December 5, 2018 • 37 mins
Catherine hears from some of Casey's closest friends and coworkers at the time of the murder in an effort to compare stories and and see if his timeline, the most important part of this alibi, really does check out. Outreach from an unexpected source provides startling information that could change everything. For more on the case, visit hellandgonepodcast.com.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans. We're ever going to get the right person.
Knowing where everyone was is getting to be really important,
That's what I would say. So we have several issues
we need to clear up with Casey's timeline. Exactly when
did he leave work on Monday, how did he get home,
(00:29):
and did he go home on Tuesday to change before work,
and if he did, how did he miss the mess
of the crime scene. If we're going to get to
the bottom of this, we need to find some of
the people who were working at Sonic on the Monday
Rebecca disappeared. Taylor has been texting one of our local
contacts who was working at the Sonic around the time
Rebecca was killed. They mentioned a story we have also
(00:52):
heard from multiple people that Casey had gone home between
leaving work on Monday and returning to work on Tuesday.
This person claims to be in communication with a couple
of other people who allegedly spoke to Casey about this.
If we could find a way to absolutely verify this information,
it could be a game changer. His story was consistent
(01:13):
in the beginning that he did not go home right,
So if we can even if he did, even if
we get him to admit, yeah, I went home to
change shirts, or we find someone who can absolutely verify
that he said that, that he mentioned going home to
change shirts, or that the timeline was a little weird.
That right there is enough to reopen the investigation because
he was, by Charlie's own words, suspect number one. Charlie
(01:34):
was the first officer on the scene. He was the
one who found the blood in Casey's house, and the
reason they ruled him out was because of his airtight alibi.
If we could quite poke a hole in that, then
they've got it. They got to take another look. They
have to, like, I really just want to talk to
these people who were working at Sonic. I just want
to know how he got home, when he went home,
(01:54):
and if he actually did go home. In September of
two thousand and four, 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
(02:16):
come back to Mountain View with one mission to get
justice for Rebecca. I'm Catherine Townsend and this is Helen Gone.
We're over two months into our investigation and Taylor and
(02:36):
I stepped back to look at the whole murder board.
So far, so many threads, so many dead ends, so
many post it notes. As I trace the line spider
webbing from picture to picture, I see many of the rumors, accusations,
and same questions that the town won't let go of.
(02:56):
We've followed a lot of leads and investigated a lot
of the rumors that we've heard in town, and by
following the evidence, we've eliminated a lot of them as
likely sos JB, Chris, Jennifer, the group theory, hundreds of
other names we've heard, but we're having a harder time
(03:16):
with Casey. Ironically enough, the first and only person that
the police have cleared. Like I said in the beginning,
everyone in this case has at least two sides. Is
Casey the sweet, caring boyfriend who is head over heels
for Rebecca that his friends describe, or the care bear
psycho that Danielle talked about. I get a call from
(03:38):
someone who has been following the case and the podcast.
He dated Rebecca shortly before her murder and had an
interaction with Casey that he can't get out of his head.
An ex boyfriend could have an ax to grind, so
we have to check his story carefully, but a quick
call with Danielle, Rebecca's sister, confirmed that he did date
Rebecca and also confirmed a lot of the details. He mentions, well,
(04:02):
and at a club, it's no longer open and fathful,
and a girlfriend of mine introduced me and are together.
We dated for I guess it was like three or
four weeks. Probably it was like a month or two
before she got killed. I thank our first date was
pretty much like I went to we were going to
go lix store, have a few trains, and you know,
(04:23):
it was just hanging out and it was me and
her and her sister and her sister at their house. Well,
we left and we went to one liquor store and
it was sposed, so we went to the other one
and it was both. So we ended up just drinking
what we had. I mean, because that's the others today. Back,
I was like my backgrounds and drank beer. Like most
of the men in Rebecca's life, he was smitten, but
(04:43):
it didn't take him long to realize their relationship could
not go further because there was someone causing drama in
Rebecca's life, and that someone was Casey Casey was not
like he was just apparently she had like slipped him
one time and he just was like blisk and she
just wanted to be friends. Well he had like showed
(05:03):
up there just out of the blue, but he I
ended up being like civil whipping and stuff. And at
the end of the night we were all getting ready
to like to go to bed and stuff, well he
was just standing like he would not leave, just not leave.
It was like very uncomfortable, and like they like went
outside and talked for a second. Like he was just
(05:24):
falling and crying and just like emotionally just straw over everything.
Like I was fixing on leave. I was just like,
screw this, I'm going back home. I ain't got time
to deal with this trauma. And I was like, your
boy out there is fixing the freak out and if
he comes in there starting anything, then on the handle.
And he's like, no, I'll take care of it. If
he does, he'll be fine. I was like, here he is,
you know, acting the pool. I'm like, look, man, I'm
(05:46):
just gonna shut you down right now. Like if you
can want to go, we can go. Otherwise you need
to keep your mouth shut because you don't found me, Like,
I mean, she was like all the time, he was
like constantly showing up where she was, wanting to know
where she was, Like I just wanted to know where
she was at twenty four seven, just controlling, and I
guess he had done that to a couple other people
and they didn't really want to like put up with
(06:07):
it or deal with it, so they just kind of
like backed off. But every time we was together, he
was constantly pulling her phone up, like messaging her like
where are you at, what are you doing? Who you with?
I mean, it was just it was just not very
overly possessive of her for them just being friends, which
I know she stayed with him on and off, but
(06:27):
she would say there because it was close to where
she worked and she didn't have to drive all the
way backs nowt but there, I mean, he was just emotional,
like just I mean he falled and cried like he
or three times, you know that, not like once whenever
he had got there and like found out that me
and her was actually going out, you know, somewhere and
doing something. And then at the end of the night,
like when they went out by it was just he
(06:47):
was just like falling in crime and just I mean
I just kind of let it go and I was
just like, Okay, you know, it was nice meeting you
out talking with you. Things don't work out. A holler
at me, and I just kind of left at the back.
I was like a month or two later, you know,
everybody had work knew that I me and her were
somewhat dating. That was like, hey, you know her boyfriend
and like her boyfriend like she was with Casey. I
(07:09):
was like, that's our boyfriend. And she's like, well she's missing,
and I'm like what. Just his demeanor and everything, like
he's controlling. You can tell he's just really that sheid
when she looked up to the way her dad was
and like what he had and what he had accomplished,
and like, you know, she's like, I want to be
successful in my life. I want to do this, I
want to do that. Like she had so much schedules
(07:29):
and dreams and ambition. She was just stuck between that
babe of like growing up and you know, actually accomplishing
things and doing things that she wanted to do, and
then being stuck into you know, being young dom and
you know, having fun. As he talks about a relationship
with Rebecca, a picture of what she was going through
(07:49):
at the time of her murder begins to emerge. Rebecca
was trying to play down her relationship with Casey. She
thought of Casey as a friend with a crush. He
was her past, not her future. He's also like very
shy and timid, right, you know, like his personality, like
I mean he's going to be loud about something like
(08:10):
he was that night, and then once I shut him down,
he was just like, Okay, I don't want to cross
them lines because you know, I don't think he's in
enough fire or anything whve either. And I mean I
wasn't too worried about him because he was very you know,
shining timid. You know, I deal with the ex strama
before with you know, other people that I tell you,
and I just wasn't really wanted to deal with that.
(08:33):
I even think I went up to sing It one
time after we started dating to talk to him, and
he wouldn't come out and talk to me because the
guys from Mark would go up there and eat and stuff.
And I guess he had been up there running his
mouth about me, saying he's going to beat my at
and just done this and he was gonna have at
and one day after work, I just went up there
and I was like, hey, you in, we got a problem.
(08:53):
He's like no, and he's just running right back inside.
I mean, I just want to see something that I
can't believe it's just gotten. I mean, it just kind
of got very like you heard a lot about it
when it first happened, like she was missing, everybody find her.
And then once they found her, it's like everything just
kind of went hush hush, like they didn't release no information.
They didn't. Really. The only thing that I remember them
(09:15):
releasing was that Casey had been clear. That's the only
thing that's absensive as he was, is she left like
he's supposed like they say he's supposedly she's supposedly left
and went to college and he didn't hear from her,
and he would be flipping out that night. He wouldn't
be out partying and drinking. I' tell you that right now,
just from his demeanor. He's not going to be out
(09:37):
partying drinking and be like, oh you know, I mean
because obviously he went home the next day, you know whatever.
I mean, it's me, it's just don't it don't make sense.
Wish you the best and just you know, I mean,
just be careful of the people that you're around up there.
I mean, it's just a bunch. I mean, it's such
a small town. I really wish I could get Casey
(10:03):
to talk. We have two questions that need answering. One
did Casey go home at any point between the murder
and work the next day? And two, how did Casey
get to his friend's house after work? We need to
lock in what Casey was doing on the day Rebecca
was murdered, because we're hearing conflicting stories about his timeline
(10:24):
and his relationship with Rebecca. But one of his co
workers must know something, so we focus on tracking down
one of Casey's friends who also worked at Sonic, the
same friend he was out all Monday night with Laren.
He was pretty easy to find because it's not like
Laren is a common name in the area. He suggests
(10:45):
meeting at a Starbucks and Little Rock near where he lives.
I didn't talked to him a couple of years. When
my mom's always like, I saw Casey at the Dollar Story,
and when I'm doing well, he's yeah, he's married now, Yeah,
Laren is huge, six foot nine. When he smiles, he
looks like the kind of guy I would want to
(11:06):
have a beer with. But he's also very physically intimidating.
And then once we started working together, me and Casey
got real close. There's history there with basketball, and then
music was what me and Casey were, you know, we
really connected about right, he was what he was, but
he was a great musician, and I love music, and
(11:27):
you know, I wasn't so inclined at the time. But
what we're Rebecca in Casey like was a couple of
I'm a very lovely dovey, I'm very just sickening, you know,
that kind of thing, like if you did yeah, yeah,
and gosh they and it was, like we said, we
(11:51):
were like be guarded because he seemed more in her
than she wasn't him just being honest, you know, But
she also seemed like she was just trying to start fresh,
like she was trying to get away from all that shit,
and she really was that they as a couple, they
were just doinggether. I mean, I can't even that's what
I sink. Trying thing yesterday too, Like my mind's been
racing for the last twenty four hours trying to remember
(12:12):
like little stuff, and you know, I can't. I couldn't
remember how long they've been together when that happened. I
can't remember. I can't remember when I was told that
she had been murdered, like where I was or what
we was doing. I remember the investigators and then I remember,
you know, of course, you know, us trying to you know,
(12:33):
minute by minute break down the day the day before.
What did the investigators asked, Bess, you know, like, what
what did you guys do? They were more interested and
I'm pretty sure having all of us sit down and
went that night and telling them the story or make
sure it wasn't something that we were blowing smoke or whatever,
you know, because it took them a little while to
(12:54):
get the camera and the receipts and all that stuff.
They were more about the night, you know, wanting to
know where case he was, did he ever leave at anytime?
You know, did stuff like that? You know, and you know,
obviously we all slept that night eventually, so I mean
that was another thing. It's that I like, is it
possible that I could have got up in the middle
of the night, left my house and then come back
(13:15):
in the amount of time that we were asleep, and
I just don't think it was possible. All of us
had pretty loud vehicles, and at my place, we'd like
to be able to hear people coming and going. We
were always praying touch and that's another thing. They were like,
you do. They're like, look, we're like, just be transparent.
We don't give a shit about weed. We're not trying
(13:36):
to bunch a bunch of teenagers mo weed, like you know,
obviously we're trying to you know. Yeah, we uh, we
all had a good time together. But it was God.
So I just one more time. That was so the
day of the day was not happened Monday, So you
guys left work that was on Monday. When we got home,
(13:57):
we would have watch wrestling Man, so we would have
probably been up a little later. See, wasn't with you guys?
Then you wrote with Philip, I think so, I think
because I don't think the car at the time. I know,
I know, for whatever reason, he was without vehicle. Where
was Casey's truck? And if Rebecca drove him to work,
how was he planning on getting home? I remember specifically
(14:18):
didn't have vehicle because when we got back home and
he started saying like, man, I can't get ahold of Rebeck.
I'm kind of worried about it. We were all like, dude,
let's just go to bed. She's fine, because we would
have had to taste, which we probably should have, or
maybe we would have walked in and got murdering on it.
Do you remember what time y'all went to bed that night?
It seemed like we watched a normal like seven o'clock movie,
(14:39):
came back when we probably did our things. We uh,
probably midnight one. I mean, it's a normal night. I'd
have to just guess on a normal night, because I
you know, I was he like, he seemed totally normal
that night or no, I don't think like because, like
I said, it seemed like, see, this is the part
(15:03):
where it's like I don't I'm just trying to remember
it that way or if that's the way it was.
But it seemed like there was like an understanding that
she was about to have a confrontation that was gonna
be something that she was that He was like, I
hope it goes well. Something like that kind of looming, Like,
(15:23):
you know, she had some things she had to take
care of, that's why she had the truck, and she
was gonna try to I don't know that, and I
don't want to say that, and then that be you know,
the off. But I feel like that's what I remember.
Laren doesn't remember a whole lot. And to be fair,
it has been fourteen years. In my experience as an investigator,
people tend to remember specific detail around crucial events in
(15:45):
their lives. But Monday started out. It's just an average day.
There's no way I could say intelligently who worked No
fair enough, I mean, is there any way like if
one y'all wanted to take time off during the day,
you could have I mean all the time, like hey
I need to go run do something. I'm sure we
were all really close. So if it was like I
need to go do something, sure whatever. You know what
(16:07):
time did Casey finish? Usually at some point he went
to just days, like he didn't want to work nights anymore.
But that was the nature of the store. Was like
you sometimes like your schedule could look like this Monday,
you could open at seven and get off at one
or two. You could come in Tuesday eleven to four.
(16:28):
You could go four to close on Wednesday, you could
come back in six to sixty ten on. It was
just always but Casey eventually got to where he just
just worked days, you know, and he was you know,
he was as far as Goods and Sonic go, and
he was one of them. He was one of the
best we had, you know, so we always had him
in the prime times. Once we left the store, I
(16:48):
know for a fact that he was never anywhere but
with us, right and the moments leading up to that,
which I'm pretty sure she dropped him off, but if she,
if he worked that morning, she would have dropped him
off that morning, yes, with his truck, and then he
would have worked, and then he would have waited for
one of us to go off work to roll out
to my place, and then we would have went out.
But I can't remember how he got to our house.
(17:12):
And also I don't remember why we went back to
my house, because we could have just left and went
to walk, had hit to baseball. But it may have
been a change small tunes. But I do know that
for a fact we was wound up back at my place,
then back to Batesville, and then back to my place,
and he was with us, you know, the whole time.
And then we slept and he got up the next
(17:32):
morning and left. But uh, I don't want to say, Philip,
I don't think I worked that morning. The next morning.
For some reason, I seem to recall like watching him
and leave. You know, I was excited when you called
because I want to get, you know, closer to this.
But that's how it's gonna happen, is now going back
(17:53):
piece of things together, things that you didn't think were important,
because when it happens, you know, you can't focus on
I don't know, I watched too many shows. You've seen
me a few people. It's a tough one. Yeah. And
then when you allow yourself to be objective, like you know, moving,
you know, going forward to remove myself from you know,
Casey being one of my best friends ever, you start
(18:15):
to think like wow, you know, and I mean that's
it too. Is you got to know where that is
to get to it. Have you ever been there? Yeah,
I'm sure you have. I mean, just driven Bob, and
it's that was another thing that got me and I
know we're chasing rabbits. I've got I've got all the
time in the world. See. That was another thing was
if you look at like if you know that area
well enough, if you're if you're from Mountain View, why
(18:41):
I go back through Melbourne to where they found your body?
You know, Like I mean maybe like if they see
me going through Mountaine they're gonna fuck with me because
they always do. You know, maybe I'd rather go through
Melbourne or you know, or is it because you know,
like did they go through Mountain View and then come
all the way back around because they're like, well, that's
(19:03):
an obvious place. Honestly, like you said, have more, that's
an obvious place to dump a body. The two towns
Laren is referring to are Melbourne and Mountain View. What
he is explaining is in order to dump the body,
if the killer was from Mountain View, he or she
was going out of their way. You never know. There's
so many places out there that I can think of
three or four different places that we partied on Highway nine,
(19:26):
you know, just places that you wouldn't know unless you knew,
you know, like old cabins off in the middle of
nowhere then you know, but they so you think it
wasn't a good spot to it. No, But I mean
I'm from that area, said that's always like probing every
gonna kill somebody. I've got them in the sharp mind
of God. You know, I'm just saying, like there's there's more,
says the River. Yeah they but that just I just
(19:47):
I don't know. I find that weird that because I've
always felt and had the belief that it was somebody
from Mountainew, somebody from that old click. But yeah, but
why I go back through Melbourne? You know? I mean,
was you trying to get to that spot? I mean,
if so, that's probably the quickest way. But if you're
from Mountainew, everybody goes back to Mountain View through God,
if you're on the Gune Road, yeah, it's quicker, it's
(20:08):
more secluded. You know. I've just always looked at that
and thought there might be something there, Like why go
through Melbourne? Did they or you or anybody ever? Like
party at Casey's house? No, actually see his dad I
think was driving a truck or something. Yeah, Like I
really didn't even know where he lived for like the
longest time. So because he just didn't live, there was
(20:29):
his dad's place, you know, so he would stay with
Patrick or you know whoever. You know, And even to
this day, I think I've been in that place one time,
and it was the time that I met his dad,
and I want to say that was before all that.
Laren claims to have been one of Casey's best friends
at the time and he didn't even know exactly where
Casey lived at the same time. Like I said, it
(20:50):
was kind of a rare thing for us to get
him away, like like because he was so involved, you know.
So I remember thinking like, all right, Casey's going out,
you know, you know, now your own party. Since it was,
you know, such a rare thing. Was it planned to
be that way? You know, it's pretty shit think about
it when start watching these shows, you know, yeah, so yeah,
it's pretty clear he went through me, and that's pretty
It's just the mystery is, like, who in the world
(21:11):
would do that at someone else's house and then clean up?
That's the really weird That's that's one of the weirdest
things about it. Case they cleaned up, so I was
left the miss and that's how they found out. Like
if I'm telling this story to somebody, a friend of mine, now,
I say she was murdered and they had a piano
(21:33):
leg miss and I said that what we heard was
that she was for the longest time is that she
was beat to death so bad that there was enough
blood that went through the mattresses, through the floorboards into
the underpinning of the trailer, and that there was a
piano leg missing and you could tell where somebody had
drug a body out the door. And then later we
heard that it was a gunshot that killed her out
Oddly enough, this is actually the first I'm hearing of
(21:55):
a gunshot. So like that's I was like, I don't know,
that's what I tell my friends. I don't really know how,
you know, how it all went down, but I said
it was brutal whatever happened, you know. I mean, did
case you ever talk to you about who you thought
did it? I'm sure, like I'm trying to think, like,
(22:18):
at some point it becomes something that we just didn't
bring up because it was like it and it's not
to be mean, but at some point it was like
and you don't want to say, like, ghet over, but
at some point, you know, you just get to be like,
look and why bring it up if it's just going
to be this thing, you know, this thing you know,
And so it became this thing that nobody talked about,
(22:38):
you know, because we just wanted Casey to feel you know,
to feel better, like you know, we want him so
bad for him to that's like why why Whenever you
know he meant, we were like thank god, yeah, you know.
But then now I'm glad he's with you. Yeah, that's good,
that's great, it's great. It's just crazy how you can
feel so passionately, but when someone's taken from me, it's different.
(23:00):
But you can feel so passionately about somebody and then
it just wind up not doing right. You know. Listen,
thank you, no, no, please you. If you think of something,
I want to run it by me and make me
think it's more helpy. I find it odd the various
(23:20):
ways Rebecca in Casey's relationship has been portrayed. I hear
from her sister that she wanted to break up. I
hear from his close friends they were inseparable. And I
hear from a relatively neutral party that he was obsessed
and couldn't leave her alone. You're listening to Helen Gone,
We'll be right back talking with Laren. I find he's
(23:47):
frustrated with how significantly the fourteen years has fogged his memory.
But we keep talking shockingly, Laren tells me that he
was never brought back in for questioning after Rebecca's body
was found. It's also incredibly frustrating that in a case
where everything hinges on an alibi, so many details of
the timeline were vague. Since this interview, we've received the
(24:11):
official police statements from some of Casey's friends who were
with him on the day Rebecca was murdered, and since
Laren was one of them, his statement helps us clear
up some questions we have about the timeline. Casey's truck
was parked in Batesville and they all drove Casey to
pick it up, so we can reasonably believe that Casey
had his truck on Monday night and into Tuesday morning.
(24:32):
Laren also says that they left Sonic at around four pm.
We know that Rebecca dropped Casey off that morning, and
we had always heard that Casey told police she was
planning on going back to school. That's why he went
out with his friends that night and stayed out all night.
But if that's the case, why was he telling his
friends that Rebecca was supposed to pick him up and
(24:54):
never showed. I also can't get the last sentence of
Laren's statement, out of my head, it said, when we
returned from Batesville, Casey used my phone. After he hung up,
he stated that Rebecca was missing. That's when it really
seemed odd that he didn't head straight out the door
to find her. Taylor and I have both been working
(25:17):
day and night to try to contact every single person
who may have been at Sonic that day. Okay, So
I just talked to Bruce and he confirmed that he
was working at Sonic that day and Casey was a cook.
And he said the cooks went on their shift between
eight and nine am, and he remembered Rebecca dropping Casey
(25:38):
off at work because he knew her. He said, he
the last thing that happened, he dropped, she dropped, pulled in,
Casey gets out, she drops him off. He said. She
waved at him, and that's the last time I ever
saw her. She drove off. And he said that Casey's
shift would have ended at about one between one and two,
but that means he could have left as early as one.
Casey was on the early shift that Monday, which meant
(26:01):
that his shift would have ended between one and two pm.
But Larrence said that the group didn't leave Sonic until
later at around four. Now, Bruce did say, you know,
the cops came around, and he said, if he left,
you would have had to clock out because you know
where you clock in and out's right next to my desk.
But then he went on to say, when I was
(26:22):
asking how Casey got a ride home because he said Rebecca,
he confirmed Rebecca dropped him off that day, and he's like, well,
you know that town, everybody's friends, everybody gives everybody lifts.
Like so if it's that easy to get in and
out and you know, drive around, then yeah, I mean,
it would have been so easy for him to get
a lift from anybody. I asked him the important questions
about Casey. He didn't volunteer a huge amount. He did
(26:45):
answer them. He didn't volunteer a huge amount. I know,
they're really good friends, he said that. I mean, I'm
sure now, I'm sure this is going to get back
to Casey. He will now he'll know that we're asking
when he clocked in when he clocked out. According to police,
Casey's alibi was air tight, but our investigation has poked
some holes in that alibi. First, the timelines and the
(27:06):
statements that Casey's friends gave to police were vague, so
there could have potentially been missing time in the afternoon. Secondly,
Bruce told me that he would have seen Casey if
he clocked out, but Laren, Teresa, and other Sonic employees
have all told me that Bruce went in and out
all the time. Finally, Casey lived just a few miles
(27:27):
away from Sonic, just a ten minute ride down the
dirt road cutthrow we took, and Laren said that it
was not uncommon for the employees to unofficially clock out
to run errands. This means that there could potentially have
been time unaccounted for in the morning. Well, I'm still
kind of confused as to why she had to have
been murdered around like ten am. Time of death. I'm
(27:49):
not a pathologist, but just from like reading a lot
of autopsies and the pathologists I talked to, I know
time of death is very difficult to determine, even under
the best circumstances when the body's found right away, and
it's partly based on when the person was seen lest anyway,
according to the auto occurring to the physical evidence, I
just cannot believe he would have literally had to be.
(28:11):
In order for him to be ruled out in this killing,
he would have had to have every single moment of
his day documented on camera from Monday morning and through
to the next day. We've now talked to Teresa, a
car hop who not only was a friend of Rebecca's,
she knew Jennifer and Casey. We've talked to Bruce, the
manager on duty that day, and Philip Laren's roommate. We're
(28:34):
starting to get their individual stories and piece together the
details from that day. As we do, we hear something
we've never heard before. Someone mentions that they heard Casey
dropped his truck off at Sonic on Sunday evening and
drove home with Rebecca. This detail floors me. How the
hell did his car get to Batesville and how did
(28:55):
he get back? So, according to the official statements, Casey's
friends drove him to pick up his car in Batesville
on Monday afternoon. So if Casey's truck was at Sonic
Monday morning, how did it get to Batesville by that afternoon.
According to the police statements, Casey told his friends that
his father drove his truck to Batesville. But we had
(29:16):
always heard that his father, who was a trucker, was
on the road that day. The mystery of the truck
has like bothered all of us so much since the
beginning because at the end of the day, even the
question about where it was for the next few days
has bothered me. Because Charlie said that Casey didn't have
his truck at Sonic the next day. The whole reason
(29:37):
he was ruled out is because he was supposedly had
no transportation and was there all day. So the minute
you start saying, okay, he wasn't there all day, and
actually he did have transportation, and his transportation mysteriously, you know,
was in Batesville by that afternoon unless someone drove his truck.
This is a huge piece of the puzzle. According to
the police, Casey was the prime suspect at the beginning
(30:00):
of the case. He was only ruled out due to
his air tight alibi. That alibi hinged on two factors,
that he was at work all day and that he
did not have transportation. If Casey had his truck at work,
that changes everything. The more we dig into Casey's timeline,
the more questions we have, and unfortunately Casey won't answer them.
(30:27):
We'll be right back. I'm shopping in Walmart, one of
the few places in town with cell phone reception. When
I get a text message. It's a potential witness. I'm
looking at Turkey decoys and guns and people in camouflage
(30:50):
gearing up for hunting season, and my hands are shaking
as I read it. He says he knows Casey and
has something he needs to tell me. When I get
back to the car, I call him. Because he knows Casey,
he doesn't want to be identified, so we've disguised his voice. Well,
(31:16):
oh hi, I just got your textess, Catherine. Yeah, no,
I mean, like I said, our whole I mean, we
just want to find the person who did it. We're
not you know what I mean. We're not. We don't
care about anything else. This manam me and Casey and
a Ghani probably tell you the same story. And I
can be in prison right now. But and on like
(31:39):
four different occasions were good. I mean I know four
for sure. We were Casey were drinking too thanne and
just bopen I mean not, I mean, not ligerant drunk,
just crime blurderent. He he said that he killed her
(32:02):
and and y'all didn't find the weapon. Fact, Well, the
police haven't shared any information with me, but we've found
a lot of you know, we've gotten a lot of information.
Did he say where the weapon was? He said, he
proved in the river on the way to the Highway
nine from dying. And this happened like like I said,
(32:26):
four times I can remember. And then one day he
was just something that been wrong for three or four
day yere and he just put in hisself and when
he wasn't drunk this night and he said the same
thing he said that his story was. And I didn't
really think much about it until I heard. I didn't
(32:47):
know that she's gonna it was a blunt ob check,
like it was. I never knew any things. And she
he said that pretty much that she was telling him
that this would be the last time that he saw her,
or she'd be last last time to see him. Look go,
they were, I guess coming to him and I didn't
know he didn't know her personally, but they got into
(33:10):
it and she said some offensive thanks time. The way
he said it, he just lost it and he said,
next thing he knows, he's cleaning stuff up. And he
said they almost had him, but they couldn't because they
thought the timeline was different because he was supposedly at
work when that happened. But he said they had the
(33:31):
timeline mixed up on him. Did he say he went
home from worker? He didn't know, man, he did not
say that. I just didn't know if he was just
blowing smoke. But it bothered me for a long time.
But here the last few weeks because I saw that
think something on Facebook, Thames who's killed her back and
(33:53):
you come on the radio and it just kind of
sitting back to him there. Well, listen, I mean, I
so appreciate you doing it, and I know, I mean,
I'm just been thinking about their in the mind. I'd
probably want, you know, closure, and I know that he's
your friend, and I know that it's got to be hard,
and I really really appreciate it. I mean, if we
(34:14):
do have to go to the police with us, would
you be willing to come with us? I've got a
bad history of the police here. I probably could in No,
I mean, my dad is a really good guy and
he's a deputy sheriff, and then there's the Arkansas stateful
(34:35):
and you know, just so you don't have to go
in in Melbourne, if they come down there and I
had to. I mean, the thing that really got me
was because I never knew. I didn't know how they
killed it. I had no clue. Sure. And then somebody
I was at my new job and they were talking
about and they said if the cop said it was
on an object, because I always thought case case, he
(34:56):
was just bullshiting me. Never I thought he's you know,
he's just just blowing smoke. And now when he said
he hit her with it's a wooden object. I know
that much. And it would or like a baseball bath,
not not a baseball bath, but you know, stay logistics.
He on his way, he stopped on the guying bridge
(35:17):
and threw it out. Wow, I don't know how you
prove it. I mean, I mean, I'm just saying. He
said that more than once to this and like I said,
it's bothered me for a while. Well now I'm gonna
have to go to the police with it, just because
(35:38):
I have to. I mean what I mean, I would
really love it if we could go together. So that's
why I mean I want to. I know he's your
friend and know it's hard, but like I want to
get you know, this person caught this man. All right,
well listen, thank you so much. As investigators, we can't
draw conclusions from a single witness. So this may not
(36:00):
be the evidence that's needed to finally close this case,
but it might be the evidence that blows it wide open.
I'm Katherine Townsend and this is Helen Gone. Helen Gone
(36:30):
is a joint production between How Stuff Works and 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 Barr and
(36:51):
Else Crowley for School of Humans and Connell Byrne and
Chuck Bryant for How Stuff Works. Our field producer is
James Morrison. Our researcher is Sandy Klosterman. Them and original
score by Ben Solee available wherever you get your music.
To dig into the investigation, please visit hellangonepodcast dot com
(37:15):
or follow us on social media. School of Humans
School of Humans. We're ever going to get the right person.
Knowing where everyone was is getting to be really important,
That's what I would say. So we have several issues
we need to clear up with Casey's timeline. Exactly when
did he leave work on Monday, how did he get home,
(00:29):
and did he go home on Tuesday to change before work,
and if he did, how did he miss the mess
of the crime scene. If we're going to get to
the bottom of this, we need to find some of
the people who were working at Sonic on the Monday
Rebecca disappeared. Taylor has been texting one of our local
contacts who was working at the Sonic around the time
Rebecca was killed. They mentioned a story we have also
(00:52):
heard from multiple people that Casey had gone home between
leaving work on Monday and returning to work on Tuesday.
This person claims to be in communication with a couple
of other people who allegedly spoke to Casey about this.
If we could find a way to absolutely verify this information,
it could be a game changer. His story was consistent
(01:13):
in the beginning that he did not go home right,
So if we can even if he did, even if
we get him to admit, yeah, I went home to
change shirts, or we find someone who can absolutely verify
that he said that, that he mentioned going home to
change shirts, or that the timeline was a little weird.
That right there is enough to reopen the investigation because
he was, by Charlie's own words, suspect number one. Charlie
(01:34):
was the first officer on the scene. He was the
one who found the blood in Casey's house, and the
reason they ruled him out was because of his airtight alibi.
If we could quite poke a hole in that, then
they've got it. They got to take another look. They
have to, like, I really just want to talk to
these people who were working at Sonic. I just want
to know how he got home, when he went home,
(01:54):
and if he actually did go home. In September of
two thousand and four, 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
(02:16):
come back to Mountain View with one mission to get
justice for Rebecca. I'm Catherine Townsend and this is Helen Gone.
We're over two months into our investigation and Taylor and
(02:36):
I stepped back to look at the whole murder board.
So far, so many threads, so many dead ends, so
many post it notes. As I trace the line spider
webbing from picture to picture, I see many of the rumors, accusations,
and same questions that the town won't let go of.
(02:56):
We've followed a lot of leads and investigated a lot
of the rumors that we've heard in town, and by
following the evidence, we've eliminated a lot of them as
likely sos JB, Chris, Jennifer, the group theory, hundreds of
other names we've heard, but we're having a harder time
(03:16):
with Casey. Ironically enough, the first and only person that
the police have cleared. Like I said in the beginning,
everyone in this case has at least two sides. Is
Casey the sweet, caring boyfriend who is head over heels
for Rebecca that his friends describe, or the care bear
psycho that Danielle talked about. I get a call from
(03:38):
someone who has been following the case and the podcast.
He dated Rebecca shortly before her murder and had an
interaction with Casey that he can't get out of his head.
An ex boyfriend could have an ax to grind, so
we have to check his story carefully, but a quick
call with Danielle, Rebecca's sister, confirmed that he did date
Rebecca and also confirmed a lot of the details. He mentions, well,
(04:02):
and at a club, it's no longer open and fathful,
and a girlfriend of mine introduced me and are together.
We dated for I guess it was like three or
four weeks. Probably it was like a month or two
before she got killed. I thank our first date was
pretty much like I went to we were going to
go lix store, have a few trains, and you know,
(04:23):
it was just hanging out and it was me and
her and her sister and her sister at their house. Well,
we left and we went to one liquor store and
it was sposed, so we went to the other one
and it was both. So we ended up just drinking
what we had. I mean, because that's the others today. Back,
I was like my backgrounds and drank beer. Like most
of the men in Rebecca's life, he was smitten, but
(04:43):
it didn't take him long to realize their relationship could
not go further because there was someone causing drama in
Rebecca's life, and that someone was Casey Casey was not
like he was just apparently she had like slipped him
one time and he just was like blisk and she
just wanted to be friends. Well he had like showed
(05:03):
up there just out of the blue, but he I
ended up being like civil whipping and stuff. And at
the end of the night we were all getting ready
to like to go to bed and stuff, well he
was just standing like he would not leave, just not leave.
It was like very uncomfortable, and like they like went
outside and talked for a second. Like he was just
(05:24):
falling and crying and just like emotionally just straw over everything.
Like I was fixing on leave. I was just like,
screw this, I'm going back home. I ain't got time
to deal with this trauma. And I was like, your
boy out there is fixing the freak out and if
he comes in there starting anything, then on the handle.
And he's like, no, I'll take care of it. If
he does, he'll be fine. I was like, here he is,
you know, acting the pool. I'm like, look, man, I'm
(05:46):
just gonna shut you down right now. Like if you
can want to go, we can go. Otherwise you need
to keep your mouth shut because you don't found me, Like,
I mean, she was like all the time, he was
like constantly showing up where she was, wanting to know
where she was, Like I just wanted to know where
she was at twenty four seven, just controlling, and I
guess he had done that to a couple other people
and they didn't really want to like put up with
(06:07):
it or deal with it, so they just kind of
like backed off. But every time we was together, he
was constantly pulling her phone up, like messaging her like
where are you at, what are you doing? Who you with?
I mean, it was just it was just not very
overly possessive of her for them just being friends, which
I know she stayed with him on and off, but
(06:27):
she would say there because it was close to where
she worked and she didn't have to drive all the
way backs nowt but there, I mean, he was just emotional,
like just I mean he falled and cried like he
or three times, you know that, not like once whenever
he had got there and like found out that me
and her was actually going out, you know, somewhere and
doing something. And then at the end of the night,
like when they went out by it was just he
(06:47):
was just like falling in crime and just I mean
I just kind of let it go and I was
just like, Okay, you know, it was nice meeting you
out talking with you. Things don't work out. A holler
at me, and I just kind of left at the back.
I was like a month or two later, you know,
everybody had work knew that I me and her were
somewhat dating. That was like, hey, you know her boyfriend
and like her boyfriend like she was with Casey. I
(07:09):
was like, that's our boyfriend. And she's like, well she's missing,
and I'm like what. Just his demeanor and everything, like
he's controlling. You can tell he's just really that sheid
when she looked up to the way her dad was
and like what he had and what he had accomplished,
and like, you know, she's like, I want to be
successful in my life. I want to do this, I
want to do that. Like she had so much schedules
(07:29):
and dreams and ambition. She was just stuck between that
babe of like growing up and you know, actually accomplishing
things and doing things that she wanted to do, and
then being stuck into you know, being young dom and
you know, having fun. As he talks about a relationship
with Rebecca, a picture of what she was going through
(07:49):
at the time of her murder begins to emerge. Rebecca
was trying to play down her relationship with Casey. She
thought of Casey as a friend with a crush. He
was her past, not her future. He's also like very
shy and timid, right, you know, like his personality, like
I mean he's going to be loud about something like
(08:10):
he was that night, and then once I shut him down,
he was just like, Okay, I don't want to cross
them lines because you know, I don't think he's in
enough fire or anything whve either. And I mean I
wasn't too worried about him because he was very you know,
shining timid. You know, I deal with the ex strama
before with you know, other people that I tell you,
and I just wasn't really wanted to deal with that.
(08:33):
I even think I went up to sing It one
time after we started dating to talk to him, and
he wouldn't come out and talk to me because the
guys from Mark would go up there and eat and stuff.
And I guess he had been up there running his
mouth about me, saying he's going to beat my at
and just done this and he was gonna have at
and one day after work, I just went up there
and I was like, hey, you in, we got a problem.
(08:53):
He's like no, and he's just running right back inside.
I mean, I just want to see something that I
can't believe it's just gotten. I mean, it just kind
of got very like you heard a lot about it
when it first happened, like she was missing, everybody find her.
And then once they found her, it's like everything just
kind of went hush hush, like they didn't release no information.
They didn't. Really. The only thing that I remember them
(09:15):
releasing was that Casey had been clear. That's the only
thing that's absensive as he was, is she left like
he's supposed like they say he's supposedly she's supposedly left
and went to college and he didn't hear from her,
and he would be flipping out that night. He wouldn't
be out partying and drinking. I' tell you that right now,
just from his demeanor. He's not going to be out
(09:37):
partying drinking and be like, oh you know, I mean
because obviously he went home the next day, you know whatever.
I mean, it's me, it's just don't it don't make sense.
Wish you the best and just you know, I mean,
just be careful of the people that you're around up there.
I mean, it's just a bunch. I mean, it's such
a small town. I really wish I could get Casey
(10:03):
to talk. We have two questions that need answering. One
did Casey go home at any point between the murder
and work the next day? And two, how did Casey
get to his friend's house after work? We need to
lock in what Casey was doing on the day Rebecca
was murdered, because we're hearing conflicting stories about his timeline
(10:24):
and his relationship with Rebecca. But one of his co
workers must know something, so we focus on tracking down
one of Casey's friends who also worked at Sonic, the
same friend he was out all Monday night with Laren.
He was pretty easy to find because it's not like
Laren is a common name in the area. He suggests
(10:45):
meeting at a Starbucks and Little Rock near where he lives.
I didn't talked to him a couple of years. When
my mom's always like, I saw Casey at the Dollar Story,
and when I'm doing well, he's yeah, he's married now, Yeah,
Laren is huge, six foot nine. When he smiles, he
looks like the kind of guy I would want to
(11:06):
have a beer with. But he's also very physically intimidating.
And then once we started working together, me and Casey
got real close. There's history there with basketball, and then
music was what me and Casey were, you know, we
really connected about right, he was what he was, but
he was a great musician, and I love music, and
(11:27):
you know, I wasn't so inclined at the time. But
what we're Rebecca in Casey like was a couple of
I'm a very lovely dovey, I'm very just sickening, you know,
that kind of thing, like if you did yeah, yeah,
and gosh they and it was, like we said, we
(11:51):
were like be guarded because he seemed more in her
than she wasn't him just being honest, you know, But
she also seemed like she was just trying to start fresh,
like she was trying to get away from all that shit,
and she really was that they as a couple, they
were just doinggether. I mean, I can't even that's what
I sink. Trying thing yesterday too, Like my mind's been
racing for the last twenty four hours trying to remember
(12:12):
like little stuff, and you know, I can't. I couldn't
remember how long they've been together when that happened. I
can't remember. I can't remember when I was told that
she had been murdered, like where I was or what
we was doing. I remember the investigators and then I remember,
you know, of course, you know, us trying to you know,
(12:33):
minute by minute break down the day the day before.
What did the investigators asked, Bess, you know, like, what
what did you guys do? They were more interested and
I'm pretty sure having all of us sit down and
went that night and telling them the story or make
sure it wasn't something that we were blowing smoke or whatever,
you know, because it took them a little while to
(12:54):
get the camera and the receipts and all that stuff.
They were more about the night, you know, wanting to
know where case he was, did he ever leave at anytime?
You know, did stuff like that? You know, and you know,
obviously we all slept that night eventually, so I mean
that was another thing. It's that I like, is it
possible that I could have got up in the middle
of the night, left my house and then come back
(13:15):
in the amount of time that we were asleep, and
I just don't think it was possible. All of us
had pretty loud vehicles, and at my place, we'd like
to be able to hear people coming and going. We
were always praying touch and that's another thing. They were like,
you do. They're like, look, we're like, just be transparent.
We don't give a shit about weed. We're not trying
(13:36):
to bunch a bunch of teenagers mo weed, like you know,
obviously we're trying to you know. Yeah, we uh, we
all had a good time together. But it was God.
So I just one more time. That was so the
day of the day was not happened Monday, So you
guys left work that was on Monday. When we got home,
(13:57):
we would have watch wrestling Man, so we would have
probably been up a little later. See, wasn't with you guys?
Then you wrote with Philip, I think so, I think
because I don't think the car at the time. I know,
I know, for whatever reason, he was without vehicle. Where
was Casey's truck? And if Rebecca drove him to work,
how was he planning on getting home? I remember specifically
(14:18):
didn't have vehicle because when we got back home and
he started saying like, man, I can't get ahold of Rebeck.
I'm kind of worried about it. We were all like, dude,
let's just go to bed. She's fine, because we would
have had to taste, which we probably should have, or
maybe we would have walked in and got murdering on it.
Do you remember what time y'all went to bed that night?
It seemed like we watched a normal like seven o'clock movie,
(14:39):
came back when we probably did our things. We uh,
probably midnight one. I mean, it's a normal night. I'd
have to just guess on a normal night, because I
you know, I was he like, he seemed totally normal
that night or no, I don't think like because, like
I said, it seemed like, see, this is the part
(15:03):
where it's like I don't I'm just trying to remember
it that way or if that's the way it was.
But it seemed like there was like an understanding that
she was about to have a confrontation that was gonna
be something that she was that He was like, I
hope it goes well. Something like that kind of looming, Like,
(15:23):
you know, she had some things she had to take
care of, that's why she had the truck, and she
was gonna try to I don't know that, and I
don't want to say that, and then that be you know,
the off. But I feel like that's what I remember.
Laren doesn't remember a whole lot. And to be fair,
it has been fourteen years. In my experience as an investigator,
people tend to remember specific detail around crucial events in
(15:45):
their lives. But Monday started out. It's just an average day.
There's no way I could say intelligently who worked No
fair enough, I mean, is there any way like if
one y'all wanted to take time off during the day,
you could have I mean all the time, like hey
I need to go run do something. I'm sure we
were all really close. So if it was like I
need to go do something, sure whatever. You know what
(16:07):
time did Casey finish? Usually at some point he went
to just days, like he didn't want to work nights anymore.
But that was the nature of the store. Was like
you sometimes like your schedule could look like this Monday,
you could open at seven and get off at one
or two. You could come in Tuesday eleven to four.
(16:28):
You could go four to close on Wednesday, you could
come back in six to sixty ten on. It was
just always but Casey eventually got to where he just
just worked days, you know, and he was you know,
he was as far as Goods and Sonic go, and
he was one of them. He was one of the
best we had, you know, so we always had him
in the prime times. Once we left the store, I
(16:48):
know for a fact that he was never anywhere but
with us, right and the moments leading up to that,
which I'm pretty sure she dropped him off, but if she,
if he worked that morning, she would have dropped him
off that morning, yes, with his truck, and then he
would have worked, and then he would have waited for
one of us to go off work to roll out
to my place, and then we would have went out.
But I can't remember how he got to our house.
(17:12):
And also I don't remember why we went back to
my house, because we could have just left and went
to walk, had hit to baseball. But it may have
been a change small tunes. But I do know that
for a fact we was wound up back at my place,
then back to Batesville, and then back to my place,
and he was with us, you know, the whole time.
And then we slept and he got up the next
(17:32):
morning and left. But uh, I don't want to say, Philip,
I don't think I worked that morning. The next morning.
For some reason, I seem to recall like watching him
and leave. You know, I was excited when you called
because I want to get, you know, closer to this.
But that's how it's gonna happen, is now going back
(17:53):
piece of things together, things that you didn't think were important,
because when it happens, you know, you can't focus on
I don't know, I watched too many shows. You've seen
me a few people. It's a tough one. Yeah. And
then when you allow yourself to be objective, like you know, moving,
you know, going forward to remove myself from you know,
Casey being one of my best friends ever, you start
(18:15):
to think like wow, you know, and I mean that's
it too. Is you got to know where that is
to get to it. Have you ever been there? Yeah,
I'm sure you have. I mean, just driven Bob, and
it's that was another thing that got me and I
know we're chasing rabbits. I've got I've got all the
time in the world. See. That was another thing was
if you look at like if you know that area
well enough, if you're if you're from Mountain View, why
(18:41):
I go back through Melbourne to where they found your body?
You know, Like I mean maybe like if they see
me going through Mountaine they're gonna fuck with me because
they always do. You know, maybe I'd rather go through
Melbourne or you know, or is it because you know,
like did they go through Mountain View and then come
all the way back around because they're like, well, that's
(19:03):
an obvious place. Honestly, like you said, have more, that's
an obvious place to dump a body. The two towns
Laren is referring to are Melbourne and Mountain View. What
he is explaining is in order to dump the body,
if the killer was from Mountain View, he or she
was going out of their way. You never know. There's
so many places out there that I can think of
three or four different places that we partied on Highway nine,
(19:26):
you know, just places that you wouldn't know unless you knew,
you know, like old cabins off in the middle of
nowhere then you know, but they so you think it
wasn't a good spot to it. No, But I mean
I'm from that area, said that's always like probing every
gonna kill somebody. I've got them in the sharp mind
of God. You know, I'm just saying, like there's there's more,
says the River. Yeah they but that just I just
(19:47):
I don't know. I find that weird that because I've
always felt and had the belief that it was somebody
from Mountainew, somebody from that old click. But yeah, but
why I go back through Melbourne? You know? I mean,
was you trying to get to that spot? I mean,
if so, that's probably the quickest way. But if you're
from Mountainew, everybody goes back to Mountain View through God,
if you're on the Gune Road, yeah, it's quicker, it's
(20:08):
more secluded. You know. I've just always looked at that
and thought there might be something there, Like why go
through Melbourne? Did they or you or anybody ever? Like
party at Casey's house? No, actually see his dad I
think was driving a truck or something. Yeah, Like I
really didn't even know where he lived for like the
longest time. So because he just didn't live, there was
(20:29):
his dad's place, you know, so he would stay with
Patrick or you know whoever. You know, And even to
this day, I think I've been in that place one time,
and it was the time that I met his dad,
and I want to say that was before all that.
Laren claims to have been one of Casey's best friends
at the time and he didn't even know exactly where
Casey lived at the same time. Like I said, it
(20:50):
was kind of a rare thing for us to get
him away, like like because he was so involved, you know.
So I remember thinking like, all right, Casey's going out,
you know, you know, now your own party. Since it was,
you know, such a rare thing. Was it planned to
be that way? You know, it's pretty shit think about
it when start watching these shows, you know, yeah, so yeah,
it's pretty clear he went through me, and that's pretty
It's just the mystery is, like, who in the world
(21:11):
would do that at someone else's house and then clean up?
That's the really weird That's that's one of the weirdest
things about it. Case they cleaned up, so I was
left the miss and that's how they found out. Like
if I'm telling this story to somebody, a friend of mine, now,
I say she was murdered and they had a piano
(21:33):
leg miss and I said that what we heard was
that she was for the longest time is that she
was beat to death so bad that there was enough
blood that went through the mattresses, through the floorboards into
the underpinning of the trailer, and that there was a
piano leg missing and you could tell where somebody had
drug a body out the door. And then later we
heard that it was a gunshot that killed her out
Oddly enough, this is actually the first I'm hearing of
(21:55):
a gunshot. So like that's I was like, I don't know,
that's what I tell my friends. I don't really know how,
you know, how it all went down, but I said
it was brutal whatever happened, you know. I mean, did
case you ever talk to you about who you thought
did it? I'm sure, like I'm trying to think, like,
(22:18):
at some point it becomes something that we just didn't
bring up because it was like it and it's not
to be mean, but at some point it was like
and you don't want to say, like, ghet over, but
at some point, you know, you just get to be like,
look and why bring it up if it's just going
to be this thing, you know, this thing you know,
And so it became this thing that nobody talked about,
(22:38):
you know, because we just wanted Casey to feel you know,
to feel better, like you know, we want him so
bad for him to that's like why why Whenever you
know he meant, we were like thank god, yeah, you know.
But then now I'm glad he's with you. Yeah, that's good,
that's great, it's great. It's just crazy how you can
feel so passionately, but when someone's taken from me, it's different.
(23:00):
But you can feel so passionately about somebody and then
it just wind up not doing right. You know. Listen,
thank you, no, no, please you. If you think of something,
I want to run it by me and make me
think it's more helpy. I find it odd the various
(23:20):
ways Rebecca in Casey's relationship has been portrayed. I hear
from her sister that she wanted to break up. I
hear from his close friends they were inseparable. And I
hear from a relatively neutral party that he was obsessed
and couldn't leave her alone. You're listening to Helen Gone,
We'll be right back talking with Laren. I find he's
(23:47):
frustrated with how significantly the fourteen years has fogged his memory.
But we keep talking shockingly, Laren tells me that he
was never brought back in for questioning after Rebecca's body
was found. It's also incredibly frustrating that in a case
where everything hinges on an alibi, so many details of
the timeline were vague. Since this interview, we've received the
(24:11):
official police statements from some of Casey's friends who were
with him on the day Rebecca was murdered, and since
Laren was one of them, his statement helps us clear
up some questions we have about the timeline. Casey's truck
was parked in Batesville and they all drove Casey to
pick it up, so we can reasonably believe that Casey
had his truck on Monday night and into Tuesday morning.
(24:32):
Laren also says that they left Sonic at around four pm.
We know that Rebecca dropped Casey off that morning, and
we had always heard that Casey told police she was
planning on going back to school. That's why he went
out with his friends that night and stayed out all night.
But if that's the case, why was he telling his
friends that Rebecca was supposed to pick him up and
(24:54):
never showed. I also can't get the last sentence of
Laren's statement, out of my head, it said, when we
returned from Batesville, Casey used my phone. After he hung up,
he stated that Rebecca was missing. That's when it really
seemed odd that he didn't head straight out the door
to find her. Taylor and I have both been working
(25:17):
day and night to try to contact every single person
who may have been at Sonic that day. Okay, So
I just talked to Bruce and he confirmed that he
was working at Sonic that day and Casey was a cook.
And he said the cooks went on their shift between
eight and nine am, and he remembered Rebecca dropping Casey
(25:38):
off at work because he knew her. He said, he
the last thing that happened, he dropped, she dropped, pulled in,
Casey gets out, she drops him off. He said. She
waved at him, and that's the last time I ever
saw her. She drove off. And he said that Casey's
shift would have ended at about one between one and two,
but that means he could have left as early as one.
Casey was on the early shift that Monday, which meant
(26:01):
that his shift would have ended between one and two pm.
But Larrence said that the group didn't leave Sonic until
later at around four. Now, Bruce did say, you know,
the cops came around, and he said, if he left,
you would have had to clock out because you know
where you clock in and out's right next to my desk.
But then he went on to say, when I was
(26:22):
asking how Casey got a ride home because he said Rebecca,
he confirmed Rebecca dropped him off that day, and he's like, well,
you know that town, everybody's friends, everybody gives everybody lifts.
Like so if it's that easy to get in and
out and you know, drive around, then yeah, I mean,
it would have been so easy for him to get
a lift from anybody. I asked him the important questions
about Casey. He didn't volunteer a huge amount. He did
(26:45):
answer them. He didn't volunteer a huge amount. I know,
they're really good friends, he said that. I mean, I'm
sure now, I'm sure this is going to get back
to Casey. He will now he'll know that we're asking
when he clocked in when he clocked out. According to police,
Casey's alibi was air tight, but our investigation has poked
some holes in that alibi. First, the timelines and the
(27:06):
statements that Casey's friends gave to police were vague, so
there could have potentially been missing time in the afternoon. Secondly,
Bruce told me that he would have seen Casey if
he clocked out, but Laren, Teresa, and other Sonic employees
have all told me that Bruce went in and out
all the time. Finally, Casey lived just a few miles
(27:27):
away from Sonic, just a ten minute ride down the
dirt road cutthrow we took, and Laren said that it
was not uncommon for the employees to unofficially clock out
to run errands. This means that there could potentially have
been time unaccounted for in the morning. Well, I'm still
kind of confused as to why she had to have
been murdered around like ten am. Time of death. I'm
(27:49):
not a pathologist, but just from like reading a lot
of autopsies and the pathologists I talked to, I know
time of death is very difficult to determine, even under
the best circumstances when the body's found right away, and
it's partly based on when the person was seen lest anyway,
according to the auto occurring to the physical evidence, I
just cannot believe he would have literally had to be.
(28:11):
In order for him to be ruled out in this killing,
he would have had to have every single moment of
his day documented on camera from Monday morning and through
to the next day. We've now talked to Teresa, a
car hop who not only was a friend of Rebecca's,
she knew Jennifer and Casey. We've talked to Bruce, the
manager on duty that day, and Philip Laren's roommate. We're
(28:34):
starting to get their individual stories and piece together the
details from that day. As we do, we hear something
we've never heard before. Someone mentions that they heard Casey
dropped his truck off at Sonic on Sunday evening and
drove home with Rebecca. This detail floors me. How the
hell did his car get to Batesville and how did
(28:55):
he get back? So, according to the official statements, Casey's
friends drove him to pick up his car in Batesville
on Monday afternoon. So if Casey's truck was at Sonic
Monday morning, how did it get to Batesville by that afternoon.
According to the police statements, Casey told his friends that
his father drove his truck to Batesville. But we had
(29:16):
always heard that his father, who was a trucker, was
on the road that day. The mystery of the truck
has like bothered all of us so much since the
beginning because at the end of the day, even the
question about where it was for the next few days
has bothered me. Because Charlie said that Casey didn't have
his truck at Sonic the next day. The whole reason
(29:37):
he was ruled out is because he was supposedly had
no transportation and was there all day. So the minute
you start saying, okay, he wasn't there all day, and
actually he did have transportation, and his transportation mysteriously, you know,
was in Batesville by that afternoon unless someone drove his truck.
This is a huge piece of the puzzle. According to
the police, Casey was the prime suspect at the beginning
(30:00):
of the case. He was only ruled out due to
his air tight alibi. That alibi hinged on two factors,
that he was at work all day and that he
did not have transportation. If Casey had his truck at work,
that changes everything. The more we dig into Casey's timeline,
the more questions we have, and unfortunately Casey won't answer them.
(30:27):
We'll be right back. I'm shopping in Walmart, one of
the few places in town with cell phone reception. When
I get a text message. It's a potential witness. I'm
looking at Turkey decoys and guns and people in camouflage
(30:50):
gearing up for hunting season, and my hands are shaking
as I read it. He says he knows Casey and
has something he needs to tell me. When I get
back to the car, I call him. Because he knows Casey,
he doesn't want to be identified, so we've disguised his voice. Well,
(31:16):
oh hi, I just got your textess, Catherine. Yeah, no,
I mean, like I said, our whole I mean, we
just want to find the person who did it. We're
not you know what I mean. We're not. We don't
care about anything else. This manam me and Casey and
a Ghani probably tell you the same story. And I
can be in prison right now. But and on like
(31:39):
four different occasions were good. I mean I know four
for sure. We were Casey were drinking too thanne and
just bopen I mean not, I mean, not ligerant drunk,
just crime blurderent. He he said that he killed her
(32:02):
and and y'all didn't find the weapon. Fact, Well, the
police haven't shared any information with me, but we've found
a lot of you know, we've gotten a lot of information.
Did he say where the weapon was? He said, he
proved in the river on the way to the Highway
nine from dying. And this happened like like I said,
(32:26):
four times I can remember. And then one day he
was just something that been wrong for three or four
day yere and he just put in hisself and when
he wasn't drunk this night and he said the same
thing he said that his story was. And I didn't
really think much about it until I heard. I didn't
(32:47):
know that she's gonna it was a blunt ob check,
like it was. I never knew any things. And she
he said that pretty much that she was telling him
that this would be the last time that he saw her,
or she'd be last last time to see him. Look go,
they were, I guess coming to him and I didn't
know he didn't know her personally, but they got into
(33:10):
it and she said some offensive thanks time. The way
he said it, he just lost it and he said,
next thing he knows, he's cleaning stuff up. And he
said they almost had him, but they couldn't because they
thought the timeline was different because he was supposedly at
work when that happened. But he said they had the
(33:31):
timeline mixed up on him. Did he say he went
home from worker? He didn't know, man, he did not
say that. I just didn't know if he was just
blowing smoke. But it bothered me for a long time.
But here the last few weeks because I saw that
think something on Facebook, Thames who's killed her back and
(33:53):
you come on the radio and it just kind of
sitting back to him there. Well, listen, I mean, I
so appreciate you doing it, and I know, I mean,
I'm just been thinking about their in the mind. I'd
probably want, you know, closure, and I know that he's
your friend, and I know that it's got to be hard,
and I really really appreciate it. I mean, if we
(34:14):
do have to go to the police with us, would
you be willing to come with us? I've got a
bad history of the police here. I probably could in No,
I mean, my dad is a really good guy and
he's a deputy sheriff, and then there's the Arkansas stateful
(34:35):
and you know, just so you don't have to go
in in Melbourne, if they come down there and I
had to. I mean, the thing that really got me
was because I never knew. I didn't know how they
killed it. I had no clue. Sure. And then somebody
I was at my new job and they were talking
about and they said if the cop said it was
on an object, because I always thought case case, he
(34:56):
was just bullshiting me. Never I thought he's you know,
he's just just blowing smoke. And now when he said
he hit her with it's a wooden object. I know
that much. And it would or like a baseball bath,
not not a baseball bath, but you know, stay logistics.
He on his way, he stopped on the guying bridge
(35:17):
and threw it out. Wow, I don't know how you
prove it. I mean, I mean, I'm just saying. He
said that more than once to this and like I said,
it's bothered me for a while. Well now I'm gonna
have to go to the police with it, just because
(35:38):
I have to. I mean what I mean, I would
really love it if we could go together. So that's
why I mean I want to. I know he's your
friend and know it's hard, but like I want to
get you know, this person caught this man. All right,
well listen, thank you so much. As investigators, we can't
draw conclusions from a single witness. So this may not
(36:00):
be the evidence that's needed to finally close this case,
but it might be the evidence that blows it wide open.
I'm Katherine Townsend and this is Helen Gone. Helen Gone
(36:30):
is a joint production between How Stuff Works and 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 Barr and
(36:51):
Else Crowley for School of Humans and Connell Byrne and
Chuck Bryant for How Stuff Works. Our field producer is
James Morrison. Our researcher is Sandy Klosterman. Them and original
score by Ben Solee available wherever you get your music.
To dig into the investigation, please visit hellangonepodcast dot com
(37:15):
or follow us on social media. School of Humans
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