S1 UPDATE: Victim Statement

Catherine talks with Rebekah’s father Larry Gould about his victim statement and meeting Rebekah’s killer.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans. That's what he said today, and he
said he didn't strangle her. Yeah, I don't understand, and
I mean, look again, glad justice was served, but I
don't understand why they can't get some of these contradictions.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
This case sitting here right now, we know less about
what happened to Repbecker's you two and afters.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Ago, after the news broke that Billy Miller was convicted
of Rebecca Gould's murder, I had some mixed feelings. It
would have been so much easier for me to believe
that justice had been done and to celebrate. After consuming
my life for so many years, as it has so

(00:57):
many other people, this case would finally be over. And
I am happy about Billy Miller's arrest and conviction. Given
the fact that Billy Miller is a dangerous sexual predator
who I absolutely believe participated in Rebecca's murder, I definitely
consider this a good thing. I also want to give
credit to the Arkansas State Police. I am thrilled that

(01:19):
Mike McNeil took over the case because for me, this
was never about being right or wrong. Remember, I had
no access to the police case file, so what I
was trying to do with Helengn was to go out
and talk to anyone I could, anyone who I believed
could have information to share. My hope was that after
the podcast aired, Dennis Simons would someday be off the

(01:42):
case and someone knew a fresh pair of eyes would
be put on the case. And that's exactly what happened.
I think that Mike McNeil has done excellent police work
and has been much more open minded than his predecessors.
But as with so many things in this case, it
doesn't feel like it's over yet. It feels like that
moment in the horror movie where you think it's all

(02:04):
done and everyone is starting to feel relieved, and then
the monster lunges out for that one last scare. I'm
Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone. In Billy Miller's confession,

(02:53):
he called himself a monster. This was during his interview
when detectives were asking him why he did it, why
he killed Rebecca. He said that there was no sexual motivation.
But I find that very hard to believe. I talked
investigator Jennifer Buckle about her impression of Billy. How do
you feel about William Miller? I mean his history.

Speaker 3 (03:15):
You know, a monster, she's a predator. We know he
you know, sexually assaulted other women. We know he had
a pattern of getting women overly drunk at bars and
taking them home to have sex with them, I eat,
rape them. He would take photos of them when they
were unconscious. We joke about killing prostitutes. You know, was
the suspect and a sexual assault in two thousand and two,

(03:36):
according to Mike. So, I mean, he obviously has a
pattern in a history. And like George and I talked
about this the other day, but George is like, what
do you think the chances are that this is Williams
filmy murder? And I'm like, I think the chance is
pretty low. But clearly he has these sexual compulsions or whatever.
I mean, I don't like the word normal and abnormal,

(03:57):
but like his sexual preferences are abnormal, and knowing this
other stuff about his history, I just don't see. Unfortunately, Rebeca,
it's probably not his only murder victim.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
Yeah, and it's hard to find information because he was
in the Philippines for so long exactly who knows what
one on them.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
You're never yep, you're never going to be able to
find the victims over there, and that sucks.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
I went to see Rebecca's dad, doctor Larry Gould again
near Mountain Home. It's been over two years since I've
last seen Larry, since the podcast happened, and then the
arrest and then COVID made travel so hard it was emotional.
I gave him a big hug before I went into
the house. Larry has had some changes in his life.

(04:52):
His two younger daughters have grown up into young women.
His oldest is getting ready to start college. I gave
them both hugs too. The last time I was in
this kitchen where were poring over autopsy diagrams and countless
piles of letters to the prosecutor, to the district attorney,
to the police, Larry was basically begging for help in

(05:15):
finding his daughter's killer. This time, the mood is different.
We're happier because obviously Rebecca's killer has been caught and
will be sent to prison for what amounts to the
rest of his natural life. So in some sense it's
a celebration. Larry finally has some answers about what happened
to his daughter. Larry first saw Billy Miller in August

(05:43):
twenty twenty two at the Suppression hearing where Billy's confession
video was played.

Speaker 4 (05:50):
As a man and as a father, I really wanted
to size up this guy. I wanted to see what
type of person could do this to my daughter.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
At that hearing, Larry sat right behind Billy and he
spent the hours of confession watching Billy, hearing the graphic
details of the man he would confess to brutally murdering
his daughter, watching her die, cleaning up her blood, and
throwing her body off the side of the road like
a bag of trash. And through it all he maintained

(06:23):
his composure because he said of a promise that he
made to Rebecca that someday he would find her killer.

Speaker 4 (06:32):
I found that his body language was his entire demeanor
was highly offensive. He's a very unattractive man. And that's
a loaded statement because a lot of what you learn
about William Miller is that a good portion of his

(06:52):
life was predicated on some forms of perversion and things
that just were not what you would consider normal behavior. First,
he didn't have to be there, he wasn't subpoenaed, and
they told him many times you could get up and
leave any time he wanted to. By the end of
the day, your thought on who William Miller was, by
his own statements, was this is an arrogant, pompous, egotistical

(07:17):
man who drew pleasure out of making people feel foolish.
And those were his exact words many times in the film,
was that he had made fools out of all of
these people, and he took a lot of pride in
that that in itself is a sickness. The man is sick,

(07:38):
and the man has a lot of problems and his
own egos what defeated him. He reminded me of what
you typically associate with people that are arsenists. They light
a fire and they want to go back and watch
it burn.

Speaker 1 (08:01):
When we were still preparing for Billy Miller's trial to
begin on October thirty first, Larry learned on October fourteenth,
the very last day that the defense had to present
a plea deal. He learned from prosecutor Eric Hants that
a deal was in the works. From there, things moved
very fast over that weekend. On Monday night, Larry texted

(08:22):
me to say the hearing would be the very next
morning at eight am. The plea deal had been accepted,
so it would be quick Larry was there with his
two younger daughters, Rebecca's half sisters, Katie and Macy. He
wanted to show them how the criminal justice system worked
and for them to finally see their half sister get justice.

(08:43):
It was an emotional day and Larry only had the
night before to prepare his victim statement.

Speaker 4 (08:50):
That evening, I had an hour one hour to write
my victim statement. So you know, when you watch these programs,
you see people up there and they're spewing off for
hours about different things and stuff. They told me I
could only submit two type three pages. So I made
notes and then I got panicky. I thought, geez, I'm

(09:11):
not going to have this ready. And so I sat
in bed at ten o'clock at night and I wrote
it out and typed it and was I knew I
had to get some sleep because the next day was
the hearing. So it took me an hour and I
wrote it out and that was that's it. And then
I read it in court, and so I'd be happy
to read.

Speaker 3 (09:29):
It to you.

Speaker 4 (09:29):
I'd love you did that in an hour? Yeah, wow, yeah, yeah,
it's you don't know what to do. You know, you
sit there and you've got eighteen years to think about
your daughter and all the different things that has happened.
So you go, do you what do I write? So
Dot read it?

Speaker 3 (09:49):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (09:50):
Please Larry read me. It's the witness statement that he
read in court, his final goodbye to his daughter Rebecca.
This sentencing hearing, liked the hearings before, it took place
in a tiny court room and no cameras or recording
devices were allowed, so only a few people were there
to hear Larry's words. So it's really important to me

(10:13):
to play this witness statement in its entirety because I
want everyone who has been following this case to hear it.

Speaker 4 (10:22):
Eighteen years ago, my life changed forever. Eighteen years ago,
many lives were changed forever. My precious daughter, Rebecca Christian
Gould was taken from us. She was taken from family,
her friends, and taken from her own future, her dreams,
her desires, her wants, her hopes, and all the possibilities

(10:44):
that life at age twenty two presents to a young lady.
No marriage, no children, no graduation from college, no career,
no good times and bad You took away a chance
for a young, tenacious and blossoming girl to dream of
her possibilities in life. You took away from me my

(11:04):
opportunity to watch those things happen. William Miller Eighteen years ago,
I was working in my office seeing patients when I
received a frantic call that Rebecca was missing. Little did
I know then that my own world would shortly changed forever,
and soon a living hell would find its way into

(11:25):
my life. A hell you created, and now a hell
you must face. No rest, little sleep, searching early morning
until late at night to try to find Rebecca. Hope
diminishes daily, but never went away until the day she
was found, and reality set in. My daughter was dumped

(11:47):
like trash left for the animal, left for the animals
and the maggots to devour slowly each night. You were
long gone. You have had eighteen years of life, family, children, money,
a career, and had you not been a truly sick

(12:09):
person at such a young age, you probably would have
had a nice life. Today that ends, and today I grieve.
I had no time to grieve then, because I could
not rest a funeral to plan, and my child to bury.
What you didn't know was at that burial site. I
took my kids aside and made a pledge that nothing

(12:31):
would ever stop us from finding the person who murdered Rebecca.
And today, today I looked to heaven and simply whisper
promise made, promise kept. The eighteen years of hell you
put me through has cost me dearly. It cost me family,
loved ones, my enjoyment of life, hundreds and hundreds of

(12:54):
thousands of dollars, precious time. Basically everything I had hoped
for in my own life was placed on hold forever.
Simply avoid or hold in my heart that could never
be repaired or patched back to a healthy state until now. See,
my glass is always going to be half full and
never half empty. I teach my children to never give up,

(13:19):
fight and never quit, to salute our precious American flag,
to salute law enforcement above all the men and women
who serve this great country. As I did. Rebecca represented
that combination of beliefs. She would fight for the underdog,
and at one hundred pounds of her ringing wet was
the courage of a hero. You took away the life

(13:42):
of someone I believed could have become anything she wanted,
The taking of my daughter's life in such a brutal
and self serving manner, And then to treat her in
the most undignified way tells me everything I need to
know about you. This court judges you and has sentenced you.
You still have two more courts to face, the prison

(14:04):
system itself and the ultimate judgment by God himself. My
pain will never go away, but it will diminish my
Lord and Savior. As stated in the poem Footprints in
the Sand, never let me fall. Gave me courage and
carried me through these eighteen years, only to set me
down as a stronger, more faithful, more loving, more compassionate,

(14:24):
and truly better human being. We are all victims from you.
In your confession, you boastfully stated how you made fools
out of everybody. I am here to tell you that
that arrogance and your obvious pathology of needing to watch
the fire burn you set is what special Agent Mike

(14:45):
McNeil brilliantly used against you. In closing, I cannot describe
the amount of emotional trauma you have created in so
many lives. I can speak for hours regarding why you
should never be allowed out of the prison. I will
leave you with this one statement. Rebecca lives in all
of us. She will never die. She is sitting at

(15:06):
the right hand of the father, looking down a place
you will probably never see, but that is not my
place to judge. Rebecca inspires us all to better our
lives and to know that love and grace are words
I will always remember her by.

Speaker 3 (15:38):
It's rasonal, It's so beautiful.

Speaker 4 (15:42):
Thank you that one came from heart.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
I got really emotional when he read that, and you
can probably hear it. As much as I try to
remain impartial and detached because I want to be able
to help the victims and not burden them with my pain,
and also I want to be able to see things
with an objective eye. At the end of the day,
we're all human. I've gone their challenges and losses of
my own over the past few years, and one of

(16:09):
the many things that I admire about Larry is his
ability to stay positive in the face of darkness. Over
the years, he sent me several supportive texts, even when
a lesser man would have been drowning in his own pain.
I admire him and I consider him a close friend,
and my friendships with George and Jennifer have been life
changing as well. Rebecca's death caused so many people pain,

(16:31):
but in her short life, she inspired so many people,
and that is something that I'm grateful for every single day.
But then Larry said he got a shock. After the
sentencing was passed, Billy indicated that he would be willing

(16:53):
to talk to Larry privately, and the judge said that
he would allow that to take place. Larry and Rebecca's
older sister, Tiffany went to a small back room where
Billy was seated behind a glass barrier.

Speaker 4 (17:04):
I was still to size him up and understand this man.
I interjected a few questions to him right off the bat,
and I gave him an opportunity to tell the truth
that I wanted to know exactly what happened. You know,
he's already convicted, he's already in there. This is a

(17:26):
good chance to get it all out. So what I
found in this face to face approach with him was
a man that was not so much wanting to talk
as he felt compelled to talk, and he was willing
to answer questions. But as he began to talk about

(17:49):
what actually happened, everything changed. He sat up a little straighter,
his chest came out a little bit more, his voice
elevated a little bit, and he began to take control
of the room. So it all changed. And I think
it changed because had he been sincere, he would have

(18:10):
wanted want of me and Tiffany was there. He would
have wanted us to feel that he was apologetic, to
feel that he was remorseful. He was placating. He was
trying to make everything appear not a way that was acceptable,
but a way that did not make him appear like he's,

(18:34):
like I said, monster like minimizing completely. So the part
that change was okay. He enters a trailer. He I
think he had originally said that he wanted to use
the phone. Rebecca goes back, which would have been I guess,
to the bedroom. He's pacing back and forth, and the

(18:55):
words he used there was all of a sudden, it
just was building in him, and then the switch went
off and then he went in and he grabbed a
piano leg. He went in and he struck her twice. Now,
in the actual confession he says that he strangled her

(19:15):
with a necktie and that she was lifeless. Now he's
saying that he didn't strangle her, that he actually started
to perform CPR, and that every time he would pump
on her the blood would go all over. So now
he's making it look like he's a rescuer. And then
it gets to where in his testimony basically he took
her like a sack of whatever and threw over the fence,

(19:38):
threw into the truck, threw off the truck. Now it's
I gingerly put her over the fence. I eased her
into the truck. It's all this appeasement. He wasn't doing
it for us, he was doing it for himself. And
I had had enough, so I got up and I

(19:58):
left after that.

Speaker 1 (20:03):
So I agree with Larry's interpretation that there are parts
of the confession where it seems that Billy Miller is
trying to make himself seem more compassionate than he was,
Like when Billy says he was trying to give Rebecca
CPR or crying. I believe that this is his way
of explaining why investigators could potentially find his DNA on

(20:23):
Rebecca's shirt or in her facial area. And I don't
believe for one second that that DNA came from attempts
to save Rebecca's life or from Billy's tears. If any
trace of Billy's bodily fluids are there. I believe that
they would be there because he was attacking Rebecca, and
Billy using words like placed her body instead of through
her body. I would put that in the same category. Again,

(20:46):
he's trying to minimize his actions. We always have to
remember that every single thing that Billy Miller says has
a purpose, and that purpose is serving his own self interest.
He's trying to mislead and he's doing things for his
own reasons, which is why I Ann, Jennifer and George
and others are surprised by the fact that the ASP
have relied so heavily on Billy's own words and on

(21:08):
his confession. Because after being one of the only people
so far to view the crime scene photos, I have
to say, so far parts of that confession do not
seem to match up with the physical evidence. Let's look
at some of the other major differences in the confession. First,
Billy said that he strangled Rebecca with a necktie, but

(21:28):
he later told Larry that he didn't. What does the
evidence say? In that pre trial hearing on October third,
I was also able to finally hear what the medical
examiner had to say about Rebecca's body Charles Cocus was
the medical examiner on the Rebecca Gould case. Doctor Cocus
confirmed that Rebecca's hyoid bone was intact. It was not broken.

(21:50):
Rebecca's thyroid bone was also intact. These are the two
organs that are often damaged when someone is strangled. Now,
it is possible for those bones to not be broken
in a case involving strangulation, especially since Rebecca would have
been hitting the head multiple times and be very weak,
so it wouldn't have taken much force to strangle her.

(22:12):
While this isn't definitive, it does make it less likely
that she was strangled. What's interesting to me is that
Billy Miller seemed to modify his story after he saw
the crime scene photos and the autopsy photos in court.
I know through George and Jennifer that Billy was active
on their social media community Unsolved Murder of Rebecca Gould,

(22:35):
and that the strangulation theory was one that a lot
of people talked about on that page. In fact, George
and Jennifer and I are noticing that a lot of
the terminology that Billy used in his confession was almost
word for word what had been written on that social
media site in Billy's original confession, he said that he

(22:56):
attacked and beat Rebecca while she was lying down in
bed in the bedroom. But remember in Helen Gone season one,
we talked to a witness, someone who told us that
Casey had hit Rebecca while she was standing up outside
the bedroom arguing with him. Now, in the crime scene
photos that I saw in the courtroom, there appeared to
be a large amount of blood on the brown carpeting

(23:18):
outside the bedroom and in the kitchen area. Billy says
that he did all of this alone. So if that's true,
why would he lie about where it happened. There are
a lot of other contradictions. For example, Billy said that
there were folded clothes on the bed, which presumably belonged
to Rebecca. This matched what we had always read in

(23:39):
newspaper articles about the case. But after seeing the crime
scene photos, there were no folded clothes on the bed.
There was nothing on the bed. Billy said that he
struck Rebecca with a piano leg and then it shattered.
So where are the wood fragments? And if he was
working alone and panicking to clean up that crime scene,
why were there brand new cleaning products out on the counter.

(24:01):
Did he go buy cleaning products and bring them back.
And if he did start cleaning up and took the
time to put bloody clothes on a wash cycle, why
would he not deal with the blood soaked carpet? Was
he planning to come back? Wouldn't he worry that the
stuff would be visible to Casey and others who came
into that trailer.

Speaker 4 (24:24):
This man definitely did it, but the gray area was
not answered. And the gray area is was there somebody
else there?

Speaker 1 (24:33):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (24:34):
Is there somebody else help help with this? He was
He wasn't going to tell you to tell the truth
and so and that's that became really obvious real fast,
And that's what I was hoping for. I thought, you know,
give the guy a chance. Let's see if he'll, if
he will break down and really detail exactly what happened
and didn't happen.

Speaker 1 (24:59):
So, if Billy is not telling the truth about how
Rebecca died, I wonder or could he be hiding something else?
I talked to George Jarrett and Jennifer Buckles about these
two different confessions, and he said he placed her and
he said he didn't strangle her.

Speaker 5 (25:18):
Yeah, And I noticed that.

Speaker 6 (25:20):
So when he went before the judge, and the Judge's like,
you know, this is we're being charguate. This is what
you're pleading to Okay, now explain to the court why
for what you did that meets this charge. And he said, well,
on September twentieth, two thousand and four, I hit Rebecca.
I can't remember if you said her last name or not,

(25:41):
but I hit Rebecca twice and then I dumped her
body off Highway nine.

Speaker 3 (25:44):
That's literally what he said.

Speaker 6 (25:46):
And I immediately noticed, like, wait a minute, what happened
to the strangulation. But then when doctor Gould came out
from talking to him, he's like, well, he told me
he did not strangle her and instead try to perform CPR,
which is why there was blood all over the house.

Speaker 5 (26:02):
And can't What I think happened is he found out
that they didn't find the necktie and the necktie thing
is for whatever reason, and it jumped out to me
it just seems like a more heinous crime because he
hit her in the head, she was probably gonna.

Speaker 2 (26:19):
Die, and then he takes the necktie and strangles her,
and a lot of people see it that way. And
he also told doctor Gould that he wasn't sure if
she was dead when he left her on the side
of the road. And so what he's doing is he's saying, Hey,
I did hurt her, and she was hurt when I
left her, but maybe she didn't die because of that.
Why is it a TBR.

Speaker 1 (26:40):
Yeah, he's minimizing. He's just trying to minimize what he did.

Speaker 3 (26:44):
Probably, Yeah, it.

Speaker 6 (26:45):
Was to alleviate his own guilt, is what he did.
And then you're revictimizing these family members again.

Speaker 1 (26:53):
Oh of course because then because then they're thinking about
her land on the side of the road.

Speaker 6 (26:58):
Yeah, And it's too totally two totally different, basically totally
different confessions. So it's like, well, what are we supposed
to believe?

Speaker 1 (27:08):
As anyone who listens to Helen God knows, I am
much more interested in victimology, in understanding the victims and
getting into their world, than I am into delving into
the mind of a killer. I guess that could be
because I don't see anything special about killers. But I
made a promise to myself and to Rebecca Gould back
in the very beginning that I would talk to anyone

(27:30):
who could provide more information that would help lead to
answers as to what really happened to her, and that
includes Billy Miller. I'm writing a letter to Billy Miller.
It reads, Billy, this is a strange letter to write,
because even though we are strangers, I feel like, in

(27:51):
a very weird way, we have been part of each
other's lives for the past several years. When I started
Helen Gone, I wanted two things. To find out the
truth about what really happened to Rebecca Gould and to
bring her killer to justice. I assumed that if the
second one happened, the first one would two. But after
everything that has gone down, I and our audience, which

(28:13):
at this point, as I'm sure you know, is tens
of millions of people all around the world, still have
so many unanswered questions. They and I want to know
who you are so that they can understand why you
did what you did. All anyone is seen of you
so far is the guy in the confession video who
called himself a monster. Just so you'll know where I'm

(28:34):
coming from, I don't believe life is that simple. I
don't believe that anyone is all good or all evil.
I don't believe in heaven or hell, or that there
is a higher power with a plan who intervenes in
our lives. A lot of people, myself included, have violent urges,
which I'm sure is part of the reason why true
crime and horror movies are so popular. I do care

(28:56):
passionately about justice and finding answers, but I have to
admit there is also a part of me that is
drawn to that darkness in all of us, and that's
probably the reason why I do this job. But you
actually went to the next level and acted on your urges.
I would like to know why, Why do you think
you feel these things, and what makes you make the

(29:17):
decision to act on them. Would you be interested in
doing an interview with me, either over the phone or
in person. If you agree to talk to me, I
can promise you that I will put your story, your
words out there in a fair way. A lot of
people have tried to talk me out of contacting you,
but I'm reaching out anyway because there is still a

(29:37):
big piece missing of what actually happened to Rebecca that day,
and there are answers that only you can provide. I
have zero agenda beyond getting to the truth. If you
acted alone, this is your chance to explain the discrepancies
in the story in a way that could really help
the rest of your family escape suspicion. I would also
like to understand why you did what you did. I'm

(29:58):
hoping that through that understanding, maybe someone who is having
the types of feelings and urges that you were describing
might be able to get help or channel them in
another way. You may not be able to control what
happened in the past, but you can control whether the
last thing your children read about you as they grow
up is that you were a monster who brutally murdered someone.

(30:19):
You can choose what to do next. It's your call.
We'll see if he gets back to me. I'm Catherine Townsend.
This is Helen Gone. Helen Gone is a production of

(30:49):
School of Humans and iHeartMedia. Our producer is Gabby Watts.
Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and L. C. Crowley.
Music is by Ben Sale Special thanks to season one
producers Taylor Church and James Morrison m H. School of Humans.

(31:23):
School of Humans