Latest / The Path Went Chilly / Vernon Shipman, Charles Glass, Louise Davis Shumate Pt. Two

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Vernon Shipman, Charles Glass, Louise Davis Shumate Pt. Two · The Path Went Chilly

0:27
Speaker 1: Welcome back to part two of our series about the
0:30
Speaker 1: murders of Vernon shipman Charles Glass and Louise David Schuemates.
0:33
Speaker 1: So let's dive right back into our discussion. So they
0:37
Speaker 1: started going into Luise's background trying to figure out if
0:40
Speaker 1: there might be any other motives for her to be murdered,
0:42
Speaker 1: and there were apparently rumors that she might have been
0:45
Speaker 1: involved in drugs because following Louise's death, they found twelve
0:49
Speaker 1: thousand dollars belonging to her in a savings account, and
0:52
Speaker 1: no one from her family knew where it came from.
0:54
Speaker 1: And as you can imagine, twelve thousand dollars in nineteen
0:58
Speaker 1: sixty six is worth a lot more money now. Wow.
1:00
Speaker 1: And it's also been reported that virtually every Thursday, when
1:03
Speaker 1: she showed up for her shift at the tailor instrument Companies,
1:07
Speaker 1: she would always bring a brown package to work with
1:09
Speaker 1: her and leave it with security at the guard station,
1:12
Speaker 1: and then when her shift ended, she would collect the
1:15
Speaker 1: package and supposedly drive to Hendersonville rather than back to
1:18
Speaker 1: her home in Ashville. So people are wondering did she
1:21
Speaker 1: have like drugs in this package? And this maybe spurned
1:24
Speaker 1: rumors that maybe she drove to Hendersonville because she was
1:27
Speaker 1: involved in the drug trade with Vernon and Charles or
1:30
Speaker 1: something like that. But it sounds like these were greatly exaggerated.
1:34
Speaker 1: There was no rumors to suggest that any of them
1:36
Speaker 1: were involved in drugs, And it makes me wonder if
1:39
Speaker 1: Luise is really like carrying around like a package of
1:42
Speaker 1: cocaine and heroin, why bring them into work and leave
1:45
Speaker 1: it with security? Like why not just leave it locked
1:48
Speaker 1: in your car or something where there's not as risk
1:50
Speaker 1: of being caught.
1:52
Speaker 2: I guess there's the risk of it being stolen if
1:55
Speaker 2: you think that maybe somebody's tailing you or onto what
1:57
Speaker 2: you're doing, and if you leave it with security, the
2:00
Speaker 2: chance of them actually opening up your package is pretty
2:02
Speaker 2: slim to none, I would think. So it's like hiding
2:05
Speaker 2: it in plain sight with I feel like potentially less risk. Nowadays,
2:10
Speaker 2: with all the technology and everything, it wouldn't be the
2:13
Speaker 2: best choice, But I think back in nineteen sixty six
2:16
Speaker 2: you could make that make sense for me. But I
2:19
Speaker 2: also think that it is a bit of a reach,
2:21
Speaker 2: given that we don't have really anything to back up
2:24
Speaker 2: that any of them had any involvement with drugs. It's
2:27
Speaker 2: just an easy thing to pull into the story because
2:33
Speaker 2: when we're trying to rationalize how why did this happen?
2:36
Speaker 2: Who would exhibit such anger towards these individuals, It's easy
2:40
Speaker 2: to imagine somebody in that lifestyle or in the drug
2:44
Speaker 2: trade would be motivated to murder them, like maybe over
2:51
Speaker 2: missing product, over money, over some kind of dispute, and
2:55
Speaker 2: that that's the way that they were all connected. But
2:58
Speaker 2: although it is a tantalize theory, I just don't think
3:01
Speaker 2: that we've got anything substantial to build a foundation for
3:05
Speaker 2: that theory.
3:07
Speaker 1: Pretty much like there were a lot of rumors about
3:09
Speaker 1: the backgrounds of all three victims at that point, but
3:12
Speaker 1: there didn't seem to be anything bad in their backgrounds
3:14
Speaker 1: other than the fact that Luis was known for being racist.
3:18
Speaker 1: Of course, because Vernon and Charles were gay, there were
3:21
Speaker 1: a lot of rumors around that time about illegal stuff
3:24
Speaker 1: they may have been doing, such as them trading drugs
3:26
Speaker 1: for sexual favors at night clubs, and there was also
3:29
Speaker 1: rumors that they liked to blackmail people, where they would
3:32
Speaker 1: take photographs of Charles sleeping with wealthy prominent men and
3:36
Speaker 1: holding wild parties attending by underage boys. And that they
3:40
Speaker 1: may have been killed over it. But once again, they
3:42
Speaker 1: never found any conclusive evidence about this, and it may
3:45
Speaker 1: have been the result of the homophobia in the area
3:47
Speaker 1: at that time. And I know that it was very
3:49
Speaker 1: difficult for investigators to turn up any hard information because
3:53
Speaker 1: a lot of members of the gay community were very
3:56
Speaker 1: reluctant to talk to police back then, not necessarily because
3:59
Speaker 1: they had something to hide, but because they thought maybe
4:02
Speaker 1: they were going to be outed or something like that
4:04
Speaker 1: as gay if they cooperate with police and talked about
4:07
Speaker 1: what they knew about either Vernon or Charles. And thankfully,
4:11
Speaker 1: many years later a writer named Terence Ryerson Neil started
4:15
Speaker 1: writing a series of books about this case and did
4:17
Speaker 1: a lot of research into Vernon and Charles's background, and
4:20
Speaker 1: he did an interview with the local newspaper a couple
4:23
Speaker 1: of years ago where he stated, quote, I was very
4:25
Speaker 1: happy to discover that the two male victims, Charles Glass
4:28
Speaker 1: and Vernon Shipman, were well liked and enjoyed life, despite
4:32
Speaker 1: the perverted twists that others tried to put on their lives.
4:35
Speaker 1: Surely had idiosyncrasies, but they didn't seem the least bit
4:38
Speaker 1: phased by the straight laced expectations of the community end quote.
4:42
Speaker 2: And I think it's good that you have somebody who
4:45
Speaker 2: is looking into their backgrounds really thoroughly from like a
4:50
Speaker 2: journalistic lens, not just in order to deliver like a
4:54
Speaker 2: salacious story that's going to sell papers. You really wanted
4:57
Speaker 2: to find out who Vernon and Charles were, their core
5:01
Speaker 2: and if there was anything in their backgrounds. Even if
5:04
Speaker 2: there was things in their backgrounds that were somewhat sketchy,
5:07
Speaker 2: it doesn't mean that they deserve to die. But when
5:10
Speaker 2: he's looking into it, he's not finding anything. And so
5:13
Speaker 2: I think that because they were gay, it just made
5:16
Speaker 2: them even more almost like victims of the media and
5:21
Speaker 2: probably of the community, who are going to presuppose these
5:25
Speaker 2: different things that are like broad generalizations around gay people,
5:29
Speaker 2: especially at the time, think they're like, oh, they're all
5:32
Speaker 2: out partying, okay, so they maybe they must be involved
5:34
Speaker 2: in the drug scene.
5:36
Speaker 3: Well this is.
5:36
Speaker 2: Probably tied to drugs, of course, that's what it is.
5:40
Speaker 2: And then it gets all wrapped up in this neat
5:42
Speaker 2: little bow and then it becomes like this big lie
5:46
Speaker 2: where it's hard to parse out what is true and
5:50
Speaker 2: what is false. So to have somebody come in and
5:53
Speaker 2: really clear that up. I think is invaluable and is
5:56
Speaker 2: invaluable for their legacies, because I don't think that people
6:00
Speaker 2: should be branded as something that they're not just because
6:04
Speaker 2: there's a level of discomfort around their sexuality at the time.
6:09
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I think in the nineteen sixties a lot
6:11
Speaker 1: of local residents probably automatically assumed if they're gay, they
6:14
Speaker 1: must be perverts and involved in some shady stuff. But no,
6:17
Speaker 1: nothing was ever found to suggest they were interested at
6:20
Speaker 1: underage boys, or that they were blackmailing people and taking
6:23
Speaker 1: photographs of wealthy, prominent people in gay positions or anything
6:27
Speaker 1: like that. So they just seemed like guys who love
6:29
Speaker 1: life and just wanted to be accepted and had no
6:33
Speaker 1: real skeletons in their closets. So it was good to
6:37
Speaker 1: see Terrence Ryers and Neil finally concur that saying that
6:40
Speaker 1: all the stuff that you heard about them back then,
6:42
Speaker 1: most of it was probably untrue. And here's some more
6:45
Speaker 1: flattering things about Vernon and Charles. They were known for
6:48
Speaker 1: being very friendly towards black people back then, even though
6:51
Speaker 1: integration had recently begun in the area and was not
6:55
Speaker 1: popular with some of the local residents. But Charles's store,
6:58
Speaker 1: The Temple Music Shop, was a very popular spot for
7:02
Speaker 1: the area's black residence because they considered it to be
7:05
Speaker 1: a safe haven. This was one of the few stores
7:08
Speaker 1: where black residents could show up there and not have
7:11
Speaker 1: to worry about being discriminated against or being thrown out.
7:14
Speaker 1: So there were rumors that perhaps this could have paved
7:17
Speaker 1: the way for the murders, that perhaps the Ku Klux
7:19
Speaker 1: Klan was even involved, and this wasn't unfounded because Charles
7:23
Speaker 1: had been a blue singer. He sometimes went on to
7:26
Speaker 1: tour with a popular rhythm and blues singer named Esther
7:29
Speaker 1: Phillips who performed under the name Little Esther, and at
7:33
Speaker 1: one point Charles invited a Little Est to town to
7:36
Speaker 1: visit him and stay at his residence, and this prompted
7:38
Speaker 1: some unidentified individuals to actually leave a burning cross in
7:42
Speaker 1: Charles's yard, and twelve days after the murders took place,
7:46
Speaker 1: another burning cross was found in the middle of the road,
7:48
Speaker 1: only about a quarter mile away from the spot where
7:51
Speaker 1: the bodies were discovered. So investigators started looking to the
7:54
Speaker 1: possibility that maybe they were murdered by a bunch of
7:57
Speaker 1: a group of racists, but they never found any evidence
8:00
Speaker 1: to support that theory, so it was based on nothing
8:03
Speaker 1: more than speculation.
8:04
Speaker 2: I mean you almost have to wonder if there would
8:08
Speaker 2: have been something else at that crime scene, maybe the
8:11
Speaker 2: killer ran out of time because making the crutches into
8:15
Speaker 2: a cross I find such an interesting detail. And then
8:19
Speaker 2: like the semi circle, it's almost like I'm picturing one
8:22
Speaker 2: of the crime scenes.
8:23
Speaker 3: Out of Hannibal, Oh, the Hannibal elector the.
8:27
Speaker 2: TV show like Hannibal. Oh okay, yeah, not the movie,
8:29
Speaker 2: but like did you ever watch with Mads Michelson? I did, yes, Yeah,
8:33
Speaker 2: you know how like the killers would often turn their
8:38
Speaker 2: turn the crime scenes into what was almost like art.
8:42
Speaker 1: Yes, And that actually leads me into our next point, because,
8:45
Speaker 1: believe it or not, one of the most outrageous theories
8:48
Speaker 1: surrounding this case where that the murders were somehow related
8:50
Speaker 1: to voodoo. Because, believe it or not, Charles had a
8:53
Speaker 1: devout interest in the subject, as he was known for
8:56
Speaker 1: selling voodoo charms and elixirs, and even published and sold
9:00
Speaker 1: booklet of his own titled Tales of Voodoo and Black Magic,
9:03
Speaker 1: which he published under the pseudonym Charles Laveret. Because there
9:08
Speaker 1: is the French word for a glass, and because the
9:11
Speaker 1: three victims' bodies have been arranged in this semi circle
9:14
Speaker 1: and Charles's crutches were draped over his torso in the
9:17
Speaker 1: shape of a cross, this caused rumors to circulate that
9:20
Speaker 1: the crime was some sort of voodoo sacrifice, but once again,
9:23
Speaker 1: there was nothing to substantiate this.
9:26
Speaker 2: I mean, it's pretty easy to reach for the mysterious
9:30
Speaker 2: or the unknown. It's really easy to other somebody, especially
9:34
Speaker 2: when it's nineteen sixty six. He's gay and he also
9:39
Speaker 2: is into voodoo, so that just adds a whole other
9:42
Speaker 2: layer and makes it so easy to other him and
9:44
Speaker 2: then to pull that in and be like, oh, it's
9:46
Speaker 2: related to his interest in publication of voodoo when it
9:50
Speaker 2: seems unlikely, but of course they're going to try to
9:54
Speaker 2: make it even more salacious than it already is.
9:57
Speaker 1: Is pretty much the nineteen sixties version of a Satan cult.
10:00
Speaker 1: I mean, if this had taken place in the eighties,
10:02
Speaker 1: I'm sure they would have blamed a Satanic called at
10:04
Speaker 1: some point, but I guess voodoo is a good substitute
10:06
Speaker 1: back then. So now I'm going to talk about some
10:09
Speaker 1: potential suspects, and one that stood out during the early
10:13
Speaker 1: days of the investigation was a twenty five year old
10:15
Speaker 1: man named Frank Myers, who was a close friend of Vernon's.
10:19
Speaker 1: And you might recall that one of the witnesses who
10:22
Speaker 1: saw Vernon and Charles in the car with Luise and
10:25
Speaker 1: an unidentified man was a Calvert Hunt junior who was
10:29
Speaker 1: an employee at the Temple Music Shop, and he was
10:32
Speaker 1: the one who was absolutely convinced that Frank Myers was
10:35
Speaker 1: the unidentified man in the car and pointed his name
10:38
Speaker 1: to police. And another interesting detail is that Frank Myers
10:42
Speaker 1: also happened to be the half brother of Sue Nichols,
10:45
Speaker 1: the person who had called Vernon's residence and spoke to
10:48
Speaker 1: Charles on the phone right before Charles said no, Vernon,
10:51
Speaker 1: don't hit me and the line was cut off. So
10:55
Speaker 1: according to a Calvert Hunt, he said that right after
10:58
Speaker 1: Vernon and Charles disappeared, he brought the Henderson police chief
11:01
Speaker 1: to the Temple Music Shop to search the file cabinets
11:04
Speaker 1: and they discovered a folder containing a number of IOUs
11:08
Speaker 1: which showed that Frank Meyers owed Vernon about one thousand dollars.
11:12
Speaker 1: And then a couple days later, after the two men's
11:14
Speaker 1: bodies were discovered. Calvert said that he and the chief
11:18
Speaker 1: checked the file cabinet again and the folder containing the
11:21
Speaker 1: IOUs was mysteriously missing. And this is a particularly ridiculous rumor,
11:26
Speaker 1: but it was said that Frank owed money to Vernon
11:29
Speaker 1: because he had helped pay for some plastic surgery that
11:32
Speaker 1: he received following a car accident. But the prevalent rumor
11:35
Speaker 1: is that Charles was jealous of Frank's friendship with Vernon
11:39
Speaker 1: and created a voodoo doll for him, and shortly after
11:42
Speaker 1: Charles disfigured the doll's face, that's when Frank got into
11:45
Speaker 1: his accident, which required surgery. So of course this was
11:48
Speaker 1: pushed forward as a potential motive for the crime. And
11:51
Speaker 1: I'm best you're thinking that this is the most logical motive, right.
11:54
Speaker 2: Oh, clearly it comes down to the voodoo doll, and yeah,
11:58
Speaker 2: punctured the face of the voo dood all and then
12:00
Speaker 2: that led to the accident. That's absolutely logical. And you
12:05
Speaker 2: can't convince me otherwise that this is going to be
12:07
Speaker 2: the best theory.
12:09
Speaker 1: Yes, And the theory though the Calvert hunt tried to
12:11
Speaker 1: push forward, is that Frank decided to murder Vernon and
12:14
Speaker 1: Charles to avoid paying back the one thousand dollars that
12:17
Speaker 1: they had in the io use. And I could totally
12:20
Speaker 1: see Frank taking away the io used to avoid paying
12:23
Speaker 1: the money back. But this crime does not look like
12:25
Speaker 1: it is financially motivated, because if he just wanted to
12:27
Speaker 1: kill them to avoid paying money, why is he going
12:30
Speaker 1: to kill Louise in such a brutal fashion by shoving
12:32
Speaker 1: a shaft from a bumper jack upper vagina. So, no,
12:36
Speaker 1: that does not fit the profile of this crime.
12:38
Speaker 3: No, I would have to agree with you there.
12:41
Speaker 1: So they looked into Frank, and his mother provided him
12:44
Speaker 1: with an alibi, insisting that Frank was with their family
12:47
Speaker 1: at Lake Newton, about one hundred miles away, on the
12:50
Speaker 1: night of the murders. And of course, like families, providing
12:53
Speaker 1: alibis does not necessarily mean that they're cleared, because for
12:57
Speaker 1: all we know, they could be covering for them and
13:00
Speaker 1: only a couple years later, in nineteen sixty nine, Frank
13:03
Speaker 1: actually wound up being shot to death by his aunt's
13:05
Speaker 1: husband during a domestic dispute. But even though Calvert Hunt
13:10
Speaker 1: identified Frank as the guy that he saw in the
13:13
Speaker 1: car with Vernon and Charles, investigators were inclined to believe
13:17
Speaker 1: that Frank wasn't the perpetrader because the other WI witnesses
13:20
Speaker 1: who saw the man did not identify him, and they
13:22
Speaker 1: also described the man as being in his forties, whereas
13:25
Speaker 1: Frank was twenty five. So investigators pretty much ruled Frank out,
13:30
Speaker 1: but for many years afterwards, Calvert Hunt still continued to
13:33
Speaker 1: insist NonStop that Frank was the guy he saw in
13:36
Speaker 1: the car.
13:38
Speaker 2: I mean, we know how problematic eyewitness identification is, and
13:42
Speaker 2: especially if you're identifying somebody at a distance, it can
13:46
Speaker 2: be really hard to be able to capture their face
13:49
Speaker 2: and to think, okay, well this is absolutely unequivocally this person.
13:53
Speaker 2: But it's really easy to get attached to that idea
13:56
Speaker 2: if you think, oh, that resembled that person, and then
14:00
Speaker 2: I think as time passes, you may become more short
14:03
Speaker 2: or less sure. But it sounds like he became more
14:05
Speaker 2: sure that that is indeed who he saw, even though
14:09
Speaker 2: there seems to be eyewitnesses to the contrary and the
14:13
Speaker 2: age doesn't add up. But you know how it can
14:16
Speaker 2: be with eyewitnesses, they can be very very sure and
14:19
Speaker 2: it's not like they're coming from a malicious place When
14:22
Speaker 2: they're doing. What they're doing is that they truly believe
14:25
Speaker 2: that that is indeed who or what they saw.
14:27
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Like I've seen documented examps of this, like
14:30
Speaker 1: people being interviewed on shows like Unsolved Mysteries where they're
14:33
Speaker 1: absolutely certain that this person they saw was a missing
14:36
Speaker 1: person or a criminal and say I would bet money
14:39
Speaker 1: on it. I'm so sure, and then later on they're
14:40
Speaker 1: proven to be wrong, because I think there was probably
14:43
Speaker 1: some cognitive bias at play, because I think Calvert probably
14:45
Speaker 1: didn't personally like Frank and thought he would be capable
14:48
Speaker 1: of a crime like this, so he put it into
14:50
Speaker 1: his head that Frank was the man he saw in
14:52
Speaker 1: the car, even though all the other witnesses disagreed.
14:55
Speaker 2: I always think of the case. I can't remember what
14:58
Speaker 2: the victim's name was, but the perpetrator, the alleged perpetrator,
15:02
Speaker 2: was Ronald Cotton, and she had accused him of raping
15:06
Speaker 2: her and was very very sure that he was the
15:08
Speaker 2: man that did it, and he ended up going to prison,
15:11
Speaker 2: but he ended up being released and she admitted, like,
15:15
Speaker 2: I got it wrong, and the two of them ended
15:16
Speaker 2: up having a relation, not like a romantic relationship, but
15:19
Speaker 2: like a friendship after the fact because she was able
15:22
Speaker 2: to look and go in whatever traumatic moment that was cross.
15:27
Speaker 2: Racial identification is a problem. Whether it be white people
15:31
Speaker 2: trying to identify black or Asian, or black people trying
15:34
Speaker 2: to identify white people, we have a harder time, and
15:39
Speaker 2: so that was the case with Ronald Cotton. But it
15:41
Speaker 2: was such an egregious miscarriage of justice. This man went
15:45
Speaker 2: to jail for a crime that he did not commit,
15:48
Speaker 2: while the person who did commit the crime was walking free,
15:52
Speaker 2: and that impact that it must have had.
15:55
Speaker 3: On poor victim.
15:56
Speaker 2: I think her name was Jennifer, I can't remember her
15:58
Speaker 2: last name, but the impact that must have had on her,
16:01
Speaker 2: what happened to her being raped violently and then knowing
16:06
Speaker 2: that the person that you pointed the finger at wasn't
16:08
Speaker 2: indeed the right person, but she was very sure that
16:11
Speaker 2: it was. And like you said, there's so many different
16:15
Speaker 2: documented examples of this.
16:17
Speaker 1: Oh definitely. I know that Ashley has mentioned Ronald Cotton
16:20
Speaker 1: several times on her show because she's an expert on
16:22
Speaker 1: wrongful convictions, and sadly that's not the only example of this,
16:25
Speaker 1: where even sometimes the survivors of these crime identify the
16:28
Speaker 1: wrong person and an innocent person goes to prison. So
16:32
Speaker 1: another intriguing suspect was a forty year old chiropractor named
16:36
Speaker 1: Paul Saxman, who had grown up next door to the
16:38
Speaker 1: Shipment family and was very close friends with Vernon. He
16:42
Speaker 1: eventually moved to Indianapolis and decided to rent out his
16:45
Speaker 1: family's home in Hendersonville and had made an arrangement with
16:48
Speaker 1: Vernon to collect the rent money and make the mortgage
16:50
Speaker 1: payments at the local bank and sometimes. During the fall
16:54
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty five, Saxman discovered that his house was
16:57
Speaker 1: receiving foreclosure warnings from the bank as the rent payments
17:00
Speaker 1: were not being made to them, and when Saxmon traveled
17:03
Speaker 1: back to Hendersonville, he actually accused Charles of pocketing the
17:06
Speaker 1: rent money which was collected, and the two men got
17:09
Speaker 1: into a heated argument in the music shop. Saxmon was
17:12
Speaker 1: going through a really rough time at that point. His
17:14
Speaker 1: marriage was falling apart, and in May of nineteen sixty six,
17:18
Speaker 1: shortly after his wife told him she wanted a divorce,
17:21
Speaker 1: he attempted suicide by a self inflicted gunshot wound, though
17:25
Speaker 1: he wound up surviving. But since the triple murder took
17:28
Speaker 1: place just two months later. There has been speculated that
17:32
Speaker 1: Saxmon was so despondent that once he recovered from the
17:35
Speaker 1: gunshot wound, he decided to travel down to Henderson and
17:38
Speaker 1: decide to murder Charles and Vernon out of revenge.
17:42
Speaker 2: I mean that sounds like a theory. None of these
17:46
Speaker 2: theories really one hundred percent line up for me. It's
17:49
Speaker 2: just we've got in like on the periphery. What happened
17:54
Speaker 2: with Louise as well? How does she factor into that?
17:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. That's the problem here is it doesn't seemed
18:00
Speaker 1: like Saxmon had any personal connection with Louise. And that's
18:03
Speaker 1: the same thing with all of these suspects is many
18:05
Speaker 1: of them have connections with Vernon, Charles, but not Louise.
18:08
Speaker 1: So it still doesn't explain how she got mixed up
18:11
Speaker 1: into it. But at the outset, Saxmon was not a
18:14
Speaker 1: strong suspect. But it turned out that after his house
18:17
Speaker 1: went into foreclosure in Hendersonville, a woman purchased it and
18:20
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty seven she found a frog giging pole
18:23
Speaker 1: in the closet which appeared to have blood on it.
18:26
Speaker 1: In case you don't know what that is, a frog
18:28
Speaker 1: gigen pole is a spear or nearly used to impale
18:31
Speaker 1: frogs in the water and pull them out. And even
18:34
Speaker 1: though the State Bureau of Investigation lab performed some testing,
18:37
Speaker 1: they were unable to determine if the blood belonged to
18:39
Speaker 1: a human or an amphibian. But they started wondering could
18:43
Speaker 1: this frog gigging pole been used as the weapon to
18:46
Speaker 1: put the puncture marks on Charles and Louise. And you
18:49
Speaker 1: notice that the puncture marks were put on Charles, who
18:52
Speaker 1: Saxmon had a personal vendetta with, but not on Vernon,
18:55
Speaker 1: someone that he considered to be his friend. So they
18:58
Speaker 1: started looking into Saxon as a potential suspect. And even
19:01
Speaker 1: though he was living in Indianapolis at the time and
19:04
Speaker 1: was running a chiropractic clinic, a search of the records
19:07
Speaker 1: showed that he saw no patience between July the fourteenth
19:10
Speaker 1: and July the eighteenth, the time period that the murders
19:12
Speaker 1: took place, and he could not account for his whereabouts
19:16
Speaker 1: during those dates or provide an alibi. So they did
19:20
Speaker 1: wonder if he traveled to Hendersonville to commit these murders,
19:23
Speaker 1: and Saxman did agree initially with investigators to take a
19:27
Speaker 1: polygraph test, but when the date arrived, his lawyers showed
19:30
Speaker 1: up instead and said that his client would not be
19:33
Speaker 1: taking the test after all, and Sasman never returned to Hendersonville.
19:37
Speaker 1: Even though his house was sold during the foreclosure proceedings
19:41
Speaker 1: and he was entitled to receive a seven hundred dollars
19:44
Speaker 1: from the sale, he never went down there to collect it,
19:46
Speaker 1: which made people speculate that perhaps he's trying to stay
19:49
Speaker 1: out of the area to avoid the police scrutiny. But
19:52
Speaker 1: they never found any evidence. They couldn't even place him
19:54
Speaker 1: in Hendersonville on the day of the crime, and he
19:57
Speaker 1: pretty much spent out the rest of his life living
19:59
Speaker 1: in a nursing home Indianapolis before he died in two
20:01
Speaker 1: thousand and six.
20:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's like, is he hiding something, probably like
20:07
Speaker 2: the fact that he can't account for his whereabouts and
20:09
Speaker 2: what he was doing.
20:11
Speaker 3: Was he committing a triple murder? I don't know.
20:14
Speaker 2: I mean, it's possible. Anything is possible here. It's just
20:18
Speaker 2: it seems like every potential suspect there's holes in the theory.
20:22
Speaker 2: I could understand if the issue was with Charles, hence
20:26
Speaker 2: why the puncture wounds were concentrated on Charles, but Louise
20:30
Speaker 2: is just like the confusing part of this story. If
20:33
Speaker 2: you just happened upon a woman and you needed to
20:36
Speaker 2: eliminate her because she saw what you were doing, why
20:39
Speaker 2: are you then putting a bunch of puncture wounds in
20:42
Speaker 2: her and going to the trouble of sexually assaulting her
20:46
Speaker 2: with an instrument? Like, these things take time, and the
20:49
Speaker 2: more time that you're spending at that spot, the greater
20:52
Speaker 2: the probability that you're going to be discovered that somebody
20:55
Speaker 2: else will come upon you, especially if that's the reason
20:58
Speaker 2: why you're eliminating Luis. But there could just be this
21:02
Speaker 2: whole other angle that we're unaware of. But I find
21:05
Speaker 2: it's so confusing that we can't connect these victims.
21:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what was weird about it, Like I mentioned earlier,
21:13
Speaker 1: is that we have a lot of people with connections
21:15
Speaker 1: to Charles or Vernon's personal life, but no one connected
21:18
Speaker 1: to Louise. And a lot of these guys like Frank
21:21
Speaker 1: Myers and Paul Sacksmon, they didn't even have any like
21:23
Speaker 1: documented criminal history, So it's like just seems weird that
21:27
Speaker 1: out of nowhere they would decide to murder these two
21:29
Speaker 1: guys and sexually assault a woman with a chaft from
21:31
Speaker 1: a bumper jack, and then just commit no other crimes
21:35
Speaker 1: for the rest of their lives. So one other person
21:38
Speaker 1: who jumped up on the radars of suspect was a
21:40
Speaker 1: career criminal. His name was John Shadrick, who had served
21:43
Speaker 1: time in prison for forgery of bank notes before he
21:46
Speaker 1: was parolled in June of nineteen sixty six. And on
21:50
Speaker 1: the day of the murders, Shadrick was in Henderson County
21:53
Speaker 1: as a record show that he was spending the night
21:55
Speaker 1: in a hotel called the Henderson In And a few
21:59
Speaker 1: weeks after the murder, Shadrick and another accomplice tried to
22:02
Speaker 1: sexually assault a young man at knife point, and Shadrick
22:05
Speaker 1: supposedly said to him, quote I've killed three people, I
22:08
Speaker 1: just as soon kill you too, end quote. And the
22:11
Speaker 1: young man even claimed that Shadrick named his victims and
22:15
Speaker 1: said that he killed them at Lake Summit, and he
22:17
Speaker 1: could hear Shadrick's accomplice mutter the words quote bumper jacks,
22:21
Speaker 1: which is a reference to the bumper jack with the
22:23
Speaker 1: shaft that was used for the sexual assault. So Shadrick
22:26
Speaker 1: was questioned by police. Unlike these other people, he did
22:29
Speaker 1: have a criminal history, and he was trying to sexually
22:32
Speaker 1: assault another man, so it seemed like he did have
22:35
Speaker 1: a history of assaulting people as well. But then, of course,
22:38
Speaker 1: he didn't really have an alibi, because he and his
22:40
Speaker 1: friend just said that we spent the entire day getting
22:43
Speaker 1: high on drugs and couldn't remember much of the day
22:45
Speaker 1: as well, which is not exactly the most solid alibi.
22:48
Speaker 1: But they looked into his background and couldn't find any
22:50
Speaker 1: evidence linking him to the crime scene, and nothing ever
22:54
Speaker 1: put him on the radar as a suspect.
22:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, he seems like a real creep and being high
23:00
Speaker 2: the whole day isn't really a great alibi. But if
23:04
Speaker 2: he had been trying to sexually assault a man, and
23:07
Speaker 2: you have two men who are found murdered at the scene,
23:10
Speaker 2: neither of them are sexually assaulted, but the woman of
23:13
Speaker 2: the scene is sexually assaulted, would that, in your opinion,
23:16
Speaker 2: fit that pattern of that individual.
23:19
Speaker 1: Not really, No, And I have a feeling that because
23:22
Speaker 1: this triple homicide was such a big story in the
23:25
Speaker 1: area that Shaffrick probably read about her in the newspapers
23:28
Speaker 1: and he thought he would intimidate this guy just by
23:31
Speaker 1: saying that, oh, there are three people were killed in
23:33
Speaker 1: the area, I'm going to brag about it. And I
23:35
Speaker 1: think the detail about the shaft of the bumper jack
23:38
Speaker 1: was released to the public. It wasn't in an exclusive
23:40
Speaker 1: detail that only the killer would have known. So it
23:42
Speaker 1: would not surprise me if you read about it and
23:44
Speaker 1: said that I'm going to share this detail with my
23:46
Speaker 1: victim in order to scare him some more.
23:49
Speaker 2: I feel like today that would be holdback information where
23:53
Speaker 2: you wouldn't be You might say the victim was sexually assaulted,
23:56
Speaker 2: but you wouldn't say that the victim was, you know, penised,
24:00
Speaker 2: traded with a bumper jack and that was left inside
24:02
Speaker 2: her vagina. Like that would be information that likely would
24:05
Speaker 2: be held back so that when somebody comes in and
24:08
Speaker 2: you're able to question them, or if they are confessing
24:11
Speaker 2: to the crime, that you know that they did in
24:14
Speaker 2: fact do that because they know this information that wasn't.
24:17
Speaker 3: Released to the public.
24:18
Speaker 2: But the way that crimes were reported and investigations were
24:22
Speaker 2: done in nineteen sixty six is not the same as
24:25
Speaker 2: it is.
24:25
Speaker 1: Today, definitely not. No, like that does seem like a
24:28
Speaker 1: detail which would be great holdback information, but I just
24:31
Speaker 1: don't know how calmon that practice was back in nineteen
24:33
Speaker 1: sixty six, so of course virtually all the details about
24:36
Speaker 1: the crime scene were published in the newspapers. So another
24:40
Speaker 1: person who popped up on the radar was a man
24:42
Speaker 1: named Jim Burrows, who had been a writer for the
24:45
Speaker 1: Ashville Citizen Times newspaper, but actually got fired from his
24:49
Speaker 1: job the week before the murders because he continually showed
24:51
Speaker 1: up to work smelling of alcohol. It's been reported that
24:55
Speaker 1: he was a friend of both Vernon and Charles, who
24:57
Speaker 1: also happened to be gay and the old. The reason
25:00
Speaker 1: he garnered suspicion is because of an odd phone call
25:03
Speaker 1: he made to reporter from the Citizen Times sometime between
25:07
Speaker 1: July the eighteenth and the twenty second, which is when
25:10
Speaker 1: Vernon and Charles were missing, but their bodies had not
25:12
Speaker 1: yet been discovered, and according to this reporter, Burrows told
25:16
Speaker 1: them that there were a quote unquote three prominent people missing,
25:20
Speaker 1: but at that point the only people who have been
25:22
Speaker 1: reported missing were Vernon and Charles, but no one had
25:25
Speaker 1: ever officially reported Louise missing, and no one knew about
25:28
Speaker 1: the connection between them, so they were wondering, hmm, does
25:31
Speaker 1: he have any information about the crime that he should
25:33
Speaker 1: know that all three of these victims went missing together
25:37
Speaker 1: and were going to be found together. But other than that,
25:39
Speaker 1: there was no evidence to implicate him. He didn't have
25:41
Speaker 1: a criminal history. But it is kind of weird that
25:44
Speaker 1: he just said that during the time period before the
25:46
Speaker 1: bodies were found.
25:48
Speaker 2: There's a lot of strange things to keep coming up
25:50
Speaker 2: with this, but it doesn't seem like it's enough for
25:53
Speaker 2: me to hold on to to believe that he could
25:56
Speaker 2: indeed be responsible. Like, we aren't seeing a pattern or
25:59
Speaker 2: a background in any kind of criminality, So to graduate
26:03
Speaker 2: to becoming a criminal with a triple homicide and one
26:08
Speaker 2: of the most violent sexual assaults slash rapes that I've
26:12
Speaker 2: ever heard of, seems really atypical.
26:16
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Like this guy was just a guy who
26:18
Speaker 1: a newspaper writer, who might have had some substance abuse issues,
26:21
Speaker 1: but no history of violence, So there's no real motive
26:24
Speaker 1: for him to harm like these three people in such
26:26
Speaker 1: a brutal fashion. So in March of nineteen sixty eight,
26:30
Speaker 1: it appeared that the case might finally be solved when
26:33
Speaker 1: he thirty three year old migrant worker named Joe Henry
26:35
Speaker 1: Parham was arrested from the crime. He was known for
26:39
Speaker 1: having only a third grade education, and he was arrested
26:42
Speaker 1: in Fort Myers, Florida, for a possession of burglary tools,
26:46
Speaker 1: and while he was being held in the jail, Parham
26:48
Speaker 1: supposedly made some statements about having killed Charles Glass. So
26:53
Speaker 1: the Henderson County sheriff at that time, James Kilpatrick, traveled
26:57
Speaker 1: down to Florida to interview Parham and got him to
26:59
Speaker 1: sign a confess and he was subsequently extradited back to
27:03
Speaker 1: Henderson County and charged with Charles's murder. But interestingly enough,
27:07
Speaker 1: he wasn't charged with Vernon or Louise's murder because he
27:10
Speaker 1: technically only confessed to Charles's murder. So it was a
27:14
Speaker 1: very odd situation, and we saw kind of a jurisdictional
27:17
Speaker 1: dispute here because even though Hendersonville is in Henderson County,
27:22
Speaker 1: the three victims' bodies were found in a remote area
27:25
Speaker 1: of Bunkham County outside the town line. So the lead
27:29
Speaker 1: investigator technically was the Bunkham County Sheriff, Harry Clay. And
27:33
Speaker 1: right after Parham was charged, he's making comments in the
27:35
Speaker 1: newspapers saying that he believed that Param's confession was fall
27:40
Speaker 1: and did not believe he was the killer. So you
27:42
Speaker 1: have two different sheriffs here giving different views, like in
27:45
Speaker 1: the paper, like arguing with each other. Which is kind
27:48
Speaker 1: of surprising that Clay said this because back in nineteen
27:50
Speaker 1: sixty eight, the general public didn't have as much knowledge
27:53
Speaker 1: about false confessions. But Clay is openly stating right after
27:57
Speaker 1: this guy was charged that he doesn't believe it's the
27:59
Speaker 1: right guy.
28:01
Speaker 2: I think that, yes, this is very true, like people
28:04
Speaker 2: believe that if you confess that you're guilty. But I
28:06
Speaker 2: also think that two things can be true, that that
28:09
Speaker 2: can be the prevailing opinion of law enforcement. But I
28:12
Speaker 2: also think that you get a pretty good sense being
28:15
Speaker 2: in law enforcement, a pretty good gut feeling whether somebody
28:18
Speaker 2: is telling you the truth or whether they're not. And
28:21
Speaker 2: not everybody is intuitive, and not everybody is great at this,
28:24
Speaker 2: But I do think that there are some cases where
28:27
Speaker 2: somebody had to walk in say that they did something,
28:30
Speaker 2: and then whomever is investigating, be it the sheriff or
28:33
Speaker 2: a sheriff's deputy or a police officer, is going there's
28:36
Speaker 2: no way for one the details don't match up. You know,
28:39
Speaker 2: this person's actions don't match up where they said that
28:43
Speaker 2: they're supposed to be. And I just don't get a
28:46
Speaker 2: feeling that what they're telling me is true. I don't
28:49
Speaker 2: think that they committed this crime. And so I'm going
28:52
Speaker 2: to say so publicly. You might want to just close
28:55
Speaker 2: this case and get your flowers for being such a
28:58
Speaker 2: great sheriff, but I'm going to oppose you with my
29:03
Speaker 2: viewpoint that he did not do this.
29:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's obviously a major red flag that
29:08
Speaker 1: he only got charged with Charles's murder because he technically
29:11
Speaker 1: never confessed to killing Vernon and Louise. Because they're all
29:14
Speaker 1: found in the same place, you have to be responsible
29:16
Speaker 1: for all three of them or none of them at all.
29:19
Speaker 1: And two months after Palmer was arrested, a Hendersonville Justice
29:22
Speaker 1: of the Peace dismissed the murder charge after failing to
29:25
Speaker 1: find probable cause or sufficient evidence against him besides his
29:29
Speaker 1: questionable confession, as he believed that the confession was false.
29:33
Speaker 1: And I know that Sheriff Killpatrick, even though he was
29:36
Speaker 1: the one who arrested Parham, he actually told the press
29:39
Speaker 1: that he agreed with the decision, stating quote. We have
29:41
Speaker 1: made every effort to positively prove mister Param's guilt as
29:45
Speaker 1: well as his innocence if he is. Because of his arrest,
29:48
Speaker 1: we have learned a great deal of valuable information and
29:50
Speaker 1: feel that in the very near future, the case will
29:53
Speaker 1: be solved and a conviction obtained on the guilty parties
29:56
Speaker 1: end quote. And sure enough, a couple months later, Palm
29:59
Speaker 1: was arrested on an unrelated breaking and entering charge, and
30:02
Speaker 1: he finally told the press that he the confession was
30:05
Speaker 1: a hoax and that he had recently learned about the
30:07
Speaker 1: murders from reading an article and True Detective magazine, and
30:11
Speaker 1: that the main reason that he wanted to do this
30:13
Speaker 1: is because he wanted to be extra guided back to
30:15
Speaker 1: North Carolina because he preferred to be incarcerated there rather
30:18
Speaker 1: than in Florida.
30:20
Speaker 2: So it seems like he has an underlying motivation for
30:23
Speaker 2: why he's saying what he's saying, and there's not a
30:26
Speaker 2: lot of truth to it.
30:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, and this doesn't really have anything related to
30:31
Speaker 1: the case. But a couple of years later, Parm was
30:34
Speaker 1: arrested after shooting his common law wife during an argument
30:37
Speaker 1: in the head and she wound up surviving, and Palm
30:40
Speaker 1: only received a five year prison sense for aggravator to
30:42
Speaker 1: assault these because he claimed, Oh, I only meant to
30:45
Speaker 1: fire the shot over her head, but accidentally wound up
30:48
Speaker 1: hitting her.
30:49
Speaker 2: Sir, you're pointing a gun at your wife's head, whether
30:51
Speaker 2: you meant to shoot over or at her head. I
30:54
Speaker 2: think you deserve to be in prison pretty much.
30:56
Speaker 1: Yees. So it sounds like param was a pretty bad person,
30:59
Speaker 1: but I don't necessarily believe he was responsible for the
31:02
Speaker 1: triple homicide in Hendersonville. So the case soon faded from
31:07
Speaker 1: the spotlight, but it returned in July of two thousand
31:10
Speaker 1: and six when a reporter called Jenny Jones Giles published
31:13
Speaker 1: an extensive series of articles for the Henderson Times News
31:17
Speaker 1: titled small Town, Big Crime in order to commemorate the
31:21
Speaker 1: forty year anniversary, and this article got the attention of
31:24
Speaker 1: the true crime series which used to air on Court
31:27
Speaker 1: TV called Haunting Evidence. Did you ever watch episodes of
31:31
Speaker 1: that show?
31:31
Speaker 3: No, I don't think I've ever seen it.
31:34
Speaker 1: It aired for a few seasons in the mid two thousands,
31:37
Speaker 1: and the whole premise was that psychics and mediums would
31:40
Speaker 1: visit the scenes of famous unsolved crimes and supposedly had
31:44
Speaker 1: visions about who committed the crime, which they hope would
31:47
Speaker 1: wind up solving them. But surprise, surprise, their information did
31:50
Speaker 1: not lead to any cases being solved. And while some
31:53
Speaker 1: of the cases featured on the show did get solved
31:55
Speaker 1: in the long run, it turned out to the information
31:58
Speaker 1: that these meat evens provided turned out to be completely false,
32:01
Speaker 1: so none of what they said actually matched the perpetrator
32:04
Speaker 1: when they wound up being caught. So this is what's
32:07
Speaker 1: caused some controversy for this case. Because they profiled the
32:10
Speaker 1: Hendersonville triple homicide on Haunting Evidence, which aired in August
32:14
Speaker 1: of two thousand and seven, they had a medium named
32:17
Speaker 1: John J. Oliver visit the murder scene and he started
32:20
Speaker 1: saying that he had visions of an African American male
32:24
Speaker 1: with a long and broad nose, a slight mustache, full lips,
32:28
Speaker 1: and a slight part in his hair. And what's bad
32:31
Speaker 1: about this is that this compelled the local authorities to
32:34
Speaker 1: reopen the investigation, and a couple months later, the local
32:38
Speaker 1: police chief, Bill Bill Powers, said that they had looked
32:41
Speaker 1: into a career criminal named Edward Thompson Junior who matched
32:45
Speaker 1: the description of the suspect provided by this so called psychic,
32:49
Speaker 1: and he flat out said quote, case closed, Edward Thompson
32:52
Speaker 1: did it. But I'm sure you're already thinking of a
32:55
Speaker 1: big hole in this theory because Edward Thompson was black,
32:59
Speaker 1: and as you I recall, all of the witnesses who
33:02
Speaker 1: saw the unidentified mail in the back seat of Vernon's
33:05
Speaker 1: vehicle said he was white.
33:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a pretty big, glaring inconsistency. And although we
33:12
Speaker 2: will go on and on and on about how eyewitness
33:15
Speaker 2: identifications are problematic, race is not something that somebody will
33:20
Speaker 2: typically get wrong when it comes down to simple somebody
33:24
Speaker 2: is white, somebody is black. Of course, there's situations where
33:28
Speaker 2: the skin tone might be a lot more similar, and
33:31
Speaker 2: so it would be easier to mix up somebody's race
33:36
Speaker 2: from afar. But in this case, it seems like all
33:40
Speaker 2: of the witnesses said it was a white man in
33:42
Speaker 2: his forties, correct.
33:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So I do think that's problematic. I mean,
33:47
Speaker 1: eyewitnesses can be mistaken, but I know that the investigators
33:51
Speaker 1: tried to account for this, saying that while Topsa was
33:53
Speaker 1: more light skin than your average black man, so maybe
33:55
Speaker 1: they could have confused him for a white man. But
33:58
Speaker 1: I'm luck in the newspaper archives back in nineteen sixty
34:00
Speaker 1: eight when he was arrested for other crimes, and it's like,
34:03
Speaker 1: I do not believe anyone can confuse this guy for
34:05
Speaker 1: a white man.
34:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's kind of the question I had was
34:09
Speaker 2: what tone was his skin? And if his skin was
34:11
Speaker 2: very dark, there's not going to be an eyewitness who's
34:14
Speaker 2: going to get confused and think that they saw a
34:18
Speaker 2: black man, or to think that they saw a white
34:20
Speaker 2: man when it was indeed when he was indeed very
34:24
Speaker 2: dark skinned. It just doesn't really make any sense, especially
34:27
Speaker 2: when you've got multiple witnesses, not just one witness. If
34:30
Speaker 2: it would be one thing if you had one witness
34:32
Speaker 2: saying it was a black man and one saying it
34:34
Speaker 2: was a white man. But we have both eyewitnesses saying
34:37
Speaker 2: it was a white man.
34:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, that witness. I told you about Calvert Hunt, who
34:42
Speaker 1: was so convinced that Frank Myers was the guy he saw.
34:44
Speaker 1: Even after Thompson was named as the perpetrator, he said, no,
34:48
Speaker 1: that's not the guy I saw. I'm still convinced it
34:50
Speaker 1: was Frank Myers. Yeah, but Thompson was a terrible person.
34:54
Speaker 1: The main reason he popped up on the radar is
34:56
Speaker 1: because he went on a massive crime spree in May
34:59
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty eight, nearly two years after the murders.
35:02
Speaker 1: It started in Hendersonville when he kidnapped a doctor and
35:05
Speaker 1: his wife from their home at gunpoint, and he proceeded
35:08
Speaker 1: to drive the couple to another location inject them with
35:11
Speaker 1: drugs from the doctor's medical kit before he drove off
35:13
Speaker 1: in their car. And he kept going throughout North Carolina
35:17
Speaker 1: and Virginia and committing all these crimes. He actually kidnapped
35:21
Speaker 1: three teenage girls and two adults in July and took
35:24
Speaker 1: them to an abandoned house in Roanoke. The car belonged
35:27
Speaker 1: to a fifty year old man named Jay Howard Davis,
35:29
Speaker 1: who was the father of one of the girls, and
35:32
Speaker 1: the second adult was a fifty year old woman named
35:34
Speaker 1: Hester Freeman, who was the mother and aunt of the
35:37
Speaker 1: other two girls. And after fatally shooting the two adults,
35:40
Speaker 1: Thompson took the girls and drove back to North Carolina
35:43
Speaker 1: in Davis's car. And what's crazy is that Thompson is
35:47
Speaker 1: considered to be the last person in the history of
35:49
Speaker 1: North Carolina to officially be declared an outlaw. This is
35:52
Speaker 1: pretty much like the rules of the Old West, where
35:54
Speaker 1: they actually told people that if you see this man,
35:57
Speaker 1: you're technically allowed to kill him in self defense if
36:00
Speaker 1: you have to, instead of calling the authorities. Like one
36:03
Speaker 1: article in the newspaper's actually read quote, any citizen who
36:06
Speaker 1: sees him may arrest him on site or kill him
36:09
Speaker 1: if he resists, without being subject to legal action.
36:12
Speaker 3: End quote, like wanted dead or alive.
36:15
Speaker 1: That's essentially it. Like it was surprised to hear of
36:17
Speaker 1: a wanted fugitive in nineteen sixty eight that they said
36:20
Speaker 1: this for and considering that Thompson was a black man
36:22
Speaker 1: in the South, it's actually remarkable that he was captured alive.
36:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is pretty incredible.
36:28
Speaker 2: You would think that he would end up being killed
36:31
Speaker 2: because people are all too trigger happy to begin with,
36:35
Speaker 2: but then when you add the element of him being black,
36:37
Speaker 2: it is really surprising that they managed to bring him
36:40
Speaker 2: in alive. And I would think that things like that
36:43
Speaker 2: would happen in like the nineteen twenties, maybe the nineteen thirties,
36:47
Speaker 2: but not in the nineteen sixties, almost into the seventies.
36:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is pretty crazy. I had no idea that
36:54
Speaker 1: these type of laws were still in place back during
36:56
Speaker 1: that time period. But I think probably the main reason
36:59
Speaker 1: Thompson survived is because he kidnapped these girls and maybe
37:02
Speaker 1: they were worried about their safety if they tried to
37:04
Speaker 1: kill them, because he was finally captured in Greensboro on
37:08
Speaker 1: July the seventeenth, and thankfully the girls were unharmed and
37:11
Speaker 1: taken back safely. He wound up pleading guilty to seven
37:14
Speaker 1: different charges and received five consecutive life sentences plus twenty years.
37:20
Speaker 1: They did briefly interview him in prison about the Hendersonville
37:23
Speaker 1: triple homicide, but no evidence could be found to implicate him,
37:26
Speaker 1: and he denied any involvement, and he died of aids
37:29
Speaker 1: in Central Prison and Raleigh at the age of fifty
37:31
Speaker 1: eight in nineteen eighty nine. But at the time he
37:35
Speaker 1: was not considered to be a serious suspect. But they
37:37
Speaker 1: started looking into similarities between Thompson's crime spree and the
37:41
Speaker 1: triple homicide with Vernon, Charles and Luis, And here are
37:46
Speaker 1: some of the similarities. I know that Thompson liked to
37:48
Speaker 1: wear dark sunglasses, and the man seen in the Vernon's
37:52
Speaker 1: car with them in the backseat was also wearing dark sunglasses.
37:56
Speaker 1: When he kidnapped his victims in nineteen sixty eight, he
37:58
Speaker 1: would often force them to d I've round for a
38:00
Speaker 1: while in their own car, and he would leave his
38:03
Speaker 1: victims in a remote location, steal their car, and subsequently
38:06
Speaker 1: abandoned it elsewhere with the keys inside the ignition, which
38:09
Speaker 1: is exactly what happened with Vernon's car. Two of the
38:13
Speaker 1: people Thompson kidnapped told police that he said to them, quote,
38:16
Speaker 1: I have a gun. I've already killed three people. Two
38:19
Speaker 1: more won't make a difference end quote. And some of
38:22
Speaker 1: Thompson's crimes took place within a few miles of the
38:25
Speaker 1: spot where Vernon, Charles and Luis's bodies were discovered, and
38:29
Speaker 1: while his whereabouts on the date of the homicide or unknown,
38:32
Speaker 1: it was established that he was in Henderson County just
38:35
Speaker 1: two weeks later because he was arrested in charge with
38:38
Speaker 1: two counts of assault for threatening a woman. And when
38:41
Speaker 1: Thompson became a wanted fugionive years later, police performed in
38:44
Speaker 1: search of his residence and found out that he kept
38:47
Speaker 1: a lot of newspaper articles about the triple homicide with
38:50
Speaker 1: Vernon Charles and Louise. So there was some compelling evidence
38:54
Speaker 1: to suggest that this crime fit his mo and that
38:57
Speaker 1: he would have been capable of it. But once again,
38:59
Speaker 1: the big issue is that the man scene in Vernon's
39:02
Speaker 1: car with him was white and Thompson was black.
39:05
Speaker 3: Yeah.
39:06
Speaker 2: And I think we've known that killers or people who
39:10
Speaker 2: commit crimes, they are like fanboys of each other's work,
39:14
Speaker 2: and so it wouldn't be atypical to keep clippings of
39:18
Speaker 2: a crime that you thought would be something that maybe
39:21
Speaker 2: you yourself would commit, and so you may see some
39:24
Speaker 2: similarities with the things that you've done and what this
39:27
Speaker 2: individual has done, so you might want to follow their
39:29
Speaker 2: quote unquote work. But like you said, the biggest hole
39:33
Speaker 2: in this theory. He sounds like a good suspect until
39:36
Speaker 2: you figure out he's not white.
39:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. I just cannot get over that. And I
39:41
Speaker 1: think a lot of people are skeptical and thought that
39:44
Speaker 1: maybe the sheriff just wanted to close this case like
39:47
Speaker 1: forty years after the fact, and because he was already
39:49
Speaker 1: deceased at that point, he couldn't rest him. Well, just
39:51
Speaker 1: tell the public that we figured out this guy was
39:54
Speaker 1: the killer, even though they don't have any conclusive evidence
39:56
Speaker 1: like DNA or anything like that. Because Thompson was creaming
40:00
Speaker 1: following his death in nineteen eighty nine, and because they
40:02
Speaker 1: weren't collecting DNA from inmates back then, they don't have
40:06
Speaker 1: his DNA on file. And while there are some compelling similarities,
40:10
Speaker 1: I do know that the two people that Thompson murdered
40:12
Speaker 1: during his crime spree in nineteen sixty eight, he shot
40:15
Speaker 1: them both to death. He didn't bludge them and sexually
40:18
Speaker 1: assault them and puncture them several times. And you may
40:21
Speaker 1: remember that when he kidnapped the doctor and his wife
40:24
Speaker 1: from Hendersonville in nineteen sixty eight, he did drive them
40:27
Speaker 1: out for remote area, but he didn't kill them or
40:30
Speaker 1: assault them. He just kind of like injected them with
40:32
Speaker 1: some drugs to put them asleep while he stole their car.
40:35
Speaker 1: So it seems weird to me that he would kill
40:37
Speaker 1: three people so brutally in nineteen sixty six, and then
40:41
Speaker 1: when he goes on this crime spree back in nineteen
40:43
Speaker 1: sixty eight, he would kidnap other victims and then just
40:46
Speaker 1: let them go. So there are some major differences in
40:49
Speaker 1: the mos.
40:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems really bizarre to me. There's just not
40:54
Speaker 2: one suspect that seems to really fit here. Like usually
40:58
Speaker 2: when we go through a case, you give all the
41:00
Speaker 2: different suspects and the ways that they could be connected
41:03
Speaker 2: to the victims or similar crimes that they've committed. I
41:07
Speaker 2: feel like I get a really good gut feeling for
41:10
Speaker 2: who might be the perpetrator. And this is a rare
41:13
Speaker 2: case where I really have no idea what's going on here,
41:16
Speaker 2: and I don't know who could be the perpetrator because
41:19
Speaker 2: every single person that seems to be suggested thus far,
41:23
Speaker 2: there's major holes in the theory.
41:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, because when I started working on this one, on
41:28
Speaker 1: the trail went cold from my episode two years ago,
41:30
Speaker 1: and at the outset, I see that, oh, they think
41:32
Speaker 1: that Edward Thompson did it, and they flat out safe
41:34
Speaker 1: case closed. But then you look at these discrepancies and
41:37
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, he does seem like a promising suspect,
41:40
Speaker 1: But I can't be convinced that whole The eyewitnesses describing
41:44
Speaker 1: the suspect as being white is just too much of
41:46
Speaker 1: an obstacle to overcome. And of course we've seen in
41:50
Speaker 1: recent years a lot of old cold cases be solved
41:53
Speaker 1: decades after the fact after they use forensic evidence to
41:57
Speaker 1: posthumously link the crime to a deceased suspect, but unfortunately
42:01
Speaker 1: that's probably not an option in this case because most
42:04
Speaker 1: of the physical evidence has since gone missing. The story
42:07
Speaker 1: goes is that the boxes of evidence were sent to
42:09
Speaker 1: the State Bureau of Investigation at LAB in Raleigh for
42:12
Speaker 1: analysis before they returned to the Henderson County Sheriff's office
42:16
Speaker 1: in July of nineteen sixty nine, but shortly thereafter the
42:20
Speaker 1: boxes just seemed to fanish without a trace, and the
42:23
Speaker 1: most prominent theory is that they were placed inside the
42:25
Speaker 1: evidence room of the Henderson County Courthouse, which was undergoing
42:28
Speaker 1: renovations at the time, and perhaps because of a miscommunication,
42:32
Speaker 1: the boxes may have been removed during a cleanup and
42:35
Speaker 1: mistakenly disposed of at a landfill. So it sounds like
42:38
Speaker 1: the only item of evidence that might still exist today
42:41
Speaker 1: are Charles's crutches that were found with them for some
42:44
Speaker 1: reason they weren't disposed of, but it's unclear if it
42:47
Speaker 1: has any forensic evidence or DNA that might link them
42:50
Speaker 1: back to a perpetrator.
42:52
Speaker 2: And the problem is like how well were those crutches preserved?
42:56
Speaker 2: Were they put in plastic bags? Were they when they
43:00
Speaker 2: were collected, did the team that do the collection were
43:04
Speaker 2: they wearing gloves? Because the way that forensics was approached
43:09
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty six was miles away from where we
43:13
Speaker 2: are now, even miles away from the way that they
43:15
Speaker 2: did it in the eighties, So I just wouldn't have
43:18
Speaker 2: a lot of trust and that there couldn't have been
43:20
Speaker 2: like a lot of cross contamination along the way with
43:23
Speaker 2: those crutches.
43:24
Speaker 1: Exactly, like you never know if someone may have touched
43:27
Speaker 1: them accidentally, Like if Charles was out in public and
43:29
Speaker 1: someone like he fell over and someone grabbed his crutches
43:32
Speaker 1: to help them up, their DNA might wind up on there,
43:35
Speaker 1: even though they are not the killers. So I don't
43:37
Speaker 1: know how reliable they would be as evidence. So one
43:40
Speaker 1: final thing I wanted to mention is that I made
43:42
Speaker 1: reference to an author named Terence Ryerson Neil who has
43:45
Speaker 1: done like a lot of in depth research into this case.
43:48
Speaker 1: And in February of twenty twenty, he published a book
43:51
Speaker 1: titled The True Story of the nineteen sixty six Hendersonville
43:55
Speaker 1: Triple Murders. He titled it Volume one, The Confessions nineteen
43:59
Speaker 1: sixty nineteen sixty eight, and he said this was going
44:03
Speaker 1: to be a multi volume series and that he was
44:05
Speaker 1: going to reveal his idea about who he believed the
44:07
Speaker 1: perpetrator was, and that volume two would be released sometime
44:11
Speaker 1: in late twenty twenty. Well, here we are sixty years
44:14
Speaker 1: later and the rest of these volumes have still never
44:17
Speaker 1: been released, and I know that Neil has done a
44:19
Speaker 1: few interviews where he says that he is skeptical that
44:22
Speaker 1: Edward Thompson actually committed the crime, and he actually believes
44:26
Speaker 1: the best suspect is Frank Parham, the guy who was
44:29
Speaker 1: arrested from Florida and made what was believed to be
44:32
Speaker 1: a false confession in nineteen sixty eight. And I'm assuming
44:35
Speaker 1: in these later volumes he was going to outline all
44:38
Speaker 1: the reasons why he believed that Parum was the best suspect.
44:41
Speaker 1: But unfortunately, because these books haven't come out yet, I
44:44
Speaker 1: still have no idea what his reasoning was, because it
44:46
Speaker 1: sounds like there was nothing against Parum except of confession
44:50
Speaker 1: that he finally admitted that he made up on his own.
44:52
Speaker 1: So unfortunately I don't have that big smoking gun, that
44:55
Speaker 1: aha moment to know who did this, And until he
44:58
Speaker 1: releases these other volumes of his books, we may never
45:01
Speaker 1: find out.
45:02
Speaker 2: Well, maybe it just comes down to the fact that
45:05
Speaker 2: he'd promised that there would be this really great suspect
45:07
Speaker 2: and that everyone would have answers, and the reality is
45:12
Speaker 2: he can't fill a book with Frank Param being the
45:16
Speaker 2: guy who did it because there just really isn't enough
45:18
Speaker 2: evidence to support that. So to put out a whole
45:21
Speaker 2: book and to basically point the finger at somebody when
45:24
Speaker 2: you yourself are potentially unsure seems like a fruitless endeavor,
45:29
Speaker 2: like why would you go to the trouble of doing that?
45:32
Speaker 2: And potentially that explains why there's been this huge protracted
45:36
Speaker 2: time period since it's been six years since we were
45:40
Speaker 2: promised to follow up there and there just is none
45:43
Speaker 2: And I think perhaps he's in the same position that
45:45
Speaker 2: we are, and that there really is no clearly defined
45:49
Speaker 2: best suspect here.
45:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, Like he hasn't really said in interviews why
45:53
Speaker 1: he believes Frank param is so compelling. And I was
45:56
Speaker 1: going to give him some slack because he released his
45:59
Speaker 1: first volume in February of twenty twenty, which was right
46:02
Speaker 1: before the COVID pandemic, So I'm thinking, Okay, there might
46:05
Speaker 1: have been some delays here with his research where he
46:07
Speaker 1: couldn't do anything for a while, and that's why his
46:10
Speaker 1: future volumes haven't come out. But we're now in twenty
46:13
Speaker 1: twenty six, we still haven't heard any follow ups. So
46:15
Speaker 1: maybe he's realized that he was also on a wild
46:17
Speaker 1: goose chase and he has no idea who really did this.
46:21
Speaker 1: And I do agree that a lot of compelling suspects,
46:23
Speaker 1: each of them have individual points which could point toward them,
46:27
Speaker 1: but also a lot of points which point away from them.
46:30
Speaker 1: So I have a feeling that the person who was
46:32
Speaker 1: in the back of the car with the Vernon Charles
46:34
Speaker 1: and Louise is probably someone who has still not popped
46:37
Speaker 1: up on the radar as a suspect yet.
46:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have to agree with you.
46:41
Speaker 2: I feel like potentially if we were to find out
46:44
Speaker 2: who this person was, then we would understand the connection
46:48
Speaker 2: between Vernon Charles and Louise and then this individual, because
46:53
Speaker 2: I just have a really hard time believing that Louise
46:56
Speaker 2: was just a bystander based on her injuries, based on
47:00
Speaker 2: the time that this killer took with her body, and
47:03
Speaker 2: for her just to be an afterthought, like, oh, we
47:05
Speaker 2: need to eliminate her to go ahead and puncture her
47:08
Speaker 2: all of those times, and to puncture Charles as well,
47:12
Speaker 2: but not Vernon. It just to me doesn't say.
47:15
Speaker 1: Afterthought exactly, And that's kind of like. The sad thing
47:19
Speaker 1: about this is if by some miracle they are able
47:22
Speaker 1: to identify who the killer was, they're probably long to cease,
47:25
Speaker 1: so we will never find out their motive for this
47:27
Speaker 1: and find out the logistics of how this played out,
47:30
Speaker 1: because not only were they found together Luise, Vernon, and Charles,
47:34
Speaker 1: even though they had no connection to each other, I
47:36
Speaker 1: still don't know why the cars were found in separate places,
47:38
Speaker 1: why Luis's car was a bandon fourteen miles away, And well,
47:42
Speaker 1: I do think that the most logical explanation is that
47:45
Speaker 1: they took Vernon and Charles to that spot, and maybe
47:47
Speaker 1: Luis was a bystander who was also kidnapped because she
47:50
Speaker 1: was a witness. There are still holes in that theory,
47:53
Speaker 1: so there is no theory to explain why these three
47:56
Speaker 1: victims wind up at that spot and were murdered together,
47:59
Speaker 1: Which makes one hundred percent and complete. Since so any
48:02
Speaker 1: further thoughts on the Henderson Bille triple murders, This.
48:07
Speaker 2: Is just a really rare case where it's so tragic
48:11
Speaker 2: at triple murder that I've never heard of before, So you.
48:14
Speaker 3: Shocked me with that.
48:15
Speaker 2: And then usually when like I mentioned earlier, when we're
48:20
Speaker 2: you know, we're at the tail end here, I have
48:24
Speaker 2: like a gut feeling for who did this, But I'm
48:27
Speaker 2: in agreement with you and that I feel like whomever
48:29
Speaker 2: did this, they haven't popped up on the radar yet,
48:33
Speaker 2: and that we haven't heard their name because there's just
48:36
Speaker 2: something missing from every single suspect here that leads me
48:40
Speaker 2: to believe that they are not responsible for what happened.
48:44
Speaker 1: And are you more inclined to believe that Louise was
48:47
Speaker 1: just an innocent bystander or are you still thinking that
48:49
Speaker 1: maybe she was initially an accomplice and then might have
48:52
Speaker 1: gotten killed by the mail.
48:54
Speaker 2: I think she was either targeted or she was an accomplice,
48:58
Speaker 2: like somehow this killer knew her. I don't think she
49:00
Speaker 2: was a bystander based on what was done to her body.
49:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, it just seems like too much hostility. If someone
49:06
Speaker 1: was targeting Vernon and Charles, why would they do such
49:09
Speaker 1: awful things to Louise if she was just an innocent bystander.
49:13
Speaker 2: And It would be one thing if Vernon also had
49:15
Speaker 2: the puncture marks and it was just like this person's
49:17
Speaker 2: just angry. But the fact that Vernon didn't have the
49:20
Speaker 2: puncture marks, Charles had a bunch of puncture marks, but
49:24
Speaker 2: the worst damage and the most egregious things were done
49:27
Speaker 2: to Louise.
49:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, just very bizarre, and it is kind of a
49:31
Speaker 1: shame that like all the physical evidence was destroyed because
49:34
Speaker 1: even though the killer is most likely dead, I don't
49:36
Speaker 1: know how they're going to prove it after all this time.
49:39
Speaker 1: Because even though the Sheriff's office was comfortable saying that
49:42
Speaker 1: Edward Thompson did this four decades after the fact, there
49:44
Speaker 1: are just way too many holes in that theory. That
49:47
Speaker 1: about brings an end to our discussion about the murders
49:49
Speaker 1: of Vernon shipman, Charles Glass and Luise. David Shumate. Thank
49:53
Speaker 1: you so much for joining us, and we'd be back
49:55
Speaker 1: next week to discuss another case.
49:59
Speaker 2: Robin, do you want to tell a little bit about
50:00
Speaker 2: the Trail Went Cold Patreon?
50:02
Speaker 1: Yes, the Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three
50:05
Speaker 1: years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like
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Speaker 1: the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very
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