Hunt and Fuller pointed out that none of the hair or blood found at the crime scene tied Spence to the murders, and they insisted that Deeb had been joking about getting rid of Kelley and that Spence knew it. Vic Feazell Interviewed by KWTX About Infamous Lake Waco Murders As a reminder, I drop new episodes of My Passion Case every Monday, and Who Killed? Lake Waco Murders: 40 years later, attorneys believe wrongfully - MSN The men she fought to free, Calvin Washington and Joe Sidney Williams, are back in prisonWashington for theft and Williams for cocaine possession and evading arrestbut she holds out hope that Tony, Gilbert, and Spence will get some vindication, if only because the system failed them, like it did Washington and Williams. According to Dannen, Reaves, and Bernadette, after a nearly three-hour meeting, Wiley appeared convinced that Melendez was possibly innocentand that Spence might have been too. The prosecutors, Owen and Schonemann wrote, had engaged in a campaign of deception that was breathtaking in its scope, including withholding evidence that was exculpatory. Williams put down his fork. Outside the majestic McLennan County courthouse, news crews set up cameras on the lawn; inside, the third-floor courtroom was jammed with spectators, who crowded into seats, stood in the aisles, and even sat on the floor. The semen found on Whites body had never been tested for DNA, Dannen realized with excitement. That June, Dannen tracked down Williams, who was still living in Waco. Ladies and gentlemen, he announced as Simons entered, I thank God for men like Truman Simons. She was beaten with a hammer, raped, and left for dead. 51 min Lake Waco Murders - 33 Crime Shots True Crime Waco, Texas --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/crimeshot/message Learn more about your ad choices. Kelley, he posited, had been the target of the killers. Theyd seen Simons take over an investigation before. every Friday, wherever you get your favorite podcasts.For the second year in a row, I will be representing Who Killed?, Who Killed Amy Mihaljevic?, and My Passion Case on Podcast row at CrimeCon 20-20 in Orlando. Though it was supposedly key evidence, the truck then sat outside for more than two years before Simons sold it to a junk dealer, who scrapped it. Pardo hired a blood-spatter expert, who concluded from crime-scene photos that the teenagers could not have been transported from one park to another; the blood, which had flowed from each body in predictable lines and had not smeared or intermingled, seemed to indicate that they had died where they were found, in Speegleville. Speaking of his decision to move to Mexico, he even referred to the Wizards words to the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz (You are under the unfortunate delusion that simply because you run away from danger you have no courage. True Crime Podcast Episode. He had one last gesture to make. ), In November Chief Scott decided to make Prices investigation official. He probably thought that a credible investigation would show he didnt do it. Owen concurred. I was getting ready to slap on the icing, Thompson recalled, but she said, I like it better without icing. Jill said she would be home by dark, and then she was gone. Mikel gave Simons some corroborating details, such as how Kenneth had been bound with shoelaces and Raylene had had a bra tied around her leg; he also reported that Spence had suggested that Gilbert MelendezSpences co-perpetrator in the abuse casehad been involved. He was like a death-camp survivor.. Spence was an ex-con. But that following evening, their bodies would be discovered at a different park across the lake, and an intense investigation would begin. Every murder involves a vast web of people, from the witnesses and the detectives who first come to the scene, to the lawyers and the juries who examine the facts, to the families of the victims, who must make sense of the aftermath. She wondered about Tony; if he was indeed innocent, surely Dannens discoveries could help exonerate him somehow. At a pretrial hearing in 1984, Spences lawyers Russ Hunt and Hayes Fuller had requested that all evidence in the states files, even documents the prosecution did not consider exculpatory, be turned over to Judge George Allen for an in-camera inspection in his chambers. The judge had agreed, and Feazell and Ned Butler, the assistant DA, had complied. Now Driggs asked Krauss to set up the study. Spence was strapped onto the gurney in the execution chamber. At Reavess request, the DAs office arranged for four envelopes from Whites rape kit to be sent to the medical examiner; to Dannens horror, they were empty. The trial began on June 18, 1984. He walked with a limp and went by the nickname Lucky. There theyd seen the kids, whom Spence enticed into the car with the promise of beer and weed. But four years later she was laid off, and wanting to live someplace warm, she applied for a job in Texas. Sitting calmly nearby, Simons would tell him to let it all out. Kader had mentioned a rough biker character known as Chilihis real name was David, she thoughtwho hung around the convenience store. With . Washington, however, remained in prison, and Dannen decided to examine his case. Hed made use of the discipline two years earlier to help solve a violent Amarillo murder in which the killer had bitten his victim. Despite some qualms about Simonss methods, he included the deputy on his team, along with the two cops most familiar with the case, Salinas and Baier. They kept saying, Tell us the truth. She also had marks on her skin that looked as if theyd been made by teeth. Unless they get something powerfully exculpatory, Tonys not getting out, he told me. He would later point out that the only thing the DNA proved was that neither Washington nor Williams had raped White; it did not exclude them from the crime scene. As IVs were placed in each arm, he looked through the glass at relatives of the Lake Waco victims. ?Learn more about your ad choices. He eventually hammered out a 114-page writ of habeas corpus, a last appeal available to death row inmates in which evidence can be introduced to allege that their trial was unfair. I dont have any guilt feelings about causing their deaths.. A trigger warning for our listeners: this series contains gruesome depictions of murders and mentions of sexual assault. Campbell identified four bite marks on Whites body and testified that the dentition of Mr. Williams [was] consistent with the injury on her hip. I kept shaking my head, he told me. (Simons testified that he fully cooperated with Price.). Im going to see my mom.. Examining a 31-Year-Old Murder Case - Texas Monthly This week we discuss the beginning of what turns out to be one of the biggest mysteries in Waco history. But the states case was entirely circumstantial until Campbell, the bite-mark expert, took the stand. I was very fond of David, Schonemann told me. Someday, the woman wrote, well all know what really took place.. Two years later, hed win a Texas Peace Officer of the Year award. The call was urgent: a body had been discovered at Speegleville Park, near Lake Waco. This Democrat Is Back in the Texas Lege After 40 Years. The Lake Waco Murders Part 1 Who Killed? podcast - Player FM Our feeling of being satisfied, of getting justice, was taken away., In the summer of 2013, Thompson stopped talking to Dannen. - Listen to The Lake Waco Murders - Part 1 by Texas Wine and True Crime instantly on your tablet, phone or browser - no downloads needed. Id knock the shit out of him, and hed say, You done? He never bullied me or bit me. Melendez was still wary of false assurances, and he was tight-lipped about what Dannen had promised. Hes thought about his brother, Gilbert, whom he never got to see again after their brief reunion in 1992, before Muneer Deebs retrial. A couple of Bud Light cans found near Raylenes body yielded no fingerprints. She recognized the inconsistencies in Gilberts testimony but said his words had been corroborated at Spences second trial by Tonyas well as by the bite-mark evidence. But others had left even the most hardened officers in the Waco Police Department reeling. And other law enforcement officers, the TRC team was learning, had always doubted Gilberts statements. As Simons stood up, WPD detective Ramon Salinas showed him a photograph of an eighteen-year-old named Kenneth Franks, who had been reported missing earlier that day. But at the end of the hearing, she walked up to the DA and gave him a message. Now none of us could honestly say we knew without a shadow of a doubt that thats how it happened. It was June of 1982, Spence claimed, when Deeb posed the question, 'Would you kill someone for 5 thousand dollars?' Spence wasnt so lucky. He had been working on the lake murders in his spare time, he told his boss, and he wanted permission to take over the case. Shes gotten me through the last year or two, he told me. Texas law sets the bar very high for innocence claims, effectively requiring conclusive proof of innocence, said Raoul Schonemann, who is now the co-director of the Capital Punishment Clinic. As he testified in a deposition in 1997, Im a deputy sheriff, Im not an assistant DA or a prosecutor. White had another son, Steve Spence, who told officers that she had begun to receive threats; she also thought her phone was tapped. Melendez had been suffering from multiple maladies, including bone cancer and kidney failure. We feel the angels have been with us, a fragile-looking Nancy told news reporters at the close of the trial. In early 1999 he obtained a copy of Whites autopsy report, which noted the presence of semen. Simons would allow him long phone calls to Juhl, sometimes until three or four in the morning, but she failed to turn up any new leads. At last, Simons had confirmation of what he had suspected all along. From day one, they told me Id receive the death sentence if I went to trial. Melendez pleaded guilty to the savage 1982 murder of three teenagers in Waco; he also testified against another man, David Spence in 1985. He wore a pair of half-tinted aviator glasses, which were slightly cocked on his face. 1 of 2 Anthony Melendez talks about the Lake Waco murders during an interview from prison in 2013. With Thompson and her husband present as witnesses, Chapman transferred every item to a representative of the Tarrant County medical examiners office. Schonemann was not about to give up: after landing a job at the Capital Punishment Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law, he continued to represent Spence pro bono. LAKE WACO MURDERS: In Part One: April does a deep dive into the infamous murders by the lake. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Episode Website More Episodes 587214 Several other witnesses reported the suspicious remarks Spence had madeabout raping two girls at the lake, about being scared he might have killed someone. He was sent to prison. (Simons has said that he got involved only after he received calls from a few of his informants. The criminal trials for the lake murders were the most anticipated in Wacos history. Though several people had seen them arrive at Koehne, and Raylenes car was found there, no one had seen them leave. It was yet another coup for Simons, who had visited Tony in jail until the inmate finally broke down. Spence was executed in 1997, Melendezs brother Gilbert died in prison of complications from HIV in 1998, and Muneer Deebwho won an acquittal in a 1993 retrialdied of, In Hunt, Its All About the River and the Rodeo, Great Moments From the Texas Country Jamboree in Hambriston Throughout Its 123 Years. Schonemann also cant escape the past. 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. This spike in executions began to attract the kind of attention for Spence that had eluded him in life. In return Melendez got two life sentences. Unsolved Murders In America on Apple Podcasts They matched exactly, Campbell told a reporter. No signup or install needed. Three Teens go missing one Summer in Waco Texas. Then, just when it seemed things couldnt get worse, in September 1995 the TRC found itself forced to shut its doors. The bedroom, Price discovered, had been Spences. When she didnt show up for church the next morning, her Sunday school teacher stopped by the house and found her. Price didnt agree with him, and neither did several of her fellow WPD officers, so in July, when Feazell held a press conference to announce the indictments, the cops kept their distance. Franks' body was found propped against a tree, with sunglasses over his eyes. Lake Waco Murders. Perhaps Simonss informants knew what they were talking about. Waco-area news briefs: Woodway Farmers Market set for July 23 Is my mother with you? Sixteen months after White was murdered, Hunt and Fuller filed Spences direct appeal with the CCA. In fact, by this time Dannen had discovered that the crime-scene evidence from the lake murders had never been tested for DNA either, and he was already working on proving that the last of the four defendants, Tony Melendez, was innocent. Their mother also urged him not to. I knew they were going to execute him, he later told me. 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. He tried to interest national media outlets in the story, even sending a pitch to 60 Minutes, but every journalist passed. Could the bracelet be Jills? Why should he confess? The lawyer told me, Youre going to kill your boy.), I was afraid to die, said Melendez. The contents of Whites purse were strewed across the floor, and her car was missing; the vehicle was found several hours later at an apartment complex about fifteen blocks away. not only bragged repeatedly that he was responsible for the murders but that he had details [about] how the murders were committed. Seven jailhouse informants took the stand. Had Frueh called Franks because he had seen Kenneth in trouble? Thats hard to believe, said the deputy to reporters as he walked out. She had been stabbed repeatedly and was naked except for a bra that was tied around her right leg. Now, Dannen told Williams, DNA testing might prove irrefutably that he had not been Whites assailant. Evans changed her name to Jan Price, and after several dedicated years on the force, she became a detective. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices. We were told it was the truth. Williams had blood drawn by a doctor that day, and Dannen had the sample sent to the Tarrant County medical examiner for safekeeping. I think its going to be an unsatisfying ending., Unsatisfying for some, perhaps.

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