Mind Over Murder (2022) s01e01 Episode Script

Hi, nice to meet you.
Hi.
Could you please start by saying your
name and your connection to Beatrice?
My name is Callan Williams.
I have lived here
most of my life.
I currently work
at the turkey hatchery
here in town.
My name is Carla Loemker.
I've lived here
since about 1976.
I was born in Beatrice.
I've lived here
most of my life.
Actually, I work just down
the block from the theater
at a salon here downtown.
It's your basic small town
in the Midwest of America.
It's one of those towns
that everybody's got
a friendly hand.
Beatrice is basically
the only place
I've ever really known
or wanted to live.
It's a nice enough town,
but there is definitely
a weird undercurrent.
They're crazy down there.
They're psychotic in a way
that Stephen King
would write about.
There's a lot
of weird history in Beatrice.
The pain
that we've gone through
is just not even describable,
and it's been going on
for 35 years.
For 20 years,
they've been called killers,
all wrongly convicted
of the 1985 rape and murder
of Helen Wilson in her tiny
downtown Beatrice apartment.
It's one
of the most dramatic cases
of exoneration
in U.S. history.
Six people wrongly convicted
of murder freed.
Some people still believe
all six of them were guilty.
I think there's still a lot
of doubts in this community
where those six people
were that night.
I haven't ran into anybody
that thinks they should have
been exonerated.
Some of them agreed
that they were guilty.
Once somebody
says they did something,
you're gonna believe
that they did.
How can someone
say they did something
if it never happened?
Why would I ever
say I did something
when I didn't do it?
JoAnn Taylor was one
of the people convicted.
She still says
she can recall vivid details
from the night of the murder.
Taylor describes suffocating
Wilson with a pillow.
I can actually feel the weight
of the pillow,
and that still scares me.
Because that's something
I can't get rid of.
Winslow said for years,
he was tormented
by what he had done.
Debra Shelden
still says today
all six took part
in the murder.
Well, now
a new documentary-style play
will bring the story
to the stage
in a theater just two blocks
from where the case started.
The script for the play
was put together
using trial transcripts,
public records,
and input
from the actors themselves.
They are turning
a crime case
into a theater show.
How do you feel about portraying
a living person
who might even still be in this community?
Hmm, I never had to play
anybody I know.
I even had a coworker,
you know, say, like,
"Oh, why would you want to,
you know, play, like,
a murderer
from your own community?"
And I was like,
"Yeah, like, people have
a lot of feelings around it."
Everybody knows somebody.
Everybody's connected
to something somewhere
and knows
some extra piece of information
that they think
changes the narrative.
I'm excited,
but at the same time,
I am nervous.
I'm not gonna lie,
like I said,
this is very embedded
into the community.
You drive by the building
all the time
living here in town,
and I think of Helen
every time I drive by there,
and so in my mind,
I've wondered,
"How did it all take place
the way that it's been
explained to us?"
Right before Grandma
was killed,
she'd come out to Scottsbluff
to visit.
It was 1985.
I was a 15-year-old.
She didn't feel well.
She had gotten sick
while she was here,
and she just wanted to go home,
and then, of course,
that evening
is when our nightmare started.
And then the next morning,
my mom got a call
from a relative
back in Beatrice.
All we were told was,
she had passed away.
We all just kind of assumed
that it was from the pneumonia
until we were driving
And my dad had the radio on,
and we were listening
to the radio.
Beatrice police
are investigating the murder
of a Beatrice woman.
The body of 68-year-old
Helen Wilson
was found in her apartment
in the 200 block
of North 6th Street.
If I recall correctly,
nobody said a word.
I remember trying to act tough
in front of my brothers,
and we had an afghan
in the back of our car
that my grandma
had made for my parents.
I just remember
hiding under it
so my brothers
couldn't see me crying.
What happened to your grandma?
Well, to be honest,
not everybody believes
the same story.
Her apartment was right
on one of the main streets
in Beatrice.
It's a brick building
that still haunts me
to this day.
It was very small.
It was pretty much
a living room
with a dining room off of that
and her bedroom
and her kitchen.
It's hard to talk about
because the pictures
that I have in my head
are of the crime scene now,
and I have
a hard time visualizing
what it was like
when I was there.
There is a girl I know
in Haiti
The evening in question,
my Aunt Katie
and my Uncle Darrell
spend the evening with her.
Their normal routine was
to have coffee with Grandma.
Even at 10:30 at night,
Grandma would still
be drinking her coffee,
and Katie was the same way.
And when
it's bleak and chilly
And life is flat
I think
of that Haitian dilly
But that night,
Grandma didn't feel good,
and she apologized to Katie
that she didn't make coffee,
I think I'm just ready
to go to bed."
And so Katie
cleaned her kitchen up
and then left to go home.
She needed to take a dose
of medicine at midnight.
Aunt Katie asked my cousin,
"Hey, call Grandma.
You know, wake her up."
And so he called
at roughly 11:45, 11:50.
She didn't answer.
The phone just rang
and rang and rang and rang.
Then Aunt Katie
decided she would try,
and she called,
and the phone rang twice,
and then it went dead.
But they just assumed
that everything was okay.
Maybe Grandma picked it up
and hung it up.
They didn't really know.
The next morning, my uncle
went to go check on Grandma.
He found her on the floor,
and then they called
the police.
All of a sudden,
my sergeant called,
and he said, "We need you
up here right away."
When I asked the dispatcher,
they said there was something
about a body,
so I grabbed
the photography equipment.
The door was open.
I just kind of walked
into apartment four.
No, it wasn't very big.
I mean, you know, you went
from a little bathroom, went right out
into a hallway
to a living room.
So I just looked
around the corner.
You know, I saw what appeared
to be a elderly lady
laying in the middle
of the living room
with her head to the west
and her feet back to the east.
It was pretty quick to tell
that the person in there
was deceased,
but I wanted to make sure that
there was nobody else in there.
Was there anybody else
in that bedroom
or in that kitchen?
I walked around
by the bedroom.
The bed was kind of
all ruffled up.
In the bathroom, there was
a washcloth in the sink.
The kitchen was messy.
You want to pay attention
to everything.
Did the perpetrator
leave anything behind
that will link it to them?
It was noted
that there was coffee made.
There was a purse
sitting on a chair.
And just down from the purse
was part of a $5 bill.
Just a portion was there.
Did somebody tear it in half
and part of it dropped down on the floor?
This picture here
shows a knife
found in that bedroom.
That knife matched the ones
that were in a drawer
in the kitchen.
This photo here
shows blood in the bedroom.
The same way with here.
Looked like there was a bunch
of blood up in this corner.
All the blankets
are thrown to one side.
There was a struggle,
definitely.
She was laying on her back.
Nightgown was pulled up.
The face was all wrapped,
and the hands were tied.
I can sit there
and tell you about this,
but it's not like seeing
that lady on the floor,
brutally murdered,
and just seeing the pain.
Totally different ball game.
The other officers
started arriving.
When I was there, watching
who came in, who came out,
two lieutenants came
from the police department.
A sergeant came,
the chief, the captain.
The sheriff came.
The county attorney came.
Richard Smith was attorney.
Richard Smith:
You've seen any blood around, Gary?
Richard Smith: Sam, why don't you call
and tell the funeral people to come out.
Richard Smith: Is she gagged?
Richard Smith: She got something else
in there, besides that, in her mouth?
Richard Smith: Can you tell?
So then at that point,
Lieutenant Fitzgerald
is gonna be in charge
of the investigation.
When you get a homicide,
you don't have
one thing to do.
You got
3,000 things to do,
and you got to do 'em
all at once,
and you're talking about,
"What do I need to remember?"
What kind of evidence
to look for.
We looked for pry marks
or forcible entry.
Since the chain on there
is not broken
would indicate
that the chain wasn't locked,
so it was either left off,
or it was taken off
when the door was opened
by somebody on the inside.
That would be the hallway
outside of her apartment.
Lights had been turned off
in the hallway.
There's a furnace room,
and one of the light switches
had been pulled,
which shut the hall lights off.
Soon as I walked
through the crime scene,
I started going apartment
to apartment, interviewing.
Nobody reported
any loud noises
or hearing any screams
or anything.
Well, then we got
to the autopsy.
The face was all wrapped,
and the pathologist
took the bandage
off of the face,
and the nose
was just pressed flat.
it was on so tight,
it was pressed flat,
and that's when
he made the statement that,
"At this time,
"I would presume that this
probably would have caused
suffocation and would've
caused the death."
On the right hand,
there was numerous cuts
on the hand
and on the top of the hand,
probably defensive cuts
from something
like a sharp object
like a knife.
They noticed that between
the first and second rib
and the fifth and six rib,
they were broke,
and then we were later notified
by the hospital
that they had found
very active semen in both
the vagina and the rectum,
which they said
would probably indicate
a young person.
I mean, the family
was obviously destroyed.
The one person
that brought
that family together
is now gone
and in such a horrific way.
If you talk to any
of my relatives,
they will tell you
she's the glue
that held us all together.
She was a kind woman.
She did everything
for everybody.
My grandmother
loved children.
From the start,
you knew she loved you
because you could
just feel it.
it radiated from her,
It's gone.
I just liked being with her.
When my first daughter
was born,
she came out to Scottsbluff
and spent two weeks with me.
You know, she just taught me
how to be a mother.
She traveled
all over the country.
She documented her whole life
on camera
and on cassette tapes.
I'm recording this poem
for my kids and their kids.
When our kids was born,
And first shown to us,
we took one look,
and oh, what a fuss!
We smiled and said,
'Oh, what a joy!'
And as I thought of the time
when I first looked at all my children -
the first time, and then -
happy was I reliving it all over again.
She had a lot of years left.
She was healthy.
I'm the same age now
as what she was
when she passed away.
We know
that she fought for her life.
She had battle wounds.
She had skin
underneath her nails.
She fought till she
couldn't fight anymore.
I can't imagine
what was going through her head
when she passed away,
how scared she would've had
to have been.
Nobody should have
to pass away that way.
Oh what I could give if I could erase,
each little wrinkle on your darling face,
put there from worry and sorrow and care.
Sometimes I think it was I
who put them there.
I don't know any way,
that I can ever repay,
pal of my cradle days.
After this happened
to my grandmother,
I knew I wanted to get ahold
of whoever did it,
and it wouldn't
have been pretty
if it happened,
and I've never felt
that way in my life,
and that's another thing
that really bothered me.
I never wanted to hurt anybody,
There's no telling
what I would've done
if I'd found the person.
There was so much anger in me.
The funeral
was incredibly tough
because we still
couldn't believe
they wouldn't let us
see Grandma
because she was so mutilated,
and that was so hard
to not be able to say goodbye.
The funeral was on the 9th.
Lieutenant Fitzgerald and I
sat there,
and we took pictures.
We got it so they had
to come out the east door.
We're sitting in a parking lot
right across the street,
nice big lens on the camera.
We could bring 'em up
very close.
Maybe if someone
would come out
and had their arm in a sling
or scratches on their faces
and people we didn't know,
we took pictures.
A lot of times,
subjects that commit crimes
would come to the funeral
to see what the reaction is
of the people
that knew the deceased
and the family and that.
Unfortunately,
nothing came of that.
We put a voice-activated
tape recorder
under some flowers
on the cemetery grave
in case somebody showed up
wanting to confess,
but that didn't
work out neither.
We only knew we had
a male involved in it.
This was before DNA,
so some of the things
you look at
is the blood samples
that show
what their blood type was.
The state lab determined
that blood samples
from the wall
proved not to be
Helen Wilson's blood type.
It had to come from a suspect.
The suspect
was a type B nonsecretor.
What does non-secretor mean?
Well, I don't know.
I'm not a serologist.
I just know that you have
secretor and a nonsecretor.
That's all I know.
Next up was every male
that we talked to,
we tried to get a blood type
to see if they were
type B nonsecretor.
Received information
from an informant
that a subject
that should be checked out
by the name of Tony Flowers
had been
in the state penitentiary
for burglary and rape,
but Mr. Flowers
is not a type B nonsecretor.
Kathy Bartak
stated that Randy Emery
liked older women.
He was eliminated.
Made contact with the operator
of the Beatrice Book Store.
Didn't reference
any individuals coming in
and buying books on bondage.
He advised
he could remember nobody
that fit the description.
You go from one person
to another
to another to another.
There was a lot of times
it felt like
Getting nowhere,
and a lot of times,
we were getting nowhere.
I would guess
I probably myself interviewed
40 to 50 people.
Now, there were other people
that did interviews too.
You feel like
it's an endless circle
because you just keep going
and going and going.
Six minutes after 10:00,
our temperature:
41 with partly sunny skies.
KWBE, I'm Doug Kennedy.
You know, when you live
in a town of 12,000, 12,500,
you don't see
a lot of violent crime.
You may go a year
or two or three
without seeing a death
that was a result
of a criminal act.
Anytime there is one,
it's a bit of a shock
to the community.
Just having a murder
is awful enough.
Not having it solved
is terrible.
Is there someone
that's going around
just killing people,
and how safe are any of us?
When a small town gets hit
with something like that,
everybody's scared, I think.
I remember we started
locking our doors
and next that the shotguns
were loaded at nights
kind of thing.
You know, when something
like that happens,
the rumor mill gets started,
and then all kinds
of information
is floating out there.
Some people had already
made up their mind
who had done it,
why they had done it.
If people had knowledge,
I mean, they asked for it.
If you know what went on,
if you know something,
you suspect something,
please come talk to us.
Don't just blab it out.
Come talk to us.
Let us work with it.
Let the investigators
do their job.
I would put
the Helen Wilson case
as the most significant case
that I worked on in my life.
Of course, at that time, I wasn't
on the police department,
nor was I a law officer.
I was just doing
my general work
around my farmstead.
7:05 on KWBE.
I had come into a house.
It was around lunchtime,
and I listened to the news.
Beatrice police
are investigating the murder
of a Beatrice woman.
The body of 68-year-old
Helen Wilson
was found in her apartment.
I kind of knew the family,
and, quite frankly,
it bothered me.
It made me
want to try to figure out
how I might be able
to do anything
that I could to help 'em.
Well before anything
about the Helen Wilson case,
I had a great tenure with
the Beatrice Police Department.
I started in '76,
when I was approximately 28.
And I left in late 1982.
I just got a little burned out
being a police officer.
He was very dedicated
in his work,
kind of like a pit bull
he got on something,
he stuck with it.
If he thought he was right,
God help you, 'cause nobody
else is gonna be able to.
If there's something out there
and he thinks he can solve it,
he's going after it.
We had
a dry-cleaning business,
and Burt Searcey
came into the cleaner's.
I think it was just me,
my dad, and my mom.
Burt Searcey came
and talked to my folks
and wanted to do
a private investigation.
They were still in shock,
so I offered to help them.
He asked if it was all right
to look into it.
Of course, anything to help
find who did this.
Obviously, we still
didn't have any answers.
We felt like
the Beatrice Police Department
had no clue what happened.
Being a small department,
we had no idea
what type of person
could've or would've
committed that type of crime.
The longer you work on it,
the more frustrated you get.
You go from one person
to another
to another to another,
and you don't appear
to be getting anywhere.
So it was frustrating.
Eventually, we reached out
to the FBI in Omaha
to see about getting
a profiler.
I got a phone call from
my special agent in charge
one day, and, you know,
he said, "Pete,
I need you to go
to Beatrice, Nebraska."
And I guess I said,
"I don't even know
where that is, John."
Part of my job
was a criminal profiler,
which is now called
criminal
investigative analysis.
What I need to do is to look
for different behavioral clues
and then tell you
what type of a person
that we may be looking for.
The weather that night
was frigid,
seven degrees below zero.
It's not the type of weather
where you want to be out
walking the dog
or just taking a stroll.
He had a specific idea in mind
to be there.
Here's another thing
that's important.
You look at that,
and you think, "Oh, how nice.
She made a pot of coffee
for herself at some point."
No.
After committing this crime,
he made a pot of coffee
for himself.
What does that mean?
He was comfortable
inside the place.
It wasn't just some guy
driving through town
maybe seeing
the apartment building
at that time of night
and thinking,
"Oh, there's an older lady
up there
"that I think I'll go in
and sexually assault her
and beat her up."
Likelihood of that
is close to zero.
This one's important.
She had an afghan
wrapped around her face.
It could have been something
that we call undoing.
The possibility exists
that he knew her,
and so it's kind of like
he insulates himself
from the victim who knew him.
And so I gave the profile
to the chief
and investigators
The suspect
will be a white male
in his late teens
or early 20s.
Dependent on a mother figure
and has been dominated by her
throughout his life.
It's possible
he knew Mrs. Wilson.
He may have been interviewed
early in the investigation.
He was motivated by rape.
It is likely that he
will have a past record
of sexual assault
and may also have spent
some time
in a detention facility.
I said, "Please don't share
this information
with the public,"
and the next morning
in the newspaper
was all of the information
I had given them.
We reviewed the report,
and it did open our eyes
a little bit
as to what type of person
we might be looking for.
Every town has a bar
that deals with a lower sector
of life in town,
and that was R&S Bar.
These were some
of the type of people
that it'd be nice
to get information from.
We made contact
with a Michael Hyatt,
who advised that he
was at the R&S Bar
with Bruce Allen Smith
the night before
the Helen Wilson homicide.
With Michael
was Cherie Bohlmeyer
and her roommate,
and they drank together,
and Smith became intoxicated.
They then went
to the girls' trailer
in Blue Springs.
They were there
until finally, the girls
kicked Smith out
at approximately 3:45
in the morning.
Bruce Allen Smith
made the statement to Mike
that he was gonna get a piece
of ass one way or another.
Mike then brought Smith back
to Beatrice
and dropped Smith off
at 6th and Court,
just a block and a half
or two blocks south
of Helen Wilson's apartment.
Mike last saw him
walking north.
He'd been in jail.
He was living in Oklahoma,
but he used to live
in Beatrice
his relatives lived
in the apartment complex
where Helen Wilson resided
at one time years before,
which would have made him
familiar with the building.
Your heart skips a beat,
and you think,
"Okay, we're going
in the right direction."
We were gonna go down
and get ahold of him
and make him the prime suspect.
We contacted an investigator
from Oklahoma City
Police Department.
He had already had some
information on Bruce Allen,
and we went to two or three
different locations.
We staked him out
for numerous hours.
The Oklahoma City investigator
found Bruce Allen Smith
and then received
a blood sample.
Oklahoma police lab
had serologists there
run the blood work,
looking
for a type B nonsecretor,
and she came back and said
that it was a type B secretor.
It's always a disappointment
when you think
you got a good lead
and might have something
and find out you don't.
We'd really had
very little information
on anything at that time.
You ready?
Grant Bennett, take one.
So, this is the monologue.
And you can read it -
we know it's the first time
you've encountered this text.
Got it.
I'm Grant Bennett,
and I am reading the part
of Burt Searcey.
I'm Mason Gustafson,
reading Burt Searcey.
I knew the Wilson family.
I told them I could help
with their mother's murder
as a private investigator,
so I started asking around.
There'd been
attempted assaults
on elderly women in '83,
all within blocks
of the Helen Wilson homicide.
Would you like to read it again?
Sure.
There'd been attempted assaults
on elderly women in '83,
all within blocks
of the Helen Wilson homicide.
In December of '84,
a lady reported
that a young male
tried to kick in her door.
Joe White
was arrested in the area,
and my confidential informants
advised me
that he was
basically unemployed.
Joe White had always
been on my radar for years.
Ran the streets,
indulged in drugs,
large amounts of alcohol,
associated
with a lot of riffraff:
Thomas Winslow, JoAnn Taylor.
I kept asking
about this crew.
One of my sources
was Lisa Podendorf,
a 17-year-old.
She hung out with the partiers
at the R&S Bar,
a local biker bar.
Ugh, I wouldn't even
go into that place
if I wasn't in uniform.
One of my sources
was Lisa Podendorf,
a 17-year-old,
and hung out with the partners
at the R&S Bar,
a local biker bar.
I wouldn't even go
into that place
unless I was in uniform.
I met Lisa
at her parents' house.
What do I think of this?
somewhat kind of truthful.
What are you
gonna do with this?
We can let the actor say this
who is gonna play you.
Oh, I see.
Well, ah, boy,
you guys are gonna have
a hell of a time
filling my spot.
Tell me the story,
the night you went to Lisa Podendorf.
I mean if you feel like you
don't want to, that's fine too.
- Well, I'm thinking.
- Okay.
I'm thinking.
Sometimes I have to think.
When anything happens,
somebody knows something,
and you have to find
that somebody.
It may take you
around a lot of curves
and down a lot of miles,
but I don't think
you can solve any case
unless you talk to people,
and if you're really good
at what you're doing,
there's a breaking point
for everyone
where you gain their trust.
I made contact
with some people
here in Beatrice
that always knew something
about everything.
I was given a name,
Lisa Podendorf,
and I was told,
"I think she knows something
about the homicide."
I went to where she lived,
and I knocked on the door.
She was a little hesitant,
but it's amazing,
you gain their trust,
what they might tell you.
Lisa tells me, the night
of the Helen Wilson homicide,
Lisa and her boyfriend
or husband at the time,
they were driving
down the street,
and she'd seen a car
pulling into the driveway
of Helen Wilson's apartment.
Lisa Podendorf
knew these people.
She identified Tom Winslow,
Joseph White,
and JoAnn Taylor.
There's a point with everyone
where they might tell you
something that they
really don't want to tell you,
and I could feel that.
She was talking
with JoAnn Taylor
the following morning.
She noticed
all these police cars
that were across the street,
and she went,
"What's all the cop cars
over there?"
And JoAnn said,
"You haven't heard?
"A lady was murdered
over there,
and I and Lobo,
Joseph White, did it."
Police looked at her like,
"This can't be right.
This can't be true."
"You're telling me
you and Joseph White
killed that lady?"
JoAnn says,
"Hey, look, we did it."
And so JoAnn
proceeded to tell her.
The lady was hands bound.
She was laying
in the living room.
There's a stool
turned upside down
beside her body,
and she was suffocated.
I thought, "Man,
this is unreal."
And so Lisa
didn't know what to do.
She was afraid
of JoAnn Taylor,
and I understood that
because I knew JoAnn Taylor.
She was on the street a lot,
was known to steal,
a person that would do drugs,
and I knew
that if she threatened you,
it may very well happen.
And so Lisa
didn't tell the police.
I had no reason but to believe
that she was telling me
the truth.
So I started digging in,
researching.
I had done a little digging
on Joseph White,
and I found
that he had been arrested,
I think around '84.
He attempted
to kick a lady's door in
and break into her house.
Unfortunately,
I learned Joseph White
and JoAnn Taylor left Beatrice
within a few weeks
after the homicide.
But I was able
to find Tom Winslow
here in Beatrice.
And I said,
"Tom, your name was mentioned
"as being seen in the area
and driving your car
when the lady was murdered."
And he's like, "It wasn't me.
I was working."
And I said,
"Oh, where do you work at?"
"Well, I work
at Marshall's Truck Stop."
I attempted to find out
who would know
Tom Winslow
at Marshall's Truck Stop,
and I interview the supervisor
as to if Tom Winslow
was working the night
of February 5th, and she said,
"No, he called in sick,
and he never did show up
to work."
Big red flag went up
that Tom Winslow,
for whatever reason,
was not telling me the truth.
At that point,
I thought I needed
to go
to the police department.
He came down
and talked to me
and told me he was looking
into another officer
from the department
that had interviewed
these people earlier
and felt they weren't guilty.
And he says,
"I know that's not true."
And he didn't do anything
with it.
That's where it died.
I was told that,
"Eh, they weren't involved.
Don't worry about it."
My information
fell on deaf ears.
It basically went cold.
During that time period,
the police department
did contact a psychic
out of Colorado
to see if she had any ideas.
There's two men and a woman involved.
or nephew or grandson.
Beatrice Police
have said Monday afternoon
that hypnosis has been used
on a possible witness.
Dr. Price
is a local psychologist
who's conducting
the hypnosis sessions.
I'm just going to talk to you
until your eyes get heavy
and just let you relax, and then
After a period of time
when we'd run out of informants
or information,
go to the back burner, I guess.
After six, eight months
and they don't have anything
and, you know,
then a year goes by
and then two years go by,
that's incredibly hard.
You'd always hope
somebody would be caught
that had done this, you know,
but you just don't know.
I mean, there was no answers.
And people would
"Well, have you heard anything?
What's going on?"
I said, "Read the paper.
You know as much as I do."
All I would do is sit and cry.
I think everybody
was coming to grips
with the fact
that we're not ever gonna know
what happened to Grandma.
At a certain point in time,
Burt was the only one
that would help us out.
Everybody else,
it was a cold case
that was gonna stay
a cold case.
Many years go by.
I had what I thought
might be a good case
with the Helen Wilson murder,
unfortunately,
a private detective
has really no authority.
You're not in a uniform,
you don't have a badge,
and it's pretty hard.
Pretty hard.
I wanted to try to get back
into law enforcement.
Having worked
on the police department,
the sheriff knew me well,
and I got hired.
Went to work for the Gage
County Sheriff's Department.
And so I went
into the sheriff's office,
and I said,
"This is what was told to me.
JoAnn Taylor basically
confessed to Lisa Podendorf."
And he said,
"What the hell you waiting on?
Get it done."
And so I went, and I
brought in Lisa Podendorf.
You know, if you tell a lie,
you can't remember
what you said.
If it's a truthful,
factual thing
that you're telling me,
you'll never forget it.
How did you know JoAnn Taylor?
Lisa told me the same story
she'd told me in 1985.
JoAnn told me she knew
what had happened.
That her and Lobo had killed a lady
that lived in that apartment building.
She also
she noticed JoAnn
had two or three
scratch marks, maybe four,
that she noticed
on the side of her neck
and cheek area.
How come you never came forward
with this information?
Because I was threatened.
And who threatened you?
JoAnn Taylor.
Anybody with common sense,
I think,
has to say, "Wow.
Why didn't this thing
get looked at harder?"
At that point,
JoAnn Taylor is a suspect.
Joseph White is a suspect.
Tom Winslow is a suspect.
And so as I further
the investigation,
I realize
I think I can solve this.
I'm gonna go after
what I need to go after,
and I will get it done.
The audition take one.
A/B common mark.
What interests me
I believe he's the one
that sparked things
to then have other people say,
"Okay, maybe you're
onto something here."
I think he really did want
to, you know, solve the crime,
but I think
it didn't go the way
he was wanting it to.
I mean, it's a small town,
and, you know,
hasn't anything happened on it
for four years.
Like, you know, you've got
to feed 'em up somebody.
I can see
what would lead someone
to keep digging
and believe something
because he could be held up
as a hero.
I don't know that there are
any heroes or villains anymore.
The truth is
that this story is a tragedy
from every angle.
Debra K. Shelden.
Where did you grow up?
Beatrice, Nebraska.
I didn't really want
to come here and tell my side
because bringing up
I have nightmares.
I knew JoAnn Taylor,
Tom Winslow,
and Joseph White.
They took me over
to the apartment.
I'm the one that they put
in front of the door to knock.
I asked Tom Winslow
why we were here,
and he said
he had to see someone.
I've had people come up
and say,
"Huh, no way."
They just don't believe it.
They think,
"Nah, you're too nice."
They didn't think
I could do murder.