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The Raccoon Bend Massacre · Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

0:01
Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Alice. I'm a Girl Scout and I have plans.
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Speaker 2: Scouts Gone Cold. Podcasts may contain violent or graphics subject matter.
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1:02
Speaker 3: On a narrow stretch of School Road in Austin County,
1:06
Speaker 3: just a couple of miles south of Texas Highway one
1:10
Speaker 3: fifty nine, a small trailer sat in the middle of
1:13
Speaker 3: the Raccoon Bend oil field, roughly twelve miles northeast of
1:18
Speaker 3: Belleville and about sixty miles northwest of Houston. The land
1:23
Speaker 3: rolled gently toward the Brazis River less than a half
1:27
Speaker 3: a mile away. Mesquite and scrub brush framed the property,
1:32
Speaker 3: and beyond it were pump jacks, cattle fences, and hayfields,
1:37
Speaker 3: the everyday backdrop of rural Austin County, a place where
1:42
Speaker 3: homicides were so rare that sheriff's investigators typically saw one
1:47
Speaker 3: a year. That trailer belonged to Will Stetton Pool. To
1:52
Speaker 3: the people of Raccoon Bend, he was simply mister Will.
1:57
Speaker 3: He was eighty six years old, a semi retired rancher,
2:01
Speaker 3: a widower since the death of his wife, Emma in
2:04
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety, and a man who lived quietly and modestly.
2:10
Speaker 3: Years earlier, his house had burned down, destroying nearly everything
2:14
Speaker 3: he owned, and the turquoise and white mobile home was
2:18
Speaker 3: meant to be temporary, but to mister Will it never was. Instead,
2:24
Speaker 3: it became his permanent home. Three small rooms, simple furnishings,
2:30
Speaker 3: and a way of life that reflected how he had
2:32
Speaker 3: always lived without much and needing even less. He kept
2:38
Speaker 3: cash because he didn't trust banks. He left his doors
2:42
Speaker 3: unlocked and the keys in his truck. People knew it.
2:47
Speaker 3: Mister Will raised cattle, sold pecans from trees on his property,
2:53
Speaker 3: and sometimes sold fish he'd caught from the river. But
2:58
Speaker 3: what mattered more to mister w Will than money was
3:01
Speaker 3: routine and family. Almost every day his daughter Bernice Schiller
3:08
Speaker 3: came by. She was sixty two years old, a lifelong
3:12
Speaker 3: homemaker and married to Alden Edward Schiller, sixty seven, a
3:17
Speaker 3: retired Texas State Highway Department maintenance manager. They always brought
3:23
Speaker 3: mister Will lunch, cleaned the trailer for him. They washed
3:28
Speaker 3: dishes he left piled in the sink, and made sure
3:31
Speaker 3: he ate something better than canned meat and beans, his
3:35
Speaker 3: usual choice of nourishment if left to his own devices,
3:40
Speaker 3: if Bernice and Alden weren't around, and even when they were,
3:45
Speaker 3: there was someone else hanging out at the trailer. Ray
3:49
Speaker 3: treat Payne, eighty one years old, lived about a half
3:53
Speaker 3: a mile away. He and mister Will were fellow small
3:57
Speaker 3: cattleman who had known each other for more than four years.
4:01
Speaker 3: In fact, they'd seen each other almost every day in
4:05
Speaker 3: that span of time. Ray would stop by talk cattle
4:10
Speaker 3: and whatever else came to mind. On a Thursday in
4:14
Speaker 3: November of nineteen ninety six, all four of them were there,
4:19
Speaker 3: and by early afternoon would become the unfortunate victims of
4:24
Speaker 3: what locals began referring to as the Raccoon Bend massacre.
4:55
Speaker 3: Raccoon Bend isn't a town in the courthouse since so
5:00
Speaker 3: much as it is a named place on the map,
5:03
Speaker 3: an unincorporated community in northeastern Austin County. Geographically, it sits
5:11
Speaker 3: in the Brazis River country, low flat to gentle rolling
5:15
Speaker 3: coastal plain terrain, where creeks, bottom land and river bends
5:20
Speaker 3: shape the landscape. The bend in Raccoon Bend is literal.
5:26
Speaker 3: The area is associated with a large crook of the
5:30
Speaker 3: Brasas nearby. Early settlement in the area dates back to
5:35
Speaker 3: the early nineteen hundreds, like a lot of rural Austin County,
5:40
Speaker 3: and consisted of small farms and scattered homes tied to
5:44
Speaker 3: nearby market towns rather than its own urban center. Then
5:49
Speaker 3: the ground changed the story. In the late nineteen twenties,
5:54
Speaker 3: Humble Oil and Refining Company opened what became known as
5:58
Speaker 3: the Raccoon Bend oil Field, touching off a burst of
6:02
Speaker 3: growth that's typical of Texas oil plays, workers, service businesses,
6:08
Speaker 3: and the quick infrastructure of a boom community. The field
6:13
Speaker 3: opened in nineteen twenty seven, and in no time Raccoon
6:17
Speaker 3: Bend featured numerous homes, oil related businesses, a school, and
6:23
Speaker 3: a church, the basics of a community that suddenly has
6:27
Speaker 3: money moving through it. Like many small oil centered places,
6:33
Speaker 3: Raccoon Bend didn't necessarily vanish when the boom cooled. It
6:38
Speaker 3: just quieted down over time. Its independent institutions thenned doubt.
6:45
Speaker 3: The community's school later closed, and the area was then
6:49
Speaker 3: served by Belleville ISD. Population figures can be iffy for
6:55
Speaker 3: unincorporated places, but the commonly cited estimate is about four
7:00
Speaker 3: four hundred residents circa the mid nineteen nineties. In a
7:05
Speaker 3: remote trailer home in Raccoon Bend on November fourteenth, nineteen
7:11
Speaker 3: ninety six, a routine visit took place a day far
7:15
Speaker 3: from out of the ordinary. Bernice and Alden Schiller had
7:20
Speaker 3: planned to check in on Papa. That was what the
7:23
Speaker 3: grandchildren called Bernice's father, mister Will Stettinpool. After that, the
7:29
Speaker 3: couple was to head to Conroe for a doctor's appointment.
7:34
Speaker 3: Mister Will's close friend Ray Payne was also over visiting.
7:40
Speaker 3: The four were last seen alive at around ten am
7:43
Speaker 3: that Thursday morning. The witness who saw them reported nothing
7:48
Speaker 3: out of the ordinary, but by late afternoon something felt wrong.
7:55
Speaker 3: Sandra Schifflet, who worked at a hospital in Conroe, noticed
7:59
Speaker 3: that parents had not arrived for their appointment. Worried, she
8:04
Speaker 3: called her little sister, Wendy Lamp. Wendy and her husband,
8:09
Speaker 3: Mark Lamp, a technician at the power station near Lagrange,
8:13
Speaker 3: lived nearby. She called her and Sandra's brother, Mark Schiller,
8:19
Speaker 3: an oil field worker, and asked him to swing by
8:23
Speaker 3: mister Will's place. He drove past the trailer on School
8:27
Speaker 3: Road on his way home and saw his parents' pickup
8:31
Speaker 3: truck parked there. Thinking nothing was wrong, that they'd simply
8:36
Speaker 3: stayed to help out in lieu of their appointment, he
8:39
Speaker 3: didn't stop. Mark called Wendy back later and told her
8:44
Speaker 3: what he had seen, but it didn't ease Wendy's mind.
8:48
Speaker 3: It only worried her more. It wasn't like her folks
8:52
Speaker 3: to miss an appointment. She called the Austin County Sheriff's
8:56
Speaker 3: office and asked for a welfare check. She waighed Wendy
9:01
Speaker 3: was a bank accountant, someone used to precision. She needed
9:06
Speaker 3: to know. The minutes crawled by with no response. Soon
9:12
Speaker 3: she learned why deputies were having trouble finding the trailer.
9:18
Speaker 3: The back roads of Raccoon Bend twisted through oil leases,
9:22
Speaker 3: pastures and river bottoms. It wasn't easy to locate a
9:27
Speaker 3: small white mobile home tucked off school road. Daylight she
9:32
Speaker 3: knew would soon fade, so Wendy went to find help.
9:38
Speaker 3: She drove to a nearby hayfield where her husband Mark
9:41
Speaker 3: was working, alongside her brother Tracy Shiller, a State Highway
9:45
Speaker 3: Department worker. She told them what was going on. The
9:50
Speaker 3: men dropped what they were doing and headed for mister
9:53
Speaker 3: Will's trailer. When Tracy Schiller and Mark lamp pulled up,
10:00
Speaker 3: as the sun had already begun its descent. The Shillers
10:04
Speaker 3: pick up and Ray Payne's truck were both still parked
10:07
Speaker 3: out front. Mark stood outside and called out, shouting for
10:13
Speaker 3: anyone who might be inside. There was no answer. Tracy
10:18
Speaker 3: walked to the front door. It was unlocked, which wasn't unusual,
10:24
Speaker 3: but the trailer was dark inside, no lights on at all.
10:29
Speaker 3: That was anything but normal. He stepped inside with a
10:34
Speaker 3: flashlight even with it. The front room was dim. As
10:39
Speaker 3: he swept the beam across the floor, he saw broken glass.
10:44
Speaker 3: Things were scattered around. It didn't look right. In the
10:49
Speaker 3: sink were dirty dishes, another red flag. His mother, Bernice,
10:54
Speaker 3: never left dishes unwashed. If she had cooked, and it
10:58
Speaker 3: looked like she had, she would have cleaned up. Mister
11:03
Speaker 3: Will's dog didn't come. The pit of Tracy's stomach dropped.
11:09
Speaker 3: He began walking down the hall toward the back bedroom.
11:13
Speaker 3: Later he would say, the hair on the back of
11:15
Speaker 3: his neck stood up. Something felt wrong in a way
11:19
Speaker 3: that words didn't cover. Then he saw blood. After seeing
11:36
Speaker 3: blood on his way down the hallway of his grandfather's
11:40
Speaker 3: trailer house, Tracy Schiller shouted for his brother in law,
11:44
Speaker 3: Mark Lamp, to come inside. Together. They continued down the
11:49
Speaker 3: short hall. In the tiny six by six foot rear bedroom,
11:55
Speaker 3: they found a massacre. Four bodies were piled on top
11:59
Speaker 3: of each other. Blood was everywhere. Tracy went limp. Mark
12:05
Speaker 3: grabbed him by the shoulder. We've got to get out
12:08
Speaker 3: of here. The two men drove to a neighbor's house
12:12
Speaker 3: a couple miles away and called nine to one one.
12:16
Speaker 3: By the time they had notified family members and returned
12:19
Speaker 3: to the trailer. Forty five minutes had passed. Law enforcement
12:24
Speaker 3: was already there. Yellow crime scene tape went up around
12:29
Speaker 3: the little turquoise and white trailer off School Road. The
12:33
Speaker 3: worst crime in modern Austin County history had just been discovered.
12:40
Speaker 3: Sheriff Vernon Bubba Brozowski arrived to a scene that even
12:46
Speaker 3: his long law enforcement career hadn't prepared him for. Inside
12:51
Speaker 3: the back bedroom, the bodies of eighty six year old
12:55
Speaker 3: Will Stettinpool, his daughter and son in law, Bernice Schiller
13:00
Speaker 3: sixty two and Olden Edward Schiller sixty seven, and eighty
13:05
Speaker 3: one year old Roy treat Pain were stacked in a
13:09
Speaker 3: pile like they fell on each other. They had been
13:12
Speaker 3: shot at close range with what appeared to be a shotgun.
13:17
Speaker 3: Investigators believed the four had huddled together there trying to
13:22
Speaker 3: hide or protect one another. A twenty two caliber rifle
13:27
Speaker 3: was found on the floor near the bodies, broken in half.
13:31
Speaker 3: There were shell casings scattered on the floor. Later sources
13:37
Speaker 3: would confirm that eight spent twelve gage shotgun shells were recovered.
13:43
Speaker 3: A thirty eight caliber bullet hole was found through a window.
13:48
Speaker 3: At least one victim had been shot twice. Authorities wouldn't
13:52
Speaker 3: say who. Bernice appeared to have tried to secure the
13:57
Speaker 3: bedroom door, but both she and the door were blasted
14:01
Speaker 3: down by shotgun fire. Another victim. Again, it was never
14:06
Speaker 3: disclosed who had been trying to escape through a small
14:10
Speaker 3: bedroom window when they were cut down. Bloody towels were
14:15
Speaker 3: found near the front of the trailer, suggesting the killer
14:19
Speaker 3: or killers may have been wounded, but there was no
14:23
Speaker 3: blood trail leaving the home. Also, something was missing. Mister
14:29
Speaker 3: Will's twelve gage shotgun, the one he kept loaded in
14:33
Speaker 3: the front room to guard against de varmints and prowlers,
14:37
Speaker 3: was gone. He was believed to have several other shotguns
14:41
Speaker 3: that were also missing. There was no handgun found that
14:45
Speaker 3: could have caused the thirty eight bullet hole. Despite the
14:51
Speaker 3: extreme violence, investigators quickly realized something that might otherwise seem strange.
14:59
Speaker 3: There was no four entry, but knowing mister Will rarely
15:03
Speaker 3: locked his door, this didn't narrow it down at all.
15:07
Speaker 3: Anyone could have come up and opened it. Also, nothing
15:12
Speaker 3: had been ransacked. There were no vehicles missing. All the
15:17
Speaker 3: men's billfolds were still there, and a purse with a
15:20
Speaker 3: wallet sat in the Shiller's truck outside. Relatives had estimated
15:27
Speaker 3: that mister Will usually kept eight hundred to one thousand
15:30
Speaker 3: dollars in the house, and they were close. About seven
15:34
Speaker 3: hundred dollars was found inside the trailer. Sheriff Brozowski admitted
15:41
Speaker 3: the case had left investigators baffled. He was a lame
15:45
Speaker 3: duck lawman set to be replaced by Dwayne Berger in
15:50
Speaker 3: January nineteen ninety seven, just a couple months away, but
15:54
Speaker 3: he vowed to take the case just as seriously as
15:58
Speaker 3: if he had four more years office. This doesn't happen
16:02
Speaker 3: out here, he kept saying, a sentiment echoed by everyone
16:07
Speaker 3: else in the community, and he was right. By Friday morning,
16:14
Speaker 3: blood spatter experts, Texas Rangers, and a fourteen member Department
16:19
Speaker 3: of Public Safety task force with a mobile crime lab
16:23
Speaker 3: arrived at the scene. Austin County Sheriff's Department Chief Investigator
16:29
Speaker 3: Richard Holloman began fielding calls. Tips were pouring in. District
16:35
Speaker 3: Attorney Travis Cohne promised justice, but even in the first days,
16:41
Speaker 3: it was clear how difficult this case would be. The
16:45
Speaker 3: victims had no known enemies, they lived quiet lives, yet
16:50
Speaker 3: each was struck down by shotgun fire in a small
16:54
Speaker 3: bedroom of a trailer house off School Road. By the
16:58
Speaker 3: morning of Saturday, November sixteenth, nineteen ninety six, the home
17:04
Speaker 3: had become the center of one of the largest investigations
17:08
Speaker 3: Austin County had ever seen. Inside, DPS crime scene technicians
17:14
Speaker 3: worked alongside Texas rangers and Sheriff's deputies, documenting every bloodstain,
17:21
Speaker 3: every shellcasing, and every shattered surface. Outside, the quiet of
17:28
Speaker 3: Raccoon Bend was broken by the hum of a crime
17:31
Speaker 3: lab van and the steady arrival of law enforcement vehicles
17:35
Speaker 3: from across the region. The bloodiest crime in Austin County
17:41
Speaker 3: history had happened here, and nobody knew why. The four
17:47
Speaker 3: bodies will Stettinpool, Bernice Schiller, Alden Schiller, and Ray Payne
17:54
Speaker 3: were taken to the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office in Houston.
17:59
Speaker 3: Chief and Investigator Holloman told reporters that the department was
18:03
Speaker 3: waiting for those autopsies to determine the exact nature of
18:07
Speaker 3: the injuries. The Sheriff's office expected results later in the week.
18:14
Speaker 3: Investigators already knew that at least eight shots had been fired,
18:19
Speaker 3: and it reinforced the idea that what happened inside that
18:23
Speaker 3: six by six foot bedroom had not necessarily been quick.
18:28
Speaker 3: It had been a gunfight. Sheriff Brezowski had said from
18:32
Speaker 3: the start that it appeared the victims may have returned fire.
18:37
Speaker 3: By November twenty third, nineteen ninety six, the case had
18:41
Speaker 3: already reached the point where local and state investigators needed help.
18:47
Speaker 3: The FBI joined the investigation. Federal agents traveled to the
18:52
Speaker 3: Raccoon Bend trailer and examined what had been described as
18:57
Speaker 3: paltry evidence. They with Austin County authorities and Texas Rangers
19:03
Speaker 3: to help build a crime scenario and develop a profile
19:07
Speaker 3: of the person or people who had committed the murders.
19:12
Speaker 3: Assistant District Attorney Cynthia Ruiz said the FBI was serving
19:17
Speaker 3: primarily as a consultant, trying to make sense of what
19:21
Speaker 3: little physical evidence existed. Investigators were still combing the trailer
19:28
Speaker 3: and the surrounding area. So far, nothing pointed clearly to
19:33
Speaker 3: a suspect. One lead did emerge. Workers in the Raccoon
19:39
Speaker 3: bind gas field, not far from mister Will's trailer told
19:43
Speaker 3: investigators that around noon on November fourteenth, they heard what
19:48
Speaker 3: sounded like gunfire in the distance, They didn't see anything
19:53
Speaker 3: unusual and were leaving for lunch around that same time.
19:58
Speaker 3: The timing matched. Because of this, investigators were able to
20:03
Speaker 3: theorize with at least some evidence that the four victims
20:07
Speaker 3: were killed around twelve pm. That meant whoever had come
20:13
Speaker 3: to the trailer had done so in broad daylight in
20:16
Speaker 3: the middle of oil field and pasture land, with trucks
20:20
Speaker 3: parked outside. They either didn't care who saw them, or
20:25
Speaker 3: they never expected anyone too. By January nineteen ninety seven,
20:32
Speaker 3: the case was already slipping out of the headlines. Then
20:37
Speaker 3: something changed. An anonymous local business donated twenty five thousand
20:43
Speaker 3: dollars to the reward fund. Up until then, the fund
20:47
Speaker 3: had only held one thousand dollars. With the new amount,
20:52
Speaker 3: investigators hoped money might do what fear and conscious had not.
20:58
Speaker 3: Sheriff's investigator Richard Holloman said autopsy and lab results would
21:03
Speaker 3: soon help clarify the status of one or more suspects.
21:08
Speaker 3: He said arrests were expected in the near future, but
21:12
Speaker 3: might not come until a new grand jury was convened
21:15
Speaker 3: later that month. But something else happened instead. In late November,
21:32
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety six, the victims of the Raccoon Bend massacre
21:37
Speaker 3: were laid to rest. Alden Schiller was buried in Seeley
21:42
Speaker 3: and Ray Payne in Belleville, or at least that's what
21:46
Speaker 3: everyone thought. In January nineteen ninety seven, families began raising concerns,
21:54
Speaker 3: although it's unclear exactly what led them to believe so
21:58
Speaker 3: something wasn't right. After long delayed DPS forensic testing, investigators
22:05
Speaker 3: made a disturbing discovery. The bodies had been switched. Alden
22:11
Speaker 3: Schiller had been buried in Ray Paine's plot, Ray pain
22:16
Speaker 3: had been buried in Alden Schiller's plot. Investigator Holloman said
22:22
Speaker 3: the condition of the bodies had made identification difficult but
22:26
Speaker 3: not impossible, and the mistake occurred after they had been
22:30
Speaker 3: properly identified. They were exhumed and reburied in their correct graves.
22:38
Speaker 3: Jennifer Zuradnik, Rai's daughter called it heartbreaking. It's unfortunate this
22:44
Speaker 3: had to come in the middle of things like it did,
22:47
Speaker 3: she said, referring to the still unsolved murder investigation. Arrests
22:53
Speaker 3: were the kind of movement family wanted, and something like
22:57
Speaker 3: this only exacerbated their grief. Also in January, a new
23:03
Speaker 3: man was in charge of the investigation. Dwayne Berger had
23:08
Speaker 3: taken office as Austin County Sheriff. He was fifty one
23:13
Speaker 3: years old, a former Houston vice police officer, and someone
23:18
Speaker 3: who knew Will Stettinpool personally. Before the murders, Burger had
23:23
Speaker 3: already been visiting the old rancher's trailer. He had worried
23:28
Speaker 3: about mister Will's messy habits, his erratic eating, and the
23:32
Speaker 3: way he sometimes wore dirty clothes. They weren't alike Burger
23:38
Speaker 3: in a jacket and tie, mister Will and worn overalls,
23:43
Speaker 3: but they had one thing in common. They liked hunting
23:46
Speaker 3: with dogs. They would walk behind the trailer toward the
23:51
Speaker 3: Brazas River, running dogs through the brush, treeing raccoons, or
23:55
Speaker 3: tracking some other kind of game. Sometimes they would just
24:00
Speaker 3: sit on the front porch talking about cattle and the
24:03
Speaker 3: weather while Ray Payne wandered over. So when Berger took office,
24:10
Speaker 3: this wasn't just a case, it was personal. He relied
24:14
Speaker 3: heavily on Richard Holloman, the Sheriff's departments lead investigator, and
24:20
Speaker 3: Texas Ranger Brian Taylor, both of whom had been on
24:23
Speaker 3: the case. Since the first hours, the three men knew
24:28
Speaker 3: every detail and every theory, and they knew how little
24:32
Speaker 3: evidence they actually had. From the beginning, investigators believed the
24:39
Speaker 3: motive was robbery, but it was a strange one. There
24:43
Speaker 3: had been money in the trailer. It was hidden, but
24:47
Speaker 3: the killer or killers had made no attempt to find it.
24:51
Speaker 3: Nothing was ransacked. The only confirmed missing property was will
24:56
Speaker 3: Stettinpool's shotgun, the one he kept low in the front room.
25:02
Speaker 3: Investigators believed that shotgun might have been taken and then
25:07
Speaker 3: used as a murder weapon. Other firearms were thought to
25:11
Speaker 3: be missing as well, but apparently no one knew what
25:15
Speaker 3: all he had for sure. Burger said mister Will was
25:19
Speaker 3: known for doing business in cash. He bought and sold
25:23
Speaker 3: pecans and sold fish from the river. People came and went,
25:28
Speaker 3: and he carried money with him, but nineteen ninety six
25:33
Speaker 3: was a drought year. There were no pecans, Sheriff Burger said. Still,
25:39
Speaker 3: mister Will's grandchildren remembered seeing him with too much cash
25:44
Speaker 3: in his wallet or stuffed into the bib pocket of
25:47
Speaker 3: his overalls. Perhaps someone else had seen it too. A
25:53
Speaker 3: check from a livestock auction was still sitting in his
25:56
Speaker 3: mailbox at the time of the murders. What really baffled
26:02
Speaker 3: investigators was not just the killing, but the ferocity. Four
26:07
Speaker 3: people shot at close range by shotgun blasts, gunned down
26:12
Speaker 3: while trying to escape it a door was blown open.
26:17
Speaker 3: If it was robbery, why not just take the money
26:19
Speaker 3: and leave. Berger and his men didn't know, but they
26:24
Speaker 3: still believed the robbery theory. They wouldn't say what led
26:28
Speaker 3: them to be so stubbornly attached to it. Sheriff's investigators
26:33
Speaker 3: also wouldn't say what FBI profilers told them, only that
26:38
Speaker 3: the suspects would likely show signs of anxiety. A year
26:43
Speaker 3: after the killings, Sheriff Burger revealed something new. Investigators, he said,
26:50
Speaker 3: were watching three men closely. One had attended Seely High School,
26:56
Speaker 3: another had gone to school in Belleville, came from Houston.
27:02
Speaker 3: The men were in their mid twenties and described as
27:05
Speaker 3: gangster wannabes. They were believed to be involved in drugs,
27:10
Speaker 3: and Burger was confident they were involved in the Raccoon
27:14
Speaker 3: Bend massacre. But there was a problem. There was no
27:19
Speaker 3: hard evidence tying them to the crime. We're dealing with
27:23
Speaker 3: pretty smart crooks, Burger said. They know that we know.
27:29
Speaker 3: Still knowing wasn't enough. Investigators needed something that could stand
27:34
Speaker 3: up in court. Another lead also developed during the course
27:39
Speaker 3: of the initial investigation. On the day of the murders,
27:43
Speaker 3: oil field workers said they had seen a light colored
27:46
Speaker 3: car within a mile of the scene. Inside were two men.
27:52
Speaker 3: The driver was white, the passenger black. Sheriff Burger said
27:57
Speaker 3: the car could not be connected to anyone in the community.
28:02
Speaker 3: He warned that it might mean nothing, but it bothered him. Nonetheless,
28:07
Speaker 3: it seems strange that car was out there that day,
28:11
Speaker 3: he said. A missing shotgun, a boot print, the light
28:17
Speaker 3: colored car, and the three unnamed suspects. That was it.
28:23
Speaker 3: No eye witnesses, no confession, no murder weapon, which was
28:28
Speaker 3: likely one of the victim's own guns. As Sheriff Berger
28:33
Speaker 3: put it, this is a case where the eye witnesses
28:36
Speaker 3: are either all dead or they're the people we're after,
28:40
Speaker 3: meaning only the killers knew what happened, because the dead Alden, Bernice,
28:46
Speaker 3: mister will and Ray can tell no tales. When a
28:51
Speaker 3: year had passed, Raccoon Bend and Bellville were losing faith.
28:57
Speaker 3: I don't think they'll ever get anyone, said Da Swartz,
29:01
Speaker 3: a clerk at a local autoparts store. People stopped talking
29:06
Speaker 3: about it as much, but they didn't stop worrying. Sheriff
29:10
Speaker 3: Berger insisted progress was being made, though it was a
29:15
Speaker 3: painstakingly slow progress, as he called it. He said investigators
29:21
Speaker 3: had several possibilities near suspects. The reward fund grew to
29:27
Speaker 3: forty thousand dollars. Forty billboards went up across southeast Texas.
29:34
Speaker 3: One stood outside the Cochrane General Store where mister Will
29:38
Speaker 3: used to buy cookies, canned beef, stew and gasoline. Store
29:44
Speaker 3: owner Teddy Burnham said it hadn't helped much. When nobody
29:48
Speaker 3: is willing to say anything, there's not much else they
29:51
Speaker 3: can do. The Sheriff's phone lines had been flooded at first,
29:57
Speaker 3: and then they stopped. None of the calls led anywhere.
30:01
Speaker 3: The killers were still out there and nobody was talking.
30:07
Speaker 3: By November nineteen ninety nine, more than one thousand and
30:11
Speaker 3: ninety five days had passed since four people were slaughtered
30:15
Speaker 3: in a small trailer near the Brazis River. The story
30:20
Speaker 3: had become something far worse than an unsolved crime. It
30:24
Speaker 3: had become a wound that refused to close. On the
30:29
Speaker 3: evening of the third anniversary, reporters from the Houston Chronicle
30:33
Speaker 3: sat inside the home of Mark and Wendy lamp Around
30:38
Speaker 3: the living room sat Mark and Wendy Alden, and Bernice's
30:42
Speaker 3: daughter Tracy Schiller, Marty Schiller, and Mark Schiller, the couple's sons,
30:49
Speaker 3: and their spouses, Venetia and Sandra. The Shiller children had
30:54
Speaker 3: lost their parents and lost their grandfather, and they had
30:58
Speaker 3: lost Ray Payin, the neighbor who had been like family.
31:03
Speaker 3: On the table was a framed photograph of Bernice and
31:07
Speaker 3: Alden that Thursday in November nineteen ninety six. They were
31:12
Speaker 3: doing what they always did, and by noon all four
31:16
Speaker 3: were dead. By the time they all gathered to discuss
31:20
Speaker 3: the unsolved murders, Austin County Sheriff Dwayne Berger had been
31:25
Speaker 3: living with the case for three years. He also knew
31:29
Speaker 3: the victims and had become close to or perhaps closer
31:34
Speaker 3: to their families. They want closure, Burger said, so does
31:40
Speaker 3: this whole community. Texas Rangers, FBI agents, Houston police detectives,
31:47
Speaker 3: and Harris County Sheriff's Office investigators had all worked the
31:51
Speaker 3: case alongside Austin County authorities, but there was nothing to
31:56
Speaker 3: show for it. No arrests, no official susse even the
32:01
Speaker 3: motive remained murky. I see nothing but robbery as the reason,
32:07
Speaker 3: Burger said, But there wasn't much in that trailer to
32:10
Speaker 3: rob He knew how simply mister Will lived. No TV,
32:16
Speaker 3: no radio, just raggedy overalls, well worn shirts, and cookies
32:22
Speaker 3: and canned beef stew from the Cochrane General Store. Investigators
32:28
Speaker 3: had little, but they still had the light colored car
32:32
Speaker 3: with a white driver and black passenger, the bootprint, and
32:36
Speaker 3: the possible DNA evidence. They refused to discuss that was
32:41
Speaker 3: it unless someone talked. We just want to know how
32:45
Speaker 3: this could happen. Mark Lamp said, We've got to believe
32:50
Speaker 3: someone with one ounce of compassion will turn these killers in,
32:55
Speaker 3: but nobody ever did. If you have any information about
33:02
Speaker 3: the Raccoon Bend massacre, please call the Austin County Sheriff's
33:06
Speaker 3: Office at nine seventy nine eight six five three one
33:11
Speaker 3: one one. We'd like to thank our newest members at
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Speaker 3: patreon dot com Slash Gone Cold Podcast, So thanks Jeffrey
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Speaker 3: w Amy W, Justin W. Sally S. Gordon, El, Tanya L.
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Speaker 3: Alexis A, Sammy L. Sandra W. Pete Gonds Kylie H,
33:38
Speaker 3: Shannon H, Matthew K, Tara B, and Janine Kay. We
33:45
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Speaker 3: we appreciate you. Thanks for listening, y'all,