March 22, 2023 • 39 mins
April 29th, 1999. A skull is found in a trash bag outside Action Glass in Atlanta, Georgia.
Soon after, in different trash bags, various other body parts are found. The remains are identified as the remains of Melissa Wolfenbarger, a 21-year-old married mother of two who is reported missing several months prior. In a remarkable twist, Melissa’s remains are verified only after her Father is arrested in connection to an unrelated murder.
In this episode of Zone 7, Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum, is joined by Liddie Evans' children: Philip (son-in-law), Carolyn, Renee, Roy and Sylvia.
They join Sheryl to express their experience of losing their mom, Liddie, who was murdered at age 31 by Carl Patton. They discuss the pain they have endured and how life was with and without Liddie.
They also each share their feelings about the murder of Melissa and why they ultimately cannot forgive Carl.
Show Notes:
- [0:00] Welcome back to Zone 7 with Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum. If you missed the beginning of Melissa Wolfenbarger’s case check out those episodes here: Melissa Wolfenbarger: Norma and Tina Patton | Part 1, Melissa Wolfenbarger: Karyn Greer | Part 2, Melissa Wolfenbarger: Trace Sargent | Part 3, Melissa Wolfenbarger: Letters From Carl Patton | Part 4
- [2:15] “We were told during the trial that their own daughter, Melissa had been murdered. I wouldn't wish that pain on anybody.”
- [2:48] Liddie Evans was 31 when she was reported missing
- [4:52] Question: Philip, did you have anything to do with Melissa’s murder?
- [5:48] Carolyn, one of Liddie’s daughters details out the events that took place the day Liddy was murdered
- [6:57] Question: Renee, tell us listeners how your mama, Liddie, was the life of the party?
- [9:24] Question: Roy, what would you say to Carl Patton if you could?
- [13:20] Question: Carolyn, do you think Norma was just telling a story while on stand? Do you think she was afraid of Carl or do you think she just didn't care?
- [15:34] Question: Roy, for you being the oldest and a man, was this even more difficult for you because you could not protect the women in your life at that time?
- [17:35] Sheryl shares a piece of Carl Patton’s letters with Liddie’s children
- [17:35] “As I have told you many times, I didn't realize what hurt and harm I'd done till we lost Melissa. Nothing I can say or do will ever change 45 years ago. I have asked my family, the families of the victims, and God to forgive me. I know God will, and I understand why the victim's family won't. I will never forgive Chris, so I do understand their hate toward me.” -Letters from Carl Patton
- [22:18] Question: Can each of you take a second and think of anything you would like to share on this episode that you feel needs to be on this show?
- [31:20] “God is the giver and taker of life, not man.”
- [38:08] “Every person can make a difference and every person should try.” -Dr. E.H
- Thanks for listening to another episode! If you’re loving the show and want to help grow the show, please head over to Itun
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
I've told y'all about my uncle Clark, my grandfather's brother
on my mother's side. He was a thief, a con artist,
and a swindler, but I've never told y'all the ending
May twelfth, nineteen fifty one, on a lonely two lane
dirt road out in the country in Wilcox County, Georgia,
(00:31):
he was found shot to death. No murder weapon was found,
nothing of value was taken, not from his car, and
not from him personally. It looked like retribution. When the
sheriff went and gave notice to my grandfather of what
has occurred, he asked him, do you know anybody that
(00:51):
would want to kill your brother? And my grandfather answered
half of this county in the next Because my grandfather
knew his brother, He knew he was a thief and
a con man and a swindler, and he also knew
he had slept with a lot of wives, so there
were a lot of people that might have wanted to
(01:12):
hurt him. Sometimes your murder victim is a criminal. Clark
was a lot of things, but he was not violent.
He never hurt anybody physically, and none of his crimes
deserved the death party. Some of Carl Patton's victims were
(01:33):
not perfect. Some had done some really bad things, but
at least two of his victims chose men that were
maybe no good for him. But two of his victims
were not bad people and were not criminals. Lyddy Evans
is one of those people. She was a mother of four.
I've been told that she was the life of the party,
(01:56):
a good woman, and a loving and devoted mother. I
reached out to Lyddy's youngest child, who was just six
years old when her mother was murdered, and y'all, she
said something so extraordinary to me. I want to share
it right now. She said, and I quote, we were
told during the trial that their own daughter, Melissa, had
(02:20):
been murdered. I wouldn't wish that pain on anybody end quote.
Then I had a chance to talk to Lyddy's eldest daughter,
who was only sixteen when her mamma died and had
to take the role of the person to raise the
younger children, and she said to me, and I quote,
(02:42):
I wouldn't wish that horror on my worst enemy, not
even Carl Patton. Lyddy Evans was thirty one when she
was reported missing. She was living with a man by
the name of Joe Cleveland, who y'all now know was
another victim of Carl Patton's was Carl's best friend since childhood.
(03:03):
I get asked a lot when it comes to Melissa's murder. Hey, Cheryl,
don't you think this was in retribution? Maybe one of
the family members of one of Carl's victims got even
with him. The first thing that comes to my mind
is to the people asking me that realize that they're
(03:24):
accusing innocent people of murder. And then, as a criminologist,
I think to myself, why would that person wait twenty
five years to get even? Why would they not kill Carl?
Why Melissa and not Norma Like a lot of these
things don't make sense when I'm asked that question, But
(03:45):
y'all know how I feel. Let's go to the source.
So today we have the opportunity to speak to the
children of Lyddy Evans. I just want to thank y'all
as a group for being here. I know that it
is not easy to talk about your mama, to talk
about Carl Patton, to talk about the trial, to talk
(04:06):
about the way that she was killed. But it's important
to me to give a three sixty view of this
whole tragedy, and y'all are part of that. And to
dispel some of the rumors and some of the questions
about whether or not y'all or a member of the
other families might have had something to do with it,
(04:27):
I think we ought to addressed that head on, and
I'd like to start with Philip. All right now, Philip,
you are married to Carolyn, yes, ma'am. So you're what
I call an outside insider, yes, ma'am for thirty seven years.
You're related by marriage, You're in this family, you're part
of this family. You have lived with this tragedy as well.
(04:49):
But I'm just going to ask you straight up, you
have anything to do with Melissa's murder, not a thing.
In fact, I didn't know that Melissa. I didn't know
Melissa had been harmed any way until well after the
fact of her dad being put in prison for my
wife's mom's murder, exactly. And that's pretty much going to
be the case for every family member. And that's one
(05:10):
thing that again I appreciate right out of the gate,
you let me come to you, because you know it's
somebody that is kind of on the perimeter of what occurred.
I think it's important that people understand the timeline. Carl
Patton got away with this for twenty five years, and
nobody went after him, nobody tried to harm him for
(05:31):
twenty five years. In fact, we didn't know didn't know
he had a daughter until the trial, you know, just
a little while after the trial when these facts started
to come out about him. Knew about him and Norma,
but didn't know about the daughters. Now, Carolyn, if you
just want to start and tell me how y'all found
(05:52):
out what happened to your mama that day, just start
telling me about Lyddy Evans. Well, if I remember correctly,
we got a phone call saying that they had found
a body and we had to go and see who
see about it, if I remember correctly, And they were
(06:13):
also shoring it on the news about them finding bodies
in the Flint River about the time we got the
phone call. Did you have to go to the morgue?
Did somebody else and your family go? I didn't go.
We went to the hospital, but we didn't get to
see mother's body. They wouldn't allow it because we were
so young. I guess Roy, is that what you remember, yes, ma'am,
(06:36):
I was about seventeen when it happened. Renee was fifteen
and I was fourteen, and Sylvia was six, So y'all
be in teenagers. I mean, y'all knew your mother. I mean,
y'all have great memories of her. Sylvia might have a
little bit lesser memories because she was so young, but Renee,
you and Roy and Carolyn certainly remember her. Renee tell
(06:58):
me how she was the life of the part. Well,
my mom either she liked her, she didn't like you basically,
and m but my mom, she our mother would give
you the shirt off her back. And she was just
I mean, you know, and there's just too many people.
I don't know if anybody that didn't like our mother.
She was just whatever was going on, she was, you know, part,
(07:20):
wanted to be part of it. And it's just aw
Like I say, my MoMA, all mother, I don't know
what I mean. She's a good hearted woman and she
just she was easy going off. She loved your young guests.
She never bothered nobody. She worked and come home and
looked after her youngest And I'm all mother never bothered
(07:42):
no one. Now, Carolyn, your mama she loved wide open,
didn't she meaning if you if she loved you, you
knew it. She was very truthful. If she liked you,
you knew and then if you didn't she didn't like you,
you all knew it. Yeah, No, I understand. I understand
that kind of person, and frankly, I love that kind
(08:04):
of person because you always know where you stand. There
shouldn't be a question. Now, Sylvia, when you and I
first talked again, your response just touched me so much.
And then Renee had the same sentiment that here y'all
are y'all have lost to so much? I mean your mamma,
(08:24):
I mean, that's the person that's going to love you
the most in this whole world, and for somebody to
take her from you, yet you still have care and
concern for what happened to Melissa Wolfenberger. And again to me,
that sets this whole case in such a proper place,
(08:45):
meaning no harm should come to anyone, and if it does,
everybody should care about that and want justice for that person.
Like Melissa's kids, I was so young and I had
to grow up knowing that someone did that to my
mom and we didn't know who did it. Well, in
our case, we knew, but you know, there was no justice,
(09:09):
and I wouldn't wish that on anybody's children. As far
as Carl and Norma, I have no sympathy for them,
but I have every sympathy in the world for their kids. Roy,
what would you say to Carl Patton if you could? Well,
Like I say, the day they sentenced him at the
(09:33):
coal house, that man looked like he was didn't have
a cure in the world. That chow, no compassion or nothing.
And we know it was a hard day, you know.
I hated it took twenty five years to lock the
man up and kill mom, you know. And his wife,
she helped with everything, and they let her off. I
(09:56):
think she should have been locked up along beside him
because she helped with all of that. You know. I
have nightmares to this day about my mother and what
he did to her. I remember his face like it
was yesterday, you know. And Roy, you've always known it
with him, Oh yes, when when I was a little
(10:17):
I was staying with while I was staying with dead,
I used to go up there and how shot would
be there. He always carried a gun on his side
and stuff that both of them all would carry the
gun on his side, you know, like they said, somebody
said he was in the Dixie mafia. I've heard that rumor.
Somebody said he was hide killer if you had the money,
(10:39):
and when somebody did, Carl Patton will do it. And
you know he killed a lot of in some people
and you know, and he's getting what he deserved. You know,
he should never see daylight step foot out of that
present again. He should rot in there and old Maut
being there with him. Never Nate, you've said that you've
(11:00):
had some nightmares as well. Yes, ma'am, I take I've
taken a mental health mess to this day and one
of them, uh, I have taken night time. That's for nightmares.
And I'm like my brother, I know that he would
he killed Mama from the from the get go. Well
in in like my brother's city, I always had that
(11:22):
gun and it was a pearl, had a pearl handle
on it. I'll never forget, never forget as long as
I live now, Caroline. When it comes to the court trials,
did y'all go to all of them, Fat and Henry
and the cab all of them? We went to the
cab and the Fat. We didn't go to the Henry
County when I don't think, but um, we went to
(11:46):
We went to those, me and my two sisters, and
I think my brother went to the one in the
cab too. To remind people real quick, the victims were
in different places because two of the ones that were
thrown in the flint of her floated into different counties literally,
and then Fred was put in another county when he
(12:06):
hit the train. So you've had different counties that were involved,
even though it was the same series tied together. So
did you find the different trials did you learn something different?
Was his attitude different ever, or was it the same
type of sterile? Are you admitting to this, yes and
moving on? It was the same type of sterile, and
(12:29):
he still had no remorse. And when he looked at
us in court, he looked like he was staring a
hole through it. She could sit to me, I could
just see evil dwelling there. And his wife when she
got on the stand and testified, I'll remember her illustrating
(12:51):
and talking about what the time was right and this
shot her and she demonstrated how mother fell over on
accounts and it was like she had no she was
so insensitive. I mean, she kept a straight face, she
didn't cry nothing while she was doing all this, And
(13:11):
I don't I don't understand how people can be so insensitive. Carolyn,
do you think she was just telling a story? Do
you think she was afraid of Carl or do you
think she just didn't care. I'm not sure, because I
know my mother was afraid of Joe. She was scared
(13:34):
of him because he was He was very possessive and
very you know, like we're gonna do what I say
or else. And so when she came up missing, I
thought it was the two of them together. I thought
it was Joe anhot shot, because he was abusive to
(13:55):
me when nobody was around, so I thought it was
I thought it was I thought it was probably both
of them together. Joe Cleveland was abusive to you when
nobody was around, Yes, very And I've heard the same
thing about Fred White with different people. Sylvia. Do you
have any memory of that at all or were you
just too little? I remember, you know, Joe getting known
(14:16):
to me and you know, standing me in the corner
and giving me spankings, But I don't remember a lot
of abuse now. But can I say something in reference
to what my brother said earlier. Yes, anything, my brother
said that Carl Patton got what he deserved, but I
(14:37):
don't agree with that. He still gets to visit with
his family, He gets to see pictures of his grandkids,
all the milestones, and I think that you and I
talked about this before. You know, all the milestones, you know,
my sixteenth birthday, when I had children, all the different
(15:00):
things Carl still gets to experience, although not behind prison walls,
he still gets to experience those things and see it's grandkids.
And I just don't think it's fair. And I don't
think that normal. It's fair for normal to be walking free.
I think that's a point that is valid. I mean,
(15:20):
there's no question about he gets to see photographs, he
gets personal visits, He gets to understand the birthdays and
the milestones, the graduations, the weddings, the baby's right. He
does absolutely, now, Roy, for you, being the oldest and
a man, was this even more difficult for you because
(15:42):
you could not protect the women in your life at
that time? Yeah? It was. When when I went to court,
I said about two or three roles behind Carl putting
and you know, crazy thought running through my mind. I
wish I could just go over there and jump across
and just choke him to death, you know, for what
(16:02):
he did to mom. You know the reason I asked
that is I've heard other men that are victims of
crime say that same type of thing that they wish
they could have protected them and stopped this from happening,
and after it does happen, just like you're saying when
they go to court or anything else. Yeah, I wish
(16:23):
I could have. But I lived down here with Daddy.
I lived in Alabama. My sister lived with Mom in Georgia.
You know, I went up there on the weekend and
seeing Mom, you know, every couple of weekends. But I
wish I could have been, you know, did something and
protected her because she was a good mom. She would
(16:44):
sit and sit and you know she wouldn't hurt nobody.
It's just just just ruck, you know. Like I said,
I have night married. I wake up, I wake up
just in a cold which shaking, and my wife waked
shaking and tell me to wake up and stuff, and
it's it's horror. Would it surprised any of y'all? In
(17:05):
the letters that Carl Patton writes to me, he will
often say that he did not realize what he was
doing at the time until Melissa was murdered. And if
I could, I will even read part of one letter
to y'all if y'all want to hear it. But y'all
tell me if y'all want to hear it or not.
And if y'all don't want to hear from him, we'll
(17:26):
move on. Go ahead, go ahead, Yeah, I'll like to
hear what he had some of what he had rolled about.
I'm quoting now, as I have told you many times,
I didn't realize what hurt and harm I done till
we lost Melissa. Nothing I can say or do will
(17:46):
ever change forty five years ago. I have asked my family,
the families of the victims, and God to forgive me.
I know God will, and I understand why the victim's
family won't. I will never forgive Chris, so I do
understand their hate towards me. That surprises me. But I
(18:12):
you know, God doesn't give me the right to hate people.
He doesn't give me the right to take life or
give it. That's God's job. So as far as forgiving,
I don't know that I have. But I don't hate
(18:32):
anybody So, Cheryl, can I play devil's advocate for a second?
Oh Philip, please? So in this having set in that courtroom,
watching the lack of remorse in his eyes, and that
riler will grin on the side of his face as
the family suffered, my question would be this, in that letter,
(18:54):
is he trying to make himself look good so that
someone would help him? Or is he trying to play
on the sympathy of society looking forward to a day
when he thinks he might see daylighting in all I
can tell y'all is he has stated something similar in
numerous letters. And I mean, he wasn't a young kid,
(19:18):
It's not that, but he does try to convey that
that level of pain and that level of loss he
just never connected because he had never experienced it. And
I just wanted y'all to know at least he's saying it,
because again, you know, he has no reason to write
that to me over and over and over. He's not
(19:39):
up for parole again for years. Carl Patton and I
are not friends. Carl Patton is exactly where he needs
to be for the crimes that he committed. There's no
doubt about that. The government decided to make a deal
with Norma. That's got anohing to do with us either.
But again, I think when what was done to Melissa
(20:03):
came to light, there has to whether you have remorse
or not, there has to be at least some understanding
that what I'm feeling right now I did to somebody else.
So I hope he feels that. I hope he has
an understanding of that, and I do hope he's begging
(20:24):
everybody for forgiveness. But I agree with you, Philip, there's
no way for me to know whether or not that's true. Now.
When I asked him Roy about Dixie Mafia, he said
he wasn't a part of the Dixie Mafia. He said
that Fred used to like to tell people they were
in the Dixie Mafia to get status and to make
people fear them more. Do you think that's a possibility
(20:47):
or do you think they were absolutely part of the
Dixie Mafia. Well, I don't really know what, in my
heart I think was a part of it. You know, well,
they certainly operated like they were. I was just going
to say that just as an outsider. As men you
were talking as we started, when when the investigation of
their their mom first started the twenty five years later
(21:10):
when they started looking into the new DNA and such
that was brought up. Um, I don't know what he
was involved in. I wasn't. I wasn't around the family
back then. But I do know this the town that
we lived in at the time, I was friends with
a lot of police officers and the county, the sheriff
(21:30):
in the county in which we lived. And I have
found a note on my car. When this started, and
you know, some rumors were circulating, I got several phone
calls at the house that told me to back away
and leave it be. Um. I don't know what they
were involved in, but those twenty five years later, I
received those kinds of things telling me to back away
and leave it alone. Well, that's a horse of a
(21:53):
different color. I wasn't expecting that, Philip. I'm just the
fun in law, I mean, And I was holding back
away and leave it And that's somebody that knew where
your car was and where your car was parked at
a certain time and a certain day, and who you were. Again,
as that outside insider a little bit a little bit.
(22:18):
Now here's what I would like to do. Now y'all
can talk about your mama. You can talk about Carl,
you can talk about normally, you can talk about Melissa,
you can talk to you know, talk about the justice system.
But each one of you just take a second and
tell me anything that you absolutely want to be sure
is owned this show. We'll just start with Philip, and
(22:40):
then we'll go to Carolyn, and then Renee, then Roy,
then Sylvia. Just because I didn't ask you don't mean
it don't need to be said. Maybe I didn't think
of the right question. Just like Philip, I would have
never asked if any of y'all have been threatened. That
hadn't crossed my mind yet, but now it has. So
tell me if you've been threatened. Tell me what your
(23:00):
favorite teacher at school, how she helped you through it.
Tell me when y'all met your spouses. Anything you want
me to know that you want to be sure is sad.
I have roy wife standing here beside me. Can we
take a second let her play something? Oh? Absolutely, hey,
yl I just want to say that Roy. They say
(23:21):
he looks the most like his mother. I believe that,
but it's it's scary at night to see. And I'm
a six foot tall, very strong man. Screaming out in
the middle of the night and it wakes me. I
have to wake him up. And I used to wondering
what let Mason do that? And then I found out.
(23:41):
I never thought I would ever meet someone, to really
be with someone who this tragedy has happened to. And
I see how it affects him and the rest of
his family. And it is sad that you understand it,
but you can't never feel what they feel because it
hasn't happened to you directly. But we do see the
ripple effect of it, and it affects all of us.
(24:03):
It's sad, but I just want to say this family
has taken me in and these girls, they are like
my sisters. I just close upon with them as I
do my own sister, Vicky. I appreciate it. If you
want to start first, Philip, Miss charl I asked you
if I could write a victim's impact statement from the outside,
and I wrote this on February the twenty second, after
(24:26):
our conversation the day prior, and it says I met
my wife in high school in Valley, Alabama, just a
strip of a girl, quiet and reserved. She had friends,
but not many as a new kid in school. After
high school, she went to college and I joined the
military where I would work where it would work out
that we'd come back together in a small town and
(24:47):
we met. Any year later, we were married and begin
our adventure into this new life. Although I knew her
mom was deceased, I didn't know all the details till
we had been married for a bit. One night, I
came in to find her crying and very emotional, and
she began to tell me and open up to me
about her early teen life and the guy that her
(25:07):
mom lived with, and how that he had a best
friend named Carl Patton. The wife began to tell me
the despicable things that he would say and do, and
how she always she was always afraid of Carl, and
he always had his gun and this briefcase with him
everywhere he went and did reputable things. The conversation revealed
(25:29):
how Lidy went missing around the seventeenth of December, and
when the news came they found her that she had
been murdered, found by duck hunters and her body was
floating in the river. It wasn't long as it worked
out that Joe Liddy's living boyfriend and Carl's best friend
was found on a playground, pretty much the same predicament.
I don't know if I can put into words the
(25:51):
impact that the loss of her mom has had, but
I'm a try like this. At age fourteen, the transitional
age from adolescence to team when a young girl needs
her mom for guidance and understanding, her mom was snatched
away by selfishness and pure meanness. Leady was not afforded
(26:15):
the chance to see her daughter graduate school, high school,
nor college. She was not president at our wedding. She
did not get to help planning her hair, her nails.
She didn't get to help pick out the dress. She
did not get to dance with her son in law.
And Leady was not there for the announcement of our
(26:35):
or the birth of our first child. She was not
allowed the opportunity to hold our son and daughter or
watch them grow up. Leady wasn't here to see what
a wonderful, loving and supporting Carrie person and educators that
her daughter has grown to be, what a loving grandmother
(26:56):
and a daughter she has become. And she wasn't given
the chance to meet me or to meet her build
and build a relationship with our grandchildren and watch them
grow up. And these are things that many other and
many other lives of lives, milestones and events that were
simply missed because, in his words, he thought somehow she
(27:17):
wronged him. That's she fits both ways. For thirty seven years,
I have been celebrating birthdays, Christmas, births, deaths, and watch
my wife endure and overcome those empty and lonely days
without her mom because of his disrespectful attitude or disrespected attitude.
(27:41):
I have walked through some dark valleys. I've listened to
things that turned my stomach that she saw her and
endured in her teen years at the hand of a
selfish man who imposed his will on a child. I
see my kids and my grandkids and they ask questions,
having to learn about their grandmother great grandmother through pictures
and memories. And I watched the pain in my wife's
(28:04):
eyes as she tells them these stories about her, and
how the lights, how she lights up when she talks
about memories of her mom and the good times that
they had and the only ones. No, I don't harbor feelings.
I don't harbor feelings, I promise No. It does break
(28:27):
my heart, it hurts my feelings, and yes, would I
or do I wish this paint on nobody? No? But
for twenty five years of not knowing, not knowing why,
not knowing how, not knowing who, and now that we
do know, and this pain has befallen him, I have
to ask myself this, does he really have remorse? Does
(28:51):
he actually think that one of us would have exacted
revenge not knowing where he was, who he was, that
he even had a daughter. And I would ask this question.
For twenty five years, he left Lyddy Matthew's family wondering
the same thing that he's wondering now, And the question
(29:14):
would be this, can you help him find justice for
his daughter so that maybe his mind will rest and
the words that he wrote to you would be true
in his life. Pray for the man every day. But
I'm a victim of abuse and his selfishness, and I
(29:37):
saw him. I guess that's all I'm gonna say. Philip,
Thank you very much. Ah, you got me a couple
of times there, Philip. I'm sitting there thinking they're supposed
to be no crying in baseball or in police white ball.
(29:58):
Miss Cheryl, I'm sorry, no, it was it was fabulous
that I'll tell you. I just I just want to
say that I always preach this ripple effect, and you're
part of that ripple effect, and your children and your grandchildren,
they're that ripple effect that I talk about. You have
no idea how many people you've heard, how many teachers,
(30:21):
how many neighbors, how many people from different congregations, no
telling how many good friends of all of these people. Like,
this ripple effect is tremendous. And that was just beautiful.
So I appreciate that. All right, Carolyn, you're up if
you can. Honey, Well, I don't know where to start.
(30:42):
It's it's not been easy, and I currently, you know,
I am seeing a therapist because of all this stuff
that has built up in my life. I do hope
they'll find justice for his daughter. I know what it's
like to lose a child, and I wouldn't wish that
on anybody. But at the same time, God doesn't give
(31:07):
us the right to take life. He had no right.
No matter what people do. Two wrongs don't make a right.
Even if she had wronged him, it doesn't make a
right because God is the God is the giver and
taker of life, not man, and I have no hard
feelings either, because you know, God would not allow me
(31:31):
to harbor hard feelings against this person. And I'm like
my husband, I'm praying because you know, God gives everybody
a soul and we all are going to go to
heaven or hell one day, and you know, as a
follower of Christ, I have to pray for his soul.
(31:52):
You know, it doesn't make the hurt go away, It
doesn't make the pain go away. Only God is helping
me with this pain. He's helping me take one day
at a time and see and helping me overcome. And
you know, God says will overcome hers through the word,
by his word, and so that's all I can rely on.
(32:15):
And I just pray they find a justice, and I
pray that He truly, truly, truly understands the pain that
we've endured all these years and all the things he's
stripped out of my life from taking my mother. Absolutely,
hope that was perfectly stated. Renee. It's mamma. I just
(32:36):
want to say that up, you know, but my sister said,
there's nothing that can take away the pain or the hurt,
and seems like of the older I get and I
know this is gonna sound weird, but seems like the
older I get, the more I need my mom. I mean,
have I always needed her, but uh seems like the
older I get, the more I need her and she's
(32:58):
not there for me to take her advice. And the
sad thing about it to me is her grandchildren that
she's missed seeing and growing up enough. It's just, um,
I hope I'm not my sister. I do not you know,
(33:19):
I don't wish the hate, the pain and hurt on anyone.
And I just hope that one day that he just
really truly does understand the hurt, the pain he's caused.
And I want to thank you for having this so
we can we can all tell our you know, say
what we had to say. And and that's just one
(33:42):
thing I want to say, is that I just want
people know that my mom or mother was the best
good hearted and hard working woman that you live with,
who you'd ever meet. Thank you, Renee. That was perfect really.
But luck I say, they say, Mom, she needn't never
(34:02):
she never seen my daughter, my my grandkids, you know,
messed all of the birthday, Christmas and stuff, and Michael
out I lived with this every day. I messed my
mom every day. Mom was good to me and and
she would have been a wonderful grandmother. My my daughter
(34:25):
and grandkids don't know what they're messing because Mom would
have been would have ben't did anything for him, and
it's it's just been our and uh and the justice system.
I think they failed us, you know. I think I
think they should. I think they should to give give
Carl Pattern a death penalty, and I think they should
(34:46):
have given a wife life without parole. Now I hate
that about his daughter, you know. I don't I want
to wish that when nobody to lose that kid, you know,
But but for Carl Pattern, I wouldn't never forgive the man.
I don't like the man and our novel forgiving until
the day did die. And we thank you for having
(35:08):
us on your podcast because I've been wanting to get
this awful off my chat for a while. I thank
you for that. You are more than welcome. Thank you,
Roy Sylvia. And I just want to say, first of all,
I don't know if they listen, but thank you to
Bruce Jordan and to Tracy far for coming down, you
(35:33):
know after twenty five years too. And I know it
takes a community of police officers, but they are the
two that were there for us and Bruce's inclination to
you know, open the case back up. So I want
to say thanks to them both, if they're listening. But
(35:54):
you know, I was thirty one years old during the trial,
the same age that Mom was when she passed, and
at the time I already had two kids that she
never got to see, and that's all I could think
about here in the trial. You know, you deprived me
from this, deprived my two sons, and Mama, if she
(36:20):
were here, would have her first great great grandchild this Maay.
She missed all of that. I don't know if I
can forgive him, but I, like my sister, I don't
hate anyone, but I'll never forgive him. And we can't forget.
We remember every birthday, every holiday, all our kids birthdays
(36:46):
because she's not there. I can't thank you all enough
for being here, and I can't thank you enough for
talking about your mama and you know, sharing with us
who she was and how important that is for everybody
to here. And and I will tell you I believe
she's a part of each one of you and all
(37:08):
that y'all have done with all of your children and grandchildren,
the children that y'all touched in the neighborhood, Carolyn, at
your school. All of you have done remarkable things for
other people, and that is because of her. There's no doubt.
So is Lyddy Evans alive and well right now, spread
(37:29):
and love and joy, ain't no question, There's no question,
And all of y'all this is the most important thing
to me that I know would be important to her.
Y'all are all together, and you've got Philip and the
other husbands and the other wives, and that's remarkable. So
you know, I believe in family, honey, and y'all's is
tight and it's wonderful, and there's a lot of tears today,
(37:52):
but y'all are in the same house right now, and
that's a powerful thing to me. So I am going
to end Zone seven the way that I always do
with a quote from somebody in my Zone seven. This
comes from doctor Eric Hickey, and he says that, I quote,
every person can make a difference, and every person should try.
(38:15):
Stephanie Roper twenty two wrote this in her diary two
days before she was raped and murdered, and doctor Hickey
wrote to me on September twenty eighth, two thousand and seven,
and simply said, do these cold cases well. As I
speak to the children of Lyddy Evans, they are making
(38:36):
a difference. They are nurses, they are teachers, they are parents,
they are grandparents. They are good, non violent, loving and
caring citizens. And I appreciate each one of them being
with me today. Y'all. Thank y'all again, and thank you
for allowing me to honor your mother. I'm Cheryl McCollum,
(39:00):
his own seven. You know the voice, you know that
slow Southern cadence he has. You know, there's nobody better
(39:22):
to dissect this case than Joe Scott Morgan join us
next week as Joe Scott, or as we affectionately call him,
Doctor Death systematically helps us understand exactly what happened to
Melissa Wolfenberger.
I've told y'all about my uncle Clark, my grandfather's brother
on my mother's side. He was a thief, a con artist,
and a swindler, but I've never told y'all the ending
May twelfth, nineteen fifty one, on a lonely two lane
dirt road out in the country in Wilcox County, Georgia,
(00:31):
he was found shot to death. No murder weapon was found,
nothing of value was taken, not from his car, and
not from him personally. It looked like retribution. When the
sheriff went and gave notice to my grandfather of what
has occurred, he asked him, do you know anybody that
(00:51):
would want to kill your brother? And my grandfather answered
half of this county in the next Because my grandfather
knew his brother, He knew he was a thief and
a con man and a swindler, and he also knew
he had slept with a lot of wives, so there
were a lot of people that might have wanted to
(01:12):
hurt him. Sometimes your murder victim is a criminal. Clark
was a lot of things, but he was not violent.
He never hurt anybody physically, and none of his crimes
deserved the death party. Some of Carl Patton's victims were
(01:33):
not perfect. Some had done some really bad things, but
at least two of his victims chose men that were
maybe no good for him. But two of his victims
were not bad people and were not criminals. Lyddy Evans
is one of those people. She was a mother of four.
I've been told that she was the life of the party,
(01:56):
a good woman, and a loving and devoted mother. I
reached out to Lyddy's youngest child, who was just six
years old when her mother was murdered, and y'all, she
said something so extraordinary to me. I want to share
it right now. She said, and I quote, we were
told during the trial that their own daughter, Melissa, had
(02:20):
been murdered. I wouldn't wish that pain on anybody end quote.
Then I had a chance to talk to Lyddy's eldest daughter,
who was only sixteen when her mamma died and had
to take the role of the person to raise the
younger children, and she said to me, and I quote,
(02:42):
I wouldn't wish that horror on my worst enemy, not
even Carl Patton. Lyddy Evans was thirty one when she
was reported missing. She was living with a man by
the name of Joe Cleveland, who y'all now know was
another victim of Carl Patton's was Carl's best friend since childhood.
(03:03):
I get asked a lot when it comes to Melissa's murder. Hey, Cheryl,
don't you think this was in retribution? Maybe one of
the family members of one of Carl's victims got even
with him. The first thing that comes to my mind
is to the people asking me that realize that they're
(03:24):
accusing innocent people of murder. And then, as a criminologist,
I think to myself, why would that person wait twenty
five years to get even? Why would they not kill Carl?
Why Melissa and not Norma Like a lot of these
things don't make sense when I'm asked that question, But
(03:45):
y'all know how I feel. Let's go to the source.
So today we have the opportunity to speak to the
children of Lyddy Evans. I just want to thank y'all
as a group for being here. I know that it
is not easy to talk about your mama, to talk
about Carl Patton, to talk about the trial, to talk
(04:06):
about the way that she was killed. But it's important
to me to give a three sixty view of this
whole tragedy, and y'all are part of that. And to
dispel some of the rumors and some of the questions
about whether or not y'all or a member of the
other families might have had something to do with it,
(04:27):
I think we ought to addressed that head on, and
I'd like to start with Philip. All right now, Philip,
you are married to Carolyn, yes, ma'am. So you're what
I call an outside insider, yes, ma'am for thirty seven years.
You're related by marriage, You're in this family, you're part
of this family. You have lived with this tragedy as well.
(04:49):
But I'm just going to ask you straight up, you
have anything to do with Melissa's murder, not a thing.
In fact, I didn't know that Melissa. I didn't know
Melissa had been harmed any way until well after the
fact of her dad being put in prison for my
wife's mom's murder, exactly. And that's pretty much going to
be the case for every family member. And that's one
(05:10):
thing that again I appreciate right out of the gate,
you let me come to you, because you know it's
somebody that is kind of on the perimeter of what occurred.
I think it's important that people understand the timeline. Carl
Patton got away with this for twenty five years, and
nobody went after him, nobody tried to harm him for
(05:31):
twenty five years. In fact, we didn't know didn't know
he had a daughter until the trial, you know, just
a little while after the trial when these facts started
to come out about him. Knew about him and Norma,
but didn't know about the daughters. Now, Carolyn, if you
just want to start and tell me how y'all found
(05:52):
out what happened to your mama that day, just start
telling me about Lyddy Evans. Well, if I remember correctly,
we got a phone call saying that they had found
a body and we had to go and see who
see about it, if I remember correctly, And they were
(06:13):
also shoring it on the news about them finding bodies
in the Flint River about the time we got the
phone call. Did you have to go to the morgue?
Did somebody else and your family go? I didn't go.
We went to the hospital, but we didn't get to
see mother's body. They wouldn't allow it because we were
so young. I guess Roy, is that what you remember, yes, ma'am,
(06:36):
I was about seventeen when it happened. Renee was fifteen
and I was fourteen, and Sylvia was six, So y'all
be in teenagers. I mean, y'all knew your mother. I mean,
y'all have great memories of her. Sylvia might have a
little bit lesser memories because she was so young, but Renee,
you and Roy and Carolyn certainly remember her. Renee tell
(06:58):
me how she was the life of the part. Well,
my mom either she liked her, she didn't like you basically,
and m but my mom, she our mother would give
you the shirt off her back. And she was just
I mean, you know, and there's just too many people.
I don't know if anybody that didn't like our mother.
She was just whatever was going on, she was, you know, part,
(07:20):
wanted to be part of it. And it's just aw
Like I say, my MoMA, all mother, I don't know
what I mean. She's a good hearted woman and she
just she was easy going off. She loved your young guests.
She never bothered nobody. She worked and come home and
looked after her youngest And I'm all mother never bothered
(07:42):
no one. Now, Carolyn, your mama she loved wide open,
didn't she meaning if you if she loved you, you
knew it. She was very truthful. If she liked you,
you knew and then if you didn't she didn't like you,
you all knew it. Yeah, No, I understand. I understand
that kind of person, and frankly, I love that kind
(08:04):
of person because you always know where you stand. There
shouldn't be a question. Now, Sylvia, when you and I
first talked again, your response just touched me so much.
And then Renee had the same sentiment that here y'all
are y'all have lost to so much? I mean your mamma,
(08:24):
I mean, that's the person that's going to love you
the most in this whole world, and for somebody to
take her from you, yet you still have care and
concern for what happened to Melissa Wolfenberger. And again to me,
that sets this whole case in such a proper place,
(08:45):
meaning no harm should come to anyone, and if it does,
everybody should care about that and want justice for that person.
Like Melissa's kids, I was so young and I had
to grow up knowing that someone did that to my
mom and we didn't know who did it. Well, in
our case, we knew, but you know, there was no justice,
(09:09):
and I wouldn't wish that on anybody's children. As far
as Carl and Norma, I have no sympathy for them,
but I have every sympathy in the world for their kids. Roy,
what would you say to Carl Patton if you could? Well,
Like I say, the day they sentenced him at the
(09:33):
coal house, that man looked like he was didn't have
a cure in the world. That chow, no compassion or nothing.
And we know it was a hard day, you know.
I hated it took twenty five years to lock the
man up and kill mom, you know. And his wife,
she helped with everything, and they let her off. I
(09:56):
think she should have been locked up along beside him
because she helped with all of that. You know. I
have nightmares to this day about my mother and what
he did to her. I remember his face like it
was yesterday, you know. And Roy, you've always known it
with him, Oh yes, when when I was a little
(10:17):
I was staying with while I was staying with dead,
I used to go up there and how shot would
be there. He always carried a gun on his side
and stuff that both of them all would carry the
gun on his side, you know, like they said, somebody
said he was in the Dixie mafia. I've heard that rumor.
Somebody said he was hide killer if you had the money,
(10:39):
and when somebody did, Carl Patton will do it. And
you know he killed a lot of in some people
and you know, and he's getting what he deserved. You know,
he should never see daylight step foot out of that
present again. He should rot in there and old Maut
being there with him. Never Nate, you've said that you've
(11:00):
had some nightmares as well. Yes, ma'am, I take I've
taken a mental health mess to this day and one
of them, uh, I have taken night time. That's for nightmares.
And I'm like my brother, I know that he would
he killed Mama from the from the get go. Well
in in like my brother's city, I always had that
(11:22):
gun and it was a pearl, had a pearl handle
on it. I'll never forget, never forget as long as
I live now, Caroline. When it comes to the court trials,
did y'all go to all of them, Fat and Henry
and the cab all of them? We went to the
cab and the Fat. We didn't go to the Henry
County when I don't think, but um, we went to
(11:46):
We went to those, me and my two sisters, and
I think my brother went to the one in the
cab too. To remind people real quick, the victims were
in different places because two of the ones that were
thrown in the flint of her floated into different counties literally,
and then Fred was put in another county when he
(12:06):
hit the train. So you've had different counties that were involved,
even though it was the same series tied together. So
did you find the different trials did you learn something different?
Was his attitude different ever, or was it the same
type of sterile? Are you admitting to this, yes and
moving on? It was the same type of sterile, and
(12:29):
he still had no remorse. And when he looked at
us in court, he looked like he was staring a
hole through it. She could sit to me, I could
just see evil dwelling there. And his wife when she
got on the stand and testified, I'll remember her illustrating
(12:51):
and talking about what the time was right and this
shot her and she demonstrated how mother fell over on
accounts and it was like she had no she was
so insensitive. I mean, she kept a straight face, she
didn't cry nothing while she was doing all this, And
(13:11):
I don't I don't understand how people can be so insensitive. Carolyn,
do you think she was just telling a story? Do
you think she was afraid of Carl or do you
think she just didn't care. I'm not sure, because I
know my mother was afraid of Joe. She was scared
(13:34):
of him because he was He was very possessive and
very you know, like we're gonna do what I say
or else. And so when she came up missing, I
thought it was the two of them together. I thought
it was Joe anhot shot, because he was abusive to
(13:55):
me when nobody was around, so I thought it was
I thought it was I thought it was probably both
of them together. Joe Cleveland was abusive to you when
nobody was around, Yes, very And I've heard the same
thing about Fred White with different people. Sylvia. Do you
have any memory of that at all or were you
just too little? I remember, you know, Joe getting known
(14:16):
to me and you know, standing me in the corner
and giving me spankings, But I don't remember a lot
of abuse now. But can I say something in reference
to what my brother said earlier. Yes, anything, my brother
said that Carl Patton got what he deserved, but I
(14:37):
don't agree with that. He still gets to visit with
his family, He gets to see pictures of his grandkids,
all the milestones, and I think that you and I
talked about this before. You know, all the milestones, you know,
my sixteenth birthday, when I had children, all the different
(15:00):
things Carl still gets to experience, although not behind prison walls,
he still gets to experience those things and see it's grandkids.
And I just don't think it's fair. And I don't
think that normal. It's fair for normal to be walking free.
I think that's a point that is valid. I mean,
(15:20):
there's no question about he gets to see photographs, he
gets personal visits, He gets to understand the birthdays and
the milestones, the graduations, the weddings, the baby's right. He
does absolutely, now, Roy, for you, being the oldest and
a man, was this even more difficult for you because
(15:42):
you could not protect the women in your life at
that time? Yeah? It was. When when I went to court,
I said about two or three roles behind Carl putting
and you know, crazy thought running through my mind. I
wish I could just go over there and jump across
and just choke him to death, you know, for what
(16:02):
he did to mom. You know the reason I asked
that is I've heard other men that are victims of
crime say that same type of thing that they wish
they could have protected them and stopped this from happening,
and after it does happen, just like you're saying when
they go to court or anything else. Yeah, I wish
(16:23):
I could have. But I lived down here with Daddy.
I lived in Alabama. My sister lived with Mom in Georgia.
You know, I went up there on the weekend and
seeing Mom, you know, every couple of weekends. But I
wish I could have been, you know, did something and
protected her because she was a good mom. She would
(16:44):
sit and sit and you know she wouldn't hurt nobody.
It's just just just ruck, you know. Like I said,
I have night married. I wake up, I wake up
just in a cold which shaking, and my wife waked
shaking and tell me to wake up and stuff, and
it's it's horror. Would it surprised any of y'all? In
(17:05):
the letters that Carl Patton writes to me, he will
often say that he did not realize what he was
doing at the time until Melissa was murdered. And if
I could, I will even read part of one letter
to y'all if y'all want to hear it. But y'all
tell me if y'all want to hear it or not.
And if y'all don't want to hear from him, we'll
(17:26):
move on. Go ahead, go ahead, Yeah, I'll like to
hear what he had some of what he had rolled about.
I'm quoting now, as I have told you many times,
I didn't realize what hurt and harm I done till
we lost Melissa. Nothing I can say or do will
(17:46):
ever change forty five years ago. I have asked my family,
the families of the victims, and God to forgive me.
I know God will, and I understand why the victim's
family won't. I will never forgive Chris, so I do
understand their hate towards me. That surprises me. But I
(18:12):
you know, God doesn't give me the right to hate people.
He doesn't give me the right to take life or
give it. That's God's job. So as far as forgiving,
I don't know that I have. But I don't hate
(18:32):
anybody So, Cheryl, can I play devil's advocate for a second?
Oh Philip, please? So in this having set in that courtroom,
watching the lack of remorse in his eyes, and that
riler will grin on the side of his face as
the family suffered, my question would be this, in that letter,
(18:54):
is he trying to make himself look good so that
someone would help him? Or is he trying to play
on the sympathy of society looking forward to a day
when he thinks he might see daylighting in all I
can tell y'all is he has stated something similar in
numerous letters. And I mean, he wasn't a young kid,
(19:18):
It's not that, but he does try to convey that
that level of pain and that level of loss he
just never connected because he had never experienced it. And
I just wanted y'all to know at least he's saying it,
because again, you know, he has no reason to write
that to me over and over and over. He's not
(19:39):
up for parole again for years. Carl Patton and I
are not friends. Carl Patton is exactly where he needs
to be for the crimes that he committed. There's no
doubt about that. The government decided to make a deal
with Norma. That's got anohing to do with us either.
But again, I think when what was done to Melissa
(20:03):
came to light, there has to whether you have remorse
or not, there has to be at least some understanding
that what I'm feeling right now I did to somebody else.
So I hope he feels that. I hope he has
an understanding of that, and I do hope he's begging
(20:24):
everybody for forgiveness. But I agree with you, Philip, there's
no way for me to know whether or not that's true. Now.
When I asked him Roy about Dixie Mafia, he said
he wasn't a part of the Dixie Mafia. He said
that Fred used to like to tell people they were
in the Dixie Mafia to get status and to make
people fear them more. Do you think that's a possibility
(20:47):
or do you think they were absolutely part of the
Dixie Mafia. Well, I don't really know what, in my
heart I think was a part of it. You know, well,
they certainly operated like they were. I was just going
to say that just as an outsider. As men you
were talking as we started, when when the investigation of
their their mom first started the twenty five years later
(21:10):
when they started looking into the new DNA and such
that was brought up. Um, I don't know what he
was involved in. I wasn't. I wasn't around the family
back then. But I do know this the town that
we lived in at the time, I was friends with
a lot of police officers and the county, the sheriff
(21:30):
in the county in which we lived. And I have
found a note on my car. When this started, and
you know, some rumors were circulating, I got several phone
calls at the house that told me to back away
and leave it be. Um. I don't know what they
were involved in, but those twenty five years later, I
received those kinds of things telling me to back away
and leave it alone. Well, that's a horse of a
(21:53):
different color. I wasn't expecting that, Philip. I'm just the
fun in law, I mean, And I was holding back
away and leave it And that's somebody that knew where
your car was and where your car was parked at
a certain time and a certain day, and who you were. Again,
as that outside insider a little bit a little bit.
(22:18):
Now here's what I would like to do. Now y'all
can talk about your mama. You can talk about Carl,
you can talk about normally, you can talk about Melissa,
you can talk to you know, talk about the justice system.
But each one of you just take a second and
tell me anything that you absolutely want to be sure
is owned this show. We'll just start with Philip, and
(22:40):
then we'll go to Carolyn, and then Renee, then Roy,
then Sylvia. Just because I didn't ask you don't mean
it don't need to be said. Maybe I didn't think
of the right question. Just like Philip, I would have
never asked if any of y'all have been threatened. That
hadn't crossed my mind yet, but now it has. So
tell me if you've been threatened. Tell me what your
(23:00):
favorite teacher at school, how she helped you through it.
Tell me when y'all met your spouses. Anything you want
me to know that you want to be sure is sad.
I have roy wife standing here beside me. Can we
take a second let her play something? Oh? Absolutely, hey,
yl I just want to say that Roy. They say
(23:21):
he looks the most like his mother. I believe that,
but it's it's scary at night to see. And I'm
a six foot tall, very strong man. Screaming out in
the middle of the night and it wakes me. I
have to wake him up. And I used to wondering
what let Mason do that? And then I found out.
(23:41):
I never thought I would ever meet someone, to really
be with someone who this tragedy has happened to. And
I see how it affects him and the rest of
his family. And it is sad that you understand it,
but you can't never feel what they feel because it
hasn't happened to you directly. But we do see the
ripple effect of it, and it affects all of us.
(24:03):
It's sad, but I just want to say this family
has taken me in and these girls, they are like
my sisters. I just close upon with them as I
do my own sister, Vicky. I appreciate it. If you
want to start first, Philip, Miss charl I asked you
if I could write a victim's impact statement from the outside,
and I wrote this on February the twenty second, after
(24:26):
our conversation the day prior, and it says I met
my wife in high school in Valley, Alabama, just a
strip of a girl, quiet and reserved. She had friends,
but not many as a new kid in school. After
high school, she went to college and I joined the
military where I would work where it would work out
that we'd come back together in a small town and
(24:47):
we met. Any year later, we were married and begin
our adventure into this new life. Although I knew her
mom was deceased, I didn't know all the details till
we had been married for a bit. One night, I
came in to find her crying and very emotional, and
she began to tell me and open up to me
about her early teen life and the guy that her
(25:07):
mom lived with, and how that he had a best
friend named Carl Patton. The wife began to tell me
the despicable things that he would say and do, and
how she always she was always afraid of Carl, and
he always had his gun and this briefcase with him
everywhere he went and did reputable things. The conversation revealed
(25:29):
how Lidy went missing around the seventeenth of December, and
when the news came they found her that she had
been murdered, found by duck hunters and her body was
floating in the river. It wasn't long as it worked
out that Joe Liddy's living boyfriend and Carl's best friend
was found on a playground, pretty much the same predicament.
I don't know if I can put into words the
(25:51):
impact that the loss of her mom has had, but
I'm a try like this. At age fourteen, the transitional
age from adolescence to team when a young girl needs
her mom for guidance and understanding, her mom was snatched
away by selfishness and pure meanness. Leady was not afforded
(26:15):
the chance to see her daughter graduate school, high school,
nor college. She was not president at our wedding. She
did not get to help planning her hair, her nails.
She didn't get to help pick out the dress. She
did not get to dance with her son in law.
And Leady was not there for the announcement of our
(26:35):
or the birth of our first child. She was not
allowed the opportunity to hold our son and daughter or
watch them grow up. Leady wasn't here to see what
a wonderful, loving and supporting Carrie person and educators that
her daughter has grown to be, what a loving grandmother
(26:56):
and a daughter she has become. And she wasn't given
the chance to meet me or to meet her build
and build a relationship with our grandchildren and watch them
grow up. And these are things that many other and
many other lives of lives, milestones and events that were
simply missed because, in his words, he thought somehow she
(27:17):
wronged him. That's she fits both ways. For thirty seven years,
I have been celebrating birthdays, Christmas, births, deaths, and watch
my wife endure and overcome those empty and lonely days
without her mom because of his disrespectful attitude or disrespected attitude.
(27:41):
I have walked through some dark valleys. I've listened to
things that turned my stomach that she saw her and
endured in her teen years at the hand of a
selfish man who imposed his will on a child. I
see my kids and my grandkids and they ask questions,
having to learn about their grandmother great grandmother through pictures
and memories. And I watched the pain in my wife's
(28:04):
eyes as she tells them these stories about her, and
how the lights, how she lights up when she talks
about memories of her mom and the good times that
they had and the only ones. No, I don't harbor feelings.
I don't harbor feelings, I promise No. It does break
(28:27):
my heart, it hurts my feelings, and yes, would I
or do I wish this paint on nobody? No? But
for twenty five years of not knowing, not knowing why,
not knowing how, not knowing who, and now that we
do know, and this pain has befallen him, I have
to ask myself this, does he really have remorse? Does
(28:51):
he actually think that one of us would have exacted
revenge not knowing where he was, who he was, that
he even had a daughter. And I would ask this question.
For twenty five years, he left Lyddy Matthew's family wondering
the same thing that he's wondering now, And the question
(29:14):
would be this, can you help him find justice for
his daughter so that maybe his mind will rest and
the words that he wrote to you would be true
in his life. Pray for the man every day. But
I'm a victim of abuse and his selfishness, and I
(29:37):
saw him. I guess that's all I'm gonna say. Philip,
Thank you very much. Ah, you got me a couple
of times there, Philip. I'm sitting there thinking they're supposed
to be no crying in baseball or in police white ball.
(29:58):
Miss Cheryl, I'm sorry, no, it was it was fabulous
that I'll tell you. I just I just want to
say that I always preach this ripple effect, and you're
part of that ripple effect, and your children and your grandchildren,
they're that ripple effect that I talk about. You have
no idea how many people you've heard, how many teachers,
(30:21):
how many neighbors, how many people from different congregations, no
telling how many good friends of all of these people. Like,
this ripple effect is tremendous. And that was just beautiful.
So I appreciate that. All right, Carolyn, you're up if
you can. Honey, Well, I don't know where to start.
(30:42):
It's it's not been easy, and I currently, you know,
I am seeing a therapist because of all this stuff
that has built up in my life. I do hope
they'll find justice for his daughter. I know what it's
like to lose a child, and I wouldn't wish that
on anybody. But at the same time, God doesn't give
(31:07):
us the right to take life. He had no right.
No matter what people do. Two wrongs don't make a right.
Even if she had wronged him, it doesn't make a
right because God is the God is the giver and
taker of life, not man, and I have no hard
feelings either, because you know, God would not allow me
(31:31):
to harbor hard feelings against this person. And I'm like
my husband, I'm praying because you know, God gives everybody
a soul and we all are going to go to
heaven or hell one day, and you know, as a
follower of Christ, I have to pray for his soul.
(31:52):
You know, it doesn't make the hurt go away, It
doesn't make the pain go away. Only God is helping
me with this pain. He's helping me take one day
at a time and see and helping me overcome. And
you know, God says will overcome hers through the word,
by his word, and so that's all I can rely on.
(32:15):
And I just pray they find a justice, and I
pray that He truly, truly, truly understands the pain that
we've endured all these years and all the things he's
stripped out of my life from taking my mother. Absolutely,
hope that was perfectly stated. Renee. It's mamma. I just
(32:36):
want to say that up, you know, but my sister said,
there's nothing that can take away the pain or the hurt,
and seems like of the older I get and I
know this is gonna sound weird, but seems like the
older I get, the more I need my mom. I mean,
have I always needed her, but uh seems like the
older I get, the more I need her and she's
(32:58):
not there for me to take her advice. And the
sad thing about it to me is her grandchildren that
she's missed seeing and growing up enough. It's just, um,
I hope I'm not my sister. I do not you know,
(33:19):
I don't wish the hate, the pain and hurt on anyone.
And I just hope that one day that he just
really truly does understand the hurt, the pain he's caused.
And I want to thank you for having this so
we can we can all tell our you know, say
what we had to say. And and that's just one
(33:42):
thing I want to say, is that I just want
people know that my mom or mother was the best
good hearted and hard working woman that you live with,
who you'd ever meet. Thank you, Renee. That was perfect really.
But luck I say, they say, Mom, she needn't never
(34:02):
she never seen my daughter, my my grandkids, you know,
messed all of the birthday, Christmas and stuff, and Michael
out I lived with this every day. I messed my
mom every day. Mom was good to me and and
she would have been a wonderful grandmother. My my daughter
(34:25):
and grandkids don't know what they're messing because Mom would
have been would have ben't did anything for him, and
it's it's just been our and uh and the justice system.
I think they failed us, you know. I think I
think they should. I think they should to give give
Carl Pattern a death penalty, and I think they should
(34:46):
have given a wife life without parole. Now I hate
that about his daughter, you know. I don't I want
to wish that when nobody to lose that kid, you know,
But but for Carl Pattern, I wouldn't never forgive the man.
I don't like the man and our novel forgiving until
the day did die. And we thank you for having
(35:08):
us on your podcast because I've been wanting to get
this awful off my chat for a while. I thank
you for that. You are more than welcome. Thank you,
Roy Sylvia. And I just want to say, first of all,
I don't know if they listen, but thank you to
Bruce Jordan and to Tracy far for coming down, you
(35:33):
know after twenty five years too. And I know it
takes a community of police officers, but they are the
two that were there for us and Bruce's inclination to
you know, open the case back up. So I want
to say thanks to them both, if they're listening. But
(35:54):
you know, I was thirty one years old during the trial,
the same age that Mom was when she passed, and
at the time I already had two kids that she
never got to see, and that's all I could think
about here in the trial. You know, you deprived me
from this, deprived my two sons, and Mama, if she
(36:20):
were here, would have her first great great grandchild this Maay.
She missed all of that. I don't know if I
can forgive him, but I, like my sister, I don't
hate anyone, but I'll never forgive him. And we can't forget.
We remember every birthday, every holiday, all our kids birthdays
(36:46):
because she's not there. I can't thank you all enough
for being here, and I can't thank you enough for
talking about your mama and you know, sharing with us
who she was and how important that is for everybody
to here. And and I will tell you I believe
she's a part of each one of you and all
(37:08):
that y'all have done with all of your children and grandchildren,
the children that y'all touched in the neighborhood, Carolyn, at
your school. All of you have done remarkable things for
other people, and that is because of her. There's no doubt.
So is Lyddy Evans alive and well right now, spread
(37:29):
and love and joy, ain't no question, There's no question,
And all of y'all this is the most important thing
to me that I know would be important to her.
Y'all are all together, and you've got Philip and the
other husbands and the other wives, and that's remarkable. So
you know, I believe in family, honey, and y'all's is
tight and it's wonderful, and there's a lot of tears today,
(37:52):
but y'all are in the same house right now, and
that's a powerful thing to me. So I am going
to end Zone seven the way that I always do
with a quote from somebody in my Zone seven. This
comes from doctor Eric Hickey, and he says that, I quote,
every person can make a difference, and every person should try.
(38:15):
Stephanie Roper twenty two wrote this in her diary two
days before she was raped and murdered, and doctor Hickey
wrote to me on September twenty eighth, two thousand and seven,
and simply said, do these cold cases well. As I
speak to the children of Lyddy Evans, they are making
(38:36):
a difference. They are nurses, they are teachers, they are parents,
they are grandparents. They are good, non violent, loving and
caring citizens. And I appreciate each one of them being
with me today. Y'all. Thank y'all again, and thank you
for allowing me to honor your mother. I'm Cheryl McCollum,
(39:00):
his own seven. You know the voice, you know that
slow Southern cadence he has. You know, there's nobody better
(39:22):
to dissect this case than Joe Scott Morgan join us
next week as Joe Scott, or as we affectionately call him,
Doctor Death systematically helps us understand exactly what happened to
Melissa Wolfenberger.
Host
Sheryl McCollum
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