The Beatrice 6 ////// 529 | Forensic Files

[Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to true crime garage wherever you are whatever you're doing thanks for
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chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] the city of beatrice
is located in the southern portion of the great cornhusker state of nebraska was once featured on the popular show
unsolved mysteries for a famous story from the city's history that took place in 1950
when a natural gas explosion destroyed a church during the church choir's regularly scheduled practice
but miraculously all 15 choir members survived because for a variety of different
reasons each of the 15 were running late that day the true crime story we are featuring today did
not make it on unsolved mysteries and takes place 35 years later in 1985. today back in 85 the population of beatrice is
practically the same right around 12 and a half thousand people lived in beatrice
which is in gage county nebraska and we will reference both beatrice city police
and gage county sheriff's department during our garage exploration of this case helen wilson was born in the nearby
village of pickerel which is also in gage county she was born on july 13 1916 and at the time of our story
she was 68 years old and living alone helen was retired and her husband passed away years earlier
she was very active in her local methodist church in fact she helped out quite a bit by watching some of the
children at the church while their parents attended she was also a member of the gage county
historical society in the eagles auxiliary in the days leading up to february 1985
helen was not feeling well helen had pneumonia was relying on the help of others including her daughter
jan winters in nebraska are cold and the february nights are even colder on the night of february 5th 1985
68 year old helen wilson went to bed the next morning helen's brother went to her apartment on north sixth
street and sadly at approximately 9 30 a.m on february 6th he found helen dead she had been murdered sometime between
when she went to bed the night before and that morning this is true crime garage
this is a case of helen wilson and the beatrice six [Music] [Applause] 68-year-old helen wilson lived alone in
a small four-room apartment located near the downtown area of beatrice across route 77 from charles park
in apartment number four at 212 north sixth street her lifeless body was found february 6
1985. helen had been raped and suffocated to death helen wilson leaves behind three children seven
grandchildren and six great-grandchildren they held a closed casket service in the days that followed
and she was buried next to her husband ray at pleasant view cemetery let's take a look at the crime scene captain and go
through some of the evidence in regards to this rape homicide investigation first off there were very obvious signs
of a break-in and a violent struggle at the scene the door had been pried open helen was found dead in the living room
but there were things at the scene to indicate that the attack started in her bedroom and then ended in the living
room helen's hands were bound with the towel now the towel came from inside of her apartment her
face was covered with a scarf that was tied around her neck and or head covering her face
this too was her scarf her nightgown was lifted up there was a lot of evidence a lot of
physical evidence at the crime scene semen was found on helen's body and collected during her autopsy it was also
found on the carpet where her body was found on and portions of her clothing as well
and a cutting from her gown she was wearing contained blood stains there were also blood stains on her bed
they found three fingerprints at least three fingerprints found throughout the apartment that they did not have a match
for or any reasonable explanation why they would be there a knife was also left at the crime scene
and this contained fingerprints other than helens the knife came from helen's kitchen so when you see a scene like
this captain the first thoughts are someone broke into this home clearly in the middle of the night she
must have been sleeping in the bedroom he surprises her using a knife to probably try to control the victim
and the fight for whatever reason the scuffle ends in the living room where her body
is eventually found the next morning did they know if the unidentified fingerprints match the prints on the
knife that's a good question and i don't have a solid answer for you captain because of the wording in the
information that we have it would seem to me that this individual whoever committed this crime
or individuals that committed this crime at least one of them was not wearing any
type of gloves to try to hide their fingerprints because we found these on the knife itself right the other
fingerprints that were found throughout the apartment i'm guessing belong to the same individual but there
is no definitive statement that i saw that says yes this is all from the same individual there was a
significant amount of cash and valuables that were found in her apartment meaning that anybody that broke in that
night during this attack could have loaded up on cash and other valuables before leaving her apartment
but for whatever reason did not and you could say maybe they didn't know that these things were here or there but
a quick search of her small apartment would have found at least thirteen hundred dollars in cash and other
valuables it's also a different time at that time period a lot of people kept cash on them nowadays i just walk out of
my house with my debit card i don't even carry cash on my person yeah and there was 1300 cash in the top drawer of her
dresser in her bedroom that anybody could have found now blood type serology at the time this is 1985
was considered to be the top scientific method to solve crimes when the perpetrator left blood hair with
follicles and or semen at the crime scene there are four main human blood types a
b a b and o i have the tiger blood people are either secretors or and about 85 percent of the population
are secretors wilson's rapist and murderer left semen at the murder scene now tess revealed that the killer was
type b blood which is more rare than the other types and a non-secretor so this is really going to limit the
population you know we're not using dna technology back then to solve crimes but
this is going to limit how many people could have possibly committed this crime that is a big help for your
investigation so in this case captain we're looking for someone with type b blood and a
non-secretor and the information that i have seen says that back in 1985 only about 1 in 10 people carried this
rare blood type according to police reports this was a single apartment this was a apartment building somebody
actually messed with the fuse box and it turned all the lights off in the hallways yeah so police immediately
believe that this is connected to the murder itself that this wasn't just something that was a coincidence and
from my understanding captain there's at least three floors in this building and
her apartment apartment number four was on the second floor what this indicates to me is that
whoever perpetrated this crime had some kind of knowledge of this building the other thing too is you have
to wonder would the perpetrator have known or known of no matter how loosely the victim
themselves yeah it seems like a targeted victim to me also by cutting out the power so there's
no lights in the hallway it gives her no way of knowing if somebody let's say knocked on the door
and then she went to the door to see who it was she would have no way of seeing out of her people and we have a
situation too here where we can really kind of narrow down the time frame of when the murder
occurred first off if you do believe that the cutting of the lights this also affected the
furnace in the building too remember this is february in nebraska so some of the residents woke up to apartments that
were extremely cold because at some point the heat just stopped kicking on well the other reason that you cut the
lights off too is as you're exiting the crime that if a neighbor went to see you
they would have a harder time identifying you and the way that we can narrow down the time frame of the murder
in the attack itself is we have relatives remember we have helen wilson she's older she's suffering from
pneumonia at the time she's not been feeling well they were kind of taking care of her some of her relatives they
were there until i believe 9 45 p.m the night before to which she said to them before they
left that she would be going to bed shortly afterward there were some phone calls that were made to her apartment
that night that went unanswered we also have the situation of her relatives finding her the next morning when
they're trying to call and again getting no answers so we really only have a time frame of
about 12 hours where this could have taken place pretty large time frame though again there was a significant
amount of cash that was found inside of the apartment easily available to anybody that was in there and from the
attack itself and from the forensic evidence that we just described it's easy to believe that the
perpetrator probably spent a good deal of time inside of the apartment now in regards to some of the autopsy
information i mean this was a brutal attack that not only involved rape but from the
coroner's opinion involved necrophilia after the fact they found blood under her fingernails right that
belonged to the perpetrator but her body was in bad shape as we said there was a towel wrapped around her
hands and wrist and the scarf was wrapped around her neck and head covering her face she suffered traumatic
fractures to her sternum left fifth and sixth ribs and the left humerus she also had suffered abrasions to the
face thorax and right knee and she had clear defensive wounds on her hands and wrist
consistent with sharp instrument lacerations well the more that you fight the more chance that you have to collect
dna evidence on your body as bad as this attack was and as brutal as it sounds captain there is belief
by the experts that say that they do not think that the perpetrator intended to kill the victim
and the way that they explain this and it doesn't make sense on the surface now does it but the way that they explain it
is they think that the attacker simply wanted to rape and incapacitate the victim and then flee at some point the
combination of using all of that force and uh the scarf on her face and around her
neck combined with the pneumonia that she was suffering from was enough to sadly do her ant well like you said
there was some sign of necrophiliac you wonder if the murderer even knew that she was dead
yes that's exactly right and we need to really focus in on this blood evidence that was found and the science that's
involved in that as we said according to the police reports in 1985 only about 1 in 10 people carried this
rare blood type police really worked this case good and what's going to sound weird by the time we get to the end of
this case you're going to go colonel what are you talking about buddy when this case first took place when
they found helen wilson's body the investigating agency at that time was the beatrice police department we have
beatrice police chief luckenroth and detective sergeant stevens who will be up front and center in regards to this
case lucknroth will be the one that will speak with media and will oversee the investigation but detective sergeant
stevens will be the one leading the actual investigation and they had some information
early on that led them to several suspects because of the fingerprints you start questioning is this one murderer
or a group well one of the individuals that they were looking at was a man by the name of bruce smith who was kind of
a drifter he was a one-time resident of beatrice who had moved away and was back in town briefly
right bruce smith captain was the early prime suspect and i'm talking about march 1985
about a month after the murder the way that bruce smith gets onto the radar of the beatrice police department
is an individual comes forward and says hey i'm friends with this guy he was in town and we spent the night at a bar
drinking and he wouldn't shut up about wanting to get laid that night well we end up hanging out with some
old friends of ours and going to an after party that just keeps getting later and later in the night and we end
up crashing at these young ladies place bruce smith and his friend are in there early to mid 20s in 1985
but something happens in the middle of that night and what happens is one of these young
ladies says hey you know i'm sleeping and bruce smith attacked me attempted to rape me or
sexually assault me in the middle of the night so basically we know that he's this
local creep and that he's back into town so they start going through a list of people that are capable of something
like this yeah well his friend is the one that brings bruce smith to the attention of police
because he says well some friend that is the way that that works out is when he tries to assault this young woman she
gives him the business and basically kicks his ass good for her and his quote-unquote friend or
you know sometimes you think you're friends with somebody and then you learn who they really are and decide we're not
really friends uh this friend also joined in on kicking bruce smith's ass so much so that he then escorted
bruce smith out of their residence and decided you know what bruce where you want to go i'm going to take you
somewhere and drop you off you can't stay here so he drops bruce smith off and he just
says look i want to tell you police this is what was going on that night i know she never reported the attack
but i'm not saying that they're connected i'm just letting you know that this is the type of guy that was here in
beatrice that night and this is what i know he did that night that he attacked this other woman
police love this lead right they end up tracking down bruce smith and he was out
of town i believe in fact out of state and they track him down and talk with him and he's pretty cooperative he says
yes i was in town that night some things happened it was a misunderstanding and he was willing to cooperate with their
investigation yeah i'm sure it was a misunderstanding they have law enforcement has this blood type that
they know is going to rule out most of the suspects so they say plain and simple anytime they are interviewing
anybody about this case they say just give us your blood give us some your your blood and your fingerprints
and we will check into the information and it will either clear you or we'll keep you on our list bruce smith submits
blood and fingerprints to the police department they run a check on it and it turns out that bruce smith
who is now their prime suspect tested in the forensics showed that he was in fact type b blood but he was a
secretor so this cleared him and he was free to go police are going to have to move on with their investigation i just
wonder if that if you have two blood types one a secretor one a non-secretor if that would mess up the
testing well you can have a mixed sample like you'd have like the victim's blood
was a secretor so somehow that gets tampered with the other blood and that would confuse the test yes you can have
a mixed sample when it comes to the forensics on these cases in fact that's what we had in the barbara blatnick case
that we discussed a couple years ago about 90 days into beatrice police chief don luckenroth's homicide of helen
wilson investigation police announced that phone tips and police suspicions led to checks into 62 men now around
this time helen's daughter jan was interviewed jan said that the citizens of beatrice and others from around the
area were very sympathetic to her and her family saying quote this town is fantastic i've lived here all my life
and the people are just wonderful and she spoke highly of law enforcement personnel working the case as well
saying quote they've been nothing but considerate of our feelings right from the start shortly after the murder of
helen wilson her family established a reward fund being offered for information leading to the arrest of the
killer when helen's family set up the reward it was for one thousand dollars but after 90 days and with the help of
other contributors from members of the public the reward as of june of 1985 was just over 3 500
now jan urged members of the elderly community to take security precautions and ask that if anyone may have seen
something out of the ordinary on february 3rd and february 4th or if they know someone acting strange
after the murder to please contact beatrice police department well the fbi also was brought into this case pretty
quickly they sent out just a single agent but like we said this is a very small town just a little over 12 000
people and with that blood sample you're able to eliminate so much of the population there will be a lot of blame
to be thrown around here captain in what will ultimately be a horrific investigation
into this murder case what i want to point out one more time is police chief luckenroth and the detective
stevens look at the work that they're doing is 1985 they are making sure that they collect all of the proper forensic
evidence at the crime scene that it's stored properly that it's tested and that that information is kept and
used to steer their investigation they're also bringing in other agencies they recognize look we're the beatrice
police department this might be above our bar so let's bring in an expert and have them assist us or at least tell us
where to go with our investigation because we need a little guidance usually these things are solved within
48 to 72 hours let's bring in the fbi so the fbi sends special agent peter klismet to
speak with and work with the beatrice police department and he's going to put together an fbi profile a perpetrator
profile on helen wilson's homicide investigation in my summarized version of his profile
reads as follows it is not likely that helen wilson was a victim of a crime of opportunity it is
possible the victim was surveilled or possibly known to the offender robbery was definitely listen to that robbery
was definitely not the motive for the attack or murder the knife used came from inside the home this was used by
the perpetrator to gain control of the victim this attack is definitely connected to
the same individual that committed the failed attacks on single elderly women a year and a half to two years ago all
right so i want to talk about this and break in here for a minute here captain so you don't break into your own
conversation in beatrice yes in 1983 there were several attacks that were undetermined to be related or not
where someone broke into a single elderly woman's home or apartment and attempted to
either rape them or assault them but was unsuccessful for whatever reason may have gotten scared off maybe she
fought back got spooked whatever ended up leaving the scene fleeing the scene this
information was given to the fbi when they were reviewing helen wilson's murder investigation and this is our
special agent saying this attack and his opinion was definitely connected to those three
failed attacks that took place a year and a half to two years ago he goes on to add these attacks took place in the
middle of the night within blocks within blocks of helen wilson's apartment the killer may live alone he might live
close to the murder scene and the previous attacks he's probably unemployed if he does work it's
unskilled labor he has a terrible self-image and is confused about his own sexual identity between the last known
attack the attempted rape in august of 1983 that's the last of the three attacks
that took place previously yeah and the murder of helen wilson in february of 1985
the attacker may have left town for a new job joined the military or been busted for
prowling somewhere he goes on to say that there's a strong possibility that the killer hated or resented older women
and probably had a terrible relationship with his mother oh not his mother he may
have experienced emotional abuse or torment from his mother grandmother or some other older female relative this
attack rape and murder was most definitely committed by one single male perpetrator the man that you are looking
for is most likely a white male short or of medium height in his early 20s thin a high school dropout
considered a loner viewed as odd or wimpy in school and came from a broken home he owns pornography and likely
spent time in a juvenile facility or underwent counseling he has engaged in fetish burglaries and
or window peeping if he has not been arrested for these types of crimes he did it without being caught he is sloppy
he is dressed poorly he has bad hygiene he knew the area and possibly the building he had a well-planned escape
route and did not feel that he would be caught [Music] [Music] all right we are back cheers
cheers to you on the front the people in the back the people in the bathroom cheers to you too
wash your hands and that man wearing the red shirt you know somebody that's going to freak
him out how did the captain know he was wearing a red shirt it's because we can see you i can see you captain now's the
point in the story where we have to introduce burdette cersei who is burdette cersei
well he's an individual that was a one-time beatrice police officer and then goes on to become a private
investigator and afterward he will then become a deputy for the gage county sheriff's office
now i do not know this individual obviously but he comes off to me as somebody who
thinks of himself as one of these famous detectives that you see on tv you know fictional detectives you might see
on hbo or on netflix solving the unsolvable murder of the small town that he lives in
what happens in this situation is we have the beatrice police department that's doing good work in their
investigation and they keep coming up with suspects and persons of interest and they're using the blood evidence
that they found at the scene to clear these individuals it's pretty simple right we have
very unique evidence so when we have that very unique evidence and we go okay well this guy is
pot this guy possibly could have done it or this these people could have possibly done it
and you go talk to them and you find out hey they don't have an alibi let's get them to test the evidence
and so when they test against the evidence they have to rule that individual out it's pretty simple just
like what we saw with bruce smith the police the beatrice police department really liked him for this murder he gave
his blood they test it it doesn't match up 100 they move on to the next guy what ends up happening here though is
because they keep clearing individuals the case drags on for months and then for years
in fact burdette cersei does not become a deputy at the sheriff's office until this case
is a couple of years old he is an obsessed officer obsessed with the murder of helen wilson and obsessed with solving
it he was considered by the beatrice police department to be an average cop it sounds to me like a lot of the
other officers didn't care for him much that he was hard to work with and difficult to get along with that might
be why he ended up being a private investigator for a while and then he gets hired as a sheriff he did try to
get back on at beatrice but they i don't know if they turned him down or if he was offered the deputy job before that
was worked out so bernette cersei is determined to solve the murder of helen wilson and look i love a good passionate
detective who is for the people and looking to right or wrong and bring justice to
any of our victims here so i don't want to sound like i'm coming down on that side of it yeah but sometimes passion
turns into stupidity but what we're going to see here captain is a situation where i think this man's obsession may
have taken him over and i will cite just some of the portions of this investigation or his investigation
as it unfolds here so first he has information or claims that he has information from a young woman named
lisa podendorff now this lisa podendorff will go on to be labeled as informant number one and i
have a summarized version of the story that she told to cersei lisa stated that at approximately 7 30
or 8 a.m on february 6 1985 while she was standing in charles park located by the junior high school
in the city of beatrice nebraska that she was approached by joanne taylor who began to visit with her
she stated that during their conversation she noted that there were several police cars in and about the
apartment building located across the street from the high school building and that she had made a comment
to joanne taylor that she wondered why all of the police cars were at that location
to which joanne taylor then replied oh haven't you heard there was an older lady killed there last night lisa asked
joanne taylor what had happened and joanne taylor stated to her that an older lady was killed there and that she
was killed by suffocation lisa asked how joanne knew that information joanne stated that
i know that because joseph white and myself did it lisa replied back to joanne oh sure in
disbelief and joanne taylor said look i can tell you where the lady is lying and what happened to her
joanne then advised her that the woman could be found lying in her living room near a hallway on her back with her
hands bound and that her face would be covered with an afghan lisa made a comment to joanne oh sure i'll
bet you did it right joanne taylor then replied to lisa hey look i can prove it i can even tell you the color of the
footstool that's lying by the body and joanne taylor proceeded to state that there would be a foot sole lying by the
body turned upside down and that the footstool was vinyl covered green in color so there's a lot of information in
that general statement that lisa podendorff provided to burdette cersei at his request
some of that information is factual crime scene information and some of it is incorrect yeah [ __ ] malarkey we do
need to point out that this is information that cersei says he received shortly after
the homicide but then received it again years later from this same source one of the problems with this lisa's
statement is right from jump street where she says that approximately 7 30 to 8 o'clock am
on february 6 she's standing there she talks to joanne taylor and they're discussing all the
police cars across the street that are in front of that apartment building well we know that helen wilson's body
was not discovered until 9 29 a.m there were no police cars there during the time that she says she was having this
conversation and that police cars were there right the information about where the body was
located in the apartment was correct the banner of death was correct in fact the
stool kicked over lying on its side near the body was correct as well this is going to prompt deputy cersei to
believing well by jove i've got it i've finally solved the unsolvable murder of our
small town well but every time you know in his defense if you're if you hear this rumor years ago and now this rumor
is creeping back up you start thinking that maybe there's some weight there to it well and in a
move that i don't love but i guess you know sometimes if something's not getting solved you've got to get other
people involved the sheriff's office knowing this information now they're determined to take over this case and i
imagine they were probably assisting the beatrice police department along the way up to this point but
basically what you have here captain is the beatrice police department in particular detective stevens
and the police chief they are now telling the sheriff and his deputy cersei like we understand that you have this
information from this lisa podendorf we know who she is she's not a reliable honest person right
this is not somebody that we would take important information from you know this
is stuff that you do collect and you investigate it and you look into it and it's quickly
it's usually quickly brushed aside because there's no there's no wait there's no credit
nothing backing it up and that was stephen's concern in regards to the statements that were
given to cersei in fact he goes on to say another officer goes on to tell cersei and warn cersei
watch out what she's saying to you because this is a person who's not only unreliable but of very limited
intelligence right cersei takes this her statement to be gospel that now we have joanne taylor
and her friend joseph white who committed this crime so now this is going to lead cersei to
interviewing joanne taylor and this joseph white so again they have this let's call her eyewitness alisa
podendorf years earlier she's telling a story now she's kind of telling the same story but
everybody has dismissed the story because of her character and and she's just not a believable
source but for some reason they're going to take her as a source now and run with this
well not only that we have cersei the deputy cersei who is now telling the sheriff's office that he
works for look my confidential informants i have more than one not just this lisa person
but they've given me information that has assisted in identifying several persons who are known in the area
where the wilson homicide occurred so in addition to this joseph white and joanne taylor
cersei is now telling the sheriff's office that this investigation has led him to consider
thomas winslow cliff sheldon mark goodson beth johnson debbie brown and charlotte mendenhall
also known as charlotte bishop as persons of interest in this case at this time at this time he's not necessarily saying
that all of these individuals did in fact commit the the murder right but these are all persons of interest to
him based off of information that he's been told by you know these could be local gossip
people they could be rumors that are going around town but whatever he's hearing is leading him to
believe that some of these individuals are involved in helen wilson's homicide well and sometimes when you have a
especially a local case and very small community you start hearing these rumors but you might have okay one or two of
these individuals are the killers but we know that they were all at a party at some point and this story was shared so
all these individuals know about the crime the interesting thing here captain is now we have eight individuals that
cersei is concerned with as being possible persons of interest and he's going to have to investigate each one of
these individuals at the very least check into the their whereabouts see if they have alibis maybe obtain blood
from each one of them in fingerprints interview them figure out who to leave on his list of suspects or include
on his list of suspects and who to eliminate so as he's investigating these persons
of interest he verified that on the night of the homicide one of his persons of interest cliff sheldon was at
a hospital and beth johnson was at her parents okay so they seem to have pretty good alibis
mark goodson told cersei that he was out of town on the night of the homicide and
it appears that cersei believed goodson's statement sounds like cersei's willing to believe just about anything
right thomas winslow claimed that he was working at a truck stop on the night of
the homicide but we have some information where cersei does some good work here he actually finds out later
that this thomas winslow called in sick that night so while winslow may have thought that he was at work or at least
was using that as a false alibi cersei finds information to determine that that in fact is not correct and he
does not have an alibi at this point in the investigation they went from thinking that maybe eight people were
involved or knew something about the crime to five people that could be involved or know something about the
crime and he's really gonna hone in on three of these characters in particular and that's going to be
joseph white joanne taylor who he's already been told by lisa were there and committed that murder
and now he is interested in this winslow guy because remember he does not have an
alibi for that night he does a little more digging into winslow and figures out that he has a previous arrest record
it's all kind of pretty petty stuff but of interest on his arrest record is a situation where someone kicked in a
door to an elderly woman's home in the middle of the night she calls it in police show
up on the scene and they find a man walking in the area well this is that winslow character so
he's brought in and actually charged with some kind of misdemeanor of menacing or
vandalism vandalism something of that nature well he sees that on winslow's record and he says you know what this is
a clear indicator that he was probably trying to break into that woman's home so that he could rape and maybe even
kill or rob the woman that night yeah and his little pee brain he's going got him
got him to winslow's credit he says he was simply just walking in the area when police showed up he was the only one
there so they believed that he in fact was the one that was guilty of kicking in this woman's door well as
they're doing more digging too they figure out that joseph white and joanne taylor the ones that he believes are
responsible for these murders left town just a little bit after the murders took
place that information is true and that's certainly going to make them look guilty to deputy cersei
what we have here captain is a situation where winslow gets himself into some kind of trouble he ends up being
involved in a pretty brutal robbery that takes place and it sounds like winslow was kind of the lookout man
and this robbery goes bad and his partner ends up severely assaulting the man that was robbed
so winslow is facing now decades in prison for this violent robbery that he was involved in
this is going to be cersei's inn right he's going to be able to go to the jail while this guy's waiting for his trial
and he's going to be able to talk with them and he says to him look i know that you have some kind of information in
regards to the homicide of helen wilson tell me what you know do you know a joanne taylor yes do you know a joseph
white yes you're friends with them i was friends with them a long time ago i was friends
with them four years ago just before they left town shortly after the murder what ends up happening is after a long
interview process winslow is now saying and getting an opportunity to get off of this long prison sentence for
the violent robbery if he agrees to say that joseph white and joanne taylor told
him that they committed the homicide and that is why they were leaving town right
because at this point we have lisa that we can't believe even everybody in town are saying we can't believe her but if
we have her saying it and another person saying it now we have two people going to be able to testify against
joseph and joanne today we will be recommending failure of justice by john ferrick this book is
fantastic on the case and it's a really long process here captain how they get from
the fbi telling them one single male perpetrator committed this crime to now we're up to three people right we're
we're at two people were involved and one guy winslow knows about it and because he's facing a lengthy prison
sentence he's all more than happy to throw his former friends under the bus and say yeah they told me they were
getting out of dodge because they committed the murder right interview after interview after interview
he wants to know that they told him details they didn't just tell you that they committed the crime
and they're they're leaving town did they no they told you intimate details didn't they tell you this that the other
thing he's feeding winslow information to help fill in a lot of the blanks and give him details unknown to the public
details about the homicide the rape and the attack itself showing him pictures of the crime scene
well we see this all the time you know look at west memphis three or whatever where it's like oh well they
oh well they use this weapon and the the cops go um you sure was that weapon you
sure it wasn't a knife you sure it wasn't this and they just kind of point them into the correct
direction armed with this information they are going to go back to their original suspects joseph white and
joanne taylor to which joseph white he says look i'm innocent i do not know what you're
talking about i didn't kill any woman i didn't do it with joanne taylor i didn't
leave town because i killed a woman i i've no involvement in this at all and furthermore they don't have any evidence
that joseph white did this other than this confession from this winslow guy they just received and it's you know a
little bit of information that turns into a lot of information but then you have these fingerprints and you go how
about we test these fingerprints and this blood evidence well that's the thing what happens is the blood evidence
doesn't match joseph white the fingerprints don't match joseph white well that's okay because we now know
that two people were there so does the blood match joanne taylor no did the fingerprints match joanne
taylor no well winslow somebody knew about this crime he says that he knew about it maybe he knows more than
what he's telling us maybe he was there that night too and helped the two of them commit this crime maybe he was
actually even involved in the murder and rape itself now we're up to three people tied
together being involved in the murder and rape they test thomas winslow's blood it doesn't match the fingerprints
do not match at some point you'd start going hey all these uh knows equal they're not involved
but he doesn't stop there he goes okay well now we got these three suspects but they don't match so while they knew
about the crime possibly were there so now i need to find another individual that actually matches the evidence
through this they will get a confession from joanne taylor and thomas winslow thomas winslow goes from just knowing
about the crime to now he's completely involved and he's confessing that he was in fact there and was involved in the
attack itself their stories are all a little you know they're not 100 lining up but they're
close joanne taylor and thomas winslow's stories are close and what's interesting
to me here captain is that these are fairly detailed actually not fairly they're very
detailed accounts of what went down that night how much of that information was fed to them is certainly to be called
into question now no joseph white is still proclaiming innocence he never confesses to anything he never
implicates anybody else in the homicide in fact he even says i believe you i was
with joanne taylor that night so she couldn't have committed the crime or committed it with anybody else
through the statements that they get from joanne taylor and the altered statements that
they get from thomas winslow they will go on to implicate a deborah sheldon and james dean so now
we have five individuals that committed this rape and homicide and what is cersei's theory the theory
is that winslow white and taylor had prior knowledge of the victim and prior knowledge of her
belongings and that she would have money and that they went there to rob this elderly woman the robbery then turned
into a rape and a murder keep in mind right the fbi who originally assisted the beatrice police department who again
was doing good work on the case before the sheriff's office took it over told the police department this is
almost certainly a single male perpetrator and the motive was definitely not robbery yeah single male
now we're having females involved and they're we're up to five people right well now and again
the nose the amount of nose that they got the nose nose the nose knows now with the addition of deborah sheldon and
james dean we have two possible people that we can connect the fingerprints and blood evidence to and again it's more
nose no way it doesn't match the blood of sheldon or james dean come on if the glove don't fit you must have quit
[Music] we have a shirt that will tell you differently um the interesting thing here though captain is
now we still need to find somebody that the blood evidence will match right we're up to five perpetrators
and nobody's matched the blood well let's keep going why stop at five there's an interesting
little tidbit to this whole story and part of that is that thomas winslow for about a week maybe a few nights to a
week stayed at the home of kathy gonzalez kathy gonzalez lived on the third floor of the
apartment building in fact directly above our victim helen wilson it is believed that gonzalez and winslow
because of this arrangement he stayed there crashing on her couch for a few days she was trying to help him out
because he was basically homeless after his girlfriend dumped him and kicked him
out of her place get out you son of a [ __ ] so now cersei believes that this provided
knowledge about the victim and her apartment and her belongings from kathy gonzalez and thomas winslow
so they tracked down this kathy gonzalez she is adamant i did not have anything to do
with this i remember exactly what i was doing that night because the next morning was very strange for me they
found a murder victim a person that i knew that i lived near how could i forget what i was doing she said that
she had done laundry watched a movie went to bed and that winslow was not living at her residence at that time she
had kicked him out too it goes from kathy gonzalez doing laundry and watching a movie that night to her
confessing to being involved in the murder as well and implicating all of these same people that have been
implicated by the others six people will ultimately be charged with the murder of helen wilson five of
them confessed to being involved and confessed that the others were involved as well kathy gonzalez her blood
matched but not 100 percent and so we thought the blood was from a male well the blood evidence is not going to
suggest if it's male or female they're not doing dna evidence we're saying hey we got
fingerprints and we have blood evidence and we have semen so we know the siemens from a man so
we're going to assume that the blood is from a man as well that's what the fbi is stating and to be clear the forensics
that were conducted the tests that were conducted on the blood evidence found at
the scene and the forensic evidence found at the scene they were conducted in the state of nebraska not by the fbi
kathy gonzalez her blood matches but it's not a 100 match but it's close enough for cersei and the sheriff's
office to continue with their charging these six individuals with homicide now what their statement is
going to be is that because we have so many perpetrators plus we have a victim that they weren't going to be able to
get a 100 match because it's probably a mixture some kind of blood mixture yeah that makes sense the confessions
the five confessions are what will ultimately win over these convictions of all six of these individuals and in fact
john ferrick says this in his book and i have to echo this belief of his that if the death penalty
did not exist in nebraska at the time i don't know that they would have gotten all these confessions or any of them for
that matter because the death penalty was what was the threat to these individuals that took them from
not being involved to confessing to being involved in a brutal homicide and i don't want to get into opinions on
death penalty for against that's not what we're here to discuss just know that that was used as
leverage against these individuals plus we also have a group that's really kind of a group of down and out
people you know some people that have had tough upbringings have had bad situations some that are not quite all
there some that are easily impressionable yeah but what they do is they use multiple people against each other not
just one and one if it's one and one you start thinking what's he said she said once these law
enforcement officers are saying look we know you're involved and if you don't cooperate like the
others are cooperating we're going to give you the death penalty so then you're going to start
contemplating in your head well i'm innocent of the crime i definitely don't want to die because of it
so if i go along with the others then at least i'm alive in prison and i have a fighting chance to get out in
1989 the six that will go on to be known as the beatrice six were arrested for the crime
of murder ultimately all six are charged and convicted and they will all serve pretty lengthy
prison sentences now this will be up until they are all all six of them exonerated in 2009
and the reason for this is that in 2008 dna evidence implicated to a 100 certainty that bruce allen smith the
original prime suspect in the murder was the sole perpetrator of this rape and homicide but i thought his blood
didn't match but what we have here captain is that bruce allen smith was eliminated by testing performed by later
disgraced lab analyst joyce gilchrist so she just did a shoddy job with her testing and her findings in her
test now unfortunately even though we've proven that bruce allen smith committed this homicide he
could not be prosecuted because he died in oklahoma back in 1992. so he's dead and gone while these
other individuals are sitting in prison for this murder charge now out of the six the way it works is some of them got
only 10 years and some of them got like 40 years and others got life in prison that's correct we have white who
received life in prison the two males were charged uh most heavily charged because
they were the ones that were implicated by the others as committing the rape and the murder itself right
unfortunately in 2011 joseph white was killed in a construction accident at work
and the state agreed to pay compensation to all of these individuals who served time in prison so there was a
lawsuit that was filed against the gage county gage county nebraska it was actually
dismissed a couple of times before it finally went through there was a trial for the lawsuit and
the jury awarded millions and millions of dollars to not only the five that remain but also
to joseph white's heirs now this is not a extremely wealthy county right and so the county was forced to
raise taxes so that they could pay back the beatrice six for the wrongful conviction
well it's sad in this case too because again law enforcement you have all these forced confessions
at some point i mean how many people do you have to have involved in this case i just don't understand how
somebody in law enforcement could it's almost like they had to make up the story as they went along and that's what
cersei was doing and a little bit in his defense i'm not going to come to his defense too much but
when you have these suspicions and you have this completely bogus theory that he believed
i i believe that he actually believed his own theory yeah well i believe that you believe that he believed his own
theory and the problem then becomes he starts finding people that are going along with this theory and filling
in a lot of the blanks along the way now they got to some of these fill in the blanks they got some of
these blanks filled in by some questionable behavior you know you had a psychologist that was involved that was
telling people you know well you probably blocked it out you know you could have been there and completely
blocked it out just because you don't remember it doesn't mean you didn't do it right you weren't there
and they started relying on a lot of the confessions a lot of the portions of the
confessions that implicated themselves and the the others came from first the notion of well the police tell
me i was there so i must have been there and then secondly it goes to they were taking information that some of the
individuals say that they were they were having dreams about the crime so they must have been there right and but i
also want to know how much force was used and that's that's something that law enforcement would know
you see what i'm saying like if i actually if i'm going into the interview and i and within an hour or so i i start
getting people to confess yes we all know that innocent people will confess to crimes they didn't
commit but i'm going to start going well that was pretty easy so maybe i am on to
something and what i'm saying is we don't know those details of of how the interrogations went well
if you want to know the details check out john ferrick's book because he details that in his book and
what we do learn is that i don't believe that there was any type of force or abuse that was used i mean i shouldn't
say any type of abuse because there was certainly some type of abuse but i would
put that more on the mental and emotional aspect of really kind of trying to corral these
individuals and convincing them that they did in fact do this and altering their own statements and giving it back
to them we're talking about a situation where we have multiple individuals that were interviewed multiple times over a
series of days and weeks and and so on and so forth and a lot of them started off with the story
that they were innocent and had nothing to do with it and over time after being interviewed over and over and over again
and sitting with the police psychologist and being hypnotized and this that and the other thing
it morphs into this weird situation of they go from being innocent to yeah i was guilty and they're guilty
too but that's what drives me nuts about some of the these law enforcement and some of these detectives it's the level
of manipulation it's the level of manipulations that you have to use on these individuals and multiple
individuals to get any kind of confession at some point you should understand that you're only getting that
confession because of the manipulation not because it's the truth [Music] [Applause]
all right thanks for joining us here in the garage and if you are freak nasty make sure you
check out off the record our bonus show that comes out every other week but only
do so if you're nasty colonel do we have any recommended reading for this week yes sir captain
obviously this week we will be recommending failure of justice a brutal murder and an obsessed cop and six
wrongful convictions by john ferrick you can find that wonderful title and many others on our website
truecrimegarage.com click on the recommended page this book is incredible this is a very convoluted
and difficult to understand story because there's so many people involved there's so many different confessions
john farrick did an amazing job of laying this case out and really detailing every portion of this
case an investigation that ultimately took over four years so make sure you check out failure of justice by john
ferrick it's also available on audible so you can check it out there i'm actually listening to it right now as we
speak as we record make sure you join us back here in the garage next week until then
be good be kind [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

The Beatrice 6 ////// 529

Part 1 of 1

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This week we take a look at a homicide case from Beatrice, Nebraska. 68 year old Helen Wilson was killed inside her apartment sometime during the night. After 4 years the investigation looked like it was going cold but an obsessive officer changed that rather quickly. Join us in the Garage as we discuss the case and those accused - The Beatrice 6.

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Loon Lake, Wisconsin - Cathy Nameth sent out a distress call. Something was terribly wrong. When her husband tried calling back, Cathy never answered. He rushed to her location finding her still clinging to life but covered in blood. Unfortunately Cathy died that day in October 2002 from multiple stab wounds. She was attacked and murdered in an isolated and safe recreational area. Concerns about a deranged murderer lurking in the woods terrified everyone. This week we discuss the still unsolved homicide case of Cathy Nameth.

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Brief Summary

The episode details the wrongful convictions of the Beatrice Six in the murder of Helen Wilson and the flaws in the investigation that led to their exoneration.

Key points

The Murder of Helen Wilson. 68-year-old Helen Wilson was found murdered in her apartment in Beatrice, Nebraska.
Brutal Attack Details. Helen's murder involved signs of a violent struggle and evidence of a break-in.
Blood Type Evidence. The killer was identified as a rare blood type, narrowing down suspects significantly.
Community Response. Helen's family established a reward fund for information leading to her killer's arrest.
Investigation Begins. The Beatrice police department initiates a thorough investigation into Helen Wilson's murder.
FBI Involvement. The FBI sends special agent Peter Klismet to assist in the investigation.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This town is fantastic, the people are just wonderful.

Jan speaking about Beatrice after her mother's murder.

22:11WatchOct 22, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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