December 16, 2021 • 29 mins
The search is on for JoAnn Tate’s killer. Melissa becomes Metro P.D.’s most prized eyewitness, but it takes a nearly month and a look into the pages of JoAnn’s diary before Melissa points the finger at Rodney Lincoln, an ex-boyfriend of her mom’s. Lincoln’s daughters watch in horror as their dad is taken away by detectives. What happens next will rock the family’s world forever.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
I couldn't believe what I was seeing. There was blood
splatter everywhere. I looked at Melissa and I screamed at her.
I said, who did this? And she said Bill did it?
And what did you think when you heard them? But
we knew a couple of bills. I'm Leah Rothman. This
(00:27):
is the Real Killer. Episode two. The hunt is on
on April around am, metro ped officers are dispatched to
(00:50):
the scene of what they're told is a cutting at
the rear apartment of fourteen eighteen for Our Street in
the St. Louis working class neighborhood of Hyde Park. Police
descend on this cool spring morning to find a truly
horrific scene. Thirty five year old Joe and Tate is
found face down on the floor, partially clothed, beaten, stabbed,
(01:15):
and sodomized with a four foot broom handle. Close by
are her daughters. Four year old Renee is found in
her bed, bleeding from her neck, which has been cut,
and seven year old Melissa is found in her bed
directly across from Renee. She's been stabbed several times and
sliced from her rectum to her vagina. This is Melissa today,
(01:41):
talking to me. Not far from that very home. There
were police and the empties, and the house was suddenly full,
and I felt very naked and ashamed. I remember a
fireman carrying me. He wrapped me in my mother's blanket.
(02:02):
I also remembered there was this blue sky. It was
prettiest day I've ever seen. He told me everything is
going to be okay. He put me on a structure.
I said, there's only two ambulances. Which one is my
mom going to be in? He said she's going to
go in a different one, and I just knew I
(02:27):
was not going to be around my mom again. At
eleven o two am, Joe and Tad is pronounced dead
at the scene. Her daughters are rushed to Cardinal Glennon
Hospital about five miles away. Melissa's condition is serious. Renee
is critical. She's unable to speak, So Melissa becomes investigators
(02:52):
only eyewitness with a depraved killer on the loose. Police
have no time to waste make I'm ask me questions.
I just remember wanting to be left alone. If I
wasn't being poked and prodded ivys and people check at
my heart and looking at my body. I think it
was worse than the doctors expected. The wounds, and at
(03:16):
the time they already looked at Renee. I know she
was worse. They didn't expect either one of us to
make it, though, and I was worried. I was worried
this man was going to come to the hospital because
I knew he had left. I knew he was out there.
I was terrified. Back at the apartment, detectives start assessing
(03:41):
the scene and it's a crime scene like they've never
seen before. Investigator Quinn O'Brien, who would later work on
the case, describes the horror this crime scene was was
really bad. There was blood everywhere. The house looked tumbled.
(04:02):
The whole scene just looked tumbled, like there was a fight.
There was blood on things in the house, cups, tables
and blankets, and blood on the walls and blood on
the floor. It was ugly. I have to say, I
have seen a lot of crime scene photos in my day,
and these are by far the worst. It's not just
(04:24):
the amount of blood everywhere that's so shocking. It's the
viciousness that comes through in the photos, the carnage, the
barbaric nature of what happened in that home to Joanne
and her young daughters. It is so disturbing police start
collecting evidence. The railroad style apartment consists of three main rooms,
(04:49):
basically in a row. It's well lived in, bright blue
shag carpeting and eclectic collection of furniture, children's toys and
clothes strewn about, and walls decorated with tapestries of the
Last Supper and the Pink Panther next to photographs of
family members and John Travolta on the floor. In the
(05:13):
girl's room, which is in the center of the apartment,
police find a steak knife. In the front room, which
is also Joanne's bedroom, they find a blood stained butcher
knife on the heater, a blood streaked steak knife on
the floor, and another steak knife in the center of
Joanne's bed. That knife is completely coated in blood, bent
(05:36):
in a half moon shape with a partially broken wood handle.
There's one crime scene photo from Joanne's room that haunts
me the most. It's of her bed. The sheets are
soaked with blood, and just above that, on the headboard,
inches away from where Melissa was brutally attacked in little
(05:57):
dime stored he's of letters. Written out is the phrase
I'm a lover, not a fighter. In the kitchen, police
find and I'm reading directly from the police report quote
a wooden holder with six slots for knives and five
were missing. Here's Quinn again. They collected all of the knives.
(06:23):
They took Joanne's diary and address book. They took the blankets, uh,
and they took hairs off of those blankets. They did
take some fingerprints and some partial fingerprints, fingerprints which are
found on a knife, a cardboard toilet, paper roll, and
a storm door frame, as well as a palm print
(06:45):
found on a plastic cup. They also take numerous blood
samples and eventually nail scrapings from Joanne. There was something.
There was a hatchet that Joanne Tate kept under her mattress.
Police find a hatchet between Joanne's mattress and box spring,
(07:05):
and next to it something bizarre. A hustler magazine opened
to the page titled Slaughter of the Innocence. We'll actually
hear more about this magazine later, but the bigger question
is why was Joanne hiding a hatchet? Who was she
afraid of? Police see no signs of forced entry. They
(07:32):
interviewed Joanne's upstairs neighbor who says around four am, while
she and her husband were asleep, she was awakened by
a loud banging noise, but it stopped soon after. The
woman can't offer any other details, but investigators at least
now have an approximate time of the attack four am.
(07:53):
Then police meet another neighbor, seventeen year old Steve Yancey.
He lives at fourteen A Levin f our just across
the street from Joanne and a couple of doors down.
Steve Yancy actually came to the scene that morning to
see what was going on, saw the police tape and
(08:13):
talk to detectives that morning. And I know that Steve
Ancy provided the police with a lot of information, just
contextual information about Joanne, what was going on in her life,
the men that she had been seeing and dating. He
mentioned Tom Schultz, Joanne's most recent X. Steve Nancy has
(08:34):
a lot to say about twenty four year old Tom Schultz.
Steve says, and this is all documented in the police report.
That Joanne had kicked Tom Schultz out after she caught
him cheating on her, and Tom told him quote he
was going to get her. Then a month before the murder,
Tom says it again quote, I'm definitely going to get her.
(08:56):
According to Steve Ancy, Joanne was afraid of Tom coming
back to hurt her, so she would ask Steve to
stay from time to time overnight with her and the girls.
Maybe she had that hatchet in case Tom Schultz came knocking.
But other names aside from Tom and Steve are quickly emerging.
(09:17):
Johnny Davis was another suspect. Davis was involved in this
bar fight and Joanne was expected to be a witness
in this case. She never took the stand to testify,
but she started to keep a diary, and in her
diary she wrote, if anything happens to me, I'm going
(09:38):
to keep a record because I'm trying to remember the
um I have that the actual hold on one second,
Oh my god, you have the diary. Well, I don't
have the physical diary, that's probably in some box deep
in a police warehouse, but I have the evidence photos,
which include all of the pages from Joanne's handwritten diary.
(10:03):
On the first page, she says, I'm only writing all
this down in case something would happen to me, you
would know who to look for. People I was with
exclamation point, I mean it's just so eerie. Yeah, and
it's um It's as if she predicted her own death
(10:32):
at Cardinal Glennon Hospital. While still in the er, Melissa
and Renee's seventeen year old sister, who had been at
her boyfriend's rushes to their side. We've been asked not
to use her name. Here's Melissa again, and I'm naked
on a table in front of people, and my sister
is asking me who did it? And I said Bill,
(10:55):
And I said it over and over. Her face there
was so much in her face and when she asked
me questions, her voice cracked. I can tell she was
just so scared. Melissa's sister doesn't know who Bill is,
(11:17):
but she does wonder about someone else. She asked me
about Gary Gary Lrose, a former boyfriend of Joanne's. When
the older sister asks Melissa, Gary did it, to everyone's surprise,
Melissa says yes. Then moments later, Melissa changes her story
(11:39):
again and says, they stabbed us. They woke us up
about four they chased mom into the kitchen. This is
the first time seven year old Melissa is saying anything
other than Bill did it. So is it Gary or
is it multiple people? Or is Gary one of the
(12:00):
multiple people. But before long, Melissa goes back to Bill
and adds a new detail. She says, during the attack
she heard her mom call the man Bill, so changing stories,
new potential suspects, and maybe multiple perpetrators, and this is
(12:22):
all within the first twelve hours. The next morning, police
are added again, hoping Melissa can idea suspect. They show
her ten photos, including ones of Tom Schultz, Gary Lrose,
and several Bills Williams and Willie's known to the family.
(12:48):
I did look at like a bunch of different pictures.
There are people I knew in there that I knew
had never done anything to anybody, and I'm like, it's
none of these. A little later that day, Melissa's interviewed
by a social worker at the hospital. It's noted in
the police report that Melissa seems quote very alert. This time,
(13:12):
she remembers even more about Bill. She says that Bill
had been to the house on Sunday than back again
on Monday when he stabbed them. She says that in May,
almost a year before the murder, she and her mother
had gone to this person's house and at the time
he was driving a yellow car and she remembers even
(13:35):
more what I told them was as personnel, a lot
of animals, a cat and four kittens. She even remembers
there were two males and two females. And it's during
this interview that four year old Renee speaks for the
first time, saying, quote, Bill did it. Bill said he
(13:57):
wouldn't cut us, but he cut us anyway. I should
note that although Renee survived the attack, sadly she passed
away at the age of thirty one. We'll talk more
about this in a later episode. Three days after the
(14:19):
attack on April, Melissa has shown more photos of potential
suspects eleven, this time mostly all bills, some of which
she had been shown before. Again, Melissa picks no one
out as the perpetrator. At this point, police are looking
at everyone in and around Joanne's world, even her brother Nat,
(14:41):
who found them that morning, Joanne's other brother Daniel, and
Joanne's boyfriend at the time, Jerry. Here's Nat again. They
treated you like like your suspect you are. They took
my fingerprints right away in UH and they just interrogate me.
I know they didn't get much because I I couldn't
say much because I don't know much. I just know
(15:02):
that what I what I found. We were all trying
to figure out who it was. But there's a part,
you know, and we thought that like Joyan, you know,
could have been Raymond, could have been Johnny Davis. It
could have been Raymond's brother or or somebody somebody we
they said, just Gary Paris. Uh, so we didn't know
who it was. Police are having about as much luck
(15:26):
as Nat and figuring out who did this. Then on
May fourth, one week into the investigation, two significant things happen. First,
police tracked down Joanne's ex boyfriend, Tom Schultz, who claims
he has an alibi he was in Texas at the
time of the attack, but detectives will still need to
(15:47):
verify that. The other is that there's a new lead
detective assigned to the case. Homicide veteran detective Joe Burgoon,
nicknamed Father Homicide and the Blue Knight Bragoon, has investigated
thou of murders in the St. Louis area. Well respected
within the department, the then forty three year old, quiet,
(16:07):
green eyed legend with a photographic memory, has been described
by a former colleague as someone who's almost too nice
for this dirty business regardless, He's determined to solve the case.
When I star case started, that was our vacation. And
when I come back to work when Boss called me
(16:29):
in the office and he said, guns, uh, these guys
are really it's really messed him, you know, the really
really shook up over it and messed up over and
he says, you got a bunch of kids. You know
you're not to do with kids and stuff like. Guess
that's why we want. I wound up with it in
my partner, you know, because we just we we talked
it over and said, you know, we're not can ask
(16:50):
from any questions. So we we just went up there
in Medham and uh, we bring him. We bring him
with a little bag of eminemity, each one of them,
and we tell jokes and stuff like that. Kid but
the kids stuff, you know how these children are. Melissa
was a very smart child, she really was. I told
(17:11):
Julian's brother Dan, and I told him from started says,
it's just we're gonna you know, we're gonna do We're
gonna go buy the book. We're not gonna do anything,
and it's just the way it's supposed to be done.
My first memory of Jarba Grood. Is me laying in
(17:33):
this hospital bed, and he showed me his badge. He
was really tall, he was very nice. I didn't think
I could trust him, but he did explain he was
there to find the person who hurt my mommy and
me and my sister, so I tried to help. In
(17:56):
the May fourth police report, it's noted that Melissa was
quote in great pain and was given a pain pill. However,
she was very alert. Bragoon, the social worker, and a
child psychologist also interviewed Melissa. Melissa tells them that last
summer at Hyde Park, she and her mom and her
(18:17):
sister met a man who was sitting on a bench.
He said his name was Bill. Melissa describes him as
having black hair all the way to his ears. Then
she says more. Bill is a skinny white man with
black short hair who looked older than Tom Schultz. I
(18:38):
remember telling them that we went over a bridge. Melissa
tells him they went over a bridge to get to
Bill's house, and Bill didn't live alone. Bill lived with
his mother and across the street was a park with swings,
animal playground equipment, monkey bars, and a merry go round.
(19:00):
Bill gave them SODA's. They spent the night and slept upstairs.
The next day, Bill drove them home in an old
yellow taxi. And there's more. I told them that Bill
had went to Hollywood, and that Bill Volkswagen and Bill
(19:22):
had worked on my mom's car, and that Bill's mom
grand a lot. She's not very nice. Melissa also says
that on the night of the attack, Bill called her
and Renee by name. Detective Bragoon shows Melissa thirteen photos
(19:46):
of again mostly Bills, and also throws in a polaroid
of Steve Yancy, their seventeen year old neighbor. Melissa says,
none of the Bills are the guy, and Steve Yancy
he's a friend and was an involved either. The next day,
Tom Schultz's alibi in Texas is verified. He takes a
(20:07):
polygraph test and passes. Police are at a loss and
are no closer to solving the case. The case that
has changed everything. I just remembered one day, everything was normal,
and then I lost my home and my animals. My
(20:29):
mom our bodies weren't the same. Everything changed. I don't
know if you noticed, but I was not allowed to
attend my mother's funeral. I actually watched it from my
hospital room. How did you watch it from her? I
was on TV. Yeah. I didn't get to say goodbye
to her. I was so upset people I didn't even
know getting going in and out that church, and I
(20:51):
was her daughter, and I'm watching it from a hospital bed.
I didn't get to go. Two weeks after the attack,
on May eleven, twelve, more photos are shown to Melissa.
She again, I d s none of them as their attacker.
(21:14):
That same day, Detective Burgoon and another detective check Melissa
and Renee out of the hospital to search for the
bridge and park Melissa described in her statement about the
overnight at Bill's house. After hours of driving over bridges
and circling various parks, they call it a day. Melissa
recognizes none of them. Police are beyond stumped and frustrated
(21:39):
as the public pressure to solve the case is mounting,
so on May tenth, they enlist the help of a
metroped sketch artist. A couple of days later, that composite
sketch is released to the public. Melissa's family sees it
on the evening news. Here's her uncle Nadigan, my brother
(21:59):
Da Annuel, and my sister abbey. When they saw this,
they said, it looks like somebody we know. We look
like somebody we know. The next day, Daniel, Clenny and
Abby Adams go down to the police station and tell
Detective Bragoon exactly that. Together they go through Joanne's diary,
(22:19):
her diary from the year before the murder, and that's
when they see a name Rod. There are five entries
Joanne made about Rod no last name. Two of them
are particularly important to detectives. The first one says, quote
(22:40):
Rod telephone to one St. Louis also bartender smart like
Hackey's seen Rod Sunday night. The next entry says, quote
met Rod, fifteen of April with Dan Cottage Leo black hair,
(23:03):
brown eyes, five ft seven, tight jeans, truck driver Ohio
sexy person likes to make love. Police still don't have
the last name, but they do have a phone number,
so he's only called call the house as I guess
(23:25):
his mother answer againstead of rag and Garrison know he's
not And then what's wrapped his last name, and so
we found out where his name was. His name is
Rodney Lincoln. Burgoon runs his name and sees that he
has a record five years before he was convicted of
second degree burglary, but alarm bells go off when Burgoon
(23:49):
learns about his other conviction. In nineteen seventy three, Lincoln
was convicted of second degree murder. Detective Burgoon takes Lincoln's
shot and a photo of a distant family member of
Joanne's to Melissa and Renee to see if they can
pick out their mother's killer. Melissa does this. She picks
(24:12):
out Rodney and Lincoln and I said, are you sure?
She said that's him. I said, his name's not f
She keept saying that's him, that's him, very emphatic, as
as fig or four times. Are you sure? You sure?
Are you sure? Him? After that, according to the police report,
(24:35):
Renee says nothing but looks at the photos, throws Rodney's
on the table, and covers her face with her hands.
On Almost a month after the attack, Detective Burgoon and
a sergeant make their way to sixteen Minnesota Avenue in
(24:56):
South St. Louis. That's where thirty seve in year old
Rodney Lincoln lives with his mother. The good Lina Rabbits
ask you had a carter's appart to crush of the
house as it looks like the park Melissa had described
with swings, animal playground equipment, monkey bars, and a merry
(25:19):
go round. We had actually been at Walmart Park fishing
that morning. Kay Lincoln, Rodney Lincoln's daughter, who was thirteen
at the time, is also there that day. We came
home in the afternoon and at that time Grandma told
(25:40):
Dad that this policeman called wanted him to call him back.
So he said, no problem, We called him back, gave
him his information, talk to him. He went out to
start the barbecue. Um my sister was out there with him.
Kay's younger sister, Kelly, was ten at the time. I
remember what I had on, and had on blue shorts
(26:01):
and a pink shirt with flower on it. Here's Kay again. DJ,
my dad's girlfriend, and I were sitting in the living
room playing cards and I looked up while my grandma's
dog started barking, and I saw these two guys go
walking past the front door towards the back yard, and
they had on suits. And that just really blew me away,
because nobody comes to my grandma's house wearing a suit.
(26:25):
And I said to DJ, I said, who is that?
She said, I don't know, And you know, just being
a flippant teenage kid. I'm like, I don't trust guys
in suits. Kay and Kelly watched the suits talk to
their dad for a few minutes. Then they all turned
to go here's Kelly again. I remember Dad talked to
(26:47):
him for a little bit and then Dad said that
he had to go downtown and talk to these men,
that he would be back in a little bit to
take us home and kiss me on the top of
the head and said, I'll see you a little bit. Angel.
He always called me as Lotle angel with horns. He
just got in a car and left with him. My
(27:08):
grandma was just she was just shell shot. But my
grandma was terrified, and you could see that in our face.
And nobody would tell us what was going on. We
had no clue. And that night we're watching Hill Street Blues,
as you know, Sunday night at nine o'clock Channel four,
(27:30):
and after Hill Street Blues it was ten o'clock news
and it was bedtime. On the last commercial break of
the program, the news broken with What's Coming at ten
o'clock and they had a big banner going across the
screen that said million dollar bail, and they said murderer arrested,
and they showed a video of our dad and his
(27:52):
hands are behind his back and there's a detective the
ones that came to Grandma's house that you didn't trust
and you know you shouldn't have. He just looked like
he didn't know what just hitting and he just never
came back. Next time on The Real Killer, when you drink,
(28:13):
did you have a temper? I could go of, um,
have a great time to be be ready to really jumpbody.
And Rodney's previous murder convictions not helping. I thought that,
you know, that just reinforces he's a killer. If he
killed once, what's going to stop from killing again? But
(28:34):
putting the bad man behind bars isn't the end of it.
I never felt safer secure. I always felt like I
was being watched. The Real Killer is a production of
a y R Media and I Heart Radio, hosted by
(28:55):
me Leah Rothman. Executive producers Leah Rothman and Elie the
Rosen for a y R Media. Written by me Leah Rothman,
Senior Associate producer Eric Newman, Editing and sound design by
Cameron Taggy, mixed and mastered by Cameron Taggi. Audio engineering
(29:16):
by Jesus c Mario Studio engineering by Tom Weir and
Kelly McGrew. Voice acting performed by Lauren Pritchard, Legal counsel
for A y R Media, Gianni Douglas, Executive producer for
iHeart Radio, Chandler Mayze. If you're enjoying The Real Killer,
(29:36):
tell your friends about it and leave us a review
on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts
I couldn't believe what I was seeing. There was blood
splatter everywhere. I looked at Melissa and I screamed at her.
I said, who did this? And she said Bill did it?
And what did you think when you heard them? But
we knew a couple of bills. I'm Leah Rothman. This
(00:27):
is the Real Killer. Episode two. The hunt is on
on April around am, metro ped officers are dispatched to
(00:50):
the scene of what they're told is a cutting at
the rear apartment of fourteen eighteen for Our Street in
the St. Louis working class neighborhood of Hyde Park. Police
descend on this cool spring morning to find a truly
horrific scene. Thirty five year old Joe and Tate is
found face down on the floor, partially clothed, beaten, stabbed,
(01:15):
and sodomized with a four foot broom handle. Close by
are her daughters. Four year old Renee is found in
her bed, bleeding from her neck, which has been cut,
and seven year old Melissa is found in her bed
directly across from Renee. She's been stabbed several times and
sliced from her rectum to her vagina. This is Melissa today,
(01:41):
talking to me. Not far from that very home. There
were police and the empties, and the house was suddenly full,
and I felt very naked and ashamed. I remember a
fireman carrying me. He wrapped me in my mother's blanket.
(02:02):
I also remembered there was this blue sky. It was
prettiest day I've ever seen. He told me everything is
going to be okay. He put me on a structure.
I said, there's only two ambulances. Which one is my
mom going to be in? He said she's going to
go in a different one, and I just knew I
(02:27):
was not going to be around my mom again. At
eleven o two am, Joe and Tad is pronounced dead
at the scene. Her daughters are rushed to Cardinal Glennon
Hospital about five miles away. Melissa's condition is serious. Renee
is critical. She's unable to speak, So Melissa becomes investigators
(02:52):
only eyewitness with a depraved killer on the loose. Police
have no time to waste make I'm ask me questions.
I just remember wanting to be left alone. If I
wasn't being poked and prodded ivys and people check at
my heart and looking at my body. I think it
was worse than the doctors expected. The wounds, and at
(03:16):
the time they already looked at Renee. I know she
was worse. They didn't expect either one of us to
make it, though, and I was worried. I was worried
this man was going to come to the hospital because
I knew he had left. I knew he was out there.
I was terrified. Back at the apartment, detectives start assessing
(03:41):
the scene and it's a crime scene like they've never
seen before. Investigator Quinn O'Brien, who would later work on
the case, describes the horror this crime scene was was
really bad. There was blood everywhere. The house looked tumbled.
(04:02):
The whole scene just looked tumbled, like there was a fight.
There was blood on things in the house, cups, tables
and blankets, and blood on the walls and blood on
the floor. It was ugly. I have to say, I
have seen a lot of crime scene photos in my day,
and these are by far the worst. It's not just
(04:24):
the amount of blood everywhere that's so shocking. It's the
viciousness that comes through in the photos, the carnage, the
barbaric nature of what happened in that home to Joanne
and her young daughters. It is so disturbing police start
collecting evidence. The railroad style apartment consists of three main rooms,
(04:49):
basically in a row. It's well lived in, bright blue
shag carpeting and eclectic collection of furniture, children's toys and
clothes strewn about, and walls decorated with tapestries of the
Last Supper and the Pink Panther next to photographs of
family members and John Travolta on the floor. In the
(05:13):
girl's room, which is in the center of the apartment,
police find a steak knife. In the front room, which
is also Joanne's bedroom, they find a blood stained butcher
knife on the heater, a blood streaked steak knife on
the floor, and another steak knife in the center of
Joanne's bed. That knife is completely coated in blood, bent
(05:36):
in a half moon shape with a partially broken wood handle.
There's one crime scene photo from Joanne's room that haunts
me the most. It's of her bed. The sheets are
soaked with blood, and just above that, on the headboard,
inches away from where Melissa was brutally attacked in little
(05:57):
dime stored he's of letters. Written out is the phrase
I'm a lover, not a fighter. In the kitchen, police
find and I'm reading directly from the police report quote
a wooden holder with six slots for knives and five
were missing. Here's Quinn again. They collected all of the knives.
(06:23):
They took Joanne's diary and address book. They took the blankets, uh,
and they took hairs off of those blankets. They did
take some fingerprints and some partial fingerprints, fingerprints which are
found on a knife, a cardboard toilet, paper roll, and
a storm door frame, as well as a palm print
(06:45):
found on a plastic cup. They also take numerous blood
samples and eventually nail scrapings from Joanne. There was something.
There was a hatchet that Joanne Tate kept under her mattress.
Police find a hatchet between Joanne's mattress and box spring,
(07:05):
and next to it something bizarre. A hustler magazine opened
to the page titled Slaughter of the Innocence. We'll actually
hear more about this magazine later, but the bigger question
is why was Joanne hiding a hatchet? Who was she
afraid of? Police see no signs of forced entry. They
(07:32):
interviewed Joanne's upstairs neighbor who says around four am, while
she and her husband were asleep, she was awakened by
a loud banging noise, but it stopped soon after. The
woman can't offer any other details, but investigators at least
now have an approximate time of the attack four am.
(07:53):
Then police meet another neighbor, seventeen year old Steve Yancey.
He lives at fourteen A Levin f our just across
the street from Joanne and a couple of doors down.
Steve Yancy actually came to the scene that morning to
see what was going on, saw the police tape and
(08:13):
talk to detectives that morning. And I know that Steve
Ancy provided the police with a lot of information, just
contextual information about Joanne, what was going on in her life,
the men that she had been seeing and dating. He
mentioned Tom Schultz, Joanne's most recent X. Steve Nancy has
(08:34):
a lot to say about twenty four year old Tom Schultz.
Steve says, and this is all documented in the police report.
That Joanne had kicked Tom Schultz out after she caught
him cheating on her, and Tom told him quote he
was going to get her. Then a month before the murder,
Tom says it again quote, I'm definitely going to get her.
(08:56):
According to Steve Ancy, Joanne was afraid of Tom coming
back to hurt her, so she would ask Steve to
stay from time to time overnight with her and the girls.
Maybe she had that hatchet in case Tom Schultz came knocking.
But other names aside from Tom and Steve are quickly emerging.
(09:17):
Johnny Davis was another suspect. Davis was involved in this
bar fight and Joanne was expected to be a witness
in this case. She never took the stand to testify,
but she started to keep a diary, and in her
diary she wrote, if anything happens to me, I'm going
(09:38):
to keep a record because I'm trying to remember the
um I have that the actual hold on one second,
Oh my god, you have the diary. Well, I don't
have the physical diary, that's probably in some box deep
in a police warehouse, but I have the evidence photos,
which include all of the pages from Joanne's handwritten diary.
(10:03):
On the first page, she says, I'm only writing all
this down in case something would happen to me, you
would know who to look for. People I was with
exclamation point, I mean it's just so eerie. Yeah, and
it's um It's as if she predicted her own death
(10:32):
at Cardinal Glennon Hospital. While still in the er, Melissa
and Renee's seventeen year old sister, who had been at
her boyfriend's rushes to their side. We've been asked not
to use her name. Here's Melissa again, and I'm naked
on a table in front of people, and my sister
is asking me who did it? And I said Bill,
(10:55):
And I said it over and over. Her face there
was so much in her face and when she asked
me questions, her voice cracked. I can tell she was
just so scared. Melissa's sister doesn't know who Bill is,
(11:17):
but she does wonder about someone else. She asked me
about Gary Gary Lrose, a former boyfriend of Joanne's. When
the older sister asks Melissa, Gary did it, to everyone's surprise,
Melissa says yes. Then moments later, Melissa changes her story
(11:39):
again and says, they stabbed us. They woke us up
about four they chased mom into the kitchen. This is
the first time seven year old Melissa is saying anything
other than Bill did it. So is it Gary or
is it multiple people? Or is Gary one of the
(12:00):
multiple people. But before long, Melissa goes back to Bill
and adds a new detail. She says, during the attack
she heard her mom call the man Bill, so changing stories,
new potential suspects, and maybe multiple perpetrators, and this is
(12:22):
all within the first twelve hours. The next morning, police
are added again, hoping Melissa can idea suspect. They show
her ten photos, including ones of Tom Schultz, Gary Lrose,
and several Bills Williams and Willie's known to the family.
(12:48):
I did look at like a bunch of different pictures.
There are people I knew in there that I knew
had never done anything to anybody, and I'm like, it's
none of these. A little later that day, Melissa's interviewed
by a social worker at the hospital. It's noted in
the police report that Melissa seems quote very alert. This time,
(13:12):
she remembers even more about Bill. She says that Bill
had been to the house on Sunday than back again
on Monday when he stabbed them. She says that in May,
almost a year before the murder, she and her mother
had gone to this person's house and at the time
he was driving a yellow car and she remembers even
(13:35):
more what I told them was as personnel, a lot
of animals, a cat and four kittens. She even remembers
there were two males and two females. And it's during
this interview that four year old Renee speaks for the
first time, saying, quote, Bill did it. Bill said he
(13:57):
wouldn't cut us, but he cut us anyway. I should
note that although Renee survived the attack, sadly she passed
away at the age of thirty one. We'll talk more
about this in a later episode. Three days after the
(14:19):
attack on April, Melissa has shown more photos of potential
suspects eleven, this time mostly all bills, some of which
she had been shown before. Again, Melissa picks no one
out as the perpetrator. At this point, police are looking
at everyone in and around Joanne's world, even her brother Nat,
(14:41):
who found them that morning, Joanne's other brother Daniel, and
Joanne's boyfriend at the time, Jerry. Here's Nat again. They
treated you like like your suspect you are. They took
my fingerprints right away in UH and they just interrogate me.
I know they didn't get much because I I couldn't
say much because I don't know much. I just know
(15:02):
that what I what I found. We were all trying
to figure out who it was. But there's a part,
you know, and we thought that like Joyan, you know,
could have been Raymond, could have been Johnny Davis. It
could have been Raymond's brother or or somebody somebody we
they said, just Gary Paris. Uh, so we didn't know
who it was. Police are having about as much luck
(15:26):
as Nat and figuring out who did this. Then on
May fourth, one week into the investigation, two significant things happen. First,
police tracked down Joanne's ex boyfriend, Tom Schultz, who claims
he has an alibi he was in Texas at the
time of the attack, but detectives will still need to
(15:47):
verify that. The other is that there's a new lead
detective assigned to the case. Homicide veteran detective Joe Burgoon,
nicknamed Father Homicide and the Blue Knight Bragoon, has investigated
thou of murders in the St. Louis area. Well respected
within the department, the then forty three year old, quiet,
(16:07):
green eyed legend with a photographic memory, has been described
by a former colleague as someone who's almost too nice
for this dirty business regardless, He's determined to solve the case.
When I star case started, that was our vacation. And
when I come back to work when Boss called me
(16:29):
in the office and he said, guns, uh, these guys
are really it's really messed him, you know, the really
really shook up over it and messed up over and
he says, you got a bunch of kids. You know
you're not to do with kids and stuff like. Guess
that's why we want. I wound up with it in
my partner, you know, because we just we we talked
it over and said, you know, we're not can ask
(16:50):
from any questions. So we we just went up there
in Medham and uh, we bring him. We bring him
with a little bag of eminemity, each one of them,
and we tell jokes and stuff like that. Kid but
the kids stuff, you know how these children are. Melissa
was a very smart child, she really was. I told
(17:11):
Julian's brother Dan, and I told him from started says,
it's just we're gonna you know, we're gonna do We're
gonna go buy the book. We're not gonna do anything,
and it's just the way it's supposed to be done.
My first memory of Jarba Grood. Is me laying in
(17:33):
this hospital bed, and he showed me his badge. He
was really tall, he was very nice. I didn't think
I could trust him, but he did explain he was
there to find the person who hurt my mommy and
me and my sister, so I tried to help. In
(17:56):
the May fourth police report, it's noted that Melissa was
quote in great pain and was given a pain pill. However,
she was very alert. Bragoon, the social worker, and a
child psychologist also interviewed Melissa. Melissa tells them that last
summer at Hyde Park, she and her mom and her
(18:17):
sister met a man who was sitting on a bench.
He said his name was Bill. Melissa describes him as
having black hair all the way to his ears. Then
she says more. Bill is a skinny white man with
black short hair who looked older than Tom Schultz. I
(18:38):
remember telling them that we went over a bridge. Melissa
tells him they went over a bridge to get to
Bill's house, and Bill didn't live alone. Bill lived with
his mother and across the street was a park with swings,
animal playground equipment, monkey bars, and a merry go round.
(19:00):
Bill gave them SODA's. They spent the night and slept upstairs.
The next day, Bill drove them home in an old
yellow taxi. And there's more. I told them that Bill
had went to Hollywood, and that Bill Volkswagen and Bill
(19:22):
had worked on my mom's car, and that Bill's mom
grand a lot. She's not very nice. Melissa also says
that on the night of the attack, Bill called her
and Renee by name. Detective Bragoon shows Melissa thirteen photos
(19:46):
of again mostly Bills, and also throws in a polaroid
of Steve Yancy, their seventeen year old neighbor. Melissa says,
none of the Bills are the guy, and Steve Yancy
he's a friend and was an involved either. The next day,
Tom Schultz's alibi in Texas is verified. He takes a
(20:07):
polygraph test and passes. Police are at a loss and
are no closer to solving the case. The case that
has changed everything. I just remembered one day, everything was normal,
and then I lost my home and my animals. My
(20:29):
mom our bodies weren't the same. Everything changed. I don't
know if you noticed, but I was not allowed to
attend my mother's funeral. I actually watched it from my
hospital room. How did you watch it from her? I
was on TV. Yeah. I didn't get to say goodbye
to her. I was so upset people I didn't even
know getting going in and out that church, and I
(20:51):
was her daughter, and I'm watching it from a hospital bed.
I didn't get to go. Two weeks after the attack,
on May eleven, twelve, more photos are shown to Melissa.
She again, I d s none of them as their attacker.
(21:14):
That same day, Detective Burgoon and another detective check Melissa
and Renee out of the hospital to search for the
bridge and park Melissa described in her statement about the
overnight at Bill's house. After hours of driving over bridges
and circling various parks, they call it a day. Melissa
recognizes none of them. Police are beyond stumped and frustrated
(21:39):
as the public pressure to solve the case is mounting,
so on May tenth, they enlist the help of a
metroped sketch artist. A couple of days later, that composite
sketch is released to the public. Melissa's family sees it
on the evening news. Here's her uncle Nadigan, my brother
(21:59):
Da Annuel, and my sister abbey. When they saw this,
they said, it looks like somebody we know. We look
like somebody we know. The next day, Daniel, Clenny and
Abby Adams go down to the police station and tell
Detective Bragoon exactly that. Together they go through Joanne's diary,
(22:19):
her diary from the year before the murder, and that's
when they see a name Rod. There are five entries
Joanne made about Rod no last name. Two of them
are particularly important to detectives. The first one says, quote
(22:40):
Rod telephone to one St. Louis also bartender smart like
Hackey's seen Rod Sunday night. The next entry says, quote
met Rod, fifteen of April with Dan Cottage Leo black hair,
(23:03):
brown eyes, five ft seven, tight jeans, truck driver Ohio
sexy person likes to make love. Police still don't have
the last name, but they do have a phone number,
so he's only called call the house as I guess
(23:25):
his mother answer againstead of rag and Garrison know he's
not And then what's wrapped his last name, and so
we found out where his name was. His name is
Rodney Lincoln. Burgoon runs his name and sees that he
has a record five years before he was convicted of
second degree burglary, but alarm bells go off when Burgoon
(23:49):
learns about his other conviction. In nineteen seventy three, Lincoln
was convicted of second degree murder. Detective Burgoon takes Lincoln's
shot and a photo of a distant family member of
Joanne's to Melissa and Renee to see if they can
pick out their mother's killer. Melissa does this. She picks
(24:12):
out Rodney and Lincoln and I said, are you sure?
She said that's him. I said, his name's not f
She keept saying that's him, that's him, very emphatic, as
as fig or four times. Are you sure? You sure?
Are you sure? Him? After that, according to the police report,
(24:35):
Renee says nothing but looks at the photos, throws Rodney's
on the table, and covers her face with her hands.
On Almost a month after the attack, Detective Burgoon and
a sergeant make their way to sixteen Minnesota Avenue in
(24:56):
South St. Louis. That's where thirty seve in year old
Rodney Lincoln lives with his mother. The good Lina Rabbits
ask you had a carter's appart to crush of the
house as it looks like the park Melissa had described
with swings, animal playground equipment, monkey bars, and a merry
(25:19):
go round. We had actually been at Walmart Park fishing
that morning. Kay Lincoln, Rodney Lincoln's daughter, who was thirteen
at the time, is also there that day. We came
home in the afternoon and at that time Grandma told
(25:40):
Dad that this policeman called wanted him to call him back.
So he said, no problem, We called him back, gave
him his information, talk to him. He went out to
start the barbecue. Um my sister was out there with him.
Kay's younger sister, Kelly, was ten at the time. I
remember what I had on, and had on blue shorts
(26:01):
and a pink shirt with flower on it. Here's Kay again. DJ,
my dad's girlfriend, and I were sitting in the living
room playing cards and I looked up while my grandma's
dog started barking, and I saw these two guys go
walking past the front door towards the back yard, and
they had on suits. And that just really blew me away,
because nobody comes to my grandma's house wearing a suit.
(26:25):
And I said to DJ, I said, who is that?
She said, I don't know, And you know, just being
a flippant teenage kid. I'm like, I don't trust guys
in suits. Kay and Kelly watched the suits talk to
their dad for a few minutes. Then they all turned
to go here's Kelly again. I remember Dad talked to
(26:47):
him for a little bit and then Dad said that
he had to go downtown and talk to these men,
that he would be back in a little bit to
take us home and kiss me on the top of
the head and said, I'll see you a little bit. Angel.
He always called me as Lotle angel with horns. He
just got in a car and left with him. My
(27:08):
grandma was just she was just shell shot. But my
grandma was terrified, and you could see that in our face.
And nobody would tell us what was going on. We
had no clue. And that night we're watching Hill Street Blues,
as you know, Sunday night at nine o'clock Channel four,
(27:30):
and after Hill Street Blues it was ten o'clock news
and it was bedtime. On the last commercial break of
the program, the news broken with What's Coming at ten
o'clock and they had a big banner going across the
screen that said million dollar bail, and they said murderer arrested,
and they showed a video of our dad and his
(27:52):
hands are behind his back and there's a detective the
ones that came to Grandma's house that you didn't trust
and you know you shouldn't have. He just looked like
he didn't know what just hitting and he just never
came back. Next time on The Real Killer, when you drink,
(28:13):
did you have a temper? I could go of, um,
have a great time to be be ready to really jumpbody.
And Rodney's previous murder convictions not helping. I thought that,
you know, that just reinforces he's a killer. If he
killed once, what's going to stop from killing again? But
(28:34):
putting the bad man behind bars isn't the end of it.
I never felt safer secure. I always felt like I
was being watched. The Real Killer is a production of
a y R Media and I Heart Radio, hosted by
(28:55):
me Leah Rothman. Executive producers Leah Rothman and Elie the
Rosen for a y R Media. Written by me Leah Rothman,
Senior Associate producer Eric Newman, Editing and sound design by
Cameron Taggy, mixed and mastered by Cameron Taggi. Audio engineering
(29:16):
by Jesus c Mario Studio engineering by Tom Weir and
Kelly McGrew. Voice acting performed by Lauren Pritchard, Legal counsel
for A y R Media, Gianni Douglas, Executive producer for
iHeart Radio, Chandler Mayze. If you're enjoying The Real Killer,
(29:36):
tell your friends about it and leave us a review
on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts
Host
Leah Rothman
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