November 7, 2023 • 31 mins
So where was Brandon the night of his parent’s murder? The team is breaking down the sequence of events on the night of October 16th, 2005. For more information about this and other cases we've covered, follow @ICHHstories on Instagram.
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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. Brandon is still in the tiny, windowless
interrogation room with Ranger Collins. He stressed, grieving, disheveled, and
(00:24):
unclear exactly what's going on, but maybe starting to notice
that law enforcement are treating him not as a grieving son,
but as a potential suspect, and there are some reasons
why they should be suspicious. Since the untimely death of
Dennis and Norma Woodruff, law enforcement have had several tips
insinuating that Brandon could be involved. Last episode, you heard
(00:48):
part of Charla and Brandon's conversations with law enforcement. We
heard from Charla the difficult relationship she had with her parents,
and we heard from Brandon, who was angry at investigators
for talk seen his dorm room and his dad's Dolly
Parton room. But we also heard him speak about the
positive relationship he had with his parents. This episode, we
(01:08):
will dive into the timeline of the night of October sixteenth,
two thousand and five because, like we discussed in our
last episode, the timeline is everything. I'm Hillary Burton Morgan
and this is true crime story. It couldn't happen here.
(01:36):
Welcome to another episode of It Couldn't Happen Here. I'm
Hillary Burton Morgan and I'm joined by my wonderful teammates
Dan Flaherty, Poe Cutcheons, and Andrew Dunn. So Brandon came
in to speak to law enforcement voluntarily and is still
in his interview with them, So let's just dive into
what happens next.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
They start marking down the timeline with him, so once
they know when he actually left his parents' house, they
can start narrowing down the time of death.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
What the investigators are looking for are two times Brandon's
last time with his family and another time to bookend
a window of time to where the murder could have
been committed by Brandon.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
They're trying to catch him in lies.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
What kind of language do they use to set up
the timeline with him?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
I mean he says, oh, this was around six six
point thirty, yeah, and so then was a half hour?
You ate, sure? Sure? And then you drove from here
to here? How long would that take oh, fifteen minutes.
It's quite suggestive.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
So you leave.
Speaker 5 (02:37):
What I mean, if your dad came with the pizza,
you're talking six thirty or so with the pizza.
Speaker 6 (02:41):
There six footem six footeena because it like we had
already called it in and stuff life when he left.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
Okay, you had one deliver. He just goes and picks
and the imson back.
Speaker 6 (02:50):
Yeah, because we were going to go eat, but then
we decided not to because we were like the guy
that's doing our barn work for us was supposed to
come by or something, so with head at home because
we weren't even eat pizza.
Speaker 7 (03:01):
But then we were like, okay, we'll just eat pizza.
Speaker 5 (03:05):
Okay, all right, So your dad came back with a
pizza about six thirty. You ate dinner with them at
the house, and then you you left so you could
go back over to.
Speaker 7 (03:15):
The house and Heath, right, yes, sir, okay.
Speaker 5 (03:18):
And then at seven you left the parents' house over
in roy City and you go over to Heath, feed the.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
Animals and parent and all that. How long does that
take it? How long does it take to get from
Royd City.
Speaker 6 (03:31):
To get to roy City to Heath to heath, maybe
twenty twenty five minutes, okay, thirty at the most. Okay,
I might have been there at the most for thirty minutes.
Maybe at the most thirty minutes.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
But your birds inside, you go inside to feed it.
Speaker 6 (03:46):
Right, because he's he has to get up, Yeah, there
outside tugs.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
You let the bird out, right, well, you have to,
but I mean just to the cage or like out
of the house or something.
Speaker 7 (03:57):
Now, like out of the cage.
Speaker 5 (03:59):
I'm thinking you take him outside and he takes off,
You're not going to be able to find you know. Okay,
all right, so you feed the dogs and the birds.
You were there for like thirty minutes, so you think
probably by the clock.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
Then you're headed towards Denton.
Speaker 7 (04:11):
Yeah, okay, I know because I know my friends. Like
he was like, come on, like I should have already
been there by then.
Speaker 6 (04:19):
Sure, but I had to pay these animals, so okay,
because my dad would have, but he was still a
waiting on the bargain.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
They then are very nice to him, and they're asking
him all these questions about when he last saw them,
because he had been helping them move. He'd been home
for the weekend from his school over an hour away.
He came home apparently on a lot of weekends, not
just to visit his friends, but to visit his parents
and also to help them with this move and to
help with the animals.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
He'd only been gone, you know, five or six week
right because, as a reminder to the listener, Brandon has
just left for college and Dennis and Norma had bought
a new house in Royce City, but they were still
transitioning everything to the new house and had their animals
still back at the old house in Heath.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
And the move was happening, and the animals had been
hugely his responsibility, so he'd been helping tend to them.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
What should law enforcement do in that interview, I mean,
do you ask them to provide you with times and
the places you've been, or as in this case, do
you make a suggestion and let them say yay or nay.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
This is part of what is weird to me that
they waited this long, because a good policing is you're
trying to lock in a timeline if it's important, and
part of locking it in is getting the time and
the stops and figuring out any receipts, anything you can
get to actually have proof of a timeline. So if
somebody's like I left the house and then I went
and got gas, and then I picked up this person,
(05:42):
and then I went and I deposited money. You want
to go and look at the receipt for the gas station,
see if there's any surveillance video from there wherever they
picked up their friends. The deposit at the bank, that's
a receipt. These are things that you do and you
do them right away to lock in time.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Well, because people forget over time.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
They forgot yet it becomes loose and you want proof
whether they're telling the truth or not. Those receipts are
going to lock it in and help you create a timeline.
It's it's like.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
They lead him into every time.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Did you find that to be the case, Dan, when
you were listening to it.
Speaker 8 (06:14):
I don't know, but it's clear from watching the interview
that Ranger Collins is trying to get firm times from Brandon.
You know, he wants to have when did you do this?
What time was this? And so Brandon is being a
little vague. Ranger Collins say, well, you know, he wants
to write a number down, you know, So he's like okay,
So would you say it was six thirty or would
you say it was eight thirty? And Brands like, yeah,
that's yeah. So it's not necessarily that Ranger Collins is
(06:36):
telling him the time ahead of time, but he wants
to lock him in, like Brandon's being vague about his times.
We ate dinner and then I left.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
He doesn't feel like he's being evasive.
Speaker 8 (06:45):
Though, No, No, I think he's very unclear about what
time any of this stuff happened.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
Oh okay, but you didn't drink at the clubs or not? Okay,
so y'all want to have been and laid it all back?
Man for Sunday night? Was it like? But Monday morning?
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Now?
Speaker 4 (07:01):
By now I guess after midnight you had the dance
off and all that. What time do you leave Dallas?
Speaker 7 (07:10):
I'm trying to give you, like the best answer I
can't get.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
No, that's it's all right. What time would the club
normally close or did you close it down? Or did
you leave her?
Speaker 6 (07:17):
Oh no, we never say that long. No, I would
say we left. I say like one thirty or two,
because like it was like we were trying to get
back when because Robert didn't know.
Speaker 7 (07:32):
But he had a paper, a right, and I was
gonna help me with the behavior, So.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
You're gonna pull them all night or after your clubs
we were trying to do that. I'd like to see
what that paper looks like. I don't know what. Okay,
did you end up helping with it? No bead? Okay?
What what time did y'all get back to a c
You do know?
Speaker 6 (07:53):
I think I don't even know because it was several
hours Okay, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
It's worth remembering this was two and five, and we
didn't all walk around with iPhones in our pocket constantly
knowing what time it was. For a teenage boy who's
bouncing around all over the place to know what time
it was at every single step of his day, that's
a lot to ask from anyone, but specifically a young person.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
And a week ago and a week ago, I.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Couldn't tell you what I was doing Friday at five
thirty a week ago if my life depended on it.
Speaker 8 (08:26):
A couple of things worth noting is the interview with
Brandon and Charla happens the day after the funerals, So
you can't imagine, right like, this is a very traumatic
thing your parents have been murdered. You just went to
their funeral, and you're coming in now to speak to
the police after they've tossed your dorm room and they've
tossed your house and messed with your father's private possessions. Sure,
his mind is going to be a little scattered, right, Yeah, And.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
I mean the fact that they tossed his storm room
shows that he's aware that he's in some way a suspect,
because they wouldn't be tossing his storm room if they weren't.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (08:58):
And what's interesting with Brandon's interview is that before it starts,
Brandon is talking to the lawyers and they're in the
interview room, and the lawyers say to Brandon, look, you
don't have to answer their questions. You have a right
to remain silent here, but they also can arrest you,
so you should cooperate with them. You should answer their questions.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
The lawyers tell Brandon to cooperate. I mean, Jesus, Brandon
is trying to be cooperative, but anything he says in
this room can and will be used against him, And
that feels so confusing for legal defense to advise him
to do so.
Speaker 8 (09:30):
Yeah, So right off the bat, Brandon is being told
by his advisors to tell them everything you know, and
he's trying to be cooperative based on his legal advice.
He's trying to come up with whatever he can come
up with to tell investigators.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
So you can't say I don't remember. You try You're like,
I think, so, yeah, okay around then you're trying to
be helpful, right, it's trying to be helpful.
Speaker 8 (09:50):
And I think the interesting thing also is the timeline.
You know exactly when the pizza happened. I'm not sure
how relevant that is, but it's relevant in sense that
we know around the time that they had dinner, and
that Brandon says he left soon after dinner, and we
have some evidence that that's correct because we have a
phone call that Brandon makes at seven thirty six pm
(10:13):
to his parents, so that would have been when he
left his parents' house after dinner. She didn't answer the phone,
but we have a call record that he did call,
so it would seem that he left his parents' house
when he said he did. The question is what did
he do after that? And the other important phone call
is the phone call that we know that happened around
nine o'clock between Norma and her mom opal they spoke
(10:35):
between nine and nine twenty that night, and we don't
think Brandon was at the house at that point either.
There's no indication. I guess what I'm trying to say
is that every indication was that Brandon did leave the
Royce City House when he said he did.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
From our research, here's the timeline of the night that
Dennis and Norma were murdered. Brandon helps his parents move
during the day. They've got multiple pickup trucks loading them
at the old house in Heath, driving them into the
new house. There's some back and forth going on, and
then we know that they all ate pizza together as
a family. Dan there's a receipt for the pizza, right,
(11:11):
That's right. Dennis went to town picked up the pizza,
and so we know he picked that up and then drove.
The amount of time it took to get home. All
these numbers are simple math, and if you have the
receipt time for when he buys the pizza, we know
how long it takes for him to get from the
pizza place to the house. So then Brandon sits down
(11:33):
with his parents, they eat. Brandon leaves sometime after that
and then it's Brandon's narrative. So he says that he
drove to the house in Heath, he did his chores,
and went and picked up his friends at the Denny's
so they could go out together that night in Dallas.
So we have multiple people that have seen Brandon over
the course of that night, we have multiple people who
(11:55):
have spoken to Brandon over the course of that night.
We have receipts that give us times over the course
of that night, and that is all going to become
incredibly important because those will give us hard times. However,
this is important. In this meeting with law enforcement. Law
enforcement is suggesting loose times to Brandon. It's not until
(12:19):
much later in Brandon's interview where Ranger Collins will drop
what he thinks is a bombshell.
Speaker 5 (12:27):
I'll tell you right now, I've got an eye witness
that saw you and Heath at eleven PM on Sunday night,
between ten and eleven PM at the Heath residence, and
you're putting yourself at a club in dow or at
Alex's home leaving between eleven and eleven fifteen, and Brandon there.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
Is let me tell you, it's impossible. You can't be.
That's our question. You can't be two places.
Speaker 7 (12:53):
How can three of my friends say that I was
with them?
Speaker 4 (12:57):
Well, you know what, we haven't talked to your friend Jornton.
Speaker 5 (12:59):
But here's the thing, Brandon, Okay, you threw out before
over in heath Man.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
I know all my neighbors, and all my neighbors know.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
Me, and I'm telling you right now that a neighbor
has contacted us and said on Sunday night, and I
know it was Sunday night, and I know it was
between ten and eleven PM.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
That's as far as I can get it narrowed down.
Speaker 5 (13:19):
I saw Brandon at the Heath address and you and
now all of a sudden, you've told us this whole
story about where you are and where you should be.
Speaker 4 (13:30):
And that's the question that we've got. How can you
be two places at once?
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Let's talk about the neighbor in Heath. What's curious is
that the neighbor in Heath said he saw Brandon pulling
in at a much later time than Brandon said he
got to the Heath house. And that is going to
be a very, very big deal. I have the interview
(14:08):
notes from when law enforcement spoke to that neighbor. When
law enforcement went out to the heath House after the
bodies were discovered, Randall Lunz wanted to make a statement.
In his interview, he said he'd been a neighbor of
the Woodruffs for nine years, but he did not socialize
with them. Still, somehow he knew that Brandon was not
(14:32):
doing well at school and that Dennis had told him
this was his chance to make it or break it.
He says that Norma had asked him to keep an
eye on the heath House while they were in the
process of moving to Royce City. Now he tells investigators
that he saw Brandon arrive in Norma's Silverado between ten
(14:52):
and eleven, and he knows it's that time because he
watches the news every single night at that time and
he stands by his bedroom and window, so that's the
only way he could have seen this truck coming and
going at that time.
Speaker 8 (15:05):
When Brandon says, I left my parents' house in Royce
City around seven point thirty and then I arrived at
the heath House around eight and then I left to
meet my friends. You know, that's his story, And in
that interview, Rinder Collins says, hey, but you know what
you're lying because I already spoke to yourn extraor neighbor
in Heath and he says he saw you there between
ten and eleven pm.
Speaker 9 (15:26):
R rand Did anything happen with you and your parents?
Speaker 7 (15:29):
There's like that's the dud too, Like there's I know
that's crazy.
Speaker 9 (15:34):
I know, but I've seen crazy stuff happen. You have
to you're sing on TV, TV everything and pick kids
that love their parents and just something flies off, something snaps, Okay,
And if something did and somebody knows it and is
remorseful for it, that's a person that can be helped.
If a person says snaps and then lies about it,
that's a person who knew it was wrong to begin with.
Speaker 6 (15:56):
Well, what I'm saying is okay, I just want to Josh,
I got we are going to check out.
Speaker 7 (16:03):
Is I don't know how they can say that I
was there.
Speaker 9 (16:05):
If I'm asking you, Brandon straight up, is if something
happened with you and your parents, get.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
Right, and that's why you get help.
Speaker 9 (16:12):
If you don't, I'm gonna tell you, they're gonna go
at you and think you're the biggest villain in the
world because you've lied about it, and you're gonna have
motives and you're gonna have all this other crap instead
of saying, you know, me and my parents got an argument,
something happened. I don't even know what happened, and something
bad happened if something did, but that's okay.
Speaker 5 (16:29):
Huge, So you're telling us straight up, I tell you
you did not kill your parent.
Speaker 7 (16:34):
No, that's fucking crazy. Chuse my language.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
The thing is, Brandon is I mean.
Speaker 6 (16:43):
No offense to y'all, but I'm like I was already
pissed allout y'all.
Speaker 7 (16:47):
No, I'm more pissed all aout y'all.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
So well, you know what you should be.
Speaker 6 (16:50):
I'm just I'm saying that I don't think that Hine
County itself has tried to obviously. I think that they're
trying to look for an easy way out of this,
and that's what I think.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
Do you think you the easiest way out?
Speaker 7 (17:01):
Well, I don't know what.
Speaker 6 (17:02):
I don't know how you can sit here and tell
me that that Obviously y'all don't know who who I am,
or who my family was or anything. Well, you're right
I don't, because I can guarantee an to you that
that would be no way in hell that that would
ever happen.
Speaker 5 (17:17):
Okay, well, let me ask you this because we've been
called by a teacher from Rockwall. We're told from a
teacher in Rockwall that after this happened that the kids
there in the class said, well, dang, if they're dead.
Speaker 4 (17:29):
Brandon did that. Everybody knows he hates his parents.
Speaker 7 (17:32):
Do do you know? Do you know?
Speaker 6 (17:33):
I've heard anything and everything from situations like that to
my parents being crackatics tonight. You don't know what I've
been through the past couple of days. And to be honestly,
rumors always fly. I understand, you know what whatever one
person thinks is they juice his information might be to
the other one's school. There you go, Yeah, to you
get what I'm saying I do? Can I go with them?
Speaker 4 (17:57):
Yeah? Yeah, you're I mean, you've been free to go
the whole time.
Speaker 10 (18:12):
Dan.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
What happens next?
Speaker 8 (18:13):
Well, after Brandon's interview, rayjer Collins starts immediately putting together
the information he needs to apply for an arrest warrant
for Brandon. So he compiles his documents and his information,
gets it to the prosecutor's office and gets an arrest
warrant which they serve the next day.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
What is the basis of the arrest warrant?
Speaker 8 (18:33):
So what I'm looking at is the probable cause affidavit
used to obtain the arrest warrant. Now, a probable cause affidavit,
for those who don't know, is like a sworn statement
that officers use to request either a search warrant or
an arrest warrant from a judge. So in this AffA David,
there are several things. Primarily is like we were saying,
the forty five caliber long cult that went missing from
(18:54):
Brandon's girlfriend's house that Brandon had access to, and the
supposed MySpace page claimed mean that he hated his parents
and one of them dead. But another thing that's interesting
is that a couple people had said that Brandon could
be cruel to animals. For example, Mike Etherington says that
Brandon had a cat, a mother cat, and that he
killed the cat with a shovel and then took her
(19:16):
kittens and dropped them from an overpass.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
That's a horrible story.
Speaker 8 (19:20):
Horrific, right, And I think that we all sort of
you have seen enough shows about serial killers or psychotic
people who are cruel to animals and that sort of
indicates that they could be cruel to people.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
It's an early sign of a serial killer in everybody's.
Speaker 8 (19:33):
Mind, exactly, and it's something that they actually list on
the probable cause Affidavid. I.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Now, meanwhile, this claim of animal abuse is problematic coming
from Mike Gatherington because Mike Etherington has his own accusation, right.
Speaker 8 (19:49):
Yeah, Apparently Dennis told his sister Kathy that he suspected
that Mike had poisoned the family dog.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
So you have these wild, really horrific accusations line back
and forth.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Between these two boys who had once been best friends.
I mean, they were members of four h together. They
were part of a cliq called the shit Kickers.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Police have used that to have an arrest warrant.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
What does a story about a report of animal cruelty
have to do? I mean, I've never actually heard that
or is it reasonable?
Speaker 2 (20:23):
It's pretty weird. I mean for it to be on
an arrest warrant, that's a wild thing to put in
an arrest.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
War It's just an allegation from another party.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
A party that still hasn't been proven. You're trying to
prove something based on another unproven story.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Right, It's not like he has an arrest record for
cruelty to animals.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Right now, that could be that there's a person who
is violent towards other living things and we have a
record of it. This is an accusation by somebody who
has accused him of other things but is known to
have a feud with him. They have a beef.
Speaker 8 (20:56):
Just so we're all on the same page. Apparently, Michelle Lee,
Brandon's girlfriend's mom, and Mike Etherington both express concerns to
investigators in reference to mysterious deaths of several animals in
Brandon's care, which included a horse, a dog, and a lamb.
Not to mention the anecdote I mentioned earlier that Mike
shared with investigators about striking the mother cat in the
(21:19):
head to kill it and then dropping her kittens from
an overpass. So that's the line form the actual probable
cause affidavit.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
I mean this sounds like accusations that preteens might make.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
And also, living in a horse country, you don't murder
a horse and have They're the most expensive animals on
the planet. Like someone's going to raise a red flag
if you kill a horse.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
But a horse or a sheep is going to die
when you are taking care of I mean animals die.
When you have a lot of animals that you care
for over the years, they don't all live.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
It's an odd thing to put into an arrest warrant.
What should be in an arrest warrant? What should law
enforcement use to procure a warrant?
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Eyewitness statements? The weapon, I mean the fact that a
gun that may have been similar to the gun used
that went missing, that a lot of people had access
to as a reason for arrest. That would be a
reason for a search warrant to go see if there's
any gun anywhere that person could have been.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Mike says that on Homecoming weekend, a group of friends
stayed over at Morgan Lee's house, so a lot of
people were in and out of her house. They should
have searched the home of every single kid who had
been at Morgan Lee's house.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Yeah, and we should talk about whether anyone ever fingerprinted
or did any DNA touch evidence on the holster that
she brought in when she said that the holster was
missing the gun.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
You're talking about the holster that Michelle Lee, Morgan Lee's
mom brought into law enforcement Because theoretically I mean, if
Brandon pulled the gun from the holster, he should have
left touch DNA.
Speaker 8 (23:16):
I mean, the other thing they mentioned in the arrest
Affidavid was that they thought Branded was incorrect about his timeline.
I mean the timeline is a big factor in this right.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Well, that's yeah, it always goes back to the timeline.
I'm telling you, there are a lot of things on
this case that are really beare looking deeply into and
the conversation and the suppositions that we're making are not
things that we would put on a TV show, but
they are what goes on behind the scenes when we're
trying to figure out things because we, like everyone else,
are trying to understand the importance of things or what
(23:48):
goes sideways or what's spot on. You know, we're trying
to figure it out like anybody else as we're doing it,
especially because we want it to then what we put
on Air two be factually based or clearly a supposition,
not acting like our riff and brainstorm is truth. But
(24:11):
that said, we don't know if Brandon did it or not.
I think it's really important for us to always step
back and say we don't know a lot of what
we're saying, feels like we're going, oh my god, let's
pick apart the holes to show he didn't do it.
And we're picking apart the holes in a case because
we see things that stink.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
What we're seeing in the twenty four hours before Brandon's
arrest are a number of opportunities for law enforcement to
pump the brakes and say, hold on, something's weird here.
This etheringtin woodroof connection is weird. There's clearly something going
on here. Before we rush in and arrest a nineteen
year old kid, maybe we do a little bit of research,
(24:52):
you know. Instead, Brandon is staying at his aunt's house
in Texarkana at the border of Texas and Arkansas, and
as grand mother is there, and it's the morning of
the twenty fourth. It's been a full week since his
parent's death.
Speaker 8 (25:09):
It's two days after the funeral, six days after the
body was found.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
God, it's only six days and they've already made the
decision that it's Brandon. That's wild. A six day investigation.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Well, it wouldn't be wild if there was actually a gun,
if there was physical evidence, if there was actually physical
evidence or eyewitness.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Evidence, if they found blood, on Brandon or anything like that.
We will get into all of that, but what we're
going to discuss right now is what happened six days
after the bodies are found. What happens that morning, Dan Well, the.
Speaker 8 (25:42):
Whatcher family are all sort of staying together at relative's house.
I believe that Bonnie is there, and Brandon is there,
the kids are both there. You know, all is just
sort of circling the wagon, is just sort of feed
together to comfort themselves, and Brandon's asleep by I think,
on a chair in the living room, and basically the police,
essentially a swat team, descends on the house, comes into
(26:03):
the house, takes Brandon into custody, shocking everybody. I mean,
Bonnie certainly tells a story of how surprised they were
and how horrific the whole scene was.
Speaker 10 (26:16):
I was at my daughter's house and Brandon was there.
He was asleep in the recliner, and I was asleep
in the one of the bedrooms. And after I don't know,
I guess i'd just gotten up, but they came and
knocked on the door. I think Kathy had been somewhere
and came back, and they came up right in the house.
(26:37):
And told Brandon he was under arrest and he looked shocked,
you know, he looked shocked, and I was shocked. I
couldn't believe. And I said, I don't understand why you're
resting him. I couldn't understand it. You know. I was upset.
I was kind of mad. I was really mad.
Speaker 8 (27:01):
And this of the Texas Rangers who came where it's.
Speaker 4 (27:04):
The sheriff's department.
Speaker 10 (27:05):
I think it was a sheriff's department. I think he
just sent them out. But I was upset with it.
Speaker 8 (27:10):
So what were you thinking at that time?
Speaker 10 (27:13):
I thought they made a mistake. I think they made him.
And they still think they made a mistake. That my
grandson's paying the price.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
To the dismay of Brandon's family. He is formally arrested,
and so sometime after that, Bonnie finds herself with Ranger
Collins again.
Speaker 10 (27:32):
After Brandon was arrested. We had a meeting with the
rangers and he was talking. They were saying that they
thought Brandon did it and all this, and I said,
you're crazy. I told the ranger that you're crazy. I said,
you don't even know my grandson. And he still don't.
(27:57):
He still didn't know my grandson. He didn't try to
get to know him, and he didn't try to find
out the truth. And I hope he pays.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
Why do you think he did that?
Speaker 10 (28:10):
He just wanted to solve that case because people were
afraid around there. They didn't even investigate very long. But
my grandson's innocent. And I told him that night. He said,
your grandson still has time to repent. I said he
(28:30):
didn't have to repent because my grandson didn't do it.
I think I know my grandson. You don't know my grandson,
and I know to this day even more so that
my grandson didn't do it. If you only knew his heart,
(28:51):
you know he has a great He has a good heart.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
One thing that really strikes me about when Bonnie says
that Collins has told her that Brandon can still repent.
Repentance is a word I would not expect coming from
a law enforcement official about a person who has been
(29:14):
accused of a crime. You know, repentance, church, and state,
all those things.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
I mean.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Noel says evil, I mean evil. I believe in evil.
Christian morality becomes the language that's used by these official
law enforcement and other people surrounding this case is striking
to me and.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Will definitely dive into that more in our next episode,
because one day after Brandon is arrested, his sister Charla
requests a second interview with Ranger Collins and basically gives
them the logline for the case.
Speaker 11 (29:51):
A lot of people are saying you're gay, and if
you lie, I know that. Ask if you're gay. If
you lie about little things, Brandon think upsetting the family.
If you lie about little things but you're chilling the
truth about the big things, they're going to know you're
a liar and they're not.
Speaker 4 (30:08):
Going to believe you.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
We'll dive into Charla's second interview and more in our
next episode. That's it for this 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
(30:30):
Brandon Woodruff case and continue to roll up our sleeves
and dig in. Thank you so much for joining us.
If you haven't watched sun Dance 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 ice HH stories
(30:54):
on Instagram. True crime story It Couldn't Happen Here was
produced by Miss jeff Farm 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 Accessor,
Robert Friedman, Mike Powers, and Meg Mortimer. Producers are Maggie
(31:19):
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 family's 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. Brandon is still in the tiny, windowless
interrogation room with Ranger Collins. He stressed, grieving, disheveled, and
(00:24):
unclear exactly what's going on, but maybe starting to notice
that law enforcement are treating him not as a grieving son,
but as a potential suspect, and there are some reasons
why they should be suspicious. Since the untimely death of
Dennis and Norma Woodruff, law enforcement have had several tips
insinuating that Brandon could be involved. Last episode, you heard
(00:48):
part of Charla and Brandon's conversations with law enforcement. We
heard from Charla the difficult relationship she had with her parents,
and we heard from Brandon, who was angry at investigators
for talk seen his dorm room and his dad's Dolly
Parton room. But we also heard him speak about the
positive relationship he had with his parents. This episode, we
(01:08):
will dive into the timeline of the night of October sixteenth,
two thousand and five because, like we discussed in our
last episode, the timeline is everything. I'm Hillary Burton Morgan
and this is true crime story. It couldn't happen here.
(01:36):
Welcome to another episode of It Couldn't Happen Here. I'm
Hillary Burton Morgan and I'm joined by my wonderful teammates
Dan Flaherty, Poe Cutcheons, and Andrew Dunn. So Brandon came
in to speak to law enforcement voluntarily and is still
in his interview with them, So let's just dive into
what happens next.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
They start marking down the timeline with him, so once
they know when he actually left his parents' house, they
can start narrowing down the time of death.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
What the investigators are looking for are two times Brandon's
last time with his family and another time to bookend
a window of time to where the murder could have
been committed by Brandon.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
They're trying to catch him in lies.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
What kind of language do they use to set up
the timeline with him?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
I mean he says, oh, this was around six six
point thirty, yeah, and so then was a half hour?
You ate, sure? Sure? And then you drove from here
to here? How long would that take oh, fifteen minutes.
It's quite suggestive.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
So you leave.
Speaker 5 (02:37):
What I mean, if your dad came with the pizza,
you're talking six thirty or so with the pizza.
Speaker 6 (02:41):
There six footem six footeena because it like we had
already called it in and stuff life when he left.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
Okay, you had one deliver. He just goes and picks
and the imson back.
Speaker 6 (02:50):
Yeah, because we were going to go eat, but then
we decided not to because we were like the guy
that's doing our barn work for us was supposed to
come by or something, so with head at home because
we weren't even eat pizza.
Speaker 7 (03:01):
But then we were like, okay, we'll just eat pizza.
Speaker 5 (03:05):
Okay, all right, So your dad came back with a
pizza about six thirty. You ate dinner with them at
the house, and then you you left so you could
go back over to.
Speaker 7 (03:15):
The house and Heath, right, yes, sir, okay.
Speaker 5 (03:18):
And then at seven you left the parents' house over
in roy City and you go over to Heath, feed the.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
Animals and parent and all that. How long does that
take it? How long does it take to get from
Royd City.
Speaker 6 (03:31):
To get to roy City to Heath to heath, maybe
twenty twenty five minutes, okay, thirty at the most. Okay,
I might have been there at the most for thirty minutes.
Maybe at the most thirty minutes.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
But your birds inside, you go inside to feed it.
Speaker 6 (03:46):
Right, because he's he has to get up, Yeah, there
outside tugs.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
You let the bird out, right, well, you have to,
but I mean just to the cage or like out
of the house or something.
Speaker 7 (03:57):
Now, like out of the cage.
Speaker 5 (03:59):
I'm thinking you take him outside and he takes off,
You're not going to be able to find you know. Okay,
all right, so you feed the dogs and the birds.
You were there for like thirty minutes, so you think
probably by the clock.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
Then you're headed towards Denton.
Speaker 7 (04:11):
Yeah, okay, I know because I know my friends. Like
he was like, come on, like I should have already
been there by then.
Speaker 6 (04:19):
Sure, but I had to pay these animals, so okay,
because my dad would have, but he was still a
waiting on the bargain.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
They then are very nice to him, and they're asking
him all these questions about when he last saw them,
because he had been helping them move. He'd been home
for the weekend from his school over an hour away.
He came home apparently on a lot of weekends, not
just to visit his friends, but to visit his parents
and also to help them with this move and to
help with the animals.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
He'd only been gone, you know, five or six week
right because, as a reminder to the listener, Brandon has
just left for college and Dennis and Norma had bought
a new house in Royce City, but they were still
transitioning everything to the new house and had their animals
still back at the old house in Heath.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
And the move was happening, and the animals had been
hugely his responsibility, so he'd been helping tend to them.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
What should law enforcement do in that interview, I mean,
do you ask them to provide you with times and
the places you've been, or as in this case, do
you make a suggestion and let them say yay or nay.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
This is part of what is weird to me that
they waited this long, because a good policing is you're
trying to lock in a timeline if it's important, and
part of locking it in is getting the time and
the stops and figuring out any receipts, anything you can
get to actually have proof of a timeline. So if
somebody's like I left the house and then I went
and got gas, and then I picked up this person,
(05:42):
and then I went and I deposited money. You want
to go and look at the receipt for the gas station,
see if there's any surveillance video from there wherever they
picked up their friends. The deposit at the bank, that's
a receipt. These are things that you do and you
do them right away to lock in time.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Well, because people forget over time.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
They forgot yet it becomes loose and you want proof
whether they're telling the truth or not. Those receipts are
going to lock it in and help you create a timeline.
It's it's like.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
They lead him into every time.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Did you find that to be the case, Dan, when
you were listening to it.
Speaker 8 (06:14):
I don't know, but it's clear from watching the interview
that Ranger Collins is trying to get firm times from Brandon.
You know, he wants to have when did you do this?
What time was this? And so Brandon is being a
little vague. Ranger Collins say, well, you know, he wants
to write a number down, you know, So he's like okay,
So would you say it was six thirty or would
you say it was eight thirty? And Brands like, yeah,
that's yeah. So it's not necessarily that Ranger Collins is
(06:36):
telling him the time ahead of time, but he wants
to lock him in, like Brandon's being vague about his times.
We ate dinner and then I left.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
He doesn't feel like he's being evasive.
Speaker 8 (06:45):
Though, No, No, I think he's very unclear about what
time any of this stuff happened.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
Oh okay, but you didn't drink at the clubs or not? Okay,
so y'all want to have been and laid it all back?
Man for Sunday night? Was it like? But Monday morning?
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Now?
Speaker 4 (07:01):
By now I guess after midnight you had the dance
off and all that. What time do you leave Dallas?
Speaker 7 (07:10):
I'm trying to give you, like the best answer I
can't get.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
No, that's it's all right. What time would the club
normally close or did you close it down? Or did
you leave her?
Speaker 6 (07:17):
Oh no, we never say that long. No, I would
say we left. I say like one thirty or two,
because like it was like we were trying to get
back when because Robert didn't know.
Speaker 7 (07:32):
But he had a paper, a right, and I was
gonna help me with the behavior, So.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
You're gonna pull them all night or after your clubs
we were trying to do that. I'd like to see
what that paper looks like. I don't know what. Okay,
did you end up helping with it? No bead? Okay?
What what time did y'all get back to a c
You do know?
Speaker 6 (07:53):
I think I don't even know because it was several
hours Okay, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
It's worth remembering this was two and five, and we
didn't all walk around with iPhones in our pocket constantly
knowing what time it was. For a teenage boy who's
bouncing around all over the place to know what time
it was at every single step of his day, that's
a lot to ask from anyone, but specifically a young person.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
And a week ago and a week ago, I.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Couldn't tell you what I was doing Friday at five
thirty a week ago if my life depended on it.
Speaker 8 (08:26):
A couple of things worth noting is the interview with
Brandon and Charla happens the day after the funerals, So
you can't imagine, right like, this is a very traumatic
thing your parents have been murdered. You just went to
their funeral, and you're coming in now to speak to
the police after they've tossed your dorm room and they've
tossed your house and messed with your father's private possessions. Sure,
his mind is going to be a little scattered, right, Yeah, And.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
I mean the fact that they tossed his storm room
shows that he's aware that he's in some way a suspect,
because they wouldn't be tossing his storm room if they weren't.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (08:58):
And what's interesting with Brandon's interview is that before it starts,
Brandon is talking to the lawyers and they're in the
interview room, and the lawyers say to Brandon, look, you
don't have to answer their questions. You have a right
to remain silent here, but they also can arrest you,
so you should cooperate with them. You should answer their questions.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
The lawyers tell Brandon to cooperate. I mean, Jesus, Brandon
is trying to be cooperative, but anything he says in
this room can and will be used against him, And
that feels so confusing for legal defense to advise him
to do so.
Speaker 8 (09:30):
Yeah, So right off the bat, Brandon is being told
by his advisors to tell them everything you know, and
he's trying to be cooperative based on his legal advice.
He's trying to come up with whatever he can come
up with to tell investigators.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
So you can't say I don't remember. You try You're like,
I think, so, yeah, okay around then you're trying to
be helpful, right, it's trying to be helpful.
Speaker 8 (09:50):
And I think the interesting thing also is the timeline.
You know exactly when the pizza happened. I'm not sure
how relevant that is, but it's relevant in sense that
we know around the time that they had dinner, and
that Brandon says he left soon after dinner, and we
have some evidence that that's correct because we have a
phone call that Brandon makes at seven thirty six pm
(10:13):
to his parents, so that would have been when he
left his parents' house after dinner. She didn't answer the phone,
but we have a call record that he did call,
so it would seem that he left his parents' house
when he said he did. The question is what did
he do after that? And the other important phone call
is the phone call that we know that happened around
nine o'clock between Norma and her mom opal they spoke
(10:35):
between nine and nine twenty that night, and we don't
think Brandon was at the house at that point either.
There's no indication. I guess what I'm trying to say
is that every indication was that Brandon did leave the
Royce City House when he said he did.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
From our research, here's the timeline of the night that
Dennis and Norma were murdered. Brandon helps his parents move
during the day. They've got multiple pickup trucks loading them
at the old house in Heath, driving them into the
new house. There's some back and forth going on, and
then we know that they all ate pizza together as
a family. Dan there's a receipt for the pizza, right,
(11:11):
That's right. Dennis went to town picked up the pizza,
and so we know he picked that up and then drove.
The amount of time it took to get home. All
these numbers are simple math, and if you have the
receipt time for when he buys the pizza, we know
how long it takes for him to get from the
pizza place to the house. So then Brandon sits down
(11:33):
with his parents, they eat. Brandon leaves sometime after that
and then it's Brandon's narrative. So he says that he
drove to the house in Heath, he did his chores,
and went and picked up his friends at the Denny's
so they could go out together that night in Dallas.
So we have multiple people that have seen Brandon over
the course of that night, we have multiple people who
(11:55):
have spoken to Brandon over the course of that night.
We have receipts that give us times over the course
of that night, and that is all going to become
incredibly important because those will give us hard times. However,
this is important. In this meeting with law enforcement. Law
enforcement is suggesting loose times to Brandon. It's not until
(12:19):
much later in Brandon's interview where Ranger Collins will drop
what he thinks is a bombshell.
Speaker 5 (12:27):
I'll tell you right now, I've got an eye witness
that saw you and Heath at eleven PM on Sunday night,
between ten and eleven PM at the Heath residence, and
you're putting yourself at a club in dow or at
Alex's home leaving between eleven and eleven fifteen, and Brandon there.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
Is let me tell you, it's impossible. You can't be.
That's our question. You can't be two places.
Speaker 7 (12:53):
How can three of my friends say that I was
with them?
Speaker 4 (12:57):
Well, you know what, we haven't talked to your friend Jornton.
Speaker 5 (12:59):
But here's the thing, Brandon, Okay, you threw out before
over in heath Man.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
I know all my neighbors, and all my neighbors know.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
Me, and I'm telling you right now that a neighbor
has contacted us and said on Sunday night, and I
know it was Sunday night, and I know it was
between ten and eleven PM.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
That's as far as I can get it narrowed down.
Speaker 5 (13:19):
I saw Brandon at the Heath address and you and
now all of a sudden, you've told us this whole
story about where you are and where you should be.
Speaker 4 (13:30):
And that's the question that we've got. How can you
be two places at once?
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Let's talk about the neighbor in Heath. What's curious is
that the neighbor in Heath said he saw Brandon pulling
in at a much later time than Brandon said he
got to the Heath house. And that is going to
be a very, very big deal. I have the interview
(14:08):
notes from when law enforcement spoke to that neighbor. When
law enforcement went out to the heath House after the
bodies were discovered, Randall Lunz wanted to make a statement.
In his interview, he said he'd been a neighbor of
the Woodruffs for nine years, but he did not socialize
with them. Still, somehow he knew that Brandon was not
(14:32):
doing well at school and that Dennis had told him
this was his chance to make it or break it.
He says that Norma had asked him to keep an
eye on the heath House while they were in the
process of moving to Royce City. Now he tells investigators
that he saw Brandon arrive in Norma's Silverado between ten
(14:52):
and eleven, and he knows it's that time because he
watches the news every single night at that time and
he stands by his bedroom and window, so that's the
only way he could have seen this truck coming and
going at that time.
Speaker 8 (15:05):
When Brandon says, I left my parents' house in Royce
City around seven point thirty and then I arrived at
the heath House around eight and then I left to
meet my friends. You know, that's his story, And in
that interview, Rinder Collins says, hey, but you know what
you're lying because I already spoke to yourn extraor neighbor
in Heath and he says he saw you there between
ten and eleven pm.
Speaker 9 (15:26):
R rand Did anything happen with you and your parents?
Speaker 7 (15:29):
There's like that's the dud too, Like there's I know
that's crazy.
Speaker 9 (15:34):
I know, but I've seen crazy stuff happen. You have
to you're sing on TV, TV everything and pick kids
that love their parents and just something flies off, something snaps, Okay,
And if something did and somebody knows it and is
remorseful for it, that's a person that can be helped.
If a person says snaps and then lies about it,
that's a person who knew it was wrong to begin with.
Speaker 6 (15:56):
Well, what I'm saying is okay, I just want to Josh,
I got we are going to check out.
Speaker 7 (16:03):
Is I don't know how they can say that I
was there.
Speaker 9 (16:05):
If I'm asking you, Brandon straight up, is if something
happened with you and your parents, get.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
Right, and that's why you get help.
Speaker 9 (16:12):
If you don't, I'm gonna tell you, they're gonna go
at you and think you're the biggest villain in the
world because you've lied about it, and you're gonna have
motives and you're gonna have all this other crap instead
of saying, you know, me and my parents got an argument,
something happened. I don't even know what happened, and something
bad happened if something did, but that's okay.
Speaker 5 (16:29):
Huge, So you're telling us straight up, I tell you
you did not kill your parent.
Speaker 7 (16:34):
No, that's fucking crazy. Chuse my language.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
The thing is, Brandon is I mean.
Speaker 6 (16:43):
No offense to y'all, but I'm like I was already
pissed allout y'all.
Speaker 7 (16:47):
No, I'm more pissed all aout y'all.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
So well, you know what you should be.
Speaker 6 (16:50):
I'm just I'm saying that I don't think that Hine
County itself has tried to obviously. I think that they're
trying to look for an easy way out of this,
and that's what I think.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
Do you think you the easiest way out?
Speaker 7 (17:01):
Well, I don't know what.
Speaker 6 (17:02):
I don't know how you can sit here and tell
me that that Obviously y'all don't know who who I am,
or who my family was or anything. Well, you're right
I don't, because I can guarantee an to you that
that would be no way in hell that that would
ever happen.
Speaker 5 (17:17):
Okay, well, let me ask you this because we've been
called by a teacher from Rockwall. We're told from a
teacher in Rockwall that after this happened that the kids
there in the class said, well, dang, if they're dead.
Speaker 4 (17:29):
Brandon did that. Everybody knows he hates his parents.
Speaker 7 (17:32):
Do do you know? Do you know?
Speaker 6 (17:33):
I've heard anything and everything from situations like that to
my parents being crackatics tonight. You don't know what I've
been through the past couple of days. And to be honestly,
rumors always fly. I understand, you know what whatever one
person thinks is they juice his information might be to
the other one's school. There you go, Yeah, to you
get what I'm saying I do? Can I go with them?
Speaker 4 (17:57):
Yeah? Yeah, you're I mean, you've been free to go
the whole time.
Speaker 10 (18:12):
Dan.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
What happens next?
Speaker 8 (18:13):
Well, after Brandon's interview, rayjer Collins starts immediately putting together
the information he needs to apply for an arrest warrant
for Brandon. So he compiles his documents and his information,
gets it to the prosecutor's office and gets an arrest
warrant which they serve the next day.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
What is the basis of the arrest warrant?
Speaker 8 (18:33):
So what I'm looking at is the probable cause affidavit
used to obtain the arrest warrant. Now, a probable cause affidavit,
for those who don't know, is like a sworn statement
that officers use to request either a search warrant or
an arrest warrant from a judge. So in this AffA David,
there are several things. Primarily is like we were saying,
the forty five caliber long cult that went missing from
(18:54):
Brandon's girlfriend's house that Brandon had access to, and the
supposed MySpace page claimed mean that he hated his parents
and one of them dead. But another thing that's interesting
is that a couple people had said that Brandon could
be cruel to animals. For example, Mike Etherington says that
Brandon had a cat, a mother cat, and that he
killed the cat with a shovel and then took her
(19:16):
kittens and dropped them from an overpass.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
That's a horrible story.
Speaker 8 (19:20):
Horrific, right, And I think that we all sort of
you have seen enough shows about serial killers or psychotic
people who are cruel to animals and that sort of
indicates that they could be cruel to people.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
It's an early sign of a serial killer in everybody's.
Speaker 8 (19:33):
Mind, exactly, and it's something that they actually list on
the probable cause Affidavid. I.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Now, meanwhile, this claim of animal abuse is problematic coming
from Mike Gatherington because Mike Etherington has his own accusation, right.
Speaker 8 (19:49):
Yeah, Apparently Dennis told his sister Kathy that he suspected
that Mike had poisoned the family dog.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
So you have these wild, really horrific accusations line back
and forth.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Between these two boys who had once been best friends.
I mean, they were members of four h together. They
were part of a cliq called the shit Kickers.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Police have used that to have an arrest warrant.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
What does a story about a report of animal cruelty
have to do? I mean, I've never actually heard that
or is it reasonable?
Speaker 2 (20:23):
It's pretty weird. I mean for it to be on
an arrest warrant, that's a wild thing to put in
an arrest.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
War It's just an allegation from another party.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
A party that still hasn't been proven. You're trying to
prove something based on another unproven story.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Right, It's not like he has an arrest record for
cruelty to animals.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Right now, that could be that there's a person who
is violent towards other living things and we have a
record of it. This is an accusation by somebody who
has accused him of other things but is known to
have a feud with him. They have a beef.
Speaker 8 (20:56):
Just so we're all on the same page. Apparently, Michelle Lee,
Brandon's girlfriend's mom, and Mike Etherington both express concerns to
investigators in reference to mysterious deaths of several animals in
Brandon's care, which included a horse, a dog, and a lamb.
Not to mention the anecdote I mentioned earlier that Mike
shared with investigators about striking the mother cat in the
(21:19):
head to kill it and then dropping her kittens from
an overpass. So that's the line form the actual probable
cause affidavit.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
I mean this sounds like accusations that preteens might make.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
And also, living in a horse country, you don't murder
a horse and have They're the most expensive animals on
the planet. Like someone's going to raise a red flag
if you kill a horse.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
But a horse or a sheep is going to die
when you are taking care of I mean animals die.
When you have a lot of animals that you care
for over the years, they don't all live.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
It's an odd thing to put into an arrest warrant.
What should be in an arrest warrant? What should law
enforcement use to procure a warrant?
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Eyewitness statements? The weapon, I mean the fact that a
gun that may have been similar to the gun used
that went missing, that a lot of people had access
to as a reason for arrest. That would be a
reason for a search warrant to go see if there's
any gun anywhere that person could have been.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Mike says that on Homecoming weekend, a group of friends
stayed over at Morgan Lee's house, so a lot of
people were in and out of her house. They should
have searched the home of every single kid who had
been at Morgan Lee's house.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Yeah, and we should talk about whether anyone ever fingerprinted
or did any DNA touch evidence on the holster that
she brought in when she said that the holster was
missing the gun.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
You're talking about the holster that Michelle Lee, Morgan Lee's
mom brought into law enforcement Because theoretically I mean, if
Brandon pulled the gun from the holster, he should have
left touch DNA.
Speaker 8 (23:16):
I mean, the other thing they mentioned in the arrest
Affidavid was that they thought Branded was incorrect about his timeline.
I mean the timeline is a big factor in this right.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Well, that's yeah, it always goes back to the timeline.
I'm telling you, there are a lot of things on
this case that are really beare looking deeply into and
the conversation and the suppositions that we're making are not
things that we would put on a TV show, but
they are what goes on behind the scenes when we're
trying to figure out things because we, like everyone else,
are trying to understand the importance of things or what
(23:48):
goes sideways or what's spot on. You know, we're trying
to figure it out like anybody else as we're doing it,
especially because we want it to then what we put
on Air two be factually based or clearly a supposition,
not acting like our riff and brainstorm is truth. But
(24:11):
that said, we don't know if Brandon did it or not.
I think it's really important for us to always step
back and say we don't know a lot of what
we're saying, feels like we're going, oh my god, let's
pick apart the holes to show he didn't do it.
And we're picking apart the holes in a case because
we see things that stink.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
What we're seeing in the twenty four hours before Brandon's
arrest are a number of opportunities for law enforcement to
pump the brakes and say, hold on, something's weird here.
This etheringtin woodroof connection is weird. There's clearly something going
on here. Before we rush in and arrest a nineteen
year old kid, maybe we do a little bit of research,
(24:52):
you know. Instead, Brandon is staying at his aunt's house
in Texarkana at the border of Texas and Arkansas, and
as grand mother is there, and it's the morning of
the twenty fourth. It's been a full week since his
parent's death.
Speaker 8 (25:09):
It's two days after the funeral, six days after the
body was found.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
God, it's only six days and they've already made the
decision that it's Brandon. That's wild. A six day investigation.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Well, it wouldn't be wild if there was actually a gun,
if there was physical evidence, if there was actually physical
evidence or eyewitness.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Evidence, if they found blood, on Brandon or anything like that.
We will get into all of that, but what we're
going to discuss right now is what happened six days
after the bodies are found. What happens that morning, Dan Well, the.
Speaker 8 (25:42):
Whatcher family are all sort of staying together at relative's house.
I believe that Bonnie is there, and Brandon is there,
the kids are both there. You know, all is just
sort of circling the wagon, is just sort of feed
together to comfort themselves, and Brandon's asleep by I think,
on a chair in the living room, and basically the police,
essentially a swat team, descends on the house, comes into
(26:03):
the house, takes Brandon into custody, shocking everybody. I mean,
Bonnie certainly tells a story of how surprised they were
and how horrific the whole scene was.
Speaker 10 (26:16):
I was at my daughter's house and Brandon was there.
He was asleep in the recliner, and I was asleep
in the one of the bedrooms. And after I don't know,
I guess i'd just gotten up, but they came and
knocked on the door. I think Kathy had been somewhere
and came back, and they came up right in the house.
(26:37):
And told Brandon he was under arrest and he looked shocked,
you know, he looked shocked, and I was shocked. I
couldn't believe. And I said, I don't understand why you're
resting him. I couldn't understand it. You know. I was upset.
I was kind of mad. I was really mad.
Speaker 8 (27:01):
And this of the Texas Rangers who came where it's.
Speaker 4 (27:04):
The sheriff's department.
Speaker 10 (27:05):
I think it was a sheriff's department. I think he
just sent them out. But I was upset with it.
Speaker 8 (27:10):
So what were you thinking at that time?
Speaker 10 (27:13):
I thought they made a mistake. I think they made him.
And they still think they made a mistake. That my
grandson's paying the price.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
To the dismay of Brandon's family. He is formally arrested,
and so sometime after that, Bonnie finds herself with Ranger
Collins again.
Speaker 10 (27:32):
After Brandon was arrested. We had a meeting with the
rangers and he was talking. They were saying that they
thought Brandon did it and all this, and I said,
you're crazy. I told the ranger that you're crazy. I said,
you don't even know my grandson. And he still don't.
(27:57):
He still didn't know my grandson. He didn't try to
get to know him, and he didn't try to find
out the truth. And I hope he pays.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
Why do you think he did that?
Speaker 10 (28:10):
He just wanted to solve that case because people were
afraid around there. They didn't even investigate very long. But
my grandson's innocent. And I told him that night. He said,
your grandson still has time to repent. I said he
(28:30):
didn't have to repent because my grandson didn't do it.
I think I know my grandson. You don't know my grandson,
and I know to this day even more so that
my grandson didn't do it. If you only knew his heart,
(28:51):
you know he has a great He has a good heart.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
One thing that really strikes me about when Bonnie says
that Collins has told her that Brandon can still repent.
Repentance is a word I would not expect coming from
a law enforcement official about a person who has been
(29:14):
accused of a crime. You know, repentance, church, and state,
all those things.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
I mean.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Noel says evil, I mean evil. I believe in evil.
Christian morality becomes the language that's used by these official
law enforcement and other people surrounding this case is striking
to me and.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Will definitely dive into that more in our next episode,
because one day after Brandon is arrested, his sister Charla
requests a second interview with Ranger Collins and basically gives
them the logline for the case.
Speaker 11 (29:51):
A lot of people are saying you're gay, and if
you lie, I know that. Ask if you're gay. If
you lie about little things, Brandon think upsetting the family.
If you lie about little things but you're chilling the
truth about the big things, they're going to know you're
a liar and they're not.
Speaker 4 (30:08):
Going to believe you.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
We'll dive into Charla's second interview and more in our
next episode. That's it for this 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
(30:30):
Brandon Woodruff case and continue to roll up our sleeves
and dig in. Thank you so much for joining us.
If you haven't watched sun Dance 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 ice HH stories
(30:54):
on Instagram. True crime story It Couldn't Happen Here was
produced by Miss jeff Farm 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 Accessor,
Robert Friedman, Mike Powers, and Meg Mortimer. Producers are Maggie
(31:19):
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 family's impacted by our cases.
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