Latest / True Crime: Killer Confessions / The Strongbox in Cutter Creek: 48 Years of Hidden Truths
Transcript
- 0:03Speaker 1: It was still dark when Ronald Cox's boot struck something
- 0:07Speaker 1: solid in the shallows of Cutter Creek. Fourteen inches of water,
- 0:11Speaker 1: four miles south of Harwick, Arkansas. And there, silted upright
- 0:16Speaker 1: like it had simply been waiting, sat an olive green metal,
- 0:20Speaker 1: strong box.
- 0:21Speaker 2: The stencil on its.
- 0:22Speaker 1: Face read, Harwick County Transit Authority Operating Fund. The tag
- 0:27Speaker 1: beneath it read, March 1971. Cox called the sheriff at 6.47
- 0:33Speaker 1: in the morning on March 14, 2019. Deputies cracked the
- 0:38Speaker 1: padlock by eight. Inside, $ 31, 000 in bundled tens and twenties,
- 0:45Speaker 1: partially fused together. A vinyl bank bag from Harwick Savings
- 0:50Speaker 1: and Loan. And beneath all of it, a single black
- 0:53Speaker 1: and white Polaroid photograph. A man's face, three-quarter profile, a
- 0:58Speaker 1: fence and vehicle behind him, The emulsion had clouded at
- 1:02Speaker 1: the edges. The center was still perfectly legible. The box
- 1:06Speaker 1: had been in that creek for about 48 years. What
- 1:09Speaker 1: investigators would find next would not just solve a murder.
- 1:13Speaker 1: It would rewrite everything Harwick thought it knew about the crime,
- 1:17Speaker 1: the victim, and the woman who survived it. Philip Ware
- 1:22Speaker 1: was 26 years old in the spring of 1971. He
- 1:26Speaker 1: had recently taken a job with Midland Protective Services Not
- 1:30Speaker 1: a glamorous position, but steady work. The kind a young
- 1:34Speaker 1: husband with a new baby reaches for when the math
- 1:37Speaker 1: of a family starts pressing in. His wife, Nora, was
- 1:41Speaker 1: home with their son, who was seven months old. Philip
- 1:44Speaker 1: left for work on the morning of March 12th, the
- 1:47Speaker 1: same way he always did. He never came home. His
- 1:51Speaker 1: partner on that run was Carol Harrison, 38, the payroll
- 1:55Speaker 1: transport coordinator for the Harwick County Transit Authority. She was
- 1:59Speaker 1: not someone who left things to chance. Colleagues described her
- 2:03Speaker 1: as methodical in the particular way that people who manage
- 2:06Speaker 1: logistics become methodical. She had a laminated card on her desk,
- 2:11Speaker 1: listing the insulin schedule for her diabetic cat.
- 2:15Speaker 2: Prospect. A shot every 12 hours.
- 2:18Speaker 1: 7 in the morning. 7 at night. She kept a
- 2:21Speaker 1: backup insulin kit in the glove compartment of the Transit
- 2:25Speaker 1: Authority's dark blue Ford Galaxy. in case a run ran long.
- 2:30Speaker 1: Carol Harrison did not like to be caught unprepared. The
- 2:34Speaker 1: route that morning was four and a half miles. Pick
- 2:37Speaker 1: up at 8.40 a.m., simple. They never arrived. At 11.15
- 2:42Speaker 1: that morning, a passerby found Philip Ware in the parking
- 2:46Speaker 1: lot of Harwick Feed and Grain on County Road 7,
- 2:50Speaker 1: two miles off the standard route. He had been shot once,
- 2:54Speaker 1: a single point,. 38 caliber round. He was rushed to
- 2:58Speaker 1: Harwick General Hospital, where he died at 1.42. In the afternoon,
- 3:04Speaker 1: Carol Harrison was found nearby, a laceration at her temple,
- 3:08Speaker 1: wrists bound with electrical tape. She was treated and released.
- 3:12Speaker 1: The Galaxy was located a quarter mile away in a ditch,
- 3:15Speaker 1: the strong box gone. Carol told investigators what she remembered.
- 3:20Speaker 1: A light-colored pickup had boxed them in. Two masked men
- 3:24Speaker 1: had forced them out of the vehicle at gunpoint. She
- 3:27Speaker 1: could not describe them beyond approximate height and build. No
- 3:32Speaker 1: fingerprints were recovered from the scene. No witnesses came forward.
- 3:36Speaker 1: The investigation ran eight months and filled 412 pages. By
- 3:41Speaker 1: November 1971, the case was cold. Nora Ware was left
- 3:46Speaker 1: to raise a seven-month-old boy alone. She would wait about
- 3:50Speaker 1: 48 years for an answer. The investigator who worked the
- 3:54Speaker 1: case hardest was Harold Poole, a Bemise County Sheriff's investigator
- 3:58Speaker 1: who interviewed transit authority staff, ran down every lead the
- 4:02Speaker 1: evidence suggested, and ultimately boxed the files when the trail
- 4:05Speaker 1: went cold. Poole retired in 1988, ate and died in 2004.
- 4:11Speaker 1: His boxes sat in the records annex, unopened, for 15 years.
- 4:17Speaker 1: Carol Harrison did not live to see the case resolved either.
- 4:21Speaker 1: She died of a stroke in 1989, at the age
- 4:25Speaker 1: of 56. Her sister, June Albright, kept a box of
- 4:30Speaker 1: Carol's papers, a copy of Carol's original statement, and a
- 4:34Speaker 1: Transit Authority logbook. June had spent 30 years angry at
- 4:38Speaker 1: her sister, not knowing exactly why, only sensing that something
- 4:42Speaker 1: in Carol's account had never quite added up.
- 4:45Speaker 2: She was right.
- 4:47Speaker 1: But the proof of what Carol had concealed was sitting
- 4:49Speaker 1: in 14 inches of water in Cutter Creek in a
- 4:52Speaker 1: strongbox that had never been opened a second time. Until
- 4:56Speaker 1: Ronald Cox's boot found it on a cold March morning.
- 5:00Speaker 1: About 48 years later, Donna Zimmerman pulled Harold Poole's boxes
- 5:04Speaker 1: from the records annex on March 17, 2019, three days
- 5:09Speaker 1: after Ronald Cox found the strongbox.
- 5:13Speaker 2: She was 41 years old.
- 5:15Speaker 1: An Arkansas State CID cold case investigator, and she had
- 5:18Speaker 1: read enough case files to know when an investigation had
- 5:21Speaker 1: missed something.
- 5:22Speaker 2: She found it on the second day.
- 5:24Speaker 1: Inside a manila envelope marked MSL Enimus Physical Wear Harrison,
- 5:30Speaker 1: Zimmerman found a second Polaroid.
- 5:33Speaker 2: Same man. Same three-quarter profile. Same man. Same three-quarter profile.
- 5:41Speaker 1: Same fence and vehicle behind him. Two prints from the
- 5:45Speaker 1: same negative, the same camera. Poole had logged it himself
- 5:48Speaker 1: with a handwritten note clipped to the envelope. Found in
- 5:52Speaker 1: Galaxy Glovebox.
- 5:54Speaker 2: Source unknown.
- 5:55Speaker 1: Not matching any known associate. One photograph had traveled about
- 6:00Speaker 1: 48 years inside a strong box at the bottom of
- 6:03Speaker 1: Cutter Creek. The other had been sitting in a manila
- 6:06Speaker 1: envelope in the Bemis County Records Annex for just as long.
- 6:10Speaker 1: Nobody had ever compared the two against a face. Zimmerman did.
- 6:14Speaker 1: She also read Poole's interview logs. Every transit authority employee
- 6:19Speaker 1: who had contact with the payroll route had been questioned,
- 6:23Speaker 1: except one. Douglas Allen Allen, born 1944, had served as
- 6:28Speaker 1: operations coordinator for 14 months and resigned in April 1971,
- 6:34Speaker 1: one month after the robbery. Poole's notes contained his name
- 6:38Speaker 1: in a staffing list. Nothing more. Allen was never brought
- 6:42Speaker 1: in for questioning. That omission was the first image loop
- 6:45Speaker 1: Zimmerman could not close. The second one opened when she
- 6:49Speaker 1: pulled the route records. Transit authority logs showed the March
- 6:53Speaker 1: 12 Teach route had been changed about 48 hours before pickup,
- 6:58Speaker 1: shifted two miles east, directly past County Road 7. The
- 7:03Speaker 1: change had been logged by the operations coordinator. The signature
- 7:07Speaker 1: was Douglas Allens. Carol Harrison drove that altered route Without
- 7:13Speaker 1: noting the change in her own log, Philip Ware rode
- 7:16Speaker 1: beside her. They never arrived. The third image loop was
- 7:20Speaker 1: a key. The strongbox found in Cutter Creek had been padlocked.
- 7:25Speaker 1: Philip Ware carried a transit key on his person. It
- 7:28Speaker 1: had been recovered at the scene in 1971. But a
- 7:32Speaker 1: padlocked strongbox found at the bottom of a creek, placed
- 7:36Speaker 1: there after the robbery, road, had to have been locked
- 7:40Speaker 1: from the outside. That required a second key. Zimmerman polled
- 7:44Speaker 1: the Transit Authority Key Registry. A second key had been
- 7:48Speaker 1: checked out in Efebuary 1971, six weeks before the robbery.
- 7:53Speaker 1: It was never returned. The checkout signature. Douglas Allen.
- 7:59Speaker 2: Three anomalies.
- 8:00Speaker 1: Three different pieces of paper, filed in three different places,
- 8:04Speaker 1: none of which Poole had connected because Allen had never
- 8:07Speaker 1: been a named suspect. Zimmerman had him on facial recognition
- 8:11Speaker 1: by April 2nd. The match came back at 83% confidence,
- 8:15Speaker 1: below the threshold for a warrant on its own. But
- 8:18Speaker 1: the system also returned Allen's residential history. Six counties over
- 8:23Speaker 1: 30 years each stay short, each departure timed within months
- 8:27Speaker 1: of an unsolved theft involving payroll or cash transport. The
- 8:32Speaker 1: pattern was not dispositive. It was not coincidence either. Zimmerman
- 8:36Speaker 1: requested a full background poll, and scheduled a field visit
- 8:39Speaker 1: for the following week. There is something specific about the
- 8:42Speaker 1: second Polaroid that had gone unexamined for about 48 years.
- 8:47Speaker 1: It was not found at the crime scene. It was
- 8:49Speaker 1: not found in Carol Harrison's home. It was found in
- 8:53Speaker 1: the glove compartment of the Galaxy, the same glove compartment
- 8:57Speaker 1: where Carol kept the spare insulin kit for her diabetic cat.
- 9:01Speaker 1: A backup kit, something she kept close in case she
- 9:05Speaker 1: was delayed. Carol Harrison was methodical, She kept a laminated
- 9:09Speaker 1: card in her wallet listing prospect's insulin schedule.
- 9:13Speaker 2: 7 in the morning.
- 9:14Speaker 1: 7 at night. Every 12 hours without fail. She kept
- 9:18Speaker 1: the spare kit in the car because she planned for contingencies.
- 9:22Speaker 1: She did not leave things in the glove compartment by accident.
- 9:25Speaker 1: The photograph was not hers to leave behind carelessly. It
- 9:29Speaker 1: was a photograph of a man. And that man had
- 9:31Speaker 1: altered her route two days before the robbery. Harold Poole
- 9:35Speaker 1: had noted the photograph and moved on. He had no
- 9:39Speaker 1: connection to make. Zimmerman now had three. She drove to
- 9:43Speaker 1: Whitver Road in Alderton, Arkansas, on a morning in April 2019.
- 9:47Speaker 1: She knocked on the door. Douglas Allen, 74 years old,
- 9:53Speaker 1: opened it. He looked at her badge. He said, I
- 9:57Speaker 1: figured this was coming when they found that box. He
- 10:00Speaker 1: did not ask which box. He did not ask what
- 10:03Speaker 1: she was investigating. He knew exactly what had surfaced in
- 10:06Speaker 1: Cutter Creek. And he had been waiting, not for a week,
- 10:10Speaker 1: not for a year, but for about 48 years, for
- 10:14Speaker 1: someone to arrive at that door. Allen gave a full
- 10:17Speaker 1: statement in exchange for a second-degree murder charge rather than first-degree.
- 10:21Speaker 1: What he described closed every loop. Zimmerman had opened, and
- 10:26Speaker 1: one she had not yet found. He had known Carol Harrison.
- 10:30Speaker 1: Not as a colleague. They had planned the robbery together.
- 10:33Speaker 1: The relationship had been concealed from Poole entirely. No shared records,
- 10:38Speaker 1: no mutual witnesses, nothing in the transit authority personnel files
- 10:42Speaker 1: that placed them in contact outside of work. Poole had
- 10:45Speaker 1: interviewed Carol. and had interviewed the staff list. He never
- 10:49Speaker 1: found the connection because it had been carefully built to
- 10:52Speaker 1: be invisible. Allen had changed the route. Allen had taken
- 10:56Speaker 1: out the second key, and on the third week of
- 10:58Speaker 1: March 1971, approximately 10 days after the robbery, Allen had
- 11:04Speaker 1: placed the strong box in Cutter Creek himself at the
- 11:07Speaker 1: second willow stand on the east bank, four miles south
- 11:11Speaker 1: of Harwick. He intended to retrieve it within a few weeks.
- 11:15Speaker 1: Once the investigation quieted, Philip Ware died at 1.42 in
- 11:19Speaker 1: the afternoon on March 12th.
- 11:22Speaker 2: Alan panicked.
- 11:24Speaker 1: He never went back. The money sat in 14 inches
- 11:27Speaker 1: of water for about 48 years. The photograph sat with it.
- 11:31Speaker 1: Picture the morning of March 12th, 1971. Carol Harrison climbs
- 11:36Speaker 1: into the galaxy at 8.40. Philip Ware takes the escort position.
- 11:41Speaker 1: The route that day runs two miles east of the
- 11:43Speaker 1: standard path. past County Road 7, away from the main road,
- 11:48Speaker 1: away from traffic. Carol knows this route. She logged it herself.
- 11:53Speaker 1: She drove it without question. One version of events says
- 11:56Speaker 1: she drove it because she had no choice. The change
- 11:59Speaker 1: had been filed, it was official. She followed procedure. In
- 12:02Speaker 1: that version she is a victim from the moment she
- 12:04Speaker 1: starts the engine. The photograph in her glove compartment is
- 12:08Speaker 1: a keepsake, something she held onto without understanding how dangerous
- 12:13Speaker 1: it was to keep. But that version collapses the moment
- 12:17Speaker 1: you read the key registry. Alan checked out the second
- 12:20Speaker 1: key six weeks before the robbery. He needed Carol's cooperation
- 12:24Speaker 1: to make a plan that specific work. Someone had to
- 12:27Speaker 1: know the pickup schedule, the exact timing, the route that
- 12:31Speaker 1: could be altered without raising flags. The operations coordinator could
- 12:35Speaker 1: file the route change. He could not have known which
- 12:38Speaker 1: window to exploit without someone inside the transport chain telling him.
- 12:42Speaker 1: Carol placed that photograph in the glove compartment. Not casually,
- 12:47Speaker 1: she was not a careless woman. She kept laminated schedules
- 12:51Speaker 1: and backup medical kits. She kept the Polaroid of Douglas
- 12:55Speaker 1: Allen in the car she drove every day at a
- 12:57Speaker 1: time when she knew they were planning something that could
- 13:01Speaker 1: go wrong. Allen's own account confirmed it. The photograph was
- 13:05Speaker 1: one he had taken at the transit yard. Carol had
- 13:08Speaker 1: kept it as a keepsake. She never intended for it
- 13:11Speaker 1: to be found, not in the glove box, not in
- 13:14Speaker 1: the creek. What that means for Carol Harrison is not
- 13:17Speaker 1: a simple answer. She was bound with electrical tape and
- 13:21Speaker 1: left beside a man who was dying. She spent 18
- 13:25Speaker 1: years living with what had happened on that road. She
- 13:28Speaker 1: died in 1989, a stroke at 56, without ever knowing
- 13:33Speaker 1: the case had been formally declared cold, without ever being charged.
- 13:37Speaker 1: The record shows she was a victim at the scene.
- 13:41Speaker 1: It also shows she knew what was coming before the pickup,
- 13:45Speaker 1: left the lot. Alan never meant for Philip Ware to die.
- 13:49Speaker 1: That claim sits in his confession and it carries no
- 13:52Speaker 1: legal weight that changes what happened. A man with a
- 13:55Speaker 1: loaded revolver and a plan to stop a payroll vehicle
- 13:58Speaker 1: at gunpoint had introduced lethal force into the equation. Ware
- 14:03Speaker 1: was shot once. He was 26 years old. The strongest
- 14:07Speaker 1: fact in the entire case is the simplest one. Ronald
- 14:10Speaker 1: Cox's trotline stake had been anchored within three feet of
- 14:14Speaker 1: that strong box for nearly 50 fishing seasons. He walked
- 14:17Speaker 1: past it every time he set his line. The box
- 14:20Speaker 1: had been there, upright and silted, waiting in the dark water,
- 14:25Speaker 1: holding a photograph of the man who put it there.
- 14:27Speaker 1: It waited until the morning Cox's boot found it instead
- 14:31Speaker 1: of the stake. That is not inevitability. That is about
- 14:34Speaker 1: 48 years of ordinary chance, finally breaking the right way.
- 14:39Speaker 1: The trial lasted four days. Douglas Allen Allen, 75 years old,
- 14:45Speaker 1: sat at the defense table in Bemis County Circuit Court
- 14:48Speaker 1: and said nothing that contradicted his confession. He had already
- 14:52Speaker 1: said everything. The jury deliberated for six hours. On September 23, 2019,
- 14:57Speaker 1: they returned a verdict of second-degree murder. The judge sentenced
- 15:04Speaker 1: Allen to 22 years. He was convicted for the death
- 15:08Speaker 1: of Philip Ware, a man who had been 26 years old,
- 15:12Speaker 1: who had been doing his job, who had been shot
- 15:14Speaker 1: once with a. 38 caliber revolver on a county road
- 15:19Speaker 1: two miles from where he was supposed to be. Nora
- 15:22Speaker 1: Ware attended every day of the trial. She was 73
- 15:26Speaker 1: years old. Her son sat beside her. He had been
- 15:29Speaker 1: seven months old when his father was killed. He had
- 15:32Speaker 1: never had a single memory of the man. He sat
- 15:35Speaker 1: in that courtroom and watched the jury come back with
- 15:38Speaker 1: a verdict for the father he never knew. That is
- 15:40Speaker 1: the consequence of about 48 years, not an abstraction. A
- 15:45Speaker 1: 73-year-old woman and her son, sitting in a courthouse, waiting
- 15:49Speaker 1: for a word. The $ 31, 000 recovered from the creek was destroyed.
- 15:55Speaker 1: Two deteriorated to redeem, per Arkansas statutes. The currency that
- 16:00Speaker 1: Philip Ware died beside a ditch road over, that Carol
- 16:04Speaker 1: Harrison spent 18 years carrying in silence, was pulped. Both
- 16:09Speaker 1: Polaroid copies were logged to permanent evidence at the Bemis
- 16:13Speaker 1: County Courthouse. The strongbox sits there too, the insulin kit
- 16:17Speaker 1: that Harold Poole had tagged and boxed in 1971. The
- 16:22Speaker 1: backup kit Carol Harrison kept in the Galaxy's glove compartment
- 16:26Speaker 1: in case she was delayed, that was released to her sister.
- 16:30Speaker 1: June Albright June Albright told investigators she had spent 30
- 16:34Speaker 1: years angry at Carol, 30 years believing her sister had
- 16:38Speaker 1: been nothing but a victim and feeling that belief degrade
- 16:41Speaker 1: somewhere underneath, replaced by something she could not name. When
- 16:45Speaker 1: the full account came out, she told Donna Zimmerman she
- 16:49Speaker 1: finally understood why Carol had never spoken. Zimmerman included June's
- 16:54Speaker 1: exact words in her case notes, verbatim. The record does
- 16:57Speaker 1: not resolve Carol Harrison cleanly.
- 17:00Speaker 2: It cannot.
- 17:01Speaker 1: She was a co-planner who was also left bound and
- 17:04Speaker 1: bleeding beside a man who was dying. She carried that
- 17:08Speaker 1: weight for 18 years and then she was gone at 56.
- 17:12Speaker 1: From a stroke without ever being charged, without ever knowing
- 17:16Speaker 1: the investigation had been formally declared cold. Whether she thought
- 17:20Speaker 1: about that road every day or learned to set it aside,
- 17:23Speaker 1: that question belongs only to her and she took it
- 17:26Speaker 1: with her. In 1989, what the record does resolve is
- 17:30Speaker 1: simpler and harder. A 26-year-old man named Philip Ware drove
- 17:35Speaker 1: to work on a Friday morning in March and never
- 17:37Speaker 1: came home. His wife waited. His son grew up. The
- 17:41Speaker 1: case went cold. About 48 years passed, and then a
- 17:45Speaker 1: fisherman's boot found a metal box in 14 inches of
- 17:49Speaker 1: creek water, upright, silted, padlocked. Still there, There is something
- 17:54Speaker 1: specific about the insulin kit that is hard to move past.
- 17:58Speaker 1: Harold Poole tagged it in 1971, sealed it in a
- 18:02Speaker 1: box and stored it in the records annex. It sat
- 18:05Speaker 1: there for about 48 years. A backup medical kit Carol
- 18:09Speaker 1: Harrison kept in the car she drove every day, in
- 18:12Speaker 1: case she was delayed. She was methodical. She planned for contingencies.
- 18:18Speaker 1: She planned for the robbery too. And she planned for
- 18:21Speaker 1: what came after. and none of it turned out the
- 18:24Speaker 1: way either of them intended. The kit was released to
- 18:27Speaker 1: June Albright after the trial closed. A small cardboard box
- 18:32Speaker 1: handed across a counter, about 48 years of evidence storage,
- 18:36Speaker 1: and then it went home. Philip Ware's name is in
- 18:39Speaker 1: the Bemis County record now, attached to a conviction. His
- 18:43Speaker 1: son was in the courtroom when it happened. He sat
- 18:46Speaker 1: next to his mother, and he heard the word guilty.
- 18:49Speaker 1: and he was old enough to understand everything it meant,
- 18:53Speaker 1: and young enough that it still came about 48 years
- 18:57Speaker 1: too late. June Albright's words are in Donna Zimmerman's case notes,
- 19:01Speaker 1: preserved verbatim. She said she spent 30 years angry at Carol,
- 19:06Speaker 1: and now understood why. That is what the evidence finally
- 19:10Speaker 1: gave her, not resolution exactly. Understanding, the difference matters to
- 19:15Speaker 1: the people who are left. The two Polaroids are at
- 19:18Speaker 1: the Bemis County Courthouse. The strong box is there too.
- 19:22Speaker 1: Ronald Cox's trotline stake is back in Cutter Creek, probably.
- 19:26Speaker 1: The second willow stand, east bank four miles south of Harwick.
- 19:31Speaker 1: The water moves around it the way it always did.
- 19:34Speaker 1: Philip Ware was 26 years old. He had a wife
- 19:38Speaker 1: and a son who was seven months old and a
- 19:40Speaker 1: job driving payroll routes in a county he knew. He
- 19:43Speaker 1: was careful enough to carry his keys. He was not
- 19:46Speaker 1: careful enough to survive what had been arranged for him.
- 19:49Speaker 1: before he ever got in that car. That is the
- 19:52Speaker 1: fact the creek kept for about 48 years sealed in
- 19:56Speaker 1: an olive green box, waiting for a morning when a
- 19:58Speaker 1: boot landed in the wrong place.
- 20:01Speaker 2: Or the right one.
- 20:02Speaker 1: This show is made by Oba Media.