December 3, 2025 • 44 mins
As Phelps seems to be getting somewhere with Shelly and Vincent’s case, another teenager is found murdered and sexually assaulted, changing the dynamic and path of his investigation considerably.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Previously on Paper Ghosts.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Shelley had scratches all over her arms and her rot side.
I didn't see the left side, but both arms were scratched,
her hands were scratched, and her right side was scratched
up on her neck.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
You know, we don't have the advantage of going back
in time and making that a more organized operation. We
can't go back in time and fix any of that
or preserve anything that maybe they didn't think or no
to preserve back then. It might be impwards today. So
you really have to have to set out on a
fact of finding mission.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
And when I talked to Elwood about it, and he's like, yeah,
we had done a polygraph on and he failed to questions,
and you know, when I wanted to go back and
question some more, it was like no, what attorney in
She's like, you'll ever talk to him again? And we
never did.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
My name is em William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalist
in the New York Times, best selling author of dozens
of true crime books. This is season five of Paper
Ghosts The Texas Teen Murders. I all apologies for the mix.
Speaker 5 (01:24):
That's okay. I can't get out of that chair.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Apologies.
Speaker 5 (01:28):
Did you get something to eat?
Speaker 6 (01:29):
No?
Speaker 5 (01:30):
Why didn't you stop?
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Then there was some faith, there was some construction, and
one simple mix up can create chaos and havoc. My
initial meeting with radio journalists and author Patricia Springer came
close to not happening at all. Within a case as
complex as this, one chance encounters and unforeseen connections can
(01:58):
make all the difference In the world of investigative journalism.
You can plan all you want, trying to make certain
everything is in place, and yet a slight oversight can
throw everything off course. Cold case work can at times
feel like you're diving down a bottomless rabbit hole, and
(02:19):
yet you have to keep in mind always that breakthroughs
can sometimes be behind just one open door. On July eighth,
nineteen eighty seven, four years after Shelley and Vincent's murders,
nineteen year old Wendy Robinson, a classmate of Vincent and Shelley,
parked her vehicle at the Wall, a popular hangout at
(02:43):
Lake Weatherford for sunbathing, swimming and partying. Wendy's plan, as
far as anyone knew, was to hang out, get some
sun and meet up with a few friends. But Wendy
never made it home, and her father, knowing his daughter
would not just take off without telling someone, was worried sick,
(03:04):
and so he reported her missing that same night. A
nineteen year old not coming home might not seem like
a situation to panic over, if we're being objective, But
in Wendy's case, there was reason to be concerned right away.
And Patricia Springer knows this case inside and out. I
(03:25):
don't think there is anyone outside of law enforcement more
knowledgeable about it. She is spent close to the past
four decades researching every nuance of it. And so how
long is she missing?
Speaker 5 (03:43):
She was missing for several days.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
In murder investigations with multiple victims, you look for connections
and parallels. Wendy Robinson drove the almost identical vehicle, a
Monte Carlo, that Vincent and Shelley were driving on the
night of their murders. The Weatherford Police Department found Wendy's
car abandoned by the lake Weatherford Wall the next morning.
(04:12):
At first, nothing seemed to be a miss, with the
exception that it appeared Wendy parked, grabbed her things for
a day at the lake, and never returned to her vehicle.
The problem was during a search by friend's family and
police on the night she went missing, Wendy's car was
(04:33):
not in the parking lot. So again, here's a similarity
we see in Vincent and Shelley's case. You have a
murder victim's car found in a place where scores of
people reported it had not been previously, as if her
killer had moved it. So she's nineteen, so she is
(04:55):
an adult at the time, right, but she's not known
to like go somewhere and not home.
Speaker 5 (05:00):
Now, this was very unusual.
Speaker 7 (05:02):
Her father, Jim, was ill, and he had a condition
where he had to eat on a regular schedule and
so forth, and Wendy always fixed his lunch for him
each day, and she never came home.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
And that's when they probably knew.
Speaker 7 (05:17):
They knew something was wrong then, but really not until
she just did never came home that night.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
I hear this all the time from families of the missing,
the ringing of an alarm deep in their intuition, someone
is not where they're supposed to be at a certain time.
Hours pass and every cell in your body, as a
family member is screaming that the worst has happened, or
(05:45):
something very close to it, and unfortunately for Wendy's family,
they were right. Wendy disappeared on July eighth, nineteen eighty seven,
and was found three days later on July eleventh. And
so where is she found.
Speaker 7 (06:04):
She's found in front of a cattle guard on a
ranch out in the country around Witherford in Parker County.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
And how is she found? Who finds her?
Speaker 7 (06:14):
There's a man that worked on that ranch that found
her body laying there. He had gone to enter the
ranch and that's when he discovered her.
Speaker 5 (06:24):
It was in the middle of nowhere. There were no
houses around or anything.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
The ranch where Wendy was found sits on a stock
of flatland, or as they say in Texas, level land,
dense brush and shrubbery with trees as far as the
eye can see. It's a very remote area, farm and
ranch country. The road itself is two lanes, extremely narrow,
(06:48):
with no street lights. At night, the only source of
light would be from the moon. How is her body discovered?
What's the crime scene look like?
Speaker 5 (07:00):
Well, her body was very decomposed by then.
Speaker 7 (07:02):
This is July in Texas, which means it's close to
one hundred degrees if not one hundred degrees, so he
wasn't really sure what he was looking at it first,
and then he finally determined that this was a body
of a young woman. She still had on her bathing
suit and shorts, a pair of shorts over her bikini,
and she had ligatures on her wrists and her legs, so.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
She was bound, and so they couldn't determine if she
was sexually assaulted or not.
Speaker 7 (07:32):
No, the body was too badly decomposed for any kind
of DNA testing or any determination.
Speaker 5 (07:38):
Whether she had been sexually assaulted.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
This is an important factor within my investigation because if
Wendy was violated sexually, that detail could begin to move
her case away from Vincent and Shelley's murders, but could
also perhaps bring the two cases closer together if what
has been alleged that Shelley was raped turned out to
(08:06):
be true. But it's pretty obvious that she was abducted. Today,
she's at the lake and she's murdered right away, because
she still got her bathing suitan right, and she did
have her clothes on.
Speaker 5 (08:17):
She did have her clothes on.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
So what's it like when her body is discovered? Work
gets out, what happens Oh.
Speaker 7 (08:24):
It was like shock waves going through the community. No
one could believe it. This had just never happened where
a young girl had been inducted and then they find
her body. It was scary for parents and scary for
young women.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Wendy's parents refused to accept anything less than answers. They
had sat and watched what happened in Vincent and Shelley's
case and how after four years, not only had those
families been frustrated and left blind, but local law enforcement
it didn't seem to be doing much of anything to
(09:02):
solve the case or keep it active. So they became relentless,
especially Wendy's father Jim, keeping the pressure on the Weatherford
Police Department and the Parker County Sheriff's office as well.
Speaker 7 (09:20):
They constantly are calling the police department to find out,
what are you doing, where's the case going? Who could
have done this? They've had a lot of questions that
needed to be answered, they were getting none.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
At a cursory glance, Wendy's case has few of the
same earmarks as Vincent and Shelley's murders, other than they
were classmates, are in the same general age range at
the time of their murders, and the locations are close.
And yet here are two cases right in whether and
(10:00):
it would be negligent for law enforcement not to consider
them possibly being connected, not to mention all the other
suspicious suicides and accidental deaths involving teens we will talk
about later, which brings up a new set of questions
for me. Have they been looking at Vincent and Shelley's
(10:21):
case from the wrong angle all this time? Or had
Wendy also come upon some sort of drug activity and
been silenced wrong place, wrong time. Either way, you have
three teen murders in the same town and not one
solid lead beyond the rumor mill turning out the same
(10:44):
grist of cops, involved people connected to cops, a jealous rival,
meth dealers, and a local businessman in prison for human trafficking,
and yet none of it is either heading toward justice
or any viable suspect. Then, shockingly, in Wendy's case, within
the first year it was announced the Weatherford Police Department
(11:08):
suddenly had eight to ten suspects. So what are some
of the first theories?
Speaker 7 (11:16):
Well, really investigating a lot of her friends. Some of
her girlfriends were naming people boys that she had dated
and so forth that they thought possibly could have done this.
The police department also she got all of the list
of the classes that she was attending at Weatherford College
and all the classmates so that they could talk to
each of them to see if they knew anything or
(11:39):
if they were acting suspiciously.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Nineteen eighty seven, I mean, that's a pretty active time
in Texas, Florida, the South for serial killers, right, is
that being talked about it all?
Speaker 5 (11:51):
Yes, it is.
Speaker 7 (11:52):
In fact, Ricky Lee Green, a serial killer, was in
the North Texas area.
Speaker 5 (11:58):
At the time.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Patricia published Blood Russian nineteen ninety four, a book about
Ricky Lee Green, who was ultimately charged for killing four
people in Texas between nineteen eighty five and nineteen eighty six.
Green was out lurking around Parker County during the time
that Wendy, Vincent and Shelley were murdered. Not long after
(12:23):
Wendy's body was found merely by happenstance, Green was arrested
for four murders he would eventually be convicted of and
sentenced to death for so investigators immediately began to look
at Green for additional murders, including the three we're looking
at here. Then Green steps forward and admits to murdering Wendy,
(12:49):
and investigators are all in. They figure, we got our man.
Speaker 7 (12:58):
He's in the tear tunny jail and his father, who
was a drug dealer, was arrested, and so Ricky thought
that he could get his dad a better deal if
he would confess to Wendy's murder. He thought, they've got
me on four, you know, why not? What's one more?
As a side note, they think that Ricky Green did
(13:19):
commit several other murders in the area other than the
four that he was convicted of.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
So he basically comes forward and says, listen, I'll give
you the girl, give my dad.
Speaker 5 (13:29):
A break exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
And they bought it.
Speaker 5 (13:32):
In fact, they bought it for a long time.
Speaker 7 (13:35):
They just kind of laid back at some point and
thought because he was known to frequent the Lake Worth
area and that's where some of her belongings had been found,
they were convinced it was Ricky Green.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Did he give him any details that weren't public.
Speaker 7 (13:53):
Not really, because he had abducted at least two others
from it all fit the pattern and so and two
of his victims were young women. Now two of his
victims were also man. It's kind of unusual, but he
was a sexually sadistic killer. He's bisexual, so he had
(14:14):
both men and women victims.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Green was a brutal, vicious psychopath of the worst type.
He often decapitated his victims and always mutilated them in
some way. He used knives and hammers. He had even
castrated one man and caught the breasts off one woman.
(14:41):
He bound his victims, and, regardless of gender, sexually assaulted them.
What stood out to me was the fact that Green
chose male and female victims like Shelley and Vincent. As
I said, he bound his victims like Wendy and sexually
assaulted them, possibly like Shelley and Wendy. On the other hand,
(15:06):
Green had never used a gun. Still, as Patricia explained, Green,
whom she interviewed at length, had to be taken seriously
in the three cases, for those reasons I mentioned and
others more significant. Yet, just as law enforcement became comfortable
accepting Green's admission in Wendy's case, while looking at him
(15:30):
for additional murders in the region, Green came forward with
a new revelation about Wendy Robinson.
Speaker 7 (15:41):
Shortly after he confessed Ricky Lee Green, I recanted his
statement and said that he didn't kill her.
Speaker 8 (15:58):
Let me first welcome mister Young Lee and his family's attorney,
mister David Sanford, and thank you for joining us here today.
After a thrare review of the motion of vakate judgment
followed by the previous administration, my office has determined that
it contains false and misleading statements that undermine the integrity
of the judicial process, which compels myself from my office
(16:21):
to withdraw that motion.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
As prosecutors aregure, I could cite over one hundred reports,
possibly more, where false and misleading statements have led to exonerations.
Same as the clip you just heard, it is part
of due legal process. Most of the cases involve a
DNA match to another perpetrator, resulting in an innocent person
(16:47):
being set free and rightly so. Yet the Innocence Project,
arguably the leader in advocating for innocent people serving prison time,
notes that approximately thirty percent of dmxonerations have included false confessions.
That is, innocent people confessed to crimes they did not
(17:08):
commit three out of ten times for myriad reasons. When
Ricky Lee Green confessed to Wendy's murder. It all seemed
to fit, which was one reason why when he later
recants that confession, investigators and prosecutors raise an eyebrow and
become skeptical. And so when he recants what.
Speaker 7 (17:32):
Happens, they didn't believe Ricky Green. They were convinced that
Ricky Green had done this. They did try to get
court documents and documents from his attorney and from psychiatrists
that had seen him and so forth, trying to see
if he had said anything in those interviews, but of
(17:52):
course that was client privilege and they didn't get that information.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
When did detectives think, hmm, maybe he didn't do it, well.
Speaker 5 (18:01):
That was a long time.
Speaker 7 (18:02):
Some of them always believed it and never discounted that
Ricky Green had done it. That's who they had focused on,
and they believed that's who it was. And not until
Jim Robinson really started pushing and he pushed to get
the Texas Rangers involved. He pushed to get other agencies
involved in the case because he felt like Ricky Green
(18:25):
had not done it.
Speaker 5 (18:27):
And I had been interviewing Green.
Speaker 7 (18:29):
For my first book, and when Jim and I spoke,
I told him that Ricky denied it, and I believed
that he didn't do it.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
So tell me you know him well, So tell me
about Ricky Green. Tell me you know you sat with him,
you interviewed him, So tell me about him. What kind
of killer is he?
Speaker 5 (18:47):
Well?
Speaker 7 (18:47):
His a sociopath. He has a low educational level. He
had several addictions to drugs and alcohol. He was your
typical serial killer in that he was a fire starter,
he was a bed wetter, all those typical things, and
he just he roamed. He would get drunk and then
(19:07):
he would drive and roam around and look for victims.
And that's another reason why they thought it was Green,
because they thought he just was driving around and happened
on windy sunbathing.
Speaker 5 (19:19):
In the lake.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Patricia started visiting Green in prison, taking his phone calls
and exchanging letters with him. The thing is, serial killers
lie pathologically with a smile on their face, very convincingly.
They like to play games cat and mouse. Sometimes they
take credit for crimes they didn't commit, just to up
(19:44):
their body count. Sometimes they won't confess to a murder
they committed because they want to save a bargaining chip,
or just out of pure spite, or even to enjoy
the notion that only they and nobody else know.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Understanding that dynamic, Patricia became determined to find out if
Green not only murdered Wendy, but Shelley and Vincent and
perhaps others in and around Parker County. Also on the
table was the infamous fort Worth three case, two teenage
girls and a nine year old girl who went out
(20:21):
to a local mall one day in fort Worth, just
thirty minutes from Weatherford and disappeared. Could Ricky Lee Green,
a despicable, violent serial killer who had no victim preference
to speak of, be behind all of these murders. During
one particular visit, Patricia confronted Green, and quite frankly, she
(20:45):
went straight at him, did you kill Wendy?
Speaker 7 (20:53):
I told him that I wanted to know about Wendy Robinson,
and he just smiled and said, I didn't kill her.
Speaker 5 (20:58):
I didn't believe that. I mean, I wasn't.
Speaker 7 (21:00):
There to prove or disprove that he did it. I
just wanted to know from him what he was thinking
and what had done. But the more I talked with him,
every time I ask him, and I interviewed him for
three years, every time I asked him. He denied it,
and right before he went to the Walls unit to
be executed, I asked him for one last time, will
(21:22):
you please tell me if you kill Wendy, Robin said,
and he said no, I did not.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Green had one request for Patricia. Would she sit in
the audience and witnessed his execution. Patricia was hoping for
a last minute deathbed confession about either Wendy, Shelley and Vincent,
the fort Worth three, or perhaps any other cases a
confession could close. She thought maybe this was Green's reason
(21:55):
for requesting her presence at his execution. What was that
like watching serial killer die?
Speaker 7 (22:02):
Well, it's it really is like they just go to sleep.
The chaplain at the prison had explained to me what
I would be seeing and what I would hear, Like
there's one last it seems like a gasp of air.
That actually it's one last expulsion of air, and so
I was prepared for that, and then he just went
(22:25):
to sleep forever.
Speaker 5 (22:26):
He did make a statement.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
The statement Green made on October eighth, nineteen ninety seven,
just before he was executed by lethal injection, was not
a last minute confession. Patricia asked him one final time
about Wendy and the others. Green denied killing Wendy right
up until the moment he died, and instead spoke of God. Quote,
(22:54):
I want to thank the Lord for giving me this
opportunity to get to know him. He has shown me
a lot, and he has changed me in the past
two months. I thank the Lord for all he has
done for me. I do want to tell the family
that I am sorry, but killing me is not going
to solve nothing. I really do not believe that if
(23:15):
Jesus were here tonight that he would execute me. Thank you, Lord.
I am finished misquoting Christ's words while on the cross.
The actual quote being it is finished was a blasphemous
attempt by a stupid, violent man to redeem himself for
(23:36):
a lifetime of torturing and murdering people. And how did
you feel walking out of there?
Speaker 7 (23:43):
Personally, I've felt like justice had been done, that had
he not been caught, that he would continue with his killing.
Speaker 5 (23:55):
He liked it, he enjoyed it.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
As it turned out, Ricky Lee Green had confessed to
Wendy's murder as he claimed to get his father a
better deal on drug charges the old man was facing.
Green did not in fact murder Wendy or Shelley and Vincent. Still,
Green's execution was far from the end of Wendy Robinson's
(24:21):
case and the possibility of her murder being connected back
to Shelley and Vincent's along with another infamous serial killer.
Speaker 4 (24:48):
So I know Wendy iss she had just I guess
finished finals at Weatherford College and she was going to
want to meet some friends over at weather For Lake.
There's a little area where people can kind of sunbathe
and stuff in the glocal a call at the wall,
so you can go hang out sunbay and enjoy some time.
But there's a road that kind of drives that goes
past the lake, so you can look up and you know,
(25:10):
your friends can wave at you, and they can see
down below and be like, hey, what's up, how are you?
So there were some friends that we know that'd seen
her down there sunbathing, and apparently the friends that she's
going to meet weren't able to make it. But she's
only gonna be down there for about two hours because
she knew she had to have the car back home
because her dad and brother needed it.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Private investigator Mel Mitchell, whom you've heard throughout the podcast
has done a tremendous amount of work into Wendy's case,
looking to find any connection whatsoever back to Vincent and
Shelley's murders, the thought being solved one possibly solve the others.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
So she was out there, I guess from two to
whenever she was abducted. Same thing. Like, she's a good kid,
she's always dependable, knows something's wrong if she's not home
with the time she's supposed to be home by, And
so they go out there look looking for her, and
her car's gone. There's no trace of her anywhere, and
they end up obviously going to the police, and they
end up having a search party the following day, Like
they look in the lake. I mean, they've got search
(26:12):
parties all around the lake. I want to say, if
I ride collectly, there was probably like up to fifty
people looking for her and they cannot find her anywhere.
And then later on sometime that night, her vehicle shows
back up parked in the probably close the same place
that went missing, like where she would have parked originally.
And then a couple of days after that, her body
(26:33):
is found in front of a local ranchers gate by
some ranch hands and it appeared that she had been
sexually assaulted. She had been bound by the hands and feet,
she had like her bathing suit top on and some
shorts on, and then she had been bludgeoned in the head.
And they believe it may have been a rock, not
one hundred percent sure, because by that time period, I
(26:55):
guess it looked like she'd been dead a couple of days,
and so they weren't able to really confirm like what
kind of you know, a murder weapon was used, but
they're assuming as possibly a rock.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Mel adds such an important detail there, Wendy's car wasn't
actually in the parking lot when they first searched for
her at the lake. It shows up after the search
is completed, as if Wendy's killer is watching and waiting,
which means what he could be local comfortable with the
(27:32):
area that mo also matches with the car Vincent was
driving being at the murder scene and then not at
the scene and as everyone had suspected, Wendy was sexually assaulted.
Do you see any connections between her murder and Vincent
(27:57):
and Shelley, Well.
Speaker 4 (27:59):
I mean themates. I know that her seat was pushed
all the way back in her car, and it sounded
as though there were isn't a lot of evidence in
her vehicle either. By one report I've read, there's been
statements made that no one saw her leave, but then
there's other statements saying they saw her get into a
vehicle with three men, which if that's the case, well
(28:22):
then who drove her car if she got into a
vehicle with three men? And I never really kind of
understood that part. I'm like, well, if you see her
going with the vehicle three men in a truck, well
then who who drove off in her vehicle? Because that
obviously left with her. So I don't know, but I
do know that, like within our case, you know, the
vehicle was seen several times during the night and they
disappear even though people were actively looking for because it
(28:44):
wasn't just Vincent Senior looking for them, it was also
the babysitter. You know, her family's out looking for them
because they're worried because they weren't back in time either.
So you've got other parties out there looking for these
kids and they can't find them. So we know that
their vehicles kind of hit or miss all night as well.
So that was kind of an interesting side note.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Small details seemingly insignificant can crack a case. The fact
that the driver's seat in the car Vincent had borrowed
that night the Monte Carlo was pushed all the way
back is indicative of someone taller than Vincent being behind
the wheel the last time it was driven, same as
it was in Wendy's case. In the Monte Carlo she
(29:27):
was driving. But even more important, Mel says three men
were seen driving away with Wendy. And if you recall,
we have heard several accounts of two or even three
men seen near Vincent's vehicle on that night up at
Piss Hill. Then, after seeing crime scene photos of Wendy's car,
(29:51):
Mel makes what could be a remarkable discovery.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
After Wendy was murdered a couple of months after that,
there was a fisherman out of a lake in Fort
Worth that had been fishing that morning and he ended
up I guess catching like a wallet and he opens
up the wallet and it says Wendy Robinson. And so
he starts calling people in Weatherford, you know, gets a
phone book out back in the day, and I guess
one of the people he had called Robinson. The guy's like, oh, yeah,
(30:25):
this isn't the right Robinson, but you need to call
the police department because that person you're talking about was murdered,
you know, a couple of months ago. So he calls
Weather for repde. They come out there, they start drudging
the lake and that's when they find a box in
the lake and it's got Wendy's person it.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
There was also a wallet in the box, which belonged
to a guy who had been attacked and robbed at
a local gas station called Petro on the same day
as Wendy's abduction.
Speaker 4 (30:53):
He was mugged from behind by two men and they
stole his wallet, knocked him out, and so that's where
they kind of believe that those two obviously were probably connected.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
In those crime scene photos from inside of Wendy's car,
Mel spies one specific detail that intrigues her.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
There was a photo It showed you know, the usual
things like lipstick, comb or whatever, but in the right
hand corner it looked like a ball of foil, kind
of like what you get off of like maybe ding
dongs or you know, it's like a little piece of foil.
But then I looked at some more and it maybe
wonder is there a possibility? And I'm not saying she was.
It's just a theory of mine that she was using
(31:36):
meth and fetamines because we know, according to the families
and other friends, that she had dropped quite a bit
of weight prior to the summer pretty quick. And we
know that there's a lot of people out there there
marketing metham fatamines, this quick weight loss drug. So do
I know if that's what it is? No, but it
just kind of was an interesting thing to find in
our purse, that this little ball of foil.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
If you're looking at it objectively, you have to consider
the fact that she could have been used in dope.
Speaker 4 (32:06):
Well, we know a lot of high schoolers. That's when
you're going to experiment with a lot of stuff. Two,
there's plenty of high schoolers it that's their an experiment
with narcotics. It's probably usually going to be in your
high school time period.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Several sources I spoke to from the class of nineteen
eighty three talked about speed as the go to drug
for kids at the time, speed being another name for
meth in those parts. Mel is not saying Wendy Robinson
was a drug user. I want to be clear about that,
but murder investigation involves a tight rope of looking at
(32:41):
all possibilities, and with meth being such a buzzword around
strange deaths, many of the suspects the rumors and murders,
you have to consider that maybe somebody Wendy knew, Wendy
herself or her killer used the drug. What I have
been told repeatedly while talking to detectives trying to connect
(33:04):
murder cases is to be cautious of the obvious. Always
allow the evidence to dictate your next step. Here's current
cold case investigator Weatherford Police Department Lieutenant Johnny Qualls referring
to the contemporary investigation into Vincent and Shelley's murders after
(33:25):
I mentioned to him how with cold case work, it's
vital that information keeps coming in or your case can
kind of become stalled.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Yeah, you're you're spot on. We opened up at some point,
you know, a hot line, I say a hot line.
It was just a direct. It was my extension. You know,
people were calling me left and right.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
A lot a lot of.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
It was the stuff I had already heard before. But
people wanted to, you know, they wanted to do their part.
They they didn't want to loose sleep at night by
not passing them on or that assumed that we knew anything,
But we did, you know, we did you know there
were a few things like, oh, that's interesting, so we
would I mean, we we traveled as far as New
Mexico to go talk to a lady because we really
(34:07):
thought we were onto something. And then by the time
so we get out there, we talked to her and
it's like, oh, okay, yeah, this is not going to
be related. So we we You know, that's the kind
of you You catch yourself going and you have to
you have to go down those rabbit holes. But that's
the frustrating, discouraging part. And you're in this situation where
(34:28):
you know, people have questions and people are are like,
who doesn't care about something like that? Two kids getting
execute executed in a car Like every everyone has compassion
and cares about that and wants that fault. And you
want to tell them all the things that you know,
and you want to tell all the things that you've
done to but you can't. It's an active investigation. You
(34:49):
can't share all that information. So it's frustrating.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
And then the families of the victims as well, who
are frustrated and still hurting, and it's just it's endless.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
Yeah, and you have you have misinformation that as a
result of that. You know, I think people when when
they don't get the answer, when when they're seeking out answers,
we can't give them, you know, either either we don't
know or we're just simply not you know, in an
effort not to jeopardize an investigation, we can't give them
those answers. It frustrates them and I think that results
in some of the not necessarily by them, but some
(35:22):
of the speculation and misinformation being spread, and.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
People fill in the blanks, you know, they have a
tendency to just fill in the blanks and it just
causes more confusion. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Any any So, in that in that particular case, so
the girl's biological mom was still alive and we were
we were able to actually go and I think she
got it. I think she understood. She didn't give us
any any problems, but we were able to go meet
and talk with her and just kind of kind of
you know, uh initially like we did that initially, but
(35:58):
then we kind of uh did it, you know, at
a midway point two, uh, and just kind of a
check in with her. And I think she got a
little overwhelmed because I think she was getting here from
both sides.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
You know, she was.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
She she was very patient and willing to hear anything
we had to tell her. But then she had other
folks in her ear too, and you know, and I'm
sure that's it probably wasn'ts fun reliving all, you know,
her daughter's murder all over again.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Sure sure, I run into it myself talking to victims families.
You know, it's it's the pain never goes away and
not having an answer to it, you know. The Weatherford
Police Department continued to focus on Ricky Lee Green for
Wendy Robinson's murder even after his execution, until a new lead,
(36:48):
a big one, began to steer them away from Green.
Here is a recording a former Weatherford Police Department chief,
the late l Wood Wholehurtz, which I was able to
obtain deep into my investigation, and what he has to
say changes a few things for me with regard to
(37:10):
not only Wendy's case, but Vincent and Shelley's as well.
Speaker 6 (37:16):
Weatherford wasn't supposed to be investigating it, but did not
want that case. Body was found out in the county
and really nobody knows if she's abducted, lake or it.
We always wondered about that Petro. Maybe he didn't want
to touch a case. So I had to let my
detectors take the case. It's going to be a hot
(37:38):
case to investigate and form politician. That was not a
good deal to me. It had to be investigated, and
that's the reason I told the intectors take off on it.
I just know he didn't want to touch a case
and it had to be investigated. I told my people
go through it.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
So the elected sheriff at the time Wendy's body was
found was the same guy in office in nineteen eighty
three when Vincent and Shelley were murdered, and he did
not want to take Wendy's case. That is not so unusual.
I have learned. Elected sheriffs are politicians, optics are everything.
(38:28):
Reelection is always the goal. But this situation turns into
a jurisdictional pissing contest, which might have led to the
case against Ricky Lee Green becoming sidetracked. Elwood Hulhertz's investigators
jumped in they focused on getting a composite drawing done
(38:50):
of the man who had rob the guy's wallet at
the Petro and afterward tossed it into that lake. They
felt there could be a connection somewhere in there, because
remember the robbery happened on the day Wendy went missing,
and when they fished that wallet out of the lake,
as you heard, they found some of Wendy's belongings, potentially
(39:14):
tying the two crimes together. I should note that composite
in no way resembled Ricky Lee Green. By then, Green
had been completely ruled out, even if there were certain
detectives who still believed he did it, with a major
part of ruling him out being that the Texas Rangers
(39:37):
were now involved. I asked Patricia Springer where the investigation
into Wendy's murder went from there.
Speaker 7 (39:53):
His attorney, his defense attorney, had a Sodian Pitothhal interview
with a psychiatrist, and I petitioned the court to be
able to see that. They would not allow me to
see it until after his execution. But I did go
see that interview, and in that interview, he talks about
a Wendy that he killed, but he said he stabbed
(40:14):
her and stabbed her, and stabbed her and stabbed her,
which is what he did to his victims. He always
used a knife, which is another sexual instrument to him,
and Wendy didn't have a stab wound, honor. She was
hit with a large rock in its splitter skull.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
You see. Very few were listening to what the evidence dictated.
Most were stuck on the obvious. A serial killer says
he did it, then I guess he did it. They
took Green at his word a huge mistake and seemed
to disregard the obvious evidence that Wendy was never stabbed. Now,
(40:54):
is there any chance that Ricky could have killed Shelley
and Vincent?
Speaker 5 (41:01):
I don't personally believe so.
Speaker 7 (41:03):
That just seemed like either planned or they came upon something.
The theory has always been that they came upon a
drug deal that was going down. And also, Ricky never
used a firearm in any of these killings, that it
would have been very unusual for him to switch from
his weapon of choice. There are also other murders that well,
(41:26):
they said he did, they don't have any proof. After
his execution, I had the Texas Rangers come in and
draw blood from him so that they would have DNA
for any future cases. Unfortunately, the Texas Department of Public
Safety can't find that DNA.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Imagine that they lost the DNA collected from a serial killer.
While certain investigators were literally closing Wendy Robinson's case at
her murder to Ricky Lee Green, not following where the
evidence was taking them, the Weatherford Police Department received a
call from a young woman, the daughter of a guy
(42:11):
named not kidding you, Ricky Lee Adkins, and that call, well,
it changed everything.
Speaker 7 (42:22):
Her father had confessed to her that he was part
of the murder of Wendy Robinson in Wetherford.
Speaker 5 (42:28):
And then that's when they went.
Speaker 7 (42:31):
Back to Adkins, found his name in the murder book
that they had, that he was known back then. He
was known to be sleeping in his vehicle at Lake Weatherford.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
And when they checked that composite of the petro robbery
suspect which had led to the wallet in the lake
and Wendy's belongings, the dude turned out to be a
dead ringer for the man whose daughter had dropped the
dime on him. And now just like that, the Weatherford
PD had his name.
Speaker 7 (43:07):
All of a sudden, he came to the forefront the
pieces start to do.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
Please check out my weekly podcast, Crossing the Line with
m William Phelps, where I delve into a new missing
person and cold case murder each week wherever you get
your favorite shows coming up. In the next episode of
Paper Ghosts.
Speaker 7 (43:38):
When they went to the wall to see what was
left there, her car was there, it was unlocked, but
her purse and her radio and her keys were gone.
Speaker 9 (43:50):
Yeah, I have no doubt Frosts everything.
Speaker 6 (43:52):
For one.
Speaker 4 (43:53):
Frosty was like one of the big wigs back then.
Speaker 9 (43:56):
You know, he's a Walter White of Parker County when
it came to cook enemies. I mean, he was one
of the guys that were the guys you went to
to get the best stuff on the market.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
And if he was a cop pain in my house.
Speaker 8 (44:09):
Here's probably like a year ago. They came over.
Speaker 5 (44:12):
Here and well belong, they started.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
Choosing everything, and I said, well, for you'll get all
high and all this sudther. Y'all need to understand that
I took a pollybat tans that I passed it.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Paper Ghost season five is written and executive produced by
me and William Phelps. Script consulting by iHeartMedia Executive producer
Catherine Law. Production by toc Boom Productions, Audio mastering and
mixing by Brandon Dicker. The series theme number four four
(44:47):
to two is written and performed by Thomas Phelps and
Tom Mooney
Previously on Paper Ghosts.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Shelley had scratches all over her arms and her rot side.
I didn't see the left side, but both arms were scratched,
her hands were scratched, and her right side was scratched
up on her neck.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
You know, we don't have the advantage of going back
in time and making that a more organized operation. We
can't go back in time and fix any of that
or preserve anything that maybe they didn't think or no
to preserve back then. It might be impwards today. So
you really have to have to set out on a
fact of finding mission.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
And when I talked to Elwood about it, and he's like, yeah,
we had done a polygraph on and he failed to questions,
and you know, when I wanted to go back and
question some more, it was like no, what attorney in
She's like, you'll ever talk to him again? And we
never did.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
My name is em William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalist
in the New York Times, best selling author of dozens
of true crime books. This is season five of Paper
Ghosts The Texas Teen Murders. I all apologies for the mix.
Speaker 5 (01:24):
That's okay. I can't get out of that chair.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Apologies.
Speaker 5 (01:28):
Did you get something to eat?
Speaker 6 (01:29):
No?
Speaker 5 (01:30):
Why didn't you stop?
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Then there was some faith, there was some construction, and
one simple mix up can create chaos and havoc. My
initial meeting with radio journalists and author Patricia Springer came
close to not happening at all. Within a case as
complex as this, one chance encounters and unforeseen connections can
(01:58):
make all the difference In the world of investigative journalism.
You can plan all you want, trying to make certain
everything is in place, and yet a slight oversight can
throw everything off course. Cold case work can at times
feel like you're diving down a bottomless rabbit hole, and
(02:19):
yet you have to keep in mind always that breakthroughs
can sometimes be behind just one open door. On July eighth,
nineteen eighty seven, four years after Shelley and Vincent's murders,
nineteen year old Wendy Robinson, a classmate of Vincent and Shelley,
parked her vehicle at the Wall, a popular hangout at
(02:43):
Lake Weatherford for sunbathing, swimming and partying. Wendy's plan, as
far as anyone knew, was to hang out, get some
sun and meet up with a few friends. But Wendy
never made it home, and her father, knowing his daughter
would not just take off without telling someone, was worried sick,
(03:04):
and so he reported her missing that same night. A
nineteen year old not coming home might not seem like
a situation to panic over, if we're being objective, But
in Wendy's case, there was reason to be concerned right away.
And Patricia Springer knows this case inside and out. I
(03:25):
don't think there is anyone outside of law enforcement more
knowledgeable about it. She is spent close to the past
four decades researching every nuance of it. And so how
long is she missing?
Speaker 5 (03:43):
She was missing for several days.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
In murder investigations with multiple victims, you look for connections
and parallels. Wendy Robinson drove the almost identical vehicle, a
Monte Carlo, that Vincent and Shelley were driving on the
night of their murders. The Weatherford Police Department found Wendy's
car abandoned by the lake Weatherford Wall the next morning.
(04:12):
At first, nothing seemed to be a miss, with the
exception that it appeared Wendy parked, grabbed her things for
a day at the lake, and never returned to her vehicle.
The problem was during a search by friend's family and
police on the night she went missing, Wendy's car was
(04:33):
not in the parking lot. So again, here's a similarity
we see in Vincent and Shelley's case. You have a
murder victim's car found in a place where scores of
people reported it had not been previously, as if her
killer had moved it. So she's nineteen, so she is
(04:55):
an adult at the time, right, but she's not known
to like go somewhere and not home.
Speaker 5 (05:00):
Now, this was very unusual.
Speaker 7 (05:02):
Her father, Jim, was ill, and he had a condition
where he had to eat on a regular schedule and
so forth, and Wendy always fixed his lunch for him
each day, and she never came home.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
And that's when they probably knew.
Speaker 7 (05:17):
They knew something was wrong then, but really not until
she just did never came home that night.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
I hear this all the time from families of the missing,
the ringing of an alarm deep in their intuition, someone
is not where they're supposed to be at a certain time.
Hours pass and every cell in your body, as a
family member is screaming that the worst has happened, or
(05:45):
something very close to it, and unfortunately for Wendy's family,
they were right. Wendy disappeared on July eighth, nineteen eighty seven,
and was found three days later on July eleventh. And
so where is she found.
Speaker 7 (06:04):
She's found in front of a cattle guard on a
ranch out in the country around Witherford in Parker County.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
And how is she found? Who finds her?
Speaker 7 (06:14):
There's a man that worked on that ranch that found
her body laying there. He had gone to enter the
ranch and that's when he discovered her.
Speaker 5 (06:24):
It was in the middle of nowhere. There were no
houses around or anything.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
The ranch where Wendy was found sits on a stock
of flatland, or as they say in Texas, level land,
dense brush and shrubbery with trees as far as the
eye can see. It's a very remote area, farm and
ranch country. The road itself is two lanes, extremely narrow,
(06:48):
with no street lights. At night, the only source of
light would be from the moon. How is her body discovered?
What's the crime scene look like?
Speaker 5 (07:00):
Well, her body was very decomposed by then.
Speaker 7 (07:02):
This is July in Texas, which means it's close to
one hundred degrees if not one hundred degrees, so he
wasn't really sure what he was looking at it first,
and then he finally determined that this was a body
of a young woman. She still had on her bathing
suit and shorts, a pair of shorts over her bikini,
and she had ligatures on her wrists and her legs, so.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
She was bound, and so they couldn't determine if she
was sexually assaulted or not.
Speaker 7 (07:32):
No, the body was too badly decomposed for any kind
of DNA testing or any determination.
Speaker 5 (07:38):
Whether she had been sexually assaulted.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
This is an important factor within my investigation because if
Wendy was violated sexually, that detail could begin to move
her case away from Vincent and Shelley's murders, but could
also perhaps bring the two cases closer together if what
has been alleged that Shelley was raped turned out to
(08:06):
be true. But it's pretty obvious that she was abducted. Today,
she's at the lake and she's murdered right away, because
she still got her bathing suitan right, and she did
have her clothes on.
Speaker 5 (08:17):
She did have her clothes on.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
So what's it like when her body is discovered? Work
gets out, what happens Oh.
Speaker 7 (08:24):
It was like shock waves going through the community. No
one could believe it. This had just never happened where
a young girl had been inducted and then they find
her body. It was scary for parents and scary for
young women.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Wendy's parents refused to accept anything less than answers. They
had sat and watched what happened in Vincent and Shelley's
case and how after four years, not only had those
families been frustrated and left blind, but local law enforcement
it didn't seem to be doing much of anything to
(09:02):
solve the case or keep it active. So they became relentless,
especially Wendy's father Jim, keeping the pressure on the Weatherford
Police Department and the Parker County Sheriff's office as well.
Speaker 7 (09:20):
They constantly are calling the police department to find out,
what are you doing, where's the case going? Who could
have done this? They've had a lot of questions that
needed to be answered, they were getting none.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
At a cursory glance, Wendy's case has few of the
same earmarks as Vincent and Shelley's murders, other than they
were classmates, are in the same general age range at
the time of their murders, and the locations are close.
And yet here are two cases right in whether and
(10:00):
it would be negligent for law enforcement not to consider
them possibly being connected, not to mention all the other
suspicious suicides and accidental deaths involving teens we will talk
about later, which brings up a new set of questions
for me. Have they been looking at Vincent and Shelley's
(10:21):
case from the wrong angle all this time? Or had
Wendy also come upon some sort of drug activity and
been silenced wrong place, wrong time. Either way, you have
three teen murders in the same town and not one
solid lead beyond the rumor mill turning out the same
(10:44):
grist of cops, involved people connected to cops, a jealous rival,
meth dealers, and a local businessman in prison for human trafficking,
and yet none of it is either heading toward justice
or any viable suspect. Then, shockingly, in Wendy's case, within
the first year it was announced the Weatherford Police Department
(11:08):
suddenly had eight to ten suspects. So what are some
of the first theories?
Speaker 7 (11:16):
Well, really investigating a lot of her friends. Some of
her girlfriends were naming people boys that she had dated
and so forth that they thought possibly could have done this.
The police department also she got all of the list
of the classes that she was attending at Weatherford College
and all the classmates so that they could talk to
each of them to see if they knew anything or
(11:39):
if they were acting suspiciously.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Nineteen eighty seven, I mean, that's a pretty active time
in Texas, Florida, the South for serial killers, right, is
that being talked about it all?
Speaker 5 (11:51):
Yes, it is.
Speaker 7 (11:52):
In fact, Ricky Lee Green, a serial killer, was in
the North Texas area.
Speaker 5 (11:58):
At the time.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Patricia published Blood Russian nineteen ninety four, a book about
Ricky Lee Green, who was ultimately charged for killing four
people in Texas between nineteen eighty five and nineteen eighty six.
Green was out lurking around Parker County during the time
that Wendy, Vincent and Shelley were murdered. Not long after
(12:23):
Wendy's body was found merely by happenstance, Green was arrested
for four murders he would eventually be convicted of and
sentenced to death for so investigators immediately began to look
at Green for additional murders, including the three we're looking
at here. Then Green steps forward and admits to murdering Wendy,
(12:49):
and investigators are all in. They figure, we got our man.
Speaker 7 (12:58):
He's in the tear tunny jail and his father, who
was a drug dealer, was arrested, and so Ricky thought
that he could get his dad a better deal if
he would confess to Wendy's murder. He thought, they've got
me on four, you know, why not? What's one more?
As a side note, they think that Ricky Green did
(13:19):
commit several other murders in the area other than the
four that he was convicted of.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
So he basically comes forward and says, listen, I'll give
you the girl, give my dad.
Speaker 5 (13:29):
A break exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
And they bought it.
Speaker 5 (13:32):
In fact, they bought it for a long time.
Speaker 7 (13:35):
They just kind of laid back at some point and
thought because he was known to frequent the Lake Worth
area and that's where some of her belongings had been found,
they were convinced it was Ricky Green.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Did he give him any details that weren't public.
Speaker 7 (13:53):
Not really, because he had abducted at least two others
from it all fit the pattern and so and two
of his victims were young women. Now two of his
victims were also man. It's kind of unusual, but he
was a sexually sadistic killer. He's bisexual, so he had
(14:14):
both men and women victims.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Green was a brutal, vicious psychopath of the worst type.
He often decapitated his victims and always mutilated them in
some way. He used knives and hammers. He had even
castrated one man and caught the breasts off one woman.
(14:41):
He bound his victims, and, regardless of gender, sexually assaulted them.
What stood out to me was the fact that Green
chose male and female victims like Shelley and Vincent. As
I said, he bound his victims like Wendy and sexually
assaulted them, possibly like Shelley and Wendy. On the other hand,
(15:06):
Green had never used a gun. Still, as Patricia explained, Green,
whom she interviewed at length, had to be taken seriously
in the three cases, for those reasons I mentioned and
others more significant. Yet, just as law enforcement became comfortable
accepting Green's admission in Wendy's case, while looking at him
(15:30):
for additional murders in the region, Green came forward with
a new revelation about Wendy Robinson.
Speaker 7 (15:41):
Shortly after he confessed Ricky Lee Green, I recanted his
statement and said that he didn't kill her.
Speaker 8 (15:58):
Let me first welcome mister Young Lee and his family's attorney,
mister David Sanford, and thank you for joining us here today.
After a thrare review of the motion of vakate judgment
followed by the previous administration, my office has determined that
it contains false and misleading statements that undermine the integrity
of the judicial process, which compels myself from my office
(16:21):
to withdraw that motion.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
As prosecutors aregure, I could cite over one hundred reports,
possibly more, where false and misleading statements have led to exonerations.
Same as the clip you just heard, it is part
of due legal process. Most of the cases involve a
DNA match to another perpetrator, resulting in an innocent person
(16:47):
being set free and rightly so. Yet the Innocence Project,
arguably the leader in advocating for innocent people serving prison time,
notes that approximately thirty percent of dmxonerations have included false confessions.
That is, innocent people confessed to crimes they did not
(17:08):
commit three out of ten times for myriad reasons. When
Ricky Lee Green confessed to Wendy's murder. It all seemed
to fit, which was one reason why when he later
recants that confession, investigators and prosecutors raise an eyebrow and
become skeptical. And so when he recants what.
Speaker 7 (17:32):
Happens, they didn't believe Ricky Green. They were convinced that
Ricky Green had done this. They did try to get
court documents and documents from his attorney and from psychiatrists
that had seen him and so forth, trying to see
if he had said anything in those interviews, but of
(17:52):
course that was client privilege and they didn't get that information.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
When did detectives think, hmm, maybe he didn't do it, well.
Speaker 5 (18:01):
That was a long time.
Speaker 7 (18:02):
Some of them always believed it and never discounted that
Ricky Green had done it. That's who they had focused on,
and they believed that's who it was. And not until
Jim Robinson really started pushing and he pushed to get
the Texas Rangers involved. He pushed to get other agencies
involved in the case because he felt like Ricky Green
(18:25):
had not done it.
Speaker 5 (18:27):
And I had been interviewing Green.
Speaker 7 (18:29):
For my first book, and when Jim and I spoke,
I told him that Ricky denied it, and I believed
that he didn't do it.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
So tell me you know him well, So tell me
about Ricky Green. Tell me you know you sat with him,
you interviewed him, So tell me about him. What kind
of killer is he?
Speaker 5 (18:47):
Well?
Speaker 7 (18:47):
His a sociopath. He has a low educational level. He
had several addictions to drugs and alcohol. He was your
typical serial killer in that he was a fire starter,
he was a bed wetter, all those typical things, and
he just he roamed. He would get drunk and then
(19:07):
he would drive and roam around and look for victims.
And that's another reason why they thought it was Green,
because they thought he just was driving around and happened
on windy sunbathing.
Speaker 5 (19:19):
In the lake.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Patricia started visiting Green in prison, taking his phone calls
and exchanging letters with him. The thing is, serial killers
lie pathologically with a smile on their face, very convincingly.
They like to play games cat and mouse. Sometimes they
take credit for crimes they didn't commit, just to up
(19:44):
their body count. Sometimes they won't confess to a murder
they committed because they want to save a bargaining chip,
or just out of pure spite, or even to enjoy
the notion that only they and nobody else know.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Understanding that dynamic, Patricia became determined to find out if
Green not only murdered Wendy, but Shelley and Vincent and
perhaps others in and around Parker County. Also on the
table was the infamous fort Worth three case, two teenage
girls and a nine year old girl who went out
(20:21):
to a local mall one day in fort Worth, just
thirty minutes from Weatherford and disappeared. Could Ricky Lee Green,
a despicable, violent serial killer who had no victim preference
to speak of, be behind all of these murders. During
one particular visit, Patricia confronted Green, and quite frankly, she
(20:45):
went straight at him, did you kill Wendy?
Speaker 7 (20:53):
I told him that I wanted to know about Wendy Robinson,
and he just smiled and said, I didn't kill her.
Speaker 5 (20:58):
I didn't believe that. I mean, I wasn't.
Speaker 7 (21:00):
There to prove or disprove that he did it. I
just wanted to know from him what he was thinking
and what had done. But the more I talked with him,
every time I ask him, and I interviewed him for
three years, every time I asked him. He denied it,
and right before he went to the Walls unit to
be executed, I asked him for one last time, will
(21:22):
you please tell me if you kill Wendy, Robin said,
and he said no, I did not.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Green had one request for Patricia. Would she sit in
the audience and witnessed his execution. Patricia was hoping for
a last minute deathbed confession about either Wendy, Shelley and Vincent,
the fort Worth three, or perhaps any other cases a
confession could close. She thought maybe this was Green's reason
(21:55):
for requesting her presence at his execution. What was that
like watching serial killer die?
Speaker 7 (22:02):
Well, it's it really is like they just go to sleep.
The chaplain at the prison had explained to me what
I would be seeing and what I would hear, Like
there's one last it seems like a gasp of air.
That actually it's one last expulsion of air, and so
I was prepared for that, and then he just went
(22:25):
to sleep forever.
Speaker 5 (22:26):
He did make a statement.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
The statement Green made on October eighth, nineteen ninety seven,
just before he was executed by lethal injection, was not
a last minute confession. Patricia asked him one final time
about Wendy and the others. Green denied killing Wendy right
up until the moment he died, and instead spoke of God. Quote,
(22:54):
I want to thank the Lord for giving me this
opportunity to get to know him. He has shown me
a lot, and he has changed me in the past
two months. I thank the Lord for all he has
done for me. I do want to tell the family
that I am sorry, but killing me is not going
to solve nothing. I really do not believe that if
(23:15):
Jesus were here tonight that he would execute me. Thank you, Lord.
I am finished misquoting Christ's words while on the cross.
The actual quote being it is finished was a blasphemous
attempt by a stupid, violent man to redeem himself for
(23:36):
a lifetime of torturing and murdering people. And how did
you feel walking out of there?
Speaker 7 (23:43):
Personally, I've felt like justice had been done, that had
he not been caught, that he would continue with his killing.
Speaker 5 (23:55):
He liked it, he enjoyed it.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
As it turned out, Ricky Lee Green had confessed to
Wendy's murder as he claimed to get his father a
better deal on drug charges the old man was facing.
Green did not in fact murder Wendy or Shelley and Vincent. Still,
Green's execution was far from the end of Wendy Robinson's
(24:21):
case and the possibility of her murder being connected back
to Shelley and Vincent's along with another infamous serial killer.
Speaker 4 (24:48):
So I know Wendy iss she had just I guess
finished finals at Weatherford College and she was going to
want to meet some friends over at weather For Lake.
There's a little area where people can kind of sunbathe
and stuff in the glocal a call at the wall,
so you can go hang out sunbay and enjoy some time.
But there's a road that kind of drives that goes
past the lake, so you can look up and you know,
(25:10):
your friends can wave at you, and they can see
down below and be like, hey, what's up, how are you?
So there were some friends that we know that'd seen
her down there sunbathing, and apparently the friends that she's
going to meet weren't able to make it. But she's
only gonna be down there for about two hours because
she knew she had to have the car back home
because her dad and brother needed it.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Private investigator Mel Mitchell, whom you've heard throughout the podcast
has done a tremendous amount of work into Wendy's case,
looking to find any connection whatsoever back to Vincent and
Shelley's murders, the thought being solved one possibly solve the others.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
So she was out there, I guess from two to
whenever she was abducted. Same thing. Like, she's a good kid,
she's always dependable, knows something's wrong if she's not home
with the time she's supposed to be home by, And
so they go out there look looking for her, and
her car's gone. There's no trace of her anywhere, and
they end up obviously going to the police, and they
end up having a search party the following day, Like
they look in the lake. I mean, they've got search
(26:12):
parties all around the lake. I want to say, if
I ride collectly, there was probably like up to fifty
people looking for her and they cannot find her anywhere.
And then later on sometime that night, her vehicle shows
back up parked in the probably close the same place
that went missing, like where she would have parked originally.
And then a couple of days after that, her body
(26:33):
is found in front of a local ranchers gate by
some ranch hands and it appeared that she had been
sexually assaulted. She had been bound by the hands and feet,
she had like her bathing suit top on and some
shorts on, and then she had been bludgeoned in the head.
And they believe it may have been a rock, not
one hundred percent sure, because by that time period, I
(26:55):
guess it looked like she'd been dead a couple of days,
and so they weren't able to really confirm like what
kind of you know, a murder weapon was used, but
they're assuming as possibly a rock.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Mel adds such an important detail there, Wendy's car wasn't
actually in the parking lot when they first searched for
her at the lake. It shows up after the search
is completed, as if Wendy's killer is watching and waiting,
which means what he could be local comfortable with the
(27:32):
area that mo also matches with the car Vincent was
driving being at the murder scene and then not at
the scene and as everyone had suspected, Wendy was sexually assaulted.
Do you see any connections between her murder and Vincent
(27:57):
and Shelley, Well.
Speaker 4 (27:59):
I mean themates. I know that her seat was pushed
all the way back in her car, and it sounded
as though there were isn't a lot of evidence in
her vehicle either. By one report I've read, there's been
statements made that no one saw her leave, but then
there's other statements saying they saw her get into a
vehicle with three men, which if that's the case, well
(28:22):
then who drove her car if she got into a
vehicle with three men? And I never really kind of
understood that part. I'm like, well, if you see her
going with the vehicle three men in a truck, well
then who who drove off in her vehicle? Because that
obviously left with her. So I don't know, but I
do know that, like within our case, you know, the
vehicle was seen several times during the night and they
disappear even though people were actively looking for because it
(28:44):
wasn't just Vincent Senior looking for them, it was also
the babysitter. You know, her family's out looking for them
because they're worried because they weren't back in time either.
So you've got other parties out there looking for these
kids and they can't find them. So we know that
their vehicles kind of hit or miss all night as well.
So that was kind of an interesting side note.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Small details seemingly insignificant can crack a case. The fact
that the driver's seat in the car Vincent had borrowed
that night the Monte Carlo was pushed all the way
back is indicative of someone taller than Vincent being behind
the wheel the last time it was driven, same as
it was in Wendy's case. In the Monte Carlo she
(29:27):
was driving. But even more important, Mel says three men
were seen driving away with Wendy. And if you recall,
we have heard several accounts of two or even three
men seen near Vincent's vehicle on that night up at
Piss Hill. Then, after seeing crime scene photos of Wendy's car,
(29:51):
Mel makes what could be a remarkable discovery.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
After Wendy was murdered a couple of months after that,
there was a fisherman out of a lake in Fort
Worth that had been fishing that morning and he ended
up I guess catching like a wallet and he opens
up the wallet and it says Wendy Robinson. And so
he starts calling people in Weatherford, you know, gets a
phone book out back in the day, and I guess
one of the people he had called Robinson. The guy's like, oh, yeah,
(30:25):
this isn't the right Robinson, but you need to call
the police department because that person you're talking about was murdered,
you know, a couple of months ago. So he calls
Weather for repde. They come out there, they start drudging
the lake and that's when they find a box in
the lake and it's got Wendy's person it.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
There was also a wallet in the box, which belonged
to a guy who had been attacked and robbed at
a local gas station called Petro on the same day
as Wendy's abduction.
Speaker 4 (30:53):
He was mugged from behind by two men and they
stole his wallet, knocked him out, and so that's where
they kind of believe that those two obviously were probably connected.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
In those crime scene photos from inside of Wendy's car,
Mel spies one specific detail that intrigues her.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
There was a photo It showed you know, the usual
things like lipstick, comb or whatever, but in the right
hand corner it looked like a ball of foil, kind
of like what you get off of like maybe ding
dongs or you know, it's like a little piece of foil.
But then I looked at some more and it maybe
wonder is there a possibility? And I'm not saying she was.
It's just a theory of mine that she was using
(31:36):
meth and fetamines because we know, according to the families
and other friends, that she had dropped quite a bit
of weight prior to the summer pretty quick. And we
know that there's a lot of people out there there
marketing metham fatamines, this quick weight loss drug. So do
I know if that's what it is? No, but it
just kind of was an interesting thing to find in
our purse, that this little ball of foil.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
If you're looking at it objectively, you have to consider
the fact that she could have been used in dope.
Speaker 4 (32:06):
Well, we know a lot of high schoolers. That's when
you're going to experiment with a lot of stuff. Two,
there's plenty of high schoolers it that's their an experiment
with narcotics. It's probably usually going to be in your
high school time period.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
Several sources I spoke to from the class of nineteen
eighty three talked about speed as the go to drug
for kids at the time, speed being another name for
meth in those parts. Mel is not saying Wendy Robinson
was a drug user. I want to be clear about that,
but murder investigation involves a tight rope of looking at
(32:41):
all possibilities, and with meth being such a buzzword around
strange deaths, many of the suspects the rumors and murders,
you have to consider that maybe somebody Wendy knew, Wendy
herself or her killer used the drug. What I have
been told repeatedly while talking to detectives trying to connect
(33:04):
murder cases is to be cautious of the obvious. Always
allow the evidence to dictate your next step. Here's current
cold case investigator Weatherford Police Department Lieutenant Johnny Qualls referring
to the contemporary investigation into Vincent and Shelley's murders after
(33:25):
I mentioned to him how with cold case work, it's
vital that information keeps coming in or your case can
kind of become stalled.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Yeah, you're you're spot on. We opened up at some point,
you know, a hot line, I say a hot line.
It was just a direct. It was my extension. You know,
people were calling me left and right.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
A lot a lot of.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
It was the stuff I had already heard before. But
people wanted to, you know, they wanted to do their part.
They they didn't want to loose sleep at night by
not passing them on or that assumed that we knew anything,
But we did, you know, we did you know there
were a few things like, oh, that's interesting, so we
would I mean, we we traveled as far as New
Mexico to go talk to a lady because we really
(34:07):
thought we were onto something. And then by the time
so we get out there, we talked to her and
it's like, oh, okay, yeah, this is not going to
be related. So we we You know, that's the kind
of you You catch yourself going and you have to
you have to go down those rabbit holes. But that's
the frustrating, discouraging part. And you're in this situation where
(34:28):
you know, people have questions and people are are like,
who doesn't care about something like that? Two kids getting
execute executed in a car Like every everyone has compassion
and cares about that and wants that fault. And you
want to tell them all the things that you know,
and you want to tell all the things that you've
done to but you can't. It's an active investigation. You
(34:49):
can't share all that information. So it's frustrating.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
And then the families of the victims as well, who
are frustrated and still hurting, and it's just it's endless.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
Yeah, and you have you have misinformation that as a
result of that. You know, I think people when when
they don't get the answer, when when they're seeking out answers,
we can't give them, you know, either either we don't
know or we're just simply not you know, in an
effort not to jeopardize an investigation, we can't give them
those answers. It frustrates them and I think that results
in some of the not necessarily by them, but some
(35:22):
of the speculation and misinformation being spread, and.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
People fill in the blanks, you know, they have a
tendency to just fill in the blanks and it just
causes more confusion. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Any any So, in that in that particular case, so
the girl's biological mom was still alive and we were
we were able to actually go and I think she
got it. I think she understood. She didn't give us
any any problems, but we were able to go meet
and talk with her and just kind of kind of
you know, uh initially like we did that initially, but
(35:58):
then we kind of uh did it, you know, at
a midway point two, uh, and just kind of a
check in with her. And I think she got a
little overwhelmed because I think she was getting here from
both sides.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
You know, she was.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
She she was very patient and willing to hear anything
we had to tell her. But then she had other
folks in her ear too, and you know, and I'm
sure that's it probably wasn'ts fun reliving all, you know,
her daughter's murder all over again.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Sure sure, I run into it myself talking to victims families.
You know, it's it's the pain never goes away and
not having an answer to it, you know. The Weatherford
Police Department continued to focus on Ricky Lee Green for
Wendy Robinson's murder even after his execution, until a new lead,
(36:48):
a big one, began to steer them away from Green.
Here is a recording a former Weatherford Police Department chief,
the late l Wood Wholehurtz, which I was able to
obtain deep into my investigation, and what he has to
say changes a few things for me with regard to
(37:10):
not only Wendy's case, but Vincent and Shelley's as well.
Speaker 6 (37:16):
Weatherford wasn't supposed to be investigating it, but did not
want that case. Body was found out in the county
and really nobody knows if she's abducted, lake or it.
We always wondered about that Petro. Maybe he didn't want
to touch a case. So I had to let my
detectors take the case. It's going to be a hot
(37:38):
case to investigate and form politician. That was not a
good deal to me. It had to be investigated, and
that's the reason I told the intectors take off on it.
I just know he didn't want to touch a case
and it had to be investigated. I told my people
go through it.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
So the elected sheriff at the time Wendy's body was
found was the same guy in office in nineteen eighty
three when Vincent and Shelley were murdered, and he did
not want to take Wendy's case. That is not so unusual.
I have learned. Elected sheriffs are politicians, optics are everything.
(38:28):
Reelection is always the goal. But this situation turns into
a jurisdictional pissing contest, which might have led to the
case against Ricky Lee Green becoming sidetracked. Elwood Hulhertz's investigators
jumped in they focused on getting a composite drawing done
(38:50):
of the man who had rob the guy's wallet at
the Petro and afterward tossed it into that lake. They
felt there could be a connection somewhere in there, because
remember the robbery happened on the day Wendy went missing,
and when they fished that wallet out of the lake,
as you heard, they found some of Wendy's belongings, potentially
(39:14):
tying the two crimes together. I should note that composite
in no way resembled Ricky Lee Green. By then, Green
had been completely ruled out, even if there were certain
detectives who still believed he did it, with a major
part of ruling him out being that the Texas Rangers
(39:37):
were now involved. I asked Patricia Springer where the investigation
into Wendy's murder went from there.
Speaker 7 (39:53):
His attorney, his defense attorney, had a Sodian Pitothhal interview
with a psychiatrist, and I petitioned the court to be
able to see that. They would not allow me to
see it until after his execution. But I did go
see that interview, and in that interview, he talks about
a Wendy that he killed, but he said he stabbed
(40:14):
her and stabbed her, and stabbed her and stabbed her,
which is what he did to his victims. He always
used a knife, which is another sexual instrument to him,
and Wendy didn't have a stab wound, honor. She was
hit with a large rock in its splitter skull.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
You see. Very few were listening to what the evidence dictated.
Most were stuck on the obvious. A serial killer says
he did it, then I guess he did it. They
took Green at his word a huge mistake and seemed
to disregard the obvious evidence that Wendy was never stabbed. Now,
(40:54):
is there any chance that Ricky could have killed Shelley
and Vincent?
Speaker 5 (41:01):
I don't personally believe so.
Speaker 7 (41:03):
That just seemed like either planned or they came upon something.
The theory has always been that they came upon a
drug deal that was going down. And also, Ricky never
used a firearm in any of these killings, that it
would have been very unusual for him to switch from
his weapon of choice. There are also other murders that well,
(41:26):
they said he did, they don't have any proof. After
his execution, I had the Texas Rangers come in and
draw blood from him so that they would have DNA
for any future cases. Unfortunately, the Texas Department of Public
Safety can't find that DNA.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Imagine that they lost the DNA collected from a serial killer.
While certain investigators were literally closing Wendy Robinson's case at
her murder to Ricky Lee Green, not following where the
evidence was taking them, the Weatherford Police Department received a
call from a young woman, the daughter of a guy
(42:11):
named not kidding you, Ricky Lee Adkins, and that call, well,
it changed everything.
Speaker 7 (42:22):
Her father had confessed to her that he was part
of the murder of Wendy Robinson in Wetherford.
Speaker 5 (42:28):
And then that's when they went.
Speaker 7 (42:31):
Back to Adkins, found his name in the murder book
that they had, that he was known back then. He
was known to be sleeping in his vehicle at Lake Weatherford.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
And when they checked that composite of the petro robbery
suspect which had led to the wallet in the lake
and Wendy's belongings, the dude turned out to be a
dead ringer for the man whose daughter had dropped the
dime on him. And now just like that, the Weatherford
PD had his name.
Speaker 7 (43:07):
All of a sudden, he came to the forefront the
pieces start to do.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
Please check out my weekly podcast, Crossing the Line with
m William Phelps, where I delve into a new missing
person and cold case murder each week wherever you get
your favorite shows coming up. In the next episode of
Paper Ghosts.
Speaker 7 (43:38):
When they went to the wall to see what was
left there, her car was there, it was unlocked, but
her purse and her radio and her keys were gone.
Speaker 9 (43:50):
Yeah, I have no doubt Frosts everything.
Speaker 6 (43:52):
For one.
Speaker 4 (43:53):
Frosty was like one of the big wigs back then.
Speaker 9 (43:56):
You know, he's a Walter White of Parker County when
it came to cook enemies. I mean, he was one
of the guys that were the guys you went to
to get the best stuff on the market.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
And if he was a cop pain in my house.
Speaker 8 (44:09):
Here's probably like a year ago. They came over.
Speaker 5 (44:12):
Here and well belong, they started.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
Choosing everything, and I said, well, for you'll get all
high and all this sudther. Y'all need to understand that
I took a pollybat tans that I passed it.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Paper Ghost season five is written and executive produced by
me and William Phelps. Script consulting by iHeartMedia Executive producer
Catherine Law. Production by toc Boom Productions, Audio mastering and
mixing by Brandon Dicker. The series theme number four four
(44:47):
to two is written and performed by Thomas Phelps and
Tom Mooney
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