Killing Fields Trilogy /// Part 1 of 3 | Forensic Files

this is true crime garage and this is The Killing Fields trilogy [Music] thank you
[Music] Interstate 45 or I-45 is a Highway located entirely in the state of Texas
the interstate is just over 280 miles in length and connects two major U.S cities
Dallas and Houston from Houston the highway continues Southeast down to Galveston
there is a portion of I-45 that is known to Houston residents as the Gulf Freeway
a short elevated section of I-45 and Southern downtown Houston is known as Pierce elevated
and a 50-mile stretch of desolate land between Houston and Galveston is called the highway of hell
a mile from I-45 lies a 25-acre patch of land that borders the Calder oil field this is known to all as the Texas
Killing Field it is just rugged Wasteland but it is here that for decades the dead have
appeared starting in the early 1970s and to this day many bodies of murder victims have
been found within this area and the killing field many girls and young women have gone
missing several have never been found there are some similarities in these cases
all the victims are pretty young girls and women between the ages of 12 and 23. and most of the located victims were
found in or around water the Texas Killing Fields murders will involve three different counties and 12
different law enforcement agencies have worked these cases including the FBI despite exhaustive efforts very few of
these murders have been solved many officers say that the 50-mile stretch is the perfect Dumping Ground
for serial killers and the killing field has been described as a place that even
if you yelled no one would hear you and if you ran there wouldn't be anywhere to
go this is the perfect place for killing someone and getting away with it the disappearances abductions and
murders span over 30 years Welcome to The Killing Fields trilogy [Music] foreign
[Music] thank you part one the 1970s by the 1970s America knew all about crime she had experienced so much of it
in her young history the 1960s was the decade of the assassination we lost so many great leaders of men and
women during that decade Texas was home to one of the worst when John F Kennedy was shot dead in front of a crowd of
people in Dallas on November 22 1963. in the 1970s America would become aware of
monsters that had been around since the beginning but were lurking quietly in the shadows
the serial killers this was to be the decade when America and the world would learn about Ted
Bundy John Gacy and David Berkowitz and again Texas would be home to one of the worst
some called him the Galveston killer where the purple passion killer many said he didn't have a name or that he
had several whoever he was he traveled the I-45 Highway and he played in The Killing
Fields June 1971 thirteen-year-old Colette Wilson vanished after being dropped off
at a bus stop after her school band practice before her mother could pick her up
someone else did a couple weeks after Colette's Disappearance in July Brenda Jones just
14. disappeared while on her way to visit a sick relative at Galveston General Hospital which is right off of
Interstate 45. October 1971 Gloria Gonzalez 19. the grocery store bookkeeper left on
vacation and that was the last time she was seen alive in November Debbie Ackerman and Maria
Johnson best friends were last seen together outside of an ice cream store January of 1973
Kimberly Pitchford 16 years old walked out of a driver's education class she was going to call her mother for a
ride home but she never did she was never heard from again Brooks brycewell and Georgia gear from
Dickinson Texas were last seen at a convenience store in September of the following year
twelve-year-old Suzanne Bowers was abducted as she walked home in May of 1977. 11 victims in total
at the time authorities believed the killings were all the work of a single killer
most of the victims were similar in appearance and most were found near or in bodies of water
several of these cases would be a nightmare to investigate as the area only had scattered small towns and the
police did not share information freely or compare notes sure a nightmare to investigate
but more so a nightmare for the communities to endure the loss fear had set in for Galveston and the surrounding area
murder had come to town this was only the beginning Welcome to The Killing Fields trilogy
[Music] 1971 Colette Wilson was one of ten children they lived in Alvin Texas Colette's father Thomas was a dentist
Colette had just finished the seventh grade and that summer she was attending band camp at a local high school on
Thursday June 17th at 12 30 PM in the afternoon her band director dropped her off at Highway 6 and County Road 99 her
mother arrived at 12 36 PM but Colette was nowhere to be found when she accompanied her mother Claire to the bus
stop to pick up her older sister Colette Alice said in an interview we thought maybe she had gotten a ride with someone
else so we called all of her friends that lived nearby they were unable to find any sign of Colette and the family
knew something must be terribly wrong they reported the girl missing but unfortunately the authorities labeled
her a runaway Colette was just 13 years old at this time which seems a little young to be labeled someone who might
run away just in my opinion well it's very irresponsible so regardless of what the authorities thought that didn't stop
the Wilson family from taking out an Alvin Texas map and organizing volunteer volunteers who would search the area for
the next three weeks Colette's little sister recalls the agony she said the best thing that they could do was kneel
around Colette's bed and pray every day and night saying it held them together during the long months as they searched
for Colette a couple weeks after Colette's disappearance on July 1st Brenda Jones who's just 14 years old she
left her house now Brenda's family didn't have much money they didn't have a car Brenda's mother and her sisters
relied on public transportation to make their way about Brenda disappeared after a visit to a
sick relative at Galveston General Hospital which is right off of Interstate 45. now the bus driver would
later confirm to police and investigators that Brenda had made it to the bus stop the bus had dropped her off
there so this is on her way back home she arrived at the bus stop this means she disappeared just blocks from her
house Brenda's mother reported her as missing that night however police told her that they would not file the report
because it was too soon she had not been missing long enough and she would probably turn up sooner rather
than later right and this is in the 70s these laws would be changed later yeah and this is something we will see and
have seen throughout the course of the 70s you know often when a kid goes missing especially a teenager the
authorities immediately believe that they've run away or they've just taken off with some friends because I'm sure
that's what happens ninety percent of the time regardless you got to take these reports seriously so now we have
Colette which is 13 years old her family is looking for and now we have 14 year old Brenda that her family's looking for
her as well yeah and Brenda's family did not have to look too long her body was found the next day the day after she had
gone missing she was found floating in Galveston Bay close to the Sea Wolf Parkway and near I-45 her body was nude
and she had died from manual strangulation now there are a lot of websites out there a lot of hacks out there that have
reported that Brenda died from a head wound but this is just simply not true if you go and do the research in this
case you will find that her cause of death uh to be head wound don't email that to us later email the the creator
of that website because that information is wrong right by how many autopsies have we seen that were wrong right now
I'm just reporting what's been seen on several websites that have covered this case the information that we have is
from a very credible Source who has reviewed the actual autopsy so that's why I'm going to go with well I'm just
you know stating oh I mean if you know Fami Malik is doing these autopsies I mean we're all screwed well the night
that Brenda had gone missing she was wearing sandals the kind with the long laces that you can wrap up around your
ankles and shins like the Caesar well someone had ripped the laces from those sandals and used them to bind Brenda's
feet and wrist the medical examiner made a strange Discovery someone had forcibly
stuffed the girl's underwear into her throat and they determined that this was after she was killed the medical
examiner also was able to narrow down the time of death whoever had abducted her kept her alive most of that night
she was killed sometime near Sunrise it was the medical examiner's opinion that Brenda had been thrown in the water from
either a pier or a boat and was not simply just tossed in from the shore you'd think if they threw her in from a
boat that's a little more discreet than off of a pier yeah and I think they're able to judge this by the amount of cuts
and bruising that would have gone on on the body after the time of death they didn't find a lot of these and that's
why they believed that it was somebody that had kind of cleanly tossed her into the water from a point that might be
already out a considerable distance in the water now of course all of these cases are
very sad but this next one is particularly sad and it's because you know sometimes when we go looking for
new cases to cover or cases that are suggested to us it's this is rare but it does happen sometimes there is nothing
out there on a Case especially for some of the cases early 1980s and prior to that there are simply no digital
footprint or very little or very few uh bits of information regarding some of these cases you know like when we
covered Tony Muncie that Cold Case right uh he had a very small digital footprint
other than a Cold Case database basically there was nothing on Tony Monsey that's why investigative
databases blogs forums and web sleuthors are so important to what we are trying to do as we move further from Paper
Trails and deeper into the digital age the digital footprint of victims becomes more and more important uh you know we
get asked a lot how can I get involved in this true crime community and be more than just a spectator how can I do more
than just listen to podcasts or watch documentaries look I would not suggest someone going out and hitting the
pavement and going out and investigating crimes um you know that's what the paid
professionals are for but the thing is what you can do is find a couple of cold cases from your area from back in the
80s the 70s maybe even the 60s Google them see what comes up if nothing comes up then get creative you know find the
old newspaper articles this will most likely require you to get out from behind your computer and go out and do
some work but gather some information right up ashore and when you say creative that doesn't mean make up the
story exactly right yes get the facts right because somebody out there is hearing
you and they're thinking oh yeah I just make up the story I could spin a good yarn that's that's a good idea yeah get
some credible information gather the information write up a short but extremely accurate report post it
somewhere using you know the Vic victim's name right and that leads us to this next possible victim which is uh
Gloria Ann Gonzalez now she was reported missing now her body was never found yeah and really the only digital
footprint that she has is she's simply a name on some lists that are out there and that's about it
um of course she was probably once a lovely young person and now she's just a name on a list if it weren't for
Catherine Casey's wonderful book titled Deliver us um I don't think we would know anything
of value about her case but what we gained from the book Deliver Us is that Gloria and Gonzalez was 19 years old she
worked at a Houston grocery store now she did disappear on October 28 1971 and it's believed that she would have
disappeared somewhere near her home in Houston uh because you know she was last seen by her roommate at their apartment
on Jacqueline Street her roommate would be the one to to report Gloria as missing
that brings us to Debbie Ackerman and Maria Johnson who were both from Galveston Texas and both 15 years old
but in their minds they were kind of going on 20. they were best friends uh their friends and loved ones say that
they were inseparable they loved the water and spent much of their time on the beaches of Galveston they were
regulars at the local surf shops and the Wix ski school at 9 00 a.m on November 11 1971 the two left Maria Johnson's
house where they had they had stayed there the night before they went to a Galveston mall now around noon they were
last seen together outside of an ice cream store and they were hitchhiking two girls working at the ice cream store
saw Debbie and Maria get into a white van the van had curtains in the back windows and had a piece simple sticker
on it right and this is enough man the driver was reported to be white and much older than the girls the girls could not
tell if there was anyone else in the van or not other than the driver it's very odd to me that hitchhiking was a lot
more popular in this in the 70s well it in some cases uh as with was the case with Debbie and Maria they almost
preferred hitchhiking it seemed to be somewhat of a hobby of not just a means of getting to where they needed to go
but rather than taking any form of public transportation they would usually hitchhike my father talked about this
before he used to pick up hitchhikers a lot and I I don't know why I think it was just like a common thing but he'd
pick him up and uh he he recently got like a brand new car or a newer car in the 70s picked up a hitchhiker and the
guy had like some stuff sticking out of his bag and it poked the the seat and ripped his seat so the guy's getting in
his car rips the guy's seat he drives him you know a couple miles tells him get out of my damn car but never picked
up a hitchhiker after that well and the funny thing that you see in when you watch movies that are based in like the
70s yes hitchhiking was such a common thing that they almost always throw it in a movie in the 70s somewhere where
you'll see that cheesy part where there's a girl on the side of the road or a guy thumb out in the air car pulls
up car goes driver goes where are you heading to going to the beach driver goes far out and then the guy guy or
girl gets in the car and then they are out man they drive to the beach most of the time nothing happens but we know
from covering these cases that uh there's a reason why hitchhiking is no longer a popular thing to do yeah you
can play Bundy for that well Debbie and Maria they weren't heard from for a few hours so one of the parents reached out
to the other set of parents and it was quickly determined that neither of the parents had seen either girl in quite
some time they were reported missing because the girls were together it was believed by police that the two had run
away and they were quote probably on drugs two days later just about 36 hours after the two were last seen the body of
the two young girls were found this is just 10 miles north of where they were last seen
they were in Turner's Bayou in Texas City a fisherman found the two floating in water both girls had been shot they
were nude from the waist down both girls had their wrist bound with long black what what may have been cords or shoe
strings so so the hands and the the feet were bound correct similar to the the other victim and I believe in this case
that it was specifically noted that these two girls were bound with their wrists in front of them right but either
way they're bound right and and then the the other difference here is the other victim was died by strangulation these
girls died by gunshot correct now just two days later a man at attics Reservoir in West Houston he was out walking with
a metal detector looking for you know lost items of value maybe some precious metals he's looking for his manhood
when he he ended up coming across a decomposing headless corpse the man had to get get in his car and
drive to a nearby house to phone in what he had found to the police now there would be several weird findings with
this here first the decapitated body okay so they found the head but for some reason the head had no Flesh on it it
was just skull and bone okay this was not the case with the body though the the body had Flesh on it and was
decomposing at a normal rate later the medical examiner would determine that the body was that of
missing 19 year old Gloria Gonzalez who we we had talked about earlier they determined that the decapitation was not
something done by her killer but it had been done by the work of animals in the area Gloria had been there laying face
down for quite some time I don't know if they ever figured out why the skull had
no skin on it and the body still did I couldn't find that anywhere I could find that the medical examiner didn't think
that the the flesh removed from the skull was due to animals anyway the weirdest part okay so
repeat that because that's not very clear so the the decapitation was done by animals the medical examiner uh in in
their opinion the decapitation was due to animals removing the skull from the corpse right so if animals are removing
the skull then they're removing the skin around the skull but it was of the medical examiner's opinion that the
flesh was not removed um that has no logical that there's no logical sense there unless the skull
would have been in a place where it would have decomposed at a at a much faster rate due to any you know there's
different it could be any number of reasons of of the environment but I'm with you I think that if if you if you
can make the leap and believe that animals removed the skull they most likely chewed up the the soft bits of
tissue off of the face well that's gross um but we have turtles in this area right and turtles are known for you know
the fleshy parts like the nose and the ears are normally attacked first by like turtles well if that wasn't strange
enough for you in this situation Captain here's another strange situation so maybe the weirdest part of everything
that was found that day they ended up finding several teeth with the skull these were loose teeth but later the
medical examiner determined that one of the teeth did not belong to the victim that they had found to Gloria Gonzalez
now Gloria they obviously ruled her death a homicide but because of this tooth they were going to need to go back
and search the area when they did just about 50 yards from where they had found the body of Gloria Gonzalez they located
another body not so much a body but rather a pile of bones without the skull but they they
found the jaw bone so there were going to be they're going to have to go to dental records here to try to identify
this body right but aren't they capable of doing a DNA test on that tooth imagine it with that skeleton
um that I don't know but what I do know that they did was they they took this Jawbone uh and I what they can do is
take the one loose tooth and see if it would fit in the jaw bone right um now remember when the story started we
started talking about 13 year old Colette Wilson who had gone missing from the bus stop after a band camp practice
and remember we said that her father was a dentist well he was also her dentist he would later be the one that had to
identify the remains based on dental records uh as the remains of of his daughter Cola that seems like it makes a
bunch of sense hey don't you think that they could have another dentist come in and look at the records and look at they
they could do that they wouldn't have to have the father do that that seems very
insensitive unless the father wanted to do it he he may I bet you he he offered his services in this situation but like
I said that's a little bit of conflict of interest it was all of his work so he would be considered the dental expert
when it came to this particular person so I think a conflict of interest some of her belongings were found with her
remains but her instrument her musical instrument was never located so at this point in the timeline we have five
missing but four bodies have been found and we have no arrest and the newspapers
are starting to make the connection you know we have several murders of girls and young women uh could they be
connected and you know should police be looking for a killer or maybe even worse
Killers well they're going to start digging hard and looking for suspects in this case and we have some suspects that
kind of present themselves now I'll go through this by way of using in a newspaper article that took place this
is from a Houston newspaper and was printed in 1989 but but it's in regards to some activities during the 70s a
convicted murderer who has vowed to seek revenge and kill Law Officers in the Houston area is out of jail as of 1989
and he may be heading back to Houston authorities say Anthony Michael nopa he's 41 years old at the time of his
release he was released from prison after serving 15 years of his 50-year sentence for killing a Brazoria County
woman authorities think nopa will return to Houston where his family and friends
are and said they are worried about the threats he has made in the past we have Jimmy Jones of the brazora county
sheriff's office said he is concerned about nopa since the murderer has threatened to kill several lawmen and
recently turned down offers for parole until he was ultimately let go in 1989. now after his murder conviction in 1972
nopa threatened to kill Jones and a guy named James Evans who is an investigator
with the Harris County sheriff's office now investigator Jones says that he took
these threats seriously and still did at the time of his release back in 1971 Noble was investigated in
connection with the deaths of Six Women in Montgomery Harris and brazora counties but he was only convicted in
one of the deaths Noble was sentenced to 50 years in prison in 1972 in the death
of Linda Faye Sutherland who was 22 years old from Missouri County Sutherland was found dead with 72 bullet
wounds in her back shoulders and legs now we have another guy here Harry Andrew Lanham he was sentenced to 25
years in prison for the same killing and he also he was also investigated in the
other five incidences as an accomplice but the five cases other than the five cases against nopa crumbled in
1972 because Lanham he attempted to escape from jail he he lunged at an officer tried to grab his gun and the
officer shot Lanham and killed him unfortunately we have two guys that are convicted of one murder of a young woman
they're being invested investigated in some of the deaths that we just talked about
but their main witness their only witness that they had in these investigations was that was Lanham who
was killed when he tried to escape from prison right so nopo was uh he has a bit of a
background here he was convicted of rape before uh he did the bazora county killing uh testimony in that trial
indicated that he took a young woman to an auto salvage yard and raped her repeatedly nopo pleaded guilty to a
lesser offense in the case because the woman was too terrified to testify against him so obviously the police had
two suspects that they liked a lot in some of these if not all of these murders just not able to piece it
together you know it wouldn't surprise me in the least if these guys committed one or more of these outstanding cases
one thing that has that was said in the investigation regarding Linda Faye's death uh and I believe it was Harry
Lanham that said this he said the two men didn't talk to each other after they had picked up Linda but the whole time
that they were driving around they both knew that they were going to kill her like
that's like wow you know that that rings of maybe these two have done this sort of thing before all right we'll get back
into the Killing Fields Trilogy after this quick beer break [Music] thank you all right we're back cheers mates so we
have the bodies of several young girls and women showing up popping up all over the I-45 in Galveston area and then we
have those two suspects but that investigation quickly went nowhere so continuing on this takes us to January
3rd 1972 when two boys fishing on Taylor Bayou near Webster Texas they found a human skull floating in the lake
the skull ended up belonging to a young girl uh six weeks later authorities searching a nearby Field find the rest
of her remains and along with it they find the remains of another girl dental records identified the girls as Rhonda
Johnson and Sharon Shaw now they had gone missing the previous summer they went missing in August of 1971.
Unfortunately they were too decomposed and their cause of death would not be determined well because this is in Texas
and bodies decompose way faster in Texas I believe due to the sun and the elements now uh this is a bit of a crazy
story here so about five months after the girl's bodies were found 23 year old gas station attended Michael Lloyd's
self was arrested and he was charged with the murders apparently self was being investigated for some other crime
at the time this was something Petty like like theft or something like that something that had nothing to do with
the murders of these two girls he ends up being convicted of the crimes and he was sentenced to life in prison however
he has always claimed that he is innocent of these two murders well how did this whole thing go down let's let's
go through this Captain so we have Rhonda Johnson and Sharon Shaw they were last seen on August 4th 1971 they were
heading towards the Jericho Surf and Sea shop in Galveston Texas an investment that's what they told family members or
friends correct so an investigation was soon launched uh pressure was placed on the officers investigating these murders
because Rhonda's grandfather was a prominent city council member in late May 1972 the Webster City Council hired
a new police chief this is Don Morris and an assistant chief Tommy deal they you can question in if they were
qualified for these positions they came from the traffic division of the Texas Department of Public Safety a few weeks
after the two were hired Morris received a tip from A city councilman Glenn price
about Michael Lloyd's self now at the Time Michael Lloyd self was a known sex offender because he had been arrested in
previous uh cases for peeping Tom incidents and we know where that normally leads to
on June 9 1972 at 5 a.m Tommy deal and officer Herman Morgan visited the gas station where self worked the night
shift deal mentioned that he believed self was thinking about the two girls referring to Rhonda and Sharon when they
were talking to self but now self would say that he was confused about the conversation they were having he
believed that he was talking about his estranged wife and his and new girlfriend and wasn't talking about
murder at all later that morning self I'm confused by all this so he confesses but he thinks he's talking about
somebody else no he's he's being interviewed by these two officers right okay and so they're asking him about two
girls they never mention them by name and they're not talking about girls being murdered they're just talking to
him about two girls that he was talking to he well and they claim that he knew these two girls and they knew who he was
talking about so he assumed that they were talking about his estranged wife that he had not seen in a while and his
new girlfriend um later that morning Michael Lloyd self did he voluntarily went to the police
station for further questioning the officers asked self if he had recognized pictures of Rhonda and Sharon he said
that he had recognized them but he did not know them maybe he had seen them around maybe they were somebody that had
come into the gas station at some point but immediately afterwards why and you know this because he worked at a gas
station for a while you you start seeing Greg regulars and you kind of know them
by same with with the bank you might not know their name but you've seen them coming to the bank multiple times at a
gas station multiple times and with the gas station for me Captain a lot of times I didn't know the person by name
but I knew him by oh this is the coffee Marlboro Lights guy you know that's the thing he gets every other morning and
this could be the case here um but immediately after he says that he recognized the girls but did not know
them well self was arrested and he was charged for their murders so investigating no evidence well yeah and
and other than I yeah I think I kind of know him oh arrest him um Michael Lloyd's self was not he's
described as not the sharpest tool in the shed let's say um the officer's interrogated him after
they arrested him and during this interrogation they claimed that they had evidence connecting him to the murders
again self-denies any involvement what's this evidence uh I don't think that that's ever clear to anybody right
because there was none well another officer Jerry Mitchell he stopped in during the interrogation and he was
observing the interrogation and he noticed that he thought that Michael Lloyd's self was quite relaxed and he
did not appear to be nervous at all um Mitchell left the room and chief Morris remember we talked about him he
then took charge of the interrogation according to Michael Lloyd's self Morris started asking him about why he killed
the victims Moore said that he wanted a confession and he would not leave until he got one
Morris allegedly held self against a wall and poked him multiple times with his night stick Morris also allegedly
took out bullets from his gun and placed them on the table Michael Lloyd self would later say that he really feared
that Morris was going to kill him okay so he's being held against the wall being poked with the night stick and
these are the back in the 70s I mean this is one long stick it's not the kind that
um you know retracts right right so these things are tough yeah it's like being poked with a small baseball bat
yeah but maybe even harder and then he's taking bullets out of his gun yeah he's
placing them on the table yeah uh wow you might you might as well just waterboard him
well at this point right Morse allegedly told Michael Lloyd's self that he would
shoot him if he didn't sign a confession um So eventually Michael Lloyd's self agreed to write and sign a confession uh
the thing here is he would have to sign multiple confessions because he didn't get a lot of the information right in
the earlier confessions um eventually it's alleged that Morris told him what he had to write down and
less than an hour and we've seen this time and time again haven't we yeah it's it's pathetic it's what it is yeah less
than an hour after Jerry Mitchell left he then returned and at this point he's seeing Michael Lloyd self in a much
different situation no longer is he relaxed and calm he now describes Michael Lloyd's self to be extremely
upset and visibly shaken Mitchell noticed that Morris had self rewrite his confession several times self
self-confession did not completely match with the known facts of the case in his
confession self claimed that he had dumped the bodies at El Largo which was 20 miles from the Taylor Bayou where the
bodies were actually found and we've talked about this before one of a detective friend that we know uh talks
about how he would go in get a written confession come back out knife look at it it just put it on his desk and then
go back in and go hey look that this story is not all lining up now he wouldn't tell him this part isn't
lining up or this part isn't lining up he would just tell him this isn't really lining up so write it again and he'd do
that sometimes several times and by taking all three confessions you get a better picture of what was actually
happening but in this case this person is going oh by the way this isn't correct and this is incorrect and this
is incorrect I mean we you see this you know like we talked about before with like Jesse Miss Kelly I mean leading the
witness I mean what Justice is this yeah yeah it's it's like a teacher grading a
paper that keeps returning the paper to you with the wrong answer circled or with a big red X on them and wants you
to correct what you got wrong right uh you know the confession stated that self choked one of the girls but there was no
evidence of that injury on their remains so first he gets the location of the bodies Wrong by 20 miles then he gets
the cause of death in one of the girls as wrong as well the confession also stated that self went to Sharon's house
to pick up the girls but her family contradicts that and that they because they left on their own yeah they weren't
last seen at her house yeah so ridiculous uh the other thing about the confession
while we're on the the wrong answer get me heat it up give me get me started his
confession also stated that the girls were yelling waving and hanging out of his car but there were no witnesses that
could be found to confirm this all right in fact Witnesses placed the girls in Galveston at around 9pm even though in
self's confession they were already with him in Webster by that time it's ridiculous so three days after self's
arrest and confession he took a polygraph test where he again confessed to the murders he also claimed that he
had knowledge on other murders that had taken place in Texas in 1971 and 1972. in his second confession self claimed
that he hit the girls with a coke bottle and then dumped them in the bayou these
statements again conflict with his first confession and so but he took this polygraph test
what what were the findings of that test he failed the test the test where he confessed to the murders right he fails
that test in his second confession self also claimed that he stripped the girl's
clothing and threw it into the side onto the side of the highway however the girl's clothing was found with them
along with uh an unidentified pair of keys all right I don't know how you could get
a confession more wrong than this I mean it's well here's the problem though is you have this system where people get
ahead people make more money you know uh private Pro public prosecutors don't make a lot of money the more convictions
they get the more then they can move up the ranks right and and this is ridiculous because it's all about just
get in the win who cares how you get it maybe you deflate the football a little bit who cares you got to get the win and
and this is what's so ridiculous it should be based off of you need to get the truth and if you don't get a
conviction who cares it's about getting the truth well and it sounds to me like one of these guys got a significant
promotion both these guys receive significant promotions from Traffic Division all the way up to chief of
police and assistant chief one of these guys had a relative that was a high-ranking public official and these
guys get in here they don't know what they're doing and they there there's a new sheriff in town I'm going to solve
all these cases right and this new sheriff in Town's a real turd bag well listen to this two weeks after Michael
Lloyd's self was arrested two sheriff's deputies checked him out of the jail this is on the pretext of buying him
dinner afterwards the deputies sometimes you talk too fast so they're going to check him out of jail to buy
him dinner correct a guy that confessed to killing to teenagers right okay so afterwards I'm
guessing this is after their nice sit-down dinner together the deputies drove him around to places mentioned in
the confession and took pictures of him at these places this was presented in court as a third confession by Michael
Lloyd self's attorney claimed that this was not a confession and was actually illegal you know they're they're taking
pictures of him at these different sites of him like standing and pointing to things and you know so it looks very
incriminating right of course it does now but we take you out we get we get you a salisbury steak and then we're
gonna drop you off at these locations and take your picture while you're there ah this is a horrible police work well
during while he was awaiting trial uh there was an investigator this is Dave uh coborn he met with Michael Lloyd self
in jail and self told him that Morrison deal had attacked him and beat a confession out of him he also mentioned
how Morris removed several bullets from a handgun and placed them in front of him and now coborn he remembered that
that he had witnessed Morris doing the same thing uh to another prisoner before now coborn wanted to testify at Michael
Lloyd self's trial however he was they they never called him and would not let him testify during this trial on May 15
1973 Michael Lloyd's self was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison
three years later remember the sheriffs that we were talking about these these wonderful Guys Don Morris and Tommy deal
uh these police guys they were arrested and charged with bank robbery oh really oh really they were part of a robbery
group that had robbed banks in 1972 and 1973. in 1976 more Steele Tommy deal Tommy [ __ ] stain Morris was sentenced to
55 years in prison and deal was sentenced to 30 years in prison well there's karma for you you know and I
believe in that so they got what they deserved they finally got caught for their ridiculous uh illegal actions you
know uh why they were wearing the badge and when they weren't wearing the badge they got caught yeah they were not
deserving of being public officials or Public Service uh people at all now despite the arrest of nopa and Lanham
who we talked about earlier who had killed the one girl and you know whether you agree or disagree with the arrest
and conviction of Michael Lloyd South you know no one's arguing that nopa and Lanham didn't kill Linda Faye Sutherland
but of course you have to wonder how many more murders did those two do but if if they did all of them uh or you
also have to wonder why would the murders continue after these arrests and these convictions and that's exactly
what happened right yeah so now we have uh January 3rd 1973. we have Kimberly Pitchford who is age 16. she took the
school bus to attend all of her classes that day now after school she went to detention she had detention for being
late to a class after detention she went to her driver's education class this class started at 5 pm and it was over at
6 PM she was supposed to call home for a ride her her mom waited for the call but
the call never came then Kimberly's parents started calling all of her friends asking where they could find
their daughter later that night Kimberly's parents filed a missing persons report with the police two days
later two boys traveling on a rural stretch of road uh this is County Road 65. the two boys spotted a black coat
near a guard rail they got out of their vehicle to check it out before they could return to their vehicle they
spotted what appeared to be a body floating upside down in a nearby ditch that was this dish is full of water due
to recent heavy rainfall the this frightened the boys and they weren't really sure what they were looking at so
they went and got one of the boy's fathers who returned to the area with the boys and after nudging the body with
a stick he believed that they were looking at a real dead body they notified police of
what they had found and Kimberly Pitchford had been located she had been strangled and her body was found about
25 miles south of where she was last scene that was the driving school in Pasadena Texas which we should know is
near the interstate 45. right so legs arms bound I don't have any of that information I don't think that that was
the case with her body they probably would have reported it if it was such yeah and the the black thing that they
spotted near the guard rail turned out to be some of her clothing I believe it was a jacket that she would would have
been wearing at the time of her disappearance uh Georgia gear uh age 14 and Brooks bracewell age 12. they had
apparently skipped school on September 6 1974. shortly afterward they were reported missing now several tips came
in uh one tip saying that they were seen at a motel near Alvin Texas playing football with a group of guys several
other tips said that the two girls were seen hitchhiking uh but the tip that may
have the most credibility as this is the most widely reported to this day is that
they were last seen together in a convenience store in Dickinson Texas is this is again close to the infamous
Texas Interstate I-45 the two girls wouldn't be found for quite some time it wasn't until April 18 1981 that the
bodies were found a man working near an oil field found two skulls this area is basically swampland near Alvin Texas the
dental records identified the skulls as belonging to the two missing girls Georgia gear and Brooks bracewell
injuries to the skull pointed to obvious cause of death the two teenage girls had
been beaten to death uh to me it's it's strange that the the tip that seems to have stood the test of time better than
the others is the convenience store tip and not the playing football tip you know I only question this because the
bodies were found closer to the area of the football tip rather than that of the
store which was in Dickinson which is not terribly far from still you know right well but what's interesting here
is we you know we have victims that have died from strangulation we've had victims die from gunshots and now we
have uh two victims that have died from being beaten in the in the head yeah the
cause of death here is all over all over the shop now um we have 12 year old Suzanne Bowers
she was abducted while she was walking home in May of 1977 around 10 a.m on May 21st first she left her grandparents
home she was going to head back to her own house her plan was to go home and get a bathing suit and then a bicycle
and head to the beach Suzanne had rode her bike to the beach often so this wasn't something out of the norm for her
Suzanne had a friend waiting for her at the beach but unfortunately Suzanne never arrived and when the grandparents
started looking for Suzanne they quickly learned that she never even she never even arrived at her own parents home to
retrieve the bicycle in the bathing suit right two years later two boys out riding dirt bikes found the skeleton of
Suzanne Bowers you find it a little odd that you know we'll have one individual one individual female go missing or two
individual females go missing and and they're always found by it seems like a group of two boys well I think that
plays to the areas where these bodies are found these These are areas that are kind of out of the way a you know you
often hear that they're being found by fishermen or two guys on two dudes on dirt bikes right uh two boys playing in
the woods um so I think it just lends to where they're being found um here's the weird thing though the
Bowers case is is not considered to be solved but I'm sure at one point many investigators considered the case to be
closed this was one of many many murders that remember a guy by the name of Henry
Lee Lucas yeah we talked about him when we discussed discussed oddest tool in the Adam Walsh case now uh Henry Lee
Lucas was a man that claimed to have killed anywhere from about 40 to 150 people well this was one of the murders
that he said he gave a vague confession uh that he had killed Suzanne Bowers yeah but he also lied about tons of
stuff I mean he I mean one he claims he killed way more people than he actually did Kill and then half the confessions
that he was confessing to like there was little to no evidence connecting him well and his confession regarding
Suzanne Bowers kind of went like this the detectives were like hey this you you remember this little girl 12 years
old that was picked up in this area and then she was found later found dead in this area and he's like sure I I was I
could have been in that area I I probably killed somebody a little girl I don't remember her name and then
anything else that he gave to them it was really nothing of any value regarding the girl's case or her murder
at all right again I think this is you know sometimes they they don't do their due diligence to have the case closed
they're just closing on their own because they don't want to deal with it later Henry Lee Lucas would recant many
of his confessions but this was one that he specifically named you know he specifically said by name he didn't kill
Suzanne Bowers stating what little he knew about the case was fed to him by police officers and he confessed to this
murder in trade for favors and privileges it's been noted that in a lot of these confessions in a lot of these
cases that he received small privileges you know like cigarettes and access outside of the prison where they would
take him on these field trips to identify places where he supposedly killed somebody and also allowing him
access to a personal TV uh in his cell for his help on all these you know mental cases across the southern states
and also I think more phone privileges as well yeah yeah you know when you're riding away in prison I would assume
that that would be like you know a Golden Ticket yeah he was he was you know if what my gut tells me about
Lucas is he's just really a big loser that probably killed one or two people or was involved in in one or two
incidences and he was you know he he took advantage of of the situation and was able to manipulate
some of these officers into getting what he wanted and at the same time these officers you know they're not trying to
do anything wrong but they need to clear these cases and they see this guy who acts like a monster and talks about
things that only a monster would do and they think well he's capable and he says
he did it so there you go they are doing something wrong because they you have to
ask the questions to get the answers to find the truth and if he isn't able to supply you with those answers without
you force feeding those answers then he didn't do the crime the crime needs to stay open the case needs to stay open
there needs to be real Justice for these families real Justice for the victims and that's what they're doing wrong
right you're exactly right Captain because then what you're ultimately left with years later when the when the dust
clears When the Smoke Clears and you figure out that these confessions are wrong you're left with no answers and
you're also left with the situation where people's stop investigating these these cases and and they they go cold
because you think that they're closed yeah or think about how many times uh there are cases solved years later
because um this guy got drunk and he was telling me about this time you know and these
drunk confessions or whatever drunk confessions deathbed confessions right but you get some weird confession and
they go well look it doesn't matter it doesn't matter about these confessions because this guy is the guy that he's in
jail and and so this guy might must just be drunk and they dismiss certain evidence and there's a big time period
that goes by when they say this crime was committed uh by by Lucas well there's time that goes by that you're
you're missing out on evidence and and and footwork that you could have done so yeah they did something really wrong and
they and they do it wrong constantly a couple of items in closing before we finish up with the 1970s
um first Colette Wilson the first girl that we discussed many consider her to be the first of many victims she was the
girl that was was found in her father Thomas a dentist identified the remains as Colette due to her dental work that
he had performed now Colette's father Thomas he only lived for about four years after her death the family said
that he became obsessed with solving the case uh and he sadly died of a heart attack at the young age of 42. now
regarding Michael Lloyd's self and the bad cops that sent him to prison for life Don Morris and Tommy deal both were
both of these bad cops were eventually paroled uh but deal was later arrested again for another robbery
um yeah he's just a just a bad seed man yeah now Michael Lloyd self's attorney pushed for a new trial for many many
years for him but that ended with no luck at all then in April April 2nd of 1980 a man walked into a police station
in Taylor Lake Texas and confessed to the murders of Rhonda Johnson and Sharon Shaw the man's confession was vague but
he did mention that he used a core to tie the girl's bodies down this fact was never mentioned by Michael Lloyd self
however the police did know about the court and had purpose purposefully withheld the fact in order to determine
a possible truth of of the confession that they would receive the man although suffering from psychosis did know the
girls and actually lived in the same apartment complex as one of them the name of this man was withheld from
newspaper articles despite the confession and criminal activities of the bad cops Morrison deal Michael Lloyd
self's conviction was upheld and in 1992 Michael Lloyd self was denied parole on
March 30th 1993 U.S Supreme Court refused used to consider his request for a new trial self and his attorney and
even investigator coborn however are certain that someone else is responsible for the murders of Rhonda Johnson and
Sharon Shaw Michael Lloyd's self passed away in prison in 2000. [Music] for everything true crime go to
truecrimegarage.com be good be kind and don't live thank you [Music] [Applause]

Killing Fields Trilogy /// Part 1 of 3

Part 1 of 3

TrueCrimeGarage.com

There is a large plot of land about a mile from interstate 45 in south Texas called the Killing Field. This spot along with the stretch of I-45 that runs from Houston to Galveston have claimed many victims and held many secrets. Since 1971 homicides of girls and young women have occurred here at an alarming rate. There have been over thirty murders and several women who have vanished. This story will span three different Texas Counties. Twelve different law enforcement agencies worked these cases. Join us as we take a trip to one of our favorite states to discuss one of America's most notorious serial cases.

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Brief Summary

The episode discusses the Texas Killing Fields and the unsolved murders of young women along I-45 in the 1970s.

Key points

The Killing Fields Trilogy. Exploring the dark history of the Texas Killing Fields, where many bodies have been found.
The Disappearance of Colette Wilson. Thirteen-year-old Colette Wilson vanished after band practice, sparking a frantic search.
Brenda Jones' Tragic Fate. Brenda Jones, 14, disappeared near a hospital and was found dead the next day.
Debbie Ackerman and Maria Johnson. Best friends disappeared together, leading to a tragic discovery of their bodies.
The Discovery of Remains. Two girls' remains are found, leading to a chilling investigation.
Michael Lloyd Self's Arrest. A gas station attendant is arrested for the murders of two girls.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Murder had come to town.

The impact of the killings on the Galveston community.

6:49WatchDec 4, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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