Ep 98: 23 Minutes of Murder

In July of 1982, engaged couple Billy Staton and Leticia Castro, both 26, went missing in La Feria, Texas. It took a Texas Ranger, a private detective, and 23 minutes of audio to solve the case.

Sources:
1) “23 minutes of murder” depicted on Brownsville tape. (1982, October 31). Associated Press.

2) A man accused of killing two people in a... (1983, April 14). UPI. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1983/04/14/A-man-accused-of-killing-two-people-in-a/5034419144400/

3) Clinton Jay High, Jr. (Director). (1998, December 9). The Texas Rangers (Season 4, Episode 11). In The New Detectives. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5QGJHgdpno

4) Doctor backs insanity plea by defendant. (1983, April 15). Associated Press.

5) Ex-wife found guilty in taped murder case. (1983, July 30). Associated Press.

6) Hidden recorder caught sounds of owner’s murder. (1982, November 10). Associated Press.

7) Insane “act” of defendant is criticized. (1983, April 19). Associated Press.

8) Jurors hear tape at murder trial. (1983, April 14). Associated Press. https://www.nytimes.com/1983/04/14/us/jurors-hear-tape-at-murder-trial.html

9) Jury convicts farmer in “death tape” case. (1983, April 21). Associated Press.

10) Sherry Wolf faces up to life in prison for... (1983, July 30). UPI. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1983/07/30/Sherry-Wolf-faces-up-to-life-in-prison-for/9713428385600/

11) Smith, S. (Director). (2019, November 3). Evil in East Texas (Season 2, Episode 1). In The Devil Speaks. Investigation Discovery.

12) Witness describes killings of man, fiancee. (1983, April 13). Associated Press.

13) Wolf v. State, No. 13-83-429-CR, (Court of Appeals of Texas, Corpus Christi June 14, 1984). https://casetext.com/case/wolf-v-state-8

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Episode Transcript

(00:36):
Hello, everyone, Welcome back toanother episode of All Crime, No Cattle,
a Texas true crime podcast. Iam Shay and I'm Marin, and
there's been a lot going on inTexas. We've had droughts, floods,
wildfires. A lot's happened this month, and I hope everybody's doing okay,
especially in Dallas and Port Worth wherethey had some really huge, dangerous floods

(00:56):
happened. Hopefully you're all safe,and we're here to bring you another episode
of this show that I'm pretty excitedabout. Aaron has told me it's unique,
so I'm interested to see how uniqueit is and in what way.
So we'll see. Yeah, itis a really unique case. Something happens
in this case that I don't thinkwe've ever seen before on the show,

(01:18):
and I mean it's just in general, a very unique circumstance. But first,
before we get to that, let'sbegin with our sources. First up
is the investigation Discovery Channel show TheDevil Speaks. The episode on this case
is episode one of season two,entitled Evil in East Texas. There's also
a short segment on the TV showThe New Detectives. The episode is called

(01:42):
Texas Rangers from Season four, episodeeleven. This case was also covered in
the newspapers at the time, withalmost all coverage coming from the Associated Press
or the United Press International. Andthen those articles were picked up and republished
in multiple different newspapers, both herein Texas as well as on a national
level. And finally, we havecourt documents, including the opinions rendered by

(02:07):
the Court of Appeals of Texas.For this episode, we're going back down
to the lower Rio Grande Valley indeep south Texas to the small town of
Lafaria. Lafaria is located about thirtymiles north of the Mexico border, and
like many border towns, there isa lot of Mexican historical and cultural influence.

(02:28):
In fact, Laferia means the fairin Spanish, and the town was
named that because of a fair groundthat was built there in the late seventeen
hundreds. It's a farming and ranchingcommunity, but it's also a bit of
a tourist town because of its proximityto the coast. It's only about an
hour's drive or so to get tothe beach. Today, Lafaria has a

(02:49):
population of about seventy five hundred people. But back in the eighties when this
case was taking place, about thirtyfive hundred people lived there. So it's
a very small town. Okay,So it's down in the lower Rio Grand
Valley, but also in the RioGrand Delta area near Matamoras and in Brownsville.
Yes, okay, exactly gotcha.And if you're a wrestling fan,

(03:10):
you might be interested to know thatLafaria is the birthplace of NXT and WWE
superstar Raquel Gonzalez now going as RaquelRodriguez. That's my girl, you know
it, that's right. In thesummer of nineteen eighty two, Billy Stayton
and Leticia Castro were in love.Billy was a construction foreman, and Leticia,

(03:32):
who went by Letti, was afourth grade teacher at Buckner Elementary School
in Far Texas, located about twentyfive miles west of Lafaria. The young
couple, both twenty six years old, were engaged in planning their wedding,
scheduled for August seventh. Billy alsohad a two year old daughter from a

(03:53):
previous relationship. Now, in orderto protect her identity, I'm going to
be referring to Billy's daughter by afake name. We'll just call her,
Heather. Billy didn't get to seeHeather that often, though, as the
custody arrangement he had with Heather's mothermeant that he only got to see her
every other weekend. But Billy wasin the process of filing to modify the

(04:14):
custody agreement so he could have moretime with Heather, and Letty was supportive
of this because she loved Heather andgot along with her really well. And
I think that makes sense, Lettybeing a fourth grade school teacher, that
she was probably really good with kids. Yeah, that makes sense, and
it's also a good sign that hewants to spend more time with his daughter.
He sounds like a good guy.I don't know. I always have

(04:36):
my detective glasses on and I'm alwayslooking for who's a good guy? Who's
a bad guy? Yeah, exactlyright. What's your role in this case?
Well, as you can imagine,the summer of nineteen eighty two was
a really busy time for them,Billy trying to go through these custody modifications
as well as them planning their upcomingwedding. Sure, there's a lot going
on. But suddenly one weekend inJuly, Billy and Leticia both disappeared.

(05:01):
Billy's family first noticed something was amiss because they knew it was his weekend
to have Heather and they've been planninga big family trip to go boating and
swimming. That doesn't sound good.Yeah, The weekend passed by without Billy
ever contacting them. In the meantime, Letty's family also became concerned after not
hearing from her first several days.She was very close with them and they

(05:25):
were used to talking to her basicallyon a daily basis. Yeah, type
family probably call each other all thetime. Yeah, exactly. Then the
following Monday, neither Billy nor Lettyshowed up to their jobs. Now again,
Billy was a construction foreman. Hehas a team of people underneath him,
and she's a teacher with students.These aren't jobs that you just no

(05:45):
call, no show too. Youknow. This was very unusual for the
both of them. So Letitia's brothersstopped by their trailer that Letitia and Billy
shared, hoping to find them,or a note that they left behind,
or some kind of clue that mightindicate where they were. But there was
nothing. Nothing ominous like blood orsigns of a struggle. Nothing missing,
or out of place. Okay,well, not necessarily a horrible sign yet

(06:10):
that it could have been worse,Like you said, blood, Yeah,
exactly. But they did notice thatBilly's car was missing. So with the
wedding only a few weeks away,the families hoped that maybe the couple had
just run off and eloped and thatthey'd hear from them again soon. But
after a few more days with stillno word from either of them, the
family has contacted law enforcement and madea missing person's report. Now, Lafaria

(06:36):
didn't have a police department at thetime, so the Texas Rangers stationed in
the nearby town of Harlingen got thecase and it was assigned to Texas Ranger
Bruce Castile. In addition to makingthe missing person's report, Billy's family also
hired a private investigator to search forthem. That's probably smart. Get more

(06:57):
hands on deck, try and getsome other people to try and find them
or track them down. Yeah,absolutely, a really smart thing to do.
And you can see sort of theirdesperation to figure out where they were.
They knew that something was wrong.The first thing Ranger Castile did was
talked to the families to find outmore about the missing couple, as well
as pinpoint when they were last seen. One of Leticia's brothers told him that

(07:19):
he'd last seen them when he'd stoppedby their trailer on Friday July sixteenth at
around six pm. He said thatthey told him that they were about to
head out to go pick up Heatherbecause it was Billy's weekend with her.
No one had heard from Billy orLetty after that night, so Ranger Castile
paid a visit to Heather's mother andBilly's ex wife, Sherry Wolf. Sherry

(07:44):
told the ranger that their custody arrangementwas that Billy would pick up Heather every
other Friday night at seven pm,but Sherry explained that on Friday July sixteenth,
he never showed up. She saidthat she waited for them, but
eventually gave up and she took Heatheror to her mother's house for the weekend.
So at this point we know thatat six pm, the couple mentioned

(08:05):
they were about to go pick upHeather, but Sherry's saying that they never
arrived, So this sounds like theirintention was definitely there. Yeah, absolutely,
So it seems like the couple musthave disappeared sometime around this time Friday
night, between six and seven.That's a tight window exactly. Yeah,
to have that really quickly, that'spretty good. Yeah. Well. The

(08:26):
ranger also asked Sherry to talk aboutthe nature of her relationship with Billy,
how well they got along. Forexample, Sherry explained that there's had been
a quick romance, marriage and pregnancywhen they were both very young. Billy
had been about twenty three or twentyfour and Sherry had been about seventeen or
eighteen. Their marriage lasted less thana year, and they were divorced within

(08:48):
a few months of Heather's birth.In the two years since, Sherry had
remarried to a farmer named Paul Wolf, and she was pregnant with their first
child together. So at this time, Sherry was about six months pregnant.
Sherry also admitted to the ranger thather relationship with Billy was quite strained and

(09:09):
they'd been having custody issues regarding Heather. Right, Yeah, we know they
were going to court to rearrange thecustody agreement, yes, exactly. But
it turns out that the story goesa little bit deeper than that. Castille
went to Billy's family as well,as his attorney to find out more information
about this, and it became clearhow contentious the relationship between Billy and Sherry

(09:31):
really was. You see, Sherrywas claiming that whenever Billy came to pick
Heather up, the girl would begincrying inconsolably, screaming that she didn't want
to go with him. She saidthat Heather didn't like her father and was
scared of him. In addition,she claimed that Billy was always showing up
late and that he was rude andabusive towards her and her husband, Paul.

(09:52):
The accusations had led to one recentcourt appearance, and it was expected
that there would be more on thehorizon, so it looked like it was
going to be a very long drawnout legal battle between the two of them.
Billy, on the other hand,argued that Heather's crying at pickup was
partly due to her age. Remembershe was two years old, so oh

(10:13):
yeah, yeah, that's a timewhere it's kind of developmentally normal to throw
tempered tantrums, act up a little, yeah, and also like get scared
when you're leaving your mom and yeah, yeah, And it also makes sense
that she didn't really know him basedon how little time he was able to
spend with her, only seeing herevery other weekend, right, And that's
part of the reason why Billy wasfiling to amend the custody agreement, because

(10:35):
he wanted more time with her.As far as the other grievances, Billy
claimed that he was always on timeand always polite. Billy had been really
frustrated by the whole thing because itwas a he said, she said situation.
He felt like he couldn't prove thatwhat Sherry and Paul were saying wasn't
the truth. Yeah, it soundslike a real war of words situation exactly,

(11:00):
and so he had turned to hisattorney for advice. His attorney told
Ranger Castile that he'd suggested to Billythat he wear a recording device to secretly
tape his interactions with Sherry and Paulwhen he came to pick up Heather.
That way, if they claimed hesaid or did anything he didn't do,
Billy would have proof that they werelying. However, the attorney said that

(11:22):
he didn't know whether or not Billyhad taken his advice. Wow, that's
pretty ridiculous that you have to goto that nth degree in those steps to
basically wear a wire just to protectyourself in court so that you get to
have a relationship with your daughter.Yeah, definitely, But in Billy's case,
it was the one thing he knewto do to try to defend himself.

(11:43):
Really. Yeah. Then, onJuly twenty ninth, thirteen days after
Billy and Laticia went missing, apilot crop dusting over farmland spotted a vehicle
partially submerged in a drainage canal.The car was pulled from the water and
the vehicle registry number matched that ofBilly's missing car. Oh no, the

(12:03):
car had been set on fire,and then the whole thing, both inside
and outside, had been entirely smearedwith mud. In addition, a large
rock was found still sitting on theaccelerator. Oh to drive it off into
the drainage did yes, exactly.Wow, that's like a thing you'd see
in movies. Yeah, okay,and then it's also covered in mud again

(12:26):
to destroy evidence. It obviously wasset on fire again to remove evidence.
But no bodies are in the car. Nobodies, but obvious signs of foul
play. Yeah, yeah, definitely. A large scale search of the area
around where the car was found began, and over four days a team of
over one hundred officers poured over thearea looking for any trace of the couple,

(12:50):
but nothing was found. Because thiswas a small, close knit community
thirty five hundred people, the newsthat Billy and Letty were missing and now
presumed dead was huge. To tryto tap that potential, law enforcement created
a special hot line for the publicto call in with any tips about the
case. You know, and inthis case, I think a hot line

(13:13):
might actually work better than in amajor metropolitan area because you get so many
ridiculous tips. Like if you havea hot line like yet Worth or Dallas
or Houston versus a tiny, tightknit community like this, you might actually
get really good tips if any comein, since they all probably know each
other and it is a small community. Yeah, and I would imagine you

(13:35):
would get fewer tips, so youwould have more time to investigate the leaves
that you do get. Yeah,it's like quality over quantity, right,
Yeah, I would guess. Well. Then Ranger Castile received a call from
a woman who had been the managerof the rental property where Sherry and Paul
Wolfe had been living. She toldCastile that the couple had been renting a

(13:56):
house from her since February of thatyear, so they'd been living there for
about five months. But then suddenly, on Saturday, July seventeenth, they
had called into the office inquiring aboutmoving to another property, and in fact,
they'd moved that very same weekend.The manager of the rental said that
the whole thing happened so fast thatshe didn't even know they were thinking about

(14:20):
moving until the following Monday when theyhanded in the keys tour. Wow,
that is a really fast move.We just did a move. How do
you move that fast? Exactly?It's very strange, isn't it, especially
considering that this was the same weekendthat Billy and Letty had gone missing.
Oh, so you have a missingcouple whose last known location was that they

(14:43):
were headed to Sherry and Paul's house, and then the very next day it
seems as though they are scrambling tomove away from that house. To me,
that seems like something may have happenedthere at that home exactly. So
that is red flag city right.Well, with this new evidence in hand,
and your castile was able to geta search warrant for the house.
Wow, And so how long hasit been now since they've gone missing.

(15:07):
You said thirteen days with the missingcar was found, and then how long
has it been since they went missing? To this point, I'm just trying
to it's only been a few daysafter they found the car. Okay,
great point. I was trying togauge, like how much time had elapsed,
so like there might still be alot of evidence if there is any
at that house. That's right,and that's exactly what they were hoping for.
Okay. So investigators entered the nowempty home, and obviously all the

(15:31):
furniture, everything is gone from thehome. Sure, but in the living
room they look at the carpet andthey see that there's a large stain sort
of in the middle of the room. They lifted the carpet and discovered that
the underside was also stained, butit appeared as if red paint had been
applied over the stain, as ifto cover something up. Huh. There

(15:52):
were also multiple areas in the livingroom, for example, on door frames,
curtains, and moldings that appeared tohave specks of blood, and there
looked to be bloody transfer stains nearthe bathroom and on the front door.
Testing soon confirmed that all of this, including the stain on the carpet,

(16:14):
was indeed human blood. Yeah,and it's starting to sound like we found
the crime scene exactly. Now,this was nineteen eighty two, so the
pinnacle of testing blood at the timewas blood type analysis. Unfortunately, the
red paint that had been sprayed overthe bloody carpet prevented blood type analysis for
that stain, but several of thespatters on the walls were tested and found

(16:37):
to be Type A, the sameblood type as Billy Staton. Now,
the specks of blood throughout the livingroom were linear elliptical drops, i e.
Cast off patterns from blood being flungfrom a weapon. So, as
you said, this is clearly acrime scene. Someone had been beaten in
the living room and then bled outon the floor, leaving behind a large

(17:00):
pool of blood. Investigators also noticedthat outside the home there were some large
decorative rocks and one was missing.There was still this big indentation in the
dirt where one used to be ohwow, what a keen eye to spot
that, And that was that therock that was used to weigh down the
accelerator. Well, they took therock and they put it in that hole

(17:23):
and it fit exactly into the hole. Okay, wow, yeah. So,
with the investigation now focused squarely onPaul and Sherry Wolf, something unexpected
happened. On August sixth. PaulWolf came forward and, with his attorney
by his side, said that hewas willing to confess to the murders of

(17:44):
both Billy Staton and Leticia Castro.Wow. Okay, right, that's abrupt,
exactly, very surprising to the investigators. So of course they sit down
and hear what he has to say. Paul said that what Sherry had told
Ranger Castile originally was true. Thaton July sixteenth, they'd sat around waiting
for Billy to come by to pickup Heather, but he never came,

(18:06):
so eventually Sherry got frustrated and tookHeather to her mother's. Paul said that
after they left, he also leftthe house to go run an errand,
and while he was out, hespotted Billy and Letitia driving in Billy's car.
They flagged each other down, andPaul said they all drove back to
his house. He said that Lettiestayed in the car while he and Billy

(18:27):
got out to talk. Billy askedwhere Heather was and Paul explained that Sherry
had grown tired of waiting for himand had left with her. Paul said
that Billy became really angry and pushedpast him into the house to look for
them. Paul said that he triedcalling Sherry on her mother's phone so she
could calm him down, but theline was busy and that made Billy even

(18:48):
more furious. He said. Billycame at him, hitting him and trying
to choke him. He said hewas able to push Billy off of him,
which gave him a second to lookaround to find something to defend himself
with. He saw an iron barleaning against the wall, and he picked
it up, and as Billy cameat him again, he hit Billy in
the head with the iron bar,and Billy fell to the ground. He

(19:12):
said that Latitia must have overheard thesound of the struggle because she suddenly burst
into the house when she saw Billylying on the floor. Paul said that
she flew into a rage and shealso attacked him. He still had the
iron bar in his hand and sohe hit her with it and Letitia also
went down. So he's claiming selfdefense in this case. Yes, Oh

(19:37):
my gosh, Paul said that hewas scared and he didn't know what to
do. So he put the bodiesinto Billy's car and he drove out to
his father's land, where he dumpedeach of them in separate drainage canals.
He was adamant that he killed bothBilly and Latsia in self defense and that
Sherry had known nothing about it.He agreed to lead investigators to the bodies.

(20:00):
This sounds like he's protecting Sherry,honestly, Like, I don't believe
that this happened. This seems ridiculous. It sounds a little bit preposterous that
you accidentally killed two people in selfdefense. You know what I mean.
It's it's big metal pipe. Yeah, and then hid the car and the
bodies. Like, if it's selfdefense, why wouldn't you just call a

(20:22):
police. Well, he said itwas scared that it happened so fast and
then they were dead, and sohe Okay, if that's the story he
wants to go with. It seemsoutlandish, but all right, this is
what he's decided to do. Yes, either way, he's going with this
story, and he's also going tolead them back to the bodies. Yes,

(20:42):
but it turns out, though,that his help wasn't quite needed,
at least to find Laticia. Onthe same day Paul gave his confession,
the private investigator who'd been hired bythe family discovered Laticia's body deep in a
remote drainage canal. Her body hadbeen sitting in water for three weeks and

(21:02):
was badly decomposed, but it wasobvious just by looking at her that she
had suffered extensive head injuries and thatpart of her skull was missing. The
area was searched, and on theground overlooking the canal, investigators found a
twenty gage shotgun show. A laterautopsy confirmed that Letty had been shot in

(21:22):
the head with a shotgun and thatpellets were still lodged in her collar bone.
Okay, So, like we thought, Paul's story is missing some critical
details here exactly. He never mentionedanything about a shotgun. Okay. So
question was she weighed down in thisdeep canal? No? Oh, I
would assume if she wasn't weighed down, she would float. Yeah, she

(21:45):
was found on top of the water. There was only a few inches of
water, so it was a lowcanal, and but it was a deep
canal. Oh. Okay, soit's just like a lot of stratigraphy to
get down to where she was.Yes, a few inches of water.
Paul himself led investigators to Billy's bodythe very same day. So ultimately,

(22:07):
both Billy and Laticia were recovered onAugust sixth, the day before they were
supposed to be married. Oh that'scrushing. Yeah. Billy's body was found
in a different canal than Letty,several miles away from where his vehicle was
discovered in the ditch. Like Letty, Billy's body had been submerged in several

(22:27):
inches of water and his body wasbadly decomposed. A later autopsy confirmed that
Billy had died from brain injuries dueto extensive skull fractures. The skull was
so badly injured that there was alarge crack across the top from ear to
ear, and the left side ofthe skull was missing completely. From what

(22:48):
remained of the skull, the pathologistsfound three areas of trauma from at least
three different blows to the head.The pathologists concluded that the pattern of damage
to the skull indicated that Billy's headhad either been resting on the ground or
pinned against something while it was beingstruck, and that it had endured multiple
blows. So, once again,none of that was consistent with Paul's statement

(23:11):
that he'd hit Billy as they werein the middle of a fight. Yeah,
that doesn't sound like self defense.Yes, but there was something very,
very special that investigators also discovered alongwith Billy's body. When they pulled
him up from the drainage canal,they noticed a rectangular shape underneath his shirt.

(23:32):
They lifted his shirt up and discoveredthat it was a mini cassette tape
recorder tape to his stomach. Oh, so he did record his conversation exactly
now. Ranger Castile had been awareof the possibility that Billy had been wearing
some kind of recording device around thetime of his disappearance, but he'd assumed
that the device would be big andblocky enough to have been discovered by anyone

(23:53):
who might have done him harm.But Billy had been smart enough to have
just a relatively small device for thetime anyway, and somehow his killer never
found it. But this thing wasn'tstill running like he got thrown in water.
Well, the machine's record button wasstill depressed, so it meant that

(24:15):
the tape might have been running duringBilly and Letty's murder. Yeah. Interesting,
so this is huge. The problem, of course, was that,
like the bodies, the mini cassettehad also been sitting in murky water for
three weeks. Yeah. The chancesthat the tape would still be usable at
this point seemed extremely thin, butRanger Castille sent it off to the FBI

(24:40):
lab anyway, hoping that they'd beable to work some magic. Special agent
Keith Spoonholtz, who worked in thefield of magnetic tape analysis, was the
one to examine it. He saidthat the tape was in such bad condition
that there was mold growing on thetape inside the cassette. Oh wow.
Yeah, but he was able toclean off the tape and make two copies,

(25:03):
one an exact copy with no processingor filters, and an enhanced copying,
and after only one week, AgentSpoonholtz reported that they were able to
restore the recording in its entirety,and that it was exactly what investigators had
been hoping for. Billy had accidentallymade a recording of his and Laticia's final

(25:26):
moments alive. Oh my god.Yeah, so let's go over the contents
of the tape. According to theofficial transcript produced by law enforcement and entered
into the record, the recording beginswith someone clearing his throat and saying,
I'll be back in a minute.Hang on. Now, given the context

(25:47):
of why we know Billy was recording, it makes sense that this was Billy
speaking to Latitia as he was headedinto Sherry and Paul's house to pick up
Heather, just like he'd been advisedto do by his attorney. You can
then are the sounds of Billy's bootswalking over a wooden porch, just like
the one at the house where Pauland Sherry lived at the time. You
can hear Billy knocking on the door, and a male voice, presumably Paul,

(26:11):
says come on in, and Billyresponds thank you. Billy can then
be heard saying hello, little one, and there is a babbling response from
a young child. Of course,this can only be Heather. Oh wait,
oh, no, Heather was there, Yes, And as I can

(26:32):
see from your reaction, yeah,this was a complete shock because Paul had
always maintained that neither Heather nor Sherryhad been there that last night. When
Billy came, Why would you haveher be there. I'm assuming if it's
premeditated, like that's a real horriblething. Oh, we're going to find
out, I guess well. Billystarts talking to Heather about what they were

(26:55):
going to do that weekend, andhe asked if Heather wants to go ride
in the boat. So they werereferring to that trip that they were supposed
to go to that weekend with Billy'sfamily. Heather responds know that she doesn't
want to go, and she startscrying. Billy tries encouraging her a little,
telling her that they were going togo have fun and go swimming,
and then another voice chimes in thevoice of an adult woman, which I'm

(27:19):
guessing this is Sherry. That's whatit seems like. She asks Heather if
she doesn't want to go, andHeather again responds no. Billy is still
trying to encourage her, says thatthe water will feel good, they'll take
some sandwiches and have a picnic.At this point, it sounds like Heather
is starting to come around a little, and she asked where Letty is.

(27:40):
Billy responds that Letty is outside waitingfor her and that she was going to
go on the boat trip too.Heather continues to cry a little and ask
about a few other people. Itsounds like these were friends and family members
of Billy's. Yeah, people she'sused to experiencing time with them. Yes,
And he tells her that they couldgo see those people that weekend as
well, so he's trying to gether pumped for his visit. Suddenly,

(28:04):
in the middle of this conversation,two loud, thudding noises can be heard,
and then a moan, and thenthe sound of three more thuds and
thud is truly the best way todescribe this noise. It's a solid,
striking noise and it is the soundof Billy getting hit in the head.

(28:26):
In the background, Heather begins cryingand screaming, and the sound fades as
if she's been taken out of theroom. Paul says, get him,
get him, hurry up, andalthough the words are unintelligible, a different
male voice responds. For several minutes, all that can be heard on the
tape is the sound of Billy's haggardbreathing, as well as a few groans.

(28:51):
Then Sherry's voice can be heard saying, quote, get him up,
get him out. Of here thefront door. Now hit him again.
The awful thudding noises can be heardagain five times. Paul's voice says,
ah, Glenn, look at thefucking mess you made, and the other
person apparently named Glenn, responds,but the words are unintelligible. Paul can

(29:14):
be heard asking someone to move acar, but the voice of Glenn replies,
what about here? You go ahead? You know I'm scared as shit.
After a few moments, the soundof a vehicle can be heard in
the background. Then Paul's voice canbe heard saying, honey, help me
drag him over, and what's thematter Glenn. You can hear lots of
muffled noises, and it seems asif this is the sound of Billy's body

(29:37):
being moved. Then there is thesound of a vehicle starting up and driving,
and the driving continues for about tenminutes on the tape. The worst
part about this is you can clearlystill hear the sounds of Billy breathing,
but by the time the car stopsand reaches its destination, you can here

(30:00):
Billy's breathing anymore. This is horrible, man, Yeah, it's awful.
After the vehicle comes to a stop. You can hear doors opening and closing,
as well as other background noises.After a few moments, Paul says,
go get the gun out of thecar, Glen, and then comes
the sound of a single shotgun blast. There's a sound again of driving,

(30:22):
and then of Billy's body being pulledfrom the car and dumped into the drainage
canal. The men's voices can beheard, but it's not clear what they're
saying. The car drives off,and then there's silence on the tape until
it runs out. Now, ifyou are interested in hearing this audio,
the episode of the Devil Speaks thatI mentioned up top and that will have

(30:45):
cited in the show notes includes portionsof the actual recording. Fair warning,
just like we went over, itis very graphic and they do present the
actual moments of the murderer on theaudio. So it is something that you
would have to sit through and listento. So it is a little intense,
but it is available if you areinterested in that. Normally, on

(31:07):
your cases that have extra audio andstuff, I would normally go and like
watch it and listen to it,But in this case, I think I'm
good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Now there was no mention on the
recording of Laticia. But I'm assumingthat that go get the shotgun and the
shotgun blast is the shotgun blast thathits her in the head. Yes,

(31:30):
And at some point in the recordingthey get her and apprehend her in some
way, and she's in the carsor vehicles with them and then has finished
off with the shotgun. Yes,that's correct. Remember that the recording device
was on Billy, and for atleast the first part of this interaction they
were separated. Lettie was still inthe car and Billy was in the home.

(31:52):
So we really don't know just fromthe tape exactly what happened to Laticia
yet, except we do hear theshotgun blast on the tape, which we
know she was shot with a shotgun. Right from start to finish. The
tape was twenty three minutes long,but it illuminated the full story of what
had happened to Billy Stayton and LaticiaCastro, and it was a far cry

(32:15):
from the story being told by PaulWolfe. First of all, the tape
proved that not only were Heather andSherry both present in the home, but
that they were both witnesses to Billy'smurder. In fact, it suggested that
Sherry was complicit in the murderers aswell. There are no sounds of protests
coming from her when Billy was beinghit, and she's in fact heard encouraging

(32:38):
them to hit Billy again. Yeah, she's barking orders. Yeah. It's
also clear that there was nothing thattriggered the attack. Billy was sitting and
having a conversation with Heather. Whenhe's out of nowhere he gets struck.
Yeah, it seems like an ambushexactly. And finally, the tape also
proved that there was another person namedGlenn who was both a witness of and

(33:01):
participant in the murders as well asthe dumping of the bodies, because we
know that Glenn was there when theshotgun blast is heard, after they had
already started dumping bodies. So ofcourse the next question is who is this
Glenn person. Well, thankfully itdidn't take long to figure it out.

(33:22):
You see, earlier, an anonymouscall had been made to that hotline set
up for public tips in the case. The caller had said that a man
named Glenn Wayne Henderson had been involvedin the murders Glenn was an eighteen year
old auto mechanic who lived in Lafaria, But there hadn't seemed to be any
connection between Glenn and Billy or Leticia, and when the call came in,

(33:45):
I'm not even sure if anyone followedup on this lead. But now,
of course, with the tape thatproved that someone named Glenn was present,
Ranger Castille went to talk to him, and very quickly Glenn ended up spilling
the entire story. Glynn said thathe had been friends with Paul Wolf for
some time, and he met Sherrythrough him soon after they got married.

(34:09):
He said that weeks before the murders, Paul had begun complaining that Sherry's ex
husband had been causing a lot ofproblems and that they didn't want him around
anymore. Glynn said that two weekslater, Paul asked him to help him
kill Billy. Glynn said that Paulwas doing all the talking, but that
Sherry was present during this conversation anddidn't object to the idea. At the

(34:31):
time, Glynn said that he believedthat the whole thing was just a joke.
Then, about a week before themurders, Glynn was visiting their home
when once again Paul asked him tohelp kill Billy, but added that they
would have to kill Laticia too inorder to get away with it, So
Laticia seemingly is just an afterthought.Yeah, that's weird. A couple days

(34:55):
later, Glenn said that Paul toldhim that he and Sherry had gone out
to look for good places to putthe bodies, and that he'd gone to
his father's land in particular to scopeit out. He said that Sherry didn't
deny it, and then Glenn saidthat three days before the murders, Paul
came to his house alone and onceagain asked that he helped them with the

(35:15):
murders. This time Glenn agreed.Yeah, so I don't understand Glenn's perspective.
How does an eighteen year old automechanic go along with all of this,
like killing seemingly an innocent woman andthis man who you know. I'm
sure they said that he sounds he'sawful and they're having problems with him.

(35:36):
But how do you go along withall this? Yeah, and that's a
really good question. Glenn had actuallynever even met Billy or Leticia before he
agreed to murder them. Well,Ranger Castile as well as the DA described
Glenn as gullible end quote, veryslow, and so there is some suggestion

(35:58):
that Glenn might have had a cognitiveor intellectual disability. Now, very little
is made out of this in anyof the documents or sources I've seen,
but at the very least, itsounds like this was a situation where Sherry
and Paul chose Glenn because they knewthat they could manipulate him. And Paul
was a few years older than Glennas well, so I wonder if that

(36:21):
factored in, as if Paul wasmaybe somebody that Glynn looked up to.
Yeah, it is weird. Itsounds like there was specific reasons that they
had for picking Glenn. It's justshocking that he accepted to go along with
all this. Yeah, absolutely,And I mean I think we also have
to take an account as well oftheir ages. They're all very very young.
Glenn was eighteen at the time,Sherry was twenty, and Paul was

(36:44):
twenty one. So but also aswe're seen and as we will continue to
see, Glenn seems to be avery agreeable person, perhaps even pliable.
He agreed to a double homicide rightaway, and now he's agreed to confess
to it again right away. Healso listened to the tape with investigators,

(37:06):
and he provided contacts for what washeard, as well as help them create
a transcript of what was said.He said that the day before the murders,
he had met with Paul, whotold him that he and Sherry had
come up with a plan they weregoing to kill the couple the following day
when they came to pick up Heather, Paul said that while Billy was distracted,
he was going to come up behindhim and hit him with an iron

(37:28):
bar. He told Glynn that theyexpected Letitia to wait outside in the car,
so they'd hit a hammer in thebushes outside the house for Glenn to
use to kill her. On FridayJuly sixteenth, the day of the murders,
Glynn said that Paul came and pickedhim up in his truck at about
six pm. When they arrived atSherry and Paul's house, Sherry was with

(37:51):
Heather in the living room waiting forthem, and they basically had a little
meeting about how the murders were goingto take place. Wow, so they're
pregaming, yeah, exactly, AndHeather was right there for this too,
just for all of the place,listening to everything that was about to happen.
Yes, Glenn said that their livingroom had what he referred to as
a little seat, which was basicallya single person chair, as well as

(38:15):
a love seat. He said Sherrytold him that she intended on sitting with
Heather in her lap on the loveseat, and she was going to put
a big pile of clothes on thelove seat next to her. She said
that Billy would have no choice butto sit in the little seat, which
sat facing away from a hallway thatled to several other rooms and basically the
rest of the house. She explainedthat this way, Paul could sneak up

(38:38):
behind him and hit him. Together, they decided that Paul and Glynn would
dispose of the bodies and Billy's car, while Sherry stayed behind to clean up
the blood. Glynn said that hesaw an iron bar that he'd never seen
before sitting in the kitchen, andthey showed him where the hammer was that
they'd hidden outside in the bushes forhim to use on Laticia. Glynn said

(39:00):
that he hid in the bedroom behindthe little seat so Billy wouldn't see him
when he came in. Billy andLetty arrived at the house at six fifty
five, just like they planned for. Billy came inside alone while Letty stayed
in the car and Billy sat downin the little chair while speaking to Heather.
After he let Billy inside the house, Paul went into the kitchen and

(39:22):
retrieved the iron bar, then snuckout into the living room directly behind Billy,
with Glenn following close behind. Glynnsaid that he stood there and watched
as Paul brought the iron bar downon Billy's head and continued to hit him
as he fell to the ground.So this aligns with what the pathologists found

(39:42):
during the autopsy, that Billy's headwas either on the ground or pinned in
some way, and that's how allof that damage happened to his skull.
Yeah, it sounds like the firstblow probably knocked him completely, yeah out,
and then his head's just on theground getting bashed with that pipe.
Yes, pretty much. Glenn saidthat began screaming when she saw her father
get hit, and so Sherry tookher into the bedroom. After Paul finished

(40:06):
striking Billy, he then went outsideto deal with Laticia. This happened during
those few moments of silence that wehear on the tape right after Billy gets
hit. Glynn said that after aminute, he followed Paul outside and he
saw that Paul was in the passengerside door of Billy's car, struggling with
Latitia and trying to strangle her.Glynn said Paul spotted him and called out

(40:30):
him to get the hammer and hitLaticia in the head. Glynn got the
hammer, went around to the driver'sside and struck Laticia several times. When
she stopped moving, they left herin the car and went back inside,
and that's when they saw that Billywas still breathing and moaning. This is

(40:51):
when Sherry can be heard telling themto move him to the front door and
hit him again, and you canhear the five more strikes on the tape.
The plan had been for Glenn tomove Billy's car closer to the front
of the house so they could movehis body into the trunk without being seen,
but as we heard on the tape, Glynn told Paul he was too
scared to do it, so Paulwas the one to move the car.

(41:13):
They both carried Billy's body to thecar and put it in the trunk.
Although it sounds bizarre, I believethey just left Letty's body in the cab
of the car as they drove itto the dump location. Really yeah,
But before they left, Glenn saidthat Paul went back inside the house and
came out with a shotgun, andhe also grabbed that big rock from the

(41:35):
front of the house. Paul droveBilly's car to the area they'd picked out
to dump the bodies, while Glennfollowed behind him in Paul's pickup truck.
Glenn said that when they stopped toput Latisia's body in the canal, they
realized that she was still alive,and that's when Paul asked Glenn to get
the shotgun and shoot her, whichGlenn did. They put Latisia's body in

(41:58):
the first canal and then drove tothe second canal for Billy's body. Afterwards,
they drove to the drainage ditch,set Billy's car and fire rubbed it
with mud and let it drive itselfinto the ditch. When they were finished,
they drove to Glenn's house and Paul'spickup and cleaned the blood off of
the hammer and the shotgun, andGlynn said he hid them both in his

(42:20):
house. Both items were leader seizedby the rangers, and although it had
been cleaned, the hammer still testedpositive for human blood. Wow, that's
amazing that Glenn just like handed themthe murder weapons too. Yeah. Any
I mean all of this, thewhole retelling, all of this information that
matches perfectly with the recording, andthen also the murder weapons. Gosh,

(42:45):
I mean, he really made ita slam dunk for them essentially. I
mean, obviously the tape was incrediblyhelpful, but having Glenn give them more
context help them figure out exactly whatwas going on the tape, I mean,
narrate what they're listening too. Yeah, essentially. Glenn Henderson, Sherry
wolf and Paul Wolfe were all arrestedand charged with murder. Glenn was charged

(43:08):
with Letty's murder, Sherry with Billy'smurder, and Paul with both murders.
In Glenn's case, Very soon afterhis arrest, he pled guilty. He
also agreed to testify against Sherry andPaul at their trials. He agreed to
this for no benefit to himself.Wow, not even a plea bargain.

(43:30):
No, he received no plea deal, and the judge sentenced him to life
in prison, So he is veryagreeable. Yes, okay. I would
like someone who maybe has more legalbackground to chime in on that, because
my concern is, if we dohave a person who it has a disability

(43:50):
and an intellectual or cognitive disability,did they get the best representation here?
Yeah? I agree. I wonderabout what kind of counsel he was getting,
if any at all. Yeah,I mean, did anybody try to
get him a plea arrangement? Andof course maybe we just sound stupid,
Maybe there's something we don't know,but I just I have a little bit
of a concern there. And becauseI've heard of people being much more involved

(44:15):
in murders getting deals for exactly whathe did, pleading guilty and or testifying.
So why didn't it happen here innineteen eighty two, I don't know,
you know, I think there's definitelyquestions there for me. Yeah,
that is interesting. It's also interestingthat Sherry only got charged with one of
the murders. Yeah, that's truetoo. Now, a few months after

(44:37):
all of that, the recording endedup being leaked to the press. Paul's
attorney tried to request a change ofvenue over the matter, saying that there
was no way that he could geta fair trial in Cameron County. Now
the tape was a very damping pieceof evidence. Of course, the DA
Ray Canto accused Paul's attorney of beingthe one to leak the tape in order

(44:59):
to try to forced the change ofvenue. So as lawyer might have been
doing some subterfuge here with the tape. Well that was the suggestion at least,
But either way, whoever it wasthat leaked, the tape was never
discovered and all trials in an abstainin Cameron County. Even though Paul was
charged for both murders, the decisionwas made to try Paul for each of

(45:22):
them separately. In April of nineteeneighty three, his trial for the murder
of Leticia Castro began. The prosecutionexplained that Billy, a father desperate to
protect himself against false accusations, hadended up accidentally recording his final moments alive
day. Canto referred to the tapeas twenty three minutes of murder. He

(45:45):
also spoke of how Paul and Sherryhad used two year old Heather as bait
and killed her father right in frontof her. Because you know, you
asked, why was Heather there?It seems like she was there to provide
a distraction so Billy would not thinkthere's anything wrong and not realize that there
was somebody coming up behind him.That's horrific, It's awful. Yeah.

(46:07):
During the first days of the trial, the tape was played in full for
the jury, which is I'm sureupsetting upsetting to hear this kind of tape.
And this is something we talk aboutall the time, is the effect
that these kind of cases have onjury members. Yeah, I hope that
there's like psychological counseling for them afterwardssome of these cases that they have to

(46:30):
go through. Sure there is.I believe that there should be offered for
something of these magnitudes and these likebrutal murder cases. There should be something
like that. Yeah, Yeah,that's something that I think a lot of
people have talked about. But thereI don't believe is currently a system in
place for those sorts of things.Especially wasn't the case in nineteen eighty two

(46:53):
either, I'm sure. I meanwe were breaking down a little bit as
you were retelling what happened on thetape, and I can't imagine listening to
it in the court. Yeah.Well, Glenn testified for the state,
and he laid out everything he knewabout the murders. When asked on the
stand why he would agreed to murdertwo people he didn't even know, Glenn

(47:15):
responded simply to be a friend.And ken't you also refers to Glenn here
as the third victim, So that'show he is described at trial, which
is again an acknowledgment there that he'sbeen manipulated. Absolutely. Yeah. Both
Billy and Latsia's mothers also testified,stating that although Heather would cry when Billy

(47:37):
came to pick her up, shewould be over it minutes later, and
she always enjoyed herself when she waswith them. Now, although Paul had
originally said the murders were in selfdefense, his plea at trial was not
guilty by reason of insanity. Okay, that's a big shift. How was
he insane in the moment of thesemurders. Well, the defense argued that

(48:00):
the murders had not been planned inadvance at all, but that they were
a sudden act born out of desperationin order to protect Heather, and in
this case, Glenn is just lyingabout everything he said about the planning and
the preparation, Yes, exactly.A child psychologist testified for the defense that

(48:20):
Heather had been acting out as aresult of the visits from her father,
as well as having terrible nightmares.He testified that for the child's own mental
well being, he'd advised Sherry andPaul to keep her away from Billy.
The defense argued that Paul and Sherrywere so torn up about seeing their daughter
in such constant distress that when Heatherbegan crying and saying she didn't want to

(48:45):
go with him that day, Pauljust snapped. So they were trying to
use that first part of the recordingas evidence of this sounds like a lot
of b estime. Three different psychiatristsalso testified for the defense, stating that
they believed Paul was legally insane thenight of the murders, with one stating

(49:05):
that he had quote run out ofoptions and stress overwhelmed him to the point
where he had a mental disease.They said that he wasn't a danger to
society, however, because the sourceof that stress, Ie Billy, was
now gone. Okay, I don'tknow if I can agree with their assessment,
but all right, Yeah, Andit also turns out that Billy was

(49:30):
not the only one secretly recording.The defense played a tape that was an
audio recording of Heather crying. Theysaid that Paul had recorded it the month
before the murders while Billy was pickingHeather up, and this was again evidence
that they were trying to show thatHeather did not like Billy and then there
was an issue there in their relationship. But there was nothing heard on the

(49:52):
tape other than Heather's crying, sothere wasn't any way to prove what was
going on in the background. Youknow. That's also weird that they were
recording two Like I guess they wereboth like setting up for this legal battle
that you were talking about it andthe custody thing exactly. It is interesting
that they're both secretly recording each other. Yeah. Paul himself took the stand

(50:12):
in his own defense. He saidthat Billy didn't love Heather. He said
that she would kick and scream wheneverhe came to pick her up, and
that she would frequently say she didn'tlike her father or Letty. He said
this stress was intense, and heonly had Heather's best interest in mind.
He said he'd never planned to killBilly or Letici at all, and he'd

(50:32):
only asked Glenn to come over thatnight to help him secretly videotape Billy's interaction
with Heather that night. Does thisvideotape exist? No? It does not.
Okay, he was never able toproduce one. I mean, he's
still claiming that he killed them thatday, but that it was unprompted,
it was not a planned thing.Now, this is kind of another interesting

(50:58):
part of the trial. Paul wason the stand for several days, speaking
clearly and lucidly telling his part ofthe story, but on day three or
four, he began slurring his words, shaking his head, and acting confused
while giving his testimony. The judgetried ordering him several times to sit up
and speak clearly, but it apparentlybecame so obvious that something was wrong that

(51:22):
the judge sent the jury out andaccused him of feigning insanity, telling him
that any tenth grader could see throughhis act. So basically, he's remember,
he's pleading not guilty by reason ofinsanity, So the judge is basically
accusing him of trying to sell tothe jury. Basically, yeah, absolutely,
okay. The judge actually told him, quote, mister Wolf, if

(51:45):
you think you've got twelve fools fora jury, you're going to be sadly
surprised. He also declared that dueto his bizarre behavior, the court would
have to assume he had taken drugs, alcohol, or some other medication before
his testimony, and therefore, althoughhe had been free on bond, he
was ordered to remain in jail forthe remainder of the trial. So just

(52:07):
like kind of a weird, bizarresided situation there well. As part of
their closing arguments, the prosecution pointedout that Paul's new defense was drastically different
than his first statement to law enforcement, where he'd admitted to murder and self
defense. And they pointed out thathis new explanation for the murders that they

(52:27):
were for Heather's sake, only cameup after the tape was discovered. That
disproved that it was in self defense. And let's just say for a moment
that Heather was afraid or nervous aroundher father. Again, you know,
we mentioned the fact that she wasa two year old girl, and it
makes sense that she was nervous orscared around somebody that she didn't see that

(52:47):
often, even if it was herfather. Sure, you also have to
think that, from the way thingsturned out, it wouldn't be shocking to
think that Sherry and Paul themselves wereencouraging her behavior to try to use that
against Billy. Yeah, act outin front of him when he comes to
pick you up, like scream orget upset. Don't you going to miss
us? Yeah, they're going tobe bad without us. You're not going

(53:09):
to have a good time, evenif and also they're recording this interaction,
so they might want her to getupset for the recording. Yeah, sure.
And you know it didn't even haveto be intentional. They might have
just been talking badly about him toa lot and treating him with hostility every
time he showed up, and soshe picked up on that. You know,
kids are very perceptive. Well itsounds like they talked about planning his

(53:30):
murder in front of her, Yeah, exactly, So I mean, who
knows. And to be clear,throughout everything, Sherry and Paul never accused
Billy of any kind of abuse.Their problems were her being uncooperative during pickup
and their claims that Billy was beingnasty to them. As far as the

(53:51):
excuse that the murderers occurred in defenseof Heather or to protect her mental health,
that completely falls apart when you knowthat they killed Billy right in front
of her. Yeah, it wasnever about Heather's mental health. This was
what was most convenient for Sherry andPaul. Why wouldn't you if something happened
and she was getting upset, whywouldn't you immediately take her out of the

(54:13):
room and have a conversation, tryand calm her down or something like?
Their defense is crap. Yeah.Well, it seems as though the jury
agreed with that assessment, because afteronly eighty minutes of deliberation, Paul was
sentenced to life in prison for Latica'smurder. His trial for Billy's murder was
set to begin next but he probablyknew that the tape was just too strong

(54:36):
of evidence against him, and Paulended up pleading guilty to Billy's murder.
He was sentenced to life in prisonfor Billy's murder as well, although the
judge approved a plea arrangement that allowedhim to serve both sentences concurrently, so
he's basically getting the same sentence forboth murders that Glenn got for one.
Yes, boy, that doesn't seemfair well. I mean, there's not

(55:00):
really anything. There's not max beyondlife in prison unless it's life in prison
without parole or it's the death sentence. I don't know. I just think
we don't need this dude around.And finally, in July nineteen eighty three,
a year after the murders, SherryWolf faced her own murder trial.
Once again. The jury listened tothe tape in full, and once again

(55:22):
Glenn testified against her. Glynn saidthat while it was Paul who'd repeatedly asked
him to help him with the murders, Sherry was almost always around and she
never protested. In fact, shedidn't deny going to look for a dumping
ground for the bodies, and momentsbefore the murders she'd sat down and gone

(55:42):
over the whole plan with them.He also testified that it was Sherry's voice
telling them, get up, gethim up, get him out of here.
The front door now hit him again. So there was a lot of
overwhelming evidence that Sherry was involved,but that actually wasn't it? The prosecution
and also produced a receipt for acarpet cleaning machine rental dated July seventeenth,

(56:05):
the day after the murders, theday that they were packing up and trying
to move away. Oh, tryingto get that stain out of the carpet
exactly. And that's in her name. It was in her name, and
she provided the driver's license ID.Yes, to check it out. Okay,
that's pretty damning. And finally,a friend of Sherry's testified that in
May of nineteen eighty two, justa few months before the murders, Sherry

(56:27):
had paid her and another friend fivehundred dollars to beat Billy up. She
said that she'd taken the money buthad never falled through with it. Well,
good for her. Yeah. Thedefense argued that Sherry had no part
in the planning, carrying out,or cleaning up of the murders, and
they also denied that it was hervoice on the recording. The actually brought

(56:47):
in an expert who testified that,in her opinion, the voice identified on
the recording as Sherry's was actually anunknown male voice. Okay, yeah,
I don't I don't know. Butthe defense argued it didn't matter either way,
because even if she was present atthe scene, that did not mean
that she was complicit in the murders. But the prosecution pointed out that if

(57:14):
she wasn't complicit, we would hearsome kind of reaction from her once Paul
begins beating Billy to death, rightlike, hey, stop, what are
you doing, don't do that,and we hear nothing. It's complete silence
from her. After two hours ofdeliberation, the jury found Sherry guilty of
Billy's murder. A juror would laterremark to the media that they believed it

(57:34):
was Sherry's voice on the tape,and her silence while Billy was being beaten
had been the most convincing evidence thatshe was involved. Sherry chose to be
sentenced by the judge instead of thejury, perhaps realizing that a jury who'd
heard that horrible tape would be harsheron her. But even so, the
judge sentence Sherry to life in prison. Today, forty years later, both

(57:59):
Glenn and Paul are still in prison. Both have been denied parole recently,
and both have their next parole hearingnext year. In twenty twenty three,
it took a while to hunt downinformation about Sherry, and I ended up
having to contact the Texas Department ofCriminal Justice, and I was informed by
a representative that Sherry was released inJanuary of twenty nineteen. Wow, so

(58:22):
she's out. So she's out.And most investigators believe that this whole thing
sort of started with Sherry, andshe was sort of the mover and shaker,
the one making all of the decisions. Yes, and yet she is
now out, Jakes, Yeah,and so what of Heather? What happened

(58:45):
to her? Heather went on tobe raised by Sherry's family. Boy,
I hope she's okay. She wasonly two years old, but there's no
telling like what this whole thing hadan effect on her. Oh absolutely,
I mean that's why it's so awful, the thing about that she was just
such a little girl. And Imean, to see something like that,
even being that young, it hasto be such a horrible trauma. So

(59:10):
I hopefully she did get, youknow, the counseling and help that she
would need to live with what happened. Yeah, what a tough case,
man. Yeah. But I thinkthe unique part, as you had mentioned,
was the twenty three minutes of brutalitythat was recorded on this recording that
Billy had hidden. I've never heardof something like that in a case.

(59:32):
No accidentally recording your own murder.I mean, I've heard of like cell
phones being left on like with otherpeople on the other end of the line,
but there's no recording afterwards, Likethere's witnesses that heard something, but
not a microcasset of the recording ofyour own death being found hidden on your
body. Yeah, that's wild.Yeah, so you can see why I

(59:54):
said it's such a unique case.I've never heard of anything quite like this
happening before. So when you decidedto cover this case, did you know
that there was this recovered audio oris it something that you found during the
research process. Yeah, so Iknew going into it that there was an
audio tape involved, but I assumedthat the audio would not be publicly available.

(01:00:15):
Yeah. Now the TV show.When I sat down to start watching
it, I assumed there might beclips of the audio, but I thought
probably there wouldn't be any of theaudio as well. That's why I was
kind of surprised that they featured somuch of it. I haven't seen the
audio available anywhere else besides that TVshow, and it's apparently a show that's

(01:00:37):
called it's called The Devil's Speaks.It's on Investigation Discovery, and it's a
show that is centered around audio recordings, so interviews of phone calls and things
like this. So this tape recorderand they must have gone through the special
channels to actually request it to putit on the show. Again, I
haven't seen anywhere else, And evenwhen it was released to the public,

(01:01:00):
I don't think any news agencies releasedany of the audio as well. They
might have done some of the transcriptsthat that information they got from law enforcement,
but the audio itself I haven't seenanywhere else besides that TV show.
Yeah, I guess the title ofthe show was kind of on the nose,
The Devil Speaks, Yeah, andit seems like one of those like
real hardcore true crime shows. Well, this episode was, at least I

(01:01:22):
suppose. Wow, I've never heardof this case or the audio tape.
Thanks for covering it and providing allthose details. I know it was really
tough. But I did hear youin the other room at some point the
other day calling the Texas Department ofCriminal Justice, and I was like,
I wonder, I wonder who she'scalling and who about and then we found
out at the end of the episode, So that's kind of funny. Yeah,

(01:01:44):
well that was a really brutal case. Are you ready for me to
tie some balloons to you and liftyou up back up into the sky with
some good news? Sure? Absolutely? All right, well we'll do that
right after this. All right,everybody, welcome back to the show.

(01:02:15):
This is good news. Today's storycomes to us from MPR and it was
written by Wyn Davis. I wastipped off about this story by an avid
listener of the show, Sarah Andres. And if you would like to be
mentioned on the show, like Sarah, one way you can do that is
by sending in Texas specific good news. We're always looking for those stories.
You can send that to All Crime, No Cattle at gmail dot com.

(01:02:37):
And if you do do that,I will shout you out on the show
as well. Now, drought isnever good, and neither is getting all
of the rain that we have lastweek in the state of Texas. But
as a result of our strange weatherpatterns, there have been some exciting discoveries
recently, more specifically due to thedrought going on in Texas, a long

(01:02:59):
set of dinosaur footprints have been revealedfrom a riverbed that date back over one
hundred forty million years ago. Well, these dinosaur tracks belong to the Acrocanthosaurus
and we're discovered at Dinosaur Valley StatePark in Glenrose, Texas. That's about
an hour's drive from Fort Worth.As the name of the state park would

(01:03:22):
denote, it is known for itsabundant amount of dinosaur prints. In fact,
if you visit the park under regularwater level conditions, you can actually
swim and wade and large sauropod andtheropod footprints right in the Paloxi River itself.
It's really cool. It's pretty spectacularwhen you think about it, that
you get to swim and dinosaur footprints. Well, these new prints are usually

(01:03:45):
covered with water and lots of riversilt from the Plexi River, but they
have emerged and become visible, andsince the river is abnormally low, paleontologists
from all over the state and evenUtah are gathering here to move sediment and
reveal the full extent of the tracksof Acrocanthosaurus. These newly exposed tracks present

(01:04:08):
a valuable find for researchers. Becausethey are made by living animals, They
can tell different things by studying dinosaurfootprints than they can from just like fossilized
remains and things like that. Theycan look at behavior day to day lives.
You know how many dinosaurs are togetherin the footprints, directionality, their
gait, their stride, and ProfessorJerry Harris of Utah Tech University kind of

(01:04:33):
shared those thoughts with MPR, saying, you get a lot more information the
posture of the animal, a lotof things it would be much more difficult
to pull out of skeletal remains.We can even determine what the speed of
the animal was when it was movingthrough the sediment, how it was responding
to the sediment when the sediment wasloose before it was turned into rock.

(01:04:53):
It's also possible to determine if therewere multiple dinosaurs moving together in a herd
and behavior of these animal. Asfor the dinosaurs that left these tracks,
Acrocanthosaurus this was a theropod, acarnivore, and one of the two dinosaurs
that make up the majority of thetracks that are found in Dinosaur Valley State
Park. A mature adult would beabout fifteen feet tall, thirty five feet

(01:05:17):
long, and way close to seventons. It was almost as big as
Tyrannosaurus rex and had a very similarappearance like t Rex. It was an
apex predator of its time and preyedon sauropods, ornithopods, and Ankleiosaurus.
It had a biting force of sixteenthousand, eight hundred and ninety four newtons,

(01:05:40):
which is equivalent to thirty eight hundredpounds per square inch. And you
know, eventually the waters will comeback and the tracks will be covered again
and filled with sediment, and thatactually helps to protect the footprints from a
roading away And in fact, theprints in the more shallow water and closer
to the bank where people like toweigh in play, they actually show signs

(01:06:01):
of erosion and damage from being revealedmore often than the deeper prints and also
from partgoers. Yeah that makes sense. That's interesting. Yeah, But before
the river rises back up and thesediment fills the footprints back in, researchers
are working on mapping one of thelongest dinosaur footprint tracks ever discovered and collecting

(01:06:23):
that data in hopes of finding outmore details about our planet's early Cretaceous period.
Oh wow. So it's actually oneof the longest singular trails of tracks.
Yes, and it actually kind ofopens up some theories about the other
saraw pod tracks that are going inthe same direction down the river. So

(01:06:44):
it might be that these arcanth resourcesare you chasing the sorrow pods down the
river valley or whatever? This sedimentused to be like a mud flat.
I don't know, it's hard tosay. It was a long time ago,
one hundred and forty million years ago. You need a paleontologist to explain
that part. But it looks likethey were hunting the sorrow pods. Oh
interesting. Wow. Yeah. Well, anyways, there you go. There's

(01:07:05):
some dino news. Very cool.Always exciting to have new scientific discoveries in
Texas. I love it. Thankyou so much. All right, y'all,

(01:07:26):
it's back for the after show.You can find us on Twitter at
ACNC podcast and on Instagram at AllCrime, No Cattle, and you can
join our Facebook group at ACNC PosseDiscussion Group. And Shay would now like
to read the names of our lovelypatrons. That's correct, and if you
would like to become a patron andsign up and get all the benefits,

(01:07:48):
extra episodes, swag and shout outs. You can find all that over at
patreon dot com slash all Crime,No Cattle, And we appreciate all of
our patrons, and these are someof the newest patrons that have joined and
they need to get their shout outs, so we're going to do that right
now. We've got Tharah Morgan,Ashley, Victoria Beckham, d Campbell,

(01:08:12):
Kat Zoltner, and Heather Collins.Thank you guys for joining and supporting the
show. And of course we needto give shout outs to our Texas rangers
that support the show and our specialproducers on every episode, and those include
Amanda Mattaford, Angel Moody, DonMaloney, e g Gail Parker, Jamie
Gray, Jennifer and Magnolia, JessicaLayfield, Leo Dardi, Lynn's Chance,

(01:08:39):
Mickey Sweet and Sarah Nicholson. Thanky'all so much for supporting the show.
It means a lot and it helpsus do what we do. As of
that, we need to get tacos. We are starving. I think I
heard my tummy grumble a couple oftimes while we're recording, So we're off
to get tacos. I hope y'allare doing well and you have tacos soon
in your life. Always remember thecrime is bigger in Texas. Yell audios, goodbye,