Introducing: Paper Ghosts: The Texas Teen Murders

Paper Ghosts: The Texas Teen Murders takes you back to 1983, when two teenagers were found murdered, execution-style, on a quiet Texas hill. What followed was decades of rumors, false leads, and a case that law enforcement could never seem to close.

Now, veteran investigative journalist M. William Phelps reopens the file — uncovering new witnesses, hidden evidence, and a shocking web of deaths that may all be connected.

Over nine gripping episodes, Paper Ghosts: The Texas Teen Murders unravels a story 42 years in the making… and asks the question: who’s really been hiding the truth?

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Did, She said, Johnny, the kids didn't come home last night.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
A small town is only as safe as the secrets
hidden behind closed doors and the evil that lies behind them.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
When the murders happened, it really put everybody on edge,
because nothing like that had ever happened in Weatherford before.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
She had seen the bodies shaking, actual they've been shot.
This murder case is it's a big deal for such
a little town, and it needs to be recognized and finished.
During the nineteen eighties, the bodies of teenagers piled up
amid rumors of widespread corruption running all the way to

(00:46):
the top. Forty years later, angry townsfolk, tired of being
ignored by law enforcement start talking.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
She gets out of the car. She's turned there and
looks at me. She goes, Mama, I love you, goodbye.
That was the last words I heard from and that
was the last time I saw.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Along the central Texas plains, where ranches, rodeos, and cutting
forces are the usual topics of conversation, teens are dying,
suicides that don't make sense, strange accidents and brutal murders.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
And blood inside the car, blood and still dripping out
of the car. Play roll shot in the head.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
All these years later, some claim that the people put
in charge of stopping the madness are the same group
behind it. We learned real young in life that just
because they were law enforcement didn't mean they were good people.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
Then all of a sudden, I heard him say, we
killed those kids.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
Have local power brokers been detecting a sadistic killer for
over four decades in what seems to be a plot
ripped straight out of breaking bad.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
Drugs, alcohol trafficking of people.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
I got two text messages on my phone. One of
them was telling me that I need to leave everything alone,
let everything die. A story so unbelievable it's taken years
to sort out truth from rumor. With two courageous women
leading the charge who will stop at nothing to see

(02:33):
justice served. There are witnesses. There are people out there
today alive that absolutely know what happened.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
He told me that we can't leave her alive and
chusht her skull with the rock.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
My name is em William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalist
and the New York Times best selling author of dozens
of true crime books. For the past four seasons, of
paper ghosts, I've gone face to face with serial killers
and been threatened by suspected murderers. Yet nothing could have
prepared me for the unsolved cold case teenage murders in

(03:14):
rural Texas. I began to unravel.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
I listen to your podcast. I'm like, Okay, this guy
is a bulldog. He will go out for the answers
and he doesn't care if he steps on some toasts.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
As I embarked on the biggest cold case investigation of
my twenty five year career, join me for season five
of Paper Ghosts the Texas Teen Murders.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
They're still looking over their shoulders, you know, forty two
years later, they're still afraid.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Listen to Paper Ghosts the Texas Teen Murders, launching November fifth,
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.