December 13, 2023 • 35 mins
On January 13, 1972, 9-year-old Debbie Randall was abducted and murdered after leaving a laundromat in Marietta, Georgia.
In this episode of Zone 7, Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum, talks with Detective Morris Nix about solving the 1972 cold case murder of 9-year-old Debbie Randall. They discuss the crime, investigation, DNA technology, and finally bringing justice after five decades.
Show Notes:
- [0:00] Welcome back to Zone 7 with Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum.
- [1:55] Introduction of Debbie’s case
- [2:50] Sheryl introduces Detective Morris Nix to the listeners
- [5:30] The crime scene is explained
- [13:30] Unusual components of the crime scene are discussed
- [15:00] Discovering Debbie’s body
- [20:00] Evidence collection and storage
- [27:00] “This is the beginning of the end.”
- [30:00] Following leads
- [35:25] “Persistence is key. Keep pushing forward, even when things get tough.”
- 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, 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!” or 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, 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
Social Links:
- Email: coldcase2004@gmail.com
- Twitter: @ColdCaseTips
- Facebook: @sheryl.mccollum
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
I was a tomboy growing up. I did not play
with dolls, but Barbie was not a doll. Barbie was
a grown woman, and Barbie was the only toy that
I can remember. My sisters, our mother, our grandmothers, and
(00:30):
our friends all participated in playing. She came with a
travel case, which I loved because then we could take her.
We could take her to our grandparents, our friends on vacation.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Barbie brought us all together.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
We were able to pick out clothes that we wanted
for our individual Barbie doll, and then our mom and
our grandmothers would make her clothes. Then we'd get to
try them on the doll, and then have like a
little fashion show. It was just an amazing experience that
all of us, all three generations, could participate in. When
(01:11):
I had a daughter of my own, we would spend
hours playing with Barbie, some of my clothes, some of
her clothes. Her aunts, her cousins, her friends. All loved it,
and I was comforted in a kind of sentimental way
that Caroline's Barbie was playing with clothes that my mama
(01:33):
and my grandmama made. Two people she never got a
chance to meet. Barbie connected all of us. Sometimes Caroline
would even wrote her brother huck in to play Ken,
so again, Barbie connected all of us. It was January thirteenth,
nineteen seventy two, when Debbie Lynn Randall, aged nine, was
(01:57):
abducted while walking home from a law dramat and Marietta, Georgia.
Debbie was a third grader at Pine Forest Elementary School.
She loved her brothers, her barbies, and dancing. She loved
to play with other children, and she would often take
toys with her to the laundromat so that when other
children were there they had something to play with.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Her.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Barbies were a staple. She and the other little girls
would use the large tables at the laundromat to spread
out all their clothes the carrying case and play for hours.
The laundrymat was three hundred feet from Debbie's front door.
When she did not return home, her parents started to
look for her. They found spilled detergent in the parking lot.
(02:44):
They knew instantly something was terribly wrong. Tonight, we have
Detective Mars Nicks with us. In twenty fifteen, Detective Nicks
got on the case of Debbie Randall y'all. He was
devoted laser focused and mission driven. Detective Nicks and I
connected in twenty seventeen and talked and talked and talked
(03:08):
about ways to move this case forward. He worked other
cold cases successfully, but Debbie never left him. Detective Nicks
began his career in law enforcement March the first, nineteen
seventy eight, with the Cob County Sheriff's Department. He remained
there until two thousand and five when he retired. Then
(03:30):
he spent ten years with the Kennisaw Police Department. He
was with their internal affairs and a polygraph examiner. He
retired again in twenty seventeen, but he didn't sit at home.
He joined the Elite Cold Case Task Force with the
Cob County DA's Office. There he volunteered his time and talents.
(03:50):
That is when he said, Debbie Lynn Randall's case, I
want it, and if not for him, her case would
still be on a shelf. It is my profound honor
to welcome Detective mars and X to Zone seven. Detective
thank you for being here. So you decide when you're
(04:11):
at this Elite task Force that Debbie Lynn Randall's going
to be your case.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Well, Cheryl, I was very familiar with Debbie's case because
I remember the day that it happened. I came home.
I was at my mom's house and my mother was
wringing her hands looking out the kitchen window. I remember it.
I could tell she very upset. I said, Mom, what's wrong.
She said, that little girl. Someone is taking that little girl.
(04:38):
I was very familiar with the area. I was very
familiar with the launder mat. I had been in that
laundromat over the years because my grandparents had lived right
there where Debbie lived. At one point, of course, it
was starting to get a lot of attention, you know,
the case. Eventflu went cold and you you go on
(05:00):
with life and get on down the road. But I
was very familiar with the case. I go to work
at the Sheriff's office. One of the first things I did,
Like a lot of deputies, you start, I started out
working in the jail, but I would always make it
a point to talk to Sheriff Hudson. Now Sheriff Hudson
(05:21):
had been one of the original detections on Debbie's case.
I would ask him every question I could think of
about this case. And at the time I didn't know
really much about Debbie personal. I was like, where's she buried?
Where is her family? So time goes along. Of course
I want to do other assignments. Became a polygraphic examiner
(05:45):
in nineteen ninety five. But when I worked to work
at Kennesaw, they had asked me to come up and
help them start internal affairs unit. That was a Kalia requirement.
One day she Bill Westenberger, who's the chief of Kennsau,
said Hey, they're starting a cold case unit at a
(06:06):
district attorney's office. He says, if you want to go
work with him, you know, we'll work that out. So
approximately two thy fifteen, twenty fourteen, I was working at
the colcase unit as an assignment from the police department.
The first day that I got to the colcation union,
(06:28):
I walked in and the first thing I said, who
has the Debuti and Randall case? And I realized at
the time those people on that unit they weren't from Marietta.
They weren't raised in Marietta. John Dawes, who was one
of the administrators in the colcase unit, he had come
from Ohio and several of the other people had come
(06:49):
from out of state. I said, well, there's this case,
some Marietta case, and I started telling them about Debni's case.
So one of the guys on the unit, man was
Tony Fields. He says, let's go down to marriett A
PD and see if they have anything on it. Well,
I knew that some people down there had been looking
(07:10):
at it over the years. But we go in there
and we'd get the evidence people to bring it everything out.
I was amazed at some of the things that were there,
and I was also amazed that some of the things
that weren't there. But that's kind of how it all again.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
All right, So let's talk about the crime and the
crime scene a minute. So Debbie lived with her mom,
step mom, and two brothers literally across the street from
the laundromat. So this is a place where she would
go and play and felt very comfortable being there by
herself without her parents, and then just would walk home.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Walk us through what the crime scene looked like.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
You know where I'm coming from this, because you've got
experience with crime scene. I thought I was going to
find a wealth of information. I thought there would be
hundreds of photographs. I thought there'd be sketches, drawings. I
thought there would be a lot of investigative material. There wasn't.
(08:10):
I was amazed, as I think we found seven or
eight pictures. I don't know if they were ever taking
it and had disappeared over the years. The first thing
that I wanted to see was the list of everyone
who lived in those projects. Today she came up missing.
There was no list, which just kind of surprised me.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
So this particular day, why was she at the laundromat alone?
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Well, they had gone there to do close. Her stepfather
had given her the money and got the machine started,
which was there. You know, that was common then and
what people don't understand. You could probably shout across the street.
But Debbie had gone over there. Her step father, Frank Hooker,
(09:01):
had given her the money get the machine. Stuarted. Debbie
had the habit of getting the unused church soap powders
that my grandmother would say, yeah, and that's what she did. Now,
one of the questions that haunted me was did Deborah
(09:23):
know her attacker? Was this someone that knew the family
or was this random? Her family was convinced she knew
her attacker. We now know she probably didn't. We have
no connection to Debbie with her attacker. But she comes
out and if you look at the photographs of where
(09:45):
the powder was dunked or where it was drawn, I
knew then that probably she had resisted or he had
just grabbed it out of her hands and slung it.
There were nowhere for girls to go. There was nowhere
them to gather, and so that's where they met. They
as girls would do, they played with their dolls and
(10:07):
I think traded doll clothes or whatever they did at
the time. I interviewed someone later who told me I
spoke to Debbie right before she walked out the door.
She said, I wanted to go with her over to
her house, and my older sister said, you're not going anywhere.
(10:28):
You're going to stay here and help me fold close. Now,
one of the big things in this case and shell,
as you know, a cold case is very different than
a case that is currently being worked. On a current case,
you keep everything close to your vest, you keep everything
(10:50):
behind closed doors. When a case goes cold, that really
doesn't apply so much. One of the big things things
that the detectives that Mary at APD did in the
beginning was they diligently hid the information or kept private
(11:11):
in the information about Debut's shoes. They thought that whoever
did the only the person who did this would know
what kind of shoes you were wearing, so they wanted
to keep that. We know now that that's not real.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Her parents, she doesn't come home, so they go looking
for When they get in the parking lot, they see
the spilled detergent and immediately panic start screaming for he
start looking for asking people that are around, have you
seen her? Have you seen her? The police are eventually called.
That entire county gets involved. Your mama standing in the
(11:55):
kitchen wringing her hands, upset. That's how that whole county
was over this child. This is how Metro Atlanta was
about this child. Y'all even had something up there called
Operation Debbie, where four thousand volunteers went out looking for
her everywhere.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Again.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Her body, sadly was found January twenty ninth, about one
thousand feet from Windy Hill powers Ferry.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
If you go down powers Ferry Road to Windy Hill Road,
is your headed south on the left, there was a
Houston's restaurant, which is no longer there. But if you're
standing in that parking lot of Houston the Old Houston restaurant.
That's where her body was, and I located Mike McMahon,
(12:44):
who's the one who found her body. Mike was a
student at Southern teen and they had asked for volunteers
to look and they were signed that area had been
a opportunity leader in Vietnam. Based on my experience. He said,
(13:05):
I saw what were signs of a possible drag mark,
so I investigated. He said, I walked the terrain slope downward,
and he walked down there. Of course it's woods then,
and he saw her body. He did not go all
the way to the body. He stopped again because he
(13:27):
did not want to disturb anything, and that when they
found her body.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Now, there was some unusual components to this crime scene.
For me, the most compelling was she was redressed. Talk
about that a little bit.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
I thought. I was thinking in my head and this
before I ever saw any the photograph of which you
only have a handful, I thought we were going to
find a nude or parsonally nude body. We didn't. She
had on a coat. It was all the way up,
which I always thought was a little strange. There was
(14:05):
some damage, facial damage, probably from wild animals I was
trying to, which will also answer some questions for me.
There was a rag in her vaginal area, and I'm thinking,
why did that happen? Well, looking back on it, I
think that she was bleeding so profusely. He did not
(14:28):
want her bleeding any vehicle, so he puts the rag
in there, puts her underwear back on her, takes her
to this location, which I think was not planned. I
think he pulled out a Dixie Catherine Stone. She's bleeding.
He stopped and thinks she's about to mest my truck up,
(14:49):
gets her out, walk right down, and leads her body.
I have always wondered, and my prayer is that she
was de ceased at this point, but I've also wondered
if maybe he pulls out and realized she's not dead.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
It's probably the most troubling because again, you're talking about
a nine year old little girl who was so severely
injured that in the autopsy it's very clear if he
had not strangled her, she would have led to death.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Correct, And that's how that's how bad it was. I
have also wondered where did he go when he dropped
her body? Where did he go? Now? Off? Windy Hill Road.
At that time it was a dumping ground for bodies.
There had been like five bodies found off Windy Hill Road.
(15:40):
I think, and I don't know why, it's just my whatever.
I think he would said it to the river. So
why did he all of a sudden stop less than
a quarter mile she was bleeding profusely, didn't want to
mess the vehicle up, or she wasn't dead.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Well, we know she was a fighter because not only
was the detergent spilled, there was an eye witness that
saw his black truck and he and a little girl
were fighting in that truck.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Which brings up another question. I always wondered, well, if
he were alone or if you were resisting, how did
he drive the truck. I'm thinking probably now he threatened
Debbie before she did not resist once he got her
in the car. That maybe she just cowered down in fear,
(16:30):
not because she was cowed. Those are just questions that
I'll never know.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
In this case had a couple of twists and turns
that were particularly unusual.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
You had not one, but two ransom calls.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
We got the crack calls, and Marietta did. In the
beginning of the case, the last one that I had
was really not that long ago. That got information that
from someone who said who was going to tell us
where the killer was buried? He gave us a and
(17:04):
we sent people out there to the cemetery was in
Uh it' sin Tucker, I believe, and gave us all
these little signs that we could and of course it
was it was ridiculous, but they were psychics. Uh. They
were people who claimed to have done it. Uh. There
(17:24):
was one individual which Sheriff Hudson who was then Detective
Hudson along with the DA office went to I believe
it was Virginia and interviewed someone who claimed they've done it,
and everything matched. He was in the area, he had
(17:48):
a prior conviction for peeping Tom just a really good
lead and he told a very convincing story to experience. Investigator.
Sheriff Hudson would tell me later he said, you know,
he was in a middle institution, but I just don't know,
(18:12):
but there's some credibility there. Years later we would track
down his brother. His brother was living out west and
after a lot of work, we found his brother living
I think Idaho, I don't remember. We get the department
(18:35):
in Idaho to see if his brother will give DNA.
He did and it was not him. Contacted Sheriff Hudson
who's now retired, retired, and I said, Sheriff, I was
going to let you know that guy y'all worked on.
It's not him. We know that it's not him, and
(18:59):
I could talk about three or four other individuals. We
had another individual who claimed he did it, and he
had a prior record of such offences and he was
in prison. First question, I asked him what was the
weather that night, because that night it rained? I said,
(19:19):
what was the weather that night? Without hesitation, he said
it was raining, and as it turns out, was not him.
I got a phone call from someone after they saw
the sketch and said, that's my dad. My dad inlisted
my sister, he that is my father. That's a spitting
image of my father. We lived in Marietta around that place.
(19:46):
That's him. Well it wasn't. We had a lot of
good leads, but none of them panned out what I
would say, And I want to put this out that
show you cannot because you know what I'm going to say.
You cannot stress enough the importance of having a good
(20:11):
trained crime scene technician. You cannot you cannot dress enough
about having an organized, well maintained evidence room because I've
been to enough agencies and I've seen enough thing where
(20:35):
I've actually told people, look, you know, y'all can get
indicted for this double witness. You've got weapons missing, you've
got you can't do this. At Kinnesau, we had a
girl that came to Kinnsau's crime scene and do the everything,
named Lori l Heights. What she did there was remarkable.
(20:58):
She went through I mean it was just chaos. She
went through completely. We did everything, computerized it, organized it,
and I thought, wow, this is impressive. But going back
to Debbie's case, maryt Apd had done a pretty good
(21:18):
job of this. We were very lucky. We were just
very lucky. But you you know, sometimes lucky is what
you make it. The only thing that I really did
in this show is I just harassed people. I got
them to go along with me, and that's really all
that I did.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Well, because that's all it takes sometimes.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Yeah, And you know, and Nancy Grayce, we did three
or four podcasts with her. The local media was wonderful.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
They did a couple of stories of which I was
very grateful. When you have an active case, you keep
everything closed. On a cold case, you don't. You have
to continuously seek the media. You have to continuously keep
it in the news. You have to continuously reach out
(22:18):
for people that will say the name talk about it.
You know, I'll call the Mariatta Jonal said, please please
do a story on this case. It was hard to
listen to Melvin, Debbie's brother when he would call me
and say, is there anything do you know anything? Has
anything changed? You know, my mama's crying. And people didn't
(22:42):
understand that part of it.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
When you called me, your name pops up on my
phone and I answer, I'm thrilled to hear from you,
and I'm like hey, and I don't hear anything for
a second, and then finally with your voice, you say,
we got him.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
We got him.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
In two thousand and fifteen, I was on my way
to let You follow the Fish in a fishing tournament
with an organization called FLW. I'm going down the road
and I get a text from John Dahl, truch case administrator.
He's like, pullover. Stop. We had submitted evidence, hopefully for DNA,
(23:35):
thinking we would get nothing. We thought, this is, you know,
forty years old, forty five years old, surely it's gonna be,
you know, not any good. But I pull over and
he's real excited. He said, we got a partial profile.
He said, we know now it was a white male,
a single white male. Well, Cheryl, I did not know then,
(23:57):
and I really don't know now much about it. I'm
much called a d r D. That's dirt road dipity,
and I don't claim to be the sharpest knife anyway.
But he was excited, and so I'm like, okay, what
does that mean partial? He said, well, let me put
(24:18):
it to you this way. He said, we know it's
a white male. And he said, it's not so much
we know who. We can know who it is, but
we're going to know who it is, which was huge
because we had a list of about one hundred names.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Anybody Hispanic or pan Asian or African American, you can
rule them out, so that.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
Narrows to feel down. When this occurred, I told my wife,
I said, one day, I don't know if it's going
to be ten years, twenty year, or long after I'm gone.
One day, this technology will advance to we're going to
know who this is. I believe it. I believe it
from my core. I thought, if the Good Lord just
(25:02):
let me live long enough, and well, guess what. There
wasn't twenty years, it was about seven. Well, by this
time I had the cocase unit. We had changed DA's
in copp County. Then of course we had the COVID thing,
which they wanted nobody in the courthouse that didn't have
to be there. Then we changed DA's again. And so
(25:27):
by this time the cocage unit, the original cocasee unit,
had not gotten back together yet, and they were all
calling me like, well, what are we waiting on when
we're going to do this? And sel I got to
talk about the people on this caucase unit. This case
was never ever about I in me, it was about us,
(25:49):
and we so many people over fifty years worked on this.
Then I find out that Ron alt he is now
up at the DA's office working this. So I taught
Ron Altar and Ron I told Ron, I said, Ron,
promise me, just promise me you won't let this go
back on the shelf. And I said, well, we're ready
(26:13):
to go back to work on this stuff. He promised
me that he would not he tells me again, we
have resubmitted some more evidence, he said, We've got enough
to do one more basically the way he put it
to me. Time goes by, and we're still working this thing.
Me and a couple of guys are still talking to people,
(26:34):
trying to run people down. We're trying to get in
touch with anybody that knew Debbie remotely, and we find,
of course, most of the people are deceased. You know,
how about this gall we he died? How about this
gall he died? I got DNA samples from four ex
husbands where the wife sure they did it. We had
(26:56):
gone to South Carolina. That in South Carolina, and that's
where we found the letter and a sketch, a drawing
that we didn't even know existed, that had been left
out of the original foul. But you know, time kind
of goes along. Then one day Ron Alder calls me
(27:17):
and says, hey, we've narrowed this down. I believe, he said,
to two places, two possible families, And I knew in
my core. I said, this is the beginning. This is
the beginning of the end. A little more time rocks along.
He called me one day and says, we know who
(27:39):
his daughter is. I knew then we got him. A
little more time goes along. I'm thinking about two weeks
and I cannot sleep. I cannot you know, I'm just dressing.
He called me back and says his name is William Rose,
and I'm going to It's a little bit embarrassing to
(27:59):
admit this, but I kind of went down in my basement,
in my corner and I had my moment. I think
it all just came out. It was a culmination of
a lot of people doing a lot of work. Without
that DNA, this case would not have been solved because
(28:21):
Well and Rose, as we found out later, had committed
Shue's side a problem two years after we did the crime.
And over the years I couldn't understand. I was trying
to think, now, who does this kind of crime? One time?
Why a isn't he in Cotis? And I'll let you
(28:42):
think the people what Cotis is? But why isn't he
in Cotis?
Speaker 1 (28:48):
What?
Speaker 3 (28:49):
There's something missing?
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Well, that's a conversation you and I had, and I
want people to understand. I love that you're given credit,
and I love that you are explaining this was us
and we I one hundred percent agree, no doubt about it,
but I do want people to know. You and I
started talking in twenty seventeen about things like the envat
(29:15):
and what can be done to push this case. And
you wanted to test the eyeglasses that were found at
the scene, and you wanted to test other things that
were at the scene that you knew.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
That killer touched.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
And so you were pushing for things in twenty seventeen,
twenty eighteen that other people weren't even thinking about. So again,
if not for you, we would not be here today.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
He was just so painful sometime to talk about this.
And Debbie's dad, like I said, his family and his
her mother said, you know, I just want to know
before I die. The day that Melvin called me and
said mister nick and I kept him, please don't call
(30:06):
me mister nute, but he said, my mam and dad,
it was a gut punch and I felt like I
have let you down. My wife will tell you that
two o'clock in the morning, welcome in the living room.
(30:28):
What are you doing up? What are you thinking about?
And I'm looking at a file thinking I missed something?
What did I miss?
Speaker 1 (30:36):
Well? You and I had how many conversations, saying there's
no way this guy didn't reoffend.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
He was too violent.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
Now, at one point, Cheryl, I started to look at
everybody who'd been executed for similar crimes. I thought, I'm
going to go through the Southeast and find out in
the timeframe who's been executed. I can get nothing. I
spent a lot of time working on nothing. I could
(31:05):
not figure out how this guy fell off facing the earth.
Of course, now we know why I wouldn't get anythinking codes.
We know why he didn't reoffend. And I want to
thank you, Chirl, I really do. And I don't want
you to cut this out. But people like yourself, people
like Nancy Grace, the media of the people put that
(31:27):
is so so important, especially in a cold case. But
without the media, without people such as your show and
Nancy Grace and these other people, it would be very difficult.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
And I just got to tell folks, you know, I
had a chance to be with you and Melvin not
long ago, just a couple of weeks ago. It was
a couple of things that struck me that night that again,
it's not just a job. This is literally what we
have devoted our lives to and sometimes the case comes
along like Debbie's that you can't turn it loose for
(32:03):
whatever reason. And something happened that night that I don't
think I will ever get over. And Melvin gave me something,
and he gave me Debbie's Barbie traveling case with her
clothes in it.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Oh, yes, that was emotional for me.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
What do you do with that? Right?
Speaker 1 (32:24):
I mean, how do you even thank somebody for that
or to think that you know you want me to
have it? And he said, all I want is for somebody,
some little girl to be able to enjoy them. And
I knew that my great nieces would. They love Barbie Ello,
Kate and Olivia. They play Barbie's all the time. And
(32:46):
I told him, I promise you that these clothes will
be enjoyed in this little case, will be played with.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
And he looked at me.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
And he pointed at you, and he said, that's my brother,
and it's going to mean the world to me to
have the two of you in my life. I think
about those clothes in that little case right this minute,
because last week Melvin's house burned down, and had he
not given those to me, he would have lost the
(33:19):
last thing that he had physically of Debbies.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
Yes, yes, so.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
You don't have to detach yourself. I don't think you
should detach yourself. You don't have to, you know, put
something on a shelf and forget about it. You added
to your family. Marris Melvin is absolutely your family.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
He is, and Melvin's had a tough time. I can't imagine,
you know, Cheryl, I just can't imagine. When a parent
loses a child in any manner, it's forever. I mean,
you agreeve for the day you died. I am named
after my father's brother. He took part in only the Invasion.
(34:07):
He was killed in France fighting the Nazis, And I
grew up in the household with my grandparents who never
got over it. They grieved until the day they died,
because that's what parents do, and you're not supposed to
go to your children's funeral. It's not supposed to walk
that way. So I kind of sort of knew the
(34:32):
lifelong agony because I'd seen it with my grandparents. So
no matter how you lose your child, you never get
over it. It never passes. I would look at Debbie's
picture and I wondered what would she have become, What
would Debbie be today because bright Well liked good kid.
(34:58):
What would she be today? This should be a school teacher.
You should be a doctor, which should be a police officer.
That's one of the tragedies of this.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
Detective mars Nicks, you are a legend. You are one
of the best that has ever done it, and I
cannot thank you enough for being a part of my
Zone seven.
Speaker 3 (35:20):
Well, Cheryl, I appreciate you, and I appreciate it thing
you do.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
I'm going to end Zone seven the way that I
always do with a quote, Persistence is key. Keep pushing
forward even when things get tough. Ruth Handler, the inventor
of the Barbie Doll. I'm Cheryl McCollum, and this is
Zone seven.
I was a tomboy growing up. I did not play
with dolls, but Barbie was not a doll. Barbie was
a grown woman, and Barbie was the only toy that
I can remember. My sisters, our mother, our grandmothers, and
(00:30):
our friends all participated in playing. She came with a
travel case, which I loved because then we could take her.
We could take her to our grandparents, our friends on vacation.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Barbie brought us all together.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
We were able to pick out clothes that we wanted
for our individual Barbie doll, and then our mom and
our grandmothers would make her clothes. Then we'd get to
try them on the doll, and then have like a
little fashion show. It was just an amazing experience that
all of us, all three generations, could participate in. When
(01:11):
I had a daughter of my own, we would spend
hours playing with Barbie, some of my clothes, some of
her clothes. Her aunts, her cousins, her friends. All loved it,
and I was comforted in a kind of sentimental way
that Caroline's Barbie was playing with clothes that my mama
(01:33):
and my grandmama made. Two people she never got a
chance to meet. Barbie connected all of us. Sometimes Caroline
would even wrote her brother huck in to play Ken,
so again, Barbie connected all of us. It was January thirteenth,
nineteen seventy two, when Debbie Lynn Randall, aged nine, was
(01:57):
abducted while walking home from a law dramat and Marietta, Georgia.
Debbie was a third grader at Pine Forest Elementary School.
She loved her brothers, her barbies, and dancing. She loved
to play with other children, and she would often take
toys with her to the laundromat so that when other
children were there they had something to play with.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Her.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Barbies were a staple. She and the other little girls
would use the large tables at the laundromat to spread
out all their clothes the carrying case and play for hours.
The laundrymat was three hundred feet from Debbie's front door.
When she did not return home, her parents started to
look for her. They found spilled detergent in the parking lot.
(02:44):
They knew instantly something was terribly wrong. Tonight, we have
Detective Mars Nicks with us. In twenty fifteen, Detective Nicks
got on the case of Debbie Randall y'all. He was
devoted laser focused and mission driven. Detective Nicks and I
connected in twenty seventeen and talked and talked and talked
(03:08):
about ways to move this case forward. He worked other
cold cases successfully, but Debbie never left him. Detective Nicks
began his career in law enforcement March the first, nineteen
seventy eight, with the Cob County Sheriff's Department. He remained
there until two thousand and five when he retired. Then
(03:30):
he spent ten years with the Kennisaw Police Department. He
was with their internal affairs and a polygraph examiner. He
retired again in twenty seventeen, but he didn't sit at home.
He joined the Elite Cold Case Task Force with the
Cob County DA's Office. There he volunteered his time and talents.
(03:50):
That is when he said, Debbie Lynn Randall's case, I
want it, and if not for him, her case would
still be on a shelf. It is my profound honor
to welcome Detective mars and X to Zone seven. Detective
thank you for being here. So you decide when you're
(04:11):
at this Elite task Force that Debbie Lynn Randall's going
to be your case.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Well, Cheryl, I was very familiar with Debbie's case because
I remember the day that it happened. I came home.
I was at my mom's house and my mother was
wringing her hands looking out the kitchen window. I remember it.
I could tell she very upset. I said, Mom, what's wrong.
She said, that little girl. Someone is taking that little girl.
(04:38):
I was very familiar with the area. I was very
familiar with the launder mat. I had been in that
laundromat over the years because my grandparents had lived right
there where Debbie lived. At one point, of course, it
was starting to get a lot of attention, you know,
the case. Eventflu went cold and you you go on
(05:00):
with life and get on down the road. But I
was very familiar with the case. I go to work
at the Sheriff's office. One of the first things I did,
Like a lot of deputies, you start, I started out
working in the jail, but I would always make it
a point to talk to Sheriff Hudson. Now Sheriff Hudson
(05:21):
had been one of the original detections on Debbie's case.
I would ask him every question I could think of
about this case. And at the time I didn't know
really much about Debbie personal. I was like, where's she buried?
Where is her family? So time goes along. Of course
I want to do other assignments. Became a polygraphic examiner
(05:45):
in nineteen ninety five. But when I worked to work
at Kennesaw, they had asked me to come up and
help them start internal affairs unit. That was a Kalia requirement.
One day she Bill Westenberger, who's the chief of Kennsau,
said Hey, they're starting a cold case unit at a
(06:06):
district attorney's office. He says, if you want to go
work with him, you know, we'll work that out. So
approximately two thy fifteen, twenty fourteen, I was working at
the colcase unit as an assignment from the police department.
The first day that I got to the colcation union,
(06:28):
I walked in and the first thing I said, who
has the Debuti and Randall case? And I realized at
the time those people on that unit they weren't from Marietta.
They weren't raised in Marietta. John Dawes, who was one
of the administrators in the colcase unit, he had come
from Ohio and several of the other people had come
(06:49):
from out of state. I said, well, there's this case,
some Marietta case, and I started telling them about Debni's case.
So one of the guys on the unit, man was
Tony Fields. He says, let's go down to marriett A
PD and see if they have anything on it. Well,
I knew that some people down there had been looking
(07:10):
at it over the years. But we go in there
and we'd get the evidence people to bring it everything out.
I was amazed at some of the things that were there,
and I was also amazed that some of the things
that weren't there. But that's kind of how it all again.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
All right, So let's talk about the crime and the
crime scene a minute. So Debbie lived with her mom,
step mom, and two brothers literally across the street from
the laundromat. So this is a place where she would
go and play and felt very comfortable being there by
herself without her parents, and then just would walk home.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Walk us through what the crime scene looked like.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
You know where I'm coming from this, because you've got
experience with crime scene. I thought I was going to
find a wealth of information. I thought there would be
hundreds of photographs. I thought there'd be sketches, drawings. I
thought there would be a lot of investigative material. There wasn't.
(08:10):
I was amazed, as I think we found seven or
eight pictures. I don't know if they were ever taking
it and had disappeared over the years. The first thing
that I wanted to see was the list of everyone
who lived in those projects. Today she came up missing.
There was no list, which just kind of surprised me.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
So this particular day, why was she at the laundromat alone?
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Well, they had gone there to do close. Her stepfather
had given her the money and got the machine started,
which was there. You know, that was common then and
what people don't understand. You could probably shout across the street.
But Debbie had gone over there. Her step father, Frank Hooker,
(09:01):
had given her the money get the machine. Stuarted. Debbie
had the habit of getting the unused church soap powders
that my grandmother would say, yeah, and that's what she did. Now,
one of the questions that haunted me was did Deborah
(09:23):
know her attacker? Was this someone that knew the family
or was this random? Her family was convinced she knew
her attacker. We now know she probably didn't. We have
no connection to Debbie with her attacker. But she comes
out and if you look at the photographs of where
(09:45):
the powder was dunked or where it was drawn, I
knew then that probably she had resisted or he had
just grabbed it out of her hands and slung it.
There were nowhere for girls to go. There was nowhere
them to gather, and so that's where they met. They
as girls would do, they played with their dolls and
(10:07):
I think traded doll clothes or whatever they did at
the time. I interviewed someone later who told me I
spoke to Debbie right before she walked out the door.
She said, I wanted to go with her over to
her house, and my older sister said, you're not going anywhere.
(10:28):
You're going to stay here and help me fold close. Now,
one of the big things in this case and shell,
as you know, a cold case is very different than
a case that is currently being worked. On a current case,
you keep everything close to your vest, you keep everything
(10:50):
behind closed doors. When a case goes cold, that really
doesn't apply so much. One of the big things things
that the detectives that Mary at APD did in the
beginning was they diligently hid the information or kept private
(11:11):
in the information about Debut's shoes. They thought that whoever
did the only the person who did this would know
what kind of shoes you were wearing, so they wanted
to keep that. We know now that that's not real.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Her parents, she doesn't come home, so they go looking
for When they get in the parking lot, they see
the spilled detergent and immediately panic start screaming for he
start looking for asking people that are around, have you
seen her? Have you seen her? The police are eventually called.
That entire county gets involved. Your mama standing in the
(11:55):
kitchen wringing her hands, upset. That's how that whole county
was over this child. This is how Metro Atlanta was
about this child. Y'all even had something up there called
Operation Debbie, where four thousand volunteers went out looking for
her everywhere.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Again.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Her body, sadly was found January twenty ninth, about one
thousand feet from Windy Hill powers Ferry.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
If you go down powers Ferry Road to Windy Hill Road,
is your headed south on the left, there was a
Houston's restaurant, which is no longer there. But if you're
standing in that parking lot of Houston the Old Houston restaurant.
That's where her body was, and I located Mike McMahon,
(12:44):
who's the one who found her body. Mike was a
student at Southern teen and they had asked for volunteers
to look and they were signed that area had been
a opportunity leader in Vietnam. Based on my experience. He said,
(13:05):
I saw what were signs of a possible drag mark,
so I investigated. He said, I walked the terrain slope downward,
and he walked down there. Of course it's woods then,
and he saw her body. He did not go all
the way to the body. He stopped again because he
(13:27):
did not want to disturb anything, and that when they
found her body.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Now, there was some unusual components to this crime scene.
For me, the most compelling was she was redressed. Talk
about that a little bit.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
I thought. I was thinking in my head and this
before I ever saw any the photograph of which you
only have a handful, I thought we were going to
find a nude or parsonally nude body. We didn't. She
had on a coat. It was all the way up,
which I always thought was a little strange. There was
(14:05):
some damage, facial damage, probably from wild animals I was
trying to, which will also answer some questions for me.
There was a rag in her vaginal area, and I'm thinking,
why did that happen? Well, looking back on it, I
think that she was bleeding so profusely. He did not
(14:28):
want her bleeding any vehicle, so he puts the rag
in there, puts her underwear back on her, takes her
to this location, which I think was not planned. I
think he pulled out a Dixie Catherine Stone. She's bleeding.
He stopped and thinks she's about to mest my truck up,
(14:49):
gets her out, walk right down, and leads her body.
I have always wondered, and my prayer is that she
was de ceased at this point, but I've also wondered
if maybe he pulls out and realized she's not dead.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
It's probably the most troubling because again, you're talking about
a nine year old little girl who was so severely
injured that in the autopsy it's very clear if he
had not strangled her, she would have led to death.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Correct, And that's how that's how bad it was. I
have also wondered where did he go when he dropped
her body? Where did he go? Now? Off? Windy Hill Road.
At that time it was a dumping ground for bodies.
There had been like five bodies found off Windy Hill Road.
(15:40):
I think, and I don't know why, it's just my whatever.
I think he would said it to the river. So
why did he all of a sudden stop less than
a quarter mile she was bleeding profusely, didn't want to
mess the vehicle up, or she wasn't dead.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Well, we know she was a fighter because not only
was the detergent spilled, there was an eye witness that
saw his black truck and he and a little girl
were fighting in that truck.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Which brings up another question. I always wondered, well, if
he were alone or if you were resisting, how did
he drive the truck. I'm thinking probably now he threatened
Debbie before she did not resist once he got her
in the car. That maybe she just cowered down in fear,
(16:30):
not because she was cowed. Those are just questions that
I'll never know.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
In this case had a couple of twists and turns
that were particularly unusual.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
You had not one, but two ransom calls.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
We got the crack calls, and Marietta did. In the
beginning of the case, the last one that I had
was really not that long ago. That got information that
from someone who said who was going to tell us
where the killer was buried? He gave us a and
(17:04):
we sent people out there to the cemetery was in
Uh it' sin Tucker, I believe, and gave us all
these little signs that we could and of course it
was it was ridiculous, but they were psychics. Uh. They
were people who claimed to have done it. Uh. There
(17:24):
was one individual which Sheriff Hudson who was then Detective
Hudson along with the DA office went to I believe
it was Virginia and interviewed someone who claimed they've done it,
and everything matched. He was in the area, he had
(17:48):
a prior conviction for peeping Tom just a really good
lead and he told a very convincing story to experience. Investigator.
Sheriff Hudson would tell me later he said, you know,
he was in a middle institution, but I just don't know,
(18:12):
but there's some credibility there. Years later we would track
down his brother. His brother was living out west and
after a lot of work, we found his brother living
I think Idaho, I don't remember. We get the department
(18:35):
in Idaho to see if his brother will give DNA.
He did and it was not him. Contacted Sheriff Hudson
who's now retired, retired, and I said, Sheriff, I was
going to let you know that guy y'all worked on.
It's not him. We know that it's not him, and
(18:59):
I could talk about three or four other individuals. We
had another individual who claimed he did it, and he
had a prior record of such offences and he was
in prison. First question, I asked him what was the
weather that night, because that night it rained? I said,
(19:19):
what was the weather that night? Without hesitation, he said
it was raining, and as it turns out, was not him.
I got a phone call from someone after they saw
the sketch and said, that's my dad. My dad inlisted
my sister, he that is my father. That's a spitting
image of my father. We lived in Marietta around that place.
(19:46):
That's him. Well it wasn't. We had a lot of
good leads, but none of them panned out what I
would say, And I want to put this out that
show you cannot because you know what I'm going to say.
You cannot stress enough the importance of having a good
(20:11):
trained crime scene technician. You cannot you cannot dress enough
about having an organized, well maintained evidence room because I've
been to enough agencies and I've seen enough thing where
(20:35):
I've actually told people, look, you know, y'all can get
indicted for this double witness. You've got weapons missing, you've
got you can't do this. At Kinnesau, we had a
girl that came to Kinnsau's crime scene and do the everything,
named Lori l Heights. What she did there was remarkable.
(20:58):
She went through I mean it was just chaos. She
went through completely. We did everything, computerized it, organized it,
and I thought, wow, this is impressive. But going back
to Debbie's case, maryt Apd had done a pretty good
(21:18):
job of this. We were very lucky. We were just
very lucky. But you you know, sometimes lucky is what
you make it. The only thing that I really did
in this show is I just harassed people. I got
them to go along with me, and that's really all
that I did.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Well, because that's all it takes sometimes.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Yeah, And you know, and Nancy Grayce, we did three
or four podcasts with her. The local media was wonderful.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
They did a couple of stories of which I was
very grateful. When you have an active case, you keep
everything closed. On a cold case, you don't. You have
to continuously seek the media. You have to continuously keep
it in the news. You have to continuously reach out
(22:18):
for people that will say the name talk about it.
You know, I'll call the Mariatta Jonal said, please please
do a story on this case. It was hard to
listen to Melvin, Debbie's brother when he would call me
and say, is there anything do you know anything? Has
anything changed? You know, my mama's crying. And people didn't
(22:42):
understand that part of it.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
When you called me, your name pops up on my
phone and I answer, I'm thrilled to hear from you,
and I'm like hey, and I don't hear anything for
a second, and then finally with your voice, you say,
we got him.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
We got him.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
In two thousand and fifteen, I was on my way
to let You follow the Fish in a fishing tournament
with an organization called FLW. I'm going down the road
and I get a text from John Dahl, truch case administrator.
He's like, pullover. Stop. We had submitted evidence, hopefully for DNA,
(23:35):
thinking we would get nothing. We thought, this is, you know,
forty years old, forty five years old, surely it's gonna be,
you know, not any good. But I pull over and
he's real excited. He said, we got a partial profile.
He said, we know now it was a white male,
a single white male. Well, Cheryl, I did not know then,
(23:57):
and I really don't know now much about it. I'm
much called a d r D. That's dirt road dipity,
and I don't claim to be the sharpest knife anyway.
But he was excited, and so I'm like, okay, what
does that mean partial? He said, well, let me put
(24:18):
it to you this way. He said, we know it's
a white male. And he said, it's not so much
we know who. We can know who it is, but
we're going to know who it is, which was huge
because we had a list of about one hundred names.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Anybody Hispanic or pan Asian or African American, you can
rule them out, so that.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
Narrows to feel down. When this occurred, I told my wife,
I said, one day, I don't know if it's going
to be ten years, twenty year, or long after I'm gone.
One day, this technology will advance to we're going to
know who this is. I believe it. I believe it
from my core. I thought, if the Good Lord just
(25:02):
let me live long enough, and well, guess what. There
wasn't twenty years, it was about seven. Well, by this
time I had the cocase unit. We had changed DA's
in copp County. Then of course we had the COVID thing,
which they wanted nobody in the courthouse that didn't have
to be there. Then we changed DA's again. And so
(25:27):
by this time the cocage unit, the original cocasee unit,
had not gotten back together yet, and they were all
calling me like, well, what are we waiting on when
we're going to do this? And sel I got to
talk about the people on this caucase unit. This case
was never ever about I in me, it was about us,
(25:49):
and we so many people over fifty years worked on this.
Then I find out that Ron alt he is now
up at the DA's office working this. So I taught
Ron Altar and Ron I told Ron, I said, Ron,
promise me, just promise me you won't let this go
back on the shelf. And I said, well, we're ready
(26:13):
to go back to work on this stuff. He promised
me that he would not he tells me again, we
have resubmitted some more evidence, he said, We've got enough
to do one more basically the way he put it
to me. Time goes by, and we're still working this thing.
Me and a couple of guys are still talking to people,
(26:34):
trying to run people down. We're trying to get in
touch with anybody that knew Debbie remotely, and we find,
of course, most of the people are deceased. You know,
how about this gall we he died? How about this
gall he died? I got DNA samples from four ex
husbands where the wife sure they did it. We had
(26:56):
gone to South Carolina. That in South Carolina, and that's
where we found the letter and a sketch, a drawing
that we didn't even know existed, that had been left
out of the original foul. But you know, time kind
of goes along. Then one day Ron Alder calls me
(27:17):
and says, hey, we've narrowed this down. I believe, he said,
to two places, two possible families, And I knew in
my core. I said, this is the beginning. This is
the beginning of the end. A little more time rocks along.
He called me one day and says, we know who
(27:39):
his daughter is. I knew then we got him. A
little more time goes along. I'm thinking about two weeks
and I cannot sleep. I cannot you know, I'm just dressing.
He called me back and says his name is William Rose,
and I'm going to It's a little bit embarrassing to
(27:59):
admit this, but I kind of went down in my basement,
in my corner and I had my moment. I think
it all just came out. It was a culmination of
a lot of people doing a lot of work. Without
that DNA, this case would not have been solved because
(28:21):
Well and Rose, as we found out later, had committed
Shue's side a problem two years after we did the crime.
And over the years I couldn't understand. I was trying
to think, now, who does this kind of crime? One time?
Why a isn't he in Cotis? And I'll let you
(28:42):
think the people what Cotis is? But why isn't he
in Cotis?
Speaker 1 (28:48):
What?
Speaker 3 (28:49):
There's something missing?
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Well, that's a conversation you and I had, and I
want people to understand. I love that you're given credit,
and I love that you are explaining this was us
and we I one hundred percent agree, no doubt about it,
but I do want people to know. You and I
started talking in twenty seventeen about things like the envat
(29:15):
and what can be done to push this case. And
you wanted to test the eyeglasses that were found at
the scene, and you wanted to test other things that
were at the scene that you knew.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
That killer touched.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
And so you were pushing for things in twenty seventeen,
twenty eighteen that other people weren't even thinking about. So again,
if not for you, we would not be here today.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
He was just so painful sometime to talk about this.
And Debbie's dad, like I said, his family and his
her mother said, you know, I just want to know
before I die. The day that Melvin called me and
said mister nick and I kept him, please don't call
(30:06):
me mister nute, but he said, my mam and dad,
it was a gut punch and I felt like I
have let you down. My wife will tell you that
two o'clock in the morning, welcome in the living room.
(30:28):
What are you doing up? What are you thinking about?
And I'm looking at a file thinking I missed something?
What did I miss?
Speaker 1 (30:36):
Well? You and I had how many conversations, saying there's
no way this guy didn't reoffend.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
He was too violent.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
Now, at one point, Cheryl, I started to look at
everybody who'd been executed for similar crimes. I thought, I'm
going to go through the Southeast and find out in
the timeframe who's been executed. I can get nothing. I
spent a lot of time working on nothing. I could
(31:05):
not figure out how this guy fell off facing the earth.
Of course, now we know why I wouldn't get anythinking codes.
We know why he didn't reoffend. And I want to
thank you, Chirl, I really do. And I don't want
you to cut this out. But people like yourself, people
like Nancy Grace, the media of the people put that
(31:27):
is so so important, especially in a cold case. But
without the media, without people such as your show and
Nancy Grace and these other people, it would be very difficult.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
And I just got to tell folks, you know, I
had a chance to be with you and Melvin not
long ago, just a couple of weeks ago. It was
a couple of things that struck me that night that again,
it's not just a job. This is literally what we
have devoted our lives to and sometimes the case comes
along like Debbie's that you can't turn it loose for
(32:03):
whatever reason. And something happened that night that I don't
think I will ever get over. And Melvin gave me something,
and he gave me Debbie's Barbie traveling case with her
clothes in it.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Oh, yes, that was emotional for me.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
What do you do with that? Right?
Speaker 1 (32:24):
I mean, how do you even thank somebody for that
or to think that you know you want me to
have it? And he said, all I want is for somebody,
some little girl to be able to enjoy them. And
I knew that my great nieces would. They love Barbie Ello,
Kate and Olivia. They play Barbie's all the time. And
(32:46):
I told him, I promise you that these clothes will
be enjoyed in this little case, will be played with.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
And he looked at me.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
And he pointed at you, and he said, that's my brother,
and it's going to mean the world to me to
have the two of you in my life. I think
about those clothes in that little case right this minute,
because last week Melvin's house burned down, and had he
not given those to me, he would have lost the
(33:19):
last thing that he had physically of Debbies.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
Yes, yes, so.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
You don't have to detach yourself. I don't think you
should detach yourself. You don't have to, you know, put
something on a shelf and forget about it. You added
to your family. Marris Melvin is absolutely your family.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
He is, and Melvin's had a tough time. I can't imagine,
you know, Cheryl, I just can't imagine. When a parent
loses a child in any manner, it's forever. I mean,
you agreeve for the day you died. I am named
after my father's brother. He took part in only the Invasion.
(34:07):
He was killed in France fighting the Nazis, And I
grew up in the household with my grandparents who never
got over it. They grieved until the day they died,
because that's what parents do, and you're not supposed to
go to your children's funeral. It's not supposed to walk
that way. So I kind of sort of knew the
(34:32):
lifelong agony because I'd seen it with my grandparents. So
no matter how you lose your child, you never get
over it. It never passes. I would look at Debbie's
picture and I wondered what would she have become, What
would Debbie be today because bright Well liked good kid.
(34:58):
What would she be today? This should be a school teacher.
You should be a doctor, which should be a police officer.
That's one of the tragedies of this.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
Detective mars Nicks, you are a legend. You are one
of the best that has ever done it, and I
cannot thank you enough for being a part of my
Zone seven.
Speaker 3 (35:20):
Well, Cheryl, I appreciate you, and I appreciate it thing
you do.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
I'm going to end Zone seven the way that I
always do with a quote, Persistence is key. Keep pushing
forward even when things get tough. Ruth Handler, the inventor
of the Barbie Doll. I'm Cheryl McCollum, and this is
Zone seven.
Host
Sheryl McCollum
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