After the U.S. Supreme Court reinstituted the death penalty, in 1976, the first Texas execution took place in 1982; by the end of that decade, the state was responsible for 33 of the countrys 116 executions. The trials began in May, with testimony from dental specialists supplementing the evidence that the prison witnesses had provided. McLemore sent out copies of the TRCs brief to journalists, trying to get attention for Spence; he also made a case for the inmates innocence in the March 1997 issue of Pardos monthly political newsletter, Capitol Watch. 
Simons and Baier set out to investigate. There has never been anything said or written that has ever changed her opinion that her jury made the right decision, Deaconson said. I believe that David Spence was an innocent person who was murdered at the hands of the state, Hunt said. He likes to brag a lot, he told his lawyers, and I just thought he was just trying to brag about that because he thought it was something cool.. He pulled down the front of his shirt, revealing a noose tattooed around his neck and on his chest. His mother, Juanita White, whod attended every day of the trial, burst into tears. Campbells words had a distinct impact. Courtney Bond is an executive editor of Texas Monthlys Food & Drink and BBQ sections. Simons, walking among the bodies as he searched for clues, was shaken. That June, Dannen tracked down Williams, who was still living in Waco. They matched exactly, Campbell told a reporter. A new lawyer, Joel Schwartz, stepped up to help. From the start, hed felt that Deeb was too slight to have committed three murders on his own, and earlier he had followed up with the original tipster, Kader, to ask if she could think of any other suspects. Talk about a commanding presence. Kelley worked at Deebs store and Simons learned Deeb had taken out a life insurance policy on her and made himself the beneficiary. For days, the departments phones rang nonstop as people called in with leads, most of which amounted to nothing: someone claimed that members of a biker gang known as the Scorpions had bragged about the killings; someone else reported having given a ride to an extremely nervous man with blood on his pants who had been walking along a nearby highway on the morning after the bodies were found; one caller reported that someone had been doing Indian rituals near the crime scene; another said that there was a devils cult operating in the area. WebBefore the murders Wiley had been grounded over her relationship with an 18-year-old who testified that he would often sneak into the teens bedroom to spend the night with her. Then there was the gold bracelet at Koehne Park, which Thompson had come to believe was planted. He didnt know a lot about the death penalty, yet when he read the writ, the inmates conviction didnt make sense. After that, however, the teenagers trail vanished. The dead boy was clearly Kenneth, the men agreed, studying the photo. And he liked to talk. I have always had my doubts and never really thought he was a guilty and still dont, Reaves said of Spence. It was only in December 2012 that theyd finally reclaimed the material; now it was at Arkansas Genomics, a lab in Little Rock that does touch DNA testing. Finally Franks relented, and the two men met at a Lubys on Valley Mills Drive. David was kind of a braggart, Hunt told me. David Spence was at the county jail awaiting trial for aggravated sexual abuse. She was shy and craved love and attention, Thompson told me. When Melendezs mother died of cancer a couple of years ago he became even closer with Thompson. Why would it be destroyed? Brad told me. But four years later she was laid off, and wanting to live someplace warm, she applied for a job in Texas. Now, putting aside any remaining semblance of journalistic objectivity, he signed a paralegal agreement to work for Reaves, who offered to help get Washington out of prison pro bono. Id knock the shit out of him, and hed say, You done? He never bullied me or bit me. These days theres increasing credibility given to the idea that innocent people do plead guilty; the National Registry of Exonerations recently found that nearly 1 in 5 of the 87 inmates who were exonerated in 2013 had pleaded guilty to charges against them, often because of the guarantee of a lesser sentence. Feazells findings, which showed that Lucas lied about his victims, had embarrassed the Texas Rangers, who had used Lucas statements to erroneously clear dozens of murders. And theres not a shred of doubt in my mind that Anthony Melendez is innocent. UPDATE:Tony Melendez, the last living Lake Waco murders defendant, died on Friday, January 13, 2017, at 57 at a prison hospice at the Michael Unit in Tennessee Colony, not far from Palestine. She was sure it would result in her sons exoneration. Hunt, who still believed that Spence was innocent, made copies, one of which he sent to the U.S. attorneys office. They had come to distrust the sergeant for his tendency to build cases on his own; in a vocation that valued teamwork, being a loner didnt win him any friends. Getting Tony out will be the other greatest thing., Was Dannen about to solve the 32-year-old mystery? His hair is cut close to the scalp, and his close-set eyes are dark with worry. Texas law sets the bar very high for innocence claims, effectively requiring conclusive proof of innocence, said Raoul Schonemann, who is now the co-director of the Capital Punishment Clinic. Hes thought about his brother, Gilbert, whom he never got to see again after their brief reunion in 1992, before Muneer Deebs retrial. Let us help you so you dont go to death row. It was Melendezs lawyersChuck Youts and Jim Barlow, both now deceasedwho urged him to plead guilty. That claim had reporters from national media outlets flocking to Texas to try to prove that bold statement wrong, and some chose Spence as the poster child for the wrongfully convicted. This is where they say those three teenagers were killed, he said Spence told him. (There were times I thought I was going to be ambushed at my house, she told me.) But as Baier soon pointed out, there was a problem: when asked for details on Spences car, Melendez had said it was a station wagon. The next day he spoke with Jills mother, Nancy Shaw, and her aunt, Jan Thompson, and revealed a theory that was beginning to take shape in his mind. Trapani offered Padgett and Alexander $15,0000 to murder Gail. Jarred Salsa Helps Revive a Nearly 70-Year-Old Tex-Mex Institution, The Top 50 Texas BBQ Joints: 2021 Edition. In return Melendez got two life sentences. Dannen would have to find evidence to support his ideas in other ways. The following summer, in August 1987, Williams went on trial. Spence was an ex-con. Is this what had driven Franks out on a desperate search for his son that night, well before the murders were reported? I acknowledge that I am not in possession of all the facts, he wrote, but I cannot fathom why, if there is new evidence that casts doubt on the states case against Mr. Spence, he should be executed without a hearing. Dannen added that he planned to look into the case for a magazine story. Feazell also included Chief Scott, who had publicly accused him of refusing to prosecute valid criminal cases. By now the tension between the WPD and the DAs office had grown to an all-time high. Heart pounding, Simons peered around the immediate surroundings. When she didnt show up for church the next morning, her Sunday school teacher stopped by the house and found her. For Simons, this was a promising start, and later that afternoon he and Baier sat down to interview Kelley, who had also been a friend of Jills. There was no time to lose, and the group feverishly got to work. He asked an investigator with the DAs office to accompany him, and the two men wandered through Koehne Park. Heres How to Bring Them to Your Yard. Yes, admitted Deeb; he often spent time at the Rainbow Drive Inn. He would work like a bird dog, around the clock, he recalled. They were vague feelings, and shed never mentioned them to her family. To some of Simonss colleagues, the results of the polygraph were no surprise. In June two cops had been shot in a gun battle downtown. Lying in the grass was the body of a young blond woman. Last April 3, David Wayne Spence was executed for the murders. Unfortunately, however, the odontologists took a long time completing their assessments, and as the October 1993 deadline for the depositions approached, the TRC team realized the full odontology report was going to be late. Three years after her murder, Jills remains lay in an unadorned grave in a country cemetery just north of Waxahachie. Theyd killed Kenneth and Raylene to prevent them from talking. But his most revealing tattoo is largely hidden under his prison shirt. After the trial, Feazell went on the offensive against Price, announcing that he was considering launching a probe for witness tampering, retaliation, and subornation of perjury by her and the WPD. Others told her about special treatment that informants got from Simons, who gave them cigarettes, food, and time alone with their wives and girlfriends. Simons, whod relied on his gut so many times before in his career, was stunned. Furthermore, although forensic odontology was admissible in court, there was no established science behind it, and allowing Campbells testimony would be a travesty of justice, argued the lawyers. Using electronically enhanced autopsy photos, the odontologist testified that Spence was the only individual to a reasonable medical and dental certainty who could have bitten the women. But there was more, said Salinas. Skip Hollandsworth specializes in long-form narratives. Kari had a full life, not only as a mother and wife, but as an elementary school teacher. Early in the investigation, the prosecutor had written a note on his stationery: G[ilbert] M[elendez] told [fellow inmate] Robert [Garcia] he did not know anything but was going to make up a story to get off of [the] sexual abuse case., Why would Gilbert confess to such a horrible crime if he didnt commit it? Wed work ten hours a day, and I didnt have a car, so Id stay a week at a time. The police had seen the letter, and theyd questioned Frueh back in 1982 before letting him go. Hed had a real crappy childhood, Driggs remembered, and probably had a lot of anger, but I never read him as a dangerous guy, unlike some others we worked with. There was no reliable forensic evidence that Spence had killed the teenagersand to all his lawyers, he had consistently maintained his innocence. I dont have any guilt feelings about causing their deaths.. The semen found on Whites body had never been tested for DNA, Dannen realized with excitement. She had been raped, sodomized, beaten, and suffocated. Ive got to go to Texas and find out what the hell happened, he told her. Now she hoped she could help free Washington and Williamsand cast some light on the DA and his investigator. The constitutional violations were egregious.. I was very fond of David, Schonemann told me. After studying the autopsy photos himself, he determined that several of the wounds on the girls bodies did, in fact, look as if theyd been made by human teeth. On February 16, 1994, Schonemann got his answer. I was like the Anne Frank of Texas, he joked. Thompson seems pleased to be there for her friend, happy to be part of what she hopes is the redemption of Tony Melendez. McLennan County DA John Segrest ordered that a sample be sent away for DNA testing and received results in February 2001. Spence wasnt so lucky. Many of the wounds were shallow, suggesting they had been tortured. At a court hearing in Waco, Feazell accused Dannen of not returning his tapes; Dannen, in an affidavit, said he had made copies and given them back. Evans threw herself into her job as a patrol officer; though she knew that many Southern cops believed police work should be reserved for men, her fearlessness and forceful attitude quickly earned her a reputation, in the words of Chief Larry Scott, as one of the best officers we had in the department. The Lake Waco murders, which took place a year after she arrived on the force, were a rude awakening. Later in the evening, the woman wrote, she saw Kenneth in the front seat of a maroon Lincoln Continental with Robert Frueh, a local reverend with a fondness for teenage boys who often cruised through Wacos parks. Schonemann and his team appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in December 1994. I live with this case every day, he said. Most murder victims know their assailants, but there seemed to be no rhyme nor reason for the deaths of these three teens. I have a witness.. Back at the TRC, Schonemanns peers found the Melendez recantations encouraging. He always told me hed be dead before the truth came out, remembered June. WebShow Crime Shots, Ep Lake Waco Murders - 33 - Jun 19, 2021 I am perplexed and bewildered, as Im sure a lot of people are, he told the Waxahachie Daily Light. I dont know whats happened to you, he whispered in her ear, but I promise you one thing. A story by the Associated Press in June 2013 also found that since 2000, at least 24 men who had been charged or convicted of murder or rape based on bite-mark evidence had been exonerated. Simons told Price that, through his informants, he had learned that Washington had had a partner in crime, a nineteen-year-old named Joe Sidney Williams. He and Blum met with Vic Feazell, who had gotten divorced and started dabbling in the film business. However, both men were found to have credible alibis (Harper's was later proven false when Spence's attorneys investigated it). Convinced he was on the right track, Dannen shared some of his own suspicions with Thompson. But now he didnt know what to think. I believe that. He worked on a couple of rewrites, telling his friends and sources back in Texas that it wouldnt be long until he could publish everything. He took it to the girls mother and aunt, who both said she had owned a bracelet like it. It was a horrific murder. But first he needed to figure out if his evolving theory about the night had any credence. Other evidence, meanwhile, had never been turned over to defense attorneys, including dozens of police reports that seemed to contradict the murder-for-hire theory. Deeb had an unrequited crush on Kelley, yet she was close with Kenneth. Simons investigative style and penchant for cultivating jailhouse snitches came under fire, even from his former Waco police colleagues. 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