Latest / Hell and Gone: Murder Line / Time Opens All Wounds

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Time Opens All Wounds · Hell and Gone: Murder Line

0:08
Speaker 1: School of Humans. We're in Walmart stocking up on provisions
0:14
Speaker 1: for our cabin when we get a call from a
0:17
Speaker 1: woman named Sylvia. She says that she does not want
0:21
Speaker 1: to be interviewed again because the last time she came forward,
0:25
Speaker 1: her entire life was put under a microscope. It was
0:29
Speaker 1: interesting both in that she pointed out a lot of
0:31
Speaker 1: the discrepancies, but she was explaining those discrepancies and she
0:35
Speaker 1: was insisting that she's right and that she did see
0:37
Speaker 1: what she saw. And she's reluctant to talk. But I
0:41
Speaker 1: was able to sort of talk to her for about
0:42
Speaker 1: twenty minutes and explain to her who you were, what
0:44
Speaker 1: we're doing, that we're legit, and I feel like if
0:48
Speaker 1: we get some new information or we have something she
0:50
Speaker 1: can collaborate with us on, I feel like she will talk.
0:53
Speaker 1: Sylvia is heavily featured in ABC's forty minute episode of
0:57
Speaker 1: their show called Primetime that was dedicated to Janie's case.
1:01
Speaker 1: It aired in two thousand and nine. In the program,
1:05
Speaker 1: Sylvia tells the producers that at the time of Janie's death,
1:08
Speaker 1: she was a runner, someone who delivered drugs to parties,
1:12
Speaker 1: and on September ninth, nineteen eighty nine. She said she
1:16
Speaker 1: was asked to deliver drugs to a high school party
1:19
Speaker 1: that was happening in a cabin on Zach Road in Marshall, Arkansas.
1:24
Speaker 1: She said when she pulled up to the cabin, she
1:26
Speaker 1: was looking straight at the porch and she witnessed the
1:29
Speaker 1: girl hid another girl in the face. Sylvia said she
1:33
Speaker 1: high tailed it out of there because she didn't want
1:35
Speaker 1: any trouble. She had bags of pot in her car
1:38
Speaker 1: and didn't want to risk arrest. Sylvia didn't come forward
1:42
Speaker 1: until two thousand and seven, three years into a new
1:45
Speaker 1: investigation into Janie Ward's death. She claimed she had been scared,
1:50
Speaker 1: but now she said she had a kid herself, and
1:53
Speaker 1: she felt for the Ward family and she wanted the
1:56
Speaker 1: Wards to know once and for all what happened to
1:59
Speaker 1: their daughter. I'm Catherine Townsend and this is Helen Gone.
2:41
Speaker 1: I do love the names of some of these roads,
2:43
Speaker 1: Like some of them make sense, like Nighthawk Road and
2:45
Speaker 1: Cricket Lane, and then some of them are like high
2:48
Speaker 1: Tech Road. It's gonna be almost like purposely ironic. Right now,
2:54
Speaker 1: we are going to the cabin where the party happened
2:59
Speaker 1: and where Jane fell. Whatever happened to Janey happened to
3:05
Speaker 1: turn right onto Zach Road, and we'd managed to get
3:09
Speaker 1: some directions from the Freedom Information Request and from I
3:14
Speaker 1: compared that address with the name of the person who
3:17
Speaker 1: bought the cabin afterwards, So we're gonna go out there
3:20
Speaker 1: and look for it. The cabin on Zach Road has
3:23
Speaker 1: been renovated in the thirty years since Janie's death. It's
3:27
Speaker 1: been spruced up since that fateful night in nineteen eighty
3:29
Speaker 1: nine when Jane's cousin Jay lived there alone. The house
3:34
Speaker 1: had two bedrooms. One had a dirty mattress on the ground.
3:38
Speaker 1: The other, where Jay slept, had a mattress with stained
3:41
Speaker 1: sheets and three thin pillows on it. Three shirts hung
3:45
Speaker 1: in the closet. Another room was converted into a makeshift
3:48
Speaker 1: workspace and was filled with old food containers and another
3:51
Speaker 1: folded up mattress and file cabinet that looked like someone
3:54
Speaker 1: to toss into the room. The living room had a
3:57
Speaker 1: matching set of faded floral furniture, and there was a
4:00
Speaker 1: model of a boat on display. The cabin didn't have
4:04
Speaker 1: electricity or running water, so the appliances in the kitchen
4:08
Speaker 1: and bathroom were unusable. And the whole house was covered
4:12
Speaker 1: in matted brown carpet. The walls were unfinished. The house
4:17
Speaker 1: had two porches. The one facing the gravel road that
4:20
Speaker 1: leads up to the cabin is where Janey supposedly fell
4:22
Speaker 1: off the step, and that step was no more than
4:25
Speaker 1: ten inches in height. In December of two thousand and four,
4:30
Speaker 1: Special Prosecutor Tim Williamson was court appointed to Janey's case.
4:35
Speaker 1: At the time, he was a prosecutor based in Mina, Arkansas.
4:40
Speaker 1: Governor Mike Huckabee sets aside ten thousand dollars for the
4:43
Speaker 1: investigation so that Williamson can build a team of investigators
4:47
Speaker 1: and a deputy prosecutor. The governor's spotlight on the case
4:51
Speaker 1: gets readers hooked to Mike Masterson's column, and journalists from
4:55
Speaker 1: around the state start covering the case again. One of
4:58
Speaker 1: those journalists was Jason Peterson, and in his news report
5:03
Speaker 1: that aired on KATV, he puts a cushion down where
5:06
Speaker 1: Jennie falls and demonstrates the fall himself, tumbling backwards and
5:10
Speaker 1: landing with a heavy smack under the cushion. When you
5:13
Speaker 1: sort of demonstrated the fall off the porch, what was
5:16
Speaker 1: your impression of the of the porch and how far
5:18
Speaker 1: the fall was. Well, that's what I wanted to try
5:21
Speaker 1: to convey to our viewers. You know, it's been widely
5:25
Speaker 1: thought that she I mean, it's a fact she fell
5:28
Speaker 1: off the porch. Three people witnessed her fall off the porch.
5:31
Speaker 1: What's in dispute is whether that fall could kill someone.
5:34
Speaker 1: A backward fall off the porch an fty plunges investigator
5:37
Speaker 1: Beach years later would call it. And so I thought
5:42
Speaker 1: the best way to try to show our viewers exactly
5:45
Speaker 1: what the people at that party saw was to fall
5:47
Speaker 1: off the porch myself. One of the reasons I wanted
5:50
Speaker 1: to do it was because our top three ports showed
5:52
Speaker 1: that her head had been snapped backwards. But a fall
6:00
Speaker 1: like that does not propel your head backwards if anything
6:03
Speaker 1: pushes it forwards when you hit the ground. And the
6:06
Speaker 1: physical act of falling off the porch didn't match the
6:09
Speaker 1: physical evidence of the head being snapped backwards, you know,
6:12
Speaker 1: either struck in the face or somehow pushed backwards from
6:16
Speaker 1: the face. And do you think that when you were
6:20
Speaker 1: when you were you know, when you were falling off
6:21
Speaker 1: the porch. It's widely been described as she fell ten inches,
6:26
Speaker 1: but actually then others were saying, but it wasn't really
6:28
Speaker 1: ten inches. If you count if you're going from the
6:30
Speaker 1: top of her head, it's more than ten inches. Yeah,
6:34
Speaker 1: it's much more. I mean, it's a much further fall
6:38
Speaker 1: than ten inches the porch. While it's true as ten
6:40
Speaker 1: inches high, you're falling from a height, and if you're
6:43
Speaker 1: falling straight back, you know, that's probably maybe a six
6:46
Speaker 1: or seven foot you know, acceleration before you hit. But
6:51
Speaker 1: I think the prosecutor one time said he had seen
6:54
Speaker 1: a case where a man in Hot Springs fell off
6:56
Speaker 1: sent made a similar fall and he was now quadriplegic.
7:00
Speaker 1: And I guess what you have to decide that the
7:02
Speaker 1: viewer is, you know, is that enough to kill someone?
7:05
Speaker 1: And ter freak accidents happened, but for the most part,
7:08
Speaker 1: the human bodies designed to live. It's pretty difficult to
7:12
Speaker 1: kill someone or you know, you can sustain a lot
7:16
Speaker 1: of injuries and still live. And would that have been
7:18
Speaker 1: enough to kill her or did something else happen either
7:23
Speaker 1: before or after that fall that contributed to her death.
7:26
Speaker 1: Peterson's report was in two thousand and five, a few
7:29
Speaker 1: months into Tim Williamson's investigation, and In his report, he
7:34
Speaker 1: brings up suspicions that he has about Jane's case. First,
7:38
Speaker 1: the fact that ron Rose, Sherry, and Kim All said
7:41
Speaker 1: they went straight to the bank parking lot, even though
7:44
Speaker 1: dispatcher Harold Young said they went by the police station. First,
7:48
Speaker 1: Peterson talked about the condition of Jannie's clothing, the fact
7:52
Speaker 1: that her clothes were wet and sandy, even though the
7:54
Speaker 1: cabin and the truck bed were reportedly dry and dusty.
7:58
Speaker 1: He also mentioned the fact that those same clothes went missing,
8:01
Speaker 1: and that the X rays the Wards supposedly saw in
8:04
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine that showed a fracture were not the
8:07
Speaker 1: same one sent to them from the crime lab, and
8:10
Speaker 1: he pointed out the discrepancies in witness statements from Sarah
8:13
Speaker 1: and some of her friends. He also said that the
8:16
Speaker 1: ambulance run reports pertaining to Janie's death were stolen. In
8:21
Speaker 1: the months after Jane died. The ambulance service had reported
8:25
Speaker 1: that the building had been broken into, only one report
8:28
Speaker 1: was stolen, Janey's. Peterson reached out to twenty six people
8:33
Speaker 1: at the party. He was able to get a few
8:36
Speaker 1: people to open up to him, but he got a
8:38
Speaker 1: lot of doors slammed in his face, and a lot
8:41
Speaker 1: of people hung up on him. Most people did not
8:44
Speaker 1: want to revisit the night that Janie died. I think
8:47
Speaker 1: we did a pretty good job. I did a pretty
8:48
Speaker 1: good job contacting as many people at the party as
8:51
Speaker 1: I could now as far as what their reactions were,
8:53
Speaker 1: I thought maybe time would have loosened some lips, they'd
8:57
Speaker 1: be less fearful to talk or to tell what they know.
8:59
Speaker 1: It's suming there's something to know, But you know, a
9:02
Speaker 1: lot of people as soon as identified who I was
9:05
Speaker 1: and what I was calling about or what I was
9:07
Speaker 1: visiting about, shutting down right away. Me know, it's just
9:11
Speaker 1: a lot of over and over people not wanting to
9:16
Speaker 1: talk about it at all, which kind of surprised me.
9:19
Speaker 1: Though maybe they've just they're just tired of hearing about it,
9:22
Speaker 1: are tired of talking about it, or tired of thinking
9:24
Speaker 1: about it as soon as they do. When he tried
9:26
Speaker 1: to call Gary Dn, Gary Don's girlfriend gave Peterson a
9:29
Speaker 1: number for him to reach him on That number one
9:33
Speaker 1: eight hundred fuck you. One other thing we still don't
9:37
Speaker 1: know the answer to is the route that the truck
9:39
Speaker 1: took from the cabin to the town Square. There are
9:44
Speaker 1: two ways to drive from the cabin on Zach Road
9:46
Speaker 1: to marshall'stown Square. The most direct route is turning left
9:50
Speaker 1: out of the driveway. You go a few miles on
9:53
Speaker 1: rocky roads and then hit the pavement. On this route
9:57
Speaker 1: you pass the Sheriff's offices, old location, several homes, and
10:01
Speaker 1: the community center where on the night Jane died, there
10:05
Speaker 1: was huge event going on, but the people in the
10:08
Speaker 1: truck who carry Janey in the back say they didn't
10:11
Speaker 1: stop or notice the community meeting. They say they never
10:15
Speaker 1: stopped until they got to the town square, which they
10:18
Speaker 1: went to because it was close to the only medical
10:20
Speaker 1: facility in town, the ambulance service. It was also across
10:26
Speaker 1: the street from the car wash. The alternate route, a
10:29
Speaker 1: little longer and even rockier, is a right turn out
10:32
Speaker 1: of the driveway. This route goes along the creek bed
10:36
Speaker 1: and comes out at the same place on the pavement
10:38
Speaker 1: as the first route. Five point one miles to the
10:42
Speaker 1: main road and zero point eight miles only really like
10:45
Speaker 1: point eight like around just under a mile to a
10:48
Speaker 1: good paved road. Whichever route they chose, the drive from
10:53
Speaker 1: the cabin on Zach Road to Marshall's town Square should
10:57
Speaker 1: not take any more than twenty minutes. We'll be right back.
11:05
Speaker 1: It's like so many other people who worked on Jamie's case.
11:09
Speaker 1: The Wards found the special prosecutor Tim Williamson disappointing. How
11:13
Speaker 1: did that affect you and Ron the whole Tim Williamson thing.
11:15
Speaker 1: I know, he came and prayed with you, right, Oh yeah,
11:18
Speaker 1: what a joke he was, and the governor gave him
11:23
Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars to have to investigate. He did nothing
11:29
Speaker 1: but covered that. I mean it was already covered at
11:32
Speaker 1: and all he did was helped them. I mean all
11:36
Speaker 1: he did was yeah, exactly, exactly, yeah. And he didn't
11:41
Speaker 1: hear from him. Michael said, you didn't hear from him
11:44
Speaker 1: after him? You never, I mean we might ask questions,
11:47
Speaker 1: we never got anything. Nothing. Journalist Mike Masterson writes about
11:52
Speaker 1: this in his column about how much faith the Words
11:55
Speaker 1: put into Tim Williamson. They prayed together, but after this meeting,
12:00
Speaker 1: Mike said, it became harder and harder to get in
12:02
Speaker 1: touch with him. The Words contacted Tim Williamson right away,
12:07
Speaker 1: and Williamson drove to Marshall and met at a church
12:12
Speaker 1: with a family and prayed together or justice to emerge
12:17
Speaker 1: in this case. He promised the family, I will find
12:19
Speaker 1: out what happened to your daughter, you know, and if
12:22
Speaker 1: it need be, there'll be accountability. He promised them that
12:26
Speaker 1: in the church, well they believed. I wanted to believe him,
12:29
Speaker 1: of course. I mean. Ron called me and said, well,
12:32
Speaker 1: we have hope for the first time that something's going
12:34
Speaker 1: to happen. He seems like a very sincere guy. He
12:36
Speaker 1: will do the right thing. For the first week or two,
12:40
Speaker 1: Tim Williamson called me, knowing I'd been involved in it
12:43
Speaker 1: and writing about it, and he said, you know, I'm
12:46
Speaker 1: going to rely on you, Mike, if you don't mind
12:47
Speaker 1: this for information if I get stuck. And I said, sure,
12:51
Speaker 1: I don't have anything to hide, and I'll be glad
12:53
Speaker 1: to help because I'd like to see justice done too.
12:56
Speaker 1: So he kind of had a rapport until about the
12:59
Speaker 1: third week into it, when he called me and said
13:02
Speaker 1: he was going to the crime lab to start really
13:05
Speaker 1: digging deeper into this, all this and all the records
13:07
Speaker 1: there at the crime lab and blah blah blah. He said,
13:10
Speaker 1: I'll get back to you next week. I said, great.
13:14
Speaker 1: So I waited a week past nothing two weeks nothing.
13:17
Speaker 1: Finally about probably three weeks after, you know, I tried
13:21
Speaker 1: to reach him and couldn't get through. You know, it's
13:23
Speaker 1: like he's busy, he's tied up. Now. Who knows what
13:26
Speaker 1: happened to the crime lab. I don't, but logically I
13:30
Speaker 1: would say something happened to the crime lab, and he
13:32
Speaker 1: was told something at the crime lab and during his
13:35
Speaker 1: visit over in a little rock that maybe sort of
13:39
Speaker 1: dampened his attitude. Put it that way, because after that
13:45
Speaker 1: he would announce that he's dug into this. He's got
13:48
Speaker 1: a staff helping him do it. He's doing interviews, going
13:52
Speaker 1: to find out what happened. He spent four years total,
13:56
Speaker 1: and he amassed lots of you know, paper, stacks of
14:00
Speaker 1: paper with interviews and stuff. So when you looked at it,
14:03
Speaker 1: you know, it looks like, boy, this guy's been really busy.
14:06
Speaker 1: But when you broke it down, there wasn't anything of
14:08
Speaker 1: substance that mattered. Tim Williamson's report makes up the bulk
14:13
Speaker 1: of the police case file we got from the Arkansas
14:15
Speaker 1: State Police. It's filled with transcriptions of interviews with witnesses
14:20
Speaker 1: and a bunch of repeated material from the first investigations.
14:23
Speaker 1: Case file. A lot of the accusations against Williamson center
14:27
Speaker 1: on the fact that people didn't think he was working
14:29
Speaker 1: hard enough. In the case file, there are dozens of
14:32
Speaker 1: letters addressed to Williamson from people around Arkansas telling him
14:36
Speaker 1: to get a move on. On page three, eight hundred
14:40
Speaker 1: and sixty, I find a note from Williamson's deputy prosecutor.
14:45
Speaker 1: He says they should hold off on conducting interviews until
14:48
Speaker 1: after the Wards have concluded their civil suit. That's the
14:52
Speaker 1: one where they're petitioning to change Janey's death certificate from
14:55
Speaker 1: undetermined to homicide, and he says that they might as
14:59
Speaker 1: well hold off because the ward's lawyer is already deposing witnesses,
15:03
Speaker 1: meaning court ordered subpoenas to get the to interview. That way,
15:08
Speaker 1: they wouldn't have to double up on the work. The
15:10
Speaker 1: depositions were done by the ward's lawyer, Jerry Sallings. Saling's
15:15
Speaker 1: law firm started working for the Wards when the family
15:18
Speaker 1: needed to get Janie's body exhumed before the second autopsy.
15:22
Speaker 1: What we're hoping to get from these depositions is the
15:25
Speaker 1: answer to some key questions, including how much time elapsed
15:30
Speaker 1: from the time Jannie fell to the ground to the
15:32
Speaker 1: time that she got to the bank parking lot, and
15:35
Speaker 1: did the truck make any other stops en route. I'm
15:38
Speaker 1: also interested in the depositions from Ron Rose and Kim
15:41
Speaker 1: because they were the ones in the truck. I'm also
15:44
Speaker 1: interested in Gary Donn's deposition because Richard Walter from the
15:48
Speaker 1: Vidock Society said Gary Donn told him a completely different
15:52
Speaker 1: story than the one that was in his statement. In
15:56
Speaker 1: Kim's deposition, she's cooperative, but she gives yes and no
16:00
Speaker 1: answers and doesn't elaborate. But what she says in her
16:04
Speaker 1: interview mostly matches her original statements, which were taken in
16:08
Speaker 1: the months after the incident. Do you you you said
16:11
Speaker 1: that you and Janie were good friends, who were friends? Okay?
16:15
Speaker 1: Do you know if she was having any problems with
16:17
Speaker 1: anybody at school? No? I don't don't know. No, you're
16:22
Speaker 1: not saying she wasn't. You just don't know where it
16:24
Speaker 1: was that. Had you heard any rumors about her having
16:28
Speaker 1: any problems at school with anybody? No? After Janie got
16:32
Speaker 1: in the vehicle with you, did you go straight to
16:35
Speaker 1: the party. Yes. Here Saling is asking about how they
16:39
Speaker 1: got there in case they had passed the river or
16:41
Speaker 1: the creek before going to the party. Didn't go by
16:43
Speaker 1: the river? No, didn't stop to buy anything, No, didn't
16:49
Speaker 1: go drink somewhere else or anything at all. Did you
16:53
Speaker 1: pick up anybody else on the way to the party? No? Okay,
16:57
Speaker 1: So how help me out? How long does it take
16:59
Speaker 1: to get from the square out to where the party was?
17:03
Speaker 1: I mean minutes, maybe thirty. That's just a gives Ron
17:08
Speaker 1: Rose is more descriptive in his answers. Do you remember
17:11
Speaker 1: what she was wearing then? Like a blue jeans and
17:16
Speaker 1: a black shirt? And I don't know. I pause it.
17:17
Speaker 1: That's wet. He said. He felt like it was his
17:20
Speaker 1: duty to get help for Janey. Might I say, no, won,
17:23
Speaker 1: there's a good good as friends. We was being kid
17:25
Speaker 1: and everything, and I feel like there's my responsibility to
17:27
Speaker 1: get her out of there, you know. So we try
17:29
Speaker 1: to get her in front of my truck, try to
17:31
Speaker 1: load her up. And how did you try to do that?
17:34
Speaker 1: Just about three or four, I think it's four of
17:36
Speaker 1: us there, four or five of us picked her up
17:38
Speaker 1: and tried to handle as best we kids, and tried
17:40
Speaker 1: the slider up in front of my truck in the cab,
17:42
Speaker 1: in my truck and we couldn't get her in there.
17:44
Speaker 1: She's too big and she was limp, you know, she
17:47
Speaker 1: just it was hard. We couldn't get her in there. Right,
17:51
Speaker 1: you know the back of your truck? Was it wet
17:53
Speaker 1: or dry? Pretty sure it was dry. Here Ron gives
17:57
Speaker 1: more details about the car wreck. This is the one
18:00
Speaker 1: that we talked about in the last episode. The vehicle
18:03
Speaker 1: was Ryan's. He became his hysterical after Janneye was pronounced
18:07
Speaker 1: dead in the parking lot as you were leaving. Do
18:09
Speaker 1: you remember Brian getting his truck stuck? Yes, he wrecked
18:13
Speaker 1: atop of the hill up there, had a wrecked up there.
18:17
Speaker 1: Who's in the truck with him? He was in a car.
18:19
Speaker 1: I don't know who was with him for sure, but
18:22
Speaker 1: he was in a car, a car, Yeah, all right?
18:25
Speaker 1: Did he block the He had roadblock he'd come out
18:27
Speaker 1: this big steep hill. When he come out on top,
18:29
Speaker 1: he'd lost it and nosed off in the bank and
18:31
Speaker 1: the back end was sticking all the way off the road.
18:34
Speaker 1: So how did y'all get around him? I had a
18:37
Speaker 1: friend Jimmy, come up there and yanked him back to
18:39
Speaker 1: the truck bank, yanked his car out of the way
18:41
Speaker 1: to where I could drive up on the bank and
18:42
Speaker 1: get by, and then after you got on the past him,
18:46
Speaker 1: you've got a gravel road for a while or ways here,
18:50
Speaker 1: And did y'all ever stop and never stopped? Neither Ron
18:54
Speaker 1: nor Kim said they stopped by the police station, and
18:57
Speaker 1: they both said they took a left out of the driveway,
19:00
Speaker 1: the more direct route that does not pass by the creek.
19:04
Speaker 1: Gary Donn's deposition openly hostile at the beginning, especially because
19:08
Speaker 1: during the depositions Ron and Moana Ward are in the
19:12
Speaker 1: room and you can feel the tension. You're here under
19:15
Speaker 1: the court order. Subpoena is a court order from the judge,
19:20
Speaker 1: and I get to ask you questions and it's my
19:24
Speaker 1: right and as I answer them, if I don't want to,
19:26
Speaker 1: well that's why I'm I'm about care to not go
19:29
Speaker 1: further than this right out here, right now, I understand.
19:31
Speaker 1: Let me just tell you the way this works in
19:34
Speaker 1: a deposition. If you refuse to answer the question, you
19:37
Speaker 1: can walk out of here today and I can go
19:40
Speaker 1: to the judge and I can say he refused to
19:42
Speaker 1: answer these questions, and he can force you to come
19:45
Speaker 1: back here and answer them, and then you pay for
19:47
Speaker 1: the deposition. Go for that right now, I'm paying for it.
19:51
Speaker 1: Go for it. Okay. Well, I don't want to get
19:53
Speaker 1: into confident. I don't want to fool with this. I'm
19:55
Speaker 1: this man right here. I don't care that he'd be
19:58
Speaker 1: in the same room with him, because the crap he's
20:00
Speaker 1: put me through, and I do not like to even
20:03
Speaker 1: be in the same block with the man you're pointing to,
20:07
Speaker 1: Ron Ron Ward right there. All right, well, I can
20:12
Speaker 1: tell that your your feelings are a little very very
20:17
Speaker 1: Sellings asked him to review his statement, and garyd On
20:20
Speaker 1: says he didn't say most of the stuff that was
20:23
Speaker 1: in it. To him, it looked like someone made up
20:26
Speaker 1: his answers say this in some parts, it's it's it's
20:31
Speaker 1: like it's backwards. I mean, like, I don't really explain
20:36
Speaker 1: it to you. It just it's just like I told
20:38
Speaker 1: you had like it had a mace or Somethingody created
20:41
Speaker 1: theirself how they wanted it to be. That's what I'm saying.
20:45
Speaker 1: So it's not the truth of what you said. No
20:47
Speaker 1: not no, okay, uh now it's two pages. Did you
20:51
Speaker 1: read all of it? I've read enough. That's fine. So
20:55
Speaker 1: I read enough. Somebody made that up. Okay, tell me
20:58
Speaker 1: what part of it is not true. I've never seen
21:00
Speaker 1: her filling no cut from okay, Okay, I've never seen
21:06
Speaker 1: her drinking. Let's take it one one statement at times
21:08
Speaker 1: so I can keep up with this. Okay, let's see,
21:13
Speaker 1: says I got to the party around six, Ron, Kim
21:18
Speaker 1: and Jane came in together. Is that is that what
21:21
Speaker 1: you said or not? That's about the one thing I've
21:24
Speaker 1: seen there in the first sentences that was correct. Okay,
21:28
Speaker 1: that can recall. Well, let me tell you this. This
21:30
Speaker 1: is a statement that we got from the police department,
21:33
Speaker 1: and this is supposed This is a copy of an
21:37
Speaker 1: interview that supposedly Bill Beach of the State Police took
21:41
Speaker 1: and this is his statement. This is anything I came
21:44
Speaker 1: up with. They changed there, They changed much stuff over
21:48
Speaker 1: the years in the department down there at that time.
21:55
Speaker 1: I'm not disputing it. I'm asking questions. I'm interested in
21:58
Speaker 1: what you're telling me. I understand, Okay, So I want
22:01
Speaker 1: to know what in here is not your statement. Sellings
22:05
Speaker 1: goes line by line and Gary don lists out what
22:08
Speaker 1: he doesn't agree with from his original state says, I
22:10
Speaker 1: went over to her and it was like the breath
22:12
Speaker 1: was knocked out of her. You're shaking your head. No, sorry,
22:17
Speaker 1: it's all right. And her shirt had come up when
22:22
Speaker 1: she fell, and I looked at her stomach and I
22:24
Speaker 1: couldn't tell that she was breathing. No, me, and somebody
22:28
Speaker 1: picked her up and put her on the porch. No,
22:31
Speaker 1: her eyes were open about halfway and rolled back, and
22:33
Speaker 1: she was not blinking. No. I believe she had messed
22:38
Speaker 1: in her pants too. No, I couldn't get anybody to
22:43
Speaker 1: help me. The urinating part is the only part that
22:48
Speaker 1: I remember it looked like to me. In this deposition,
22:52
Speaker 1: gary Don doesn't mention anything about the creek bad and
22:55
Speaker 1: the drowning theory that we had heard from Richard Walter
22:57
Speaker 1: of the Vedok Society. These answers are notably different from
23:01
Speaker 1: gary Don's original statement in nineteen eighty nine and his
23:05
Speaker 1: link the interview with Bill Beach in the months after
23:08
Speaker 1: Jane's death. In this deposition, he says he did not
23:12
Speaker 1: move Janeye onto the porch, and he also says she
23:15
Speaker 1: could have been lying on the ground for up to
23:17
Speaker 1: twenty minutes before he had said he had immediately gone
23:21
Speaker 1: over to her after she had fallen and moved her
23:24
Speaker 1: up onto the porch. He also doesn't remember his interview
23:27
Speaker 1: with Bill Beach and says he had to do a
23:29
Speaker 1: polygraph test basically a light detector test at the Cercy
23:33
Speaker 1: County Jail, but there is no mention of a polygraph
23:37
Speaker 1: test anywhere in the case file. In fact, Bill Beach
23:41
Speaker 1: later specifically said that he hadn't administered any polygraph tests
23:45
Speaker 1: during his investigation. On the night Janie died, ron Ward
23:50
Speaker 1: saw his daughter in the morgue at the Kaufman Funeral
23:52
Speaker 1: Home around midnight. He was there with the coroner of
23:56
Speaker 1: Sirsey County, Thomas Martin, and Ron said he had to
23:59
Speaker 1: insist on an autopsy. Sallings deposed Tom to ask him
24:04
Speaker 1: about his impressions of that night. Tell us your name,
24:06
Speaker 1: pleads Thomas W. Martin Jr. And mister Martin, I understand
24:10
Speaker 1: that you have some difficulty hearing at times. I do
24:13
Speaker 1: all right, and you know we're here today for a deposition.
24:17
Speaker 1: At the time of Jane's death, Tom had been a
24:19
Speaker 1: coroner for about twenty five years, and his role was
24:23
Speaker 1: mainly to declare someone dead and also determine a cause
24:26
Speaker 1: of death if he couldn't determine anything. He would send
24:30
Speaker 1: the body to the medical examiner in Little Rock. Sellings
24:34
Speaker 1: asked him a question about his corner report. Next to
24:37
Speaker 1: a lot of the questions on the forum, Tom left
24:39
Speaker 1: it blank or wrote a question mark. He could not
24:42
Speaker 1: tell if there were abrasions on Jane's body, He could
24:45
Speaker 1: not tell what injury there was, or if any foul
24:48
Speaker 1: play occurred. He had ruled out fairly obvious causes of
24:52
Speaker 1: death like gunshot wounds, and said he didn't see anything
24:55
Speaker 1: obviously wrong with Janey. Basically, he said he had no
24:59
Speaker 1: idea what happened to Janey. And he said he also
25:02
Speaker 1: didn't finish filling out the form because he was already
25:05
Speaker 1: intending to have the body taken to Little Rock. In fact,
25:08
Speaker 1: like I I couldn't exactly remember, he said he figured that
25:11
Speaker 1: he would have already called the medical Examiner's office by
25:14
Speaker 1: the time he met Ron at the funeral home. Did
25:17
Speaker 1: you see mister Ward that night, Ron Ward, Yes, he
25:20
Speaker 1: came to the funeral And would that have been before
25:24
Speaker 1: or after the court the medical examiner was called? Probably
25:29
Speaker 1: after he was called. No, I don't really remember the
25:33
Speaker 1: time frame that he came in of the funeral. Do
25:36
Speaker 1: you have any memory of him insisting that an autopsv done.
25:42
Speaker 1: Uh No, don't have anything. He didn't have to insist
25:47
Speaker 1: on him because he was already on the way. The
25:51
Speaker 1: investigators working on the case did conduct and record interviews
25:54
Speaker 1: from two thousand and seven to two thousand and eight.
25:57
Speaker 1: Sarah is a glaring omission from these interviews. They interviewed
26:02
Speaker 1: JD and Kathy, the ambulance service attendants who checked Jane
26:05
Speaker 1: in the bank parking lot. They're the ones who also
26:09
Speaker 1: said they saw debris on Janie and that her clothes
26:11
Speaker 1: were wet. They also saw swelling in her neck. And
26:16
Speaker 1: they're the ones who filled out the ambulance run reports,
26:19
Speaker 1: the ones that had supposedly been stolen in the months
26:21
Speaker 1: after Janie's death. Here's Kathy's interview with investigators. I after
26:26
Speaker 1: broken into then they thought, well, JD, who was my husband's,
26:31
Speaker 1: thought that the run sheet had gotten stolen. I found
26:35
Speaker 1: that I had put it in a different place. But
26:39
Speaker 1: Kathy clarifies the run report was just misplaced, and this
26:43
Speaker 1: has been a Misunderstandably was and it was. I found
26:46
Speaker 1: it later on. I had put it under some new
26:49
Speaker 1: run sheet and I didn't realize that I had done that.
26:52
Speaker 1: Kathy again describes what she saw in the bank parking
26:55
Speaker 1: lot and what condition Janie's body was in clothes was
26:59
Speaker 1: a damp here you're stamp and what was that inmisphere
27:02
Speaker 1: conditions at this time? It was it was dry that
27:07
Speaker 1: she was damp. Her clothes were damp, her hair was damp.
27:14
Speaker 1: The only place that there was in the dampness was
27:16
Speaker 1: between the raps. And I said, I smelled no urine
27:22
Speaker 1: or no bed. I just had a it's just a
27:26
Speaker 1: soft perfuse smell. That was all I smelled. There was
27:30
Speaker 1: leaves and twigs and sand in her hair, and you know,
27:37
Speaker 1: that was all I looked at at that time. And
27:40
Speaker 1: I did a cervical check, but I I didn't feel
27:45
Speaker 1: the spine. It it felt like it was in plite.
27:49
Speaker 1: And they said the flight the spine in her neck,
27:51
Speaker 1: the free had a whole leaf spine. I was checking
27:53
Speaker 1: the sea spine and I felt like I felt everything.
27:58
Speaker 1: But you know, I still kept tractioning on the neck.
28:00
Speaker 1: I that we'd keep tractioning when we'd moving. Mkay, let
28:03
Speaker 1: me back you up to what you said the while.
28:05
Speaker 1: Was it real? Kathy said she didn't notice an obvious
28:09
Speaker 1: neck injury when she examined Janie, nor did she see
28:12
Speaker 1: any trauma to the face. Hearing these accounts from the
28:16
Speaker 1: coroner and Kathy, neither of them could see anything obviously
28:20
Speaker 1: wrong with Jane. So if there were no obvious injuries
28:24
Speaker 1: to her face, was it possible that she was hitting
28:26
Speaker 1: the face at all. We'll be right back. We're driving
28:36
Speaker 1: to Little Rock to meet with a family's lawyer, Jerry Sallings.
28:40
Speaker 1: He conducted all the depositions and represented the Ward family
28:44
Speaker 1: for the duration of Tim Williamson's investigation, but he was
28:47
Speaker 1: also an outsider to Marshall. I don't care if we
28:54
Speaker 1: wanted his perspective on the case. What I believe is,
29:00
Speaker 1: at the beginning of this case, a very small town,
29:06
Speaker 1: so you don't have resources, you don't have highly developed,
29:12
Speaker 1: intelligent police force, and you've got someone's family there who
29:18
Speaker 1: is prestigious in the community, the district judge, I think
29:24
Speaker 1: at the time, and all of those factors, But the
29:28
Speaker 1: biggest factor that I perceived as I was proceeding through
29:32
Speaker 1: the depositions is I don't think they really did a
29:36
Speaker 1: good job of investigating or trying, and I think they
29:41
Speaker 1: assumed that because this was a small town, and mister
29:45
Speaker 1: Ward and his family were not sophisticated that they wouldn't
29:49
Speaker 1: have to worry about it. I think that's what happened.
29:51
Speaker 1: And then they found out differently when mister Ward said
29:56
Speaker 1: had all these questions and they couldn't answer them because
29:59
Speaker 1: they didn't do a good job in the first place.
30:02
Speaker 1: They did a really bad job. Honestly, does not share
30:06
Speaker 1: the dislike that the family had towards Tim Williamson. He
30:10
Speaker 1: said they'd worked together in the court proceedings and they
30:13
Speaker 1: had a mutual respect for each other. We'd heard from
30:16
Speaker 1: some people that they thought Ron was uncooperative, but Selling
30:20
Speaker 1: said Ron always shared all of the information he collected
30:24
Speaker 1: independently with the police and with investigators. I don't think
30:27
Speaker 1: anybody anything I had or that Ron had was kept secret.
30:31
Speaker 1: What we tried to get were specific answers, and Tim
30:36
Speaker 1: had a notebook, and I don't think I had that
30:39
Speaker 1: notebook anymore. But it was just topic by topic with
30:45
Speaker 1: you know, whatever the inconsistency was the or the question
30:49
Speaker 1: that he had that wasn't answered, and I felt like
30:54
Speaker 1: it was my job to try to answer it if
30:56
Speaker 1: I could. And the way you try to answer it
30:59
Speaker 1: is to go get the facts or the information through
31:02
Speaker 1: depositions or whatever. And at the end of the day,
31:06
Speaker 1: there were some questions that we couldn't answer and still can't.
31:12
Speaker 1: As an investigator, this is a feeling that I can
31:14
Speaker 1: relate to. And while you always want to give people answers,
31:17
Speaker 1: and you always want to think that there's another step
31:19
Speaker 1: that you can take or something that can be done,
31:22
Speaker 1: the reality is, once mistakes are made at the initial
31:25
Speaker 1: crime scene, it's very difficult to go back and rectify them.
31:29
Speaker 1: Can you just in general, maybe not even about this case,
31:32
Speaker 1: but just talking about the difficulty of if the original
31:35
Speaker 1: crime scene is messed up, how difficult it is to
31:38
Speaker 1: go back and if something's not done right. I mean,
31:41
Speaker 1: is there something that the police could have done early
31:43
Speaker 1: on like that would have mitigated that? I mean, just
31:47
Speaker 1: from my experience with pure crime, I was looking through
31:50
Speaker 1: the witness statements and they're very short. They're basically a
31:53
Speaker 1: paragraph a long each and they're just there's no detail.
31:56
Speaker 1: There's not much detail in any of them things like that.
31:58
Speaker 1: I mean, is there anything that could have done to
32:02
Speaker 1: I mean the reason that you have CSI all these
32:06
Speaker 1: police shows is because every every fact is important, and
32:10
Speaker 1: you can't say, oh, that's not important because you don't
32:14
Speaker 1: know what was there. So photographs, statements from everybody, and
32:20
Speaker 1: following up on every lead, and I don't that wasn't
32:24
Speaker 1: done here for sure. The assumption was is that she
32:28
Speaker 1: fell off, fell off and died, and so when you
32:33
Speaker 1: work from that assumption, you're not really looking for anything else.
32:38
Speaker 1: Was there anything else? I don't know. I could not
32:41
Speaker 1: get that answer to the point that I could say
32:45
Speaker 1: that was anything specifically. I mean, there were a lot
32:48
Speaker 1: of irregularities in this and that's why Ron had questions,
32:53
Speaker 1: and that's why it was pursued. But unfortunately it wasn't
32:57
Speaker 1: pursued early enough. And that's not his fault because he
33:01
Speaker 1: tried diligently to do it. But I think they assumed
33:05
Speaker 1: that he was just a uh, someone who didn't know
33:09
Speaker 1: what he was doing. I asked if Salings thought there
33:12
Speaker 1: would have been any answer that would have satisfied Ron Ward.
33:15
Speaker 1: I don't know Ron was. He was he was convinced
33:19
Speaker 1: it was more than natural causes or falling off the
33:23
Speaker 1: porch or any of a number of things. So I
33:26
Speaker 1: don't know if he would have been or not. Maybe
33:28
Speaker 1: if maybe Fuld. Maybe you felt they'd been treated with
33:31
Speaker 1: more respect, and it was an answer that at least
33:33
Speaker 1: made sense. Maybe, but maybe he was he was a stubborn,
33:38
Speaker 1: determined man. Remember that after doctor Burnell's autopsy, there are
33:54
Speaker 1: a lot of people looking into Janie's death. There's Tim
33:57
Speaker 1: Williamson in his investigation. There's the family's lawyer, Jerry Sallings
34:02
Speaker 1: doing depositions, and there's Mike Masterson's column it's now published
34:06
Speaker 1: multiple times a week looking into Jannie's case. And there's
34:11
Speaker 1: a film crew from ABC. The ABC producer contacts Sylvia,
34:18
Speaker 1: the runner, who said she witnessed Jane getting hit in
34:20
Speaker 1: the face with a baseball bat. Sylvia's information could be
34:24
Speaker 1: crucial because it appears to match doctor Burnell's conclusion that
34:28
Speaker 1: Jane could have been hit with a bluntfuls object. But
34:31
Speaker 1: some people were critical of Sylvia. They point out that
34:35
Speaker 1: she'd already given a statement in nineteen eighty nine, it's
34:38
Speaker 1: included in the case file, and in this statement she
34:42
Speaker 1: told a completely different story. When Sylvia was interviewed by
34:46
Speaker 1: Tim Williamson in two thousand and six, he asked her
34:49
Speaker 1: about inconsistencies in her story. He asked Sylvia about a
34:52
Speaker 1: previous interview that she did in nineteen eighty nine with
34:55
Speaker 1: an investigator named Robert Hicks at her home. In that interview,
35:00
Speaker 1: Sylvia claimed she'd heard the story secondhand from three guys
35:04
Speaker 1: who told her as story about two girls who were
35:07
Speaker 1: mad at Janie because she was dating one of their boyfriends.
35:11
Speaker 1: Sylvia said that the injury to Janie's neck came when
35:14
Speaker 1: somebody hit her with a full beer bottle, and after that,
35:18
Speaker 1: she said, some guy in a pickup truck took her
35:20
Speaker 1: to the house to clean her up. In two thousand
35:23
Speaker 1: and six, Sylvia denied to Tim Williamson that she ever
35:27
Speaker 1: made that statement, but it's a part of the police
35:30
Speaker 1: case file. Some people also criticized the fact that Sylvia
35:34
Speaker 1: came forward with this new version of events after the
35:37
Speaker 1: information about doctor Bannell's autopsy conclusions became public. Ron told
35:43
Speaker 1: Bill Beach that he spoke to Sylvia and that Sylvia
35:45
Speaker 1: told him a story about three girls and an older
35:48
Speaker 1: guy jumping on Janne and beating her up by the river.
35:52
Speaker 1: But when ABC interviewed Sylvia, she said that she witnessed
35:56
Speaker 1: Sarah on the porch hitting Jane in the neck with
35:59
Speaker 1: a baseball bat in the eyes of investigators, Sylvia lost
36:03
Speaker 1: any credibility she had as a witness. Because of all
36:06
Speaker 1: these inconsistencies. We were able to reach Tim Williamson. He's
36:11
Speaker 1: no longer practicing law, but Janey's case remains vivid in
36:15
Speaker 1: his mind. Well, thank you for talking to us, Kim,
36:18
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it. So you ended up with this case, now,
36:22
Speaker 1: had you heard about it before you took it on?
36:25
Speaker 1: I had recalled the headlines of the case from eighty nine,
36:31
Speaker 1: and then I think I probably recalled some of the
36:37
Speaker 1: discussions around the case that made to the made it
36:41
Speaker 1: into the newsprint. Tim started investigating, but he couldn't reach
36:46
Speaker 1: any new conclusions from the investigative evidence or from looking
36:50
Speaker 1: back at the previous autopsies, and he especially couldn't see
36:54
Speaker 1: any evidence of a homicide. As we got favored into it,
36:58
Speaker 1: we were not developing additional information that was helping me
37:03
Speaker 1: to decide, well, if this is a homicide, than who
37:05
Speaker 1: did it. It got down to the point eventually, where
37:11
Speaker 1: as I had some you know, we were looking at
37:13
Speaker 1: the Thenell's findings and then going back and comparing those
37:16
Speaker 1: with the photograss and the information collected the time doctor
37:21
Speaker 1: Fane Malik for the crime that I did the original autopsy,
37:26
Speaker 1: and it became apparent to me and to my investigators
37:31
Speaker 1: that we had to get to the bottom of the
37:35
Speaker 1: forensics on this because we truly felt because we had
37:39
Speaker 1: too somewhat competing autosic reports, we had to get a
37:43
Speaker 1: definitive position as to what the medical evidence and the
37:49
Speaker 1: forensic evidence is, because inherently, you do not want to
37:53
Speaker 1: attempt to prosecute a case or you have information that
37:57
Speaker 1: is not corroborative of itself when it's in the forensic role.
38:01
Speaker 1: So we're relying on science. The science has to agree.
38:07
Speaker 1: So our only option was to do something that is
38:10
Speaker 1: extremely rare, and we did not want to do it,
38:13
Speaker 1: but we were left without choice. Much like the ward's
38:16
Speaker 1: lawyer Jerry Sallings, Tim thought that there was no way
38:19
Speaker 1: to solve the case through the investigative evidence, so he
38:23
Speaker 1: decided there was one last thing he could do exhume
38:27
Speaker 1: Janey's body again and perform another autopsy. I'm Katherine Townsend
38:34
Speaker 1: and this is Helen Gone. Helen Gone is a joint
38:42
Speaker 1: production between School of Humans and iHeartRadio. It is written
38:47
Speaker 1: and recorded by me Katherine Townsend, Taylor Church, and Gabby
38:51
Speaker 1: Watts are our producers and story editors. Executive producers are
38:55
Speaker 1: Brandon Barr, Brian Lavin, and Els Crowley for School of
38:59
Speaker 1: Humans and Conell Byrne and Chuck Bryant for iHeart Our
39:03
Speaker 1: Field producer is Miranda Hawk. Theme and original score are
39:07
Speaker 1: by Ben Sale, available wherever you get your music. Please
39:12
Speaker 1: visit us at helengon podcast dot com or follow us
39:15
Speaker 1: on social media. School of Humans