Latest / Hell and Gone: Murder Line / S1 UPDATE: Confession, But Questions Remain

Transcript

S1 UPDATE: Confession, But Questions Remain · Hell and Gone: Murder Line

0:00
Speaker 1: Hi, Helen Gone listeners. We are so excited to share
0:03
Speaker 1: these case updates with you. Did you know that you
0:05
Speaker 1: can hear this bonus episode plus three more, completely ad
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0:12
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Speaker 1: for the new episode. Subscribe today to get early access
0:20
Speaker 1: to all the available case updates with no ads. Subscribe
0:23
Speaker 1: to Helen Gone on the I Heart True Crime Plus
0:25
Speaker 1: Channel today, exclusively available on Apple Podcasts. I am driving
0:40
Speaker 1: from my dad's house in Mountain View to Melbourne down
0:46
Speaker 1: Highway nine. This will be the first time that I've
0:48
Speaker 1: been on Highway nine in quite a while. The drive
0:51
Speaker 1: has not gotten any easier. It is a rough drive.
0:55
Speaker 1: It's really curvy. It's almost like as soon as you
0:58
Speaker 1: cross over the bridge says sharp curves for the next
1:02
Speaker 1: twenty miles and you have to really concentrate and there's
1:05
Speaker 1: no shoulder and the road gets really skinny. So I
1:08
Speaker 1: find the drive, even in the daytime, um a little sketchy,
1:12
Speaker 1: even more so at night. So I'm driving to the
1:16
Speaker 1: pre trial hearing. So far there's been a hearing for
1:20
Speaker 1: emotion to suppress Billy Miller's confession and that was denied.
1:28
Speaker 1: This is the pre trial hearing. I have no idea
1:30
Speaker 1: what they're gonna be covering. Um, I'm just gonna show
1:32
Speaker 1: up and see what I find. I don't know how
1:35
Speaker 1: many people are gonna be there. I just I don't
1:37
Speaker 1: know anything. I'm just gonna go in blind and see
1:40
Speaker 1: what happens. The last time I drove this specific route
1:50
Speaker 1: down Highway nine was four years ago. At that time,
1:54
Speaker 1: I drove from Mountain View and went to a specific
1:57
Speaker 1: outlook about five miles from Melbourne. It's a scenic beauty spot,
2:01
Speaker 1: but it's also a place where some people stopped to
2:03
Speaker 1: dump trash. I went there because more than eighteen years ago,
2:09
Speaker 1: this is the place where police found the body of
2:11
Speaker 1: twenty two year old Rebecca Gold. Rebecca Gould disappeared on
2:16
Speaker 1: September twenty one, two thousand four. All I knew about
2:20
Speaker 1: the case at the time was what I read in
2:21
Speaker 1: the papers that on the day before, on the morning
2:24
Speaker 1: of September two thousand four, she dropped her boyfriend, Casey
2:28
Speaker 1: McCullough off at work at Sonic. After that, Rebecca stopped
2:34
Speaker 1: at a gas station called the Possum Trot to buy
2:36
Speaker 1: a breakfast sandwich and coffee, then she went back to
2:39
Speaker 1: Casey's trailer to pack her stuff. Rebecca's life was in transition.
2:46
Speaker 1: She had just enrolled at a college in Fayetteville and
2:49
Speaker 1: moved into an apartment there with her sister, Danielle. She
2:53
Speaker 1: was supposed to pick Danielle up that morning so that
2:55
Speaker 1: they could drive back to school together, but Rebecca never
2:59
Speaker 1: showed up up. Danielle spent the day frantically calling her friends,
3:04
Speaker 1: but no one had seen Rebecca, and the next day,
3:07
Speaker 1: Rebecca was officially reported missing. At Casey's trailer where she
3:12
Speaker 1: was staying. Law enforcement found blood everywhere on the mattress,
3:17
Speaker 1: in the carpets, and in the washing machine, but Rebecca
3:20
Speaker 1: was gone. It was a week later when searchers found
3:24
Speaker 1: her body in that embankment off Highway nine. She was
3:28
Speaker 1: still wearing her cropped black T shirt with the word
3:31
Speaker 1: music printed on it in rhinestone's and her underwear. Her
3:36
Speaker 1: body was badly decomposed. For the next eighteen years, Rebecca's
3:43
Speaker 1: case would be one of the most notorious cold cases
3:47
Speaker 1: in the state of Arkansas. I had followed Rebecca's case
3:50
Speaker 1: for years. I'm from Arkansas and my younger sister, Caroline
3:55
Speaker 1: was very good friends with Rebecca's baby sister, Danielle. They
3:59
Speaker 1: went to high school together, and my dad and my
4:02
Speaker 1: sister still live in Mountain View. That's in Stone County,
4:05
Speaker 1: which is right next to Iszard County where Rebecca was murdered.
4:09
Speaker 1: And in two thousand eighteen, I showed up with a
4:11
Speaker 1: couple of producers to make a podcast that became the
4:15
Speaker 1: first season of Helen Gone. By the end of the season,
4:19
Speaker 1: I believed that the lead Arkansas State Police investigator, whose
4:24
Speaker 1: name was Dennis Simmons, was doing nothing to investigate the
4:27
Speaker 1: case and that he was fixated on someone else, a
4:31
Speaker 1: guy named Chris Kntrell, who had nothing to do with
4:33
Speaker 1: the murder. The crime scene indicated that Rebecca was murdered
4:38
Speaker 1: in Casey's trailer and then her killer or killers took
4:42
Speaker 1: her body out and dumped it by the side of
4:44
Speaker 1: the road where it was found. Based on that crime
4:47
Speaker 1: scene and interviews with witnesses, I developed a theory. I
4:51
Speaker 1: believed that either Casey McCullough or someone connected to Casey
4:56
Speaker 1: McCullough or his family had something to do with it.
4:59
Speaker 1: But because I thought that anyone who would bother to
5:02
Speaker 1: clean up that crime scene would have to have a
5:04
Speaker 1: reason for doing it. In January of two thousand twenty,
5:09
Speaker 1: a new lead investigator named Mike McNeil was assigned to
5:13
Speaker 1: the case. He called me in early two thousand twenty
5:16
Speaker 1: and said he'd heard I had some audio. He wanted
5:19
Speaker 1: us to send it to him, And over the next
5:23
Speaker 1: several months there seemed to be renewed interest in the case.
5:27
Speaker 1: Journalist and true crime author George Jared and Jennifer Buckle's,
5:31
Speaker 1: a private investigator and professor of criminology, started a Facebook
5:34
Speaker 1: group called Unsolved Murder of Rebecca Gold. And then in
5:39
Speaker 1: November of two thousand twenty, we got the news that
5:42
Speaker 1: we've been waiting for for so long. There had finally
5:45
Speaker 1: been an arrest. The man who was arrested was forty
5:50
Speaker 1: four year old William Miller, and he goes by Billy.
5:53
Speaker 1: He's Casey McCullough's first cousin. Now that Billy has been caught,
5:58
Speaker 1: we're beginning to answer a lot of the questions we've
6:01
Speaker 1: had for so many years about Rebecca's case. New information
6:05
Speaker 1: has been revealed, and some parts of the story aren't
6:09
Speaker 1: adding up. I still have a lot of unanswered questions,
6:13
Speaker 1: and I made a promise to Rebecca and to all
6:16
Speaker 1: of you in the first season that I wouldn't stop
6:18
Speaker 1: until I did my best to get justice and answers
6:21
Speaker 1: for Rebecca. I'm Catherine Townsend, and in these bonus episodes
6:26
Speaker 1: for season one, I'm gonna walk you through everything that's
6:29
Speaker 1: happened in the past few months and figure out what's missing.
6:34
Speaker 1: This is Helen Gone. First, let's go through Billy Miller's confession.
7:12
Speaker 1: We learned that Billy had been in the Mountain View
7:14
Speaker 1: area for a brief period of time visiting family. He
7:18
Speaker 1: claimed that he was helping his mom and brother Jeremy,
7:21
Speaker 1: moved from Arkansas back to Texas. If you remember, on
7:25
Speaker 1: season one of Helen Gone, we talked to someone who
7:28
Speaker 1: said they had seen a man, a white man with
7:31
Speaker 1: a darker complexion and black hair, a man who matches
7:34
Speaker 1: Billy's description with a woman at Casey's trailer talking to
7:38
Speaker 1: Rebecca and then weed eating, and that witness said that
7:41
Speaker 1: Rebecca seemed comfortable and that the man they saw was
7:45
Speaker 1: talking to Rebecca for about twenty minutes. The witness said
7:48
Speaker 1: the man was driving a blue car with Texas plates.
7:52
Speaker 1: After Rebecca's murder. Billy Miller left town with his family
7:56
Speaker 1: and never came back to Arkansas. He spent some time
7:59
Speaker 1: living into Texas. Then he got married and started a
8:02
Speaker 1: family of his own. Later, he moved to the Philippines,
8:06
Speaker 1: where he worked on oil rigs. His first marriage ended
8:10
Speaker 1: and he married for a second time. His new wife
8:13
Speaker 1: was from the Philippines. They had another child. Meanwhile, Mike
8:17
Speaker 1: McNeil had taken another look at the case. He testified
8:21
Speaker 1: at a pre trial hearing that when he looked at
8:23
Speaker 1: Rebecca's case file, he stated that based on the evidence
8:27
Speaker 1: he saw, he believed that either Casey McCullough or someone
8:31
Speaker 1: connected to him committed the murder. Mike noticed that Billy
8:36
Speaker 1: had been interviewed in two thousand four briefly by some
8:39
Speaker 1: investigators in Texas, but based on the fact that Billy
8:42
Speaker 1: had been mentioned as someone who was present in Casey's
8:45
Speaker 1: trailer shortly before Rebecca was murdered, Mike decided to take
8:49
Speaker 1: another look at him. Mike testified that when he saw
8:53
Speaker 1: that Billy had allegations of violence and sexual assault in
8:57
Speaker 1: his past, he became more interested in him as a suspect,
9:01
Speaker 1: and he decided that he wanted to interview him. Mike
9:05
Speaker 1: learned that Billy had come back to where some of
9:08
Speaker 1: his family members were living in Cottage Grove, Oregon. Sources
9:12
Speaker 1: close to his family have told me that Billy was
9:15
Speaker 1: planning to relocate his family there from the Philippines, and
9:18
Speaker 1: he was looking at buying property in that area. In
9:21
Speaker 1: November of two thousand twenty, investigator Mike McNeil made a
9:25
Speaker 1: trip to Cottage Grove, Oregon to interview Billy. During that interview,
9:30
Speaker 1: Mike told Billy that he had a wash rag from
9:33
Speaker 1: the crime scene, one that had DNA on it. In reality,
9:37
Speaker 1: Mike had no physical evidence, but Billy didn't know that,
9:40
Speaker 1: and it's not illegal to lie to murder suspects. Billy
9:45
Speaker 1: tried to make up a story about seeing two strange
9:48
Speaker 1: men on the back porch of the trailer on the
9:50
Speaker 1: morning when Rebecca was murdered, but Mike McNeil was clearly
9:55
Speaker 1: not buying Billy's story. He said, quote, what you saying
10:00
Speaker 1: is ridiculous. Tell me what you did, Billy, or tell
10:03
Speaker 1: me how you helped Casey cover it up. At that point,
10:07
Speaker 1: Billy looked visibly shaken on the video. He asked if
10:11
Speaker 1: he could step outside of the room to talk to
10:13
Speaker 1: his mother, and when he came back into the room,
10:16
Speaker 1: he started talking. Billy said that he committed the murder alone.
10:22
Speaker 1: He said that he killed Rebecca and that he had
10:25
Speaker 1: played everyone for a fool all these years. Billy never
10:30
Speaker 1: really offered a motive for killing Rebecca, but he did
10:33
Speaker 1: say at one point, I am a monster. Billy said
10:39
Speaker 1: that on that Monday morning, September four, after Rebecca dropped
10:44
Speaker 1: Casey off at work at Sonic and went back to
10:46
Speaker 1: his trailer, he happened to be hunting in an adjacent
10:50
Speaker 1: field near the mcculla's land. He said that he saw
10:53
Speaker 1: her car and realized that she was in there. He
10:57
Speaker 1: said that on Sunday, he and his mother and his brother,
11:00
Speaker 1: we're getting ready to move back to Texas, and they
11:02
Speaker 1: went over to see Casey. While he was there on Sunday,
11:06
Speaker 1: he saw Rebecca, but he didn't actually talk to her.
11:09
Speaker 1: So Billy said that that Monday morning when he came
11:12
Speaker 1: to the trailer was the first time that he'd ever
11:15
Speaker 1: actually had an encounter with her. Billy said that he
11:18
Speaker 1: hid his truck in the woods to disguise it. Then
11:22
Speaker 1: he walked up to the door and knocked. Rebecca let
11:25
Speaker 1: him in. He told her he was Casey's cousin and
11:28
Speaker 1: he needed to use the phone. Billy said that the
11:31
Speaker 1: phone excuse was really just a pretext to get inside
11:34
Speaker 1: the house. After that, Rebecca turned around and went back
11:37
Speaker 1: to the bedroom. He said she was lying on her
11:40
Speaker 1: bed with her head facing away from the door, and
11:43
Speaker 1: Billy said that he got an urge, an overwhelming urge
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Speaker 1: to kill her. He said that he'd had these kinds
11:49
Speaker 1: of urges before. He was pacing around like an animal,
11:53
Speaker 1: in this kind of murderous frenzy, debating what to do.
11:57
Speaker 1: While he was pacing, his leg knocked again the piano.
12:01
Speaker 1: The piano leg was loose, It had kind of just
12:05
Speaker 1: been propped up there. Billy said, it rolled down and
12:09
Speaker 1: he grabbed it. Then he said he went inside that
12:12
Speaker 1: bedroom and he hit Rebecca. He hit her twice, and
12:16
Speaker 1: at that point the injuries were catastrophic and she was
12:20
Speaker 1: bleeding out. He said that he took a necktie from
12:23
Speaker 1: the closet and strangled her until she stopped moving. After that,
12:27
Speaker 1: he was in a panic. He decided to do a
12:30
Speaker 1: quick cleanup. He cleaned up for about fifteen minutes. Then
12:35
Speaker 1: he said he threw the bloody sheets and the pillow
12:37
Speaker 1: cases into the washing machine. Billy said that he tried
12:41
Speaker 1: to stuff Rebecca's body into her black suitcase, the one
12:44
Speaker 1: that Danielle, her sister, had told us was missing from
12:47
Speaker 1: the crime scene, the one that was never found. But
12:50
Speaker 1: Billy said that the body wouldn't fit, so he said
12:54
Speaker 1: that he took some of the bloody betting material and
12:56
Speaker 1: put that in the suitcase. Then he threw her body,
13:00
Speaker 1: along with all that stuff, into the back of his truck.
13:03
Speaker 1: Billy said that he drove right through Melbourne with Rebecca's
13:06
Speaker 1: body exposed in the back of the truck. He pointed
13:09
Speaker 1: out the fact that he had passed very close to
13:11
Speaker 1: the turn off to the police department, and then when
13:14
Speaker 1: he got to Highway nine, to that scenic overlook, he
13:18
Speaker 1: pulled off the side of the road and dumped her body.
13:22
Speaker 1: After that, he put the piano leg the murder weapon,
13:25
Speaker 1: in a trash can at a nearby car wash. When
13:29
Speaker 1: police asked about the black suitcase, he told them he
13:32
Speaker 1: could direct them to the exact place in Izard County
13:35
Speaker 1: where that suitcase was. According to information that came out
13:39
Speaker 1: during the pre trial hearing, police officers did follow Billy's
13:43
Speaker 1: directions and they found the suitcase, but they did not
13:47
Speaker 1: provide any information about where it was found or what
13:50
Speaker 1: was inside. After Billy confessed, he was arrested for Rebecca's murder. Eventually,
13:56
Speaker 1: he was extradited back to Arkansas. Since November two thousand twenty,
14:01
Speaker 1: he's been in jail awaiting his murder trial, but due
14:04
Speaker 1: to COVID and other issues, the trial date kept getting
14:07
Speaker 1: pushed back. The date was finally set for October thirty one,
14:12
Speaker 1: two thousand twenty two, but before the trial, there were
14:16
Speaker 1: some hearings. First, there was a suppression hearing to determine
14:20
Speaker 1: which evidence would be allowed in court. The first hearing
14:24
Speaker 1: was in August of two thousand twenty two, and at
14:26
Speaker 1: that hearing, Billy's confession was played and the judge ruled
14:30
Speaker 1: that it was admissible. Billy's confession was played for a
14:34
Speaker 1: room full of reporters, family members, and people who had
14:38
Speaker 1: been following this case for years. I really was worried
14:42
Speaker 1: about seeing him because of what he did, but one
14:47
Speaker 1: I remember seeing his mug shot and thinking how cruel
14:51
Speaker 1: and awful he looked. And everything then got into trial.
14:57
Speaker 1: They hading dressed in khaki and then nice navy's shirt
15:01
Speaker 1: and tie, and I thought, no way, no way. I
15:05
Speaker 1: looked Attie like, how could you do something this cruel?
15:11
Speaker 1: This is Diana Cox. She's a resident of mountain View, Arkansas.
15:15
Speaker 1: Diana and her sister Karen have been attending all the
15:19
Speaker 1: suppression hearings of William Miller because they, like so many
15:22
Speaker 1: residents of mountain View and Melbourne, are highly invested in
15:25
Speaker 1: Rebecca's case. Diane is active in George Jared and Jennifer
15:29
Speaker 1: Buckolets his Facebook group. She keeps up to date with
15:32
Speaker 1: all the new information coming out of Iszard County. I
15:35
Speaker 1: also found out that Diana's late husband, Junior, was very
15:39
Speaker 1: good friends with my dad. They grew up together in Alzheimer, Arkansas. So,
15:43
Speaker 1: as it turns out, I've been hearing stories about Diana
15:46
Speaker 1: for years, and it was great to finally be able
15:48
Speaker 1: to put a name to the face and to meet
15:50
Speaker 1: someone else who cared so much about Rebecca and her case.
15:53
Speaker 1: My name is Diana Cox, and I got involved in
15:58
Speaker 1: this when Catherine came out with The Hell and Gone.
16:02
Speaker 1: I had never listened to any podcast before, but this
16:06
Speaker 1: seemed to be a big interest and everybody got so
16:09
Speaker 1: excited over it. So that's how I got interested, and
16:13
Speaker 1: I'm still interested. I love it, and I think my
16:16
Speaker 1: sister and I missed our calling of being detectives. But anyway,
16:20
Speaker 1: what's what do you mean? It's too late. Diana and
16:24
Speaker 1: Karen were at the suppression hearing back in August, and
16:27
Speaker 1: she told me about her impressions of Billy's confession video
16:31
Speaker 1: when he finally said I did it. I killed her.
16:37
Speaker 1: Nobody else knows. Nobody else was involved. This is what
16:41
Speaker 1: he said. That's nobody else but me and Catherine. It
16:46
Speaker 1: was kind of like, in a way he was reading
16:50
Speaker 1: like what we have read on different things, you know,
16:54
Speaker 1: on our website and things like that. It was like
16:59
Speaker 1: kind of like he was reading it. I don't know
17:02
Speaker 1: what what it was about it. Well, um, that was crazy.
17:16
Speaker 1: So I just got back from the pre trial hearing
17:20
Speaker 1: I found out there was a ton of wow. It
17:23
Speaker 1: was just it was pretty incredible. On October three, two two,
17:29
Speaker 1: I traveled back to Arkansas to attend the pre trial hearings.
17:33
Speaker 1: That's where I met Diana. On that day, the judge
17:36
Speaker 1: would be deciding which autopsy photos and crime scene photos
17:40
Speaker 1: would be allowed into evidence, and I wanted to be there.
17:44
Speaker 1: It was really important that I was at this pre trial.
17:47
Speaker 1: To my knowledge, I was the only journalist there, and
17:50
Speaker 1: if the photos were ruled inadmissible or for some other
17:54
Speaker 1: reason the trial didn't happen, this could be my only
17:58
Speaker 1: chance to ever see photo of what Rebecca's body looked
18:01
Speaker 1: like and what the crime scenemed looked like. We weren't
18:05
Speaker 1: allowed to record inside, so it was just me and
18:08
Speaker 1: my notebook for hours. So here's what happened. First, I
18:22
Speaker 1: saw Billy Miller in person for the first time. It
18:25
Speaker 1: turned out that instead of having the hearing in the
18:27
Speaker 1: main Iszard County Courthouse, it was held in the Izard
18:31
Speaker 1: County District Court, which is basically a tiny room inside
18:35
Speaker 1: the sheriff station. I got very up close and personal
18:38
Speaker 1: with Billy Miller. He was sitting right in front of me,
18:42
Speaker 1: unto the left, about five ft away from me. He
18:45
Speaker 1: did not look like a psychotic killer. In fact, he
18:48
Speaker 1: looked utterly forgettable, which might be one of the scariest
18:52
Speaker 1: things about him. He didn't say anything during the pre trial.
18:57
Speaker 1: He had several lawyers, and they were challenging the admissibility
19:00
Speaker 1: of some of the autopsy photos, arguing that they were inflammatory,
19:04
Speaker 1: and they were also trying to get some of the
19:06
Speaker 1: crime scene photos which were taken at Casey's trailer thrown out.
19:10
Speaker 1: The autopsy photos have never been seen by the public.
19:14
Speaker 1: Before they started showing the photos, the judge said, if
19:18
Speaker 1: you don't have to be here, you can leave the
19:20
Speaker 1: room now. I'd seen diagrams of Rebecca's autopsy, but this
19:28
Speaker 1: was the first time I actually saw what she looked
19:31
Speaker 1: like when she was found. They started showing the photos,
19:36
Speaker 1: they flipped through them rapidly, so we only had a
19:39
Speaker 1: few seconds to see each one. From what I could tell,
19:45
Speaker 1: if you're looking at Rebecca's body from above, she seemed
19:49
Speaker 1: to be kind of crouched down. Her legs were apart
19:52
Speaker 1: and what I would call almost like a frog position
19:55
Speaker 1: when your legs are splayed out. To me, it looked
19:59
Speaker 1: like the killer had dumped her down that embankment on
20:01
Speaker 1: Highway nine. It looked like she could have tumbled over
20:04
Speaker 1: a few times and then landed in that position, stuck
20:08
Speaker 1: between two trees. On one side of her body. From
20:12
Speaker 1: a certain angle, you could see hair hanging down across
20:15
Speaker 1: her face, and there was some skin remaining, but Once
20:19
Speaker 1: the body was turned over on the autopsy table upright,
20:24
Speaker 1: you could see that there was hardly anything left. Rebecca's
20:27
Speaker 1: body was in much worse shape than I ever could
20:30
Speaker 1: have imagined. I was shocked at the level of decomposition
20:34
Speaker 1: that the Arkansas, Indian summer causes, and I think it's
20:37
Speaker 1: really important to understand how decomposed she was, because looking
20:41
Speaker 1: at it as someone without medical training, I would have
20:44
Speaker 1: thought she'd been out there for a month. She had
20:47
Speaker 1: almost no skin. She was a skeleton. I'm really glad
21:04
Speaker 1: that Rebecca's dad, Larry, and the rest of her family
21:07
Speaker 1: were not present at that hearing, because no parents should
21:11
Speaker 1: ever have to see that. But I looked at every
21:14
Speaker 1: single autopsy photo because I believe that I owe that
21:17
Speaker 1: to Rebecca. As an investigator, that was my responsibility. Then
21:28
Speaker 1: we got to the photos of the crime scene. Those
21:31
Speaker 1: were also a little shocking for different reasons, because a
21:35
Speaker 1: lot of what we had been told about the crime scene,
21:37
Speaker 1: things that have been reported in the paper, we're actually wrong.
21:41
Speaker 1: And this was the first chance that I ever had
21:43
Speaker 1: to look at that and to figure it out. We've
21:47
Speaker 1: been told that the first officer on the scene back
21:49
Speaker 1: in two thousand four was Charlie Melton. He was the
21:52
Speaker 1: police officer who came into the trailer with Casey, and
21:55
Speaker 1: he supposedly secured the scene after that. Now, presumably that
22:00
Speaker 1: would mean that nothing was moved in there before those
22:02
Speaker 1: photos were taken, but other sources have told me that
22:05
Speaker 1: there were multiple people at the crime scene, so I
22:09
Speaker 1: just don't want to totally discount the possibility that law
22:12
Speaker 1: enforcement or someone else could have moved some of those
22:15
Speaker 1: things around before they were photographed. There were about thirty
22:21
Speaker 1: photographs and all, and because they were just showing them
22:24
Speaker 1: to see if they could be admissible in court, it
22:27
Speaker 1: took a few minutes to present them. All the lawyers
22:30
Speaker 1: and judges briefly discussed each one, which is why I
22:33
Speaker 1: called up Diana afterwards. I wanted to see if she
22:38
Speaker 1: remembered the same things as I did, just because we
22:41
Speaker 1: had to view them so quickly and we were all
22:43
Speaker 1: trying to take notes. First, I wanted to address the
22:46
Speaker 1: mattress because since the beginning of this case, we've been
22:50
Speaker 1: hearing about this blood soaked mattress. I pictured the mattress
22:55
Speaker 1: to really have a lot of blood on it, but
22:58
Speaker 1: there was only as we're looking at the mattress on
23:01
Speaker 1: the right top corner was a pool of blood or
23:06
Speaker 1: a big blood stain about the size of a basketball.
23:09
Speaker 1: That was about it. And did you notice the stuff
23:12
Speaker 1: under the bed the pillows, Yes, okay, I remember the
23:16
Speaker 1: picture that they were stuffed under the side of the
23:19
Speaker 1: bed and you could see blood. It wasn't a lot
23:23
Speaker 1: of blood on them, but it was spotted blood on them,
23:26
Speaker 1: and they were stuffed under the under the bed, just
23:30
Speaker 1: stuffed right there. Evidently whoever stripped the bed or whatever
23:34
Speaker 1: they done, they forgot about the pillows. That makes sense.
23:38
Speaker 1: So like they stripped the bed and through it in
23:39
Speaker 1: the washing machine, but they forgot about the actual pillows. Yeah, exactly.
23:44
Speaker 1: And what do you remember about the washing machine? The
23:46
Speaker 1: first picture that I remember saying was really bloody water.
23:52
Speaker 1: And then in that thing like up on top of
23:55
Speaker 1: your washing machine that you put bleach in, it was bloody.
23:58
Speaker 1: It was real old bloody. What do you remember about
24:02
Speaker 1: the suitcases? Okay, whenever they were scanning around the room,
24:07
Speaker 1: there was two suitcases sitting up against the wall. They
24:12
Speaker 1: were kind of a bluish color, and there were two
24:15
Speaker 1: of them. Like the suitcases you pull around got the
24:18
Speaker 1: wheels on it. There was two of them, and that
24:21
Speaker 1: really caught my eye. The suitcases, because all we've talked about,
24:26
Speaker 1: or anybody's talked about, is the black suitcase. That was
24:31
Speaker 1: you know, Rebecca's supposedly Rebecca's right. What about what do
24:35
Speaker 1: you remember about the interior, Well, it was you know,
24:41
Speaker 1: like the bathroom was very neat clean. What stood out
24:46
Speaker 1: to me was all those cleaning supplies, paper towel and
24:50
Speaker 1: stuff like that. I think it was on a table
24:52
Speaker 1: or a bar or something that stood out to me,
24:56
Speaker 1: all the cleaning stuff. I was real focused on the
24:59
Speaker 1: cleaning products too. Yes, they really stood out. There was
25:02
Speaker 1: a lot of cleaning products on the table or whatever
25:05
Speaker 1: it was. Um and also you I think you were
25:08
Speaker 1: telling me that that you didn't notice any folded clothes, right,
25:11
Speaker 1: because we've been talking about how that the clothes like
25:13
Speaker 1: they were supposedly clothes folded on the bed, which was
25:17
Speaker 1: the reason that like he I guess presumably someone took
25:20
Speaker 1: him out of the suitcase, put him on the bed,
25:22
Speaker 1: and then either put her or put other stuff in
25:24
Speaker 1: the suitcase. Yes, that that was one thing that that
25:28
Speaker 1: we've heard that her clothes were neatly stacked on the mattress. Well,
25:34
Speaker 1: there was nothing on the mattress, you know the pictures
25:38
Speaker 1: that we saw. There was nothing on the mattress, no
25:40
Speaker 1: clothes anywhere that I saw. And you know, that was
25:44
Speaker 1: one of the things, wasn't it that they talked about?
25:47
Speaker 1: But I did not say that at all. And also
25:50
Speaker 1: did you notice the the bloodstains in the living room, Yes,
25:55
Speaker 1: on the wall and baseboard, yeah, and the carpet too,
25:58
Speaker 1: But I couldn't tell whether I think it was the
26:00
Speaker 1: living room, Yes, yes it was. I wonder if that
26:04
Speaker 1: was maybe tracked the way the door the way I understand,
26:08
Speaker 1: he wouldn't have had to gone in the living room
26:11
Speaker 1: to take her out the back right exactly the trailer
26:16
Speaker 1: was made, you know, the back door and and everything.
26:20
Speaker 1: So was did he track it in there or what? Yeah?
26:24
Speaker 1: And they also said that they originally that the police
26:27
Speaker 1: were saying the fight started in the kitchen or it
26:30
Speaker 1: started in the in that area, and then that's also
26:33
Speaker 1: kind of what my witness had said. But then like
26:35
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think any of the evidence I
26:37
Speaker 1: saw points to the fight starting in the bedroom. It
26:40
Speaker 1: looks like something happened on that carpet outside. What do
26:44
Speaker 1: you remember about the porch. I remember the porch was
26:49
Speaker 1: empty all but that they call it a thumper or
26:54
Speaker 1: a tire checker. It was that, Yes, I remember that
26:58
Speaker 1: was it. But I remember sin faint blood like a drag,
27:04
Speaker 1: and I do remember that on the porch, and then
27:07
Speaker 1: two spots of blood on the steps. Did you notice
27:10
Speaker 1: he seemed to me really looking at the not the
27:12
Speaker 1: autopsy photos, but all the crime scene photos crime scene.
27:15
Speaker 1: He looked at all the crime scene. He did not
27:18
Speaker 1: look at us autopsy at all. And I wish they
27:20
Speaker 1: had made him look at him. I wish they had
27:22
Speaker 1: made him look up there at it. But he hung
27:24
Speaker 1: his head the whole time. But yeah, he really watched
27:28
Speaker 1: the crime scene, all of them. But I tell you
27:31
Speaker 1: what those crime scene Catherine. Really it was kind of
27:35
Speaker 1: like a question to me on some of the stuff
27:37
Speaker 1: where it was. Yeah, and then William. That was also
27:40
Speaker 1: one of the things that was weird to me about
27:42
Speaker 1: his confession. He's he mentioned everything that was online. So
27:46
Speaker 1: it's just the whole thing is very strange to me. Yes,
27:48
Speaker 1: it is. It's very strange. Just like I told you
27:51
Speaker 1: start with, it was like he was reading some of
27:54
Speaker 1: the things that he had heard or read before you know,
27:59
Speaker 1: on on on how that some of the things that
28:02
Speaker 1: come out that how she was or around this and that.
28:05
Speaker 1: But it was to me, I don't know, he I
28:08
Speaker 1: don't know. It's it was a very strange confession. Honestly,
28:15
Speaker 1: after seeing the crime scene photos, I have more questions
28:19
Speaker 1: than ever because it does seem like a lot of
28:22
Speaker 1: the things that Billy Miller confessed to are true. But
28:26
Speaker 1: there's a piece missing and I'm not sure what it
28:28
Speaker 1: is yet. Maybe someone else let him into that trailer,
28:32
Speaker 1: or maybe someone else struck the first blow and Billy
28:35
Speaker 1: finished it off and cleaned up. Maybe he's covering for
28:38
Speaker 1: someone else, perhaps one of his family members was there
28:41
Speaker 1: at the time. I absolutely believe that he had a
28:44
Speaker 1: role in killing Rebecca, but I don't think he did
28:47
Speaker 1: the whole thing on his own. It's illogical that William
28:52
Speaker 1: did this in I'll vacuum, you know, completely by himself.
29:01
Speaker 1: This is Jennifer Buckles. She's a criminal investigator and professor
29:05
Speaker 1: of forensics. After she listened to Helen Gone, she got
29:09
Speaker 1: interested in Rebecca's case. Later, she contacted Rebecca's father, Dr.
29:14
Speaker 1: Larry Gold and George shared. Since then, Jennifer and George
29:20
Speaker 1: have worked on a lot of cases together. They also
29:22
Speaker 1: started a Facebook group, Unsolved Murder of Rebecca Gold, where
29:26
Speaker 1: they tried to use crowdsourcing to help get information and
29:29
Speaker 1: leads on Rebecca's case. The couple of aspects of Rebecca's
29:33
Speaker 1: case that really caught my attention and that I thought
29:35
Speaker 1: I hadn't been considered or given any attention by law
29:39
Speaker 1: enforcement is the fact that her body was removed from
29:42
Speaker 1: the crime scene to a secondary location and someone had
29:45
Speaker 1: tried to clean the scene. And those actions are super rare,
29:50
Speaker 1: like most killers just don't do that. They usually des
29:53
Speaker 1: grabbed the weapon and they sleeve the scene. And so
29:55
Speaker 1: that immediately told me like, it's got to be someone
29:57
Speaker 1: who has like a known connection to her and that residents.
30:01
Speaker 1: The other thing that stuck out to her was the
30:03
Speaker 1: road back Casey's. You know, there's a road that leads
30:07
Speaker 1: basically from Casey's property to where Rebecca was found, and
30:13
Speaker 1: I think there's been like a little mentioned about through
30:15
Speaker 1: the years, but it seemed like the prevailing theory is
30:17
Speaker 1: that the killer like took pavement, either went up and
30:20
Speaker 1: around through Melbourne or went down and around through a
30:23
Speaker 1: mountain view which never made sense to me because usually
30:26
Speaker 1: a person like they want to have a dead body
30:28
Speaker 1: in their car for the least amount of time possible,
30:31
Speaker 1: so obviously, like there's an alternate route that doesn't take
30:33
Speaker 1: your own pavement that's rarely traveled, and you know law enforcement,
30:37
Speaker 1: like there's not gonna be any cops out there, that
30:39
Speaker 1: would be the logical route to take. So then it
30:45
Speaker 1: occurred to us, well, assuming they took that that throw
30:48
Speaker 1: it says to be someone either local to the area
30:51
Speaker 1: or who has spent a decent amount of time in
30:52
Speaker 1: the area. So again, it's just like the evidence has
30:55
Speaker 1: kept kind of pointing to someone with a personal relationship
30:59
Speaker 1: or connection to Rebecca. Another weird thing about Billy is
31:09
Speaker 1: that before he was arrested, he actually reached out to
31:12
Speaker 1: me and also to Jennifer. He called me while I
31:16
Speaker 1: was staying at my grandmother's cabin by myself in the
31:19
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere, I was getting multiple calls a day
31:23
Speaker 1: about people of interest, and a lot of them turned
31:26
Speaker 1: out to be people whose names were being whispered around
31:28
Speaker 1: town because they knew Rebecca, but who had nothing to
31:31
Speaker 1: do with her murder. To the best of my recollection,
31:35
Speaker 1: Billy told me some coworkers of his had been talking
31:38
Speaker 1: about people and had mentioned the names Chris and Jennifer.
31:41
Speaker 1: But again, at the time, a lot of people were
31:44
Speaker 1: calling me and had stuff to say about Chris and Jennifer,
31:47
Speaker 1: So nothing that Billy Miller said particularly stuck out, at
31:50
Speaker 1: least until afterwards, when I realized how creepy it was
31:54
Speaker 1: that the person who confessed to killing Rebecca called me
31:58
Speaker 1: in a remote location and presuming when you knew exactly
32:00
Speaker 1: where I was. Billy also made contact with Jennifer by
32:04
Speaker 1: reaching out on the Facebook group that she and George
32:07
Speaker 1: Jared had started to help their investigation, and we started
32:11
Speaker 1: out in October and within a month a guy named
32:15
Speaker 1: William Miller joined the group, and thankfully due to a
32:21
Speaker 1: woman named Miranda who had dated Casey for a year
32:24
Speaker 1: and a half, she had mapped his whole family tree
32:27
Speaker 1: for us, and so when that request to join came in,
32:30
Speaker 1: She's like, that's Casey's cousins. I'm like, well, that's interesting.
32:35
Speaker 1: Then he maybe he lurked around for a month or so.
32:39
Speaker 1: I think it was towards the end of eighteen is
32:40
Speaker 1: when he started making comments on some of the posts,
32:44
Speaker 1: But you know, like aside from being Casey's cousin, there
32:47
Speaker 1: wasn't really any other red flags to his comments. I mean,
32:50
Speaker 1: he was throwing ideas out just like everybody else. We
32:53
Speaker 1: just thought that, I mean, most people probably know about
32:56
Speaker 1: My theory is that, well, he thinks we don't know
32:58
Speaker 1: who he is, so he is in the group to
33:01
Speaker 1: spy for Casey and his family. Right, there were definitely people,
33:07
Speaker 1: There are people doing that. There's always spies. Yeah, and
33:10
Speaker 1: that's fine. I mean, yeah, we want the killer to
33:13
Speaker 1: know what's going on. Yeah, we want them to see
33:16
Speaker 1: what's in our group, and we want them to stay
33:18
Speaker 1: on edge so that we don't That's fine. And then yeah, January,
33:23
Speaker 1: which ironically is Casey's birthday, William Villari sent me the
33:27
Speaker 1: first message, like a direct message to me, and he
33:31
Speaker 1: had sent me a photo of a newspaper article, the
33:35
Speaker 1: one that says a neighborhood heard screams in the hours
33:39
Speaker 1: before the murder or something like that, and he had
33:42
Speaker 1: asked if I'd seen the article, what did I think?
33:44
Speaker 1: You know? And so, Mike, this is interesting because I'm
33:47
Speaker 1: talking to Casey's cousin now, and so I just wrote
33:51
Speaker 1: back like normal, you know, I'm like, thanks for reaching out.
33:53
Speaker 1: I appreciate you, know, your insight, your thought process. You know,
33:57
Speaker 1: we do know that that report from a neighbor was
34:00
Speaker 1: made to police, but we don't know the timeframe, like
34:03
Speaker 1: police have not ever divulged what time they heard the screen,
34:06
Speaker 1: So it's hard for us to put much stock in
34:08
Speaker 1: that or use it at this point, you know. And
34:11
Speaker 1: so it's been from there on out. We just went
34:12
Speaker 1: back and forth periodically, and he would ask a lot
34:16
Speaker 1: of the same questions that tons of other people asked,
34:19
Speaker 1: and he might have been digging a little bit, I'm sure,
34:22
Speaker 1: you know, to try to get our viewpoint on stuff,
34:24
Speaker 1: but it was really it's fairly benign. Obviously. I've read
34:28
Speaker 1: them over and over and over again, now like did
34:30
Speaker 1: I miss something? And I don't really feel I do.
34:33
Speaker 1: I did. But there's a few things that he was
34:35
Speaker 1: he had more focused on than others, and one was
34:38
Speaker 1: the timeline, like the actual timeframe of when Rebecca was killed.
34:42
Speaker 1: He told me on multiple occasions like I'm trying to
34:45
Speaker 1: do what you do and put together the timeline of how,
34:48
Speaker 1: how and when the murder actually went down. And he
34:52
Speaker 1: talked several times about the maybe the person who cleaned
34:55
Speaker 1: up ward gloves and now you know, I'm kind of
34:58
Speaker 1: like that might have been true, but there wasn't, like,
35:01
Speaker 1: you know, any huge red flag. And then the last
35:05
Speaker 1: conversation we had was, I think it was September. He
35:10
Speaker 1: had posted a photo in our group of Chris Cantrell
35:14
Speaker 1: and so something about his tear drop tattoos must mean
35:17
Speaker 1: he committed a murder. Remember that. So and I we
35:20
Speaker 1: rarely removed posts, but that one had come down. And
35:23
Speaker 1: then I messaged him, I'm like, no, we can't have
35:26
Speaker 1: people posting photos and pointing the finger at someone who,
35:29
Speaker 1: as far as we know, has no connection to this case,
35:32
Speaker 1: So please don't do that. And you know, he apologized,
35:35
Speaker 1: And that was really our last exchange, which makes sense
35:39
Speaker 1: because that's when Mike McNeil was onto him. When I
35:41
Speaker 1: was talking with Diana, we both said it seemed that
35:45
Speaker 1: Billy was studying those crom scene photos, almost like he
35:48
Speaker 1: was taking notes on them. Jennifer got a similar impression
35:52
Speaker 1: from him when he first read his confession. In fact,
35:55
Speaker 1: some of his quotes almost seemed like he took them
35:58
Speaker 1: straight from George, because specifically the one where he said
36:02
Speaker 1: he drove with her body right through Melbourne past the
36:05
Speaker 1: Sheriff's department. I'm like, that's something Georgia said. Are written
36:09
Speaker 1: like and and and we never believed that anyways, he
36:13
Speaker 1: did not drive your downtown Melbourne with a dead body
36:15
Speaker 1: in the open bet of your pickup truck, like nobody
36:18
Speaker 1: would do that. He's wording what really? And look, I
36:21
Speaker 1: mean if it was if I really believe that it
36:24
Speaker 1: was only him, I would be a lot happier right now,
36:26
Speaker 1: you know, because it'd be like, oh, justice is served.
36:28
Speaker 1: But I feel like, um, when I read the confession,
36:30
Speaker 1: I had exactly the same thought. I was like, this,
36:33
Speaker 1: this feels like he's been reading stuff online or something
36:36
Speaker 1: and took it from there. It was really strange, yes,
36:40
Speaker 1: and some of it just it just couldn't be like
36:44
Speaker 1: he I guess. He said something about like he went
36:46
Speaker 1: hunting early in the morning and he knocked on Rebucca's
36:49
Speaker 1: door about eight. Well, Rebucca is supposed to be taking
36:52
Speaker 1: Casey to work at that time, like he but Casey
36:55
Speaker 1: clapped into twelves. She wouldn't have been home at n talk,
37:00
Speaker 1: so that it can't be true. But then he said,
37:03
Speaker 1: like he committed the removal, he clean did all his cleaning,
37:05
Speaker 1: and then he went back to his mom's house, and
37:07
Speaker 1: they hadn't even gotten out of bed yet. Like your
37:10
Speaker 1: your brother had to go to the high school. They
37:12
Speaker 1: were certainly up by ten o'clock or whatever time in
37:15
Speaker 1: the morning. So I then we knew some of that
37:17
Speaker 1: just had to be a lie if there's other And
37:19
Speaker 1: and the thing about his mom, I know there's been
37:22
Speaker 1: a lot of speculation that she might have known something.
37:25
Speaker 1: So I just wonder how much the mom knew and
37:26
Speaker 1: when she knew it. What I've been told is that
37:30
Speaker 1: they confirmed that she knew now that she knew her
37:34
Speaker 1: son killed Rebecca. I don't know the timeframe for sure
37:38
Speaker 1: of when she found that out, but what I've been
37:40
Speaker 1: told is that she has known that information for quite
37:44
Speaker 1: a while and obviously did nothing about it. Billy never
37:55
Speaker 1: went to trial. On October nineteen, William Miller was convict
38:00
Speaker 1: did a first degree murder and sentenced to forty years
38:02
Speaker 1: in prison. Billy is now incarcerated with the Washita River
38:06
Speaker 1: Correctional Unit in Malvern, Arkansas. After the conviction, Billy said
38:14
Speaker 1: that he was willing to speak privately with Rebecca's dad,
38:17
Speaker 1: Larry Gould, and her older sister Tiffany. So the three
38:21
Speaker 1: of them went into a back room with a sheriff
38:23
Speaker 1: station to talk in private. After about fifteen minutes, they
38:27
Speaker 1: came out and according to Larry, the confession Billy gave
38:32
Speaker 1: to him was totally different than the one that he
38:35
Speaker 1: had made in court. If Billy has two different stories,
38:39
Speaker 1: that must mean that he lied in one of them.
38:42
Speaker 1: And if he lied before, what's to stop him from
38:46
Speaker 1: lying again? What is Billy Miller hiding? I'm Katherine Townsend.
38:52
Speaker 1: This is Helen Gone. Helen Gone is a production of
39:01
Speaker 1: School of Humans and I Heart Media. Our producer is
39:03
Speaker 1: Gabby Watts. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and
39:08
Speaker 1: Elsie Crowley. Music is by Ben Tale Special thanks to
39:12
Speaker 1: season one producers Taylor Church and James Morrison. School of
39:31
Speaker 1: Humans