In other comments to the paper that same year, he was similarly unequivocal. Her murder went unsolved for nearly 40 years. Two days later, White was dead. Add to your scrapbook. If the new DNA evidence is favorable, Melendez could file a habeas writ and allege that hes factually innocent or that his plea was unsound. View 57 homes for sale in Hawkins, TX at a median listing home price of $236,500. When Butler first saw the lake murders file, he immediately asked Salinas if theyd checked the bodies for bite marks. The evidence is telling us things it never could tell before because the technology wasnt there, he said. They found a co-worker who had last seen her alive that day around 5 p.m. outside her apartment. I dont have any guilt feelings about causing their deaths.. Between 1982 to 1985 she lived in the Beaumont-Port Arthur area, moving to Austin in 1986, Ratliff said. A middle school dropout with a fondness for beer, marijuana, and amphetamines, he had married at 16, become a father of two by 18, and divorced at 20. TV crew to interview Texarkana woman with connection to 1986 Jerry 'Animal' McFadden murder spree in East Texas by Lori Dunn | June 17, 2019 at 4:43 a.m. | Updated June 17, 2019 at 4:46 a.m. Dannen and Blum also drove to Dallas to meet Muneer Deeb, who in his years out of prison had been profiled in Life magazine; filed a $100 million civil suit against Feazell, Simons, and other law enforcement officials (it was thrown out of court); started a limo company; and spoken on Amnesty International panels, including one with the Dalai Lama. Dannen soon found what seemed to be confirmation of this during a visit with Thompson. A dragnet involved some 1,200 officers before McFadden was caught. After the phenotyping was completed, investigators began working with GenMatch to use genetic genealogy to compose family trees for both of the victims. Then they went home. Median home price: $434,475, lot price: $0. GARZA All rights reserved. ), The truck being destroyedthat was huge. That case will stand on its own, he said. It was yet another coup for Simons, who had visited Tony in jail until the inmate finally broke down. A genealogist. Learn more about merges. Things were about to get crazy, he said, and Melendez might want to consider talking. He had recently received a letter from Dannen saying that a breakthrough with the DNA testing was imminent. For Jills family, the day was especially excruciating. In 1991, though, when one of the convicts got a new trial and was then found not guilty, some people wondered, Were these four actually the killers? Deeb loudly protested his innocence, claiming he knew nothing about the killings. This time it was sent to Homer Campbell, the expert in Spences trial, along with Washingtons mold and Whites autopsy photos. Nothing like this had ever happened in Waco, Officer Dennis Baier would remember years later. Someday, the woman wrote, well all know what really took place.. He could not have known that his promise, and every action he took to fulfill it, would shortly come under intense scrutinyand, in the years to come, set the course for one of the strangest, most serpentine cases of criminal justice in modern Texas history. It was all mind-blowing, Schonemann told me. January 2023 Reader Quiz: What Did You Learn? He was still living in San Miguel de Allende, playing chamber music and serving on a board that helps rural Mexican schoolchildren. Still, the defense attorneys made a miscalculation in their overall strategy. This was a homicidal frenzy. There was one person in particular who Dannen figured might offer insight on the matter: Kenneths father, Richard Franks, whose accounts of that night had troubled a few police officers. Hed robbed a Fort Worth convenience store with a hatchet at 21 and served fifteen months. I followed the direction that has been pointed out to me.. He was known to camp not too far from the point, where rolling waves crashed against the rugged shoreline and pretty girls flirted with the guys. She shares stories about East Texas through her Behind the Wheel column. How Florence ButtNot Her SonLaunched the H-E-B Empire, Jimmy Carters Peanut-and-Egg Taco Made Quite the Impression on San Antonians, The Top 50 Texas BBQ Joints: 2021 Edition. Local teenagers liked to gravitate to a small beach called "the point," and parents felt safe letting them go there, said retired Precinct 3 Constable David Barber, who at the time was serving as a Wood County sheriff's deputy. Over breakfast at the downtown Hilton, he proposed that the former inmate provide a blood sample, so that his DNA could be compared against that of the semen at the crime scene. The rest of her remains were located in a wooded area near the home, Ratliff said. Who would do something like this? This memorial has been copied to your clipboard. Fred would call now and then and say, Im almost ready, remembered Thompson. He felt humiliated, remembered Salinas. The next day he spoke with Jills mother, Nancy Shaw, and her aunt, Jan Thompson, and revealed a theory that was beginning to take shape in his mind. Editor's Note: This is the first in a five-day series recalling paroled sex offender Jerry Walter McFadden's murderous 1986 crime spree that terrorized a region and influenced the way Texas deals with prison overcrowding. State District Judge Richard Davis ordered the terms to be served concurrently. He had more or less abandoned his life back in New York and dedicated himself entirely to solving the Lake Waco murders. Hopper, the Portland detective, and her partner traveled to Texas to take more samples from McFaddens family members. Price was astounded to find that a few days before her death, White had received a letter from Spence that had been sent to him by Robert Snelson, one of the men who had testified against him; he was the informant who told jurors that Spence had confessed to biting off Jills nipple. His life seemed to unravel even before reaching adulthood. The town of Hawkins was shaken during the first week of May when 18-year-old Suzanne Harrison, Bryan Boone, 19, and Gina Turner, 20, went missing during a routine trip to the lake and later were found dead. But Dannen ignored his friends warnings, and in October 1998 he returned to Austin alone, taking along his computer and a digital keyboard on which to play Chopin and Gershwin. Keeping his whereabouts a secret, Dannen continued his investigation from Mexico, hiring a detective service to pursue leads. None of the officers on the scene had ever encountered a crime this grisly. I said, They didnt do this. Perhaps Simonss informants knew what they were talking about. June 14th, 2022 . The nonprofits executive director scrambled to find a firm to represent him, but no one wanted to defend a man whod twice been convicted of butchering three teenagers. The judge had agreed, and Feazell and Ned Butler, the assistant DA, had complied. The second body was found on Feb. 2, 1986, by two juveniles who were riding bikes in the same area where Frye's body was discovered on Calder Road, Ratliff said. Speegleville was the largest, a pleasant, wooded wilderness that made for good camping, hiking, and fishing. We submitted about eight DNA profiles, Hopper told reporters. David was kind of a braggart, Hunt told me. Hawkins was the kind of town where neighbors looked out for one another, and there was an innocence that people seemed to enjoy, but a lot of it was lost that one terrible summer. Gilbert had initially brushed the incident off. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Yet there was one nagging question: How to explain the many people whod heard him say he was the murderer? Dannen had now been in Texas for almost three years. Thank you very much in advance. After all this time, I still think about it.. Though theres a chance were never going to know for sure who killed those kids., Jill would be 49 today, and Thompson thinks of her often. The writ was full of typos but also cogent arguments; Deeb was granted a new trial when the court ruled that the jailhouse informants testimony that had been used against him was hearsay. (As for Frankss polygraph, without context, it is just as likely that Richard Franks statement was that he was with them in spirit.), Spences prosecutors, in fact, had long maintained that they had turned over everything to the defense that they were required to. The two men could not have been more different. But no one emerged as a credible suspect. At a court hearing in Waco, Feazell accused Dannen of not returning his tapes; Dannen, in an affidavit, said he had made copies and given them back. He was a little twitchy, she told me. There was a lot of apprehension. Gilow said he was trying to get his officers a $2 per hour raise, but the council denied that. But he braced himself for more bad news, whichhardly to his surprise nowhe got in March 1996, when the Fifth Circuit turned down his clients appeal. But that didnt bother me like this. The murders, another official said, were the most sadistic and cruel he had seen in his career. Now she hoped she could help free Washington and Williamsand cast some light on the DA and his investigator. Baled in a Bale by Mike Cox Though most of the ginning is done by brainless machinery, the industry's human element has developed a colorful folklore with a range of subsets. He and Melendez drove the bodies to Speegleville and dumped them there. He filed petitions with the U.S. Supreme Court, a motion to reconsider with the CCA, and a petition for clemency from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Governor George W. Bush. Copyright 2020 KLTV. She asked Dannen to make a presentation, and she set up a meeting at Nancys house. 'It was somewhat of a blood bath,' Roberts said. He never would have risen to the level of a suspect.. There was also former inmate Kevin Mikel, who explained how hed learned details of the murders. When they returned to Waco, Simons set about gathering information on the young man, talking assiduously to sources both in and out of jail. The population was 1,331 at the 2000 census. The former Haskell, Texas, oil field worker dropped out of school before completing junior high, and by 19 was married to a girl, who was 15. When I asked Dannen why he hadnt tried to help free Melendez earlier by publishing everything he had, he said, It wouldnt have made any difference for Tonyabsolutely none. A tough 28-year-old from Waco whod served time in the mid-seventies for assault with intent to murder, Melendez had been given seven years after pleading guilty in the aggravated sexual abuse case. The unlikely crime-fighter cracking decades-old murders? Dannen bought a Chevy Blazer and took driving lessons, tracking down sources who had never spoken to authorities or who had documents related to the case. Dannen found a middle-aged man still mourning his son. Jan Price was arresting our witnesses on the Juanita White case and holding them in the city jail, incommunicado, without access to a magistrate or attorney, trying to pressure them to change their stories, he wrote in an email.). It was her late niece's absolute favorite meal and the item most requested for family get-togethers. I dont know how he does it, said one of his fellow officers around the time of the investigation, and I dont want to know. (Simons declined to be interviewed for this story.). He is mostly confined to his cell; he gets two hours daily in the dayroom, where he can watch TV, and two hours outside. That didnt happen. Carl Lee Now it was possible hed orchestrated the whole thing.. Still, what follows is not a legal document; some of the people involved in the case are dead, others dont remember much, and even othersincluding the patrol sergeant who investigated the case and the DA who prosecuted itrefused to be interviewed. Larry David Pack and Larry D Pack are some of the alias or nicknames that Larry has used. While investigating the White case, Dannen had learned that the evidence from Speegleville Park had ended up in the possession of David Chapman, the special prosecutor in Deebs retrial. Editor's Note: This is the second in a five-day series recalling paroled sex offender Jerry , Editor's Note: This is the third in a five-day series recalling paroled sex offender Jerry W, Editor's Note: This is the fourth in a five-day series recalling paroled sex offender Jerry , Editor's Note: This is the last of a five-day series recalling paroled sex offender Jerry Wa. Their opinions were in the minority. As the mild-mannered Schonemann knew, Spence had a rough historyhis ex-girlfriend Christine Juhl had told the police that he beat her, and testimony at the close of his first trial had included allegations of violent rape. He and Reaves went looking for Carroll, but to their dismay, he was dead; after being paroled, he had died of a self-inflected gunshot wound, in 1990. The first DNA exoneration in the country, in 1989, had come about when the DNA of a Chicago man convicted of rape was shown not to match that of the semen found on his alleged victims underwear; since then, this exclusionary approach had led to the exoneration of dozens of others. As manager of this memorial you can add or update the memorial using the Edit button below. Many of the wounds were shallow, suggesting they had been tortured. The two friends quickly got to work, furiously reading through thousands of pages of transcripts from Spences two trials and numerous files from the McLennan County DAs office. He played things close to the vest, Baier would explain later, and that bothered some people. Nevertheless, Scott, convinced of Deebs flight risk, approved the arrest, and that night Simons brought the store owner in for questioning.