Latest / Devil Town / Silence | Chapter 16

Transcript

Silence | Chapter 16 · Devil Town

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So a couple days after that first phone call I
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: had with Joe Hogue, the one where he decided he
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: was going to go lean on his Texas Rangers buddies
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: and try to get Kelly Wilson's case looked at again,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Hogue calls me back, and I could tell right off
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: that something had changed. So I'm out in my backyard
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: smoking a brisket, having a pretty normal Sunday, and Hogue, man,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: it sounds like he has not slept in about a week.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, what a night, man. It's been a
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: roller coaster.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: See, after we'd hung up that first time, Joe had
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: gone back home and sat down and listened to both
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: of my Joe Henry interviews again, back to back, the
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: whole way through in one night. And he took notes.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: I've got like 25 pages of notes. Anyway, I think
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: you should have the privilege of hearing some of this.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: I'd love to, yeah. When he called me, he said
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: that he had been up for 36 hours working on this.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: And I guess that's what this episode is really about.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: It's about what a guy hears when he stays up
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: all night convinced he's listening to a killer. And then
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: there's what I hear sitting right next to him, which
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: it turns out is maybe not always the same thing.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: In his mind, he's now at the point where he's
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: killed her. And this is what comes out of his mouth.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: From Free Range Productions in association with Imperative Entertainment. I'm
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Wes Ferguson, and this is Deviltown. Chapter 16, Silence. Okay,
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: here is just a very quick reminder of who we're
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: dealing with. Joe Hogue is a Texas state trooper, 27
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: years in, retired now, who stumbled onto my show on
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: those long border drives and just could not put the
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Kelly Wilson case down. And out of this whole thing,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: the guy he keeps coming back to over and over
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: is Joe Henry. And of course you know Joe Henry.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: He ran the burger joint on the square, he leased
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: the movies to the video store where Kelly worked, and
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: he's always said he was the last person to see
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: her on the night she disappeared. And just like I
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: said last time, I'm going to repeat that Joe Henry
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: is has never been charged with anything in this case.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: He is innocent until proven guilty. Everything you are about
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: to hear Joe Hogue say about him is just opinion.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: It's not fact. It's not a conviction. Joe Henry is
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: innocent until proven guilty. Okay, so Hogue has been through
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: my interviews with a fine-tooth comb, and the first thing
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: he wants to talk about when he calls me back
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: is how Joe Henry acts when the questions get hard.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: He redirects you every single thing that you asked him
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: some specifics about. Like, there's a couple times in there
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: where his mouth goes dry.
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: You may have saw that. Did you pick up on that?
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: Where he went cotton mouth? Mm-hmm. And so his real
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: demeanor is real down. But when you... shift, and then
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: you start asking about these other questions you want to ask,
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: and these questions were like off-the-wall rumor stuff.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: So here Hoag is referring to several questions that I
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: asked Joe Henry about some rumors flying around. I got
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: into all these in previous episodes, so I won't really
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: get into.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: It too much here.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: There was the story about the guy who supposedly came
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: home the morning after she disappeared, covered in mud. stuff
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: about the rich old guys in town and all the
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: rumors about where Kelly's body supposedly is hidden, like under
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: the pizza hut, under Gilmer Lake, or maybe she was
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: put in the incinerator at a lumber yard. Joe Henry
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: described all of this as fanciful talk.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: He does a 180. Like, his spirit, his demeanor, like,
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: came back up.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Hogue brought this up a little bit on our last call,
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: but now he pushes it even further.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: Well, he was.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Relieved to move on. You know, it's kind of human nature.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Not on the spot anymore. And that's true as far
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: as it goes. You know, a guy is getting grilled
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: about one of the worst nights in his life when
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: there has been this suspicion cast over him for decades.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: And then when I change the subject, of course he
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: loosens up. But the more of those hard moments that
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: I went back and listened to, the less I felt
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: like all of that left him off the hook. Because
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: it wasn't just a one-time thing. I mean, it was
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: a lot. Ask Joe something real, he shrinks. Bring up
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: some rumor, he's chatty as can be. Hoag heard the
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: exact same thing that I did. He just wasn't willing
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: to explain it away. You'll also remember that Joe Henry
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: does not have a clean slate. As you heard in
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: the last episode, he has a child pornography conviction. And
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: to be fair, that conviction came more than a decade
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: after Kelly vanished. And as far as we know, it
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: really has nothing to do with her case. But it's
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: also a good deal uglier than the folks defending him
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: have let on. And Joe admitted to some other things
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: around Kelly at the store that a grown man has
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: no business doing. Now, does any of that prove that
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: he hurt Kelly Wilson? No, of course it doesn't. Joe
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Henry has never been charged with that. But it's also
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: not nothing. So when Joe Hogue tells me he hears
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: something dark on my tape, I can't just wave that away.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: And when I was actually in the room with Joe Henry,
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: first at his burger shop and then in his living room,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: there was more than one moment where I think I
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: felt it too. And I told Joe Hogue that.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: I was curious, your mindset during that, You know that,
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's you and it's him sitting there. And
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: you've got the guy that's done it.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: Hogue and I are just speculating here. We're not saying
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: it was Joe Henry. What we are saying is that
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: we are looking hard at him.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, that was definitely going through my head. Whether
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: he acted alone, I don't know. He's kind of a smaller,
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: kind of a weak and mild, timid kind of guy.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: So I've wondered if he, you know, had help or
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: maybe he was the help. I don't know, but I
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: definitely got the read on him that he was feeling
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: extremely guilty and was not disclosing everything that he knew.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: That's for sure. Again, this is just us speculating here, spitballing.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: Joe Henry could have been nervous. After all, nobody wants
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: to be accused of something. But I still felt like
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: something was off, and obviously Joe Hogue felt that too.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: On our second phone call, Hogue told me something really chilling.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: I cried last night. I prayed. I kept praying over
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: and over and over, you know, because I started to
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: panic at one point when I'm listening to his interview
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: and he's went through these timelines of his alibi, which
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: he's lying about all of them. But do you realize,
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: you know, when he tells you that off-the-wall story about
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: the dog in the yard. There's your dog in the yard?
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: And I thought, yeah, I think so. So I got
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: up and looked out the window, and there he was,
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: you know. This is what comes out of his mouth,
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: you know, because he doesn't know what to say. So
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: he's just saying. And so at that point, I was
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: having problems breathing because I felt that I was listening to, like,
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: the moment where In his mind, this is when he
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: killed her.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I thought it was really weird at
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: the time too, but I didn't really know what to
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: make of it. Why would his girlfriend, who wasn't even there,
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: call him and ask if his dog was in the yard?
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: Without more context, it really makes no sense. But I
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: did push back on Joe Hogue's theory just a bit.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: It seems like he had 30 years. He could have
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: come up with a better alibi than, is your dog
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: in the yard? If you did this and you had
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: three decades to smooth your story out, why would you
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: leave in the one detail that sounds insane? And Hogue,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: to his credit, had an answer for that, and it
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: wasn't a crazy one.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: When you get put in that position and that stress
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: level goes way up like that, I mean, it's hard
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: to control what the body does when the stress level
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: is at And like he can practice it and he
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: can think about it in his mind. But until that
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: time happens where somebody's in front of him and is
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: asking to answer something, when that stress hits the roof,
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: the human body can't prepare itself for that. And so
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: it's just the human body just does things that a
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: person can't control.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: So at this point, Joe Hogue is 100% certain that
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Joe Henry did this, and he wants to do something
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: about it. If you remember from last episode, he started
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: reaching out to his law enforcement connections to try and
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: make things happen. He didn't call me back to just
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: share more thoughts about the interviews. He called to give
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: me some updates. After the break, more investigators get involved. Okay,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: so this is the part of our podcast where Joe
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Hogue turns from a guy with headphones and 25 pages
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: of notes into a guy actually trying to reopen a
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: 30-year-old murder case. And remember who we're dealing with. 27
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: years at DPS, he knows people. He already told me
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: on that first call that he was going to go
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: talk to his friend, the Texas Ranger, who had just
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: been assigned to Upshur County. Well, by the second call,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: he'd done a whole lot more than talk.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: The right people are involved. I was wanting the wheels
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: to start rolling today, but they're not. You know, I've
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: talked to the Ranger and then the Lieutenant Ranger. I've
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: got a couple of demands, and they're on board.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: So all of a sudden, we are not talking about
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: a maybe anymore. He's got actual Texas Rangers, plural, willing
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: to take a look. And when Joe Hogue says he's
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: got demands, understand he is not kidding around. He had
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: worked up this whole plan for how these Rangers were
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: going to get up to speed, and it's honestly kind
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: of intense.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: I'm going to make them listen to these interviews. With me,
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: with nothing being said. They're going to listen to them
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: and not say a word. Okay? I don't know how
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: good they are at interpreting interviews. And so it's vital.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: It's vital that people that are very well trained. So
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: the reason I'm going to make them listen to it
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: in front of me, and then I need to see
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: that they pick up on what I picked on.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: So he doesn't want to just hand the Rangers a
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: case and walk away. He wants to sit them down,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: play my tapes, and watch their faces to make sure
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: they hear the guilt he thinks he hears. And if
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: they don't?
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: If they don't pick up on what I pick up on,
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: then somebody else is going to listen to it.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: And that tells you right where Joe Hoag's head was at.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: This is a man who has decided flat out that
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: he is right. And now he's auditioning the Texas Rangers
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: to see if they're sharp enough to agree with him.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: So I asked Kogue the obvious thing, the thing I
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: couldn't get my head around. You can't just walk up
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: to a man after 30 years and accuse him of murder.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, how do you even start a conversation like that? Well,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: wouldn't the interviewer kind of frame it as, you know,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: a general investigation and just seeing if he can help out,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: you know, not pinning him down.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, there's psychological steps
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: that you can do, you know, to make him not suspicious,
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: to make him think everything is all right, you know,
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: in the beginning. But that's over my head, you know,
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: and how they do that. But, yeah, all that will
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: have to be analyzed by what type of person this is,
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: you know, and we've learned everything we need to know
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: from your interviews, what type of witness he is. They'll
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: make that decision on how they want to go about it,
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: you know. They may come at him at an angle
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: that they're looking at something else, you know. They just
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: got to get in there.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: So the plan was to go in soft. Sit somebody
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: down with Joe Henry, get him talking about anything but Kelly,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: at least a start, and just wait for a crack
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: to show. And here's the part that sat a little
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: funny with me, honestly. To build a plan like that,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: they were not starting from nothing. They had hours of
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Joe Henry already on tape.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: My tape.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: Not every journalist agrees with me on this, but I
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: always try to help law enforcement when I can. I
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: do talk to a lot of people who ask me
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: not to reveal their identity. And I definitely don't do that.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: I never break their trust. But if our conversation is
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: on the record, sure, I'll probably pass that along to
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: the right authorities since it could do more good in
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: their hands. The interviews I did with Joe Henry, I
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: was trying to stay right down the middle, not jump
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: to a bunch of conclusions. And now Hoag is handing
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: those same interviews to the Texas Rangers. And there's a
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: real difference between me asking a guy questions for a
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: story and the law using my recordings to go plan
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: an interrogation. Somewhere across these two phone calls with Joe Hogue,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: without ever really deciding to, I maybe had crossed the
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: line from journalist to, I don't know, hopefully something more helpful.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: And there's a reason Hogue was so sure that Joe
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: Henry's weak spot was the element of surprise. Because the
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: two times I got Joe Henry to talk, I did
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: not call ahead. I just drove over and knocked. Hogue
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: picked up on that right away.
• 15:11
  Speaker 5: In my mind, I'm thinking you went there because you
• 15:15
  Speaker 5: knew that that was your only chance to get him
• 15:19
  Speaker 5: to talk to you again was to ask him in person.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: And he was right. It never once occurred to me
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: to call. On the phone, someone has every reason in
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: the world to say no thanks, no comment. And that
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: was the whole thing Hogue was trying to line up.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: He had a meeting set with the Rangers Tuesday morning,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: 8 a.m., and he asked me, real plainly, to keep
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: all of that quiet. You know, obviously I'm not going
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: to be, you know, trumpeting this out to the public
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: at all, you know, until that time is appropriate, but
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: I'd love to be just kind of kept in the
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: loop if you don't mind. And I meant that. I've
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: sat on all of this for a long time, literally years,
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: because he asked me to, And because the last thing
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: I wanted was to be the guy who blew a
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: chance to find answers for Kelly Wilson's family. And I'll
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: be honest, hanging up the phone, I kind of got excited.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: A Texas Ranger, new to the county, ready to make
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: his mark. Another Ranger and his lieutenant, also on board.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: A meeting on the calendar. For the first time in
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: a really long time, it felt like something was actually
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: about to move. Before I tell you where this went,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: I want to play you one more thing Hogue said
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: because it stuck with me more than just about anything
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: in either call. I asked him basically, why does a
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: case just sit like this? 30 years. Everybody in Gilmer
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: knew the names. Why does nobody ever pick it back up?
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: And Hogue had a theory, and it's not about one
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: bad cop. It's a little sadder than that.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: These people up there I've been talking to They think
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: that the reason that nobody has done anything about this
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: in all these years is that if these people were wrong,
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: if these investigators were truly wrong, that not only did
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: they ruin those people's lives that they arrested, well, they
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: allowed this guy to be free all these years. I've
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: heard that's a possibility that people... Don't want to dig
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: into that because if he did do it, then a
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: lot of people, a lot of people didn't do their job.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: He's careful about this, which I appreciated. He's not calling
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: anybody a villain.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: It's awful, you know. They didn't do it purposely. They
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: truly believed, you know, that they were doing the right
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: thing and these people were guilty. They just... They didn't
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: have the training to evaluate those people, and they just
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: made mistakes and didn't have the training to realize that
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: they made those mistakes. But if this guy did it,
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: that means that a lot of people failed.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: And that's the real weight of this whole thing. That's
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: why it's so much easier to just leave a case
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: sitting in a drawer than to open it up and
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: find out you spent 30 years looking at the wrong
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: man or the wrong people and wrecking innocent people along
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: the way. And then, right at the end of that
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: second call, Joe Hogue said something I did not see coming.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: He brought up the very first episode of Deviltown from
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: years back, something I said that honestly I'd half forgotten about.
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: Do you know in the beginning of the story that
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: you made the comment that we've all had to live
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: with this, you know, all these years and it's unsettling
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: and that all you're.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: Hoping is that somebody sees this and asks some questions.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: Do you remember saying something like that, that that is
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: your hope?
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I kind of remember that.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: Well. Somebody has seen it and somebody's asked it some questions.
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: All right. Amen.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: We ended our call and I can't speak for Hogue,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: but for me, it felt like something might actually happen. Finally.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Hogue had the Texas Rangers. He had his meeting on
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: the books. He had that fire in him. A couple
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: weeks went by and I texted Hogue just to check in.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: And here's what came back. January 16th, 2024. Sadly, no.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: They haven't said anything to me. I give you my
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: word we will get some answers. Then a few more
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: months go by. And in April, another text. Just an update.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: I spoke with a DPS investigator at length today. He's
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: actually from Gilmer originally. He is 100% on board. We
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: will work together moving forward. So I wrote back and
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: asked him straight up, has anybody ever actually interviewed Joe Henry?
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: And he told me not to their knowledge and no
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: record of any previous polygraph either. In over 30 years,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: the last man to see Kelly Wilson had apparently never
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: once sat down for a real interview with law enforcement.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: And then, well, things just got quiet. Summer came. I
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: texted Hoag again, mostly just to say hey, see if
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: he'd heard anything. And there was nothing new. No interview,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: no ranger sitting across from Joe Henry. Still no answers, obviously.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: Joe Hoag never got his shot. And Kelly Wilson is
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: still out there somewhere, and her family still does not
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: have answers. So somewhere along the way, I started kicking
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: around a different idea. A simple one. If the Rangers
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: weren't going to go knock on Joe Henry's door and
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: just ask him what happened, well, maybe I should try again.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: Coming up next time on Deviltown. So I'm in Gilmer
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: and just drove past Joe Henry's house.
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: I've got butterflies in my stomach.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: I'm nervous, obviously.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: I go see Joe Henry and he opens up again.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: I am very nervous. Yeah, I was scared to death.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: But this time, I'm just going to come out and
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: ask him.
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: I mean, if some law enforcement officer, if it's this
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: state trooper, someone else comes in and says, you know,
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: by listening to this audio, listening to this interview, I
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: think that you had some involvement in this case that
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: you have not shared in the past 30 something years.
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: I mean, what's your, what's your response to that?
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Deviltown is a free-range production in association with Imperative Entertainment.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: The show was created by me, Wes Ferguson. Our producer
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: is Aislinn Gaddis. Theme music by Robert Ellis. Stay up
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: to date with our progress on the story when you
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: sign up for our free newsletter at UnforgottenPod.com. That's UnforgottenPod.com
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: because our other podcast is The Unforgotten. As always, thank
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: you for listening.