November 21, 2018 • 44 mins
Even though he was cleared as a suspect, Catherine turns her attention to Casey, Rebekah's boyfriend at the time of her murder. She surveys some of the people closest to Rebekah to get a better idea of the nature of their relationship including Rebekah's sister, Danielle, her father, Larry Gould, and friends and associates of Casey's as well. For more on the case, visit hellandgonepodcast.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans. Hey, man, what's up. Hey, how's it going.
It's going okay. A guy just called me and said
we're in a fight against God and Satan and demonic entities,
and it was just insane, insane. After a long week
(00:31):
of writing an investigation, I'm very ready to get home,
and as per usual in the Ozarks, I have no
cell reception. But this time, when I get back into range,
my phone has one hundred miscalls and text messages. One
of them is Chris's sister. So here's what happened. I
hear that Chris has been arrested. It turns out that
he was arrested for making terroristic threats and for burglary.
(00:54):
That's what I hear. Even though I don't think Chris
had anything to do with the murder of Rebecca, he
is not doing himself any favors by visiting her ex
boyfriend's house. Chris's kids are getting tech, according to the sisters,
saying that you know your dad's a killer, and it's
just awful. This is an awful situation. In September of
(01:23):
two thousand and four, twenty two year old Rebecca Gould
was brutally murdered in a remote area of the Arkansas Ozarks.
Fourteen years later, her killer is still out there. I've
come back to Mountain View with one mission to get
justice for Rebecca. I'm Catherine Townsend and this is Helen Gone.
(01:54):
The story we heard from the police is that Chris
went over to Justin's house and he told him if
he talks, he'll kill him. That's not what happened. Chris
and his friend happened to be over Justin's house because
of was had a friendship with Justin's wife or whatever,
and they were over there to see her. And you know,
then Justin came home and I'm sure because of the connection.
(02:15):
I'm sure there were words exchanged about the case because
they haven't seen each other in a long time. But
that wasn't the cause of him going over there at all.
Tommy went over there, not Chris. We don't know what
went down behind closed doors. It all sounds very fishy
that that Chris is the only one with charges against him,
and he gets charged with burglary, not because he took anything,
but because if you're at someone's house without permission, you
(02:36):
can get charged with burglary. I think it's very fishy
also that A headline came out in the paper saying
suspect in two thousand and four murder as if you know,
it just looks like they're trying to throw it on
Chris once again. It feels like that. It really does
extremely guilty right now? Is there overall where Chris did
do it? No? No, I mean I do and he
(03:01):
doesn't help himself. Wait, so when did this actually happen?
I don't know. The article got posted yesterday, but from
what I from what I hear, it was a few
days ago. I'm trying to I'm getting the affiday but
now and figuring out when it happened and getting all
the details. Well, I mean, where the case right now?
That's it. Dennis told Chris's sister that all the evidence
(03:25):
in the case points to Chris and that he wants
to get this case slid before he's retired. And he said,
all the evidence points to Chris. Your family's trash and yeah,
I mean that's that's what's on. You said that to her.
I believe her. So that's what's going on. But they
(03:46):
don't blame us. The good the good news from that
is even Chris and his sister don't blame they know,
like they're calling us and trying to help, so get
this right. The sister's trying to bail him out, and
she's like, Chris keeps saying, and this is so Chris,
my word is my bond. I don't need a lawyer.
I've got my word. And I'm like, you know, you
might not want to get him lawyer, and she said,
I'm trying to get him a lawyer. We don't have
(04:08):
any money, Chris. This is like the fifth job. Chris
is lost because these guys keep arresting him. You know,
she said, Now he's not blameless in this. Chris does
some really dumb stuff. You know, he's getting himself in trouble.
Now that Chris is in jail, it is even more
vital that we find Rebecca's killer. I reached out to
Casey at the beginning of my investigation and he hasn't
(04:29):
gotten back to me yet, even though he's the one
person who's been officially ruled out as a suspect by
the police. Now I want to find out if his
AWLIBI is as air tight as they claim it is.
I still have hope. I mean, maybe I'm wrong and
maybe and look if he doesn't. If he doesn't get
back to us ever, maybe it will come to knock
it on his door. But like, I still have some
(04:49):
hope that he might get in touch with us. Everyone
said how much he loved her and what a good
guy was. There's that topics Did you see that topics
port about him, and it says, sorry, I met this
guy named Casey something and he used to sing in
a band. Anyone know who I'm talking about? Yeah, And
then and then everybody says, well, this one says, fairly
(05:11):
decent guy. I think he works at Melbourne Sonic. He's
really sweet. He's been done wrong by the past. Yeah,
it's definitely haunted him. It's definitely hot. It seems to
have really haunted him, and now he seems to be
happy and settled and everything. But it's really it's also
really crazy because you think about it and you're like,
(05:31):
she should have all those things. She should have a
husband and a baby, and you know, she should have
the opportunity to be an aunt to her sister's kids
and you know, all those things, and like she doesn't
have any of those things now. But then eventually it's
gonna be like, look, dude, like you say, you love
this girl. You know, she was so important to you,
and like she got murdered brutally, you know something. And
if he has nothing to hide, he should be willing
(05:53):
to talk about it because that was his friend and
he loved her and you know, and he should want
to find who did this. Not only that, but I
mean his house was destroyed. I kissed if somebody murdered
somebody in my house. So we go back to the
timeline and what we know of September twentieth, two thousand
(06:16):
and four. Casey told police that after Rebecca dropped him
off at work in the morning, he was at work
all day until his shift ended. Then he went to
the movies and stayed out with his friends that whole night.
But some people in town have heard a different story.
Remember Alicia, she was the plumber's daughter. Her husband was
the one who owned the sonic where both Casey and
(06:37):
Rebecca worked. She were saying, like at his place, I
thank when she would come up from school, but not
you know, she wasn't It wasn't been a full time
thing that she was there all the time. But I
mean they were together quite a bit. They always worked together.
I know on that particular day. It was weird day
(06:58):
that she had brought him to work and dropped him
off that day. I don't know why. I think maybe
because she was up on school, she was at working.
I'm not sure she wasn't off on break or something,
but she had dropped him off for at sonics that morning.
That was the last fan that he saw her. The
very fact. They said that he had went, that he
(07:18):
lest work, and I guess Rebecca wasn't supposed to be there.
She was supposed to be leaving to go back to Fayetteville.
And so he left work with a friend and they
actually went out to the movies and you know, hung
out that night, and he said he didn't return home,
you know, till really late and into the next morning.
I think they said he was there for the whole
(07:40):
entire shift that day, and that he left work with
that friend of his, and that they were supposed to
go out to a movie. Or what she's saying matches
the story that was reported in the papers and what
I've heard from others. Casey was at work all day
and out with his friends all night. He was really
(08:01):
shook up. He seemed like it after you know, they
don't want to Reaca about what I found odd was
he said that he went back to the house and
that he couldn't tell anything that happened there, but that
her stuff was still there and her belongings. And I
just think that's not accurate, because you know, they said
(08:24):
that you could physically tell something happened, and how could
you go into your own home and not notice that
something happened there, or to how to say that you
don't noticed that something happened. I just I don't understand that.
Do you think that your ex husband could help us
with the records of who was working at Sonic that day? Yeah? Probably?
(08:47):
All right? So Licia unloads some new information I haven't
heard before. She said that Casey may have stopped at
home at some point before he went there with the
police on Tuesday. Your call has been forwarded to an
(09:08):
automated voice messaging system. He's not available at the Tell him.
Please record your message. When you've finished recording, you may
hang up form Alicia's husband, Joey isn't calling us back.
Sometimes people don't want to get involved because they're hiding something.
Other times, especially in this case, it can be because
(09:29):
they are scared. George has proven to be a valuable
member of our team. He's the only one who was
there at the time reporting on the murder and is
emotionally and physically removed enough to give me some real answers.
What do you think about Casey? Now? I don't know.
He talked to me several times, initially after her body
(09:53):
was found, and then I contacted his wife, his now wife,
probably in twenty sixteen. I called her at work and
she's like, oh, because I wanted to talk to him,
you know, because I want to to kind of update
the case, and I wanted to get dive into some
more details because, like you said, it's been you know,
at that time, it had been twelve years. I mean,
(10:14):
you're getting to the point where it doesn't matter if
you're still interviewing people. This is a cold case, and
you never know when one little thing will break in
a case. One story runs, one rumor starts, and then
all of a sudden, everything changes. So I just wanted
to talk to him, and so I called her, and
she was really nice, very nice, very friendly, gave me
(10:38):
her phone number and his phone number, and I tried
to contact him and he would not talk to me. Well,
then I try to contact her, and she wouldn't contact
me back, and she had told me. She goes, oh,
he'd love to talk to you. But then so then
I finally contacted her at work again and I said, hey,
I've been trying to get ahold of you in casey
and I haven't get hold of you. Guys, she goes, oh,
(10:59):
he doesn't want to talk about it. He doesn't think
it'll do him any good to talk to you. And
I said, well, that may be true. I mean, I'm
just a journal but I would like to talk to him.
You know, the story is, you know, she went and
dropped him off at work, and then she went to
the Possum Trot convenience store, got a couple of things,
and then left went back to his house, and then
somewhere sometime during the morning she died. Well, then he
(11:20):
got off work and then he went to it stayed
at night at a friend's house, and then went straight
to work the next day. So he never returned to
his house to see the full new clothes and all
this other stuff. Well, then I heard a separate story
that he did go home the next morning to get
some fresh clothes for work, and so I just you know,
that's a kind of a big detail. It's a big detail.
So I just wanted to know. And you know, he
(11:42):
obviously didn't want to talk about it, and to this
day I have not spoke to him about it. I
tried to, but he just doesn't want to talk. Turns
out he's heard the same thing we heard that at
some point before the police arrived on Tuesday, Casey went
home to change shirts. Even if her car was just
still there, he still wouldn't have left, you know, to
go to a friend's house, do you know what I mean.
(12:03):
It never made sense to me that he there. Yeah,
everything was there. I mean, even if you wanted to assume,
let's say her car was there. Let's say he comes
home the next morning, sees her car there. Maybe another
friend came and picked her up, went and stayed the night,
you know, with another friend. Something happened to you know,
she was supposed to pick her sister up. Maybe the
arrangement changed. She wouldn't have left her purse. In his defense,
(12:27):
to this degree, we don't know for certain that he
returned to the house. That it's it's just again a rumor.
When you talk to Casey, what did he seem like
when you seem really emotional upset. He seemed really distant,
like you could tell that there was a shock factor
with him. And I was actually at the Sheriff's department
(12:48):
when they brought him in for questioning one time, and
the family was there, and I mean there was fire
in a lot of those people's eyes. And actually one
of Rebecca's ex boyfriends, Justin, he was there and he
started like just tears started coming down his face and
he was really angry. It looked like just watching the
police lead him into the Sheriff's department. Considering that we
(13:09):
now know Rebecca and Justin saw each other just a
week before her death, I can't imagine the tension inside
that police station. So when I talked to him, he
seemed shocked. I talked to him maybe twice after that,
and he just very quiet, very soft spoken. You know
he you know, I suspect he probably knows some things,
(13:34):
but you know, I can't He won't talk to me,
so I can't prove it. So I might be scared.
He may be scared. That's that's a very viable possibility.
Being like a CUB reporter at the time, I made
some mistakes because he did talk to me after the fact,
and I could have found these details out immediately. All
I had to do was ask the questions and guess
(13:54):
what didn't ask questions, And so now I have to
spin my wheels fourteen years later to try to find
the answers. Now, I think that Casey at one time
may have been named as a suspect quote unquote, but
they cleared him pretty quickly. Now, Casey did tell me
that they did interview interrogate him hard. I mean he
literally said that they just came at him, I mean,
(14:17):
and they were very combative, telling him he knew it,
he knew they knew he had something to do with that.
He knew something. So but anyway, it would be nice
if you know they should have some suspects. We'll be
right back until we can find someone else who knew Casey.
(14:41):
Danielle will have to help us understand Casey and Rebecca's relationship,
which seems more and more complicated the more we learn.
They I think went out for over a year. I mean,
he was obsessed with her. He wrote music about her, poems,
(15:03):
you know. Every now and then he would freak out.
He was very He's kind of controlling. And on our
way back to Mountain View in the car, Rebecca had
said we had she had mentioned Casey and she was like, Hey,
(15:23):
he wants to be my boyfriend, and you know she
didn't want that. So that was really strange that she
had said that after all the years and just not
getting anywhere. I don't know, Yeah, what do you think? Yeah?
(15:47):
And you were saying his dad wouldn't let you search
the land or he wouldn't like we were allowed to
search the land? No, which seems really weird. That's where
it happened. Yeah, and they're really good. But he's supposedly
really good friends with her and loved her, so right,
why wouldn't you let you search? Right? We've heard that
Casey's dad supposedly did not allow the land surrounding the
(16:10):
crime scene to be searched. Was there no search warrant?
And how much land are we talking here? Yeah? I
feel like we got a lot to do. So I
need the address for the Isra County assessor because I
have no is There county assessor. Let's see. So we
drive to Melbourne to get the tax records to find
out we're trying to find out I'll not need to
(16:31):
go to the park's office. But if we're trying to
find out who owns a piece of land, okay, well
that's the thing. They have the address I have, I
have it on that and there have been two different
addresses for it. So can you do it by cordinate me?
You know, I'm sorry. Okay. So it would be like
this area right here, does it have a house on it? Yes,
(16:56):
so there should be an right So where from this
is the property that you're looking for. It's sort of
behind it, so the house is behind it. The house
is spread by the road, and then it's like there's
some land behind it. Okay, so it's just the raw
land that you're asking. Yes, it's who owns it. That's
(17:19):
who owns that's who owns the mobile too. How far
does his property? How far does that property line go?
He's got kind a bit of property there. Wow, it's
a lot. Okay, thank you very much. Back at the car,
we unroll the map from the assessor. So this is
the house. That's the trailer house, right, so look where's
where's Highway nine? Anyway, just for my own interest, I'm
(17:43):
like glad we saw that because he has a big
ass piece of land back there. I'm just curious to
see if there was a quicker way for Casey to
cut through, or anyone else to cut through. It's only
about four and a half miles in that cut through,
and it's a really well paved road. I found another
back road. There's a dirt road that starts out right
next to Sonic in Melbourne and comes out on Highway
(18:05):
fifty just under a mile from Casey's house. I drive
slowly down the dirt road, passed several farms and over
a rickety wooden bridge. It's about four and a half
miles from the Sonic to Casey's house, about ten minutes,
and I didn't pass one single car on the road.
I kind of can't let go the fact that Casey
(18:25):
could have left work that day, and again, since we're
trying to rule him out as a suspect, I just
want to explore every possibility for how he could have
gone between those two locations. One of the questions we've
been trying to answer was whether Rebecca's body was taken
straight to the dump site or kept somewhere else and moved.
So we take another look at the autopsy, reading through
(18:47):
the gory details of the kinds of insects that consumed
Rebecca's body makes me feel in a strange way like
I'm invading her privacy. But it's one of the only
pieces of solid physical evidence that we have access to
in this case. So we owe it to Rebecca to
leave no stone unturned, even if the details are stomach turning.
(19:10):
This is doctor Eric Merritt. He's a forensic entomologist. Most
of the time, and I'd say ninety nine percent of time.
It's a group called the blowflies, and these are the
green and blue bottleflies that hang around your garbage can
and if there's rotting meat, these are the first flies
to come to a body, whether it be a deer, rabbit,
(19:33):
or anything that dies. If you put it out, say
in the backyard, the first thing that come to him
within minutes will be blowflies. So what happens is as
soon as a person dies, they give off odors, okay,
and generally they come into the ears, no eyes, nose,
(19:56):
and mouth. That's their first area they come to and
lay their eggs. So within ten to fifteen minutes after
someone dies and they'll come in and they'll lay their eggs.
Within twelve to twenty four hours of dead bodies, and
once they lay their eggs in these maggots what we
call the eggs hatch into maggots or larvaew we call them.
(20:22):
And these things hatch from the eggs after twenty four
to forty eight hours, and they go through a number
of what we call stages or in stars, in stars
the scientific term. But they hatch, they molt, and they'll
be a bigger larvae, and then they'll mold and they'll
be a bigger larva. And so they grow at a
(20:44):
constant rate based on temperature. It was Arkansas, Indian summer.
During the week Rebecca's body was in the woods, the
temperature climbed a highs around eighty five degrees. So what
we do is when a person found like this body
I read your report where she had maggots won sixteenth
to one half inch. So the one half inch would
(21:07):
indicate that there's probably some late stage larvae that are
ready to migrate away from the body and go into
the soil and turn into what we call the resting
stage or the pupa, and then eventually they'll come out
as an adult. These are probably third instars. It goes
through three in stars, first, second, and third, and there's
(21:31):
certain characteristics of the larva that we can look at
and determine what stage they're in. When I saw that
half inch, that's about fourteen called the fourteen millimeters, and
that's about a third stage larvae. So it's based on
the normal development of a fly that I'm used to
(21:55):
that would be about a week old. Doctor Merritt explains
that while it's not an exact science, forensic entomology can
be one of the best ways to determine time of death.
I've heard, for example, someone talking about this case. They said, oh, well,
based on the maggots, they can get the time of
death down to like thirty minutes, And I didn't. I
from everything I know, that's not true. If you can
(22:15):
get the depth down to win a thirty minutes based
on magots, then you should be a suspect. But if
you can get better than anybody else generally by the
medical examiner or by the detectives and stuff like that,
and even the anthropologists, you can do better than they can.
So if you have a magets and you collect them,
(22:38):
and you know, we can identify them, and we can
do pretty darn close to when that person probably died,
but not thirty minutes or anything like that. Based on
my drive through the back roads, I estimate that someone
could have killed Rebecca and disposed of her body in
under an hour. All of the evidence points to the
fact that she was in the woods for a week
(22:59):
and that her body was put there within a few
hours after her death, not kept somewhere else. We'll be
right back. During our investigation, we've learned a lot about Jennifer, Chris, JB,
(23:23):
and Justin, but more than anyone else in this case,
Casey is an enigma. By all accounts, he was distraught
after Rebecca's death. He's the polar opposite of Justin, JB.
And Chris, who come across as tough. Casey is the
acoustic guitarist, strumming, sensitive musician who wrote poems to his girlfriend.
(23:45):
For several years after Rebecca's death, he traveled around the
country working various jobs. A few years ago he'd moved
back to Melbourne. His new wife is attractive, young and blonde,
just like Rebecca. She worked at Sonic too. They got married,
They had children. At least on the surf, Casey seemed
(24:07):
to find love and live happily ever after, the happy
ending that Rebecca never got. But what I can understand
is when everyone else in town was searching for the
girl he was madly in love with, Casey seemed to
be m I a. Casey is the only person we've
looked at so far who didn't help with the search.
I tracked down Casey's friend Patrick at the store where
(24:29):
he works. He's friendly and welcoming. When I tell him
I'm there to talk about Casey and Rebecca's murder, he
takes me into the back office. Casey's one of my
best friends. Yes, yeah, Casey. After the whole or dealer
and everything, of course, you know, he was still standing
out there at the trailer, which he hated. I ended
up talking to him and we let him move, actually
(24:51):
move in with me and my wife, and he stayed
with us for I don't know how long long time.
I mean, I still remember that entire day. I was
actually in town getting We had one of our lug
nut bolts on our tire break off. We had to
get it fixed, heard about it and everything. But I
remember right after that all happened and everything else I
heard about it. I remember Casey and them, saying that
(25:14):
he had nothing out with laring to them because we
were going We used to have a huge group of
saw people Every Wednesday, we'd go out to Larens and
have this Halo night where we would bring TVs and
xboxes to play. After I heard about everything else, of
course Casey was distraught, and while he was I guess
being interviewed and everything else, I went around town to
the different gas stations and stuff, asking and saying, hey,
(25:36):
do you have any cameras pointing towards the road, trying
to verify his story everything, And I guess the Possum
trot or he used to be paulsing Trot has some
cameras out there and which we informed the police about.
And then I guess that's one of the cameras they
found when you guys when he went to Larenz. Do
you know what he was doing that night that I
don't that I don't so back then, which I don't
(26:02):
know if it's changed now as far as fight with Larying,
then we've all they've all had whole house slipped forward.
But back then, you know, they were big into marijuana.
Stuff like that smoked marijuana and that was their big things.
So I imagine if they got together, that's probably what
they were doing that night, which I guess they probably were,
because I guess whenever Casey did the light detector and
tests stuff like that, I guess there were some issues.
If you smoke marijuana so far before you take one,
(26:25):
they say you can mess up the tests or something.
I called a polygraph examiner and asked if marijuana can
make you fail a light detector test. He said, without
a doubt, marijuana cannot make you pass or fail. What
was their relationship like his and Becca's far as a
no good? I mean, I do know they had some
(26:45):
issues as far as, like, you know, staying together, because
I guess there were some other guys that it was
in a relationship before Casey and you know, so there
would be breaks up, breakups and stuff like that to
where she would go back with one of them. But
far as I know, there at the end they were
doing great. He was pretty distraught about it. I mean,
like I said, for a long time and when we
lived with us, he was he was scared to even
be at the house by himself, you know, because he
(27:06):
didn't know what or who happened to her. Of course,
you know, of course we all had our suspicions about
some certain individuals out of the mountain view and everything.
But like I said, he didn't of course, you know
what if they come after me, you know what if
they have any things like that. So he was always
bearing not I remember first couple of nights and stuff.
For the first couple of weeks that he actually stayed
(27:28):
with us, he wouldn't go in the trailer. If we
were gone, like a convas with something, we'd come back.
I would go into the trailer, check everything, make sure
you know, no one's hiding out of there. What happened
to the trailer? Ever? Is it still there that he
lives in it now? Back in he didn't live there
for like I said, a couple of years. At least
his dad still live there. Then I guess his grandpa
(27:49):
ended up going into like some top of nursing home
or something. So his dad moved out of the trailer,
moved in with moved into his panpa's the place. Just
to clarify, Casey is living in the house that his
girlfriend was murdered in. Well, then, Casey I believed that
the times actually there's a cabin on the same property
is down all he was standing living down there for
a little while and he ended up being his wife
(28:11):
that he's with now, Hannah. And then after they started
getting married and they found out theory and I have
a kid, they moved into the trailer last living ever since.
What sort of Casey theory or your theory about who
did it? So? I'm not real good with names. I
don't remember names. It's hard hard to remember them. But
of course there was one of my old bosses, what
(28:35):
was her name, female, Jennifer, Yes, yes, Jennifer. And there
was one other, but I didn't know that individual. I
guess it was from what I understand was her dealer
at the time. Sounds like Patrick is just regurgitating all
the rumors. So what is Casey's theory? You know? I
think about it, especially whenever I see stuff on Facebook
(28:56):
about it and stuff like that. I remember about a
year ago, year and a half, two years ago. I
don't seem like I was that long. I saw the
thing pop up on Facebook where they talk about how
they had a lot more leads about they heard some
college students and stuff over and it was our college
talking and stuff talking about them committing the crowd and everything.
So I was hoping. I think, okay, well great, you
(29:17):
know it's finally going to again too. I was really
you know, but and then just got off nothing. Yeah,
i'd heard, and everyone's related and everybody. It's just a
tough it's difficult to untangle. I've never once thought Casey right,
never once, just because I've been friends with him so long.
But almost seemed like the person had been at the
(29:39):
house before, because I knew where everything was at cleaning supplies,
you know, things like that using the watcher. It just
seems odd to me that someone feel comfortable enough to
stay there at the house end that much time. Thank
you very much. It was one number, and yeah, I
feel think of anything. Family, I'm glad to go to
somebody's actually looking at it. Yeah, I'm on I'll connect
on Facebook. I'm on Facebook too, and we do like
updates and stuff. But sure, Yeah, I met Casey when
(30:08):
he was with Rebecca. I think we're at Tiffany's graduation
in Fabelle and all my kids were there and Casey
came with Rebecca, and so I met him there. Other
than that, I don't think I had met him before.
I don't remember because it was just you know, yeah,
(30:29):
it was I was involved with Tiffany, and but there
were photographs and I just don't I don't remember having
an impression of them. Rebecca's father didn't know Casey very well.
They only met once. I mean, did you see him
at all that week? No, not that I recall. But
you have to remember that I didn't know some of
(30:51):
these people. I would be introduced to some people and
then I could place them, but there was there were
there were so many people out there that were helping
that I was introduced to. And of course we were
you know, you're just you have tunnel vision. You're just
not looking at Hey, this person over here could be
(31:12):
the killer. I'm pretty sure that Justin was there, and
I think Justin was there with his new girlfriend who
was pregnant, and I believe I got introduced to her.
And aside from that, we just went off looking and searching.
(31:33):
So nothing, nothing made any sense. But then then everything's gray.
I don't know, you know, I know, Casey got back
in the trailer and the things were unlocked. It was
left in a state where somebody could come in and out.
But if these other state police guys came, they would
(31:55):
have known enough to to, you know, kind of set
up a perimeter around it or something where people couldn't
be there. But and why they didn't, I don't know.
It could be that it was because the jurisdiction is
set up initially that it's the sheriff's department, and that
at some point it gets turned over to the state
Police at the request of the sheriff's department, And how
(32:19):
much time went by until that happened could have been days.
According to multiple sources, Casey walked in and out of
the crime scene. Former Izard County Sheriff Joe Martz talked
to Ak Barnes in twenty sixteen about the crime scene.
He was open about the fact that the local sheriff's
office was overwhelmed. He said that investigators spent thirteen hours
(32:41):
inside the house bagging evidence, so many that he had
to go to Miller's grocery store to get more paper
bags and boxes to send to the state crime lab.
He said that they took hundreds of items from the
trailer and turned the case over to the Arkansas State Police.
Larry has also heard the rumors that Casey went home
at some point before returning to the crime scene on
(33:01):
Tuesday with the police. I wonder where this rumor originated.
I'm pretty sure Danielle told me her mom called the police.
Have to look back at everything to make sure. But
also there was a note that her mom had gotten
a call from Casey that was alarming about the stuff
being in the house, but she wasn't. Her stuff was there,
but she wasn't, So I guess I'm just wondering, was
(33:22):
that while the police were there or could that have
been If that was before the police got there, then
that means that he went home before the police got there,
and that would conflict with the story he told the
police where heard the two stories that he that he
went home and actually went into the trailer before anybody
knew anything. And I don't know, if you can't talk
to him, you can't pin it down now, he told
(33:45):
he called either Danielle or her mother, and he also
just said, aple of people, it's on it. Yeah. So
that's what we're working on out because as soon as
we can get someone saying, as soon as we have
someone nailing down saying that he said that, I mean
that totally the reason in my opinion, he was written
(34:06):
off as his suspects early is because of the altby.
He supposedly had this alby and he was gone the
whole night and multiple witnesses and all this. So if
we can show that he there's a hole in that,
then I mean there's something weird about his story no
matter what. So yeah, and even the various descriptions of
what the trailer was like, I have something in writing
(34:30):
that one of the loustters that came in later said
the thing was just what was his expression? Not disheveled,
it was can't think of the term, but it was
a mess. And then you have others that said that said, well,
I didn't notice anything, So I can't believe the case
(34:52):
He would have could have gone there and have Rebecca's
car there perse there obviously some other things were there
that we know now, and he didn't that something was wrong,
and then all the other things that you know about
just doesn't make any sense. Casey shut down, and Casey
(35:17):
to me still has to be one of the primary suspects.
And the fact that he won't come forward and spend
time really talking to people and going through things and
showing his innocence and answering questions, a lot of the
answers that I've seen in written form, answers that I've
seen in and just responses he's given other people conflict.
(35:40):
According to Larry, the events after Rebecca went missing or
a blur. Remember George Jared described him taping up Rebecca's
missing poster over road signs on the Highway. It's obvious
that he was devastated by Rebecca's death. Both Patrick and
George mentioned the fact that Casey was distraught after Rebecca's murder.
(36:01):
And we know that trauma can make people behave irrationally.
We now know that justin, Jennifer, Chris and JB were
all around, all of them searched for Rebecca, all of
them except Casey. Now it's just becoming a glowing red flag.
Every single person. Chris and these guys have so much
(36:24):
to lose if they say the wrong thing. And they're
still cooperating, right, all these guys. The one that's not
is Casey. We did get to one of Casey's friends,
but I really think it's the Sonic people who hold
the key to if or when or how Casey may
have gone home on Monday. Nobody seems to know shit
about Casey, who's in this friend group. By the way,
they didn't even really know Rebecca was Datingum. And he's like,
(36:45):
I didn't know that guy. I think I met him once.
And Chris is like, you know, I didn't know where
that cat. I didn't even know where that place was.
I'd never been there, told the police I'd never been there.
And that's like a bold statement. He's like, take my
DNA because I've never been there. None of these people
went to that cabin. Not only that, but they just
don't look like people that would mesh at all. Because
(37:06):
we were kind of talking about it, Casey's like, he's
in a band, he's kind of he was a little
bit more. He was a hipstery hipstory dude. You know,
like smoke Pot went to Larren's house of smoke pot,
like playing a band, Like you said, yeah, pot was
the drug of choice rather than meth, and like you
know what I mean, Yeah, yeah, surely, yeah, Casey, definitely. Yeah.
(37:27):
They just didn't mix. They just didn't. They were in
different cities, different groups of people. This whole rumor that
they were all partying at that house just never happened.
That never happened. As far as I know, Casey's not
even real, right, Yeah, he could just be a fake
Facebook account, you know, like you're right, there's there's literally
(37:48):
it's like a ghost hound. Then all of a sudden,
our ghost appears. Casey sends me a Facebook message. He
tells me he doesn't want to talk and that he
has a family he needs to protect. He declines to
speak with me and makes it clear that the only
people he will with moving forward are the police. It
looks like if we're going to find out more about Casey,
(38:11):
it's not going to be from him. Oh yeah, no, listen,
it would because we've heard obviously, like we've heard some
of these names. I'm sure in some rumors. But if
the person who actually heard people talking about it is yeah,
that's really valuable. And I mean, no, listen, I really
(38:35):
really appreciate. I mean I wonder, I mean, did did
Casey have any theories about who did it? Over the years? Yeah,
because that's been that has actually been one of the
things that struck us about it, that the you know,
that place is so remote, you know what I mean,
It's like, who would know who'd be able to know
that it was there? That's been kind of a from
(38:56):
the beginning, you know. All right, thank you so much.
All right, thanks bye. Okay, that was extremely interesting. This
is Casey's best friend. Interesting for reasons other than you know,
(39:16):
it's not like, oh he thinks he did it. No,
it's this is his best friend. He basically lived in
that house at the time, lived in that trailer. You know,
he was there all the time. I was very I
wanted to ask him way more questions, but he was
kind of like kind of had to go. And anyway,
he basically he works around town. He is a coworker
(39:36):
who he said, this guy said he heard the other
day about the case getting reopened, so that's obviously through
our stuff, and he was talking about it with the
co worker, and the co worker sort of said that
he heard it a party, that it was a group
of people who did it, and was given details and things.
But interestingly, he was out of town for like three
(39:58):
days during the murder. He was working on a tugboat,
I think, he said. But when he got back he
said Casey was staying with his sister. And he also
said that Casey cried in his arms about it, and
you know, it was just all upset, right, But he said,
(40:20):
you know, really it really got to me. That cabin
so remote, nobody knows where the hell that place is.
You know. He was literally saying that, and he goes,
I straight out asked him, did you do it? He said,
friend of friend, did you do it? And then he
kind of went off and he goes, of course he
was at work, so blah blah. He just kind of
went off. But I'm thinking, like, like you can feel
the wheels turning. He said, they were still really close,
(40:41):
but like because Casey had a girlfriend, see, and everyone
in Casey's life refers to Rebecca as the girlfriend, but
everyone in Rebecca's life refers to Casey's just like some
random guy who's like around and he's like, well no,
He's like he it was just really painful, and I'm sorry.
If your girlfriend got fucking murdered in your house, You're
(41:04):
gonna solve it. You're gonna We're gonna be like us
times one hundred on steroids. You're gonna be like, I'm
gonna solve this. I'm gonna find out who did this
in my house, who came into my house and killed
my girlfriend. You're not gonna be fired up. I mean,
I get you go through Peter Greek. But after a while,
you notice everyone else we've spoken to Chris JB. Everyone
(41:25):
has theories or at least an idea of what even
if if they don't know. They sit there and say,
you know, I've thought about it for countless hours. It's
haunted me. And yet this is Casey's best friend saying, well, no,
I kind of wait for him to bring it up. No,
he didn't really have any theory. You're gonna tell me.
I mean, if it were me and it was my boyfriend,
(41:45):
I would have a murder board in my house, and
I would probably like I'd be like the guy in
the Vanishing, you know who, like took a hotel room
and put red strings everywhere. I do think that there
are people who feature in this tale who may have
at one point bragged about it or may have known
people because just because they were either because they're trying
to look hard and tough. I could even see Jennifer,
even though even if she had nothing to do with it,
(42:08):
She's got this hard bitch image, do you know what
I mean? So I can see her plan. I don't
see a downside to kind of I see why, I
see why that would happen. I'm not saying it did,
but I'm just saying when he told me, he asked
his friend and then he on his own brought up
the remoteness of that location. Of course he was at work.
Is not really what you want to hear. You want
to hear. There's no way im for could have done that.
(42:30):
You know, he doesn't have it and he never would
have hurt anybody, not while he was at work. Oh Catherine,
here's the other thing that really bothers me about this
whole investigation has since to start. In part of your
victimology profile, you're supposed to interview the people closest to
the victim. And I don't know if the police talk
to Danielle or and by the way, she's a trauma victim,
(42:51):
so like at the time it should have been done
in a way like a very sensitive you know, you
gotta be really careful with trauma victims, and you know
this is the person that your best Okay, And I'm
just not sure that they ever. Don't think they ever
got anything about the temper or you know, any of
these things about Casey. I just I don't even know
(43:13):
if they ever I don't know if they questioned her,
I don't know. I'm Katherine Townsend and this is Helen Gone.
(43:40):
Helen Gone is a joint production between How Stuff Works
in School of Humans. It is written and recorded by me,
Catherine Townsend. Taylor Church is our producer and story editor.
Audio editing and designed by Jonathan Sleeve, mix engineer Glenn
Mattulo audio mixing and love by Tunewelders. Executive producers Brandon
(44:01):
Barr and Else Crowley for School of Humans and Connell
Byrne and Bryant for How Stuff Works. Our field producer
is James Morrison. Our researcher is Sandy Klosterman. Themon original
score by Ben Solee available wherever you get your music.
To dig into the investigation, please visit helengonepodcast dot com
(44:25):
or follow us on social media. School of Humans
School of Humans. Hey, man, what's up. Hey, how's it going.
It's going okay. A guy just called me and said
we're in a fight against God and Satan and demonic entities,
and it was just insane, insane. After a long week
(00:31):
of writing an investigation, I'm very ready to get home,
and as per usual in the Ozarks, I have no
cell reception. But this time, when I get back into range,
my phone has one hundred miscalls and text messages. One
of them is Chris's sister. So here's what happened. I
hear that Chris has been arrested. It turns out that
he was arrested for making terroristic threats and for burglary.
(00:54):
That's what I hear. Even though I don't think Chris
had anything to do with the murder of Rebecca, he
is not doing himself any favors by visiting her ex
boyfriend's house. Chris's kids are getting tech, according to the sisters,
saying that you know your dad's a killer, and it's
just awful. This is an awful situation. In September of
(01:23):
two thousand and four, twenty two year old Rebecca Gould
was brutally murdered in a remote area of the Arkansas Ozarks.
Fourteen years later, her killer is still out there. I've
come back to Mountain View with one mission to get
justice for Rebecca. I'm Catherine Townsend and this is Helen Gone.
(01:54):
The story we heard from the police is that Chris
went over to Justin's house and he told him if
he talks, he'll kill him. That's not what happened. Chris
and his friend happened to be over Justin's house because
of was had a friendship with Justin's wife or whatever,
and they were over there to see her. And you know,
then Justin came home and I'm sure because of the connection.
(02:15):
I'm sure there were words exchanged about the case because
they haven't seen each other in a long time. But
that wasn't the cause of him going over there at all.
Tommy went over there, not Chris. We don't know what
went down behind closed doors. It all sounds very fishy
that that Chris is the only one with charges against him,
and he gets charged with burglary, not because he took anything,
but because if you're at someone's house without permission, you
(02:36):
can get charged with burglary. I think it's very fishy
also that A headline came out in the paper saying
suspect in two thousand and four murder as if you know,
it just looks like they're trying to throw it on
Chris once again. It feels like that. It really does
extremely guilty right now? Is there overall where Chris did
do it? No? No, I mean I do and he
(03:01):
doesn't help himself. Wait, so when did this actually happen?
I don't know. The article got posted yesterday, but from
what I from what I hear, it was a few
days ago. I'm trying to I'm getting the affiday but
now and figuring out when it happened and getting all
the details. Well, I mean, where the case right now?
That's it. Dennis told Chris's sister that all the evidence
(03:25):
in the case points to Chris and that he wants
to get this case slid before he's retired. And he said,
all the evidence points to Chris. Your family's trash and yeah,
I mean that's that's what's on. You said that to her.
I believe her. So that's what's going on. But they
(03:46):
don't blame us. The good the good news from that
is even Chris and his sister don't blame they know,
like they're calling us and trying to help, so get
this right. The sister's trying to bail him out, and
she's like, Chris keeps saying, and this is so Chris,
my word is my bond. I don't need a lawyer.
I've got my word. And I'm like, you know, you
might not want to get him lawyer, and she said,
I'm trying to get him a lawyer. We don't have
(04:08):
any money, Chris. This is like the fifth job. Chris
is lost because these guys keep arresting him. You know,
she said, Now he's not blameless in this. Chris does
some really dumb stuff. You know, he's getting himself in trouble.
Now that Chris is in jail, it is even more
vital that we find Rebecca's killer. I reached out to
Casey at the beginning of my investigation and he hasn't
(04:29):
gotten back to me yet, even though he's the one
person who's been officially ruled out as a suspect by
the police. Now I want to find out if his
AWLIBI is as air tight as they claim it is.
I still have hope. I mean, maybe I'm wrong and
maybe and look if he doesn't. If he doesn't get
back to us ever, maybe it will come to knock
it on his door. But like, I still have some
(04:49):
hope that he might get in touch with us. Everyone
said how much he loved her and what a good
guy was. There's that topics Did you see that topics
port about him, and it says, sorry, I met this
guy named Casey something and he used to sing in
a band. Anyone know who I'm talking about? Yeah, And
then and then everybody says, well, this one says, fairly
(05:11):
decent guy. I think he works at Melbourne Sonic. He's
really sweet. He's been done wrong by the past. Yeah,
it's definitely haunted him. It's definitely hot. It seems to
have really haunted him, and now he seems to be
happy and settled and everything. But it's really it's also
really crazy because you think about it and you're like,
(05:31):
she should have all those things. She should have a
husband and a baby, and you know, she should have
the opportunity to be an aunt to her sister's kids
and you know, all those things, and like she doesn't
have any of those things now. But then eventually it's
gonna be like, look, dude, like you say, you love
this girl. You know, she was so important to you,
and like she got murdered brutally, you know something. And
if he has nothing to hide, he should be willing
(05:53):
to talk about it because that was his friend and
he loved her and you know, and he should want
to find who did this. Not only that, but I
mean his house was destroyed. I kissed if somebody murdered
somebody in my house. So we go back to the
timeline and what we know of September twentieth, two thousand
(06:16):
and four. Casey told police that after Rebecca dropped him
off at work in the morning, he was at work
all day until his shift ended. Then he went to
the movies and stayed out with his friends that whole night.
But some people in town have heard a different story.
Remember Alicia, she was the plumber's daughter. Her husband was
the one who owned the sonic where both Casey and
(06:37):
Rebecca worked. She were saying, like at his place, I
thank when she would come up from school, but not
you know, she wasn't It wasn't been a full time
thing that she was there all the time. But I
mean they were together quite a bit. They always worked together.
I know on that particular day. It was weird day
(06:58):
that she had brought him to work and dropped him
off that day. I don't know why. I think maybe
because she was up on school, she was at working.
I'm not sure she wasn't off on break or something,
but she had dropped him off for at sonics that morning.
That was the last fan that he saw her. The
very fact. They said that he had went, that he
(07:18):
lest work, and I guess Rebecca wasn't supposed to be there.
She was supposed to be leaving to go back to Fayetteville.
And so he left work with a friend and they
actually went out to the movies and you know, hung
out that night, and he said he didn't return home,
you know, till really late and into the next morning.
I think they said he was there for the whole
(07:40):
entire shift that day, and that he left work with
that friend of his, and that they were supposed to
go out to a movie. Or what she's saying matches
the story that was reported in the papers and what
I've heard from others. Casey was at work all day
and out with his friends all night. He was really
(08:01):
shook up. He seemed like it after you know, they
don't want to Reaca about what I found odd was
he said that he went back to the house and
that he couldn't tell anything that happened there, but that
her stuff was still there and her belongings. And I
just think that's not accurate, because you know, they said
(08:24):
that you could physically tell something happened, and how could
you go into your own home and not notice that
something happened there, or to how to say that you
don't noticed that something happened. I just I don't understand that.
Do you think that your ex husband could help us
with the records of who was working at Sonic that day? Yeah? Probably?
(08:47):
All right? So Licia unloads some new information I haven't
heard before. She said that Casey may have stopped at
home at some point before he went there with the
police on Tuesday. Your call has been forwarded to an
(09:08):
automated voice messaging system. He's not available at the Tell him.
Please record your message. When you've finished recording, you may
hang up form Alicia's husband, Joey isn't calling us back.
Sometimes people don't want to get involved because they're hiding something.
Other times, especially in this case, it can be because
(09:29):
they are scared. George has proven to be a valuable
member of our team. He's the only one who was
there at the time reporting on the murder and is
emotionally and physically removed enough to give me some real answers.
What do you think about Casey? Now? I don't know.
He talked to me several times, initially after her body
(09:53):
was found, and then I contacted his wife, his now wife,
probably in twenty sixteen. I called her at work and
she's like, oh, because I wanted to talk to him,
you know, because I want to to kind of update
the case, and I wanted to get dive into some
more details because, like you said, it's been you know,
at that time, it had been twelve years. I mean,
(10:14):
you're getting to the point where it doesn't matter if
you're still interviewing people. This is a cold case, and
you never know when one little thing will break in
a case. One story runs, one rumor starts, and then
all of a sudden, everything changes. So I just wanted
to talk to him, and so I called her, and
she was really nice, very nice, very friendly, gave me
(10:38):
her phone number and his phone number, and I tried
to contact him and he would not talk to me. Well,
then I try to contact her, and she wouldn't contact
me back, and she had told me. She goes, oh,
he'd love to talk to you. But then so then
I finally contacted her at work again and I said, hey,
I've been trying to get ahold of you in casey
and I haven't get hold of you. Guys, she goes, oh,
(10:59):
he doesn't want to talk about it. He doesn't think
it'll do him any good to talk to you. And
I said, well, that may be true. I mean, I'm
just a journal but I would like to talk to him.
You know, the story is, you know, she went and
dropped him off at work, and then she went to
the Possum Trot convenience store, got a couple of things,
and then left went back to his house, and then
somewhere sometime during the morning she died. Well, then he
(11:20):
got off work and then he went to it stayed
at night at a friend's house, and then went straight
to work the next day. So he never returned to
his house to see the full new clothes and all
this other stuff. Well, then I heard a separate story
that he did go home the next morning to get
some fresh clothes for work, and so I just you know,
that's a kind of a big detail. It's a big detail.
So I just wanted to know. And you know, he
(11:42):
obviously didn't want to talk about it, and to this
day I have not spoke to him about it. I
tried to, but he just doesn't want to talk. Turns
out he's heard the same thing we heard that at
some point before the police arrived on Tuesday, Casey went
home to change shirts. Even if her car was just
still there, he still wouldn't have left, you know, to
go to a friend's house, do you know what I mean.
(12:03):
It never made sense to me that he there. Yeah,
everything was there. I mean, even if you wanted to assume,
let's say her car was there. Let's say he comes
home the next morning, sees her car there. Maybe another
friend came and picked her up, went and stayed the night,
you know, with another friend. Something happened to you know,
she was supposed to pick her sister up. Maybe the
arrangement changed. She wouldn't have left her purse. In his defense,
(12:27):
to this degree, we don't know for certain that he
returned to the house. That it's it's just again a rumor.
When you talk to Casey, what did he seem like
when you seem really emotional upset. He seemed really distant,
like you could tell that there was a shock factor
with him. And I was actually at the Sheriff's department
(12:48):
when they brought him in for questioning one time, and
the family was there, and I mean there was fire
in a lot of those people's eyes. And actually one
of Rebecca's ex boyfriends, Justin, he was there and he
started like just tears started coming down his face and
he was really angry. It looked like just watching the
police lead him into the Sheriff's department. Considering that we
(13:09):
now know Rebecca and Justin saw each other just a
week before her death, I can't imagine the tension inside
that police station. So when I talked to him, he
seemed shocked. I talked to him maybe twice after that,
and he just very quiet, very soft spoken. You know
he you know, I suspect he probably knows some things,
(13:34):
but you know, I can't He won't talk to me,
so I can't prove it. So I might be scared.
He may be scared. That's that's a very viable possibility.
Being like a CUB reporter at the time, I made
some mistakes because he did talk to me after the fact,
and I could have found these details out immediately. All
I had to do was ask the questions and guess
(13:54):
what didn't ask questions, And so now I have to
spin my wheels fourteen years later to try to find
the answers. Now, I think that Casey at one time
may have been named as a suspect quote unquote, but
they cleared him pretty quickly. Now, Casey did tell me
that they did interview interrogate him hard. I mean he
literally said that they just came at him, I mean,
(14:17):
and they were very combative, telling him he knew it,
he knew they knew he had something to do with that.
He knew something. So but anyway, it would be nice
if you know they should have some suspects. We'll be
right back until we can find someone else who knew Casey.
(14:41):
Danielle will have to help us understand Casey and Rebecca's relationship,
which seems more and more complicated the more we learn.
They I think went out for over a year. I mean,
he was obsessed with her. He wrote music about her, poems,
(15:03):
you know. Every now and then he would freak out.
He was very He's kind of controlling. And on our
way back to Mountain View in the car, Rebecca had
said we had she had mentioned Casey and she was like, Hey,
(15:23):
he wants to be my boyfriend, and you know she
didn't want that. So that was really strange that she
had said that after all the years and just not
getting anywhere. I don't know, Yeah, what do you think? Yeah?
(15:47):
And you were saying his dad wouldn't let you search
the land or he wouldn't like we were allowed to
search the land? No, which seems really weird. That's where
it happened. Yeah, and they're really good. But he's supposedly
really good friends with her and loved her, so right,
why wouldn't you let you search? Right? We've heard that
Casey's dad supposedly did not allow the land surrounding the
(16:10):
crime scene to be searched. Was there no search warrant?
And how much land are we talking here? Yeah? I
feel like we got a lot to do. So I
need the address for the Isra County assessor because I
have no is There county assessor. Let's see. So we
drive to Melbourne to get the tax records to find
out we're trying to find out I'll not need to
(16:31):
go to the park's office. But if we're trying to
find out who owns a piece of land, okay, well
that's the thing. They have the address I have, I
have it on that and there have been two different
addresses for it. So can you do it by cordinate me?
You know, I'm sorry. Okay. So it would be like
this area right here, does it have a house on it? Yes,
(16:56):
so there should be an right So where from this
is the property that you're looking for. It's sort of
behind it, so the house is behind it. The house
is spread by the road, and then it's like there's
some land behind it. Okay, so it's just the raw
land that you're asking. Yes, it's who owns it. That's
(17:19):
who owns that's who owns the mobile too. How far
does his property? How far does that property line go?
He's got kind a bit of property there. Wow, it's
a lot. Okay, thank you very much. Back at the car,
we unroll the map from the assessor. So this is
the house. That's the trailer house, right, so look where's
where's Highway nine? Anyway, just for my own interest, I'm
(17:43):
like glad we saw that because he has a big
ass piece of land back there. I'm just curious to
see if there was a quicker way for Casey to
cut through, or anyone else to cut through. It's only
about four and a half miles in that cut through,
and it's a really well paved road. I found another
back road. There's a dirt road that starts out right
next to Sonic in Melbourne and comes out on Highway
(18:05):
fifty just under a mile from Casey's house. I drive
slowly down the dirt road, passed several farms and over
a rickety wooden bridge. It's about four and a half
miles from the Sonic to Casey's house, about ten minutes,
and I didn't pass one single car on the road.
I kind of can't let go the fact that Casey
(18:25):
could have left work that day, and again, since we're
trying to rule him out as a suspect, I just
want to explore every possibility for how he could have
gone between those two locations. One of the questions we've
been trying to answer was whether Rebecca's body was taken
straight to the dump site or kept somewhere else and moved.
So we take another look at the autopsy, reading through
(18:47):
the gory details of the kinds of insects that consumed
Rebecca's body makes me feel in a strange way like
I'm invading her privacy. But it's one of the only
pieces of solid physical evidence that we have access to
in this case. So we owe it to Rebecca to
leave no stone unturned, even if the details are stomach turning.
(19:10):
This is doctor Eric Merritt. He's a forensic entomologist. Most
of the time, and I'd say ninety nine percent of time.
It's a group called the blowflies, and these are the
green and blue bottleflies that hang around your garbage can
and if there's rotting meat, these are the first flies
to come to a body, whether it be a deer, rabbit,
(19:33):
or anything that dies. If you put it out, say
in the backyard, the first thing that come to him
within minutes will be blowflies. So what happens is as
soon as a person dies, they give off odors, okay,
and generally they come into the ears, no eyes, nose,
(19:56):
and mouth. That's their first area they come to and
lay their eggs. So within ten to fifteen minutes after
someone dies and they'll come in and they'll lay their eggs.
Within twelve to twenty four hours of dead bodies, and
once they lay their eggs in these maggots what we
call the eggs hatch into maggots or larvaew we call them.
(20:22):
And these things hatch from the eggs after twenty four
to forty eight hours, and they go through a number
of what we call stages or in stars, in stars
the scientific term. But they hatch, they molt, and they'll
be a bigger larvae, and then they'll mold and they'll
be a bigger larva. And so they grow at a
(20:44):
constant rate based on temperature. It was Arkansas, Indian summer.
During the week Rebecca's body was in the woods, the
temperature climbed a highs around eighty five degrees. So what
we do is when a person found like this body
I read your report where she had maggots won sixteenth
to one half inch. So the one half inch would
(21:07):
indicate that there's probably some late stage larvae that are
ready to migrate away from the body and go into
the soil and turn into what we call the resting
stage or the pupa, and then eventually they'll come out
as an adult. These are probably third instars. It goes
through three in stars, first, second, and third, and there's
(21:31):
certain characteristics of the larva that we can look at
and determine what stage they're in. When I saw that
half inch, that's about fourteen called the fourteen millimeters, and
that's about a third stage larvae. So it's based on
the normal development of a fly that I'm used to
(21:55):
that would be about a week old. Doctor Merritt explains
that while it's not an exact science, forensic entomology can
be one of the best ways to determine time of death.
I've heard, for example, someone talking about this case. They said, oh, well,
based on the maggots, they can get the time of
death down to like thirty minutes, And I didn't. I
from everything I know, that's not true. If you can
(22:15):
get the depth down to win a thirty minutes based
on magots, then you should be a suspect. But if
you can get better than anybody else generally by the
medical examiner or by the detectives and stuff like that,
and even the anthropologists, you can do better than they can.
So if you have a magets and you collect them,
(22:38):
and you know, we can identify them, and we can
do pretty darn close to when that person probably died,
but not thirty minutes or anything like that. Based on
my drive through the back roads, I estimate that someone
could have killed Rebecca and disposed of her body in
under an hour. All of the evidence points to the
fact that she was in the woods for a week
(22:59):
and that her body was put there within a few
hours after her death, not kept somewhere else. We'll be
right back. During our investigation, we've learned a lot about Jennifer, Chris, JB,
(23:23):
and Justin, but more than anyone else in this case,
Casey is an enigma. By all accounts, he was distraught
after Rebecca's death. He's the polar opposite of Justin, JB.
And Chris, who come across as tough. Casey is the
acoustic guitarist, strumming, sensitive musician who wrote poems to his girlfriend.
(23:45):
For several years after Rebecca's death, he traveled around the
country working various jobs. A few years ago he'd moved
back to Melbourne. His new wife is attractive, young and blonde,
just like Rebecca. She worked at Sonic too. They got married,
They had children. At least on the surf, Casey seemed
(24:07):
to find love and live happily ever after, the happy
ending that Rebecca never got. But what I can understand
is when everyone else in town was searching for the
girl he was madly in love with, Casey seemed to
be m I a. Casey is the only person we've
looked at so far who didn't help with the search.
I tracked down Casey's friend Patrick at the store where
(24:29):
he works. He's friendly and welcoming. When I tell him
I'm there to talk about Casey and Rebecca's murder, he
takes me into the back office. Casey's one of my
best friends. Yes, yeah, Casey. After the whole or dealer
and everything, of course, you know, he was still standing
out there at the trailer, which he hated. I ended
up talking to him and we let him move, actually
(24:51):
move in with me and my wife, and he stayed
with us for I don't know how long long time.
I mean, I still remember that entire day. I was
actually in town getting We had one of our lug
nut bolts on our tire break off. We had to
get it fixed, heard about it and everything. But I
remember right after that all happened and everything else I
heard about it. I remember Casey and them, saying that
(25:14):
he had nothing out with laring to them because we
were going We used to have a huge group of
saw people Every Wednesday, we'd go out to Larens and
have this Halo night where we would bring TVs and
xboxes to play. After I heard about everything else, of
course Casey was distraught, and while he was I guess
being interviewed and everything else, I went around town to
the different gas stations and stuff, asking and saying, hey,
(25:36):
do you have any cameras pointing towards the road, trying
to verify his story everything, And I guess the Possum
trot or he used to be paulsing Trot has some
cameras out there and which we informed the police about.
And then I guess that's one of the cameras they
found when you guys when he went to Larenz. Do
you know what he was doing that night that I
don't that I don't so back then, which I don't
(26:02):
know if it's changed now as far as fight with Larying,
then we've all they've all had whole house slipped forward.
But back then, you know, they were big into marijuana.
Stuff like that smoked marijuana and that was their big things.
So I imagine if they got together, that's probably what
they were doing that night, which I guess they probably were,
because I guess whenever Casey did the light detector and
tests stuff like that, I guess there were some issues.
If you smoke marijuana so far before you take one,
(26:25):
they say you can mess up the tests or something.
I called a polygraph examiner and asked if marijuana can
make you fail a light detector test. He said, without
a doubt, marijuana cannot make you pass or fail. What
was their relationship like his and Becca's far as a
no good? I mean, I do know they had some
(26:45):
issues as far as, like, you know, staying together, because
I guess there were some other guys that it was
in a relationship before Casey and you know, so there
would be breaks up, breakups and stuff like that to
where she would go back with one of them. But
far as I know, there at the end they were
doing great. He was pretty distraught about it. I mean,
like I said, for a long time and when we
lived with us, he was he was scared to even
be at the house by himself, you know, because he
(27:06):
didn't know what or who happened to her. Of course,
you know, of course we all had our suspicions about
some certain individuals out of the mountain view and everything.
But like I said, he didn't of course, you know
what if they come after me, you know what if
they have any things like that. So he was always
bearing not I remember first couple of nights and stuff.
For the first couple of weeks that he actually stayed
(27:28):
with us, he wouldn't go in the trailer. If we
were gone, like a convas with something, we'd come back.
I would go into the trailer, check everything, make sure
you know, no one's hiding out of there. What happened
to the trailer? Ever? Is it still there that he
lives in it now? Back in he didn't live there
for like I said, a couple of years. At least
his dad still live there. Then I guess his grandpa
(27:49):
ended up going into like some top of nursing home
or something. So his dad moved out of the trailer,
moved in with moved into his panpa's the place. Just
to clarify, Casey is living in the house that his
girlfriend was murdered in. Well, then, Casey I believed that
the times actually there's a cabin on the same property
is down all he was standing living down there for
a little while and he ended up being his wife
(28:11):
that he's with now, Hannah. And then after they started
getting married and they found out theory and I have
a kid, they moved into the trailer last living ever since.
What sort of Casey theory or your theory about who
did it? So? I'm not real good with names. I
don't remember names. It's hard hard to remember them. But
of course there was one of my old bosses, what
(28:35):
was her name, female, Jennifer, Yes, yes, Jennifer. And there
was one other, but I didn't know that individual. I
guess it was from what I understand was her dealer
at the time. Sounds like Patrick is just regurgitating all
the rumors. So what is Casey's theory? You know? I
think about it, especially whenever I see stuff on Facebook
(28:56):
about it and stuff like that. I remember about a
year ago, year and a half, two years ago. I
don't seem like I was that long. I saw the
thing pop up on Facebook where they talk about how
they had a lot more leads about they heard some
college students and stuff over and it was our college
talking and stuff talking about them committing the crowd and everything.
So I was hoping. I think, okay, well great, you
(29:17):
know it's finally going to again too. I was really
you know, but and then just got off nothing. Yeah,
i'd heard, and everyone's related and everybody. It's just a
tough it's difficult to untangle. I've never once thought Casey right,
never once, just because I've been friends with him so long.
But almost seemed like the person had been at the
(29:39):
house before, because I knew where everything was at cleaning supplies,
you know, things like that using the watcher. It just
seems odd to me that someone feel comfortable enough to
stay there at the house end that much time. Thank
you very much. It was one number, and yeah, I
feel think of anything. Family, I'm glad to go to
somebody's actually looking at it. Yeah, I'm on I'll connect
on Facebook. I'm on Facebook too, and we do like
updates and stuff. But sure, Yeah, I met Casey when
(30:08):
he was with Rebecca. I think we're at Tiffany's graduation
in Fabelle and all my kids were there and Casey
came with Rebecca, and so I met him there. Other
than that, I don't think I had met him before.
I don't remember because it was just you know, yeah,
(30:29):
it was I was involved with Tiffany, and but there
were photographs and I just don't I don't remember having
an impression of them. Rebecca's father didn't know Casey very well.
They only met once. I mean, did you see him
at all that week? No, not that I recall. But
you have to remember that I didn't know some of
(30:51):
these people. I would be introduced to some people and
then I could place them, but there was there were
there were so many people out there that were helping
that I was introduced to. And of course we were
you know, you're just you have tunnel vision. You're just
not looking at Hey, this person over here could be
(31:12):
the killer. I'm pretty sure that Justin was there, and
I think Justin was there with his new girlfriend who
was pregnant, and I believe I got introduced to her.
And aside from that, we just went off looking and searching.
(31:33):
So nothing, nothing made any sense. But then then everything's gray.
I don't know, you know, I know, Casey got back
in the trailer and the things were unlocked. It was
left in a state where somebody could come in and out.
But if these other state police guys came, they would
(31:55):
have known enough to to, you know, kind of set
up a perimeter around it or something where people couldn't
be there. But and why they didn't, I don't know.
It could be that it was because the jurisdiction is
set up initially that it's the sheriff's department, and that
at some point it gets turned over to the state
Police at the request of the sheriff's department, And how
(32:19):
much time went by until that happened could have been days.
According to multiple sources, Casey walked in and out of
the crime scene. Former Izard County Sheriff Joe Martz talked
to Ak Barnes in twenty sixteen about the crime scene.
He was open about the fact that the local sheriff's
office was overwhelmed. He said that investigators spent thirteen hours
(32:41):
inside the house bagging evidence, so many that he had
to go to Miller's grocery store to get more paper
bags and boxes to send to the state crime lab.
He said that they took hundreds of items from the
trailer and turned the case over to the Arkansas State Police.
Larry has also heard the rumors that Casey went home
at some point before returning to the crime scene on
(33:01):
Tuesday with the police. I wonder where this rumor originated.
I'm pretty sure Danielle told me her mom called the police.
Have to look back at everything to make sure. But
also there was a note that her mom had gotten
a call from Casey that was alarming about the stuff
being in the house, but she wasn't. Her stuff was there,
but she wasn't, So I guess I'm just wondering, was
(33:22):
that while the police were there or could that have
been If that was before the police got there, then
that means that he went home before the police got there,
and that would conflict with the story he told the
police where heard the two stories that he that he
went home and actually went into the trailer before anybody
knew anything. And I don't know, if you can't talk
to him, you can't pin it down now, he told
(33:45):
he called either Danielle or her mother, and he also
just said, aple of people, it's on it. Yeah. So
that's what we're working on out because as soon as
we can get someone saying, as soon as we have
someone nailing down saying that he said that, I mean
that totally the reason in my opinion, he was written
(34:06):
off as his suspects early is because of the altby.
He supposedly had this alby and he was gone the
whole night and multiple witnesses and all this. So if
we can show that he there's a hole in that,
then I mean there's something weird about his story no
matter what. So yeah, and even the various descriptions of
what the trailer was like, I have something in writing
(34:30):
that one of the loustters that came in later said
the thing was just what was his expression? Not disheveled,
it was can't think of the term, but it was
a mess. And then you have others that said that said, well,
I didn't notice anything, So I can't believe the case
(34:52):
He would have could have gone there and have Rebecca's
car there perse there obviously some other things were there
that we know now, and he didn't that something was wrong,
and then all the other things that you know about
just doesn't make any sense. Casey shut down, and Casey
(35:17):
to me still has to be one of the primary suspects.
And the fact that he won't come forward and spend
time really talking to people and going through things and
showing his innocence and answering questions, a lot of the
answers that I've seen in written form, answers that I've
seen in and just responses he's given other people conflict.
(35:40):
According to Larry, the events after Rebecca went missing or
a blur. Remember George Jared described him taping up Rebecca's
missing poster over road signs on the Highway. It's obvious
that he was devastated by Rebecca's death. Both Patrick and
George mentioned the fact that Casey was distraught after Rebecca's murder.
(36:01):
And we know that trauma can make people behave irrationally.
We now know that justin, Jennifer, Chris and JB were
all around, all of them searched for Rebecca, all of
them except Casey. Now it's just becoming a glowing red flag.
Every single person. Chris and these guys have so much
(36:24):
to lose if they say the wrong thing. And they're
still cooperating, right, all these guys. The one that's not
is Casey. We did get to one of Casey's friends,
but I really think it's the Sonic people who hold
the key to if or when or how Casey may
have gone home on Monday. Nobody seems to know shit
about Casey, who's in this friend group. By the way,
they didn't even really know Rebecca was Datingum. And he's like,
(36:45):
I didn't know that guy. I think I met him once.
And Chris is like, you know, I didn't know where
that cat. I didn't even know where that place was.
I'd never been there, told the police I'd never been there.
And that's like a bold statement. He's like, take my
DNA because I've never been there. None of these people
went to that cabin. Not only that, but they just
don't look like people that would mesh at all. Because
(37:06):
we were kind of talking about it, Casey's like, he's
in a band, he's kind of he was a little
bit more. He was a hipstery hipstory dude. You know,
like smoke Pot went to Larren's house of smoke pot,
like playing a band, Like you said, yeah, pot was
the drug of choice rather than meth, and like you
know what I mean, Yeah, yeah, surely, yeah, Casey, definitely. Yeah.
(37:27):
They just didn't mix. They just didn't. They were in
different cities, different groups of people. This whole rumor that
they were all partying at that house just never happened.
That never happened. As far as I know, Casey's not
even real, right, Yeah, he could just be a fake
Facebook account, you know, like you're right, there's there's literally
(37:48):
it's like a ghost hound. Then all of a sudden,
our ghost appears. Casey sends me a Facebook message. He
tells me he doesn't want to talk and that he
has a family he needs to protect. He declines to
speak with me and makes it clear that the only
people he will with moving forward are the police. It
looks like if we're going to find out more about Casey,
(38:11):
it's not going to be from him. Oh yeah, no, listen,
it would because we've heard obviously, like we've heard some
of these names. I'm sure in some rumors. But if
the person who actually heard people talking about it is yeah,
that's really valuable. And I mean, no, listen, I really
(38:35):
really appreciate. I mean I wonder, I mean, did did
Casey have any theories about who did it? Over the years? Yeah,
because that's been that has actually been one of the
things that struck us about it, that the you know,
that place is so remote, you know what I mean,
It's like, who would know who'd be able to know
that it was there? That's been kind of a from
(38:56):
the beginning, you know. All right, thank you so much.
All right, thanks bye. Okay, that was extremely interesting. This
is Casey's best friend. Interesting for reasons other than you know,
(39:16):
it's not like, oh he thinks he did it. No,
it's this is his best friend. He basically lived in
that house at the time, lived in that trailer. You know,
he was there all the time. I was very I
wanted to ask him way more questions, but he was
kind of like kind of had to go. And anyway,
he basically he works around town. He is a coworker
(39:36):
who he said, this guy said he heard the other
day about the case getting reopened, so that's obviously through
our stuff, and he was talking about it with the
co worker, and the co worker sort of said that
he heard it a party, that it was a group
of people who did it, and was given details and things.
But interestingly, he was out of town for like three
(39:58):
days during the murder. He was working on a tugboat,
I think, he said. But when he got back he
said Casey was staying with his sister. And he also
said that Casey cried in his arms about it, and
you know, it was just all upset, right, But he said,
(40:20):
you know, really it really got to me. That cabin
so remote, nobody knows where the hell that place is.
You know. He was literally saying that, and he goes,
I straight out asked him, did you do it? He said,
friend of friend, did you do it? And then he
kind of went off and he goes, of course he
was at work, so blah blah. He just kind of
went off. But I'm thinking, like, like you can feel
the wheels turning. He said, they were still really close,
(40:41):
but like because Casey had a girlfriend, see, and everyone
in Casey's life refers to Rebecca as the girlfriend, but
everyone in Rebecca's life refers to Casey's just like some
random guy who's like around and he's like, well no,
He's like he it was just really painful, and I'm sorry.
If your girlfriend got fucking murdered in your house, You're
(41:04):
gonna solve it. You're gonna We're gonna be like us
times one hundred on steroids. You're gonna be like, I'm
gonna solve this. I'm gonna find out who did this
in my house, who came into my house and killed
my girlfriend. You're not gonna be fired up. I mean,
I get you go through Peter Greek. But after a while,
you notice everyone else we've spoken to Chris JB. Everyone
(41:25):
has theories or at least an idea of what even
if if they don't know. They sit there and say,
you know, I've thought about it for countless hours. It's
haunted me. And yet this is Casey's best friend saying, well, no,
I kind of wait for him to bring it up. No,
he didn't really have any theory. You're gonna tell me.
I mean, if it were me and it was my boyfriend,
(41:45):
I would have a murder board in my house, and
I would probably like I'd be like the guy in
the Vanishing, you know who, like took a hotel room
and put red strings everywhere. I do think that there
are people who feature in this tale who may have
at one point bragged about it or may have known
people because just because they were either because they're trying
to look hard and tough. I could even see Jennifer,
even though even if she had nothing to do with it,
(42:08):
She's got this hard bitch image, do you know what
I mean? So I can see her plan. I don't
see a downside to kind of I see why, I
see why that would happen. I'm not saying it did,
but I'm just saying when he told me, he asked
his friend and then he on his own brought up
the remoteness of that location. Of course he was at work.
Is not really what you want to hear. You want
to hear. There's no way im for could have done that.
(42:30):
You know, he doesn't have it and he never would
have hurt anybody, not while he was at work. Oh Catherine,
here's the other thing that really bothers me about this
whole investigation has since to start. In part of your
victimology profile, you're supposed to interview the people closest to
the victim. And I don't know if the police talk
to Danielle or and by the way, she's a trauma victim,
(42:51):
so like at the time it should have been done
in a way like a very sensitive you know, you
gotta be really careful with trauma victims, and you know
this is the person that your best Okay, And I'm
just not sure that they ever. Don't think they ever
got anything about the temper or you know, any of
these things about Casey. I just I don't even know
(43:13):
if they ever I don't know if they questioned her,
I don't know. I'm Katherine Townsend and this is Helen Gone.
(43:40):
Helen Gone is a joint production between How Stuff Works
in School of Humans. It is written and recorded by me,
Catherine Townsend. Taylor Church is our producer and story editor.
Audio editing and designed by Jonathan Sleeve, mix engineer Glenn
Mattulo audio mixing and love by Tunewelders. Executive producers Brandon
(44:01):
Barr and Else Crowley for School of Humans and Connell
Byrne and Bryant for How Stuff Works. Our field producer
is James Morrison. Our researcher is Sandy Klosterman. Themon original
score by Ben Solee available wherever you get your music.
To dig into the investigation, please visit helengonepodcast dot com
(44:25):
or follow us on social media. School of Humans
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