Oh My God... What Kind of Mess is This?

As Phelps keeps digging, new sources come forward.  Has all of this been some sort of witch hunt to pin the murders on two innocent men, so the real killers walk free?

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
At the conclusion of the previous episode, you heard my
source Alan Carter mention a series of accidents, suicides, and
other strange deaths in Parker County, in fact Wright in Weatherford.
Several sources I spoke to, including Alan, claimed that many

(00:29):
of those deaths tied directly back to the murders of
Shelley and Vincent in some way. I understand that's a big,
bold assertion. When I first heard this, I honestly had
one of those moments. Okay, I get it. The frustration
of an unsolved teenage double murder case, a lack of

(00:52):
results from the local PD. Add the conspiracy mindset that's
so common today. Any death of a team becomes suspicious,
the confusion of a mishandled investigation, no arrests forty something
years later. It's a basic human response. When no answers
present themselves, you begin to question everything. You begin to

(01:17):
think systemic corruption. It's rare, but it does take place.
So I put my investigative cap on and decided to
take a serious look into some of these cases in
Parker County. Now, let me ask you, so, are there
any other murders before or after this that have a

(01:39):
similar kind of ring to them that begin to tell
a tale of like, wow, there's something bigger going on here.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
There's one I know.

Speaker 3 (01:48):
His name is Jimmy Joe Hayes, and I know he
was a younger guy and he was found next to
the lake. He had allegedly hung himself. It was ruled
as a suicide, but he was found hanging with his
hands tied behind his back, his feet tied up, and
then his dog shot underneath his feet.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
Wow, okay put his.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
Rule of suicide.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
And so I know a lot of people have kind
of brought him up, and you know that doesn't really
set well with the suicide. I don't know about you,
but I don't know how man to tie my hands
behind my back and my feet and then try to
figure out how to hang myself.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
But I mean, I don't know. Maybe a magician can.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
I must say that working with mel Mitchell over the
years on these cases has taught me many things. She
is a tenacious, driven, insatiable investigator working for a very
large private investigation firm, Blackfish, and she does not stop
until she finds an answer or exhausts every avenue, which

(02:49):
is what these cases need. She also refuses to take
any shit from anyone, which I admire and respect immensely.
In researching all of these strange deaths, murders, accidents, and suicides,
Mel Mitchell did something which needs to be recognized and acknowledged,

(03:10):
something that's vital in cold case work.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
I was trying to understand.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
How they did things back in the eighties, which clearly
is a lot different than now we're talking about. Like
I guess the investigators are also cross trained in some
pathology and some you know, some classes within you know,
medical examers. They could actually determine okay, suicide, homicide, you know,
undetermined whether or not needs to go.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
Off, and you know, have an autopsy.

Speaker 3 (03:37):
But it was a JP back then that would actually
make the determination, Okay, you know what, it's a suicide.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
You know what, it's a homicide.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
Mel is referring to the justice of the piece when
she says JP, And what impresses me about her research
is how she places her investigation in the year twenty
twenty five back into the context of nineteen eighty three,
which is so very important when trying to develop new
information in a cold case, when you are trying to

(04:12):
figure out what might have been missed. You have to
look at things the way in which investigators did at
that time. And when you do that in this case,
as Mel pointed out, obvious signs of the potential to
corrupt and muddy an investigation emerge. One insider could easily

(04:35):
cover up a lot of crime. Three or four could
change the entire course of a murder case. It sounds
to me like a clusterfuck. That's what it sounds like.
This whole thing. Like from the moment that they showed
up at that scene, nobody did anything right.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
No, they did not, oh one hundred percent.

Speaker 3 (04:59):
And those people that had that would talk to us
will tell you, yes, nothing was done right. And that's
why it's mind boggling to me, because right around that
time period, like six weeks after their murders, there was
two other murders that happened at the lake and it
was a couple and they were I believe shot in
their vehicle and then that vehicle was pushed off into lake. Anyway,

(05:19):
but they found the guy done in Austin within a
couple of weeks, and I'm like, okay, so you guys
are able to process that scene and actually find out
whose guy is and the locate on way down Austin,
and you do all that right, but within six weeks
time period, you can't do anything right with these kids.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
I mentioned the murder of that couple in an earlier
episode of the podcast. That case doesn't appear to be
connected to any of the cases here, but the point
Mel makes is noted. The Weatherford Police Department publicized that
they had cleared all the murders in town over a
ten year period, including when d Robinson's. They'd cleared everything

(06:03):
except Shelley and Vincent's, which says something. What was it
about Shelley and Vincent's murders stifling progress? Within the first
six months, the Weatherford Police Department reported to the media
they had eleven law enforcement agencies working on the case,

(06:24):
and the Weatherford PD had amassed over three hundred hours
in overtime alone and not a single solid lead or suspect.
Was there someone deeply involved behind the scenes, pushing the
investigation off course at every opportunity. Remember when Mel and

(06:45):
I met in front of the funeral home and Mel
went inside and asked about embombing records for Shelley and Vincent.
She had made contact with someone at the funeral home
in twenty twenty five during one of my trips to Texas.
The woman was extremely helpful during that first conversation Mel

(07:06):
had with her. Yes, absolutely, we keep all the records.
I'll find the ones you're looking for and call you,
she told Mel. Important to keep in mind is that
those notes from the embomber Mel was searching for would
give a complete and very detailed description of the bodies
during the embalming process when the bodies were being prepared

(07:30):
for viewing in burial. Any injury, any blemish to the skin,
any anomaly would have been noted. That same woman who
was so friendly the first time Mel spoke to her,
turned stand offish the next time they had a conversation
and passed the baton off to higher ups. So Mel

(07:51):
got one of the managers on the phone. After playing
tag for a bit, I did tell him.

Speaker 3 (08:00):
I was like, well, I was like, through some back channels,
we'll leave it there now. I did a copy of
a Shelley's on TOOS report and he's like, okay, we
also found out that we were missing Shelley's in mommer report.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
You know. I found out that they have a file
and I was like, there's no hippo violations.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
The point is handing over an embombing report is not
the same as handing over medical records. Yet, out of
all the embombing reports they had, even as far back
as nineteen eighty three and before, all of which had
the embombing notes inside the file, Mel was told, guess

(08:37):
which two reports did not have embombing notes when they checked.
Shelley and Vincent's so.

Speaker 3 (08:46):
When you talk about crush, you're talking about someone who
actually really knew how to cover themselves up, because who
would even think to go after an embalming report. And
He's like, well, I want it either, And I'm like, exactly,
that's my point because it was showing her external injuries.

Speaker 1 (09:01):
Mel reached out to Lance Arnold, the Weatherford Police Department
chief from twenty seventeen to twenty twenty four, who expressed
interest in talking to me for the podcast, but then,
like many others in law enforcement involved in this case, today,
disappeared and stopped responding to my requests without even having

(09:23):
the courtesy to tell me no. Each time. It was
the same scenario. At first, they had no problem talking
to me, some were even eager, but as time went
by and they must have spoken to friends or those
in positions of high authority from that point on, they
ghosted me. That says a lot. After forty plus years,

(09:49):
what is there to hide? Why wouldn't you want to
make a statement on a worldwide podcast and take the
opportunity to reach out to people in your community who
might help you solve your town's coldest murder case. Melwood
puts several different questions to Chief Arnold, some of which

(10:10):
included the condition of Shelley's body and if in fact
she had been raped and beaten.

Speaker 3 (10:19):
And he's like, well, I don't know if she had
external injuries, and like, what do you mean. He's like, well,
I saw the photos of her and Vins in the car,
and he's like, for maybe ten fifteen seconds, I saw
her body that was in the morgue, you know, when
she was unclothed. And he's like, I don't remember seeing
any external injuries.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
But he's like, but don't quote me on that, because
only it's not for like fifteen seconds. It's been like
five years ago.

Speaker 3 (10:39):
And I'm like, okay, well, what I am going to
tell you is that if the mom you know of
a murdered child sees all these injuries on body, I'm
going to be obviously inclined to believe her because that's her,
that's her child that's been really murdered. He's like, no,
one hundred percent, I absolutely agree.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
If if the.

Speaker 3 (10:54):
Mom's what, if that's what the mom saw, then then
that's what you have to go on.

Speaker 2 (10:58):
Because he's right.

Speaker 3 (10:59):
He's like, I'm not stuff like fifteen seconds, but I
don't remember seeing anything on her body from the morgue,
and I do remember seeing seeing her.

Speaker 2 (11:07):
Had clothing on in the car.

Speaker 3 (11:09):
What I kind of pieced together with him and when
I'm what I kind of had thought about enough is
I don't think they.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
Were giving Arnold the whole story. I personally don't.

Speaker 3 (11:18):
I don't think the investigators were giving Arnold because you know,
he created this cold case unit. You know, he said
we had They got together once a day, I mean
once a week, They work once you know, once a week,
and they come back to him monthly give him updates
on it. So he's not going to have the fine
details and everything going on in the case. They're just
gonna give him the broad overview. Okay, that's what we
found this we have you know, probably made ten to
fifteen minute briefing and that's about it. When I'm talking

(11:41):
about this, he's like, yeah, I think the kids were
actually killed, you know, in the car. I saw the
photos and he's like, you know, it looked like they
were probably killed in the car. So I didn't have
time to really get into it with him on no,
I don't believe that's true. And here's my reasons why.
He's like, there's some things about this case I can't
tell you about. It's still up an investigation. He's like,

(12:01):
I can only give you, you know, bare minimum stuff.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
I'm like, that's fine.

Speaker 3 (12:05):
But the more I started talking to him about some stuff,
like about finally Kimura and he's like, yeah, i'd heard.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
Those rumors rumors.

Speaker 3 (12:13):
I'm like, yeah, okay, but unfortunate as rumors are pretty
much true.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
And he started kind of coming around.

Speaker 3 (12:19):
Towards end the conversation, he's like, well, yeah, we know
that there was a lot of activity going on that
shouldn't have been going on back of that time period.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
Here, once again is part of a conversation with the
late Elwood Hohertz, the Weatherford Police Department chief at the
time of the murders a tape which I obtained late
into my investigation.

Speaker 4 (12:53):
The only thing is we knew that they got shot
somebody sticking inside the right passion and shot him from
the right side with them.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
The interviewer then brings up several points, one that there
was definitely a struggle before they were murdered, Two that
in speaking with many people attending the wake, abrasions were
reported on Shelley's right side nearly from the top of
her face to the bottom of her leg. And three
how for a fact, from Shelley's face all the way

(13:26):
down to her arms had been completely torn up, as
if she'd been dragged through a brier patch. Hoehertz responds,
confirming as much.

Speaker 4 (13:38):
It' not torah, but it was noticeable.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
Then the question of several gashes on Shelley's forehead were posed.

Speaker 4 (13:46):
I didn't notice that.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
Another fact gleaned from Shelley's mother, Janetta, if you recall,
was that her shoes were pristine, but her feet were filthy.
Hoehurtz ignored that and said this.

Speaker 4 (14:00):
Well, the saying that always interests us. You know, the
car radio was on. As soon as you turn on
the switch of the car, the radio was running immediately,
and we know that they were killed with the car running.

Speaker 1 (14:16):
Point in fact, the keys were reportedly missing and never
found anyway.

Speaker 4 (14:24):
I was upset that everybody was calling around. People were
not trained at up there at Witherford at that time,
and they didn't protect the scene. But I'm upset Max
Smith and his people going there and going off through
that they should have protected the scene.

Speaker 1 (14:41):
Holehurtz mentions Max Smith there the district attorney at the time.
This interview with Hoolehurtz exemplifies a major point from me.
If you persist in keep asking the right questions, truth
will eventually emerge.

Speaker 5 (14:58):
Whole.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
Hurtz was the chief at the time, and here he
is acknowledging a lot of the quote unquote rumor we've
been hearing. He confirms the injuries Shelley sustained, while at
the same time trying his best to back away from
a complete confirmation. So clear in this tape as I

(15:19):
listened back and studied it carefully, was how much Hohurtz
wanted to say but ultimately bit his tongue about that
evidence they did collect. Hohurts said there were shellcasings and
a used condom both of which could break the case
open at some point down the road. According to Hohertz,

(15:39):
those items were sent to Fort Worth, a department more
skilled in forensics in crime scene investigation than any other
department at the time in the region. But when the
Weatherford Police Department went back to Fort Worth and asked
what had been found from testing those pieces of evidence,
the evidence officer there said, I'm sorry, but we can't

(16:03):
find any of it.

Speaker 4 (16:05):
I'm surprised about that. Really, the main part isn't what
we're playing. And I always remember they want to take
the heat off of me, sure me? Holy hell.

Speaker 1 (16:16):
According to Hohurtz, the case became political right from the start,
and the person he refers to as she there was
a top politician in town then, the indication being that
all sorts of local politicians and lawyers and other law
enforcement officials were getting involved mucking everything up, telling him
to basically back the fuck off. And then as Holhurtz's

(16:41):
investigators started digging into the case through the evidence collected
from the crime scene that they had sent off, things
became even more convoluted and quite honestly alarming.

Speaker 4 (16:54):
I still thank you for the deal, and I think
it strict MODI was he couldn't stand the sea a
Mexican lady and a white girl.

Speaker 1 (17:02):
Hoehurtz is referring to one of the names I have censored,
and that politically connected person following him to the polygraph, and.

Speaker 4 (17:13):
It's got to be an on my case, like Chris
wanted me out of there. Well, that's when two detectives
of pot Words agreed that they takes the heat off me.
They picked up up and the lawyer followed him and
went to pot work to run the polygraph. That time.
This is now well after, and that's the day he

(17:37):
lets her lawyer followed him right behind him all the
way the name censored.

Speaker 1 (17:43):
There is that politician seemingly running things within Weatherford and
so we have this supposed cover up going all the
way up the chain. Then Hoolhertz tells this story which
is just mind boggling but all so revealing, showing the
links to which some went to make sure this case

(18:06):
never went anywhere.

Speaker 4 (18:10):
One day, two Texas rangers showed up and they said,
we're missing some evidence, and I said what is it?
And said, suppose that you took to the property room
to be uh checked out by you know, they're property people.
And I said, oh, I remember, I said, and I

(18:30):
took it in let him side for it. They said, yeah,
the state can't find it. I said, state can't find it.
They can't even find where they signed for it. Yeah,
but I bet you Weatherbord's got where they signed for it.
They said they did, but that person is signed for
it supposed to don't work for the state. I said,

(18:54):
oh my god, what kind of mess is it?

Speaker 1 (18:57):
Oh my god, previously on paper.

Speaker 6 (19:04):
Ghosts and he had just forty two years later and
nothing still.

Speaker 4 (19:09):
But I'm going to say that that's what it was,
and to me, that's what it was.

Speaker 6 (19:13):
Sure sign and they all covered it up.

Speaker 7 (19:16):
There were a couple of you know, young African American
boys that were killed and murdered for no reason.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
There was just so many, so many things, and so.

Speaker 6 (19:24):
Many that were not even written about that we know
about that we're missing.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
I just hope that they can stop.

Speaker 8 (19:30):
So we went in the house and she was looking
for him and I was just kind of sitting there
and that's when I saw. I didn't know who he
was when I saw him, but it was then all
of a sudden I heard him say, we killed those kids.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
My name is em William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalist
and the New York Times bestselling author of dozens of
true crime books. This is season five of for Ghosts
the Texas Team Murders. So what is in the autopsy

(20:15):
report Troy Nichelis received on his front doorstep during the
fall of twenty twenty four which could have been so
important that the person leaving the report wanted that information
to be either known by the family or shared publicly.
And why now four decades later, here is mel Mitchell.

(20:40):
Once again.

Speaker 3 (20:42):
We've had a lot of people that we had talked to,
you know about Hey, where were they shot?

Speaker 2 (20:46):
What do you remember?

Speaker 3 (20:48):
And we have been told that, you know, Vincent had
been shot in the right temple because his left eye
was kind of hanging out, and Shelley had been shot
once in the back of the head, like I guess,
kind of behind the ear.

Speaker 2 (21:01):
Well, come to find out she was shot twice in
the head.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
That autopsy report isn't clear about a lot of things,
and I would go so far as to say it
was purposely constructed to be unclear. On the front page,
the medical examiner states that one projectile was recovered from
the right side of the head, and one projectile was

(21:31):
recovered from the left side of the head of interest.
The external examination section of the report has a note
indicating that quote lividity conforms to the position of the
deceased having been seated slightly plumped over attached car door.
This is directly associated with what the pathologist was told

(21:55):
by law enforcement, or there is no other way he
could have known. With the amount of certainty he maintained
in the report, Shelley had no defensive wounds, the report claims.
Then it specifies that Shelley had a single gunshot wound
localized to the left side of her face, very close

(22:15):
to her ear. The second wound was found three inches
below the base of the same ear. If you are
looking at Shelley from a left profile view, one wound
was just to the side of the ear and the
other to the back of the ear. Those are the
type of wounds generally associated with an execution, like a

(22:36):
mob related hit, designed specifically to send a message.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
When we got the autopsy report, there's a lot more
questions and that than answers, because we know that she
has scratch marks all over her We know that she
had scratches, I mean, like on her forehead and like
almost like she'd been drug through the briers. Like online,
the whole right cyber body was torn up. Going to
the funeral. You could see the scratches, I mean, and

(23:05):
it's seen, you know, some moment. Actually I had seen her
oppositely prior to you know, being dressed, you know, for
the funeral. I mean, just seeing all these crash marks.
Because in the auto's report it shows none of that,
nothing at all. It doesn't show there is any I mean,
any wounds at all of asides the two bullepoint winds.

Speaker 2 (23:24):
That's it.

Speaker 3 (23:25):
So that's already a huge question for me as someone
who's an emmy, Why are you not documenting all the
exterior injuries because you haven't documented any.

Speaker 1 (23:36):
By the end of what is one of the shorter
autopsy reports I've ever come across, the pathologist says he
took blood in urine samples, tissue sections, fingernail cuttings, plucked
hair from Shelley's scalp, to cardiac blood, and very important,
a rape kit. There is zero mention of any external injury.

(24:00):
Like Elwood Hulhertz describes throughout this podcast, The pathologist who
conducted Shelley's autopsy was doctor nzamb Pirwani, a name steeped
in controversy.

Speaker 3 (24:13):
Well, I don't know if you ever had a chance
to read about the Emmy, Like I sent just some
of the documents a while back. Did you ever read
about the emmy in his background?

Speaker 1 (24:20):
Yeah, yeah, it's a very sketchy situation.

Speaker 4 (24:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:23):
And at that time period, he had just gotten a
contract a couple of months prior to these murders to
do Parker County. I think they were paying him like
five hundred dollars in autopsy, which obviously back there was
a lot of money, but his lab was not like
a massive, you know, medical examer's lab like you have now.
Like he had been asking for donations and all that
kind of stuff, and so he built this like half

(24:44):
million dollar lab that opened up I think October November
of that same year to where he had a better facility.
So I don't know what all he was lacking at
the time of their murders, because typically a lot of
the bigger named, you know, autopsies would be sent to Dallas.
So if you had if you really needed a lot
of in depth stuff, I mean, better forensics, you'd be

(25:04):
going to Dallas because this guy was like an up
and coming metal examer, Like he wasn't just some guy
that's been, you know, around for ten twenty years. I mean,
he'd just started up as practice.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
Wouldn't two teenagers shot to death in a car be
a big case that you'd want to send to Dallas.

Speaker 3 (25:20):
I would think, So that'd be the first place I
sent him to his Dallas because Dallas wanted took on
all the big stuff back then. So instead you're saying
to a new guy who's new here and has long
been practicing for like maybe a year or two, and
you just get, you know, a contract at the county.
I'm like, well, why would you say it to this
guy who doesn't have it's like a fully functional lab

(25:41):
like you would Dallas, And.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
Who would be in charge of all of that?

Speaker 2 (25:44):
That would be the justice of the piece.

Speaker 3 (25:48):
Glenn Dimsmore was the one that was making most of
those decisions at the time.

Speaker 1 (25:52):
From my understanding, Doctor Pierwani, and it would have been
a stretch calling him a doctor at the time had
a career mired in lies and incompetence, beginning in the
years before the kid's murders, and it's important to note.

(26:14):
According to then district Attorney Max Smith, the Monte Carlo
was sent to doctor Pierwani as well, and Max Smith
publicly stated that Pierwani conducted the forensic examination of that vehicle.
Pierjani became the deputy medical Examiner in nineteen seventy six,

(26:35):
yet his medical license did not become effective until nineteen
seventy eight, so for two years he conducted autopsies without
a medical license, which is a felony. He also obtained
his green card he immigrated from Pakistan after lying about

(26:56):
the terms of his student visa. In the years after
he conducted the autopsies of Shelley and Vincent, Pierjuani was
found to have given false testimony in a death penalty case,
resulting in the defendant being sentenced to death, and an
audit of his office found fifty nine errors in twenty

(27:18):
seven cases. Fifty nine errors twenty seven cases. Perjuani's comedical
examiner was later fired. This is not the guy you
want to trust with two bodies in a double homicide.
With the public pressure of the case at the highest

(27:39):
level possible, I also couldn't wrap my mind around why
a medical examiner would be the one to conduct the
forensic search of a vehicle in a double murder case,
or why you would even send two bodies in a
double homicide to a medical examiner who was clearly unreliable
and did not do a thorough job up. But when

(28:01):
I applied more pressure, that supposed fact gave way.

Speaker 3 (28:08):
That was a crazy thing too, is that there was
taking the car and the bodies to Emmy's office. Well
the Emmy's office. First of all, it's not forensics for
a car. Secondly, there's no word to even park a
car to even do forensics on it, so I knew
it wasn't Emmy's office.

Speaker 1 (28:23):
Mel discovered that Max Smith was wrong. The car was
not sent to doctor Pierwani, which still did not make
matters any better.

Speaker 3 (28:33):
I'd been told it went to fort Worth, and fort
Worth is the one who had done the processing on it.
And then when I talked to Raymond Pritcher, he had
said it was actually the Terrant County Sheriff's Department that
had the vehicle and was doing the forensics on the car,
and he had told us that it was nothing was
really done like I was supposed to be because I
asked him, I was like, well, were their fingerprints taken?

Speaker 2 (28:55):
And he's like, I don't think so.

Speaker 3 (28:57):
Because I'd asked the family, the ones that actually have
the car, I'm like, do you remember seeing any of
the black powders, like, you know, back then they we've
had the black fingerprint powder everywhere.

Speaker 2 (29:04):
He's like, no, I don't remember seeing any of that
in the vehicle or outside of the vehicle.

Speaker 3 (29:07):
And so talking to Raymond, he said he didn't really
remember them doing fingerprints all that either. He did remember
there was a bootprint in the back seat and they
had like kind of pointed towed cowboy boots with like
some zigzag design on the footprint. I asked him, I
was like, well, I understood that there was economist Shelle
cases in the car.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
And he's like yeah, He's like this kind of went missing.

Speaker 1 (29:33):
Let me break that down simply because it sounds so
confusing and truly unbelievable. Raymond Pritchard, who took over the
case many years later and eventually became deputy chief of
the Weatherford Police Department, told mel Mitchell no search for
fingerprints was ever conducted on the vehicle and we know

(29:55):
from Raven t Jerina, Vincent's uncle that when he saw
the vehicle that morning and after it was returned to
the family, there was a used condom inside the car.
So I think it's safe to say that no forensic
examination of the vehicle, or at least a competent examination,
was ever done, and surely that used condom, which could

(30:19):
contain the answer to the case, was never tested.

Speaker 3 (30:23):
And so he's like, oh, well, it was a brand
new person, like it as a newbie that basically a
got assigned to do in the friensis on his car,
like he'd never done fansis on his car ever before.

Speaker 1 (30:33):
Even if it was your first minute on the job,
it would be pretty damn hard to miss a used
condom sitting on the backseat of a vehicle you are
calling through for evidence in a murder investigation.

Speaker 3 (30:51):
And so when I'm talking to Raymond, I'm trying to
understand this, Like, so you're telling me that you have
a double homicide and it's target sent over to Terrence
County Shaff's office, and some guy who's never done forensis
on a car ever before is the one that gets
assigned to doing the forensics on his car. He's like, well, yeah,
that's why that's such poor that's such a poor job

(31:12):
was done on it.

Speaker 1 (31:13):
To say the least. I was baffled by the incompetence
within all of this. So, Mel, I'm not understanding how
the evidence got put back in the car and given
back to the family. Is that what somebody wanted done?
I don't.

Speaker 2 (31:29):
I'm not, I think so.

Speaker 3 (31:31):
They allegedly don't have the evidence, so I don't know
if it was someone who And I'm not sure I've
been trying to figure out for the family if they
actually went to go pick up the car or if
it was brought back. But my understanding the car was
actually kept after the forensics was done on it. It
was actually kept in a facility for all the other

(31:52):
toad you know, towed vehicles, like a towing yard, and
so it was like back in his back corner, and
it wasn't really shielded from the you know, from the elements,
like kind of stuck in a corner somewhere. And so
Vincent Senior and maybe his brother Raymond, you know, had
got out there and picked up the car and then
came back. But another family member had just told us
maybe Vincent Senior was not happy with maybe looking at

(32:14):
the car and realizing, Okay, I don't feel like this
has been inspected like it should.

Speaker 2 (32:17):
And so at some point time he drew it back.

Speaker 3 (32:18):
Up to whether for a PDE to have them look
over it, like, it doesn't look like this car's in
a process.

Speaker 1 (32:26):
Can you imagine the car where two teenage murder victims
were allegedly found not being processed. If I hadn't gotten
involved in this case, I'd have to say, it's impossible.
Who the hell is running this investigation?

Speaker 2 (32:46):
Exactly? That's that's what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (32:47):
And so when I was talking to Raymond, he I
was a lead on this, and Raymond reopened this case
in two thousand and three with another investigator Chris Crawford,
and Raymon.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
At that point in time, I think was like, Deputy, please, chief.

Speaker 6 (32:59):
You know.

Speaker 2 (33:00):
So when I'm talking to Raymond Pritchett.

Speaker 3 (33:01):
About this, it's like, well, you don't have a scene
properly taped off from all the witnesses we've talked to,
so you've basically got I mean, it's like the Grand
Prix walking through here. There's footprints everywhere, there's car tracks, everywhere.
Nothing was properly you know, purtened off from you know,
just anybody walking through it. You got press out there.
You've got Pressed the same night that's actually taking video

(33:24):
of people walking around where the bloodstains are on the ground.

Speaker 2 (33:27):
And then you have this car that people are touching.

Speaker 3 (33:30):
They're touching the car like as it's like getting loaded
up onto the tow truck.

Speaker 2 (33:34):
So now you've like.

Speaker 3 (33:35):
Really contaminated the scene with all these people's footprints and
touching the vehicle. So, I mean, who knows how many
fingerprints maybe on the outside of the car, and then
it's sent over to Fort Worth to be processed, which
I don't think there are ever any fingerprints taken.

Speaker 2 (33:49):
And so Raymond said that.

Speaker 3 (33:50):
There was a paper I guess, like the old school
kind of paper you can kind of own I guess
the tracing sheets or whatever you can trace the footprints,
and so like they had a trice footprint made.

Speaker 2 (34:01):
I've had one bootprint, and.

Speaker 3 (34:04):
He said somehow that was lost in the evidence later on,
but they had a photo of it left, like they
still had a photo still somewhere in the evidence. But
there's so much evidence as lost in this So I
don't know who had the car. He's telling me it's
Terry County, Shaff's apartment. I have others to tell me
it's for or f PD, But whoever had the car,
I don't know. If there's a phone call that was
made and said, hey, make sure this doesn't find its way.

Speaker 2 (34:25):
Back to PD.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
I'm almost certain I've never heard anything this incompetent within
a murder investigation throughout my twenty five year career of
investigative journalism. It's either the most inept investigation ever or
certain parties are playing dumb, hoping to deflect the obvious
and muck up the investigation on purpose.

Speaker 3 (34:56):
Because I mean, honestly, I don't know how else it
would have happened, because you're not going to have it
bagged and tagged, and then somehow it ends up right
back in the car for the family to find, knowing
the family is more than likely not going to hang
on to it thinking okay, well it's obviously left in
here for a reason.

Speaker 1 (35:12):
More paper ghosts After a quick break, 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.

Speaker 3 (35:36):
We had set up a meeting and we try to
keep as confidential as possible with the witnesses to come
forward on this podcast.

Speaker 1 (35:47):
At one point, Mel Mitchell and Justice for Vincent and
Shelley Facebook page administrator Laurie Kates set up a virtual
meeting with about ten sources. These potential sources wanted to
feel me out, understand what I was doing, get a
feel for this yankee and my angle. They also wanted

(36:10):
to meet one another. There is strength and unity and
each of them would make the other feel safer about
stepping forward. The ladies had worked hard at getting everyone together.
On the morning of the meeting, something happened, which has
become an all too common occurrence when people begin asking
questions about Vincent and Shelley's murders.

Speaker 3 (36:36):
Some of them were really scared, and we wanted them
to kind of meet each other and know that they're one,
not alone two. You know, they could probably rely on
each other. They felt like, you know, possibly they were
being followed or you know, anybody had called them and
made them feel like uncomfortable or possibly harassed, So kind
of quitting them their own little small group of knowing, hey,

(36:59):
we are witness to certain aspects of this case, and
you know that we're not alone.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
We've got a kind of a mini support group.

Speaker 1 (37:06):
Neither Melth nor Lorie told them where the meeting would
take place until the last possible moment so as to
keep it as confidential as possible.

Speaker 3 (37:17):
So we had set up a day in time, but
we were calling people that morning to tell them the location.

Speaker 2 (37:25):
And it's a little bit further outside the city.

Speaker 3 (37:27):
And that morning I was driving out there a little
bit earlier, and there was a SUV that was in
the left lane because it's only two lanes and I
was in the right lane. SUV's in the left lane,
And to be honest, I didn't even really notice them
because it's the traffic's ridiculous now. So I took the exit.
This suv cut off the driver behind me to get

(37:50):
over on the exit, and you know, of course, all
I'm thinking is, you know, hey, some idiot just was
about to miss her exit, and uh, you know, we
all know how drivers are these days, so I didn't
think much of it. And then we're going down this,
you know, one new road that they built out here,
and you know, person's kind of behind me, not anything

(38:10):
too too far out. And we get to a turn
lane where I had to turn left into where this
individual lives, and that person pulled in behind me. So
I got a pretty decent look at the person. It
was a female. So we take a left and she's
kind of like really wrong on my rear to where
I couldn't get a license plate like I wanted to.

(38:30):
She's I mean, close enough where I can't get a
visual of it, and I don't know. It's just one
of those gut instinct things where I'm thinking, okay, so
maybe this person does live the neighborhood. They just want
to get around me. I'll just kind of slow down,
see they'll pass me. Well, of course that didn't happen.
So I was like, well, let me just test my theory.
I'm gonna take another left up here onto an even
more of a rural road. And so when I did,

(38:53):
that person follow me again, and I guess that's when
she realized I was picking up on what she is doing.
So by the time I'm wanting to slow down because
I was going to stop and just you know, get
out and really confront the person. And by the time
I started slowing down. That person already pretty much slammed
on their brakes and turn around is already heading out

(39:14):
to the you know, to the highway again. So this
person exited the neighborhood the same way we came in,
but I went a different route and kind of loop
back around the neighborhood. So when I came out, this
individual was coming out on the other side of the neighborhoods.
I could see she was leaving pretty pretty quickly.

Speaker 1 (39:38):
Keep in mind, mel carries several loaded weapons on her
at all times and has some loaded weapons bedside as well,
which is something I myself have embraced recently after getting
death threats deemed credible by my local police department during
the fall of twenty twenty four, after launching a narrative

(39:59):
podcast about the Karen Reid case in Boston, the woman
accused and later acquitted of murdering her Boston Police officer
boyfriend John O'Keefe. This is the world in which we
now live. Who do you think that could be?

Speaker 3 (40:18):
I think it's someone that could have possibly been one
of the investors at a point in time on this case.
But like I said, I couldn't get a license plate
so I don't want to confirm, yes, this is who
it was, but given the appearance, that's who it appeared
to be. But why maybe just to see what we know?

(40:39):
I mean, there's a possibility that some of these witnesses
may have not told him everything, or maybe some of
his witnesses may not have ever come forward, and there's
just new people that they would probably love to know about.

Speaker 1 (40:51):
Mel Mitchell has this contagious, welcoming, youthful aura about her.
One of the most determined investigators I have ever had
the honor of working with her, eye and ear for
detail unparalleled. Her courage to dig, even if digging is
going to rattle cages and stir up the past some
would rather not see resurface. She forges on even when

(41:15):
what she discovers might upset victims' families. Because look, I
had to ask, what if all this talk of corruption
and cops being involved major political people as well, had
all been some sort of a ruse, a deflection engineered
by the real killer or killers to keep law enforcement

(41:39):
off their scent. A lot of this talk about corruption
went from the town square to social media and soon
took off like a Texas marin heat gaining a life
of its own, So you'd have to wonder if the
murderers were working this angle.

Speaker 3 (41:58):
So Shelley has a hope chest that her mom have
obviously kept over the years, and so in his hope chest,
amongst other documents, there was this one newspaper clipping that
she had circled these two individuals.

Speaker 1 (42:10):
Mel gives me the names, and they are not the
two names I have been censoring throughout. These are two
different young men. What would be the significance do you
think that Shelley had this picture and had circled the
faces of these two males?

Speaker 4 (42:27):
Now?

Speaker 3 (42:28):
I know she went to high school with both of them,
I mean, and whether for it wasn't a huge city
or town, I mean much less a very big high
school either, So I mean what the significance of it
would be? I don't know as far as how she
would have known him outside the FFA.

Speaker 1 (42:42):
Another line of inquiry once Mel began looking into these
new names also came up and could make sense when
compared to what looks to be the execution style manner
of murder in this case. Tell me about Vincent's ex
girlfriend perhaps being a target.

Speaker 3 (43:02):
She said that, for whatever reason, when she was interviewed
by the police, that they had made a statement that
she may have been the ind attended target instead of
Shelley for whatever reason. She hasn't really elaborated much on that.
She had said also that they had never found the
car keys to Vincent's car that night, But she also
stated that they had known, or she had known, that

(43:24):
they had staged the kids after they were shot to
looked like they were making out. That's what she had
told us, and that she had, through whoever she had
talked to, believes that Shelley was killed outside of the
car and that Vincent was shot inside and basically left
to bleed out.

Speaker 2 (43:41):
She said.

Speaker 3 (43:41):
The other understandings she had whoever she's talking to, is
that the police were covering up due to one of
their own individuals possibly having been involved in it.

Speaker 1 (43:53):
And so here we are again, we've come full circle,
directly back to that law enforcement angle. So that was
her whole basis for this information was.

Speaker 3 (44:09):
That she may have known more than she needed to know.
And so she said that she had gotten a death
threat one day she was at the movies and just
gotten a brand new car, and I guess that morning
actually and so she got into movies a couple of friends,
and when she came out there was a note on
her window that was a death threat, and so she
handed it over to police to say, hey, can you

(44:30):
please look into this? And she said that was probably
around late January to early February nineteen eighty four.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
Mel went on to say a lot of this the
idea of high school kids involved death threats, Shelley circling
the faces of two individuals pictures for some reason all
centered around the meth trade and how the drug was
then marketed in school as a quick, fixed weight loss

(44:57):
drug at the time. So the theory is some kids
got in too deep, knew too much, had seemed too much,
and had to be taken out. When I mentioned near

(45:42):
the top of the episode, there were a lot of
strange deaths and accidents around the time of the murders,
many of which seemed to be connected back to Shelley
and Vincent, much in the same way Vincent's former girlfriend
might fit in. I was not being overly dramatic or hyperbolic.

Speaker 3 (46:05):
A couple of months after Vincent was killed, one of
his really good friends, Billy Taylor, had died in a
one man car accident. I believe his brother was in
the vehicle with him, but he dies. He's fifteen, He's
like one day away from his sixteenth birthday, so it's
a really sad deal. He passes away. And then you

(46:25):
have the following summer. You've got Shelley's stepbrother who had
the same last name as her. They had become really
close before she passed away, and him and someboddies were
about to go to Fort Worth. They picked up the
Bluebells I guess, kind of the cheerleading team for Weatherford,
the usual Friday night stuff for teenagers. The way I
understood is there's two other people that got in the

(46:46):
car instead. It is thirty minutes to an hour later,
those kids are in an accident right off the highway,
went flying off the highway over an embankment and basically
into a ditch, and the car exploded, killing four of
them on impact. Two of them were severely burned. One
of they're bosent down to a burn unit. I believe
in Galveston. One of them passed away and the other

(47:08):
one there's one survivor from that. But so that was
five classmates right there that passed away in that accident.

Speaker 1 (47:22):
The idea that Shelley and Vincent saw something they should
not have seen and it was ordered that they needed
to unsee it is a plausible explanation, especially when placed
into the context of killing a couple of kids to
protect a multi million dollar operation like the meth trade.

(47:43):
For some involved in that world, murder becomes just another
part of doing business. And what shocks me perhaps most
is I begin to get deep into the weeds here
is just how many people are willing and courageous enough
to want to talk about that part of this story
at all, seeing how many people have died or been murdered,

(48:08):
And in that sense, I had to think the murderer
could be standing right in front of us the entire time,
and we might not even know it. Alan Carter, who
was entangled in the meth world at one time, had
been hauled in and questioned about Shelley and Vincent's murders.

(48:31):
You've heard from Alan in previous episodes. When did they
polygraph you Allan?

Speaker 3 (48:40):
Uh?

Speaker 6 (48:41):
They were so serious about it that they handcuffed me
and took me to go take it. And when I
got through it, that polygraph guy said he had nothing
to do with it, and I said, I take his
fucking handcuff of me, and he goes, calm down.

Speaker 1 (48:55):
I'm calm down, my ash.

Speaker 6 (48:57):
You handcuffed me and drove me all way over here
and made me take this student and I'm pasted with
a fine code and gets you hankos of me and
he took them off of me and then be to
Collie right at home.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
So Alan, it's important to say, if we are to
take a lie detector test at face value, is a
truth teller? Do you remember any of the questions they
had for you on the polygraph?

Speaker 6 (49:21):
Do you know do you hang out with where were
you on the night of this? What were you doing?

Speaker 4 (49:28):
All kinds of questions.

Speaker 1 (49:31):
Whenever we talk suspects in this case, those two names
I have been censoring throughout come up again and again
and again, and now here you have Weatherford investigators asking
Allan about those very names. So it is a fact
that Weatherford was looking at these two individuals as suspects

(49:56):
very early on into its investigation, and from what Allan
tells me, it seemed they were at least at one
time hyper focused on one of them in particular. So
this thing was really focused on.

Speaker 6 (50:13):
It seems well, if somebody told him that me and
him were out together, well then he failed his polygraph.
That's why when they rapped to me, I said, no,
he looked like when they asked me that on the polygraph,
I said that I passed. They couldn't be And they
said because they said he was.

Speaker 4 (50:32):
In college going to Trooper school.

Speaker 6 (50:34):
You know how it work back then? You know, you
see them guys, they all got the crew cook, they're tall,
they all wear can can count with.

Speaker 3 (50:40):
That same god.

Speaker 6 (50:42):
And they wasn't saying flash and all that they were
white guys.

Speaker 1 (50:47):
What could be the motive here to kill Vincent Shelley
like that? What do you think if it was, what
would be the motive?

Speaker 6 (50:58):
They seen something they weren't sposed to on his heal.
I've seen a hand one something they.

Speaker 5 (51:05):
Were supposed to see.

Speaker 1 (51:08):
I needed to make a play at contacting these guys,
ask them to come on the podcast and discuss what
people have been saying for what over forty years? Now
give them their chance to speak for themselves. Remember, these
guys are innocent of these crimes until proven guilty. They

(51:31):
have never been charged. I need you to understand that
one very important fact They have become the focus of
this case today only by the people in town accusing
them and in several instances doxing them by putting their
pictures and names out there alongside information we have no

(51:52):
way of verifying. Not to mention, I have confirmed that
law enforcement looked deep into these men throughout the early
part of its investigation, and for whatever reason, have not
pursued them since. Was all of this a witch hunt,
a carefully orchestrated design to put the onus of the

(52:16):
murders on two innocent people? After all, nobody has offered
any concrete forensic proof or a credible eyewitness statement placing
either of them at the scene of the murders. I
needed to understand their opinions of it all, not badger them,

(52:38):
call them out on anything, or accused them of murdering
two teenagers. Just talk and listen to what they had
to say. So I called welcome too.

Speaker 6 (52:51):
Now it's not available, please be good message after the.

Speaker 1 (52:54):
Tone, Hey, this is Phelps coming up in the next
episode of paper Ghosts.

Speaker 5 (53:06):
I know that Parker County was pretty young back. What
we called it crank Okay, all we ever heard was.

Speaker 6 (53:14):
That's kind of sort of how I found out about
the men.

Speaker 5 (53:17):
Well, we're gonna say we called the crank. We heard that,
you know, there might be some shady things going on
with to share it. He just always heard it that
he was always kind of shaved or had shady up.

Speaker 7 (53:33):
Because when I went and talked to Arnold in February
of twenty twenty two, that's what Arnold had said. They
had five scenarios and they had just got back from
New Mexico. Now they've worked it down before, but I've
asked her and I don't think she would lie about that.

Speaker 9 (53:50):
He told me that this girl said she had seen
the body shaking.

Speaker 4 (53:55):
Actual they've been shot.

Speaker 9 (53:57):
Now this guy's not alive, I can want to care.
Said he wasn't just somebody's sold for me. He was
a friend of mine.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
Paper Ghost Season five is written and executive produced by
me and William Phelps. Script consulting by iHeartMedia Executive producer
Catherine Law, Production by Tok Boom Productions, Audio mastering and
mixing by Brandon Dicker. The series theme number four four

(54:34):
to two is written and performed by Thomas Phelps and
Tom Mooney