Even Hunt, who never believed the jailhouse informants, remembers speaking at trial with a bailiff at the courthousewhom he did consider a credible witnesswho told him, I know you dont think Spence did it, but he told me he did. Other lawyers also still wonder about the incriminating things Spence said over the years. She uses a cane to walk, and because of failing eyesight, she cant drive. Informants they interviewed offered myriad allegations about Feazell and Simons, and the two cops found themselves having to consider the sources.

For Feazell in particular, the victory could not have come at a better time. After closing arguments, in which Feazell likened the store owner to Judas Iscariot for his dirty hands in the killings, Deeb was found guilty in less than two hours. There was no evidence of a boat, and there were no tire tracks around the Speegleville gate, which closed at eleven.

She was shy and craved love and attention, Thompson told me.

8 The Lake Waco Murders.

I argued with his lawyer, she told me. Critics, including Horton, the retired Waco police lieutenant, claimed Simons gave snitches special favors to coax their testimonies and fed them information. The family gathered in the living roomJills parents, her brother and sister, another aunt, Thompson, and Thompsons husband and two daughtersas Dannen laid out his case for Spences possible innocence and Harpers involvement. Dannen had a sample of the carpet sent to the Tarrant County medical examiner; the lab, Dannen told me, was unable to exclude its gold fibers from the gold carpet fibers found on Kenneths body. Dannen also managed to locate the two men he believed were with Harper that night; they were in prison for other crimes. He introduced himself to her after the trial and they were married less than a year later. He was executed in Huntsville in 1997. There was good news, though: the lab that had performed an autopsy on Carroll had saved some of his blood.

After three hours of testing, the operator delivered his opinion: no deception. They had been looking for a place to fish when theyd spotted the body near the foot of a tree, lying beneath some low-hanging branches. Schonemann found himself without a job.

If the DNA test excludes Tony, Spence, and Gilbert, said Reaves, and it includes somebody else who was originally considered a suspect, that would be enough for an actual innocence writ or a clemency petition to the governoror both., But even those results wouldnt necessarily mean a get-out-of-jail-free card. Man, 2 Teen-age Girls Found Stabbed to Death at Lake Park: Police Say Bodies Bound, Girls Nude, read the front page of the Waco Tribune-Herald. Franks' body was found propped against a tree, with sunglasses over his eyes. She smiled and said, That would turn anybodys head around, and let me go with a warning.. Then, six days before Spences trial, they were dealt an even bigger blow: in an unexpected about-face, Tony pleaded guilty in exchange for a life sentence.

At 41, Dannen had built a formidable writing career, publishing a best-selling nonfiction book about the music business, Hit Men, before joining Vanity Fair and then the New Yorker as a staff writer. He sent McLemore to visit Schonemann, who handed over trial transcripts and case briefs for them to read. Sitting calmly nearby, Simons would tell him to let it all out. He interviewed relatives of the victims, such as Jills aunt Jan Thompson, and won over numerous Waco residents. Hed robbed a Fort Worth convenience store with a hatchet at 21 and served fifteen months. Honestly, I have not killed anyone. So someone would keep coming back to talk to you? Yes. He told me he didnt have any idea it would get so out of hand., Though Schonemann never saw this side of Spence, some of the inmates other lawyers did. ), The truck being destroyedthat was huge. Lying is not going to help you. When Tony saw Simons, he was blunt. Blum was there to help with research but also I think to act as a bodyguard., The two began to make daily trips to Waco, Blum at the wheel of the rental car because Dannen hated to drive. That compounded the mystery for Waco police, who were under considerable and increasing pressure to solve the case as the weeks and months went by. Truman Simons, who was with the Waco police department and had been one of the first respondents on the crime scene, also assisted the investigation in an informal capacity. Jill Montgomery, Raylene Rice and Kenneth Franks were tortured and stabbed multiple times at Speegleville Park at Lake Waco on July 13, 1982. Is this what had driven Franks out on a desperate search for his son that night, well before the murders were reported? He happened to notice a young juror in the case, a first-grade teacher named Karen who had recently graduated from Baylor University. He sent gifts to Russ Hunt, including an elaborate stagecoach made out of popsicle sticks and a clock made of matchsticks. As Pardo worked through the documents, he grew incredulous. Every now and then I think I should not have gotten this personally involved, but I felt like Tony needed to have someone on his side, she told me.

Yet some things just didnt add up, such as the prosecutions mistaken-identity theory; for one thing, Jill had large breasts, while Gayle Kelley was flat-chested, a discrepancy that Thompson felt sure a man like Spence would have noticed. However, those charged were dismissed after officials determined there was insufficient evidence at that time to make the charges stick. Feazell also included Chief Scott, who had publicly accused him of refusing to prosecute valid criminal cases. Simons told him early in their relationship, a few weeks after arriving at the jail. At the time of Whites murder, in 1986, DNA testing was not yet an established practice; the first conviction in the United States based on DNA evidence did not occur until 1988, and it was only in the mid- to late nineties that genetic testing became widely used in courts. I dont have the authority to do anything.). I believe Raoul Schonemann made a legal case that should have prevented Spence from being executed. It was only in December 2012 that theyd finally reclaimed the material; now it was at Arkansas Genomics, a lab in Little Rock that does touch DNA testing. He was going to find the one person who would give him the answer. He stopped Kelley mid-sentence.

In the following months, a complex criminal case unfolded, one that sparked local and national

Feazell didnt have to rely as heavily on the murder-for-hire theory; thanks to Simons, he had new ammunition. Tony Melendez, the last living Lake Waco murders defendant, died on Friday, January 13, 2017, at 57 at a prison hospice at the Michael Unit in Tennessee Colony, not far from Palestine. I heard Truman Simons say to Gilbert Melendez, Gilbert, were going to turn the recorder off now and get our story straight, and then well turn the recorder back on, he said in an affidavit. More important, Tony, in the expectation of getting help with parole, had agreed to give a more detailed statement and testify against Spence. After serving seven years, Williams was released in June 1993 and eventually received $31,250 for his time behind bars. I do know that just about every one of the witnesses who said that Calvin or Joe murdered Mrs. White would say anything to benefit themselves. (In a deposition Simons gave in 1989, he said, I only talked to Angela Miles one time, and she said that she couldnt write a statement out, and as she quoted it to me, I wrote it out. He insisted that he let her examine it. I believe that.

Simons said, What have yall heard about Waco? Blum later recalled in an affidavit. They kept us locked up. Until we made an arrest in that case, nobody knew who did it and they were afraid their child might be next.. (Spence was found guilty in late March and given ninety years; he was allowed to remain at the jail because he was helping with Simonss investigation.) But I didnt kill anyone. One of those was Chief Larry Scott. Kenneth told his father that they were going to Koehne Park, which was directly across the lake from Speegleville Park. (When Deebs lawyer asked him if the store owner was still a suspect, Simons retorted, You bet your ass hes still a suspect.) He called the sheriffs office and asked if there were any openings as a jailer. Reaves had agreed to represent Melendez pro bono too. I followed the direction that has been pointed out to me.. He was living an unsettled life, moving from an Austin apartment to a friends guest room in Salado to a girlfriends house in Waco. Vic Feazell was the McLennan County district attorney at the time, and his office gave Simons free rein to try to solve the triple homicide. Still, what follows is not a legal document; some of the people involved in the case are dead, others dont remember much, and even othersincluding the patrol sergeant who investigated the case and the DA who prosecuted itrefused to be interviewed. But at the end of the hearing, she walked up to the DA and gave him a message. Also considered was the confession Deeb had made to the two young women about his involvement in the killings and the life insurance policy he had taken out for his employee. He died from cancer six years after being released. After studying the autopsy photos himself, he determined that several of the wounds on the girls bodies did, in fact, look as if theyd been made by human teeth.

July 28, 2022. Early in the investigation, the prosecutor had written a note on his stationery: G[ilbert] M[elendez] told [fellow inmate] Robert [Garcia] he did not know anything but was going to make up a story to get off of [the] sexual abuse case., Why would Gilbert confess to such a horrible crime if he didnt commit it? Fred would call now and then and say, Im almost ready, remembered Thompson. After campaigning on the promise to shake up a complacent DAs office, hed been elected in an upset, and he now set about hiring more prosecutors, tightening protocols for defense attorneys, and increasing security measures. Within days, Butler got remarkable news: Campbell was certain that Spences teeth had made the marks. Had Frueh called Franks because he had seen Kenneth in trouble? Not surprisingly, Feazell didnt see it that way, telling reporters that the DNA results changed nothing. The fight for Spences life was back on.

The TRC lawyers faced an enormous task: to persuade the courts that their clients, whom they knew in most cases to be guilty, had received an unfair trial or death sentence and thus deserved a new trial or at least a life sentence. Heart pounding, Simons peered around the immediate surroundings. The case languished for nearly a year until the work of Simons and others had produced enough evidence again to arrest Deeb and three alleged accomplices in the plot. I was afraid to die, he told Texas Monthly in 2014, insisting he was painting houses in Bryan, as several alibi witnesses had told police he was. Lets go right now, he said. Besides Horton, Waco attorneys Russ Hunt and Walter M. Reaves Jr. also think the four defendants were wrongfully convicted. He had one last gesture to make. Why should he confess? The lawyer told me, Youre going to kill your boy.), I was afraid to die, said Melendez. Schonemann had never felt so low. You did it, we know you did ityoure going to die for it.

Deebs trial, which began on February 25, lasted twelve days and featured forty witnesses, many of whom had testified against Spence, including one jailhouse informant. Her personal opinion, she continued, was that this Frueh guy had something to do with it. Frueh was no longer alivehe had been stabbed to death by a teenager in 1991but Dannen discovered that he had lived less than a block away from Franks. Horton remains convinced to this day that innocent men were charged in the Lake Waco case. Luxurious River Cruise on the Brazos River in Waco.

Its the only time Ive ever seen the police investigate a DA, said Walter Reaves, who, after working as Spences lawyer, had gone on to represent Williams. To uncover any facts that might help save their clientsthat prosecutors had concealed evidence, for example, or that an inmate had suffered an abusive childhood or was mentally disabledthe attorneys had to reinvestigate every case, searching through files and trial transcripts, visiting with inmates, and traveling far and wide to find old and new witnesses. Standing over her, he felt overwhelmed by the evil that had befallen her. A second wrote that the marks were more likely than not made by insects or artifacts. If the purpose of the exercise, he continued, was to match these marks to a set of teeth, it borders on the unbelievable. A third thought that some contusions on one body were probable human bite marks, but he couldnt match any of the molds to them. People say you prosecuted the wrong guys in the case. His efforts were unsuccessful, but they brought attention to the case following Spences execution. An HBO documentary released two months later, The Execution Machine: Texas Death Row, featured Spence in his final week. But first he needed to figure out if his evolving theory about the night had any credence. In 1982 a brutal triple homicide shook the city of Waco and soon became one of the most confounding criminal cases in Texas historyone that still haunts the many people who have tried to solve it. Bite marks on the victims were also presented as evidence of Spences involvement. He also played audio from Feazells tapes, including one in which Feazell spoke disparagingly about Simonss investigative methods. Lake Waco murders (1982, Waco TX) Johnny Gosch abduction (1982, West Des Moines IA) Rashell Ward murder (1983, Red Bluff CA) Roy Radin murder (1983, Gorman CA) Vicki Morgan murder (1983, Los Angeles CA) Beth Miller disappearance (1983, Idaho Springs CO) Gary Lauwers murder (1984, Northport NY) Eugene Martin I thought, How can you put someone on death row without evidence? They had hoped to introduce evidence showing that the crime could have been committed by two other menJames Bishop, a former Waco resident who had moved to California right after the murders and then been arrested for raping and attempting to kill two high school girls on a beach, and Ronnie Breiten, a man who had been seen in bloody clothes after a night fishing at the lake. Though hed ended up retracting all his statements, Gilbert now told Schonemann, he had agreed to testify against Spence at his second trial because it looked like it was just a hopeless cause. Spence had already been found guilty; what would a jury do to a two-time felon who was Mexican American?

I was afraid to die, he told. WebThe Vic Feazell show is a primary source podcast featuring practicing attorney and former McLennan County (Waco,TX) District Attorney Vic Feazell and co-host Jonathon Zemek. I cant say for certain he was innocent, but I know that he was wrongly executed. Muneer Mohammad Deeb, a local gas station owner, was known to have had a contentious relationship with Kenneth Franks. I could never have asked for the death penalty if I didnt sincerely believe they were guilty. He has already raised doubts about the DNA evidence, saying he believes the material has been tampered with. WebBefore the murders Wiley had been grounded over her relationship with an 18-year-old who testified that he would often sneak into the teens bedroom to spend the night with her. Other reports contained statements from people who claimed that the victims were heavy drug users; one witness said a friend of a friend had gone to the park that night to collect a $3,000 drug debt from Kenneth. Copyright 2022 KWTX.

The more they understood of the case, the more troubling they found it: the types of evidence used against their clientjailhouse testimony and bite markswere well-known in legal circles to be unreliable. Fear spread through town, and residents began locking their doors at night and pushing for park curfews. Theres not a day that goes by when I dont think about it. Salinas, one of the officers to first discover the teenagers bodies, still wrestles with his memories. Their mother also urged him not to. Skip Hollandsworth specializes in long-form narratives. Kelley worked at Deebs store and Simons learned Deeb had taken out a life insurance policy on her and made himself the beneficiary. Simons decided to share his findings with Wacos new district attorney, Vic Feazell.

Though he was not officially assigned to the investigation, he spent hours at the lake, devoting much of his free time to searching the woods and talking to people. When I asked Dannen why he hadnt tried to help free Melendez earlier by publishing everything he had, he said, It wouldnt have made any difference for Tonyabsolutely none.

At a quarter before six, Governor Bush, Spences last hope, also denied a reprieve. As Simons stood up, WPD detective Ramon Salinas showed him a photograph of an eighteen-year-old named Kenneth Franks, who had been reported missing earlier that day. Reaves, who had also represented Joe Sidney Williams, suggested that Dannen take a look at the Juanita White case. On the morning of April 3, Spence met with his loved ones, including June, one of his sons, and his brother. Price and Turks investigation went through May 1988, when she took their findings to the FBI and the U.S. attorney in Waco. Hed say, June, I didnt do this. Once a year, she would bring the couples two sons, Joel and Jason, for a four-hour, no-contact visit. The 1982 Lake Waco Murders refers to the deaths of three teenagers (two females, one male) near Lake Waco in Waco, Texas, in July 1982. When Reaves and Dannen explained that they had exhausted their funds, Wiley recommended they seek help from the Texas Center for Actual Innocence, at UTs School of Law. In June, Anthony Melendez pleaded guilty to the crimes and was sentenced to life imprisonment. All three victims had been repeatedly stabbed, and both of the women's throats had been slashed. At Reavess request, the DAs office arranged for four envelopes from Whites rape kit to be sent to the medical examiner; to Dannens horror, they were empty. Jills mother, Nancy, who was scheduled to be a witness, had forced herself to study the crime-scene photos as a way of bracing herself for the gruesome details shed hear in testimony. Now it was dinnertime, and Simons had been thinking about grabbing some food, maybe at the Whataburger over on Seventh. But that didnt bother me like this. The murders, another official said, were the most sadistic and cruel he had seen in his career. When Williams was nevertheless found guilty and given a life sentence, Price was so peeved that she stepped up her informal investigation. Williams put down his fork.

He was sent to prison.

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Simons said Anthony Melendez told him he also wanted to testify against Spence because he never told his mother he and Gilbert were involved in the killings. Spence, who had two new attorneysWalter Reaves, whod represented him on the aggravated sexual abuse case, and Bill Vancegrew increasingly agitated, eventually trying to fire his lawyers. (Simons would later say that it was Price who believed the wounds on Whites body were bite marks and that they agreed to get the mold after looking at autopsy photos together; Price insists that the mold already existed when she and Simons joined forces.). Deebs trial was moved to Johnson County, where he also received the death penalty. (Simons has always denied giving inmates conjugal visits. Yet there was one nagging question: How to explain the many people whod heard him say he was the murderer? And he didnt eat just anything. She made calls and introduced him to sources who might not otherwise have talked, such as a woman who claimed she had seen Harpers van next to the Pinto that night. Blum felt strongly that it wasnt safe for Dannen to continue his reporting on the lake murders, at least not in Waco, and advised him to stay in New York. The killers propped Franks body sitting up against a tree and took the time to put his sunglasses on his face as if he were mockingly posed there on display. There has never been anything said or written that has ever changed her opinion that her jury made the right decision, Deaconson said. Id interviewed mafiosi and hung with the triads in Hong Kong, he told me, but the first time in my career I felt Id put myself in harms way was being a Jewish boy from New York investigating Texas law enforcement.. The following summer, in August 1987, Williams went on trial. Im going to see my mom.. At Williamss trial, she had testified that she saw Williams and Washington in a club parking lot, sitting near Whites car. That night, the officers got a huge break when a panicked Kelley called Simons at one in the morning. As a police department, we were totally unprepared for the complexity of this case., Simons in particular seemed to be deeply affected by the brutal scene hed encountered. Months before, in the spring, the DA had drawn nationwide attention when he cast doubt on the murder claims of famed serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. The nonprofit didnt get many wins in its fight against the death penalty, but Spences case was looking promising. The next morning,citizens across Waco awoke to a terrifying headline. Dubbed the 'Lake Waco murders', three teenagers were found dead with numerous stab wounds, slashed throats, and evidence of sexual assault. [8] Spences case was badly damaged by Melendez confession, which played a key role in his eventual conviction in July 1984.

Texas law sets the bar very high for innocence claims, effectively requiring conclusive proof of innocence, said Raoul Schonemann, who is now the co-director of the Capital Punishment Clinic. (The medical examiner said she had not recognized the bite marks at the autopsy, but she was now certain that some of the victims wounds had a pattern that sug-gested teeth.) Opening it, he read that there were still no definitive leads. The surviving sons of David Spence, who was convicted and sentenced to death for two of the three homicides that made up the 1982 Lake Waco Murders, have filed a lawsuit against the State of Texas. WebShow Crime Shots, Ep Lake Waco Murders - 33 - Jun 19, 2021 But in a case of mistaken identity, they had attacked Jill, and Raylene and Kenneth had been caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. At the time, Leon Cox, Delores husband, said the only item missing from the home was the fireplace set containing a poker and Then, just when it seemed things couldnt get worse, in September 1995 the TRC found itself forced to shut its doors. One said the photos were of such poor quality that he refused to compare them against the molds.

Now 24, Spence had become more and more unpredictable and violent. He and his fellow officers soon spotted something else: a bent knee, rising above some weeds. Owen tracked down one informant, Jesse Ivy, who had testified that Spence had admitted to killing the teenagers; now Ivy told Owen that Spence had said nothing of the sort. If somethings not right, you do something about it. In September, worried that Feazell would subpoena him so he could be questioned about his work on the lake murders, Dannen packed up the Blazer with his keyboard, a kitten hed named Calvin, his clothes, and all his hard driveswhich held transcripts of the seven hundred interviews hed conductedand left the country, driving to San Miguel de Allende, where a friend had offered him a place to stay. Spence was the kind of criminal Simons knew well: rough, poor, and full of swagger. I was absolutely crushed, he told me.

Reaves, who successfully overturned the convictions of Calvin Washington and Joe Sidney Williams in the murder of Spences mother Juanita White, in Waco, said he also believes the Lake Waco defendants didnt do it. We were pulling out all the stops, Schonemann explained to me. More Home About Photos Videos About See all 167 people like this 185 people Over the years he had made a name for himself as an investigative reporter with a penchant for penetrating dark and complicated worlds, such as those of the Mafia and the gangs of Chinatown. Attorney Vic Feazell was recently interviewed by KWTX-TV News 10 for a special segment on the infamous 1982 Lake Waco murders. Someday, the woman wrote, well all know what really took place.. The acrimony was about to get even worse. His tenacity, in fact, was about to pay off in other ways. Dannen rented an expensive high-speed scanner and began uploading pages and pages of court transcripts, case briefs, and medical reports onto his computer. Courtesy Barbara Baker Waco Murder On April 7, 2006, Kari Baker was found dead in Evans had seen plenty of murder and mayhem in her career, but nothing this macabre. Owen, a Harvard law graduate from Georgia, moved to Texas to work for the nonprofit in 1989; he encouraged Schonemann, an NYU law grad whod grown up in Ohio and Indiana, to join him a couple of years later. For the first time in years, Thompson felt calm. I can tell you he shouldnt have been prosecuted for it., Far from Waco, in Louisiana, Spences ex-wife looks back on the past three decades with deep sadness. not only bragged repeatedly that he was responsible for the murders but that he had details [about] how the murders were committed. Seven jailhouse informants took the stand. Reporters wanted a cut-and-dried case, he remembered.

They also sought out Spences former attorney Walter Reaves, who was now representing another death row inmate with innocence claimsCameron Todd Willinghamand Raoul Schonemann, who was still doing work for the Capital Punishment Clinic in Austin and representing death row inmates. Simons went back to the inmate, even taking him to Koehne and Speegleville parks the next morning; over two days, Melendez gave three statements that included other discrepancies, such as different times for when he and Spence arrived at Koehne Park. These days theres increasing credibility given to the idea that innocent people do plead guilty; the National Registry of Exonerations recently found that nearly 1 in 5 of the 87 inmates who were exonerated in 2013 had pleaded guilty to charges against them, often because of the guarantee of a lesser sentence. Furthermore, in her view, the evidence that Simons had gathered was not very impressivethe blood on the sweatshirt, it turned out, was barely a drop, and the sneakers did not match the shoe print from the front door.

Franks had originally told a newspaper reporter that when his son didnt return home, he became anxious that Kenneth might be in trouble and went out looking for him at four-thirty in the morning. Talk about a commanding presence. Melendez had always denied any involvement in the lake murders, but now Simons, encouraged by the headway hed made with Spence, began to press the inmate. Perhaps Simonss informants knew what they were talking about. Washingtons trial took place that December; he was found guilty and given life. Right before the trial, Simons had written out a statement for her to sign; in it he offered various incriminating facts she knew nothing about. Truman Simons (far right) helping carry the body of the teenagers out from the brush in Speegleville Park on July 14, 1982.

This made for an awkward arrangement, since Simons and the WPD officers had been on cool terms after hed left the force. If Simons had a job at the jail, he could get close to Spence and use him to solve the lake murders.