February 28, 2025 • 53 mins
Here in Alabama, a black man named Robin "Rocky" Myers sits on death row where he's been since 1994. He's run out of appeals and awaiting an execution date. There's just one problem. Rocky might be innocent.
In Chapter 1 of Rocky's story, we introduce a high level overview of the story. Who is Rocky? What was the crime? And how did Rocky get wrapped up in it? Who are the key players? This episode will set up what's to come.
Next week, we'll go to trial...
To access earlier episodes of Corpus Delicti and to help support the show, please visit patreon.com/corpusdelicti
Our merch store can be found at teepublic.com/stores/corpus-delicti-podcast
Music by:
Kai Engel
"Daemones"
Blooper music by:
Art of Escapism
"Coal Miners"
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA.
Clemency for Rocky Myers (wordpress.com)
Petition · Grant clemency to Robin Myers and change his sentence from death to life without the possibility of parole · Change.org
https://youtu.be/j5pArQPDyO0
In Chapter 1 of Rocky's story, we introduce a high level overview of the story. Who is Rocky? What was the crime? And how did Rocky get wrapped up in it? Who are the key players? This episode will set up what's to come.
Next week, we'll go to trial...
To access earlier episodes of Corpus Delicti and to help support the show, please visit patreon.com/corpusdelicti
Our merch store can be found at teepublic.com/stores/corpus-delicti-podcast
Music by:
Kai Engel
"Daemones"
Blooper music by:
Art of Escapism
"Coal Miners"
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA.
Clemency for Rocky Myers (wordpress.com)
Petition · Grant clemency to Robin Myers and change his sentence from death to life without the possibility of parole · Change.org
https://youtu.be/j5pArQPDyO0
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Hey everyone, It's Jen and this is Lindsay and this
is corpustilic I. Welcome to our latest series. This is
actually going to be about one person right now. It's
going to be about five chapters or five episodes long,
but it's worth.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
It potentially more. And I'm sure you guys have heard
by now that our next series was or is Alabama Crimes,
and we are going to start off in a way
that we didn't anticipate. So little backstory here. We had
a listener named Tracy reach out to us and she
(01:00):
recommended a case, which happens a lot. We gather them,
we look through them, but with the Alabama series coming up,
this one was in Alabama and so we were like, well,
let's look at it. And we're like, oh, this is
really interesting, and it has snowballed and turned into a
huge not only story, but an actual project, which we
(01:22):
will talk about at the end of this episode. But
this is going to kick off the Alabama series, but
it is a series of its own. It's called Road
to Redemption and it is about a man in Alabama
on death row.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
So let's get rolling. Road to Redemption. Chapter one, Death Row.
Our story begins at Holman Correction Facility at Moore, Alabama.
This is Escumpia County in the most southern part of
the state. It's about eighty two miles up from Gulf Shores.
Holman is currently home to three hundred and seven inmates.
(02:00):
It is also the primary facility for death row inmates,
having one hundred and seventy death row sales, and this
is the only one that carries out executions. In twenty sixteen,
Holman Prison was said to be the most violent prison
in the country. There were stabbings happening regularly according to inmates,
(02:22):
and it earned the nickname of Slaughterhouse. And now, luckily,
after an investigation some new oversight, things do seem to
have improved a bit. Just over a year ago. In
January of twenty twenty, there was heavy deterioration discovered in
parts of the building, which caused a lot of the
prisoners to be sent to other facilities, but those on
(02:45):
death row had to stay. One of these prisoners, Prisoner
Z five sixty three, is a black man named Robin
Dion Myers. We know him as Rocky. Rocky was convicted
of capital murder in nineteen ninety three and sentenced to
death by lethal injection, meaning he's been there for pretty
(03:08):
much thirty years. Rocky says life on death Row is lonely.
He misses his family. He's got four kids, eleven grandkids,
and now he even has one great grandchild.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
He wakes up early every day. Breakfast is at four am,
lunch is at ten, dinner is at four pm. That's
crazy eating times and there's just not much to do.
He does have a TV, but to pass the time
and keep himself busy, he is what they call a
hall runner, so he will bring things to other people
(03:42):
in his unit. He'll bring him food, books, whatever they
might need. Hey, Rocky, can you go down and grab
me something from the library or whatever. And he loves
to go to church. They do do a church service there,
and he loves to sing, which helps pass the time.
But when somebody in there is scheduled to be executed,
things take an even more somber tone than they already were.
(04:04):
Everyone is really quiet, they keep to themselves. The tone
completely changes, which is scary, but it's even more scary
for Rocky, who has run out of appeals and is
awaiting an execution date. The scariest part, there's a really
good chance that Robin Rocky Myers doesn't even belong there,
(04:25):
and there's even a stronger chance that he is innocent.
So we are going to get into a little bit
of information about Rocky. Who he is. Robin Beyond Myers
or Rocky was born on July sixteenth, nineteen sixty one,
in New Jersey to John and Lorraine Myers. He was
the fourth of ten children, so there was John, Jeffrey, Christine,
(04:48):
Robin which is Rocky, Russell, Krystal, Karen, Kim, Derek, and Daniel.
His sister Christel died of a brain aneurysm at age eleven,
His brother Kim also died of an aneurysm at age
twenty five, and his eldest brother died at age forty
five of cancer.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
John, being the eldest, was born when Lorraine, their mom,
was just fifteen years old. By the age of thirty,
she had given birth to all ten kids. Now. John
and Lorraine divorced when Rocky was just eight. Rocky and
some of fhis siblings described their father, John as an alcoholic.
(05:30):
He was often out of work and they had to
rely on welfare, living off of grits. Powdered eggs and
powdered milk. They had it rough. I mean, you have
this full house of kids, and poor Lorraine. I mean
she was doing the best she can with what she had.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
So Jeffrey, who is the second child, he says that
their father was really more of another child. He would
play with them and stuff like that, but he never
really raised them except for when they needed to be disciplined,
which was often done using a belt. Jeffrey also recalls
that when he turned eighteen, John, their father, took him
(06:11):
to a bar and got him drunk. They got drunk together,
and even Rocky recalls drinking with his father from a
really early age, perhaps as early as fourteen, maybe fifteen
years old. And from early on, Rocky was always quote
unquote different. He struggled in ways others did not. And
(06:31):
again according to John, the older brother, he said, when
we were growing up, I didn't want Rocky to hang
around with me and my friends because he was slower
than we were.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Now, Rocky remembers being picked on for being poor and
his words, not smart. Rocky struggled in school. He repeated
the third grade and apparently failed all of the classes
the second time around. Again, now he was placed in
special educational classes. After this, they pushed him through to
(07:02):
the sixth grade just so he can keep up socially
with his peers now when he was there, he also
repeated the sixth grade and the seventh grade. He continues
to struggle with memory and paying attention, so his mind
is working differently than all of his peers around him.
(07:24):
You know, he's struggling daily with this.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
By the time he was in high school, he had
to go to a school that specializes in students with
quote unquote intellectual disabilities, and he dropped out after ninth grade.
After this, he attended a vocational school, but he was
removed due to behavior, and he recalls getting into a
lot of fights because he was being picked on. Not
(07:49):
only did he begin to drink at an early age,
but he started using drugs. He started using marijuana, crack, cocaine, queludes, codine, and.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
He also had a difficulty with his bladder control at night,
and this lasted until early adulthood. At nineteen, he met
and married Debbie Hood, who was just seventeen and reportedly
his only romantic relationship. They welcomed their first son, Leandrew,
not long after. They eventually went on to have four children.
(08:25):
Rocky worked, but he had to take awful lot of
time for health reasons. He had asthma and severe egzema.
It was so severe that outdoor allergens would cause his
skin to completely crack or flake off when something rubbed
up against him, just like clothing. Now, he would bleed
and this would be very painful, and he was under
(08:47):
a doctor's care for this, but it didn't seem to help.
He would actually have to wear long sleeves in the
heat of the summer to avoid further irritation and infection.
Now remember this, this is a key point here. As
an adult, his drug use had turned really problematic. They
were in a very heavily drug ridden area. His wife's
(09:10):
family lived in Alabama. So after some criminal charges for theft,
they decided, hey, look let's relocate. Let's be near family,
Let's try to start over, be where we can get help.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
With the kids and just try to do better. So
this is when the family ended up in Decatur, Alabama,
in approximately nineteen ninety. Now Decatur is in the very
very tip top of North Alabama in Morgan County. It's
located on the Tennessee River. It's about seventy five miles
from Birmingham, which is where we are. And unfortunately, what
(09:45):
was meant to be a move to better himself turned
out to be probably the worst thing that could have
happened to him.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
So we're going to cut to Friday, October fourth, nineteen
ninety one, in Decatur, Alabama. It's in a little bit
of a down neighborhood, to the point where the locals
call it Cracktown. A sixty eight year old woman named
Ludy May Tucker had her cousin, Mammy Dutton, visiting her home. Now,
(10:13):
Mammy was out of town, so when she had come,
she had driven there in her own car, and she
was going to spend the night with her cousin. The
two women had already gone to sleep that evening, about
eleven o'clock at night. Miss Dutton remembers looking at the
clock just before she goes to sleep. Now, Miss Tucker
was a widow and her husband had passed away several
(10:36):
years earlier, so it was around midnight, so technically it's
October fifth, nineteen ninety one. Her doorbell rang, Ludy May
went to the door. She saw a man on her porch.
He stated that he had been in an accident in
a fight, and he was injured. He really needed to
use the phone to call his family, and he's saying,
(10:56):
I'm bleeding to death.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
So Maymi Dutton got out of bed and she peered
through the window outside and saw the two talking. Now
keep in mind she's woken up by this doorbell. She's
in her cousin's home. Ludy was talking to the man
through the window or the door right there at the front.
So she's like, she's got it. So she turns and
she goes back to bed, and she hears Ludy May
(11:20):
offering to dial the phone number and make the phone
call for this man who's saying, I've been in a fight,
I'm entered, I'm dying. Then many heard the man come inside.
She says that he was jabbering, just talking really fast,
didn't stop, and that his voice was very shaky. At
this point, she heard Ludy May say something really odd.
(11:42):
She said that her husband was in the other room.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Then before she knew it, she heard Ludy May yelling,
and shortly after this, the man ran in a mammy's
room and stabbed her in her side. Now she's terrified
She stayed in her room for just another minute, but
when she thought it was safe, she finally came out.
This is when she saw Ludy May. Ludy is very injured,
(12:07):
laying on the couch with the phone in her hand,
and she was downing nine to one one. And this
is a phone call that came in at twelve nineteen.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Important note. When Miss Dutton is stabbed in the side.
The man then runs out of the house. He leaves
the door open, he's gone, and then she walks out
and sees Miss Tucker injured. So Ludy May was not
able to say much on this nine to one one
call because she's in a lot of pain and she's
having trouble breathing, but she did manage to tell them
that someone had broken into the house. Luckily, there was
(12:42):
an officer in the vicinity. He had been out on
a suspected drug activity call in that very area. He
was just a few blocks away. He had done his patrolling,
didn't see much, and he was about to be on
his way out when he got this call. So he
heads over to Miss Tucker's house. He's there in no
more than two minutes. That's how close by he is
dispatch logs actually confirmed this call came in. He gets there,
(13:06):
he reports in two minutes, it was very very fast.
He sees Miss Tucker. He says, she's obviously very injured,
and he his name is Jim Tilly. He called for
an ambulance and backup. Now based on what she says,
he also put out a BOLO, which is a be
on the lookout for a short and stocky black mail
(13:27):
with a light possibly white shirt with blood on it. Again,
that is what Miss Tucker told him, and also what
she told the nine one one operator when she called.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Their very first priority is making sure the victims are okay.
Ludy May kept saying how much pain she was in,
but she did manage to tell them about her attacker.
In Jim Tilly's testimony, now this came directly from court documents,
it reads, I was trying to calm her down at
this point, and she told me it was a black mail,
(14:00):
a dark black male. And I asked her, I said,
can you tell me anything about him? And she said
that he was short, stalky, And I asked miss Tucker
about the clothing. She gasped and squeezed my hand again,
and she said he was wearing possibly a plaid shirt
with a white T shirt with blood on it. Now,
after saying that she went unconscious, she is struggling to breathe.
(14:25):
She's in a lot of pain. She gave the policeman,
mister Tilly, lots of information. Plaid shirt, white shirt, blood
on it. So think about as much information as she gave.
That's a lot of words when you're stabbed and you're bleeding.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
So on the phone with the nine one one operator,
as we said, she had also mentioned a white shirt
or T shirt, she wasn't sure which, and it had
blood on it. So the ambulance arrived. They carried miss
Tucker to the hospital. Unfortunately, she died of her injuries. Specifically,
one of the four stab wounds that she sustained was
(15:08):
the fatal cut. So three injuries were located on the
front of her body, with the fatal wound being in
the left chest area, and it punctured both her lung
and her heart. It was right in that kind of
in between space where it got both. It's about six
inches below the top of her left shoulder and the
(15:28):
wound was one inch long and gapped to a sixteenth
of an inch wide. So it's not a massive wound.
When you think of stabbing, you know, you tend to
think of horror movies, butcher knife, but it wasn't necessarily
like that. Maymi Dutton did survive her injuries. They could
tell once they got there that hers weren't quite as
(15:51):
bad as Miss Tucker's. So they were focusing on Miss Tucker.
Miss Dutton was recalling what happened, and she was taken
to the hospital and she was really least two days later.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
We are going to get to the investigation right after
this break I delected bills. Let's just cut right to
the chase. You see where we're going with this. This
is the crime that Rocky is on death row for.
We will talk more about how it unfolded later, but
right now, off the bat, here are some key points
(16:22):
we need to acknowledge based just on the murder of
Loudy Maytucker and the attack of Mammy Dutton that was
just discussed. Now we haven't mentioned this yet, but at
the time Rocky, his wife and children lived across the
street on a converted duplex, and the duplex only had
(16:43):
power on one side. So think about it like this,
It's like a one story stocky building with two front doors.
Now that's what's going to be a duplex. It is
a four lane highway in between the two houses, but
they are across the street from each other. So this duplex,
(17:04):
which is two houses that are attached. They had taken
out that middle wall, so technically it was designed as
a duplex, but they it was opened up to them.
But that's why there was only power on one side
because there hadn't been anybody on that other side before
they did that.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
So this may not really seem like a big deal.
But let's think about this a little more because we
already know that right off the bat that this is Rocky.
Rocky's in prison for this. So a few questions that
we want to address right off the bat. The man
who attacked these victims stated that he was in a
(17:40):
car crash and a fight. He needed to use the
phone to call his family. He's bleeding. Why would Rocky
need to do this if he lived right across the street,
and I mean directly across the street. Also, Ludy May
and Rocky knew each other. Rocky had been to Ludy
May's house on at least two occasions that he remembered
(18:02):
specifically to borrow ice from her. Rocky's family did not
have a refrigerator, so it really wasn't unusual for them
to need ice for cool drinks. He says that his
kid's treat was kool aid, and when they would make
kool aid for a special treat, they wanted ice in it,
so they would go over and get it it. It
wasn't all the time. It was just kind of a
(18:23):
little fun thing for them.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
And think about like that, it was their treat to
have kool aid, and it was a treat for them
to have ice in their kool aid, right, And so
Miss Tucker always waved to him when they were outside.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
They were neighbors. They did what neighbors do. Now that's
not to say that they were super close. They didn't
have cookouts together or anything, but they knew each other.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
And I want to interject this, if you were to
watch youtubes on this case, there is one that I
haven't seen anything to back this up. That Rocky did
go over there and mow her grass from time to time.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
That is up for debates. Some say that happens, some
say it didn't. Because of his skinned condition. Keeping that
in mind, a few other things. Why would Miss Tucker
tell her attacker that her husband was in the other room.
Miss Tucker was not married, she was widowed, and Rocky
knew this that again, they had talked. So why then
would Miss Tucker not have opened the door for Rocky
(19:23):
seeing him injured and him saying he needs help. But
the even bigger question is Miss Tucker's injured, Her lung
is punctured, she's gasping for air. And as Jen said,
she spent all this time detailing this man, short and stocky,
white shirt had blood on it. Why didn't she just
say Rocky? She saw this man, she described him? She
(19:47):
would it not have been easier to simply say Rocky
than to struggle and be gasping to say all of
these other details or.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Better, yet, why did she not point to across the street?
Speaker 2 (20:00):
She wouldn't have had to said a word.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
It would have been much easier for her to point
and say he or Rocky and point to across the
street there was if it was Rocky, there was no
need for her to go into this very lengthy and
painful description of this man.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
So, with that said, how did this happen? What's the backstory?
We know Rocky's there, we know that he's in prison.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
What happened, So let's get down to the suspect list.
Let's get into the investigation of the Decatur Police Department.
As soon as Miss Tucker was taken by ambulance, Mammy
Dutton was stable, she was okay, and the police began
to secure the scene. After they examined Miss Tucker's house,
(20:50):
there wasn't much evidence at all, but two things did
stick out. There was footprints outside. Now this is from
Officer Tilley, who was first to arrive on the scene.
He said, we were trying to see if there was
any physical evidence, like a knife or anything that might
have been thrown into the bushes. Without disturbing anything, we
(21:12):
tried to look around the house to see if we
could find anything. Officer Rogers pointed out on the east
side of the house, along the side where there was
two bedroom windows, there were some crushed down type of
shrubbery and footprints. There is a lot of dew on
the ground, so they were pretty distinguishable. It appeared from
(21:33):
what we could tell that somebody had been standing in
a couple of areas around the house there. From there
we went towards the alley, and I didn't go any
further than that. He saw footprints. It was dewey, So
we have to make the assumption that they were there
after the dew fell, but before the murder. That would
(21:57):
give you a good timeline of when they were put there,
so that would be around the time of the murder.
The TV in the living room was slightly pulled out.
There were some chords laying down around it. These chords
had been pulled, specifically pulled as like the ends were missing,
and they were located where a VCR might have been,
(22:20):
which Mammy Dutton confirmed. This gave them their first insight
to a possible motive of robbery. So the murderer touched
the cables, He touched the television to take the VCR,
which was a hot commodity in the nineteen nineties, and
(22:41):
removed it from the house.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
So then they decide to dust for prints. But of
course you can't go through and dust every single thing
in the house. That would take forever. So they went
based on Miss Dutton and Emma's Tucker's story. So they
did the phone because they know that the guy tried
to make a phone call. They did the front door,
the glass door that the VCR would have been behind
(23:05):
things like that. But of course prints are only good
if you have someone to match it to. So immediately
police start going door to door talking to neighbors. Did
you see anything? Did you see anyone? And one of
these neighbors was Purcell Yarboro. Now they did not talk
to him until the next day, but they did start
(23:26):
immediately and they continued and here is what Purcell Yarbro said.
They came to my house on a Saturday, and that
Saturday night, I told my wife I was going to
ride around down on Sixth and see if I heard
anything about the lady getting killed. That's when I went
on Sixth to my sister's house. I went in and
they invited me to sit down, and I sat down. Anyway,
(23:50):
we were sitting there talking and the old lady's name
came up. It was so awful the way somebody did
the old lady. And as we was talking, she said,
did anything get taken? She said it must have been
some drugs. She asked if anything was stolen out of
the house, and I told her I heard there was
a VCR that got stolen. Finally, she said, you said
(24:11):
a VCR was stolen, and I said, yes, that's what
I heard. She said, come here, I need to talk
to you. As we got into the little hallway, my
sister told me again, you said a VCR got stolen.
And I said yeah, And they said it was an RCA.
Remember he has talked to the police. That's how he
knows this. She pushed the door open and said, look
(24:32):
right there, and there was a VCR up under the table.
I got on my knees and I pulled the VCR
out and I looked at it. She said, is that it?
And I said, I don't know, but this is an
RCA VCR. And she said, get it out of here.
Get it out of here. I said, where did it
come from? She said, I don't know where it came from,
but get it out of here. I said, who brought
(24:53):
it here? She said, I don't know who brought it here,
but get it out of here. I don't want to
get involved.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
All right.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
So Yarboro is the neighbor the morning of the murder,
because it happened at midnight, a little bit after midnight.
Please go over to the neighbor's house. They talk, they,
you know, they explain what happened. Yarbro then goes to
his sister's house. His sister has the stolen VCR. Presumably
(25:19):
at this point she doesn't want it in our house,
so parcel people call him Percy. His sister was Annie
Sue Crintinton. Now Miss Crittinton had a house not far
from Rocky and Miss Tucker. So that was a very
close neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
It's about three blocks away. Just to put it in.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Perspective, it was known as a shothouse. Now, this house
sells liquor beer, it's not authorized to do so, and
her friends would come by and you know, she would
sell them beer whatever. It was also what you would
call a crack house. A man named Leon Madden now
his street name is Butch. Butch sold crack cocaine out
(26:00):
of the home as well. Butch was dating Annie Crittinton's daughter,
So the neighbor yard brough Percy. His sister Annie had
the stolen VCR. Her daughter was dating Butch, the drug
dealer out of her house called a shoththouse. Butch paid
(26:22):
all the bills, He provided her with furniture, he gave food,
He paid all of the utility bills. It was a
good working relationship with them, so she let him run
his little operation, or I wouldn't say little. I mean
it was a good sized drug operation out of that house.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
So he would operate on the front screened and porch.
It was really glassed in. Shouldn't say screened, it was
glass But he had a few friends who helped kind
of serve as lookouts for police officers, any untrustworthy customers,
anybody that may be up to no good. One of
these is Willie Reese Rae. His nickname is Roadrunner, and
(27:03):
Willie Reese Roadrunner served as his go between. If Butch
was busy, then Roadrunner would handle the transaction for him,
so he's really his right hand man. He got his
nickname Roadrunner because he could apparently outrun any police officer
even in the car. He was the getaway man. Now,
Roadrunner himself said he couldn't sell no crack unless he
(27:27):
went through me. I had to verify they wasn't a
snitch or something, and then sometimes he would put the
drugs in my hand through me and do the transactions.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Now, on October fourth, the day of the murder, or
the evening before the murder, Butch and his crew set
up their operation at that house around eleven AM. But
that night there had been a collateral transaction. Butch had
accepted the RCA VCR from a customer in exchange for
(27:59):
some crack, hence the statement from Percy that we just heard.
And that's when he went in and the his sister
was like, get it out of here. I don't want
anything to do with this. Percy, already, having talked to
the police, took the VCR and took it to the police.
But Howie took it to police is a story with
(28:20):
and of itself.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
So they knew that it was miss Tucker's because there
was an old repair receipt that had the serial number
on it, which matched, so this VCR had been repaired
before they compared it to the actual machine. Plus we
had mentioned it's been yanked from the wall. So investigators
start questioning everyone around the shothouse, starting with whoever they
(28:43):
can find. First. They're hoping to talk to Butch because
he's the one who accepted the VCR, so he clearly
would have seen whoever sold it. Right, So in the
meantime they're trying to track these people down, not exactly
jumping to talk to the police because there's drugs involved,
there's illegal alcohol involved. So in the meantime, an anonymous
(29:05):
police call comes in and this female caller says that
on the night of the murder, she saw a man
named Cool Breeze in an alley not far from the
crime scene. His hand was bleeding and he had a
white shirt with a logo on it. His pants were black,
and he wiped the blood on his shirt. When she
(29:28):
asked him about it, this Cool Breeze guy, he said,
I got into a fight over drugs and then I
slammed a door on my hand. He asked her for
a ride home, which she did not provide. And one
important note here is this call actually came in twice.
This female called. Once she got spooked, she hung up,
(29:50):
and then she called back. So she is clearly scared
of something, because they say, hey, what's your name? Would
you be willing to testify? Would you be willing to
give us a statement? He hangs up, So she's scared
of something, but what she wants to tell them is
also important enough for her to call back and say it. Luckily,
they are able to track down this caller. Her name
(30:13):
was Angela Acklin. They bring her in, get her statement
and she picks Cool Breeze out of a lineup. His
real name is Anthony Ballantine, and Angela Acklin did know
Cool Breeze or Anthony Valentine. This isn't someone she was
identifying from pictures, only she actively recognized and named him.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Then they find the man named Smith Willie Reese Ravon,
which is Roadrunner Smith and Roadrunner said that Anthony Balentine
sold the VCR to Butch. So now we have two
people confirming that Ballentine sold the VCR to Butch. Valentine
was also known as Lindsay said his street name was
(30:59):
Cool Breeze, but sometimes they just referred to him as Breeze.
And in fact, Willy Reese says that Cool Breeze was
there a few times that night, so not just once.
And at one point he was trying to convince Butch
to sell him on credit. You know, he wanted the
drugs and he said, oh, man, I'm going to pay
you back, pay you back. But Butch was not about credit.
(31:23):
You had to pay for the product when you got it.
He never operated on credit.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Collateral was okay.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Yeah, that happened sometimes, especially with like VCRs, which again
nineteen nineties, they were super expensive. But he was not
about to take someone's.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Word for it. Roadrunner Willy Reese recalls, this is a quote.
He was walking off the porch. Then there was four steps,
and he told Butch, I will be back, man, I'll
be back. And he did come back from court testimony.
Here's what Roadrunner recalls, I'll read the question and Jen
will be Roadrunner, so I will be the attorneys. He
(32:04):
had a bag with him, Yes, sir, what was he wearing?
To me? It was like a white sweatshirt. All right.
Did you observe whether or not he was bleeding.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
He had blood on his hands, a little bit on
his shirt, and he was sweating really hard.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
So finally they do find Butch because all these other
guys are being questioned, they are delivering the message. Butch
is like, look, i'm gonna go down there. I'm gonna
talk to him and I'm gonna clear this up. So
they bring him in and they questioned him for a
while and he signs a statement saying the man that
brought him this VCR in exchange for crack was indeed
(32:40):
Anthony Coolebreeze Ballentine, and Butch also knew Breeze. Now in
his own words. He said that Breeze was not a
preferred customer, but he would see him about once a
week at least, And he goes on to detail how
Breese was acting. He tried to get Butch to give
him crack on credit. He came back with the VS
(33:00):
under his arm. And this is several pages worth of
statement here, and it ended with him saying, finally, hell,
here we are. I'm telling you like it went down.
I hate it for Breeze, but I didn't make him
do what he did. He's a man. He did what
he did if he did it.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Now, there are also some reports of people seeing him
in a car in and around that area, one person
seeing him cross the street with blood on his shirt,
people seeing him cut on his hand. Needless to say,
Breeze is arrested just days after the crime. At his job,
Brees was brought down and questioned. And we're going to
(33:38):
summarize the police report for you. And now keep in
mind it's not recorded. It wasn't recorded. It's just a
summary from the officer which he wrote on the paper.
It does go on to say that they made a
specific note about how he would never once ask who
he was arrested for murdering and he seemed pretty unc
(34:00):
concerned with the whole thing. He only stated that they
should not have done it while he was at work
because it was really embarrassing. He laughed several times about
the arrest. Officers told him he was being arrested for
Miss Tucker's murder, showed him the VCR and said that
they knew what he had sold it for. He responded that,
(34:21):
of course you've got the wrong guy. He has no
idea about it, nor had he had ever done drugs
in his life. They said he was seen at the
shothouse and he said, no, I've never done crack. I've
never left my house that a whole night. But they said,
but people saw you there. They saw you, and he says, well,
(34:42):
I did leave my house once, but it was only
to walk across the street to a friend. Again, the
police question him and they said, look, people saw you
at Butcher's crackhouse. He says, I don't even know Butch.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
So they say it again. They both they double down
on him. They say, Butch saw you there. Not only
did other people see you there, this guy that you
just said you don't know saw you there. And he goes, well,
Butch is a liar, and you can't believe someone like Butch. Well,
now they know he does know Butch. So they say,
are you sure you you never went there then, and
(35:19):
he says, well, I may have walked by for a beer.
I can't really remember. So then they say, well, there
are people who saw you in a car there that night,
but he keeps saying he was walking everywhere. I walked
to my friend's house, I walked to the shothouse. And
he says that that can't be true because my car
doesn't run. And they're like, okay, well, what's wrong with
(35:40):
your car? And he says, well, actually, my license is suspended.
That's why my car doesn't run. It doesn't run because
I don't run it. I can't run it. So they're like, okay,
something doesn't add up here. They go and check the
status of his license. It's not revoked, like he said.
So they come back and they're like, hey, we just
ran it. Your license isn't revoked. He says, well, it
(36:05):
was revoked due to an accident. It is reinstated now,
but now the car won't run because of that accident.
So this is all over the place. You can see
it's back and forth, it's changing. It's just a mess.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
The cops are having to call him in every single lie,
and he's coming back with another lie to make up
for the one prior to. He does finally admit that
he knows Butch, but that he's never actually talked to
him because he doesn't do crack. So they asked him
if he would take a drug test. Well, he agrees,
(36:39):
and it's positive. It is positive for drugs, and he says, okay, okay,
I've done it in the past, but it's been a
really long time. Specifically, it's been years. It's been years.
By the way, this is not how it works. It
would not be positive after years. Now, See you're getting
the point here. They caught him in a huge web
of life, so it's not looking good for him. And
(37:02):
this is only two and a half hours. This interview ends.
He's now in jail and he's officially charged with murder.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
So they also search us home and they find a
laundry basket. In this laundry basket, they find a white
sports jersey. Specifically, it's an Oakland Athletics, which is a
baseball team jersey. It has a blood stain on it
and a pair of blue work pants. There was also
a pocket knife. Now note blue pants could probably seem
(37:34):
like black pants in the middle of the night, because
remember we have that phone call from who we know
now is Angela Acklin who said he was wearing black pants.
And at this point they're like, we've got it, We've
got the clothes, we've got the man. It seems like Loudy,
May Tucker and Maymi Dutton are going to receive justice.
That is until November of nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Then in walks the man named Tyrone Elliott. He comes
forward stating that he saw a man leaving Miss Tucker's
house with the VCR wearing dark clothing. But you know what,
it wasnt Coolebreeze. He said it was a man named Rocky.
It's important to note that Tyrone Elliott worked with Valentine
Colebreez's dad. Tyrone spoke to a private investigator working on
(38:23):
Valentine's case who told him that there was a five
thousand dollar reward that was being offered. So think about
like this. The man who is wearing the clothing that
matched victim's statement he was seen, he had possession of
the VCR sold it for crack. He's in jail, and
(38:45):
yet they are still offering a five thousand dollar reward.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
So the reward technically came before that, and they hadn't
closed it out yet. So that's a very good question
because essentially, from what I under stand is you cannot
receive the reward until the case is closed gone to trial,
and they know they've got the right guy. So here
comes this tyrone Elliott and they're like, well, he's saying
(39:12):
he saw somebody too, we at least need to check.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
It out, which I agree, But he has connection to
the guy that's in jail, so you have to take
that with a grain of salt. There is a personal
connection there.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
But do they know that at this point. So they
bring everybody back in to get everything straight. They're like, look,
if we can confirm with these guys that this is
what happened. There's like five or six of them. They're
probably more right than this other guy. So Butch comes
back and they're like, we need your help. Here's what
we heard from this guy. He said it's a guy
(39:47):
named Rocky. Well, Butch is ready to sign another statement,
but this one is different. He says that the only
reason he signed the statement saying that Breeze sold the
VCR was because that's what the police wanted to hear
and it was not true. Now, later on in court
he elaborated on this, and he said they wouldn't take
(40:09):
no for an answer. I'm not a liar, but I
was telling the truth about the situation. I had no choice. Now,
this statement said in part the statement I gave you
previously is true as far as my business goes. All
of the other about Willy Reavees helping me out and
all of that. The part about Breeze buying from me
and using regular is also true. But he ain't the
(40:31):
one that brought the VCR to me. I told you
that after you all put the heat on me, Willy
had told what he had told, and that's why I
signed what I did. I knew you all note about
Breeze being over at my place, so I just figured
that's what everyone wanted to hear. He elaborates after this,
and he starts to insist that from the very minute
(40:52):
he walked in to be questioned, he told them it
was a guy named Rocky. Now, this is also what
Tyrone Elliot says, and he says, look, I told you
all this. I came in saying it was Rocky. I
said it over and over. But they had already talked
to Roadrunner. They had talked to a guy named Marsel,
which we'll get to him in a minute, and their
minds seemed to be made up all right.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Speaking of Marzelle, a tad later, a guy named marcelle
Ewing was also a part of Butcher's crew who was
arrested for a car theft and gave a statement. Now,
at this time he was seventeen. He had been working
for Butch for about a year. Marzelle implicates Rocky. Much
more on this is going to come on in a
(41:36):
future episode, and Butch actually wasn't the only one. Willie Reese,
which is Roadrunner, also signed a brand new statement too.
Now this statement reads, in part, the statement that I
gave you earlier about Breeze being the man that sold
and traded the VCR is not true. Y'all just scared me.
You already knew about Breeze that was there, and you
(41:58):
had a picture of them, and so I figured that's
what she wanted me to say. I really couldn't have
gone through with that. I just wanted out under y'all's
pressuring and questioning me at the time. It went on
to name who actually sold the VCR. The person who
now sold the VCR is Robin Rocky Myers.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
But why the change of heart? Why would people lie
then change their mind? What's going on here? So Butch
and Roadrunner explained it in their new statements. They said
they felt pressured. They said the police would not take
them at their word, and they elaborated that road Runner
was mad at Breeze. They had argued that night at
(42:43):
the shothouse over money that Breeze owed to Roadrunner. So
he's like, well, screw this guy Marzelle though, because remember
we still have this guy named Marzelle who came forward
when he was arrested for car theft and said it
was Rocky. We'll talk more about why he implicated Rocky
later in another episode. But Marzelle, they find out, was
(43:05):
friends with Rocky. He had known him ever since Rocky
moved to Decatur basically, so at this point they're like, well,
he knows Rocky, he's been with him face to face.
If he says this, there's gotta be something to it.
It counts for a lot.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
Now, keep in mind, there are still other witnesses that
named Colebreeze crossing the street with the bloody finger, et cetera.
So what the heck is going on here? Were they
intimidated by the police in the interrogation to name Colebreeze.
Were these people just looking for a way to cover
for Breeze and Rocky was their way out? Did Rocky
(43:44):
really sell the VCR? There are so many loose ends
we have barely scratched the surface. So we are actually
going to get more into this in the next episode.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
A few quick things. We decided to take this on
in full like this because we started researching it and
we were like, oh, this is interesting. Oh wait, there's
something here. Oh wait, this is really bad. Oh wait,
somebody has to do something. So we do plan to
get some sort of campaign together to write letters and
(44:21):
some other stuff. We're going to give more information on
that as we kind of iron out some of the
fine details. So just know that this is not just
a story that we're hoping that we can kind of
band together. We're very, very fortunate because for the first
time ever, we have reached out to people in this case.
We have had the pleasure of talking to Rocky's current lawyer,
(44:44):
the current investigator, and there are some other people that
we have on the schedule to talk to as well.
So we're very confident in what we're bringing you guys,
They have actually looked at it, they have helped with it. Tracy,
the listener who recommended this, has basic been our research assistant.
We talk to her all the time now and she's
given us links and helped us find stuff. And there's
(45:06):
just all these people involved because we really want to
try to get this out there and make a difference.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
And I will say this, the investigator, Sarah and the
attorney Casey. You guys are going to hear that later,
and you're going to hear the passion and the compassion
that they have for Rocky. Absolutely, it's moving. They have
been so wonderful and partnering with us and getting us
(45:35):
the documents that we need. We almost have his entire
case file.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
Which is something we're not really used to. We dig
as deep as we can with every case we do,
but resources are limited. You can't just get case files
on every single case without filing requests and based on
you know, our day jobs and our lives and everything.
That's just not the approach we took. But this one
(46:02):
just really kind of called to us.
Speaker 1 (46:05):
I guess coming up in the next couple of weekends,
Lindsay and I are actually going to drive to Decatur. Yep,
we are going to rewalk the scene. We're going to
record some of it for you guys, so you can
actually hear what we're doing. We've got a couple more
interviews coming up, and we have reached out to all
of the key players and we'll pretty give you a
(46:27):
little bit more heads up. We are now corresponding with
Rocky and he sent us a letter which is just
amazing and I'm not going to read. I'm not going
to read the whole letter because a lot of it
hit my heart and I don't want to share that
publicly what he wrote. But his first two sentences was,
(46:50):
I hope all is well with you and you're being
safe out there. It's really sad the state of the
world right now, but be encouraged. Things will get better.
Just endure. He is on death row. Yeah, the very
first thing he says is the world is crazy, but no,
(47:10):
it's going to get better. He's saying that to me,
who I am able to go to Starbucks and get
a Grande white chocolate mocha and he is having to
eat breakfast at four am or he does not eat
again until ten.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
So full confession here. And you know this, But the
day we received his letter, I was having a crap
day at work, really crappy day. I was in a
foul mood. I was mad. And Jen sent that to
me and I read the first two three sentences and
(47:42):
there is this man who is on death row we
believe is wrongfully convicted, and he's being positive and he's
telling us to just endure the world. And I was like,
holy crap, what am I doing? What is my problem?
Speaker 3 (47:55):
You know?
Speaker 2 (47:56):
So it's I don't know. This has just become very
close to our hearts, very important. There is so much
more to come. I am very confident at this point.
Spoiler alert for you, Jen, I don't think it's going
to be five episodes. I am currently on episode three
on the outline, and there's still a lot more to go,
(48:18):
especially once we factor in interviews. But there's so much
to talk about here. Just to kind of set the scene,
every single thing that could have gone wrong in a
case happened in this case. It's going to highlight problems
cracks in the justice system in Alabama, just in humanity.
(48:39):
It's going to highlight it every single step of the way.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
If you listen to no other episode, listen to the
chapter on the trial. Lindsay said, we were writing a
letter campaign. We are working with the ACLU and we
will be working with his lawyer and the investigator. If
you feel so held to write a letter yourself, you
(49:02):
don't have to. It's not a call to action. If
you feel the need to help, we are going to
provide you with our po box. Our goal is to
collect them and then present them to Governor Kivy.
Speaker 2 (49:18):
That's up to you.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
We're not saying please write letters on our behalf. If
you feel so inclined, we will give you the tools.
We'll give you the resources. We will actually have verbiage
posted on our Facebook pages. If you need it, ask us,
we'll email it to you. Just know that if you
need help drafting something, we will have it already drafted
(49:41):
if you want that.
Speaker 2 (49:42):
But then again, if you know, listen to this all
the way through and get the details that you feel
passionate about. Jen and I have already sent letters to
the governor and kind of put it in our own words,
and you know.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
And so I was talking to my mom about this case,
which I never talked to her about my podcast. Just
don't because you know, conversations she's just about grandkids and
life events that are happening. But for the first time,
I was like, Mom, you've got to hear this episode.
You've got to research this case. And then she goes, well, Jennifer,
just write the Supreme Court. I'm like what she goes, Yeah,
(50:21):
there's nine of them.
Speaker 2 (50:22):
Now just write them. Like, I don't know if they
can do anything on the state level or not. We'll
have to look into that.
Speaker 1 (50:29):
No, but they can kick a hornet's nest.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
That's true.
Speaker 3 (50:34):
That's true.
Speaker 2 (50:35):
Well we did. We got caught off guard. We were like,
oh cool a case recommendation. Oh look it's an Alabama
Oh this is interesting. Holy crap. Here we are a
month later and we are only halfway through it on
our ends.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
Oh on a side note, there was there's three Patreon
requests four episodes for the Alabama case. We will get
to those.
Speaker 2 (50:57):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
Rocky himself gave me a suggestion, a recommendation. Yes, he did,
so just let you guys know. But all that to say,
we're in this. It's gonna be an interesting journey. There's
so so, so much more to come.
Speaker 2 (51:13):
We need and want you guys to hang with us,
but we're gonna go ahead and wrap it up for tonight.
Before we go, though, we have a few people that
we want to think.
Speaker 1 (51:22):
Every month we do a live Patreon feed, and we
are so thankful we have new patreons that could join us.
Those patreons are Monica, Nicole, Tracy, Lisa, and Colin. We
really appreciate the support you know. Right now, guys, we
are going to use all of that to buy stamps,
(51:43):
to buy ink, to buy paper for these letters. That
money will not go to waste.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
Absolutely, So with that we will stand adjourned. We will
be back next week. We're going to dive into the
court case. We're gonna diet statements, forensics, all that, and
you're gonna want to buckle up because it's about to
get crazy.
Speaker 1 (52:07):
But until then, Felicia is going to go put on
one mask, maybe two, for a few more weeks and
then maybe our state will be lifting this mass requirement.
We don't know. Until then, stay safe for you and yours.
Do what's best. We're out the door.
Speaker 2 (52:23):
Bye bye.
Speaker 3 (52:27):
Welcome back to Nature Versus Narcissism.
Speaker 4 (52:29):
A true crime podcast where we delve into the life
and crimes of some of the most egregious criminals the
world has ever seen. And Season five is here.
Speaker 3 (52:38):
As you know, each season we have a different theme
to discuss some prolific as well as lesser known criminals.
Speaker 4 (52:43):
And season five is all about family, blood and water.
Speaker 3 (52:48):
You always hear about blood being thicker than water. Family
is everything, right.
Speaker 4 (52:52):
I mean, stick with your family and that's all the
support you need.
Speaker 3 (52:55):
Right. Sometimes yes, but sometimes no.
Speaker 4 (53:00):
There are times when family kills with family, while other
times family kills family.
Speaker 3 (53:05):
Originally we wanted season five to be sibling rivalry, to
share cases where siblings kill one another.
Speaker 4 (53:11):
But the more digging we did, the more we learned
of an equally intriguing phenomenon, which is how often siblings
kill with their siblings.
Speaker 3 (53:20):
So that's what Season five will showcase, siblings killing siblings
and siblings killing with siblings.
Speaker 4 (53:27):
So buckle up and enjoy the ride, because for the
next eight episodes you'll learn just how tight knit family
can be, and.
Speaker 3 (53:34):
Perhaps how easily that brink and break, So until next time,
stay inside, stay alive, and don't call the cops.
Speaker 2 (53:42):
Bye.
Hey everyone, It's Jen and this is Lindsay and this
is corpustilic I. Welcome to our latest series. This is
actually going to be about one person right now. It's
going to be about five chapters or five episodes long,
but it's worth.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
It potentially more. And I'm sure you guys have heard
by now that our next series was or is Alabama Crimes,
and we are going to start off in a way
that we didn't anticipate. So little backstory here. We had
a listener named Tracy reach out to us and she
(01:00):
recommended a case, which happens a lot. We gather them,
we look through them, but with the Alabama series coming up,
this one was in Alabama and so we were like, well,
let's look at it. And we're like, oh, this is
really interesting, and it has snowballed and turned into a
huge not only story, but an actual project, which we
(01:22):
will talk about at the end of this episode. But
this is going to kick off the Alabama series, but
it is a series of its own. It's called Road
to Redemption and it is about a man in Alabama
on death row.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
So let's get rolling. Road to Redemption. Chapter one, Death Row.
Our story begins at Holman Correction Facility at Moore, Alabama.
This is Escumpia County in the most southern part of
the state. It's about eighty two miles up from Gulf Shores.
Holman is currently home to three hundred and seven inmates.
(02:00):
It is also the primary facility for death row inmates,
having one hundred and seventy death row sales, and this
is the only one that carries out executions. In twenty sixteen,
Holman Prison was said to be the most violent prison
in the country. There were stabbings happening regularly according to inmates,
(02:22):
and it earned the nickname of Slaughterhouse. And now, luckily,
after an investigation some new oversight, things do seem to
have improved a bit. Just over a year ago. In
January of twenty twenty, there was heavy deterioration discovered in
parts of the building, which caused a lot of the
prisoners to be sent to other facilities, but those on
(02:45):
death row had to stay. One of these prisoners, Prisoner
Z five sixty three, is a black man named Robin
Dion Myers. We know him as Rocky. Rocky was convicted
of capital murder in nineteen ninety three and sentenced to
death by lethal injection, meaning he's been there for pretty
(03:08):
much thirty years. Rocky says life on death Row is lonely.
He misses his family. He's got four kids, eleven grandkids,
and now he even has one great grandchild.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
He wakes up early every day. Breakfast is at four am,
lunch is at ten, dinner is at four pm. That's
crazy eating times and there's just not much to do.
He does have a TV, but to pass the time
and keep himself busy, he is what they call a
hall runner, so he will bring things to other people
(03:42):
in his unit. He'll bring him food, books, whatever they
might need. Hey, Rocky, can you go down and grab
me something from the library or whatever. And he loves
to go to church. They do do a church service there,
and he loves to sing, which helps pass the time.
But when somebody in there is scheduled to be executed,
things take an even more somber tone than they already were.
(04:04):
Everyone is really quiet, they keep to themselves. The tone
completely changes, which is scary, but it's even more scary
for Rocky, who has run out of appeals and is
awaiting an execution date. The scariest part, there's a really
good chance that Robin Rocky Myers doesn't even belong there,
(04:25):
and there's even a stronger chance that he is innocent.
So we are going to get into a little bit
of information about Rocky. Who he is. Robin Beyond Myers
or Rocky was born on July sixteenth, nineteen sixty one,
in New Jersey to John and Lorraine Myers. He was
the fourth of ten children, so there was John, Jeffrey, Christine,
(04:48):
Robin which is Rocky, Russell, Krystal, Karen, Kim, Derek, and Daniel.
His sister Christel died of a brain aneurysm at age eleven,
His brother Kim also died of an aneurysm at age
twenty five, and his eldest brother died at age forty
five of cancer.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
John, being the eldest, was born when Lorraine, their mom,
was just fifteen years old. By the age of thirty,
she had given birth to all ten kids. Now. John
and Lorraine divorced when Rocky was just eight. Rocky and
some of fhis siblings described their father, John as an alcoholic.
(05:30):
He was often out of work and they had to
rely on welfare, living off of grits. Powdered eggs and
powdered milk. They had it rough. I mean, you have
this full house of kids, and poor Lorraine. I mean
she was doing the best she can with what she had.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
So Jeffrey, who is the second child, he says that
their father was really more of another child. He would
play with them and stuff like that, but he never
really raised them except for when they needed to be disciplined,
which was often done using a belt. Jeffrey also recalls
that when he turned eighteen, John, their father, took him
(06:11):
to a bar and got him drunk. They got drunk together,
and even Rocky recalls drinking with his father from a
really early age, perhaps as early as fourteen, maybe fifteen
years old. And from early on, Rocky was always quote
unquote different. He struggled in ways others did not. And
(06:31):
again according to John, the older brother, he said, when
we were growing up, I didn't want Rocky to hang
around with me and my friends because he was slower
than we were.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Now, Rocky remembers being picked on for being poor and
his words, not smart. Rocky struggled in school. He repeated
the third grade and apparently failed all of the classes
the second time around. Again, now he was placed in
special educational classes. After this, they pushed him through to
(07:02):
the sixth grade just so he can keep up socially
with his peers now when he was there, he also
repeated the sixth grade and the seventh grade. He continues
to struggle with memory and paying attention, so his mind
is working differently than all of his peers around him.
(07:24):
You know, he's struggling daily with this.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
By the time he was in high school, he had
to go to a school that specializes in students with
quote unquote intellectual disabilities, and he dropped out after ninth grade.
After this, he attended a vocational school, but he was
removed due to behavior, and he recalls getting into a
lot of fights because he was being picked on. Not
(07:49):
only did he begin to drink at an early age,
but he started using drugs. He started using marijuana, crack, cocaine, queludes, codine, and.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
He also had a difficulty with his bladder control at night,
and this lasted until early adulthood. At nineteen, he met
and married Debbie Hood, who was just seventeen and reportedly
his only romantic relationship. They welcomed their first son, Leandrew,
not long after. They eventually went on to have four children.
(08:25):
Rocky worked, but he had to take awful lot of
time for health reasons. He had asthma and severe egzema.
It was so severe that outdoor allergens would cause his
skin to completely crack or flake off when something rubbed
up against him, just like clothing. Now, he would bleed
and this would be very painful, and he was under
(08:47):
a doctor's care for this, but it didn't seem to help.
He would actually have to wear long sleeves in the
heat of the summer to avoid further irritation and infection.
Now remember this, this is a key point here. As
an adult, his drug use had turned really problematic. They
were in a very heavily drug ridden area. His wife's
(09:10):
family lived in Alabama. So after some criminal charges for theft,
they decided, hey, look let's relocate. Let's be near family,
Let's try to start over, be where we can get help.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
With the kids and just try to do better. So
this is when the family ended up in Decatur, Alabama,
in approximately nineteen ninety. Now Decatur is in the very
very tip top of North Alabama in Morgan County. It's
located on the Tennessee River. It's about seventy five miles
from Birmingham, which is where we are. And unfortunately, what
(09:45):
was meant to be a move to better himself turned
out to be probably the worst thing that could have
happened to him.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
So we're going to cut to Friday, October fourth, nineteen
ninety one, in Decatur, Alabama. It's in a little bit
of a down neighborhood, to the point where the locals
call it Cracktown. A sixty eight year old woman named
Ludy May Tucker had her cousin, Mammy Dutton, visiting her home. Now,
(10:13):
Mammy was out of town, so when she had come,
she had driven there in her own car, and she
was going to spend the night with her cousin. The
two women had already gone to sleep that evening, about
eleven o'clock at night. Miss Dutton remembers looking at the
clock just before she goes to sleep. Now, Miss Tucker
was a widow and her husband had passed away several
(10:36):
years earlier, so it was around midnight, so technically it's
October fifth, nineteen ninety one. Her doorbell rang, Ludy May
went to the door. She saw a man on her porch.
He stated that he had been in an accident in
a fight, and he was injured. He really needed to
use the phone to call his family, and he's saying,
(10:56):
I'm bleeding to death.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
So Maymi Dutton got out of bed and she peered
through the window outside and saw the two talking. Now
keep in mind she's woken up by this doorbell. She's
in her cousin's home. Ludy was talking to the man
through the window or the door right there at the front.
So she's like, she's got it. So she turns and
she goes back to bed, and she hears Ludy May
(11:20):
offering to dial the phone number and make the phone
call for this man who's saying, I've been in a fight,
I'm entered, I'm dying. Then many heard the man come inside.
She says that he was jabbering, just talking really fast,
didn't stop, and that his voice was very shaky. At
this point, she heard Ludy May say something really odd.
(11:42):
She said that her husband was in the other room.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Then before she knew it, she heard Ludy May yelling,
and shortly after this, the man ran in a mammy's
room and stabbed her in her side. Now she's terrified
She stayed in her room for just another minute, but
when she thought it was safe, she finally came out.
This is when she saw Ludy May. Ludy is very injured,
(12:07):
laying on the couch with the phone in her hand,
and she was downing nine to one one. And this
is a phone call that came in at twelve nineteen.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Important note. When Miss Dutton is stabbed in the side.
The man then runs out of the house. He leaves
the door open, he's gone, and then she walks out
and sees Miss Tucker injured. So Ludy May was not
able to say much on this nine to one one
call because she's in a lot of pain and she's
having trouble breathing, but she did manage to tell them
that someone had broken into the house. Luckily, there was
(12:42):
an officer in the vicinity. He had been out on
a suspected drug activity call in that very area. He
was just a few blocks away. He had done his patrolling,
didn't see much, and he was about to be on
his way out when he got this call. So he
heads over to Miss Tucker's house. He's there in no
more than two minutes. That's how close by he is
dispatch logs actually confirmed this call came in. He gets there,
(13:06):
he reports in two minutes, it was very very fast.
He sees Miss Tucker. He says, she's obviously very injured,
and he his name is Jim Tilly. He called for
an ambulance and backup. Now based on what she says,
he also put out a BOLO, which is a be
on the lookout for a short and stocky black mail
(13:27):
with a light possibly white shirt with blood on it. Again,
that is what Miss Tucker told him, and also what
she told the nine one one operator when she called.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Their very first priority is making sure the victims are okay.
Ludy May kept saying how much pain she was in,
but she did manage to tell them about her attacker.
In Jim Tilly's testimony, now this came directly from court documents,
it reads, I was trying to calm her down at
this point, and she told me it was a black mail,
(14:00):
a dark black male. And I asked her, I said,
can you tell me anything about him? And she said
that he was short, stalky, And I asked miss Tucker
about the clothing. She gasped and squeezed my hand again,
and she said he was wearing possibly a plaid shirt
with a white T shirt with blood on it. Now,
after saying that she went unconscious, she is struggling to breathe.
(14:25):
She's in a lot of pain. She gave the policeman,
mister Tilly, lots of information. Plaid shirt, white shirt, blood
on it. So think about as much information as she gave.
That's a lot of words when you're stabbed and you're bleeding.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
So on the phone with the nine one one operator,
as we said, she had also mentioned a white shirt
or T shirt, she wasn't sure which, and it had
blood on it. So the ambulance arrived. They carried miss
Tucker to the hospital. Unfortunately, she died of her injuries. Specifically,
one of the four stab wounds that she sustained was
(15:08):
the fatal cut. So three injuries were located on the
front of her body, with the fatal wound being in
the left chest area, and it punctured both her lung
and her heart. It was right in that kind of
in between space where it got both. It's about six
inches below the top of her left shoulder and the
(15:28):
wound was one inch long and gapped to a sixteenth
of an inch wide. So it's not a massive wound.
When you think of stabbing, you know, you tend to
think of horror movies, butcher knife, but it wasn't necessarily
like that. Maymi Dutton did survive her injuries. They could
tell once they got there that hers weren't quite as
(15:51):
bad as Miss Tucker's. So they were focusing on Miss Tucker.
Miss Dutton was recalling what happened, and she was taken
to the hospital and she was really least two days later.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
We are going to get to the investigation right after
this break I delected bills. Let's just cut right to
the chase. You see where we're going with this. This
is the crime that Rocky is on death row for.
We will talk more about how it unfolded later, but
right now, off the bat, here are some key points
(16:22):
we need to acknowledge based just on the murder of
Loudy Maytucker and the attack of Mammy Dutton that was
just discussed. Now we haven't mentioned this yet, but at
the time Rocky, his wife and children lived across the
street on a converted duplex, and the duplex only had
(16:43):
power on one side. So think about it like this,
It's like a one story stocky building with two front doors.
Now that's what's going to be a duplex. It is
a four lane highway in between the two houses, but
they are across the street from each other. So this duplex,
(17:04):
which is two houses that are attached. They had taken
out that middle wall, so technically it was designed as
a duplex, but they it was opened up to them.
But that's why there was only power on one side
because there hadn't been anybody on that other side before
they did that.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
So this may not really seem like a big deal.
But let's think about this a little more because we
already know that right off the bat that this is Rocky.
Rocky's in prison for this. So a few questions that
we want to address right off the bat. The man
who attacked these victims stated that he was in a
(17:40):
car crash and a fight. He needed to use the
phone to call his family. He's bleeding. Why would Rocky
need to do this if he lived right across the street,
and I mean directly across the street. Also, Ludy May
and Rocky knew each other. Rocky had been to Ludy
May's house on at least two occasions that he remembered
(18:02):
specifically to borrow ice from her. Rocky's family did not
have a refrigerator, so it really wasn't unusual for them
to need ice for cool drinks. He says that his
kid's treat was kool aid, and when they would make
kool aid for a special treat, they wanted ice in it,
so they would go over and get it it. It
wasn't all the time. It was just kind of a
(18:23):
little fun thing for them.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
And think about like that, it was their treat to
have kool aid, and it was a treat for them
to have ice in their kool aid, right, And so
Miss Tucker always waved to him when they were outside.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
They were neighbors. They did what neighbors do. Now that's
not to say that they were super close. They didn't
have cookouts together or anything, but they knew each other.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
And I want to interject this, if you were to
watch youtubes on this case, there is one that I
haven't seen anything to back this up. That Rocky did
go over there and mow her grass from time to time.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
That is up for debates. Some say that happens, some
say it didn't. Because of his skinned condition. Keeping that
in mind, a few other things. Why would Miss Tucker
tell her attacker that her husband was in the other room.
Miss Tucker was not married, she was widowed, and Rocky
knew this that again, they had talked. So why then
would Miss Tucker not have opened the door for Rocky
(19:23):
seeing him injured and him saying he needs help. But
the even bigger question is Miss Tucker's injured, Her lung
is punctured, she's gasping for air. And as Jen said,
she spent all this time detailing this man, short and stocky,
white shirt had blood on it. Why didn't she just
say Rocky? She saw this man, she described him? She
(19:47):
would it not have been easier to simply say Rocky
than to struggle and be gasping to say all of
these other details or.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Better, yet, why did she not point to across the street?
Speaker 2 (20:00):
She wouldn't have had to said a word.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
It would have been much easier for her to point
and say he or Rocky and point to across the
street there was if it was Rocky, there was no
need for her to go into this very lengthy and
painful description of this man.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
So, with that said, how did this happen? What's the backstory?
We know Rocky's there, we know that he's in prison.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
What happened, So let's get down to the suspect list.
Let's get into the investigation of the Decatur Police Department.
As soon as Miss Tucker was taken by ambulance, Mammy
Dutton was stable, she was okay, and the police began
to secure the scene. After they examined Miss Tucker's house,
(20:50):
there wasn't much evidence at all, but two things did
stick out. There was footprints outside. Now this is from
Officer Tilley, who was first to arrive on the scene.
He said, we were trying to see if there was
any physical evidence, like a knife or anything that might
have been thrown into the bushes. Without disturbing anything, we
(21:12):
tried to look around the house to see if we
could find anything. Officer Rogers pointed out on the east
side of the house, along the side where there was
two bedroom windows, there were some crushed down type of
shrubbery and footprints. There is a lot of dew on
the ground, so they were pretty distinguishable. It appeared from
(21:33):
what we could tell that somebody had been standing in
a couple of areas around the house there. From there
we went towards the alley, and I didn't go any
further than that. He saw footprints. It was dewey, So
we have to make the assumption that they were there
after the dew fell, but before the murder. That would
(21:57):
give you a good timeline of when they were put there,
so that would be around the time of the murder.
The TV in the living room was slightly pulled out.
There were some chords laying down around it. These chords
had been pulled, specifically pulled as like the ends were missing,
and they were located where a VCR might have been,
(22:20):
which Mammy Dutton confirmed. This gave them their first insight
to a possible motive of robbery. So the murderer touched
the cables, He touched the television to take the VCR,
which was a hot commodity in the nineteen nineties, and
(22:41):
removed it from the house.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
So then they decide to dust for prints. But of
course you can't go through and dust every single thing
in the house. That would take forever. So they went
based on Miss Dutton and Emma's Tucker's story. So they
did the phone because they know that the guy tried
to make a phone call. They did the front door,
the glass door that the VCR would have been behind
(23:05):
things like that. But of course prints are only good
if you have someone to match it to. So immediately
police start going door to door talking to neighbors. Did
you see anything? Did you see anyone? And one of
these neighbors was Purcell Yarboro. Now they did not talk
to him until the next day, but they did start
(23:26):
immediately and they continued and here is what Purcell Yarbro said.
They came to my house on a Saturday, and that
Saturday night, I told my wife I was going to
ride around down on Sixth and see if I heard
anything about the lady getting killed. That's when I went
on Sixth to my sister's house. I went in and
they invited me to sit down, and I sat down. Anyway,
(23:50):
we were sitting there talking and the old lady's name
came up. It was so awful the way somebody did
the old lady. And as we was talking, she said,
did anything get taken? She said it must have been
some drugs. She asked if anything was stolen out of
the house, and I told her I heard there was
a VCR that got stolen. Finally, she said, you said
(24:11):
a VCR was stolen, and I said, yes, that's what
I heard. She said, come here, I need to talk
to you. As we got into the little hallway, my
sister told me again, you said a VCR got stolen.
And I said yeah, And they said it was an RCA.
Remember he has talked to the police. That's how he
knows this. She pushed the door open and said, look
(24:32):
right there, and there was a VCR up under the table.
I got on my knees and I pulled the VCR
out and I looked at it. She said, is that it?
And I said, I don't know, but this is an
RCA VCR. And she said, get it out of here.
Get it out of here. I said, where did it
come from? She said, I don't know where it came from,
but get it out of here. I said, who brought
(24:53):
it here? She said, I don't know who brought it here,
but get it out of here. I don't want to
get involved.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
All right.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
So Yarboro is the neighbor the morning of the murder,
because it happened at midnight, a little bit after midnight.
Please go over to the neighbor's house. They talk, they,
you know, they explain what happened. Yarbro then goes to
his sister's house. His sister has the stolen VCR. Presumably
(25:19):
at this point she doesn't want it in our house,
so parcel people call him Percy. His sister was Annie
Sue Crintinton. Now Miss Crittinton had a house not far
from Rocky and Miss Tucker. So that was a very
close neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
It's about three blocks away. Just to put it in.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Perspective, it was known as a shothouse. Now, this house
sells liquor beer, it's not authorized to do so, and
her friends would come by and you know, she would
sell them beer whatever. It was also what you would
call a crack house. A man named Leon Madden now
his street name is Butch. Butch sold crack cocaine out
(26:00):
of the home as well. Butch was dating Annie Crittinton's daughter,
So the neighbor yard brough Percy. His sister Annie had
the stolen VCR. Her daughter was dating Butch, the drug
dealer out of her house called a shoththouse. Butch paid
(26:22):
all the bills, He provided her with furniture, he gave food,
He paid all of the utility bills. It was a
good working relationship with them, so she let him run
his little operation, or I wouldn't say little. I mean
it was a good sized drug operation out of that house.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
So he would operate on the front screened and porch.
It was really glassed in. Shouldn't say screened, it was
glass But he had a few friends who helped kind
of serve as lookouts for police officers, any untrustworthy customers,
anybody that may be up to no good. One of
these is Willie Reese Rae. His nickname is Roadrunner, and
(27:03):
Willie Reese Roadrunner served as his go between. If Butch
was busy, then Roadrunner would handle the transaction for him,
so he's really his right hand man. He got his
nickname Roadrunner because he could apparently outrun any police officer
even in the car. He was the getaway man. Now,
Roadrunner himself said he couldn't sell no crack unless he
(27:27):
went through me. I had to verify they wasn't a
snitch or something, and then sometimes he would put the
drugs in my hand through me and do the transactions.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Now, on October fourth, the day of the murder, or
the evening before the murder, Butch and his crew set
up their operation at that house around eleven AM. But
that night there had been a collateral transaction. Butch had
accepted the RCA VCR from a customer in exchange for
(27:59):
some crack, hence the statement from Percy that we just heard.
And that's when he went in and the his sister
was like, get it out of here. I don't want
anything to do with this. Percy, already, having talked to
the police, took the VCR and took it to the police.
But Howie took it to police is a story with
(28:20):
and of itself.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
So they knew that it was miss Tucker's because there
was an old repair receipt that had the serial number
on it, which matched, so this VCR had been repaired
before they compared it to the actual machine. Plus we
had mentioned it's been yanked from the wall. So investigators
start questioning everyone around the shothouse, starting with whoever they
(28:43):
can find. First. They're hoping to talk to Butch because
he's the one who accepted the VCR, so he clearly
would have seen whoever sold it. Right, So in the
meantime they're trying to track these people down, not exactly
jumping to talk to the police because there's drugs involved,
there's illegal alcohol involved. So in the meantime, an anonymous
(29:05):
police call comes in and this female caller says that
on the night of the murder, she saw a man
named Cool Breeze in an alley not far from the
crime scene. His hand was bleeding and he had a
white shirt with a logo on it. His pants were black,
and he wiped the blood on his shirt. When she
(29:28):
asked him about it, this Cool Breeze guy, he said,
I got into a fight over drugs and then I
slammed a door on my hand. He asked her for
a ride home, which she did not provide. And one
important note here is this call actually came in twice.
This female called. Once she got spooked, she hung up,
(29:50):
and then she called back. So she is clearly scared
of something, because they say, hey, what's your name? Would
you be willing to testify? Would you be willing to
give us a statement? He hangs up, So she's scared
of something, but what she wants to tell them is
also important enough for her to call back and say it. Luckily,
they are able to track down this caller. Her name
(30:13):
was Angela Acklin. They bring her in, get her statement
and she picks Cool Breeze out of a lineup. His
real name is Anthony Ballantine, and Angela Acklin did know
Cool Breeze or Anthony Valentine. This isn't someone she was
identifying from pictures, only she actively recognized and named him.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Then they find the man named Smith Willie Reese Ravon,
which is Roadrunner Smith and Roadrunner said that Anthony Balentine
sold the VCR to Butch. So now we have two
people confirming that Ballentine sold the VCR to Butch. Valentine
was also known as Lindsay said his street name was
(30:59):
Cool Breeze, but sometimes they just referred to him as Breeze.
And in fact, Willy Reese says that Cool Breeze was
there a few times that night, so not just once.
And at one point he was trying to convince Butch
to sell him on credit. You know, he wanted the
drugs and he said, oh, man, I'm going to pay
you back, pay you back. But Butch was not about credit.
(31:23):
You had to pay for the product when you got it.
He never operated on credit.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Collateral was okay.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Yeah, that happened sometimes, especially with like VCRs, which again
nineteen nineties, they were super expensive. But he was not
about to take someone's.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Word for it. Roadrunner Willy Reese recalls, this is a quote.
He was walking off the porch. Then there was four steps,
and he told Butch, I will be back, man, I'll
be back. And he did come back from court testimony.
Here's what Roadrunner recalls, I'll read the question and Jen
will be Roadrunner, so I will be the attorneys. He
(32:04):
had a bag with him, Yes, sir, what was he wearing?
To me? It was like a white sweatshirt. All right.
Did you observe whether or not he was bleeding.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
He had blood on his hands, a little bit on
his shirt, and he was sweating really hard.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
So finally they do find Butch because all these other
guys are being questioned, they are delivering the message. Butch
is like, look, i'm gonna go down there. I'm gonna
talk to him and I'm gonna clear this up. So
they bring him in and they questioned him for a
while and he signs a statement saying the man that
brought him this VCR in exchange for crack was indeed
(32:40):
Anthony Coolebreeze Ballentine, and Butch also knew Breeze. Now in
his own words. He said that Breeze was not a
preferred customer, but he would see him about once a
week at least, And he goes on to detail how
Breese was acting. He tried to get Butch to give
him crack on credit. He came back with the VS
(33:00):
under his arm. And this is several pages worth of
statement here, and it ended with him saying, finally, hell,
here we are. I'm telling you like it went down.
I hate it for Breeze, but I didn't make him
do what he did. He's a man. He did what
he did if he did it.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Now, there are also some reports of people seeing him
in a car in and around that area, one person
seeing him cross the street with blood on his shirt,
people seeing him cut on his hand. Needless to say,
Breeze is arrested just days after the crime. At his job,
Brees was brought down and questioned. And we're going to
(33:38):
summarize the police report for you. And now keep in
mind it's not recorded. It wasn't recorded. It's just a
summary from the officer which he wrote on the paper.
It does go on to say that they made a
specific note about how he would never once ask who
he was arrested for murdering and he seemed pretty unc
(34:00):
concerned with the whole thing. He only stated that they
should not have done it while he was at work
because it was really embarrassing. He laughed several times about
the arrest. Officers told him he was being arrested for
Miss Tucker's murder, showed him the VCR and said that
they knew what he had sold it for. He responded that,
(34:21):
of course you've got the wrong guy. He has no
idea about it, nor had he had ever done drugs
in his life. They said he was seen at the
shothouse and he said, no, I've never done crack. I've
never left my house that a whole night. But they said,
but people saw you there. They saw you, and he says, well,
(34:42):
I did leave my house once, but it was only
to walk across the street to a friend. Again, the
police question him and they said, look, people saw you
at Butcher's crackhouse. He says, I don't even know Butch.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
So they say it again. They both they double down
on him. They say, Butch saw you there. Not only
did other people see you there, this guy that you
just said you don't know saw you there. And he goes, well,
Butch is a liar, and you can't believe someone like Butch. Well,
now they know he does know Butch. So they say,
are you sure you you never went there then, and
(35:19):
he says, well, I may have walked by for a beer.
I can't really remember. So then they say, well, there
are people who saw you in a car there that night,
but he keeps saying he was walking everywhere. I walked
to my friend's house, I walked to the shothouse. And
he says that that can't be true because my car
doesn't run. And they're like, okay, well, what's wrong with
(35:40):
your car? And he says, well, actually, my license is suspended.
That's why my car doesn't run. It doesn't run because
I don't run it. I can't run it. So they're like, okay,
something doesn't add up here. They go and check the
status of his license. It's not revoked, like he said.
So they come back and they're like, hey, we just
ran it. Your license isn't revoked. He says, well, it
(36:05):
was revoked due to an accident. It is reinstated now,
but now the car won't run because of that accident.
So this is all over the place. You can see
it's back and forth, it's changing. It's just a mess.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
The cops are having to call him in every single lie,
and he's coming back with another lie to make up
for the one prior to. He does finally admit that
he knows Butch, but that he's never actually talked to
him because he doesn't do crack. So they asked him
if he would take a drug test. Well, he agrees,
(36:39):
and it's positive. It is positive for drugs, and he says, okay, okay,
I've done it in the past, but it's been a
really long time. Specifically, it's been years. It's been years.
By the way, this is not how it works. It
would not be positive after years. Now, See you're getting
the point here. They caught him in a huge web
of life, so it's not looking good for him. And
(37:02):
this is only two and a half hours. This interview ends.
He's now in jail and he's officially charged with murder.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
So they also search us home and they find a
laundry basket. In this laundry basket, they find a white
sports jersey. Specifically, it's an Oakland Athletics, which is a
baseball team jersey. It has a blood stain on it
and a pair of blue work pants. There was also
a pocket knife. Now note blue pants could probably seem
(37:34):
like black pants in the middle of the night, because
remember we have that phone call from who we know
now is Angela Acklin who said he was wearing black pants.
And at this point they're like, we've got it, We've
got the clothes, we've got the man. It seems like Loudy,
May Tucker and Maymi Dutton are going to receive justice.
That is until November of nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Then in walks the man named Tyrone Elliott. He comes
forward stating that he saw a man leaving Miss Tucker's
house with the VCR wearing dark clothing. But you know what,
it wasnt Coolebreeze. He said it was a man named Rocky.
It's important to note that Tyrone Elliott worked with Valentine
Colebreez's dad. Tyrone spoke to a private investigator working on
(38:23):
Valentine's case who told him that there was a five
thousand dollar reward that was being offered. So think about
like this. The man who is wearing the clothing that
matched victim's statement he was seen, he had possession of
the VCR sold it for crack. He's in jail, and
(38:45):
yet they are still offering a five thousand dollar reward.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
So the reward technically came before that, and they hadn't
closed it out yet. So that's a very good question
because essentially, from what I under stand is you cannot
receive the reward until the case is closed gone to trial,
and they know they've got the right guy. So here
comes this tyrone Elliott and they're like, well, he's saying
(39:12):
he saw somebody too, we at least need to check.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
It out, which I agree, But he has connection to
the guy that's in jail, so you have to take
that with a grain of salt. There is a personal
connection there.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
But do they know that at this point. So they
bring everybody back in to get everything straight. They're like, look,
if we can confirm with these guys that this is
what happened. There's like five or six of them. They're
probably more right than this other guy. So Butch comes
back and they're like, we need your help. Here's what
we heard from this guy. He said it's a guy
(39:47):
named Rocky. Well, Butch is ready to sign another statement,
but this one is different. He says that the only
reason he signed the statement saying that Breeze sold the
VCR was because that's what the police wanted to hear
and it was not true. Now, later on in court
he elaborated on this, and he said they wouldn't take
(40:09):
no for an answer. I'm not a liar, but I
was telling the truth about the situation. I had no choice. Now,
this statement said in part the statement I gave you
previously is true as far as my business goes. All
of the other about Willy Reavees helping me out and
all of that. The part about Breeze buying from me
and using regular is also true. But he ain't the
(40:31):
one that brought the VCR to me. I told you
that after you all put the heat on me, Willy
had told what he had told, and that's why I
signed what I did. I knew you all note about
Breeze being over at my place, so I just figured
that's what everyone wanted to hear. He elaborates after this,
and he starts to insist that from the very minute
(40:52):
he walked in to be questioned, he told them it
was a guy named Rocky. Now, this is also what
Tyrone Elliot says, and he says, look, I told you
all this. I came in saying it was Rocky. I
said it over and over. But they had already talked
to Roadrunner. They had talked to a guy named Marsel,
which we'll get to him in a minute, and their
minds seemed to be made up all right.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Speaking of Marzelle, a tad later, a guy named marcelle
Ewing was also a part of Butcher's crew who was
arrested for a car theft and gave a statement. Now,
at this time he was seventeen. He had been working
for Butch for about a year. Marzelle implicates Rocky. Much
more on this is going to come on in a
(41:36):
future episode, and Butch actually wasn't the only one. Willie Reese,
which is Roadrunner, also signed a brand new statement too.
Now this statement reads, in part, the statement that I
gave you earlier about Breeze being the man that sold
and traded the VCR is not true. Y'all just scared me.
You already knew about Breeze that was there, and you
(41:58):
had a picture of them, and so I figured that's
what she wanted me to say. I really couldn't have
gone through with that. I just wanted out under y'all's
pressuring and questioning me at the time. It went on
to name who actually sold the VCR. The person who
now sold the VCR is Robin Rocky Myers.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
But why the change of heart? Why would people lie
then change their mind? What's going on here? So Butch
and Roadrunner explained it in their new statements. They said
they felt pressured. They said the police would not take
them at their word, and they elaborated that road Runner
was mad at Breeze. They had argued that night at
(42:43):
the shothouse over money that Breeze owed to Roadrunner. So
he's like, well, screw this guy Marzelle though, because remember
we still have this guy named Marzelle who came forward
when he was arrested for car theft and said it
was Rocky. We'll talk more about why he implicated Rocky
later in another episode. But Marzelle, they find out, was
(43:05):
friends with Rocky. He had known him ever since Rocky
moved to Decatur basically, so at this point they're like, well,
he knows Rocky, he's been with him face to face.
If he says this, there's gotta be something to it.
It counts for a lot.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
Now, keep in mind, there are still other witnesses that
named Colebreeze crossing the street with the bloody finger, et cetera.
So what the heck is going on here? Were they
intimidated by the police in the interrogation to name Colebreeze.
Were these people just looking for a way to cover
for Breeze and Rocky was their way out? Did Rocky
(43:44):
really sell the VCR? There are so many loose ends
we have barely scratched the surface. So we are actually
going to get more into this in the next episode.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
A few quick things. We decided to take this on
in full like this because we started researching it and
we were like, oh, this is interesting. Oh wait, there's
something here. Oh wait, this is really bad. Oh wait,
somebody has to do something. So we do plan to
get some sort of campaign together to write letters and
(44:21):
some other stuff. We're going to give more information on
that as we kind of iron out some of the
fine details. So just know that this is not just
a story that we're hoping that we can kind of
band together. We're very, very fortunate because for the first
time ever, we have reached out to people in this case.
We have had the pleasure of talking to Rocky's current lawyer,
(44:44):
the current investigator, and there are some other people that
we have on the schedule to talk to as well.
So we're very confident in what we're bringing you guys,
They have actually looked at it, they have helped with it. Tracy,
the listener who recommended this, has basic been our research assistant.
We talk to her all the time now and she's
given us links and helped us find stuff. And there's
(45:06):
just all these people involved because we really want to
try to get this out there and make a difference.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
And I will say this, the investigator, Sarah and the
attorney Casey. You guys are going to hear that later,
and you're going to hear the passion and the compassion
that they have for Rocky. Absolutely, it's moving. They have
been so wonderful and partnering with us and getting us
(45:35):
the documents that we need. We almost have his entire
case file.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
Which is something we're not really used to. We dig
as deep as we can with every case we do,
but resources are limited. You can't just get case files
on every single case without filing requests and based on
you know, our day jobs and our lives and everything.
That's just not the approach we took. But this one
(46:02):
just really kind of called to us.
Speaker 1 (46:05):
I guess coming up in the next couple of weekends,
Lindsay and I are actually going to drive to Decatur. Yep,
we are going to rewalk the scene. We're going to
record some of it for you guys, so you can
actually hear what we're doing. We've got a couple more
interviews coming up, and we have reached out to all
of the key players and we'll pretty give you a
(46:27):
little bit more heads up. We are now corresponding with
Rocky and he sent us a letter which is just
amazing and I'm not going to read. I'm not going
to read the whole letter because a lot of it
hit my heart and I don't want to share that
publicly what he wrote. But his first two sentences was,
(46:50):
I hope all is well with you and you're being
safe out there. It's really sad the state of the
world right now, but be encouraged. Things will get better.
Just endure. He is on death row. Yeah, the very
first thing he says is the world is crazy, but no,
(47:10):
it's going to get better. He's saying that to me,
who I am able to go to Starbucks and get
a Grande white chocolate mocha and he is having to
eat breakfast at four am or he does not eat
again until ten.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
So full confession here. And you know this, But the
day we received his letter, I was having a crap
day at work, really crappy day. I was in a
foul mood. I was mad. And Jen sent that to
me and I read the first two three sentences and
(47:42):
there is this man who is on death row we
believe is wrongfully convicted, and he's being positive and he's
telling us to just endure the world. And I was like,
holy crap, what am I doing? What is my problem?
Speaker 3 (47:55):
You know?
Speaker 2 (47:56):
So it's I don't know. This has just become very
close to our hearts, very important. There is so much
more to come. I am very confident at this point.
Spoiler alert for you, Jen, I don't think it's going
to be five episodes. I am currently on episode three
on the outline, and there's still a lot more to go,
(48:18):
especially once we factor in interviews. But there's so much
to talk about here. Just to kind of set the scene,
every single thing that could have gone wrong in a
case happened in this case. It's going to highlight problems
cracks in the justice system in Alabama, just in humanity.
(48:39):
It's going to highlight it every single step of the way.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
If you listen to no other episode, listen to the
chapter on the trial. Lindsay said, we were writing a
letter campaign. We are working with the ACLU and we
will be working with his lawyer and the investigator. If
you feel so held to write a letter yourself, you
(49:02):
don't have to. It's not a call to action. If
you feel the need to help, we are going to
provide you with our po box. Our goal is to
collect them and then present them to Governor Kivy.
Speaker 2 (49:18):
That's up to you.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
We're not saying please write letters on our behalf. If
you feel so inclined, we will give you the tools.
We'll give you the resources. We will actually have verbiage
posted on our Facebook pages. If you need it, ask us,
we'll email it to you. Just know that if you
need help drafting something, we will have it already drafted
(49:41):
if you want that.
Speaker 2 (49:42):
But then again, if you know, listen to this all
the way through and get the details that you feel
passionate about. Jen and I have already sent letters to
the governor and kind of put it in our own words,
and you know.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
And so I was talking to my mom about this case,
which I never talked to her about my podcast. Just
don't because you know, conversations she's just about grandkids and
life events that are happening. But for the first time,
I was like, Mom, you've got to hear this episode.
You've got to research this case. And then she goes, well, Jennifer,
just write the Supreme Court. I'm like what she goes, Yeah,
(50:21):
there's nine of them.
Speaker 2 (50:22):
Now just write them. Like, I don't know if they
can do anything on the state level or not. We'll
have to look into that.
Speaker 1 (50:29):
No, but they can kick a hornet's nest.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
That's true.
Speaker 3 (50:34):
That's true.
Speaker 2 (50:35):
Well we did. We got caught off guard. We were like,
oh cool a case recommendation. Oh look it's an Alabama
Oh this is interesting. Holy crap. Here we are a
month later and we are only halfway through it on
our ends.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
Oh on a side note, there was there's three Patreon
requests four episodes for the Alabama case. We will get
to those.
Speaker 2 (50:57):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
Rocky himself gave me a suggestion, a recommendation. Yes, he did,
so just let you guys know. But all that to say,
we're in this. It's gonna be an interesting journey. There's
so so, so much more to come.
Speaker 2 (51:13):
We need and want you guys to hang with us,
but we're gonna go ahead and wrap it up for tonight.
Before we go, though, we have a few people that
we want to think.
Speaker 1 (51:22):
Every month we do a live Patreon feed, and we
are so thankful we have new patreons that could join us.
Those patreons are Monica, Nicole, Tracy, Lisa, and Colin. We
really appreciate the support you know. Right now, guys, we
are going to use all of that to buy stamps,
(51:43):
to buy ink, to buy paper for these letters. That
money will not go to waste.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
Absolutely, So with that we will stand adjourned. We will
be back next week. We're going to dive into the
court case. We're gonna diet statements, forensics, all that, and
you're gonna want to buckle up because it's about to
get crazy.
Speaker 1 (52:07):
But until then, Felicia is going to go put on
one mask, maybe two, for a few more weeks and
then maybe our state will be lifting this mass requirement.
We don't know. Until then, stay safe for you and yours.
Do what's best. We're out the door.
Speaker 2 (52:23):
Bye bye.
Speaker 3 (52:27):
Welcome back to Nature Versus Narcissism.
Speaker 4 (52:29):
A true crime podcast where we delve into the life
and crimes of some of the most egregious criminals the
world has ever seen. And Season five is here.
Speaker 3 (52:38):
As you know, each season we have a different theme
to discuss some prolific as well as lesser known criminals.
Speaker 4 (52:43):
And season five is all about family, blood and water.
Speaker 3 (52:48):
You always hear about blood being thicker than water. Family
is everything, right.
Speaker 4 (52:52):
I mean, stick with your family and that's all the
support you need.
Speaker 3 (52:55):
Right. Sometimes yes, but sometimes no.
Speaker 4 (53:00):
There are times when family kills with family, while other
times family kills family.
Speaker 3 (53:05):
Originally we wanted season five to be sibling rivalry, to
share cases where siblings kill one another.
Speaker 4 (53:11):
But the more digging we did, the more we learned
of an equally intriguing phenomenon, which is how often siblings
kill with their siblings.
Speaker 3 (53:20):
So that's what Season five will showcase, siblings killing siblings
and siblings killing with siblings.
Speaker 4 (53:27):
So buckle up and enjoy the ride, because for the
next eight episodes you'll learn just how tight knit family
can be, and.
Speaker 3 (53:34):
Perhaps how easily that brink and break, So until next time,
stay inside, stay alive, and don't call the cops.
Speaker 2 (53:42):
Bye.
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