Latest / Gone Cold - Texas True Crime / The Murder of Mickey Bryan Part 5: Killer Cop
Transcript
- 0:02The Gone Cold. Podcasts may contain violent or graphics subject matter. Listener discretion
- 0:07is advised. Joe Brian was released from a Huntsville, Texas prison in nineteen
- 0:14eighty eight after on a technicality, he was granted a new trial. The
- 0:20judge in his nineteen eighty six trial for killing his wife, Mickey Brian had
- 0:25denied a defense motion that called into question one of the motives strongly implied by
- 0:30the prosecution, a substantial payout. Being out of prison with nearly everything lost
- 0:37to him wasn't really much relief. The love of Joe's life was gone,
- 0:43as was his job, his home, and the trust, respect and friendship
- 0:48of Clifton residents he'd spent a decade gaining as the high school's principal. They
- 0:54didn't understand how or why Joe Brian killed Mickey, but the cops, the
- 0:59dis strict attorney, and twelve upstanding Bosky County men and women all said he
- 1:04did it, so they believed that he did. Clifton was a typical small
- 1:11Texas town, a law and ordered town full of folks who believed wholeheartedly in
- 1:18the justice system. As the result of this sort of blind trust, many
- 1:23called Joe guilty as sin. Though many of those experienced cognitive dissonance when they
- 1:30remembered Joe's exemplary standing in the community, still faith in the balanced scales of
- 1:38the justice system generally one out. Even Joe's twin brother had turned his back
- 1:44on him. Proving he didn't kill Mickey anyway had become his sole purpose.
- 1:51The seven day re trial, which took place in June of nineteen eighty nine,
- 1:55besides being moved to Comanche County, wasn't much different than the first,
- 2:00at least as far as the prosecution witnesses. Texas Ranger Joe Wiley, Harker
- 2:07Heights Police Sergeant Bob Thorman, and the victim's brother, Charlie Blue were again
- 2:13perhaps the most impactful. District Attorney Andy McMullen, and even Special Prosecutor Gary
- 2:20Llewellen returned to retry the case, but this time only five character witnesses came
- 2:27to support Joe Brian as opposed to the thirty six plus who'd shown up before.
- 2:35Seventy five miles from the courtroom where he was first tried, there wasn't
- 2:38a single juror familiar with Joe's impeccable reputation or genuine good nature. There were
- 2:46plenty of empty seats in the courtroom. The media was largely uninterested. Once
- 2:53again, Joe Dale Bryan, now forty eight years old, was found guilty
- 2:59and sentence to ninety nine years in prison. He was sent back to the
- 3:04same maximum security penitentiary in Huntsville he'd been released from the year prior. Nicknamed
- 3:10the Walls Unit, the last remnants of hope to clear his name or something
- 3:16Joe desperately clung to, But the bleak and grim conditions behind the walls of
- 3:23Texas's oldest prison didn't make it easy. When the father of a slain Clifton
- 3:29teenager visited the editor of the newspaper that had published detailed articles about Joe's nineteen
- 3:35eighty six trial that heavily and inarguably favored the prosecution's case. However, it
- 3:42gave the convicted man reason to fight. In the summer of nineteen ninety one,
- 3:55the managing editor of the Clifton Record, W. L. Leon Smith,
- 4:00was paid a visit by a desperate man, Don Whitley, whose seventeen
- 4:05year old daughter Judy had been murdered six years before, wanted answers and the
- 4:12Clifton Police. Don told Leon had walked away from the case, leaving it
- 4:16unsolved more by choice than by the lack of evidence. Pointing to a suspect,
- 4:23Don asked the newspaper man if he would attempt to enlist the help of
- 4:28the syndicated television show Unsolved Mysteries, who he hoped would conduct a proper investigation.
- 4:34While he was at it, Don insisted Leon should also mention the Mickey
- 4:40Brian case to the TV program. It had already been adjudicated. Of course,
- 4:46but Don's wife knew Joe Bryan, he said, and believed there was
- 4:49no way in hell he was responsible. Perhaps the two were connected, Don
- 4:55wondered, w Leon Smith was a good guy, an old school journalist who
- 5:00both believed in the truth and felt a genuine obligation as a reporter to serve
- 5:06his fellow citizen. Of course, he'd help to entice Unsolved Mysteries to take
- 5:14the cases. Leon began an endeavor of his own after contacting the show.
- 5:18He'd pour over the evidence himself and write something up to publish in the Clifton
- 5:24Record. When he contacted Joe Brian, hope and appreciation overwhelmed the inmate.
- 5:31Absolutely he would cooperate, Joe told Leon, somewhat to the reporter's surprise.
- 5:39Leon had assumed the courts got it right, but Joe told him he had
- 5:43nothing to hide and was excited at the prospect of also potentially helping the Whitley
- 5:47family with Judy's case. It too, was a case close to his heart.
- 5:53She'd been a student at Clifton High where he was principal. For two
- 5:59long days, w Leon Smith poured over the Mickey Bryan murder case file,
- 6:04of which he'd been granted access by Clifton Police Chief Jim Vanderhoof, who'd come
- 6:10on the job in March of nineteen eighty seven. Right away under his command
- 6:15and alongside a few other officers knew to the force, the Judy Whitley case
- 6:20was revisited, put back on the front burner, as vander Hoof put it.
- 6:26Also enlisted was the help of criminal intelligence officers from the Texas Department of
- 6:31Public Safety, Texas Rangers, and behavioral science agents from the FBI. They'd
- 6:38come up with a surprisingly complete picture of the suspect, Vanderhoof said, and
- 6:44evidence was being tested four years after the fact. However, no arrests had
- 6:50been made. Chief Vanderhoof liked Clifton Record editor W. Leon Smith and gladly
- 6:58let him see the Mickeybrian came because the Judy Whitley murder was still open,
- 7:03though virtually inactive at this point, Leon's access to that case file was limited.
- 7:11Because of this, he decided he'd craft many of the questions he would
- 7:15present to Joe Brian as ones that he thought would conjure up common denominators with
- 7:20Judy's murder. On September seventeenth, nineteen ninety one, Leon conducted his first
- 7:27two hour interview with Joe. While he was permitted to record the audio,
- 7:32no cameras were allowed, though guards agreed to snap a couple shots of the
- 7:38two men talking, separated by thick glass and steel mesh, using Leon's polaroid.
- 7:46A significant portion of the first interview concentrated on Joe's life inside the Walls
- 7:50Unit, his anger at God, which he'd quickly overcome as his faith was
- 7:57too strong to break. Joe spoke of it, lack of freedom and privacy,
- 8:01and his job working in the prison compliance office. Next, Leon asked
- 8:07him about something he had heard that Joe had been the target of a hired
- 8:11hit shortly after he'd come to the Walls unit. Joe confirmed it at three
- 8:18am on January thirty first, nineteen eighty seven. Joe told Leon. A
- 8:24guard woke him up and brought him to the captain's office. A lieutenant there
- 8:28told Joe that the Texas Rangers had informed them of a contract out on his
- 8:33life. I hope they'd do it and get this over with, Joe remembered
- 8:37thinking to himself. At the time, many inmates were coming in and out
- 8:43of the unit, which had been set up as a medical center briefly temporarily,
- 8:48Joe was in protective custody. Not long after, in the compliance office
- 8:54where he worked, an inmate came asking for Joe Brian. He went to
- 8:58the door and told a man that was him, and the inmate said,
- 9:03that's all I needed to know, turned around and walked out. Prison administration
- 9:09wished to move Joe to maximum security lock up, but because he'd known of
- 9:13another inmate being killed in another unit in max's security, he asked them not
- 9:20to. He'd have a better chance at running in jen Pop. Joe believed
- 9:26the hit was either never attempted or had failed because of the watchful eye on
- 9:30Joe as the result of the threat. As they continued the interview, Joe
- 9:35told Leon he'd found work in Houston while he was out of prison awaiting a
- 9:39new trial, at a private school there the only place he could find to
- 9:43hire him. He taught English to kids with behavioral or substance abuse issues.
- 9:50Knowing what he now knew, he wanted to keep them out of the penitentiary,
- 9:54Joe said, a natural at working with teenagers of any kind, He
- 10:00became principal of the school after only one month, but continuing that work became
- 10:05impossible not long after when he was convicted again. Now he planned to get
- 10:11that conviction reversed and then teach in the prison system, a job officials there
- 10:16had guaranteed him should he be freed. He wanted to use his unique experiences
- 10:22to help others, but first, Joe insisted he would hire a professional investigator
- 10:28to find out who really killed Mickey, who he described as his life.
- 10:41Hey, it's Wes Ferguson. I want to tell you about my new podcast,
- 10:46The Unforgotten. It's a ten episode deep dive investigating one murder that you
- 10:50might already know about from The Gone Cold podcast. Thirty years ago, a
- 10:54young mom named Shelley Salter Watkins was found dead in the Trinity River. She
- 10:58was wrapped in plastic, bound with duct tape and chained to concrete blocks.
- 11:03Shelley's case went cold long ago, but my co host Carol Dawson and I
- 11:07are digging in and believe it or not, we're getting real answers the public
- 11:11has never heard before. We're talking to key witnesses, friends, family,
- 11:16law enforcement, and we've turned up a story that will blow your mind.
- 11:20But story chalk full of power, money, sex, murder, and public
- 11:24corruption. By the time we're finished, we will have done everything in our
- 11:26power to get justice for Shelley Watkins. Listen to the Unforgotten wherever you get
- 11:31your podcasts. Though at trial Joe Bryan's defense team had strongly implied that the
- 11:39victim's brother, Charlie Blue, had planted the supposed blood spattered flashlight in the
- 11:45trunk of his car, they had not provided adequate alternate suspect. Upon his
- 11:50review of the Mickey Brian murder case file, one thing immediately caught the attention
- 11:56of Clifton Record managing editor W Leon Smith. Something that seemed particularly important Just
- 12:03after midnight on October sixteenth, nineteen eighty five, the day after Mickey's body
- 12:09was found, two men had been spotted at a local Ford dealership. One
- 12:15of the men was standing next to a van that had just been spray painted
- 12:18green over its original color of white. It had no license plates. The
- 12:24man told a Clifton police officer he'd painted the van for an upcoming hunting excursion.
- 12:31Each of the men had significant criminal records that included weapons convictions and one
- 12:37theft an invasion of privacy charges. It was just one of the many leads
- 12:43that hadn't been followed up on in the investigation of Mickey Brian's murder. Once
- 12:50Joe Brian was arrested and charged in fact, investigation into any other possibility came
- 12:56to a screeching halt. During his entry with Joe, Leon asked him to
- 13:01speculate his intentions weren't nefarious. Rather, he wanted to give Joe the chance
- 13:07to express his thoughts about the murder of his wife. Joe didn't know anything,
- 13:13really, he told Leon, but thought it was possible Mickey and Judy's
- 13:18murders could be connected. As far as Judy's case went, he remembered something
- 13:22from the time that had been spun by the famous Clifton rumor mill talk that
- 13:28a Clifton police officer was responsible and that there may have been a cover up
- 13:33as the result. When Leon mentioned there was a home in the Brians neighborhood
- 13:37that, after Mickey's murder, had become known as a drug house, Joe
- 13:43told him neither he nor his wife had known anything about it. He hadn't
- 13:48seen or heard anything that might put the couple in any danger, Joe continued,
- 13:54and to his knowledge, neither had Mickey. Interestingly, perhaps the intelligence
- 14:00the Texas Rangers were given about the contract on Joe's life was thought to have
- 14:05had something to do with someone involved in narcotics. At the time of the
- 14:11interview, Joe's case was in the appeals process and a private investigator had been
- 14:16approved by him to help out. A former Texas Ranger, Joe told Leon
- 14:22was also interested in working with the PI. During his questioning of Joe W.
- 14:28Leon Smith covered just about every base imaginable. Joe denied, ever putting
- 14:33the alleged blood spattered flashlight in his trunk. The flaps used to close the
- 14:39box in which the flashlight was found were folded all the way down inside,
- 14:46Joe said, and reached the bottom of the box. The money bag he
- 14:50found after the search warrant was executed was under one of those flaps, though
- 14:56Texas Ranger Joe Wiley insisted they'd gone away over every inch of Joe's car and
- 15:01the money bag was not there. It's unclear if a photograph of the box
- 15:05with the flaps folded back out and open was among the ones documenting the search.
- 15:11If one did exist, it apparently was not shown in court. As
- 15:18far as Unsolved Mysteries was concerned. Even after releasing his incredibly compelling three part
- 15:24interview with Joe, Leon couldn't get the TV show to come to town,
- 15:28further investigate and run segments on the Mickey, Brian and Judy Whitley cases.
- 15:35The Newspaperman did, however, walk away with a nagging feeling that not only
- 15:39had justice for Mickey not been served, but a great injustice against Joe had
- 15:46been committed. As a journalist, Leon felt compelled, if not obligated,
- 15:50to investigate himself. As Clifton Police Chief Jim Vanderhoof would not reinvestigate, choosing
- 15:58instead to concentrate on the Judy Whitley case. Though the lawmen did agree with
- 16:03Leon that Mickey's case merited for the review, Leon obsessively investigated. It was
- 16:11claimed at court that a cigarette butt had been discarded in the street by Peace
- 16:15Justice Alvin James and was tracked all the way up to the Brian home and
- 16:19into the kitchen by way of the soul of Ranger Wiley's cowboy boots. Leon
- 16:26attempted an experiment to replicate that occurrence. He waited for a storm to come
- 16:32and go, and when the ground was as wet as it had been the
- 16:34morning Mickey's body was discovered, he attempted to step on cigarette butts with his
- 16:41own boots to track them a comparable distance for an hour. Leon conducted this
- 16:47experiment, but said he could never get one to stick to his boots for
- 16:51more than a step or two. In interviews, Joe had told Leon when
- 16:56the cigarette butt was presented in court as evidence, it didn't even appear to
- 17:00have been stepped on. He and vander Hoof continued to trade notes on their
- 17:06separate cases, and Leon was granted uncommon access to publicly unknown details in Judy's
- 17:11case. Soon enough, the Chief of Police and the editor of the local
- 17:17paper were onto a potential alternate suspect for the murder of Mickey Bryan and a
- 17:22strong primary suspect in the Judy Whitley case, a former Clifton police officer.
- 17:29There was indeed truth to one of the rumors going around after Judy's murder.
- 17:37Dennis Murray Dunlap, a local policeman at the time of Judy's murder, was
- 17:41a, if not the primary suspect in the case. Dunlap was something of
- 17:48a wanderer, having moved from one small Texas town police department to the next
- 17:52for years. He was a police officer in Clifton for less than a year,
- 17:57but in that short pace period had managed to develop a reputation for harassing,
- 18:03intimidating, and stalking women while on duty and off. While Dunlap was
- 18:10never internally investigated for this behavior, he was looked at, albeit briefly and
- 18:15markedly inadequately, for the murder of seventeen year old Judy Whitley. Chief Vanderhoof
- 18:22had kept up with Dunlap's movements from town to town since he'd first begun looking
- 18:29into Judy's case in eighty seven, tracing his movements before that has proved difficult.
- 18:36The earliest newspaper reports about Dennis Murray Dunlap as a police officer are in
- 18:41December of nineteen seventy three, up in Galena, Ohio. He'd shot himself
- 18:47in the right thigh with a twenty two caliber revolver accidentally. By nineteen seventy
- 18:52seven, Dunlap was in Denton, Texas. In the fall of that year,
- 18:57twelve year old Susy Murrey Mages was abducted from Denton and later found murdered
- 19:03in Dallas. In nineteen seventy eight and into nineteen seventy nine, Dunlap spent
- 19:10a year as the police chief of Little Elm, a small town not far
- 19:14east of Denton. In nineteen eighty one, he lived in Lake Dallas.
- 19:19In June of nineteen eighty four, Dunlap was accused of sexual harassment in Newark,
- 19:26Texas, where he was the only police officer the chief. He resigned
- 19:30and skipped town as the result of the allegations. Dunlap arrived in Clifton after
- 19:37that and joined the force there. On January fifteenth, nineteen eighty five,
- 19:41at thirty eight years old, he married a local woman named Elaine in April
- 19:47of that year, though two weeks later she threw him out for watching her
- 19:51as she slept and stalking her. On June nineteenth, nineteen eighty five,
- 19:56seventeen year old Judy Whitley was abducted, bound, raped, and slain.
- 20:03By July thirteenth, nineteen eighty five, Dunlap had once again moved on.
- 20:08That's an important date as far as the Judy Whitley case is concerned. We'll
- 20:12get to that. Dunlap, anyway, changed wives about as often as he
- 20:18skipped town. His many divorces included accusations of neglect, absence, and extreme
- 20:25cruelty. In nineteen ninety one, Chief vanderhoof New Dunlap was living just southwest
- 20:32of Houston and suburban Nadville, and newspaperman W. Leon Smith began corresponding with
- 20:38him that fall. Leon was looking for police officers on the force when Judy
- 20:45was murdered and asking some questions he told Dunlap. The ex Clifton cop replied
- 20:51with brief answers to the standard questions. It was just a warm up for
- 20:56Leon. Eventually, over the course of four life, he interrogated Dunlap on
- 21:02paper, asking him to explain his being named a suspect and Judy Whitley's murder.
- 21:07Dunlap, when he finally answered the final letter now early nineteen ninety two,
- 21:12denied ever being told he was a suspect, and in fact had been
- 21:17told by then police Chief Rob brennand that he was not one. He moved
- 21:22away, he said, simply because he didn't like it there. Chief Jim
- 21:27Vanderhoof felt he didn't have the proof he needed to arrest Dennis Murray Dunlap for
- 21:33the murder of Judy Whitley since some of the evidence mysteriously vanished from headquarters.
- 21:38During the initial investigation, a fellow Clifton police officer suspected thirty eight year old
- 21:56Dennis Murray Dunlap of the rape murder of seventeen year old Judy Whitley, and
- 22:03no matter what he told w Leon Smith via handwritten letters in nineteen ninety one
- 22:07and ninety two, he was looked at in the initial investigation. Briefly,
- 22:14the rumor going around town that a policeman was being investigated for killing Judy was
- 22:19true, at least in part. According to detectives working the case, Dunlap
- 22:26knew specific details about the crime that he shouldn't have, things known only to
- 22:32them and the killer. Within weeks of the murder, Texas Ranger Joe Wiley
- 22:37took Dunlap to Texas Department of Public Safety headquarters in Waco to undergo a polygraph
- 22:44examination. Wiley said the results were inconclusive and any further investigation into the officer
- 22:51pretty much ended there. It should not have. Judy Whitley's sister, Patricia,
- 22:57met Dennis Murray Dunlap when he came into a convenience store where she worked.
- 23:03He asked her out and she agreed to the date. Although he was
- 23:07a police officer, he had kind of a bad boy look, disheveled,
- 23:12dirty blonde hair, cowboy boots under his police blues, and intense mysterious eyes,
- 23:18not to mention character. When they went to his apartment, however,
- 23:23Patricia decided Dunlap wasn't the guy for her after she noticed photos depicting women in
- 23:30bondage, wearing and bound by leather and chains. She was done with him
- 23:37after one date. Not long after that, Judy went missing, and the
- 23:42next day Dunlap delivered the news to the Whitley family that she'd been found deceased.
- 23:49He hadn't been among the authorities at the scene, but described the crime
- 23:53to the Whitleys in more detail than he should have known at that time.
- 23:59The policeman, not detective, immersed himself in Judy's rape and murder case,
- 24:04whether it was asking questions about its progression or consoling the family. Sometimes.
- 24:11Patricia later said it seemed like he'd appear out of thin air, like he
- 24:17was always around watching. Dunlap even insisted on being a pallbearer at Judy Whitley's
- 24:23funeral. For just shy of a month. He continued to be fixated on
- 24:29the Whitley family until one day he was gone. In the early morning hours
- 24:36of July eleventh, nineteen eighty five, the home of Judy Whitley's grandmother exploded
- 24:41and became engulfed in flames. The Clifton police had gotten word that Judy kept
- 24:48a detailed diary there that might contain clues as to the identity of her killer.
- 24:55Although the diary was just a rumor, Judy never kept one, The
- 24:59cop were scheduled to search her grandmother's home for it later on the day it
- 25:03burnt down. It was after the explosion and fire that Dunlap underwent a polygraph
- 25:10examination, which again proved inconclusive and more or less stopped the investigation into him,
- 25:18at least at that time. Two days after the explosion, Dennis Murray
- 25:22Dunlap handed over his badge and service weapon and left Clifton, Texas. He
- 25:30skipped town so abruptly, in fact, that associates of the man were left
- 25:34to clean his residence and discard of his personal belongings, including a Honda motorcycle.
- 25:41Physical items from the Judy Whitley murder investigation, tape recordings, and other
- 25:47materials vanished from the Clifton police evidence locker right along with him. Later,
- 25:52after finding similar duct tape as that used in the crime, when they cleaned
- 25:57out Dunlap's belongings, it too disappeared. Dunlap moved to an unknown place in
- 26:06the Dallas Fort Worth area and stayed for an unknown period of time before moving
- 26:11to Nedville. On April twelfth, nineteen ninety six, a call was placed
- 26:17to nine one one in Rosenberg, Texas, just southwest of Houston. Police
- 26:23responded to the scene at twelve fifty pm, where they found forty nine year
- 26:27old Dennis Murray Dunlap hanging in his garage. What Rosenberg police detective Brad Rawlins
- 26:36referred to as a nine knot noose was tight around his neck. The other
- 26:41end of the rope tied to a secured pole and draped over an ibeam.
- 26:48Five minutes before his girlfriend found his body, Dunlap spoke to her on the
- 26:52telephone and asked her to bring him a coke. Two suicide notes and a
- 26:56suicide tape recording were found at the scene. In one of the notes,
- 27:02he described being disgusted with his life and the rotten hand in that life he'd
- 27:07been dealt. As they searched Dunlap's apartment, they discovered the letters Clifton newspaperman
- 27:14W. Leon Smith had wrote to him, and it became clear their suicide
- 27:18victim was also a suspect in a decade old murder investigation. Authorities in Rosenberg
- 27:25promptly called and then released the scene of Dunlap's suicide to an investigator from Clifton.
- 27:33Sergeant Rex's childress drove the two hundred and twenty miles to comb through Dunlap's
- 27:37apartment, and over the course of several trips, interviewed folks who knew him.
- 27:42Texas ranger Christine Nix also joined the investigation. Dunlap was always in fear,
- 27:49the investigators learned, always looking over his shoulder, expecting law enforcement to
- 27:56come for him at any time, and it's no wonder for years. In
- 28:00a heroic effort, Clifton Police Chief Jim Vanderhoof had been anonymously mailing Dunlap newspaper
- 28:07clippings about Judy Whitley's ongoing murder investigation. Vanderhoof later said he wanted Dunlap to
- 28:15know he was being watched. After receiving the clippings, one associate of the
- 28:22man's said he'd become despondent and once remarked he was glad they didn't find the
- 28:26gray duct tape in the trunk of his police cruiser. Judy Whitley's mouth had
- 28:32been covered in such tape. The investigation into Dunlap intensified after his suicide,
- 28:40and after the public answered law enforcements please for information via the media, the
- 28:45picture of a violent and predatory man began developing. He'd once choked out a
- 28:51woman who refused to have sex with him, warning her that he could kill
- 28:55her if he wanted to. And she knew it. One of the many
- 28:59women he stalked in Clifton had filed several complaints against him, but nothing came
- 29:04of any of them. Dunlap apparently was known for killing household pets for no
- 29:11reason, including dogs and bunnies, interviewees told police, and often threatened to
- 29:17burn down houses. Witnesses told police he built bombs. Folks who knew Dunlap
- 29:25claimed he described to them in detail what he'd done to Judy, handcuffing her,
- 29:30taking her to the woods, handcuffing her to a tree, placing the
- 29:33tape over her mouth, and sexually assaulting her. She died while Dunlap raped
- 29:40her. Unable to properly breathe, He described it as gurgling on her own
- 29:45saliva, one individual said, listening as she struggled to breathe in her final
- 29:52moments. During the course of his four and a half year investigation, Clifton
- 29:57Record managing editors W. Leon Smith was able to collect evidence and information in
- 30:03both cases that had been missed or simply not investigated. After Dunlap's suicide,
- 30:11the Clifton Police and Texas Rangers began an intensive investigation of their own. Finally,
- 30:18and fourteen years after Judy Whitley was murdered on Tuesday June fifteenth, nineteen
- 30:23ninety nine, Rex Childress, who'd since taken over as police chief after Vanderhof's
- 30:30death in nineteen ninety seven, announced that Dennis Murray Dunlap was the killer and
- 30:34that the case was now cleared. Attempts at landing a posthumous indictment, however,
- 30:41had failed. The Whitley family, though they experienced some relief, were
- 30:48angered at law enforcement's failure to nail Dunlap while he was still alive. In
- 30:52the weeks following the heinous crime. Then police Chief Rob Brennan had actually told
- 30:59dun Lay it would be best if he left town, he later admitted,
- 31:03and the Merit at the time vehemently denied there was a police officer under investigation
- 31:10at all, but the Whitleys had suspected him almost since the beginning. The
- 31:15victim's sister, Patricia also suspected Dunlap for the murder of Mickey Bryan, and
- 31:22it wasn't something she had just plucked out of the clear blue sky. That
- 31:27and the hearing that should have landed Joe Dale Bryan a third trial next time
- 31:33on Gone Cold, the final episode in this series. If you like Gone
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- 32:21in bio in the episode's description. Thanks for listening, y'all.