Latest / Gone Cold - Texas True Crime / Lou Allen Goettsch Part 2 of 2: Big Country Bones

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Lou Allen Goettsch Part 2 of 2: Big Country Bones · Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: The Gone Cold. Podcasts may contain violent or graphics subject matter.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Listener discretion is advised. The area of West Texas known
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: as the Big Country encompasses twelve or thirteen counties, depending
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: on who you ask. Half of those counties, Fisher, Jones, Mitchell, Nolan, Scurry,
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  Speaker 1: and Taylor sit toward the bottom of the Texas Rolling Plains,
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  Speaker 1: sometimes described as the last gasp of the Great Plains
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  Speaker 1: of the United States, more or less the beginning of
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: the West Texas region. The Big Country is nearly as
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  Speaker 1: ideal as Central Texas for cattle ranching, and there are
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: plenty of enterprising folks who knew it before everyone else.
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  Speaker 1: By the late eighteen seventies, white settlers had once and
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  Speaker 1: for all driven out the nomadic Native Americans who inhabited
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  Speaker 1: the area intermittently, and ranchers began grazing laws large herds
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: of cattle on the rolling fields of Bluestem and Switchgrass.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Taylor County, no doubt was the Big Country's hub, but
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: area businessmen had other plans than to let the incoming
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  Speaker 1: railroad go through the then current county seat Buffalo Gap,
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  Speaker 1: named such because bison hunters set up camp and a
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: trading post there in the winter time. As the Texas
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: and Pacific Railway began its push westward, the more influential
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Taylor County ranchers platted a new city, one that would
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: take over as the county seat, and because these men
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: had ranches there put the railroad depot in the northern
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: part of the county. Abilene, which loosely means land of Meadows,
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  Speaker 1: was born, promoted as the future great city of West
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Texas by traveling developers seeking to lure cattlemen and potential
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  Speaker 1: ranchers to the area. Abilene caught on in the first
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: two days of auctioning lots in the new city in
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: eighteen eighty one. In fact, buyers snapped up about three
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: hundred As Abilene quickly grew. Public utilities like city water
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: and electricity followed closely behind, which only attracted more to
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: the area. For many years after, farming and livestock kept
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: the economy afloat and even thriving. Oil discovery was slow
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: going when that boom hit many parts of Texas, bankrupting
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: plenty of prospectors, but by the nineteen thirties it became
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: a strong part of Abilene's economy. Since then, the city's
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: seen its fair share of changes due to military facilities nearby,
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  Speaker 1: major expansion of manufacturing, and all the things both big
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: and small in between. Abilene is the heart of the
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Big Country. When lew allen Getch went missing from out Abilene,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: either on March thirty first or April first, nineteen eighty one, he,
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  Speaker 1: like the city, became a central figure one law enforcement
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: officers thought of when human remains were found in the
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: surrounding counties. Whenever bones were discovered in the Big Country,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Low's name seemed to be at the top of authorities mines.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety three, after being relatively cold for more
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: than twelve years after Lou's disappearance, things on the case
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: had heated back up, beginning with a confession which led
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: to careful search efforts in a northwest Abilene pasture. Perhaps
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: at the very moment of that confession, about twenty miles
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: northeast of that pasture, dove hunters discovered human remains just
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: north of Farm to Market Road twelve twenty six, outside
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  Speaker 1: Holly in Jones County. This discovery kicked off a seemingly
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: unprecedented number of other discoveries of human remains as Nolan
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: County Sheriff Jim Blackley later suggested there were plenty of
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: bones to be found in the big country. Thirty four
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: year old Ronnie Dean Harper, who had confessed to the
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: murder of lou Getch, stopped cooperating with the Abilene police
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: when he couldn't locate the missing man's body. It stalled everything,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: but detectives believed if their boots hit the pavement they
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: could gather enough evidence against Harper by reworking the case,
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: so for a couple more weeks that's what they did.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Harper wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. The murder charge was
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: still on the books, and if that fell through, the
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: man had left town with an outstanding warrant for a
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: theft by check charge from nineteen eighty six that they
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: might be able to use to buy them a little
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: more time. That notion was put to the test on Tuesday,
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  Speaker 1: October twelfth, nineteen ninety three, when a hearing was held
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  Speaker 1: in front of Judge Sam Mada. Harper's lawyer, Jeff Johnson
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  Speaker 1: argued that no one even knew if lou Getch was dead,
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  Speaker 1: and that the state had the burden of proving his
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  Speaker 1: client murdered the man, which they hadn't For all they knew,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: Johnson continued, Lou decided on his own free will to
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: leave Abilene without leaving so much as a trace behind.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: He was an adult, it was his right. Abilene police
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: Detective Lee Reid called bullshit. He had been on the
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: case from the get go and had never found a
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: shred of evidence to support Lou being alive. The missing
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: twenty one year old came from a close knit family,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: and Lou had gone through many phases the military and
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: moved around plenty, but he had never failed to maintain
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: contact with family members. Periodically, Detective red checked driver's license records,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: national employment records, and Lou's Social Security number, and every
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: time found no activity. As far as any of them went,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Lou had left everything behind, including a decent chunk of
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: money in the bank and a vehicle. Judge Mada ultimately
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: agreed with Assistant District Attorney Curtis tom although there is
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: no body per se, the statements that have been made
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: by mister Harper, I believe are sufficient to establish probable
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: cause that a murder did occur. He ruled Ronnie Dean
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: Harper was to stay in jail for the time being,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: but the judge demanded the prosecution get the case before
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: a grand jury as soon as possible. Because Harper still
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: wasn't talking, finding the body of Lou, Allan Gatch seemed
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: a near impossibility, a possibility simply left to chance, no
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: matter their firm insistence that they had the man responsible
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: for Lou's disappearance. It seems incredibly likely that at least
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: some law enforcement officials were beginning to have their doubts.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Could Harper's confession have been bunk. Detectives and prosecutors surely
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: entertained the notion as they did, and as many of
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: them were steadfast that Harper killed Lou Getch. Human bones
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: began appearing in the area at an unprecedented level. Just
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: a few weeks after a Taylor County judge decided Ronnie
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Dean Harper's detainment could continue. Bones were found just over
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  Speaker 1: the Taylor Nolan County line. Shortly after nine a m.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: On Thursday, November fourth, nineteen ninety three, a quail hunter
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  Speaker 1: came across a toothless human cranium in a pasture. There.
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  Speaker 1: He hurriedly called the Sheriff's office under Nolan County Sheriff
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  Speaker 1: Jim Blackley deputies scoured the cactus and mesquite covered pasture
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  Speaker 1: for more bones or other evidence. They were successful. Sixty
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: four feet from the cranium, a femur was found, as
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: well as some clothing shreds of men's underwear, including an
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: elastic waistband. The remains had been there for years. It
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: was the initial consensus of area law enforcement that the
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: bones belonged to missing twenty one year old Lou Allen Getch.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: The area looked much like the field near the Greater
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: Abilene Industrial District water tower where Ronnie den Harper said
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  Speaker 1: he had shot and killed Lou, but also where no
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: remains could be found, so perhaps they thought the confessor
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: was simply mistaken about the location. The next day, six
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: deputies returned. They sectioned off the approximately thirty five acre
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: field into grids using steaks and rope, and searched each
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: inch by inch. Two more bones were found, another leg
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: bone and an armbone. Abilene's forensic technician, Tammy MacLean said
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: that without teeth or some type of injury that affected
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: the bones being found, an identification was going to be tough.
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  Speaker 1: DNA technology was in its infancy and not particularly helpful
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: in such a case. Officer McLean did remark that the
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: bones belonged to a tall, probably thin man. Another search
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  Speaker 1: the following Monday proved even more fruitless. It was more
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: of the same Tuesday, nothing else was found. Nolan County
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Sheriff Jim Blackley insured reporters that they'd be back. He
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: was determined to find something that could help make an identification,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: but subsequent searches in that area proved futile. The remains
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: sat in Sweetwater, the Nolan County seat for several weeks
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: before finally being sent to the Southwest Institute of Forensic
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  Speaker 1: Science in Dallas. To this day, in October twenty twenty four,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: no one has identified the partial body. It is known, however,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: that the bones did not belong to Leu Allen Getch. Instead,
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: they belonged to a black male thirty five to forty
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: years old. He stood approximately five feet nine inches tall
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: and had been deceased ten to twenty years His cause
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  Speaker 1: of death is unknown. The bones of Nolan County John
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: Doe nineteen ninety three weren't the last to be found.
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  Speaker 1: On November seventeenth, eighteen ninety three, outside Breckinridge, Texas. A
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Stephens County rancher found skeletal remains while searching for a
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: lost calf in a desolate field on his land. The
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: bones were sent to the Terrant County Medical Examiner's Office
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  Speaker 1: for analysis, again sixty miles to the southwest. Detectives in
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  Speaker 1: Abilene were paying close attention, a bit more of a
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: long shot than the last set. They couldn't help but
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: wonder if these remains belonged to lou Gatch. But within
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: two days, the pathologists who examined the bones told the
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Stephens County Sheriff's office that they belonged to a woman.
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  Speaker 1: The death was a homicide, the cause blunt forced trauma
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  Speaker 1: to the head. For a decade and a half, after
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  Speaker 1: creating a composite sketch from the remains and releasing the
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  Speaker 1: information to the Texas Department of Public Safety, among other efforts,
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  Speaker 1: the woman remained unidentified. Eventually, in two thousand and eight,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: she was identified as Donna Lee Allman, who'd been missing
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: eighteen years by that time. A little more than a
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: month later, and two months after the bones of Nolan
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  Speaker 1: County John Doe nineteen ninety three were found, another discovery
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  Speaker 1: was made on Monday, January third, nineteen ninety four. Workers
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: were clearing mesquite trees in a large field several hundred
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  Speaker 1: yards south of Interstate twenty, just past the tail just
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  Speaker 1: passed the Taylor County line when they found a skull
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  Speaker 1: complete with teeth and partials on the lower jaw. Nolan
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  Speaker 1: County Sheriff's deputies responded to the scene not long after.
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  Speaker 1: This location was about twenty four miles west of the
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  Speaker 1: apartment lou Getch was set to move into and nineteen
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  Speaker 1: miles from the location where Ronny Dene Harper confessed he
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  Speaker 1: killed him. Not far from the skull, in the brush,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: near a barbed wire fence that ran the length of
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  Speaker 1: the access road, they uncovered human hair, other bones, and
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: even a fingernail with polish still intact. They found all
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  Speaker 1: the remains other than the left legbones. Eleven days earlier,
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  Speaker 1: just under a mile away on the north side of
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  Speaker 1: Interstate twenty, authorities had been alerted that bones were found,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: which turned out to be left leg bones. Chances were
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: Nolan County Sheriff Jim Blackly remarked those bones belonged to
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: the body he had just found, but he wondered how
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: the hell did the leg bones get that far away?
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: For whatever reason, the lawman had ruled out animal activity,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: perhaps due to the remains being found on opposite sides
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: of Interstate twenty, but he also called the legbones displayed.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: He theorized that someone dumped the body, returned to the
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: scene after it had decomposed, and then moved the leg
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  Speaker 1: to a place it would be easily discovered. As far
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: as the identity of the body went, neither Sheriff Blackley
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: nor Abilene police detective Lee Reid knew of anyone who
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: had gone missing who fit the description of the mostly
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: skeletal remains in the estimated time period of death, which
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: Sheriff Blackley put at eight to twelve weeks prior. That
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: estimation turned out not so bad. After sending the remains
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: to the Southwest Institute of Forensic Science in Dallas, anthropologists
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: said that the time of death was no more than
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: six months before. The bones belonged to a white female.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: They did not belong to lew Allen Gatch, of course,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: or any of the other young folks who went missing
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  Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty one, Dorothy Gene Richardson and Teresa Elizabeth
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: Bishop among them. This set of remains, like those of
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: Nolan County John Doe nineteen ninety three, are unidentified to
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: this day. Nolan County Jane Doe had brown hair, stood
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: five feet to five feet three inches tall, and weighed
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: approximately one hundred and five to one hundred and ten pounds.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Another discovery within days of this one, once again had
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: authorities hopeful they'd found the bones of lou Getch. On Saturday,
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: January eighth, nineteen ninety four, about thirty eight miles northwest
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: of Abilene in rural Fisher County between Sylvester and Trent,
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  Speaker 1: Tarrant County, criminal Court judge Darryl Coffee and a friend
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: were hunting quail when they found skeletal remains, fully clothed
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: save shoes. When area law enforcement got wind of the discovery,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: particularly detectives with the Abilene Police Department, even after so
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: many disappointments, they thought maybe this time it was lou
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: No Dice. On July thirty first, nineteen ninety one, fifty
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: three year old Clinton Dale McKee stepped outside his home
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: in Abilene with a cup of ice and a cordless telephone.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: Then he vanished. Everything was left behind. Clinton had taken
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: no clothing or other personal items, and his truck was
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: at home with the keys inside. Police and volunteers searched
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: a large proximity around the man's house, interviewed friends, co workers,
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: and acquaintances, and the man's family offered a one thousand
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: dollars reward for information that led to him. This new
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: set of bones belonged to Clinton, a preliminary determination of
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: which was made quickly when a set of keys found
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: on the body were tried on his wife's car. It
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: started right up. Detectives in Abilene were beginning to think
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: they'd never found lou Getch. In the years leading up
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: to the discovery of the Big Country bones, bodies in
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: various stages of decomposition had been found here and there,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: but never in such numbers in a concentrated period of time.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: There were, however, discoveries in several high profile cases, namely
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: the bodies of three year old Ryan Burton of Breckinridge,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: whose remains were found in nineteen eighty four in Stephens County,
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: nearly three years after her nineteen eighty one abduction, and
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: seven year old Courtney Clayton of Stamford, whose remains were
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: found in Shackleford County six months after her disappearance in
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight. Other remains found in the area that
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: might have been lou Getch were most often identified as
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: someone else relatively quickly, But in late nineteen ninety three
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: and early nineteen ninety four, things were different in the
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: Big Country. When asked about the seemingly unprecedented number of
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: sets of human remains found within that short period of
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: a few months and unsurprised, Nolan County Sheriff Jim Blackley
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: commented that if all the fields and ditches in Texas
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: were searched, anyone would see that what was happening in
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: the Big Country wasn't strange or even uncommon. There was
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: certainly no reason to think the discovery of the Big
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: Country bones themselves were linked in any way, as there
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: was no connection between the folks who found each set,
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: save the fact that most of them were hunters. A
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: month after the last set was discovered, on Thursday February seventeenth,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four, Taylor County Grand jurors convened to hear
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: evidence against Ronnie Dene Harper, the man accused of murdering
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: Lou Allen Getch in nineteen eighty one as the result
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: of his own admission. Harper had later recanted his confession
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: and refused further cooperation with police after the initial few
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: searches for Lou's body, all of which had turned up
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: no sign of the missing man. Even after cordoning off
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: the field where Harper said he'd shot Lou to death
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: into small workable sections they combed inch by inch, detectives
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: found nothing. Though the Apolene police department excused the lack
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: of progress as forgetfulness on Harper's part and believed that
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: the murder might have taken place somewhere else altogether. Perhaps
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: it wasn't lost on them that, out of all the
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: memories one might be able to remember in relative detail,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: where a person killed a man seems to be one
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: that can be reached with at least some accuracy. Were
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: there indeed, other involved, as one iteration of Harper's story went,
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: And did they quickly move the remains when they saw
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: the locally publicized confession. It was a far fetched notion,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: since police acted fast after the confession, but possible those
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: questions were certainly on the mind of grand jurors and
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: Although such proceedings are kept secret by Texas state law,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: it isn't haphazard to presume they had many more. One
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: of the first questions considered was likely the phenomenon of
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: false confessions. Even outside of police coercion, people, particularly men,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: sometimes confessed to crimes they did not commit, by and
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: large when under the influence of drugs and or alcohol,
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: which at the time of his confession. Ronnie Dean Harper
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: was also The confessor's story was strange and demanded answers
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: that could not be provided. Harper said he ran into
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: Lou at a convenience store and Lou asked him if
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: he wanted to attend a big drug deal with him.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: He agreed, and when they got to the field where
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: the deal was to take place, Harper said he saw
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: a gun barrel protruding out of some bushes and decided
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: Lou was setting him up. He fired at the bushes
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: and it hit Lou. The man said it didn't make sense.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: Why would Lou invite Harper to a substantial drug deal
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: in the first place, and if he was setting Harper up,
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: how did Lou know he'd be at the convenience store
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: to ask him to come along just a few months before,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: when they were pulled over because Harper was driving erratically,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: an officer found marijuana on his person. This was another
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: instance of Lou setting him up, according to Harper's confession,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: but how exactly Lou could have done this was not explained.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: The amount of marijuana on Ronnie Dene Harper that day
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: was small enough to get him a one hundred dollars
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: fine and six months probation, essentially hardly an amount or
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: bust worth the CoP's attention. Even in nineteen eighty one.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: Harper led on that this angered him enough to kick
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: Lou in the head repeatedly after he shot him, But
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: the situation's outcome does not match the reaction of murder.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: If Lou was an arc, as Harper believed anyway, why
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: did he agree to go on a drug deal with
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: him in the first place. The grand jury probably also
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: wondered why lou Getch would have left all his personal
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: belongings in the bed of his pickup truck outside his
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: New Duplex apartment to attend a drug deal. It was
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: literally everything the young man owned, a young man who'd
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: never had much. The truck couldn't have been driven back
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: there by Harper, since Lou had secured the apartment that day,
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: and Harper most likely couldn't have known about the duplex,
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: especially if they'd simply run into each other at the
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: convenience store that day. The questions concerning the confession mounted
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: during the grand jury proceedings. Harper was in no hurry
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: to leave town after lou Getch's disappearance. He was in
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: fact implicated by an anonymous tipster in Lou's murder during
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: the initial investigation about ten months in, and still he
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: didn't leave Abilene, even though he had many ties out
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: of state. In October of nineteen eighty six, Harper was
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: hit with a theft by check charge, meaning he stayed
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: in Abilene for years after Lou vanished. Perhaps Ronnie Dean
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: Harper's confession was true to an extent, but warped to
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: make it look like he had a somewhat justifiable reason
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: to gun down the supposed nark lou Getch, at least
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: in his eyes. The Abilene police believed that Lou was
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: carrying fifteen hundred dollars at the time of his disappearance,
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: an amount worth a little over five thousand dollars at
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: the time of this recording in October of twenty twenty four.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: To any normal human being, of course, this amount of money,
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: or any amount for that matter, is hardly worth taking
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: another human being's life. Maybe in Harper's eyes though it
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: was worth it. It's only a theory, however, as no
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: evidence exists to support it. In fact, there was no
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: evidence to corroborate Harper's story or any other possible plausible
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: scenario other than the confession. Evidence was nonexistent. Taylor County
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: Assistant District Attorney Sandy Self told reporters for the Abilene
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: Reporter News that he and detectives presented all the evidence
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: they had against Ronnie Dene Harper to the grand jury. Jurors,
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: of course, did not indict the man. Abilene Police Sergeant
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: David Gage said the case wasn't quite dead in the water,
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: but it would take confession corroborating evidence to resurrect it.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: It didn't have to be Lou's body, he added, but
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: they needed something anything. Charges against Harper were dropped after
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: more than five months, though he remained in the Taylor
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: County jail on theft by check charges until that matter
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: was sorted out. Since that day in February nineteen ninety four,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: the case of the disappearance of lou Allan Gatch has
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: been ice cold. If you have any information about the
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: disappearance of lou Allan Getch, please contact Abilene crime Stoppers
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: at eight hundred eight six eight eight four seven seven.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: If you'd like to join Gone Cold's mission to renew
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: the public's interest in unsolved homicides, missing persons cases, and
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: other perplexed mysteries, you can support the show and listen
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: at free at patreon dot com forward slash Gone Cold podcast.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: You'll also find episodes exclusive to Patreon there, with more
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: to come in the near future. Words cannot express how
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: much we appreciate our patrons. Thank you so much for
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: your support. You can also support Gone Cold by leaving
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: a five star rating and written review on iTunes and
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, which will help the show reach more ears,
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: bettering the chance someone with information about a case will
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: hear it and come forward. A rating and written review
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: wherever you listen is much appreciated. Thanks for listening, y'all.