further investigation, Susan thinks that the Swain murders were actually featured on another very
33:21
obscure true crime series in the early nineteen nineties. I can't even remember what
33:24
it's called, but I think the big clue was is that Jane had said
33:29
that she called the Unsolved Mysteries tip line because they had been offering a reward
33:32
and she wanted to collect on the reward. But if you watch the segment,
33:37
there's no mention of any reward whatsoever. So Susan has speculated that perhaps
33:42
that Jane called the tip line for this other TV show which was an Unsolved
33:46
Mysteries, that perhaps they offered a reward on that show and then just got
33:51
the two shows mixed up. But because this is a very obscure show,
33:53
they were never able to find any old copies of the episode or any of
33:58
their old tips. But right away, that just shows issues with the credibility
34:01
of Jane Beaver when she can't even remember the correct TV show that she called
34:06
into. It's too bad that investigators were so hell bent on pursuing Dennis Perry
34:13
as a suspect without really giving the weight that they should have to the alibi
34:19
with the coworker who drove him and the testimony that he didn't have a vehicle,
34:23
and even if he did, it would have been a real tight timeline.
34:28
He would have had to have jumped into that vehicle like a waiting vehicle
34:30
right away and then driven there pretty fast in order to murder Felman and Harold,
34:36
it just doesn't seem likely. And then when they talked to Carol Anne
34:39
and they say that actually what Jane Biaver is saying about him isn't accurate,
34:45
then you have to question is all the other information that she's giving about the
34:52
potential that he did this accurate or is she somehow misremembering? Is she delusional?
35:00
But they gave far too much weight to her testimony and to her opinions
35:04
about Dennis Perry, and that led them down the wrong path, oh exactly.
35:08
And talking about like the whole vehicle thing, you're wondering, even if
35:13
Perry was able to make this lengthy drive, there's also a question of motive,
35:16
like why would he drive all the way back to his hometown just to
35:20
kill this couple, this preacher. And this is another story provided by Jane
35:24
Bieber, saying that a few weeks before the murders, he had told her
35:30
that he had visited the home of one of his grandparents neighbors to borrow money,
35:34
but this guy laughed at him and ridiculed for him for it. So
35:37
it made Dennis very mad. And he apparently stood about the incident. And
35:40
while he never specifically referred to Harold Swain by name. He used racial slurs
35:45
to describe this man. So this gives off the impression that the murder was
35:51
a hate crime. Wouldn't it be kind of weird given that Jane Biaber hates
35:54
him so much that Dennis Perry would spend this time confiding in her exactly like
36:00
they He had already broken up with Carol Anne at this point, so I
36:04
have no idea why he's going up to hang out with her and give his
36:07
plans for murder in expressing hatred for someone he wants to kill, So this
36:12
conversation doesn't make any sense. And it was later confirmed that the Swains were
36:16
neighbors of Perry's grandparents, but he claimed that even though he knew who they
36:22
were, he had never met them before and had no reason to hate them
36:27
or anything like that. And another questionable thing is that they would later determine
36:30
that Dennis Perry had perfect twenty twenty vision and never wore glasses in his life,
36:36
which kind of goes against the evidence of the glasses being left behind at
36:39
the murder scene. But here's Jane Biaber saying that, oh yeah, I
36:43
saw him wearing glasses during our conversation, and he told me that he used
36:46
them for reading, And for whatever reason, investigators just took everything she said
36:51
out her word. Do you think that somehow Jane Beaver heard about the murder
36:58
of Harold and Thelma because of Dennis Perry's grandparents living next door, Like maybe
37:05
he told Caroline and then Caroline told Jane Beaver, and Jane Beaver was like,
37:09
oh, well, he must have been involved type of a thing,
37:13
That's what I'm thinking. Yeah, that maybe she just because they were like
37:15
such close neighbors, she just put it into her head like she had this
37:19
bias towards this guy and figured that even though he's no longer even living in
37:22
the area, he had to have made a special trip down here in order
37:27
to commit the murders. I mean, obviously, he wasn't known as a
37:30
saint. Like he did have a drinking problem back then, he had a
37:32
drug problem. He was once arrested for duy, but he had no known
37:37
history of violence, and everyone who knew him said he was not the type
37:40
of guy who would just throw around racial slurs to describe black people. So
37:45
this incident where he's saying that he's calling like Harold. All these like racial
37:50
slurs did not fit with his character, and also the fact that he supposedly
37:53
said that he asked Harold to borrow money, but Harold just laughed at him
37:58
and ridiculed for him, when by all accounts, Harold was a very kind,
38:01
generous man who would always help people out and give them money. So
38:06
it did not sound logical that he would laugh at someone for asking for a
38:08
loan. No, it just sounds like we really can't rely on anything that
38:15
Jane Beaver says. So. But despite of this, they decided to investigate
38:20
him as a suspect again, and they brought in Perry for questioning. Dale
38:24
Bundy did and even though he could, he supposedly denied that he killed the
38:29
Swains, and he continued to maintain that he had never even met them before.
38:32
During this lengthy interrogation session, he supposedly acknowledged that, well, I
38:37
was doing a lot of drugs at that time, so it is possible that
38:39
I could have made a trip back to Camden County and committed the murderers without
38:44
remembering it. And of course, following Perry's arrest, they would say that
38:47
he had made a so called confession in this interrogation session, but Dennis denied
38:53
this, and of course nobody recorded this session even though it was something like
38:58
three hours long. There were no investigator's notes, and there was only really
39:01
like a one or two page summary of what he had supposedly said, So
39:06
there was no actual record of this so called confession or him saying that,
39:09
oh I could have committed the murders and just not remembered it. So it
39:14
sounds like Bundy just made that up and that never actually happened. Yikes.
39:19
Yeah, you can't trust a confession where there's no recording and no investigator's notes.
39:24
You've got nothing to substantiate that. You've got a potential perpetrator who's just
39:30
saying, yeah, I was so messed up or like blacked out that I
39:32
basically could have done anything, you know what I mean. Like, it's
39:36
not like, oh, yeah, I committed the murders. It's I was
39:38
so effed up that I don't remember. You know, you could tell me
39:43
that I did ABC or D and sure I could have done any of those
39:46
things, because I literally have no memory of that timeframe, so anything is
39:51
possible. That is not the same thing as saying I committed the murders exactly.
39:58
And it's one thing to do something bad when you're so high on drugs
40:00
and can't remember it. But could you really make a four hour drive from
40:04
Jonesborrow to Campden County while you're in a drug fueled haze and not remember it.
40:08
No, I don't think so. I think that you probably would have
40:12
got into an accident or been pulled over at some point. It sounds far
40:16
too precise and on a very specific timeline. And also for him to get
40:21
that messed up on drugs, what so he got off his job at the
40:24
construction site, just did a bunch of drugs I got so high he can't
40:29
remember anything, and then drove there with the car that he doesn't have.
40:32
It just doesn't make any sense exactly. And I didn't hear anything about him
40:37
missing any shifts at work, like the day after or anything, so he
40:39
presumably had to make the four hour drive back. So did he just commit
40:44
this murder and then drive another four hours back to Jonesborough and then wake up
40:47
for work tomorrow as if everything was normal. I don't think so. I
40:52
don't think so either, And I think they're using the fact that he obviously
40:54
had drinking, you know, alcohol and drug issues at the time, as
40:59
just a door way into he could have done it. He did it,
41:02
but it just doesn't match the facts of the case exactly because this crime had
41:07
gone unsolved for nearly fifteen years at this point, and I think they were
41:10
just desperate and wanted to pit it on somebody. And of course they used
41:15
all this confiscated drug money to hire this new cold case investigator named Dale Bundy,
41:20
and they were probably thinking, well, I hope this money doesn't go
41:22
to waste. He'd better closed one of our cases soon, and that's pretty
41:25
much what happened here. It's so unfortunate when we look back at these wrongful
41:30
conviction cases because you can see all of the missteps, and there's so many
41:35
other avenues that they could have gone down. And if they would have actually
41:37
looked at Jane Beaver for what she was, an unfortunate woman who was suffering
41:42
from mental health issues and was clearly delusional, then they would have known to
41:46
pursue other avenues. But it's like they already had their minds made up and
41:52
they really wanted that conviction, and unfortunately we've seen that in so many cases
41:59
exactly. It'sretty much the same thing here. And while we're on the subject
42:02
of Jane Bieb, you heard me mention earlier that she had been going around
42:07
showcasing a photograph of Dennis Perry to one of the other witnesses from the church,
42:12
Cora Fisher. It turned out that she also did the same thing to
42:15
van Zola Williams, the one witness who was actually face to face with the
42:19
killer. When Joe Gregory was investigating Dennis Perry back in the late nineteen eighties,
42:24
he actually showed Vanzola a photo lineup with Perry's pitcher and she failed to
42:30
pick him out. So in Gregory's eyes, this was just one more piece
42:32
of evidence that Perry was not the killer. But lo and behold, Jane
42:37
Bieber, while doing her own independent investigation, showed van Zola Williams a photograph
42:42
of Dennis and then she suddenly started changing her mind and started thinking, oh,
42:46
maybe this was the guy I actually saw in the vestibule. And then
42:50
lo and behold, when Venzola Williams and Cora Fisher were later questioned by Dale
42:54
Bundy, they both positively identified Perry as the man they had seen at the
43:00
church. But the problem is that Bundy did not actually use the proper procedure,
43:05
because usually when you want someone to pick out a photo of a suspect,
43:07
you'll use a photo lineup and include the suspects picture in there and just
43:13
hope they pick out the right one to avoid any confirmation bias. But that's
43:17
not what happened here, as Bundy just showed van Zola and Cora Dennis's photograph
43:22
and said, is this the guy you saw? And both times they said
43:25
yes. And what makes it even more ridiculous is that when he went to
43:30
visit Cora Fisher on her home, she had actually suffered an accident where she
43:32
fell down and was a waiting for the ambulance to arrive to pick her up.
43:37
And while she was waiting on the floor, that's when he showed her
43:40
Dennis's picture, and that's when she picked him out and paid a positive identification.
43:45
And You're like, she's already in a stressed out situation because she suffered
43:49
a medical accident, she's waiting for an ambulance, So are you really going
43:52
to trust like the memory and the judgment of someone in that situation to identify
43:58
a killer that they saw from maybe like twenty feet away. The lack of
44:02
empathy there. He's clearly very gold driven. But this woman's had an accident.
44:08
The first portocol should be getting her the help that she needs. You
44:13
shouldn't be hovering over her with one photograph, being like, is this the
44:16
guy? She's in a compromised state. She's an incredible amount of pain,
44:22
and that's what you're concerned about. Bundy's just really not looking good in this
44:27
investigation. Definitely not like this is the only time I've ever seen this in
44:30
a cold case investigation. Like I've seen so much that I often failed to
44:35
be shocked anymore. But when I heard that story, I was shocked that
44:38
he's using this as evidence to charge a guy with murder, the identification of
44:42
a poor woman who's in pain, lying on the floor waiting for an ambulance.
44:45
So this seems like a good place to end part one, But join
44:50
us next week when we return to discuss part two of the murders of Harold
44:52
and Thelma Swayin. Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
44:55
about the Trail Went Cold Patreon? Ah? Yes, The Trail Cold Patreon
45:00
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45:19
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45:45
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45:54
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