October 12, 2023 • 28 mins
Just weeks after Jarrod Green was missing, police find out that the people he allegedly owed money to, Brandon Wheeler and Robert Webb, had left town and that their rental house had caught on fire. The woman who cleaned that house presents some revealing information. And a lawsuit is filed against Brandon Wheeler with disastrous consequences.
Wheeler v. City of Searcy lawsuit: https://casetext.com/case/wheeler-v-city-of-searcy
If you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
On the last episode of Helen Gone Murder Line, I
discussed the case of Jared Green, a twenty year old
young man who went missing from Sarcy, Arkansas, on September thirtieth,
nineteen ninety four. We talked to Jared's sister, Shannon, who's
been fighting to get justice for her brother for almost
thirty years. She told me the pain that she and
(00:32):
her parents had gone through when they discovered that Jared
had developed a drug habit, and as he began to
descend further and further into methamphetamine addiction, he started hanging
out more and more with Brandon Wheeler and Robert Webb,
two guys he knew from high school. According to police,
Brandon and Robert were involved in drug dealing. They'd given
(00:53):
Jared a large quantity of meth Somehow, he ended up
owing Brandon and Robert a lot of money, somewhere between
seventy five hundred and eight thousand dollars. On September thirtieth,
Jared left home and met a friend at the Sarcey
Country Club. This friend told police that Jared got a
gun back from him and that he was scared that
(01:13):
night that he planned to meet with Brandon Wheeler and
smooth things over regarding this debt. After that night, Jared
Green disappeared. His abandoned car was found a few days
later at a Walmart supercenter. The keys were underneath the
front seat, the windows were rolled down. Jared Green's family
has never seen him since that day. It's been almost
(01:36):
thirty years, and Jared Green's family wants answers and justice.
I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the past five years of making
my true crime podcast, Telling Gone, I've learned that there
is no such thing as a small town where murder
never happens. I have received hundreds of messages from people
all around the country asking for help with an unsolved
(01:59):
murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities. If
you have a case you'd like me and team to
look into, you can reach out to us at our
Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four
four six one four five. That's six seven eight seven
four four, six one four or five. Just a few
(03:05):
weeks after Jared Green went missing, police find out the
people he allegedly owed money to, Brandon Wheeler and Robert Webb,
have left town and that their rental house is caught
on fire. Fortunately the fire did not burn down the
entire house, but police later said that it looked like
someone poured accelerant in the garage. Clearly this seemed like arson,
(03:28):
but no charges were ever filed. Now police were trying
to track down Brandon Wheeler and Robert Webb, they talked
to another neighbor, a woman named Shelby Watson, who lived
next door to the house Brandon and Robert had been renting.
Shelby said she was in her late teens at the time.
She lived with her parents, and she started hanging out
at the guy's residence in August. Not surprisingly, because these
(03:52):
guys always had money and drugs, it seemed to have
become kind of a neighborhood party house. While she was
hanging out there, Shelby said she met a guy who
called himself Felix, and again, figuring out who these people
really are, who Felix really was, is part of the mystery.
Shelby said she and Felix kind of hit it off,
(04:14):
they became friends, but then, she said, in late September,
Felix disappeared. He had told her he lived in Tennessee,
so Shelby thought maybe he was moving back there. She
said that she got worried. She told police that Felix
owed Brandon something like ten thousand dollars, but unlike Jared Green,
(04:34):
Felix reappeared. When she asked him about the money, he said, basically,
don't worry about it, I've already paid it back. Shortly
after that, though, she said, Felix disappeared for good and
she never saw him after that. So what we have
are a lot of people dropping in and out of
that house, a lot of people who potentially owe Brandon
and Robert a lot of money, and who seemed to
(04:56):
mysteriously disappear. But police did reveal in the investigative file
that they have figured out Felix's real name, Barren Stafford. Honestly,
as an investigator, I know, as other listeners of this
podcast know, that I've had my problems with law enforcement
in the past. But the frustrating part is that the
bad police officers out there really make the job of
(05:20):
the good police officers, the ones who diligently are working
for justice, so much harder. And there was an investigator
in this case named Tim Webb. Looking back at his work,
at least the written notes it seems like he was
trying to track these people down. Tim Webb wanted to
find Baron Stafford, the guy who had been known as Felix.
(05:43):
He said that he tried all the phone numbers that
he had for Baron Stafford but got no response. Then
he said he talked to Baron's brother, who told them
Baron was out of town and that Baron was not
coming back to Sercy. So now you have Brandon and
Robert who had both vanished without a trace, without police
ever talking to them, and now Baron Stafford was gone too.
(06:04):
And the reason that he wanted to find him was
because Tim Webb looked through the phone records for Brandon
and Robert's landline and he saw a lot of calls
between their rental house in North Little Rock and Baron
Stafford's house. In fact, the last call from Baron Stafford's
residence to Robert and Brandon's house was on October fourth,
nineteen ninety four, at ten thirty am. The calls continued
(06:28):
between Brandon and Robert to a residence in Nashville, Tennessee.
From reading through these notes, it seems like Tim Webb
developed a theory that Baron Stafford had gone to Nashville
and that he was staying with family there. This could
have been crucial because Tennessee was also somewhere where Jared
had gone in the past and mentioned to his family
(06:50):
that he could be going. In December, Tim Webb got
in touch with Metro Nashville Police. He asked for help
figuring out the location of his telephone number that Brandon
and Robert had been calling, and he did his due diligence.
He also called the phone company. Both the phone company
and Nashville Police confirmed that there was a phone number
(07:10):
on Berwick Trail in Nashville, Tennessee. They found the woman
that this phone belonged to. They identified or as a
woman named Sherry Dotson. And this is just another heartbreak
in my opinion, because Tim Webb asked for permission to
go to Nashville. He wanted to do surveillance on that house.
He wanted to see if Baron Stafford was at that
(07:32):
residence in Nashville. But his bosses told him basically to
forget it and to request that the Nashville Police Department
sent someone over, and the Nashville police seemed to kind
of blow Tim Webb off. I'm not blaming them. They
were really busy. I know that there's investigative red tape
people have to go through and administrative procedure, but it
(07:54):
seems crazy that for the sake of a five hour
drive they could not just let this officer, who clearly
cared about the case, ride over to Nashville and check
out this residence. This also, by the way, seems like
one of these cases where if someone like me or
another licensed private investigator was allowed to help police, perhaps
they could fill in some of those gaps. Unfortunately, Tim
(08:16):
Webbs seemed to hit a dead end. In the investigative notes,
police stated they did figure out that Robert Webb and
Brandon Wheeler were dealing large quantities of methamphetamine in Sirce
and White Counties. They said that an Arkansas State Police
investigator had actually tried to make a deal with Brandon
and Robert to try to make them confidential informants, but
(08:39):
it hadn't worked out. From Tim Webb's notes, it seems
like he was very frustrated that he could not go
to Nashville, that he got stonewalled, and that nothing happened.
In nineteen ninety five, Tim Webb tried again there's a
handwritten note in the case file saying, quote, on eight
three ninety five, I met with Chief Thomas in reference
(09:00):
to the information. I had to express my views on
follow up investigations, which might require some time and the
need for some assistance. Chief Thomas advised me I needed
to get with him on the thirty first for further instructions.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
End quote.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Then there's another memo about Chief Thomas saying there would
be an investigator helping Tim Webb two days a week,
and then another note saying the investigator who had been
assigned was extremely busy on several other cases. So I'm
going to go back to Tim Webb's notes to some
of the very legitimate questions he was trying to answer
about this case. One of them involves the mysterious phone calls.
(09:37):
Remember there was a mysterious caller who called police and
identified himself as Jared Green's father. Shannon said this was
an impersonator that never happened. On October tenth, nineteen ninety four,
Jared Green's girlfriend Es told police that someone called her workplace.
They didn't identify themselves, but they told her this mystery
(09:58):
caller that Jared was okay. So I'm wondering who was
that person who was calling the police saying that they
were Jared's father, who called Jared's girlfriend's workplace and said
that they were Jared's friend. Was it the same person?
I want to understand more about that person and why
they were trying to mislead the investigation. And obviously I'm
(10:19):
also wondering the screaming red flag. What was the story
with Robert Webb and Brandon Wheeler. Why didn't the police
ever talk them after they left town. It turned out
the police did want to talk to Robert Webb, but
they couldn't because sometime in the summer of nineteen ninety five,
Robert Webb disappeared. Robert Webb went missing sometime in the
(10:46):
summer of nineteen ninety five. Again, the timeline here is
a little confusing. His mother later told police the last
time she heard from her son was on July fourth,
nineteen ninety five, and that no trace of him has
been seen since. His family said he would never drop
out of contact for that long. Robert's mother officially reported
Robert missing around ten months after Jared disappeared. According to Shannon,
(11:10):
people who know Jared had their own suspicions about what
might have happened to Robert Webb. In later court papers,
Robert Webb is described as Brandon Wheeler's roommate and best friend.
There's an excerpt from the investigator's reports that reads, an
investigator reported, during this time, the aforementioned individual, meaning Robert Webb,
was bragging he was a part of the disappearance of
(11:31):
Jared Green just before his own disappearance end quote. So
clearly police talk to people people who said they suspect
the same person or people who killed Jared Green might
be responsible for Robert Webb's death. Maybe they saw eliminating
him as collateral damage, just another brutal and violent way
to tie up loose sins. In nineteen ninety five, Sir
(11:55):
C Police, from reading through the case file, seemed to
be developing a theory, a theory that Brandon had something
to do with Jared's disappearance, but they had no real evidence.
Then there was another very strange twist in the case.
Shortly after that, investigators interviewed a man named Charles Langley.
Charles Langley was in prison doing time on an unrelated matter.
(12:17):
When police talked to him. Charles told police that Brandon
came to his house to try to sell some crystal meth,
and while he and a friend of his were there,
they quote asked me if I wanted to get rid
of someone for them, because he owed them seventy five
hundred dollars. The guy they wanted me to get rid
of was Green. Sometime later in December, they came to
(12:38):
my house again and said Jason Green. And he did
say Jason, though later Charles said he meant Jared was
no longer a problem, that he had been taken out
of the picture. They told me they had grabbed him
at the Walmart store and took care of him end quote.
At first this would seem to be a potentially groundbreaking
moment in the case, but as with so many things
(13:01):
in this case, it was not all it was cracked
up to be, because later, when another investigator interviewed Charles
in two thousand, Charles recanted his entire statement. He straight
up said he had been lying to get a reduced sentence,
and he said that when he gave this information to investigators,
he was just repeating these third hand rumors. He said
he didn't know Brandon and Robert. He said that his
(13:24):
statement had been quote an attempt to shorten my stay
or possibly even keep me from going to prison, but
most of which was a lie end quote. This is
why it's so important for investigators to ask more detailed questions.
Charles had no information that he couldn't have heard through
local rumors. In fact, as we mentioned before, this information
(13:47):
appears to be pretty unbelievable because I think it's very
unlikely that the Walmart parking lot was the primary crime
scene where Jared was attacked. I think it's far more
likely that car was driven there. But that's the kind
of thing that if you're just hearing stuff based on
local rumor, you know a car was found in the
Walmart lot, you could just repeat to investigators as a
(14:08):
plausible story. On December thirty first, two thousand, Baron Stafford,
who police still had not talked to, spoke to his
cousin who was also his pastor. The pastor would later
tell police Baron said he knew vital information about two
different murders. He meant Robert Webb and Jared Green, and
(14:29):
shortly after that, on New Year's Eve two thousand, Baron
Stafford reportedly took his own life. After that, Jared Green's
case went cold for years, but then in two thousand
and six, there was another shocking twist because that was
the year that an officer in Portland, Oregon, pulled a
car over for a routine traffic stop. There were two
(14:51):
men in the car. According to an incident report, the
officer noticed crack cocaine in the car, and then during
the stop, he saw one of these men throw something
outside the window a few feet away. It was something
black and metal. The officer saw that it was a handgun.
After police arrested the two men, they tracked down the
gun serial number, and that gun and that serial number
(15:14):
were traced back to Circe, Arkansas, and to Jared Green.
So how did the gun show up in Oregon after
all those years, Shannon says she has never gotten an
answer to that question. In December of two thousand and eight,
according to the Daily Citizen, detectives searched the grounds of
an old well on a property on Pine Canyon Road
(15:36):
off Highway thirty six near Circe after they got a
tip that Jared's body might be in a well in
this old house. But no trace of Jared was found there,
just another heartbreak for his family. In twenty sixteen, police
did another search. They went to a rural property acting
on information of a confidential informant. They were looking near
(15:58):
a deer stand in some woods and at that spot
cadaverdogs alerted. Later, the pond was drained, no human remains
were found. Police consulted the prosecuting attorney named Rebecca Reed McCoy.
After she reviewed the evidence and saw that the dog
had alerted, she signed an arrest affidavit for Brandon Wheeler.
(16:21):
So just a few months later, in twenty seventeen, Shannon
Green said her family got mind blowing news. They found
out Brandon Wheeler had been arrested and authorities were planning
to charge him with Jared's murder and abuse of a corpse.
In twenty seventeen, Shannon Green and her family learned that
(16:43):
Brandon Wheeler, the man they had long suspected of being
involved in her brother Jared's disappearance, had been arrested and charged.
Brandon was arrested in Ohio and eventually extradited to Arkansas.
He was questioned by police and released on bail. Then,
in November of twenty seventeen, in another complete reversal, the
(17:06):
prosecutor decided to not move forward with the charges against
Brandon Wheeler. Now at the time, she said this was
because quote, additional evidence is expected to be recovered and
DNA testing would not be completed within the timeframe set
by the court end quote. What she actually meant was
that she was facing a situation of having to prosecute
(17:26):
Brandon Wheeler on a no body homicide. Just reading between
the lines, although this is just a guess on my part,
it seems as though the prosecutor decided to roll the dice,
thought that evidence would be found when the cadaver dogs
alerted and after they drained that pond, but draining the
pond failed to secure any additional evidence. In the end,
(17:49):
the charges against Brandon Wheeler were dismissed with prejudiced, which
means if additional evidence ever surfaces, they can be refiled.
If the prosecutor had gone forward with the charges then lost.
Of course, Brandon Wheeler could not be retried based on
the double jeopardy rule, so he was suing individual officers
and also the entire police department. He sued the officers
(18:11):
in their individual and in their official capacities. You can
look up the lawsuit online and We're going to provide
a link to the judgment in our source list at
the end of the episode. In a nutshell, Brandon Wheeler
and his attorneys argued that Brandon Wheeler should never have
been arrested and detained on that evidence. They said the
officers who wrote up the arrest affidavit indicated in that
(18:32):
affidavit that the cadaver doogs had alerted, but they left
out the part about no evidence of a body or
any remains being found. Brandon's lawyers also said that the
Circe police officers mentioned this confession they had gotten from
Charles Langley that they knew that later he'd recandidate, but
they didn't mention that in their affidavit either. And there
(18:54):
were other problems that Brandon Wheeler's legal team claimed that
they found in the affidavit. They claimed it was completely misleading.
When I talked to Shannon, she discussed the toll that
this lawsuit had on the investigation because she says, for
the two years that Brandon's lawsuit dragged out, the investigation stopped.
(19:15):
Now Brandon Wheeler, by the way, claims he has no
involvement in Jared's death. This arrest was completely unjustified. He
says he's suffered lost wages and severe mental anguish as
a result of being stuck in Arkansas. He said he
was subject to unreasonable seizure, that officers violated his fourth
and fourteenth Amendments, and that they subjected him to cruel
(19:37):
and unusual punishment and excessive bail. He also, by the way,
alleges intentional infliction of emotional distress, and this lawsuit is
still playing out. In twenty twenty, the United States District
Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas sided with Brandon Wheeler.
The court found that once you took what his attorneys
(19:58):
called misleading statements out of that arrest affidavit, that those
officers did not have probable cause to arrest Brandon Wheeler,
and the Court of Appeals affirmed that decision in twenty
twenty one. I have so many questions about this lawsuit,
the way everything played out. I still find myself wondering
why did they arrest Brandon Wheeler in that moment. Apparently
(20:21):
they thought they did have enough to move forward with
a no body homicide. Unfortunately, they miscalculated. And there's more
bad news for Shannon's family because the judge ruled that
Brandon's interview with the police could not be admitted as evidence.
So Shannon and her family only saw five minutes of
that video interview in the pre trial hearing. So now
(20:43):
we're wondering what else did Brandon Wheeler say in that interview.
We may never know. Brandon Wheeler has left the state
of Arkansas, and I'm sure he's hired a legal team.
I wonder have police lost their only chance at getting
Brandon Wheeler or is it possible to get more evidence later.
(21:04):
It seems like over the years, Jared's case has had
investigators who cared about it. Shannon told me that Jared's
case actually became this notorious unsolved case in Sirce, and
that when new recruits would join the police force, a
detective would sort of present Jared's case as a challenge
that the rookies could try to solve.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
They just basically used to try that case out and
give it to the new guy and just say, here,
see you can do anything with this. But anytime they
got close. What I was told by the last investigators
in the case, well that anytime they got close to something,
when they started finding things like, hey, I really want
to go talk to this person. Their boss who's not
(21:47):
there anymore, was like, no, just give them a call
and then have somebody else do it like they would.
They could never go actually do any investigation outside of
like our local area.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
The case is also complicated by the fact that so
many people connected with it have either died or disappeared.
As we mentioned earlier, Robert Webb vanished in July of
nineteen ninety five. He's presumed to be dead. Some people
out there have a theory that Robert Webb faked his
own death to escape the heat, but his family insists
(22:19):
that would be completely out of character. He would never
do that, and there's been literally no sign of life
since nineteen ninety five. We know that Baron Stafford, who
went by the name Felix, reportedly took his own life
in two thousand. Shannon says that she is not given up.
She says that in twenty twenty three, she hoped to
(22:40):
have additional private dog teams who would volunteer to investigate.
She also said she hoped that now that the lawsuit
has mostly played out, that some of the investigators who
were so devoted to Jared's case would get some additional resources.
She said so far that it hasn't happened.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
We had two dog teams that were lined up that
were willing to search, but for some reason, there has
been a stop. So the original investigating officer, who is
awesome and I have nothing but respect for he was
like put on patrol after that mess with Wheeler when
they sued. But then he was moved back into CID
(23:17):
and he got promoted and now he's leading a team
of investigators. And so I thought when that happened and
he had these additional resources, that they were going to make,
you know, really be able to dedicate time to Jared's case.
But that has not been the case. And I don't
know why. I haven't really been able to talk to them.
I don't know if this because there is a new
(23:38):
police chief and so maybe he's restricting their you know,
my access to them. Like it's not that people aren't
letting me talk to them, it's just like I really
hoped that with this, with this edition, of these three
or four other people, that do get some progress.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
So what can we do next? What needs to happen now?
There were four key locations Shannon said needed to be
searched they've searched one, but there's still three more to go.
She's hoping to get a dog team out there and
keep searching that land. Shannon continues to be the advocate
for her brother. She said she's not giving up hope.
(24:17):
Shannon said she needs people to come forward. She is
begging anyone who knew her brother Jared or had any
kind of interaction with him, no matter how small, to
please come forward because you never know which piece of
information will be key to cracking this case.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
We need someone to break their silence. We know people
are withholding information. I think that there are people that
have information about what happened that night that will not
share an offer effect. But I believe that Rob Webb's
family and sister knows something about what happened. He's the
guy that went missing about nine months after Jared, who
(24:55):
was supposedly Wheeler's best friend, and Wheeler ac feel like
he didn't know who he was either. And it's no
coin to me that these guys both you know, disappeared.
Now there is speculation that you know, Webb is not
really he didn't die, that he you know, just changed
(25:18):
his identity and moved on. But we have no proof
of that. We just know that he hasn't been seen,
So I think someone needs to break their silence, right,
Someone needs to have courage and come forward.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Shannon and her family have just announced a new twenty
five thousand dollars reward for any information that could help
lead to locating her brother Jared's remains. We still need
to fill in blanks of a timeline from September thirtieth,
nineteen ninety four. People have come forward to tell Shannon
they saw Jared Green at Walmart that night. We know
(25:53):
that he went out, that he met his friend Jason
at the country club, and he called his girlfriend after that.
It's a mystery. We don't even know for sure if
the person or people who saw Jared at Walmart that
night really I saw him that night, or we're remembering
another night. So much time has passed, Shannon said she
used to use the slogan justice for Jared. She said,
(26:14):
even though she does dream of getting justice for her
brother and of the person or people who killed him
being held responsible, the main thing she wants to know
is where Jared's remains are so that she and her
family can find some measure of peace.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Nobody is trying to charge anybody with drug charges. Nobody
cares about that. And I've tried to stress that on
my Facebook page a lot because I want people to
understand we're looking for Jared's remains. I don't know if
we will ever get justice for him, but we can
give him the burial he deserves and the closure for
us to put him to rest. And that's really all
(26:54):
we want is just to know where he's at and
bring him home. And what I don't this is the
part that you know, there's a lot of this that
it's sickening, but I don't under and why if someone
had to kill him, why they didn't just leave him
where he could be found, because then we would at
least know, and then I wouldn't still be, you know,
(27:15):
forcing myself on the world to try to tell Jared's
story to try to find his remains. Because if people
are afraid or they were involved and they don't want
this to keep cropping up, and all they have to
do is come forward, yeah and say here's the information
I have, I will share it. Nobody's going to jail
for the only charge that could possibly be applied would
(27:36):
be a murder charge. And if you didn't kill him,
then there's nothing, no reason why they shouldn't come forward
to say what they know.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
So please, if you know anything, think about if this
was your brother, your sister, your parents lying awake at night,
agonizing over what happened to their child, wondering if they
could still be out there. Shannon Green just wants to
bring her little brother Jared home. I'm Catherine Townsend. This
is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line is
(28:21):
a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's
written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by
Gabby Watts. Music is by Ben Solee and this episode
was scored and mixed by Miranda Hawkins. Executive producers are
Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Els Crowley. If you have
a case you'd like me and my team to look into,
(28:42):
you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone
Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six
one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four
six one four or five.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
School of Humans
School of Humans.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
On the last episode of Helen Gone Murder Line, I
discussed the case of Jared Green, a twenty year old
young man who went missing from Sarcy, Arkansas, on September thirtieth,
nineteen ninety four. We talked to Jared's sister, Shannon, who's
been fighting to get justice for her brother for almost
thirty years. She told me the pain that she and
(00:32):
her parents had gone through when they discovered that Jared
had developed a drug habit, and as he began to
descend further and further into methamphetamine addiction, he started hanging
out more and more with Brandon Wheeler and Robert Webb,
two guys he knew from high school. According to police,
Brandon and Robert were involved in drug dealing. They'd given
(00:53):
Jared a large quantity of meth Somehow, he ended up
owing Brandon and Robert a lot of money, somewhere between
seventy five hundred and eight thousand dollars. On September thirtieth,
Jared left home and met a friend at the Sarcey
Country Club. This friend told police that Jared got a
gun back from him and that he was scared that
(01:13):
night that he planned to meet with Brandon Wheeler and
smooth things over regarding this debt. After that night, Jared
Green disappeared. His abandoned car was found a few days
later at a Walmart supercenter. The keys were underneath the
front seat, the windows were rolled down. Jared Green's family
has never seen him since that day. It's been almost
(01:36):
thirty years, and Jared Green's family wants answers and justice.
I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the past five years of making
my true crime podcast, Telling Gone, I've learned that there
is no such thing as a small town where murder
never happens. I have received hundreds of messages from people
all around the country asking for help with an unsolved
(01:59):
murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities. If
you have a case you'd like me and team to
look into, you can reach out to us at our
Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four
four six one four five. That's six seven eight seven
four four, six one four or five. Just a few
(03:05):
weeks after Jared Green went missing, police find out the
people he allegedly owed money to, Brandon Wheeler and Robert Webb,
have left town and that their rental house is caught
on fire. Fortunately the fire did not burn down the
entire house, but police later said that it looked like
someone poured accelerant in the garage. Clearly this seemed like arson,
(03:28):
but no charges were ever filed. Now police were trying
to track down Brandon Wheeler and Robert Webb, they talked
to another neighbor, a woman named Shelby Watson, who lived
next door to the house Brandon and Robert had been renting.
Shelby said she was in her late teens at the time.
She lived with her parents, and she started hanging out
at the guy's residence in August. Not surprisingly, because these
(03:52):
guys always had money and drugs, it seemed to have
become kind of a neighborhood party house. While she was
hanging out there, Shelby said she met a guy who
called himself Felix, and again, figuring out who these people
really are, who Felix really was, is part of the mystery.
Shelby said she and Felix kind of hit it off,
(04:14):
they became friends, but then, she said, in late September,
Felix disappeared. He had told her he lived in Tennessee,
so Shelby thought maybe he was moving back there. She
said that she got worried. She told police that Felix
owed Brandon something like ten thousand dollars, but unlike Jared Green,
(04:34):
Felix reappeared. When she asked him about the money, he said, basically,
don't worry about it, I've already paid it back. Shortly
after that, though, she said, Felix disappeared for good and
she never saw him after that. So what we have
are a lot of people dropping in and out of
that house, a lot of people who potentially owe Brandon
and Robert a lot of money, and who seemed to
(04:56):
mysteriously disappear. But police did reveal in the investigative file
that they have figured out Felix's real name, Barren Stafford. Honestly,
as an investigator, I know, as other listeners of this
podcast know, that I've had my problems with law enforcement
in the past. But the frustrating part is that the
bad police officers out there really make the job of
(05:20):
the good police officers, the ones who diligently are working
for justice, so much harder. And there was an investigator
in this case named Tim Webb. Looking back at his work,
at least the written notes it seems like he was
trying to track these people down. Tim Webb wanted to
find Baron Stafford, the guy who had been known as Felix.
(05:43):
He said that he tried all the phone numbers that
he had for Baron Stafford but got no response. Then
he said he talked to Baron's brother, who told them
Baron was out of town and that Baron was not
coming back to Sercy. So now you have Brandon and
Robert who had both vanished without a trace, without police
ever talking to them, and now Baron Stafford was gone too.
(06:04):
And the reason that he wanted to find him was
because Tim Webb looked through the phone records for Brandon
and Robert's landline and he saw a lot of calls
between their rental house in North Little Rock and Baron
Stafford's house. In fact, the last call from Baron Stafford's
residence to Robert and Brandon's house was on October fourth,
nineteen ninety four, at ten thirty am. The calls continued
(06:28):
between Brandon and Robert to a residence in Nashville, Tennessee.
From reading through these notes, it seems like Tim Webb
developed a theory that Baron Stafford had gone to Nashville
and that he was staying with family there. This could
have been crucial because Tennessee was also somewhere where Jared
had gone in the past and mentioned to his family
(06:50):
that he could be going. In December, Tim Webb got
in touch with Metro Nashville Police. He asked for help
figuring out the location of his telephone number that Brandon
and Robert had been calling, and he did his due diligence.
He also called the phone company. Both the phone company
and Nashville Police confirmed that there was a phone number
(07:10):
on Berwick Trail in Nashville, Tennessee. They found the woman
that this phone belonged to. They identified or as a
woman named Sherry Dotson. And this is just another heartbreak
in my opinion, because Tim Webb asked for permission to
go to Nashville. He wanted to do surveillance on that house.
He wanted to see if Baron Stafford was at that
(07:32):
residence in Nashville. But his bosses told him basically to
forget it and to request that the Nashville Police Department
sent someone over, and the Nashville police seemed to kind
of blow Tim Webb off. I'm not blaming them. They
were really busy. I know that there's investigative red tape
people have to go through and administrative procedure, but it
(07:54):
seems crazy that for the sake of a five hour
drive they could not just let this officer, who clearly
cared about the case, ride over to Nashville and check
out this residence. This also, by the way, seems like
one of these cases where if someone like me or
another licensed private investigator was allowed to help police, perhaps
they could fill in some of those gaps. Unfortunately, Tim
(08:16):
Webbs seemed to hit a dead end. In the investigative notes,
police stated they did figure out that Robert Webb and
Brandon Wheeler were dealing large quantities of methamphetamine in Sirce
and White Counties. They said that an Arkansas State Police
investigator had actually tried to make a deal with Brandon
and Robert to try to make them confidential informants, but
(08:39):
it hadn't worked out. From Tim Webb's notes, it seems
like he was very frustrated that he could not go
to Nashville, that he got stonewalled, and that nothing happened.
In nineteen ninety five, Tim Webb tried again there's a
handwritten note in the case file saying, quote, on eight
three ninety five, I met with Chief Thomas in reference
(09:00):
to the information. I had to express my views on
follow up investigations, which might require some time and the
need for some assistance. Chief Thomas advised me I needed
to get with him on the thirty first for further instructions.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
End quote.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Then there's another memo about Chief Thomas saying there would
be an investigator helping Tim Webb two days a week,
and then another note saying the investigator who had been
assigned was extremely busy on several other cases. So I'm
going to go back to Tim Webb's notes to some
of the very legitimate questions he was trying to answer
about this case. One of them involves the mysterious phone calls.
(09:37):
Remember there was a mysterious caller who called police and
identified himself as Jared Green's father. Shannon said this was
an impersonator that never happened. On October tenth, nineteen ninety four,
Jared Green's girlfriend Es told police that someone called her workplace.
They didn't identify themselves, but they told her this mystery
(09:58):
caller that Jared was okay. So I'm wondering who was
that person who was calling the police saying that they
were Jared's father, who called Jared's girlfriend's workplace and said
that they were Jared's friend. Was it the same person?
I want to understand more about that person and why
they were trying to mislead the investigation. And obviously I'm
(10:19):
also wondering the screaming red flag. What was the story
with Robert Webb and Brandon Wheeler. Why didn't the police
ever talk them after they left town. It turned out
the police did want to talk to Robert Webb, but
they couldn't because sometime in the summer of nineteen ninety five,
Robert Webb disappeared. Robert Webb went missing sometime in the
(10:46):
summer of nineteen ninety five. Again, the timeline here is
a little confusing. His mother later told police the last
time she heard from her son was on July fourth,
nineteen ninety five, and that no trace of him has
been seen since. His family said he would never drop
out of contact for that long. Robert's mother officially reported
Robert missing around ten months after Jared disappeared. According to Shannon,
(11:10):
people who know Jared had their own suspicions about what
might have happened to Robert Webb. In later court papers,
Robert Webb is described as Brandon Wheeler's roommate and best friend.
There's an excerpt from the investigator's reports that reads, an
investigator reported, during this time, the aforementioned individual, meaning Robert Webb,
was bragging he was a part of the disappearance of
(11:31):
Jared Green just before his own disappearance end quote. So
clearly police talk to people people who said they suspect
the same person or people who killed Jared Green might
be responsible for Robert Webb's death. Maybe they saw eliminating
him as collateral damage, just another brutal and violent way
to tie up loose sins. In nineteen ninety five, Sir
(11:55):
C Police, from reading through the case file, seemed to
be developing a theory, a theory that Brandon had something
to do with Jared's disappearance, but they had no real evidence.
Then there was another very strange twist in the case.
Shortly after that, investigators interviewed a man named Charles Langley.
Charles Langley was in prison doing time on an unrelated matter.
(12:17):
When police talked to him. Charles told police that Brandon
came to his house to try to sell some crystal meth,
and while he and a friend of his were there,
they quote asked me if I wanted to get rid
of someone for them, because he owed them seventy five
hundred dollars. The guy they wanted me to get rid
of was Green. Sometime later in December, they came to
(12:38):
my house again and said Jason Green. And he did
say Jason, though later Charles said he meant Jared was
no longer a problem, that he had been taken out
of the picture. They told me they had grabbed him
at the Walmart store and took care of him end quote.
At first this would seem to be a potentially groundbreaking
moment in the case, but as with so many things
(13:01):
in this case, it was not all it was cracked
up to be, because later, when another investigator interviewed Charles
in two thousand, Charles recanted his entire statement. He straight
up said he had been lying to get a reduced sentence,
and he said that when he gave this information to investigators,
he was just repeating these third hand rumors. He said
he didn't know Brandon and Robert. He said that his
(13:24):
statement had been quote an attempt to shorten my stay
or possibly even keep me from going to prison, but
most of which was a lie end quote. This is
why it's so important for investigators to ask more detailed questions.
Charles had no information that he couldn't have heard through
local rumors. In fact, as we mentioned before, this information
(13:47):
appears to be pretty unbelievable because I think it's very
unlikely that the Walmart parking lot was the primary crime
scene where Jared was attacked. I think it's far more
likely that car was driven there. But that's the kind
of thing that if you're just hearing stuff based on
local rumor, you know a car was found in the
Walmart lot, you could just repeat to investigators as a
(14:08):
plausible story. On December thirty first, two thousand, Baron Stafford,
who police still had not talked to, spoke to his
cousin who was also his pastor. The pastor would later
tell police Baron said he knew vital information about two
different murders. He meant Robert Webb and Jared Green, and
(14:29):
shortly after that, on New Year's Eve two thousand, Baron
Stafford reportedly took his own life. After that, Jared Green's
case went cold for years, but then in two thousand
and six, there was another shocking twist because that was
the year that an officer in Portland, Oregon, pulled a
car over for a routine traffic stop. There were two
(14:51):
men in the car. According to an incident report, the
officer noticed crack cocaine in the car, and then during
the stop, he saw one of these men throw something
outside the window a few feet away. It was something
black and metal. The officer saw that it was a handgun.
After police arrested the two men, they tracked down the
gun serial number, and that gun and that serial number
(15:14):
were traced back to Circe, Arkansas, and to Jared Green.
So how did the gun show up in Oregon after
all those years, Shannon says she has never gotten an
answer to that question. In December of two thousand and eight,
according to the Daily Citizen, detectives searched the grounds of
an old well on a property on Pine Canyon Road
(15:36):
off Highway thirty six near Circe after they got a
tip that Jared's body might be in a well in
this old house. But no trace of Jared was found there,
just another heartbreak for his family. In twenty sixteen, police
did another search. They went to a rural property acting
on information of a confidential informant. They were looking near
(15:58):
a deer stand in some woods and at that spot
cadaverdogs alerted. Later, the pond was drained, no human remains
were found. Police consulted the prosecuting attorney named Rebecca Reed McCoy.
After she reviewed the evidence and saw that the dog
had alerted, she signed an arrest affidavit for Brandon Wheeler.
(16:21):
So just a few months later, in twenty seventeen, Shannon
Green said her family got mind blowing news. They found
out Brandon Wheeler had been arrested and authorities were planning
to charge him with Jared's murder and abuse of a corpse.
In twenty seventeen, Shannon Green and her family learned that
(16:43):
Brandon Wheeler, the man they had long suspected of being
involved in her brother Jared's disappearance, had been arrested and charged.
Brandon was arrested in Ohio and eventually extradited to Arkansas.
He was questioned by police and released on bail. Then,
in November of twenty seventeen, in another complete reversal, the
(17:06):
prosecutor decided to not move forward with the charges against
Brandon Wheeler. Now at the time, she said this was
because quote, additional evidence is expected to be recovered and
DNA testing would not be completed within the timeframe set
by the court end quote. What she actually meant was
that she was facing a situation of having to prosecute
(17:26):
Brandon Wheeler on a no body homicide. Just reading between
the lines, although this is just a guess on my part,
it seems as though the prosecutor decided to roll the dice,
thought that evidence would be found when the cadaver dogs
alerted and after they drained that pond, but draining the
pond failed to secure any additional evidence. In the end,
(17:49):
the charges against Brandon Wheeler were dismissed with prejudiced, which
means if additional evidence ever surfaces, they can be refiled.
If the prosecutor had gone forward with the charges then lost.
Of course, Brandon Wheeler could not be retried based on
the double jeopardy rule, so he was suing individual officers
and also the entire police department. He sued the officers
(18:11):
in their individual and in their official capacities. You can
look up the lawsuit online and We're going to provide
a link to the judgment in our source list at
the end of the episode. In a nutshell, Brandon Wheeler
and his attorneys argued that Brandon Wheeler should never have
been arrested and detained on that evidence. They said the
officers who wrote up the arrest affidavit indicated in that
(18:32):
affidavit that the cadaver doogs had alerted, but they left
out the part about no evidence of a body or
any remains being found. Brandon's lawyers also said that the
Circe police officers mentioned this confession they had gotten from
Charles Langley that they knew that later he'd recandidate, but
they didn't mention that in their affidavit either. And there
(18:54):
were other problems that Brandon Wheeler's legal team claimed that
they found in the affidavit. They claimed it was completely misleading.
When I talked to Shannon, she discussed the toll that
this lawsuit had on the investigation because she says, for
the two years that Brandon's lawsuit dragged out, the investigation stopped.
(19:15):
Now Brandon Wheeler, by the way, claims he has no
involvement in Jared's death. This arrest was completely unjustified. He
says he's suffered lost wages and severe mental anguish as
a result of being stuck in Arkansas. He said he
was subject to unreasonable seizure, that officers violated his fourth
and fourteenth Amendments, and that they subjected him to cruel
(19:37):
and unusual punishment and excessive bail. He also, by the way,
alleges intentional infliction of emotional distress, and this lawsuit is
still playing out. In twenty twenty, the United States District
Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas sided with Brandon Wheeler.
The court found that once you took what his attorneys
(19:58):
called misleading statements out of that arrest affidavit, that those
officers did not have probable cause to arrest Brandon Wheeler,
and the Court of Appeals affirmed that decision in twenty
twenty one. I have so many questions about this lawsuit,
the way everything played out. I still find myself wondering
why did they arrest Brandon Wheeler in that moment. Apparently
(20:21):
they thought they did have enough to move forward with
a no body homicide. Unfortunately, they miscalculated. And there's more
bad news for Shannon's family because the judge ruled that
Brandon's interview with the police could not be admitted as evidence.
So Shannon and her family only saw five minutes of
that video interview in the pre trial hearing. So now
(20:43):
we're wondering what else did Brandon Wheeler say in that interview.
We may never know. Brandon Wheeler has left the state
of Arkansas, and I'm sure he's hired a legal team.
I wonder have police lost their only chance at getting
Brandon Wheeler or is it possible to get more evidence later.
(21:04):
It seems like over the years, Jared's case has had
investigators who cared about it. Shannon told me that Jared's
case actually became this notorious unsolved case in Sirce, and
that when new recruits would join the police force, a
detective would sort of present Jared's case as a challenge
that the rookies could try to solve.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
They just basically used to try that case out and
give it to the new guy and just say, here,
see you can do anything with this. But anytime they
got close. What I was told by the last investigators
in the case, well that anytime they got close to something,
when they started finding things like, hey, I really want
to go talk to this person. Their boss who's not
(21:47):
there anymore, was like, no, just give them a call
and then have somebody else do it like they would.
They could never go actually do any investigation outside of
like our local area.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
The case is also complicated by the fact that so
many people connected with it have either died or disappeared.
As we mentioned earlier, Robert Webb vanished in July of
nineteen ninety five. He's presumed to be dead. Some people
out there have a theory that Robert Webb faked his
own death to escape the heat, but his family insists
(22:19):
that would be completely out of character. He would never
do that, and there's been literally no sign of life
since nineteen ninety five. We know that Baron Stafford, who
went by the name Felix, reportedly took his own life
in two thousand. Shannon says that she is not given up.
She says that in twenty twenty three, she hoped to
(22:40):
have additional private dog teams who would volunteer to investigate.
She also said she hoped that now that the lawsuit
has mostly played out, that some of the investigators who
were so devoted to Jared's case would get some additional resources.
She said so far that it hasn't happened.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
We had two dog teams that were lined up that
were willing to search, but for some reason, there has
been a stop. So the original investigating officer, who is
awesome and I have nothing but respect for he was
like put on patrol after that mess with Wheeler when
they sued. But then he was moved back into CID
(23:17):
and he got promoted and now he's leading a team
of investigators. And so I thought when that happened and
he had these additional resources, that they were going to make,
you know, really be able to dedicate time to Jared's case.
But that has not been the case. And I don't
know why. I haven't really been able to talk to them.
I don't know if this because there is a new
(23:38):
police chief and so maybe he's restricting their you know,
my access to them. Like it's not that people aren't
letting me talk to them, it's just like I really
hoped that with this, with this edition, of these three
or four other people, that do get some progress.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
So what can we do next? What needs to happen now?
There were four key locations Shannon said needed to be
searched they've searched one, but there's still three more to go.
She's hoping to get a dog team out there and
keep searching that land. Shannon continues to be the advocate
for her brother. She said she's not giving up hope.
(24:17):
Shannon said she needs people to come forward. She is
begging anyone who knew her brother Jared or had any
kind of interaction with him, no matter how small, to
please come forward because you never know which piece of
information will be key to cracking this case.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
We need someone to break their silence. We know people
are withholding information. I think that there are people that
have information about what happened that night that will not
share an offer effect. But I believe that Rob Webb's
family and sister knows something about what happened. He's the
guy that went missing about nine months after Jared, who
(24:55):
was supposedly Wheeler's best friend, and Wheeler ac feel like
he didn't know who he was either. And it's no
coin to me that these guys both you know, disappeared.
Now there is speculation that you know, Webb is not
really he didn't die, that he you know, just changed
(25:18):
his identity and moved on. But we have no proof
of that. We just know that he hasn't been seen,
So I think someone needs to break their silence, right,
Someone needs to have courage and come forward.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Shannon and her family have just announced a new twenty
five thousand dollars reward for any information that could help
lead to locating her brother Jared's remains. We still need
to fill in blanks of a timeline from September thirtieth,
nineteen ninety four. People have come forward to tell Shannon
they saw Jared Green at Walmart that night. We know
(25:53):
that he went out, that he met his friend Jason
at the country club, and he called his girlfriend after that.
It's a mystery. We don't even know for sure if
the person or people who saw Jared at Walmart that
night really I saw him that night, or we're remembering
another night. So much time has passed, Shannon said she
used to use the slogan justice for Jared. She said,
(26:14):
even though she does dream of getting justice for her
brother and of the person or people who killed him
being held responsible, the main thing she wants to know
is where Jared's remains are so that she and her
family can find some measure of peace.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Nobody is trying to charge anybody with drug charges. Nobody
cares about that. And I've tried to stress that on
my Facebook page a lot because I want people to
understand we're looking for Jared's remains. I don't know if
we will ever get justice for him, but we can
give him the burial he deserves and the closure for
us to put him to rest. And that's really all
(26:54):
we want is just to know where he's at and
bring him home. And what I don't this is the
part that you know, there's a lot of this that
it's sickening, but I don't under and why if someone
had to kill him, why they didn't just leave him
where he could be found, because then we would at
least know, and then I wouldn't still be, you know,
(27:15):
forcing myself on the world to try to tell Jared's
story to try to find his remains. Because if people
are afraid or they were involved and they don't want
this to keep cropping up, and all they have to
do is come forward, yeah and say here's the information
I have, I will share it. Nobody's going to jail
for the only charge that could possibly be applied would
(27:36):
be a murder charge. And if you didn't kill him,
then there's nothing, no reason why they shouldn't come forward
to say what they know.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
So please, if you know anything, think about if this
was your brother, your sister, your parents lying awake at night,
agonizing over what happened to their child, wondering if they
could still be out there. Shannon Green just wants to
bring her little brother Jared home. I'm Catherine Townsend. This
is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line is
(28:21):
a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's
written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by
Gabby Watts. Music is by Ben Solee and this episode
was scored and mixed by Miranda Hawkins. Executive producers are
Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Els Crowley. If you have
a case you'd like me and my team to look into,
(28:42):
you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone
Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six
one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four
six one four or five.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
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