December 12, 2023 • 38 mins
The team will discuss the issues that members of the LGBTQIA+ community may have faced in a small town in Texas back in 2005, and how little has changed all these years later.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi guys, it's Hillary here. Just a quick note. This
series does deal with a lot of tough subject matter
that may be difficult for some listeners, so please keep
this in mind when and where you choose to listen
to these episodes. Last episode, we discussed our prison interview
(00:21):
with Brandon, as well as a phone call that I
shared with him from his grandmother's house. Now, as a reminder,
throughout Brandon's case, we have heard time and time again
the suggestion from officials, family friends, and even a member
of Brandon's own family the Brandon's sexuality may have had
something to do with the murder of his parents, Dennis
(00:42):
and Norma. So in this episode, we're going to put
into context what Brandon faced as a young man coming
out in a tiny Texas town in two thousand and five,
and regrettably, how all these years later not much has changed.
I'm Hillary Burton Morgan and this is true crime story.
It couldn't happen here. Hi guys, Hillary Burton Morgan here,
(01:15):
and I am with Dan Flaherty, Pocutcheons, Andrew Dunn. Let's
get into it. Let's talk about the climate of Texas,
specifically in two thousand and five because we can speculate
what the morals and ethics of law enforcement were, but
there are actual laws and legislation on the books during
that era that really give you a clear picture of
(01:38):
what Texas as a whole believed was appropriate. It was
only in two thousand and three that the Supreme Court
struck down a Texas law that banned sodomy. So the
Supreme Court literally had to step in and shoot down
this Texas law, and this happened just two years before
it's theorized that Brandon killed his parents because they may
(01:59):
not accept him. Now, around the same time thsdomy is
now legalized thanks to federal intervention, Texas was discriminating in
other ways with strict referendums on same sex marriage and
civil unions. It wasn't until two thousand and fifteen when
the Supreme Court again had to step in and strike
(02:20):
down all state bands on same sex marriage, and that
meant that Texas could no longer deny couples this right.
But you guys, that was a decade after the murder
of Norma and Dennis, So Brandon was in a situation
growing up as like a southern agricultural kid. In two
thousand and five, and I know even in my high
(02:41):
school in the late nineties, there weren't out openly gay kids.
You know, you just didn't do that. It was scary,
and so I can empathize with what he was going
through and how difficult it was for him to navigate
that situation. Everyone should be able to go on that
journey in their own time, but unfortunately Brandon was not
(03:02):
afforded that opportunity. So Brandon tells us about his journey
and struggle in his own words coming out.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Basically, when I was eighteen nineteen years old. It was
a difficult process. It was different, but it wasn't like
the end of the world for me. I've always been
kind of like care free and just lived life. There
was definitely some people I didn't tell because you know,
I knew their perceptions or their persona you know, might
(03:29):
be different. But it's not like I was as closeted
as some people would have you believe. I mean, if
you looked on my MySpace, I had nothing but you know,
gay friends on there and people from the club. I
was taking, you know, public pictures with these people for years.
Obviously I knew when I did porn that you know,
it was not going to be in a closet, you know.
So it's not like, you know, they're trying to say
(03:51):
that I had this sinister side because I had this
completely hidden lifestyle. What it simply was was I just
didn't tell certain people at this time because I didn't
really know for myself. I didn't know what one hundred
percent that I was gay or bisexual, whether I wanted
to go, you know, try to get back with my
girlfriend or a boyfriend.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
It is so clear to me that in this case,
people are not empathizing with the struggle of a young
gay teenager and what he might be feeling growing up
in Texas at that time, and instead they're saying, like,
quote unquote, he's living a double life, as if he's
like a grown ass man cheating on his wife and
kids with a whole other family. Why do you think
(04:31):
the narrative of this double life is so widely used
as a motive and just so intoxicating.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
I think for me, it's like, you know, when you
hear about a possible murder and a suspect and all
these people who are close to him say, oh, there's
no way that he could have done that, right, and
it's like I know him, I've known him my whole life.
He's just not the kind of person who would do that. Right,
So people have an idea of who the suspect is,
but then when they learn, oh, I don't know this
(04:58):
person as well as I think thought I did.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
And you want to not know the person as well
as you thought you did, because then you're a chump,
you're the jump because you didn't suspect anything about this
terrible murders person.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Sure, he'sa like my best friend, Like, there's no way
he could kill somebody. And then I find out, oh
my god, he actually is somebody who I didn't know.
He's not who I thought he was. Maybe he could
have done it. You know my assumption about him was wrong.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
Well, it's the ultimate betrayal, right, to feel that betrayed
and to feel that stupid that you wouldn't know and vulnerable.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Right, But I have to stress this. I can't stress
it enough. Not being out to everyone is nowhere near
the same as having a double life. Okay, coming out
of the closet. It's a process. It's a sensitive process,
especially in a place where it's not really being discussed
as acceptable or even as Noel the blood splatter expert says,
(05:51):
as tolerated, and Brandon reiterates this in my phone call
with him.
Speaker 5 (05:56):
Yeah, so much is made of you living this double life,
and anyone who knows about coming out or you know,
coming out stories, knows that you don't rush into it.
Speaker 6 (06:09):
There's kind of a there's a period of discovery that
a kid goes through. How much do you think prejudiced
against what you were going through in that time played
in one of the one of.
Speaker 7 (06:24):
The biggest questions that I was asked that actually I
never really paid attention and basically I was just finding myself.
I wasn't so positive to extreme that the closet had
a lot on it, and I wasn't, you know, entering
out of nowhere. I was going into public day club.
I was going into a public day propert.
Speaker 8 (06:42):
I was one of them.
Speaker 7 (06:43):
I was doing. You know, I would never do going
now I got I kind of regret doing it, but
at the time I made that a thing I did
that I own up to that. But he wasn't a
private thing. So I sat to allude that. You know,
I was so positive when the woman got it a
person to come out of head.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
I didn't know if that com One thing that made me
really sad is that he apologized. He said, look, you know,
I made mistakes. Even though he was justifying, hey, I
was gay, I didn't know. I was confused. That's why
I was living a double life. He talks about he
made mistakes, there were things he did were wrong about
his sexuality and how he's living his life, you know, doing.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Porn, or he thinks he's being punished for the porn.
I mean, Dan, he says as much to you in
his prison interview.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
I mean, if anybody's life was put under a magnifying glass,
I don't think nobody's life would be perfect. I down
up to anything that I've done in my life, you know,
including the porn videos. You know, maybe I wouldn't make
porn now as a thirty five year old guy, but
at eighteen, I was just care free.
Speaker 5 (07:47):
I was silly.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
You know, I'm not denying any of that, but I'm
telling you I didn't kill my parents.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
It felt like he has absorbed the message that something
was wrong with him for being gay. He sounded you know, I.
Speaker 9 (08:00):
Think he was referring to making the horn tips.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Sure, yeah, exactly suddenly.
Speaker 9 (08:06):
I don't think he was apologizing for being gay.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
It's something that's become so normalized today. We didn't have
iPhones in two thousand and five, right, And whether we
want to admit it or not, every teenager in America
has either made a video or seen a video from
one of their peers. We have only fan sites that
eighteen and up can now join. We've got kids sending
(08:29):
snapchats of naked pictures and things like that. It is
a totally normalized behavior now. And Brandon had it weaponized
against him because it was two thousand and five and
it was taboo.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
I read it a little differently. I read it as
him saying like I felt a little shame from how
he was speaking. I felt like he was saying, well,
I'm wise and that was a terrible decision. He was
trying to distance himself from it. And there's so much shame.
I mean, of course, he's been penalized for it. It
was weaponized against him, and he's had no support. He
didn't get to go become a person of that supportive
(09:04):
allied community.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Ever, He's reaching forty and he is still locked in
at nineteen years old. He never got to go through
the full metamorphosis, and so he's just kind of stuck
in that cocoon of uncertainty. I agree with Poe. I
think that he feels a great deal of shame that
he shouldn't feel because he has no idea what all
the teenagers out here in the world are doing right now.
(09:28):
They're all doing the same thing. There's a lens that
we have to remind ourselves to look through, and it's
the two thousand and five lens.
Speaker 7 (09:38):
You know.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
When we filmed this episode, we really had to reconcile
the fact that it's been a lot of years since
Dennis and Norma died in two thousand and five, or
since Brandon's trial in two thousand and nine, and we
asked ourselves, are we better now? Is our society more accepting?
Is our legislation more accepting? But then after this episode
(10:00):
aired on TV, we just had this avalanche of don't
Say Gay bills and other legislation and book banning and
checking girls menstrual cycles to make sure they're actually girls.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
Well, taking away women's basic rights over their own body
and privacy.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
And then in March of twenty twenty two, the state
of Texas removed LGBTQIA plus resources from their suicide prevention website.
They have a culture war against drag Queen's story hour.
The very people who are out dancing at these clubs
with Brandon and all of his friends are being persecuted
(10:36):
in this same environment. So really, I just don't know
that we're any better than we were in two thousand
and five or even two thousand and nine, you know,
because these laws continue to be enacted and it's happening
regularly across this country, and it sucks. So when we
talk about a case like this that can absolutely be
(10:57):
impacted by the timing and the culture of a specific place,
we have to be so sensitive about representing a demographic
that we may not necessarily be in. And so whether
we are discussing issues for any marginalized community based on race, religion, gender,
sexual orientation, gender identity, any of that. When you are
(11:20):
producing something, how do you approach the story so that
you're not making generalizations? What do you do to ensure
that you are understanding the story from the perspective of
someone like Brandon.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
It's a really good question. I Mean, we talked on
our very first get Timtya and then oh my god,
let's plan the show about wanting certain types of cases,
and one of them was absolutely about how homosexuality can
be a factor in an investigation, be weaponized, be weaponized,
and having been raised in San Francisco, especially in a
(11:59):
period where I went to marches with Harvey milk and stuff,
you know, I felt like that was an important, very
important factor in our storytelling. But you first lead with humanity.
You make sure you do your work, your homework, You
make sure you look deeply into these issues in a
very open way, and you try to include people of
(12:21):
all genders, races, and identities in your crew.
Speaker 9 (12:26):
But when we.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
Land, it's respectfully with humanity, with empathy, including people who
might be bigoted, and try to understand where they're coming from,
where in their life and their experience, and especially trying
to with Brandon, understand what it would be like for
a person who identified the way he did and is
who he is in a place that was highly religious
(12:47):
and not accepting.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
How do we make sure that we elevate these voices,
specifically in this case, members of the LGBTQIA plus community.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
We try to find people who are connected to the
case who can represent that.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Yeah, exactly. I mean, you know, it was important for
us to have representation in the show of a gay
man who grew up in rural Texas. So during our research,
we came across a podcaster named Scott Pogancy, and Scott
was involved in this case. He did a ton of
work in research on Brandon's case.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
Scott is a Texan, He's a gay man. He was
raised in a small town, not the same one, but
one that he says is every bit as similar. And
so here's a man who has a similar background growing
up in a small town in Texas where there's a
lot of Christian bias against homosexuality in many places, especially
in Texas or Texas included, believe that homosexuality is a sin.
That became a huge part of this case, and he
(13:48):
could relate, and he said the case came up on
TV and he saw Brandon and it became very personal
to him.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
So he was a double resource for us. He had
done a lot of his own recent or so he
was good just for understanding the case, but also just
good on what it was like for him growing up.
And it was to get a first hand point of
view from someone other than Brandon.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Yes, Scott was super resourceful for us. I remember we
had kind of a different location to meet with Scott. Dan,
do you remember how we booked that location.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
We had a location I believe lined up that fell
through last minute, so we needed to find a location
to have your conversation with Scott pretty quickly, and that evening.
Actually we needed to be all the way out and Texarkana.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Oh that's right. We had such a long drive.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
We had a long drive for the rest of the day,
so we had limited time to do that. So we
found another location pretty quickly that was nearby where we were.
Had a place I think was on the lake, you know,
and it was kind of pretty there, so we're like, great,
let's do that, and.
Speaker 9 (14:50):
We wanted to be inside. It was boiling hot, humid.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Yeah, I mean it was what was it July? It
was dead of summer, and it was a different location
than we normally use because we normally go to like
municipal buildings or a diner or someplace that's a little
structured office buildings things like that. There were other things
going on that day.
Speaker 9 (15:13):
Trying to remember this was a it was like a campground. No,
it was a sort of a hobby farm that hosted
events like weddings and receptions additionally, and there was basically
a reception hall there and.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
It was right next door to a shooting range. So
we get there, we're realizing, okay, we have to contend
with the audio of gunfire.
Speaker 9 (15:35):
We have, like in the background, there's herds of goats
roaming around.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
There was livestock, and we went out to speak with
you outside and there was a rooster. We had to
go in between the or some kind of bird that
was very loud.
Speaker 9 (15:49):
Here we go.
Speaker 10 (15:52):
Standby.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
That's true, Koku. Yeah, the rooster was on my list.
I was not pumped about that, especially also when you're
dealing with really serious subject matter. It's one thing if
you're just like joking around and you're doing lighthearted stuff,
(16:16):
and you can roll with it. But when you're trying
to set a tone that is serious and respectful, having
a dog barking or a rooster crowing, or the gunfire
or a cow mooing like any of that is my kryptonite.
And it wasn't just these exterior sounds that were having
to deal with, like birds and gunshots. You know, you
(16:37):
can hear it a little bit in the interview with Scott.
They were doing load in for a kid's party. They
were having like a graduation party, and so a whole
group of teenagers showed up.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Yeah, they give us a very small window. They're like,
you can come in and do your thing filming in here,
but you have to be out by two o'clock or
whatever time it was. Yeah, ever happens, and so we
get there and then it was a million degrees out
and we couldn't shut off the air conditioning, so we
have to deal with a loud air conditioning noise that
we couldn't shut off. A very limited time to film.
And we're getting towards the end of filming the scene
(17:10):
and the people start arriving. The guests for this party started.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Riving full of beer and soda pop or being loaded
in and I'm trying to have this conversation about Brandon,
about life and death.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
Yeah, and we push it about as far as we
can go, and then finally the owners of this location
were like, you gotta stop.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
It's so hard. It's so hard to get I mean,
you can't get pristine, and if you're outside, you know,
suddenly the camera will whip away from the subject to
capture the plane or the bus that went by, or
the birds that are chirping in the tree, so that
we can show people what that noise is and sort
of justify it for the viewer. We call it the
motivation for the sound, because if you hear it and
(17:47):
it disrupts, but if you understand how it's integrated into
the world, then the world opens up. It doesn't always
work that way, but that's what we try to do.
And Andrew is like incredible as a DP with an
ear for what else is happening, both story wise and
also environmentally.
Speaker 9 (18:04):
Well, if there's no sound, there's no picture. Really, sound
is actually more important in many ways than a picture.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
Says the director of photography, which is something most cinematographers
have no clue of.
Speaker 9 (18:16):
I didn't say that, but.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
If you're sitting think about it, nobody does. If you
have a silhouette of a person at a window at
night and you hear crickets, that person's in the country,
and if you hear sirens, that person's in the city,
and nothing's changed with a shot, And that's something most
people don't realize. Sound is the subconscious of the film
or of the show, and you have to pay an
incredible amount of attention to it.
Speaker 9 (18:40):
I just want to say I think actually we were
timing part of the interview between rounds of gunfire from
the shooting range. We had to stop, ye and count,
Oh well that magazine so many shots fired. Oh, their
clip is empty. Let's continue.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
Yeah, I mean that's Andrew counting. Like not all of
us are verse, but Andrew is the master of all things,
so he will know how many clips on.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
The boys Scout k new.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
Yeah, the boy scoutk new.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
But even through all of this, Scott, he's such a
trooper and he was so great and our sit down
and this was important to him. And so while we
didn't have much time for our interview, we really covered
a lot of ground. And it all starts with how
Scott first became aware of Brandon's case and what he
(19:29):
did next.
Speaker 6 (19:30):
Tell me a little bit about how you got involved
in this situation.
Speaker 10 (19:34):
Sure, when I first saw it, I was at dinner
with a friend and they in Brandon's mugshot came up
on the TV as being arrested for his parents and murders,
and my friend said, you know, oh, my gosh, that's
my ex boyfriend. And I was like, Wow, that's weird.
I looked up and I saw his mugshot, and I
(19:55):
was like, that does not look like a guy that
would kill parents, you know. He just he looked innocent
and young, and you know, I mean just like he
looked like a kid, and I'm like, it just doesn't
make sense, you know. So over the next few years,
I just kind of followed it, you know, with Google
searches every once in a while, just to see what
was going on with the case. And eventually, in two
(20:18):
thousand and nine, I googled it one day and saw
that he was convicted, and it just didn't set right
with me.
Speaker 7 (20:24):
You know.
Speaker 10 (20:25):
It's like, this kid is is screaming that he's innocent
and that he didn't do this, and I'm like, well,
that just you know, it just doesn't like I've always
been kind of the Perry Mason fan, you know. I've
always been the one that, you know, someone says they're
innocent and then Perry Mason comes in and proves it
at the last second. So that's been I've always been
kind of that mindset when it came to like criminal
(20:48):
law and stuff like that. I was wanted to be
a lawyer. You know, I wanted to be Perry Mason did.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Yeah, when you guys first met Scott, how did he
come across to you?
Speaker 3 (20:57):
Well, I mean I heard his story of how he
first got introduced to the case and interested in the case,
in his immediate perception of his thoughts on Brandon's situation,
and that made me skeptical of Scott. I mean, he's
already made up his mind. How could this guy have
done this? And I don't think he's guilty, you know,
right away.
Speaker 9 (21:14):
So I mean it's a classic face value assessment. Young
man looks innocent, And we hear this on the news
every day.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
This is what we're wary of, is somebody who's automatically
going to make a snap judgment and base it on
a gut.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
I certainly was. I mean, he's saying I identify with Brandon,
and therefore I think Brandon's innocent. It's like that's not enough,
you know, so for me, just made me approach Scott
with a certain amount of caution, you know what I mean,
really trying to understand where he's coming from and looking
at the stuff that he dug up and to take,
you know, really a critical look at Scott all the
way through, you know, And I wasn't sure how he
(21:50):
would be as an interview either, like if he was
going to really sort of show any bias, But he
did well. He has dug into this case and was
able to sort of separate his impressions of what was
going on with the facts that he dug up.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
Right, he was a great resource. We knew he was
going to be a great resource because he has a
blog and has really really dug in and that was great,
and we wanted and hoped that a person like him
could be this representative, connected person to represent, you know,
Brandon's perspective while also giving good information. But that was
the crux of whether or not he would be able
to arrive in a way that felt like a real solid,
(22:27):
non armchair quarterback type. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
I mean, we're not looking to just interview people who
are unbiased. We have Nol who is one hundred percent
certain this kid is guilty, you know, and then we
have someone like Scott, who is one hundred percent that
Brandon is innocent, and it's important to represent both perspectives.
But to your point, I don't think that Scott arrived
at his decision without a ton of research.
Speaker 6 (22:53):
So once you found out that Brandon had been convicted
of his parents' murderer, why.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Get involved.
Speaker 10 (23:04):
Again. It was one of those things that it just
it didn't make sense to me, you know, the way
that he looked him, professing his innocence, just things didn't
add up. So I just basically decided to write him
a letter. And I was like, hey, I'm a friend
of a friend, you know, kind of introduced to myself.
And it took him about a year, but he finally
wrote back. It's funny. I went to my mailbox one
(23:26):
day and I get this letter from Brandon dale Woodruff
and I literally had it's been a year, like I've
forgotten that I even wrote him. And I was like,
Brandon dale Wood, oh that's and then I hopeen it
like as fast as I could, and I was like,
I read the letter, and you know, he basically said, yeah,
I'm innocent. I didn't do this. And what really struck
me was he said, don't you don't have to take
(23:49):
my word for it. I will get you in touch
with my friend. She'll give you the whole defense file.
You can look through it. You can see that I'm
innocent and I, and I'm sitting there thinking to myself,
who am I like? But he's like so vested in
making me, nobody that he's ever met didn't know him
believe that he's innocent. So that again really made me
(24:10):
take notice, like this just doesn't add up. You know,
It's not like he just said yeah, I mean it
was up, dude, you know, like he was so adamant
about his innocence. So when I got that letter, we
basically just kind of started writing back and forth a
pen pals and stuff. I got the defense file and
I looked through everything, and I was sitting there and
(24:31):
every time I would turn a page, I would think
to myself, Okay, this is going to be why they
arrested him, or this is gonna the next page is
going to tell me why they convicted him. And I
got through the whole case about tens of thousands of pages,
and I didn't see anything, nothing to put him at
the crime and nothing to put him at the crime scene,
nothing that had any kind of inference that he was
(24:55):
that he was there at that time. And then what
I've just started discovering was not only was there nothing
that put him there at the clime but there were
things that were pointing saying he wasn't there. And so
once I started realizing that this guy is actually innocent,
I didn't really feel like I had a choice, like
I had to get involved.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
What I like about Scott is that I felt the
same way you did Dan going into this. I'm like,
this guy has created a whole podcast called American Justice.
He has a website for Brandon. He has thrown his
life into defending Brandon. And it gave me pause. I
was like, what's the angle, because unfortunately, I think everyone
has an angle. When we met Scott, I was struck
(25:51):
by the fact that he doesn't seem like a provocative person.
He doesn't seem like someone who's out there looking for
confrontation or looking for fights, or looking to insert himself
in bad situations. This is someone who saw a call
to arms and was like, God, I have.
Speaker 4 (26:07):
To do it right. He did not feel like he
was on this mission because he wanted to shove himself
into the spotlight. I mean, he's a little bit like,
you know, shy, right, yeshy guy.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Here's what happens in a small community when something like
this occurs. Brandon is not just Brandon anymore. Brandon is
a symbol for every other gay kid in the community.
And if it could happen to him, you know, it's
literally the title of our show. It couldn't happen here.
I mean it could it did? It happened to Brandon?
(26:39):
And I hate that. I hate that there was an
entire generation of Scott's and Brandon's who had to grow
up watching the news coverage and watching Brandon's lifestyle be filified.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
And what a chilling effect. I mean if that then
is called a motive, like either he didn't want them
to find out, or they found out and there was
a fight, then how can anyone feel safe coming out?
Speaker 1 (27:04):
So we talked to Scott about that in our interviews
with him.
Speaker 8 (27:07):
Luckily, I've been out of the closet for over twenty
five years, so it's not that big a deal for now.
But I fear for the youth that are going through
that process now. You know, if you're struggling with your
sexuality and you're hiding that part of yourself, what can
these prosecutors and what can these investigators say about that
(27:31):
that they can accuse you of anything. The mantra that
Ranger Collins used throughout this investigation that if you can
lie about being gay, you can lie about killing your parents.
It's just absolutely ridiculous. You're talking about somebody that's keeping
their private life private instead of being out there and
(27:52):
open to the public about their private life, and then
talking about them being a liar because of it. If
you go out and ask any gay person in the
world if coming out and dealing with their sexuality was
a small thing, I think one hundred percent of them
would tell you no, it was probably the biggest thing
in their life. But Ranger Collins, coming from that perspective
(28:16):
of a heterosexual male, to him, being gay is no
big thing. It's not something that you have to hide
from everyone. What he doesn't realize, and he doesn't take
into perspective, is that it is a big deal for
gay people. They don't want to tell the church friends,
they don't want to tell the school friends they don't have.
(28:38):
Sometimes most of the time, they don't feel comfortable telling
their own family, and it's a huge thing that weighs
on their minds for sometimes years before they are even
comfortable telling one person.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
I also spoke with Scott about some of the laws
on the books back in two thousand and five, in
two thousand and nine, that would have created a sense
of fear or quiet or hesitation. And I talked to
him about the ones that we discussed earlier in this episode,
how sodomy was illegal in Texas until two thousand and three,
(29:10):
and gay marriage at a national level was still almost
a decade away from being passed. And this is what
Scott had to say.
Speaker 10 (29:17):
Brandon was very you know, he was being told systemically
from a young age that being gay is not okay
and so legal, it's illegal. You can't you couldn't do
it if you were consenting adults. So what makes him
think that it's going to be okay to come out?
What makes him think it's going to be okay to
be himself.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
It's that point right there, that systemically, from a young age,
Brandon is being told it is wrong to be gay,
and that's the message these kids are getting. It's devastating
that the institutions in our country that are set up
to protect all of us are writing down in the
books that you're the problem, You're the danger, You're the
(30:02):
thing that we have to protect other people from. You know,
we talked about the trial a couple episodes ago, but
I also wanted to get Scott's thoughts on it. During
Brandon's trial, do you feel that in rural Texas he
was able to have an unbiased jury?
Speaker 10 (30:20):
Absolutely not. And the reason that I say that is
because in East Texas in two thousand and five, remember
we're going back, you know, many years at this point
he there was, there were Greenville and Hunt County is
the kind of town where you you know, you can't
throw a rock without hitting a church. The bias against
(30:41):
homosexuals in general is not good. But then when you
get on trial and they're bringing up the fact that
you're gay, they're bringing up the fact that you did
gay porn. Like I don't believe that people can put
aside their bias to look at the facts of the case.
(31:02):
And then they started bringing up stuff like, well, Brandon's
hiding his sexuality. Not only is he gay, but he's
lying to people about his sexuality. He's telling them that
he's straight. And I believe that that kind of made
the jury realize or think to themselves, well, he's lying
about his homosexuality, then what else could he be lying about?
(31:23):
And that was part of the mantra of the investigation
and the trial, and you know, and it drives me
crazy when people say that he had a double life.
You know, he's a nineteen year old kid. He's struggling
with his sexuality. He doesn't even know if he's gay
or not. He knows that he likes guys, and he
knows that he wants to explore that side of himself,
but he still had a girlfriend that he loved very much. So,
(31:46):
you know, it's just so unfortunate that the prosecution and
the investigators used that fact against him and then presented
it in court. They're using him is private life, private
as too, as motive and just character assassination. That's the
only way that they were able to convict him is
(32:08):
you know, they had no proof, you know, but they
were able to convict him by making him out to
be this big, fat liar.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
What's crazy to me is that they continue this point
of lie, Lie, Lie, Lie Lie. And I just want
to not only look at what gay kids go through
right now in the coming out process, but in two
thousand and five, because I didn't know a single person
in my high school that was out, I knew a
(32:37):
lot of people who I knew were day who I
hung out with outside of school, but no one that
would admit it in the hallways of the school. And
the pattern was that you would leave for college and
freshman year, you would go somewhere far enough away from
home that you could go experiment with who you wanted
to be. And I have personal experience with you know,
(33:00):
what Brandon was doing was the formula for what teenagers
did at the time.
Speaker 9 (33:05):
Wasn't he just doing what every teen does, which is lie.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
I'm not going to tell my parents if I'm having
sex at eighteen nineteen years old, and.
Speaker 4 (33:14):
It doesn't matter who is with. I don't think that
that's lying. I think that's just creating.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
I mean, okay, you have teenage kids, Andrew, would you
want your child to call you and say, Dad, I'm
sleeping with so and so.
Speaker 4 (33:27):
No, okay, But it's different than lying. It's withholding things
that maybe they don't want to share it. I mean,
withholding and lying are different. Lying means you say this
is not true. Withholding means you're not going to share
a portion of your life with certain people. There's a
big difference between withholding and lying. Unless I mean, in
(33:47):
many cases, of course, there's an overlap, but those are
two different things.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Well, it's the practice of omission, and Brandon didn't even
seem to be doing that. You know, we know that
his roommates, his friends, his parents, his aunt, all of
these people knew Brandon's experimenting, Brandon's going down, but.
Speaker 4 (34:06):
They still had a girlfriend.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
I think what you're talking about is really interesting, right,
I mean even back then, this is years ago, but
every generation goes through it, Like you were saying, you
don't tell your parents what you're doing, and even just
understanding of the lifestyle of this group of people. So
when they're talking to Ranger Collins, I believe, and I
forget which witness it was, was saying that one of
their friends, a female friend, was having a bachelorette party
(34:31):
at this gay club, and Ranger Collins was like kind
of in disbelief, like why would a bunch of you know,
women go to a gay club, as if it was
so absurd for him to think this, and it's like, yeah, no,
they went to this club and they partied, you know,
And so the kids all thought, okay, yeah, we all
go to this club and it's a gay club or
stray club or whatever it is, and they were all
kind of okay going to this club, and Ranger Collins
(34:52):
just thought this was somebody's lying here because there's no
way that that happened. And I think that's just kind
of an indicative of the generational sort of perception.
Speaker 4 (34:59):
Same with like Drag Queen Story Hour. They think that
that's a strip club, it's insidious, and they don't realize
that it's camp and it's funny and it's performance, and
that it's something that's been going on for centuries and
millennia probably. I mean, we have some evidence of that,
so you know, it's like seeing something as seedy and
horrible that could just be for quality. Yeah, it's just
(35:21):
fun fun for other people. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Now, Scott still talks to Brandon in prison quite a bit,
So did he talk to you about that about what
their relationship looks like at this point?
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Scott, Yeah, Yeah, I mean I think they do speak often,
and I think Brandon appreciates having someone on the outside
who believes in him and trusts him outside of his
own family.
Speaker 7 (35:43):
You know.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Well, I mean for anybody else that is going through
the coming out process, you find your community, right and
you make your friendships in that community and you find
your support group and it helps you build a life
that is healthy. Hopefully you know that's the hope that
you have for people. Brandon went to prison immediately, and
I don't know that there is any kind of support
(36:06):
for him in that facility to a explore who he is,
b process what's happened to him, and so Scott being
an ally on the outside, it is powerful on a
lot of different levels. I'm so glad Brandon has someone
(36:28):
like Scott. I'm so grateful that he took the time
to sit with us and give us his insight because
he was so thoughtful and articulate, and I really felt
that his mission was one that people can support. He
studied the case, and he's fought for what he believes
and he continues to fight for what he believes in,
and that's Brandon's innocence. So we'll talk more about that fight,
(36:51):
as well as Brandon and his legal team's ongoing quest
for justice in our next episode. That's it for this
(37:13):
week's episode of True Crime Story. It couldn't happen here,
but be sure to join us next week as we
dive deeper into the Brandon Woodruff case.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
Does he have hope you have hope.
Speaker 8 (37:24):
There's hope. There's always hope.
Speaker 4 (37:26):
I wouldn't give up hope completely.
Speaker 8 (37:28):
There's always hope.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Join us next week as we continue to roll up
our sleeves and dig in. Thank you so much for
joining us. If you haven't watched Sundance TV's True Crime
Story It Couldn't Happen Here, you can catch all of
our episodes streaming on AMC Plus. For more information about
this and other cases we've covered, follow at I see
(37:52):
HH stories on Instagram. True Crime Story It Couldn't Happen
Here was produced by Mischief Far in association with Bungalow
Media and Entertainment, Authentic Management Productions, and Figdonia in partnership
with Sundance TV. Executive producers are me Hillary Burton, Morgan,
Liz Deccessor, Robert Friedman, Mike Powers, and Meg Mortimer. Producers
(38:17):
are Maggie Robinson, Katz and Libby Siegel. Our audio engineer
is Brendan Dalton, with original music by Philip Radiotis. We
want to say a special thank you to everyone who participated,
but especially the families impacted by our cases.
Hi guys, it's Hillary here. Just a quick note. This
series does deal with a lot of tough subject matter
that may be difficult for some listeners, so please keep
this in mind when and where you choose to listen
to these episodes. Last episode, we discussed our prison interview
(00:21):
with Brandon, as well as a phone call that I
shared with him from his grandmother's house. Now, as a reminder,
throughout Brandon's case, we have heard time and time again
the suggestion from officials, family friends, and even a member
of Brandon's own family the Brandon's sexuality may have had
something to do with the murder of his parents, Dennis
(00:42):
and Norma. So in this episode, we're going to put
into context what Brandon faced as a young man coming
out in a tiny Texas town in two thousand and five,
and regrettably, how all these years later not much has changed.
I'm Hillary Burton Morgan and this is true crime story.
It couldn't happen here. Hi guys, Hillary Burton Morgan here,
(01:15):
and I am with Dan Flaherty, Pocutcheons, Andrew Dunn. Let's
get into it. Let's talk about the climate of Texas,
specifically in two thousand and five because we can speculate
what the morals and ethics of law enforcement were, but
there are actual laws and legislation on the books during
that era that really give you a clear picture of
(01:38):
what Texas as a whole believed was appropriate. It was
only in two thousand and three that the Supreme Court
struck down a Texas law that banned sodomy. So the
Supreme Court literally had to step in and shoot down
this Texas law, and this happened just two years before
it's theorized that Brandon killed his parents because they may
(01:59):
not accept him. Now, around the same time thsdomy is
now legalized thanks to federal intervention, Texas was discriminating in
other ways with strict referendums on same sex marriage and
civil unions. It wasn't until two thousand and fifteen when
the Supreme Court again had to step in and strike
(02:20):
down all state bands on same sex marriage, and that
meant that Texas could no longer deny couples this right.
But you guys, that was a decade after the murder
of Norma and Dennis, So Brandon was in a situation
growing up as like a southern agricultural kid. In two
thousand and five, and I know even in my high
(02:41):
school in the late nineties, there weren't out openly gay kids.
You know, you just didn't do that. It was scary,
and so I can empathize with what he was going
through and how difficult it was for him to navigate
that situation. Everyone should be able to go on that
journey in their own time, but unfortunately Brandon was not
(03:02):
afforded that opportunity. So Brandon tells us about his journey
and struggle in his own words coming out.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Basically, when I was eighteen nineteen years old. It was
a difficult process. It was different, but it wasn't like
the end of the world for me. I've always been
kind of like care free and just lived life. There
was definitely some people I didn't tell because you know,
I knew their perceptions or their persona you know, might
(03:29):
be different. But it's not like I was as closeted
as some people would have you believe. I mean, if
you looked on my MySpace, I had nothing but you know,
gay friends on there and people from the club. I
was taking, you know, public pictures with these people for years.
Obviously I knew when I did porn that you know,
it was not going to be in a closet, you know.
So it's not like, you know, they're trying to say
(03:51):
that I had this sinister side because I had this
completely hidden lifestyle. What it simply was was I just
didn't tell certain people at this time because I didn't
really know for myself. I didn't know what one hundred
percent that I was gay or bisexual, whether I wanted
to go, you know, try to get back with my
girlfriend or a boyfriend.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
It is so clear to me that in this case,
people are not empathizing with the struggle of a young
gay teenager and what he might be feeling growing up
in Texas at that time, and instead they're saying, like,
quote unquote, he's living a double life, as if he's
like a grown ass man cheating on his wife and
kids with a whole other family. Why do you think
(04:31):
the narrative of this double life is so widely used
as a motive and just so intoxicating.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
I think for me, it's like, you know, when you
hear about a possible murder and a suspect and all
these people who are close to him say, oh, there's
no way that he could have done that, right, and
it's like I know him, I've known him my whole life.
He's just not the kind of person who would do that. Right,
So people have an idea of who the suspect is,
but then when they learn, oh, I don't know this
(04:58):
person as well as I think thought I did.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
And you want to not know the person as well
as you thought you did, because then you're a chump,
you're the jump because you didn't suspect anything about this
terrible murders person.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Sure, he'sa like my best friend, Like, there's no way
he could kill somebody. And then I find out, oh
my god, he actually is somebody who I didn't know.
He's not who I thought he was. Maybe he could
have done it. You know my assumption about him was wrong.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
Well, it's the ultimate betrayal, right, to feel that betrayed
and to feel that stupid that you wouldn't know and vulnerable.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Right, But I have to stress this. I can't stress
it enough. Not being out to everyone is nowhere near
the same as having a double life. Okay, coming out
of the closet. It's a process. It's a sensitive process,
especially in a place where it's not really being discussed
as acceptable or even as Noel the blood splatter expert says,
(05:51):
as tolerated, and Brandon reiterates this in my phone call
with him.
Speaker 5 (05:56):
Yeah, so much is made of you living this double life,
and anyone who knows about coming out or you know,
coming out stories, knows that you don't rush into it.
Speaker 6 (06:09):
There's kind of a there's a period of discovery that
a kid goes through. How much do you think prejudiced
against what you were going through in that time played
in one of the one of.
Speaker 7 (06:24):
The biggest questions that I was asked that actually I
never really paid attention and basically I was just finding myself.
I wasn't so positive to extreme that the closet had
a lot on it, and I wasn't, you know, entering
out of nowhere. I was going into public day club.
I was going into a public day propert.
Speaker 8 (06:42):
I was one of them.
Speaker 7 (06:43):
I was doing. You know, I would never do going
now I got I kind of regret doing it, but
at the time I made that a thing I did
that I own up to that. But he wasn't a
private thing. So I sat to allude that. You know,
I was so positive when the woman got it a
person to come out of head.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
I didn't know if that com One thing that made me
really sad is that he apologized. He said, look, you know,
I made mistakes. Even though he was justifying, hey, I
was gay, I didn't know. I was confused. That's why
I was living a double life. He talks about he
made mistakes, there were things he did were wrong about
his sexuality and how he's living his life, you know, doing.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Porn, or he thinks he's being punished for the porn.
I mean, Dan, he says as much to you in
his prison interview.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
I mean, if anybody's life was put under a magnifying glass,
I don't think nobody's life would be perfect. I down
up to anything that I've done in my life, you know,
including the porn videos. You know, maybe I wouldn't make
porn now as a thirty five year old guy, but
at eighteen, I was just care free.
Speaker 5 (07:47):
I was silly.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
You know, I'm not denying any of that, but I'm
telling you I didn't kill my parents.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
It felt like he has absorbed the message that something
was wrong with him for being gay. He sounded you know, I.
Speaker 9 (08:00):
Think he was referring to making the horn tips.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Sure, yeah, exactly suddenly.
Speaker 9 (08:06):
I don't think he was apologizing for being gay.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
It's something that's become so normalized today. We didn't have
iPhones in two thousand and five, right, And whether we
want to admit it or not, every teenager in America
has either made a video or seen a video from
one of their peers. We have only fan sites that
eighteen and up can now join. We've got kids sending
(08:29):
snapchats of naked pictures and things like that. It is
a totally normalized behavior now. And Brandon had it weaponized
against him because it was two thousand and five and
it was taboo.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
I read it a little differently. I read it as
him saying like I felt a little shame from how
he was speaking. I felt like he was saying, well,
I'm wise and that was a terrible decision. He was
trying to distance himself from it. And there's so much shame.
I mean, of course, he's been penalized for it. It
was weaponized against him, and he's had no support. He
didn't get to go become a person of that supportive
(09:04):
allied community.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Ever, He's reaching forty and he is still locked in
at nineteen years old. He never got to go through
the full metamorphosis, and so he's just kind of stuck
in that cocoon of uncertainty. I agree with Poe. I
think that he feels a great deal of shame that
he shouldn't feel because he has no idea what all
the teenagers out here in the world are doing right now.
(09:28):
They're all doing the same thing. There's a lens that
we have to remind ourselves to look through, and it's
the two thousand and five lens.
Speaker 7 (09:38):
You know.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
When we filmed this episode, we really had to reconcile
the fact that it's been a lot of years since
Dennis and Norma died in two thousand and five, or
since Brandon's trial in two thousand and nine, and we
asked ourselves, are we better now? Is our society more accepting?
Is our legislation more accepting? But then after this episode
(10:00):
aired on TV, we just had this avalanche of don't
Say Gay bills and other legislation and book banning and
checking girls menstrual cycles to make sure they're actually girls.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
Well, taking away women's basic rights over their own body
and privacy.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
And then in March of twenty twenty two, the state
of Texas removed LGBTQIA plus resources from their suicide prevention website.
They have a culture war against drag Queen's story hour.
The very people who are out dancing at these clubs
with Brandon and all of his friends are being persecuted
(10:36):
in this same environment. So really, I just don't know
that we're any better than we were in two thousand
and five or even two thousand and nine, you know,
because these laws continue to be enacted and it's happening
regularly across this country, and it sucks. So when we
talk about a case like this that can absolutely be
(10:57):
impacted by the timing and the culture of a specific place,
we have to be so sensitive about representing a demographic
that we may not necessarily be in. And so whether
we are discussing issues for any marginalized community based on race, religion, gender,
sexual orientation, gender identity, any of that. When you are
(11:20):
producing something, how do you approach the story so that
you're not making generalizations? What do you do to ensure
that you are understanding the story from the perspective of
someone like Brandon.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
It's a really good question. I Mean, we talked on
our very first get Timtya and then oh my god,
let's plan the show about wanting certain types of cases,
and one of them was absolutely about how homosexuality can
be a factor in an investigation, be weaponized, be weaponized,
and having been raised in San Francisco, especially in a
(11:59):
period where I went to marches with Harvey milk and stuff,
you know, I felt like that was an important, very
important factor in our storytelling. But you first lead with humanity.
You make sure you do your work, your homework, You
make sure you look deeply into these issues in a
very open way, and you try to include people of
(12:21):
all genders, races, and identities in your crew.
Speaker 9 (12:26):
But when we.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
Land, it's respectfully with humanity, with empathy, including people who
might be bigoted, and try to understand where they're coming from,
where in their life and their experience, and especially trying
to with Brandon, understand what it would be like for
a person who identified the way he did and is
who he is in a place that was highly religious
(12:47):
and not accepting.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
How do we make sure that we elevate these voices,
specifically in this case, members of the LGBTQIA plus community.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
We try to find people who are connected to the
case who can represent that.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Yeah, exactly. I mean, you know, it was important for
us to have representation in the show of a gay
man who grew up in rural Texas. So during our research,
we came across a podcaster named Scott Pogancy, and Scott
was involved in this case. He did a ton of
work in research on Brandon's case.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
Scott is a Texan, He's a gay man. He was
raised in a small town, not the same one, but
one that he says is every bit as similar. And
so here's a man who has a similar background growing
up in a small town in Texas where there's a
lot of Christian bias against homosexuality in many places, especially
in Texas or Texas included, believe that homosexuality is a sin.
That became a huge part of this case, and he
(13:48):
could relate, and he said the case came up on
TV and he saw Brandon and it became very personal
to him.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
So he was a double resource for us. He had
done a lot of his own recent or so he
was good just for understanding the case, but also just
good on what it was like for him growing up.
And it was to get a first hand point of
view from someone other than Brandon.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Yes, Scott was super resourceful for us. I remember we
had kind of a different location to meet with Scott. Dan,
do you remember how we booked that location.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
We had a location I believe lined up that fell
through last minute, so we needed to find a location
to have your conversation with Scott pretty quickly, and that evening.
Actually we needed to be all the way out and Texarkana.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Oh that's right. We had such a long drive.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
We had a long drive for the rest of the day,
so we had limited time to do that. So we
found another location pretty quickly that was nearby where we were.
Had a place I think was on the lake, you know,
and it was kind of pretty there, so we're like, great,
let's do that, and.
Speaker 9 (14:50):
We wanted to be inside. It was boiling hot, humid.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Yeah, I mean it was what was it July? It
was dead of summer, and it was a different location
than we normally use because we normally go to like
municipal buildings or a diner or someplace that's a little
structured office buildings things like that. There were other things
going on that day.
Speaker 9 (15:13):
Trying to remember this was a it was like a campground. No,
it was a sort of a hobby farm that hosted
events like weddings and receptions additionally, and there was basically
a reception hall there and.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
It was right next door to a shooting range. So
we get there, we're realizing, okay, we have to contend
with the audio of gunfire.
Speaker 9 (15:35):
We have, like in the background, there's herds of goats
roaming around.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
There was livestock, and we went out to speak with
you outside and there was a rooster. We had to
go in between the or some kind of bird that
was very loud.
Speaker 9 (15:49):
Here we go.
Speaker 10 (15:52):
Standby.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
That's true, Koku. Yeah, the rooster was on my list.
I was not pumped about that, especially also when you're
dealing with really serious subject matter. It's one thing if
you're just like joking around and you're doing lighthearted stuff,
(16:16):
and you can roll with it. But when you're trying
to set a tone that is serious and respectful, having
a dog barking or a rooster crowing, or the gunfire
or a cow mooing like any of that is my kryptonite.
And it wasn't just these exterior sounds that were having
to deal with, like birds and gunshots. You know, you
(16:37):
can hear it a little bit in the interview with Scott.
They were doing load in for a kid's party. They
were having like a graduation party, and so a whole
group of teenagers showed up.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Yeah, they give us a very small window. They're like,
you can come in and do your thing filming in here,
but you have to be out by two o'clock or
whatever time it was. Yeah, ever happens, and so we
get there and then it was a million degrees out
and we couldn't shut off the air conditioning, so we
have to deal with a loud air conditioning noise that
we couldn't shut off. A very limited time to film.
And we're getting towards the end of filming the scene
(17:10):
and the people start arriving. The guests for this party started.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Riving full of beer and soda pop or being loaded
in and I'm trying to have this conversation about Brandon,
about life and death.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
Yeah, and we push it about as far as we
can go, and then finally the owners of this location
were like, you gotta stop.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
It's so hard. It's so hard to get I mean,
you can't get pristine, and if you're outside, you know,
suddenly the camera will whip away from the subject to
capture the plane or the bus that went by, or
the birds that are chirping in the tree, so that
we can show people what that noise is and sort
of justify it for the viewer. We call it the
motivation for the sound, because if you hear it and
(17:47):
it disrupts, but if you understand how it's integrated into
the world, then the world opens up. It doesn't always
work that way, but that's what we try to do.
And Andrew is like incredible as a DP with an
ear for what else is happening, both story wise and
also environmentally.
Speaker 9 (18:04):
Well, if there's no sound, there's no picture. Really, sound
is actually more important in many ways than a picture.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
Says the director of photography, which is something most cinematographers
have no clue of.
Speaker 9 (18:16):
I didn't say that, but.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
If you're sitting think about it, nobody does. If you
have a silhouette of a person at a window at
night and you hear crickets, that person's in the country,
and if you hear sirens, that person's in the city,
and nothing's changed with a shot, And that's something most
people don't realize. Sound is the subconscious of the film
or of the show, and you have to pay an
incredible amount of attention to it.
Speaker 9 (18:40):
I just want to say I think actually we were
timing part of the interview between rounds of gunfire from
the shooting range. We had to stop, ye and count,
Oh well that magazine so many shots fired. Oh, their
clip is empty. Let's continue.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
Yeah, I mean that's Andrew counting. Like not all of
us are verse, but Andrew is the master of all things,
so he will know how many clips on.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
The boys Scout k new.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
Yeah, the boy scoutk new.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
But even through all of this, Scott, he's such a
trooper and he was so great and our sit down
and this was important to him. And so while we
didn't have much time for our interview, we really covered
a lot of ground. And it all starts with how
Scott first became aware of Brandon's case and what he
(19:29):
did next.
Speaker 6 (19:30):
Tell me a little bit about how you got involved
in this situation.
Speaker 10 (19:34):
Sure, when I first saw it, I was at dinner
with a friend and they in Brandon's mugshot came up
on the TV as being arrested for his parents and murders,
and my friend said, you know, oh, my gosh, that's
my ex boyfriend. And I was like, Wow, that's weird.
I looked up and I saw his mugshot, and I
(19:55):
was like, that does not look like a guy that
would kill parents, you know. He just he looked innocent
and young, and you know, I mean just like he
looked like a kid, and I'm like, it just doesn't
make sense, you know. So over the next few years,
I just kind of followed it, you know, with Google
searches every once in a while, just to see what
was going on with the case. And eventually, in two
(20:18):
thousand and nine, I googled it one day and saw
that he was convicted, and it just didn't set right
with me.
Speaker 7 (20:24):
You know.
Speaker 10 (20:25):
It's like, this kid is is screaming that he's innocent
and that he didn't do this, and I'm like, well,
that just you know, it just doesn't like I've always
been kind of the Perry Mason fan, you know. I've
always been the one that, you know, someone says they're
innocent and then Perry Mason comes in and proves it
at the last second. So that's been I've always been
kind of that mindset when it came to like criminal
(20:48):
law and stuff like that. I was wanted to be
a lawyer. You know, I wanted to be Perry Mason did.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Yeah, when you guys first met Scott, how did he
come across to you?
Speaker 3 (20:57):
Well, I mean I heard his story of how he
first got introduced to the case and interested in the case,
in his immediate perception of his thoughts on Brandon's situation,
and that made me skeptical of Scott. I mean, he's
already made up his mind. How could this guy have
done this? And I don't think he's guilty, you know,
right away.
Speaker 9 (21:14):
So I mean it's a classic face value assessment. Young
man looks innocent, And we hear this on the news
every day.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
This is what we're wary of, is somebody who's automatically
going to make a snap judgment and base it on
a gut.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
I certainly was. I mean, he's saying I identify with Brandon,
and therefore I think Brandon's innocent. It's like that's not enough,
you know, so for me, just made me approach Scott
with a certain amount of caution, you know what I mean,
really trying to understand where he's coming from and looking
at the stuff that he dug up and to take,
you know, really a critical look at Scott all the
way through, you know, And I wasn't sure how he
(21:50):
would be as an interview either, like if he was
going to really sort of show any bias, But he
did well. He has dug into this case and was
able to sort of separate his impressions of what was
going on with the facts that he dug up.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
Right, he was a great resource. We knew he was
going to be a great resource because he has a
blog and has really really dug in and that was great,
and we wanted and hoped that a person like him
could be this representative, connected person to represent, you know,
Brandon's perspective while also giving good information. But that was
the crux of whether or not he would be able
to arrive in a way that felt like a real solid,
(22:27):
non armchair quarterback type. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
I mean, we're not looking to just interview people who
are unbiased. We have Nol who is one hundred percent
certain this kid is guilty, you know, and then we
have someone like Scott, who is one hundred percent that
Brandon is innocent, and it's important to represent both perspectives.
But to your point, I don't think that Scott arrived
at his decision without a ton of research.
Speaker 6 (22:53):
So once you found out that Brandon had been convicted
of his parents' murderer, why.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Get involved.
Speaker 10 (23:04):
Again. It was one of those things that it just
it didn't make sense to me, you know, the way
that he looked him, professing his innocence, just things didn't
add up. So I just basically decided to write him
a letter. And I was like, hey, I'm a friend
of a friend, you know, kind of introduced to myself.
And it took him about a year, but he finally
wrote back. It's funny. I went to my mailbox one
(23:26):
day and I get this letter from Brandon dale Woodruff
and I literally had it's been a year, like I've
forgotten that I even wrote him. And I was like,
Brandon dale Wood, oh that's and then I hopeen it
like as fast as I could, and I was like,
I read the letter, and you know, he basically said, yeah,
I'm innocent. I didn't do this. And what really struck
me was he said, don't you don't have to take
(23:49):
my word for it. I will get you in touch
with my friend. She'll give you the whole defense file.
You can look through it. You can see that I'm
innocent and I, and I'm sitting there thinking to myself,
who am I like? But he's like so vested in
making me, nobody that he's ever met didn't know him
believe that he's innocent. So that again really made me
(24:10):
take notice, like this just doesn't add up. You know,
It's not like he just said yeah, I mean it
was up, dude, you know, like he was so adamant
about his innocence. So when I got that letter, we
basically just kind of started writing back and forth a
pen pals and stuff. I got the defense file and
I looked through everything, and I was sitting there and
(24:31):
every time I would turn a page, I would think
to myself, Okay, this is going to be why they
arrested him, or this is gonna the next page is
going to tell me why they convicted him. And I
got through the whole case about tens of thousands of pages,
and I didn't see anything, nothing to put him at
the crime and nothing to put him at the crime scene,
nothing that had any kind of inference that he was
(24:55):
that he was there at that time. And then what
I've just started discovering was not only was there nothing
that put him there at the clime but there were
things that were pointing saying he wasn't there. And so
once I started realizing that this guy is actually innocent,
I didn't really feel like I had a choice, like
I had to get involved.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
What I like about Scott is that I felt the
same way you did Dan going into this. I'm like,
this guy has created a whole podcast called American Justice.
He has a website for Brandon. He has thrown his
life into defending Brandon. And it gave me pause. I
was like, what's the angle, because unfortunately, I think everyone
has an angle. When we met Scott, I was struck
(25:51):
by the fact that he doesn't seem like a provocative person.
He doesn't seem like someone who's out there looking for
confrontation or looking for fights, or looking to insert himself
in bad situations. This is someone who saw a call
to arms and was like, God, I have.
Speaker 4 (26:07):
To do it right. He did not feel like he
was on this mission because he wanted to shove himself
into the spotlight. I mean, he's a little bit like,
you know, shy, right, yeshy guy.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Here's what happens in a small community when something like
this occurs. Brandon is not just Brandon anymore. Brandon is
a symbol for every other gay kid in the community.
And if it could happen to him, you know, it's
literally the title of our show. It couldn't happen here.
I mean it could it did? It happened to Brandon?
(26:39):
And I hate that. I hate that there was an
entire generation of Scott's and Brandon's who had to grow
up watching the news coverage and watching Brandon's lifestyle be filified.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
And what a chilling effect. I mean if that then
is called a motive, like either he didn't want them
to find out, or they found out and there was
a fight, then how can anyone feel safe coming out?
Speaker 1 (27:04):
So we talked to Scott about that in our interviews
with him.
Speaker 8 (27:07):
Luckily, I've been out of the closet for over twenty
five years, so it's not that big a deal for now.
But I fear for the youth that are going through
that process now. You know, if you're struggling with your
sexuality and you're hiding that part of yourself, what can
these prosecutors and what can these investigators say about that
(27:31):
that they can accuse you of anything. The mantra that
Ranger Collins used throughout this investigation that if you can
lie about being gay, you can lie about killing your parents.
It's just absolutely ridiculous. You're talking about somebody that's keeping
their private life private instead of being out there and
(27:52):
open to the public about their private life, and then
talking about them being a liar because of it. If
you go out and ask any gay person in the
world if coming out and dealing with their sexuality was
a small thing, I think one hundred percent of them
would tell you no, it was probably the biggest thing
in their life. But Ranger Collins, coming from that perspective
(28:16):
of a heterosexual male, to him, being gay is no
big thing. It's not something that you have to hide
from everyone. What he doesn't realize, and he doesn't take
into perspective, is that it is a big deal for
gay people. They don't want to tell the church friends,
they don't want to tell the school friends they don't have.
(28:38):
Sometimes most of the time, they don't feel comfortable telling
their own family, and it's a huge thing that weighs
on their minds for sometimes years before they are even
comfortable telling one person.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
I also spoke with Scott about some of the laws
on the books back in two thousand and five, in
two thousand and nine, that would have created a sense
of fear or quiet or hesitation. And I talked to
him about the ones that we discussed earlier in this episode,
how sodomy was illegal in Texas until two thousand and three,
(29:10):
and gay marriage at a national level was still almost
a decade away from being passed. And this is what
Scott had to say.
Speaker 10 (29:17):
Brandon was very you know, he was being told systemically
from a young age that being gay is not okay
and so legal, it's illegal. You can't you couldn't do
it if you were consenting adults. So what makes him
think that it's going to be okay to come out?
What makes him think it's going to be okay to
be himself.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
It's that point right there, that systemically, from a young age,
Brandon is being told it is wrong to be gay,
and that's the message these kids are getting. It's devastating
that the institutions in our country that are set up
to protect all of us are writing down in the
books that you're the problem, You're the danger, You're the
(30:02):
thing that we have to protect other people from. You know,
we talked about the trial a couple episodes ago, but
I also wanted to get Scott's thoughts on it. During
Brandon's trial, do you feel that in rural Texas he
was able to have an unbiased jury?
Speaker 10 (30:20):
Absolutely not. And the reason that I say that is
because in East Texas in two thousand and five, remember
we're going back, you know, many years at this point
he there was, there were Greenville and Hunt County is
the kind of town where you you know, you can't
throw a rock without hitting a church. The bias against
(30:41):
homosexuals in general is not good. But then when you
get on trial and they're bringing up the fact that
you're gay, they're bringing up the fact that you did
gay porn. Like I don't believe that people can put
aside their bias to look at the facts of the case.
(31:02):
And then they started bringing up stuff like, well, Brandon's
hiding his sexuality. Not only is he gay, but he's
lying to people about his sexuality. He's telling them that
he's straight. And I believe that that kind of made
the jury realize or think to themselves, well, he's lying
about his homosexuality, then what else could he be lying about?
(31:23):
And that was part of the mantra of the investigation
and the trial, and you know, and it drives me
crazy when people say that he had a double life.
You know, he's a nineteen year old kid. He's struggling
with his sexuality. He doesn't even know if he's gay
or not. He knows that he likes guys, and he
knows that he wants to explore that side of himself,
but he still had a girlfriend that he loved very much. So,
(31:46):
you know, it's just so unfortunate that the prosecution and
the investigators used that fact against him and then presented
it in court. They're using him is private life, private
as too, as motive and just character assassination. That's the
only way that they were able to convict him is
(32:08):
you know, they had no proof, you know, but they
were able to convict him by making him out to
be this big, fat liar.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
What's crazy to me is that they continue this point
of lie, Lie, Lie, Lie Lie. And I just want
to not only look at what gay kids go through
right now in the coming out process, but in two
thousand and five, because I didn't know a single person
in my high school that was out, I knew a
(32:37):
lot of people who I knew were day who I
hung out with outside of school, but no one that
would admit it in the hallways of the school. And
the pattern was that you would leave for college and
freshman year, you would go somewhere far enough away from
home that you could go experiment with who you wanted
to be. And I have personal experience with you know,
(33:00):
what Brandon was doing was the formula for what teenagers
did at the time.
Speaker 9 (33:05):
Wasn't he just doing what every teen does, which is lie.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
I'm not going to tell my parents if I'm having
sex at eighteen nineteen years old, and.
Speaker 4 (33:14):
It doesn't matter who is with. I don't think that
that's lying. I think that's just creating.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
I mean, okay, you have teenage kids, Andrew, would you
want your child to call you and say, Dad, I'm
sleeping with so and so.
Speaker 4 (33:27):
No, okay, But it's different than lying. It's withholding things
that maybe they don't want to share it. I mean,
withholding and lying are different. Lying means you say this
is not true. Withholding means you're not going to share
a portion of your life with certain people. There's a
big difference between withholding and lying. Unless I mean, in
(33:47):
many cases, of course, there's an overlap, but those are
two different things.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Well, it's the practice of omission, and Brandon didn't even
seem to be doing that. You know, we know that
his roommates, his friends, his parents, his aunt, all of
these people knew Brandon's experimenting, Brandon's going down, but.
Speaker 4 (34:06):
They still had a girlfriend.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
I think what you're talking about is really interesting, right,
I mean even back then, this is years ago, but
every generation goes through it, Like you were saying, you
don't tell your parents what you're doing, and even just
understanding of the lifestyle of this group of people. So
when they're talking to Ranger Collins, I believe, and I
forget which witness it was, was saying that one of
their friends, a female friend, was having a bachelorette party
(34:31):
at this gay club, and Ranger Collins was like kind
of in disbelief, like why would a bunch of you know,
women go to a gay club, as if it was
so absurd for him to think this, and it's like, yeah, no,
they went to this club and they partied, you know,
And so the kids all thought, okay, yeah, we all
go to this club and it's a gay club or
stray club or whatever it is, and they were all
kind of okay going to this club, and Ranger Collins
(34:52):
just thought this was somebody's lying here because there's no
way that that happened. And I think that's just kind
of an indicative of the generational sort of perception.
Speaker 4 (34:59):
Same with like Drag Queen Story Hour. They think that
that's a strip club, it's insidious, and they don't realize
that it's camp and it's funny and it's performance, and
that it's something that's been going on for centuries and
millennia probably. I mean, we have some evidence of that,
so you know, it's like seeing something as seedy and
horrible that could just be for quality. Yeah, it's just
(35:21):
fun fun for other people. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Now, Scott still talks to Brandon in prison quite a bit,
So did he talk to you about that about what
their relationship looks like at this point?
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Scott, Yeah, Yeah, I mean I think they do speak often,
and I think Brandon appreciates having someone on the outside
who believes in him and trusts him outside of his
own family.
Speaker 7 (35:43):
You know.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Well, I mean for anybody else that is going through
the coming out process, you find your community, right and
you make your friendships in that community and you find
your support group and it helps you build a life
that is healthy. Hopefully you know that's the hope that
you have for people. Brandon went to prison immediately, and
I don't know that there is any kind of support
(36:06):
for him in that facility to a explore who he is,
b process what's happened to him, and so Scott being
an ally on the outside, it is powerful on a
lot of different levels. I'm so glad Brandon has someone
(36:28):
like Scott. I'm so grateful that he took the time
to sit with us and give us his insight because
he was so thoughtful and articulate, and I really felt
that his mission was one that people can support. He
studied the case, and he's fought for what he believes
and he continues to fight for what he believes in,
and that's Brandon's innocence. So we'll talk more about that fight,
(36:51):
as well as Brandon and his legal team's ongoing quest
for justice in our next episode. That's it for this
(37:13):
week's episode of True Crime Story. It couldn't happen here,
but be sure to join us next week as we
dive deeper into the Brandon Woodruff case.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
Does he have hope you have hope.
Speaker 8 (37:24):
There's hope. There's always hope.
Speaker 4 (37:26):
I wouldn't give up hope completely.
Speaker 8 (37:28):
There's always hope.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Join us next week as we continue to roll up
our sleeves and dig in. Thank you so much for
joining us. If you haven't watched Sundance TV's True Crime
Story It Couldn't Happen Here, you can catch all of
our episodes streaming on AMC Plus. For more information about
this and other cases we've covered, follow at I see
(37:52):
HH stories on Instagram. True Crime Story It Couldn't Happen
Here was produced by Mischief Far in association with Bungalow
Media and Entertainment, Authentic Management Productions, and Figdonia in partnership
with Sundance TV. Executive producers are me Hillary Burton, Morgan,
Liz Deccessor, Robert Friedman, Mike Powers, and Meg Mortimer. Producers
(38:17):
are Maggie Robinson, Katz and Libby Siegel. Our audio engineer
is Brendan Dalton, with original music by Philip Radiotis. We
want to say a special thank you to everyone who participated,
but especially the families impacted by our cases.
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