January 18, 2022 • 28 mins
22 year-old Jacque Sue Rawson was a small town girl from picturesque Cape Girardeau, Missouri. She loved her family and dreamed of one day being a mom. In 1994 she married James Clay Waller, a tall lanky man who let Jacque mother him. After 11 years of marriage, in 2005, Jacque’s biggest dream came true. Jacque gave birth to triplets, and she was over the moon to instantly be the mother of three. By 2011, the marriage was falling apart and it was only a matter of time before terribly dark secrets came to light.
Check us out online! www.instagram.com/KT_Studios
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Crazy in Love is the true crime podcast that tells
love stories with a twist. Well, it's funny because she
had her triplets, but she would often refer to Clay
as her fourth child. She loved taking care of him,
from babying him and spoiling him as well. Sometimes the
twist of a knife. An FBI agent who worked most
of the case dug up remains of a knee. Just
because things start off with once upon a Time doesn't
(00:26):
mean everyone lives happily ever after. This is Crazy and Love,
the production of Katie Studios and I Heart Radio. I'm
Courtney Armstrong, a true crime producer at Katie Studios, joined
by fellow producers Lisa Di Giovine, Beth Greenwalt, and Tim Hamilton's.
We've all worked for years on various crime podcasts and
(00:49):
TV series, and as crime producers we talk murder all
the time. One thing we've noticed is just how many
of them stem from love. We're exploring the story of
a man child, the missing mom, and a sandbar called
Devil's Island. Jackie su Rassin was a pretty blonde to
live in a small town of Cape Girardo, Missouri, on
(01:11):
the border of Illinois. Cape Girardo is a college town
about a hundred miles south of St. Louis. It's got
a quaint downtown and a beautiful riverfront park that sits
on the Mississippi. It's also a family town in the
heartland of the United States, and Jackie was all about family.
At twenty two, she dreamed of having a beautiful family
(01:33):
with lots of children. She was also a born caregiver
who loved looking after others. So when she met the tall, lanky,
twenty three year old James Clay Waller, Clay to his friends,
she wanted to take care of him. They married, and
friends and family said she would always stand up for
him no matter the circumstances. And when Jackie got pregnant
(01:56):
at the age of thirty four, eleven years into the marriage,
it was great cause for celebration. Here's Beth. Yes. So
Jackie and Clay didn't have just one child, they had three.
She was pregnant with triplets, two girls and a boy,
and they were all born in two thousand five. According
to Jackie's sister Cheryl, she was an incredibly patient person.
(02:19):
When the kids were crying and screaming, you know, she
laughed it off. She was a hard worker and she
really kind of took challenges head on. And you know,
as you can imagine, with triplets, you're just on the
go completely. At night, she'd get up nine to ten
times to change the diapers, take care of feedings. These
kids were her whole world. Plus she also looked after
her husband and the house. Well. It's funny because she
(02:42):
had her triplets, but she would often refer to Clay
as her fourth child. She loved him, and yeah he
was her husband, but she loved taking care of him,
to embabying him and spoiling him as well. Jackie's sister Cheryl, though,
said she didn't think Clay ever changed one diping. You know,
I would think that you would want your husban meant
to be helping change kids diapers, but I don't think
(03:03):
he did that very often. And Jackie was really a
do it all woman. I mean, she worked forty plus
hours a week as a manager at a blue cross
and she took on all the mom duties for triplets,
and she was running the household because Clay wasn't really
running it with her. She was kind of helping take
(03:23):
care of the whole thing. Clay bounced around from job
to job, so Jackie became the breadwinner. She's just that
person that would step up and take care of everything.
I mean he tried. He did work for a year
actually as a deputy at the Cape Girardeau County Sheriff's office,
which was their small town, but he had a bit
of a personality clash with the captain and the job ended,
(03:46):
so he kind of just you know, meander around, wait
for the next job, and jump into something. And she
just took everything on herself. She was one of those
type a personalities that seemed to be able to just
organize and handle everything. And you have to wonder, is
it that she wanted to take on everything and do
everything herself, or was it because she didn't have that
(04:07):
with Clay so she had to step into that role.
You know, she always dreamed of having in a family.
You know, she wanted kids. She wanted to be you know,
the wife and mother, and they were married for eleven
years before she got pregnant. I think she was just
happy that she finally was having the kids that she
wanted and maybe at that point just could overlook the
flaws in her husband. People that really want kids really
(04:27):
go after that strongly. But she's a small town girl,
a family girl, and I bet this is something she
really yearned for. By December of the children were almost
five years old and things began to go downhill for
the couple. Clay was having affairs, and when Jackie confronted him,
he would deny it. Jackie kept a detailed diary on
(04:51):
her work computer so Clay wouldn't see it. In this diary,
she noted his abuse and his threats to her. She
was beginning to seriously fear for her safety. On December,
Jackie found her courage and told Clay she was going
to file for divorce. Confronted with this, he threatened her.
(05:15):
According to Jackie's diary entry on December three, Clay said quote,
I have a feeling that one of us will not
be around to watch our children grow up. Jackie planned
to get out, but she was going to move slowly.
She told her sister Cheryl, I know what he's capable of,
and I don't want to be dead. Here's tim. So
(05:37):
it seemed at this point that nobody really liked or
cared for Clay, and that it was especially true for
Jackie's sister Sheryl, who wondered why did her sister stuck
with him for so long since he contributed nearly nothing
to the relationship and he was cheating on her year
old Sheryl burnick You was Jackie's older sister by six years,
(05:59):
and she was also her protector, and Cheryl never really
got a good feeling about Clay. Jackie confided in her
sister that she felt sorry for Clay, and she also
told her sister that she was codependent and felt like
she had to nurture him and take care of him
and pretty much mother him. Jackie's parents, Stan and Ruby
Rawson agreed with Cheryl and said they never really cared
(06:23):
for him either. Jackie's mom thought he was a jerk,
and Jackie's father said he really didn't care for him
from the first moment that they met. They probably thought
they're beautiful, ambitious, go get her daughter could do way
better than marry a guy who just cares little about
anything and has no responsibility and can't even hold the job.
It gets even weirder because you know, on Christmas Day,
(06:46):
Clay spent the holiday with Jackie's family, which seems pretty
odd since nobody liked him and they had just started
the whole divorce thing. They were on that road. Her
own mother was shocked when she saw him at the
front door, so the last thing anybody was expected was
for him to show up at a family event. Ruby
said she talked to Clay a little bit and she
got the feeling he must have known the marriage was over,
(07:08):
especially when he said I'm hanging on by my fingertips.
And they shot a holiday video too, and it's kind
of it's really uncomfortable to watch. I mean, Clay's kids
are looking uncomfortable around him, and they're all opening presents.
He asked his daughter for a kiss, and then she hesitates,
and she looks up at him and she looks kind
of scared, and she kisses him, and he goes on
(07:31):
asking do you love me? Do you love me? She
just ignores him. And it's just kind of it's a
very strange. He looks like he doesn't fit in and
everybody looks very uncomfortable around him. Beth, you found something
about the diary, didn't you. Things got worse after the
Christmas video, and Jackie did keep a diary, and there's
an entry from her in March of two eleven, and
(07:54):
she wrote something It was really kind of disturbing. This
is what she wrote. Clay told me that I did
not deserve to live. He told me that a divorce
would be my death sentence. And even more disturbing than that,
the entry she wrote the following week, which was Clay
told me if he couldn't get me, he would kill
all our kids. He would take them for a weekend
(08:15):
fishing trip, and then he would personally tell me they
drowned so he could see my face. She was obviously
really scared. When you think about it. The statistics, and
I believe I read this somewhere, was on average, nearly
twenty people per minute are physically abused by an intimate
partner in the United States. If you look at that
statistic during one year, this equates to more than ten
(08:37):
million men and women. Shortly after the diary entries, Clay
lost another job and they lost their house. They were
also facing bankruptcy. Jackie was relieved because now she had
an excuse to actually get out. She and the kids
moved with her sister, Cheryl and her husband, Bob. Clay
moved over an hour away to Jackson, Missouri, in a
house owned by a friend, which is probably the best
(08:59):
thing that could have happened. What was really haunting to
me is the diary. I mean he's threatening to kill
her and threatening to kill her children, and then to
tell her about it, to see the reaction on her face.
It's like seventeen years they've been together, so maybe she
still had a little bit of hope. Maybe that's why
she wanted to stick it out. I was wondering if
(09:20):
maybe she didn't run to the police because he used
to work there, and maybe she felt like he had
friends in the department or something. That's a very interesting point. However,
he was only there for a year and he didn't
get along with his captain. But they're already was abuse
because we learned that already. It was in her diaries.
It's understandable that you would hope that maybe this person
(09:42):
can go back to the person you fell in love with.
I mean, that's a common thing. And he was also
the father of her children, you know, and she wanted
them to have a father, and you know, when things started,
he wasn't like this. You know, they fell in love,
they built this family, they built this life that she's
so very wanted, So you know, I wonder she was
holding out hope that things would get better. It's a
(10:02):
small town. Everybody knows everybody. Maybe she didn't want anybody
to talk about this. When you don't want that out there,
I understand that, but I still think it's really important,
especially for anyone who's listening to this, that when somebody
says that, you definitely do need to share that with
the authorities or somebody you trust. Well, what's interesting here
(10:23):
in this story is her family all had a bad
feeling about this guy right from the get go. But
we're all so easily blinded by love, and I think
we we like to see the best in people, and
when your emotions are involved, you definitely can see what
you want to see. So by the spring of just
months after filing for divorce, the couple was leading separate lives.
(10:46):
They both began relationships with other people, and Jackie told
her sister that she felt Clay had turned a corner.
Jackie was hopeful that he would sign the divorce papers
and she could move on with her life. They only
needed to finalize the paperwork, and June one was the
big day the divorce was about to become final. Jackie
(11:09):
son Maddox stayed with Clay over the Memorial Day weekend holiday,
and the plan was for the couple to meet at
the attorney's office, then to swing by Clay's house and
pick up maddox. On the way, Jackie called her sister
Cheryl to tell her she was getting maddox and then
heading home. After three hours and several unanswered voicemails from Jackie,
(11:32):
Cheryl became worried and she called Clay, but he didn't answer.
Cheryl then texted Clay and said, quote, if I don't
hear from my sister in five minutes, I'm going straight
to the police. At that point, Clay called Sheryl back
and said if I see her, I'll let you know.
Then he hung up. It was around six thirty pm.
(11:56):
Cheryl felt something was terribly wrong. She drove to the
police Asian and told them that she believed Clay Waller
had killed her sister Jackie. Here's Lisa. Well. The police
acted really quickly on this. Typically you wait twenty four
hours to report a missing person. But the sister had
(12:16):
explained about the threats and Clay's behavior because at times
Jackie did share with her sister what was going on. Um,
So the police found Clay at home. Uh, And they
did question him, and he said Jackie met him at
a drug store just after eleven, they had lunch, they
(12:37):
split up, and they met at the attorney's office at
three o'clock, and then after that Jackie came over to
his place, not to pick up their son, but to
discuss the divorce. He went on to say that they
took a nap together, which seems kind of weird to
me because why would you be taking a nap with
your soon to be ex husband. That doesn't add up.
(13:00):
None of it makes sense to me. Like he said
that they went to take a nap together, I mean
they're going through a contentious divorce on some level. He
had been threatening, so that immediately to me, just made
me feel uneasy. And their son, Maddox, wasn't at the house.
Apparently he was left with Clay's girlfriend, which didn't make
(13:23):
sense either, because the deal was that she was going
to the house to retrieve the little boy. I found
out that. He also told police that they got into
an argument over the bankruptcy and she took off and
just left on foot, and he went to look for her.
When he couldn't find her, he said he quote, get
a soda and cool off unquote. When he returned back
(13:45):
to his house, which was after about six, he said
Jackie's car was gone. Well, Tim, The cops actually found
Jackie's car and it was on an interstate and it
had a flat tire. But when the car expert looked
at it, the rim wasn't damaged in any way, shape
or worm, So it wasn't flat from driving. It had
to be punctured after the vehicle had stopped. Someone intentionally
(14:07):
did that to her tire. So where is she? And
police wanted to search Clay's house, but he immediately lawyered
up refused to answer any further questions. We're going to
take a quick break. We'll be back in just a moment.
(14:35):
Four days after Jackie disappeared, Clay left her a voicemail
and this is what he said. Hey, honey, it's Sunday
afternoon and you've been missing since Wednesday. Please, if you
get this message, please call me. I don't know where
you're at. I miss you so terribly. Please call now.
This is a small town, so as you can imagine,
(14:56):
the case explodes. The police put together a major case
squa on taking the best of seven different apartments to
work on Jackie's disappearance. Well, authorities obtained search warrants for
Clay's car end his house because remember he was staying
in a small house in Jackson, about an hour from Jackie.
An FBI agent found blood in his car on the
driver's side door, not just a few drops, but a
(15:18):
large blood stain. False alarm though, because when they analyzed
the blood it was actually fish blood and it was
planted there by Clay to test the police and see
if they were really checking to see what's there, running
it through the proper channels to see if it's what
kind of blood and whose blood it was. I mean,
(15:38):
it's kind of delusional for him to think they wouldn't
check that. Meanwhile, inside the house, some of the other
hallway carpet was missing and blood was all over one
area of the walls, lots of blood and it was confined.
It seemed to like this one area. The police found
their way to the basement crawl space and saw that
the missing carpet from upstairs was rolled up and show
(16:00):
into an area of the crawl space that you can't
easily get to, and it was soaked in blood. And
after being tested they found out it was Jackie's blood.
This guy took advantage of the cops to let's not
forget about that. He planted blood in his own car.
I mean, that's really going the extra mile. I mean,
(16:22):
that's impeding an investigation, is what that is. I mean,
obviously he's trying to throw them off the scent, but
he's also trying to test them. I mean, that's that
seems ridiculous. You have to wonder is he is he
putting it there so they don't go looking in the
house if they they find the blood out there, that
they stick to that area and they don't go anywhere
else and it's like concentrated there for that. Ah ha,
(16:45):
got you a moment beyond that. To me, it's like
your wife is missing. You know, yes, you're getting divorced,
but she's the mother of your children, and you're kind
of like horsing around over here. Yeah, it's very juvenile.
Goes back to that fourth child syndrome, But it seems
like he didn't care. He definitely lacks that compassion and
those those feelings that most of the rest of us
(17:06):
do have. Police did the tracking of her day so
they could kind of get an idea of how what
happened and how did blood get there. The day she
disappeared was June one, and they went through surveillance cameras.
The drug store had surveillance tape because she was seen
there at eleven am, and then she was also seen
(17:29):
on the bank's close circuit TV at the drive through
at one pm. This was the last time she was
seen on camera. Hours later, on the very same day,
Clay has seen with his girlfriend and son Maddox at
a toy store, except he's wearing a different shirt from
earlier and there's no sign of Jackie, and the close
circuit TV in the parking lot also showed his truck
(17:52):
and in the flatbed he had a large trash can
and he was towing a small boat. And later that
same night, Clay is seen on camera at a car
wash washing his boat. So images of the boat were
released to the public, and a young couple actually said
that they saw the boat on the afternoon of Jackie's
disappearance in the Mississippi River next to Devil's Island. Devil's
(18:15):
Island is part sandbar and part island. The area includes bottomland,
hardwood forests, and agricultural feels and it's subject to flooding,
and it covers about two thousand acres. Authority starts searching
the island and they don't find anything. Well, Clay now
sits down for a formal interview because he is a
person of interest. He was confronted with the blood evidence
(18:39):
and he said it was all from an accident that
Jackie had in the hallway and it wasn't a big deal.
Now even with blood evidence, there wasn't enough to charge him.
When was the blood there? Was it there when she
had visited the house previously? Is it knew? There was
no way of telling, and there was still no proof
that she was dead. She was a missing soon at
(19:00):
this point, although a lot of her family didn't believe
she was alive. Police were drowning in circumstantial evidence, but
they had nobody. With Clay as the main suspect, they
attached a track or to his truck. However, Clay drove
around aimlessly, parking in vacant lots where he would sit
for hours. Police suspected that he knew he was being tracked.
(19:25):
In fact, the entire community was searching for Jackie and
the police were watching Clay like hawk. When he lost
custody of his children to Cheryl. Something snapped. Clay threatened
Cheryl on social media with bodily harm, and Clay was
arrested not for his wife's murder, but for threatening her
sister's life. Here's him in his threat to Cheryl, he wrote,
(19:51):
you're dead. I promise if those kids get hurt, I
will get you. Five years from now. You'll have it coming.
So it's like that ominous, eerie threat. With this threat,
I think the cops had an opportunity to bring Clay
in again for questioning five months into Jackie's disappearance, to
try again. They asked about Jackie. He says nothing, He
(20:14):
denies he has any information, and he starts arguing, kind
of goes off on a tangent that a colleague of
his wife killed her, a guy named Gary, and he
said Jackie was afraid of Gary and that he could
prove Gary's guilt. And when you look at the interrogation,
he gets angry with rage talking about this guy. Well,
(20:38):
unbeknownst to him, the police had already sorted through Gary
and he had an alibi. At the end of the day,
Clay couldn't deny the threats to Cheryls, so he pled
guilty and was sentenced to five years in prison. I Meanwhile,
Jackie's family was really desperate to find her body. They
wanted that they needed that for closure, but Clay was
not talking at all. Two years after Jackie Waller's disappearance,
(21:03):
her family asked officials to take another look at the case.
Clay's attorney countered with a deal. If Clay helped prosecutors
find Jackie's body, they would allow him to plead guilty
to second degree murder with the sentence of twenty years.
The family simply wanted this to end and ask prosecution
to agree, which they did. So Clay leads police and
(21:29):
the FBI to that sandbar we mentioned earlier the Devil's Island,
and Devil's Island is located in the Mississippi River. It's
also if you remember the area where the two witnesses
had spotted Clay's boat. So the girl on the island,
and now Clay has a problem finding the exact spot
(21:51):
where he said Jackie was buried, and investigators are are
starting to click their heels and they're wondering is he
lying again and is this a wild goose chase? So
someone in authority remembered Clay saying that he put a
bag of fertilizer on her body, and since fertilizer kills trees,
(22:13):
they were looking around this one area to see where
there were any dead trees, and an FBI agent who
worked most of the case started digging with his bare hands,
and he dug up remains of a knee and denim
jeans and it was Jackie, and they excavated the rest
(22:35):
of the body. Let's stop here for another quick break.
(22:55):
As part of the plea deal, Clay had to walk
police through the murder and explained how he took his
boat to Devil's Island and doug a hole the day
before the murder, and that's where he was spotted by
the couple we mentioned earlier. That night, he spent with
his girlfriend in Illinois, and he met Jackie the next day.
Clay went on to say that Jackie wanted and I quote,
(23:17):
one last bang, which is why they went back to
his place after meeting with the lawyer, which doesn't seem
at all plausible. Clay told police that he and Jackie
were both getting something out of the fridge and he
accidentally hid her nose and she got a bloody nose,
and she took off running and tripped in the hallway,
and an argument erupted. It's like this guy knows how
(23:37):
to tell some tall tales. Clay says that Jackie accused
him of hitting her nose on purpose, saying, I wonder
how much time you get with the kids if everybody
knew you just beat me up. Clay went on to
say he hit her backhanded across the neck, and she
fell to the ground, and he stood over her, and
he punched her in the nose. He said that he
(23:59):
all so then pressed his forearm into her chest and
she stopped breathing. He said he didn't plan on killing her.
It just happened. You know what they point out to
Clay is he says this was something that happened in
a fit of rage or fit of passion or whatever.
He had already previously stated that he dug the hole
the day before, which is premeditation. This wasn't a spur
(24:23):
of the moment. This was something that he planned for.
So it's interesting that he's still lying to police even
though he has a plea deal, and it's still gonna
be twenty years no matter what. After clay fulfilled his
part of the bargain and they found Jackie's remains. He
had to make his formal plea in court in front
of the judge, and we have a snippet of audio
from that work calls the case reversus James playing the
(24:49):
state degree to amend his charge to murder in the
second degree and recommend a sense of twenty years to
serve and dismiscounts two and three. And in return, Mr
Waller had to provide the location of Jackie Waller's body.
Law enforcement had to be capable of recovering her body,
(25:11):
and then Mr Waller had to sit down and give
an accounting of how he killed Jackie Waller. You were
there and Jackie was there? Is that correct? And what
happened that led to this? That in the argument and
I lost temporary m all right? Um caused her death?
(25:37):
Did you strike her about the head and face? What
did you do that with my fast? All right? Did
you press your forearm against her neck? And did you
choke her to death that way or suffocate her? You
were aware that you were causing her death when you
were doing it. Yeah, and that was your intention at
(25:57):
that time? Was that correct? Yes, court finds a the
defendant hasn't been and all of the elements of the
charge against him and not defend is guilty. It's so
hard when you hear it. He couldn't even bring himself
to say the words I killed her. I think we
see this a lot. It's I almost feel like they
just till the very end they hold on and refused
to kind of give anything that could bring bring peace
(26:17):
to a family. People forget how one person's actions can
affect the lives of so many and the kind of
endless ripple effect it can have. It affected a community,
it affected a family, and this was a tragedy all
the way around. Clay Waller got twenty years in his
(26:39):
plea agreement, but the story doesn't end just yet. He
confessed to digging a grave for Jackie on Devil's Island
in Illinois and then returning to Missouri to murder her.
In doing so, he violated a little known law called
the Interstate Domestic Violence Act. It's a federal crime that
carries a prison sentence off the five years which Clay
(27:02):
was sentenced to. James Clay Waller is now in prison
in Washington, d c. And is scheduled for release on October.
The triplets are sixteen years old and they were formally
adopted by their aunt Cheryl and uncle Bob. If you're
enjoying Crazy and Love, listen to seasons one and two
(27:24):
of The piked In Massacre, another Katie Studios production, and
follow us on Instagram at Katie Underscore Studios. Crazy in
Love is produced by Stephanie Laie Decker, Beth Greenwald, Chris Graves,
Lisa Dgovin, Jeff Shane, Tim Hamilton's and me Courtney Armstrong.
Editing and sound designed by Jeff ta Additional editing by
(27:47):
Davy Cooper Wasser. Crazy in Love is a production of
I Heart Radio and Katie Studios. For more podcasts from
I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite chose. If you're
enjoying Crazy and Love, listen to seasons one and two
of The piked In Massacre, another Katie Studios production.
Crazy in Love is the true crime podcast that tells
love stories with a twist. Well, it's funny because she
had her triplets, but she would often refer to Clay
as her fourth child. She loved taking care of him,
from babying him and spoiling him as well. Sometimes the
twist of a knife. An FBI agent who worked most
of the case dug up remains of a knee. Just
because things start off with once upon a Time doesn't
(00:26):
mean everyone lives happily ever after. This is Crazy and Love,
the production of Katie Studios and I Heart Radio. I'm
Courtney Armstrong, a true crime producer at Katie Studios, joined
by fellow producers Lisa Di Giovine, Beth Greenwalt, and Tim Hamilton's.
We've all worked for years on various crime podcasts and
(00:49):
TV series, and as crime producers we talk murder all
the time. One thing we've noticed is just how many
of them stem from love. We're exploring the story of
a man child, the missing mom, and a sandbar called
Devil's Island. Jackie su Rassin was a pretty blonde to
live in a small town of Cape Girardo, Missouri, on
(01:11):
the border of Illinois. Cape Girardo is a college town
about a hundred miles south of St. Louis. It's got
a quaint downtown and a beautiful riverfront park that sits
on the Mississippi. It's also a family town in the
heartland of the United States, and Jackie was all about family.
At twenty two, she dreamed of having a beautiful family
(01:33):
with lots of children. She was also a born caregiver
who loved looking after others. So when she met the tall, lanky,
twenty three year old James Clay Waller, Clay to his friends,
she wanted to take care of him. They married, and
friends and family said she would always stand up for
him no matter the circumstances. And when Jackie got pregnant
(01:56):
at the age of thirty four, eleven years into the marriage,
it was great cause for celebration. Here's Beth. Yes. So
Jackie and Clay didn't have just one child, they had three.
She was pregnant with triplets, two girls and a boy,
and they were all born in two thousand five. According
to Jackie's sister Cheryl, she was an incredibly patient person.
(02:19):
When the kids were crying and screaming, you know, she
laughed it off. She was a hard worker and she
really kind of took challenges head on. And you know,
as you can imagine, with triplets, you're just on the
go completely. At night, she'd get up nine to ten
times to change the diapers, take care of feedings. These
kids were her whole world. Plus she also looked after
her husband and the house. Well. It's funny because she
(02:42):
had her triplets, but she would often refer to Clay
as her fourth child. She loved him, and yeah he
was her husband, but she loved taking care of him,
to embabying him and spoiling him as well. Jackie's sister Cheryl, though,
said she didn't think Clay ever changed one diping. You know,
I would think that you would want your husban meant
to be helping change kids diapers, but I don't think
(03:03):
he did that very often. And Jackie was really a
do it all woman. I mean, she worked forty plus
hours a week as a manager at a blue cross
and she took on all the mom duties for triplets,
and she was running the household because Clay wasn't really
running it with her. She was kind of helping take
(03:23):
care of the whole thing. Clay bounced around from job
to job, so Jackie became the breadwinner. She's just that
person that would step up and take care of everything.
I mean he tried. He did work for a year
actually as a deputy at the Cape Girardeau County Sheriff's office,
which was their small town, but he had a bit
of a personality clash with the captain and the job ended,
(03:46):
so he kind of just you know, meander around, wait
for the next job, and jump into something. And she
just took everything on herself. She was one of those
type a personalities that seemed to be able to just
organize and handle everything. And you have to wonder, is
it that she wanted to take on everything and do
everything herself, or was it because she didn't have that
(04:07):
with Clay so she had to step into that role.
You know, she always dreamed of having in a family.
You know, she wanted kids. She wanted to be you know,
the wife and mother, and they were married for eleven
years before she got pregnant. I think she was just
happy that she finally was having the kids that she
wanted and maybe at that point just could overlook the
flaws in her husband. People that really want kids really
(04:27):
go after that strongly. But she's a small town girl,
a family girl, and I bet this is something she
really yearned for. By December of the children were almost
five years old and things began to go downhill for
the couple. Clay was having affairs, and when Jackie confronted him,
he would deny it. Jackie kept a detailed diary on
(04:51):
her work computer so Clay wouldn't see it. In this diary,
she noted his abuse and his threats to her. She
was beginning to seriously fear for her safety. On December,
Jackie found her courage and told Clay she was going
to file for divorce. Confronted with this, he threatened her.
(05:15):
According to Jackie's diary entry on December three, Clay said quote,
I have a feeling that one of us will not
be around to watch our children grow up. Jackie planned
to get out, but she was going to move slowly.
She told her sister Cheryl, I know what he's capable of,
and I don't want to be dead. Here's tim. So
(05:37):
it seemed at this point that nobody really liked or
cared for Clay, and that it was especially true for
Jackie's sister Sheryl, who wondered why did her sister stuck
with him for so long since he contributed nearly nothing
to the relationship and he was cheating on her year
old Sheryl burnick You was Jackie's older sister by six years,
(05:59):
and she was also her protector, and Cheryl never really
got a good feeling about Clay. Jackie confided in her
sister that she felt sorry for Clay, and she also
told her sister that she was codependent and felt like
she had to nurture him and take care of him
and pretty much mother him. Jackie's parents, Stan and Ruby
Rawson agreed with Cheryl and said they never really cared
(06:23):
for him either. Jackie's mom thought he was a jerk,
and Jackie's father said he really didn't care for him
from the first moment that they met. They probably thought
they're beautiful, ambitious, go get her daughter could do way
better than marry a guy who just cares little about
anything and has no responsibility and can't even hold the job.
It gets even weirder because you know, on Christmas Day,
(06:46):
Clay spent the holiday with Jackie's family, which seems pretty
odd since nobody liked him and they had just started
the whole divorce thing. They were on that road. Her
own mother was shocked when she saw him at the
front door, so the last thing anybody was expected was
for him to show up at a family event. Ruby
said she talked to Clay a little bit and she
got the feeling he must have known the marriage was over,
(07:08):
especially when he said I'm hanging on by my fingertips.
And they shot a holiday video too, and it's kind
of it's really uncomfortable to watch. I mean, Clay's kids
are looking uncomfortable around him, and they're all opening presents.
He asked his daughter for a kiss, and then she hesitates,
and she looks up at him and she looks kind
of scared, and she kisses him, and he goes on
(07:31):
asking do you love me? Do you love me? She
just ignores him. And it's just kind of it's a
very strange. He looks like he doesn't fit in and
everybody looks very uncomfortable around him. Beth, you found something
about the diary, didn't you. Things got worse after the
Christmas video, and Jackie did keep a diary, and there's
an entry from her in March of two eleven, and
(07:54):
she wrote something It was really kind of disturbing. This
is what she wrote. Clay told me that I did
not deserve to live. He told me that a divorce
would be my death sentence. And even more disturbing than that,
the entry she wrote the following week, which was Clay
told me if he couldn't get me, he would kill
all our kids. He would take them for a weekend
(08:15):
fishing trip, and then he would personally tell me they
drowned so he could see my face. She was obviously
really scared. When you think about it. The statistics, and
I believe I read this somewhere, was on average, nearly
twenty people per minute are physically abused by an intimate
partner in the United States. If you look at that
statistic during one year, this equates to more than ten
(08:37):
million men and women. Shortly after the diary entries, Clay
lost another job and they lost their house. They were
also facing bankruptcy. Jackie was relieved because now she had
an excuse to actually get out. She and the kids
moved with her sister, Cheryl and her husband, Bob. Clay
moved over an hour away to Jackson, Missouri, in a
house owned by a friend, which is probably the best
(08:59):
thing that could have happened. What was really haunting to
me is the diary. I mean he's threatening to kill
her and threatening to kill her children, and then to
tell her about it, to see the reaction on her face.
It's like seventeen years they've been together, so maybe she
still had a little bit of hope. Maybe that's why
she wanted to stick it out. I was wondering if
(09:20):
maybe she didn't run to the police because he used
to work there, and maybe she felt like he had
friends in the department or something. That's a very interesting point. However,
he was only there for a year and he didn't
get along with his captain. But they're already was abuse
because we learned that already. It was in her diaries.
It's understandable that you would hope that maybe this person
(09:42):
can go back to the person you fell in love with.
I mean, that's a common thing. And he was also
the father of her children, you know, and she wanted
them to have a father, and you know, when things started,
he wasn't like this. You know, they fell in love,
they built this family, they built this life that she's
so very wanted, So you know, I wonder she was
holding out hope that things would get better. It's a
(10:02):
small town. Everybody knows everybody. Maybe she didn't want anybody
to talk about this. When you don't want that out there,
I understand that, but I still think it's really important,
especially for anyone who's listening to this, that when somebody
says that, you definitely do need to share that with
the authorities or somebody you trust. Well, what's interesting here
(10:23):
in this story is her family all had a bad
feeling about this guy right from the get go. But
we're all so easily blinded by love, and I think
we we like to see the best in people, and
when your emotions are involved, you definitely can see what
you want to see. So by the spring of just
months after filing for divorce, the couple was leading separate lives.
(10:46):
They both began relationships with other people, and Jackie told
her sister that she felt Clay had turned a corner.
Jackie was hopeful that he would sign the divorce papers
and she could move on with her life. They only
needed to finalize the paperwork, and June one was the
big day the divorce was about to become final. Jackie
(11:09):
son Maddox stayed with Clay over the Memorial Day weekend holiday,
and the plan was for the couple to meet at
the attorney's office, then to swing by Clay's house and
pick up maddox. On the way, Jackie called her sister
Cheryl to tell her she was getting maddox and then
heading home. After three hours and several unanswered voicemails from Jackie,
(11:32):
Cheryl became worried and she called Clay, but he didn't answer.
Cheryl then texted Clay and said, quote, if I don't
hear from my sister in five minutes, I'm going straight
to the police. At that point, Clay called Sheryl back
and said if I see her, I'll let you know.
Then he hung up. It was around six thirty pm.
(11:56):
Cheryl felt something was terribly wrong. She drove to the
police Asian and told them that she believed Clay Waller
had killed her sister Jackie. Here's Lisa. Well. The police
acted really quickly on this. Typically you wait twenty four
hours to report a missing person. But the sister had
(12:16):
explained about the threats and Clay's behavior because at times
Jackie did share with her sister what was going on. Um,
So the police found Clay at home. Uh, And they
did question him, and he said Jackie met him at
a drug store just after eleven, they had lunch, they
(12:37):
split up, and they met at the attorney's office at
three o'clock, and then after that Jackie came over to
his place, not to pick up their son, but to
discuss the divorce. He went on to say that they
took a nap together, which seems kind of weird to
me because why would you be taking a nap with
your soon to be ex husband. That doesn't add up.
(13:00):
None of it makes sense to me. Like he said
that they went to take a nap together, I mean
they're going through a contentious divorce on some level. He
had been threatening, so that immediately to me, just made
me feel uneasy. And their son, Maddox, wasn't at the house.
Apparently he was left with Clay's girlfriend, which didn't make
(13:23):
sense either, because the deal was that she was going
to the house to retrieve the little boy. I found
out that. He also told police that they got into
an argument over the bankruptcy and she took off and
just left on foot, and he went to look for her.
When he couldn't find her, he said he quote, get
a soda and cool off unquote. When he returned back
(13:45):
to his house, which was after about six, he said
Jackie's car was gone. Well, Tim, The cops actually found
Jackie's car and it was on an interstate and it
had a flat tire. But when the car expert looked
at it, the rim wasn't damaged in any way, shape
or worm, So it wasn't flat from driving. It had
to be punctured after the vehicle had stopped. Someone intentionally
(14:07):
did that to her tire. So where is she? And
police wanted to search Clay's house, but he immediately lawyered
up refused to answer any further questions. We're going to
take a quick break. We'll be back in just a moment.
(14:35):
Four days after Jackie disappeared, Clay left her a voicemail
and this is what he said. Hey, honey, it's Sunday
afternoon and you've been missing since Wednesday. Please, if you
get this message, please call me. I don't know where
you're at. I miss you so terribly. Please call now.
This is a small town, so as you can imagine,
(14:56):
the case explodes. The police put together a major case
squa on taking the best of seven different apartments to
work on Jackie's disappearance. Well, authorities obtained search warrants for
Clay's car end his house because remember he was staying
in a small house in Jackson, about an hour from Jackie.
An FBI agent found blood in his car on the
driver's side door, not just a few drops, but a
(15:18):
large blood stain. False alarm though, because when they analyzed
the blood it was actually fish blood and it was
planted there by Clay to test the police and see
if they were really checking to see what's there, running
it through the proper channels to see if it's what
kind of blood and whose blood it was. I mean,
(15:38):
it's kind of delusional for him to think they wouldn't
check that. Meanwhile, inside the house, some of the other
hallway carpet was missing and blood was all over one
area of the walls, lots of blood and it was confined.
It seemed to like this one area. The police found
their way to the basement crawl space and saw that
the missing carpet from upstairs was rolled up and show
(16:00):
into an area of the crawl space that you can't
easily get to, and it was soaked in blood. And
after being tested they found out it was Jackie's blood.
This guy took advantage of the cops to let's not
forget about that. He planted blood in his own car.
I mean, that's really going the extra mile. I mean,
(16:22):
that's impeding an investigation, is what that is. I mean,
obviously he's trying to throw them off the scent, but
he's also trying to test them. I mean, that's that
seems ridiculous. You have to wonder is he is he
putting it there so they don't go looking in the
house if they they find the blood out there, that
they stick to that area and they don't go anywhere
else and it's like concentrated there for that. Ah ha,
(16:45):
got you a moment beyond that. To me, it's like
your wife is missing. You know, yes, you're getting divorced,
but she's the mother of your children, and you're kind
of like horsing around over here. Yeah, it's very juvenile.
Goes back to that fourth child syndrome, But it seems
like he didn't care. He definitely lacks that compassion and
those those feelings that most of the rest of us
(17:06):
do have. Police did the tracking of her day so
they could kind of get an idea of how what
happened and how did blood get there. The day she
disappeared was June one, and they went through surveillance cameras.
The drug store had surveillance tape because she was seen
there at eleven am, and then she was also seen
(17:29):
on the bank's close circuit TV at the drive through
at one pm. This was the last time she was
seen on camera. Hours later, on the very same day,
Clay has seen with his girlfriend and son Maddox at
a toy store, except he's wearing a different shirt from
earlier and there's no sign of Jackie, and the close
circuit TV in the parking lot also showed his truck
(17:52):
and in the flatbed he had a large trash can
and he was towing a small boat. And later that
same night, Clay is seen on camera at a car
wash washing his boat. So images of the boat were
released to the public, and a young couple actually said
that they saw the boat on the afternoon of Jackie's
disappearance in the Mississippi River next to Devil's Island. Devil's
(18:15):
Island is part sandbar and part island. The area includes bottomland,
hardwood forests, and agricultural feels and it's subject to flooding,
and it covers about two thousand acres. Authority starts searching
the island and they don't find anything. Well, Clay now
sits down for a formal interview because he is a
person of interest. He was confronted with the blood evidence
(18:39):
and he said it was all from an accident that
Jackie had in the hallway and it wasn't a big deal.
Now even with blood evidence, there wasn't enough to charge him.
When was the blood there? Was it there when she
had visited the house previously? Is it knew? There was
no way of telling, and there was still no proof
that she was dead. She was a missing soon at
(19:00):
this point, although a lot of her family didn't believe
she was alive. Police were drowning in circumstantial evidence, but
they had nobody. With Clay as the main suspect, they
attached a track or to his truck. However, Clay drove
around aimlessly, parking in vacant lots where he would sit
for hours. Police suspected that he knew he was being tracked.
(19:25):
In fact, the entire community was searching for Jackie and
the police were watching Clay like hawk. When he lost
custody of his children to Cheryl. Something snapped. Clay threatened
Cheryl on social media with bodily harm, and Clay was
arrested not for his wife's murder, but for threatening her
sister's life. Here's him in his threat to Cheryl, he wrote,
(19:51):
you're dead. I promise if those kids get hurt, I
will get you. Five years from now. You'll have it coming.
So it's like that ominous, eerie threat. With this threat,
I think the cops had an opportunity to bring Clay
in again for questioning five months into Jackie's disappearance, to
try again. They asked about Jackie. He says nothing, He
(20:14):
denies he has any information, and he starts arguing, kind
of goes off on a tangent that a colleague of
his wife killed her, a guy named Gary, and he
said Jackie was afraid of Gary and that he could
prove Gary's guilt. And when you look at the interrogation,
he gets angry with rage talking about this guy. Well,
(20:38):
unbeknownst to him, the police had already sorted through Gary
and he had an alibi. At the end of the day,
Clay couldn't deny the threats to Cheryls, so he pled
guilty and was sentenced to five years in prison. I Meanwhile,
Jackie's family was really desperate to find her body. They
wanted that they needed that for closure, but Clay was
not talking at all. Two years after Jackie Waller's disappearance,
(21:03):
her family asked officials to take another look at the case.
Clay's attorney countered with a deal. If Clay helped prosecutors
find Jackie's body, they would allow him to plead guilty
to second degree murder with the sentence of twenty years.
The family simply wanted this to end and ask prosecution
to agree, which they did. So Clay leads police and
(21:29):
the FBI to that sandbar we mentioned earlier the Devil's Island,
and Devil's Island is located in the Mississippi River. It's
also if you remember the area where the two witnesses
had spotted Clay's boat. So the girl on the island,
and now Clay has a problem finding the exact spot
(21:51):
where he said Jackie was buried, and investigators are are
starting to click their heels and they're wondering is he
lying again and is this a wild goose chase? So
someone in authority remembered Clay saying that he put a
bag of fertilizer on her body, and since fertilizer kills trees,
(22:13):
they were looking around this one area to see where
there were any dead trees, and an FBI agent who
worked most of the case started digging with his bare hands,
and he dug up remains of a knee and denim
jeans and it was Jackie, and they excavated the rest
(22:35):
of the body. Let's stop here for another quick break.
(22:55):
As part of the plea deal, Clay had to walk
police through the murder and explained how he took his
boat to Devil's Island and doug a hole the day
before the murder, and that's where he was spotted by
the couple we mentioned earlier. That night, he spent with
his girlfriend in Illinois, and he met Jackie the next day.
Clay went on to say that Jackie wanted and I quote,
(23:17):
one last bang, which is why they went back to
his place after meeting with the lawyer, which doesn't seem
at all plausible. Clay told police that he and Jackie
were both getting something out of the fridge and he
accidentally hid her nose and she got a bloody nose,
and she took off running and tripped in the hallway,
and an argument erupted. It's like this guy knows how
(23:37):
to tell some tall tales. Clay says that Jackie accused
him of hitting her nose on purpose, saying, I wonder
how much time you get with the kids if everybody
knew you just beat me up. Clay went on to
say he hit her backhanded across the neck, and she
fell to the ground, and he stood over her, and
he punched her in the nose. He said that he
(23:59):
all so then pressed his forearm into her chest and
she stopped breathing. He said he didn't plan on killing her.
It just happened. You know what they point out to
Clay is he says this was something that happened in
a fit of rage or fit of passion or whatever.
He had already previously stated that he dug the hole
the day before, which is premeditation. This wasn't a spur
(24:23):
of the moment. This was something that he planned for.
So it's interesting that he's still lying to police even
though he has a plea deal, and it's still gonna
be twenty years no matter what. After clay fulfilled his
part of the bargain and they found Jackie's remains. He
had to make his formal plea in court in front
of the judge, and we have a snippet of audio
from that work calls the case reversus James playing the
(24:49):
state degree to amend his charge to murder in the
second degree and recommend a sense of twenty years to
serve and dismiscounts two and three. And in return, Mr
Waller had to provide the location of Jackie Waller's body.
Law enforcement had to be capable of recovering her body,
(25:11):
and then Mr Waller had to sit down and give
an accounting of how he killed Jackie Waller. You were
there and Jackie was there? Is that correct? And what
happened that led to this? That in the argument and
I lost temporary m all right? Um caused her death?
(25:37):
Did you strike her about the head and face? What
did you do that with my fast? All right? Did
you press your forearm against her neck? And did you
choke her to death that way or suffocate her? You
were aware that you were causing her death when you
were doing it. Yeah, and that was your intention at
(25:57):
that time? Was that correct? Yes, court finds a the
defendant hasn't been and all of the elements of the
charge against him and not defend is guilty. It's so
hard when you hear it. He couldn't even bring himself
to say the words I killed her. I think we
see this a lot. It's I almost feel like they
just till the very end they hold on and refused
to kind of give anything that could bring bring peace
(26:17):
to a family. People forget how one person's actions can
affect the lives of so many and the kind of
endless ripple effect it can have. It affected a community,
it affected a family, and this was a tragedy all
the way around. Clay Waller got twenty years in his
(26:39):
plea agreement, but the story doesn't end just yet. He
confessed to digging a grave for Jackie on Devil's Island
in Illinois and then returning to Missouri to murder her.
In doing so, he violated a little known law called
the Interstate Domestic Violence Act. It's a federal crime that
carries a prison sentence off the five years which Clay
(27:02):
was sentenced to. James Clay Waller is now in prison
in Washington, d c. And is scheduled for release on October.
The triplets are sixteen years old and they were formally
adopted by their aunt Cheryl and uncle Bob. If you're
enjoying Crazy and Love, listen to seasons one and two
(27:24):
of The piked In Massacre, another Katie Studios production, and
follow us on Instagram at Katie Underscore Studios. Crazy in
Love is produced by Stephanie Laie Decker, Beth Greenwald, Chris Graves,
Lisa Dgovin, Jeff Shane, Tim Hamilton's and me Courtney Armstrong.
Editing and sound designed by Jeff ta Additional editing by
(27:47):
Davy Cooper Wasser. Crazy in Love is a production of
I Heart Radio and Katie Studios. For more podcasts from
I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite chose. If you're
enjoying Crazy and Love, listen to seasons one and two
of The piked In Massacre, another Katie Studios production.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.