Latest / Devil Town / An Answer for Everything | Chapter 17

Transcript

An Answer for Everything | Chapter 17 · Devil Town

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: So I'm in Gilmer and just drove past Joe Henry's house.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: I've got butterflies in my stomach.
• 0:10
  Speaker 3: I'm nervous, obviously.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Not quite sure how to broach this subject. So this
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: was me a few weeks ago. I was in East
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Texas visiting my family, so I decided to drop in
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: on Joe Henry, the last person known to have seen
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Kelly Wilson on the night she disappeared in 1992. If
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: you've listened to the last couple of episodes, you know
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: about my phone calls with Joseph Hogue. He's the retired
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: state trooper who listened to my interviews with Joe and
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: came away from them deeply suspicious. Hogue brought this case
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: to the Texas Rangers and tried to get them interested
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: in Kelly. For the first time, it felt like this
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: case was finally catching some steam. I gave the Rangers
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: a couple of years, but from the outside, it looks
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: like the case still.
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: Hasn't gone anywhere.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: So in September, I rolled up to Joe Henry's house
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: and then, well, I kept cruising. I'm not sure why
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: I was feeling so awkward in the moment. You know,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: I'd already talked to Joe twice and both of those
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: times I had also just dropped in unannounced and everything
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: was fine. But that was four years ago and it
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: was before everything in the podcast came out. And this
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: time I was basically going to ask him to his
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: face if he's a killer, if I could work up
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: the nerve. A lot of times when I'm reporting and
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: I have to do something like this, I try to
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: just turn my brain off, you know, just like push
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: through or just go do it. It's kind of like
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: when I was a kid and, you know, you're jumping.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Off the high dive or like off of a cliff
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: into some water.
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: And it's like if.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: You get up there and you think about it, then
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: you're going to freeze and you're not going to do it.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: So you just have to like shut off your brain,
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: push through and just go do it. Unfortunately, I didn't
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: follow my own advice and I just drove past Joe's
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: little house that he has here in downtown Gilmer, pulled
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: over into a church parking lot in some shade sitting
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: here trying to figure out how to work up the
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: nerve to go have this conversation. I need to let
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: him know that he's about to be the subject of
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: more episodes, give him a chance to respond and to
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: see where it goes from there.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: I sat there idling for a minute, maybe two, and
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: then I went to see Joe. From Free Range Productions,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: in association with Imperative Entertainment, I'm Wes Ferguson, and this
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: is Deviltown. Chapter 17, An Answer for Everything.
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: Pulling up to this.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: Little brick house where Joe Henry lives, or he did
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: live the last.
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: Time I checked.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go knock on his door now. Phone
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: going in my shirt pocket, got my notepad. Did you
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: notice how the sound just dropped right there? I put
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: my phone in my shirt pocket, and somehow I accidentally
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: turned off the recording. I still cannot believe I did that.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: The good news is eventually I would notice and I
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: would turn the recorder back on. But anyway, without the
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: recorder rolling, I do knock on Joe Henry's door and
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: I hear some shuffling around inside and then Joe cracks
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: the door open. And when he did, I kid you not,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: he was in his undies. Joe welcomed me inside and
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: he grabbed a pair of blue jeans. He kind of
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: fumbled with them and he got them most of the
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: way up. And then with his jeans around his hips,
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: he sat down in his armchair, and invited me to
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: sit on the sofa. I'm still kicking myself for not
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: getting any of this on tape because, I mean, it
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: was really bizarre. I guess I would describe Joe's energy
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: as both pretty startled to see me, but also pretty
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: gracious and welcoming. He seemed a little healthier than last time,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: and he had put some weight back on. It was
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: pretty hot in his living room. I guess that's a
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: good reason to be hanging out in your undies.
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: I'll tell you what I will do, Forrest. Yeah, I
• 4:19
  Speaker 4: haven't done it. I'm turning the air on, of course.
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: Okay, sure.
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: I'll do that. I'm pretty chingy with my air.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Joe gave me an update on his health. He had
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: a bunch of medical issues he was dealing with. We
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: talked about that for a while. And then I brought
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: up Kelly Wilson, her disappearance, and all the fallout. This
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: is around the time I noticed that my recorder wasn't rolling,
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: so I turned it back on.
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: It has devastated me as a good friend. And then
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: the situation, the shock of that kind of situation and
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: all that's gone on during that time. And it's just,
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: I just can't put into words other than saying it's
• 4:56
  Speaker 4: just devastated me. And among not just me, but her
• 4:59
  Speaker 4: family and friends and many, many folks. But it definitely
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: has devastated me.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: Joe says he still grieves for Kelly. He has also
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: lived under a cloud of suspicion when it comes to her.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Some people will hear Joe and say he spent 30
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: years performing that grief. Sitting on his sofa a few
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: feet away from him, it was really hard for me
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: to say one way or the other. So I did
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: the only thing I know how to do in that situation.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: I started asking questions. And I started with the one
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: that's nagged me for a few years now. His last
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: night with Kelly and the video store. See, Joe's always
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: told this the same way. His very last words to
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: Kelly were him asking if she was opening the store
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: the next day and her saying, yeah, she was. But
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: the next day was a Monday. When I was first
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: reporting the story, a few people told me that Gilmer
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: was out of school that day. It was still the
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Christmas break. But later I learned that wasn't quite right.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Classes at Gilmer High School had already started. So how
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: does Kelly open the video store when she's in school?
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: I just never understood why Kelly, if she's going to school,
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: probably at 8 a.m., right?
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: How is she going to also open the video store?
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: She would open it at lunch. The owner came in.
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: And he would do all the prep and stuff and
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: do what book work he needed to do. And then
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: one of the girls would come.
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: In and watch. Was she some kind of like work study,
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: you know, where they get out early and then they
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: can go work?
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: I'm sure that's right. That was called distributive education at
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: the time. But I'm sure that's correct.
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: So Kelly would have been the distributive education.
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I'll say that's what it was still called at
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: that time.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: So those pieces fit. Joe had an answer for that.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: And I have reached out to some people trying to
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: confirm whether Kelly was would have really left school at
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: noon to open the video store, and they said yeah.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: Kelly was in the work-study program at Gilmer High School.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: So my first gotcha fizzled. But we had so much
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: more to talk about. After the break, I start asking
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: some of Joe Hogue's questions. Okay, before I take you
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: into the hard part, I've got to say the thing
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: I always say, and I mean it every time. Joe
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Henry has never been charged with anything to do with
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Kelly Wilson's disappearance. Not 30 years ago, not now. He
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: is innocent until proven guilty. I've heard some criticism about
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: our recent episodes that I'm supposedly taking up for Joe.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: The way I see it, I am not taking up
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: for him. I'm just trying to be responsible and follow
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: the law. So I'll also repeat that everything Trooper Hogue
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: has said about Joe is Hogue's opinion. It's not a verdict.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: What I did in that room was take that read
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: piece by piece and hold each piece up against the
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: man himself. So here we go. I started soft because
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: the very first thing Hogue fixates on isn't really even
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: what Joe says. It's how he sounds. Nervous, jumpy, his
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: voice going tight. Like a man sitting on something. So
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: I told Joe that, more or less to his face,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: and here's what he told me.
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: I am very nervous. I have an anxiety problem. And yeah,
• 8:09
  Speaker 4: I'm very nervous. I mean, I'm not particularly nervous now,
• 8:12
  Speaker 4: but this is not a comfortable subject to talk about.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, an anxiety problem. Next, I asked about a seemingly
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: throwaway detail that had been puzzling me and Hogue and
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: a bunch of other people. Part of Joe's memory from
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: the night Kelly disappeared when he got home and he
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: called his girlfriend.
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: Why did she ask if your dog was in the yard?
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: I don't know. She called. Now, let me think. Now,
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: just a second. If I talked to her, and I
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: got home and talked to her, and I think she
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: must have called me back. And I looked out the window,
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: and I said, no, he's outside. Angela lived about three
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: or four blocks from here at that time. Why she
• 8:53
  Speaker 4: said that, I don't know, but his name was Bimbo.
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: We called him Bimbo, but I called him Bim. And
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: he was outside sleeping by my window.
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: What kind of dog was he?
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: He was like a little border collie. But yeah, she
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: did ask me that.
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: So maybe like she saw another dog running by and
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: wondered if it was yours?
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: I'm assuming that. She just said she thought the dog
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: was over there. He'd never been over there. He never
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: left my yard. That's it.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: A phone call about a border collie. All right. Fair enough,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: I guess. Then I made myself bring up the ugliest stuff.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Because there's an old moment involving Kelly and Joe and
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: some stuff that a grown man's got no business doing.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: And Joe didn't dodge me on that either.
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: I mean, there was the sweatpants thing.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: There was the $ 1, 000.
• 9:35
  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah. That was a joke. And those were, what
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: would you call it, not out of context, but improper things.
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: The sweatpants thing went wrong. That was going to be
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: like a deal where you, you know, but shouldn't have
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: done that. Shouldn't have done that. We horseplayed a lot
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: and shouldn't have done that. But that was just taken
• 9:55
  Speaker 4: out of context and there was nothing to it. The $ 1, 000
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: thing was just a joke. Improper joke. And the horseplay
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: with the pants is improper, but that's all that was.
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to sit here and tell you that
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: made me comfortable. It did not. But Joe owned it,
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: called it improper and said he shouldn't have done it.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: And you know, I certainly agree with him about that.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: Another answer. Joe's also got his own theory about what
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: happened to Kelly that night, though I want you to
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: notice which direction he points it.
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: What do you think really happened to her?
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: Well, just to put it on the line, I think
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: Chris and Brent Ward had something to do with it.
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: I don't think they intentionally did anything to her or
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: would have done anything to her, but I think something happened.
• 10:40
  Speaker 4: And I base that upon the stuff that was going
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: on with them at the time. what Sergeant Brown had
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: related to me. One thing in particular that I told
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: the police that they didn't seem to be, not that
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: they were not interested in it, but it didn't seem
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: to be a relevant matter, were movies were rented on
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: Saturday by Chris Denton. You back on Sunday, Matt Kelly disappeared.
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: They were not turned in until the following Thursday. And
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: I related that to them, and it was.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Like, again with the late rentals.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: Help me understand why that is so important or so relevant.
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: It's just unusual. I mean, and it's just a circumstantial thing.
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: I mean, it might not have anything to do with anything.
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: But it was just, I thought it was kind of unusual.
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: Because we got a night drop, you just drop the
• 11:32
  Speaker 4: hoodies in a night drop, you know, at any time.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: And we knew that they were going to, they had
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: said they were going to go mess with her on Sunday,
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: I thought.
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: You were hearing that?
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: I don't remember that.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: I thought they were going to go up because they
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: knew she was working so they were going to go
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: mess with her or something like that on Sunday.
• 11:48
  Speaker 4: How's that? I don't know about that.
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: I mean, from what I.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: Know about Chris, it seems like he would have had
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: some late fees like pretty often.
• 11:55
  Speaker 4: Oh, absolutely.
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
• 11:57
  Speaker 4: And, but I just thought that was a strange thing
• 11:59
  Speaker 4: with what had happened previously and the movies turned me
• 12:02
  Speaker 4: in late, you know, but it may have had anything
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: to do with anything. The police didn't seem to think
• 12:08
  Speaker 4: it was a big matter but I did relate to
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: that thing.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: But I guess they were cleared for some reason, or
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: maybe there just wasn't enough dependent on them?
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: Well, I mean, that's a typical thing. You know, many
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: people did that, so that's not an uncommon practice for
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: somebody to rent movies and turn them in several days late.
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: And with people that had consistent late charges, you wouldn't
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: think if they rented them on Saturday, they were going
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: to be back on Sunday. So it might have been
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: the same thing as the previous times that developed the
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: late charge. They might have been several days late or
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: many times before that.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: When you think it was probably Chris or Brent, Is
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: that just because of their situation? Like you knew that
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: their involvement or was there something specific that.
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: No, nothing specific.
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: I just knew that, for lack of a better word,
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: they weren't big guys.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: Now you also might have caught something in there. Joe says,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: what Sergeant Brown told me. Brown was the lead investigator
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: on Kelly's case and Joe was the last man to
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: see her. The first name you'd put on the list.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: You wouldn't think Sergeant Brown would be talking to Joe...
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: about this case. But he was.
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: The bunch he's referring to here is the Justice for
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: Kelly folks, who thought Sergeant Brown was involved in Kelly's disappearance.
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: But who exactly told Joe to stay away from them?
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: Joe and Brown were friendly in that regular small-town way.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: Joe remembers the day Sergeant Brown was arrested.
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: He came in my hamburger place that day and brought
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: some movies back. We didn't need more movies, you know.
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: He brought some movies back and said, hey, I'm going
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: to be out of town for a few days and
• 13:51
  Speaker 4: I'll see you Monday or Tuesday. I said, okay, I'll
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: be fine. Well, that's when he was going to, what
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: was it?
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: College Station.
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: College Station to do whatever he was doing and was
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: either arrested down there or arrested when he got back.
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: I'm not sure exactly about that. But yeah, I didn't
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: see him for I don't know how long it was
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: that I saw him. I went out to his house
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: one day. He called about his VCR was acting up.
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: I went out there to check in because I did
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: the VCR repair.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: So a good piece of Joe's theory, who to look at,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: where to point, he got straight from the detective running
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: the case over hamburgers and VCR repairs, which is its
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: own strange thing, the suspect and the lead investigator. But
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: it's also why, when Joe steers me toward those other guys...
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: I can't just take it at face value.
• 14:41
  Speaker 4: You know, I didn't know anything particular about them, but
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: they just were not the kind of guys you'd want
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: somebody to hang around with.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Chris Denton was one of the very first men the
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: police looked at. They never found anything tying him to
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: the case, and he passed away years ago. So I'll
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: be honest, pointing at a dead man who can't say
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: one word back, that's an easy thing to do. That's
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: the exact kind of move that got Joseph Hogue suspicious
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: in the first place. but by now I'd been circling
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: long enough. So I stopped circling and I put the
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: whole thing to Joe as plainly as I could, that
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: a state trooper had sat and listened to him over
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: and over and decided in his opinion that Joe did it.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: I got a call not too long ago from a guy.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: He was a state trooper at the time and he
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: has since retired, but he listened to the podcast and, uh,
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: You know, he's really big on, he's an instructor on interrogations,
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: you know, and getting people to confess and all this
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: kind of stuff. And he thought that you were maybe
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: like extremely nervous when we talked.
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: I am very nervous. I have an anxiety problem. And yeah,
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: I'm very nervous. I mean, I'm not particularly nervous now,
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: but this is not a comfortable subject to talk about.
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: But no, I have no problem talking with anybody. And
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: as God is my witness, if you're Christian, I don't
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: know if you are, But as God's my witness, I
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: had absolutely nothing to do with that. And Kelly and
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: I are really good friends. We had no relationship. It
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: wasn't just a friendly relationship or business relationship, if that's
• 16:12
  Speaker 4: what you want to say. But yeah, I was scared
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: to death. I mean, you know, here I'm supposedly the
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: last guy to see her. And that's where they start with.
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: And yeah, certainly. I won't deny that wasn't it. But
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: as God's my witness, I had absolutely nothing to do
• 16:28
  Speaker 4: with that. I was scared to death.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, if some law enforcement officer, if it's this
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: state trooper or someone else, comes in and says, you know,
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: by listening to this audio, listening to this interview, I
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: think that you had some involvement in this case that
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: you have not shared in the past 30-something years. I mean,
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: what's your response to that?
• 16:50
  Speaker 4: I'll answer any questions I can. I mean, I have
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: nothing to hide. I came home that night. My mom
• 16:56
  Speaker 4: was here. My mom was living here. Angela called me
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: on the phone. The next door neighbor saw me come
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: home Max Roberts at the grocery store was there when
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: I bought groceries, and I don't know what else I
• 17:09
  Speaker 4: can say.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: And that's the thing Joe has been carrying all these years.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: Joe Henry didn't just wait around to be cleared. The
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: way he tells it, he tried to clear himself. He
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: says he called the bank on his own to make
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: sure Kelly's last deposit from the store actually went in
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: that weekend.
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: I called the bank to see if the deposit was
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: made that morning. Well, no, not that morning, when I
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: got to work later. No, wait a minute, wait a minute,
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: wait a minute. Or did I call from my place,
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: the hamburger place? I don't remember, but I did call
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: the bank and said, yes, the deposit was made. And
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: so that kind of relieved me about that. But at
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: that time, things were still fresh and nobody knew what
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: was going on.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: After all these years and without access to the police
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: case files, I have no way to verify whether Joe
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: really made.
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: That call to the bank.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: At the same time, we do know the deposit was
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: made by Kelly or somebody else. When the investigators were
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: looking at Joe, he says he asked them to pull
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: the phone records to show the calls he made that
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: night were real.
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: I told them to check and see if Angela called me,
• 18:13
  Speaker 4: make sure about that. And they said they didn't have
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: your records today.
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: Oh, they didn't? No.
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: Well, not that I didn't, she didn't call me or
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: I called her or whatever it was. They just didn't
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: have any phone records like they're doing now.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: And then right on the heels of that, Joe Henry
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: told me the thing that stuck with me harder than
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: anything else that whole afternoon. Because Joseph Hoag's got this
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: line he uses that everybody Joe Henry points to, everybody
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: who could ever back up his story, is conveniently dead.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: And Joe Henry hears that exact same fact, and he
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: has a different take.
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: Did the Texas Rangers come by at all in the
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: last few years to talk to you?
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: No, not since that part of the investigation. Yeah.
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: You know, the thing is, you've had a lot of
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: people that have pointed a finger at you.
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: Sure, certainly.
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: I mean, I have no idea what that's like.
• 19:09
  Speaker 4: Well, it's a frightful thing, but the thing that bothers
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: me more than anything about that is the fact that
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: no one came to talk to my mom or the
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: neighbor next door that saw me or the man at
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: the grocery store, Max Roberts, who, when I bought groceries
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: that night.
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: Saw me.
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: And they didn't talk to them. Really? And so they're
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: all dead now.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: To Trooper Hogue, it's a little too convenient. Every witness gone.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: The way Joe Henry puts it, this is an injustice
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: that has affected his entire life. The cops never bothered
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: to go check the people who could have cleared him,
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: and now it's too late. And it will be too
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: late forever. And the maddening thing to me is that
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: either of those things could be true. Our conversation continues
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: after the break. Here's a thing that happens about an
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: hour into really sitting with somebody in their house, in
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: their living room, on their sofa. It stops being about
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: the tells and the timelines and what a member of
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: law enforcement heard on a tape, and it becomes about
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: a person. In this quiet little house with Joe's family
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: pictures up on the wall, in an afternoon that he'd
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: made time for to answer a bunch of unpleasant questions,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: I asked him what all those years of suspicion had
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: done to him.
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: It's a very hurtful thing, and what really hurts me
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: more than anything... is that we're good friends, or still
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: are good friends as far as I'm concerned. And the
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: fact of the matter is that to have to go
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: through all that, being on the kind of the dark
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: side of the fence, really hurt me. I mean, it
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: bothered me a lot, or still bothers me. But I mean,
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: I can't do anything but just say what happened. And
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: I wish that he'd come to talk to my folks
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: at the time, my neighbor. Well, they may have talked
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: to Angela. I don't remember now. They did. About where
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: I was and all that kind of stuff. But it's
• 21:10
  Speaker 4: too late now. I mean, they're all gone.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: That friendship is the thing Joe keeps coming back to.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: And he told me about something Kelly said to him once,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: years before any of this, that's always stuck with him.
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: The only thing that ever troubled me about what she
• 21:25
  Speaker 4: said to me, she said this. She said, I would
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: rather be drunk than anything else.
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: What did she say that? I don't remember you saying that.
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: She said it wouldn't work one night. She said, I'd
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: rather be drunk than anything else. And I was troubled
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: by that.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: 30 years later, and that's still one of the things
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: he thinks about. Joe told me how Angela died.
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: Angela called me one day at work. She was looking
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: at a lot of you, and I hadn't seen her
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: in probably, we were still friends, but we weren't boyfriend
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: and girlfriend anymore. And she lived down there, and she
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: was having some financial troubles. And I would give her
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: hamburgers and things. She'd come by and stuff like that.
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: Never really gave her any money because you start doing that,
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: then you're kind of tied into that. But anyway, Angela
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: called me one day, and I answered the phone. It
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: was after I closed. And she said, hey, I'm in
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: the hospital. I said, really? And she said, yeah. She said,
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: I'm going to have to have surgery tonight. And she said,
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: I have no circulation in my legs. I said, why
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: is that? And she said, well, I don't know. So
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: we talked a little bit, and I said, okay, well, Angela,
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: I thought I'd talk to you and find out how
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: that goes tomorrow. She said, okay. Well, she died during
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: the surgery. And a friend of hers called me the
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: next day named Bill. Bill's died since then. And when
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: Angela called, he said, hey. And I knew what he
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: was going to say. And he said, well, I'm glad
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: y'all got to talk. And I said, yeah, we did.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: And then it was about time for me to go.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: I thanked Joe for his time, and then he said
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: something else to me.
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: Well, Joe, I appreciate you making so much time for me.
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: I'm glad you're doing it. I'm sorry it's such a.
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: It stinks to have to talk about this over and over.
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: I know we're good. You're a good guy. I trust you.
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: I think you're a good man. You're not exploitive.
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: I appreciate that.
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: You know that kind of stuff.
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: I try.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: It's kind of funny that he said that, since I'm
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: the guy who drove all the way down there to
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: figure out if he had something to do.
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: With Kelly's murder.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: To the guy about to put his voice on a
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: true crime show that a whole lot of people are
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: going to hear. Did Joe Henry have anything to do
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: with Kelly Wilson's disappearance? If he's culpable in any way,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: of course I'm glad I pushed him a little. If
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: he's innocent, well, I don't know. I got in my
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: car and drove back out of Gilmer, and I could
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: not have told you which man I had just spent
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: the last hour and a half with. Hoag had listened
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: to that same voice on the interview tape, and he
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: came away certain of Joe's guilt. I sat there three
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: feet away from Joe and came away still unable to
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: make up my mind. Because I can't let go of
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: my suspicions, just like what we know about Joe and
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: his past, the way he acted toward Kelly. But at
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: the same time, I don't have anything concrete to go on.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: And Kelly Wilson is still out there somewhere, 30-some years gone,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: and her mom and her dad still don't have her back.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: So I'm not going to sit here and tell you
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: what to believe about Joe Henry. I'm just going to
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: do what I've tried to do since the very first
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: episode of this show. Lay it all out there for
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: you as honest as I know how and let you
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: decide for yourself. We'll be back soon. Deviltown is a
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: free-range production in association with Imperative Entertainment. The show was
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: created by me, Wes Ferguson. Our producer is Aislinn Gattis.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: Theme music by Robert Ellis. Stay up to date with
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: our progress on the story when you sign up for
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: our free newsletter at UnforgottenPod.com. That's UnforgottenPod.com because our other
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: podcast is The Unforgotten. As always, thank you for listening.