Road Trip (re-release)

We hope you enjoy this re-release of a members-only episode from 2023!

It was the 1970s, a time of freedom and adventure for 16-year-old Jim Boucher and 19-year-old Daryl Barber, when they headed out from their Michigan homes to Daytona Beach Florida for a week of fun and sunshine. The two young men had saved for this trip, their first trip to Florida, having no idea that it would be their last.

Join us at the quiet end for Road Trip. When James and Daryl failed to check in daily as agreed, their parents were concerned. But maybe the two were having so much fun that they’d forgotten. After all, they were young and on vacation.  But when James and Daryl didn’t come home from their trip on their planned return date, their parents began to panic. The Daytona Beach police didn’t have the resources to look for them—there were so many young people who disappeared from Daytona Beach. It was left to their families to find out what happened to them.

Sources

Orlando Sentinal Archives 1978-1990

The Snake & the Spider by Karen Kingsbury

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
True Crime Brewery contains disturbing content related to real life crimes.
Medical information is opinion based on facts of a crime
and should not be interpreted as medical advice or treatment.
Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome to True Crime Brewery. Ty Grabbers, I'm Chill and
I'm Big. It was the nineteen seventies a time of
freedom and adventure for seventeen year old Jim Boucher and
nineteen year old Darryl Barber when they headed out from
their Michigan homes to Daytona Beach, Florida for some fun
and some sunshine. The two young men had saved for

(00:50):
this trip their first trip to Florida, having no idea
that it would be their last. Join us at the
quiet end for road trip. When James and dare all
failed to check in daily as agreed, their parents were concerned,
but maybe the two were having so much fun that
they'd just forgotten. After all, they were young and on vacation.

(01:11):
But when James and Daryl didn't come home from their
trip on their planned return date, their parents began to panic.
The Daytona Beach police didn't have the resources to look
for them. There were so many young people who disappeared
from Daytona Beach, so it was left to their families
to find out what happened to them.

Speaker 3 (01:30):
So I'm doing a little bit of a different beer
review this time. The boys were murdered in Florida, so
by rights, I should be reviewing a Florida beer, but
I'm kind of tired of Florida beer's.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
We have done a lot of Florida so I'm going
to take.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
A Michigan beer because that's where the boys lived, and
that meant for me that I would review another beer
from Founders Brewing Company, one of my favorite brewers, and
this is Curmudgeon. I like the name too. It's an
old al. I think it's around eleven percent alcohol by volume,
so it's a heavy hitter and a nice little sniff.

(02:04):
The beer is dark reddish brown, medium sized white head,
a good amount of sticky lace aroma, sweet malt, caramel, oak,
dark fruit, and boozy. Has a caramel and better scotch
taste along with plums and raisins. Still fairly boozy. This
is a very nice beer, maybe a little more boozy than.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
I wanted, so you can really taste the alcohol.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
You really can. Okay, but I don't think it detracts
from it.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
I bet it doesn't. Let's open it up, all right, Dicky,
follow me down here to the quiet end and start
us out on this case. It's fascinating, sad. It just

(02:53):
has a little bit of everything in it.

Speaker 3 (02:55):
It does. We're going to find out a private detective
is going to run certain around through police right in
solving this crime.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Yeah, that's fascinating.

Speaker 3 (03:05):
So it was a sunny Saturday, August twelfth, nineteen seventy eight.
Fay Buscher was preparing breakfast for her oldest son Jim.
That very day, Jim and his best friend Daryl were
leaving for their long anticipated Florida trip. They would be
driving to Florida and Daryl's car, and they planned to
spend a few days at Daytona Beach and on to
Disney World in Orlando. They had plans to make this

(03:28):
a one week trip. Mom Fay, who was a little
bit concerned that Jim, who was just seventeen, had never
been away by himself. Daryl was nineteen, maybe just a
tiny bit more worldly than Jim, but still Mom felt
that the trip would give Jim an opportunity to be
more independent and would let him see that there's more
to life than tiny Metamora, Michigan.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
Which she now makes sense. Well, yeah, yeah, but neither
one of these guys were worldly at all. Really, they
were very naive. Yes, it was Metamora, very tiny, Yes,
town living, and it's like.

Speaker 3 (04:01):
An hour from Detroit, So it wasn't that you just
popped in and out of Detroit all the time. No.
So Daryl was two years older than Jim. As we said,
he was employed as a machinist, and the boys were
driving down to Florida and Daryl's nineteen seventy two Chevy Nova.
It's a hot little car, red color with a black
vinyl roof. Chickmobile.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
Yeah, those were cool cars. Even in the eighties those
still were really cool, especially for teen boys. So the
day they left was beautiful and the boys ended up
making really good time. Jim began thinking of his girlfriend
Jamie and how much she was going to miss her.
It had been Jamie who proposed that he go to
Daytona as a destination. She'd been there on spring break

(04:43):
and had a great time, and she told Jim jokingly
to keep his hands to himself. Back home in Metamora,
Fay was beginning to get worried about her son. It
was ten fifteen and she hadn't heard from Jim. Her husband, Roy,
tried to assuage her, saying the boys probably weren't there yet,
and he suggested Faye say a prayer because they were

(05:03):
religious and that way maybe she wouldn't worry as much.
The Bouchers were very devout Christians and they lived with
their faith, so they weren't just posers. They really felt
like they had a relationship with God, and their children
had grown up in that atmosphere.

Speaker 3 (05:19):
And within fifteen minutes of saying her prayer, the phone rang.
There was Jim on the line. They had an easy
but long trip. It was about twelve hundred miles. They'd
been in the ocean for a swim, and they're getting
ready to go find a motel. Jim promised his mother
he would call regularly. After they hung up, the Bouchers
went to bed. Fay was really relieved to have heard

(05:41):
from Jim and she felt there was nothing to worry about.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
Yeah, I'm a mom, I would be relieved.

Speaker 3 (05:46):
Yeah, well he got there and he called like you
said he would.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
That's right, he's a good boy. After talking with the parents,
Jim and Darrell drove off to find a motel. They
decided on the Thunderbird Motel and paid cash for a
one night's day room one oh nine. After they unpacked,
they decided to hit the beach and maybe they could
find a party.

Speaker 3 (06:05):
To go to.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
As they were sitting on the beach, a man who
appeared to be in his late teens or early twenties
approached them. He sat down with them. He lit up
a joint and asked them if they wanted to go
to a party up the beach, and this was just
what the boys wanted to hear. They were really wanting
to go to parties and just have a good time.

Speaker 3 (06:24):
That's what they were there for, of course.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
So after speaking with Jim on Saturday, Fay didn't hear
from him on Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday. Although he hadn't
promised a daily call, Fay had expected to have heard
from him by then. She called up Daryl's mother, who
reassured her, saying the boys were just having too much
fun to worry about calling home. But then Wednesday, Thursday,
and Friday passed with no word from the boys, and

(06:49):
Fay began to panic. At Darrel's house. His parents, Ron
and Mary and Barber were also beginning to panic. Oh yeah,
in several days. Yeah, so they know something's wrong. These
kids wouldn't do that to their parents. So days passed,
and then weeks passed. The Boucher's and the Barbers called

(07:11):
the local police, the state police, and even the governor's office.
No one had seen the boys, No one knew where
they had gone after that phone call, and no one
knew where they were. The families thought of another way
to track the boys. Jim had purchased travelers checks for
the trip.

Speaker 3 (07:27):
Yeah remember those, Not.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
Really to be honest, but yes, I remember the commercials
with the guy with the big nose. Right, yeah right,
it's kind of before everyone had a credit card.

Speaker 3 (07:37):
Yeah, it's cash basically, right.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
So Jim had bought some of those for the trip.
So his dad, Roy Boucher, called the Central Michigan clearinghouse
and found that some of those checks had cleared. So
that's interesting. It's more interesting, Yeah, it really does.

Speaker 3 (07:54):
So the first check was cashed it had a magic
market in Daytona Beach on Sunday, August thirteenth. Then the
next one was cashed on the seventeenth at Roadrunner Pitstop
and Grill in Defuniac Springs, Florida.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
Now where's that.

Speaker 3 (08:08):
That's outside of Daytona, so.

Speaker 2 (08:10):
Not too far away, no, okay.

Speaker 3 (08:13):
Then another one was cashed the same day at the
North Beach Street trailer Park.

Speaker 2 (08:17):
Interesting, So what's this? I don't know. I could see
the stores might be a place where Jim or Darrell
would catch those travelers checks. But trailer park. That's a
little weird.

Speaker 3 (08:27):
Yeah, well it gets weirder, okay, Okay. On the eighteenth,
there's a check cash at Dobb's House in Pascagoula, Mississippi,
and another one that same day at Ocean Springs Custom
Cycle Shop in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
That is weird. Now.

Speaker 3 (08:41):
That certainly was not on their itinerary for this trip.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
No, not at all.

Speaker 3 (08:45):
Never once mentioned that they were going to go to Mississippi.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
Why would they They were going to Florida. Yeah, I
mean you've been to Daytona, right, yeah, and it's a
party place definitely, so there's no reason to go to Mississippi.

Speaker 3 (08:59):
Now. The checks were all countersigned by James Buscher, and
the signature did not appear to be a forgery.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
So we've got all these checks being cashed at different places,
a couple of them in Mississippi, but they've all been
signed by Jim. So this information just really mystified the parents.
The boys never said they were going to Mississippi, and
as far as the parents knew, there was no reason.
Roy Bouscher relayed this information to an officer Ray Burnham

(09:26):
at the Michigan State Police Office. He followed up on
what he had received without finding anything out. So Burnham
had a couple of problems with this missing person case. First,
these were two responsible kids who normally would have called
home regularly, and they had called when they first got there.
The fact that they hadn't was worrisome. Second, when he

(09:48):
called the establishments where the travelers checks were cashed, no
one remembered the boys. And this is the late seventies,
so really nobody has cameras. So maybe Jim's signature had
been forge that was possible. Maybe someone made him sign it,
which is even scarier.

Speaker 3 (10:05):
Right, So Burnham then called the Daytona Police Department and
he ended up speaking with the detective Michelson in Missing Persons.
As Burnham suspected Nicholson was not particularly helpful. Literally, hundreds
of people go missing each year from the Daytona Beach area,
so finding them is not a high priority.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
No young people have gone there and just never gone home,
you know, living on the beach, the beach bum life,
it happens.

Speaker 3 (10:31):
Well, Michelson himself had about one hundred missing persons cases
in his docket.

Speaker 2 (10:36):
Wow, well how could he even do that?

Speaker 3 (10:38):
You just can't all these other crimes going on. Sure,
so the missing persons takes a back seat to the
murders and robberies and such that go on in Daytona.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
Yeah, that's a shame. So finding these boys in Daytona,
you know, not really the fault of the detective necessarily,
but it can't be his first priority. And you know, honestly,
he just didn't have the time. No, So, after two
months and no progress in finding the boys, the Bouchers
and the Barbers hired a private detective. This was a

(11:11):
guy named James Bird who lived in Detroit, and Bird
told the families he would do whatever it took to
find the boys for them, But then he called up
private investigator Bob Brown of Orlando and subcontracted him to
find the two boys. So did he tell the parents
that he did that? No, Okay, but I guess there's
really nothing wrong with that necessarily.

Speaker 3 (11:33):
Well, he's going to get someone who's familiar with the area, sure,
so he'd be able probably to get information.

Speaker 2 (11:40):
More easily, right exactly.

Speaker 3 (11:42):
And I don't think he deliberately hid the fact that
he subcontracted, but he didn't reveal that as far as
the two families were concerned. Bird was doing the investigating.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
Sure, but Bob Brown had been a PI for thirteen
year years. He didn't really look like a PI and
didn't act like a PI, whatever that means. But he
was a brilliant investigator who had earned the respect of
many of his peers. As a child, Bob had fallen
in with the wrong crowd and seemed headed for a
life of crime himself. A well meaning uncle, though, had

(12:18):
talked to him and Bob had straightened out. He enlisted
in the army, where he was a photographer, and after
the army, Bob married and worked in his own photo studio.
Eventually he and his family moved to Florida, where he
was the photo editor for the Sarasota News, and one
of his assignments was to ride along with the Highway Patrol,

(12:38):
and Bob became really enamored with police work. He did
his training and was hired by the Manatee County Sheriff's Department.
He worked in the crime lab but quit after a
few years over a salary dispute, and he returned to
photography working for the Orlando Sentinel. But in his heart,
he really wanted to be an investigator, and his background

(13:00):
working for a newspaper and for the police really gave
him kind of what he needed to be an investigator.
So in nineteen sixty six, after he was divorced and remarried,
he began working as a private investigator. At the same time,
Bob also became a Christian. His natural ability, along with
this newfound faith, made Bob a huge success in what

(13:21):
he was doing, so he vowed to keep working as
long as there was someone that he could help. So
it wasn't just for the money for him. He really
did want to help people, He.

Speaker 3 (13:31):
Really did, so Bob spent a week learning everything he
could about Jim and Daryl. He saw how strong their
friendship was and how they would stand up for each other,
but at the same time he saw how their friendship
could work against them. Both boys were equally naive and
equally trusting of people. Neither boy had the ability to
recognize the potential dangers a city like Daytona Beachhead. There

(13:54):
was really no real crime in Metamora or as surrounding communities,
so the boys that never had any EPs experience and
how to recognize criminal activity.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
No, So these boys grew up together. They were friends
as kids, or at least as young teens.

Speaker 3 (14:09):
Right, Yeah, they grew up I think when Jim was
like ten or eleven, so several years. Yes, I've been
good friends.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
Which is a long time when you're a teenager. So
both of these boys were known to be responsible and respectful,
and they had really good relationships with their parents. Jim
had just won ten thousand dollars in a bowling tournament
and he had ordered himself a brand new Camaro. So
there just didn't seem to be any reason for these
guys to be runaways. And the way Bob saw it,

(14:39):
something bad had happened to Jim and Darrel and that's
what their parents are afraid of as well, just doesn't
make sense.

Speaker 3 (14:45):
He knew what a then of illegal activity Daytona.

Speaker 2 (14:49):
Beach was, yeah, and these kids weren't up for protecting themselves.

Speaker 3 (14:53):
Kind of two roots from the sticks.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
Right, So if someone wanted to seek them out and
take advantage of them, would be that difficult.

Speaker 3 (15:01):
It really wouldn't be.

Speaker 2 (15:02):
So that's very sad. But from the information he had received,
Bob knew that Detective Wes Michlson was the police officer
assigned to the missing person case, so Bob visited Micholson
to speak with him about the missing boys. Michelson told
Bob how many missing persons cases there were and how

(15:22):
many he himself was handling, which Bob already knew. Bob
said that the governor of Michigan had contacted the governor
of Florida, so this was going to be more of
a high profile case because of that, and the two
of them decided that Bob would do the investigating, but
Michelson would be there to support and assist him in
any way he could. So that was a good thing.

Speaker 3 (15:45):
Well, it is because it takes a case off of
Michelson's roster, it is, and.

Speaker 2 (15:49):
It's good to have someone that will respect Bob and
back him up when he does find things, not just
blow him off.

Speaker 3 (15:56):
And so it was a good contract.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (16:00):
In Michigan, the families were frustrated by the lack of progress.

Speaker 2 (16:03):
Can you imagine how they must feel? Oh my god,
yeah's while.

Speaker 3 (16:06):
You're sitting here now a good two months into.

Speaker 2 (16:09):
This, I can't imagine.

Speaker 3 (16:11):
And there's absolutely nothing that you can look at.

Speaker 4 (16:14):
No.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
And if they were to go down to Florida, what
could they really do? Not much.

Speaker 3 (16:20):
One of their relatives did, Yeah, go down and didn't
find anything.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
No.

Speaker 2 (16:24):
I think you kind of have to have some inns there,
which at least Bob Brown did have that.

Speaker 3 (16:29):
That's right. The parents decide they're going to contact the
media looking for some more publicity. The response from the
media was pretty lukewarm, with the exception of the k liner.
And this is a national paper for and about kmart.

Speaker 2 (16:43):
Employees really never heard of that either.

Speaker 3 (16:47):
So a shopper in an Alabama Kmart was positive she
had seen Jim Boucher Alabama, Wow, Alabama. She remembered hiring
Jim in mid August to help around her farm. I
only worked a few days there and then left to
work at a cement plant in Tarence City, Alabama. She
also remembered Jim had a friend he would hang out with,

(17:08):
and Jim looked to her like he was running from something.

Speaker 2 (17:12):
This sounds like a red herring, unfortunately, but this woman
did call the Michigan State Police and spoke with Officer
Ray Burnham. He, in turn contacted the cement plant and
found out that Jim and his friend Darrel were both
employed at the plant. Burnham relayed this information to the
boy's parents, and they made plans to fly to Alabama
the next day to be reunited with their sons. So

(17:36):
they're feeling kind of relieved. But the next day, as
they were preparing to head to the airport, Burnham called
to tell them that their sons were actually still missing.
He called their supervisor, who said they did have a
Jim and Darrell as employees, but they were both long
term employees and both of these guys were in their forties.
So I have to say that why did he tell

(17:56):
the parents that without knowing the details. I know, it's
just fucking with their heads.

Speaker 3 (18:01):
I guess he was so excited.

Speaker 2 (18:03):
Yeah, but you gotta know that you need to be
more sure before you tell parents.

Speaker 3 (18:07):
Yeah, I can see it both ways. He learns that
there's a Jim and Darryl Working who had worked there.

Speaker 2 (18:14):
When Jess for a description, at least a basic description,
their forties is way off.

Speaker 3 (18:19):
Quite a bit.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
Meanwhile, Bob and two assistants were in Daytona combing the beach,
offering reward money for anyone with any useful information. Nothing
was coming of that. He did check the hospitals, no
results there, and the boys weren't in the morgue. Bob
even checked the fifteen john Does who were in the morgue,
and of course this wasn't them. He then moved on

(18:42):
to the flophouses in town, again without finding any information
on the missing boys. He had his assistance drive I
ten west, stopping at the rest arees in exits and
showing pictures of these boys, and no results came from
that either. So it really just seems like they disappeared.

Speaker 3 (19:00):
It does. He looked at Dieitan West because that's the
route they would have taken if they're heading for Mississippi.

Speaker 2 (19:07):
I see, so good.

Speaker 3 (19:08):
Idea, but it didn't come ount to anything.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
No, but if you know anything about their home life,
it doesn't make sense for them to run away at all.

Speaker 3 (19:16):
No, it doesn't. So Bob Brown's next step was to
visit the places where the travelers checks had been cashed.

Speaker 2 (19:22):
Makes sense, right, So.

Speaker 3 (19:25):
His first stop was the Magic Market. The clerklear had
no recollection of who would cash the check. He did
have better luck at the trailer park. The manager's wife
remembered taking the check from Snake for payment of rent.
Neither the manager nor his wife knew Snake's real name,
but they gave Bob the name and address of the
trailer park owner.

Speaker 2 (19:46):
So just the fact that this guy goes by Snake
is not encouraging, right, No, it's definitely not.

Speaker 3 (19:52):
A good sign. So Bob showed the couple pictures of
the boys, and the manager recognized Darryl. He remembered asking
to Aryl to move his car, which he recalled was
a red car with a black top and had Michigan plates.

Speaker 2 (20:05):
Well, now we're getting somewhere, yeap.

Speaker 3 (20:08):
He never saw Daryl again, but he did see Snake
and he was driving Daryl's car. So Snake paid the
rent with the travelers checks, and then he Spider, the
fat Man, and the girls moved out.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
So who are these people?

Speaker 3 (20:22):
Names The manager knew from hanging out with Snake, but
he didn't know anything more than the nicknames I see,
and he didn't know much of anything about Snake other
than he was a member of the Pagan motorcycle gang.
Also not good.

Speaker 2 (20:35):
No Well, Bob called the trailer park owner and found
that Snake's real name was John Cox. She didn't have
an address for him.

Speaker 3 (20:43):
Though.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
Bob was excited to get this information, but at the
same time really sad because if the boys had been
in contact with any of the Pagans, they were likely dead.
So Bob went to the police department and spoke again
with Detective Mickelson about what he had found. Mickleson knew
of John Spider Cox and knew of his lengthy arrest record. Unfortunately, though,

(21:05):
he didn't have any photos of Cox. So Bob decided
he needed some reward money if he was going to
find Snake, Spider, or the Fat Man. He withdrew two
thousand dollars from his business account and hit the beach.
While several people knew them, no one was able or
willing to give Bob any more information, so that same

(21:26):
evening Bob went to some biker bars, but he still
didn't get much in the way of information. He did
find out, though, that Snake was rumored to have done
something really bad recently.

Speaker 3 (21:38):
Yeah, what they called a heavy lick.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
Really yeah, So that means like a violent crime or.

Speaker 3 (21:44):
Something something nasty yeh.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
So Bob thought he might get more information if he
spoke with a member of the rival motorcycle gang and
they were called the Outlaws. He had more luck with
this approach and found out that Spider's real name was
Earl Smith. Also, Snake was considered to be a really
dangerous man, so.

Speaker 3 (22:04):
Bob shared this information with Detective Nicholson, and Nicholson found
out that Spider Smith was actually in the Belujah County
Jail on a weapons charge at that very moment, So
Bob and Nicholson went to interview Spider. Spider said he
knew Snake, that Snake had been driving a red Chevy Nova,
that he had travelers checks in his possession, and he

(22:25):
was bragging about a heavy lick. So when Bob showed
Spider pictures of Jim and Darryl, Spider went nuts, really
screamed at Bob and told him to get out. He
wasn't answering any more.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
Questions, so he touched some kind of nerve.

Speaker 3 (22:38):
There, you hit a nerve there, Oh, it's.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
Not getting a good picture here for what happened to
Daryl and Jim.

Speaker 3 (22:45):
Nope.

Speaker 2 (22:45):
So now it's mid November and the case of the
missing boys had been brought to the attention of the
Governor of Florida, who at the time was Reuben Askew.
He in turn asked Sheriff's deputy Joe Deemer and the
Florida Drug in Law Enforce Smith to investigate the matter.
They met with Nicholson, who told them that Bob Brown
was working on the case and he was way ahead

(23:08):
of them. In fact, Bob was just sitting down with
Spider to question him a little more, and he told
Spider that if he had information about these missing boys,
then whoever talked first would get the best deal.

Speaker 3 (23:21):
Yeah, so this seemed to work. Got Spider talking. He
said that he had seen the boys at Snake's trailer.
Snake had met the boys at the Thunderbird Motel and
took them back to his place for a pot party.
Spider joined them and they all got high, and then
when the party broke up, Spider went back home, and
he said, Snake and the boys left for Mississippi.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
But for what reason, Well, Spider's just talking to get
to get him off his back. Yeah. So from the jail,
Bob went to the Thunderbird Motel. There was no record
of the boys staying there. Bob also noted that there
was really a paucity of guests for that day. To him,
that meant either that Spider was lying or that the
motel was cheating on their books. He thought the most

(24:04):
likely explanation would be that Spider was lying.

Speaker 3 (24:07):
Then later that day, Bob spoke with his two young assistants.
They're the ones that had been working the I ten,
and they reported a touch truck driver who had worked
on the battery cable of a red Chevy Nova with
Michigan plates somewhere between August eighteenth and August twentieth. Now,
the tow truck driver identified the driver of the Chevy
as Snake and said that Snake was the only occupant

(24:30):
of the car.

Speaker 2 (24:31):
So it really seems like he did something to these
boys and took the car.

Speaker 3 (24:35):
Yes, it does, doesn't it.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah, But still Bob was at this point where he
really didn't know how to proceed. He needed to find Snake,
but he really didn't know how to do that. He
didn't think it would be effective if he did it
on his own paying for information, and he didn't think
the police would be any more effective either. So after
a moment of prayer, he knew what he needed to do.

(24:57):
He needed a temporary employee who could infiltrate rate the
biker bars and get information about Snake. And this person
needed to look like a biker but be neither a
pagan nor an outlaw.

Speaker 3 (25:09):
That's a fairly big task.

Speaker 2 (25:11):
I would say so, but Bob was determined. He hit
the Orlando biker bars in search of this new employee
he would have. He was unsuccessful, and just as he
was about to give up for the night, he did
find who turned out to be the perfect person for
the job. And this guy, whose name was Larry, looked
like a well muscled grizzly bear. He was a big

(25:32):
guys guy. Bob talked with him and they agreed on
a two hundred dollars fee if Larry could just get
information on where Snake was. So Larry went into a
biker bar looking for information about Snake, but no one
could or you know, even would help him. But finally
one of the patrons said that fat Man knew Snake's whereabouts.

(25:53):
Remember we heard about fat Man right.

Speaker 3 (25:56):
He was partying with Snake and Spider.

Speaker 2 (25:59):
So Larry went to the other bar and found fat
Man with some encouragement. He divulged that Snake was in
Tampa living in a trailer with his wife and that
he had given the Nova to her. Interesting. So Bob
drove to Tampa to the Bayfront Trailer Park, which was
on the east side of the city, and he found
the lot, Lot forty. He approached the trailer carefully, he

(26:22):
knew he was dealing with a dangerous person, but it
was dark and no one seemed to be home. But
he did see a red Chevy Nova with no license
plates and it was parked alongside the trailer. He was
able to match the then numbers, and he knew then
that this was actually Darrell's car. So Bob called the
Tampa police and they sent some men over. Bob and

(26:44):
the officers kept the trailer under surveillance, and then at
ten thirty pm, a car pulled up to Lot forty
and two.

Speaker 3 (26:52):
Falling down drunks. A man and a woman kind of
fell out of the car. The woman identified herself as
Sandra Cox, Snake's wife.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
Talk about marrying poorly.

Speaker 3 (27:02):
Yes, the man was not John Snake. Cox, just a
really good friend of Sanders.

Speaker 2 (27:08):
Interesting.

Speaker 3 (27:09):
Sandras said that Snake worked for a local trucking company
and he was on the road. Huh, oh, we're getting closer.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
I didn't think that Snake would.

Speaker 3 (27:17):
Have a job. Yeah, that's an interesting story. It looks
like after these boys were killed, Snake wanted to try
to go straight, or at least straighten up a little bit.

Speaker 2 (27:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:26):
So we got back with his wife, they moved to Tampa,
and he got a legitimate job.

Speaker 2 (27:32):
It was the next morning when Bob drove to the
Commercial Vehicle trucking company and the receptionist did tell him
that John Cox worked there. He was out on a
cross country run and would be back around Monday, December eleventh.
So you have to wonder who the guy was that
was with his wife if he was out on the road, right,
that's interesting.

Speaker 3 (27:53):
It was some guy. We never got unidentify this some
guy his wife was bopping.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
Well, that's what I wondered. I like, that's cute. But
Bob hoped Snake wouldn't hear about this investigation and disappear
on him. He decided to learn as much about Snake
as he could, so he drove to the trailer park
to talk with Snake's wife. So Snake and Sandra had separated,
she said, and she was staying at her mother's in Biloxi.

(28:19):
On her birthday, Snake called and said he was coming
over with a birthday present for her, and the couple
had then returned to Daytona. Not long after he gave
Sandra the car, Snake took the radio out and sold
it so he could get a new front end for
his bike, meaning motorcycle, I assume, But that would give
you the Mississippi connection, that would So it was then

(28:42):
that he told her he had taken a job with
a trucking company and they were going to move to Tampa.
Sandra did think that Snake was acting weird. He wanted
to leave immediately and seemed very agitated about something. From
what Sandra had told him, Bob deduced that Snake had
a hand in the disappearance of Jim and Darrel. Back

(29:03):
in his office, Bob thought about the case and decided
he needed to hire another type of employee and what
he wanted was a law man, someone from the FDL,
Florida Department of Law Enforcement, right right.

Speaker 3 (29:17):
So Ostensibly FDL was part of the investigation, but Bob
knew they weren't doing much because He's been doing everything.

Speaker 2 (29:25):
Right and they might be a little overwhelmed, you know,
just to be kind.

Speaker 3 (29:29):
Sure, So he was thinking maybe someone would respond to
a cash payment that could lead Bob and them also
to Snake. So Bob also put up some new missing
Persons posters, but this time offered a five hundred dollars reward.
Got lots of calls about that, but nothing that worked
right right, So over the Thanksgiving holiday, the Bouchers and

(29:50):
the Barbers got together with each other, really desperate at
this point for some closure. They decided to pay the
cost of a lawyer for Spider if you would tell
the truth about what had happened to Jim and Daryl.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
Well, that's an interesting move, was that Bob Brown's idea?

Speaker 3 (30:05):
No, that was a parent's idea.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
These poor parents, they're desperate, and well, of course they are.

Speaker 3 (30:11):
So Bob presented this proposal to Spider, who said, no way,
but then he thought about it. Maybe with some help
from Bob, he agree to Bob's terms, and he told
Bob that the boys had been registered at the Thunderbird motel,
which he knew because he said he'd seen a room
key in Daryl's car. He also told Bob that both
boys were dead.

Speaker 2 (30:32):
Oh heartbreaking.

Speaker 3 (30:33):
So early on a Monday morning, Bob took a call
from Murray Ziegler, who was a homicide investigator. Ziegler had
recently been a sign of the case and he was
very impressed with the information Bob had gathered to this point,
so he and Bob decided to make a visit to
the jail where Spider was incarcerated in order to see
if Spider would open up more. He wasn't any more forthcoming,

(30:56):
but Bob believed that eventually Spider would open up.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
He and Ziegler met with state Attorney Jack Watson, and
he was more than willing to make a deal with
Spider once he could determine whether a crime had been committed.
So Bob and Ziegler passed this information on to Spider,
and Spider admitted that he and Snake had killed Daryl
and Jim and disposed of their bodies. In response to

(31:20):
a question from Bob, Spider insisted the boys had registered
at the Thunderbird motel, and Bob knew that their names
were not the register, so he suspected that the manager
was skimming off the books. So that would mean the
boys registered for a room, but whoever was managing at
that point was not the owner and was pocketing the money.

Speaker 3 (31:40):
Yeah yeah, paying cash.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
Sure, well, the Thunderbird Motel does not sound like a
first class establishment. It did, no. The next day, Bob
Ziegler and Deputy Joe Deemer made a visit to the
Thunderbird and they spoke with Zelza, one of the cleaning crew.
She didn't remember seeing the two boys, but she did
say the motel had been at full occupancy the entire

(32:04):
month of August.

Speaker 3 (32:06):
Yeah, so what the manager was saying was not true, right, right?
He said it was pretty slow.

Speaker 2 (32:11):
I see, so he was pocketing quite a bit of cash.

Speaker 3 (32:14):
It seems like I'm not sure that would last you
very long. The owners should find out pretty easily, you would.

Speaker 2 (32:20):
Think so eventually, right that there might have been big
turnover at the job. And yeah, you know, who knows.
I think back in the seventies a lot more people
paid cash than they do now.

Speaker 3 (32:31):
Yeah. Well, I mean when they looked at the registration book,
it looked like the hotel was maybe half full.

Speaker 2 (32:37):
So whoever was managing was making some money.

Speaker 1 (32:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (32:41):
Yeah, So Spider appeared in court and it was granted immunity.
The judges signed an attorney named Dick Kane to be
Spider's public counsel, and by doing so, he eliminated the
opportunity for Bob and Zieber to question Spider because his
attorney's going to tell him, don't talk.

Speaker 2 (33:01):
Oh right, So this immunity doesn't hold well.

Speaker 3 (33:04):
Correct, You're pretty much done with it because he's not
going to be able to give him all the information
that they want in order to give an immunities sort
of a circular I see.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
So he couldn't really live up to the deal.

Speaker 3 (33:16):
He couldn't.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
But Snake was due home fairly soon, and as far
as Bob knew, he was unaware of the trouble he
was in. So Bob was staking out the trucking company,
and while he waited for Snake to show up, he
reviewed all of the information that he had on both
Snake and Spider. Real Spider Smith was the product of
a rape when his mother was a teen. When she

(33:39):
found out she was pregnant, she decided to keep the baby,
but her parents were strongly opposed to this, so she
ran away. His mother ignored him, and when she married
his stepfather he abused him. And as he grew Spider
never showed any emotion no matter how he was treated,
so pretty much a sociopath pretty much. By age twelve,

(34:00):
he had joined a gang and was soon committing all
kinds of crimes. He moved to Daytona Beach when he
was just eighteen and continued his life of crime. And
that's when he met John Snake Cox, who was probably
more of a sociopath even than Spider. So they ganged
up with one another and began to associate with the

(34:20):
Pagans Bike gang.

Speaker 3 (34:23):
This is probably not a good combination of sociopaths to.

Speaker 2 (34:26):
Get together, No, Well, you know, people can feed off
each other, and if you've got two people like that,
it's real trouble.

Speaker 3 (34:33):
YEA.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
As much as he had learned about Spider and Snake,
Bob did not know how they had met up with
Jim and Darrel, though he did have some ideas how
the scenario could have played out, but no specifics. At
this point, Bob had been watching the trucking company for
a couple of days with no sign of Snake, he
was thinking today's the day when Snake pulled up in
his truck, he parked, went inside, and came out with

(34:57):
his paycheck. And that's when Bob called the fdl E.
He would continue to tail Snake and the fdl E
agents would come and arrest him, which they did.

Speaker 3 (35:08):
Yeah, the description of him is tailing Snake was interesting.
He almost lost him, really and kept wondering where the
hell is FDL E. Guys.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
Now this saw Bob Brown seems very committed.

Speaker 3 (35:22):
He certainly was.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (35:24):
So the state assigned a public defendant for Snake, and
even at that early stage, when no one had mentioned
that murder chargers could be pending, the defense realized that
they were working on a double homicide and not simply
a forgery. That's what they charged Snake.

Speaker 2 (35:39):
With, just to get him in there.

Speaker 3 (35:40):
Right, right, Jim Byrd, you might have forgotten about him,
but he was the Michigan private eye who had subcontracted
the case to Bob Brown. Right. He contacted the Barbers
with the news of the arrest, and they contacted the Buchers.

Speaker 2 (35:56):
But this isn't really the kind of stuff parents wanted
to hear. No, but I guess at this point they
kind of feel like, probably it's not going to be
a good outcome.

Speaker 3 (36:04):
Yeah, but as long as they hadn't been found, there's
got that hope.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
Sure, of course.

Speaker 3 (36:08):
This is much of a longshot as it.

Speaker 2 (36:10):
Is, no, but I get it. Yeah. They learned that
Snake Cox, the man who had taken possessions of Darrel's nova,
had finally been caught, so the two couples met at
the barber's house that evening. Even after all the time
that had passed, their emotions about the boys being found
were very mixed. There was some relief that the nightmare

(36:31):
might be over soon, but they also had the heartbreaking
fear that Darrell and Jim were dead. As painful as
this was, they thought it would be better to know.
They thought it was the not knowing that was unbearable.
They thought it probably couldn't get worse. But I think
it does get worse when the hope goes away.

Speaker 3 (36:48):
Yeah, it does.

Speaker 2 (36:49):
As long as their sons were missing, and as difficult
as the past six weeks had been on them, there
had always been hoped that the boys were still alive,
but then once they were found, if they were dead,
that hope would be gone. But even that the parents
agreed would be better than not knowing what had happened
to them, So that's what they thought, and that evening together,

(37:11):
the couples tried to prepare themselves for the worst. Unless
the boys were alive somewhere by some miracle, the truth
was going to be very devastating, and none of them
could be prepared to hear the news, no matter what
they told each other. You might want to try and prepare,
but there's no way to do that.

Speaker 3 (37:28):
No, you can't. I'm sure they've been preparing that for weeks.

Speaker 2 (37:32):
Sure, but you can't.

Speaker 3 (37:33):
No. No. The attorney Dick Kane, who had been assigned
to defend Spider, heard about the plea deal that had
been offered, and when Spider mentioned that to him, Kane
asked him to tell the whole story and the complete truth.
So Kane and Spider talked for two hours and discussed
what really happened to Jim and Darryl. And when he
was finished, kan knew how bad his client's situation was

(37:56):
and if the state was willing to offer a plea bargain,
he probably would have been happy his client just received
a life sentence and not the death penalty.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
Yeah, nothing good is going to happen here, But according
to Spider's version of the story, he really did seem
to deserve the death penalty if anyone does.

Speaker 3 (38:13):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (38:14):
On Tuesday morning, December twelfth, Cain called state Attorney Watson,
who then called Detective Ziegler and Bob Brown. The news
was that Spider wanted to talk to them as soon
as possible in the presence of his attorney, but Snake Cox,
being more experienced at criminal activity and more intelligent than Spider,
had told his attorney that he wanted to talk to

(38:35):
the police whether his attorney was present or not. So
it was basically whoever talked first would get the better deal.
The sheriff's deputy had two bailiffs bring in Smith and
Cox and put them in two adjacent interview rooms. The
idea was to bring them in at the same time
so they'd see each other and then they'd be worried
if the other was going to throw them under the bus.

(38:57):
So the bailiffs arrived with the suspects at differ for
an ends of the hall. Snake and Spider recognized each other,
of course, and for the first time they were aware
that the other one was being questioned, so they glared
at each other as bailiffs moved them into separate interview rooms.
And after they went into their interview rooms, Bob Brown

(39:18):
went to talk to Spider and Detective Ziegler went to
talk with Snake.

Speaker 3 (39:23):
Now in the room with Brown, Spider Smith was absolutely terrified.
He quickly gave up on waiting for his attorney because
he was afraid that Snake would beat him to getting
the deal, and he agreed to speak alone without his attorney. However,
Snake beat him to it, so Zegilier went into the
room where Spider was and said, forget it, Bob talking
to Bob Brown. Cox is telling us everything. Then he

(39:45):
looked at Spider, who was straightened up in his seat
was turning progressively more pale. Yeah, I bet he's told Spider.
It's too late, Spider. The deals off. So Snake got
the carrot Spider against the stick. But that's not the
end of it.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
No, it's much more complicated than that I would think.

Speaker 3 (40:01):
And so by the time homicide Detective Ziegler wound up
in an interview room alone with Snake, the prisoner had
already given at least one version of what happened to
Jim and Daryl. A meeting with his attorney on the
night of his arrest, he had agreed to tell the
truth and allow his attorney to document his story right.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
So basically his story was that on the evening of
August twelfth, nineteen seventy eight, just after dark, Darryl Barber
and Jim Boucher and someone known only as Mike came
to the McDonald's restaurant in Daytona Beach, where they met
up with Snake. At the time of the meeting, Snake
was with another man named Robert McDonald, who was better

(40:41):
known as Buford. According to Snake, Beauford was well known
at Daytona Beach. Although Snake couldn't remember Mike's last name
or any other details about him, he did remember that
Mike told Snake that Jim and Darrell were interested in
buying some marijuana. He wondered if Snake might be able
to help find someone who could sell them some, so

(41:02):
Snake agreed to work on a deal. Then Jim, Darrell, Mike,
and Snake had gotten into Darrell's car and driven around
Daytona Beach looking for a marijuana dealer. The four spent
much of the night and into the early hours of
August thirteenth without ever finding someone to buy pot from,
so finally near dawn, they gave up and they returned

(41:23):
to Snake's trailer park. Snake then got out of the
car and asked Jim and Darrell and Mike to come
back later that afternoon. He said that he could find
someone by then and the boys could buy the marijuana
they wanted. So later that afternoon, Jim and Darrell and
Mike returned to Snake's trailer. Snake got into the car,
and the three began looking for a place to buy

(41:44):
the pot. Finally, at about five o'clock in the evening,
they found a dealer named Kenny, who agreed to sell
Darrell one kilo of marijuana for five hundred and fifty dollars.
To me, that's a red flag that this story's bullshit.
You think this kid's he could to buy a KEI low?
I could see maybe they wanted to buy a little
to smoke on their trip, but no, so well, it

(42:07):
gets more unbelievable, right. Jim contributed about two hundred dollars cash,
she said, but Kenny wouldn't accept his Travelers checks. So
Snake had kindly offered to pay cash for Jim's two
hundred dollars in travelers checks. Then Snake agreed to loan
the boys another one hundred and fifty dollars so that
they would have a total of five hundred and fifty

(42:29):
dollars in cash, just enough to make the deal.

Speaker 3 (42:32):
Yeah, so two hundred from Jim, two hundred from Darryl,
and Snake is loaning the other one hundred and fifty
right at least according to Snake.

Speaker 2 (42:42):
Right now, no one would have expected Snake to trust
the Michigan teens to repay him the one hundred and
fifty dollars. So he said he had worked out a
deal with Daryl where he would take the Chevy Nova
as collateral. Now that's very unbelievable too, He's not going
to give him his nice car. But according to Snake,
everyone involved agreed on this deal, and Kenny the dealer

(43:04):
handed over a brick sized, tightly packed kilo of marijuana
in exchange for the cash. After that, Snake took the
boys back to the motel and they got out of
the car with Snake behind the wheel. Jim and Darrell
assured Snake they would return to his trailer within two
weeks to repay the loan and get Daryl's car back,

(43:25):
but remember they were just planning on being there for
a week at that time. Darrel wrote a note, Snake said,
giving Snake permission to use the car until the loan
was repaid. Snake then used the car to drive to Biloxi, Mississippi,
where he picked up his wife and brought her back
to Daytona Beach. He used the travelers checks to pay

(43:46):
rent at the trail park and to pay for the
trip north to Biloxi. After that, he waited for the
boys to return with the money, but he claimed that
he had never seen them again, and so Snake decided
since the loan was never repaid, the car was legally
his and that's his story. What a totally bullshit story,

(44:08):
absolutely so.

Speaker 3 (44:10):
But Snake's attorney asked him if you'd be willing to
take a polygraph test and tell the entire story again. Now.
Snake refused, and his reason for the refusal was that,
in an unrelated incident sometime before, he'd had a bad
experience while taking a polygraph. Since then, he'd been physically
unable to do so.

Speaker 2 (44:29):
I called bullshit.

Speaker 3 (44:30):
As Ziegler read the details of Snake's story, he figured
he knew what the bad experience was. Snake had probably
lied while taking the test, and the tested indicated deception. Sure,
that's a really unbelievable story.

Speaker 2 (44:43):
Oh yeah, totally. After reading Snake's story in front of Snake,
Detective Ziegler tossed the document into the trash and said
this is a bunch of lies. Snake said nothing and
kept his eyes on the bare wall. Ziegler then told
him that he either needed to talk or he would
be getting the electric chair. Being experienced in living a

(45:05):
criminal life, Snake knew that Ziegler was not bluffing. He
considered his options for several seconds, and then he did
begin to talk again. Snake was clearly not happy about
having to talk, but Ziegler knew that he was ready
to tell the truth. At this point, the detective had
gone next door and ended the conversation between Bob and Spider,

(45:26):
and if Snake wanted to talk, then Spider could just
sit and jail and rot for the next ten years
on death row until he was finally put to death.
So that's how Ziegler felt about it. So now we've
got Bob Brown and Detective Ziegler in the interrogation room
with Snake Cox. It was December twelfth, exactly four months
after Jim and Darrel had disappeared, and this time Snake's

(45:49):
story was very different from the first one. He told
yeah the way.

Speaker 3 (45:54):
He told it now. On the evening of August twelfth,
he was sitting inside the McDonald's in the boardwalk area
of Daytona Beach when he was approached by Spider Smith.
Spider led him outside to the car he had arrived in,
a red Chevy Novah with a black vinyl top, and
inside the car were two teenage boys. Spider then pulled

(46:14):
Snake away from the car so the boys couldn't hear
what he was saying. At that time, he suggested that
they take the boys to a party, do some smoking,
and then rip them off. So Spider then went back
to the Nova and talked to the boys, and within
a short time he reported back to Snake that the
boys were both willing and ready to find a party
with them. So Snake and Spider got into the boy's

(46:36):
car and sat in the back seat. They sat in
the McDonald's parking lot and smoked marijuana while talking about
parties in the area. Then they drove around Daytona Beach,
still smoking marijuana in the car. So both detectives knew
that the Michigan Boys were not drug users, so in
their opinion, this detail was incredible.

Speaker 2 (46:56):
No, but Snake went on. He said that they somehow
had wound up in the area of the Strickland Rifle
Range on Williamson Boulevard in Vluja County. The area was
dark and deserted, and all four of them got out
of the car. At this time, Spider pulled out a
twenty five caliber automatic handgun from his waistband and ordered
Jim and Darrel to hand over their money and their

(47:18):
travelers checks. At this point in the story, Snake was
unclear about whether it was him or Spider who was
responsible for the specifics of what happened to the boys,
but either way, after Jim and Darrel had been robbed,
they were ordered at gunpoint to remove their belts. Snake
said that the boy's belts were used to tie their
hands behind their backs, and then they were put in

(47:41):
the back seat of Darrel's car. Snake and Spider then
climbed into the front seat and noticed the motel keys
on the car's dashboard Thunderbird Motel Room one O nine.
The keys read, so with Snake driving the Nova, they
headed for that motel. But before they pulled out of
the area, Snake and Spider put Darrell and Jim in

(48:01):
the trunk, and once the boys were in the trunk
of the car, he and Spider got back inside the
car and drove to the motel. When they arrived, he
and Spider went into the boy's room and took all
of their personal belongings, and this would include Jim's camera,
both of their suitcases, and their clothing. With the boys
still in the trunk of the car, Snake and Spider

(48:22):
left the motel and drove around for quite a while
deciding what to do with their victims. So, my god,
this is August in Florida. Can you imagine being in
the trunk of a car? How hot it would be?

Speaker 3 (48:33):
It bed quite warm? But I remember, this is just
the version of what happened.

Speaker 2 (48:38):
Right, We can't really believe these versions. But he said
that Finally they came to an isolated area about a
half a mile off Highway ninety two on Indian Lake
Road and Snake stopped the car, they climbed out, and
one of them opened the trunk. The boys were no
longer moving, Snake said, so he and Spider decided that
Jim and Darrel had died while in the trunk. He

(49:00):
and Spider then removed the boy's bodies and dumped them
there in an isolated wooded area. So now Snake agreed
to take the investigators to the boy's bodies. Detective Ziegler
contacted the judge and just before six o'clock that evening
he finally got permission with Deputy Joe Deemer and private
investigator Bob Brown to take a handcuffed Snake to the

(49:23):
spot he had described and searched for the bodies of
Jim Buscher and Darrel Barber. But Spider, meanwhile had been
returned to his cell and his attorney, Dick Kane, had
withdrawn himself from the case, so he's out. Bob Brown
contacted James Bird, who's the private eye in Michigan who
had hired him, and James Bird called the Boucher's and

(49:46):
he said to them, I told you I'd get to
the bottom of this, and he kind of took credit
for Bob's work, he said, I think we've finally gotten there.
If mister Cox's story is correct, he said. If mister
Cox's story is correct, the boys died the same night
they arrived in town. They were robbed and killed by
a couple of guys in the state of Florida. So
this was not what the parents wanted to hear.

Speaker 3 (50:09):
No. I mean, you know, probably deep down in your
heart that the boys are dead.

Speaker 2 (50:14):
But that's different than knowing for a fact. Sure is
so fey Boucher was sobbing, wanting so badly for this
just to be a nightmare. For four months, she had
convinced herself that the worst thing a mother could face
was not knowing where her son was. But she'd been wrong.
This was worse because she knew her son would never
come home again.

Speaker 3 (50:35):
So it's just getting dark outside. When Zigler and Deemer
escorted the Shackle Snake Cocks to a squad car, Bob
Brown drove behind them. Following Snake's directions, they headed for
Highway ninety two, several miles out of the city in
an area covered with dense Florida scrubbrush. Zigler turned the
car and onto Indian Lake Road. Within half a mile.

(50:56):
The road had narrowed down and became little more than
a dirt. Snake motioned for Zigler to turn left on
a trail there was even more narrow though, with Bob
following closely behind, they traveled the trail for four tenths
of a mile. Then Snake held up his hand and
said it right here. So the car stopped and detectives
climbed out. They walked behind Snake for a few yards

(51:16):
ahead of the cars, and then tore it a clearing
in the bush. The detectives moved to the spot and
looked into the clearing, while Snake stayed a few feet behind.

Speaker 2 (51:25):
Yeah. So by this time, at six fifty pm and
there's very little light left, Ziegler turned on his flashlight
and there, scattered around what appeared to be a blue
woolen blanket were human bones. Then they saw two skulls
lying side by side. Ziegler said that they would rope
off the area and come back the next day when
it would be light. With Snake back in the squad car,

(51:48):
Ziegler and Deamer roped off the area. So the phone
rang in the barber home at nine thirty that night.
By then the Bouchers had made arrangements for their younger children,
and the two coupples had gathered at the barbers, where
they waited by the telephone for most of that evening.
Ron Barber answered the call and it was James Byrd again.

(52:10):
He told Ron that they hadn't positively identified the bodies yet,
but they had found remains where the killer had taken
the police. So that sounds pretty certain.

Speaker 3 (52:20):
Yes, it does, doesn't it?

Speaker 2 (52:22):
It really does.

Speaker 3 (52:23):
So at ten fifty that night, the Barbers and the
Bushers gathered in front of the TV. The story was
one of the first on a newscasts that night. They
watched as Detective Ziggler explained to reporters that they had
found the skeletal remains of two people believed to be
the Michigan teenagers who had been missing in Daytona Beach
for the past four months. Early on the morning of

(52:44):
December thirteenth, a special crime scene unit from the Florida
Department of Criminal Law Enforcement flew into Daytona Beach from Tallahassee.
The team, led by doctor Dan Morris, who was a
forensic scientist from Florida State University, included Daytona Beach Police
officer Micholson, Sheriff's deputies Joe Deemer and Murray Zigler, and

(53:05):
Sheriff's Captain Howard McBride. There was also a representative from
the Halifax Fire Department and two additional forensic scientists from
at the scene.

Speaker 2 (53:15):
Well, as you can imagine, this process was very slow.
Bones from the two bodies were found over an area
of forty square feet. At first, this caused the investigators
to wonder if they weren't dealing with more than two bodies,
but within the first few minutes of the search, doctor
Dan Morse figured out what had happened. In his opinion,

(53:35):
as the boy's bodies had lain on the blanket side
by side, slowly decomposing animals had moved in and dragged
away various body parts. So they used screens and sifted
surface soil, rinsing what remained so that they could reclaim
the smallest of bones. In addition to the bones, they
collected two blankets and several items of clothing, which would

(53:58):
include two pairs of blue U jeans and two T shirts. Finally,
just before sunset that evening, the crew packed up the
evidence they had collected and they left the scene. The skulls, teeth,
and other skeletal remains of the victims were sent to
the crime lab headquarters in Tallahassee, and this is where
they would be restructured and analyzed in an attempt to

(54:21):
determine the cause of death. By that time, Michigan State
Police had already sent both boys dental charts to the
crime lab in Tallahassee so that the identification could be made.
The Barbers and Boucher's knew that there was a possibility
the remains were not those of their sons, but when
they took the call from a technician at the crime lab,

(54:42):
they were not surprised that confirmations had been made the
bodies were those of Darryl Barber and Jim Buscher.

Speaker 3 (54:50):
So by Friday, December twenty second, Spider wanted to talk
to the detectives. He asked to be interviewed. Siegue was
out on another case, Bob brown I was back at
his Orlando office. Since Deemer was familiar with the case,
he was happy to make the trip to County Jail
to hear what Spider wanted to say. Deemer first read
him his rights and explained that the interview would be recorded.

(55:12):
Spider said, it was about time they got the truth
out the whole thing. The whole night was looked like
some kind of freaking nightmare man, Spider said, And then
Spider told the story. It shed a different light on
what happened at August night, and at this time Deemer
felt certain there was nothing at all it seemed untrue
about the story.

Speaker 2 (55:32):
So now he thinks he's getting the real story of
what happened, which is horrendous. According to Spider Smith, he
had been prowling in the Daytona Beach area near the
boardwalk the evening of August twelfth, nineteen seventy eight, just
looking for some victims, and that's when he saw the
two Michigan teens. He approached them and smoked a few
marijuana joints while talking to them about parties in the area.

(55:55):
He said he tried to sell them about an ounce
of pot, but both boys chose to smoke any on
the beach, and after a little while, according to Spider,
he made up a story and told them there was
a big party going on at the Day's Inn down
the street. So Jim and Darrell had asked Spider where
exactly this party was, and Spider had offered to take
the boys there. After getting into the red and black

(56:18):
Chevy Nova with the boys, Spider had suggested that they
pick up a friend of his and bring him to
the party with them, and this friend was Snake Cox.
At that point, Spider said he led the boys to McDonald's,
where they met up with Snake. Spider told Deemer the
truth about this meeting. He had gone up to Snake

(56:38):
and told him about a couple of pigeons in the
car outside, and the pigeons Spider had told Snake looked
to be wealthy and naive. Okay, Snake had said, let's
go get them. But these really weren't wealthy kids, right,
They were middle class kids that worked for their stuff.
They might think these are wealthy kids, but these are
actually kids that worked for and saved that money, is

(56:59):
what I'm saying. Yeah, these weren't spoiled wealthy kids. Not
that it really matters. Then I'm rich. No. So the
two men had climbed into the boy's car with them,
and after that they headed down the street and stopped
for gas at a station near the corner of Atlantic
and Broadway. During that time, both Snake and Spider had
noticed that Darrel had a wat of twenty dollars bills

(57:21):
in his wallet, and shortly after leaving the gas station,
Snake suggested that they stop by his trailer for some
party goods. Now, Jim had been worried about taking this
side trip. It's getting late, he had said, how long
will the party go? Snake had assured him that the
night was early and the party would last for hours. More. So,

(57:42):
the boys agreed and drove to the trailer so Snake
could get the goods, and after a few minutes he
returned with a paper bag. Then, once inside the car,
he pulled a twenty five caliber automatic pistol from the
bag and handed it to Spider. Snake also kept a
thirty eight caliber pistol for himself, and at this point
in the story, Spider tried to remember which of them

(58:03):
had pulled a gun on the boy's first, but he
said he couldn't remember. All he could say was that
one of them, maybe both of them, pulled their guns
on the boys. So, as you can imagine, Jim and
Darrell had been scared to death and they had followed
Snake's directions, driving the car on to highway ninety two.
The boys obeyed when they reached a dark area and

(58:24):
they were told to pull off the road. They turned
on to Indian Lake Road and drove for half a
mile before Snake ordered them to stop the car, and
there both boys were robbed of their wallets while Snake
and Spider held guns to their heads. But Snake moved
away from the boys and motioned for Spider to follow him.
Snake said, listen, man, they know our names, they know

(58:46):
where we live, they know where we hang out. We've
got no choice, man, We got to kill em. So Spider,
apparently seeing no reason to object to this, took one
boy by the arm and Snake took the other. It
was pitch dark, but they for verst the boys at
gunpoint further down the road. As they walked, one of
Jim's shoes got stuck in the mud and it came

(59:06):
off his foot. Then they ordered both boys to take
their shoes off. Jim and Darrell, their eyes filled with fear,
looked at each other and followed orders, taking off their
shoes and tossing them into the bushes. They walked along
a little bit further, and then they reached a clearing
where Snake ordered the boys to lie face down in
an area that was wet with mud and moss. You

(59:29):
do one, Snake had said, And I'll do one next,
Spider said. He cocked the gun he was holding and
held it to Darrell's head, but for some reason, he
couldn't pull the trigger. So they beat Darrel with a
tree limb, but he didn't die. Snake and Spider hit
both boys in their heads with their guns. Then they
made Jim Busher sign over his traveler's checks. They tied

(59:52):
the boy's arms behind their backs with their belts and
then put them in the trunk of the car. So
this is terrifying, and just to think of what these
boys went through, I can't. They must have been so scared, so.

Speaker 3 (01:00:06):
Unsure of what to do with their bleeding victims in
the trunk of the car. Snake drove back to his trailer.
Both men went inside and discussed what to do. Finally,
they agreed on a plan. They would take a piece
of hose some tape and drive the boys back to
the deserted area off Indian Lake Road, and they would
guess them to death, would die by carbon monoxide poisoning.

Speaker 2 (01:00:27):
Oh I guess so I don't understand why they didn't
shoot them. It's horrible, but it almost seems more humane
than what they did do to them.

Speaker 3 (01:00:35):
It does, but maybe Spider was thinking it sounds better
if they killed them non violently. That's a stupid way
to put it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:42):
It's not non violent. They'd beat the hell.

Speaker 3 (01:00:44):
Out of them rather than shoot them. We'll just poison them.

Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
Either way. It's just fucking sick.

Speaker 3 (01:00:49):
It's horrible. So, with Snake driving, they returned to the
spot where they were drove a half mile down Indian
Lake Road and then another four tenths of a mile
down a trail, stopped the car and opened the trunk.
Boys were alive. Daryl was moaning loudly and trying to
squirm free of the belt that bound his arms behind
his back. Jim was crying softly, begging for Snake Inspirer

(01:01:11):
to let them go. So Snake told them they needed
to count out loud to one thousand, and then when
they were finished, they were free to run away. Both
boys were badly beaten, but they nodded that they understood.
Then Snake slammed the trunk shut. He then took the
hose and connected it to the tailpipe stuck the other
end into the trunk. Then he took the roll of

(01:01:32):
tape and began sealing the seam of the trunk. Now,
at this point it seemed that Daryl realized what was
going on.

Speaker 2 (01:01:38):
Oh, it's horrible.

Speaker 3 (01:01:39):
Obviously realizing that they're about to die, he began using
his feet to kick the hose out of the trunk.

Speaker 2 (01:01:45):
So Snake said, that's it, man, and he reached into
the car's glove compartment and removed a hunting knife, which
Darrel had kept there for protection. Snake took the knife
and began jamming it through the seam of the trunk
until he must have felt it sinking into Darrell's chest.
He heard Darrell cry out in pain, and then suddenly
Darrell stopped trying to kick the hose out of the car.

(01:02:08):
Satisfied with that, Snake dropped the knife and continued to
tape up the trunk. When he was finished, he started
the car and filled the trunk with deadly carbon monoxide.
So for the next two hours, these two guys, Snake
and Spider, sat on a nearby log, smoking pot and
actually telling each other jokes. At first, they could hear

(01:02:29):
the sound of at least one of the boys kicking
at the inside of the trunk with his feet, but
after a few minutes there was only the sound of
the car's engine. Finally, in the early hours of the morning,
while it was still dark out, Snake walked back to
the car and turned off the engine. Then he pulled
off the tape and opened the trunk. When he saw
that the boys were now dead, he pulled their bodies

(01:02:49):
from the car, and with Spider's help, they moved the
boys into a clearing and laid them out side by side.
Since they didn't want anyone to see the bodies, they
found a blanket in the b of Darrell's car and
covered the boys with it, and then they just left
them so. Spider looked satisfied after telling Deemer his version
of events, and Deemer believed this story. When the other

(01:03:11):
investigators involved in the case heard Spider's version of what
had happened to the two boys, they agreed that Spider
was telling them the truth, and by late December, members
of an autopsy team had reconstructed the skeletons of the
boys and proven that there had been severe trauma to
Darrel Barber's skull before he died. They had also located

(01:03:33):
a rib from Darrell's left side, which showed a knife
mark that would support Spider's story that Snake had stabbed
the boy. Additionally, an expert in forgery had proven that
Jim did sign those Travelers checks. The shaky signature on
the checks had been the result of the beating that
he had received, and, perhaps more importantly, they agreed that

(01:03:55):
Spider's decision to confess to the murder would be used
against both him and Snake trial.

Speaker 3 (01:04:01):
Spider had opted for a trial in lieu of a
guilty plea. Now, a trial for either Snake or Spider
had been something State Attorney Watson thought they might be
able to avoid in light of the details provided by Spider.
Snake had agreed to plead guilty to two counts of
first degree murder in exchange for his life. He would
receive a life sentence without the possibility of parole, but

(01:04:23):
because of his assistance in finding the boy's bodies, and
because he was willing to plead guilty, he could avoid
the death penalty. Watson hoped that Spider would be willing
to plead guilty and accept these conditions instead. After Spider
had confessed to Deemer. He had spent the next few
days in his self convincing himself that he was not
responsible for the boy's murders.

Speaker 2 (01:04:44):
It's amazing how people can justify things. Yeah, he actually
pondered his own difficult childhood and the influence that Snake
had over him, and he decided that any reasonable jury
would find him not guilty of murder.

Speaker 3 (01:04:58):
We said at one point that he wasn't brightest person, No, certainly,
but the.

Speaker 2 (01:05:02):
Way he saw it, it was Snake's idea to kill
the boys, and it was Snake's fault that it had happened.
So he doesn't have a basic understanding of how murder
workspe So, despite the risk of the electric chair. On
February ninth, nineteen seventy nine, the court did a point
an attorney, Thomas Beeves to represent Spider.

Speaker 3 (01:05:22):
Then that spring nineteen seventy nine, Spider and another man
captured a guard, disarmed him, beat him, and subjected him
to gang rate. Reguard said the Spider had done unspeakable
things to one of his body cavities, oh gosh. And
then he had finally stopped fighting the rape because Spider
threatened to bite his jugular vein if he cried out
for help.

Speaker 2 (01:05:41):
So not only is he stupid, he is a violent,
horrible person.

Speaker 1 (01:05:45):
He is.

Speaker 3 (01:05:46):
When Bob Brown, Deemer, and Ziegler heard about that incident,
there pleases Spider had opted for a first degree murder trial.

Speaker 2 (01:05:53):
Well, that's not going to help him out because.

Speaker 3 (01:05:55):
When he lost, he would definitely get the death penalty.

Speaker 2 (01:05:58):
Yeah, this is Florida.

Speaker 3 (01:06:00):
So Assistant State Attorney Jean White had to agree with
Spider's attorney that the idea of going to trial is
ludicrous given the evidence against Spider. Smith. Still, he was
aware that the governors of both Florida and Michigan had
been involved in this case and that they were watching
carefully to see that justice was served.

Speaker 2 (01:06:18):
Yes, so the trial went forward, and it began on
January fourteenth. Spider's defense revolved around the idea that a
person could be coerced to do something out of character
and against their true nature under the influence of another,
and this, the defense said, was the case with Earl Smith.
But the trial only lasted for four days. The prosecutor

(01:06:40):
only called seven of the fifty witnesses he had subpoened.
Forensic experts were among these witnesses. Detective Damer took the
stand and he talked about Spider's confession. Then the tape
of Spider's confession was played for the jury, who were horrified,
and the defense called no witnesses. So the jury received

(01:07:00):
their instructions at two p m. On the fourth day
of the trial, and it took them less than an
hour to find him guilty of two counts of first
degree murder, and he was sentenced to death. But then
in nineteen eighty eight, Smith's attorneys were able to convince
a judge that his terrible childhood was responsible for the
role he played in these murders. His mother had been

(01:07:23):
raped prior to his conception, and he had been forced
to witness his stepfather's suicide, so his death sentence was
commuted to life in prison. This was concerning for the
families of Daryl and Jim, especially when they learned that
their son's murderers could be released from prison as early
as nineteen ninety six because the Florida prisons were overcrowded

(01:07:44):
and because they could get time off for good behavior.

Speaker 3 (01:07:48):
Well I don't know what the terms. Once the commuted
his sentence, but with Snake, he was sentenced to life
in prison without the possibility of parole, right, So he's
not getting out as early as nineteen ninety sive.

Speaker 2 (01:08:00):
No, and they didn't have good behavior in prison. From
what I've seen, they continued to be violent assholes.

Speaker 3 (01:08:07):
So they're still in prison.

Speaker 2 (01:08:08):
Yes, from the latest information I could find, they are
still in prison on death row. No, And I really
have no problem with that. I'm not a big death
penalty person. As long as they stay in prison for life,
I think that's satisfactory, and I hope the families feel
okay with that. Well. I think they did want them
to get the death penalty, but there's so much that

(01:08:29):
goes along with that, and people stay in prison for
so long and never get the death penalty. Actually a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:08:35):
We just saw a crime show about somebody who's been
on death row for thirty years.

Speaker 2 (01:08:39):
Sure it happens a lot. Oh yeah, So, but what
a despicable crime. And my heart breaks for those families.
Those two kids.

Speaker 3 (01:08:48):
Horrendous.

Speaker 2 (01:08:49):
Yeah, they really had a horrible time. So it's really
amazing what people go through sometimes.

Speaker 3 (01:08:56):
Yeah, you look through the reports and stuff, and you
wonder how a person could do that to another.

Speaker 2 (01:09:00):
Person exactly right. It's just horrendous for what like a
few hundred bucks. Yeah yeah, in a car in a car, right,
and it never works out anyway. These people get caught
most of the time, most of the time. Yeah, well,
thanks for talking with me about this. I found a
book on this and was just pretty horrified by the crime.

Speaker 3 (01:09:21):
It's definitely not an uplifting story.

Speaker 2 (01:09:23):
No, it isn't. It isn't. Okay, Well, thanks everyone for listening,
and we really appreciate your support, which is wonderful, and
we will see you soon with a regular episode of
True Crime Brewery. So then we'll see you at the
quiet end. We'll save some seats, okay, bye, bye.

Speaker 4 (01:09:40):
Bye guys, and a dictly int