February 15, 2023 • 29 mins
In November of 1987, 49-year-old Fred Wilkerson, a truck driver, last seen on Thanksgiving night, vanished. Fred's car was found a month later in the Atlanta airport's parking lot with two uncashed checks in the car. Years later, Fred’s remains were found in ex-girlfriend, Connie Quedens well.
In this episode of Zone 7, Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum, talks with Clay Bryant as they discuss the case of 49-year-old Fred Wilkerson who vanished in November, 1987. Clay lays out the glaring red flags in Fred's case that went unnoticed years prior, the reason Fred’s son wanted the case further investigated, and what led to Connie’s guilty verdict.
Show Notes:
- [0:00] Welcome back to Zone 7 with Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum. Sheryl gives an introduction of Criminal Investigator, Clay Bryant to the listeners
- [3:00] Solving the West Georgia Murder of Gwendolyn Moore | Chief Clay Bryant Part 1
- [3:30] Criminal Investigator, Clay Bryant details out the second case he’s solved involving a well
- [7:10] 49-year-old Fred Wilkerson was a truck driver that vanished in November of 1987
- [8:59] Sheryl and Clay go over some glaring red flags during the disappearance of Fred Wilkerson
- [10:54] A break in Fred’s case
- [13:48] “[Clay] became an expert in solvability factors. He would look at what he had and instantly know what he needed to push that case into the endzone. Clay's gift is being able to talk to people and pull information out of them that nobody's ever heard. To stack that information into this pyramid of justice, he does it better than anybody.”
- [22:16] Clay details out the trial and evidence in the court
- [28:20] “The truth will always come to light.”
- [28:50] Next week on Zone 7, we will be discussing the unsolved case of 21-year-old Melissa Wolfenbarger
- [29:15] Thanks for listening to another episode! If you’re loving the show and want to help grow the show, please head over to Itunes and leave a rating and review! How to Leave an Apple Podcast Review: First, Open the podcast app on your iPhone, Mac, or iPad. Then, hit the “Search” tab at the bottom right-hand corner of the page and search for Zone 7. Select the podcast, and scroll down to find the subheading “Ratings & Reviews”. and select “Write a Review.” Next, select the number of stars you’d like to leave. Please choose 5 stars! Using the text box which says “Title,” write a title for your review. Then in the text box, write the review itself. The review can be up to 300 words long, but doesn’t need to be much more than: “Love the show! Thanks!” Once you’re done select “Send” in the upper right-hand corner.
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Sheryl “Mac” McCollum is an Emmy Award-winning CSI, a writer for CrimeOnLine, a Forensic and Crime Scene Expert for Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, and a CSI for a metro Atlanta Police Department. She is the co-author of the textbook., Cold Case: Pathways to Justice. Sheryl is also the founder and director of the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute, a collaboration between universities and colleges that brings researchers, practitioners, students and the criminal justice community together to advance techniques in solving cold cases and assist families and law enforcement with solvability factors for unsolved homicides, missing persons, and kidnapping cases.
You can connect and learn more about Sheryl’s work by visiting the CCIRI website https://coldcasecrimes.org
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
How good or bad you are at something will get
you a nickname in law enforcement. I've got a friend
down in South Georgia. She crashed her squad car into
not one, but two State patrol cars during the same incident.
They were brand new State patrol cars. They call her
(00:32):
Crash to this day. Now keep in mind that was
about years ago. Every card, most invitations, most emails, they
will address her as Crash. When I was working for
the Crime Commission, they assigned me to Operation Weed and
Seed through the Atlanta Police Department. My partner A B.
(00:54):
And I we worked in the most dangerous violent neighborhoods
in Atlanta at that time, which was Sown three. We
worked Thomasville Heights in good Manner and Mechanicsville. There was
a pretty dangerous drug dealer there. He had the nickname Geronimo. Well,
unbeknownst to me he had given me a nickname. And
(01:16):
one afternoon I was working like I always did, pretty
much by myself all times, day and night. So this
little fella ran up to me and he said, hey,
living with seven? And I said, well, hey, buddy, and
he took all and I thought living with seven, I thought,
that's such strange. And then this kept happening with different people,
(01:41):
and I asked my partner A B. I was like,
what are they saying? She said, I have no idea.
So this went over a little while and I thought,
I'm gonna have to ask somebody because I'm not able
to figure it out. I went up to one of
my folks in the neighborhood that I had known really
since before I even got out there as part of
(02:01):
my official capacity, and I asked him, why are they
calling me living with seven? And he said, they're calling
you snow white. So eventually, the longer I worked, they
dropped the living with and I just was called seven.
So there's a lot of folks in this one pocket
of eight years of my career. That's how they know me,
(02:24):
and that's how they will still refer to me. Clay
Bryant earned his nickname Cold Case Clay because he's just
that good at solving old cases. There's even a joke
that in the state of Georgia, if you kill somebody,
don't throw them in a whale, because Clay will find
(02:46):
you and arrest you for it. Again, these nicknames, these monikers,
a lot of times it's because you might have messed
up something, but sometimes it's just because you're the best
there is at it. Last week, y'all heard from Chief
Clay Bryant in the Gwendoline Moore case where a woman
(03:06):
had been murdered and thrown in a well. Remarkably, Chief
had a second case where a body had been thrown
in a well. This was absolutely a career featured stamp
of legendary status. Chief, Welcome back to Zonne Heaven. Well,
(03:26):
thank you again, Cheryl for the invitation. Actually, I've so
enjoyed talking about the last one, and maybe I maybe
folks would like to hear this one. It's it's a
wonderful case. I say, a wonderful case. It's a tragic case.
Actually it came to us because of the first case.
We had finished this Okay, you just finished it up
(03:48):
and got a fair amount of publicity from him. Within
a couple of months. Beach Candle like us had just
bought a brand new Dodge pickup truck. I mean, University
of Georgia Red. You know, he's a George alum and
he h A storm came through a summer storm was
kind of um out of character, and but it did
(04:12):
a fair amount of damage, knock to pile out and
it blew a huge top out of a pine tree
in pa yard right across his new pickup truck, squashed
it flat as a pancake. And uh, of course he
was in the office the next day. He was winding
about the truck and he said, well, I don't know,
I guess what. I need to get somebody to look
(04:33):
at it. And I said, well, now let's take it
over to Tim Wilkerson, West Georgia Paint Body. Well, we
got Pete's truck, the tops and not completely off of it,
He's sitting in it, and away we go over to
the body shop. It looked like something with the coal
haines coming down the road, you know. And uh, we
(04:56):
got there and we talked and they talked about the
insurance and taking care of the truck and this and
that and the fact it was probably total. And at
the end of the conversation then works and says, is
there any way y'all could look into my dad's case.
And I knew of the Fred Wilkeson case, but I
never had any involvement in it, he said, you know,
(05:16):
they were just we never felt like it got what
it deserved, and even there had always been some speculation
about his involvement with a lady and this and that,
and uh, but I did I didn't know the particulars.
I looked at Pete, and Pete says, yeah, if you'd
like for us too, would look at it again, Claire,
look at it. I told him, I said, I'd like
(05:38):
to come and sit down with you, and you tell
me what you know, tell me some history about it,
you know, about what was going on. And God, it
was so enlightened when I when I did that, and
he told me of the family's lives and this and that,
and it was, you know, a book in itself. And
he told me that there was a young lady that
(06:03):
had come forth, the lady that he had been involved with.
She had enticed Fred. You know that there's a thing,
and I don't I call the savior syndrome. And some
people get drawn into they find it, especially people people
in law enforcement, the E. M. S. Service, fire service,
(06:24):
those people, those types of people are especially drawn in. Uh.
Tim Dad was the fire chief of the volunteer fire
department at wear a cross road and Troupe Kent. He
had gotten at work. He uh There's a lady that
came to work in their office and she started having,
you know, one tragedy after another, and her and her
(06:47):
husband were having trouble in this and that, and all
of a sudden, I think Fred makes it his business
to try to rescue her. Let me be clear for everybody,
we're talking about Fred Wilkerson, forty nine year old truck
driver who van November of so you get hooked up
on this case. May of two thousand three, that's correct.
(07:10):
He vanished in on Thanksgiving night. Was the last time
anybody saw Fred Wilks and a life if Carl was
found at the Atlanta airport with uncashed payroll checks in it,
that kind of thing. And how they came to this conclusion,
I guess it's because of no contact. But there was
(07:31):
a tremendous amount of conjecture of what had happened in Whine,
you know, his relationship with this woman that had gone
sour and Fred was never seen again. There were some
situations where some folks in Las Vegas said they thought
they thought they'd seen him getting onto an elevator, and
you know, just ghost sightings, you know how people are
(07:51):
sometimes and we've all run into him. I know you
have suro where person interjects themselves into something they know
nothing about. You know, you could say, hey, somebody robbed
a train downtown last night, and some fool let's say
I saw the whole damn thing absolutely, and then there
you have to and to dispel it. You've got to
go down that road because if you don't, it's gonna
(08:13):
come to you a trial anyway. So it rocked along
for seven years. Bridge's gone no contact. So the woman
he had been involved with that that situation was o.
She files to have him declared dead because she has
(08:35):
a vested interest in it. She had an insurance policyl
for whatever reason, that didn't raise any red flags. Well,
let's go over some of those flags again. So you're
telling me he vanishes before Thanksgiving, doesn't show up for Christmas,
his car has found a month after he's last seen alive,
with at least two uncashed paychecks. That's right, check totally
(08:59):
about a thousand dollars. Okay, Well, who gets on an
airplane to go start a new life and didn't take
their last thousand dollars? I have no idea, but for
some reason that became the story that law enforcement went
with And then on top of that, the insurance. I mean,
(09:20):
I'm sorry, but you're getting paid out an insurance policy
on a man that you haven't known that long. And
they were not married, correct, No, no, but they had.
They had actually been in and out of a relationship.
She had divorced and he had divorced. And she was
kind of person, not just with Fred, but with other people.
She would draw them into some type of scheme or
(09:43):
this or that, and she tried to control their finances
and that type of thing and everything in the world.
You would I would think that would be glaring to say,
your boys, you all need to look at this into
the ground. But that it never did. And uh. In
talking with Tim, he tells me, he says, uh. McLay says,
(10:06):
one of the girls that I went to school with.
She actually when the probate action to having declared dead
was going on, it came out in the newspaper. Of
course she saw the article. Well, she was living in
Goose Creek, South Carolina. Well, Tim told me that, I said,
what happened that took place? She contacted Tim, who contacted
(10:32):
Tim's attorney, who contacted law enforcement and said this girl
says that she on Thanksgiving weekend, the day after Thanksgiving,
was contacted by this woman, Connie Queeden's to pick her
up at the airport. She had to take some folks
(10:53):
up there. They had come to visit her. And this
is the person that Fred was at this situation with.
Now here's the kicker bread on. Earlier in that week
or in the latter part of the week before, he
had borrowed money to put a swimming pool and finished
some work at that house. Well alone went in default
(11:14):
because Fred had They had worked together at the job,
and she demanded Fred leave that job, and he did
and he went to work for a fast food merchandise. Again,
everything in the world to me pointed straight at her.
And don't get me wrong, as she was interviewed and
she always had a story and this and that and
this was it would have been in or was in
(11:38):
and this should have been the straw that broke the
camel's back. When this girl comes up and says, she
called me and I picked her up that morning after
Fred disappeared at the airport. For whatever reason, it never
went anywhere. And uh Tim told me that one day
about lunchtime. The next day I'm in Goods Creek, South
(11:59):
Carolina talking to her, and she tip lays it out.
I come back. I talked with Pete about what we got,
he said, Jesus. Now, she had two kids. They were
I went to school. They all these kids, you know,
they were in uh, socially acquaintances, and they went to
(12:20):
each other's homes and this and there, and there's sixteen
seventeen years old. She immediately starts getting these kids to
start dragging debris and stuff, throw it in the well
and tries to set it on fire. But of course
there ain't no action down there, so all it does
is smolder. So that all that's taking place in and
(12:41):
she's telling me the story. Now, I'm sorry in two
thousand two, but this she came forth with this story
in we rarely hear about a cold is being solved
nowadays that didn't involve DNA or ancestry. Connecting these dots
(13:08):
with that type of evidence seems to be pretty much
now standard operating procedure. But Clay Bryant has solved not one,
but two cold cases with no DNA, no murder weapon,
no footprints, no fingerprints, no new witnesses, no deathbed confessions,
(13:31):
He became an expert and solvability factors. He would look
at what he had and instantly no what he needed
to push that case into the end zone. Clay's gift
is being able to talk to people and pull information
out of them that nobody's ever heard to stack that
(13:56):
information in just this pyramid of justice. He does it
better than anybody. And a lot of times when people
say what is the best tool I can work on
to have as a cold case investigator? I tell him talking?
Can you talk to people? Do people instinctively trust you?
(14:18):
Do they want to be around you? Clay Bryant is
the best I've ever seen. I'd get a guy that
who she did the same thing where she and gets him,
said we need to go into a business together, and
she gets to finance and she gets him too with
a peaceful equipment. He had to finish filling in the whale.
(14:39):
I was told that. So I contact him and he said,
the wales right here, chief, He said, you see that
clump of bushes out there. And of course she fell
out with this guy and she took his money and
tried to take his equipment and everything. And he said,
right out there where that clump of bushes is because
we had ridden over there, and he that's where the
(15:00):
will is. With the information that the young lady had
given me, went to judge and we got a search
war to excavate that well. We got there that morning.
She had another guy in the house then, and she
had gotten to come down to business with And I
(15:20):
never forget what he said. I knocked on the door,
and myself and Captain grizz with the Sheriff's office, he went,
he was with me and he says, Ms. Connie's not
here right now. She's gone tell town to involving her
Christian work. Well, Connie gets back from her Christian work.
I tell her, Connie, we have a search warrant. We're
(15:43):
gonna search your property. Well, it's already been done for
everybody always looked and said you know this and that.
I said, but we're gonna look a little cloture this time.
We're sitting there with a track o and on and
a dozier and sitting out there on a low boy.
And I said, we're gonna art at that well on
top of the hill. And she says, if he's in it,
(16:05):
I don't know anything about it. Well, Chief I gotta
ask you something. Did you look at that man and
think to yourself, buddy, you got no idea. I just
saved your life if he stayed in the game long enough.
The thing that that got Fred was, you know, because
(16:25):
that long living to fault, he filed a suit against her.
Ain't I kind of got lost in my conversation and uh,
but he filed a suit against her, and like the
first part of the week, it was served on her. Well,
the weekend, the girl that her name was Lisa hold
On Connie had gotten her father and mother to come
(16:48):
down from West Virginia, where they had lived earlier, because
she wanted to help him get into a business. Mr Holdeman.
He saw this thing about the money and her control
and whatnot, so that he opted out of that. But
they still remain, you know, friends too. I guess you'd say,
Lisa Holdeman, it's just amazed her. You know that Connie
still would want to be involved in their business and everything.
(17:13):
The the weekend that Fred disappeared, her husband that he
she had brought back into the scene and the boys,
they were all supposed to go to Florida to visit
a relative. Well at the last minute, she says, I'm
gonna stay here. I gotta work, and she tells Lisa
Holdaman's mother, she said, I'm staying here. I need to
(17:34):
protect my property, and I expect that protection came at
a very high expense. To Fred Wilkerson, the chief, my
mind is just blown because every time you give us
another element, another event, another piece of evidence, It's like,
this ain't a flag. This is a parade of flags,
and this is one of the ones that that that
(17:55):
I lost some friendships over. Is you know, you got
a woman that won't half the money for a house.
He didn't cash to payroll checks, he abandoned his car.
Nobody has seen him alive ever. Again. They might have
thought they saw him in Las Vegas from a distance,
but nobody's talked to him. She had an insurance policy
against him, and then she knew that he was suing her.
(18:18):
So other stuff was gonna come out in deposition and whatnot.
If somebody can't see that this thing was done for money,
I'm at a loss. It goes back to that thing.
You know what I said earlier. You know, I'd like
God like to claim being a genius for so all
in these cases, they you know, they and there were
a couple that were a little more twisted than this,
(18:40):
but anyway that was in this case, it just made
sense and we were able to Andre And let me
tell you something. When we executed the search warrant, we
find two microcosette tapes. And those micro cosette tapes she
had since she had been keeping them since nineteen seven
(19:04):
and this is two thousand and two. Well one of
them was later than that because she had taken her
husband back and one of those tapes for her and
I guess you they were a trophy. In that first
video of micro cossette tape, she's talking to Fred Wilkerson,
who had just filed a lawsuit on her. She calls him,
in her words, Fred Wilkerson, you son of a bitch.
(19:26):
I will kill you. And she had that microcust that
she had now kept for down your twenty years, and
we were able to retrieve it and have it at
court and she all we also dealing with her husband.
Your name was Gary Cuen's. He goes to Florida that weekend.
(19:49):
He comes back in an hour question of him. He
comes back and there is a pistol laying in the
floor downstairs. Of course, he picks the pistol up the perp.
So that was was guess who's gonna take the weapon
for this murder if this thing gets discovered, the gun
that killed him, But it never comes to be an issue.
(20:12):
The other tape is him and her arguing about the
a divorce settlement, and in that tape it says I
want my Walter pistol, and he says, Connie, there were
three Walter pistols, your author pistol that I sold at
a gun show. The two that I bought from Marcus
(20:34):
Smith Wickens executive serial numbers I gave the boys, and
the one that I sold at the gun show was
one that someone may have used at Fred's time. He
was straightforward with us and helped us in every way.
We're able to establish a fact to a moral's certainty
that he was in Florida during the time that Fred
Wilson was probably cute, But sometimes you have to make
(20:56):
a deal with the devil to get to which you know, yea,
there is nothing better than making that call. When a
cold case finally has an arrest made, Once that detective
has the person in custody and takes them to jail
(21:17):
and they are able to call that family or go
by and visit in person and tell them the person
that murdered their loved one has been arrested. Is a
powerful thing. It is often career defining. It's the reason
(21:37):
you do what you do in a cold case squad.
This is the trophy, this is the end result, This
is the gold medal. This is what it's all for.
All the sleepless nights, all the eighteen hour days, not
being able to get it out of your mind for
twenty years, thirty years, this is what it's for. That
(22:00):
didn't y'all roll out on the gurney all of his
bones at trial, you know, And I was kind of
shocked that they let us do it. Judge Bill Lee
was on the bench and as part of the evidence,
uh that we brought into court, we brought fred Wilckson
into court anatomically correct with a whole effect in the
(22:23):
back of the skull, and Dr Frederick Snow with the
g B I UH wonderful pathologists and he helped me
in several cases. And I just can't say enough about
him and Dark Spear. He is one of the foremost
forensic anthropologists in the country. And you know, he had excavated, uh,
(22:45):
mass Graves and Bosnia and things like that, and it's just,
you know, a tremendous asset to the g B I
And eventually he left the g B out. I think
he went to the University of Tennessee. Well, he recognized
that injury, didn't he as an assassination? Yes, sir, he's
oh absolutely, he said this and he said, this is
a classic keyhole deffect in the back of the man's skull.
(23:06):
Said he was shot at close range. He was straight
up assassinated, absolutely, and and and and it found as
it came to the back to that same thing after
he left Thanksgiving dinner with his sister and his kids.
And France was a family guy. I mean, baseball coach.
Uh maybe not the best husband in the world, but
(23:29):
baseball coach. Never Mr Dance Recital, you know, nothing in
the farthest thing, community oriented guy, the one thing in
the world. It would never, no matter what happened, would
he ever have just walked away from his family. We
were lucky to come up with the evidence that we did.
We were able to try and convict her. It was
(23:50):
kind of a situation where, uh, Judy went out and
I honestly think that it was a situation where it
took them longer to elective Phoneman than it did to
come to a guilty verdict. In three hours they came
back and please tell me, y'all played the tape in court.
(24:10):
We did, and you know it was just it was,
you know, I got your moment. You know, Tim Wilkson,
his sister Tracy, and their children. They were able to
bury their father, a decent Christian bearer. I developed a
relationship with them, and you know they're my friends, and
you know, I've never been any prouder back just that thing,
(24:34):
like with Alan Moore, never been any prouder than to
be able to experience that with them, as tragic as
it was. You know, everybody says, you know, well you're
that closure. You started talking about losing your children or
your parents to some absolutely unnecessary act. I don't think
(24:56):
there's anything that you could say is ever a closure,
but I think it gets to a point of finality,
you know, I think they got there and it was
just one of those deals and back this, you know
I said before about you know, I had a couple
of guys after this case they are ahead. Was it
(25:18):
outfit associated press call and they you know, they had
a big thing about the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Did them
think that's what the cold case Clay came from was
a feature article with them? There were a couple of
folks that early on in this case that were attached
to it and my friends and never spoke to me again.
(25:38):
Oh Ji, if he even wrote a letter to Pizza,
as long as I have at the d a's office,
that they would not be a healthy working relationship between
the officer in the share of So I'll never understand it.
There you have it, y'all. A lifetime of studying people
and places and crimes leads to solving two cold cases,
(26:00):
given victims family's answers and justice for the people that
they love and they lost decades ago. And I want
every young investigator to remember the one thing Chief said.
Remember when he said he got a tip from a
woman in Goose Creek, South Carolina. He was there the
(26:23):
next day. Let me let me tell you. You know,
we talked about my dad and he told me one thing.
He says, Son, you gotta work crime when crime is
and and it's true. You know, people might talk to
you today and they might not tomorrow, you know. And
(26:45):
just as conversely in some old cases where they're changing
and they'll talk to you now, but you've got to go,
and you you can't say, well, we're gonna schedule this
next Thursday. We'll talk to this person. If you've got
something you better will talk to him today. And my dad,
you know, we talked again about everything in this case
about Connie Queeding brings something to mind me and it's
(27:09):
something I think it's just that you'll like to hear.
We were right along one afternoon, you know, we're talking
about loves lost and bad decisions made in their lives
and things like that. And it looked at me and
he smiled. He says, well, sudden, let me tell you,
he said, And this applied to Fred Wilkson as much
as anybody that I've ever heard in my life. He said,
(27:29):
let me tell you, he says. You know, love is
but a two drop from heaven. Probably me is. Some
days it's just as soon fall on a horse turb
it had a geranium. Uh, But that was my dad.
But again, thank you. I appreciate more than anything in
the world being able to talk to you. And this
book's under contract. So there'll be a story about Fred
(27:50):
Wilkson coming to shortly and and it will be the
Blackwood as well. All Right, y'all, you gotta work crime
when crime is chief. I appreciate you so much, and
I'm gonna end Zone seven like I always do with
a quote from somebody from my Zone seven And this
comes from someone that I admire greatly, Elena Burrows, host
(28:12):
of Crimocene Confidential on Investigation Discovery. She's also a former
Crimocene investigator. Stay in the crime scene, don't sit in
your car, don't stand outside, Stay in the scene. Wait
for the chaos to clear, and in the silence you
(28:35):
will hear and see more than you initially did by
just being physically present. I'm Sheryl McCollum and this is
Zone seven. Next week we're going to tackle a case
(29:03):
unlike any other in history. There has never been a
case like this. So bring your pad and pencil, get
some rest, hydra, because we're gonna need you all on
this one. We are taken on the case of Melissa Wolfenberger.
How good or bad you are at something will get
you a nickname in law enforcement. I've got a friend
down in South Georgia. She crashed her squad car into
not one, but two State patrol cars during the same incident.
They were brand new State patrol cars. They call her
(00:32):
Crash to this day. Now keep in mind that was
about years ago. Every card, most invitations, most emails, they
will address her as Crash. When I was working for
the Crime Commission, they assigned me to Operation Weed and
Seed through the Atlanta Police Department. My partner A B.
(00:54):
And I we worked in the most dangerous violent neighborhoods
in Atlanta at that time, which was Sown three. We
worked Thomasville Heights in good Manner and Mechanicsville. There was
a pretty dangerous drug dealer there. He had the nickname Geronimo. Well,
unbeknownst to me he had given me a nickname. And
(01:16):
one afternoon I was working like I always did, pretty
much by myself all times, day and night. So this
little fella ran up to me and he said, hey,
living with seven? And I said, well, hey, buddy, and
he took all and I thought living with seven, I thought,
that's such strange. And then this kept happening with different people,
(01:41):
and I asked my partner A B. I was like,
what are they saying? She said, I have no idea.
So this went over a little while and I thought,
I'm gonna have to ask somebody because I'm not able
to figure it out. I went up to one of
my folks in the neighborhood that I had known really
since before I even got out there as part of
(02:01):
my official capacity, and I asked him, why are they
calling me living with seven? And he said, they're calling
you snow white. So eventually, the longer I worked, they
dropped the living with and I just was called seven.
So there's a lot of folks in this one pocket
of eight years of my career. That's how they know me,
(02:24):
and that's how they will still refer to me. Clay
Bryant earned his nickname Cold Case Clay because he's just
that good at solving old cases. There's even a joke
that in the state of Georgia, if you kill somebody,
don't throw them in a whale, because Clay will find
(02:46):
you and arrest you for it. Again, these nicknames, these monikers,
a lot of times it's because you might have messed
up something, but sometimes it's just because you're the best
there is at it. Last week, y'all heard from Chief
Clay Bryant in the Gwendoline Moore case where a woman
(03:06):
had been murdered and thrown in a well. Remarkably, Chief
had a second case where a body had been thrown
in a well. This was absolutely a career featured stamp
of legendary status. Chief, Welcome back to Zonne Heaven. Well,
(03:26):
thank you again, Cheryl for the invitation. Actually, I've so
enjoyed talking about the last one, and maybe I maybe
folks would like to hear this one. It's it's a
wonderful case. I say, a wonderful case. It's a tragic case.
Actually it came to us because of the first case.
We had finished this Okay, you just finished it up
(03:48):
and got a fair amount of publicity from him. Within
a couple of months. Beach Candle like us had just
bought a brand new Dodge pickup truck. I mean, University
of Georgia Red. You know, he's a George alum and
he h A storm came through a summer storm was
kind of um out of character, and but it did
(04:12):
a fair amount of damage, knock to pile out and
it blew a huge top out of a pine tree
in pa yard right across his new pickup truck, squashed
it flat as a pancake. And uh, of course he
was in the office the next day. He was winding
about the truck and he said, well, I don't know,
I guess what. I need to get somebody to look
(04:33):
at it. And I said, well, now let's take it
over to Tim Wilkerson, West Georgia Paint Body. Well, we
got Pete's truck, the tops and not completely off of it,
He's sitting in it, and away we go over to
the body shop. It looked like something with the coal
haines coming down the road, you know. And uh, we
(04:56):
got there and we talked and they talked about the
insurance and taking care of the truck and this and
that and the fact it was probably total. And at
the end of the conversation then works and says, is
there any way y'all could look into my dad's case.
And I knew of the Fred Wilkeson case, but I
never had any involvement in it, he said, you know,
(05:16):
they were just we never felt like it got what
it deserved, and even there had always been some speculation
about his involvement with a lady and this and that,
and uh, but I did I didn't know the particulars.
I looked at Pete, and Pete says, yeah, if you'd
like for us too, would look at it again, Claire,
look at it. I told him, I said, I'd like
(05:38):
to come and sit down with you, and you tell
me what you know, tell me some history about it,
you know, about what was going on. And God, it
was so enlightened when I when I did that, and
he told me of the family's lives and this and that,
and it was, you know, a book in itself. And
he told me that there was a young lady that
(06:03):
had come forth, the lady that he had been involved with.
She had enticed Fred. You know that there's a thing,
and I don't I call the savior syndrome. And some
people get drawn into they find it, especially people people
in law enforcement, the E. M. S. Service, fire service,
(06:24):
those people, those types of people are especially drawn in. Uh.
Tim Dad was the fire chief of the volunteer fire
department at wear a cross road and Troupe Kent. He
had gotten at work. He uh There's a lady that
came to work in their office and she started having,
you know, one tragedy after another, and her and her
(06:47):
husband were having trouble in this and that, and all
of a sudden, I think Fred makes it his business
to try to rescue her. Let me be clear for everybody,
we're talking about Fred Wilkerson, forty nine year old truck
driver who van November of so you get hooked up
on this case. May of two thousand three, that's correct.
(07:10):
He vanished in on Thanksgiving night. Was the last time
anybody saw Fred Wilks and a life if Carl was
found at the Atlanta airport with uncashed payroll checks in it,
that kind of thing. And how they came to this conclusion,
I guess it's because of no contact. But there was
(07:31):
a tremendous amount of conjecture of what had happened in Whine,
you know, his relationship with this woman that had gone
sour and Fred was never seen again. There were some
situations where some folks in Las Vegas said they thought
they thought they'd seen him getting onto an elevator, and
you know, just ghost sightings, you know how people are
(07:51):
sometimes and we've all run into him. I know you
have suro where person interjects themselves into something they know
nothing about. You know, you could say, hey, somebody robbed
a train downtown last night, and some fool let's say
I saw the whole damn thing absolutely, and then there
you have to and to dispel it. You've got to
go down that road because if you don't, it's gonna
(08:13):
come to you a trial anyway. So it rocked along
for seven years. Bridge's gone no contact. So the woman
he had been involved with that that situation was o.
She files to have him declared dead because she has
(08:35):
a vested interest in it. She had an insurance policyl
for whatever reason, that didn't raise any red flags. Well,
let's go over some of those flags again. So you're
telling me he vanishes before Thanksgiving, doesn't show up for Christmas,
his car has found a month after he's last seen alive,
with at least two uncashed paychecks. That's right, check totally
(08:59):
about a thousand dollars. Okay, Well, who gets on an
airplane to go start a new life and didn't take
their last thousand dollars? I have no idea, but for
some reason that became the story that law enforcement went
with And then on top of that, the insurance. I mean,
(09:20):
I'm sorry, but you're getting paid out an insurance policy
on a man that you haven't known that long. And
they were not married, correct, No, no, but they had.
They had actually been in and out of a relationship.
She had divorced and he had divorced. And she was
kind of person, not just with Fred, but with other people.
She would draw them into some type of scheme or
(09:43):
this or that, and she tried to control their finances
and that type of thing and everything in the world.
You would I would think that would be glaring to say,
your boys, you all need to look at this into
the ground. But that it never did. And uh. In
talking with Tim, he tells me, he says, uh. McLay says,
(10:06):
one of the girls that I went to school with.
She actually when the probate action to having declared dead
was going on, it came out in the newspaper. Of
course she saw the article. Well, she was living in
Goose Creek, South Carolina. Well, Tim told me that, I said,
what happened that took place? She contacted Tim, who contacted
(10:32):
Tim's attorney, who contacted law enforcement and said this girl
says that she on Thanksgiving weekend, the day after Thanksgiving,
was contacted by this woman, Connie Queeden's to pick her
up at the airport. She had to take some folks
(10:53):
up there. They had come to visit her. And this
is the person that Fred was at this situation with.
Now here's the kicker bread on. Earlier in that week
or in the latter part of the week before, he
had borrowed money to put a swimming pool and finished
some work at that house. Well alone went in default
(11:14):
because Fred had They had worked together at the job,
and she demanded Fred leave that job, and he did
and he went to work for a fast food merchandise. Again,
everything in the world to me pointed straight at her.
And don't get me wrong, as she was interviewed and
she always had a story and this and that and
this was it would have been in or was in
(11:38):
and this should have been the straw that broke the
camel's back. When this girl comes up and says, she
called me and I picked her up that morning after
Fred disappeared at the airport. For whatever reason, it never
went anywhere. And uh Tim told me that one day
about lunchtime. The next day I'm in Goods Creek, South
(11:59):
Carolina talking to her, and she tip lays it out.
I come back. I talked with Pete about what we got,
he said, Jesus. Now, she had two kids. They were
I went to school. They all these kids, you know,
they were in uh, socially acquaintances, and they went to
(12:20):
each other's homes and this and there, and there's sixteen
seventeen years old. She immediately starts getting these kids to
start dragging debris and stuff, throw it in the well
and tries to set it on fire. But of course
there ain't no action down there, so all it does
is smolder. So that all that's taking place in and
(12:41):
she's telling me the story. Now, I'm sorry in two
thousand two, but this she came forth with this story
in we rarely hear about a cold is being solved
nowadays that didn't involve DNA or ancestry. Connecting these dots
(13:08):
with that type of evidence seems to be pretty much
now standard operating procedure. But Clay Bryant has solved not one,
but two cold cases with no DNA, no murder weapon,
no footprints, no fingerprints, no new witnesses, no deathbed confessions,
(13:31):
He became an expert and solvability factors. He would look
at what he had and instantly no what he needed
to push that case into the end zone. Clay's gift
is being able to talk to people and pull information
out of them that nobody's ever heard to stack that
(13:56):
information in just this pyramid of justice. He does it
better than anybody. And a lot of times when people
say what is the best tool I can work on
to have as a cold case investigator? I tell him talking?
Can you talk to people? Do people instinctively trust you?
(14:18):
Do they want to be around you? Clay Bryant is
the best I've ever seen. I'd get a guy that
who she did the same thing where she and gets him,
said we need to go into a business together, and
she gets to finance and she gets him too with
a peaceful equipment. He had to finish filling in the whale.
(14:39):
I was told that. So I contact him and he said,
the wales right here, chief, He said, you see that
clump of bushes out there. And of course she fell
out with this guy and she took his money and
tried to take his equipment and everything. And he said,
right out there where that clump of bushes is because
we had ridden over there, and he that's where the
(15:00):
will is. With the information that the young lady had
given me, went to judge and we got a search
war to excavate that well. We got there that morning.
She had another guy in the house then, and she
had gotten to come down to business with And I
(15:20):
never forget what he said. I knocked on the door,
and myself and Captain grizz with the Sheriff's office, he went,
he was with me and he says, Ms. Connie's not
here right now. She's gone tell town to involving her
Christian work. Well, Connie gets back from her Christian work.
I tell her, Connie, we have a search warrant. We're
(15:43):
gonna search your property. Well, it's already been done for
everybody always looked and said you know this and that.
I said, but we're gonna look a little cloture this time.
We're sitting there with a track o and on and
a dozier and sitting out there on a low boy.
And I said, we're gonna art at that well on
top of the hill. And she says, if he's in it,
(16:05):
I don't know anything about it. Well, Chief I gotta
ask you something. Did you look at that man and
think to yourself, buddy, you got no idea. I just
saved your life if he stayed in the game long enough.
The thing that that got Fred was, you know, because
(16:25):
that long living to fault, he filed a suit against her.
Ain't I kind of got lost in my conversation and uh,
but he filed a suit against her, and like the
first part of the week, it was served on her. Well,
the weekend, the girl that her name was Lisa hold
On Connie had gotten her father and mother to come
(16:48):
down from West Virginia, where they had lived earlier, because
she wanted to help him get into a business. Mr Holdeman.
He saw this thing about the money and her control
and whatnot, so that he opted out of that. But
they still remain, you know, friends too. I guess you'd say,
Lisa Holdeman, it's just amazed her. You know that Connie
still would want to be involved in their business and everything.
(17:13):
The the weekend that Fred disappeared, her husband that he
she had brought back into the scene and the boys,
they were all supposed to go to Florida to visit
a relative. Well at the last minute, she says, I'm
gonna stay here. I gotta work, and she tells Lisa
Holdaman's mother, she said, I'm staying here. I need to
(17:34):
protect my property, and I expect that protection came at
a very high expense. To Fred Wilkerson, the chief, my
mind is just blown because every time you give us
another element, another event, another piece of evidence, It's like,
this ain't a flag. This is a parade of flags,
and this is one of the ones that that that
(17:55):
I lost some friendships over. Is you know, you got
a woman that won't half the money for a house.
He didn't cash to payroll checks, he abandoned his car.
Nobody has seen him alive ever. Again. They might have
thought they saw him in Las Vegas from a distance,
but nobody's talked to him. She had an insurance policy
against him, and then she knew that he was suing her.
(18:18):
So other stuff was gonna come out in deposition and whatnot.
If somebody can't see that this thing was done for money,
I'm at a loss. It goes back to that thing.
You know what I said earlier. You know, I'd like
God like to claim being a genius for so all
in these cases, they you know, they and there were
a couple that were a little more twisted than this,
(18:40):
but anyway that was in this case, it just made
sense and we were able to Andre And let me
tell you something. When we executed the search warrant, we
find two microcosette tapes. And those micro cosette tapes she
had since she had been keeping them since nineteen seven
(19:04):
and this is two thousand and two. Well one of
them was later than that because she had taken her
husband back and one of those tapes for her and
I guess you they were a trophy. In that first
video of micro cossette tape, she's talking to Fred Wilkerson,
who had just filed a lawsuit on her. She calls him,
in her words, Fred Wilkerson, you son of a bitch.
(19:26):
I will kill you. And she had that microcust that
she had now kept for down your twenty years, and
we were able to retrieve it and have it at
court and she all we also dealing with her husband.
Your name was Gary Cuen's. He goes to Florida that weekend.
(19:49):
He comes back in an hour question of him. He
comes back and there is a pistol laying in the
floor downstairs. Of course, he picks the pistol up the perp.
So that was was guess who's gonna take the weapon
for this murder if this thing gets discovered, the gun
that killed him, But it never comes to be an issue.
(20:12):
The other tape is him and her arguing about the
a divorce settlement, and in that tape it says I
want my Walter pistol, and he says, Connie, there were
three Walter pistols, your author pistol that I sold at
a gun show. The two that I bought from Marcus
(20:34):
Smith Wickens executive serial numbers I gave the boys, and
the one that I sold at the gun show was
one that someone may have used at Fred's time. He
was straightforward with us and helped us in every way.
We're able to establish a fact to a moral's certainty
that he was in Florida during the time that Fred
Wilson was probably cute, But sometimes you have to make
(20:56):
a deal with the devil to get to which you know, yea,
there is nothing better than making that call. When a
cold case finally has an arrest made, Once that detective
has the person in custody and takes them to jail
(21:17):
and they are able to call that family or go
by and visit in person and tell them the person
that murdered their loved one has been arrested. Is a
powerful thing. It is often career defining. It's the reason
(21:37):
you do what you do in a cold case squad.
This is the trophy, this is the end result, This
is the gold medal. This is what it's all for.
All the sleepless nights, all the eighteen hour days, not
being able to get it out of your mind for
twenty years, thirty years, this is what it's for. That
(22:00):
didn't y'all roll out on the gurney all of his
bones at trial, you know, And I was kind of
shocked that they let us do it. Judge Bill Lee
was on the bench and as part of the evidence,
uh that we brought into court, we brought fred Wilckson
into court anatomically correct with a whole effect in the
(22:23):
back of the skull, and Dr Frederick Snow with the
g B I UH wonderful pathologists and he helped me
in several cases. And I just can't say enough about
him and Dark Spear. He is one of the foremost
forensic anthropologists in the country. And you know, he had excavated, uh,
(22:45):
mass Graves and Bosnia and things like that, and it's just,
you know, a tremendous asset to the g B I
And eventually he left the g B out. I think
he went to the University of Tennessee. Well, he recognized
that injury, didn't he as an assassination? Yes, sir, he's
oh absolutely, he said this and he said, this is
a classic keyhole deffect in the back of the man's skull.
(23:06):
Said he was shot at close range. He was straight
up assassinated, absolutely, and and and and it found as
it came to the back to that same thing after
he left Thanksgiving dinner with his sister and his kids.
And France was a family guy. I mean, baseball coach.
Uh maybe not the best husband in the world, but
(23:29):
baseball coach. Never Mr Dance Recital, you know, nothing in
the farthest thing, community oriented guy, the one thing in
the world. It would never, no matter what happened, would
he ever have just walked away from his family. We
were lucky to come up with the evidence that we did.
We were able to try and convict her. It was
(23:50):
kind of a situation where, uh, Judy went out and
I honestly think that it was a situation where it
took them longer to elective Phoneman than it did to
come to a guilty verdict. In three hours they came
back and please tell me, y'all played the tape in court.
(24:10):
We did, and you know it was just it was,
you know, I got your moment. You know, Tim Wilkson,
his sister Tracy, and their children. They were able to
bury their father, a decent Christian bearer. I developed a
relationship with them, and you know they're my friends, and
you know, I've never been any prouder back just that thing,
(24:34):
like with Alan Moore, never been any prouder than to
be able to experience that with them, as tragic as
it was. You know, everybody says, you know, well you're
that closure. You started talking about losing your children or
your parents to some absolutely unnecessary act. I don't think
(24:56):
there's anything that you could say is ever a closure,
but I think it gets to a point of finality,
you know, I think they got there and it was
just one of those deals and back this, you know
I said before about you know, I had a couple
of guys after this case they are ahead. Was it
(25:18):
outfit associated press call and they you know, they had
a big thing about the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Did them
think that's what the cold case Clay came from was
a feature article with them? There were a couple of
folks that early on in this case that were attached
to it and my friends and never spoke to me again.
(25:38):
Oh Ji, if he even wrote a letter to Pizza,
as long as I have at the d a's office,
that they would not be a healthy working relationship between
the officer in the share of So I'll never understand it.
There you have it, y'all. A lifetime of studying people
and places and crimes leads to solving two cold cases,
(26:00):
given victims family's answers and justice for the people that
they love and they lost decades ago. And I want
every young investigator to remember the one thing Chief said.
Remember when he said he got a tip from a
woman in Goose Creek, South Carolina. He was there the
(26:23):
next day. Let me let me tell you. You know,
we talked about my dad and he told me one thing.
He says, Son, you gotta work crime when crime is
and and it's true. You know, people might talk to
you today and they might not tomorrow, you know. And
(26:45):
just as conversely in some old cases where they're changing
and they'll talk to you now, but you've got to go,
and you you can't say, well, we're gonna schedule this
next Thursday. We'll talk to this person. If you've got
something you better will talk to him today. And my dad,
you know, we talked again about everything in this case
about Connie Queeding brings something to mind me and it's
(27:09):
something I think it's just that you'll like to hear.
We were right along one afternoon, you know, we're talking
about loves lost and bad decisions made in their lives
and things like that. And it looked at me and
he smiled. He says, well, sudden, let me tell you,
he said, And this applied to Fred Wilkson as much
as anybody that I've ever heard in my life. He said,
(27:29):
let me tell you, he says. You know, love is
but a two drop from heaven. Probably me is. Some
days it's just as soon fall on a horse turb
it had a geranium. Uh, But that was my dad.
But again, thank you. I appreciate more than anything in
the world being able to talk to you. And this
book's under contract. So there'll be a story about Fred
(27:50):
Wilkson coming to shortly and and it will be the
Blackwood as well. All Right, y'all, you gotta work crime
when crime is chief. I appreciate you so much, and
I'm gonna end Zone seven like I always do with
a quote from somebody from my Zone seven And this
comes from someone that I admire greatly, Elena Burrows, host
(28:12):
of Crimocene Confidential on Investigation Discovery. She's also a former
Crimocene investigator. Stay in the crime scene, don't sit in
your car, don't stand outside, Stay in the scene. Wait
for the chaos to clear, and in the silence you
(28:35):
will hear and see more than you initially did by
just being physically present. I'm Sheryl McCollum and this is
Zone seven. Next week we're going to tackle a case
(29:03):
unlike any other in history. There has never been a
case like this. So bring your pad and pencil, get
some rest, hydra, because we're gonna need you all on
this one. We are taken on the case of Melissa Wolfenberger.
Host
Sheryl McCollum
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