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Hell and Gone Murder Line: Gail Vaught Part 2 · Hell and Gone: Murder Line

0:08
Speaker 1: School of Humans.
0:13
Speaker 2: On October seventeenth, nineteen eighty, just after ten am, the
0:17
Speaker 2: body of Gael Vault was found in Washington County, Arkansas,
0:21
Speaker 2: near an area called Blake Weddington.
0:24
Speaker 1: Gail was just twenty one years old.
0:26
Speaker 2: She worked with mostly male colleagues on a road crew
0:28
Speaker 2: building Highway seventy one in Fayetbule. Gail was wearing a
0:33
Speaker 2: flannel shirt and a blue Michelin jacket. I know I
0:36
Speaker 2: mentioned this last week, and I'm mentioning it again because
0:39
Speaker 2: what Gail was wearing and the order that everything happened
0:42
Speaker 2: in will become crucial in this murder investigation. Gail's legs
0:47
Speaker 2: were open. She was naked from the waist down except
0:50
Speaker 2: for a pair of torn and filthy white socks. Last week,
0:54
Speaker 2: we explored three main theories. One that Gail's murder could
0:58
Speaker 2: have been connected to drug dealing, to some kind of
1:01
Speaker 2: Ozark mafia, or possibly to a drug dealer who was
1:05
Speaker 2: trying to send a message to her boyfriend Ray Foreman
1:08
Speaker 2: by targeting Gail. The second theory was that Gail was
1:11
Speaker 2: the victim of domestic violence that on Thursday night, something
1:16
Speaker 2: happened between Gail's boyfriend Ray and Gail something that spiraled
1:20
Speaker 2: out of control and ended with her dead. The third
1:24
Speaker 2: was that someone else, someone the police overlooked, maybe even
1:27
Speaker 2: a stranger, raped and killed Gail.
1:31
Speaker 1: One of the main.
1:32
Speaker 2: Questions we talked about last week was the condom, the
1:35
Speaker 2: brand Tickled Fancy, that was found near Gail's body. A
1:40
Speaker 2: lot of people have wondered if Gail was actually sexually assaulted,
1:43
Speaker 2: or if that condom was a red herring, if it
1:45
Speaker 2: could have come from someone else, maybe some teenagers who
1:48
Speaker 2: used that area for parking. This week, we're going to
1:52
Speaker 2: do a deep dive into the Gail Vault case and
1:55
Speaker 2: see if we can answer the question of what really
1:58
Speaker 2: happened to her in those woods on October seventeenth, nineteen
2:01
Speaker 2: eighty I'm Catherine Townsend. For the past five years of
2:06
Speaker 2: working on my true crime podcast, Helen Gone, I've learned
2:09
Speaker 2: that there is no such thing as a small town
2:11
Speaker 2: where murder never happens. If you have a case you'd
2:15
Speaker 2: like me to look into, you can reach out to
2:17
Speaker 2: us at our Helen Gone Murder line at six seven
2:20
Speaker 2: eight seven four four six one four five. That's six
2:24
Speaker 2: seven eight seven four four six one four five. This
2:28
Speaker 2: is Helen Gone Murder line. We've been looking at the
3:01
Speaker 2: Gael Vaux case file. We filed a Foyer request. We
3:04
Speaker 2: wanted to understand more about each of these three theories,
3:08
Speaker 2: so our research assistant Amy reached out to Gail's sister, Teresa.
3:13
Speaker 2: As we said last week, Teresa has been working with
3:15
Speaker 2: a private investigator named Marty for the past few years,
3:19
Speaker 2: and Marty was the person who first talked to me
3:21
Speaker 2: about this case. Teresa and her sister Gail both came
3:25
Speaker 2: from the small town of mountain Berg. Even though Gail's
3:28
Speaker 2: parents have passed away, Teresa has still not given up
3:32
Speaker 2: hope she might be able to find answers and one
3:34
Speaker 2: day to understand what happened to her sister.
3:37
Speaker 3: She went to two year college and played basketball. Who
3:40
Speaker 3: is really big into sports. She didn't have a lot
3:43
Speaker 3: of boyfriends, but she had a lot of guy friends.
3:46
Speaker 2: You know.
3:47
Speaker 3: She hung out more with me guys at friends than
3:51
Speaker 3: she did girls. And I think it was Coachy was
3:54
Speaker 3: so tall, you know, she was like six foot one that.
3:57
Speaker 3: She had a very outgoing personality, made friends easily. She
4:03
Speaker 3: was a free spirit. She was kind, you know. She
4:07
Speaker 3: lived in Sayedville and I lived between Van Buren and
4:11
Speaker 3: own Cropper County, and she used to be at our
4:15
Speaker 3: house all the time that you know, she had just
4:18
Speaker 3: kind of once she moved it up here to Saydville,
4:21
Speaker 3: she found a different circle of friends. I always felt
4:25
Speaker 3: like her friends were the friends that if Gail wasn't
4:28
Speaker 3: their friends, that they wouldn't have any friends. He was
4:31
Speaker 3: just kind of everybody better. You know, most of her
4:34
Speaker 3: friends were not the most outstanding people that you know,
4:39
Speaker 3: they needed a friend and that was her.
4:42
Speaker 2: Like pretty much everyone who talked to us about Gail,
4:45
Speaker 2: Teresa told us about what a nice and wonderful person
4:49
Speaker 2: her sister was. However, she did say that because Gail
4:53
Speaker 2: was so nice, sometimes Gail would befriend people who, it
4:56
Speaker 2: seems like Teresa believed might not have been the best
4:59
Speaker 2: influences on Gail. Teresa said she didn't know Ray Forman,
5:03
Speaker 2: Gail's boyfriend, that well.
5:05
Speaker 3: She was dating a guy by the name of Ray
5:08
Speaker 3: Forman at the time. He had been at the house
5:11
Speaker 3: a couple of times, and the last time was probably
5:15
Speaker 3: about two weeks before he was murdered, and they had
5:19
Speaker 3: picked up my son, which he was three at the time,
5:23
Speaker 3: and took him to the Fort Smith's Fair. It was
5:27
Speaker 3: kind of late when they got home, and I offered
5:29
Speaker 3: them to the Saturday night you know, where he had
5:31
Speaker 3: spend the night and then go back the next morning.
5:33
Speaker 3: And it was like, oh, my race got to work,
5:36
Speaker 3: you know, this kind of stuff. But he was a
5:38
Speaker 3: nice looking man. But he was very quiet, you know,
5:42
Speaker 3: and that just made been his personality. I don't know,
5:45
Speaker 3: never any mention of any kind of issues or problems,
5:47
Speaker 3: but we didn't speak very often, you know that then
5:50
Speaker 3: we had had a seal zone.
5:52
Speaker 2: We talked last week about the fact that there have
5:54
Speaker 2: been allegations of domestic violence with Ray and his ex
5:57
Speaker 2: wife Lynn. Ray split up with Lynn a few months
6:00
Speaker 2: before he started dating Gail. Teresa said that to her knowledge,
6:04
Speaker 2: Gail and Ray were very happy and she was not
6:06
Speaker 2: aware of any problems in their relationship or any domestic violence.
6:12
Speaker 2: Teresa talked about her frustration with the police investigation, and
6:16
Speaker 2: I really sympathize with us, by the way, because listeners
6:19
Speaker 2: of this podcast know that so many of the cases
6:23
Speaker 2: that we cover, we see the same pattern. The story
6:26
Speaker 2: of what happened to Gail has changed over the years.
6:30
Speaker 2: It seemed like to Teresa there was information that was
6:33
Speaker 2: being added and being taken away After a while, she
6:36
Speaker 2: said she really wasn't sure what to believe.
6:38
Speaker 3: The story changus was to please them. What time as
6:42
Speaker 3: the time serio as you're talking about.
6:45
Speaker 2: As an example of what Teresa defined as this changing story,
6:49
Speaker 2: she said that early in the investigation, one of the
6:51
Speaker 2: deputies who was at the crime scene told her they
6:54
Speaker 2: found white chipped paint near Gail's body, but there's nothing
6:58
Speaker 2: in the record about that. There's nothing about white paint ships.
7:01
Speaker 2: Later there was a rumor about orange paint ships being
7:04
Speaker 2: found near the body. That's nowhere in the official record either.
7:08
Speaker 2: Teresa also talked about Ray Foreman's alibi.
7:11
Speaker 3: The police tell us that Ray had gone to a
7:14
Speaker 3: party with about thirty people and that he had a
7:19
Speaker 3: lot of alibis that as time has gone passed from
7:24
Speaker 3: the police, who has changed to where he was out
7:28
Speaker 3: running around doing kind of dope deel.
7:35
Speaker 2: Teresa also discussed something that I mentioned in last week's episode.
7:38
Speaker 2: She talked about Ray's alibi and about that weird alarm
7:42
Speaker 2: clock story. Remember, Ray said he was out all night
7:45
Speaker 2: with his friend Jody, someone who we know Gail did
7:48
Speaker 2: not like. He claimed that he borrowed her jeep and
7:51
Speaker 2: that she just allowed him to do that. And as
7:54
Speaker 2: I said last week, I do find that unbelievable. Everyone
7:56
Speaker 2: who knew Gail said she never gave her car to anyone.
7:59
Speaker 2: She didn't want to walk. She was always the one
8:02
Speaker 2: to drive her vehicle. So the idea that she would
8:04
Speaker 2: give her vehicle to her boyfriend to allow him to
8:07
Speaker 2: go out and make drug deals and just be fine
8:09
Speaker 2: with that, knowing she had to go pick her paycheck
8:11
Speaker 2: up the next morning seems very unlikely, but that is
8:14
Speaker 2: his story. The next morning, he drove Jody home and
8:18
Speaker 2: then he drove back to the apartment that he shared
8:21
Speaker 2: with Gail, and he still had her jeep. Ray claimed
8:24
Speaker 2: that he parked the jeep, and he said that he
8:27
Speaker 2: got into his own truck. He got into his vehicle
8:30
Speaker 2: and slept there. This was very odd, and he said
8:33
Speaker 2: something else that was odd. He said that he saw
8:36
Speaker 2: an alarm clock on the dashboard of his truck and
8:39
Speaker 2: that the truck door was a little bit ajar. Teresa
8:42
Speaker 2: called out the weirdness of this story.
8:44
Speaker 3: There's something in there about an alarm clock that he
8:48
Speaker 3: decided gale up maddenning and put it in his truck.
8:51
Speaker 3: But the bottom line is, you know, on a Thursday
8:53
Speaker 3: night where all of this SAT's happened, I can't feel
8:57
Speaker 3: like that was a coincidence.
8:59
Speaker 2: Again, this is another question we need to answer. We
9:01
Speaker 2: need to figure out exactly what Ray was talking about.
9:05
Speaker 2: We need to know if he meant that it was
9:07
Speaker 2: a some kind of a clock that was in the
9:09
Speaker 2: truck or it was an actual alarm clock that got
9:11
Speaker 2: put out.
9:11
Speaker 1: There, because that was bizarre.
9:14
Speaker 2: What if Ray slept in the truck, not just because
9:17
Speaker 2: he was hungover, but because he did not want to
9:19
Speaker 2: go in that house and face Gail. What if while
9:22
Speaker 2: he was sleeping, she walked out of the house and
9:24
Speaker 2: that's why she had no shoes on, she approached him
9:28
Speaker 2: in the truck, and they got into a knockdown, drag
9:30
Speaker 2: out argument right there. I'm going to come back to
9:33
Speaker 2: that later. For now, let's go through the rest of
9:36
Speaker 2: Ray's albi Amy and I discussed the fact that right
9:40
Speaker 2: before Gail left home, she was preparing dinner. According to Teresa,
9:45
Speaker 2: Gail was cooking beans and cornbread.
9:47
Speaker 3: He had started cooking beans and corn bread and stuff,
9:51
Speaker 3: and then somebody turned the stoves off and there weren't
9:54
Speaker 3: com points to Cook.
9:56
Speaker 2: We looked at the autopsy report and there weren't any
9:59
Speaker 2: stomach contents listed. I don't know if that's because of
10:02
Speaker 2: Gail's injuries or if it was something that just wasn't noted,
10:06
Speaker 2: but it would have been great to know if any
10:08
Speaker 2: food was in her stomach at that time. Teresa said
10:13
Speaker 2: that she believed Ray had something to do with Gail's murder.
10:17
Speaker 2: She said that she believed that something started that night
10:20
Speaker 2: before Ray left the house, something that potentially set him off,
10:25
Speaker 2: Which brings us to another mystery in the case, because remember,
10:28
Speaker 2: Gail was found wearing only a pair of socks. The
10:31
Speaker 2: socks were dirty on the bottom and they had holes
10:34
Speaker 2: in them, and police.
10:36
Speaker 1: Said they never did find Gail's shoes.
10:39
Speaker 2: Now, Teresa believes that that means Gail was kidnapped from
10:43
Speaker 2: her apartment, possibly at gunpoint.
10:46
Speaker 3: You know, I'm just surmising from every little bit of
10:48
Speaker 3: piece of God. I can't say for sure that I
10:51
Speaker 3: feel like it he right killed her, that I feel
10:57
Speaker 3: in my heart that he knew that it was going
10:59
Speaker 3: to happen and that he didn't do anything to stop it.
11:03
Speaker 3: But you know, he may have been part of it.
11:06
Speaker 3: I don't know, but I do know I do have
11:08
Speaker 3: that feeling that he knew what was going on and
11:11
Speaker 3: he tracked her in her apartment. You know, if he
11:15
Speaker 3: didn't do it, then he helped set her up and
11:19
Speaker 3: where it happened. I'm sorry, I know there has to
11:22
Speaker 3: be difficult to hear. Well, you know, I lived with
11:26
Speaker 3: it for you know, decades, and you know it's kind
11:31
Speaker 3: of like you get numbed and stuff. That's right. Criminals
11:35
Speaker 3: can be so evil is because they're so used to
11:37
Speaker 3: seeing it. And I was the nurse, so you know,
11:40
Speaker 3: I've kind of hardened to a lot of that. So
11:43
Speaker 3: it's fine. You know, if this is going to find closure,
11:47
Speaker 3: it's not a big deal.
11:56
Speaker 2: One of the theories work exploring is the idea this
11:58
Speaker 2: could have been connected to drug dealing. So we need
12:01
Speaker 2: to know how big, how serious a drug user was
12:04
Speaker 2: Gail and how big a drug dealer was her boyfriend Ray.
12:09
Speaker 2: Teresa clarified that she said her sister did smoke pot
12:12
Speaker 2: quite a bit. She said she did marijuana and did
12:15
Speaker 2: ask it occasionally. This was pretty much the same thing
12:18
Speaker 2: that we heard from Gail's friends. Gail was not involved
12:21
Speaker 2: in heavy drugs or heavy drug dealing. The sheriff of
12:25
Speaker 2: Washington County at the time of Gail's murder was a
12:27
Speaker 2: man named Herb Marshall. Even though Herb left office shortly
12:31
Speaker 2: after Gail's body was found, he has always said this
12:34
Speaker 2: is a case that has stayed with him and that
12:36
Speaker 2: he wishes he could have gotten justice for Gail and
12:39
Speaker 2: for her family. A few years ago, Sheriff Marshall told Marty,
12:47
Speaker 2: the private investigator who first brought us the case, that
12:50
Speaker 2: he Herb believed that Gail was kidnapped from her home.
12:54
Speaker 2: I wanted to know if he still felt that way.
12:56
Speaker 2: Herb is now in his eighties. He admits that his
12:59
Speaker 2: memory is not what it once was, and on top
13:01
Speaker 2: of that, he's been having some serious health issues. But
13:05
Speaker 2: he's still wants to help us in any way that
13:07
Speaker 2: he can. He wants to figure out what happened to
13:09
Speaker 2: Gayle Vaught. It's clear that the idea of this unsolved
13:13
Speaker 2: murder in his county has tormented him over the years.
13:16
Speaker 4: I just got out of a pill a week ago,
13:20
Speaker 4: and mainly I'm not in that great in shape, but
13:23
Speaker 4: I'll do what I can for you.
13:26
Speaker 2: Herb said he believed in his gut that Ray had
13:30
Speaker 2: something to do with Gail's death. He also said he
13:33
Speaker 2: believed she had been forced out of her home, possibly
13:35
Speaker 2: at gunpoint. Herb said he believed this based on the
13:38
Speaker 2: fact there was the food on the stove that Theresa
13:40
Speaker 2: mentioned and that there was food in the oven. This
13:44
Speaker 2: made police believe that Gayle's time of death happened sometime
13:48
Speaker 2: late on Thursday night. The former sheriff, Herb Marshall explained
13:53
Speaker 2: what actually killed Gail and we weren't wrong.
13:56
Speaker 1: Her death was horrific.
14:02
Speaker 4: They made it try to look like from which she
14:06
Speaker 4: wasn't at the grime and saying had actually what killed her.
14:12
Speaker 4: And she had a bullet hole right behind her right
14:15
Speaker 4: at ere. I believe it's a twenty two caliper which
14:19
Speaker 4: she hid, that bullingncked her unconscious, but whoever shot herself
14:25
Speaker 4: that killer.
14:27
Speaker 2: Gail had been shot in the head with a twenty
14:29
Speaker 2: two caliber bullet, but the bullet fragmented in her skull
14:33
Speaker 2: and so it did not penetrate her brain, so this
14:36
Speaker 2: was not a fatal wound. Sometime during all this, Gail's
14:41
Speaker 2: killer took off her jeans and underwear. We know based
14:45
Speaker 2: on the fecal matter that was in her underwear that
14:48
Speaker 2: she was dead or dying when this was done. And
14:52
Speaker 2: then at some point during this horrific sexual assault, her
14:55
Speaker 2: killer realized that Gail was not dead.
14:59
Speaker 4: She apparently was a fading in the back behind the cheek.
15:04
Speaker 4: When the cheap backed over her, said Kilder was a
15:09
Speaker 4: She bled to death and eternally from her splain the
15:14
Speaker 4: splain or some portion in her she actually bled to
15:19
Speaker 4: death internally.
15:21
Speaker 2: So the killer got in his vehicle and backed over her.
15:26
Speaker 2: When the vehicle backed over her, it caused catastrophic injuries
15:30
Speaker 2: to her pelvis, a lot of her internal organs. Basically,
15:34
Speaker 2: the car tore apart the bottom half of her body
15:38
Speaker 2: and led to her bleeding to.
15:39
Speaker 1: Death in the woods alone.
15:41
Speaker 2: It's one of the most horrific murders I've ever read
15:44
Speaker 2: about herb said he was focused on Ray because mainly
15:49
Speaker 2: of the drug dealing and the bad associations he had
15:52
Speaker 2: with him. He said he believed that when he talked
15:54
Speaker 2: to Ray, Ray was on the cusp of confessing to something.
15:57
Speaker 4: In my mind, I had him at one time.
16:02
Speaker 1: He couldn't answer the question of what the motive would
16:04
Speaker 1: have been.
16:05
Speaker 4: I'm not sure of picking event I have a dozen things.
16:10
Speaker 4: He could have been drugs because he had her on
16:13
Speaker 4: some drugs. He's Rudi him sale.
16:21
Speaker 2: I know that smoking pot was a much bigger deal,
16:24
Speaker 2: especially in Arkansas in nineteen eighty, but so far I
16:28
Speaker 2: haven't seen anything other than some bragging that happened years
16:32
Speaker 2: later by a couple of guys who were in jail
16:35
Speaker 2: and might have had their own reasons for wanting to
16:38
Speaker 2: seem like dangerous drug dealers. I haven't seen any evidence
16:42
Speaker 2: of any type of drug dealing connected to Gale's death,
16:46
Speaker 2: but police did think the murder might have something to
16:48
Speaker 2: do with drugs, so let's explore that again. Was Ray
16:52
Speaker 2: really this big time drug dealer. Amy did some research
16:56
Speaker 2: into pills because we were wondering why were there seventeen
17:00
Speaker 2: thousand pills being confiscated from these guys. It turns out
17:04
Speaker 2: that back in the day, these pills, these very strong
17:07
Speaker 2: caffeine pills, were kind of the equivalent of selling adderall
17:10
Speaker 2: and sometimes dealers would come up with more creative ways
17:14
Speaker 2: to get people high, including sometimes melting the pills down
17:19
Speaker 2: into liquid and injecting them into the bloodstream. I don't
17:22
Speaker 2: actually know if injecting speed with an IV would make
17:27
Speaker 2: it hit your bloodstream faster. I don't know what kind
17:29
Speaker 2: of effects that would have, but I can imagine those
17:33
Speaker 2: caffeine pills and those quantities would.
17:35
Speaker 1: Make people act crazy.
17:36
Speaker 2: But at the same time, even in those quantities, this
17:40
Speaker 2: doesn't point to Ray or his cohorts being these big
17:44
Speaker 2: time drug dealers. Caffeine pills in marijuana are both legal today,
17:47
Speaker 2: and even though this was a long time ago. Again,
17:51
Speaker 2: I'm not really buying into the drug dealer theory, at
17:53
Speaker 2: least not with the evidence that we've seen so far.
17:59
Speaker 2: We asked her if there was anyone left alive since
18:01
Speaker 2: Ray and Randy have both passed away. He said, we
18:04
Speaker 2: should talk to Joy Ray's friend.
18:07
Speaker 4: I'll tell you there's one to living and hers and
18:11
Speaker 4: that knows for sure, and that person won't tell it
18:15
Speaker 4: to hey 'all. Jardy is still alive. He should be
18:21
Speaker 4: in the late seventies. For the last time I heard
18:24
Speaker 4: he was still alive.
18:27
Speaker 1: We need to find Jody.
18:37
Speaker 2: So, if Ray did kill Gail, why did he do it.
18:41
Speaker 2: We were trying to find out if there had been
18:43
Speaker 2: anyone else in Gail's life who might have seen signs
18:46
Speaker 2: of domestic violence. Let's go back to the evidence, even
18:51
Speaker 2: though a lot of the caseball pages are missing.
18:53
Speaker 1: We know where Gail's worksite was.
18:55
Speaker 2: We know where she lived in the trailer court in
18:57
Speaker 2: the basement apartment she shared with Ray that was owned
19:00
Speaker 2: by Ray's friend Barry Frizell. We know that at eight
19:04
Speaker 2: pm on October seventeenth, Gail talked to one of her
19:07
Speaker 2: supervisors at work. We know that she confirmed that they
19:11
Speaker 2: were not going to work the next day because of
19:12
Speaker 2: all the heavy rain they'd been having, but she told
19:15
Speaker 2: Joe she planned on coming up to pick up her
19:17
Speaker 2: paycheck on Friday morning. That conversation with Joe was the
19:22
Speaker 2: last known conversation that Gail ever had with anyone except
19:25
Speaker 2: her killer. Amy talked to Barry Frizell's brother. His name
19:30
Speaker 2: is Ted, and he said he knew Gail well. He
19:33
Speaker 2: said he hung around Gail and Ray during their relationship,
19:36
Speaker 2: and he insists there was no violence in their relationship.
19:40
Speaker 1: He said that Ray adored Gail.
19:43
Speaker 2: Ted said he didn't mind sharing information, but he said
19:46
Speaker 2: he prefers not to be on the podcast, which obviously
19:49
Speaker 2: is fine, but he did want to share his theory
19:52
Speaker 2: about what may have happened to Gail Vaught. He said
19:55
Speaker 2: he has a suspect in mine. He believes Ray's ex wife, Lynn,
19:59
Speaker 2: may have played a role in Gail's death. Gail never
20:04
Speaker 2: told anyone that Ray abused her, but we do know
20:08
Speaker 2: from the case file that Gail did make a comment
20:11
Speaker 2: at one point about being afraid of Ray because of
20:14
Speaker 2: what Ray had allegedly done to his ex wife. And
20:17
Speaker 2: to figure out what happened to her, we need to
20:19
Speaker 2: figure out the actual time of death. So again we
20:24
Speaker 2: come back to the crime scene and back to the evidence,
20:27
Speaker 2: and it strikes me that this case, more than anyone
20:29
Speaker 2: I've seen in a long time, has so much evidence
20:32
Speaker 2: that appears to be contradictory. So we really have to
20:36
Speaker 2: zero in and look at Gail's pattern of life. One
20:40
Speaker 2: of what I consider the biggest breakthroughs of this case
20:43
Speaker 2: is when we looked at the autopsy report and we
20:46
Speaker 2: figured out that the time of death is almost certainly wrong.
20:50
Speaker 2: Doctor Fawmi Malak, the medical examiner, did his forensic testing
20:53
Speaker 2: at eleven thirty am on October seventeenth, nineteen eighty. Now, initially,
20:58
Speaker 2: he said he believed that based on the forensics, that
21:01
Speaker 2: Gail had been dead between six and ten hours. That
21:05
Speaker 2: would put the time of death sometime between one thirty
21:08
Speaker 2: and five thirty am, But elsewhere in the autopsy report,
21:12
Speaker 2: doctor Malik indicated the time of death had been before midnight.
21:16
Speaker 2: This more closely aligns to what the police believed. They
21:21
Speaker 2: believed that Gail was killed that night, that she had
21:25
Speaker 2: been making dinner at home, and that she was either
21:27
Speaker 2: kidnapped from her home or something bad happened to her,
21:29
Speaker 2: something started in the home and went out to the woods.
21:32
Speaker 2: But the evidence contradicts this because first there's the fact that,
21:37
Speaker 2: according to the autopsy report, rigor mortis had just started
21:41
Speaker 2: in Gaile's face, it had not yet moved down her body,
21:44
Speaker 2: which would indicate that she had only been dead for
21:47
Speaker 2: a few hours. Let's go back to the tire tracks.
21:55
Speaker 2: Remember it rained really hard the night before. It was
21:58
Speaker 2: actually pouring torrentially at two am. But according to the
22:02
Speaker 2: autopsy report, Gail's hair and her clothes were described as
22:07
Speaker 2: wet but not saturated. And then there were the fresh
22:11
Speaker 2: tire tracks. They had a lot of detail in them.
22:14
Speaker 2: If Gail had been killed prior to this torrential rain,
22:17
Speaker 2: the tire tracks would have been obliterated in all that mud.
22:21
Speaker 2: Every single factor we look at points to the fact
22:24
Speaker 2: that Gail's time of death was much later than the
22:26
Speaker 2: police believe.
22:28
Speaker 1: I believe that it was.
22:29
Speaker 2: On Friday morning. Then we go back again to the condom.
22:34
Speaker 2: One of the biggest questions we've had in this case
22:36
Speaker 2: was was the condom a red herring? Was it left
22:39
Speaker 2: over from another couple hooking up in the woods, or
22:42
Speaker 2: could Gail's killer have planted it there? Did they want
22:45
Speaker 2: to make it look like this was a rape and
22:47
Speaker 2: murder and that that had been the motive. As we
22:50
Speaker 2: said last week, forensic testing on Gail's body revealed the
22:53
Speaker 2: possible presence of seamen in Gaal's vagina, but when swabs
22:56
Speaker 2: from Gayale's vagina were tested, they tested negative for sperm.
23:01
Speaker 1: We explained the discrepancy.
23:02
Speaker 2: We said that the semen could have been from consensual
23:05
Speaker 2: sex she had with Ray on Wednesday night. The fact
23:09
Speaker 2: that Gayle's genes and underwear were removed make it, in
23:12
Speaker 2: my opinion, less likely that the condom was completely irrelevant.
23:17
Speaker 1: That seems like a big coincidence.
23:20
Speaker 2: However, tragically, somewhere between the Arkansas State Crime Lab in
23:24
Speaker 2: Washington County, the condom was lost years ago, so there's
23:28
Speaker 2: no way to test it for DNA. Now, so did
23:35
Speaker 2: gailes killer stage a crime scene? Did he try to
23:38
Speaker 2: frame someone? I think the framing theory is becoming more
23:43
Speaker 2: and more unlikely. People who are discussing that and making
23:46
Speaker 2: comments online about it are for the most part, looking
23:49
Speaker 2: at this case with a modern day CSI Dick Wolf
23:52
Speaker 2: savvy lens. And we have to remember that this was
23:56
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty. CSI did not exist. People were not watching
23:59
Speaker 2: Dick Wolf shows. DNA was not even a remote possibility.
24:02
Speaker 2: No one had ever heard of it. And we have
24:05
Speaker 2: to also ask ourselves who was using condoms in the
24:08
Speaker 2: Arkansas Ozarks Back then? This was also pre AIDS, so
24:12
Speaker 2: men who were past their teenage years, in their mid
24:15
Speaker 2: and late twenties. In that age group, those guys who
24:18
Speaker 2: were in relationships tended not to use condoms that much.
24:22
Speaker 2: There were some exceptions. There are a few groups of
24:25
Speaker 2: people who, in my investigative experience on cold cases, and
24:29
Speaker 2: as a PI who's done a lot of marital surveillance,
24:31
Speaker 2: men who cheat carry condoms. Those are the guys who
24:35
Speaker 2: carry boxes of condoms in their car, often in the
24:37
Speaker 2: glove compartment. So now we need to take a look
24:45
Speaker 2: at the third theory. We've talked about domestic violence, We've
24:48
Speaker 2: talked about drug dealing. What about the possibility that a
24:51
Speaker 2: stranger sexually assaulted and murdered Gale, Which brings us back
24:56
Speaker 2: to the man who said that he saw Gail hitchhiking.
24:59
Speaker 2: Laith Lane, a twenty nine year old who was driving
25:02
Speaker 2: his wife to work at around six fifteen am on
25:04
Speaker 2: the morning of a Osober seventeenth. The officer who interviewed
25:08
Speaker 2: laith Lane noted that he was acting strangely during the interview,
25:14
Speaker 2: acting nervous and in fact, the officer wrote that Laith's
25:18
Speaker 2: behavior was so unusual that he said he wanted to
25:22
Speaker 2: check the FBI background details on this person. Remember that
25:26
Speaker 2: laith said that on the morning of October seventeenth, he
25:29
Speaker 2: was on the road driving his wife to work by
25:31
Speaker 2: six fifteen am. Later, though in another interview, he told
25:36
Speaker 2: a slightly different story. He said that he dropped his
25:39
Speaker 2: children off at daycare. He said he saw Gail on
25:42
Speaker 2: the hill by the Fayetteville Mall. And then when we
25:45
Speaker 2: talked to Teresa, she dropped another bombshell. She said that
25:49
Speaker 2: around midnight or a little after in the early morning
25:52
Speaker 2: hours of October seventeenth, that someone else had supposedly seen
25:56
Speaker 2: Gail hitchhiking. This person was a police officer.
26:00
Speaker 3: He was seen now on one of the highways by
26:03
Speaker 3: some Farmington police officer, but about midnight. But and it
26:07
Speaker 3: was raining, and he should have sought and he didn't.
26:16
Speaker 3: I have been talking to different like state police, different
26:21
Speaker 3: deputies from Zaydville, you know, whoever Marty could find me
26:26
Speaker 3: to talk to, and nobody ever told me that case
26:29
Speaker 3: was closed until about maybe a year ago. And I've
26:34
Speaker 3: been talking to him since twenty thirteen, and then all
26:37
Speaker 3: of a sudden the case closed. They said if new
26:41
Speaker 3: evidence came, then they reopened it. Well, what they have
26:45
Speaker 3: said is that they believe Brakforman did it, and there's
26:48
Speaker 3: just no way to prove it. So in their minds,
26:51
Speaker 3: they've already solved it, you know, with no evidence.
26:57
Speaker 2: There are so many more questions we still need answered.
27:01
Speaker 2: We need to know more about who was involved in
27:03
Speaker 2: the drug scene in that friend group, need to know
27:06
Speaker 2: more about the relationship between Ray and Gail. We need
27:10
Speaker 2: to figure out what happened on the morning of October seventeenth,
27:13
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty, because that's the crucial time period. What happened
27:18
Speaker 2: at Gale and Ray's apartment after he came home that morning,
27:23
Speaker 2: And what if anything set her out on that path
27:26
Speaker 2: walking along the highway, and who might have picked her
27:30
Speaker 2: up along that dark highway. To get the answers, I
27:34
Speaker 2: may have to go back into those woods.
27:38
Speaker 1: I'm Catherine Townsend.
27:39
Speaker 2: This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line
27:45
Speaker 2: is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts.
27:48
Speaker 2: It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced
27:51
Speaker 2: by Gabby Watts. Music contributed by Ben Sale. Executive producers
27:56
Speaker 2: are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Elsie Curley. If you
28:00
Speaker 2: have a case you'd like me to look into, you
28:02
Speaker 2: can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder
28:04
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28:09
Speaker 2: That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five.
28:25
Speaker 1: School of Humans