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The Bathroom Slayings Epilogue: The Murder of Mickey Niles · Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Gone Call. Podcasts may contain violent or graphics subject matter.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Listener discretion is advised. By the middle of the nineteen seventies,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: the Abilene Police Department had a problem. It wasn't simply
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: that the city had unsolved crimes. Practically every law enforcement
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: agency did. The problem was that the city had accumulated
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: a number of violent crimes, including several troubling murders, that
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  Speaker 1: detectives had spent years trying and failing to solve. In
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: February nineteen seventy six, a government funded study examining police
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  Speaker 1: work in one hundred and fifty six jurisdictions across the
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  Speaker 1: United States concluded that relatively few crimes appeared to be
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  Speaker 1: solved through investigative work. If the suspect isn't arrested at
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  Speaker 1: the scene, or if a witness didn't come forward within days,
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  Speaker 1: the case likely wouldn't be solved. In more than half
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: of the resolved cases studied, one of those two things
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  Speaker 1: was the catalyst, usually the latter. Most of the other
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: cases the study went on were solved by routine administrative actions,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: not by detectives prowess. Abilene Police Chief Warren Dodson rejected
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: the findings arguing that they failed to reflect the work
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: his officers were doing. Captain George Sutton, who commanded the
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Criminal Investigation Division, also stood by his detectives. The retorts
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: read more like defensiveness than self assurance, however, and many
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: residents believed the department had botched several cases. While the
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: department had their fair share of unsolved homicides, a few
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: of Abilene's most notorious murder investigations were without even a suspect.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: In September nineteen sixty seven, twenty four year old Sharon K.
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  Speaker 1: Watts was found dead on the bathroom floor of her apartment.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: There were no obvious signs of forced entry, no apparent motive,
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  Speaker 1: and despite physical evidence collected from the scene, no killer identified.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: Six years later, junior high school teacher Geneva Jackson was
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: found murdered in the bathtub of her Edgemont Drive home.
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  Speaker 1: Once again, detectives had no clear motive or suspect, prompting
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: one officer to describe it as another Sharon Watt's case. Then,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: a year after the study, in April nineteen seventy seven,
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Juanita Carroll was found bound to a chair in the
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  Speaker 1: bathroom of her Ballinger Street home. Although the circumstances initially
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: pointed to homicide, her death was later ruled a suicide,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: a conclusion many vehemently questioned. Those were only three of
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  Speaker 1: the cases fueling Abilene's growing reputation for murders that seemed
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: impossible to solve. By October nineteen, seven seventy nine, the
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  Speaker 1: fort Worth Star Telegram devoted nearly an entire page to
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  Speaker 1: more than a dozen unsolved murders across West and west
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  Speaker 1: central Texas. Big Spring had them, Brownwood had them, Eastland
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  Speaker 1: had them, Midland and Odessa certainly had them, but Abilene
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  Speaker 1: featured prominently. The article opened with a headline as memorable
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  Speaker 1: as it was damning. If you want to commit murder
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  Speaker 1: and get away with it, come to West Texas. It
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: was incredibly ironic for a newspaper in Fort Worth to
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  Speaker 1: run such a story, given the overwhelming number of unsolved
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  Speaker 1: homicide cases there. The piece reflected the frustration of families
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  Speaker 1: who had waited years for answers that never came. One
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  Speaker 1: of the murders helping shape that reputation was the nineteen
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  Speaker 1: seventy four killing of a seven year old boy. Because
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: of its brutality, the lack of an apparent motive, the
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  Speaker 1: absence of obvious forced entry, and the scarcity of evidence
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  Speaker 1: identifying a suspect, Detectives considered whether his murder might somehow
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: be connected to the deaths of Sharon Watts and Geneva Jackson.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Years later, after Juanita Carroll's death, his case would again
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: become part of that conversation. Michael David Niles was born
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  Speaker 1: on September tenth, nineteen sixty six, at Grand Fork's Air
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  Speaker 1: Force Base in North Dakota, to Joanne and Master Sergeant
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  Speaker 1: Bernard Niles. Everyone called him Mickey. His birth was marked
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  Speaker 1: by both joy and heartbreak. Mickey entered the world as
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  Speaker 1: a twin, but his brother was still born. He joined
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  Speaker 1: a growing family that already included an older brother and
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: three older sisters, and before long, another son, Robbie, completed
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  Speaker 1: the household. If the loss of Mickey's twin brother shaped
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: him in any way, those who loved him believed it
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  Speaker 1: may have made his bond with Robbie even stronger. The
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: two younger brothers were inseparable. They rarely called one another
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  Speaker 1: by name, instead affectionately calling each other Bud, a nickname
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  Speaker 1: they'd learned from their father. Bernard's Air Force career soon
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: brought the family to Abilene, where he was stationed at
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  Speaker 1: Dayas Air Force Base. By nineteen sixty eight, the Niles
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  Speaker 1: family had settled into a two story, wood sided home
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  Speaker 1: at the corner of South ninth and Ballinger Streets in
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  Speaker 1: Abilene's Elmwood neighborhood. Built in nineteen forty eight, the house
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  Speaker 1: contained more than twenty two hundred square feet of living
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  Speaker 1: space and a detached garage. Family members remembered Mickey as
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  Speaker 1: an unusually gentle child. He loved being around people and
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: possessed a quiet, easy going, and patient nature that made
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  Speaker 1: people love being around him. He enjoyed school, played peewee football,
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  Speaker 1: and had one small quirk his family always remembered. While
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  Speaker 1: most boys his age chose blue or red as their
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: favorite color, Mickey's was always black. Some of his happiest
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: memories were made at the Abilene Zoo. There, a small
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: fishing pond became one of his favorite places. Somehow, Mickey
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: always seemed to catch fish with ease. His family later
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: joked there was something about his gentle touch that made
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  Speaker 1: the fish less afraid. Faith was equally important in Mickey's
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: young life. The Niles family attended Faith Baptist Church, where
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  Speaker 1: he became well known throughout the congregation. At just five
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  Speaker 1: years old, Mickey amazed church members by reciting all sixty
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  Speaker 1: six books of the Bible from memory while standing before
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  Speaker 1: the congregation. It was an extraordinary moment for a child
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  Speaker 1: so young, and one his family never forgot. At church
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  Speaker 1: on Easter Sunday nineteen seventy four, dressed in a little
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: white suit, Mickey turned to his mother and said, I'm
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  Speaker 1: going up now. He had decided he was ready to
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  Speaker 1: accept Jesus as his savior. Joanne watched with pride as
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  Speaker 1: her seven year old son made the walk to the
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  Speaker 1: front of the sanctuary. She could tell he was nervous,
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  Speaker 1: but he had found the courage to do it. She
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  Speaker 1: never imagined it would become one of the last joyful
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  Speaker 1: memories she would have of him. By the summer of
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four, life inside the household had changed since
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  Speaker 1: the Nile's family came to Abilene. Joanne and Bernard had
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: separated two years earlier. Bernard was living in the non
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  Speaker 1: commissioned Officers Barracks at Diis Air Force Base, while Joanne
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: remained in the South ninth Street home with the children.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: To support her family, she worked the overnight shift at
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  Speaker 1: Eileen Incorporated, where she had been employed for nearly a
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  Speaker 1: year as a winding machine operator and inspector. Her shift
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  Speaker 1: began at eleven thirty each night and ended at seven
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  Speaker 1: thirty the following morning. It was a routine the family
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  Speaker 1: had settled into, and on the night of Thursday, June
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  Speaker 1: sixth nineteen seventy four, someone took advantage of it. That
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  Speaker 1: evening began, like so many others in the Niles household,
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  Speaker 1: Joanne prepared for another overnight shift, leaving the children at home,
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  Speaker 1: as she had done countless times before. By midnight, Joanne
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  Speaker 1: was at work and the children were asleep. Some time
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  Speaker 1: after that, someone entered the house. Seven year old Mickey
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  Speaker 1: slept peacefully in his bedroom. An intruder stabbed him once.
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  Speaker 1: The stabbing was so brutal it shattered Mickey's breastplate. The
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  Speaker 1: knife pierced his heart, killing him where he lay. The
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  Speaker 1: attacker then entered the room where thirteen year old Kelly
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  Speaker 1: was sleeping. Unlike her younger brother, Kelly awoke during the assault.
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  Speaker 1: She fought with everything she had, but was stabbed eight
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  Speaker 1: times in the back. The killer ran down the stairs
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  Speaker 1: and fled from the home. Despite her injuries, Kelly managed
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  Speaker 1: to reach the telephone at twelve forty seven am she
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  Speaker 1: called for help. When officers arrived at the Niles home
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  Speaker 1: in the early morning hours of June seventh, nineteen seventy four,
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  Speaker 1: they found seven year old Mickey deceased in his bed.
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  Speaker 1: His thirteen year old sister, Kelly, was critically wounded but alive.
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  Speaker 1: Six year old Robbie had somehow slept through the attack,
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  Speaker 1: unaware that his brother had been murdered only a short
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  Speaker 1: distance away. Kelly was rushed to Diis Air Force Base Hospital,
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  Speaker 1: and against all odds, she survived within hours. She also
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  Speaker 1: gave detectives the investigation's only eyewitness account. Kelly described her
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  Speaker 1: attacker as a white male with short, dark hair, a
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  Speaker 1: muscular build, standing between five feet ten and six feet tall,
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  Speaker 1: and appearing to be somewhere in his mid thirties. It
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: was a description the Abilene Police would chase for more
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  Speaker 1: than three decades. Captain George Sutton and detectives with the
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: Criminal Investigation Division immediately launched one of the largest homicide
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: investigations in the city's history. Officers canvassed the neighborhood, interviewed neighbors,
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  Speaker 1: and searched every inch of the home for evidence that
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  Speaker 1: might identify the killer. The crime scene offered both promise
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  Speaker 1: and frustration. Detectives were never able to determine exactly how
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  Speaker 1: the intruder got inside, as there were no obvious signs
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  Speaker 1: of forced entry. They recovered a latent fingerprint from inside
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  Speaker 1: the house. They collected blood. After detectives began to suspect
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  Speaker 1: Kelly had injured her attacker during the struggle. Both were
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  Speaker 1: sent to the Texas Department of Public Safety Crime Lab
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  Speaker 1: in Midland in hopes that science might succeed where their
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  Speaker 1: witness could not. The murder weapon, which was a large
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  Speaker 1: pocket knife, had also been tested nearly two months later. However,
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  Speaker 1: the results brought little encouragement. According to Captain Sutton, testing
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  Speaker 1: failed to produce any meaningful breakthrough. The blood appeared consistent
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  Speaker 1: with Mickey and Kelly, leaving detectives unable to determine whether
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  Speaker 1: the killer had been injured. With no suspect and no motive,
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  Speaker 1: detectives turned to the public. Joanne's employer offered a one
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  Speaker 1: thousand dollars reward for information leading to the killer's arrest.
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  Speaker 1: While Kelly recovered in the hospital and Robbie struggled to
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  Speaker 1: understand what had happened, Taylor County welfare officials sought emergency
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  Speaker 1: protective custody of the surviving children, Concerned both that the
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  Speaker 1: attacker remained unidentified and that the children had been left
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  Speaker 1: home alone while Joanne worked overnight. Officials obtained a court
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  Speaker 1: order placing the children in the temporary custody of Taylor
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  Speaker 1: County for ten days. The decision devastated Joanne. When deputies
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  Speaker 1: arrived at Dias Air Force Base Hospital to serve the order,
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  Speaker 1: the grieving mother reacted in emotionally. She scratched, struck, and
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  Speaker 1: bit one of the officers before being restrained and arrested
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  Speaker 1: on a charge of aggravated assault. Only days after burying
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  Speaker 1: her seven year old son, Joanne spent a night in
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  Speaker 1: the Taylor County jail while Kelly remained hospitalized and her
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  Speaker 1: six year old son, Robbie was taken into protective custody.
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  Speaker 1: The man responsible for setting those events in motion had
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  Speaker 1: disappeared into the night without a trace. Despite the intense
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  Speaker 1: public attention, the investigation into the murder of Mickey Niles
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  Speaker 1: stalled Almost immediately, Captain George Sutton and detectives with the
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  Speaker 1: Abilene Police Department's Criminal Investigation Division pursued every lead they
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  Speaker 1: could find. Neighbors were interviewed, friends, relatives, military personnel from
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  Speaker 1: Das Air Force Base, and Joanne's coworkers at Eileen Incorporated
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: were questioned. Detectives administered polygraph examinations, chased down anonymous tips,
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  Speaker 1: and followed every promising lead, hoping one of them would
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  Speaker 1: identify the man Kelly had described. None did. As weeks
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  Speaker 1: became months, the investigation expanded well beyond Abilene. One lead
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  Speaker 1: took Detective Eugene McDowell to Colorado. Another centered on a
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  Speaker 1: man suspected of murdering a young woman in New Mexico.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: Police obtained his fingerprints, photographs, and criminal history before eventually
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: ruling him out. Captain Sutton revealed that by then his
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: men had examined five persons of interest in connection with
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  Speaker 1: Mickey's murder. Each lead ended the same way with no arrest.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Unable to identify a suspect, detectives began looking for something else,
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  Speaker 1: a pattern. Only six months earlier and less than two
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  Speaker 1: mon miles directly south Geneva, Jackson was found murdered inside
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: her home. Years before that, Sharon Watts had been killed
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: under similarly baffling circumstances. Though Mickey wasn't killed in a
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: bathroom like Geneva and Sharon, his murder shared enough disturbing
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  Speaker 1: similarities to warrant comparison. The attacks were unusually brutal, and
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Geneva had been repeatedly stabbed. There was no obvious motive
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  Speaker 1: in any of the killings, no signs of forced entry,
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  Speaker 1: and very little evidence pointing investigators toward a suspect. After
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: Janita Carroll's death in nineteen seventy seven, only a couple
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  Speaker 1: blocks away, her case would inevitably be added to those
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  Speaker 1: comparisons as well, at least before her death was ruled
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  Speaker 1: an elaborate suicide, one in which the motive was just
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: as unclear. Captain Sutton never publicly embraced the theory that
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: one killer was response for all these murders. He consistently
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: maintained the methods differed too greatly to connect them. Even so,
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: detectives understood why people asked the question. By the end
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy four, the investigation into the murder of
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  Speaker 1: Mickey Niles had reached a standstill. When the Abilene Reporter
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: News looked back on the year's biggest stories, Mickey's photograph
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: appeared beneath three heartbreaking words no substantial clues. For the
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: next thirty years, those words would define the case. In
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: that time, detectives retired and memories faded. But tucked away
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: inside the evidence room was something that time could not erase.
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  Speaker 1: A single latent fingerprint. It had been there all along.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: For decades, the print recovered from the Niles home remained
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: nothing more than an unidentified piece of evidence. Then, in
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four, Abilene detectives entered the print into the
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: automated Fingerprint Identification system known as APHIS. Not long after,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: the Texas Department of Public Safety finally began utilizing the system.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: The hope was simple. If the person who had left
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: it had been fingerprinted in one of the many police
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: agencies in the United States utilizing APHIS, the computer might
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: finally identify him. There was no immediate match. In fact,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: for another ten years, nothing happened. In August two thousand
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: and four, just five years after the FBI launched the
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: next generation of APHIS, the Integrated Automated Fingerprint identification system.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: A routine driving while intoxicated arrest in San Antonio unexpectedly
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: reopened the case of seven year old Mickey Niles. As
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: part of the booking process, officer's fingerprinted Juan Castanado brought.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: When those prints were entered into the national database, the
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: computer immediately recognized one of them. It matched the unidentified
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: fingerprint detectives had recovered from the Niles home more than
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: thirty years earlier. Detectives learned that Bravo was eighteen years
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: old when Mickey was murdered in June nineteen seventy four.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: He was stationed at Dais Air Force Base and lived
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: in the barracks there, only a few miles from the
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: Niles home. He was already married and the father of
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: a young daughter. Public records also indicate he had been
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: arrested on a drug charge in nineteen seventy four, just
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: before the murder, and had accumulated additional arrests in the
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: years that followed. He was convicted of several crimes, including
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: burglary and robbery. All the arrests and convictions are in Texas,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: so it's unclear how and why Bravo's fingerprints didn't flag
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: a match before the dabas charge. The fingerprint, anyway, anyway,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: wasn't the only evidence pointing to the man. Detectives re
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: examined the evidence collected in nineteen seventy four using forensic
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: techniques unavailable at the time of the murder. DNA testing
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: linked Bravo to blood recovered from inside the Niles home,
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: the very blood detectives had long suspected belonged to the
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: attacker after Mickey's sister, Kelly, fought back during the assault.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: For the first time, the Abilene police had two independent
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: pieces of physical evidence placing a suspect inside the house.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: On April twenty fifth, two thousand and five, Juan Costanado Bravo,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: now forty nine years old, was arrested in San Antonio
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: and returned to Taylor County to face a murder charge. Surprisingly,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: the arrest generated little public attention. Aside from literally a
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: couple local articles, the arrest of the man accused of
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: killing seven year old Mickey Niles barely made headlines for
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: the Niles family. However, it changed everything. After waiting thirty
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: one years, they finally knew the identity of the man
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: who had killed little Mickey. They never publicly determined whether
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: Bravo knew the Niles family, despite the fact that both
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: he and Bernard Niles had been stationed at Dayas Air
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: Force Base at the time. They never explained why the
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: South Ninth Street home had been chosen or why two
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: sleeping children had become his victims. Rather than face trial,
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: Bravo pleaded guilty in January two thousand and seven and
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: was sentenced to forty years in prison. There would be
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: no trial, no testimony, no public explanation, no confession beyond
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: his guilty plea. Juan Castanado Bravo has since been released,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: though it's virtually impossible for him to have been responsible
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: for the death of Sharon Kay Watts in nineteen sixty seven,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: It's unclear if he was ever investigated for the nineteen
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: seventy three murder of Geneva Jackson, just six months before
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: Mickey was killed. If you'd like to join Gon Cold's
• 21:22
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• 21:25
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• 21:29
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• 21:33
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