Bonus: Case Update

While Catherine and the team investigated the death of Janie Ward for season two, they spent some time looking back into the murder of Rebekah Gould from season one. All of the updates for season one are consolidated in this bonus episodes. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans Hi Helen Gone Listeners. While we investigated
the death of Janie Ward for season two, we also
spent some time looking back into the murder of Rebecca
Gould from season one. In order to keep the cases separate,
we decided to make an adjustment. We're going to consolidate
all of the season one updates on Rebecca's case into

(00:30):
one episode. Rebecca Gould was brutally murdered on September twentieth,
two thousand and four, near the small town of Melbourne, Arkansas.
It's been fifteen years and her killer has never been found.
A lot has happened since season one. Rebecca's father, Larry,

(00:54):
is continuing to battle to get justice for his daughter.
He's been fighting to change the law to allow more
open access to cold case files. The ASP have been
made making this claim since the beginning that keeping the
case file sealed is an absolute priority. After we began
our investigation and went to the police and the prosecutor

(01:15):
to point out discrepancies in the timeline, Dennis, the lead
investigator on Rebecca's case, interviewed Casey's friends Philip and Laren,
who were out with Casey on September twentieth, two thousand
and four, the day Rebecca was murdered. Rather than talking
to them in person, Dennis sent their witness statements back
to them. In doing so, he lost any ability he

(01:36):
had to ask them anything new or to challenge them
on anything they'd already written down. But this also meant
that these witness statements, which the Arkansas State Police have
long claimed were sealed in order to protect the integrity
of the case, immediately became public knowledge. Rebecca was murdered
on September twentieth, two thousand and four. We know she

(01:58):
dropped Casey off at Sonic that morning in her car,
stopped by the Possum Trot to buy a breakfast sandwich
and coffee, and went back to Casey's house. So now
we can focus even more on the timeline and try
to answer the question what happened during those missing hours.
In Philip's statement, he said, some of the guys were

(02:21):
headed to Batesville to watch a movie. When I arrived,
Casey was outside and I started to talk to him.
Casey told me that he was waiting on his ride.
I think he mentioned Rebecca as being his ride, but
I'm not positive. I asked where his truck was, and
he told me that his dad had taken it to Batesville.
According to phillips statement, the five friends Laren, b Jy, Sean, Casey,

(02:45):
and Philip left Sonic sometime between four thirty five and
four fifty. Philip wrote, we did some running about town.
As with Laren's statement, which we covered last season, there's
no mention of many key details, like how many vehicles
they took or who rode with whom. Philip's statement did

(03:06):
give a few more key details. He said that the
first thing the guys did when they got to Batesville
was stopped by to pick up Casey's truck. He wrote,
we found it in a second parking area, and Casey
made sure the keys were in it. I noticed that
there's no mention of which parking area or of what

(03:26):
time any of this happened. Also, Philip wrote in his
statement that Casey indicated that his father had left the
truck for him. There's also no mention of what time
Casey's father, who was a truck driver, went on the road.
Figuring out these details is crucial to narrowing down the
people who could have come to Casey's home that day

(03:48):
and killed Rebecca After picking up the truck, the five
friends stopped by Hastings then Colton's to eat. Then they
went to the seven to fifteen showing of Resident Evil.
After the movie, Philip gave a couple more details. He
said that the guys stopped by Walmart and then go
before traveling back to Melbourne, where they let Larin get

(04:09):
his truck before arriving at Laren's house. At that point,
they watched some DVDs and smoke some pot. Two of
the guys left and Philip and Laren went to bed
in their rooms. Casey stayed the night and slept on
the couch. At seven am the next morning, according to Philip,
Casey's alarm went off. Casey hit snooze twice before leaving

(04:32):
at seven twenty. I'm noticing that in this part of
the witness statement, the details are getting more and more specific,
Philip wrote. Casey quickly sat up, put his clothes on,
said goodbye, and left. That was the last time I've
heard or saw Casey. Philip also wrote, I know Casey

(04:53):
was madly in love with Rebecca because he would never
shut up about her. He lost a promotion because of
their antics at work, but he didn't care, Philip said
in his statement as Larry and did that Casey tried
to call Rebecca Monday night when he got home from Batesville.
Philip wrote, after he had been on the phone, he

(05:15):
told us that she was missing. But there's something weird here.
When I squint to read the handwritten statement, I can
see that the sentence originally read he told us all
that she had been missing for twenty four hours had
been and twenty four hours are crossed out and initialed
by Philip. So I'm wondering why was this crossed out.

(05:40):
I keep coming back again and again to the statement
that we got from our informant. They said that the
police had the timeline wrong. The police were focused on
the evening and never addressed the multiple gaps of missing
time during the day. Philip wrote that Casey showed signs
he was worried about Rebecca being missing, but he never

(06:02):
left to go find her. This echoes what was rech
and Laren's statement. Laren wrote, Rebecca was supposed to have
picked him up, but she hadn't shown. It entered my
mind that he wasn't too concerned, but I just thought
that he was getting out with the guys for the night.
I'm thinking if Casey was telling his friends that Rebecca
was supposed to pick him up that afternoon. This does

(06:24):
not match the original story that was told to police
and the one that's been reported in the newspapers. By
the time Casey got off work, Rebecca was already supposed
to have left to pick her sister Danielle up and
go back to school. I had already seen Laren's statement,
so I compare the one in public record now with

(06:44):
the one I saw last summer, and I noticed something else.
Certain passages have been highlighted with neon yellow ink, including
the part where Laryen wrote, I know that Casey was
head over heels for her, and for him to go
out with us and have something not right with Rebecca
didn't seem right. Laren also wrote in his statement that

(07:06):
Casey used the phone when he got back to Laren's house.
I can see there's another part of Laren's statement with
big bold yellow blocks. Laren wrote after he hung up,
he stated that Rebecca was missing. That's when it really
seemed odd that he didn't head out the door to
find her. As I said at the end of season one,

(07:28):
we're all in this together. But even though we now
have access to these statements, the waiting game continues. Rebecca's father, Larry,
has worked tirelessly over the years to get justice for
his daughter. He's written hundreds of letters to police and
to prosecutors, spoken to the media, and spent tens of

(07:48):
thousands of dollars hiring investigators. Since last season, Larry has
spoken to a legislator and began to work on creating
Rebecca's Law, which would allow for more open access of records.
Some states have sunset clauses which allow case files to
become or public after a certain amount of time passes. Unfortunately,

(08:10):
Arkansas isn't one of them. Well, we think that it
should be. In February twenty nineteen, we were invited to
the Capitol Building in Little Rock to meet with Janadela Rosa,
a member of Arkansas Congress. She's also a true crime fan.
So I listened to the podcast because I listened to
a lot of true podcasts. Because I travel back and

(08:32):
forth from northwest Arkansas, so I have a three hour
drive each way, three hours and fifteen minutes. If the
state police are listening, and my sister's the one that
got me hooked on podcasts, and she's actually the one
that recommended Helen Gone. I hadn't heard about it. I
got to the episode where you were saying that I
think it was that Larry had contacted the legislature trying

(08:55):
to get Rebecca's law passed, and I'm in my car
and everybody would laugh. I mean, but I'm not a car, went,
Holy moly, that's me. That's me. That's me. That that
pertains to me. Jana reached out to us on our
Facebook page and we've been corresponding about the best way
to get Rebecca's law passed. There's a big difference between
one single case and a law that would apply to
all cases. Henceforth, it's two totally different things. So you

(09:18):
always have to take that into account, and you've got
to bring in basically all the stakeholders in all of
it and try and come up with something that benefits
the victim's family but doesn't harm the investigation, that doesn't
cause a prosecutor to have trouble later, that doesn't in
any way infringe on any kind of privacy laws or

(09:42):
anything like that. So it's a much bigger task to
try and create a policy or a law than it
is to try and fix an issue that one particular
person had in one particular case. Because it applies to
the whole state. That means that in order to pass
something like Rebecca's Law, we will need to have the
support of the Arkansas State Police. But it's going to

(10:03):
be a long process. We meet every other year in session,
so right now we're in session, and we meet in
the off years, and that's when the bills are proposed.
And a bill has to be proposed either by a
House member or a Senate member. It's the only one
that can introduce a bill, and it's got to move
through both chambers. So in this case, if I introduce
this as a House bill, it'll go through committee first.

(10:24):
If it passes that, then it goes to the House
floor and gets voted on by the whole house. If
it passes that, it goes and does the exact same thing.
On the Senate side, It goes through its chamber, goes
through its floor. If it passes all of that, then
it goes to the Governor's desk and he has the
power to veto or pass, and if it passes that,
then you actually have a law that's in place. So
there's five check marks that have to be made, two

(10:46):
on the House side, two on the Senate side, and
one by the governor. So if you can get through
all of that, then you actually have a law. As
an investigator, I completely understand the difficulties the Arkansas State
Police would have with a bill like this. What I
would like to see from this bill is twofold one

(11:06):
some sort of a review process where an independent investigator,
after a certain amount of time has passed, can come
in and take another look at the case file. And two,
at some point I believe the case file should become public.
Of course, there's a need to withhold certain details early
in investigation so the killer can be caught. But once

(11:27):
a case has gone cold, the public can be your
best friend when you're trying to solve a murder. We'll
be right back. One thread that seems to tie Jane
and Rebecca's case together, and as an investigator I have
to be very careful to avoid, is the concept of
confirmation bias. I see it all the time in murder cases.

(11:51):
Once investigators or loved ones decide who or what killed someone,
the person is looking for the evidence to support their
particular conclusion. It's hard to do, but you really need
to have an open mind when entering an investigation, and
that's why what we do is so important. In Rebecca's case,
Dennis Simons, the lead investigator, told me he believed that

(12:14):
Chris killed her, and that if Chris could not be
prosecuted for Rebecca's murder, Dennis planned to ensure that Chris
served life in prison on the installment plan. Chris was
arrested in October twenty eighteen for threatening the life of Justin,
Rebecca's ex boyfriend, allegedly telling him that if Justin continued
to talk to police about Rebecca's murder, Chris would kill him.

(12:38):
I was shocked to hear this because, as many of
you know, we interviewed both Chris and Justin in season
one and concluded that we do not believe there's any
evidence to support the fact that either of them were
involved in Rebecca's murder. I decided we had to get
to the bottom of Chris's arrest. Was it really connected
to Rebecca's case or was something else going on. Here's

(13:00):
what we know. According to the arrest affidavit, Chris was
at a friend's house on September twenty twenty fifth, twenty eighteen,
when the friend told him he was headed to Justin's house.
The affidavit described Justin as the former boyfriend of Rebecca Gould,
the two thousand and four homicide victim. Once they got
to the house, Justin's wife told investigators when she answered

(13:22):
the back door, Chris's friend entered, and then Chris pushed
his way into the residence and put the couple's telephone
in his pocket. Justin was at the store at the time,
but when he got back home, he reported that he
was confronted by Chris quote in regards to Justin making
statements to law enforcement about Chris's possible involvement in the

(13:44):
murder of Rebecca. According to court papers, Chris threatened to
kill Justin if he continued to talk. Justin's wife said
she heard Chris say he would cut Justin's throat and
that he would kill him if he continued to make statements.
Chris's friend also told investigators that he witnessed Chris threatened
Justin's life. Police say Justin escaped the residence and contacted

(14:06):
law enforcement from a neighbor's phone. According to press reports,
Chris was charged with residential burglary, intimidating a juror a
witness or informant, terroristic threatening in the first degree, in
interference with emergency communication in the first degree for taking
the phone. He was taken into custody and his bail
was set at fifty thousand dollars. In March twenty nineteen,

(14:29):
Chris was sentenced to ninety six months in jail for
terroristic threatening. So, due in part to his criminal history,
Chris got eight years in prison for making a threat.
I wanted to know more about what happened that night,
so I filed a freedom of information requests with a
Stone County Sheriff's office. It was denied by the Council

(14:50):
for Stone County. In the denial, the lawyer referred to
the case being part of an open investigation connected to
Rebecca's case. I was able to get the arrest affidavit.
The person who supplied the facts constituting reasonable cause was
you guessed it, Special Agent Dennis Simon's of the Arkansas
State Police. There's a lot about this arrest affidavit that

(15:12):
bothers me. First of all, Justin was supposedly in fear
for his life, but this affidavit wasn't filed until October eighth,
two weeks after the fight. I'm getting a lot of
other bizarre Facebook messages from people who claimed that there's
more to the story. One is from a source who
states that the fight started out as a domestic dispute

(15:33):
between Justin and his wife and that Chris somehow got
in the middle. I'm left with a lot of questions.
If Chris threatened Justin's life, why wasn't he arrested that night?
But with Chris behind bars, it seems that no one
is asking questions about what happened. But I won't accept
silence for an answer. I'm Catherine Townsend and this is

(15:54):
Helen Gone. Helen Gone is a joint production between School
of Humans and iHeartRadio. It is written and recorded by me.
Katherine Townsend. Taylor Church and Gabby Watts are our producers

(16:18):
and story editors. Executive producers are Brandon Barr, Brian Lavin,
and Else Crowley for School of Humans and Conell Byrne
and Chuck Bryant for iHeart. Theme and original score are
by Ben Sale. Available wherever you get your music, Please
visit us at Helen gonpodcast dot com or follow us

(16:39):
on social media. School of Humans