October 28, 2025 • 41 mins
On July 9, 2009, Byrd and Melanie Billings were brutally murdered on their sprawling property in Escambia County near Pensacola, Florida. The ensuing investigation revealed a plot to steal an estimated 13 million dollars in cash in a safe in the Billings home.
Multiple suspects, driven by greed in a plot for a fortune were subsequently caught and would set off a quest for answers that would captivate the entire nation.
Timestamps
13:19 The Home Invasion
16:00 The Investigation Begins
17:33 Turmoil
18:46 The Red Van Connection
20:17 The Suspects Emerge
37:54 The Shocking Discovery
39:08 Justice Is Served
Follow “Unspeakable: a True Crime Podcast by Kelly Jennings via the below link https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/unspeakable-a-true-crime-podcast-by-kelly-jennings/id1651928508
Follow “Crime Wire Weekly” on it’s new channel HERE:
Apple Podcasts
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-crime-wire-weekly/id1815864889
Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/show/3zyrgjtW6gLUVbicJaYXV9?si=0dbf4983938344a2
Amazon Music
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/3738411d-828e-4138-9976-223ab5de2c87/the-crime-wire-weekly
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/exposed-scandalous-files-of-the-elite--6073723/support.
Multiple suspects, driven by greed in a plot for a fortune were subsequently caught and would set off a quest for answers that would captivate the entire nation.
Timestamps
13:19 The Home Invasion
16:00 The Investigation Begins
17:33 Turmoil
18:46 The Red Van Connection
20:17 The Suspects Emerge
37:54 The Shocking Discovery
39:08 Justice Is Served
Follow “Unspeakable: a True Crime Podcast by Kelly Jennings via the below link https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/unspeakable-a-true-crime-podcast-by-kelly-jennings/id1651928508
Follow “Crime Wire Weekly” on it’s new channel HERE:
Apple Podcasts
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-crime-wire-weekly/id1815864889
Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/show/3zyrgjtW6gLUVbicJaYXV9?si=0dbf4983938344a2
Amazon Music
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/3738411d-828e-4138-9976-223ab5de2c87/the-crime-wire-weekly
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/exposed-scandalous-files-of-the-elite--6073723/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everyone, and welcome back to Exposed Scandalous Files of
the Elite. I am your host, Jim Chapman, and today
I am bringing you a brand new episode in the
Fatal Fortune series. Now we're going to be going to
Escambia County, Florida for this one. And a little bit
about Escambia County, it is very well known if you're
(00:22):
from my neck of the woods in South Louisiana, really
anywhere on the Gulf Coast. It is home to Pensacola Beach, Florida,
which is a vacation destination for nearly three million travelers
per year. Escambia County is so popular in the South
in fact, as a travel destination that it's known as
(00:45):
the Redneck Riviera. Now, although the Escambia County area is
known for its beautiful beaches, it's not without its share
of high profile cases. The Blue Moon murders occurred in
the Pensacola Beach area. Ted Bundy was captured in Escambia County,
so it's definitely had its share of high profile cases. Now,
(01:08):
the area where this particular crime took place was in
an area of Pensacola known as Bulah, which would be
considered kind of a rural area of Pensacola, a very
affluent area as well. They had almost no crime in
this area of Pensacola, just a very quiet and nice place.
(01:30):
So you can imagine the shock when police entered the
home of Bird and Melanie Billings. This was on July
ninth of two thousand and nine, and they find this
couple shot to death. So who did it, why did
they do it, and what happened. That's exactly the questions
(01:50):
that I'm going to answer for you today. And to
do that, I need to give you a little history
on this now murdered couple, and it really is the
tale of several different lives. I'm going to start with
Bird Billings. And bird Billings actually went by the nickname Bud,
and Bud was sixty six years old at the time
(02:12):
of his murder, and he was wealthy. Bud was known
as a guy who just kind of always found his
way to success. He was born and raised in Mississippi,
and in nineteen seventy six he actually started a boat
company in the state of Mississippi. In the eighties, he
was a successful used car dealer there and eventually he
(02:34):
made his way to Florida. Now, during all this time,
he had a couple of marriages and divorces. He even
owned a couple of strip clubs believe it or not
in the nineties in Florida. But his third triumph marriage
was the charm for him. He married Melanie Billings, who
was twenty three years his junior. She was forty three
(02:58):
years old at the time of her murder. So eventually
Bud leaves the strip club business behind him and he
opens up several used car dealerships with in house financing,
and he becomes very, very wealthy in the area. Now
he and his wife live on what some considered the
(03:20):
premier property in the area. It was thirteen acres, huge,
multi story home. Life was great for these people. Now.
Melanie Billings, she by all accounts, was just an amazing
human being, and her passion and purpose in life was
adopting children, and Bud he shared in that passion, and
(03:43):
together they adopted thirteen children. But to tell you how
awesome these people were, they specifically sought out special needs
children because they knew these children would maybe find a
little tougher road to finding a family to adopt them.
(04:03):
And they were just obviously very patient people and very
special people to do that. Thirteen children at the time
of their death. That's how amazing this couple was. So
on July ninth of two thousand and nine, it was
one of those children that called police and reported that
(04:24):
Melanie and Bird Billings have been shot. So police and
detectives they show up on the scene this massive property,
this home that is secluded in many ways from the
main road, and they enter that home and the first
thing that they note is both the side door, the
front door, and the back door had been forced open
(04:47):
kicked in presumably. So as soon as they step into
the living room, they start seeing a lot of blood
and they know something ain't right. They follow that blood
trail and they fine Bird Bud Billings face down in
the bedroom. His hands they are zip tied, and they
(05:08):
notice a single gunshot wound in his head area, and
they also noticed two gunshot wounds in his leg areas. Now,
Melanie Billings, she is found in a hallway facing toward
a bathroom. She's found face up and she has multiple
gunshot wounds to the head and chest. Both Melanie and
(05:32):
Bud were dead when police arrived. So at this point,
not only do you have an active crime scene in
which two people are dead, but you also have thirteen
children in this residence with special needs that you now
have to deal with and speak with. Police found children
(05:56):
hiding under beds, they found children hiding in closet, you
name it. And police they got to secure this crime scene.
They got to make sure the bad guys are going,
They've got to interview these poor children. Just a really
difficult crime scene right off the bat to work. Now,
think about this. These children were in the house when
(06:19):
all of this went down, and it's important to mention that, thankfully,
by the grace of God, none of these children were
physically hurt. Definitely some mental squares there that I am
absolutely sure lasted throughout their lives, but physically, thank god,
none of them were shot. So police start investigating and
(06:40):
they learned this is a very prominent couple in the area,
a very wealthy couple. There was an enormous police presence
on the scene as soon as this gut called out.
As I told you, this is not a normal thing
in that area of Escambia County. Detectives start looking for
evidence of what happened, and they find two nine millimeters
(07:03):
shellcasings in the living room area and ten spent shellcasings
in the bedroom and in the bedroom hallway. This particular
house was so large even the master bedroom had a hallway.
So they start recovering these projectiles from these bullets, and y'all,
a projectile is the part of the bullet that pierces
(07:24):
the body and causes the damage. They photograph every square
inch of this massive house. And as I said earlier,
there were three points of entry and those doors were
kicked in to gain entry to the home. And so
that was a big clue to police because now they
(07:45):
knew there were definitely multiple assailants. They start interviewing the children,
and one child in particular shocked detectives when she told them, hey,
I saw the assailants pull up to the house. So
she lived on the second story, that's where her bedroom was,
(08:05):
and she told police that a red van pulled up
all the way to the front door and several people
got out. Police also noticed near the body of Melanie
Billings there was a small linen closet, and they look
inside of this small linen closet and they noticed there
are four indentions in the carpet. Now, to leave these indentions.
(08:31):
Police knew right off the bat something relatively heavy must
have been sitting on top of that carpet. So common
sense here would tell you it's likely a safe, and
the indentions they were spaced to part enough to dictate
the safe was likely the size of like a microwave oven,
(08:52):
so heavy but not so heavy that someone could not
pick it up and carry it out. Now, when this
stuff happens, the investigation starts, and one of the first things,
if not the first thing that detectives are going to do,
is they're going to dig into the background of the deceased,
and they do this for obvious reasons. This is how
(09:15):
they start removing suspects. Everyone, and I mean everyone in
a murder case outside of the detective is a suspect. Initially,
in any case, you start with the closest person to
the victim and you work your way out of that
inner circle and you weed out suspects as you go along.
(09:38):
So through that process, detectives discover that Bud Billings had
a daughter from a previous marriage, and her name was
Ashley Markham. He also had a son. Now, both of
these biological children were adults, and they did not live
with the Billings family. Detectives also discovered the Billings were
(09:59):
in d need legit millionaires, which strengthened that robbery motive.
That as soon as you pulled up on this scene
and you saw this house, you know, that was the
first suspicion you would have as somebody robbed these people.
Now police knew they had their work cut out for them.
Bud Billings owned a used car dealership several actually in Pensacola,
(10:22):
and when you own car dealerships, you come into contact
with hundreds of potential suspects every month, and that's a
lot of folks to interview. Think about the amount of
people that Bud Billings would just talk to and come across.
Police got to interview all these people because one of
those might be the perpetrator, or several of those might
(10:45):
be the perpetrators. Then they discovered what I consider the
entire key to this case when upon securing the home,
they stumble across the Holy Grail into work surveillance cameras
in a surveillance system, so detectives remove the hard drive
(11:08):
out of that system. This is a little bit before
we had clouds and people were using you know, Google Cloud,
and things of that nature to upload surveillance stuff. They
still used hard drives back in those days, so they
removed that hard drive. They bring it to the police
headquarters and what they see is absolutely shocking. They see
(11:34):
several people exit the van and go to the front door,
and they see several people go to the side and
rear doors of that home, and simultaneously, these people kick
in the doors and they make entry inside of that home. Now,
inside of the home, there were also cameras in the
living room area and you can see these guys approach
(11:59):
mister Billing and there's some quick dialogue that has exchanged
between mister Billings and these people. But unfortunately these cameras
were not equipped for sound. It was only video. But
you can tell from the mannerisms that this isn't a
pleasant conversation. They're not saying, hey man, we came over
(12:19):
here to watch the ball game. You can see this
is a very serious situation. Now, you also see the
perpetrators in this video in what they are wearing, and
they're dressed in all black and what can be described
as ninja costumes. So there's a short dialogue and then
(12:42):
you see mister Billings get shot in the leg. You
see them arguing some more. Mister Billings is getting thrown around.
Then you see them getting shot again in the leg.
And then the next thing that you see is everyone
disap peer into that master bedroom area of the home. Now,
(13:04):
the unfortunate thing is there was no cameras in that
master bedroom.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
In the sultry heat of Louisiana, where the bayous whisper
secrets and the air hangs heavy with the scent of magnolias,
a darkness lurked beneath the surface. Derek todd Lee was
a man whose charm masked a sinister reality. He was
a monster. Lee, a seemingly ordinary man with a disarming smile,
led a double life that would unravel in a series
(13:42):
of murders in the capital city of Baton Rouge and
the surrounding areas. As the first reports of disappearances and
murders began to surface, South Louisiana was thrust into a nightmare,
igniting a frantic search for answers. The true horror was
just beginning, and the hunt for a serial killer. Eventually,
by just three letters, would reveal not only the depths
(14:03):
of Derek Toddley's depravity, but also the resilience of those
most affected by his evil acts, the families and the survivors.
This is DTL.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
DTL can be found by Searching Unspeakable, a true crime
podcast by Kelly Jennings wherever you listen to podcasts, Episode
one dropping November three. But the good thing in this
case is now they had some surveillance video and they
had the getaway vehicle or the vehicle that they used
to get there and get away on that surveillance video,
(14:42):
and they did something you don't see often when these cases,
when these Martyer cases first occur, but it's extremely smart
in this case. And what they did was they contacted
the media and they released a picture of this van
to the media, and the media at that point they
(15:03):
took that and they just blasted it everywhere. Facebook wasn't
what it is today, but they still posted it there.
They posted it on the local news anywhere they could
post it. Ay, be on the lookout for this red van. Now,
in many cases, detectives don't do that because they want
(15:24):
some time to hunt for these folks before the perpetrators
know the police are on their trail. If they're still
in possession of that van, the police don't want to
put it out there, and then the perpetrators get rid
of the van and they could have caught them in
the van. So it was really tricky on whether or
(15:44):
not it was a smart thing to release this, but
in this case, as you will discover in a little while,
it was the right call. Now, another thing that police
discovered through access to the surveillance video was that from
start to finish this double murder, from the time that
the assailants appeared on the property until when they left
(16:08):
the property was only four minutes. It was really fast,
and that told police one thing. This was very well
planned out. This wasn't a bunch of guys driving down
the road just looking for somebody to rob. So police
go to daughter Ashley, who was a much older adult,
(16:28):
and they asked her if she had any idea of
who would want to do this, who would want to
hurt your parents, and she said she can't imagine anyone
wanting to harm her parents. But she did mention that
older adoptive brother, Justin, who had kind of a rocky
relationship with Bud Billings, his adoptive father, and it was
(16:51):
related to just the butting of heads that you have
when you're growing up with your parents, and everything they
say is wrong and everything you say is right. And
when they asked Justin about all this, he admitted to
the rocky relationship. But it's one thing to not get
along with your dad at nineteen twenty years old. It's
(17:15):
quite another thing to kill your dad. And when they
checked Justin's alibi that he provided, it checked out and
he was crossed off the list. So they then asked
Justin the same thing. They asked his sister, who do
you think would have done this? And Justin mentions a
(17:35):
huge falling out that his dad had somewhat recently with
a former business partner at one of his car dealerships.
That really got nasty, in Justin's words. So they start
trying to locate this business partner, which they do in
very short order. Y'all, this where we're at right now.
(17:56):
In this case, this is over like a twelve hour
time period. These police are moving fast, but they do
locate that business partner. He's in a neighboring county and
he owns a car dealership in that county, And you
can't make this shit up. They drive over there, they
pull into the car dealership and this guy is outside
(18:19):
and guess what he's doing. He is cleaning up a
red van. However, as coincidental as that was, and even
though the guy was upfront with his disdain of Bud Billings,
he was checked off the list pretty quickly and he
really had nothing to do with the killings, nor did
(18:41):
the van he was working on. That was just, believe
it or not, sheer coincidence. But as I told you
just a few minutes ago, remember they had released a
picture of that red van as soon as they got it,
and it was in short order, almost immediately after that
picture was relayed on the local news that crime stoppers,
(19:03):
they get a tip that the same red van is
part behind a house really close to the crime scene.
The guy that called in the tip said the van
used to be his van, but he had sold it
to a guy by the name of Patrick Gonzalez Junior,
(19:24):
and that it was sitting at his dad's house, who
was Patrick Gonzalez Senior. This guy even had the address
to where this van was located, so detectives head that way,
but before they do, they run the background on the
homeowner and they discover that Gonzalez Senior he has a
(19:47):
criminal record that is a mile long, nothing major, but
just a lot, just really a treasure drove of petty crimes.
So detectives go over there. They want to put their
eyes on this red van and they pull up at
the scene. It's a mobile home and they don't see
(20:09):
a red van at all, but there is a shed
that's behind the house, and that shed is large enough
to park a van in, and just on the edge
of the opening to that shed, you can see what
appeared to police to be the very edge of the
rear of a red van peeking out of that shed.
(20:32):
Imagine those two doors that you have with these old
dingy vans. You can see those just peeking out, just barely.
But police have a problem. They don't have a warrant,
and they're trying to figure out how they are going
to get back there legally. And about that time, a
(20:52):
car pulls up and Leonard Gonzales Senior, his wife gets
out Patrick Gonzale Leonard was his first name. So his
wife gets out of that car and detectives they're like,
how can we get back there? And one detective says,
why don't we just ask her? He walks up to
(21:16):
her and he says, hey, is that a van parked
back there? And the wife says yes, And detectives ask
if they can go back there and take a look,
and she's like, sure, I don't care, you can go
back there and look. So that's just what they do.
They go back there, and as soon as they start
walking back there, two men walk out of the house,
(21:39):
Gonzalez and another guy, and his name was Wayne Cauldron.
Now Wayne sees these detectives and he just takes off
running as soon as he sees them, so police grab
him pretty quick, and police would discover later that Wayne
and Ganzale they were neighbors and that Wayne was from Tennessee,
(22:03):
but he had moved to the Panhandle of Florida after
doing time in prison in Tennessee. So not a good
guy by any means. So they grab him. They grabbed
Gonzales Senior. They bring him back there to where that
van is. Gonzales Senor is saying, hey, you ain't got
all right to love back here, and they say, uh,
your wife told us we could go back here. We
(22:25):
have permission, we don't need a warr So as they
go back there, they discover not only does this look
like the red van in that surveillance video, but there
was a lot of areas sanded off and there were
spray paint near that van, and that indicated to police
that someone was attempting to change the appearance of that van,
(22:49):
and they were in the middle of that when police
showed up, so they hauled the van down to the
police headquarters to have that analyzed and scrubbed that van
for DNA, etc. And here's where a detective does some
really amazing bit of detective work. So he's going to
(23:11):
leave the shed where that van was parked, and he
notices on a shelf a box of work boots and
the box appeared to be brand new, and y'all, this
inside of this shed, it was very dingy picture, just
a ugly, nasty inside of a shed where everything's old
(23:33):
and dirty and it's got a ton of dust on it.
And this shoe box stood out to him because it
looked brand new, number one, It had no dust on it,
and it had a little picture on the side of it.
And the little picture on the side of that box
was of boots that appeared to be combat boots. They
(23:54):
were black, and it just reminded him of what he
saw in the video. Now, they didn't have a search
warrant to take anything off the property except that van.
But he notices that box and he's going to head out,
and he says, is anything in that box? And Gonzales
(24:16):
Senior's wife says no, And he said, well, I'm leaving
right now and be passing a garbage can, so if
you want me to, I can throw that away for you.
And she says, sure, you throw it away if you
want to. So he grabs it and he walks out
of that shed, but rather than throwing it in the
garbage he throws it in the back of his police car.
(24:41):
Gonzales Senior and Wayne Cauldron. They are then hauled to
the police station for questioning, and they also ask Gonzales
Senior's wife if she would go down to the station
and talk to them, And under questioning of Gonzales Senior's wife,
she admitted yet that she had overheard her husband and
(25:03):
Wayne Cauldron talking about a scheme to rob somebody. She said,
I never heard a name mentioned. I never heard anything
about them killing anybody, but I did hear something from
them when they were talking, and I could tell they
were trying to keep this kind of a secret because
they were being quiet about it. But I do know
(25:24):
that it had something to do with robbing someone. So
armed with that information, police question Gonzalez Senior and Cauldron
and they start putting the pressure on them and they say, hey,
They tell Gonzales Senor, your wife has already told us
she heard you kind of hashing out a plan to
(25:44):
rob somebody. Gonzale Senor. He starts singing like a canary,
and he mentioned that his son, Leonard Gonzalez Junior, is
also involved. And he said that his son had business
dealings with mister Billings in the past, and that's how
they knew mister Billings. They have another name, and they
(26:09):
go pick up Gonzalez Junior. He comes to the station
and in the meantime they do a lot of looking
in his background. Now, Gonzalez Junior, he seemed to be
totally opposite of his dad. He was a business owner.
He was much more professional looking, if you will, than
(26:30):
his dad. He was a karate instructor. You own the
karate business. He had even been on the local news
several times and police would discover that mister Billings. At
one point he even donated five thousand dollars to Gonzales
Junior's karate school for some sort of project they were doing. Now,
(26:53):
they would also find out that Gonzalez Junior went to
mister Billings a second time over the years to get
money for some other business that he needed donated to,
and mister Billings told him no, he didn't want to
get involved in that just wasn't his deal. Now, eventually
his karate studio started struggling and he would start losing money.
(27:16):
Police would find this out after, but gives you a
pretty good motive to want to rob somebody, right. As
a matter of fact, his karate studio was struggling so
bad he ended up having his car repossessed, and his
mother bought him that red van that was used in
(27:39):
these killings. She bought that van for him so he
would have something to ride around him because this car
had been repossessed. So police present all this to Gonzales Junior,
and of course he denies everything under questioning, and when
they tell him, hey, it was your dad that told
us all this stuff and your mom, he said, but
(28:00):
his dad is crazy, he's a liar, he's not to
be believed. He's a petty thief and you're gonna believe
me a business owner who's got my shit together over
my dad, et cetera. But police, they knew that it
was only a matter of time before they could crack him.
And in the meantime, they start looking at that shoe
(28:23):
box and looking into where that was purchased, and they
discover that this particular brand of shoes they were bought
at a Walmart. So they go to the Walmart and
they go to the Lost Control people at that Walmart
and they say, hey, we need you to pull surveillance
(28:43):
videos from inside the store. And they knew what time
that these guys were in the store because they managed
to get a hold to the receipt for those shoes,
and so Lost Control brings them in the back. They
view the video and they see Gonzalis Junior as well
as three or four other individuals. They all go into
(29:08):
that particular Walmart and they all buy the same type
of combat style boots together. They see them all leave
on that surveillance video in a gold suv. So they
do what they did with the red van, and they
(29:29):
release a picture of that gold suv to the media,
and again another Bolo be on the lookout for this
gold SUV. If you know who owns it, give us
a call, and sure enough, almost immediately they start getting tips.
But they had something even better than tips. At this point,
(29:53):
they had a couple of suspects actually turned themselves in
that owned that gold su Just the pressure right of
this being all over the news, this was a big deal.
Now at this point, there are two factions of people
involved in this. Detectives would discover. First you have what
(30:18):
I'm gonna turn the Pensacola group, which was Wayne Cauldron,
Gonzalez Senior, and Gonzales Junior. And then you have what
we're gonna call the Fort Walton Beach, Florida group, and
it consisted of Rakeem Florence, Frederick Thornton, who actually those
(30:40):
are the guys that called and turned themselves into police,
and a couple of other people that I'm gonna get
into in a minute. But Rakeem Florence and Frederick Thornton,
they actually had quite a story to tell. Now, according
to these guys, they were with the guys that broke
(31:00):
into the Billings home and committed these murders. But according
to these guys, they stayed in the van. They were
sleeping the whole time that all this went down, which
come on, police knew that was bullshit. They didn't realize
police had all this surveillance video at that point, and
police let them know that, hey, we've got you on
(31:22):
video actually going in the house. Now. When police dug
into these two individuals were Keen Florence and Frederick Thornton,
they found out they were young. These were just sixteen
and seventeen year old kids by the time of this crime.
But they were already little hulums. They already had their
little scratches with police. If you will, so the ruling
(31:47):
police work. If you're wanting to cut a deal with
the police's squeaky wheel gets the best deal, right. And
these kids they started talking quickly, and police let them know, hey,
we got you all on camera going into the home.
We can charge you with first degree murders just like
everybody else. It's up to you if you want to
(32:10):
work with us and let us know everybody that was
involved in how all this went down, we're willing to lessen.
So these kids talk and they mentioned another guy by
the name of Gary Sumner. Gary Sumner was forty years old.
He owned a body shop in Fort Walton Beach, and
they also mentioned another guy by the name of Donnie Stalwarth,
(32:34):
which his involvement kind of shocked everyone because he appeared
to be a pretty stand up guy. He was stationed
at England Air Force Base, which I've actually stayed on
England Air Force Base before. That's a whole nother story,
so I want to get into it. But he was
active in the Air Force and not the type of
(32:55):
guy you would think was wrapped up in all of this.
This guy had a family, he was much older, he
lived on the base, he was active military. Who would
think that he would be involved in this. But as
I said, these teens they started talking and they spilled
(33:15):
the beans. And here's what they say that actually happened.
They said through other people they met Gonzales Junior and
at some point he basically tells them, Hey, I know
this guy. His name is Bud Billings. He's a real asshole.
He abuses his adopted kids, and he's a drug dealer.
(33:39):
Just painting Bud Billings as this real piece of shit
that nobody would care if this guy got robbed. And
he goes on to tell these kids that Bud Billings
had thirteen million dollars in cash in a safe at
his house, and these kids by this this entire story
(34:01):
hook line and sinker, and he also tells these kids,
Gonzalees Junior, hey, we're gonna need other people to help
us in this. This needs to be highly coordinated. So
these kids recruit the rest of the Fort Walton crew,
Stalworth and Florence, and Junior recruits his dad, Gonzalez Senior
(34:24):
and Wayne Cauldron. Now, according to the teens, this was
never a plan to shoot anyone. The plan was just
to rob the Billings. But according to the teens, as
soon as Gonzalez Junior goes in the house, he shoots
mister Billings in the leg. And hey, they're telling the truth.
(34:46):
It's all on surveillance video. They said. At that time,
all hell broke loose. Gonzales Junior eventually ends up killing
both Bud and Melanie Billings. They steal that small floor, say,
and they are in and out of that house in
four minutes. And everything that these teens said matched up
(35:07):
to the surveillance video. So everyone gets arrested that were
mentioned by these two teens, And they also find out
during this questioning that the safe could not be opened.
They couldn't figure out how to open that safe that
they had taken out of that lenen closet, and the
(35:28):
heat was on. So the police are saying, well, where
is the safe and where is the murder weapon? And
they find out from these teens that the murder weapon
and the safe were dropped off with a lady who
owned a flea market and she was also the landlord
for Gonzales Junior. And her name was Pamela Wiggins. She
(35:52):
was also a real estate agent. Again, a person you
wouldn't think would be involved in something like this. On
the outside, it appeared this lady had the perfect life.
She had it going on. She owned a lot of property, etc.
And she's involved in a double murder. And in this case,
(36:13):
she had rental property that Gonzalez Junior he rented from her.
He was living in one of her rental properties. So
they track her down. They end up arresting her as
she's getting off of a boat in Orange Beach, Florida.
She was partying. They come in from partying and whoop,
(36:34):
they're the police. So was her affiliation where police eventually
figured out where all this stuff was. The murder weapon
was the first thing they recovered, and they actually recovered
that murder weapon. It was inside of a vehicle that
was on a car dealership lot, and it was hidden
(36:58):
pretty good. It was nine milimeter hand and it was
actually somehow the seat covers were taken off of a
vehicle and it was shoved in between the foam and
the springs, and then the seat cover was sewed back
on to this vehicle. But they did eventually find it.
(37:19):
Someone obviously went through a lot of painstaking work to
hide it. And they also learn where the safe is
and that safe was actually buried in the ground at
one of the properties that Pamela Wiggins owned, So they
dig that up, and when they dig it up, they
(37:40):
noticed the safe is still locked. So police they're able
to crack open that safe and guess how much of
that thirteen million was in it? You're ready for this. Zero? None,
just this personal paperwork, et cetera. So these two amazing
(38:05):
people were killed, and these perpetrators would have zero money
to show for it. There was nothing in that safe.
They were killed for absolutely nothing. Nothing. There was ever
a reason to kill somebody. But there was another safe
that the perpetrators overlooked. They didn't know about. It was
(38:27):
actually a wall safe in the home of the Billings,
and they did have a substantial amount of cash in
that wall safe that those guys overlooked, but it was
like four hundred thousand dollars something like that. Substantial, but
nowhere near the sixteen million dollars that Gonzales Junior had claimed.
(38:50):
So after all of that, what happens to these six
guys in that female real estate agent. Well, Leonard Gonzales
Junior he gets the death penalty and he's currently on
death row for that double murder. Donnie Stalworth he gets
(39:11):
two life sentences. Wayne Cauldron gets two life sentences. Now
Gonzales Senior he only got seventeen years in prison, but
due to his age, that was pretty much a life
sentence to him. He actually died in prison in twenty
(39:32):
fifteen where King Florence he took a plea deal one
of those teens and he ended up getting forty five years.
Frederick Forton also took a plea deal. He ended up
getting forty years. Pamela Wiggins she got twenty eight years
for accessory after the fact. However, again it was a
(39:54):
life sentence for her because she died in prison in
twenty fifteen, and she wasn't old. I mean she was
in like her forties. Gary Sumner, who was what they
called the back of the house getaway driver, he got
twenty years in prison. He was the only one that
(40:15):
didn't actually enter the house. So what happened to all
these kids that were in the house that horrific day
when Bud and Melanie Billings were killed. Well, the biological
daughter of Bud Billings that I told you about way
back at the beginning at the start of this one,
(40:36):
Ashley Markham. She actually took custody of all thirteen of
those adopted special needs children, which really spoke to me
about what kind of person she was. But there you
have it, another edition Fatal Fortune, and I hope you
(40:58):
enjoyed that one. Now quickly, during this episode, you heard
a promotion for a new series coming out. It's a
docuseriies told by Kelly Jennings and executive produced by yours truly.
It's called DTL. I promise you it is unlike anything
you've ever heard. I actually affectionately call this a listening experience.
(41:24):
Go follow Kelly Jennings podcast if you don't already do so.
It's Unspeakable a true crime podcast by Kelly Jennings. I
will link it in the description of this podcast. Just
an amazing storyteller. Honored to executive produce everything Kelly does.
(41:44):
And until next time for exposed scandalous files of the elite,
I'm your host, Jim Chaban. Much love,
Hey everyone, and welcome back to Exposed Scandalous Files of
the Elite. I am your host, Jim Chapman, and today
I am bringing you a brand new episode in the
Fatal Fortune series. Now we're going to be going to
Escambia County, Florida for this one. And a little bit
about Escambia County, it is very well known if you're
(00:22):
from my neck of the woods in South Louisiana, really
anywhere on the Gulf Coast. It is home to Pensacola Beach, Florida,
which is a vacation destination for nearly three million travelers
per year. Escambia County is so popular in the South
in fact, as a travel destination that it's known as
(00:45):
the Redneck Riviera. Now, although the Escambia County area is
known for its beautiful beaches, it's not without its share
of high profile cases. The Blue Moon murders occurred in
the Pensacola Beach area. Ted Bundy was captured in Escambia County,
so it's definitely had its share of high profile cases. Now,
(01:08):
the area where this particular crime took place was in
an area of Pensacola known as Bulah, which would be
considered kind of a rural area of Pensacola, a very
affluent area as well. They had almost no crime in
this area of Pensacola, just a very quiet and nice place.
(01:30):
So you can imagine the shock when police entered the
home of Bird and Melanie Billings. This was on July
ninth of two thousand and nine, and they find this
couple shot to death. So who did it, why did
they do it, and what happened. That's exactly the questions
(01:50):
that I'm going to answer for you today. And to
do that, I need to give you a little history
on this now murdered couple, and it really is the
tale of several different lives. I'm going to start with
Bird Billings. And bird Billings actually went by the nickname Bud,
and Bud was sixty six years old at the time
(02:12):
of his murder, and he was wealthy. Bud was known
as a guy who just kind of always found his
way to success. He was born and raised in Mississippi,
and in nineteen seventy six he actually started a boat
company in the state of Mississippi. In the eighties, he
was a successful used car dealer there and eventually he
(02:34):
made his way to Florida. Now, during all this time,
he had a couple of marriages and divorces. He even
owned a couple of strip clubs believe it or not
in the nineties in Florida. But his third triumph marriage
was the charm for him. He married Melanie Billings, who
was twenty three years his junior. She was forty three
(02:58):
years old at the time of her murder. So eventually
Bud leaves the strip club business behind him and he
opens up several used car dealerships with in house financing,
and he becomes very, very wealthy in the area. Now
he and his wife live on what some considered the
(03:20):
premier property in the area. It was thirteen acres, huge,
multi story home. Life was great for these people. Now.
Melanie Billings, she by all accounts, was just an amazing
human being, and her passion and purpose in life was
adopting children, and Bud he shared in that passion, and
(03:43):
together they adopted thirteen children. But to tell you how
awesome these people were, they specifically sought out special needs
children because they knew these children would maybe find a
little tougher road to finding a family to adopt them.
(04:03):
And they were just obviously very patient people and very
special people to do that. Thirteen children at the time
of their death. That's how amazing this couple was. So
on July ninth of two thousand and nine, it was
one of those children that called police and reported that
(04:24):
Melanie and Bird Billings have been shot. So police and
detectives they show up on the scene this massive property,
this home that is secluded in many ways from the
main road, and they enter that home and the first
thing that they note is both the side door, the
front door, and the back door had been forced open
(04:47):
kicked in presumably. So as soon as they step into
the living room, they start seeing a lot of blood
and they know something ain't right. They follow that blood
trail and they fine Bird Bud Billings face down in
the bedroom. His hands they are zip tied, and they
(05:08):
notice a single gunshot wound in his head area, and
they also noticed two gunshot wounds in his leg areas. Now,
Melanie Billings, she is found in a hallway facing toward
a bathroom. She's found face up and she has multiple
gunshot wounds to the head and chest. Both Melanie and
(05:32):
Bud were dead when police arrived. So at this point,
not only do you have an active crime scene in
which two people are dead, but you also have thirteen
children in this residence with special needs that you now
have to deal with and speak with. Police found children
(05:56):
hiding under beds, they found children hiding in closet, you
name it. And police they got to secure this crime scene.
They got to make sure the bad guys are going,
They've got to interview these poor children. Just a really
difficult crime scene right off the bat to work. Now,
think about this. These children were in the house when
(06:19):
all of this went down, and it's important to mention that, thankfully,
by the grace of God, none of these children were
physically hurt. Definitely some mental squares there that I am
absolutely sure lasted throughout their lives, but physically, thank god,
none of them were shot. So police start investigating and
(06:40):
they learned this is a very prominent couple in the area,
a very wealthy couple. There was an enormous police presence
on the scene as soon as this gut called out.
As I told you, this is not a normal thing
in that area of Escambia County. Detectives start looking for
evidence of what happened, and they find two nine millimeters
(07:03):
shellcasings in the living room area and ten spent shellcasings
in the bedroom and in the bedroom hallway. This particular
house was so large even the master bedroom had a hallway.
So they start recovering these projectiles from these bullets, and y'all,
a projectile is the part of the bullet that pierces
(07:24):
the body and causes the damage. They photograph every square
inch of this massive house. And as I said earlier,
there were three points of entry and those doors were
kicked in to gain entry to the home. And so
that was a big clue to police because now they
(07:45):
knew there were definitely multiple assailants. They start interviewing the children,
and one child in particular shocked detectives when she told them, hey,
I saw the assailants pull up to the house. So
she lived on the second story, that's where her bedroom was,
(08:05):
and she told police that a red van pulled up
all the way to the front door and several people
got out. Police also noticed near the body of Melanie
Billings there was a small linen closet, and they look
inside of this small linen closet and they noticed there
are four indentions in the carpet. Now, to leave these indentions.
(08:31):
Police knew right off the bat something relatively heavy must
have been sitting on top of that carpet. So common
sense here would tell you it's likely a safe, and
the indentions they were spaced to part enough to dictate
the safe was likely the size of like a microwave oven,
(08:52):
so heavy but not so heavy that someone could not
pick it up and carry it out. Now, when this
stuff happens, the investigation starts, and one of the first things,
if not the first thing that detectives are going to do,
is they're going to dig into the background of the deceased,
and they do this for obvious reasons. This is how
(09:15):
they start removing suspects. Everyone, and I mean everyone in
a murder case outside of the detective is a suspect. Initially,
in any case, you start with the closest person to
the victim and you work your way out of that
inner circle and you weed out suspects as you go along.
(09:38):
So through that process, detectives discover that Bud Billings had
a daughter from a previous marriage, and her name was
Ashley Markham. He also had a son. Now, both of
these biological children were adults, and they did not live
with the Billings family. Detectives also discovered the Billings were
(09:59):
in d need legit millionaires, which strengthened that robbery motive.
That as soon as you pulled up on this scene
and you saw this house, you know, that was the
first suspicion you would have as somebody robbed these people.
Now police knew they had their work cut out for them.
Bud Billings owned a used car dealership several actually in Pensacola,
(10:22):
and when you own car dealerships, you come into contact
with hundreds of potential suspects every month, and that's a
lot of folks to interview. Think about the amount of
people that Bud Billings would just talk to and come across.
Police got to interview all these people because one of
those might be the perpetrator, or several of those might
(10:45):
be the perpetrators. Then they discovered what I consider the
entire key to this case when upon securing the home,
they stumble across the Holy Grail into work surveillance cameras
in a surveillance system, so detectives remove the hard drive
(11:08):
out of that system. This is a little bit before
we had clouds and people were using you know, Google Cloud,
and things of that nature to upload surveillance stuff. They
still used hard drives back in those days, so they
removed that hard drive. They bring it to the police
headquarters and what they see is absolutely shocking. They see
(11:34):
several people exit the van and go to the front door,
and they see several people go to the side and
rear doors of that home, and simultaneously, these people kick
in the doors and they make entry inside of that home. Now,
inside of the home, there were also cameras in the
living room area and you can see these guys approach
(11:59):
mister Billing and there's some quick dialogue that has exchanged
between mister Billings and these people. But unfortunately these cameras
were not equipped for sound. It was only video. But
you can tell from the mannerisms that this isn't a
pleasant conversation. They're not saying, hey man, we came over
(12:19):
here to watch the ball game. You can see this
is a very serious situation. Now, you also see the
perpetrators in this video in what they are wearing, and
they're dressed in all black and what can be described
as ninja costumes. So there's a short dialogue and then
(12:42):
you see mister Billings get shot in the leg. You
see them arguing some more. Mister Billings is getting thrown around.
Then you see them getting shot again in the leg.
And then the next thing that you see is everyone
disap peer into that master bedroom area of the home. Now,
(13:04):
the unfortunate thing is there was no cameras in that
master bedroom.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
In the sultry heat of Louisiana, where the bayous whisper
secrets and the air hangs heavy with the scent of magnolias,
a darkness lurked beneath the surface. Derek todd Lee was
a man whose charm masked a sinister reality. He was
a monster. Lee, a seemingly ordinary man with a disarming smile,
led a double life that would unravel in a series
(13:42):
of murders in the capital city of Baton Rouge and
the surrounding areas. As the first reports of disappearances and
murders began to surface, South Louisiana was thrust into a nightmare,
igniting a frantic search for answers. The true horror was
just beginning, and the hunt for a serial killer. Eventually,
by just three letters, would reveal not only the depths
(14:03):
of Derek Toddley's depravity, but also the resilience of those
most affected by his evil acts, the families and the survivors.
This is DTL.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
DTL can be found by Searching Unspeakable, a true crime
podcast by Kelly Jennings wherever you listen to podcasts, Episode
one dropping November three. But the good thing in this
case is now they had some surveillance video and they
had the getaway vehicle or the vehicle that they used
to get there and get away on that surveillance video,
(14:42):
and they did something you don't see often when these cases,
when these Martyer cases first occur, but it's extremely smart
in this case. And what they did was they contacted
the media and they released a picture of this van
to the media, and the media at that point they
(15:03):
took that and they just blasted it everywhere. Facebook wasn't
what it is today, but they still posted it there.
They posted it on the local news anywhere they could
post it. Ay, be on the lookout for this red van. Now,
in many cases, detectives don't do that because they want
(15:24):
some time to hunt for these folks before the perpetrators
know the police are on their trail. If they're still
in possession of that van, the police don't want to
put it out there, and then the perpetrators get rid
of the van and they could have caught them in
the van. So it was really tricky on whether or
(15:44):
not it was a smart thing to release this, but
in this case, as you will discover in a little while,
it was the right call. Now, another thing that police
discovered through access to the surveillance video was that from
start to finish this double murder, from the time that
the assailants appeared on the property until when they left
(16:08):
the property was only four minutes. It was really fast,
and that told police one thing. This was very well
planned out. This wasn't a bunch of guys driving down
the road just looking for somebody to rob. So police
go to daughter Ashley, who was a much older adult,
(16:28):
and they asked her if she had any idea of
who would want to do this, who would want to
hurt your parents, and she said she can't imagine anyone
wanting to harm her parents. But she did mention that
older adoptive brother, Justin, who had kind of a rocky
relationship with Bud Billings, his adoptive father, and it was
(16:51):
related to just the butting of heads that you have
when you're growing up with your parents, and everything they
say is wrong and everything you say is right. And
when they asked Justin about all this, he admitted to
the rocky relationship. But it's one thing to not get
along with your dad at nineteen twenty years old. It's
(17:15):
quite another thing to kill your dad. And when they
checked Justin's alibi that he provided, it checked out and
he was crossed off the list. So they then asked
Justin the same thing. They asked his sister, who do
you think would have done this? And Justin mentions a
(17:35):
huge falling out that his dad had somewhat recently with
a former business partner at one of his car dealerships.
That really got nasty, in Justin's words. So they start
trying to locate this business partner, which they do in
very short order. Y'all, this where we're at right now.
(17:56):
In this case, this is over like a twelve hour
time period. These police are moving fast, but they do
locate that business partner. He's in a neighboring county and
he owns a car dealership in that county, And you
can't make this shit up. They drive over there, they
pull into the car dealership and this guy is outside
(18:19):
and guess what he's doing. He is cleaning up a
red van. However, as coincidental as that was, and even
though the guy was upfront with his disdain of Bud Billings,
he was checked off the list pretty quickly and he
really had nothing to do with the killings, nor did
(18:41):
the van he was working on. That was just, believe
it or not, sheer coincidence. But as I told you
just a few minutes ago, remember they had released a
picture of that red van as soon as they got it,
and it was in short order, almost immediately after that
picture was relayed on the local news that crime stoppers,
(19:03):
they get a tip that the same red van is
part behind a house really close to the crime scene.
The guy that called in the tip said the van
used to be his van, but he had sold it
to a guy by the name of Patrick Gonzalez Junior,
(19:24):
and that it was sitting at his dad's house, who
was Patrick Gonzalez Senior. This guy even had the address
to where this van was located, so detectives head that way,
but before they do, they run the background on the
homeowner and they discover that Gonzalez Senior he has a
(19:47):
criminal record that is a mile long, nothing major, but
just a lot, just really a treasure drove of petty crimes.
So detectives go over there. They want to put their
eyes on this red van and they pull up at
the scene. It's a mobile home and they don't see
(20:09):
a red van at all, but there is a shed
that's behind the house, and that shed is large enough
to park a van in, and just on the edge
of the opening to that shed, you can see what
appeared to police to be the very edge of the
rear of a red van peeking out of that shed.
(20:32):
Imagine those two doors that you have with these old
dingy vans. You can see those just peeking out, just barely.
But police have a problem. They don't have a warrant,
and they're trying to figure out how they are going
to get back there legally. And about that time, a
(20:52):
car pulls up and Leonard Gonzales Senior, his wife gets
out Patrick Gonzale Leonard was his first name. So his
wife gets out of that car and detectives they're like,
how can we get back there? And one detective says,
why don't we just ask her? He walks up to
(21:16):
her and he says, hey, is that a van parked
back there? And the wife says yes, And detectives ask
if they can go back there and take a look,
and she's like, sure, I don't care, you can go
back there and look. So that's just what they do.
They go back there, and as soon as they start
walking back there, two men walk out of the house,
(21:39):
Gonzalez and another guy, and his name was Wayne Cauldron.
Now Wayne sees these detectives and he just takes off
running as soon as he sees them, so police grab
him pretty quick, and police would discover later that Wayne
and Ganzale they were neighbors and that Wayne was from Tennessee,
(22:03):
but he had moved to the Panhandle of Florida after
doing time in prison in Tennessee. So not a good
guy by any means. So they grab him. They grabbed
Gonzales Senior. They bring him back there to where that
van is. Gonzales Senor is saying, hey, you ain't got
all right to love back here, and they say, uh,
your wife told us we could go back here. We
(22:25):
have permission, we don't need a warr So as they
go back there, they discover not only does this look
like the red van in that surveillance video, but there
was a lot of areas sanded off and there were
spray paint near that van, and that indicated to police
that someone was attempting to change the appearance of that van,
(22:49):
and they were in the middle of that when police
showed up, so they hauled the van down to the
police headquarters to have that analyzed and scrubbed that van
for DNA, etc. And here's where a detective does some
really amazing bit of detective work. So he's going to
(23:11):
leave the shed where that van was parked, and he
notices on a shelf a box of work boots and
the box appeared to be brand new, and y'all, this
inside of this shed, it was very dingy picture, just
a ugly, nasty inside of a shed where everything's old
(23:33):
and dirty and it's got a ton of dust on it.
And this shoe box stood out to him because it
looked brand new, number one, It had no dust on it,
and it had a little picture on the side of it.
And the little picture on the side of that box
was of boots that appeared to be combat boots. They
(23:54):
were black, and it just reminded him of what he
saw in the video. Now, they didn't have a search
warrant to take anything off the property except that van.
But he notices that box and he's going to head out,
and he says, is anything in that box? And Gonzales
(24:16):
Senior's wife says no, And he said, well, I'm leaving
right now and be passing a garbage can, so if
you want me to, I can throw that away for you.
And she says, sure, you throw it away if you
want to. So he grabs it and he walks out
of that shed, but rather than throwing it in the
garbage he throws it in the back of his police car.
(24:41):
Gonzales Senior and Wayne Cauldron. They are then hauled to
the police station for questioning, and they also ask Gonzales
Senior's wife if she would go down to the station
and talk to them, And under questioning of Gonzales Senior's wife,
she admitted yet that she had overheard her husband and
(25:03):
Wayne Cauldron talking about a scheme to rob somebody. She said,
I never heard a name mentioned. I never heard anything
about them killing anybody, but I did hear something from
them when they were talking, and I could tell they
were trying to keep this kind of a secret because
they were being quiet about it. But I do know
(25:24):
that it had something to do with robbing someone. So
armed with that information, police question Gonzalez Senior and Cauldron
and they start putting the pressure on them and they say, hey,
They tell Gonzales Senor, your wife has already told us
she heard you kind of hashing out a plan to
(25:44):
rob somebody. Gonzale Senor. He starts singing like a canary,
and he mentioned that his son, Leonard Gonzalez Junior, is
also involved. And he said that his son had business
dealings with mister Billings in the past, and that's how
they knew mister Billings. They have another name, and they
(26:09):
go pick up Gonzalez Junior. He comes to the station
and in the meantime they do a lot of looking
in his background. Now, Gonzalez Junior, he seemed to be
totally opposite of his dad. He was a business owner.
He was much more professional looking, if you will, than
(26:30):
his dad. He was a karate instructor. You own the
karate business. He had even been on the local news
several times and police would discover that mister Billings. At
one point he even donated five thousand dollars to Gonzales
Junior's karate school for some sort of project they were doing. Now,
(26:53):
they would also find out that Gonzalez Junior went to
mister Billings a second time over the years to get
money for some other business that he needed donated to,
and mister Billings told him no, he didn't want to
get involved in that just wasn't his deal. Now, eventually
his karate studio started struggling and he would start losing money.
(27:16):
Police would find this out after, but gives you a
pretty good motive to want to rob somebody, right. As
a matter of fact, his karate studio was struggling so
bad he ended up having his car repossessed, and his
mother bought him that red van that was used in
(27:39):
these killings. She bought that van for him so he
would have something to ride around him because this car
had been repossessed. So police present all this to Gonzales Junior,
and of course he denies everything under questioning, and when
they tell him, hey, it was your dad that told
us all this stuff and your mom, he said, but
(28:00):
his dad is crazy, he's a liar, he's not to
be believed. He's a petty thief and you're gonna believe
me a business owner who's got my shit together over
my dad, et cetera. But police, they knew that it
was only a matter of time before they could crack him.
And in the meantime, they start looking at that shoe
(28:23):
box and looking into where that was purchased, and they
discover that this particular brand of shoes they were bought
at a Walmart. So they go to the Walmart and
they go to the Lost Control people at that Walmart
and they say, hey, we need you to pull surveillance
(28:43):
videos from inside the store. And they knew what time
that these guys were in the store because they managed
to get a hold to the receipt for those shoes,
and so Lost Control brings them in the back. They
view the video and they see Gonzalis Junior as well
as three or four other individuals. They all go into
(29:08):
that particular Walmart and they all buy the same type
of combat style boots together. They see them all leave
on that surveillance video in a gold suv. So they
do what they did with the red van, and they
(29:29):
release a picture of that gold suv to the media,
and again another Bolo be on the lookout for this
gold SUV. If you know who owns it, give us
a call, and sure enough, almost immediately they start getting tips.
But they had something even better than tips. At this point,
(29:53):
they had a couple of suspects actually turned themselves in
that owned that gold su Just the pressure right of
this being all over the news, this was a big deal.
Now at this point, there are two factions of people
involved in this. Detectives would discover. First you have what
(30:18):
I'm gonna turn the Pensacola group, which was Wayne Cauldron,
Gonzalez Senior, and Gonzales Junior. And then you have what
we're gonna call the Fort Walton Beach, Florida group, and
it consisted of Rakeem Florence, Frederick Thornton, who actually those
(30:40):
are the guys that called and turned themselves into police,
and a couple of other people that I'm gonna get
into in a minute. But Rakeem Florence and Frederick Thornton,
they actually had quite a story to tell. Now, according
to these guys, they were with the guys that broke
(31:00):
into the Billings home and committed these murders. But according
to these guys, they stayed in the van. They were
sleeping the whole time that all this went down, which
come on, police knew that was bullshit. They didn't realize
police had all this surveillance video at that point, and
police let them know that, hey, we've got you on
(31:22):
video actually going in the house. Now. When police dug
into these two individuals were Keen Florence and Frederick Thornton,
they found out they were young. These were just sixteen
and seventeen year old kids by the time of this crime.
But they were already little hulums. They already had their
little scratches with police. If you will, so the ruling
(31:47):
police work. If you're wanting to cut a deal with
the police's squeaky wheel gets the best deal, right. And
these kids they started talking quickly, and police let them know, hey,
we got you all on camera going into the home.
We can charge you with first degree murders just like
everybody else. It's up to you if you want to
(32:10):
work with us and let us know everybody that was
involved in how all this went down, we're willing to lessen.
So these kids talk and they mentioned another guy by
the name of Gary Sumner. Gary Sumner was forty years old.
He owned a body shop in Fort Walton Beach, and
they also mentioned another guy by the name of Donnie Stalwarth,
(32:34):
which his involvement kind of shocked everyone because he appeared
to be a pretty stand up guy. He was stationed
at England Air Force Base, which I've actually stayed on
England Air Force Base before. That's a whole nother story,
so I want to get into it. But he was
active in the Air Force and not the type of
(32:55):
guy you would think was wrapped up in all of this.
This guy had a family, he was much older, he
lived on the base, he was active military. Who would
think that he would be involved in this. But as
I said, these teens they started talking and they spilled
(33:15):
the beans. And here's what they say that actually happened.
They said through other people they met Gonzales Junior and
at some point he basically tells them, Hey, I know
this guy. His name is Bud Billings. He's a real asshole.
He abuses his adopted kids, and he's a drug dealer.
(33:39):
Just painting Bud Billings as this real piece of shit
that nobody would care if this guy got robbed. And
he goes on to tell these kids that Bud Billings
had thirteen million dollars in cash in a safe at
his house, and these kids by this this entire story
(34:01):
hook line and sinker, and he also tells these kids,
Gonzalees Junior, hey, we're gonna need other people to help
us in this. This needs to be highly coordinated. So
these kids recruit the rest of the Fort Walton crew,
Stalworth and Florence, and Junior recruits his dad, Gonzalez Senior
(34:24):
and Wayne Cauldron. Now, according to the teens, this was
never a plan to shoot anyone. The plan was just
to rob the Billings. But according to the teens, as
soon as Gonzalez Junior goes in the house, he shoots
mister Billings in the leg. And hey, they're telling the truth.
(34:46):
It's all on surveillance video. They said. At that time,
all hell broke loose. Gonzales Junior eventually ends up killing
both Bud and Melanie Billings. They steal that small floor, say,
and they are in and out of that house in
four minutes. And everything that these teens said matched up
(35:07):
to the surveillance video. So everyone gets arrested that were
mentioned by these two teens, And they also find out
during this questioning that the safe could not be opened.
They couldn't figure out how to open that safe that
they had taken out of that lenen closet, and the
(35:28):
heat was on. So the police are saying, well, where
is the safe and where is the murder weapon? And
they find out from these teens that the murder weapon
and the safe were dropped off with a lady who
owned a flea market and she was also the landlord
for Gonzales Junior. And her name was Pamela Wiggins. She
(35:52):
was also a real estate agent. Again, a person you
wouldn't think would be involved in something like this. On
the outside, it appeared this lady had the perfect life.
She had it going on. She owned a lot of property, etc.
And she's involved in a double murder. And in this case,
(36:13):
she had rental property that Gonzalez Junior he rented from her.
He was living in one of her rental properties. So
they track her down. They end up arresting her as
she's getting off of a boat in Orange Beach, Florida.
She was partying. They come in from partying and whoop,
(36:34):
they're the police. So was her affiliation where police eventually
figured out where all this stuff was. The murder weapon
was the first thing they recovered, and they actually recovered
that murder weapon. It was inside of a vehicle that
was on a car dealership lot, and it was hidden
(36:58):
pretty good. It was nine milimeter hand and it was
actually somehow the seat covers were taken off of a
vehicle and it was shoved in between the foam and
the springs, and then the seat cover was sewed back
on to this vehicle. But they did eventually find it.
(37:19):
Someone obviously went through a lot of painstaking work to
hide it. And they also learn where the safe is
and that safe was actually buried in the ground at
one of the properties that Pamela Wiggins owned, So they
dig that up, and when they dig it up, they
(37:40):
noticed the safe is still locked. So police they're able
to crack open that safe and guess how much of
that thirteen million was in it? You're ready for this. Zero? None,
just this personal paperwork, et cetera. So these two amazing
(38:05):
people were killed, and these perpetrators would have zero money
to show for it. There was nothing in that safe.
They were killed for absolutely nothing. Nothing. There was ever
a reason to kill somebody. But there was another safe
that the perpetrators overlooked. They didn't know about. It was
(38:27):
actually a wall safe in the home of the Billings,
and they did have a substantial amount of cash in
that wall safe that those guys overlooked, but it was
like four hundred thousand dollars something like that. Substantial, but
nowhere near the sixteen million dollars that Gonzales Junior had claimed.
(38:50):
So after all of that, what happens to these six
guys in that female real estate agent. Well, Leonard Gonzales
Junior he gets the death penalty and he's currently on
death row for that double murder. Donnie Stalworth he gets
(39:11):
two life sentences. Wayne Cauldron gets two life sentences. Now
Gonzales Senior he only got seventeen years in prison, but
due to his age, that was pretty much a life
sentence to him. He actually died in prison in twenty
(39:32):
fifteen where King Florence he took a plea deal one
of those teens and he ended up getting forty five years.
Frederick Forton also took a plea deal. He ended up
getting forty years. Pamela Wiggins she got twenty eight years
for accessory after the fact. However, again it was a
(39:54):
life sentence for her because she died in prison in
twenty fifteen, and she wasn't old. I mean she was
in like her forties. Gary Sumner, who was what they
called the back of the house getaway driver, he got
twenty years in prison. He was the only one that
(40:15):
didn't actually enter the house. So what happened to all
these kids that were in the house that horrific day
when Bud and Melanie Billings were killed. Well, the biological
daughter of Bud Billings that I told you about way
back at the beginning at the start of this one,
(40:36):
Ashley Markham. She actually took custody of all thirteen of
those adopted special needs children, which really spoke to me
about what kind of person she was. But there you
have it, another edition Fatal Fortune, and I hope you
(40:58):
enjoyed that one. Now quickly, during this episode, you heard
a promotion for a new series coming out. It's a
docuseriies told by Kelly Jennings and executive produced by yours truly.
It's called DTL. I promise you it is unlike anything
you've ever heard. I actually affectionately call this a listening experience.
(41:24):
Go follow Kelly Jennings podcast if you don't already do so.
It's Unspeakable a true crime podcast by Kelly Jennings. I
will link it in the description of this podcast. Just
an amazing storyteller. Honored to executive produce everything Kelly does.
(41:44):
And until next time for exposed scandalous files of the elite,
I'm your host, Jim Chaban. Much love,
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Paper Ghosts: The Texas Teen Murders
Paper Ghosts: The Texas Teen Murders takes you back to 1983, when two teenagers were found murdered, execution-style, on a quiet Texas hill. What followed was decades of rumors, false leads, and a case that law enforcement could never seem to close. Now, veteran investigative journalist M. William Phelps reopens the file — uncovering new witnesses, hidden evidence, and a shocking web of deaths that may all be connected. Over nine gripping episodes, Paper Ghosts: The Texas Teen Murders unravels a story 42 years in the making… and asks the question: who’s really been hiding the truth?
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com